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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9608-8.txt b/9608-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5ec6fe1 --- /dev/null +++ b/9608-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10782 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cords of Vanity, by +James Branch Cabell and Willson Follett + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Cords of Vanity + +Author: James Branch Cabell + Willson Follett + +Posting Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #9608] +Release Date: January, 2006 +First Posted: October 9, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORDS OF VANITY *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Virginia Paque, Anuradha Valsa, +and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + + +THE CORDS OF VANITY + +A Comedy of Shirking + +Revised and Expanded Edition + +by JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +with INTRODUCTION by WILSON FOLLETT + + + + + + + +To + +GABRIELLE BROOKE MONCURE + +_Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit._ + + + + + +AN INTRODUCTION + +by Wilson Follett + + +Mr. Cabell, in making ready this second or intended edition of THE +CORDS OF VANITY, performs an act of reclamation which is at the same +time an act of fresh creation. + +For the purely reclamatory aspect of what he has done, his reward (so +far as that can consist in anything save the doing) must come from +insignificantly few directions; so few indeed that he, with a wrily +humorous exaggeration, affects to believe them singular. The author of +this novel has been pleased to describe the author of this +introduction as "the only known purchaser of the book" and, further, +as "the other person to own a CORDS OF VANITY". I could readily enough +acquit myself, with good sound legal proofs, of any such singularity +as stands charged in this soft impeachment--and that without appeal to +_The Cleveland Plain Dealer_ of eleven years ago ("slushy and +disgusting"), or to _The New York Post_ ("sterile and malodorous ... +worse than immoral--dull"), or to _Ainslee's Magazine_ ("inconsequent +and rambling ... rather nauseating at times"). These devotees of the +adjective that hunts in pairs are hardly to be discussed, I suppose, +in connection with any rewards except such as accrue to the possessors +of a certain obtuseness, who always and infallibly reap at least the +reward of not being hurt by what they do not know--or, for that +matter, by what they do know. He who writes such a book as THE CORDS +OF VANITY is committing himself to the supremely irrational faith that +this dullness is somehow not the ultimate arbiter; and for him the +pronouncements of this dullness simply do not figure among either his +rewards or his penalties. So, it is not exactly to these tributes of +the press that one reverts in noting that THE CORDS OF VANITY, on its +publication eleven years ago, promptly became a book which there +were--almost--none to praise and very few to love. After all, its +author's computation of that former audience of his--his actual +individual voluntary readers of a decade ago--appears to be but +slightly and pardonably exaggerated on the more modest side of the +fact. If there were a Cabell Club of membership determined solely by +the number of those who, already possessing THE CORDS OF VANITY in its +first edition, recognize it as the work of a serious artist of high +achievement and higher capacity, I suspect that the smallness of that +club would be in inordinate disproportion to everything but its +selectness and its members' pride in "belonging". + +Be that as it may, the economist-author, on the eve of his book's +emergence from the limbo of "out of print", prefers that it come into +its redemption carrying a foreword by someone who knew it without +dislike in its former incarnation. No contingent liability, it seems, +can dissuade Mr. Cabell from this preference. An author who once +elected to precede a group of his best tales with an introduction +eloquently setting forth reasons why the collection ought not to be +published at all, is hardly to be deterred now by the mere +inexpediency of hitching his star to a farm-wagon. His own graciously +unreasonable insistence must be the excuse, such as it is, for the +present introduction, such as it is. If there may be said to exist a +sort of charter membership in Mr. Cabell's audience, this document is +to be construed as representing its very enthusiastic welcome to the +later and vastly larger elective membership. + +And if, weighed as such a welcome, it proves hopelessly inadequate, at +least it provides a number of possible compensations by the way. For +instance, that _New York World_ critic who damned the book but praised +its frontispiece of 1909, has now a uniquely pat opportunity to +balance his ledger by praising the book and damning this foreword, +which, more or less, replaces the frontispiece. Similarly, the more +renowned critic and anthologist who so well knows the "originals" of +the verses in _From the Hidden Way_, can now render poetically perfect +justice to all who will care by perceiving that both the earlier +edition of this book and the author of this foreword are but figments +of Mr. Cabell's slightly puckish invention. + +But these pages must not be, like those which follow, a comedy of +shirking. They will have flouted a plain duty unless they speak of the +sense and the degree in which this novel, during the process of +reclaiming it, has been actually recreated. Perhaps the matter can be +packed most succinctly into the statement that Mr. Cabell's hero has +been subjected to such a process of growth as has made him +commensurate in stature with the other two modern writers of Mr. +Cabell's invention. As _The Cream of the Jest_ is essentially the book +of Felix Kennaston and _Beyond Life_ that of John Charteris, so THE +CORDS OF VANITY is essentially the book of Robert Etheridge Townsend. +Now, this Townsend has accomplished a deal of growing since 1909. By +this I do not mean that he is taken at a later period of his own +imagined life, or that he fails to act consonantly with the extreme +youth imputed to him: I mean that he is the creation of a more mature +mind, a deeper philosophy, a more probing insight into the +implications of things. A given youth of twenty-five will be very +differently interpreted by an observer of thirty and by the same +observer at forty, very much as a given era of the past will be +understood differently by a single historian before and after certain +cycles of his own social and political experience. The past never +remains to us the same past; it grows up along with us; the physical +facts may remain admittedly the same, but our understanding accents +them differently, finds more in them at some points and less at +others. So Robert Etheridge Townsend remains an example of that +special temperament which, being unable to endure the contact of +unhappiness, consistently shirks every responsibility that entails or +threatens discomfort; and the truth about him, taking him as an +example of just that temperament, is still inexorably told. But his +weakness as a man becomes much more tolerable in this second version, +because it is much more intimately and poignantly correlated with his +strength as an artist. One is made to feel that he, like Charteris, +may the better consummate in his art the auctorial virtues of +distinction and clarity, beauty and symmetry, tenderness and truth and +urbanity, precisely because his personal life is bereft of those +virtues. Less than before, the accent is on the wastrel in Townsend; +more than before, it is on the potential creator of beauty in him. The +earlier readers will hardly count it as a fault that Mr. Cabell has +contrived to make his novel, without detriment to any truth +whatsoever, a far less unpleasant book. Sardonic it still is, by a +necessary implication, but not wantonly, and with a mellowness. The +irony, which at its harshest was capable of rasping the nerves, has +become capable of wringing the heart. + +Other reasons there are, too, for holding that THE CORDS OF VANITY is +certain to make its second appeal to a many times multiplied audience. +Since divers momentous transactions of the years just gone, the whole +world stands in a moral position extraordinarily well adapted to the +comprehension of just such a comedy of shirking; and especially the +world of thought has received a powerful impulsion toward the area +long occupied by Mr. Cabell's romantic pessimism. There is perhaps +somewhat more demand for satire, or at least a growing toleration of +it. Moreover, by sheer patience and reiteration Mr. Cabell has +procured no little currency for some of his most characteristic ideas. +Chivalry and gallantry, as he analyzes them, are concepts which play +their part in the inevitable present re-editing of social and literary +history. _The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck_, _The Cream of the Jest_, +and _The Certain Hour_ have somewhat to say to the discriminating, +even on other than purely aesthetic grounds; _Beyond Life_ is on the +threshold of its day as the _Sartor Resartus_ of one side, the +aesthetic side, of modernism; + +"_Of_ Jurgen _eke they maken mencion";_ + +and THE CORDS OF VANITY is but the first of the earlier books to be +reissued in the format of the uniform and accessible Intended Edition. + +While THE CORDS OF VANITY was out of print, a fresh copy is known to +have been acquired for twenty-five cents. Copies of a more recent work +by the same hand--a tale which has been rendered equally unavailable +to the public, though by slightly different considerations--have +fetched as much as one hundred times that sum. This arithmetic may be, +in part, the gauge of an unsought and distasteful notoriety; but that +very notoriety, by the most natural of transitions, will lead the +curious on from what cannot be obtained to what can, and some who have +begun by seeking one particular work of a great artist will end by +discovering the artist. In short, it is rational to expect that the +fortunes hereafter of this rewritten novel will very excellently +illustrate the uses of adversity. + +Not, I repeat, that any great part of the reward for such writing can +come from without. According to Robert Etheridge Townsend, "a man +writes admirable prose not at all for the sake of having it read, but +for the more sensible reason that he enjoys playing solitaire"--a not +un-Cabellian saying. And, even of the reward from without, it may be +questioned whether the really indispensable part ever comes from the +multitude. A lady with whose more candid opinions the writer of this +is more frequently favored nowadays than of old has said: "Every time +I hear of somebody who has wanted one of these books without being +able to get it, or who, having got it, has conceded it nothing better +than the disdain of an ignoramus, I feel as if I must forthwith get +out the copy and read it through again and again, until I have read it +once for every person who has rejected it or been denied it." One may +feel reasonably sure that it is this kind of solicitude, rather than +any possible sanction from the crowd, which would be thought of by the +author of this book as "the exact high prize through desire of which +we write". + +WILSON FOLLETT. + +CHESHIRE, CONNECTICUT + +_May, 1920_ + + + + + + CONTENTS: + + THE PROLOGUE + + I HE SITS OUT A DANCE + + II HE LOVES EXTENSIVELY + + III HE EARNS A STICK-PIN + + IV HE TALKS WITH CHARTERIS + + V HE REVISITS FAIRHAVEN AND THE PLAY + + VI HE CHATS OVER A HEDGE + + VII HE GOES MAD IN A GARDEN + + VIII HE DUELS WITH A STUPID WOMAN + + IX HE PUTS HIS TONGUE IN HIS CHEEK + + X HE SAMPLES NEW EMOTIONS + + XI HE POSTURES AMONG CHIMNEY-POTS + + XII HE FACES HIMSELF AND REMEMBERS + + XIII HE BAITS UPON THE JOURNEY + + XIV HE PARTICIPATES IN A BRAVE JEST + + XV HE DECIDES TO AMUSE HIMSELF + + XVI HE SEEKS FOR COPY + + XVII HE PROVIDES COPY + + XVIII HE SPENDS AN AFTERNOON IN ARDEN + + XIX HE PLAYS THE IMPROVIDENT FOOL + + XX HE DINES OUT, IMPEDED BY SUPERSTITIONS + + XXI HE IS URGED TO DESERT HIS GALLEY + + XXII HE CLEANS THE SLATE + + XXIII HE REVILES DESTINY AND CLIMBS A WALL + + XXIV HE RECONCILES SENTIMENT AND REASON + + XXV HE ADVANCES IN THE ATTACK ON SELWOODE + + XXVI HE ASSISTS IN THE DIVERSION OF BIRDS + + XXVII HE CALLS, COUNSELS, AND CONSIDERS + +XXVIII HE PARTICIPATES IN SUNDRY CONFIDENCES + + XXIX HE ALLOWS THE MERITS OF IMPERFECTION + + XXX HE GILDS THE WEATHER-VANE + + THE EPILOGUE: WHICH SUGGESTS THAT SECOND THOUGHTS-- + + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + +_"In the house and garden of his dream he saw a child moving, and +could divide the main streams at least of the winds that had played on +him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey."_ + + + +_The Prologue: Which Deals with the Essentials_ + + +_1--Writing_ + +It appeared to me that my circumstances clamored for betterment, +because never in my life have I been able to endure the contact of +unhappiness. And my mother was always crying now, over (though I did +not know it) the luckiest chance which had ever befallen her; and that +made me cry too, without understanding exactly why. + +So the child, that then was I, procured a pencil and a bit of +wrapping-paper, and began to write laboriously: + +"DEAR LORD + +"You know that Papa died and please comfort Mama +and give Father a crown of Glory Ammen + +"Your lamb and very sincerely yours + +"ROBERT ETHERIDGE TOWNSEND." + +This appeared to the point as I re-read it, and of course God would +understand that children were not expected to write quite as straight +across the paper as grown people. The one problem was how to deliver +this, my first letter, most expeditiously, because when your mother +cried you always cried too, and couldn't stop, not even when you +wanted to, not even when she promised you five cents, and it all made +you horribly uncomfortable. + +I knew that the big Bible on the parlor table was God's book. Probably +God read it very often, since anybody would be proud of having written +a book as big as that and would want to look at it every day. So I +tiptoed into the darkened parlor. I use the word advisedly, for there +was not at this period any drawing-room in Lichfield, and besides, a +drawing-room is an entirely different matter. + +Everywhere the room was cool, and, since the shades were down, the +outlines of the room's contents were uncomfortably dubious; for just +where the table stood had been, five days ago, a big and oddly-shaped +black box with beautiful silver handles; and Uncle George had lifted +me so that I could see through the pane of glass, which was a part of +this funny box, while an infinity of decorous people rustled and +whispered.... + +I remember knowing they were "company" and thinking they coughed and +sniffed because they were sorry that my father was dead. In the light +of knowledge latterly acquired, I attribute these actions to the then +prevalent weather, for even now I recall how stiflingly the room smelt +of flowers--particularly of magnolia blossoms--and of rubber and of +wet umbrellas. For my own part, I was not at all sorry, though of +course I pretended to be, since I had always known that as a rule my +father whipped me because he had just quarreled with my mother, and +that he then enjoyed whipping me. + +I desired, in fine, that he should stay dead and possess his crown of +glory in Heaven, which was reassuringly remote, and that my mother +should stop crying. So I slipped my note into the Apocrypha.... + +I felt that somewhere in the room was God and that God was watching +me, but I was not afraid. Yet I entertained, in common with most +children, a nebulous distrust of this mysterious Person, a distrust of +which I was particularly conscious on winter nights when the gas had +been turned down to a blue fleck, and the shadow of the mantelpiece +flickered and plunged on the ceiling, and the clock ticked louder and +louder, in prediction (I suspected) of some terrible event very close +at hand. + +Then you remembered such unpleasant matters as Elisha and his bears, +and those poor Egyptian children who had never even spoken to Moses, +and that uncomfortably abstemious lady, in the fat blue-covered +_Arabian Nights_, who ate nothing but rice, grain by grain--in the +daytime.... And you called Mammy, and said you were very thirsty and +wanted a glass of water, please. + +To-day, though, while acutely conscious of that awful inspection, and +painstakingly careful not to look behind me, I was not, after all, +precisely afraid. If God were a bit like other people I knew He would +say, "What an odd child!" and I liked to have people say that. Still, +there was sunlight in the hall, and lots of sunlight, not just long +and dusty shreds of sunlight, and I felt more comfortable when I was +back in the hall. + + +2--_Reading_ + +I lay flat upon my stomach, having found that posture most conformable +to the practice of reading, and I considered the cover of this slim, +green book; the name of John Charteris, stamped thereon in fat-bellied +letters of gold, meant less to me than it was destined to signify +thereafter. + +A deal of puzzling matter I found in this book, but in my memory, +always, one fantastic passage clung as a burr to sheep's wool. That +fable, too, meant less to me than it was destined to signify +thereafter, when the author of it was used to declare that he had, +unwittingly, written it about me. Then I read again this + +_Fable of the Foolish Prince_ + +"As to all earlier happenings I choose in this place to be silent. +Anterior adventures he had known of the right princely sort. But +concerning his traffic with Schamir, the chief talisman, and how +through its aid he won to the Sun's Sister for a little while; and +concerning his dealings with the handsome Troll-wife (in which affair +the cat he bribed with butter and the elm-tree he had decked with +ribbons helped him); and with that beautiful and dire Thuringian woman +whose soul was a red mouse: we have in this place naught to do. +Besides, the Foolish Prince had put aside such commerce when the Fairy +came to guide him; so he, at least, could not in equity have grudged +the same privilege to his historian. + +"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping along his +father's highway. But the road was bordered by so many wonders--as +here a bright pebble and there an anemone, say, and, just beyond, a +brook which babbled an entreaty to be tasted,--that many folk had +presently overtaken and had passed the loitering Foolish Prince. First +came a grandee, supine in his gilded coach, with half-shut eyes, +uneagerly meditant upon yesterday's statecraft or to-morrow's +gallantry; and now three yokels, with ruddy cheeks and much dust upon +their shoulders; now a haggard man in black, who constantly glanced +backward; and now a corporal with an empty sleeve, who whistled as he +went. + +"A butterfly guided every man of them along the highway. 'For the Lord +of the Fields is a whimsical person,' said the Fairy,' and such is his +very old enactment concerning the passage even of his cowpath; but +princes each in his day and in his way may trample this domain as +prompt their will and skill.' + +"'That now is excellent hearing,' said the Foolish Prince; and he +strutted. + +"'Look you,' said the Fairy, 'a man does not often stumble and break +his shins in the highway, but rather in the byway.'.... + +"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping on his +allotted journey, though he paused once in a while to shake his bauble +at the staring sun. + +"'The stars,' he considered, 'are more sympathetic.... + +"And thus, the Fairy leading, they came at last to a tall hedge +wherein were a hundred wickets, all being closed; and those who had +passed the Foolish Prince disputed before the hedge and measured the +hundred wickets with thirty-nine articles and with a variety of +instruments, and each man entered at his chosen wicket, and a +butterfly went before him; but no man returned into the open country. + +"'Now beyond each wicket,' said the Fairy, 'lies a great crucible, and +by ninety and nine of these crucibles is a man consumed, or else +transmuted into this animal or that animal. For such is the law in +these parts and in human hearts.' + +"The Prince demanded how if one found by chance the hundredth wicket? +But she shook her head and said that none of the Tylwydd Teg was +permitted to enter the Disenchanted Garden. Rumor had it that within +the Garden, beyond the crucibles, was a Tree, but whether the fruit of +this Tree were sweet or bitter no person in the Fields could tell, nor +did the Fairy pretend to know what happened in the Garden. + +"'Then why, in heaven's name, need a man test any of these wickets?' +cried the Foolish Prince; 'with so much to lose and, it may be, +nothing to gain? For one, I shall enter none of them.' + +"But once more she shook her glittering head. 'In your House and in +your Sign it was decreed. Time will be, my Prince; to-day the kid +gambols and the ox chews his cud. Presently the butcher cries, _Time +is!_ Comes the hour and the power, and the cook bestirs herself and +says, _Time was!_ The master has his dinner, either way, all say, and +every day.' + +"And the Fairy vanished as she talked with him, her radiances thinning +into the neutral colors of smoke, and thence dwindling a little by a +little into the vaulting spiral of a windless and a burnt-out fire, +until nothing remained of her save her voice; and that was like the +moving of dead leaves before they fall. + +"'Truly,' said the Foolish Prince, 'I am compelled to consider this a +vexatious business. For, look you, the butterfly I just now admire +flits over this wicket, and then her twin flutters over that wicket, +and between them there is absolutely no disparity in attraction. Hoo! +here is a more sensible insect.' + +"And he leaped and cracked his heels together and ran after a golden +butterfly that drifted to the rearward Fields. There was such a host +of butterflies about that presently he had lost track of his first +choice, and was in boisterous pursuit of a second, and then of a +third, and then of yet others; but none of them did he ever capture, +the while that one by one he followed divers butterflies of varying +colors, and never a golden butterfly did he find any more. + +"When it was evening, the sky drew up the twilight from the east as a +blotter draws up ink, and stars were kindling everywhere like tiny +signal-fires, and a light wind came out of the murky east and rustled +very plaintively in places where the more ambiguous shadows were; and +the Foolish Prince shivered, for the air was growing chill, and the +tips of his fingers were aware of it. + +"'A crucible,' he reflected, 'possesses the minor virtue of continuous +warmth.' + +"And before the hedge he found a Rational Person, led hither by a +Clothes' Moth, working out the problem of the hundred wickets in +consonance with the most approved methods. 'I have very nearly solved +it,' the Rational Person said, in genteel triumph, 'but this evening +grows too dark for any further ciphering, and again I must wait until +to-morrow. I regret, sir, that you have elected to waste the day, in +pursuit of various meretricious Lepidoptera.' + +"'A happy day, my brother, is never wasted." + +"'That appears to me to be nonsense,' said the Rational Person; and he +put up his portfolio, preparatory to spending another night under his +umbrella in the Fields. + +"'Indeed, my brother?' laughed the Foolish Prince. 'Then, farewell, +for I am assured that yonder, as here, our father makes the laws, and +that to dispute his appreciation of the enticing qualities of +butterflies were an impertinence.' + +"Thereafter, pushing open the wicket nearest to his hand, the Foolish +Prince tucked his bauble under his left arm and skipped into the +Disenchanted Garden; and as he went he sang, not noting that, from +somewhere in the thickening shadows, had arisen a golden butterfly +which went before him through the wicket. + +"Sang the Foolish Prince: + + "'Farewell to Fields and Butterflies + And levities of Yester-year! + For we espy, and hold more dear, + The Wicket of our Destinies. + + "'Whereby we enter, once for all, + A Garden which such fruit doth yield + As, tasted once, no more Afield + We fare where Youth holds carnival. + + "'Farewell, fair Fields, none found amiss + When laughter was a frequent noise + And golden-hearted girls and boys + Appraised the mouth they meant to kiss. + + "'Farewell, farewell! but for a space + We, being young, Afield might stray, + That in our Garden nod and say, + _Afield is no unpleasant place.'"_ + + +3--_Arithmetic_ + +In such disconnected fashion, as hereafter, I record the moments of my +life which I most vividly remember. For it is possible only in the +last paragraphs of a book, and for a book's people only, to look back +upon an ordered and proportionate progression to what one has become; +in life the thing arrives with scantier dignity; and one appears, in +retrospection, less to have marched toward any goal than always to +have jumped and scrambled from one stepping-stone to another because, +however momentarily, "just this or that poor impulse seemed the sole +work of a lifetime." + +Well! at least I have known these moments and the rapture of their +dominance; and I am not lightly to be stripped of recollection of +them, nor of the attendant thrill either, by any cheerless hour +wherein, as sometimes happens, my personal achievements confront me +like a pile of flimsy jack-straws. + +What does it all amount to?--I do not know. There may be some sort of +supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, but very certainly it is not +conformable to any human mathematics. + + + + + + + _THE CORDS OF VANITY + +"His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the flowers; and +gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been upon him. +Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his morsel +and his song."_ + + + + + + +1. + +_He Sits Out a Dance_ + + +When I first knew Stella she was within a month of being fifteen, +which is for womankind an unattractive age. There were a startling +number of corners to her then, and she had but vague notions as to the +management of her hands and feet. In consequence they were perpetually +turning up in unexpected places and surprising her by their size and +number. Yes, she was very hopelessly fifteen; and she was used to +laugh, unnecessarily, in a nervous fashion, approximating to a whinny, +and when engaged in conversation she patted down her skirts six times +to the minute. + +It seems oddly unbelievable when I reflect that Rosalind--"daughter to +the banished Duke"--and Stella and Helen of Troy, and all the other +famous fair ones of history, were each like that at one period or +another. + +As for myself, I was nine days younger than Stella, and so I was at +this time very old--much older than it is ever permitted anyone to be +afterward. I cherished the most optimistic ideas as to my impendent +moustache, and was wont in privacy to encourage it with the +manicure-scissors. I still entertained the belief that girls were +upon the whole superfluous nuisances, but was beginning to perceive +the expediency of concealing this opinion, even in private converse +with my dearest chum, where, in our joyous interchange of various +heresies, we touched upon this especial sub-division of fauna very +lightly, and, I now suspect, with some self-consciousness. + + + 2 + +All this was at a summer resort, which was called the Green +Chalybeate. Stella and I and others of our age attended the hotel hops +in the evening with religious punctuality, for well-meaning elders +insisted these dances amused us, and it was easier to go than to argue +the point. At least, that was the feeling of the boys. + +Stella has since sworn the girls liked it. I suspect in this statement +a certain parsimony as to the truth. They giggled too much and were +never entirely free from that haunting anxiety concerning their +skirts. + +We danced together, Stella and I, to the strains of the last Sousa +two-step (it was the _Washington Post_), and we conversed, meanwhile, +with careful disregard of the amenities of life, since each feared +lest the other might suspect in some common courtesy an attempt +at--there is really no other word--spooning. And spooning was absurd. + +Well, as I once read in the pages of a rare and little known author, +one lives and learns. + +I asked Stella to sit out a dance. I did this because I had heard Mr. +Lethbury--a handsome man with waxed mustachios and an absolutely +piratical amount of whiskers,--make the same request of Miss Van +Orden, my just relinquished partner, and it was evident that such +whiskers could do no wrong. + +Stella was not uninfluenced, it may be, by Miss Van Orden's example, +for even in girlhood the latter was a person of extraordinary beauty, +whereas, as has been said, Stella's corners were then multitudinous; +and it is probable that those two queer little knobs at the base of +Stella's throat would be apt to render their owner uncomfortable and a +bit abject before--let us say--more ample charms. In any event, Stella +giggled and said she thought it would be just fine, and I presently +conducted her to the third piazza of the hotel. + +There we found a world that was new. + + + 3 + +It was a world of sweet odors and strange lights, flooded with a +kindly silence which was, somehow, composed of many lispings and +trepidations and thin echoes. The night was warm, the sky all +transparency. If the comparison was not manifestly absurd, I would +liken that remembered sky's pale color to the look of blue plush +rubbed the wrong way. And in its radiance the stars bathed, large and +bright and intimate, yet blurred somewhat, like shop-lights seen +through frosted panes; and the moon floated on it, crisp and clear as +a new-minted coin. This was the full midsummer moon, grave and +glorious, that compelled the eye; and its shield was obscurely marked, +as though a Titan had breathed on its chill surface. Its light +suffused the heavens and lay upon the earth beneath us in broad +splashes; and the foliage about us was dappled with its splendor, save +in the open east, where the undulant, low hills wore radiancy as a +mantle. + +For the trees, mostly maples of slight stature, clustered thickly +about the hotel, and their branches mingled in a restless pattern of +blacks and silvers and dim greens that mimicked the laughter of the +sea under an April wind. Looking down from the piazza, over the +expanse of tree-tops, all this was strangely like the sea; and it gave +one, somehow, much the same sense of remote, unbounded spaces and of a +beauty that was a little sinister. At times whippoorwills called to +one another, eerie and shrill; and the distant dance-music was a +vibration in the air, which was heavy with the scent of bruised +growing things and was filled with the cool, healing magic of the +moonlight. + +Taking it all in all, we had blundered upon a very beautiful place. +And there we sat for a while and talked in an aimless fashion. We did +not know quite how one ought to "sit out" a dance, you conceive.... + + + 4 + +Then, moved by some queer impulse, I stared over the railing for a +little at this great, wonderful, ambiguous world, and said solemnly: + +"It is good." + +"Yes," Stella agreed, in a curious, quiet and tiny voice, "it--it's +very large, isn't it?" She looked out for a moment over the tree-tops. +"It makes me feel like a little old nothing," she said, at last. "The +stars are so big, and--so uninterested." Stella paused for an +interval, and then spoke again, with an uncertain laugh. "I think I am +rather afraid." + +"Afraid?" I echoed. + +"Yes," she said, vaguely; "of--of everything." + +I understood. Even then I knew something of the occasional +insufficiency of words. + +"It is a big world," I assented, "and lots of people are having a +right hard time in it right now. I reckon there is somebody dying this +very minute not far off." + +"It's all--waiting for us!" Stella had forgotten my existence. "It's +bringing us so many things--and we don't know what any of them are. +But we've got to take them, whether we want to or not. It isn't fair. +We've got to--well, got to grow up, and--marry, and--die, whether we +want to or not. We've no choice. And it may not matter, after all. +Everything will keep right on like it did before; and the stars won't +care; and what we've done and had done to us won't really matter!" + +"Well, but, Stella, you can have a right good time first, anyway, if +you keep away from ugly things and fussy people. And I reckon you +really go to Heaven afterwards if you haven't been really bad,--don't +you?" + +"Rob,--are you ever afraid of dying?" Stella asked, "very much +afraid--Oh, you know what I mean." + +I did. I was about ten once more. It was dark, and I was passing a +drug-store, with huge red and green and purple bottles glistening in +the gas-lit windows; and it had just occurred to me that I, too, must +die, and be locked up in a box, and let down with trunk-straps into a +hole, like Father was.... So I said, "Yes." + +"And yet we've got to! Oh, I don't see how people can go on living +like everything was all right when that's always getting nearer,--when +they know they've got to die before very long. Because they dance and +go on picnics and buy hats as if they were going to live forever. +I--oh, I can't understand." + +"They get used to the idea, I reckon. We're sort of like the rats in +the trap at home, in our stable," I suggested, poetically. "We can bite +the wires and go crazy, like lots of them do, if we want to, or we can +eat the cheese and kind of try not to think about it. Either way, there's +no getting out till they come to kill us in the morning." + +"Yes," sighed Stella; "I suppose we must make the best of it." + +"It's the only sensible thing to do, far as I can see." + +"But it is all so big--and so careless about us!" she said, after a +little. "And we don't know--we can't know!--what is going to happen to +you and me. And we can't stop its happening!" + +"We'll just have to make the best of that, too," I protested, +dolefully. + +Stella sighed again, "I hope so," she assented; "still, I'm scared of +it." + +"I think I am, too--sort of," I conceded, after reflection. "Anyhow, I +am going to have as good a time as I can." + +There was now an even longer pause. Pitiable, ridiculous infants were +pondering, somewhat vaguely but very solemnly, over certain mysteries +of existence, which most of us have learned to accept with stolidity. +We were young, and to us the miraculous insecurity and inconsequence +of human life was still a little impressive, and we had not yet come +to regard the universe as a more or less comfortable place, +well-meaningly constructed anyhow--by Somebody--for us to reside in. + +Therefore we moved a trifle closer together, Stella and I, and were +commonly miserable over the _Weltschmerz_. After a little a distant +whippoorwill woke me from a chaos of reverie, and I turned to Stella, +with a vague sense that we two were the only people left in the whole +world, and that I was very, very fond of her. + +Stella's head was leaned backward. Her lips were parted, and the +moonlight glinted in her eyes. Her eyes were blue. + +"Don't!" said Stella, faintly. + +I did.... + +It was a matter out of my volition, out of my planning. And, oh, the +wonder, and sweetness, and sacredness of it! I thought, even in the +instant; and, oh, the pity that, after all, it is slightly +disappointing.... + +Stella was not angry, as I had half expected. "That was dear of you," +she said, impulsively, "but don't try to do it again." There was the +wisdom of centuries in this mandate of Stella's as she rose from the +bench. The spell was broken, utterly. "I think," said Stella, in the +voice of a girl of fifteen, "I think we'd better go and dance some +more." + + + 5 + +In the crude morning I approached Stella, with a fatuous smile. She +apparently both perceived and resented my bearing, although she never +once looked at me. There was something of great interest to her in the +distance, apparently down by the springhouse; she was flushed and +indignant; and her eyes wouldn't, couldn't, and didn't turn for an +instant in my direction. + +I fidgeted. + +"If," said she, impersonally, "if you believe it was because of _you_, +you are very much mistaken. It would have been the same with anybody. +You don't understand, and I don't either. Anyhow, I think you are a +mess, and I hate you. Go away from me!" + +And she stamped her foot in a fine rage. + +For the moment I entertained an un-Christian desire that Stella had +been born a boy. In that case, I felt, I would, just then, have really +enjoyed sitting upon the back of her head, and grinding her nose into +the lawn, and otherwise persuading her to cry "'Nough." These virile +pleasures being denied me, I sought for comfort in discourteous +speech. + +"Umph-huh!" said I, "and you think you're mighty smart, don't you? +Well, I don't want you pawing around me any more, either. I won't have +it, do you understand! That was what I was going to tell you anyhow, +you kissing-bug, even if you hadn't acted so smart. And you can just +stick that right in your pipe and smoke it, you old Miss Smart Alec." + +Thereupon I--wisely--departed without delay. A rock struck me rather +forcibly between the shoulder blades, but I did not deign to notice +this phenomenon. + +"You can't fight girls with fists," I reflected. "You've just got to +talk to them in the right way." + + + + +2. + +_He Loves Extensively_ + + +I saw no more of Stella for a lengthy while, since within two days of +the events recorded it pleased my mother to seek out another summer +resort. + +"For in September," she said, "I really must have perfect quiet and +unimpeachable butter, and falling leaves, and only a very few +congenial people to be melancholy with,--and that sort of thing, you +know. I find it freshens one up so against the winter." + +It was a signal feature of my mother's conversation that you never +understood, precisely, what she was talking about. + +Thus in her train the silly, pretty woman drew otherwhither her +hobbledehoy son, as indeed Claire Bulmer Townsend had aforetime drawn +an armament of more mature and stolid members of my sex. I was always +proud of my handsome mother, but without any aspirations, however +theoretical, toward intimacy; and her periods of conscientious if +vague affection, when she recollected its propriety, I endured with +consolatory foreknowledge of an impendent, more agreeable era of +neglect. + +I fancy that at bottom I was without suspecting it lonely. I was an +only child; my father had died, as has been hinted, when I was in +kilts.... No, I must have graduated from kilts into "knee-pants" when +the Democracy of Lichfield celebrated Grover Cleveland's first +election as President, for I was seven years old then, and was allowed +to stay up ever so late after supper to watch the torchlight parade. I +recollect being rather pleasantly scared by the yells of all those +marching people and by the glistening of their faces as the irregular +flaring torches heaved by; and I recollect how delightfully the cold +night air was flavored with kerosene. In any event, it was on this +generally festive November night that my father again took too much to +drink, and, coming home toward morning, lay down and went to sleep in +the vestibule between our front-door and the storm-doors; and five +days later died of pneumonia...In that era I was accounted an odd boy; +given to reading and secretive ways, and, they record, to long +silences throughout which my lips would move noiselessly. "Just +talking to one of my friends," they tell me I was used to explain; +though it was not until my career at King's College that I may be said +to have pretended to intimacy with anybody. + + + 2 + +For in old Fairhaven I spent, of course, a period of ostensible study, +as four generations of my fathers had done aforetime. But in that +leisured, slatternly and ancient city I garnered a far larger harvest +of (comparatively) innocuous cakes and ale than of authentic learning, +and at my graduation carried little of moment from the place save many +memories of Bettie Hamlyn.... Her father taught me Latin at King's +College, while Bettie taught me human intimacy--almost. Looking back, +I have not ever been intimate with anybody.... + +Not but that I had my friends. In particular I remember those four of +us who always called ourselves--in flat defiance, just as Dumas did, +of mere arithmetic--"The Three Musketeers." I think that we loved one +another very greatly during the four years we spent together in our +youth. I like to believe we did, and to remember the boys who were +once unreasonably happy, even now. It does not seem to count, somehow, +that Aramis has taken to drink and every other inexpedient course, I +hear, and that I would not recognize him today, were we two to +encounter casually--or Athos, either, I suppose, now that he has been +so long in the Philippines. + +And as for D'Artagnan--or Billy Woods, if you prefer the appellation +which his sponsors gave him,--why we are still good friends and always +will be, I suppose. But we are not particularly intimate; and very +certainly we will never again read _Chastelard_ together and declaim +the more impassioned parts of it,--and in fine, I cannot help seeing, +nowadays, that, especially since his marriage, Billy has developed +into a rather obvious and stupid person, and that he considers me to +be a bit of a bad egg. And in a phrase, when we are together, just we +two, we smoke a great deal and do not talk any more than is necessary. + +And once I would have quite sincerely enjoyed any death, however +excruciating, which promoted the well-being of Billy Woods; and he +viewed me not dissimilarly, I believe.... However, after all, this was +a long, long while ago, and in a period almost antediluvian. + +And during this period they of Fairhaven assumed I was in love with +Bettie Hamlyn; and for a very little while, at the beginning, had I +assumed as much. More lately was my error flagrantly apparent when I +fell in love with someone else, and sincerely in love, and found to my +amazement that, upon the whole, I preferred Bettie's companionship to +that of the woman I adored. By and by, though, I learned to accept +this odd, continuing phenomenon much as I had learned to accept the +sunrise. + + + 3 + +Once Bettie demanded of me, "I often wonder what you really think of +me? Honest injun, I mean." + +I meditated, and presently began, with leisure: + +"Miss Hamlyn is a young woman of considerable personal attractions, +and with one exception is unhandicapped by accomplishments. She plays +the piano, it is true, but she does it divinely and she neither +crochets nor embroiders presents for people, nor sketches, nor +recites, nor sings, or in fine annoys the public in any way +whatsoever. Her enemies deny that she is good-looking, but even her +friends concede her curious picturesqueness and her knowledge of it. +Her penetration, indeed, is not to be despised; she has even grasped +the fact that all men are not necessarily fools in spite of the +fashion in which they talk to women. It must be admitted, however, +that her emotions are prone to take precedence of her reasoning +powers: thus she is not easily misled from getting what she desires, +save by those whom she loves, because in argument, while always +illogical, she is invariably convincing--" + +Miss Hamlyn sniffed. "This is, perhaps, the inevitable effect of +twenty cigarettes a day," was her cryptic comment. "Nevertheless, it +does affect me with ennui." + +"--For, the mere facts of the case she plainly demonstrates, with the +abettance of her dimples, to be an affair of unimportance; the real +point is what she wishes done about it. Yet the proffering of any +particular piece of advice does not necessarily signify that she +either expects or wishes it to be followed, since had she been present +at the Creation she would have cheerfully pointed out to the Deity His +various mistakes, and have offered her co-operation toward bettering +matters, and have thought a deal less of Him had He accepted it; but +this is merely a habit--" "Yes?" said Bettie, yawning; and she added: +"Do you know, Robin, the saddest and most desolate thing in the world +is to practise an _etude_ of Schumann's in nine flats, and the next is +to realize that a man who has been in love with you has recovered for +keeps?" + +"--It must not be imagined, however, that Miss Hamlyn is untruthful, +for when driven by impertinences into a corner she conceals her real +opinion by voicing it quite honestly as if she were joking. Thereupon +you credit her with the employment of irony and the possession of +every imaginable and super-angelical characteristic--" + +"Unless we come to a better understanding," Miss Hamlyn crisply began, +"we had better stop right here before we come to a worse--" + +"--Miss Hamlyn, in a word, is possessed of no insufferable virtues and +of many endearing faults; and in common with the rest of humanity, she +regards her disapproval of any proceeding as clear proof of its +impropriety." This was largely apropos of a fire-new debate concerning +the deleterious effects of cigarette-smoking; and when I had made an +end, and doggedly lighted another one of them, Bettie said nothing.... +She minded chiefly that one of us should have thought of the other +without bias. She said it was not fair. And I know now that she was +right. + +But of Bettie Hamlyn, for reasons you may learn hereafter if you so +elect, I honestly prefer to write not at all. Four years, in fine, we +spent to every purpose together, and they were very happy years. To +record them would be desecration. + + + 4 + +Meantime, during these years, I had fallen in and out of love +assiduously. Since the Anabasis of lad's love traverses a monotonous +country, where one hill is largely like another, and one meadow a +duplicate of the next to the last daffodil, I may with profit dwell +upon the green-sickness lightly. It suffices that in the course of +these four years I challenged superstition by adoring thirteen girls, +and, worse than that, wrote verses of them. + +I give you their names herewith--though not their workaday names, lest +the wives of divers people be offended (and in many cases, surprised), +but the appellatives which figured in my rhymes. They were Heart's +Desire, Florimel, Dolores, Yolande, Adelais, Sylvia, Heart o' My +Heart, Chloris, Felise, Ettarre, Phyllis, Phyllida, and Dorothy. Here +was a rosary of exquisite names, I even now concede; and the owner of +each _nom de plume_ I, for however brief a period, adored for this or +that peculiar excellence; and by ordinary without presuming to mention +the fact to any of these divinities save Heart o' My Heart, who was, +after all, only a Penate. + +Outside the elevated orbits of rhyme she was called Elizabeth Hamlyn; +and it afterward became apparent to me that I, in reality, wrote all +the verses of this period solely for the pleasure of reading them +aloud to Bettie, for certainly I disclosed their existence to no one +else--except just one or two to Phyllida, who was "literary." + +And the upshot of all this heart-burning is most succinctly given in +my own far from impeccable verse, as Bettie Hamlyn heard the summing-up +one evening in May. It was the year I graduated from King's +College, and the exact relation of the date to the Annos Domini is +trivial. But the battle of Manila had just been fought, and off +Santiago Captain Sampson and Commander Schley were still hunting for +Cervera's "phantom fleet." And in Fairhaven, as I remember it, +although there was a highly-colored picture of Commodore Dewey in the +barber-shop window, nobody was bothering in the least about the war +except when Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal foregathered at Clarriker's +Emporium to denounce the colossal errors of "imperialism".... + + "Thus, then, I end my calendar + Of ancient loves more light than air;-- + And now Lad's Love, that led afar + In April fields that were so fair, + Is fled, and I no longer share + Sedate unutterable days + With Heart's Desire, nor ever praise + Felise, or mirror forth the lures + Of Stella's eyes nor Sylvia's, + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "Chloris is wedded, and Ettarre + Forgets; Yolande loves otherwhere, + And worms long since made bold to mar + The lips of Dorothy and fare + Mid Florimel's bright ruined hair; + And Time obscures that roseate haze + Which glorified hushed woodland ways + When Phyllis came, as Time obscures + That faith which once was Phyllida's,-- + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "That boy is dead as Schariar, + Tiglath-pileser, or Clotaire, + Who once of love got many a scar. + And his loved lasses past compare?-- + None is alive now anywhere. + Each is transmuted nowadays + Into a stranger, and displays + No whit of love's investitures. + I let these women go their ways, + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "Heart o' My Heart, thine be the praise + If aught of good in me betrays + Thy tutelage--whose love matures + Unmarred in these more wistful days,-- + Yet love for each loved lass endures." + +For this was the year that I graduated, and Chloris--I violate no +confidence in stating that her actual name was Aurelia Minns, and that +she had been, for a greater number of years than it would be courteous +to remember, the undisputed belle of Fairhaven,--had that very +afternoon married a promising young doctor; and I was draining the cup +of my misery to the last delicious drop, and was of course inspired +thereby to the perpetration of such melancholy bathos as only a +care-free youth of twenty is capable of evolving. + + + 5 + +"Dear boy," said Bettie, when I had made an end of reading, "and are +you very miserable?" + +Her fingers were interlocked behind her small black head; and the +sympathy with which she regarded me was tenderly flavored with +amusement. + +This much I noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and +mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the +least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I +believe I never will." + +"Oh--? But I don't count." The girl continued, with composure: "Or +rather, I have always counted your affairs, so that I know precisely +what it all amounts to." + +"Sum total?" + +"A lot of imitation emotions." She added hastily: "Oh, quite a good +imitation, dear; you are smooth enough to see to that. Why, I remember +once--when you read me that first sonnet, sitting all hunched up on +the little stool, and pretending you didn't know I knew who you meant +me to know it was for, and ending with a really very effective, +breathless sob--and caught my hand and pressed it to your forehead for +a moment--Why, that time I was thoroughly rattled and almost +believed--even I--that--" She shrugged. "And if I had been +younger--!" she said, half regretfully, for at this time Bettie was +very nearly twenty-two. + +"Yes." The effective breathless sob responded to what had virtually +been an encore. "I have not forgotten." + +"Only for a moment, though." Miss Hamlyn reflected, and then added, +brightly: "Now, most girls would have liked it, for it sounded all +wool. And they would have gone into it, as you wanted, and have been +very, very happy for a while. Then, after a time--after you had got a +sonnet or two out of it, and had made a sufficiency of pretty +speeches,--you would have gone for an admiring walk about yourself, +and would have inspected your sensations and have applauded them, +quite enthusiastically, and would have said, in effect: 'Madam, I +thank you for your attention. Pray regard the incident as closed.'" + +"You are doing me," I observed, "an injustice. And however tiny they +may be, I hate 'em." + +"But, Robin, can't you see," she said, with an odd earnestness, "that +to be fond of you is quite disgracefully easy, even though--" Bettie +Hamlyn said, presently: "Why, your one object in life appears to be to +find a girl who will allow you to moon around her and make verses +about her. Oh, very well! I met to-day just the sort of pretty idiot +who will let you do it. She is visiting Kathleen Eppes for the Finals. +She has a great deal of money, too, I hear." And Bettie mentioned a +name. + +"That's rather queer," said I. "I used to know that girl. She will be +at the K. A. dance to-morrow night, I suppose,"--and I put up my +manuscript with a large air of tolerance. "I dare say that I have been +exaggerating matters a bit, after all. Any woman who treated me +in the way that Miss Aurelia did is not, really, worthy of regret. And +in any event, I got a ballade out of her and six--no, seven--other +poems." + +For the name which Bettie had mentioned was that of Stella Musgrave, +and I was, somehow, curiously desirous to come again to Stella, and +nervous about it, too, even then.... + + + + +3. + +_He Earns a Stick-pin_ + + +"Dear me!" said Stella, wonderingly; "I would never have known you in +the world! You've grown so fa--I mean, you are so well built. I've +grown? Nonsense!--and besides, what did you expect me to do in six +years?--and moreover, it is abominably rude of you to presume to speak +of me in that abstracted and figurative manner--quite as if I were a +debt or a taste for drink. It is really only French heels and a +pompadour, and, of course, you can't have this dance. It's promised, +and I hop, you know, frightfully.... Why, naturally, I haven't +forgotten--How could I, when you were the most disagreeable boy I ever +knew?" + +I ventured a suggestion that caused Stella to turn an attractive pink, +and laugh. "No," said she, demurely, "I shall never never sit out +another dance with you." + +So she did remember! + +Subsequently: "Our steps suit perfectly--Heavens! you are the fifth +man who has said that to-night, and I am sure it would be very silly +and very tiresome to dance through life with anybody. Men are so +absurd, don't you think? Oh, yes, I tell them all--every one of +them--that our steps suit, even when they have just ripped off a yard +or so of flounce in an attempt to walk up the front of my dress. It +makes them happy, poor things, and injures nobody. You liked it, you +know; you grinned like a pleased cat. I like cats, don't you?" + +Later: "That is absolute nonsense, you know," said Stella, critically. +"Do you always get red in the face when you make love? I wouldn't if I +were you. You really have no idea how queer it makes you look." + +Still later: "No, I don't think I am going anywhere to-morrow +afternoon," said Stella. + + + 2 + +So that during the fleet moments of these Finals, while our army was +effecting a landing in Cuba, I saw as much of Stella as was possible; +and veracity compels the admission that she made no marked effort to +prevent my doing so. Indeed, she was quite cross, and scornful, about +the crowning glory being denied her, of going with me to the +Baccalaureate Address the morning I received my degree. To that of +course I took Bettie. + + + 3 + +I said good-bye to Bettie Hamlyn rather late one evening. It was in +her garden. The Finals were over, and Stella had left Fairhaven that +afternoon. I was to follow in the morning, by an early train. + +It was a hot, still night in June, with never a breath of air +stirring. In the sky was a low-hung moon, full and very red. It was an +evil moon, and it lighted a night that was unreasonably ominous. And +Bettie and I had talked of trifles resolutely for two hours. + +"Well--good-bye Bettie," I said at last. "I'm glad it isn't for long." +For of course we meant never to let a month elapse without our seeing +each other. + +"Good-bye," she said, and casually shook hands. + +Then Bettie Hamlyn said, in a different voice: "Robin, you come of +such a bad lot, and already you are by way of being a rather frightful +liar. And I'm letting you go. I'm turning you over to Stellas and +mothers and things like that just because I have to. It isn't fair. +They will make another Townsend of my boy, and after all I've tried to +do. Oh, Robin, don't let anybody or anything do that to you! Do try to +do the unpleasant thing sometimes, my dear!--But what's the good of +promising?" + +"And have I ever failed you, Bettie?" + +"No,--not me," she answered, almost as though she grudged the fact. +Then Bettie laughed a little. "Indeed, I'm trying to believe you never +will. Oh, indeed, I am. But just be honest with me, Robin, and nothing +else will ever matter very much. I don't care what you do, if only you +are always honest with me. You can murder people, if you like, and +burn down as many houses as you choose. You probably will. But you'll +be honest with me--won't you?--and particularly when you don't want to +be?" + +So I promised her that. And sometimes I believe it is the only promise +which I ever tried to keep quite faithfully.... + + + 4 + +And all the ensuing summer I followed Stella Musgrave from one +watering place to another, with an engaging and entire candor as to my +desires. I was upon the verge of my majority, when, under the terms of +my father's will, I would come into possession of such fragments of +his patrimony as he had omitted to squander. And afterward I intended +to become excessively distinguished in this or that profession, not as +yet irrevocably fixed upon, but for choice as a writer of immortal +verse; and I was used to dwell at this time very feelingly, and very +frequently, upon the wholesome restraint which matrimony imposes upon +the possessor of an artistic temperament. + +Stella promised to place my name upon her waiting list, and to take up +the matter in due season; and she lamented, with a tiny and +pre-meditated yawn, that as a servitor of system she was compelled to +list her "little lovers and suitors in alphabetical order, Mr. +Townsend. Besides, you would probably strangle me before the year was +out." + +"I would thoroughly enjoy doing it," I said, grimly, "right now." She +regarded me for a while. "You would, too," she said at last, with an +alien gravity; "and that is why--Oh, Rob dear, you are out of my +dimension. I am rather afraid of you. I am a poor bewildered triangle +who is being wooed by a cube!" the girl wailed, and but half +humorously. + +And I began to plead. It does not matter what I said. It never +mattered. + +And persons more sensible than I found then far more important things +to talk about, such as General Alger's inefficiency, and General +Shafter's hammock, and "embalmed beef," and the folly of taking over +the Philippines, and Admiral von Diedrich's behavior, and the yellow +fever in our camps and the comparative claims of Messrs. Sampson and +Schley to be made rear-admiral; and everybody more or less was +demanding "an investigation," as the natural aftermath of a war. + + + 5 + +Stella's mother had closed Bellemeade for the year, however, and they +were to spend the winter in Lichfield; and Stella, to reduplicate her +phrase, promised to "think it over very seriously." + +But I suppose I had never any real chance against Peter Blagden. To +begin with,--though Stella herself, of course, would inherit plenty +of money when her mother died,--Peter was the only nephew of a +childless uncle who was popularly reported to "roll in wealth"; and in +addition, Peter was seven years older than I and notoriously +dissipated. No other girl of twenty would have hesitated between us +half so long as Stella did. She hesitated through a whole winter; and +even now there is odd, if scanty, comfort in the fact that Stella +hesitated.... + +Besides Peter was eminently likeable. At times I almost liked him +myself, for all my fervent envy of his recognized depravity and of the +hateful ease with which he thought of something to say in those +uncomfortable moments when he and I and Stella were together. At most +other times I could talk glibly enough, but before this seasoned +scapegrace I was dumb, and felt my reputation to be hopelessly +immaculate ... If only Stella would believe me to be just the tiniest +bit depraved! I blush to think of the dark hints I dropped as to +entirely fictitious women who "had been too kind to me. But then"--as +I would feelingly lament,--"we could never let women alone, we +Townsends, you know--" + + + 6 + +One woman at least I was beginning to "let alone", in that I was +writing Bettie Hamlyn letters which grew shorter and shorter.... Her +mother had fallen ill, not long after I left college; and she and +Bettie were now a great way off, in Colorado, where the old lady was +dying, with the most selfish sort of laziness about it, and so was +involving me in endless correspondence.... At least, I wrote to Bettie +punctually, if briefly, though I had not seen her since that night +when the moon was red, and big, and very evil. I had to do it, because +she had insisted that I write. + +"But letters don't mean anything, Bettie. And besides, I hate writing +letters." + +"That is just why you must write to me regularly. You never do the +things you don't want to do. I know it. But for me you always will, +and that makes all the difference." + +"Shylock!" I retorted. + +"If you like. In any event, I mean to have my pound of flesh, and +regularly." + +So I wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month--because +that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because that +was mine. The rest of my time I gave whole-heartedly to Stella.... + + + 7 + +They named her Stella, I fancy, because her eyes were so like stars. +It is manifestly an irrelevant detail that there do not happen to be +any azure stars. Indeed, I am inclined to think that Nature belatedly +observed this omission, and created Stella's eyes to make up for it; +at any rate, if you can imagine Aldebaran or Benetnasch polished up a +bit and set in a speedwell-cup, you will have a very fair idea of one +of them. You cannot, however, picture to yourself the effect of the +pair of them, because the human mind is limited. + +Really, though, their effect was curious. You noticed them casually, +let us say; then, without warning, you ceased to notice anything. You +simply grew foolish and gasped like a newly-hooked trout, and went mad +and babbled as meaninglessly as a silly little rustic brook trotting +under a bridge. + +I have seen the thing happen any number of times. And, strangely +enough, you liked it. Numbers of young men would venture into the same +room with those disconcerting eyes the very next evening, even +appearing to seek them out and to court peril, as it were,--young men +who must have known perfectly well, either by report or experience, +the unavoidable result of such fool-hardy conduct. For eventually it +always culminated in Stella's being deeply surprised and grieved,--at +a dance, for choice, with music and color and the unthinking laughter +of others to heighten the sadness and the romance of it all,--she +never having dreamed of such a thing, of course, and having always +regarded you only as a dear, dear friend. Yes, and she used certainly +to hope that nothing she had said or done could have led you to +believe she had even for a moment considered such a thing. Oh, she did +it well, did Stella, and endured these frequent griefs and surprises +with, I must protest, quite exemplary patience. In a phrase, she was +the most adorable combination of the prevaricator, the jilt and the +coquette I have ever encountered. + + + 8 + +So, for the seventh time, I asked Stella to marry me. Nearly every +fellow I knew had done as much, particularly Peter Blagden; and it is +always a mistake to appear unnecessarily reserved or exclusive. And +this time in declining--with a fluency that bespoke considerable +practice,--she informed me that, as the story books have it, she was +shortly to be wedded to another. + +And Peter Blagden clapped the pinnacle upon my anguish by asking me to +be the best man. I knew even then whose vanity and whose sense of the +appropriate had put him up to it.... + +"For I haven't a living male relative of the suitable age except two +second cousins that I don't see much of--praise God!" said Peter, +fervently; "and Hugh Van Orden looks about half-past ten, whereas I +class John Charteris among the lower orders of vermin." + +I consented to accept the proffered office and the incidental stick-pin; +and was thus enabled to observe from the inside this episode of Stella's +life, and to find it quite like other weddings. + +Something like this: + +"Look here," a perspiring and fidgety Peter protested, at the last +moment, as we lurked in the gloomy vestry with not a drop left in +either flask; "look here, Henderson hasn't blacked the soles of these +blessed shoes. I'll look like an ass when it comes to the kneeling +part--like an ass, I tell you! Good heavens, they'll look like +tombstones!" + +"If you funk now," said I, severely, "I'll never help you get married +again. Oh, sainted Ebenezer in bliss, and whatever have I done with +that ring? No, it's here all right, but you are on the wrong side of +me again. And there goes the organ--Good God, Peter, look at her! +simply look at her, man! Oh, you lucky devil! you lucky jackass!" + +I spoke enviously, you understand, simply to encourage him. + +Followed a glaring of lights, a swishing of fans, a sense that Peter +was not keeping step with me, and the hum of densely packed, expectant +humanity; a blare of music; then Stella, an incredible vision with +glad, frightened eyes. My shoulders straightened, and I was not out of +temper any longer. The organist was playing softly, _Oh, Promise Me_, +and I was thinking of the time, last January, that Stella and I heard +The Bostonians, and how funny Henry Clay Barnabee was.... "--so long +as ye both may live?" ended the bishop. + +"I will," poor Peter quavered, with obvious uncertainty about it. + +And still one saw in Stella's eyes unutterable happiness and fear, but +her voice was tranquil. I found time to wonder at its steadiness, even +though, just about this time, I resonantly burst a button off one of +my new gloves. I fancy they must have been rather tight. + +"And thereto," said Stella, calmly, "I give thee my troth." + +And subsequently they were Mendelssohned out of church to the +satisfaction of a large and critical audience. I came down the aisle +with Stella's only sister--who afterward married the Marquis +d'Arlanges,--and found Lizzie very entertaining later in the +evening.... + + + 9 + +Yes, it was quite like other weddings. I only wonder for what +conceivable reason I remember its least detail, and so vividly. For it +all happened a great while ago, when--of such flimsy stuff is glory +woven,--Emilio Aguinaldo and Captain Coghlan were the persons most +talked of in America; and when the Mazet committee was "investigating" +I forget what, but with column after column about it in the papers +every day; and when _Me und Gott_ was a famous poem, and "to +hobsonize" was the most popular verb; and when I was twenty-one. _Sic +transit gloria mundi_, as it says in the back of the dictionary. + + + + +4. + +_He Talks with Charteris_ + + +It was upon the evening of this day, after Mr. and Mrs. Blagden had +been duly rice-pelted and entrained, that I first talked against John +Charteris. The novelist was, as has been said, a cousin of Peter +Blagden, and as such, was one of the wedding guests at Bellemeade; and +that evening, well toward midnight, the little man, midway in the +consumption of one of his interminable cigarettes, happened to come +upon me seated upon the terrace and gazing, rather vacantly, in the +direction of the moon. + +I was not thinking of anything in particular; only there was a by-end +of verse which sang itself over and over again, somewhere in the back +of my brain--"Her eyes were the eyes of a bride whom delight makes +afraid, her eyes were the eyes of a bride"--and so on, all over again, +as at night a traveller may hear his train jogging through a +monotonous and stiff-jointed song; and in my heart there was just +hunger. + + + 2 + +Charteris had heard, one may presume, of my disastrous love-business; +and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his +gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light +upon thee, Mr. Townsend,--whatever a murrain may happen to be,--since +you have disturbed me in the concoction of an ever-living and +entrancing fable." + +"I may safely go as far," said I, "as to offer the proverbial penny." + +"Done!" cried Mr. Charteris. He meditated for a moment, and then +began, in a low and curiously melodious voice, to narrate + +_The Apologue of the First Conjugation_ + +"When the gods of Hellas were discrowned, there was a famous scurrying +from Olympos to the world of mortals, where each deity must +henceforward make shift to do without godhead:--Aphrodite in her +hollow hill, where the good knight Tannhauser revels yet, it may be; +Hephaestos, in some smithy; whilst Athene, for aught I know, +established a girls' boarding school, and Helios, as is notorious, +died under priestly torture, and Dionysos cannily took holy orders, +and Hermes set up as a merchant in Friesland. But Eros went to the +Grammarians. He would be a schoolmaster. + +"The Grammarians, grim, snuffy and wrinkled though they might be, were +no more impervious to his allures than are the rest of us, and in +consequence appointed him to an office. This office was, I glean of +mediaeval legend, that of teaching dunderheaded mortals the First +Conjugation. So Eros donned cap and gown, took lodgings with a quiet +musical family, and set _amo_ as the first model verb; and ever since +this period has the verb 'to love' been the first to be mastered in +all well-constituted grammars, as it is in life. + +"Heigho! it is not an easy verb to conjugate. One gets into trouble +enough, in floundering through its manifold nuances, which range +inevitably through the bold-faced 'I love', the confident 'I will +love', the hopeful 'I may be loved', and so on to the wistful, pitiful +Pluperfect Subjunctive Passive, 'I might have been loved +if'--Then each of us may supply the Protasis as best befits his +personal opinion and particular scars, and may tear his hair, or +scribble verses, or adopt the cynical, or, in fine, assume any pose +which strikes his fancy. For he has graduated into the Second +Conjugation, which is _moneo_; and may now admonish to his heart's +content, whilst looking back complacently into the First Classroom, +where others--and so many others!--are still struggling with that +mischancy verb, and are involved in the very conditions--verbal or +otherwise--which aforetime saddened him, or showed him a possible +byway toward recreation, or played the deuce with his liver, according +to the nature of the man. + +"Eros is a hard, implacable pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars +suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers +fabled,--no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised +in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging +nothingness; and not a scholar escapes at least a flick of it. + +"I can fancy the class called up as Eros administers, with zest, his +penalties. Master Paris! for loving his neighbor a little less than +himself, and his neighbor's wife a little more. Master Lancelot! +ditto. Masters Petrarch, Tristram, Antony, Juan Tenorio, Dante +Alighieri, and others! ditto. There are a great many called up for +this particular form of peccancy, you observe; even Master David has +to lay aside his Psalm Book, and go forward with the others for +chastisement. Master Romeo! for trespassing in other people's gardens +and mausoleums. Master Leander! for swimming in the Hellespont after +dark; and Master Tarquin! for mistaking his bedroom at the Collatini's +house-party. + +"Thus, one by one, each scholar goes into the darkened private office. +The master handles his rod--eia! 'tis borrowed from the +Erinnyes,--lovingly, caressingly, like a very conscientious person +about the performance of his duty. Then comes the dreadful order, +'Take down your breeches, sir!'.... But the scene is too horrible to +contemplate. He punishes all, this schoolmaster, for he is +unbelievably old, and with the years' advance has grown querulous. + +"Well, now I approach my moral, Mr. Townsend. One must have one's +birching with the others, and of necessity there remains but to make +the best of it. Birching is not a dignified process, and the endurer +comes therefrom both sore and shamefaced. Yet always in such +contretemps it is expedient to brazen out the matter, and to present +as stately an appearance, we will say, as one's welts permit. + +"First, to the world--" + + + 3 + +But at this point I raised my hand. "That is easily done, Mr. +Charteris, inasmuch as the world cares nothing whatever about it. The +world is composed of men and women who have their own affairs to mind. +How in heaven's name does it concern them that a boy has dreamed +dreams and has gone mad like a star-struck moth? It was foolish of +him. Such is the verdict, given in a voice that is neither kindly nor +severe; and the world, mildly wondering, passes on to deal with more +weighty matters. For vegetables are higher than ever this year, and, +upon my word, Mrs. Grundy, ma'am, a housekeeper simply doesn't know +where to turn, with the outrageous prices they are asking for +everything these days. No, believe me, the world does not take +love-affairs very seriously--not even the great ones," I added, in +noble toleration. + +And with an appreciative chuckle, Charteris sank beside me upon the +bench. + +"My adorable boy! so you have a tongue in your head." + +"But can't you imagine the knights talking over Lancelot's affair with +Guenevere, at whatever was the Arthurian substitute for a club? and +sniggering over it? and Lamoracke sagaciously observing that there was +always a crooked streak in the Leodograunce family? Or one Roman +matron punching a chicken in the ribs, and remarking to her neighbor +at the poultry man's stall: 'Well, Mrs. Gracchus, they do say Antony +is absolutely daft over that notorious Queen of Egypt. A brazen-faced +thing, with a very muddy complexion, I'm told, and practically no +reputation, of course, after the way she carried on with Caesar. And +that reminds me, I hear your little Caius suffers from the croup. Now +_my_ remedy'--and so they waddle on, to price asparagus." + +Charteris said: "Well! we need not go out of our way to meddle with +the affairs of others; the entanglement is most disastrously apt to +come about of itself quite soon enough. Yet a little while and +Lancelot will be running Lamoracke through the body, while the King +storms Joyeuse Garde; a few months and your Roman matron will weep +quietly on her unshared pillow--not aloud, though, for fear of +disturbing the children,--while Gracchus is dreadfully seasick at +Actium." + +"But that doesn't prove anything," I stammered. "Why, it doesn't +follow logically--" + +"Nor does anything else. This fact is the chief charm of life. You +will presently find, I think, that living means a daily squandering of +interest upon the first half of a number of two-part stories which +have not ever any sequel. Oh, my adorable boy, I envy you to-night's +misery so profoundly I am half unwilling to assure you that in the +ultimate one finds a broken heart rather fattening than otherwise; and +that a blighted life has never yet been known to prevent queer +happenings in conservatories and such-like secluded places or to rob a +solitude _a deux_ of possibilities. I grant you that love is a +wonderful thing; but there are a many emotions which stand toward love +much as the makers of certain marmalades assert their wares to stand +toward butter--'serving as an excellent occasional substitute.' At +least, so you will find it. And unheroic as it is, within the month +you will forget." + +"No,--I shall not quite forget," said I. + +"Then were you the more unwise. To forget, both speedily and +frequently, is the sole method of rendering life livable. One is here; +the importance of the fact in the eternal scheme of things is perhaps +a shade more trivial than one is disposed to concede, but in any +event, one is here; and here, for a very little while in youth, one is +capable of happiness. For it is a colorful world, Mr. Townsend, +containing much, upon the whole, to captivate both eye and taste; a +world manured and fertilized by the no longer lovely bodies of persons +who died in youth. Oh, their coffins lie everywhere beneath our feet, +thick as raisins in a pudding, whithersoever we tread. Yet every one +of these poor relics was once a boy or a girl, and wore a body that +was capable of so much pleasure! To-day, unused to gain the fullness +of that pleasure, and now not ever to be used, they lie beneath us, in +their coffins, these white, straight bodies, like swords untried that +rust in the scabbard. Meanwhile, on every side is apparent the not yet +out-wasted instrument, and one is naturally inquisitive,--so that +one's fingers and one's nostrils twitch at times, even in the hour +when one is most miserable, very much as yours do now." + +For a long while I meditated. Then I said: "I am not really miserable, +because, all in all, one is content to pay the price of happiness. I +have been very happy sometimes during the past year; and whatever the +blind Fate that mismanages the world may elect to demand in payment, I +shall not haggle. No, by heavens! I would have nothing changed, and +least of all would I forget; having drunk nectar neat, one would not +qualify it with the water of Lethe." + +I rose, not unhandsome, I trusted, in the moonlight. I was hoping Mr. +Charteris would notice my new dress-suit, procured in honor of +Stella's wedding. And I said: "The play is over, the little comedy is +played out. She must go; at least she has tarried for a little. She +does not love you; ah! but she did. God speed her, then, the woman we +have all loved and lost, and still dream of on sleepy Sundays; and all +possible happiness to her! One must be grateful that through her one +has known the glory of loving. Even though she never cared--'and never +could understand',--one may not but be glad that one has known and +loved in youth the Only Woman." + +"The Only Woman has a way of leaving many heirs, Mr. Townsend, that +play the deuce with the estate." + +"--So to-morrow, like the person in _Lycidas_, I am for fresh fields, +Mr. Charteris. And indeed it is high time that I were journeying, +since she and I have rested, and have laughed and eaten and drunk our +fill at this particular tavern; and now it is closing time. A plague +on these foolish and impertinent laws, say I quite heartily; for it is +cold and cheerless outside, whereas here within I was perfectly +comfortable. None the less I must go, or else be evicted by the +constable; so good-night, my sweet; and as for you, Madam Clotho, pray +what unconscionable score have you chalked up against me?" + +I grimaced. "Heavens! what an infinity of sighs, sonnets, +lamentations, and heart-burnings is this that I owe to Fate and +Decency!" + +Charteris applauded as though it were a comedy. "In effect, Marian's +married and you stand here, alive and merry at--pray what precise +period of life, Mr. Townsend?" + +"I confess to twenty-one at present, sir, though I trust to live it +down in time." + +"I would hardly have thought you that venerable. Well, I predict for +you a life without achievements but of gusto. Yes, you will bring a +seasoned palate to your grave,--and I envy you. We open Willoughby +Hall next week, and of course you will make one of the party. For you +write, I know; and you will want to talk to me about editors and read +me all your damnable verses. Nothing could please me more. Good-night, +you glorious boy." + +And the little man wheeled and departed, leaving me to reflect, with +appropriate emotions, that I had been formally invited to visit the +founder of the Economist school of writers. + + + 4 + +"He said it," I more lately observed--"yes, he undoubtedly said it. +And he wrote _Ashtaroth's Lackey_ and _In Old Lichfield_ and _The +Foolish Prince_, and he knows all the magazine editors personally, and +they are probably only too glad to oblige him about anything, and--Oh, +may be, it is only a dream, after all." My heart was pounding, but not +with sorrow or despair or any other maudlin passion; and Stella was +now as remote from my thoughts as was Joan of Arc or Pharaoh's +daughter. + + + + +5. + +_He Revisits Fairhaven and the Play_ + + +So I went to Willoughby Hall, which stands, as you may be aware, upon +the eastern outskirt of Fairhaven. My reappearance created some stir +among the older students and the town-folk, though, one and all, they +presently declared me to be "too stuck-up for any use," inasmuch as I +ignored them in favour of the Charteris house-party,--after, of +course, one visit to Chapel, which I paid a little obviously _en +prince_, and affably shook hands with all the Faculty, and was +completely conscious of how such happenings impressed us when I, too, +was a student. + +So much had happened since then, and I felt so much older,--with my +existence so delightfully blighted, too,--that it seemed droll to find +Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal still sitting in arm chairs before +Clarriker's Emporium, very much as I had left them there ten months +ago. + + + 2 + +By a disastrous chance did Bettie Hamlyn spend that spring, as well as +the preceding year, in Colorado with her mother, who died there that +summer; and to me Fairhaven proper without Bettie Hamlyn seemed a +tawdry and desolate place; and I know that but for Mrs. Hamlyn's +illness--a querulous woman for whom I never cared a jot,--my future +life had been quite otherwise. For, as I told Bettie once, and it was +true, I have found in the world but three sorts of humanity--"Myself, +and Bettie Hamlyn, and the other people." + +So I still wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month-- +because that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because +that was mine. + +And I thought of many things as I walked by the deserted garden, where +there was nothing which concerned me now, not even a ghost. I did not +go in to leave a card upon Professor Hamlyn. The empty house +confronted me too blankly, with its tight-shuttered windows, like +blind eyes, and I hurried by. + + + 3 + +Meanwhile, this was the first time for many years that Willoughby Hall +had been occupied by any other than caretakers; and Fairhaven, to +confess the truth, was a trifle ill-at-ease before the modish persons +who now tenanted the old mansion; and consoled itself after an +immemorial usage by backbiting. + +And meanwhile I enjoyed myself tremendously. It was the first time I +was ever thrown with people who were unanimously agreed that, after +all, nothing is very serious. Mrs. Charteris, of course, was +different; but she, like the others, found me divertingly naive and, +in consequence, petted and cosseted me. I like petting; and since +everyone seemed agreed to regard me as "the Child in the House"--that +was Alicia Wade's nickname, and it clung,--and to like having a child +in the house, I began a little to heighten my very real boyishness. +There was no harm in it; and if people were fonder of me because I sat +upon the floor by preference, and drolly exaggerated what I really +thought, it became a sort of public duty to do these things. So I did, +and found it astonishingly pleasant. + + + 4 + +And meanwhile too, John Charteris could never see enough of me, whom, +as I to-day suspect, Charteris was studying conscientiously, to the +end that I should be converted into "copy." For me, I was waiting +cannily until he should actually ask to see those manuscripts I had +brought to Willoughby Hall, and should help me to get them published. +So there were two of us.... In any event, it was just three weeks +after Stella's marriage that Charteris coaxed me into Fairhaven's +Opera House to witness a performance of _Romeo and Juliet_, by the +Imperial Dramatic Company. + +I went under protest; I had witnessed the butchery of so many dramas +within these walls during my college days, that I knew what I must +anticipate, I said. I had, as a matter of fact, always enjoyed the +Opera House "shows," but I did not wish to acknowledge the harboring +of such crude tastes to Charteris. In any event, at the conclusion of +the second act,-- + +"By Jove!" said I, in a voice that shook a little. "She's a stunner!" +I jolted out, as I proceeded to applaud, vigorously, with both hands and +feet. "And who would have thought it! Good Lord, who would have +thought it!" + +Charteris smiled, in that infernally patronizing way he had sometimes. +"A beautiful woman, my dear boy,--an inordinately beautiful woman, in +fact, but entirely lacking in temperament." + +"Temperament!" I scoffed; "what's temperament to two eyes like those? +Why, they're as big as golf-balls! And her voice--why, a violin--a +very superior violin--if it could talk, would have just such a voice +as that woman has! Temperament! Oh, you make me ill! Why, man, just +look at her!" I said, conclusively. + +Charteris looked, I presume. In any event, the Juliet of the evening +stood before the curtain, smiling, bowing to right and left. The +citizens of Fairhaven were applauding her with a certain conscientious +industry, for they really found Romeo and Juliet a rather dull couple. +The general opinion, however, was that Miss Montmorenci seemed an +elegant actress, and in some interesting play, like _The Two Orphans_ +or _Lady Audley's Secret_, would be well worth seeing. Upon those who +had witnessed her initial performance, she had made a most favorable +impression in _The Lady of Lyons_; while at the Tuesday matinee, as +Lady Isabel in _East Lynne_, she had wrung the souls of her hearers, +and had brought forth every handkerchief in the house. Moreover, she +was very good-looking,--quite the lady, some said; and, after all, one +cannot expect everything for twenty-five cents; considering which +circumstances, Fairhaven applauded with temperate ardor, and made due +allowance for Shakespeare as being a classic, and, therefore, of +course, commendable, but not necessarily interesting. + + + 5 + +"Well?" I queried, when she had vanished. I was speaking under cover +of the orchestra,--a courtesy title accorded a very ancient and very +feeble piano. "Well, and what do you think of her--of her looks, I +means? Who cares for temperament in a woman!" + +Charteris assumed a virtuous expression. "I don't dare tell you," said +he; "you forget I am a married man." + +Then I frowned a little. I often resented Charteris's flippant +allusion to a wife whom I considered, with some reason, to be vastly +too good for her husband. And I considered how near I had come to +remaining with the others at Willoughby Hall--for that new game they +called bridge-whist! And I decided I would never care for bridge. How +on earth could presumably sensible people be content to coop +themselves in a drawing-room on a warm May evening, when hardly a +mile away was a woman with perfectly unfathomable eyes and a voice +which was a love-song? Of course, she couldn't act, but, then, who +wanted her to act? I indignantly demanded of my soul. + +One simply wanted to look at her, and hear her speak. Charteris, with +his prattle about temperament, was an ass; when a woman is born with +such eyes and with a voice like that, she has done her full duty by +the world, and has prodigally accomplished all one has the tiniest +right to expect of her. + +It was impossible she was in reality as beautiful as she seemed, +because no woman was quite so beautiful as that; most of it was +undoubtedly due to rouge and rice-powder and the footlights; but one +could not be mistaken about the voice. And if her speech was that, +what must her singing be! I thought; and in the outcome I remembered +this reflection best of all. + +I consulted my programme. It informed me, in large type at the end, +that Juliet was "old Capulet's daughter," and that the part was played +by Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci. + +And I sighed. I admitted to myself that from a woman who wilfully +assumed such a name little could be hoped. Still, I would like to see +her off the stage...without all those gaudy fripperies and +gewgaws...merely from curiosity.... Then too, they said those +actresses were pretty gay.... + + + 6 + +"A most enjoyable performance," said Mr. Charteris, as we came out of +the Opera House. "I have always had a sneaking liking for burlesque." + +Thereupon he paused to shake hands with Mrs. Adrian Rabbet, wife to +the rector of Fairhaven. + +"Such a sad play," she chirped, "and, do you know, I am afraid it is +rather demoralizing in its effects on young people. No, of course, I +didn't think of bringing the children, Mr. Charteris--Shakespeare's +language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that +safe. And besides, as I so often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think +of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite +depressed me all through the play to think of him hobnobbing with Dr. +Johnson at the Tabard Inn, and making such irregular marriages, and +stealing sheep--or was it sheep, now?" + +I said that, as I remembered, it was a fox, which he hid under his +cloak until the beast bit him. + +"Well, at any rate, it was something extremely deplorable and +characteristic of genius, and I quite feel for his wife." Mrs. Rabbet +sighed, and endeavored, I think, to recollect whether it was _Ingomar_ +or _Spartacus_ that Shakespeare wrote. "However," she concluded, "they +play _Ten Nights in a Barroom_ on Thursday, and I shall certainly +bring the children then, for I am always glad for them to see a really +moral and instructive drama. That reminds me! I absolutely must tell +you what Tom said about actors the other day--" + +And she did. This led naturally to Matilda's recent and blasphemous +comments on George Washington, and her observations as to the rector's +dog, and little Adey's personal opinion of Elisha. And so on, in a +manner not unfamiliar to fond parents. Mrs. Rabbet said toward the end +that it was a most enjoyable chat, although to me it appeared to +partake rather of the nature of a monologue. It consumed perhaps a +half-hour; and when we two at last relinquished Mrs. Rabbet to her +husband's charge, it was with a feeling not altogether unakin to +relief. + + + 7 + +We walked slowly down Fairhaven's one real street, which extends due +east from the College for as much as a mile, to end inconsequently in +those carefully preserved foundations, which are now the only remnant +of a building wherein a number of important matters were settled in +Colonial days. There Cambridge Street divides like a Y, one branch of +which leads to Willoughby Hall. + +Our route from the Opera House thus led through the major part of +Fairhaven, which, after an evening of unwonted dissipation, was now +largely employed in discussing the play, and turning the cat out for +the night. The houses were mostly dark, and the moon, nearing its +full, silvered row after row of blank windows. There was an odour of +growing things about, for in Fairhaven the gardens are many. + +Then it befell that I made a sudden exclamation. + +"Eh?" said Charteris. + +"Why, nothing," I explained, lucidly. + +It may be mentioned, however, that we were, at this moment, passing a +tall hedge of box, set about a large garden. The hedge was perhaps +five feet six in height; Charteris was also five feet six, whereas I +was an unusually tall young man, and topped my host by a good +half-foot. + +"I say," I observed, after a little, "I'm all out of cigarettes. I'll +go back to the drug-store," I suggested, as seized with a happy +thought, "and get some. I noticed it was still open. Don't think of +waiting for me," I urged, considerately. + +"Why, great heavens!" Charteris ejaculated; "take one of mine. I can +recommend them, I assure you--and, in any event, there are all sorts, +I fancy, at the house. They keep only the rankest kind of domestic +tobacco yonder." + +"I prefer it," I insisted, "oh, yes, I really prefer it. So much +milder and more wholesome, you know. I never smoke any other sort. My +doctor insists on my smoking the very rankest tobacco I can get. It is +much better for the heart, he says, because you don't smoke so much of +it, you know. Besides," I concluded, virtuously, "it is infinitely +cheaper; you can get twenty cigarettes all for five cents at some +places. I really must economize, I think." + +Charteris turned, and with great care stared in every direction. He +discovered nothing unusual. "Very well!" assented Mr. Charteris; "I, +too, have an eye for bargains. I will go with you." + +"If you do alive," quoth I, quite honestly, "I devoutly desire that +all sorts of unpleasant things may happen to me for not having wrung +your neck first." + +Charteris grinned. "Immoral young rip!" said he; "I warn you, before +entering the ministry, Mr. Rabbet was accounted an excellent shot." + +"Get out!" said I. + +And the fervour of my utterance was such that Charteris proceeded to +obey. "Don't be late for breakfast, if you can help it," he urged, +kindly. "Of course, though, you are up to some new form of insanity, +and I shall probably be sent for in the morning, to bail you out of +the lock-up." + +Thereupon he turned on his heel, and went down the deserted street, +singing sweetly. + +Sang Mr. Charteris: + + "Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, + Billing and cooing is all your cheer, + Sighing and singing of midnight strains + Under bonnybells" window-panes. + Wait till you've come to forty year! + + "Forty times over let Michaelmas pass, + Grizzling hair the brain doth clear; + Then you know a boy is an ass, + Then you know the worth of a lass, + Once you have come to forty-year." + + + + +6. + +_He Chats Over a Hedge_ + + +Left to myself, I began to retrace my steps. Solitude had mitigated my +craving for tobacco in a surprising manner; indeed, a casual observer +might have thought it completely forgotten, for I walked with curious +leisure. When I had come again to the box-hedge my pace had +degenerated, a little by a little, into an aimless lounge. Mr. Robert +Etheridge Townsend was rapt with admiration of the perfect beauty of +the night. + +Followed a strange chance. There was only the mildest breeze about; it +was barely audible among the leaves above; and yet--so unreliable are +the breezes of still summer nights,--with a sudden, tiny and almost +imperceptible outburst, did this treacherous breeze lift Mr. +Townsend's brand-new straw hat from his head, and waft it over the +hedge of trim box-bushes. This was unfortunate, for, as has been said, +the hedge was a tall and sturdy hedge. So I peeped over it, with +disconsolate countenance. + + + 2 + +"Beastly awkward," said I, as meditatively; "I'd give a great deal to +know how I'm going to get my hat back without breaking through the +blessed hedge, and rousing the house, and being taken for a burglar, +may be--" + +"It is terrible," assented a quite tranquil voice; "but if gentlemen +_will_ venture abroad on such terrible nights--" + +"Eh?" said I. I looked up quickly at the moon; then back toward the +possessor of the voice. It was peculiar I had not noticed her before, +for she sat on a rustic bench not more than forty feet away, and in +full view of the street. It was, perhaps, the strangeness of the +affair that was accountable for the great wonder in my soul; and the +little tremor which woke in my speech. + +"--so windy," she complained. + +"Er--ah--yes, quite so!" I agreed, hastily. + +"I am really afraid that it must be a tornado. Ah," she continued, +emotion catching at her voice, "heaven help all poor souls at sea! How +the wind must whistle through the cordage! how the marlin-spikes must +quiver, and the good ship reel on such a night!" She looked up at a +cloudless sky, and sighed. + +"Er h'm!" I observed. + +For she had come forward and had held out my hat toward me, and I +could see her very plainly now; and my mouth was making foolish +sounds, and my heart was performing certain curious and varied +gymnastics which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be +included among its proper duties, and which interfered with my +breathing. + + + 3 + +"Didn't I know it--didn't I know it?" I demanded of my soul, and my +pulses sang a paean; "I knew, with that voice, she couldn't be a +common actress--a vulgar, raddled creature out of a barn! You not a +gentlewoman! Nonsense! Why--why, you're positively incredible! Oh, you +great, wonderful, lazy woman, you are probably very stupid, and you +certainly can't act, but your eyes are black velvet, and your voice is +evidently stolen from a Cremona, and as for your hair, there must be +pounds of it, and, altogether, you ought to be set up on a pedestal +for men to worship! There is just one other woman in the whole wide +world as beautiful as you are; and she is two thousand years old, and +is securely locked up in the Louvre, and belongs to the French +Government, and, besides, she hasn't any arms, so that even there you +have the advantage!" + +Indeed, Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci was of much the same large, +placid type as the Venus of Milo, nor were the upper portions of the +two faces dissimilar. Miss Montmorenci's lips, however, were far more +curved, more buxom, and were, at the present moment, bordered by an +absolutely bewildering assemblage of dimples which the statue may not +boast. + + + 4 + +"I really think," said Miss Montmorenci, judicially, "that it would be +best for you to seek some shelter from this devastating wind. It +really is not safe, you know, in the open. You might be swept away, +just as your hat was." + +"The shelter of a tree--" I began, looking doubtfully into the garden, +which had any number of trees. + +"The very thing," she assented. "There is a splendid oak yonder, just +half a block up the street." And she graciously pointed it out. + +I regarded it with disapproval. "Such a rickety old tree," I objected, +sulkily. + +Followed a silence. She bent her head to one side, and looked up at +me. She was now grave with a difference. "A strolling actress isn't +supposed to be very particular, is she?" asked Miss Montmorenci. "She +wouldn't object to a man's coming by night and trying to scrape +acquaintance with her,--a man who wouldn't think of being seen with +her by day? She would like it, probably. She--she'd probably be +accustomed to it, wouldn't she?" And Miss Montmorenci smiled. + +And I, on a sudden, was abjectly ashamed of myself. "Why, you can't +think that of me!" I babbled. "I--oh, don't think me that sort, I beg +of you! I'm not--really, I'm not, Miss Montmorenci! But I admired you +so much to-night--I--oh, of course, I was very silly and very +presumptuous, but, really, you know--" + +I paused for a little. This was miles apart from the glib talk I had +designed. + +"My name is Robert Townsend," I then continued; "I am staying at Mr. +Charteris's place, just outside of Fairhaven. And I am delighted to +meet you, Miss Montmorenci. So now, you see, we have been quite +properly introduced, haven't we? And, by the way," I suggested, after +a moment's meditation, "there is a very interesting old college here-- +old pictures, records, historical association and such like. I would +like to inspect it, vastly. Can't I call for you in the morning. We +can do it together, if you don't mind, and if you haven't already seen +it. Won't you, Miss Montmorenci? You really ought to see King's +College, you know; it is quite famous, because I was educated there, +and no end of other interesting things have happened within its +venerable confines." + +She had drawn close to the hedge. "You really mean it?" she asked. +"You would walk through the streets of this Fairhaven with me--with a +barn-stormer, with a strolling actress? You'd be afraid!" she cried, +suddenly; "oh, yes, you talk bravely enough, but you'd be afraid, of +course, when the time came! You'd be afraid!" + +I had taken the hat, but my head was still uncovered. "I don't think," +said I, reflectively, "that I am afraid of many things, somehow. But +of one thing I am certainly not afraid, and that is of mistaking a +good woman for--for anything else. Their eyes are different somehow," +I haltingly explained, as to myself; then I smiled. "Shall we say +eleven o'clock?" + +Miss Montmorenci laid one hand upon the hedgetop and slowly twisted +off four box-leaves what while I waited. "I--I believe you," she said, +in' meditation; "oh, yes, I believe you, somehow, Mr. Townsend. But we +rehearse in the morning, and there is a matinee every day, you know, +and--and there are other reasons--" She paused, irresolutely. "No," +said Miss Montmorenci, "I thank you, but--good night." + +"Oh, I say! am I never to see any more of you?" + +A century or so of silence now. Her deliberation seemed endless. + +At last: "Matinees and rehearsal keep us busy by day. But I am +boarding here for the week, and--and I rest here in the garden after +the evening performance. It is cool, it--it is like a glass of water +after taking rather bitter medicine. And you aren't a bad sort, are +you? No; you look too big and strong and clean, Mr. Townsend. And, +besides, you're just a boy--" + +"In that case," cried Mr. Townsend, "I shall say goodnight with a +light heart." And I turned to go. + +"A moment--" said she. + +"An eternity," I proffered. + +"Promise me," she said, "that you will not come again this week to the +Opera House." + +My brows were raised a trifle. "I adore the drama," I pleaded. + +"And I loathe it. And I act very badly--hopelessly so," said Miss +Montmorenci, with an indolent shrug; "and, somehow, I don't want you +to see me do it. Why did you mind my calling you a boy? You _are_, you +know." + +So I protested I had not minded it at all; and I promised. "But at +least," I said, triumphantly, "you can't prevent my remembering +Juliet!" + +She said of course not, only I was not to be silly. + +"And therefore," quoth I, "Juliet shall be remembered always." I +smiled and waved my hand. "_Au revoir_, Signorina Capulet," said I. + +And I took my departure. My blood rejoiced, with a strange fervor, in +the summer moonlight. It was good to be alive. + + + + +7. + +_He Goes Mad in a Garden_ + + +"And, oh, but it is good to be with you again, Signorina!" cried I, as +I came with quick strides into the moonlit garden. I caught both her +hands in mine, and laughed like an ineffably contented person. There +was nothing very subtle about the boy that then was I; at worst, he +overacted what he really felt; and just at present he was pleased with +the universe, and he saw no possible reason for concealing the fact. + +It was characteristic, also, that she made no pretence at being +surprised by my coming. She was expecting me and she smiled very +frankly at seeing me. Also, in place of the street dress of Tuesday, +she wore something that was white and soft and clinging, and left her +throat but half concealed. This, for two reasons, was sensible and +praiseworthy; one being that the night was warm, and the other that it +really broadened my ideas as to the state of perfection which it is +possible for the human throat to attain. + + + 2 + +"So you don't like my stage-name?" she asked, as I sat down beside +her. "Well, for that matter, no more do I." "It doesn't suit you," I +protested--"not in the least. Whereas, you might be a Signorina +Somebody-or-other, you know. You are dark and stately and--well, I +can't tell you all the things you are," I complained, "because the +English language is so abominably limited. But, upon the whole, I am +willing to take the word of the playbill,--yes, I am quite willing to +accept you as Signorina Capulet. She had a habit of sitting in gardens +at night, I remember. Yes," I decided, after reflection, "I really +think it highly probable that you are old Capulet's daughter. I shall +make a point of it to pick a quarrel as soon as possible, with that +impertinent, trespassing young Montague. He really doesn't deserve +you, you know." + +Unaccountably, her face saddened. Then, "Signorina? Signorina?" she +appraised the title. "It _is_ rather a pretty name. And the other is +horrible. Yes, you may call me Signorina, if you like." + + + 3 + +She would not tell me her real name. She was unmarried,--this much she +told me, but of her past life, her profession, or of her future she +never spoke. "I don't want to talk about it," she said, candidly. "We +play for a week in Fairhaven, and here, once off the stage, I intend +to forget I am an actress. When I am on the stage," she added, in +meditative wise, "of course everyone knows I am not." + +I laughed. I found her very satisfying; she was not particularly +intelligent, perhaps, but then I was beginning to consider clever +women rather objectionable creatures. There was a sufficiency of them +among the Charteris house-party--Alicia Wade, for instance, and +Pauline Ashmeade and Cynthia Chaytor,--and I thought of them almost +resentfully. The world had accorded them not exactly what they most +wanted, perhaps, but, at least, they had its luxuries; and they said +sharp, cynical things about the world in return. In a woman's mouth +epigrams were as much out-of-place as a meerschaum pipe. + +Here, on the contrary, was a woman whom the world had accorded nothing +save hard knocks, and she regarded it, upon the whole, as an eminently +pleasant place to live in. She accepted its rebuffs with a certain +large calm, as being all in the day's work. There was, no doubt, some +good and sufficient reason for these inconveniences; not for a moment, +however, did she puzzle her handsome head in speculating over this +reason. She was probably too lazy. And the few favours the world +accorded her she took thankfully. + +"You see," she explained to me--this was on Thursday night, when I +found her contentedly eating cheap candy out of a paper bag,--"the +world is really very like a large chocolate drop; it's rather bitter +on the outside, but when you have bitten through, you find the heart +of it sweet. Oh, how greedy!--you've taken the last candied cherry, +and I am specially fond of candied cherries!" And indeed, she looked +frankly regretful as I munched it. + +I thought her adorable; and in exchange for that last candied cherry I +promised her some of the new books,--_David Harum_ certainly, and, +_When Knighthood Was in Flower_, because everybody was reading it, and +Mr. Dooley, because they said this young fellow Dunne was nearly as +funny as Bill Nye.... + + + 4 + +In fact, the moon seemed to shine down each night upon that particular +garden in a more and more delightful and dangerous manner. And I being +a fairly normal and healthy young man, the said moonshine affected me +in a fashion which has been peculiar to moonshine since Noah was a +likely stripling; my blood appeared to me, at times, to leap and +bubble in my veins as if it had been some notably invigorating and +heady tipple; and my heart was unreasonably contented, and I gave due +thanks for this woman who had come to me unsullied through the world's +gutter. For she came unsullied; there was no questioning that. + +I pictured her in certain execrable rhymes as the Lady in _Comus_, +moving serene and unafraid among a rabble of threatening, bestial +shapes. And I rejoiced that there were women like this in the world,-- +brave, wholesome, unutterably honest women, whose very lack of +cleverness--oh, subtle appeal to my vanity!--demanded a gentleman's +protection. + +As has been said, I was a well-grown lad, but when I thought in this +fashion I seemed to myself, at a moderate computation, ten feet in +height,--and just the person, in short, who would be an ideal +protector. + +Thus far my callow meditations. My course of reasoning was perhaps +faulty, but then there are, at twenty-one, many processes more +interesting and desirable than the perfecting of a mathematical +demonstration. And so, for a little, my blood rejoiced with a strange +fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive. + + + 5 + +Thursday was the twenty-third of the month, so upon that afternoon I +wrote to Bettie Hamlyn, in far-off Colorado. + +It was a lengthy letter. It told her of how desolate her garden was +and of how odd Fairhaven seemed without her. It told how I had half +changed my mind, and would probably not go to Europe with Mr. +Charteris, after all. Bettie had been at pains, in the letter I was +answering, to expatiate upon her hatred of Charteris, whom she had +never seen. My letter told her, in fine, of a variety of matters. And +it ended: + +"I went to the Opera House on Monday. But that, like everything else, +isn't the same without you, dear. The woman who played Juliet was, I +believe, rather good-looking, but I scarcely noticed her in worrying +over the pitiful circumstance that the Apothecary and the Populace of +Verona had only one pair of shoes between them. Besides, Mercutio kept +putting on a bathrobe and insisting he was Friar Laurence.... I would +write more about it, if I had not almost used up all my paper. There +is just room to say--" + + + 6 + +This was, as I have stated, on Thursday afternoon. Upon the following +evening-- + +"And why not?" I demanded, for the ninth time. + +But she was resolute. "Oh, it is dear of you!" she cried; "and I--I do +care for you,--how could I help it? But it can't be,--it can't ever +be," she repeated wearily; and then she looked at me, and smiled a +little. "Oh, boy, boy! dear, dear boy!" she murmured, half in wonder, +"how foolish of you and--how dear of you!" + +"And why not?" said I--for the tenth time. + +She gave a sobbing laugh. "Oh, the great, brave, stupid boy!" she +said, and, for a moment, her hand rested on my hair; "he doesn't know +what he is doing,--ah, no, he doesn't know! Why, I might hold you to +your word! I might sue you for breach of promise! I might marry you +out of hand! Think of that! Why I am only a strolling actress, and +fair game for any man,--any man who isn't particular," she added, with +the first trace of bitterness I had ever observed in her odd, throaty +voice. "And you would marry me,--you! you would give me your name, you +would make me your wife! You have actually begged me to be your wife, +haven't you? Ah, my brave, strong, stupid Bobbie, how many women must +love you,--women who have a right to love you! And you would give them +all up for me,--for me, you foolish Bobbie, whom you haven't known a +week! Ah, how dear of you!" And she caught her breath swiftly, and her +voice broke. + +"Yes," I brazenly confessed; "I really believe I would give them all +up--every blessed one of them--for you." I inspected her, critically, +and then smiled. "And I don't think that I would be deserving any very +great credit for self sacrifice, either, Signorina." + +"My dear," she answered, "it pleases you to call me old Capulet's +daughter,--but if I were only a Capulet, and you a Montague, don't you +see how much easier it would be? But we don't belong to rival +families, we belong to rival worlds, to two worlds that have nothing +in common, and never can have anything in common. They are too strong +for us, Bobbie,--my big, dark, squalid world, that you could never +sink to, and your gay little world which I can never climb to,--your +world that would have none of me, even if--even _if_--" But the +condition was not forthcoming. + +"The world," said I, in an equable tone--"My dear, I may as well warn +you I am shockingly given to short and expressive terms, and as we are +likely to see a deal of each other for the future, you will have to be +lenient with them,--accordingly, I repeat, the world may be damned." + +And I laughed, in unutterable content. "Have none of you!" I cried. +"My faith, I would like to see a world which would have none of you! +Ah, Signorina, it is very plain to me that you don't realize what a +beauty, what a--a--good Lord, what an unimaginative person it was that +invented the English language! Why, you have only to be seen, heart's +dearest,--only to be seen, and the world is at your feet,--my world, +to which you belong of rights; my world, that you are going to honour +by living in; my world, that in a little will go mad for sheer envy of +blundering, stupid, lucky me!" And I laughed her to scorn. + +There was a long silence. Then, "I belonged to your world once, you +know." + +"Why, of course, I knew as much as that." + +"And yet--you never asked--" "Ah, Signorina, Signorina!" I cried; +"what matter? Don't I know you for the bravest, tenderest, purest, +most beautiful woman God ever made? I doubt you--I! My word!" said I, +and stoutly, "that _would_ be a pretty go! You are to tell me just +what you please," I went on, almost belligerently, "and when and where +you please, my lady. And I would thank you," I added, with appropriate +sternness, "to discontinue your pitiful and transparent efforts to +arouse unworthy suspicions as to my future wife. They are wasted, +madam,--utterly wasted, I assure you." + +"Oh, Bobbie, Bobbie!" she sighed; "you are such a beautiful baby! Give +me time," she pleaded weakly. + +And, when I scowled my disapproval, "Only till tomorrow--only a +little, little twenty-four hours. And promise me, you won't speak of +this--this crazy nonsense again tonight. I must think." + +"Never!" said I, promptly; "because I couldn't be expected to keep +such an absurd promise," I complained, in indignation. + +"And you look so strong," she murmured, with evident disappointment,-- +"so strong and firm and--and--admirable!" + +So I promised at once. And I kept the promise--that is, I did +subsequently refer to the preferable and proper course to pursue in +divers given circumstances "when we are married;" but it was on six +occasions only, and then quite casually,--and six times, as I myself +observed, was, all things considered, an extremely moderate allowance +and one that did great credit to my self-control. + + + 7 + +"And besides, why _not_?" I said,--for the eleventh time. + +"There are a thousand reasons. I am not your equal, I am just an +ostensible actress--Why, it would be your ruin!" + +"My dear Mrs. Grundy, I confess that, for the moment, your disguise +had deceived me. But now: I recognize your voice." + +She laughed a little. "And after all," the grave voice said, which +was, to me at least, the masterwork of God, "after all, hasn't one +always to answer Mrs. Grundy--in the end?" + +"Why, then, you disgusting old harridan," said I, "I grant you it is +utterly impossible to defend my behaviour in this matter, and, believe +me, I don't for an instant undertake the task. To the contrary, I +agree with you perfectly,--my conduct is most thoughtless and +reprehensible, and merits your very severest condemnation. For look +you, here is a young man, well born, well-bred, sufficiently well +endowed with this world's goods, in short, an eminently eligible +match, preparing to marry an 'ostensible actress' a year or two his +senior,--why, of course, you are,--and of whose past he knows +nothing,--absolutely nothing. Don't you shudder at the effrontery of +the minx? Is it not heart-breaking to contemplate the folly, the utter +infatuation of the misguided youth who now stands ready to foist such +a creature upon the circles of which your ladyship is a distinguished +ornament? I protest it is really incredible. I don't believe a word of +it." + +"I cannot quite believe it, either, Bobbie--" + +"But you see, he loves her. You, my dear madam, blessed with a wiser +estimation of our duties to society, of the responsibilities of our +position, of the cost of even the most modest establishment, and, +above all, of the sacredness of matrimony and the main chance, may +well shrug your shoulders at such a plea. For, as you justly observe, +what, after all, is this love? only a passing madness, an exploded +superstition, an irresponsible _ignis fatuus_ flickering over the +quagmires and shallows of the divorce court. People's lives are no +longer swayed by such absurdities; it is quite out of date." + +"Yes; you are joking, Bobbie, I know; yet it is really out of date--" + +"But I protest, loudly, my hand upon my heart, that it is true; people +no longer do mad things for love, or ever did, in spite of lying +poets; any more than the birds mate in the spring, or the sun rises in +the morning; popular fallacies, my dear madam, every one of them. You +and I know better, and are not to be deceived by appearances, however +specious they may be. Ah, but come now! Having attained this highly +satisfactory condition, we can well afford to laugh at all our past +mistakes,--yes, even at our own! For let us be quite candid. Wasn't +there a time, dear lady, before Mr. Grundy came a-wooing, when, +somehow, one was constantly meeting unexpected people in the garden, +and, somehow, one sat out a formidable number of dances during the +evening, and, somehow, the poets seemed a bit more plausible than they +do today? It was very foolish, of course,--but, ah, madam, there _was_ +a time,--a time when even our staid blood rejoiced with a strange +fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive! Come +now, have you the face to deny it,--Mrs. Methuselah?" + +"It has not been quite bad to be alive, these last few hours--" + +"And, oh, my dear, how each of us will look back some day to this very +moment! And we are wasting it! And I have not any words to tell you +how I love you! I am just a poor, dumb brute!" I groaned. + +Then very tenderly she began to talk with me in a voice I cannot tell +you of, and concerning matters not to be recorded. + +And still she would not promise anything; and I would give an arm, I +think, could it replevin all the idiotic and exquisite misery I knew +that night. + + + + +8. + +_He Duels with a Stupid Woman_ + + +Yet I approached the garden on Saturday night with an elated heart. +This was the last evening of the engagement of the Imperial Dramatic +Company. To-morrow the troupe was to leave Fairhaven; but I was very +confident that the leading lady would not accompany them, and by +reason of this confidence, I smiled as I strode through the city of +Fairhaven, and hummed under my breath an inane ditty of an extremely +sentimental nature. + +As I bent over the little wooden gate, and searched for its elusive +latch, a man came out of the garden, wheeling sharply about the hedge +that, until this, had hidden him; and simultaneously, I was aware of +the mingled odour of bad tobacco and of worse whiskey. Well, she would +have done with such people soon! I threw open the gate, and stood +aside to let him pass; then, as the moon fell full upon the face of +the man, I gave an inarticulate, startled sound. + +"Fine evening, sir," suggested the stranger. + +"Eh?" said I; "eh? Oh, yes, yes! quite so!" Afterward I shrugged my +shoulders, and went into the garden, a trifle puzzled. + + + 2 + +I found her beneath a great maple in the heart of the enclosure. It +was a place of peace; the night was warm and windless, and the moon, +now come to its full glory, rode lazily in the west through a froth of +clouds. Everywhere the heavens were faintly powdered with stardust, +but even the planets seemed pale and ineffectual beside the splendour +of the moon. + +The garden was drenched in moonshine--moonshine that silvered the +unmown grass-plots, and converted the white rose-bushes into squat-figured +wraiths, and tinged the red ones with dim purple hues. On every side the +foliage blurred into ambiguous vistas, where fireflies loitered; and the +long shadows of the nearer trees, straining across the grass, were wried +patterns scissored out of blue velvet. It was a place of peace and light +and languid odours, and I came into it, laughing, the possessor of an +over-industrious heart and of a perfectly unreasoning joy over the fact +that I was alive. + +"I say," I observed, as I stretched luxuriously upon the grass beside +her, "you put up at a shockingly disreputable place, Signorina." +"Yes?" said she. + +"That fellow who just went out," I explained--"do you know the police +want his address, I think? No," I continued, after consideration, "I +am sure I'm not mistaken,--that is either Ned Lethbury, the embezzler, +or his twin-brother. It's been five years since I saw him, but that is +he. And that", said I, with proper severity, "is a sample of the sort +of associate you prefer to your humble servant! Ah, Signorina, +Signorina, I am a tolerably worthless chap, I admit, but at least I +never forged and embezzled and then skipped my bail! So you had much +better marry me, my dear, and say good-bye to your peculating friends. +But, deuce take it! I forgot--I ought to notify the police or +something, I suppose." + +She caught my arm. Her mouth opened and shut again before she spoke. +"He--he is my husband," she said, in a toneless voice. Then, on a +sudden, she wailed: "Oh, forgive me! Oh, my great, strong, beautiful +boy, forgive me, for I am very unhappy, and I cannot meet your eyes-- +your honest eyes! Ah, my dear, my dear, do not look at me like that,-- +you don't know how it hurts!" + +The garden noises lisped about us in the long silence that fell. Then +the far-off whistling of some home going citizen of Fairhaven tinkled +shrilly through the night, and I shuddered a bit. + +"I don't understand," I commenced, strangely quiet. "You told me--" + +"Ah, I lied to you! I lied to you!" she cried. "I didn't, mean to-- +hurt you. I did not know--I couldn't know--I was so lonely, Bobbie," +she pleaded, with wide eyes; "oh, you don't know how lonely I am. And +when you came to me that first night, you--why, you spoke to me as the +men I once knew used to speak. There was respect in your voice, and I +wanted that so; I hadn't had a man speak to me like that for years, +you know, Bobbie. And, boy dear, I was so lonely in my squalid +world,--and it seemed as if the world I used to know was calling me-- +your world, Bobbie--the world I am shut out from." + +"Yes," I said; "I think I understand." + +"And I thought for a week--just to peep into it, to be a lady again +for an hour or two--why, it didn't seem wicked, then, and I wanted it +so much! I--I knew I could trust you, because you were only a boy. And +I was hungry--_so_ hungry for a little respect, a little courtesy, +such as men don't accord strolling actresses. So I didn't tell you +till the very last I was married. I lied to you. Oh, but you don't +understand, this stupid, honest boy doesn't understand anything except +that I have lied to him!" + +"Signorina," I said, again, and I smiled, resolutely, "I think I +understand." I took both her hands in mine, and laughed a little. +"But, oh, my dear, my dear," I said, "you should have told me that you +loved another man; for you have let me love you for a week, and now I +think that I must love you till I die." + +"Love him!" she echoed. "Oh, boy dear, boy dear, what a Galahad it is! +I don't think Ned ever cared for anything but Father's money; and I-- +why, you have seen him. How _could_ I love him?" she asked, as simply +as a child. + +I bowed my head. "And yet--" said I. Then I laughed again, somewhat +bitterly. "Don't let's tell stories, Mrs. Lethbury," I said; "it is +kindly meant, I know, but I remember you now. I even danced with you +once, some seven years ago,--yes, at the Green Chalybeate. I remember +the night, for a variety of reasons. You are Alfred Van Orden's +daughter; your father is a wealthy man, a very wealthy man; and yet, +when your--your husband disappeared you followed him--to become a +strolling actress. Ah, no, a woman doesn't sacrifice everything for a +man in the way you have done, unless she loves him." + +I caught my breath. Some unknown force kept tugging down the corners +of my mouth, in a manner that hampered speech; moreover, nothing +seemed worth talking about. I had lost her. That was the one thing +which mattered. + +"Why, of course, I went with him," she assented, a shade surprised; +"he was my husband, you know. But as for loving,--no, I don't think +Ned ever really loved me," she reflected, with puckering brows. "He +took that money for--for another woman, if you remember. But he is +fond of me, and--and he _needs_ me." + +I did not say anything; and after a little she went on, with a quick +lift of speech. + +"Oh, what a queer life we have led since then! You can't imagine it, +my dear. He has been a tavern-keeper, a drummer,--everything! Why, +last summer we sold rugs and Turkish things in Atlantic City! But he +is always afraid of meeting someone who knows him, and--and he drinks +too much. So we have not got on in the world, Ned and I; and now, +after three years, I'm the leading lady of the Imperial Dramatic +Company, and he is the manager. I forgot, though,--he is advance-agent +this week, for he didn't dare stay in Fairhaven, lest some of the men +at Mr. Charteris's should recognize him, you know. He came back only +this evening--" + +She paused for a moment; a wistful quaver crept into her speech. "Oh, +it's queer, it's queer, Bobbie! Sometimes--sometimes when I have time +to think, say on long Sunday afternoons, I remember my old life, every +bit of it,--oh, I do remember such strange little details! I remember +the designs on the bread and butter plates, and all the silver things +on my desk, and the plank by my door that always creaked and somehow +never got fixed, and the big, shiny buttons on the coachman's coat,-- +just trifles like that. And--and they hurt, they hurt, Bobbie, those +little, unimportant things! They--grip my throat." + +She laughed, not very mirthfully. "Then I am like the old lady in the +nursery rhyme, and say, Surely, this can't be I. But it is I, boy +dear,--a strolling actress, a barn-stormer! Isn't it queer, Bobbie? +But, oh, you don't know half--" + +I was remembering many things. I remembered Lethbury, a gross man, +superfluously genial, whom I had never liked, although I recalled my +admiration of his whiskers. I recollected young Amelia Van Orden, not +come to her full beauty then, the bud of girlhood scarce slipped; and +I remembered very vividly the final crash, the nine days' talk over +Lethbury's flight in the face of certain conviction,--by his father-in- +law's advice (as some said) who had furnished and forfeited heavy bail +for the absconder. Oh, the brave woman who had followed! Oh, the brave, +foolish woman! And, for the action's recompense, he was content to +exhibit her to yokels, to make of her beauty an article of traffic. +Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. And then hope +blazed. + +"Your husband," I said, quickly, "he does not love you? He--he is not +faithful to you?" + +"No," she answered; "there is a Miss Fortescue--she plays second +parts--" + +"Ah, my dear, my dear!" I cried, with a shaking voice; "come away, +Signorina,--come away with me! He _doesn't_ need you,--and, oh, my +dear, I need you so! You can get your divorce and marry me. Ah, +Signorina, come away,--come away from this squalid life that is +killing you, to the world you are meant for, to the life you hunger +for! Come back to the clean, lighthearted world you love, the world +that is waiting to pet and caress you just as it used to do,--our +world, Signorina! You don't belong here with--with the Fortescues. You +belong to us." + +I sprang to my feet. "Come now!" said I. "There's Anne Charteris; she +is a good woman, if ever lived one. She used to know you, too, didn't +she? Well, then, come with me to her, dearest--and tonight! You shall +see your father tomorrow. Your father--why, think how that old man +loves you, how he has longed for you, his only daughter, all these +years. And I?" I spread out my hands, in the tiniest, impotent +gesture. "I love you," I said, simply. "I cannot do without you, +heart's dearest." + +Impulsively, she rested both hands upon my breast; then bowed her head +a little. The nearness of her seemed to shake in my blood, to catch at +my throat, and my hands, lifted for a moment, trembled with desire of +her. + +"You don't understand," she said. "I am a Catholic--my mother was one, +you know. There is no divorce for us. And--and besides, I'm not +modern. I am very old-fashioned, I suppose, in my ideas. Do you know," +she asked, with a smile upon the face which lifted confidingly toward +me, "I--I _really_ believe the world was made in six days; and that +the whale swallowed Jonah, and that there is a real purgatory and a +hell of fire and brimstone. You don't, do you, Bobbie? But I do,--and +I promised to stay with him till death parted us, you know, and I must +do it. I am all he has. He would get even worse without me. I--oh, boy +dear, boy dear, I love you so!" And her voice broke, in a great, +choking sob. + +"A promise--a promise made by an ungrown girl to a brute--a thief--!" + +"No, dear," she answered, quietly; "a promise made to God." + +And looking into her face, I saw love there, and anguish, and +determination. It seemed monstrous, but of a sudden I knew with a dull +surety; she loved me, but she thought she had no right to love me; she +would not go with me. She would go with that drunken, brutish thief. + +And I suddenly recalled certain clever women--Alicia Wade, Pauline +Ashmeade, Cynthia Chaytor--the women of that world wherein I was +novitiate; beyond question, they would raise delicately penciled +eyebrows to proclaim this woman a fool--and to wonder. + +They would be right, I thought. She was only a splendid, tender-hearted, +bright-eyed fool, the woman that I loved. My heart sickened as her +folly rose between us, an impassable barrier. I hated it; and I revered +it. + +Thus we two stood silent for a time. The wind murmured above in the +maples, lazily, ominously. Then the gate clicked, with a vicious snap +that pierced the silence like the report of a distant rifle. "That is +probably Ned," she said wearily. "I had forgotten they close the +barrooms earlier on Saturday nights. So good-bye, Bobbie. You--you may +kiss me, if you like." + +So for a moment our lips met. Afterward I caught her hands in mine, +and gripped them close to my breast, looking down into her eyes. They +glinted in the moonlight, deep pools of sorrow, and tender--oh, +unutterably tender and compassionate. + +But I found no hope there. I lifted her hand to my lips, and left her +alone in the garden. + + + 3 + +Lethbury was fumbling at the gate. + +"Such nuishance," he complained, "havin' gate won't unlock. Latch mus' +got los'--po' li'l latch," murmured Mr. Lethbury, plaintively--"all +'lone in cruel worl'!" + +I opened the gate for him, and stood aside to let him pass toward his +wife. + + + + +9. + +_He Puts His Tongue in His Cheek_ + + +It was not long before John Charteris knew of the entire affair, for +in those days I had few concealments from him: and the little wizened +man brooded awhile over my misery, with an odd wistfulness. + +"I remember Amelia Van Orden perfectly," he said--"now. I ought to +have recognized her. Only, she was never, in her best days, the +paragon you depict. She sang, I recollect; people made quite a to-do +over her voice. But she was very, very stupid, and used to make loud +shrieking noises when she was amused, and was generally reputed to be +'fast.' I never investigated. Even so, there was not any real doubt as +to her affair, in any event, with Anton von Anspach, after that night +the sleigh broke down--" + +"Oh, spare me all those ancient Lichfield scandals! She is an angel, +John, if there was ever one." + +"In your eyes, doubtless! So your heart is broken. Yet do you not +realize that not a month ago you were heartbroken over Stella +Musgrave? Child, I repeat, I envy you this perpetual unhappiness, for +I have lost, as you will presently lose, the capacity of being quite +miserable." + +"But, John, it seems as if there were nothing left to live for, now--" + +"At twenty-one! Well, certainly, at that age one loves to think of +life as being implacable. But you will soon discover that she is +merely inconsequential, and that none of her antics are of lasting +importance; and you will learn to smile a deal more often than you +weep or laugh." + +Then we talked of other matters. It was presently settled that +Charteris was to take me abroad with him that summer; and with the +thorough approval of my mother. + +"Mr. Charteris will be of incalculable benefit to you," she told me, +"in introducing you to the very best people, all of whom he knows, of +course, and besides you are getting to look older than I, and it is +unpleasant to have to be always explaining you are only my stepson, +particularly as your father never married anybody but me, though, +heaven knows, I wish he had. Of course you will be just as wild as +your father and your Uncle George. I suppose that is to be expected, +and I daresay it will break my heart, but all I ask of you is please +to keep out of the newspapers, except of course the social items. And +if you _must_ associate with abandoned women, please for my sake, +Robert, don't have anything to do with those who can prove that they +are only misunderstood, because they are the most dangerous kind." + +I kissed her. "Dear little mother, I honestly believe that when you +get to heaven you will refuse to speak to Mary Magdalen." + +"Robert, let us remember the Bible says, 'in my Father's house are +many mansions,' and of course nobody would think of putting me in the +same mansion with her." + +It was well-nigh the last conversation I was to hold with my mother; +and I was to remember it with an odd tenderness.... + + + 2 + +Upon the doings of myself in Europe during the ensuing two years I +prefer to dwell as lightly as possible. I had long anticipated a +sojourn in divers old-world cities; but the London I had looked to +find was the London of Dickens, say, and my Paris the Paris of Dumas, +or at the very least of Balzac. It is needless to mention that in the +circles to which the, quite real, friendship of John Charteris +afforded an entry I found little that smacked of such antiquity. I had +entered a world inhabited by people who amused themselves and +apparently did nothing else; and I was at first troubled by their +levity, and afterward envious of it, and in the end embarked upon +sedulous attempt to imitate it. I continued to be very boyish; indeed, +I found myself by this in much the position of an actor who has made +such a success in one particular role that the public declines to +patronize him in any other. + + + 3 + +It was during this first year abroad that I wrote _The Apostates_, +largely through the urging of John Charteris. + +"You have the ability, though, that dances most gracefully in fetters. +You will never write convincingly about the life you know, because +life is, to you, my adorable boy, a series of continuous miracles, to +which the eyes of other men are case-hardened. Write me, then, a book +about the past." + +"I have thought of it," said I, "for being over here makes the past +seem pretty real, somehow. Last month when I was at Ingilby I was on +fire with the notion of writing something about old Ormskirk--my +mother's ancestor, you know. And since I've seen what's left of +Bellegarde I have wanted to write about his wife's people too,--the +dukes and vicomtes of Puysange, or even about the great Jurgen. You +see, I am just beginning to comprehend that these are not merely +characters in Lowe's and La Vrilliere's books, but my flesh and blood +kin, like Uncle George Bulmer--" + +"And for that reason you want to write about them! You would, though; +it is eminently characteristic. Well, then, why should you not +immortalize the persons who had the honor of begetting you--oh, most +handsome and most naive of children!--by writing your very best about +them?" "Because to succeed--not only among the general but with the +'cultured few,' God save the mark!--it is now necessary to write not +badly but abominably." + +"What would you demand, then, of a book?" + +I meditated. "What one most desiderates in the writings of to-day is +clarity, and beauty, and tenderness and urbanity, and truth." + +"Not a bad recipe, upon the whole, though I would stipulate for +symmetry and distinction also--Write the book!" + +"Ah," said I, "but this is the kind of book I wish to read when, of +course, the mood seizes me. It is not at all the sort of book, though, +I would elect to write. The main purpose of writing any book, I take +it, is to be read; and people simply will not read a book when they +suspect it of being carefully written. That sort of thing gets on a +reader's nerves; it's too much like watching a man walk a tight-rope +and wondering if he won't slip presently." + +"Oh, 'people!'" Charteris flung out, in an extremity of scorn. "Since +time was young, a generally incompetent humanity has been willing to +pardon anything rather than the maddening spectacle of labour +competently done. And they are perfectly right; it is abominable how +such weak-minded persons occasionally thrust themselves into a world +quite obviously designed for persons who have not any minds at all. +But I was not asking you to write a 'best-seller.'" + +"No, you were asking me to become an Economist, and be one of 'the few +rare spirits which every age providentially affords,' and so on. That +is absolute and immoral nonsense. When you publish a novel you are at +least pretending to supply a certain demand; and if you don't +endeavour honestly to supply it, you are a swindler, no more and no +less. No, it is all very well to write for posterity, if it amuses +you, John; personally, I cannot imagine what possible benefit you will +derive from it, even though posterity _does_ read your books. And for +myself, I want to be read and to be a power while I can appreciate the +fact that I _am_ a sort of power, however insignificant. Besides, I +want to make some money out of the blamed thing. Mother is a dear, of +course, but, like all the Bulmers, with age she is becoming tight-fisted." + +"And Esau--" Charteris began. + +"Yes,--but that's Biblical, and publishing a book is business. People +say to authors, just as they do to tailors: 'I want such and such an +article. Make it and I'll pay you for it.' Now, your tailor may +consider the Imperial Roman costume more artistic than that of today, +and so may you in the abstract, but if he sent home a toga in place of +a pair of trousers, you would discontinue dealing with him. So if it +amuses you to make togas, well and good; I don't quarrel with it; but, +personally, I mean to go into the gents' furnishing line and to do my +work efficiently." + +"Yes,--but with your tongue in your cheek." + +"It is the one and only attitude," I sweetly answered, "in which to +write if you indeed desire to be read with enjoyment." And presently I +rose and launched upon + +_A Defence of That Attitude_ + +"The main trouble with you, John Charteris, is that you will never +recover from being _fin de siecle_. Yes, you belong to that queer +dying nineteenth century. And even so, you have quite overlooked what +is, perhaps, the signal achievement of the nineteenth century,--the +relegation of its literature to the pharmacopoeia. The comparison of +the tailor, I willingly admit, is a bad one. Those who write +successfully nowadays must appeal to men and women who seek in fiction +not only a means of relaxation, but spiritual comfort as well, and an +uplifting rather than a mere diversion of the mind; so that they are +really druggists who trade exclusively in intoxicants and hypnotics. + +"Half of the customers patronize the reading-matter shops because they +want to induce delusions about a world they know, and do not find +particularly roseate and the other half skim through a book because +they haven't anything else to do and aren't sleepy, as yet. + +"Oh, in filling either prescription the trick is much the same; you +have simply to avoid bothering the reader's intellect in any way +whatever. You have merely to drug it, you have merely to caress it +with interminable platitudes, or else with the most uplifting +avoidances of anything which happens to be unprintably rational. And +you must remember always that the crass emotions of half-educated +persons are, in reality, your chosen keyboard; so play upon it with an +axe if you haven't any handier implement, but hit it somehow, and for +months your name will be almost as famous as that of my mother's +father remains the year round because he invented a celebrated +baking-powder. + +"It is all very well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there +are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can +hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, +for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, +entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But +why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with +one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, +whenever humanity goes into the library to take a nap? For what other +purpose do you suppose a gentleman goes into his library, pray? When +he is driven to reading he does it decently in bed. + +"Besides, if I like a book, why, then, in so far as I am concerned, it +_is_ a good book. No, please don't talk to me about 'the dignity of +literature'; modern fiction has precisely as much to do with dignity +as has vaudeville or billiards or that ridiculous Prohibitionist +Party, since the object of all four, I take it, is to afford diversion +to people who haven't anything better to do. Thus, a novel which has +diverted a thousand semi-illiterate persons is exactly ten times as +good as a novel that has pleased a hundred superior persons. It is +simply a matter of arithmetic. + +"You prefer to look upon writing as an art, rather than a business? +Oh, you silly little man, the touchstone of any artist is the skill +with which he adapts his craftsmanship to his art's limitations. He +will not attempt to paint a sound or to sculpture a colour, because he +knows that painting and sculpture have their limitations, and he, +quite consciously, recognizes this fact whenever he sets to work. + +"Well, the most important limitation of writing fiction nowadays is +that you have to appeal to people who would never think of reading you +or anybody else, if they could possibly imagine any other employment +for that particular vacant half-hour. And you cannot hope for an +audience of even moderately intelligent persons, because intelligent +persons do not attempt to keep abreast with modern fiction. It is +probably ascribable to the fact that they enjoy being intelligent, and +wish to remain so. + +"You sneer at the 'best-sellers.' I tell you, in sober earnest, that +the writing of a frankly trashy novel which will 'sell,' is the +highest imaginable form of art. For true art, in its last terms, is +the adroit circumvention of an unsurmountable obstacle. I suppose that +form and harmony and colour are very difficult to tame; and the +sculptor, the musician and the painter quite probably earn their hire. +But people don't go to concerts unless they want to hear music; +whereas the people who buy the 'best-sellers' are the people who would +prefer to do _anything_ rather than be reduced to reading. I protest +that the man who makes these people read on until they see how 'it all +came out' is a deal more than an artist; he is a sorcerer." + +And I paused, a little out of breath. + +"What a boy it is!" said Charteris. "Do you know, you are uncommonly +handsome when you are talking nonsense? Write the trashy book, then. I +never argue with children; and besides, I do not have to read it." + + + 4 + +It thus fell about that in the second European year, not very long +after my mother's death, _The Apostates_ was given to the world, with +what result the world has had a plenty of time wherein to forget.... +It was first published in _The Quaker Post_, with pictures by Roderick +King Hill, and in the autumn was brought out as a book by Stuyvesant +and Brothers. I made rather a good thing cut of it financially; but +the numerous letters I received from the people who had liked it I +found extremely objectionable. They were not the right sort of people, +I felt forlornly.... So I endured my plaudits without undue elation, +for I always held _The Apostates_ to be, at best, a medley of +conventional tricks and extravagant rhetoric, inanimate by any least +particle of myself,--and its success, say, as though the splendiferous +trappings of an emperor were hung upon a clothier's dummy, and the +result accepted as an adequate presentation of Charlemagne. + +In other words, the book was the most unbridled kind of balderdash, +founded on my callow recollections of the Green Chalybeate,--not the +least bit accurate, as I was afterward to discover,--with all the good +people exceedingly oratorical and the bad ones singularly epigrammatic +and abandoned and obtuse. I introduced a depraved nobleman, of course, +to give the requisite touch of high society, seasoned the mixture with +French and botany and with a trifle of Dolly Dialoguishness, and +inserted, at judicious intervals, the most poetical of descriptions, +so that the skipping of them might afford an agreeable rest to the +reader's eye. There was also a sufficiency of piddling with unsavoury +matters to insure the suffrage of schoolgirls. + +And a number of persons, in fine, were so misguided as to enthuse over +the result. The verb is carefully selected, for they one and all were +just the sort of people who "enthuse." + + + 5 + +I was vexed, however, at the time to find I could not achieve an +appropriate emotion over my mother's death. The news came, to be sure, +at a season when I was preoccupied with getting rid of Agnes Faroy.... +I have not ever heard of any rational excuse for the quite common +assumption that children ought to be particularly fond of their +parents. Still, my mother was the prettiest woman I had ever known, +though without any claim to beauty, and I had always gloried in our +kinship; for I believed her nature to be generous and amiable when she +thought of it; and the cablegram which announced the event aroused in +me sincere regret that a comely ornament to my progress had been +smashed irrevocably. + +For a little I reflected as to whither she had vanished, and decided +she had been too futile and well-meaning ever to be punished by any +reasonable Being. Yet how she would have enjoyed the publication of my +book!--without any attempt to read it, however, since she had never, +to my knowledge, read anything, with the exception of the daily +papers.... And besides, I disliked being unable to have the +appropriate emotion. + +But I simply could not manage it. For here, in the midst of the Faroy +mess,--with Agnes weeping all over the place, and her brothers +flourishing pistols and declaiming idiocies,--came the news from Uncle +George that my mother had left me virtually nothing. She must have +used up, of course, a good share of her Bulmer Baking Powder money in +supporting my father comfortably; but she had always lived in such +estate as to make me assume she had retained, anyhow, enough of the +Bulmer money to last my time. So it was naturally a shock to discover +that this monetary attitude was inherited from my mother, who had been +cheerfully "living on her principle" all these years, without +considering my future. I had no choice but to regard it as abominably +selfish. + +"I think Claire was afraid to tell you," wrote Uncle George, "how +little there was left. In any event, she always shirked doing it, so +as to stave off unpleasantness. And when we cabled you how ill she +was, it now seems most unfortunate you could not see your way clear to +giving up your trip through the chateau country, as your not coming +appeared to be on her mind a great deal at the last. I do not wish to +seem to criticize you in any way, Robert, but I must say...." + +Well, but you know what sort of nonsense that smug gambit heralds in +letters from your kindred. Even so, I now owned the Townsend house and +an income sufficient for daily bread; and it looked just then as +though the magazine editors were willing to furnish the butter, and +occasional cakes. So the future promised to be pleasant enough. + + + 6 + +Charteris had returned to Algiers in the autumn my book was published, +but I elected to pass the winter in England. "Of course," was Mr. +Charteris's annotation--"because it is precisely the most dangerous +spot in the world for you. And you are to spend October at Negley? I +warn you that Jasper Hardress is in love with his wife, and that the +woman has an incurable habit of making experiments and an utter +inability to acquire experience. Take my advice, and follow Mrs. +Monteagle to the Riviera, instead. Cissie will strip you of every +penny you have, of course, but in the end you will find her a deal +less expensive than Gillian Hardress." + +"You possess a low and evil mind," I observed, "since I am fond, in +all sincerity, of Hardress, whereas his wife is not even civil to me. +Why, she goes out of her way to be rude to me." + +"Yes," said Mr. Charteris; "but that is because she is getting worried +about her interest in you. And what is the meaning of this, by the +way? I found it on your table this morning." He read the doggerel +aloud with an unkindly and uncalled-for exaggeration of the rhyming +words. + + "We did not share the same inheritance,-- + I and this woman, five years older than I, + Yet daughter of a later century,-- + Who is therefore only wearied by that dance + Which has set my blood a-leaping. + + "It is queer + To note how kind her face grows, listening + To my wild talk, and plainly pitying + My callow youth, and seeing in me a dear + Amusing boy,--yet somewhat old to be + Still reading _Alice Through the Looking-Glass_ + And _Water-Babies_.... With light talk we pass, + + "And I that have lived long in Arcady-- + I that have kept so many a foolish tryst, + And written drivelling rhymes--feel stirring in me + Droll pity for this woman who pities me, + And whose weak mouth so many men have kissed." + +"That," I airily said, "is, in the first place, something you had no +business to read; and, in the second, simply the blocking out of an +entrancingly beautiful poem. It represents a mood." + +"It is the sort of mood that is not good for people, particularly for +children. It very often gets them shot too full of large and untidy +holes." + +"Nonsense!" said I, but not in displeasure, because it made me feel +like such a devil of a fellow. So I finished my letter to Bettie +Hamlyn,--for this was on the seventh,--and I went to Negley precisely +as I had planned. + + + 7 + +"We were just speaking of you," Mrs. Hardress told me, the afternoon +of my arrival,--"Blanche and I were talking of you, Mr. Townsend, the +very moment we heard your wheels." + +I shook hands. "I trust you had not entirely stripped me of my +reputation?" + +"Surely, that is the very last of your possessions any reasonable +person would covet?" + +"A palpable hit," said I. "Nevertheless, you know that all I possess +in the world is yours for the asking." + +"Yes, you mentioned as much, I think, at Nice. Or was it Colonel +Tatkin who offered me a heart's devotion and an elopement? No, I +believe it was you. But, dear me, Jasper is so disgustingly healthy +that I shall probably never have any chance of recreation." + +I glanced toward Jasper Hardress. "I have heard," said I, hopefully, +"that there is consumption in the family?" + +"Heavens, no! he told me that before marriage to encourage me, but I +find there is not a word of truth in it." + +Then Jasper Hardress came to welcome his guest, and save from a +distance I saw no more that evening of Gillian Hardress. + + + + +10. + +_He Samples New Emotions_ + + +It was the following day, about noon, as I sat intent upon my Paris +_Herald_ that a tiny finger thrust a hole in it. I gave an inaudible +observation, and observed a very plump young person in white with +disfavour. + +"And who may you happen to be?" I demanded. + +"I'm Gladys," the young lady responded; "and I've runned away." + +"But not without an escort, I trust, Miss Gladys? Really--upon my +word, you know, you surprise me, Gladys! An elopement without even a +tincture of masculinity is positively not respectable." I took the +little girl into my lap, for I loved children, and all helpless +things. "Gladys," I said, "why don't you elope with me? And we will +spend our honeymoon in the Hesperides." + +"All right," said Gladys, cheerfully. She leaned upon my chest, and +the plump, tiny hand clasped mine, in entire confidence; and the +contact moved me to an irrational transport and to a yearning whose +aim I could not comprehend. "Now tell me a story," said Gladys. + +So that I presently narrated to Gladys the ensuing + + _Story of the Flowery Kingdom_ + + "Fair Sou-Chong-Tee, by a shimmering brook + Where ghost-like lilies loomed tall and straight, + Met young Too-Hi, in a moonlit nook, + Where they cooed and kissed till the hour was late: + Then, with lanterns, a mandarin passed in state, + Named Hoo-Hung-Hoo of the Golden Band, + Who had wooed the maiden to be his mate-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "Now, Hoo-Hung-Hoo had written a book, + In seven volumes, to celebrate + The death of the Emperor's thirteenth cook: + So, being a person whose power was great, + He ordered a herald to indicate + He would blind Too-Hi with a red-hot brand + And marry Sou-Chong at a quarter-past-eight,-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "And the brand was hot, and the lovers shook + In their several shoes, when by lucky fate + A Dragon came, with his tail in a crook,-- + A Dragon out of a Nankeen Plate,-- + And gobbled the hard-hearted potentate + And all of his servants, and snorted, _and_ + Passed on at a super-cyclonic rate,-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "The lovers were wed at an early date, + And lived for the future, I understand, + In one continuous tete-a-tete,-- + For these things occur...in the Flowery Land." + + +Gladys wanted to know: "But what sort of house is a tete-a-tete? Is it +like a palace?" + +"It is very often much nicer than a palace," I declared,--"provided of +course you are only stopping over for a week-end." + +"And wasn't it odd the Dragon should have come just when he did?" + +"Oh, Gladys, Gladys! don't tell me you are a realist." + +"No, I'm a precious angel," she composedly responded, with a flavour +of quotation. + +"Well! it is precisely the intervention of the Dragon, Gladys, which +proves the story is literature," I announced. "Don't you pity the poor +Dragon, Gladys, who never gets a chance in life and has to live always +between two book-covers?" + +She said that couldn't be so, because it would squash him. + +"And yet, dear, it is perfectly true," said Mrs. Hardress. The lean +and handsome woman was regarding the pair of us curiously. "I didn't +know you cared for children, Mr. Townsend. Yes, she is my daughter." +She carried Gladys away, without much further speech. + +Yet one Parthian comment in leaving me was flung over her shoulder, +snappishly. "I wish you wouldn't imitate John Charteris so. You are +getting to be just a silly copy of him. You are just Jack where he is +John. I think I shall call you Jack." + +"I wish you would," I said, "if only because your sponsors happened to +christen you Gillian. So it's a bargain. And now when are we going for +that pail of water?" + +Mrs. Hardress wheeled, the child in her arms, so that she was looking +at me, rather queerly, over the little round, yellow head. "And it was +only Jill, as I remember, who got the spanking," she said. "Oh, well! +it always is just Jill who gets the spanking--Jack." + +"But it was Jack who broke his crown," said I; "Wasn't it--Jill?" It +seemed a jest at the time. But before long we had made these nicknames +a habit, when just we two were together. And the outcome of it all was +not precisely a jest.... + + + 2 + +She told me not long after this, "When I saw Gladys loved you, of +course I loved you too." And I hereby soberly record the statement +that to have a woman fall thoroughly in love with him is the most +uncomfortable experience which can ever befall any man. + +I am tolerably sure I never made any amorous declaration. Rather, it +simply bewildered me to observe the shameless and irrational +infatuation this woman presently bore for me, and before it I was +powerless. When I told her frankly I did not love her, had never loved +her, had no intention of ever loving her, she merely bleated, "You are +cruel!" and wept. When I attempted to restrain her paroxysms of +anguish, she took it as a retraction of what I had told her. + +I would then have given anything in the world to be rid of Gillian +Hardress. This led to scenes, and many scenes, and played the very +devil with the progress of my second novel. You cannot write when +anyone insists on sitting in the same room with you, on the irrelevant +plea that she is being perfectly quiet, and therefore is not +disturbing you. Besides, she had no business in my room, and was apt +to get caught there. + + + 3 + +I remember one of these contentions. She is abominably rouged, and +before me she is grovelling, as she must have seen some actress do +upon the stage. + +"Oh, I lied to you," she wailed; "but you are so cruel! Ah, don't be +cruel, Jack!" + +Then I lifted the scented woman to her feet, and she stayed +motionless, regarding me. She had really wonderful eyes. + +"You are evil," I said, "through and through you are evil, I think, +and I can't help thinking you are a little crazy. But I wish you would +teach me to be as you are, for tonight the hands of my dead father +strain from his grave and clutch about my ankles. He has the right +because it is his flesh I occupy. And I must occupy the body of a +Townsend always. It is not quite the residence I would have chosen-- +Eh, well, for all that, I am I! And at bottom I loathe you!" + +"You love me!" she breathed. + +I thrust her aside and paced the floor. "This is an affair of moment. +I may not condescend to sell, as Faustus did, but of my own volition +must I will to squander or preserve that which is really Robert +Townsend." + +I wheeled upon Gillian Hardress, and spoke henceforward with +deliberation. You must remember I was very young as yet. + +"I have often regretted that the colour element of vice is so oddly +lacking in our life of to-day. We appear, one and all, to have been +born at an advanced age and with ladylike manners, and we reach our +years of indiscretion very slowly; and meanwhile we learn, too late, +that prolonged adherence to morality trivialises the mind as +hopelessly as a prolonged vice trivialises the countenance. I fear +this has been said by someone else, my too impetuous Jill, and I hope +not, for in that event I might possibly be speaking sensibly, and to +be sensible is a terrible thing and almost as bad as being +intelligible." + +"You are not being very intelligible now, sweetheart. But I love to +hear you talk." + +"Meanwhile, I am young, and in youth--_il faut des emotions_, as +Blanche Amory is reported to have said, by a novelist named Thackeray, +whose productions are now read in public libraries. Still, for a +respectable and brougham-supporting person, Thackeray came then as +near to speaking the truth as is possible for people of that class. In +youth emotions are necessary. Find me, therefore, a new emotion!" + +"So many of them, dear!" she promised. + +"I do not love you, understand,--and your husband is my friend, and I +admire him. But I am I! I have endowments, certain faculties which +many men are flattering enough to envy--and I will to make of them a +carpet for your quite unworthy feet. I will to degrade all that in me +is most estimable, and in return I demand a new emotion." + + + 4 + +Well, but women are queer. There is positively no way of affronting +them, sometimes. She had not even the grace to note that I had taken a +little too much to drink that night.... But over all this part of my +life I prefer to pass as quickly as may be expedient. + + + 5 + +I remembered, anyway, after Gillian had gone from my room, to write +Bettie Hamlyn a post-card. It was no longer, strictly speaking, the +twenty-third, but considerably after midnight, of course. Still, it +was the writing regularly when I loathed writing letters that counted +with Bettie, I reflected; and virtually I was writing on the twenty-third, +and besides, Bettie would never know. + + + 6 + +And thereafter Gillian Hardress made almost no concealment of her +feeling toward me, or employed at best the flimsiest of disguises. All +that winter she wrote to me daily, and, when the same roof sheltered +us, would slip the scribblings into my hand at odd moments, but +preferably before her husband's eyes. She demanded an account of every +minute I spent apart from her, and never believed a syllable of my +explanations; and in a sentence, she pestered me to the verge of +distraction. + +And always the circumstance which chiefly puzzled me was the host of +men that were infatuated by Gillian Hardress. There was no doubt about +it; she made fools of the staidest, if for no better end than that the +spectacle might amuse me. + +"Now you watch me, Jack!" she would say. And I obediently would watch +her wriggling beguilements, and the man's smirking idiocy, with +bewilderment. + +For in me her allurements aroused, now, absolutely no sensation save +that of boredom. Often I used to wonder for what reason it seemed +impossible for me, alone, to adore this woman insanely. It would have +been so much more pleasant, all around. + +But, I repeat, I wish to have done with this portion of my life as +quickly as may be expedient. I am not particularly proud of it. I +would elide it altogether, were it possible, but as you will presently +see, that is not possible if I am to make myself intelligible. And I +find that the more I write of myself the more I am affected by the +same poor itch for self-exposure which has made Pepys and Casanova and +Rousseau famous, and later feminine diarists notorious. + +Were I writing fiction, now, I would make the entire affair more +plausible. As it stands, I am free to concede that this chapter in my +life history rings false throughout, just as any candid record of an +actual occurrence does invariably. It is not at all probable that a +woman so much older than I should have taken possession of me in this +fashion, almost against my will. It is even less probable that her +husband, who was by ordinary absurdly jealous of her, should have +suspected nothing and have been sincerely fond of me. + +But then I was only twenty-two, as age went physically, and he looked +upon me as an infant. I was, I think, quite conscientiously childish +with Jasper Hardress. I prattled with him, and he liked it. And so +often, especially when we three were together--say, at luncheon,--I +was teased by an insane impulse to tell him everything, just casually, +and see what he would do. + +I think it was the same feeling which so often prompted her to tell +him, in her flighty way, of how profoundly she adored me. I would +wriggle and blush; and Jasper Hardress would laugh and protest that he +adored me too. Or she would expatiate upon this or that personal +feature of mine, or the becomingness of a new cravat, say; and would +demand of her husband if Jack--for so she always called me,--wasn't +the most beautiful boy in the world? And he would laugh and answer +that he thought it very likely. + + + 7 + +They were Americans, I should have said earlier, but to all intents +they lived abroad, and had done so for years. Hardress's father had +been thoughtful enough to leave him a sufficient fortune to +countenance the indulgence of this or any other whim, so that the +Hardresses divided the year pretty equally between their real home at +Negley and a tiny chateau which they owned near Aix-les-Bains. I +visited them at both places. + +It was a pleasant fiction that I came to see Gladys. Regularly, I was +told off to play with her, as being the only other child in the house. +It was rather hideous, for the little girl adored me, and I was +beginning to entertain an odd aversion toward her, as being in a way +responsible for everything. Had Gillian Hardress never found me +cuddling the child, whose sex was visibly a daily aggrievement to +Jasper Hardress, however conscientiously he strove to conceal the +fact,--so that in consequence "I have to love my precious lamb for +two, Jack,"--Gillian would never, I think, have distinguished me from +the many other men who, so lightly, tendered a host of gallant +speeches.... But I never fathomed Gillian Hardress, beyond learning +very early in our acquaintance that she rarely told me the truth about +anything. + +Also I should have said that Hardress cordially detested Charteris, +just as Bettie Hamlyn did, because for some reason he suspected the +little novelist of being in love with Hardress's wife. I do not know; +but I imagine Charteris had made advances to her, in his own ambiguous +fashion, as he was apt to do, barring strenuous discouragement, to +every passably handsome woman he was left alone with. I do know he +made love to her a little later. + +Hardress distrusted a number of other men, for precisely the same +reason. Heaven only is familiar with what grounds he had. I merely +know that Gillian Hardress loathed John Charteris; she was jealous of +his influence over me. But me her husband never distrusted. I was only +an amusing and ingenuous child of twenty-two, and not for a moment did +it occur to him that I might be in love with his wife. + +Indeed, I believe upon reflection that he was in the right. I think I +never was. + + + 8 + +"Yes," I said, "I am to meet the Charterises in Genoa. Yes, it is +rather sudden. I am off to-morrow. I shall not see you dear good +people for some time, I fancy...." + +When Hardress had gone the woman said in a stifled voice: "No, I will +not dance. Take me somewhere--there is a winter-garden, I know--" + +"No, Jill," said I, with decision. "It's no use. I am really going. We +will not argue it." + +Gillian Hardress watched the dancers for a moment, as with languid +interest. "You fear that I am going to make a scene. Well! I can't. +You have selected your torture chamber too carefully. Oh, after all +that's been between us, to tell me here, to my husband's face, in the +presence of some three hundred people, without a moment's warning, +that you are 'off to-morrow!' It--it is for good, isn't it?" + +"Yes," I said. "It had to be--some time, you know." + +"No, don't look at me. Watch the dancing, I will fan myself and seem +bored. No, I shall not do anything rash." + +I was uncomfortable. Yet at bottom it was the theatric value of this +scene which impressed me,--the gaiety and the brilliance on every side +of her misery. And I did not look at her. I did just as she ordered +me. + +"I was proud once. I haven't any pride now. You say you must leave me. +Oh, dearest boy, if you only knew how unhappy I will be without you, +you could not leave me. Sweetheart, you must know how I love you. I +long every minute to be with you, and to see you even at a distance is +a pleasure. I know it is not right for me to ask or expect you to love +me always, but it seems so hard." + +"It's no use, Jill--" + +"Is it another woman? I won't mind. I won't be jealous. I won't make +scenes, for I know you hate scenes, and I have made so many. It was +because I cared so much. I never cared before, Jack. You have tired of +me, I know. I have seen it coming. Well, you shall have your way in +everything. But don't leave me, dear! oh, my dear, my dear, don't +leave me! Oh, I have given you everything, and I ask so little in +return--just to see you sometimes, just to touch your hand sometimes, +as the merest stranger might do...." + +So her voice went on and on while I did not look at her. There was no +passion in this voice of any kind. It was just the long monotonous +wail of some hurt animal.... They were playing the _Valse Bleu_, I +remember. It lasted a great many centuries, and always that low voice +was pleading with me. Yes, it was uncommonly unpleasant; but always at +the back of my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to +precisely how I felt, because some day they might be useful, for the +book I had already outlined. "It is no use, Jill," I kept repeating, +doggedly. + +Then Armitage came smirking for his dance. Gillian Hardress rose, and +her fan shut like a pistol-shot. She was all in black, and throughout +that moment she was more beautiful than any other woman I have ever +seen. + +"Yes, this is our dance," she said, brightly. "I thought you had +forgotten me, Mr. Armitage. Well! good-bye, Mr. Townsend. Our little +talk has been very interesting--hasn't it? Oh, this dress _always_ +gets in my way--" + +She was gone. I felt that I had managed affairs rather crudely, but it +was the least unpleasant way out, and I simply had not dared to trust +myself alone with her. So I made the best of an ill bargain, and +remodeled the episode more artistically when I used it later, in +_Afield_. + + + + +11. + +_He Postures Among Chimney-Pots_ + + +I met the Charterises in Genoa, just as I had planned. Anne's first +exclamation was, "Heavens, child, how dissipated you look! I would +scarcely have known you." + +Charteris said nothing. But he and I lunched at the Isotta the +following day, and at the conclusion of the meal the little man leaned +back and lighted a cigarette. + +"You must overlook my wife's unfortunate tendency toward the most +unamiable of virtues. But, after all, you are clamantly not quite the +boy I left at Liverpool last October. Where are your Hardresses now?" + +"In London for the season. And why is your wife rushing on to Paris, +John?" + +"Shopping, as usual. Yes, I believe I did suggest it was as well to +have it over and done with. Anne is very partial to truisms. Besides, +she has an aunt there, you know. Take my advice, and always marry a +woman who is abundantly furnished with attractive and visitable +relations, for this precaution is the true secret of every happy +marriage. We may, then, regard the Hardress incident as closed?" + +"Oh, Lord, yes!" said I, emphatically. + +"Well, after all, you have been sponging off them for a full year. The +adjective is not ill-chosen, from what I hear. I fancy Mrs. Hardress +has found you better company after she had mixed a few drinks for you, +and so--But a truce to moral reflections! for I am desirous once more +to hear the chimes at midnight. I hear Francine is in Milan?" + +"There is at any rate in Milan," said I, "a magnificent Gothic +Cathedral of international reputation; and upon the upper gallery of +its tower, as my guidebook informs me, there is a watchman with an +efficient telescope. Should I fail to meet that watchman, John, I would +feel that I had lived futilely. For I want both to view with him the +Lombard plain, and to ask him his opinion of Cino da Pistoia, and as to +what was in reality the middle name of Cain's wife." + + + 2 + +Francine proved cordial; but John Charteris was ever fickle, and not +long afterward an Italian countess, classic in feature, but in coloring +smacking of an artistic renaissance, had drawn us both to Switzerland, +and thence to Liege. It was great fun, knocking about the Continent +with John, for he knew exactly how to order a dinner, and spoke I don't +know how many languages, and seemed familiar with every side-street and +back-alley in Europe. For myself, my French as acquired in Fairhaven +appeared to be understood by everybody, but in replying very few of the +natives could speak their own foolish language comprehensibly. I could +rarely make head or tail out of what they were jabbering about. + +I was alone that evening, because Annette's husband had turned up +unexpectedly; and Charteris had gone again to hear Nadine Neroni, the +new prima donna, concerning whom he and his enameled Italian friend +raved tediously. But I never greatly cared for music; besides, the +opera that night was _Faust_; the last act of which in particular, when +three persons align before the footlights and scream at the top of +their voices, for a good half hour, about how important it is not to +disturb anybody, I have never been able to regard quite seriously. + +So I was spending this evening sedately in my own apartments at the +Continental; and meanwhile I lisped in numbers that (or I flattered +myself) had a Homeric tang; and at times chewed the end of my pencil +meditatively. "From present indications," I was considering, "that +Russian woman is cooking something on her chafing-dish again. It +usually affects them that way about dawn." + +I began on the next verse viciously, and came a cropper over the clash +of two sibilants, as the distant clamour increased. "Brutes!" said I, +disapprovingly. "Sere, clear, dear--Now they have finished, '_Jamais, +monsieur_', and begun crying, 'Fire!' Oh, this would draw more than +three souls out of a weaver, you know! Mere, near, hemisphere--no, but +the Greeks thought it was flat. By Jove! I do smell smoke!" + +Wrapping my dressing-gown about me--I had afterward reason to thank the +kindly fates that it was the green one with the white fleurs-de-lis, +and not my customary, unspeakably disreputable bath-robe, scorched by +the cigarette ashes of years,--I approached the door and peeped out +into the empty hotel corridor. The incandescent lights glimmered mildly +through a gray haze which was acrid and choking to breathe; little +puffs of smoke crept lazily out of the lift-shaft just opposite; and +down-stairs all Liége was shouting incoherently, and dragging about the +heavier pieces of hotel furniture. + +"By Jove!" said I, and whistled a little disconsolately as I looked +downward through the bars about the lift-shaft. + +"Do you reckon," spoke a voice--a most agreeable voice,--"we are in any +danger?" + +The owner of the voice was tall; not even the agitation of the moment +prevented my observing that, big as I am, her eyes were almost on a +level with my shoulder. They were not unpleasant eyes, and a stray +dream or two yet lingered under their heavy lids. The owner of the +voice wore a strange garment that was fluffy and pink,--pale pink like +the lining of a sea-shell--and billows of white and the ends of various +blue ribbons peeped out about her neck. I made mental note of the fact +that disordered hair is not necessarily unbecoming; it sometimes has +the effect of an unusually heavy halo set about the face of a +half-awakened angel. + +"It would appear," said I, meditatively, "that, in consideration of our +being on the fifth floor, with the lift-shaft drawing splendidly, and +the stairs winding about it,--except the two lower flights, which have +just fallen in,--and in consideration of the fire department's probable +incompetence to extinguish anything more formidable than a tar-barrel, +--yes, it would appear, I think, that we might go further than +'dangerous' and find a less appropriate adjective to describe the +situation." + +"You mean we cannot get down?" The beautiful voice was tremulous. + +And my silence made reply. + +"Well, then," she suggested, cheerfully, after due reflection, "since +we can't go down, why not go up?" + +As a matter of fact, nothing could be more simple. We were on the top +floor of the hotel, and beside us, in the niche corresponding to the +stairs below, was an iron ladder that led to a neatly-whitewashed +trapdoor in the roof. Adopting her suggestion, I pushed against this +trap-door and found that it yielded readily; then, standing at the top +of the ladder, I looked about me on a dim expanse of tiles and +chimneys; yet farther off were the huddled roofs and gables of Liége, +and just a stray glimpse of the Meuse; and above me brooded a clear sky +and the naked glory of the moon. + + + 3 + +I lowered my head with a distinct sigh of relief. + +"I say," I called, "it is infinitely nicer up here--superb view of the +city, and within a minute's drop of the square! Better come up." + +"Go first," said she; and subsequently I held for a moment a very +slender hand--a ridiculously small hand for a woman whose eyes were +almost on a level with my shoulder,--and we two stood together on the +roof of the Hôtel Continental. We enjoyed, as I had predicted, an +unobstructed view of Liége and of the square, wherein two toy-like +engines puffed viciously and threw impotent threads of water against +the burning hotel beneath us, and, at times, on the heads of an excited +throng erratically clad. + +But I looked down moodily, "That," said I, as a series of small +explosions popped like pistol shots, "is the café; and, oh, Lord! there +goes the only decent Scotch in all Liége!" + +"There is Mamma!" she cried, excitedly; "there!" She pointed to a stout +woman, who, with a purple? shawl wrapped about her head, was wringing +her hands as heartily as a bird-cage, held in one of them, would +permit. "And she has saved Bill Bryan!" + +"In that case," said I, "I suppose it is clearly my duty to rescue the +remaining member of the family. You see," I continued, in bending over +the trap-door and tugging at the ladder, "this thing is only about +twenty feet long; but the kitchen wing of the hotel is a little less +than that distance from the rear of the house behind it; and with this +as a bridge I think we might make it. In any event, the roof will be +done for in a half-hour, and it is eminently worth trying." I drew the +ladder upward. + +Then I dragged this ladder down the gentle slant of the roof, through a +maze of ghostly chimneys and dim skylights, to the kitchen wing, which +was a few feet lower than the main body of the building. I skirted the +chimney and stepped lightly over the eaves, calling, "Now then!" when a +muffled cry, followed by a crash in the courtyard beneath, shook my +heart into my mouth. I turned, gasping; and found the girl lying safe, +but terrified, on the verge of the roof. + +"It was a bucket," she laughed, "and I stumbled over it,--and it +fell--and--and I nearly did,--and I am frightened!" + +And somehow I was holding her hand in mine, and my mouth was making +irrelevant noises, and I was trembling. "It was close, but--look here, +you must pull yourself together!" I pleaded; "because we haven't, as it +were, the time for airy badinage and repartee--just now." + +"I can't," she cried, hysterically. "Oh, I am so frightened! I can't!" + +"You see," I said, with careful patience, "we must go on. I hate to +seem too urgent, but we _must_, do you understand?" I waved my hand +toward the east. "Why, look!" said I, as a thin tongue of flame leaped +through the open trap-door and flickered wickedly for a moment against +the paling gray of the sky. + +She saw and shuddered. "I'll come," she murmured, listlessly, and rose +to her feet. + + + 4 + +I heaved another sigh of relief, and waving her aside from the ladder, +dragged it after me to the eaves of the rear wing. As I had foreseen, +this ladder reached easily to the eaves of the house behind the rear +wing, and formed a passable though unsubstantial-looking bridge. I +regarded it disapprovingly. + +"It will only bear one," said I; "and we will have to crawl over +separately after all. Are you up to it?" + +"Please go first," said she, very quiet. And, after gazing into her +face for a moment, I crept over gingerly, not caring to look down into +the abyss beneath. + +Then I spent a century in impotence, watching a fluffy, pink figure +that swayed over a bottomless space and moved forward a hair's breadth +each year. I made no sound during this interval. In fact, I do not +remember drawing a really satisfactory breath from the time I left the +hotel-roof, until I lifted a soft, faint-scented, panting bundle to the +roof of the Councillor von Hollwig. + + + 5 + +"You are," I cried, with conviction, "the bravest, the most--er--the +bravest woman I ever knew!" I heaved a little sigh, but this time of +content. "For I wonder," said I, in my soul, "if you have any idea what +a beauty you are! what a wonderful, unspeakable beauty you are! Oh, you +are everything that men ever imagined in dreams that left them weeping +for sheer happiness--and more! You are--you, and I have held you in my +arms for a moment; and, before high heaven, to repurchase that +privilege I would consent to the burning of three or four more hotels +and an odd city or so to boot!" But, aloud, I only said, "We are quite +safe now, you know." + +She laughed, bewilderingly. "I suppose," said she, "the next thing is +to find a trap-door." + +But there were, so far as we could discover, no trapdoors in the roof +of the Councillor von Hollwig, or in the neighbouring roofs; and, after +searching three of them carefully, I suggested the propriety of waiting +till dawn to be melodramatically rescued. + +"You see," I pointed out, "everybody is at the fire over yonder. But we +are quite safe here, I would say, with an entire block of houses to +promenade on; moreover, we have cheerful company, eligible central +location in the very heart of the city, and the superb spectacle of a +big fire at exactly the proper distance. Therefore," I continued, and +with severity, "you will please have the kindness to explain your +motives for wandering about the corridors of a burning hotel at four +o'clock in the morning." + +She sat down against a chimney and wrapped her gown about her. "I sleep +very soundly," said she, "and we did both museums and six churches and +the Palais de Justice and a deaf and dumb place and the cannon-foundry +today,--and the cries awakened me,--and I reckon Mamma lost her head." + +"And left you," thought I, "left you--to save a canary-bird! Good Lord! +And so, you are an American and a Southerner as well." + +"And you?" she asked. + +"Ah--oh, yes, me!" I awoke sharply from admiration of her trailing +lashes. The burning hotel was developing a splendid light wherein to +see them. "I was writing--and I thought that Russian woman had a few +friends to supper,--and I was looking for a rhyme when I found you," I +concluded, with a fine coherence. + +She looked up. It was incredible, but those heavy lashes disentangled +quite easily. I was seized with a desire to see them again perform this +interesting feat. "Verses?" said she, considering my slippers in a new +light. + +"Yes," I admitted, guiltily--"of Helen." + +She echoed the name. It is an unusually beautiful name when properly +spoken. "Why, that is my name, only we call it Elena." + +"Late of Troy Town," said I, in explanation. + +"Oh!" The lashes fell into their former state. It was hopeless this +time; and manual aid would be required, inevitably. "I should think," +said my compatriot, "that live women would be more--inspiring" + +"Surely," I assented. I drew my gown about me and sat down. "But, you +see, she is alive--to me." And I dwelt a trifle upon the last word. + +"One would gather," said she, meditatively, "that you have an +unrequited attachment for Helen of Troy." + +I sighed a melancholy assent. The great eyes opened to their utmost. +The effect was as disconcerting as that of a ship firing a broadside at +you, but pleasanter. "Tell me all about it," said she, coaxingly. + +"I have always loved her," I said, with gravity. "Long ago, when I was +a little chap, I had a book--_Stories of the Trojan War_, or something +of the sort. And there I first read of Helen--and remembered. There +were pictures--outline pictures,--of quite abnormally straight-nosed +warriors, with flat draperies which amply demonstrated that the laws of +gravity were not yet discovered; and the pictures of slender goddesses, +who had done their hair up carefully and gone no further in their +dressing. Oh, the book was full of pictures,--and Helen's was the most +manifestly impossible of them all. But I knew--I knew, even then, of +her beauty, of that flawless beauty which made men's hearts as water +and drew the bearded kings to Ilium to die for the woman at sight of +whom they had put away all memories of distant homes and wives; that +flawless beauty which buoyed the Trojans through the ten years of +fighting and starvation, just with delight in gazing upon Queen Helen +day by day, and with the joy of seeing her going about their streets. +For I remembered!" And as I ended, I sighed effectively. + +"I know," said she. + +"'Or ever the knightly years had gone +With the old world to the grave, +I was a king in Babylon +And you were a Christian slave.'" + +"Yes, only I was the slave, I think, and you--er--I mean, there goes +the roof, and it is an uncommonly good thing for posterity you thought +of the trap-door. Good thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at +those flames!" I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled +inward like a house of cards; "they are splashing, actually splashing, +like waves over a breakwater!" + +I drew a deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to +encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. "Yes, I was a Trojan +warrior," I resumed; "one of the many unknown men who sought and found +death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they +died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they +had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness. +She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved her; I had overheard +some laughing words of hers in passing, and I treasured them as men +treasure gold. Or she had spoken, perhaps--oh, day of days!--to me, in +a low, courteous voice that came straight from the back of the throat +and blundered very deliciously over the perplexities of our alien +speech. I remembered--even as a boy, I remembered." + +She cast back her head and laughed merrily. "I reckon," said she, "you +are still a boy, or else you are the most amusing lunatic I ever met." + +"No," I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, "that tale +about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen--and the gods be praised for +it!--can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of +unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently +as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose, +with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very +certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she + +"Abides the symbol of all loveliness, +Of beauty ever stainless in the stress +Of warring lusts and fears. + +"For she is to each man the one woman that he might have loved +perfectly. She is as old as youth, she is more old than April even, and +she is as ageless. And, again like youth and April, this Helen goes +about the world in varied garments, and to no two men is her face the +same. Oh, very often she transmutes her fleshly covering. But through +countless ages I, like every man alive, have followed her, and fought +for her, and won her, and have lost her in the end,--but always loving +her as every man must do. And I prefer to think that some day--" But my +voice here died into a whisper, which was in part due to emotion and +partly to an inability to finish the sentence satisfactorily. The logic +of my verses when thus paraphrased from memory, seemed rather vague. + +"Yes--like Pythagoras" she said, a bit at random. "Oh, I know. There +really must be something in it, I have often thought, because you +actually do remember having done things before sometimes." + +"And why not? as the March Hare very sensibly demanded." But now my +voice was earnest. "Yes, I believe that Helen always comes. Is it +simply a proof that I, too, am qualified to sit next to the Hatter?" I +spread out my hands in a helpless little gesture. "I do not know. But I +believe that she will come,--and by and by pass on, of course, as Helen +always does." + +"You will know her?" she queried, softly. + +Now I at last had reached firm ground. "She will be very tall," I said, +"very tall and exquisite,--like a young birch-tree, you know, when its +new leaves are whispering over to one another the secrets of spring. +Yes, that is a ridiculous sounding simile, but it expresses the general +effect of her--the _coup d'oeil_, so to speak,--quite perfectly. +Moreover, her hair will be a miser's dream of gold; and it will hang +heavily about a face that will be--quite indescribable, just as the +dawn yonder is past the utmost preciosity of speech. But her face will +flush and will be like the first of all anemones to peep through black, +good-smelling, and as yet unattainable earth; and her eyes will be +deep, shaded wells where, just as in the proverb, truth lurks." + +But now I could not see her eyes. + +"No," I conceded, "I was wrong. For when men talk to her as--as they +cannot but talk to her, her face will flush dull red, almost like +smouldering wood; and she will smile a little, and look out over a +great fire, such as that she saw on the night when Ilium was sacked and +the slain bodies were soft under her stumbling feet, as she fled +through flaming Troy Town. And then I shall know her." + +My companion sighed; and the woes of centuries weighed down her eyelids +obstinately. "It is bad enough," she lamented, "to have lost all one's +clothes--that new organdie was a dream, and I had never worn it; but to +find yourself in a dressing-gown--at daybreak, on a strange roof--and +with an unintroduced lunatic--is positively terrible!" + +The unintroduced lunatic rose to his feet and waved his hand toward the +east. The dawn was breaking in angry scarlet and gold that spread like +fire over half the visible horizon; the burning hotel shut out the +remaining half with tall flames, which shouldered one another +monotonously, and seemed lustreless against the pure radiance of the +sky. Chill daylight showed in melting patches through the clouds of +black smoke overhead. + +It was a world of fire, transfigured by the austere magnificence of +dawn and the grim splendour of the shifting, roaring conflagration; and +at our feet lay the orchard of the Councillor von Hollwig, and there +the awakened birds piped querulously, and sparks fell crackling among +apple-blossoms. + +"Ilium is ablaze," I quoted; "and the homes of Pergamos and its +towering walls are now one sheet of flame." + +She inspected the scene, critically. "It does look like Ilium," she +admitted. "And that," peering over the eaves into the deserted +by-street, "looks like a milkman." + +I was unable to deny this, though an angry concept crossed my mind that +any milkman, with commendable tastes and feelings, would at this moment +be gaping at the fire at the other end of the block, rather than +prosaically measuring quarts at the Councillor's side-entrance. But +there was no help for it, when chance thus unblushingly favoured the +proprieties; in consequence I clung to a water-pipe, and explained the +situation to the milkman, with a fretted mind and King's College +French. + +I turned to my companion. She was regarding the burning hotel with an +impersonal expression. + +"Now I would give a deal," I thought, "to know just how long you would +prefer that milkman to take in coming back." + + + + +12. + +_He Faces Himself and Remembers_ + + +Into the lobby of the Hôtel d'Angleterre strolled, an hour later, a +tall young man, in a green dressing-gown, and inquired for Charteris. +The latter, in evening dress, was mournfully breakfasting in his new +quarters. + +Charteris sprang to his feet. I saw, with real emotion, that he had +been weeping; but now he was all flippancy. "My dear boy! I have just +torn my hair and the rough drafts of several cablegrams on your +account! Sit down at once, and try the bacon, since, for a wonder, it +is not burnt--and, in passing, I had thought of course that you were." + +Instead, I took a drink, and went to sleep upon the nearest sofa. + + + 2 + +I was very tired, but I awakened about noon and managed to procure +enough clothes to make myself not altogether unpresentable to the +public eye. Charteris had gone already about his own affairs, and I did +not regret it, for I meant, without delay, to follow up my adventure of +the night before. + +But when I had come out of the Rue de la Casquette, and was approaching +the statue of Gretry, I came upon a very ornately-dressed woman, who +was about to enter en open carriage. I stared; and preposterous as it +was, I knew that I was not mistaken. And I said aloud, "Signorina!" + +It was a long while before she said, "Don't--don't ever call me that +again!" And since the world in general appeared just then to be largely +flavoured with the irresponsibility of dreams, it did not surprise me +that we were presently alone in somebody's sitting-room. + +"I have seen you twice in Liége," she said. "I suppose this had to come +about. I would have preferred to avoid it, though. Well! _che sara!_ +You don't care for music, do you? No,--otherwise you would have known +earlier that I am Nadine Neroni now." + +"Ah!" I said, very quietly. I had heard, as everybody had, a deal +concerning the Neroni. "I think, if you will pardon me, I will not +intrude upon Baron von Anspach's hospitality any longer," I said. + +"That is unworthy of you,--no, I mean it would have been unworthy of a +boy we knew of." There was a long pier-glass in these luxurious rooms. +She led me to it now. "Look, Bobbie. We have altered a little, haven't +we? I at least, am unmistakable. 'Their eyes are different, somehow', +you remember. You haven't changed as much,--not outwardly. I think you +are like Dorian Gray. Yes, as soon--as soon as I could afford it, I +read every book you ever talked about, I think. It was damnably foolish +of me. For I've heard things. And there was a girl I tried to help in +London--an Agnès Faroy--" + +"Ah!" I said. + +"She had your picture even then, poor creature. She kissed it just +before she died. She didn't know that I had ever heard of you. She +never knew. Oh, how _could_ you!" the Neroni said, with something very +like a sob, "Or were you always--just that, at bottom?" + +"And have you ever noticed, Mademoiselle Neroni, that every one of us +is several people? In consequence I must confess to have been +wondering--?" + +"Well! I wasn't. You won't believe it now, perhaps. And it doesn't +matter, anyhow." Her grave voice lifted and upon a sudden was changed. +"Bobbie, when you had gone I couldn't stand it! I couldn't let you ruin +your life for me, but I could not go on as I had done before--Oh, well, +you'll never understand," she added, wearily. "But Von Anspach had +always wanted me to go with him. So I wrote to him, at the Embassy. And +after all, what is the good of talking--now!" + +We two were curiously quiet. "No, I suppose there is no good in talking +now." We stood there, as yet, hand in hand. The mirror was candid. "Oh, +Signorina, I want to laugh as God laughs, and I cannot!" + + + 3 + +But I lack the heart to set down all that brief and dreary talk of +ours. How does it matter what we said? We two at least knew, even as we +talked, that all we said meant in the outcome, nothing. Yet we talked +awhile and spoke, I think, quite honestly. + +She was not unhappy; and there were inbred Lichfeldian traditions which +prompted me to virtuous indignation over her defects in remorse and +misery. There were my memories, too. + +"I don't sing very well, of course, but then I'm not dependent on my +singing, you know. Oh, why not be truthful? And Von Anspach always sees +to it I get the tendered of criticism--in print. And, moreover, I've a +deal put by. I'm a miser, _he_ says, and I suppose I am, because I know +what it is to be poor. So when the rainy day comes--as of course it +will,--I'll have quite enough to purchase a serviceable umbrella. +Meanwhile, I have pretty much everything I want. People talk of course, +but it is only on the stage they ever drive you out into a snow-storm. +Besides, they don't talk to _me_." + +In fine, I found that the Neroni was a very different being from Miss +Montmorenci.... + + + 4 + +Then I left her. I had not any inclination just now to pursue my fair +Elena. Rather I sat alone in my new bedroom, thinking, confusedly, +first of Amelia Van Orden, and how I danced with her a good eight years +ago; of that woman who had come to me in remote Fairhaven, coming +through the world's gutter, unsullied,--because that much I yet +believe, although I do not know.... She may have been always the same, +even in the old days when Lichfield thought her "fast," and she was +more or less "compromised,"--and years before I met her, a blind, +inexperienced boy. Only she may then have been a better actress than I +suspected.... I thought, in any event, of those execrable rhymes that +likened her to the Lady in _Comus_, moving serene and unafraid among a +rabble of threatening bestial shapes; and I thought of the woman who +would, by this time, be with Von Anspach. + +For here again were inbred Lichfieldian traditions of the sort I rarely +dare confess to, even to myself, because they are so patently hidebound +and ridiculous. These traditions told me that this woman, whom I had +loved, was Von Anspach's harlot. I might--and I did--endeavor to be +ironical and to be broadminded and to be up-to-date about the whole +affair, and generally to view the matter through the sophisticated eyes +of the author of The Apostates, that Robert Etheridge Townsend who was +a connoisseur of ironies and human foibles; but these futilities did no +good at all. Lichfield had got at and into me when I was too young to +defend myself; and I could no more alter the inbred traditions of +Lichfield, that were a part of me, than a carpet could change its +texture. My traditions merely told me that the dear woman whom I +remembered had come--in fleeing from discomforts which were unbearable, +if that mattered--to be Von Anspach's harlot: and finding her this, my +traditions declined to be the least bit broadminded. In Lichfield such +women were simply not respectable; nor could you get around that fact +by going to Liége. + +There was in the room a _Matin,_ which contained a brief account of the +burning of the Continental, and a very lengthy one of the Neroni's +appearance the night before. Drearily, to keep from thinking, I read a +deal concerning _la gracieuse cantatrice américaine._ Whether or not +she had made a fool of me with histrionics in Fairhaven, there was no +doubt that she had chosen wisely in forsaking Lethbury, and the round +of village "Opera Houses." She had chosen, after all, and precisely as +I had done, to make the most of youth while it lasted; and she +appeared, just now, to harvest prodigally. + +"On jouait Faust," I read, "et jamais le célèbre personnage de Goethe +n'adore plus exquise Gretchen. Miss Nadine Neroni est, en effet, une +idéale Marguerite à la taille bien prise, au visage joli éclairé des +deux yeux grands et doux. Et lorsqu'elle commença à chanter, ce fut un +véritable ravissement: sa voix se fit l'interprète rêvée de la divine +musique de Gounod, tandis que sa personne et son coeur incarnaient +physiquement et moralement l'héroine de Goethe".... + +And so on, for Von Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, +well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what +in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only +doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is +possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we +are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, I had better go and look for that +preposterously beautiful Elena. And a fig for the provincial notions of +Lichfield, that are poisoning me with their nonsense! and for the +notions of Fairhaven, too, I suppose--" + + + 5 + +Then Charteris came into the room. "John," said I, "this is a truly +remarkable world, and only hypercriticism would venture to suggest that +it is probably conducted by an inveterate humourist. So lend me that +pocket-piece of yours, and we will permit chance to settle the entire +matter. That is the one intelligent way of treating anything which is +really serious. You probably believe I am Robert Etheridge Townsend, +but as a matter of fact, I am Hercules in the allegory. So! the +beautiful lady or America? Why, the eagle flutters uppermost, and from +every mountain side let praises ring. Accordingly I am off." + +"And you will cross half the world," said Charteris, "in the green +dressing-gown, or in the coat which Byam borrowed for you this morning? +I do not wish to seem inquisitive, you understand--" + +"No, I believe I am through with borrowed coats--as with yours, for +instance. But I am quite ready to go in my own dressing-gown if +necessary--" + +I wheeled at the door. + +"By the way, I am done with you, John. I am fond of you, and all that, +and I sincerely admire my chimney-pot coquette--of whom you haven't +heard,--but, after all, there are real people yonder. And by God, even +after two years of being pickled in alcohol and chasing after women +that are quite used to being chased--well, even now I am one of those +real people. So I am done with you and this perpetual making light of +things--!" + +"The Declaration of Independence," Charteris observed, "is undoubtedly +the best thing in imaginative literature that we Americans have as yet +accomplished; but I am sufficiently familiar with it, thank you, and I +find, with age, that only the more untruthful platitudes are endurable. +Oh, I predicted for you, at our first meeting, a life without +achievements but of gusto! Now, it would appear, you plan to prance +among an interminable saturnalia of the domestic virtues. So be it! +but I warn you that the house of righteousness is but a wayside inn +upon the road to being a representative citizen." + +"You are talking nonsense," I rapped out--"and immoral nonsense." + +"It is very strange," John Charteris complained, "how so many of us +manage to reduce everything to a question of morality,--that is, to the +alternative of being right or wrong. Now a man's personality, as +somebody or other very properly observes, has many parts besides the +moral area; and the intelligent, the artistic, even the religious part, +need not necessarily have anything to do with ethics--" + +"Ah, yes," said I, "so there is a train at noon--" + +"And a virtuous man," continued Charteris, amicably, "is no more the +perfect type of humanity than an intellectual man. In fact, the lowest +and certainly the most disagreeable type of all troublesome people is +that which combines an immaculate past with a limited understanding. +The religious tenets of this class consist of an unshakable belief that +the Bible was originally written in English, and contains nothing +applicable to any of the week-days. And in consequence--" + +I left him mid-course in speech. "Words, words!" said I; and it +appeared to me for the moment that words were of astonishingly trivial +import, however carefully selected, which was in me a wholesome, +although fleet, apostacy of yesterday's creed. And I sent a cablegram +to Bettie Hamlyn. + + + 6 + +It was on the trip homeward I first met with Celia Reindan. I then +considered her a silly little nuisance.... + +For I crossed the Atlantic in a contained fury of repentance for the +wasted months. I had achieved nothing that was worthy of me, and +presently I would be dead. Why, I might die within the five minutes! I +might never see the lagging minute-hand of my little traveling clock +pass that next numeral, say! The thought obsessed me, especially at +night. Once, in a panic, I rose from my berth, and pushed the +minute-hand forward a half-hour. "Now, I have tricked You!" I said, +aloud; for nervously I was footing a pretty large bill. At twenty-three +one has the funds wherewith to balance these accounts.... + +I wanted to live normally--to live as these persons thick about me, who +seemed to grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious +fashion of oxen. I wanted to think only from hand to mouth, to think if +possible not at all, and to be guided always in the conduct of my life +by gross and obvious truisms, so that I must be judged at last but as +one of the herd. "And what is accustomed--what holds of familiar +usage--had come to seem the whole essence of wisdom, on all subjects"; +for I wanted just the sense of companionship, irrevocable and eternal +and commonly shared with every one of my kind. And yonder was Bettie +Hamlyn.... "Oh, make a man of me, Bettie! just a common man!" + +And Bettie might have done it, one considers, even then, for I was +astir with a new impetus. Now, with a grin, the Supernal Aristophanes +slipped the tiniest temptation in my way; to reach Fairhaven I was +compelled to spend some three hours of an April afternoon in Lichfield, +where upon Regis Avenue was to be met, in the afternoon, everyone worth +meeting in Lichfield; and Stella drove there on fine afternoons, under +the protection of a trim and preternaturally grave tiger; and the +afternoon was irreproachable. + + + 7 + +By the way she looked back over her shoulder, I knew that Stella had +not recognized me. I stood with a yet lifted hat, irresolute. + +"By Jove!" said I, in my soul, "then the Blagdens are in Lichfield! +Why, of course! they always come here after Lent. And Bettie would not +mind; to call on them would be only courteous; and besides, Bettie need +not ever know. And moreover, I was always very fond of Peter." + +So the next afternoon but four, Stella was making tea for me.... + + + + +13. + +_He Baits Upon the Journey_ + + +"You are quite by way of being a gentleman," had been Stella's +greeting, that afternoon. Then, on a sudden, she rested both hands upon +my breast. When she did that you tingled all over, in an agreeable +fashion. "It was uncommonly decent of you to remember", said this +impulsive young woman. "It was dear of you! And the flowers were +lovely." + +"They ought to have been immortelles, of course," I apologised, "but +the florist was out of them. Yes, and of daffodils, too." I sat down, +and sighed, pensively. "Dear, dear!" said I, "to think it was only two +years ago I buried my dearest hopes and aspirations and--er--all that +sort of thing." + +"Nonsense!" said Stella, and selected a blue cup with dragons on it. +"At any rate," she continued, "it is very disagreeable of you to come +here and prate like a death's-head on my wedding anniversary." + +"Gracious gravy!" said I, with a fine surprise, "so it is an +anniversary with you, too?" She was absorbed in the sugar-bowl. "What a +coincidence!" I suggested, pleasantly. + +I paused. The fire crackled. I sighed. + +"You are such poor company, nowadays, even after the advantages of +foreign travel," Stella reflected. "You really ought to do something to +enliven yourself." After a little, she brightened as to the eyes, and +concentrated them upon the tea-making, and ventured a suggestion. "Why +not fall in love?" said Stella. + +"I am," I confided, "already in that deplorable condition." +And I ventured on sigh number two. + +"I don't mean--anything silly," said she, untruthfully. "Why," she +continued, with a certain lack of relevance, "why not fall in love with +somebody else?" Thereupon, I regret to say, her glance strayed toward +the mirror. Oh, she was vain,--I grant you that. But I must protest she +had a perfect right to be. + +"Yes," said I, quite gravely, "that is the reason." + +"Nonsense!" said Stella, and tossed her head. She now assumed her most +matronly air, and did mysterious things with a perforated silver ball. +I was given to understand I had offended, by a severe compression of +her lips, which, however, was not as effective as it might have been. +They twitched too mutinously. + + + 2 + +Stella was all in pink, with golden fripperies sparkling in +unanticipated localities. Presumably the gown was tucked and ruched and +appliquéd, and had been subjected to other processes past the +comprehension of trousered humanity; it was certainly becoming. + +I think there was an eighteenth-century flavour about it,--for it +smacked, somehow, of a patched, mendacious, dainty womanhood, and its +artfulness was of a gallant sort that scorned to deceive. It defied +you, it allured you, it conquered you at a glance. It might have been +the last cry from the court of an innocent Louis Quinze. It was, in +fine, inimitable; and if only I were a milliner, I would describe for +you that gown in some not unbefitting fashion. As it is, you may draft +the world's modistes to dredge the dictionary, and they will fail, as +ignominiously as I would do, in the attempt. + +For, after all, its greatest charm was that it contained Stella, and +converted Stella into a marquise--not such an one as was her sister, +the Marquise d'Arlanges, but a marquise out of Watteau or of Fragonard, +say. Stella in this gown seemed out of place save upon a high-backed +stone bench, set in an _allée_ of lime-trees, of course, and under a +violet sky,--with a sleek abbé or two for company, and with beribboned +gentlemen tinkling on their mandolins about her. + +I had really no choice but to regard her as an agreeable anachronism +the while she chatted with me, and mixed hot water and sugar and lemon +into ostensible tea. She seemed so out of place,--and yet, somehow, I +entertained no especial desire upon this sleety day to have her +different, nor, certainly, otherwhere than in this pleasant, half-lit +room, that consisted mostly of ambiguous vistas where a variety of +brass bric-à-brac blinked in the firelight. + +We had voted it cosier without lamps or candles, for this odorous +twilight was far more companionable. Odorous, for there were a great +number of pink roses about. I imagine that someone must have sent +them--because there were not any daffodils obtainable, by reason of the +late and nipping frost--in honour of Stella's second wedding +anniversary. + + + 3 + +"Peter says you talk to everybody that way," quoth she,--almost +resentfully, and after a pause. + +"Oh!" said I. For it was really no affair of Peter's. And so-- + +"Peter, everybody tells me, is getting fat," I announced, presently. + +Stella witheringly glanced toward the region where my waist used to be. +"He isn't!" said she, indignant. + +"Quite like a pig, they assure me," I continued, with relish. She +objected to people being well-built. "His obscene bloatedness appears +to be an object of general comment." + +Silence. I stirred my tea. + +"Dear Peter!" said she. And then--but unless a woman of Stella's sort +is able to exercise a proper control over her countenance, she has +absolutely no right to discuss her husband with his bachelor friends. +It is unkind; for it causes them to feel like social outcasts and +lumbering brutes and Peeping Toms. If they know the husband well, it +positively awes them; for, after all, it is a bit overwhelming, this +sudden glimpse of the simplicity, and the credulity, and the merciful +blindness of women in certain matters. Besides, a bachelor has no +business to know such things; it merely makes him envious and +uncomfortable. + +Accordingly, "Stella," said I, with firmness, "if you flaunt your +connubial felicity in my face like that, I shall go home." + +She was deaf to my righteous rebuke. "Peter is in Washington this +week," she went on, looking fondly into the fire. "I had planned a +party to celebrate to-day, but he was compelled to go--business, you +know. He is doing so well nowadays," she said, after a little, "that I +am quite insufferably proud of him. And I intend for him to be a great +lawyer--oh, much the greatest in America. And I won't ever be content +till then." + +"H'm!" said I. "H'm" seemed fairly non-committal. + +"Sometimes," Stella declared, irrelevantly, "I almost wish I had been +born a man." + +"I wish you had been," quoth I, in gallant wise. "There are so few +really attractive men!" + +Stella looked up with a smile that was half sad. + +"I'm just a little butterfly-woman, aren't I?" she asked. + +"You are," I assented, with conviction, "a butterfly out of a queen's +garden--a marvellous pink-and-gold butterfly, such as one sees only in +dreams and--er--in a London pantomime. You are a decided ornament to +the garden," I continued, handsomely, "and the roses bow down in +admiration as you pass, and--ah--at least, the masculine ones do." + +"Yes,--we butterflies don't love one another overmuch, do we? Ah, well, +it scarcely matters! We were not meant to be taken seriously, you +know,--only to play in the sunlight, and lend an air to the garden +and--amuse the roses, of course. After all," Stella summed it up, "our +duties are very simple; first, we are expected to pass through a +certain number of cotillions and a certain number of various happenings +in various tête-à-têtes; then to make a suitable match,--so as to +enable the agreeable detrimentals to make love to us, with perfect +safety--as you were doing just now, for instance. And after that, we +develop into bulbous chaperones, and may aspire eventually to a kindly +quarter of a column in the papers, and, quite possibly, the honour of +having as many as two dinners put off on account of our death. +Yes, it is very simple. But, in heaven's name," Stella demanded, with a +sudden lift of speech, "how can any woman--for, after all, a woman is +presumably a reasoning animal--be satisfied with such a life! Yet that +is everything--everything!--this big world offers to us shallow-minded +butterfly-women!" + +Personally, I disapprove of such morbid and hysterical talk outside of +a problem novel; there I heartily approve of it, on account of the +considerable and harmless pleasure that is always to be derived from +throwing the book into the fireplace. And, coming from Stella, this +farrago doubly astounded me. She was talking grave nonsense now, +whereas Nature had, beyond doubt, planned her to discuss only the +lighter sort. So I decided it was quadruply absurd, little Stella +talking in this fashion,--Stella, who, as all knew, was only meant to +be petted and flattered and flirted with. + +And therefore, "Stella," I admonished, "you have been reading something +indigestible." I set down my teacup, and I clasped my hands. "Don't +tell me," I pleaded, "that you want to vote!" + +She remained grave. "The trouble is," said she, "that I am not really a +butterfly, for all my tinsel wings. I am an ant." + +"Oh," said I, shamelessly, "I hadn't heard that Lizzie had an item for +the census man. I don't care for brand-new babies, though; they always +look so disgracefully sun-burned." + +The pun was atrocious and, quite properly, failed to win a smile or +even a reproof from the morbid young person opposite. "My grandfather," +said she in meditation, "began as a clerk in a country store. Oh of +course, we have discovered, since he made his money and since Mother +married a Musgrave, that his ancestors came over with William the +Conqueror, and that he was descended from any number of potentates. But +he lived. He was a rip at first--ah, yes, I'm glad of that as well, +--and he became a religious fanatic because his oldest son died very +horribly of lockjaw. And he browbeat people and founded banks, and made +a spectacle of himself at every Methodist conference, and everybody was +afraid of him and honoured him. And I fancy I am prouder of Old Tim +Ingersoll than I am of any of the emperors and things that make such a +fine show in the Musgrave family tree. For I am like him. And I want to +leave something in the world that wasn't there before I came. I want my +life to count, I want--why, a hundred years from now I _do_ want to be +something more than a name on a tombstone. I--oh, I daresay it _is_ +only my ridiculous egotism," she ended, with a shrug and Stella's usual +quick smile,--a smile not always free from insolence, but always +satisfactory, somehow. + +"It's late hours," I warned her, with uplifted forefinger, "late hours +and too much bridge and too many sweetmeats and too much bothering over +silly New Women ideas. What is the sense of a woman's being useful," I +demanded, conclusively, "when it is so much easier and so much more +agreeable all around for her to be adorable?" + +She pouted. "Yes," she assented, "that is my career--to be adorable. It +is my one accomplishment," she declared, unblushingly,--yet not without +substantiating evidence. + +After a little, though, her gravity returned. "When I was a girl--oh, I +dreamed of accomplishing all sorts of beautiful and impossible things! +But, you see, there was really nothing I could do. Music, painting, +writing--I tried them all, and the results were hopeless. Besides, Rob, +the women who succeed in anything like that are always so queer +looking. I couldn't be expected to give up my complexion for a career, +you know, or to wear my hair like a golf-caddy's. At any rate, I +couldn't make a success by myself. But there was one thing I could do, +--I could make a success of Peter. And so," said Stella, calmly, "I did +it." + +I said nothing. It seemed expedient. + +"You know, he was a little--" + +"Yes," I assented, hastily. Peter had gone the pace, of course, but +there was no need of raking that up. That was done with, long ago. + +"Well, he isn't the least bit dissipated now. You know he isn't. That +is the first big thing I have done." Stella checked it off with a +small, spear-pointed, glinting finger-nail. "Then--oh, I have helped +him in lots of ways. He is doing splendidly in consequence; and it is +my part to see that the proper people are treated properly." + +Stella reflected a moment. "There was the last appointment, for +instance. I found that the awarding of it lay with that funny old Judge +Willoughby, with the wart on his nose, and I asked him for it--not the +wart, you understand,--and got it. We simply had him to dinner, and I +was specially butterfly; I fluttered airily about, was as silly as I +knew how to be, looked helpless and wore my best gown. He thought me a +pretty little fool, and gave Peter the appointment. That is only an +instance, but it shows how I help." Stella regarded me, uncertainly. +"Why, but an authorman ought to understand!" + +Of a sudden I understood a number of things--things that had puzzled. +This was the meaning of Stella's queer dinner the night before, and the +ensuing theatre-party, for instance; this was the explanation of those +impossible men, vaguely heralded as "very influential in politics," and +of the unaccountable women, painfully condensed in every lurid shade of +satin, and so liberally adorned with gems as to make them almost +valuable. Stella, incapable by nature of two consecutive ideas, was +determined to manipulate the unseen wires, and to be, as she probably +phrased it, the power behind the throne.... + +"Eh, it would be laughable," I thought, "were not her earnestness so +pathetic! For here is Columbine mimicking Semiramis." + +Yet it was true that Peter Blagden had made tremendous strides in his +profession, of late. For a moment, I wondered--? Then I looked at this +butterfly young person opposite, and I frowned. "I don't like it," I +said, decisively. "It is a bit cold-blooded. It isn't worthy of you, +Stella." + +"It is my career," she flouted me, with shrugging shoulders. "It is the +one career the world--our Lichfield world--has left me. And I am doing +it for Peter." + +The absurd look that I objected to--on principle, you understand-- +returned at this point in the conversation. I arose, resolutely, for I +was really unable to put up with her nonsense. + +"You are in love with your husband," I grumbled, "and I cannot +countenance such eccentricities. These things are simply not done--" + +She touched my hand. "Old crosspatch, and to think how near I came to +marrying you." + +"I do think of it--sometimes. So you had better stop pawing at me. It +isn't safe." + +I wish I could describe her smile. I wish I knew just what it was that +Stella wanted me to say or do as we stood for a moment silent, in this +pleasant, half-lit room where brass things blinked in the firelight. + +"Old crosspatch!" she repeated.... + +"Stella," said I, with dignity, "I wish it distinctly understood that I +am not a funny old judge with a wart on his nose." + +Whereupon I went away. + + + + +14. + +_He Participates in a Brave Jest_ + + +Stella drove on fine afternoons, under the protection of a trim and +preternaturally grave tiger. The next afternoon, by a Lichfieldian +transition, was irreproachable. I was to remember, afterward, wondering +in a vague fashion, as the equipage passed, if the boy's lot was not +rather enviable. There might well be less attractive methods of earning +the daily bread and butter than to whirl through life behind Stella. +One would rarely see her face, of course, but there would be such +compensations as an unfailing sense of her presence, and the faint +odour of her hair at times and, always, blown scraps of her laughter or +shreds of her talk, and, almost always, the piping of the sweet voice +that was stilled so rarely. + +Perhaps the conscienceless tiger listened when she was "seeing the +proper people were treated properly"? Yes, one would. Perhaps he ground +his teeth? Well, one would, I suspected. And perhaps--? + +There was a nod of recognition from Stella; and I lifted my hat as they +bowled by toward the Reservoir. I went down Regis Avenue, mildly +resentful that she had not offered me a lift. + + + 2 + +A vagrant puff of wind was abroad in the Boulevard that afternoon. It +paused for a while to amuse itself with a stray bit of paper. Presently +the wind grew tired of this plaything and tossed between the eyes of a +sorrel horse. Prince lurched and bolted; and Rex, always a vicious +brute, followed his mate. One fancies the vagabond wind must have +laughed over that which ensued. + +After a moment it returned and lifted a bit of paper from the roadway, +with a new respect, perhaps, and the two of them frolicked away over +close-shaven turf. It was a merry game they played there in the spring +sunlight. The paper fluttered a little, whirled over and over, and +scuttled off through the grass; with a gust of mirth, the wind was +after it, now gained upon it, now lost ground in eddying about a tree, +and now made up the disadvantage in the open, and at last chuckled over +its playmate pinned to the earth and flapping in sharp, indignant +remonstrances. Then _da capo_. + +It was a merry game that lasted till the angry sunset had flashed its +final palpitant lance through the treetrunks farther down the roadway. +There were gaping people in this place, and broken wheels and shafts, +and a policeman with a smoking pistol, and two dead horses, and a +horrible looking dead boy in yellow-topped boots. Somebody had +charitably covered his face with a handkerchief; and men were lifting a +limp, white heap from among the splintered rubbish. + +Then wind and paper played half-heartedly in the twilight until the +night had grown too chilly for further sport. There was no more murder +to be done; and so the vagabond wind was puffed out into nothingness, +and the bit of paper was left alone, and at about this season the big +stars--the incurious stars--peeped out of heaven, one by one. + + + 3 + +It was Stella's sister, the Marquise d'Arlanges, who sent for me that +night. Across the street a hand-organ ground out its jingling tune as +Lizzie's note told me what the playful wind had brought about. It was a +despairing, hopeless and insistent air that shrilled and piped across +the way. It seemed very appropriate. + +The doctors feared--Ah, well, telegrams had failed to reach Peter in +Washington. Peter Blagden was not in Washington, he had not been in +Washington. He could not be found. And did I think--? + +No, I thought none of the things that Stella's sister suggested. Of a +sudden I knew. I stood silent for a little and heard that damned, +clutching tune cough and choke and end; I heard the renewed babblement +of children; and I heard the organ clatter down the street, and set up +its faint jingling in the distance. And I knew with an unreasoning +surety. I pitied Stella now ineffably, not for the maiming and crippling +of her body, for the spoiling of that tender miracle, that white flower +of flesh, but for the falling of her air-castle, the brave air-castle +which to her meant everything. I guessed what had happened. + +Later I found Peter Blagden, no matter where. It is not particularly to +my credit that I knew where to look for him. Yet the French have a +saying of infinite wisdom in their _qui a bu boira_. The old vice had +gripped the man, irresistibly, and he had stolen off to gratify it in +secret; and he had not been sober for a week. He was on the verge of +collapse even when I told him--oh, with a deliberate cruelty, I grant +you,--what had happened that afternoon. + +Then, swiftly, his demolishment came; and I could not--could not for +very shame--bring this shivering, weeping imbecile to the bedside of +Stella, who was perhaps to die that night. Such was the news I brought +to Stella's sister; through desolate streets already blanching in the +dawn. + +Stella was calling for Peter. We manufactured explanations. + + + 4 + +Nice customs curtsey to death. I am standing at Stella's bedside, and +the white-capped nurse has gone. There are dim lights about the room, +and heavy carts lumber by in the dawn without. A petulant sparrow is +cheeping somewhere. + +"Tell me the truth," says Stella, pleadingly. Her face, showing over +billows of bedclothes, is as pale as they. But beautiful, and +exceedingly beautiful, is Stella's face, now that she is come to die. + +It heartened me to lie to her. Peter had been retained in the great +Western Railway case. He had been called to Denver, San Francisco +and--I forget today just why or even whither. He had kept it as a +surprise for her. He was hurrying back. He would arrive in two days. I +showed her telegrams from Peter Blagden,--clumsy forgeries I had +concocted in the last half-hour. + +Oh, the story ran lamely, I grant you. But, vanity apart, I told it +with conviction. Stella must and should die in content; that much at +least I could purchase for her; and my thoughts were strangely nimble, +there was a devilish fluency in my speech, and lie after lie was fitted +somehow into an entity that surprised even me as it took plausible +form. And I got my reward. Little by little, the doubt died from her +eyes as I lied stubbornly in a drug-scented silence; a little by a +little, her cheeks flushed brighter, and ever brighter, as I dilated on +this wonderful success that had come to Peter Blagden, till at last her +face was all aflame with happiness. + +She had dreamed of this, half conscious of her folly; she had worked +toward this consummation for months. But she had hardly dared to hope +for absolute success; it almost worried her; and she could not be +certain, even now, whether it was the soup or her blue silk that had +influenced Allardyce most potently. Both had been planned to wheedle +him, to gain this glorious chance for Peter Blagden.... + +"You--you are sure you are not lying?" said Stella, and smiled in +speaking, for she believed me infinitely. + +"Stella, before God, it is true!" I said, with fervour. "On my word of +honour, it is as I tell you!" And my heart was sick within me as I +thought of the stuttering brute, the painted female thing with tumbled +hair, and the stench of liquor in the room--Ah, well, the God I called +to witness strengthened me to smile back at Stella. + +"I believe you," she said, simply. "I--I am glad. It is a big thing for +Peter." Her eyes widened in wonder and pride, and she dreamed for just +a moment of his future. But, upon a sudden, her face fell. "Dear, +dear!" said Stella, petulantly; "I'd forgotten. I'll be dead by then." + +"Stella! Stella!" I cried, and very hoarsely; "why--why, nonsense, +child! The doctor thinks--he is quite sure, I mean--" I had a horrible +desire to laugh. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. + +"Ah, I know," she interrupted. "I am a little afraid to die," she went +on, reflectively. "If one only knew--" Stella paused for a moment; then +she smiled. "After all," she said, "it isn't as if I hadn't +accomplished anything. I have made Peter. The ball is at his feet now; +he has only to kick it. And I helped." + +"Yes," said I. My voice was shaken, broken out of all control. "You +have helped. Why, you have done everything, Stella! There is not a +young man in America with his prospects. In five years, he will be one +of our greatest lawyers,--everybody says so--everybody! And you have +done it all, Stella--every bit of it! You have made a man of him, I +tell you! Look at what he was!--and then look at what he is! And--and +you talk of leaving him now! Why, it's preposterous! Peter needs you, I +tell you--he needs you to cajole the proper people and keep him steady +and--and--Why, you artful young woman, how could he possibly get on +without you, do you think? Oh, how can any of us get on without you? +You _must_ get well, I tell you. In a month, you will be right as a +trivet. You die! Why, nonsense!" I laughed. I feared I would never have +done with laughter over the idea of Stella's dying. + +"But I have done all I could. And so he doesn't need me now." Stella +meditated for yet another moment. "I believe I shall always know when +he does anything especially big. God would be sure to tell me, you see, +because He understands how much it means to me. And I shall be +proud--ah, yes, wherever I am, I shall be proud of Peter. You see, he +didn't really care about being a success, for of course he knows that +Uncle Larry will leave him a great deal of money one of these days. But +I am such a vain little cat--so bent on making a noise in the world, +--that, I think, he did it more to please my vanity than anything else. +I nagged him, frightfully, you know," Stella confessed, "but he was +always--oh, _so_ dear about it, Rob! And he has never failed me--not +even once, although I know at times it has been very hard for him." +Stella sighed; and then laughed. "Yes," said she, "I think I am +satisfied with my life altogether. Somehow, I am sure I shall be told +about it when he is a power in the world--a power for good, as he will +be,--and then I shall be very perky--somewhere. I ought to sing _Nunc +Dimittis_, oughtn't I?" I was not unmoved; nor did it ever lie within +my power to be unmoved when I thought of Stella and how gaily she went +to meet her death.... + + + 5 + + +"Good-bye," said she, in a tired voice. + +"Good-bye, Stella," said I; and I kissed her. + +"And I don't think you are a mess. And I _don't_ hate you." She was +smiling very strangely. "Yes, I remember that first time. And no matter +what they said, I always cared heaps more about you, Rob, than I dared +let you know. And if only you had been as dependable as Peter--But, you +see, you weren't--" + +"No, dear, you did the right thing--what was best for all of us--" + +"Then don't mind so much. Oh, Bob, it hurts me to see you mind so much! +You aren't--being dependable, like Peter, even now," she said, +reproachfully.... + +Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. + + + + +15. + +_He Decides to Amuse Himself_ + + +I came to Fairhaven half-bedrugged with memories of Stella's funeral, +--say, of how lightly she had lain, all white and gold, in the +grotesque and horrid box, and of Peter's vacant red-rimmed eyes that +seemed to wonder why this decorous company should have assembled about +the deep and white-lined cavity at his feet and find no answer. Nor, +for that matter, could I. + +"But it was flagrant, flagrant!" my heart screeched in a grill of +impotent wrath. "Eh, You gave me power to reason, so they say! and will +You slay me, too, if I presume to use that power? I say, then, it was +flagrant and tyrannical and absurd! 'Let twenty pass, and stone the +twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!' O Setebos, it +wasn't worthy of omnipotence. You know it wasn't!" In such a frame of +mind I came again to Bettie Hamlyn. + + + 2 + +It was very odd to see Bettie again. I had been sublimely confident, +though, that we would pick up our intercourse precisely where we had +left off; and this, as I now know, is something which can never happen +to anybody. So I was vaguely irritated before we had finished shaking +hands, and became so resolutely boyish and effusive in my delight at +seeing her that anyone in the world but Bettie Hamlyn would have been +quite touched. And my conversational gambit, I protest, was masterly, +and would have made anybody else think, "Oh how candid is the egotism +of this child!" and would have moved that person, metaphorically +anyhow, to pat me upon the head. + +But Bettie only smiled, a little sadly, and answered: + +"Your book?--Why, dear me, did I forget to write you a nice little +letter about how wonderful it was?" + +"You wrote the letter all right. I think you copied it out of _The +Complete Letter Writer_. There was not a bit of you in it." + +"Well, that is why I dislike your book--because there was not a bit of +_you_ in it. Of course I am glad it was the big noise of the month, and +also a little jealous of it, if you can understand that phase of the +feminine mind. I doubt it, because you write about women as though they +were pterodactyls or some other extinct animal, which you had never +seen, but had read a lot about." + +"Which attests, in any event, my morals to be above reproach. You +should be pleased." + +"To roll it into a pill, your book seems pretty much like any other +book; and it has made me hold my own particular boy's picture more than +once against my cheek and say, 'You didn't write books, did you, dear? +--You did nicer things than write books'--and he did .... I hear many +things of you...." + +"Oh, well!" I brilliantly retorted, "you mustn't believe all you hear." +And I felt that matters were going very badly indeed. + +"Robin, do you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with +you by the people who care for you?--and one of them dislikes pottage. +Indeed, I _would_ have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I +almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great +length of liking you,--because 'if only for old sake's sake, dear, +you're the loveliest doll in the world.' There might be a better +reason, if you could only make up your mind to dispense with +pottage...." + +The odd part of it, even to-day, is that Bettie was saying precisely +what I had been thinking, and that to hear her say it made me just +twice as petulant as I was already. + +"Now, please don't preach," I said. "I've heard so much preaching +lately--dear," I added, though I am afraid the word was rather +obviously an afterthought. + +"Oh, I forgot you stayed over for Stella Blagden's funeral. You were +quite right. Stella was a dear child, and I was really sorry to hear of +her death." + +"Really!" It was the lightest possible additional flick upon the raw, +but it served. + +"Yes,--I, too, was rather sorry, Bettie, because I have loved Stella +all my life. She was the first, you see, and, somehow, the others have +been different. And--she disliked dying. I tell you, it is unfair, +Bettie,--it is hideously unfair!" + +"Robin--" she began. + +"And why should you be living," I said, in half-conscious absurdity, +"when she is dead? Why, look, Bettie! even that fly yonder is alive. +Setebos accords an insect what He grudges Stella! Her dying is not even +particularly important. The big news of the day is that the President +has started his Pacific tour, and that the Harvard graduates object to +his being given an honorary degree, and are sending out seven thousand +protests to be signed. And you're alive, and I'm alive, and Peter +Blagden is alive, and only Stella is dead. I suppose she is an angel by +this. But I don't care for angels. I want just the silly little Stella +that I loved,--the Stella that was the first and will always be the +first with me. For I want her--just Stella--! Oh, it is an excellent +jest; and I will cap it with another now. For the true joke is, I came +to Fairhaven, across half the world, with an insane notion of asking +you to marry me,--you who are 'really' sorry that Stella is dead!" And +I laughed as pleasantly as one may do in anger. + +But the girl, too, was angry. "Marry you!" she said. "Why, Robin, you +were wonderful once; and now you are simply not a bad sort of fellow, +who imagines himself to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether +she's dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but just enough +to make a spectacle of you, even now." + +"I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north of your +opinion," said I. "Though, as I dare assert, you are quite probably in +the right. So I'll be off to my husks again, Bettie." And I kissed her +hand. "And that too is only for old sake's sake, dear," I said. + +Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train. +And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt "Good +evening, gentlemen," as I passed Clarriker's Emporium, where Colonel +Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had +left them there two years ago. + + + 3 + +It was a long while afterward I discovered that "some damned +good-natured friend," as Sir Fretful has immortally phrased it, had +told Bettie Hamlyn of seeing me at the theatre in Lichfield, with +Stella and her marvellous dinner-company. It was by an odd quirk the +once Aurelia Minns, in Lichfield for the "summer's shopping," who had +told Bettie. And the fact is that I had written Bettie upon the day of +Stella's death and, without explicitly saying so, had certainly +conveyed the impression I had reached Lichfield that very morning, and +was simply stopping over for Stella's funeral. And, in addition, I +cannot say that Bettie and Stella were particularly fond of each other. + +As it was, I left Fairhaven the same day I reached it, and in some +dissatisfaction with the universe. And I returned to Lichfield and +presently reopened part of the old Townsend house .... "Robert and I," +my mother had said, to Lichfield's delectation, "just live downstairs +in the two lower stories, and ostracise the third floor...." And I was +received by Lichfield society, if not with open arms at least with +acquiescence. And Byam, an invaluable mulatto, the son of my cousin +Dick Townsend and his housekeeper, made me quite comfortable. + +Depend upon it, Lichfield knew a deal more concerning my escapades than +I did. That I was "deplorably wild" was generally agreed, and a +reasonable number of seductions, murders and arsons was, no doubt, +accredited to me "on quite unimpeachable authority, my dear." + +But I was a Townsend, and Lichfield had been case-hardened to +Townsendian vagaries since Colonial days; and, besides, I had written a +book which had been talked about; and, as an afterthought, I was +reputed not to be an absolute pauper, if only because my father had +taken the precaution, customary with the Townsends, to marry a woman +with enough money to gild the bonds of matrimony. For Lichfield, +luckily, was not aware how near my pleasure-loving parents had come, +between them, to spending the last cent of this once ample fortune. + +And, in fine, "Well, really now--?" said Lichfield. Then there was a +tentative invitation or two, and I cut the knot by accepting all of +them, and talking to every woman as though she were the solitary +specimen of feminity extant. It was presently agreed that gossip often +embroidered the actual occurrence and that wild oats were, after all, a +not unheard-of phenomenon, and that though genius very often, in a +phrase, forgot to comb its hair, these tonsorial deficiencies were by +the broadminded not appraised too strictly. + +I did not greatly care what Lichfield said one way or the other. I was +too deeply engrossed: first, in correcting the final proofs of +_Afield_, my second book, which appeared that spring and was built +around--there is no harm in saying now,--my relations with Gillian +Hardress; secondly, in the remunerative and uninteresting task of +writing for _Woman's Weekly_ five "wholesome love-stories with a dash +of humor," in which She either fell into His arms "with a contented +sigh" or else "their lips met" somewhere toward the ending of the +seventh page; and, thirdly, in diverting myself with Celia Reindan.... + + + 4 + +That, though, is a business I shall not detail, because it was one of +the very vulgarest sort. It was the logical outgrowth of my admiration +for her yellow hair,--she did have extraordinary hair, confound her! +--and of a few moonlit nights. It was simply the result of our common +vanity and of her book-fed sentimentality and, eventually, of her +unbridled temper; and in nature the compound was an unsavoury mess +which thoroughly delighted Lichfield. Lichfield will be only too glad, +even nowadays, to discourse to you of how I got wedged in that infernal +transom, and of how Celia alarmed everybody within two blocks of her +bedroom by her wild yells. + + + 5 + +I had meanwhile decided, first, to write another and a better book than +_The Apostates_ or _Afield_ had ever pretended to be; and afterward to +marry Rosalind Jemmett, whom I found, in my too-hackneyed but habitual +phrase, "adorable." For this Rosalind was an eminently "sensible +match," and as such, I considered, quite appropriate for a Townsend. + +The main thing though, to me, was to write the book of which I had +already the central idea,--very vague, as yet, but of an unquestionable +magnificence. Development of it, on an at all commensurate scale, +necessitated many inconveniences, and among them, the finding of +someone who would assist me in imbuing the love-scenes--of which there +must unfortunately be a great many--with reality; and for the tale's +_milieu_ I again pitched upon the Green Chalybeate,--where, as you may +remember, I first met with Stella. + +So I said a not unpromising farewell to Rosalind Jemmett, who was going +into Canada for the summer. She was quite frankly grieved by the +absolute necessity of my taking a rigorous course of the Chalybeate +waters, but agreed with me that one's health is not to be trifled with. +And of course she would write if I really wanted her to, though she +couldn't imagine _why_--But I explained why, with not a little detail. +And she told me, truthfully, that I was talking like an idiot; and was +not, I thought, irrevocably disgusted by my idiocy. So that, all in +all, I was not discontented when I left her. + +Then I ordered Byam to pack and, by various unveracious +representations, induced my Uncle George Bulmer--as a sort of visible +and outward sign that I forgave him for declining to lend me another +penny--to accompany me to the Green Chalybeate. Besides, I was fond of +the old scoundrel.... + + + 6 + +When I began to scribble these haphazard memories I had designed to be +very droll concerning the "provincialism" of Lichfield; for, as every +inhabitant of it will tell you, it is "quite hopelessly provincial," +--and this is odd, seeing that, as investigation will assure you, the +city is exclusively inhabited by self-confessed cosmopolitans. I had +meant to depict Fairhaven, too, in the broad style of _Cranford_, say; +and to be so absolutely side-splitting when I touched upon the Green +Chalybeate as positively to endanger the existence of any apoplectic +reader, who presumed to peruse the chapter which dealt with this +resort. + +But, upon reflection, I am too familiar with these places to attempt to +treat them humorously. The persons who frequent their byways are too +much like the persons who frequent the byways of any other place, I +find, at bottom. For to write convincingly of the persons peculiar to +any locality it is necessary either to have thoroughly misunderstood +them, or else perseveringly to have been absent from daily intercourse +with them until age has hardened the brain-cells, and you have +forgotten what they are really like. Then, alone, you may write the +necessary character studies which will be sufficiently abundant in +human interest. + +For, at bottom, any one of us is tediously like any other. +Comprehension is the grave of sympathy; scratch deeply enough and you +will find not any livelily-coloured Tartarism, but just a mediocre and +thoroughly uninteresting human being. So I may not ever be so droll as +I had meant to be; and if you wish to chuckle over the grotesque places +I have lived in, you must apply to persons who have spent two weeks +there, and no more. + +For the rest, Lichfield, and Fairhaven also, got at and into me when I +was too young to defend myself. Therefore Lichfield and Fairhaven +cannot ever, really, seem to me grotesque. To the contrary, it is the +other places which must always appear to me a little queer when judged +by the standards of Fairhaven and Lichfield. + + + + +16. + +_He Seeks for Copy_ + + +I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read _The Apostates_, and, +as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely +well-meaning. To-night I was superintending the process. + +"For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate," said I; "and it +may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul, +Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate +scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently +fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to +overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent café! Try now, nunky! +try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the +right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you." + +Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the +contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was "frosted" to a +nicety. We were drinking "Mamie Taylors" that summer, you may remember; +and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar. + +"Oh, I say, you know!" observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth +chapter, and flung down the book. + +"Rot, utter rot," I assented pleasantly; "puerile and futile trifling +with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your sturdy common-sense +instantly detected. In fact," I added, hopefully, "I think that chapter +is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In _Afield_, +you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the noblest sentiments, +the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father's whiskey and water; and +'Old-Fashioned' and 'Fair Play' have been obliging enough to write to +the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low +moral standards of to-day. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady +is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to +meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question +nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot +to show you--all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit, +and my fine impersonal attitude, and the survival of the fittest, and +so on." + +But Uncle George refused to be comforted. "Look here, Bob!" said he, +pathetically, "why don't you brace up and write something--well! we'll +put it, something of the sort you _can_ do. For you can, you know." + +"Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second +edition before publication?" I softly queried. "I had no money. I was +ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything +adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle's +deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to +this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread." I refilled my +glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. +"This time next year," said I, as dreamily, "I shall be able to afford +cake; for I shall have written _As the Coming of Dawn_." + +Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. "You catch me +lending you any money for your--brief Biblical words!" he said. + +"For the reign of subtle immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. +Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of +men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know +that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes +dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and +that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly--sordidly, at +times,--and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a +scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow +journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, +and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!" + +"Dearest Robert!" remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, "you are sadly _passé_: that +pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago." + +"The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is +already reflected--faintly, I grant you,--in the best-selling books. We +have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness +and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of +primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if +his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have +tossed over the contents of every closet in the _menage à trois_. And +I--_moi, qui vous parle_,--I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring +lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in _Afield_; and +henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence." + +"Saul among the prophets," Uncle George suggested, helpfully. + +"Quite so," I assented, "and my first prophecy will be _As the Coming +of Dawn_." + +Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. "Mad, quite mad!" said +he, in parenthesis. + +"I shall be idyllic," I continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the +ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the +keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met +after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs +blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is +love,--the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not +the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as +it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that +will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I +will!" + +I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table. + +"H'm!" said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; "going back to renew associations +with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her +grandchildren terribly in the way." + +"It is imperative," said I,--"yes, imperative for the scope of my book, +that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I +discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban +product to serve my purpose. And I can't find any one who will." + +Uncle George whistled softly. "'Honourable young gentleman,'" he +murmured, as to himself, "'desires to meet attractive and innocent +young lady. Object: to learn how to be idyllic in three-hundred +pages.'" + +There was no commentary upon his text. + +"I say," queried Mr. Bulmer, "do you think this sort of thing is fair +to the girl? Isn't it a little cold-blooded?" + +"Respected nunky, you are at times very terribly the man in the street! +Anyhow, I leave the Green Chalybeate to-morrow in search of _As the +Coming of Dawn_." + +"Look here," said Mr. Bulmer, rising, "if you start on a tour of the +country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my +abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a +liver-pill and go to bed! I don't promise anything, mind, but perhaps +about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath +on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there," +he added unkindlily, "are not built for those full rich figures." + +Next morning, I notified the desk-clerk, and, quite casually, both the +newspaper correspondents, that the Green Chalybeate was about to be +bereft of the presence of a distinguished novelist. Then, as my train +did not leave till night, I resolved to be bored on horseback, rather +than on the golf-links, and had Guendolen summoned, from the stable, +for a final investigation of the country roads thereabouts. + +Guendolen this afternoon elected to follow a new route; and knowing by +experience that any questioning of this decision could but result in +undignified defeat, I assented. Thus it came about that we circled +parallel to the boardwalk, which leads uphill to the deserted Royal +Hotel, and passed its rows of broken windows; and went downhill again, +always at Guendolen's election; and thus came to the creek, which +babbled across the roadway and was overhung with thick foliage that +lisped and whispered cheerfully in the placid light of the declining +sun. It was there that the germ of _As the Coming of Dawn_ was found. + +For I had fallen into a reverie over the deplorable obstinacy of my new +heroine, who declined, for all my labours, to be unsophisticated; and +taking advantage of this, Guendolen had twitched the reins from my hand +and proceeded to satisfy her thirst in a manner that was rather too +noisy to be quite good form. I sat in patience, idly observing the +sparkling reflection of the sunlight on the water. I was elaborating a +comparison between my obstinate heroine and Guendolen. Then Guendolen +snorted, as something rustled through the underbrush, and turning, I +perceived a Vision. + +The Vision was in white, with a profusion of open-work. There were blue +ribbons connected with it. There were also black eyes, of the +almond-shaped, heavy-lidded variety that I had thought existed only in +Lely's pictures, and great coils of brown hair which was gold where the +chequered sunlight fell upon it, and two lips that were inexpressibly +red. I was filled with pity for my tired horse, and a resolve that for +this once her thirst should be quenched. + +Thereupon, I lifted my cap hastily; and Guendolen scrambled to the +other bank, and spluttered, and had carried me well past the Iron +Spring, before I announced to the evening air that I was a fool, and +that Guendolen was describable by various quite picturesque and +derogatory epithets. And I smiled. + +"Now, Robert Etheridge Townsend, you writer of books, here is a subject +made to your hand!" And then: + + "Only 'twixt the light and shade +Floating memories of my maid +Make me pray for Guendolen." + +After this we retraced our steps. I was peering anxiously about the +roadway. + +"Pardon me," said I, subsequently; "but _have_ you seen anything of a +watch--a small gold one, set with pearls?" + +"Heavens!" said the Vision, sympathetically, "what a pity! Are you sure +it fell here?" + +"I don't seem to have it about me," I answered, with cryptic, but +entire veracity. I searched about my pockets, with a puckered brow. +"And as we stopped here--" + +I looked inquiringly into the water. + +"From this side," observed the Vision, impersonally, "there is less +glare from the brook." + +Having tied Guendolen to a swinging limb, I sat down contentedly in +these woods. The Vision moved a little, lest I be crowded. + +"It might be further up the road," she suggested. + +"Oh, I must have left it at the hotel," I observed. + +"You might look--" said she, peering into the water. + +"Forever!" I assented. + +The Vision flushed, "I didn't mean--" she began. + +"But I did," quoth I,--"and every word of it." + +"Why, in that case," said she, and rose to her feet, "I'd better--" A +frown wrinkled her brow; then a deep, curved dimple performed a similar +office for her cheek. "I wonder--" said she. + +"Why, you would be a bold-faced jig," said I, composedly; "but, after +all there is nobody about. And, besides,--for I suspect you of being +one of the three dilapidated persons in veils who came last night,--we +are going to be introduced right after supper, anyway." + +The Vision sat down. "You mentioned your sanatorium?" quoth she. + +"The Asylum of Love," said I; "discharged--under a false impression, +--as cured, and sent to paradise. + +"Oh!" said I, defiant, "but it _is_!" + +She looked about her. "The woods _are_ rather beautiful," she conceded, +softly. + +"They form a quite appropriate background," said I. "It is a veritable +Eden, before the coming of the snake." + +"Before?" she queried, dubiously. + +"Undoubtedly," said I, and felt my ribs, in meditative wise. "Ah, but I +thought I missed something! We participate in a historic moment. This +is in Eden immediately after the creation of--Well, but of course you +are acquainted with that famous bull about Eve's being the fairest of +her daughters?" + +"It is _quite_ time," said she, judicially, "for me to go back to the +hotel, before--since we are speaking of animals,--your presence here is +noticed by one of the squirrels." + +"It is not good," I pleaded, "for man to be alone." + +"I have heard," said she, "that--almost any one can cite scripture to +his purpose." + +I thrust out a foot for inspection. "No suggestion of a hoof," said I; +"and not the slightest odour of brimstone, as you will kindly note; and +my inoffensive name is Robert Townsend." + +"Of course," she submitted, "I could never think of making your +acquaintance in this irregular fashion; and, therefore, of course, I +could not think of telling you that my name is Marian Winwood." + +"Of course not," I agreed; "it would be highly improper." + +"--And it is more than time for me to go to supper," she concluded +again, with a lacuna, as it seemed to me, in the deduction. + +"Look here!" I remonstrated; "it isn't anywhere near six yet." I +exhibited my watch to support this statement. + +"Oh!" she observed, with wide, indignant eyes. + +"I--I mean--" I stammered. + +She rose to her feet. + +"--I will explain how I happened to be carrying two watches--" + +"I do not care to listen to any explanations. Why should I?" + +"--upon," I firmly said, "the third piazza of the hotel. And this very +evening." + +"You will not." And this was said even more firmly. "And I hope you +will have the kindness to keep away from these woods; for I shall +probably always walk here in the afternoon." Then, with an indignant +toss of the head, the Vision disappeared. + + + 3 + +I whistled. Subsequently I galloped back to the hotel. + +"See here!" said I, to the desk-clerk; "how long does this place keep +open?" + +"Season closes latter part of September, sir." + +I told him I would need my rooms till then. + + + + +17. + +_He Provides Copy_ + + +So it was Uncle George Bulmer who presently left the Green Chalybeate, +to pursue Mrs. Chaytor with his lawless arts. I stayed out the season. + +Now I cannot conscientiously recommend the Green Chalybeate against +your next vacation. Once very long ago, it was frequented equally for +the sake of gaiety and of health. In the summer that was Marian's the +resort was a beautiful and tumble-down place where invalids congregated +for the sake of the nauseous waters,--which infallibly demolish a solid +column of strange maladies I never read quite through, although it +bordered every page of the writing-paper you got there from the +desk-clerk,--and a scanty leaven of persons who came thither, +apparently, in order to spend a week or two in lamenting "how very dull +the season is this year, and how abominable the fare is." + +But for one I praise the place, and I believe that Marian Winwood also +bears it no ill-will. For we two were very happy there. We took part in +the "subscription euchres" whenever we could not in time devise an +excuse which would pass muster with the haggard "entertainer." We +danced conscientiously beneath the pink and green icing of the +ball-room's ceiling, with all three of the band playing _Hearts and +Flowers_; and with a dozen "chaperones"--whom I always suspected of +taking in washing during the winter months,--lined up as closely as was +possible to the door, as if in preparation for the hotel's catching +fire any moment, to give us pessimistic observal. And having thus +discharged our duty to society at large, we enjoyed ourselves +tremendously. + +For instance, we would talk over the book I was going to write in the +autumn. That was the main thing. Then one could golf, or drive, or--I +blush to write it even now--croquet. Croquet, though, is a much +maligned game, as you will immediately discover if you ever play it on +the rambling lawn of the Chalybeate, about six in the afternoon, say, +when the grass is greener than it is by ordinary, and the shadows are +long, and the sun is well beneath the tree-tops of the Iron Bank, and +your opponent makes a face at you occasionally, and on each side the +old, one-storied cottages are builded of unusually red bricks and are +quite ineffably asleep. + +Or again there is always the creek to divert yourself in. Once I caught +five crawfishes there, while Marian waited on the bank; and afterward +we found an old tomato-can and boiled them in it, and they came out a +really gorgeous crimson. This was the afternoon that we were Spanish +Inquisitors.... Oh, believe me, you can have quite a good time at the +Chalybeate, if you set about it in the proper way. + + + 2 + +Only it is true that sometimes, when it rained, say, with that hopeless +insistency which, I protest, is unknown anywhere else in the world; and +when Marian was not immediately accessible, and cigarettes were not +quite satisfactory, because the entire universe was so sodden that +matches had to be judiciously coaxed before they would strike; and when +if you happened to be writing a fervid letter to Rosalind Jemmett, let +us say, the ink would not dry for ever so long:--why, it is true that +in these circumstances you would feel a shade too like the wicked Lord +So-and-So of a melodrama to be comfortable. + +Yet even in these circumstances, reason told me that the Book was the +main thing, that the girl would be thoroughly over the affair by +November at latest, and that at the cost of a few inconsequent tears, +she would have meanwhile immeasurably obliged posterity. And I knew +that no man may ever write in perdurable fashion save by ruthlessly +converting his own life into "copy," since of other persons' lives he +can, at most, reproduce but the blurred and misinterpreted by-ends, by +reason of almost any author's deplorable lack of omniscience. Yes, the +Book was the main thing; and yet the girl--knowingly to dip my pen into +her heart as into an inkstand was not, at best, chivalric.... + +"But the Book!" said I. "Why, I must be quite idiotically in love to +think of letting that Book perish!" And I viciously added: "Confound +the pretty simpleton!"... + + + 3 + +So the book was builded, after all, a little by a little. Hardly an +evening came when after leaving Marian I had not at least one excellent +and pregnant jotting to record in my note-book. Now it would be just an +odd turn of language, or a description of some gesture she had made, or +of a gown she had worn that day; and now a simile or some other rather +good figure of speech which had popped into my mind when I was making +love to her. + +Nor had I any difficulty in preserving nearly all she said to me, for +Marian was never a chatterbox; yet her responses had, somehow, that +long-sought tang it wasn't in me to invent for any imaginary young +woman who must be, for the sake of my new novel, quite heels over head +in love. + +And I began to see that Bettie was right, as usual. I had portrayed +Gillian Hardress pretty well in _Afield_; but by and large, I had +always written about women as though they were "pterodactyls or some +other extinct animal, which you had never seen, but had read a lot +about." + +And now, in looking over my notes, I knew, and my heart glowed to know, +that I was not about to repeat the error. + +So the Book was builded, after all, a little by a little. And a little +by a little the summer wore on; and in the lobby of the Main Hotel was +hung the beautiful Spirit of the Falls poster of the Buffalo +Exposition; and we talked of Oom Paul Krüger, and Shamrock II, and the +Nicaragua Canal, and lanky Bob Fitzsimmons, and the Boxer outrages; and +we read _To Have and To Hold_ and _The Cardinal's Snuff Box_, and +thought it droll that the King of England was not going to call himself +King Albert, after all. + +And then came the news of how the President had been shot, "with a +poisoned bullet," and a week of contradictory bulletins from the +Milburn House in Buffalo. And there were panicky surmises raised +everywhere as to "what these anarchists may do next," so that Maggio +was mobbed in Columbus, and Emma Goldman in Chicago; and Colonel +Roosevelt was found, after days of search, on Mt. Marcy in the +Adirondacks, and was told in the heart of a forest that to-morrow he +would be at the head of a nation. And the country's guidance was +entrusted to a mere lad of forty-three, with general uneasiness as to +what might come of it; and the dramatic tale of Colonel Roosevelt's +taking of the oath of office was in that morning's paper; and Marian +and I were about to part. + + + 4 + +"It will be dreadful," sighed she; "for we have to stay a whole week +longer, and I shall come here every afternoon. And there will be only +ghosts in the woods, and I shall be very lonely." + +"Dear," said I, "is it not something to have been happy? It has been +such a wonderful summer; and come what may, nothing can rob us now of +its least golden moment. And it is only for a little." + +"You will come back?" said she, half-doubtingly. + +"Yes," I said. "You wonderful, elfin creature, I shall undoubtedly come +back--to your real home, and claim you there. Only I don't believe you +do live in Aberlin,--you probably live in some great, gnarled oak +hereabouts; and at night its bark uncloses to set you free, and you and +your sisters dance out the satyrs' hearts in the moonlight. Oh, I know, +Marian! I simply _know_ you are a dryad,--a wonderful, laughing, +clear-eyed dryad strayed out of the golden age." + +"What a boy it is!" she said. "No, I am only a really and truly girl, +dear,--a rather frightened girl, with very little disposition to +laughter, just now. For you are going away--Oh, my dear, you have meant +so much to me! The world is so different since you have come, and I am +so happy and so miserable that--that I am afraid." An infinitesimal +handkerchief went upward to two great, sparkling eyes, and dabbed at +them. + +"Dear!" said I. And this remark appeared to meet the requirements of +the situation. + +There was a silence now. We sat in the same spot where I had first +encountered Marian Winwood. Only this was an autumnal forest that +glowed with many gem-like hues about us; and already the damp odour of +decaying leaves was heavy in the air. It was like the Tosti thing +translated out of marine terms into a woodland analogue. The summer was +ended; but _As the Coming of Dawn_ was practically complete. + +It was not the book that I had planned, but a far greater one which was +scarcely mine. There was no word written as yet. But for two months I +had viewed life through Marian Winwood's eyes; day by day, my +half-formed, tentative ideas had been laid before her with elaborate +fortuitousness, to be approved, or altered, or rejected, just as she +decreed; until at last they had been welded into a perfect whole that +was a Book, bit by bit, we had planned it, I and she; and, as I dreamed +of it as it would be in print, my brain was fired with exultation, and +I defied my doubt and I swore that the Book, for which I had pawned a +certain portion of my self-respect, was worth--and triply worth--the +price which had been paid.... This was in Marian's absence. + +"Dear!" said she.... + +Her eyes were filled with a tender and unutterable confidence that +thrilled me like physical cold. "Marian," said I, simply, "I shall +never come back." + +The eyes widened a trifle, but she did not seem to comprehend. + +"Have you not wondered," said I, "that I have never kissed you, except +as if you were a very holy relic or a cousin or something of that +sort?" + +"Yes," she answered. Her voice was quite emotionless. + +"And yet--yet--" I sprang to my feet. "Dear God, how I have longed! +Yesterday, only yesterday, as I read to you from the verses I had made +to other women, those women that are colourless shadows by the side of +your vivid beauty,--and you listened wonderingly and said the proper +things and then lapsed into dainty boredom,--_how_ I longed to take you +in my arms, and to quicken your calm blood a little with another sort +of kissing. You knew--you must have known! Last night, for instance--" + +"Last night," she said, very simply, "I thought--And I hoped you +would." + +"What a confession for a nicely brought up girl! Well! I didn't. And +afterward, all night, I tossed in sick, fevered dreams of you. I am mad +for love of you. And so, once in a while I kiss your hand. Dear God, +your hand!" My voice quavered, effectively. + +"Yes," said she; "still, I remember--" + +"I have struggled; and I have conquered this madness,--for a madness it +is. We can laugh together and be excellent friends; and we can never, +never be anything more. Well! we have laughed, have we not, dear, a +whole summer through? Now comes the ending. Ah, I have seen you +puzzling over my meaning before this. You never understood me +thoroughly; but it is always safe to laugh." + +She smiled; and I remember now it was rather as Mona Lisa smiles. + +"For we can laugh together,--that is all. We are not mates. You were +born to be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy +children; and you and your sort will inherit the earth and make the +laws for us weaklings who dream and scribble and paint. We are not +mates. But you have been very kind to me, Marian dear. So I thank you +and say good-bye; and I pray that I may never see you after to-day." + +There was a sub-tang of veracity in my deprecation of an unasked-for +artistic temperament; the thing is very often a nuisance, and was just +then a barrier which I perceived plainly; and with equal plainness I +perceived the pettier motives that now caused me to point it out as a +barrier to Marian. My lips curled half in mockery of myself, as I +framed the bitter smile I felt the situation demanded; but I was fired +with the part I was playing; and half-belief had crept into my mind +that Marian Winwood was created, chiefly, for the purpose which she had +already served. + +I regarded her, in fine, as through the eyes of future readers of my +biography. She would represent an episode in my life, as others do in +that of Byron or of Goethe. I pitied her sincerely; and, under all, +what moralists would call my lower nature, held in leash for two months +past, chuckled, and grinned, and leaped, at the thought of a holiday. + +She rose to her feet. "Good-bye," said she. + +"You--you understand, dear?" I queried, tenderly. + +"Yes," she answered; "I understand--not what you have just told me, for +in that, of course, you have lied. That Jemmett girl and her money is +at the bottom of it all, of course. You didn't want to lose her, and +still you wanted to play with me. So you were pulled two ways, poor +dear." + +"Oh, well, if that is what you think of me--!" + +"You see, you are not an uncommon type,--a type not strong enough to +live life healthily, just strong enough to dabble in life, to trifle +with emotions, to experiment with other people's lives. Indeed, I am +not angry, dear; I am only--sorry; for you have played with me very +nicely indeed, and very boyishly, and the summer has been very happy." + + + 5 + +I returned to Lichfield and wrote _As the Coming of Dawn_. + +I spent six months in this. My work at first was mere copying of the +book that already existed in my brain; but when it was transcribed +therefrom, I wrote and rewrote, shifted and polished and adorned until +it seemed I would never have done; and indeed I was not anxious to have +done with any labour so delightful. + +Particularly did I rejoice in the character for which Marian Winwood +had posed. Last summer's note-book here came into play; and now, for +once, my heroine was in no need of either shoving or prompting. She did +things of her own accord, and I was merely her scribe... + +I would vain-gloriously protest, just to myself, that the love scenes +in this story were the most exquisite and, with all that, the most +genuine love scenes I knew of anywhere. "By God!" I would occasionally +say with Thackeray; "I _am_ a genius!" + +Besides, the story of the book, I knew, was novel and astutely wrought; +its progress caught at once and teased your interest always, so that +having begun it, most people would read to the end, if only to discover +"how it all came out." I knew the book, in fine, could hardly fail to +please and interest a number of people by reason of its plot alone. + +I ought to have been content with this. But I had somehow contracted an +insane notion that a novel is the more enjoyable when it is adroitly +written. In point of fact, of course, no man who writes with care is +ever read with pleasure; you may toil through a page or two perhaps, +but presently you are noting how precisely every word is fitted to the +thought, and later you are noting nothing else. You are insensibly +beguiled into a fidgety-footed analysis of every clause, which fatigues +in the outcome, and by the tenth page you are yawning. + +But I did not comprehend this then. And so I fashioned my apt phrases, +and weighed my synonyms, and echoed this or that vowel very skilfully, +I thought, and alliterated my consonants with discretion. In fine, I +did not overlook the most meticulous device of the stylist; and I +enjoyed it. It was a sort of game; and they taught me at least, those +six delightful months, that a man writes admirable prose not at all for +the sake of having it read, but for the more sensible reason that he +enjoys playing solitaire. + +I led a hermit's life that winter; and I enjoyed that too. Night, after +all, is the one time for writing, particularly when you are inane +enough to hanker after perfected speech, and so misguided as to be the +slave of the "right word." You sit alone in a bright, comfortable room; +the clock ticks companionably; there is no other sound in the world +except the constant scratching of your pen, and the occasional far-off +puffing of a freight-train coming into Lichfield; there is snow +outside, but before your eyes someone, that is not you exactly, +arranges and redrills the scrawls which will bring back the sweet and +languid summer and remarshal all its pleasant trivialities for anyone +that chooses to read through the printed page, although he read two +centuries hence, in Nova Zembla.... + +Then you dip into an Unabridged, and change every word that has been +written, for a better one, and do it leisurely, rolling in the mouth, +as it were, the flavour of every possible synonym, before decision. +Then you reread, with a corrective pen in hand the while, and you +venture upon the whole to agree with Mérimée that it is preferable to +write one's own books, since those of others are not, after all, +particularly worth reading in comparison. + +And by this time the windows are pale blue, like the blue of a dying +flame, and you peep out and see the sparrows moving like rather poorly +made mechanical toys about the middle of the deserted street, where +there is neither light nor shade. The colour of everything is perfectly +discernible, but there is no lustre in the world as yet, though yonder +the bloat sun is already visible in the blue and red east, which is +like a cosmic bruise; and upon a sudden you find it just possible to +stay awake long enough to get safely into bed.... + + + 6 + +Thus I dandled the child of my brain for a long while, and arrayed it +in beautiful and curious garments, adorning each beloved notion with +far-sought words that had a taste in the mouth, and would one day lend +an aroma to the printed page; and I rejoiced shamelessly in that which +I had done. Then it befell that I went forth and sought the luxury of a +Turkish bath, and in the morning, after a rub-down and an ammonia +cocktail, awoke to the fact that the world had been going on much as +usual, that winter. + +Young Colonel Roosevelt seemed not to have wrecked civilization, after +all, according to the morning _Courier-Herald_, despite that Democratic +paper's colorful prophecies last autumn in the vein of Jeremiah. To the +contrary, Major-General McArthur was testifying before the Senate as to +the abysmal unfitness of the Filipinos for self-government; the Women's +Clubs were holding a convention in Los Angeles; there had been terrible +hailstorms this year to induce the annual ruining of the peach-crop, +and the submarine Fulton had exploded; the California Limited had been +derailed in Iowa, and in Memphis there was some sort of celebration in +honor of Admiral Schley; and the Boer War seemed over; and Mr. +Havemeyer also was before the Senate, to whom he was making it clear +that his companies were in no wise responsible for sugar having reached +the unprecedentedly high price of four and a half cents a pound. + +The world, in short, in spite of my six months' retiring therefrom, +seemed to be getting on pleasantly enough, as I turned from the paper +to face the six months' accumulation of mail. + + + 7 + +A few weeks later, I sent for Mr. George Bulmer, and informed him of +his avuncular connection with a genius; and waved certain typewritten +pages to establish his title. + +Subsequently I read aloud divers portions of _As the Coming of Dawn_, +and Mr. Bulmer sipped Chianti, and listened. + +"Look here!" he said, suddenly; "have you seen _The Imperial +Votaress?_" + +I frowned. It is always annoying to be interrupted in the middle of a +particularly well-balanced sentence. "Don't know the lady," said I. + +"She is advertised on half the posters in town," said Mr. Bulmer. "And +it is the book of the year. And it is your book." + +At this moment I laid down my manuscript. '"I _beg_ your pardon?" said +I. + +"Your book!" Uncle George repeated firmly; "and scarcely a hair's +difference between them, except in the names." + +"H'm!" I observed, in a careful voice. "Who wrote it?" + +"Some female woman out west," said Mr. Bulmer. "She's a George +Something-or-other when she publishes, of course, like all those +authorines when they want to say about mankind at large what less +gifted women only dare say about their sisters-in-law. I wish to heaven +they would pick out some other Christian name when they want to cut up +like pagans. Anyhow, I saw her real name somewhere, and I remember it +began with an S--Why, to be sure! it's Marian Winwood." + +"Amaimon sounds well," I observed; "Lucifer, well; Larbason, well; yet +they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but--Marian Winwood!" + +"Dear me!" he remonstrated. "Why, she wrote _A Bright Particular Star_, +you know, and _The Acolytes_, and lots of others." + +The author of _As the Coming of Dawn_ swallowed a whole glass of +Chianti at a gulp. + +"Of course," I said, slowly, "I cannot, in my rather peculiar position, +run the risk of being charged with plagiarism--by a Chinese-eyed mental +sneak-thief...." + +Thereupon I threw the manuscript into the open fire, which my +preference for the picturesque rendered necessary, even in May. + +"Oh, look here!" my uncle cried, and caught up the papers. "It is +infernally good, you know! Can't you--can't you fix it,--and--er-- +change it a bit? Typewriting is so expensive these days that it seems a +pity to waste all this." + +I took the manuscript and replaced it firmly among the embers. "As you +justly observe," said I, "it is infernally good. It is probably a deal +better than anything else I shall ever write." + +"Why, then--" said Uncle George. + +"Why, then," said I, "the only thing that remains to do is to read _The +Imperial Votaress._" + + + 8 + +And I read it with an augmenting irritation. Here was my great and +comely idea transmuted by "George Glock"--which was the woman's foolish +pen-name,--into a rather clever melodrama, and set forth anyhow, in a +hit or miss style that fairly made me squirm. I would cheerfully have +strangled Marian Winwood just then, and not upon the count of larceny, +but of butchery. + +"And to cap it all, she has assigned her hero every pretty speech I +ever made to her! I honestly believe the rogue took shorthand jottings +on her cuffs. 'There is a land where lovers may meet face to face, and +heart to heart, and mouth to mouth'--why, that's the note I wrote her +on the day she wasn't feeling well!" + +Presently, however, I began to laugh, and presently sitting there +alone, I began to applaud as if I were witnessing a play that took my +fancy. + +"Oh, the adorable jade!" I said; and then: "George Glock, forsooth! +_George Dandin, tu l' as voulu._" + + + 9 + +Naturally I put the entire affair into a short story. And--though even +to myself it seems incredible,--Miss Winwood wrote me within three days +of the tale's appearance, a very indignant letter. + +For she was furious, to the last exclamation point and underlining, +about my little magazine tale.... "Why don't you stop writing, and try +plumbing or butchering or traveling for scented soap? _You can't +write!_ If you had the light of creation you wouldn't be using my +material".... + +--Which caused me to reflect forlornly that I had wasted a great deal +of correct behavior upon Marian, since any of the more intimately +amorous advances which I might have made, and had scrupulously +refrained from making, would very probably have been regarded as raw +"material," to be developed rather than shocked by.... + + + + +18. + +_He Spends an Afternoon in Arden_ + + +I had, in a general way, intended to marry Rosalind Jemmett so soon as +I had completed _As the Coming of Dawn_; but in the fervour of writing +that unfortunate volume, I had at first put off a little, and then a +little longer, the answering of her last letter, because I was +interested just then in writing well and not particularly interested in +anything else; and I had finally approximated to forgetfulness of the +young lady's existence. + +Now, however, my thoughts harked back to her; and I found, upon +inquiry, that Rosalind had spent all of May and a good half of April in +Lichfield, in the same town with myself, and was now engaged to Alfred +Chaytor,--an estimable person, but popularly known as "Sissy" Chaytor. + + + 2 + +And this gave an additional whet to my intentions. So I called upon the +girl, and she, to my chagrin, received me with an air of having danced +with me some five or six times the night before; our conversation was +at first trivial and, on her part, dishearteningly cordial; and, in +fine, she completely baffled me by not appearing to expect any least +explanation of my discourteous neglect. This, look you, when I had been +at pains to prepare a perfectly convincing one. + +It must be conceded I completely lost my temper; shortly afterward +neither of us was speaking with excessive forethought; and each of us +languidly advanced a variety of observations which were more dexterous +than truthful. But I followed the intractable heiress to the Moncrieffs +that spring, in spite of this rebuff, being insufferably provoked by +her unshakable assumptions of my friendship and of nothing more. + + + 3 + +It was perhaps a week later she told me: "This, beyond any reasonable +doubt, is the Forest of Arden." + +"But where Rosalind is is always Arden," I said, politely. Yet I made a +mental reservation as to a glimpse of the golf-links, which this +particular nook of the forest afforded, and of a red-headed caddy in +search of a lost ball. + +But beyond these things the sun was dying out in a riot of colour, and +its level rays fell kindlily upon the gaunt pines that were thick about +us two, converting them into endless aisles of vaporous gold. + +There was primeval peace about; an evening wind stirred lazily above, +and the leaves whispered drowsily to one another over the waters of +what my companion said was a "brawling loch," though I had previously +heard it reviled as a particularly treacherous and vexatious hazard. +Altogether, I had little doubt that we had reached, in any event, the +outskirts of Arden. + +"And now," quoth she, seating herself on a fallen log, "what would you +do if I were your very, very Rosalind?" + +"Don't!" I cried in horror. "It wouldn't be proper! For as a decent +self-respecting heroine, you would owe it to Orlando not to listen." + +"H'umph!" said Rosalind. The exclamation does not look impressive, +written out; but, spoken, it placed Orlando in his proper niche. + +"Oh, well," said I, and stretched myself at her feet, full +length,--which is supposed to be a picturesque attitude,--"why quarrel +over a name? It ought to be Gamelyn, anyhow; and, moreover, by the +kindness of fate, Orlando is golfing." + +Rosalind frowned, dubiously. + +"But golf is a very ancient game," I reassured her. Then I bit a +pine-needle in two and sighed. "Foolish fellow, when he might be--" + +"Admiring the beauties of nature," she suggested. + +Just then an impudent breeze lifted a tendril of honey-coloured hair +and toyed with it, over a low, white brow,--and I noted that Rosalind's +hair had a curious coppery glow at the roots, a nameless colour that I +have never observed anywhere else.... + +"Yes," said I, "of nature." + +"Then," queried she, after a pause, "who are you? And what do you in +this forest?" + +"You see," I explained, "there were conceivably other men in Arden--" + +"I suppose so," she sighed, with exemplary resignation. + +"--For you were," I reminded her, "universally admired at your uncle's +court,--and equally so in the forest. And while Alfred--or, strictly +speaking, Gamelyn, or, if you prefer it, Orlando,--is the great love of +your life, still--" + +"Men are so foolish!" said Rosalind, irrelevantly. + +"--it did not prevent you--" + +"Me!" cried she, indignant. + +"You had such a tender heart," I suggested, "and suffering was +abhorrent to your gentle nature." + +"I don't like cynicism, sir," said she; "and inasmuch as tobacco is not +yet discovered--" + +"It is clearly impossible that I am smoking," I finished; "quite true." + +"I don't like cheap wit, either," said Rosalind. "You," she went on, +with no apparent connection, "are a forester, with a good cross-bow and +an unrequited attachment,--say, for me. You groan and hang verses and +things about on the trees." + +"But I don't write verses--any longer," I amended. "Still how would +this do,--for an oak, say,-- + +"I found a lovely centre-piece +Upon the supper-table, +But when I looked at it again +I saw I wasn't able, +And so I took my mother home +And locked her in the stable." + +She considered that the plot of this epic was not sufficiently +inevitable. It hadn't, she lamented, a quite logical ending; and the +plot of it, in fine, was not, somehow, convincing. + +"Well, in any event," I optimistically reflected, "I am a nickel in. If +your dicta had emanated from a person in Peoria or Seattle, who hadn't +bothered to read my masterpiece, they would have sounded exactly the +same, and the clipping-bureau would have charged me five cents. +Maybe I can't write verses, then. But I am quite sure I can groan." And +I did so. + +"It sounds rather like a fog-horn," said Rosalind, still in the +critic's vein; "but I suppose it is the proper thing. Now," she +continued, and quite visibly brightening, "you can pretend to have an +unrequited attachment for me." + +"But I can't--" I decisively said. + +"Can't," she echoed. It has not been mentioned previously that Rosalind +was pretty. She was especially so just now, in pouting. And, therefore, +"--pretend," I added. + +She preserved a discreet silence. + +"Nor," I continued, with firmness, "am I a shambling, nameless, +unshaven denizen of Arden, who hasn't anything to do except to carry a +spear and fall over it occasionally. I will no longer conceal the +secret of my identity. I am Jaques." + +"You can't be Jaques," she dissented; "you are too stout." + +"I am well-built," I admitted, modestly; "as in an elder case, sighing +and grief have blown me up like a bladder; yet proper pride, if nothing +else, demands that my name should appear on the programme." + +"But would Jaques be the sort of person who'd--?" + +"Who wouldn't be?" I asked, with appropriate ardour. "No, depend upon +it, Jaques was not any more impervious to temptation than the rest of +us; and, indeed, in the French version, as you will find, he eventually +married Celia." + +"Minx!" said she; and it seemed to me quite possible that she referred +to Celia Reindan, and my heart glowed. + +"And how," queried Rosalind, presently, "came you to the Forest of +Arden, good Jaques?" + +I groaned once more. "It was a girl," I darkly said. + +"Of course," assented Rosalind, beaming as to the eyes. Then she went +on, and more sympathetically: "Now, Jaques, you can tell me the whole +story." + +"Is it necessary?" I asked. + +"Surely," said she, with sudden interest in the structure of +pine-cones; "since for a long while I have wanted to know all about +Jaques. You see Mr. Shakespeare is a bit hazy about him." + +"_So_!" I thought, triumphantly. + +And aloud, "It is an old story," I warned her, "perhaps the oldest of +all old stories. It is the story of a man and a girl. It began with a +chance meeting and developed into a packet of old letters, which is the +usual ending of this story." + +Rosalind's brows protested. + +"Sometimes," I conceded, "it culminates in matrimony; but the ending is +not necessarily tragic." + +I dodged exactly in time; and the pine-cone splashed into the hazard. + +"It happened," I continued, "that, on account of the man's health, they +were separated for a whole year's time before--before things had +progressed to any extent. When they did progress, it was largely by +letters. That is why this story ended in such a large package. + +"Letters," Rosalind confided, to one of the pines, "are so +unsatisfactory. They mean so little." + +"To the man," I said, firmly, "they meant a great deal. They brought +him everything that he most wished for,--comprehension, sympathy, and, +at last, comfort and strength when they were sore needed. So the man, +who was at first but half in earnest, announced to himself that he had +made a discovery. 'I have found,' said he, 'the great white love which +poets have dreamed of. I love this woman greatly, and she, I think, +loves me. God has made us for each other, and by the aid of her love I +will be pure and clean and worthy even of her.' You have doubtless +discovered by this stage in my narrative," I added, as in parenthesis, +"that the man was a fool." + +"Don't!" said Rosalind. + +"Oh, he discovered it himself in due time--but not until after he had +written a book about her. _As the Coming of Dawn_ the title was to have +been. It was--oh, just about her. It tried to tell how greatly he loved +her. It tried--well, it failed of course, because it isn't within the +power of any writer to express what the man felt for that girl. Why, +his love was so great--to him, poor fool!--that it made him at times +forget the girl herself, apparently. He didn't want to write her +trivial letters. He just wanted to write that great book in her honour, +which would _make_ her understand, even against her will, and then to +die, if need be, as Geoffrey Rudel did. For that was the one thing +which counted--to make her understand--" I paused, and anyone could see +that I was greatly moved. In fact, I was believing every word of it by +this time. + +"Oh, but who wants a man to _die_ for her?" wailed Rosalind. + +"It is quite true that one infinitely prefers to see him make a fool of +himself. So the man discovered when he came again to bring his foolish +book to her,--the book that was to make her understand. And so he +burned it--in a certain June. For the girl had merely liked him, and +had been amused by him. So she had added him to her collection of men, +--quite a large one, by the way,--and was, I believe, a little proud of +him. It was, she said, rather a rare variety, and much prized by +collectors." + +"And how was _she_ to know?" said Rosalind; and then, remorsefully: +"Was it a very horrid girl?" + +"It was not exactly repulsive," said I, as dreamily, and looking up +into the sky. + +There was a pause. Then someone in the distance--a forester, probably, +--called "Fore!" and Rosalind awoke from her reverie. + +"Then--?" said she. + +"Then came the customary Orlando--oh, well! Alfred, if you like. The +name isn't altogether inappropriate, for he does encounter existence +with much the same abandon which I have previously noticed in a muffin. +For the rest, he was a nicely washed fellow, with a sufficiency of the +mediaeval equivalents for bonds and rubber-tired buggies and country +places. Oh, yes! I forgot to say that the man was poor,--also that the +girl had a great deal of common-sense and no less than three longheaded +aunts. And so the girl talked to the man in a common-sense fashion--and +after that she was never at home." + +"Never?" said Rosalind. + +"Only that time they talked about the weather," said I. "So the man +fell out of bed just about then, and woke up and came to his sober +senses." + +"He did it very easily," said Rosalind, almost as if in resentment. + +"The novelty of the process attracted him," I pleaded. "So he said--in +a perfectly sensible way--that he had known all along it was only a +game they were playing,--a game in which there were no stakes. That was +a lie. He had put his whole soul into the game, playing as he knew for +his life's happiness; and the verses, had they been worthy of the love +which caused them to be written, would have been among the great songs +of the world. But while the man knew at last that he had been a fool, +he was swayed by a man-like reluctance against admitting it. So he +laughed--and lied--and broke away, hurt, but still laughing." + +"You hadn't mentioned any verses before," said Rosalind. + +"I told you he was a fool," said I. "And, after all, that is the entire +story." + +Then I spent several minutes in wondering what would happen next. +During this time I lost none of my interest in the sky. I believed +everything I had said: my emotions would have done credit to a Romeo or +an Amadis. + +"The first time that the girl was not at home," Rosalind observed, +impersonally, "the man had on a tan coat and a brown derby. He put on +his gloves as he walked down the street. His shoulders were the most +indignant--and hurt things she had ever seen. Then the girl wrote to +him,--a strangely sincere letter,--and tore it up." + +"Historical research," I murmured, "surely affords no warrant for such +attire among the rural denizens of tranquil Arden." + +"You see," continued Rosalind, oblivious to interruption, "I know all +about the girl,--which is more than you do." + +"That," I conceded, "is disastrously probable." + +"When she realised that she was to see the man again--_Did_ you ever +feel as if something had lifted you suddenly hundreds of feet above +rainy days and cold mutton for luncheon, and the possibility of other +girls' wearing black evening dresses, when you wanted yours to be the +only one in the room? Well, that is the way she felt at first, when she +read his note. At first, she realised nothing beyond the fact that he +was nearing her, and that she would presently see him. She didn't even +plan what she would wear, or what she would say to him. In an +indefinite way, she was happier than she had ever been before--or has +been since--until the doubts and fears and knowledge that give children +and fools a wide berth came to her,--and _then_ she saw it all against +her will, and thought it all out, and came to a conclusion." + +I sat up. There was really nothing of interest occurring overhead. + +"They had played at loving--lightly, it is true, but they had gone so +far in their letter writing that they could not go backward,--only +forward, or not at all. She had known all along that the man was but +half in earnest--believe me, a girl always knows that, even though she +may not admit it to herself,--and she had known that a love affair +meant to him material for a sonnet or so, and a well-turned letter or +two, and nothing more. For he was the kind of man that never quite +grows up. He was coming to her, pleased, interested, and a little +eager--in love with the idea of loving her,--willing to meet her +half-way, and very willing to follow her the rest of the way--if she +could draw him. And what was she to do? Could she accept his gracefully +insulting semblance of a love she knew he did not feel? Could they see +each other a dozen times, swearing not to mention the possibility of +loving,--so that she might have a chance to reimpress him with her +blondined hair--it _is_ touched up, you know--and small talk? And--and +_besides_--" + +"It is the duty of every young woman to consider what she owes to her +family," said I, absentmindedly. Rosalind Jemmett's family consists of +three aunts, and the chief of these is Aunt Marcia, who lives in +Lichfield. Aunt Marcia is a portly, acidulous and discomposing person, +with eyes like shoe-buttons and a Savonarolan nose. She is also a +well-advertised philanthropist, speaks neatly from the platform, and +has wide experience as a patroness, and extreme views as to +ineligibles. + +Rosalind flushed somewhat. "And so," said she, "the girl exercised her +common-sense, and was nervous, and said foolish things about new plays, +and the probability of rain--to keep from saying still more foolish +things about herself; and refused to talk personalities; and let him +go, with the knowledge that he would not come back. Then she went to +her room, and had a good cry. Now," she added, after a pause, "you +understand." + +"I do not," I said, very firmly, "understand a lot of things." + +"Yet a woman would," she murmured. + +This being a statement I was not prepared to contest, I waved it aside. +"And so," said I, "they laughed; and agreed it was a boy-and-girl +affair; and were friends." + +"It was the best thing--" said she. + +"Yes," I assented,--"for Orlando." + +"--and it was the most sensible thing." + +"Oh, eminently!" + +This seemed to exhaust the subject, and I lay down once more among the +pine-needles. + +"And that," said Rosalind, "was the reason Jaques came to Arden?" + +"Yes," said I. + +"And found it--?" + +"Shall we say--Hades?" + +"Oh!" she murmured, scandalised. + +"It happened," I continued, "that he was cursed with a good memory. And +the zest was gone from his little successes and failures, now there was +no one to share them; and nothing seemed to matter very much. Oh, he +really was the sort of man that never grows up! And it was dreary to +live among memories of the past, and his life was now somewhat +perturbed by disapproval of his own folly and by hunger for a woman who +was out of his reach." + +"And Rosalind--I mean the girl--?" + +"She married Orlando--or Gamelyn, or Alfred, or Athelstane, or +Ethelred, or somebody,--and, whoever it was, they lived happily ever +afterward," I said, morosely. + +Rosalind pondered over this dénouement for a moment. + +"Do you know," said she, "I think--" + +"It's a rather dangerous practice," I warned her. + +Rosalind sighed, wearily; but in her cheek at about this time occurred +a dimple. + +"--I think that Rosalind must have thought the play +very badly named." + +"_As You Like It_?" I queried, obtusely. + +"Yes--since it wasn't, for her." + +It is unwholesome to lie on the ground after sunset. + + + 4 + +"I had rather a scene with Alfred yesterday morning. He said you drank, +and gambled, and were always running after--people, and weren't in +fine, a desirable person for me to know. He insinuated, in fact, that +you were a villain of the very deepest and non-crocking dye. He told me +of instances. His performance would have done credit to Ananias. I was +_mad_! So I gave him his old ring back, and told him things I can't +tell _you_,--no, not just yet, dear. He is rather like a muffin, isn't +he?" she said, with the lightest possible little laugh--"particularly +like one that isn't quite done." + +"Oh, Rosalind," I babbled, "I mean to prove that you were right. And I +_will_ prove it, too!" + +And indeed I meant all that I said--just then. + +Rosalind said: "Oh, Jaques, Jaques! what a child you are!" + + + + +19. + +_He Plays the Improvident Fool_ + + +Now was I come near to the summit of my desires, and advantageously +betrothed to a girl with whom I was, in any event, almost in love; but +I presently ascertained, to my dismay, that sophisticated, "proper" +little Rosalind was thoroughly in love with me, and always in the back +of my mind this knowledge worried me. + +Imprimis, she persisted in calling me Jaques, which was uncomfortably +reminiscent of that time wherein I was called Jack. Yet my objection to +this silly nickname was a mischancy matter to explain. There was no way +of telling her that I disliked anything which reminded me of Gillian +Hardress, without telling more about Gillian than would be pleasant to +tell. So Rosalind went on calling me Jaques; and I was compelled to put +up with a trivial and unpremeditated, but for all that a daily, +annoyance; and I fretted under it. + +Item, she insisted on presenting me with all sorts of expensive +knick-knacks, and being childishly grieved when I remonstrated. + +"But I have the money," Rosalind would say, "and you haven't. So why +shouldn't I? And besides, it's really only selfishness on my part, +because I like doing things for you, and _if_ you liked doing things +for me, Jaques, you'd understand." + +So I would eventually have to swear that I did like "doing things" for +her; and it followed--somehow--that in consequence she had a perfect +right to give me anything she wanted to. + +And this too fretted me, mildly, all the summer I spent at Birnam Beach +with Rosalind and with the opulent friends of Rosalind's aunt from St. +Louis.... They were a queer lot. They all looked so unspeakably new; +their clothes were spick and span, and as expensive as possible, but +that was not it; even in their bathing suits these middle-aged +people--they were mostly middle-aged--seemed to have been very recently +finished, like animated waxworks of middle-aged people just come from +the factory. And they spent money in a continuous careless way that +frightened me. + +But I was on my very best, most dignified behavior; and when Aunt Lora +presented me as "one of the Lichfield Townsends, you know," these +brewers and breweresses appeared to be properly impressed. One of +them--actually--"supposed that I had a coat-of-arms"; which in +Lichfield would be equivalent to "supposing" that a gentleman possessed +a pair of trousers. But they were really very thoughtful about never +letting me pay for anything; in this regard there seemed afoot a sort +of friendly conspiracy. + +So the summer passed pleasantly enough; and we bathed, and held hands +in the moonlight, and danced at the Casino, and rode the +merry-go-round, and played ping-pong, and read _Dorothy Vernon of +Haddon Hall_,--which was much better, I told everybody, than that +idiotic George Clock book, _The Imperial Votaress_. And we drank +interminable suissesses, and it was all very pleasant. + +Yet always in the rear of my mind was stirring restively the instinct +to get back to my writing; and these sedately frolicsome benevolent +people--even Rosalind--plainly thought that "writing things" was just +the unimportant foible of an otherwise fine young fellow. + + + 2 + +And in September Rosalind came to visit her Aunt Marcia in Lichfield, +to get clothes and all other matters ready for our wedding in November; +and Lichfield, as always, made much of Rosalind, and she had the honor +of "leading" the first Lichfield German with Colonel Rudolph Musgrave. +My partner at that dance was the Marquise d'Arlanges.... + +I was seeing a deal of the Marquise d'Arlanges. She was Stella's only +sister, as you may remember, and was that autumn paying a perfunctory +visit to her parents--the second since her marriage. + +I shall not expatiate, however, concerning Madame la Marquise. You have +doubtless heard of her. For Lizzie has not, even yet, found a time +wherein to be idle; she has been busied since the hour of her birth in +acquiring first, plain publicity, and then social power, and every +other amenity of life in turn. I had not the least doubt even then of +her ending where she is now.... + +She was at this time still well upon the preferable side o! thirty, and +had no weaknesses save a liking for gossip, cigarettes, and admiration. +Lizzie was never the woman to marry a Peter Blagden. Once Stella was +settled, Lizzie Musgrave had sailed for Europe, and eventually had +arrived at Monaco with an apologetic mother, several letters of +introduction, and a Scotch terrier; and had established herself at the +Hôtel de la Paix, to look over the "available" supply of noblemen in +reduced circumstances. Before the end of a month Miss Musgrave had +reached a decision, had purchased her Marquis, much as she would have +done any other trifle that took her fancy, and had shipped her mother +back to America. Lizzie retained the terrier, however, as she was +honestly attached to it. + +Her marriage had been happy, and she found her husband on further +acquaintance, as she told me, a mild-mannered and eminently suitable +person, who was unaccountably addicted to playing dominoes, and who +spent a great deal of money, and dined with her occasionally. In a +sentence, the marquise was handsome, "had a tongue in her head," and, +to utilise yet another ancient phrase, was as hard as nails. + +And yet there was a family resemblance. Indeed, in voice and feature +she was strangely like an older Stella; and always I was cheating +myself into a half-belief that this woman I was talking with was +Stella; and Lizzie would at least enable me to forget, for a whole +half-hour sometimes, that Stella was dead.... + + * * * * * + +"I must thank you," I said, one afternoon, when I arose to go, "for a +most pleasant dream of--what we'll call the Heart's Desire. I suppose I +have been rather stupid, Lizzie; and I apologise for it; but people are +never exceedingly hilarious in dreams, you know." + +She said, very gently: "I understand. For I loved Stella too. And that +is why the room is never really lighted when you come. Oh, you stupid +man, how could I have _helped_ knowing it--that all the love you have +made to me was because you have been playing I was Stella? That +knowledge has preserved me, more than once, my child, from succumbing +to your illicit advances in this dead Lichfield." + +And I was really astonished, for she was not by ordinary the sort of +woman who consents to be a makeshift. + +I said as much, "And it _has_ been a comfort, Lizzie, because she +doesn't come as often now, for some reason--" + +"Why--what do you mean?" + +The room was very dark, lit only by the steady, comfortable glow of a +soft-coal fire. For it was a little after sunset, and outside, +carriages were already rumbling down Regis Avenue, and people were +returning from the afternoon drive. I could not see anything +distinctly, excepting my own hands, which were like gold in the +firelight; and so I told her all about _The Indulgences of Ole-Luk-Ole_. + +"She came, that first time, over the crest of a tiny upland that lay in +some great forest,--Brocheliaunde, I think. I knew it must be autumn, +for the grass was brown and every leaf upon the trees was brown. And +she too was all in brown, and her big hat, too, was of brown felt, and +about it curled a long ostrich feather dyed brown; and my first +thought, as I now remember, was how in the dickens could any mediaeval +lady have come by such a garb, for I knew, somehow, that this was a +woman of the Middle Ages. + +"Only her features were those of Stella, and the eyes of this woman +were filled with an unutterable happiness and fear, as she came toward +me,--just as the haunting eyes of Stella were upon the night she +married Peter Blagden, and I babbled nonsense to the moon. + +"'Oh, I have wanted you,--I have wanted you!' she said; and afterward, +unarithmeticably dimpling, just as she used to do, you may remember: +_'Depardieux,_ messire! have you then forgotten that upon this forenoon +we hunt the great boar?" + +"'Stella!' I said, 'O dear, dear Stella! what does it mean?' + +"'You silly! it means, of course, that Ole-Luk-Oie is kind, and has put +us both into the glaze of the mustard-jar--only I wonder which one we +have gotten into?' Stella said. 'Don't you remember them, dear--the +blue mustard-jar and the red one your Mammy had that summer at the +Green Chalybeate, with men on them hunting a boar?' + +"'They stood, one on each corner of the mantelpiece,' I said; 'and in +the blue one she kept matches, and in the other--' + +"'She kept buttons in the red one,' said Stella,--'big, shiny white +buttons, with four holes in them, that had come off your underclothes, +and were to be sewed on again. One day you swallowed one of 'em, I +remember, because you _would_ keep it in your mouth while you swung in +the hammock. And you thought it would surely kill you, so you knelt +down in the dry leaves and prayed God He wouldn't let it kill you.' + +"'But you weren't there,' I protested; 'nobody was there. So nobody +ever knew anything about it, though may be you--' For I had just +remembered that Stella was dead, only I knew it was against some rule +to mention it. + +"'Well, at any rate I'm _here_,' said Stella, 'and Ole-Luk-Oie is kind; +and we had better go and hunt the great boar at once, I suppose, since +that is what the people on the mustard-jars always do.' + +"'But how did you come hither, O my dear--?' + +"'Why, through your wanting me so much,' she said. 'How else?' + +"And I understood.... + +"So we went and slew the great boar. I slew it personally, with a long +spear, and with Stella clasping her hands in the background. Only there +was a nicked place in the mustard-jar, where I had dropped it on the +hearth some fifteen years ago, and my horse kept stumbling over this +crevice, so that I knew it was the red jar and the buttons we were +riding around. And afterward I made a song in honour of my Stella,--a +song so perfect that I presently awoke, weeping with joy that I had +made a song so beautiful, and with the knowledge I could not now +recollect a single word of it; and I knew that neither I nor any other +man could ever make again a song one-half so beautiful.... + +"Since then Ole-Luk-Oie--or someone--has been very kind at times. He +always lets me into pictures, though, never into mouse-holes and +hen-houses and silly places like that, as he did little Hjalmar. I +don't know why.... + +"Once it was into the illustrations to the _Popular Tales of +Poictesme_, and we met my great grandfather Jurgen there. And once it +was into the picture on the cover of that unveracious pamphlet the +manager of the Green Chalybeate sends in the spring to everybody who +has once been there. That time was very odd. + +"It is a picture of the Royal Hotel, you may remember, as it used to be +a good ten years ago. Both fountains were playing in the sunlight, +--they were torn down when I was at college, and I had almost forgotten +their existence; and elegant and languid ladies were riding by, in +victorias, and under tiny parasols trimmed with fringe, and all these +ladies wore those preposterously big sleeves they used to wear then; +and men in little visored skull caps were passing on tall old-fashioned +bicycles, just as they do in the picture. Even the silk-hatted +gentleman in the corner, pointing out the beauties of the building with +his cane, was there. + +"And Stella and I walked past the margin of the picture, and so on down +the boardwalk to the other hotel, to look for our parents. And we +agreed not to tell anyone that we had ever grown up, but just to let it +be a secret between us two; and we were to stay in the picture forever, +and grow up all over again, only we would arrange everything +differently. And Stella was never to go driving on the twenty-seventh +of April, so that we would be quite safe, and would live together for a +long, long while. + +"She wouldn't promise, though, that when Peter Blagden asked to be +introduced, she would refuse to meet him. She just giggled and shook +her sunny head. She hadn't any hat on. She was wearing the +blue-and-white sailor-suit, of course.".... + + + 4 + +But a servant was lighting up the front-hall, and the glare of it came +through the open door, and now the room was just like any other room. + +"And you are Robert Townsend!" the marquise observed. "The one my +mother doesn't approve of as a visitor!" + +Madame d'Arlanges said, with a certain lack of sequence: "And yet you +are planning to do precisely what Peter Blagden did. He liked Stella, +she amused him, and he thought her money would come in very handy; and +so he, somehow, contrived to marry her in the end, because she was just +a child, and you were a child, and he wasn't. And he always lied to her +about--about those business-trips--even from the very first. I knew, +because I'm not a sentimental person. But, Bob, how can you stoop to +mimic Peter Blagden! For you are doing precisely what he did; and for +Rosalind, just as it was for Stella, it is almost irresistible, to have +the chance of reforming a man who has notoriously been 'talked about.' +Still, I see that for Stella's sake you won't lie as steadfastly to +Rosalind as Peter did to Stella. It is none of my business of course; +oh, I don't meddle. I merely prophesy that you won't." + +But those lights had made an astonishing difference. And so, "But why +not?" said I. "It is the immemorial method of dealing with savages; and +surely women can never expect to become quite civilised so long as +chivalry demands that a man say to a woman only what he believes she +wants to hear? Ah, no, my dear Lizzie; when a man tries to get into a +woman's favour, custom demands that he palliate the invasion with +flatteries and veiled truths--or, more explicitly, with lies,--just as +any sensible explorer must come prepared to leave a trail of +looking-glasses and valueless bright beads among the original owners of +any unknown country. For he doesn't know what obstacles he may +encounter, and he has been taught, from infancy, to regard any woman as +a baleful and unfathomable mystery--" + +"She is never so--heaven help her!--if the man be sufficiently +worthless." + +"I rejoice that we are so thoroughly at one. For upon my word, I +believe this widespread belief in feminine inscrutability is the result +of a conspiracy on the part of the weaker sex; and that every mother is +somehow pledged to inculcate this belief into the immature masculine +mind. Apparently the practice originated in the Middle Ages, for it +never seemed to occur to anybody before then that a woman was +particularly complex. Though, to be sure, Catullus now--" "This is not +a time for pedantry. I don't in the least care what Catullus or anyone +else observed concerning anything--" "But I had not aspired, my dear +Lizzie, to be even remotely pedantic. I was simply about to remark that +Catullus, or Ariosto, or Coventry Patmore, or King Juba, or Posidonius, +or Sir John Vanbrugh, or perhaps, Agathocles of Chios, or else +Simonides the Younger, has conceded somewhere, that women are, in +certain respects, dissimilar, as it were, to men." "I am merely urging +you not to marry this silly little Rosalind, for the excellent reason +that you _did_ love my darling Stella even more than I, and that +Rosalind is in love with you." "Do you really think so?" said I. "Why, +then, actuated by the very finest considerations of decency and +prudence and generosity, I shall, of course, espouse her the very next +November that ever is." + +The marquise retorted: "No,--because you are at bottom too fond of +Rosalind Jemmett; and, besides, it isn't really a question of your +feeling toward _her_. In any event, I begin to like you too well, Bob, +to let you kiss me any more." + +I declared that I detested paradox. Then I went home to supper. + + + 5 + +But, for all this, I meditated for a long while upon what Lizzie had +said. It was true that I was really fond of "proper" little Rosalind +Jemmett; concerning myself I had no especial illusions; and, to my +credit, I faced what I considered the real issue, squarely. + +We were in Aunt Marcia's parlour. Rosalind was an orphan, and lived in +turn with her three aunts. She said the other two were less unendurable +than Aunt Marcia, and I believed her. I consider, to begin with, that a +person is not civilised who thumps upon the floor upstairs with a +poker, simply because it happens to be eleven o'clock; and moreover, +Aunt Marcia's parlour--oh, it really was a "parlour,"--was entirely too +like the first night of a charity bazaar, when nothing has been sold. + +The room was not a particularly large one; but it contained exactly +three hundred and seven articles of bijouterie, not estimating the +china pug-dog upon the hearth. I know, for I counted them. + +Besides, there were twenty-eight pictures upon the walls--one in oils +of the late Mr. Dumby (for Aunt Marcia was really Mrs. Clement Dumby), +painted, to all appearances, immediately after the misguided gentleman +who married Aunt Marcia had been drowned, and before he had been wiped +dry,--and for the rest, everywhere the eye was affronted by engravings +framed in gilt and red-plush of "Sanctuary," "Le Hamac," "Martyre +Chrétienne," "The Burial of Latané," and other Victorian outrages. + +Then on an easel there was a painting of a peacock, perched upon an +urn, against a gilded background; this painting irrelevantly deceived +your expectations, for it was framed in blue plush. Also there were +"gift-books" on the centre table, and a huge volume, again in red +plush, with its titular "Album" cut out of thin metal and nailed to the +cover. This album contained calumnious portraits of Aunt Marcia's +family, the most of them separately enthroned upon the same imitation +rock, in all the pride of a remote, full-legged and starchy youth, each +picture being painfully "coloured by hand." + + + 6 + +"Do you know why I want to marry you?" I demanded of Rosalind, in such +surroundings, apropos of a Mrs. Vokins who had taken a house in +Lichfield for the winter, and had been at school somewhere in the +backwoods with Aunt Marcia, and was "dying to meet me." + +She answered, in some surprise: "Why, because you have the good taste +to be heels over head in love with me, of course." + +I took possession of her hands. "If there is anything certain in this +world of uncertainties, it is that I am not the least bit in love with +you. Yet, only yesterday--do you remember, dear?" + +She answered, "I remember." + +"But I cannot, for the life of me, define what happened yesterday. I +merely recall that we were joking, as we always do when together, and +that on a wager I loosened your hair. Then as it tumbled in great +honey-coloured waves about you, you were silent, and there came into +your eyes a look I had never seen before. And even now I cannot define +what happened, Rosalind! I only know I caught your face between my +hands, and for a moment held it so, with fingers that have not yet +forgotten the feel of your soft, thick hair,--and that for a breathing +space your eyes looked straight into mine. Something changed in me +then, my lady. Something changed in you, too, I think." + +Then Rosalind said, "Don't, Jaques--!" She was horribly embarrassed. + +"For I knew you willed me to possess you, and that possession would +seem as trivial as a fiddle in a temple.... Yet, too, there was a +lustful beast, somewhere inside of me, which nudged me to--kiss you, +say! But nothing happened. I did not even kiss you, my beautiful and +wealthy Rosalind." + +"Don't keep on talking about the money," she wailed. "Why, you can't +believe I think you mercenary!" + +"I would estimate your intellect far more cheaply, my charming +Rosalind, if you thought anything else; for of course I am. I wanted to +settle myself, you conceive, and as an accomplice you were very +eligible. I now comprehend it is beyond the range of rationality, dear +stranger, that we should ever marry each other; and so we must not. We +must not, you comprehend, since though we lived together through ten +patriarchal lifetimes we would die strangers to each other. +For you, dear clean-souled girl that you are, were born that you might +be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy children. The +world was made for you and for your offspring; and in time your +children will occupy this world and make the laws for us irrelevant +folk that scribble and paint and design all useless and beautiful +things, and thus muddle away our precious lives. No, you may not wisely +mate with us, for you are a shade too terribly at ease in the universe, +you sensible people." + +"But I love Art," said Rosalind, bewildered. + +"Yes,--but by the tiniest syllable a thought too volubly, my dear. You +are the sort that quotes the Rubaiyat. Whereas I--was it yesterday or +the day before you told me, with a wise pucker of your beautiful low, +white brow, that I had absolutely no sense of the responsibilities of +life? Well, I really haven't, dear stranger, as you appraise them; and, +indeed, I fear we must postpone our agreement upon any possible +subject, until the coming of the Coquecigrues. We see the world so +differently, you and I,--and for that same reason I cannot but adore +you, Rosalind. For with you I can always speak my true thought and know +that you will never for a moment suspect it to be anything but irony. +Ah, yes, we can laugh and joke together, and be thorough friends; but +if there is anything certain in this world of uncertainties, it is that +I am not, and cannot be, in love with you. And yet--I wonder now?" said +I, and I rose and paced Aunt Marcia's parlour. + +"You wonder? Don't you understand even now?" the girl said shyly. "I am +not as clever as you, of course; I have known that for a long while, +Jaques; and to-night in particular I don't quite follow you, my dear, +but I love you, and--why, there is _nothing_ I could deny you!" + +"Then give me back my freedom," said I. "For, look you, Rosalind, +marriage is proverbially a slippery business. Always there are a +variety of excellent reasons for perpetrating matrimony; but the rub of +it is that not any one of them insures you against to-morrow. Love, for +example, we have all heard of; but I have known fine fellows to fling +away their chances in life, after the most approved romantic fashion, +on account of a pretty stenographer, and to beat her within the +twelvemonth. And upon my word, you know, nobody has a right to blame +the swindled lover for doing this--" + +I paused to inspect the china pug-dog which squatted on the pink-tiled +hearth and which glared inanely at the huge brass coal-box just +opposite. Then I turned from these two abominations and faced Rosalind +with a bantering flirt of my head. + +"--For put it that I marry some entrancing slip of girlhood, what am I +to say when, later, I discover myself irrevocably chained to a fat and +dowdy matron? I married no such person, I have indeed sworn eternal +fidelity to an entirely different person; and this unsolicited usurper +of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my +entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to justify the +ensuing action before an irrational audience, which faces common logic +in very much the attitude of Augustine's famed adder! Decidedly I think +that, on the whole, I would prefer my Freedom." + +It was as though I had struck her. She sat as if frozen. "Jaques, is +there another woman in this?" + +"Why, in a fashion, yes. Yet it is mainly because I am really fond of +you, Rosalind." + +She handed me that exceedingly expensive ring the jeweler had charged +to me. I thought her action damnably theatrical, but still, it was not +as though I could afford to waste money on rings, so I took the trinket +absent-mindedly. + +"You are unflatteringly prompt in closing out the account," I said, +with a grieved smile.... + +"Good-bye!" said Rosalind, and her voice broke. "Oh, and I had +thought--! Well, as it is, I pay for the luxury of thinking, just as +you forewarned me, don't I, Jaques? And you won't forget the +hall-light? Aunt Marcia, you know--but how glad _she_ will be! I feel +rather near to Aunt Marcia to-night," said Rosalind. + + + 7 + +She left Lichfield the next day but one, and spent the following winter +with the aunt that lived in Brooklyn. She was Rosalind Gelwix the next +time I saw her.... + +And Aunt Marcia, whose taste is upon a par with her physical +attractions, inserted a paragraph in the "Social Items" of the +Lichfield _Courier-Herald_ to announce the breaking-off of the +engagement. Aunt Marcia also took the trouble to explain, quite +confidentially, to some seven hundred and ninety-three people, just why +the engagement had been broken off: and these explanations were more +creditable to Mrs. Dumby's imagination than to me. + +And I remembered, then, that the last request my mother made of me was +to keep out of the newspapers--"except, of course, the social +items".... + + + + +20. + +_He Dines Out, Impeded by Superstitions_ + + +Within the week I had repented of what I termed my idiotic quixotism, +and for precisely nine days after that I cursed my folly. And then, at +the Provises, I comprehended that in breaking off my engagement to +Rosalind Jemmett I had acted with profound wisdom, and I unfolded my +napkin, and said: + +"Do you know I didn't catch your name--not even this time?" + +She took a liberal supply of lemon juice. "How delightful!" she +murmured, "for I heard yours quite distinctly, and these oysters are +delicious." + +I noted with approval that her gown was pink and fluffy; it had also the +advantage of displaying shoulders that were incredibly white, and a +throat which was little short of marvellous. "I am glad," I whispered, +confidentially, "that you are still wearing that faint vein about your +left temple. I thought it admirable for early morning wear upon the +house tops of Liege, but it seems equally effective for dinner parties." + +She raised her eyebrows slightly and selected a biscuit. + +"You see," said I, "I was horribly late. And when Kittie Provis said, +'Allow me,' and I saw--well, I didn't care," I concluded, lucidly, +"because to have every one of your dreams come true, all of a sudden, +leaves you past caring." + +"It really is funny," she confided to a spoonful of _consomme a la +Julienne_. + +"After almost two years!" sighed I, ever so happily. But I continued, +with reproach, "To go without a word--that very day--" + +"Mamma--" she began. + +I recalled the canary-bird, and the purple shawl. "I sought wildly," +said I; "you were evanished. The _proprietaire_ was tearing his hair--no +insurance--he knew nothing. So I too tore my hair; and I said things. +There was a row. For he also said things: 'Figure to yourselves, +messieurs! I lose the Continental--two ladies come and go, I know not +who--I am ruined, desolated, is it not?--and this pig of an American +blusters--ah, my new carpets, just down, what horror!' And then, you +know, he launched into a quite feeling peroration concerning our +notorious custom of tomahawking one another-- + +"Yes," I coldly concluded into Mrs. Clement Dumby's ear, "we all behaved +disgracefully. As you very justly observe, liquor has been the curse of +the South." It was of a piece with Kittie Provis to put me next to Aunt +Marcia, I reflected. + +And mentally I decided that even though a portion of my assertions had +not actually gone through the formality of occurring, it all might very +easily have happened, had I remained a while longer in Liege; and then +ensued a silent interval and an entree. + +"And so--?" + +"And so I knocked about the world, in various places, hoping against +hope that at last--" + +"Your voice carries frightfully--" + +I glanced toward Mrs. Clement Dumby, who, as a dining dowager of many +years' experience, was, to all appearances, engrossed by the contents of +her plate. "My elderly neighbour is as hard of hearing as a +telephone-girl," I announced. She was the exact contrary, which was why +I said it quite audibly. "And your neighbour--why, _his_ neighbour is +Nannie Allsotts. We might as well be on a desert island, Elena--" And +the given name slipped out so carelessly as to appear almost accidental. + +"Sir!" said she, with proper indignation; "after so short an +acquaintance--" + +"Centuries," I suggested, meekly. "You remember I explained about that." + +She frowned,--an untrustworthy frown that was tinged with laughter. "One +meets so many people! Yes, it really is frightfully warm, Colonel +Grimshaw; they ought to open some of the windows." + +"Er--haw--hum! Didn't see you at the Anchesters." + +"No; I am usually lucky enough to be in bed with a sick headache when +Mrs. Anchester entertains. Of two evils one should choose the lesser, +you know." + +In the manner of divers veterans Colonel Grimshaw evinced his mirth upon +a scale more proper to an elephant; and relapsed, with a reassuring air +of having done his duty once and for all. + +"I never," she suggested, tentatively, "heard any more of your poem, +about--?" + +"Oh, I finished it; every magazine in the country knows it. It is poor +stuff, of course, but then how could I write of Helen when Helen had +disappeared?" + +The lashes exhibited themselves at full length. "I looked her up," +confessed their owner, guiltily, "in the encyclopaedia. It was very +instructive--about sun-myths and bronzes and the growth of the epic, you +know, and tree-worship and moon-goddesses. Of course"--here ensued a +flush and a certain hiatus in logic,--"of course it is nonsense." + +"Nonsense?" My voice sank tenderly. "Is it nonsense, Elena, that for two +years I have remembered the woman whose soft body I held, for one +unforgettable moment, in my arms? and nonsense that I have fought all +this time against--against the temptations every man has,--that I might +ask her at last--some day when she at last returned, as always I knew +she would--to share a fairly decent life? and nonsense that I have +dreamed, waking and sleeping, of a wondrous face I knew in Ilium first, +and in old Rome, and later on in France, I think, when the Valois were +kings? Well!" I sighed, after vainly racking my brain for a tenderer +fragment of those two-year-old verses, "I suppose it is nonsense!" + +"The salt, please," quoth she. She flashed that unforgotten broadside at +me. "I believe you need it." + +"Why, dear me! of course not!" said I, to Mrs. Dumby; "immorality lost +the true _cachet_ about the same time that ping-pong did. Nowadays +divorces are going out, you know, and divorcees are not allowed to. +Quite modish women are seen in public with their husbands nowadays." + +"H'mph!" said Mrs. Dumby; "I've no doubt that you must find it a most +inconvenient fad!" + +I ate my portion of duck abstractedly. "Thus to dive into the +refuse-heap of last year's slang does not quite cover the requirements +of the case. For I wish--only I hardly dare to ask--" + +"If I were half of what you make out," meditatively said she, "I would +be a regular fairy, and couldn't refuse you the usual three wishes." + +"Two," I declared, "would be sufficient." + +"First?" + +"That you tell me your name." + +"I adore orange ices, don't you? And the second?" was her comment. + +"Well, then, you' re a pig," was mine. "You are simply a nomenclatural +Berkshire. But the second is that you let me measure your finger--oh, +any finger will do. Say, the third on the left hand." + +"You really talk to me as if--" But this non-existent state of affairs +proved indescribable, and the unreal condition lapsed into a pout. + +"Oh, very possibly!" I conceded; "since the way in which a man talks to +a woman--to _the_ woman--depends by ordinary upon the depth--" + +"The depth of his devotion?" she queried, helpfully. "Of course!" + +I faced the broadside, without flinching. "No," said I, critically; "the +depth of her dimples." + +"Nonsense!" Nevertheless, the dimples were, and by a deal, the more +conspicuous. We were getting on pretty well. + +I bent forward; there was a little catch in my voice. Aunt Marcia was +listening. I wanted her to listen. + +"You must know that I love you," I said, simply, "I have always loved +you, I think, since the moment my eyes first fell upon you in +that--other pink thing. Of course, I realize the absurdity of my talking +in this way to a woman whose name I don't know; but I realise more +strongly that I love you. Why, there is not a pulse in my body which +isn't throbbing and tingling and leaping riotously from pure joy of +being with you again, Elena! And in time, you will love me a little, +simply because I want you to,--isn't that always a woman's main reason +for caring for a man?" + +She considered this, dubious and flushed. + +"I will not insist," said I, with a hurried and contented laugh, "that +you were formerly an Argive queen. I mean I will not be obstinate about +it, because that, I confess, was a paraphrase of my verses. But Helen +has always been to me the symbol of perfect loveliness, and so it was +not unnatural that I should confuse you with her." + +"Thank you, sir," said she, demurely. + +"I half believe it is true, even now; and if not--well, Helen was +acceptable enough in her day, Elena, but I am willing to Italianise, for +I have seen you and loved you, and Helen is forgot. It is not exactly +the orthodox pace for falling in love," I added, with a boyish candour, +"but it is very real to me." + +"You--you couldn't have fallen in love--really--" + +"It was not in the least difficult," I protested. + +"And you don't even know my _name_--" + +"I know, however, what it is going to be," said I; "and Mrs. 'Enry +'Awkins, as we'll put it, has found favour in the judgment of +connoisseurs. So after dinner--in an hour--?" + +"Oh, very well! since you're an author and insist, I will be ready, in +an hour, to decline you, with thanks." + +"Rejection not implying any lack of merit," I suggested. "This is +damnable iteration; but I am accustomed to it." + +But by this, Mrs. Provis was gathering eyes around the table, and her +guests arose, with the usual outburst of conversation, and swishing of +dresses, and the not always unpremeditated dropping of handkerchiefs and +fans. Mrs. Clement Dumby bore down upon us now, a determined and +generously proportioned figure in her notorious black silk. + +"Really," said she, aggressively, "I never saw two people more +engrossed. My dear Mrs. Barry-Smith, you have been so taken up with Mr. +Townsend, all during dinner, that I haven't had a chance to welcome you +to Lichfield. Your mother and I were at school together, you know. And +your husband was quite a beau of mine. So I don't feel, now, at all as +if we were strangers--" + +And thus she bore Elena off, and I knew that within ten minutes Elena +would have been warned against me, as "not quite a desirable +acquaintance, you know, my dear, and it is only my duty to tell you that +as a young and attractive married woman--" + + + 2 + +"And so," I said in my soul, as the men redistributed themselves, "she +is married,--married while you were pottering with books and the turn of +phrases and immortality and such trifles--oh, you ass! And to a man +named Barry-Smith--damn him, I wonder whether he is the hungry scut that +hasn't had his hair cut this fall, or the blancmange-bellied one with +the mashed-strawberry nose? Yes, I know everybody else. And Jimmy Travis +is telling a funny story, so _laugh_! People will think you are grieving +over Rosalind.... But why in heaven's name isn't Jimmy at home this very +moment,--with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of +paregoric on his mantelpiece,--instead of here, grinning like a fool +over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to +marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron +that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren't _you_ married--married +years ago,--with a home of your own, and a victoria for Mrs. Townsend +and bills from the kindergarten every quarter? Oh, you bartender of +verbal cocktails! I believe your worst enemy flung your mind at you in a +moment of unbridled hatred." + +So I snapped the stem of my glass carefully, and scowled with morose +disapproval at the unconscious Mr. Travis, and his now-applauded and +very Fescennine jest.... + + + 3 + +I found her inspecting a bulky folio with remarkable interest. There was +a lamp, with a red shade, that cast a glow over her, such as one +sometimes sees reflected from a great fire. The people about us were +chattering idiotically, and something inside my throat prevented my +breathing properly, and I was miserable. + +"Mrs. Barry-Smith,"--thus I began,--"if you've the tiniest scrap of pity +in your heart for a very presumptuous, blundering and unhappy person, I +pray you to forgive and to forget, as people say, all that I have +blatted out to you. I spoke, as I thought, to a free woman, who had the +right to listen to my boyish talk, even though she might elect to laugh +at it. And now I hardly dare to ask forgiveness." + +Mrs. Barry-Smith inspected a view of the Matterhorn, with careful +deliberation. "Forgiveness?" said she. + +"Indeed," said I, "I _don't_ deserve it." And I smiled most resolutely. +"I had always known that somewhere, somehow, you would come into my life +again. It has been my dream all these two years; but I dream carelessly. +My visions had not included this--obstacle." + +She made wide eyes at me. "What?" said she. + +"Your husband," I suggested, delicately. + +The eyes flashed. And a view of Monaco, to all appearances, awoke some +pleasing recollection. "I confess," said Mrs. Barry-Smith, "that--for +the time--I had quite forgotten him. I--I reckon you must think me +very horrid?" + +But she was at pains to accompany this query with a broadside that +rendered such a supposition most unthinkable. And so-- + +"I think you--" My speech was hushed and breathless, and ended in a +click of the teeth. "Oh, don't let's go into the minor details," +I pleaded. + +Then Mrs. Barry-Smith descended to a truism. "It is usually better not +to," said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing +the facade of Notre Dame, "You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so much +older than I--" + +"I would prefer that. Of course, though, it is none of my business." + +"You see, you came and went so suddenly that--of course I never thought +to see you again--not that I ever thought about it, I reckon--" Her +candour would have been cruel had it not been reassuringly +over-emphasized. "And Mr. Barry-Smith was very pressing--" + +"He would be," I assented, after consideration. "It is, indeed, the +single point in his outrageous conduct I am willing to condone." + +"--and he was a great friend of my father's, and I _liked_ him--" + +"So you married him and lived together ever afterward, without ever +throwing the tureen at each other. That is the most modern version; but +there is usually a footnote concerning the bread-and-butter plates." + +She smiled, inscrutably, a sphinx in Dresden china. "And yet," she +murmured, plaintively, "I _would_ like to know what you think of me." + +"Why, prefacing with the announcement that I pray God I may never see +you after to-night, I think you the most adorable creature He ever made. +What does it matter now? I have lost you. I think--ah, desire o' the +world, what can I think of you? The notion of you dazzles me like +flame,--and I dare not think of you, for I love you." + +"Yes?" she queried, sweetly; "then I reckon Mrs. Dumby was right after +all. She said you were a most depraved person and that, as a young +and--well, _she_ said it, you know--attractive widow--" + +"H'm!" said I; and I sat down. "Elena Barry-Smith," I added, "you are an +unmitigated and unconscionable and unpardonable rascal. There is just +one punishment which would be adequate to meet your case; and I warn you +that I mean to inflict it. Why, how dare you be a widow! The court +decides it is unable to put up with any such nonsense, and that you've +got to stop it at once." + +"Really," said she, tossing her head and moving swiftly, "one would +think we _were_ on a desert island!" + +"Or a strange roof"--and I laughed, contentedly. "Meanwhile, about that +ring--it should be, I think, a heavy, Byzantine ring, with the stones +sunk deep in the dull gold. Yes, we'll have six stones in it; say, R, a +ruby; O, an opal; B, a beryl; E, an emerald; R, a ruby again, I suppose; +and T, a topaz. Elena, that's the very ring I mean to buy as soon as +I've had breakfast, tomorrow, as a token of my mortgage on the desire of +the world, and as the badge of your impendent slavery." And I reflected +that Rosalind had, after all, behaved commendably in humiliating me by +so promptly returning this ring. + +Very calmly Elena Barry-Smith regarded the Bay of Naples; very calmly +she turned to the Taj Mahal. "An obese young Lochinvar," she reflected +aloud, "who has seen me twice, unblushingly assumes he is about to marry +me! Of course," she sighed, quite tolerantly, "I know he is clean out of +his head, for otherwise--" "Yes,--otherwise?" I prompted. + +"--he would never ask me to wear an opal. Why," she cried in horror, "I +couldn't think of it!" "You mean--?" said I. + +She closed the album, with firmness. "Why, you are just a child," said +Mrs. Barry-Smith. "We are utter strangers to each other. Please remember +that, for all you know, I may have an unbridled temper, or an imported +complexion, or a liking for old man Ibsen. What you ask--only you don't, +you simply assume it,--is preposterous. And besides, opals +_are_ unlucky." + +"Desire o' the world," I said, in dolorous wise, "I have just remembered +the black-lace mitts and reticule you left upon the dinner-table. Oh, +truly, I had meant to bring 'em to you--Only _do_ you think it quite +good form to put on those cloth-sided shoes when you've been invited to +a real party?" + +For a moment Mrs. Barry-Smith regarded me critically. Then she shook her +head, and tried to frown, and reopened the album, and inspected the +crater of Vesuvius, and quite frankly laughed. And a tender, pink-tipped +hand rested upon my arm for an instant,--a brief instant, yet pulsing +with a sense of many lights and of music playing somewhere, and of a +man's heart keeping time to it. + +"If you were to make it an onyx--" said Mrs. Barry-Smith. + + + + +21. + +_He is Urged to Desert His Galley_ + + +She had been a widow even when I first encountered her in Liege. I may +have passed her dozens of times, only she was in mourning then, for +Barry-Smith, and so I never really saw her. + +It seems, though, that "in the second year" it is permissible to wear +pink garments in the privacy of your own apartments, and that if people +see you in them, accidentally, it is simply their own fault. + +And very often they are punished for it; as most certainly was I, for +Elena led me a devil's dance of jealousy, and rapture, and abject +misery, and suspicion, and supreme content, that next four months. She +and her mother had rented a house on Regis Avenue for the winter; and I +frequented it with zeal. Mrs. Vokins said I "came reg'lar as +the milkman." + + + 2 + +Now of Mrs. Vokins I desire to speak with the greatest respect, if only +for the reason that she was Elena Barry-Smith's mother. Mrs. Vokins had, +no doubt, the kindest heart in the world; but she had spent the first +thirty years of her life in a mountain-girdled village, and after her +husband's wonderful luck--if you will permit me her vernacular,--in +being "let in on the groundfloor" when the Amalgamated Tobacco Company +was organised, I believe that Mrs. Vokins was never again quite at ease. + +I am abysmally sure she never grew accustomed to being waited on by any +servant other than a girl who "came in by the day"; though, oddly +enough, she was incessantly harassed by the suspicion that one or +another "good-for-nothing nigger was getting ready to quit." Her time +was about equally devoted to tending her canary, Bill Bryan, and to +furthering an apparently diurnal desire to have supper served a quarter +of an hour earlier to-night, "so that the servants can get off." + +Finally Mrs. Vokins considered that "a good woman's place was right in +her own home, with a nice clean kitchen," and was used to declare that +the fummadiddles of Mrs. Carrie Nation--who was in New York that winter, +you may remember, advocating Prohibition,--would never have been stood +for where Mrs. Vokins was riz. Them Yankee huzzies, she estimated, did +beat her time. + + + 3 + +It was, and is, the oddest thing I ever knew of that Elena could have +been her daughter. Though, mind you, even to-day, I cannot commit myself +to any statement whatever as concerns Elena Barry-Smith, beyond +asserting that she was beautiful. I am willing to concede that since the +world's creation there may have lived, say, six or seven women who were +equally good to look upon; but at the bottom of my heart I know the +concession is simply verbal. For she was not pretty; she was not +handsome; she was beautiful. Indeed, I sometimes thought her beauty +overshadowed any serious consideration of the woman who wore it, just as +in admiration of a picture you rarely think to wonder what sort of +canvas it is painted on. + +Yes, I am quite sure, upon reflection, that to Elena Barry-Smith her +beauty was a sort of tyrant. She devoted her life, I think, to the +retention of her charms; and what with the fixed seven hours for +sleep--no more and not a moment less,--the rigid limits of her diet, the +walking of exactly five miles a day, and her mathematical adherence to a +predetermined programme of massage and hair-treatment and manicuring and +face-creams and so on, Elena had hardly two hours in a day at her +own disposal. + +She would as soon have thought of sacrificing her afternoon walk to the +Musgrave Monument and back, as of having a front-tooth unnecessarily +removed; and would as willingly have partaken of prussic acid as of +candy or potatoes. She was, in fine, an artist of the truest type, in +that she immolated her body, and her own preferences, in the cause +of beauty. + +Nor was she vain, or stupid either, though what I have written vaguely +sounds as though she were both. She was just Elena Barry-Smith, of whom +your memory was always how beautiful she had been at this or that +particular moment, rather than what she said or did. And I believe that +every man in Lichfield was in love with her. + +But, in recollection of any person with whom you have had intimate and +tender intercourse, the pre-eminent feature is the big host of questions +which you cannot answer, or not, at least, with certainty.... + + + 4 + +For instance: the night of the Allardyce dance, after seeing Elena home, +I stepped in for a moment to get warm and have her mix me a highball. We +sat for a considerable while on the long sofa in the dimly-lighted +dining room, talking in whispers so as not to disturb the rest of the +house: and Elena was unusually beautiful that night, and I was more than +usually in love, more thanks to three of the five drinks she mixed.... + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she stated, sighing. + +I did not say anything. + +"Oh, well, then--! If you will just promise me," she stipulated, "that +you will never in any way refer to it afterwards--" + +So I promised.... And the next day she met me, cool as the proverbial +cucumber, and never once did she "refer to it afterwards," nor did I +think it wise to do so either. But the incident, however delightful, +puzzled me. It puzzles me even now.... + + + 5 + +In any event, she was not only beautiful but exceedingly well-to-do +likewise, since her dead father and her husband also had provided for +her amply; and Lichfield sniggered in consequence, and as a matter of +course assumed my devotion to be of astute and mercenary origin. But I +had, in this period, a variety of reasons to know that Lichfield was for +once entirely in the wrong; and that what Lichfield mistook to be the +begetter of, was in reality--so we will phrase it--the almost +unnecessary augmenter of my infatuation. Of course I did not exactly +object to her having money.... + +Meantime Elena was profoundly various. I told her once that being +married to her would be the very next thing to owning a harem. And in +consequence of this same mutability, it was as late as March before +Elena Barry-Smith made up her mind to marry me; and I was so deliciously +perturbed that the same night I wrote to tell Bettie Hamlyn all about +it. I had accepted Rosalind more calmly somehow. Now I was dithyrambic; +and you would never have suspected I had lived within fifty miles of +Bettie for an entire two years without attempting to communicate with +her, for very certainly my letter did not touch upon the fact. I was, in +fine, supremely happy, and I wanted Bettie, first of all, to know of +this circumstance, because my happiness had always made her happy too. + +The act was natural enough; only Elena telephoned, at nine the following +morning, that she had altered her intention. + +"My regret is beyond expression," said I, politely, "I shall come for my +tea at five, however." + +She entered upon a blurred protest. "You have already broken my heart," +I said, with some severity, "and now it would appear you contemplate +swindling the remainder of my anatomy out of its deserts. You are a +curmudgeon." And I hung up the receiver. + +And my first thought was, "Oh, how gladly I would give the gold of Ormus +and of Alaska just to have my letter back!" But I had mailed it, +shuffling to the corner in my slippers, and without any collar on, in +the hushed middle of the night, because my letter had seemed so +important then. + + + 6 + +"Will you not have me, lady?" I began that afternoon. + +"No, my lord," she demurely responded, "for I've decided it would be too +much like living in my Sunday-clothes." + +And "I give it up. So what's the answer?" was my annotation. + +"Oh, I'm not making jokes to-day. Why are you so--Oh, as we used to say +at school," she re-began, _"Que diable allais-tu faire dans +cette galere?"_ + +"I was born in a vale of tears, Elena, and must take the consequences of +being found in such a situation." + +She came to me, and her finger-tips touched my hand ever so lightly. +"That is another quotation, I suppose. And it is one other reason why I +mean not to marry you. Frankly, you bore me to death with your +erudition; you are three-quarters in love with me, but you pay heaps +less attention to what I say about anything than to what Aristotle or +some other old fellow said about it. Oh, that I should have lived to be +jealous of Aristotle! Indeed I am, for I have the misfortune to be +hideously in love with you. You are so exactly the sort of infant I +would like to adopt." + +"Love," I suggested, "while no longer an excuse for marriage, is at +least a palliation." + +"Listen, dear. From the first I have liked you, but that was not very +strange, because I like almost everybody; but it was strange I should +have remembered you and have liked the idea of you ever since you went +away that first time." + +"Oh, well, this once I will excuse you--" + +"But it happened in this way: I had found everybody--very nice, you +know--particularly the men,--and the things which cannot be laughed at I +had always put aside as not worth thinking about. You like to laugh, +too, but I have always known--and sometimes it gets me real mad to think +about it, I can tell you--that you could be in earnest if you chose, and +I can't. And that makes me a little sorry and tremendously glad, +because, quite frankly, I _am_ head over heels in love with you. That is +why I don't intend to marry you." + +And I was not a little at sea. "Oh, very well!" I pleasantly announced, +"I shall become a prominent citizen at once, if that's all that is +necessary. I will join every one of the patriotic societies, and sit +perpetually on platforms with a perspiring water-pitcher, and unveil +things every week, with felicitous allusions to the glorious past of our +grand old State; and have columns of applause in brackets on the front +page of the _Courier-Herald_. I will even go into civic politics, if you +insist upon it, and leave round-cornered cards at all the drugstores, so +that everybody who buys a cigar will know I am subject to the Democratic +primary. I wonder, by the way, if people ever survive that malady? It +sounds to me a deal more dangerous that epilepsy, say, yet lots of +persons seem to have it--" + +But Elena was not listening. "You know," she re-began, "I could get out +of it all very gracefully by telling you you drink too much. You +couldn't argue it, you know--particularly after your behavior +last Tuesday." + +"Oh, now and then one must be sociable. You aren't a prude, Elena--" + +"However, I am not really afraid of that, somehow. I even confess I +don't actually _mind_ your being rather good for nothing. No woman ever +really does, though she has her preference, and pretends, of course, to +mind a great deal. What I mean, then, is this: You don't marry just me. +I--I have very few relations, just two brothers and my mother; yet, in a +sense, you know, you marry them as well. But I don't believe you would +like being married to them. They are so different from you, dear. Your +whole view-point of life is different--" + +I had begun to speak when she broke in: "No, don't say anything, please, +until I'm quite, quite through. My brothers are the most admirable men I +ever knew. I love them more than I can say. I trust them more than I do +you. But they are just _good_. They don't fail in the really important +things of life, but they are remiss in little ways, they--they don't +_care_ for the little elegantnesses, if that's a word. Even Arthur chews +tobacco when he feels inclined. And he thinks no _man_ would smoke a +cigarette. Oh, I can't explain just what I mean--" + +"I think I understand, Elena. Suppose we let it pass as said." + +"And Mamma is not--we'll say, particularly highly educated. Oh, you've +been very nice to her. She adores you. You won _her_ over completely +when you took so much trouble to get her the out-of-print paper +novels--about the village maidens and the wicked dukes--in that idiotic +Carnation Series she is always reading. The whole affair was just like +both of you, I think." + +"But, oh, my dear--!" I laughed. + +"No, not one man in a thousand would have remembered it after she had +said she did think the titles 'were real tasty'; and I don't believe any +other man in the world would have spent a week in rummaging the +second-hand bookstores, until he found them. Only I don't know, even +yet, whether it was really kindness, or just cleverness that put you up +to it--on account of me. And I do know that you are nice to her in +pretty much the same way you were nice to the negro cook yesterday. And +I have had more advantages than she's had. But at bottom I'm really just +like her. You'd find it out some day. And--and that is what I mean, +I think." + +I spoke at some length. It was atrocious nonsense which I spoke; in any +event, it looked like atrocious nonsense when I wrote it down just now, +and so I tore it up. But I was quite sincere throughout that moment; it +is the Townsend handicap, I suspect, always to be perfectly sincere for +the moment. + +"Oh, well!" she said; "I'll think about it." + + + 7 + +That night Elena and I played bridge against Nannie Allsotts and Warwick +Risby. I was very much in love with Elena, but I hold it against her, +even now, that she insisted on discarding from strength. However, there +was to be a little supper afterward, and you may depend upon it that +Mrs. Vokins was seeing to its preparation. + +She came into the room about eleven o'clock, beaming with kindliness and +flushed--I am sure,--by some slight previous commerce with the +kitchen-fire. + +"Well, well!" said Mrs. Vokins, comfortably; "and who's a-beating?" + +I looked up. I must protest, until my final day, I could not help it. +"Why, we is," I said. + +And Nannie Allsotts giggled, ever so slightly, and Warwick Risby had +half risen, with a quite infuriate face, and I knew that by to-morrow +the affair would be public property, and promptly lost the game and +rubber. Afterward we had our supper. + +When the others had gone--for my footing in the house was such that I, +by ordinary, stayed a moment or two after the others had gone,--Elena +Barry-Smith came to me and soundly boxed my jaws. + +"That," she said, "is one way to deal with you." + +A minute ago I had been ashamed of myself. I had not room to be that +now; I was too full of anger. "I did make rather a mess of it," I +equably remarked, "but, you see, Nannie had shown strength in diamonds, +and I simply couldn't resist the finesse. So they made every one of +their clubs. And I hadn't any business to take the chance of course at +that stage, with the ace right in my hand--" + +"Arthur would have said, before he'd thought of it, 'You damn fool--!' +And then he would have apologised for forgetting himself in the presence +of a lady," she said, in a sorry little voice. "Yes, you--you _have_ +hurt me," she presently continued,--"just as you meant to do, if that's +a comfort to you. I feel as though I'd smacked a marble statue. You are +the sort that used to take snuff just before they had their heads cut +off, and when _they_ were in the wrong. And I'm not. That's always been +the trouble." + +"Elena!" I began,--"wait, just a moment! I'm in anger now--!" It was not +much to stammer out, but for me, who have the Townsend temper, it was +very hard to say. + +"You talk about loving me! and I believe you do love me, in at any rate +a sort of way. But you'll never forget, you never _have_ forgotten, +those ancestors of yours who were in the House of Burgesses when I +hadn't any ancestors at all. It isn't fair, because we haven't got the +chance to pick our parents, and it's absurd, and--it's true. The woman +is my mother, and I'll be like her some day, very probably. Yes, she +_is_ ignorant and tacky, and at times she is ridiculous. She hadn't even +the smartness to notice it when you made a fool of her; and if anybody +were to explain it to her she would just laugh and say, 'Law, I don't +mind, because young people always have to have their fun, I reckon.' And +she would forgive you! Why, she adores you! she's been telling me for +months that you're 'a heap the nicest young man that visits with me.'" + +Afterward Elena paused for an instant. "I think that is all," she said. +"It's a difference that isn't curable. Yes, I simply wanted to tell you +that much, and then ask you to go, I believe--" + +"So you don't wish me, Elena, in the venerable phrase, to make an honest +woman of you?" + +She had half turned, standing, in pink and silver fripperies, with one +bared arm resting on the chair back, in one of her loveliest attitudes. +"What do you mean?" + +"I was referring to what happened the other night, after the Allardyce +dance." + +And Elena smiled rather strangely. "You baby! how much would it shock +you if I told you no woman really minds about that either? Any way, you +have broken your solemn promise," she said, with indignation. + +"Ah, but perfidy seemed, somehow, in tone with an establishment wherein +one concludes the evening's entertainment by physical assault upon the +guests. Frankly, my dear"--I observed, with my most patronizing languor, +--"your breeding is not quite that to which I have been accustomed, and +I have had a rather startling glimpse of Lena Vokins, with all the +laboriously acquired veneering peeling off. Still, in view of +everything, I suppose I do owe it to you to marry you, if you insist--" + +"Insist! I wouldn't wipe my feet on you!" + +"That especial demonstration of affection was not, as I recall, +requested of you. So it is all off? along with the veneering, eh? Well, +perhaps I did attach too much importance to that diverting epilogue to +the Allardyce dance. And as you say, Elena--and I take your word for it, +gladly,--once one has become used to granting these little favors +indiscriminately--" + +"Get out of my house!" Elena said, quite splendid in her fury, "or I +will have you horsewhipped. I was fond of you. You would not let me be +in peace. And I didn't know you until to-night for the sneering, +stuck-up dirty beast you are at heart--" She came nearer, and her +glittering eyes narrowed. "And you have no hold on me, no letters to +blackmail me with, and nobody anywhere would take your word for anything +against mine. You would only be whipped by some real man, and probably +shot. So do you remember to keep a watch upon that lying, sneering mouth +of yours! And do you get out of my house!" + +"It is only rented," I submitted: "yet, after all, to boast +vaingloriously of their possessions is pardonable in those who have +risen in the world, and aren't quite accustomed to it...." There were a +pair of us when it came to tempers. + + + 8 + +And I went homeward almost physically sick with rage. I knew, even then, +that, while Elena would forgive me in the outcome, if I set about the +matter properly, I could never bring myself to ask forgiveness. If only +she had been in the wrong, I could have eagerly gone back and have +submitted to the extremest and the most outrageous tyranny she +could devise. + +But--although I would never have blackmailed her, I think,--she had been +mainly in the right. She had humiliated me, with a certain lack of +decorum, to be sure, but with some justice: and to pardon plain +retaliation is beyond the compass of humanity. At least, it ranks among +achievements which have always baffled me. + + + + +22. + +_He Cleans the Slate_ + + +It was within a month of this other disaster that Jasper Hardress came +to America, accompanied by his wife. They planned a tour of the States, +which they had not visited in seven years, and more particularly, as his +forerunning letter said, they meant to investigate certain mining +properties which Hardress had acquired in Montana. So, not unstirred by +trepidations, I met them at the pier. + +For I was already in New York, in part to see a volume of my short +stories through the press--which you may or may not have read, in its +elaborate "gift-book" form, under the title of _The Aspirants_,--and in +part about less edifying employments. I was trying to forget Elena, and +in Lichfield it was not possible to induce such forgetfulness without +affording unmerited pleasure for gabbling busybodies.... It was not in +me to apologise, except in a letter, where the wording and interminable +tinkering with phraseology would enable me to forget it was I who was +apologising, until a bit of nearly perfect prose was safely mailed; and +I knew she would not read any letter from me, because Elena comprehended +that I always persuaded her to do what I prompted, if only she +listened to me. + +As it was, I talked that morning for an hour or more with fat Jasper +Hardress.... Even now I find the two errands which brought him to +America of not unlaughable incongruity. + + + 2 + +For, first, he came as an agent of the Philomatheans, who were +endeavouring to secure official recognition by the churches of America +and England of a revised translation of, in any event, the New +Testament. + +He told me of a variety of buttressing reasons,--which I suppose are +well-founded, though I must confess I never investigated the matter. He +told me how the Authorised Version was a paraphrase, abounding in +confusions and in mistranslations from the Greek of Erasmus's New +Testament, which, as the author confessed, "was rather tumbled headlong +into the world than edited." And he told me how the edition of Erasmus +itself was hastily prepared from careless copies of inaccurate +transcriptions of yet further copies of divers manuscripts of which the +oldest dates no further back than the fourth century, and is in turn, +most probably, just a liberal paraphrase, as all the others are, of +still another manuscript. + +So that the English version, as I gathered, may be very fine English, +but has scarcely a leg left, when you consider it as a safe foundation +for superiority, or pillorying, or as a guide in conduct. + +I suspect, however, that Jasper Hardress somewhat overstated the case, +since on this subject he was a fanatic. To me it seemed rather quaint +that Hardress or anybody else should be bothering about such things. + +And as he feelingly declaimed concerning the great Uncials, and +explained why in this particular verse the Ephraem manuscript was in the +right, whereas to probe the meaning of the following verse we clearly +must regard the Syriac version as of supreme authority, I could well +understand how at one period or another his young wife must inevitably +have considered him in the light of a rather tedious person. + +And I told him that it hardly mattered, because the true test of a +church-member was the ability to believe that when the Bible said +anything inconvenient it really meant something else. + +But actually I was not feeling over-cheerful, because Jasper's second +object in coming to America was to leave his wife in Sioux City, so that +she could secure a divorce from him, on quite un-Scriptural grounds. +Hardress told me of this at least without any excitement. He did not +blame her. He was too old for her, too stolid, too dissimilar in every +respect, he said. Their marriage had been a mistake, that was all,--a +mismating, as many marriages were. She wanted to marry someone else, he +rather thought. + +And "Oh, Lord! yes!" I inwardly groaned. "She probably does." + +Aloud I said: "But the Bible--Yes, I _am_ provincial at bottom. It's +because I always think in nigger-English and translate it when I talk. +It was my Mammy, you see, who taught me how to think,--and in our +nigger-English, what the Bible says is true. Why, Jasper, even this +Revised Version of yours says flatly that a man--" + +"Child, child!" said Jasper Hardress, and he patted my hair, and I +really think it crinkled under his touch, "when you grow up--if indeed +you ever do,--you will find that a man's feeling for his wife and the +mother of his children, is not altogether limited by what he has read in +a book. He wants--well, just her happiness." + +I looked up without thinking; and the aspect of that gross and +unattractive man humiliated me. He had reached a height denied to such +as I; and inwardly I cursed and envied this fat Jasper Hardress.... I +would have told him everything, had not the waiter come just then. + + + 3 + +And the same afternoon I was alone with Gillian Hardress, for the first +time in somewhat more than two years. We had never written each other; I +had been too cautious for that; and now when the lean, handsome woman +came toward me, murmuring "Jack--" very tenderly,--for she had always +called me Jack, you may remember,--I raised a hand in protest. + +"No,--that is done with, Jill. That is dead and buried now, my dear." + +She remained motionless; only her eyes, which were like chrysoberyls, +seemed to grow larger and yet more large. There was no anger in them, +only an augmenting wonder. + +"Ah, yes," she said at last, and seemed again to breathe; "so that is +dead and buried--in two years." Gillian Hardress spoke with laborious +precision, like a person struggling with a foreign language, and +articulating each word to its least sound before laying tongue to its +successor. + +"Yes! we have done with each other, once for all," said I, half angrily. +"I wash my hands of the affair, I clean the slate today. I am not polite +about it, and--I am sorry, dear. But I talked with your husband this +morning, and I will deceive Jasper Hardress no longer. The man loves you +as I never dreamed of loving any woman, as I am incapable of loving any +woman. He dwarfs us. Oh, go and tell him, so that he may kill us both! I +wish to God he would!" + +Mrs. Hardress said: "You have planned to marry. It is time the prodigal +marry and settle down, is it not? So long as we were in England it did +not matter, except to that Faroy girl you seduced and flung out into the +streets--" + +"I naturally let her go when I found out--" + +"As if I cared about the creature! She's done with. But now we are in +America, and Mr. Townsend desires no entanglements just now that might +prevent an advantageous marriage. So he is smitten--very +conveniently--with remorse." Gillian began to laugh. "And he discovers +that Jasper Hardress is a better man than he. Have I not always known +that, Jack?" + +Now came a silence. "I cannot argue with you as to my motives. Let us +have no scene, my dear--" + +"God keep us respectable!" the woman said; and then: "No; I can afford +to make no scene. I can only long to be omnipotent for just one instant +that I might deal with you, Robert Townsend, as I desire--and even then, +heaven help me, I would not do it!" Mrs. Hardress sat down upon the +divan and laughed, but this time naturally. "So! it is done with? I have +had my dismissal, and, in common justice, you ought to admit that I have +received it not all ungracefully." + +"From the first," I said, "you have been the most wonderful woman I have +ever known." And I knew that I was sincerely fond of Gillian Hardress. + +"But please go now," she said, "and have a telegram this evening that +will call you home, or to Kamchatka, or to Ecuador, or anywhere, on +unavoidable business. No, it is not because I loathe the sight of you or +for any melodramatic reason of that sort. It is because, I think, I had +fancied you to be not completely self-centred, after all, and I cannot +bear to face my own idiocy. Why, don't you realize it was only yesterday +you borrowed money from Jasper Hardress--some more money!" + +"Well, but he insisted on it: and I owed it to you to do nothing to +arouse his suspicions--" + +"And I don't hate you even now! I wish God would explain to me why He +made women so." + +"You accuse me of selfishness," I cried. "Ah, let us distinguish, for +there is at times a deal of virtue in this vice. A man who devotes +himself to any particular art or pursuit, for instance, becomes more and +more enamoured of it as time wears on, because he comes to identify it +with himself; and a husband is fonder of his wife than of any other +woman,--at least, he ought to be,--not because he considers her the most +beautiful and attractive person of his acquaintance, but because she is +the one in whom he is most interested and concerned. He has a +proprietary interest in her welfare, and she is in a manner part of +himself. Thus the arts flourish and the home-circle is maintained, and +all through selfishness." + +I snapped my fingers airily; I was trying, of course, to disgust her by +my callousness. And it appeared I had almost succeeded. + +"Please go!" she said. + +"But surely not while we are as yet involved in a question of plain +logic? You think selfishness a vice. None the less you must concede that +the world has invariably progressed because, upon the whole, we find +civilisation to be more comfortable than barbarism; and that a wholesome +apprehension of the penitentiary enables many of us to rise to +deaconships. Why, deuce take it, Jill! I may endow a hospital because I +want to see my name over the main entrance, I may give a beggar a penny +because his gratitude puts me in a glow of benevolence that is cheap at +the price. So let us not rashly declare that selfishness is a vice, +and--let us part friends, my dear." + +And I assumed possession of the thin hands that seemed to push me from +her in a species of terror, and I gallantly lifted them to my lips. + +The ensuing event was singular. Gillian Hardress turned to the door of +her bedroom and brutally, as with two bludgeons, struck again and again +upon its panels with clenched hand. She extended her hands to me, and +everywhere their knuckles oozed blood. "You kissed them," she said, "and +even today they liked it, and so they are not clean. They will never +again be clean, my dear. But they were clean before you came." + +Then Gillian Hardress left me, and where she had touched it, the brass +door knob of her bedroom door was smeared with blood.... + + + 4 + +When I had come again to Lichfield I found that in the brief interim of +my absence Elena Barry-Smith, without announcement, had taken the train +for Washington, and had in that city married Warwick Risby. This was, I +knew, because she comprehended that, if I so elected, it was always in +my power to stop her halfway up the aisle and to dissuade her from +advancing one step farther.... "I don't know _how_ it is!--" she would +have said, in that dear quasi-petulance I knew so well.... + +But as it was, I met the two one evening at the Provises', and with +exuberant congratulation. Then straddling as a young Colossus on the +hearth-rug, and with an admonitory forefinger, I proclaimed to the +universe at large that Mrs. Risby had blighted my existence and +beseeched for Warwick some immediate and fatal and particularly +excruciating malady. In fine, I was abjectly miserable the while that I +disarmed all comment by being quite delightfully boyish for a whole +two hours. + +I must record it, though, that Mrs. Vokins patted my hand when nobody +else was looking, and said: "Oh, my dear Mr. Bob, I wish it had been +you! You was always the one I liked the best." For that, in view of +every circumstance, was humorous, and hurt as only humour can. + +So in requital, on the following morning, I mailed to Mrs. Risby some +verses. This sounds a trifle like burlesque; but Elena had always a sort +of superstitious reverence for the fact that I "wrote things." It would +not matter at all that the verses were abominable; indeed, Elena would +never discover this; she would simply set about devising an excellent +reason for not showing them to anybody, and would consider Warwick +Risby, if only for a moment, in the light of a person who, whatever his +undeniable merits, had neither the desire nor the ability to write +"poetry." And, though it was hideously petty, this was precisely what I +desired her to do. + +So I dispatched to her a sonnet-sequence which I had originally +plagiarized from the French of Theodore Passerat in honour of Stella. I +loathed sending Stella's verses to anyone else, somehow; but, after all, +my one deterrent was merely a romantic notion; and there was not time to +compose a new set. Moreover, "your eyes are blue, your speech is +gracious, but you are not she; and I am older,--and changed how +utterly!--I am no longer I, you are not you," and so on, was absolutely +appropriate. And Elena most undoubtedly knew nothing of Theodore +Passerat. And Stella, being dead, could never know what I had done. + +So I sent the verses, with a few necessitated alterations, to the +address of Mrs. Warwick Risby. + + + 5 + +I had within the week, an unsigned communication which, for a long while +afterward, I did not comprehend. It was the photograph of an infant, +with the photographer's address scratched from the cardboard and without +of course any decipherable postmark; and upon the back of the thing was +written: "His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the +flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been +upon him. Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his +morsel and his song." + +I thought it was a joke of some sort. + +Then it occurred to me that this might be--somehow--Elena's answer. It +was an interpretation which probably appealed to the Supernal +Aristophanes. + + + + +23. + +_He Reviles Destiny and Climbs a Wall_ + + +But now the spring was come again, and, as always at this season, I was +pricked with vague longings to have done with roofs and paven places. I +wanted to be in the open. I think I wanted to fall in love with +somebody, and thereby somewhat to prolong the daily half-minute, +immediately after awakening in the morning, during which I did not think +about Elena Risby. + +I was bored in Lichfield. For nothing of much consequence seemed, as I +yawned over the morning paper, to be happening anywhere. The Illinois +Legislature had broken up in a free fight, a British square had been +broken in Somaliland, and at the Aqueduct track Alado had broken his +jockey's neck. A mob had chased a negro up Broadway: Russia had demanded +that China cede the sovereignty of Manchuria; and Dr. Lyman Abbott was +explaining why the notion of equal suffrage had been abandoned finally +by thinking people. + +Such negligible matters contributed not at all to the comfort or the +discomfort of Robert Etheridge Townsend; and I was pricked with vague +sweet longings to have done with roofs and paven places. If only I +possessed a country estate, a really handsome Manor or a Grange, I was +reflecting as I looked over the "Social Items," and saw that Miss +Hugonin and Colonel Hugonin had re-opened Selwoode for the summer +months.... + +So I decided I would go to Gridlington, whither Peter Blagden had +forgotten to invite me. He was extremely glad to see me, though, to do +him justice. For Peter--by this time the inheritor of his unlamented +uncle's estate,--had, very properly, developed gout, which is, I take +it, the time-honoured appendage of affluence and, so to speak, its +trade-mark; and was, for all his wealth, unable to get up and down the +stairs of his fine house without, as we will delicately word it, the +display and, at times, the overtaxing of a copious vocabulary. + + + 2 + +I was at Gridlington entirely comfortable. It was spring, to begin with, +and out of doors in spring you always know, at twenty-five, that +something extremely pleasant is about to happen, and that She is quite +probably around the very next turn of the lane. + +Moreover, there was at Gridlington a tiny private garden which had once +been the recreation of Peter Blagden's aunt (dead now twelve years ago), +and which had remained untended since her cosseting; and I in nature +took charge of it. + +There was in the place a wilding peach-tree, which I artistically sawed +into shape and pruned and grafted, and painted all those profitable +wounds with tar; and I grew to love it, just as most people do their +children, because it was mine. And Peter, who is a person of no +sensibility, wanted to ring for a servant one night, when there was a +hint of frost and I had started out to put a bucket of water under my +tree to protect it. I informed him that he was irrevocably dead to all +the nobler sentiments, and went to the laundry and got a wash-tub. + +Peter was not infrequently obtuse. He would contend, for instance, that +it was absurd for any person to get so gloriously hot and dirty while +setting out plants, when that person objected to having a flower in the +same room. For Peter could not understand that a cut flower is a dead +or, at best, a dying thing, and therefore to considerate people is just +so much abhorrent carrion; and denied it would be really quite as +rational to decorate your person or your dinner table with the severed +heads of chickens as with those of daffodils. + +"But that is only because you are not particularly bright," I told him. +"Oh, I suppose you can't help it. But why make _all_ the actions of your +life so foolish? What good do you get out of having the gout, for +instance?" + +Whereupon Mr. Blagden desired to be informed if I considered those +with-various-adjectives-accompanied twinges in that qualified foot to be +a source of personal pleasure to the owner of the very-extensively-hiatused +foot. In which case, Mr. Blagden felt at liberty to express his opinion of +my intellectual attainments, which was of an uncomplimentary nature. + +"Because, you know," I pursued, equably, "you wouldn't have the gout if +you did not habitually overeat yourself and drink more than is good for +you. In consequence, here you are at thirty-two with a foot the same +general size and shape as a hayrick, only rather less symmetrical, and +quite unable to attend to the really serious business of life, which is +to present me to the heiress. It is a case of vicarious punishment which +strikes me as extremely unfair. You have made of your stomach a god, +Peter, and I am the one to suffer for it. You have made of your +stomach," I continued, venturing aspiringly into metaphor, "a brazen +Moloch, before which you are now calmly preparing to immolate my +prospects in life. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Peter!" + +Mr. Blagden's next observation was describable as impolite. + +"Fate, too," I lamented, in a tragic voice, "appears to have entered +into this nefarious conspiracy. Here, not two miles away, is one of the +greatest heiresses in America,--clever, I am told, beautiful, I am sure, +for I have yet to discover a woman who sees anything in the least +attractive about her,--and, above all, with the Woods millions at her +disposal. Why, Peter, Margaret Hugonin is the woman I have been looking +for these last three years. She is, to a hair, the sort of woman I have +always intended to make unhappy. And I can't even get a sight of her! +Here are you, laid up with the gout, and unable to help me; and yonder +is the heiress, making a foolish pretence at mourning for the old +curmudgeon who left her all that money, and declining to meet people. +Oh, but she is a shiftless woman, Peter! At this very moment she might +be getting better acquainted with me; at this very moment, Peter, I +might be explaining to her in what points she is utterly and entirely +different from all the other women I have ever known. And she prefers to +immure herself in Selwoode, with no better company than her father, that +ungodly old retired colonel, and a she-cousin, somewhere on the +undiscussable side of forty--when she might be engaging me in amorous +dalliance! That Miss Hugonin is a shiftless woman, I tell you! And +Fate--oh, but Fate, too, is a vixenish jade!" I cried, and shook my fist +under the nose of an imaginary Lachesis. + +"You appear," said Peter, drily, "to be unusually well-informed as to +what is going on at Selwoode." + +"You flatter me," I answered, as with proper modesty. "You must remember +that there are maids at Selwoode. You must remember that my man Byam, +is--and will be until that inevitable day when he will attempt to +blackmail me, and I shall kill him in the most lingering fashion I can +think of,--that Byam is, I say, something of a diplomatist." + +Mr. Blagden regarded me with disapproval. + +"So you've been sending your nigger cousin over to Selwoode to spy for +you! You're a damn cad, you know, Bob," he pensively observed. "Now most +people think that when you carry on like a lunatic you're simply acting +on impulse. I don't. I believe you plan it out a week ahead. I sometimes +think you are the most adroit and unblushing looker-out for number one I +ever knew; and I can't for the life of me understand why I don't turn +you out of doors." + +"I don't know where you picked up your manners," said I, reflectively, +"but it must have been in devilish low company. I would cut your +acquaintance, Peter, if I could afford it." Then I fell to pacing up and +down the floor. "I incline, as you have somewhat grossly suggested, to a +certain favouritism among the digits. And why the deuce shouldn't I? A +fortune is the only thing I need. I have good looks, you know, of a +sort; ah, I'm not vain, but both my glass and a number of women have +been kind enough to reassure me on this particular point. And that I +have a fair amount of wits my creditors will attest, who have lived +promise-crammed for the last year or two, feeding upon air like +chameleons. Then I have birth,--not that good birth ensures anything but +bad habits though, for you will observe that, by some curious freak of +nature, an old family-tree very seldom produces anything but wild oats. +And, finally, I have position. I can introduce my wife into the best +society; ah, yes, you may depend upon it, Peter, she will have the +privilege of meeting the very worst and stupidest and silliest people in +the country on perfectly equal terms. You will perceive, then, that the +one desirable thing I lack is wealth. And this I shall naturally expect +my wife to furnish. So, the point is settled, and you may give me a +cigarette." + +Peter handed me the case, with a snort. "You are a hopelessly conceited +ass," Mr. Blagden was pleased to observe, "for otherwise you would have +learned, by this, that you'll, most likely, never have the luck of +Charteris, and land a woman who will take it as a favour that you let +her pay your bills. God knows you've angled for enough of 'em!" + +"You are painfully coarse, Peter," I pointed out, with a sigh. "Indeed, +your general lack of refinement might easily lead one to think you owed +your millions to your own thrifty industry, or some equally unpleasant +attribute, rather than to your uncle's very commendable and lucrative +innovation in the line of--well, I remember it was something extremely +indigestible, but, for the moment, I forget whether it was steam-reapers +or a new sort of pickle. Yes, in a great many respects, you are +hopelessly parvenuish. This cigarette-case, for instance--studded with +diamonds and engraved with a monogram big enough for a coach-door! Why, +Peter, it simply reeks with the ostentation of honestly acquired +wealth,--and with very good tobacco, too, by the way. I shall take it, +for I am going for a walk, and I haven't any of my own. And some day I +shall pawn this jewelled abortion, Peter,--pawn it for much fine gold; +and upon the proceeds I shall make merriment for myself and for my +friends." And I pocketed the case. + +"That's all very well," Peter growled, "but you needn't try to change +the subject. You know you _have_ angled after any number of rich women +who have had sense enough, thank God, to refuse you. You didn't use to +be--but now you're quite notoriously good-for-nothing." + +"It is the one blemish," said I, sweetly, "upon an otherwise perfect +character. And it is true," I continued, after an interval of +meditation, "that I have, in my time, encountered some very foolish +women. There was, for instance, Elena Barry-Smith, who threw me over for +Warwick Risby; and Celia Reindan, who had the bad taste to prefer Teddy +Anstruther; and Rosalind Jemmett, who is, very inconsiderately, going to +marry Tom Gelwix, instead of me. These were staggeringly foolish women, +Peter, but while their taste is bad, their dinners are good, so I have +remained upon the best of terms with them. They have trodden me under +their feet, but I am the long worm that has no turning. Moreover, you +are doubtless aware of the axiomatic equality between the fish in the +sea and those out of it. I hope before long to better my position in +life. I hope--Ah, well, that would scarcely interest you. Good morning, +Peter. And I trust, when I return," I added, with chastening dignity, +"that you will evince a somewhat more Christian spirit toward the world +in general, and that your language will be rather less reminiscent of +the blood-stained buccaneer of historical fiction." + +"You're a grinning buffoon," said Peter. "You're a fat Jack-pudding. +You're an ass. Where are you going, anyway?" + +"I am going," said I, "to the extreme end of Gridlington. Afterward I am +going to climb the wall that stands between Gridlington and Selwoode." + +"And after that?" said Peter. + +I gave a gesture. "Why, after that," said I, "fortune will favour the +brave. And I, Peter, am very, very brave." + +Then I departed, whistling. In view of all my memories it had been +strangely droll to worry Peter Blagden into an abuse of marrying for +money. For this was on the twenty-eighth of April, the anniversary of +the day that Stella had died, you may remember.... + + + 3 + +And a half-hour subsequently, true to my word, I was scaling a ten-foot +stone wall, thickly overgrown with ivy. At the top of it I paused, and +sat down to take breath and to meditate, my legs meanwhile bedangling +over an as flourishing Italian garden as you would wish to see. + +"Now, I wonder," I queried, of my soul, "what will be next? There is a +very cheerful uncertainty about what will be next. It may be a +spring-gun, and it may be a bull-dog, and it may be a susceptible +heiress. But it is apt to be--No, it isn't," I amended, promptly; "it is +going to be an angel. Or perhaps it is going to be a dream. She can't be +real, you know--I am probably just dreaming her. I would be quite +certain I was just dreaming her, if this wall were not so humpy and +uncomfortable. For it stands to reason, I would not be fool enough to +dream of such unsympathetic iron spikes as I am sitting on." + +"Perhaps you are not aware," hazarded a soprano voice, "that this is +private property?" + +"Why, no," said I, very placidly; "on the contrary I was just thinking +it must be heaven. And I am tolerably certain," I commented further, in +my soul, "that you are one of the more influential seraphim." + +The girl had lifted her brows. She sat upon a semi-circular stone bench, +some twenty feet from the wall, and had apparently been reading, for a +book lay open in her lap. She now inspected me, with a sort of languid +wonder in her eyes, and I returned the scrutiny with unqualified +approval in mine. + +And in this I had reason. The heiress of Selwoode was eminently good to +look upon. + + + + +24. + +_He Reconciles Sentiment and Reason_ + + +So I regarded her for a rather lengthy interval, considering meanwhile, +with an immeasurable content how utterly and entirely impossible it +would always be to describe her. + +Clearly, it would be out of the question to trust to words, however +choicely picked, for, upon inspection, there was a delightful ambiguity +about every one of this girl's features that defied such idiotic +makeshifts. Her eyes, for example, I noted with a faint thrill of +surprise, just escaped being brown by virtue of an amber glow they had; +what colour, then, was I conscientiously to call them? + +And her hair I found a bewildering, though pleasing, mesh of shadow and +sunlight, all made up of multitudinous graduations of some anonymous +colour that seemed to vary with the light you chanced to see it in, +through the whole gamut of bronze and chestnut and gold; and where, +pray, in the bulkiest lexicon, in the very weightiest thesaurus, was I +to find the adjective which could, if but in desperation, be applied to +hair like that without trenching on sacrilege? ... For it was spring, +you must remember, and I was twenty-five. + +So that in my appraisal, you may depend upon it, her lips were quickly +passed over as a dangerous topic, and were dismissed with the mental +statement that they were red and not altogether unattractive. Whereas +her cheeks baffled me for a time,--but always with a haunting sense of +familiarity--till I had, at last, discovered they reminded me of those +little tatters of cloud that sometimes float about the setting +sun,--those irresolute wisps which cannot quite decide whether to be +pink or white, and waver through their tiny lives between the +two colours. + + + 2 + +To this effect, then, I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon +the wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. By +and by, though, the girl sighed. + +"You are placing me in an extremely unpleasant position," she +complained, as if wearily. "Would you mind returning to your sanatorium +and allowing me to go on reading? For I am interested in my book, and I +can't possibly go on in any comfort so long as you elect to perch up +there like Humpty-Dumpty, and grin like seven dozen Cheshire cats." + +"Now, that," I spoke, in absent wise, "is but another instance of the +widely prevalent desire to have me serve as scapegoat for the sins of +all humanity. I am being blamed now for sitting on top of this wall. One +would think I wanted to sit here. One would actually think," I cried, +and raised my eyes to heaven, "that sitting on the very humpiest kind of +iron spikes was my favorite form of recreation! No,--in the interests of +justice," I continued, and fell into a milder tone, "I must ask you to +place the blame where it more rightfully belongs. The injuries which are +within the moment being inflicted on my sensitive nature, and, +incidentally, upon my not overstocked wardrobe, I am willing to pass +over. But the claims of justice are everywhere paramount. Miss Hugonin, +and Miss Hugonin alone, is responsible for my present emulation of +Mohammed's coffin, and upon that responsibility I am compelled +to insist." + +"May one suggest," she queried gently, "that you are +probably--mistaken?" + +I sketched a bow. "Recognising your present point of view," said I, +gallantly, "I thank you for the kindly euphemism. But may one allowably +demonstrate the fallacy of this same point of view? I thank you: for +silence, I am told, is proverbially equal to assent. I am, then, one +Robert Townsend, by birth a gentleman, by courtesy an author, by +inclination an idler, and by lucky chance a guest of Mr. Peter Blagden, +whose flourishing estate extends indefinitely yonder to the rear of my +coat-tails. My hobby chances to be gardening. I am a connoisseur, an +admirer, a devotee of gardens. It is, indeed, hereditary among the +Townsends; a love for gardens runs in our family just as a love for gin +runs in less favoured races. It is with us an irresistible passion. The +very founder of our family--one Adam, whom you may have heard of,--was a +gardener. Owing to the unfortunate loss of his position, the family +since then has sunken somewhat in the world; but time and poverty alike +have proven powerless against our horticultural tastes and botanical +inclinations. And then," cried I, with a flourish, "and then, what +follows logically?" + +"Why, if you are not more careful," she languidly made answer, "I am +afraid that, owing to the laws of gravitation, a broken neck is what +follows logically." + +"You are a rogue," I commented, in my soul, "and I like you all the +better for it." + +Aloud, I stated: "What follows is that we can no more keep away from a +creditable sort of garden than a moth can from a lighted candle. +Consider, then, my position. Here am I on one side of the wall, and with +my peach-tree, to be sure--but on the other side is one of the most +famous masterpieces of formal gardening in the whole country. Am I to +blame if I succumb to the temptation? Surely not," I argued; "for surely +to any fair-minded person it will be at once apparent that I am brought +to my present very uncomfortable position upon the points of these very +humpy iron spikes by a simple combination of atavism and +injustice,--atavism because hereditary inclination draws me irresistibly +to the top of the wall, and injustice because Miss Hugonin's perfectly +unreasonable refusal to admit visitors prevents my coming any farther. +Surely, that is at once apparent?" + +But now the girl yielded to my grave face, and broke into a clear, +rippling carol of mirth. She laughed from the chest, this woman. And +perched in insecure discomfort on my wall, I found time to rejoice that +I had finally discovered that rarity of rarities, a woman who neither +giggles nor cackles, but has found the happy mean between these two +abominations, and knows how to laugh. + +"I have heard of you, Mr. Townsend," she said at last. "Oh, yes, I have +heard a deal of you. And I remember now that I never heard you were +suspected of sanity." + +"Common-sense," I informed her, from my pedestal, "is confined to that +decorous class of people who never lose either their tempers or their +umbrellas. Now, I haven't any temper to speak of--or not at least in the +presence of ladies,--and, so far, I have managed to avoid laying aside +anything whatever for a rainy day; so that it stands to reason I must +possess uncommon sense." + +"If that is the case," said the girl "you will kindly come down from +that wall and attempt to behave like a rational being." + +I was down--as the phrase runs,--in the twinkling of a bed-post. On +which side of the wall, I leave you to imagine. + +"--For I am sure," the girl continued, "that I--that Margaret, I should +say,--would not object in the least to your seeing the gardens, since +they interest you so tremendously. I'm Avis Beechinor, you know,--Miss +Hugonin's cousin. So, if you like, we will consider that a proper +introduction, Mr. Townsend, and I will show you the gardens, if--if you +really care to see them." + +My face, I must confess, had fallen slightly. Up to this moment, I had +not a suspicion but that it was Miss Hugonin I was talking to: and I now +reconsidered, with celerity, the information Byam had brought me +from Selwoode. + +"For, when I come to think of it," I reflected, "he simply said she was +older than Miss Hugonin. I embroidered the tale so glibly for Peter's +benefit that I was deceived by my own ornamentations. I had looked for +corkscrew ringlets and false teeth a-gleam like a new bath-tub in Miss +Hugonin's cousin,--not an absolutely, supremely, inexpressibly +unthinkable beauty like this!" I cried, in my soul. "Older! Why, good +Lord, Miss Hugonin must be an infant in arms!" + +But my audible discourse was prefaced with an eloquent gesture. "If I'd +care!" I said. "Haven't I already told you I was a connoisseur in +gardens? Why, simply look, Miss Beechinor!" I exhorted her, and threw +out my hands in a large pose of admiration. "Simply regard those +yew-hedges, and parterres, and grassy amphitheatres, and palisades, and +statues, and cascades, and everything--_everything_ that goes to make a +formal garden the most delectable sight in the world! Simply feast your +eyes upon those orderly clipped trees and the fantastic patterns those +flowers are laid out in! Why, upon my word, it looks as if all four +books of Euclid had suddenly burst into blossom! And you ask me if I +would _care_! Ah, it is evident _you_ are not a connoisseur in gardens, +Miss Beechinor!" + +And I had started on my way into this one, when the girl stopped me. + +"This must be yours," she said. "You must have spilled it coming over +the wall, Mr. Townsend." + +It was Peter's cigarette-case. + +"Why, dear me, yes!" I assented, affably. "Do you know, now, I would +have been tremendously sorry to lose that? It is a sort of present--an +unbirthday present from a quite old friend." + +She turned it over in her hand. + +"It's very handsome," she marvelled. "Such a pretty monogram! Does it +stand for Poor Idiot Boy?" + +"Eh?" said I. "P.I.B., you mean? No, that stands for Perfectly +Immaculate Behaviour. My friend gave it to me because, he said, I was so +good. And--oh, well, he added a few things to that,--partial sort of a +friend, you know,--and, really--Why, really, Miss Beechinor, it would +embarrass me to tell you what he added," I protested, and modestly waved +the subject aside. + +"Now that," my meditations ran, "is the absolute truth. Peter did tell +me I was good. And it really would embarrass me to tell her he added +'for-nothing.' So, this far, I have been a model of veracity." + +Then I took the case,--gaining thereby the bliss of momentary contact +with a velvet-soft trifle that seemed, somehow, to set my own grosser +hand a-tingle--and I cried: "Now, Miss Beechinor, you must show me the +pergola. I am excessively partial to pergolas." + +And in my soul, I wondered what a pergola looked like, and why on earth +I had been fool enough to waste the last three days in bedeviling Peter, +and how under the broad canopy of heaven I could ever have suffered from +the delusion that I had seen a really adorable woman before to-day. + + + 3 + +But, "She is entirely too adorable," I reasoned with myself, some +three-quarters of an hour later. "In fact, I regard it as positively +inconsiderate in any impecunious young person to venture to upset me in +the way she has done. Why, my heart is pounding away inside me like a +trip-hammer, and I am absolutely light-headed with good-will and charity +and benevolent intentions toward the entire universe! Oh, Avis, Avis, +you know you hadn't any right to put me in this insane state of mind!" + +I was, at this moment, retracing my steps toward the spot where I had +climbed the wall between Gridlington and Selwoode, but I paused now to +outline a reproachful gesture in the direction from which I came. + +"What do you mean by having such a name?" I queried, sadly. "Avis! Why, +it is the very soul of music, clear, and sweet and as insistent as a +bird-call, an unforgettable lyric in four letters! It is just the sort +of name a fellow cannot possibly forget. Why couldn't you have been +named Polly or Lena or Margaret, or something commonplace like that, +Avis--dear?" + +And the juxtaposition of these words appealing to my sense of euphony, I +repeated it, again and again, each time with a more relishing gusto. +"Avis dear! dear Avis! dear, _dear_ Avis!" I experimented. "Why, each +one is more hopelessly unforgettable than the other! Oh, Avis dear, why +are you so absolutely and entirely unforgettable all around? Why do you +ripple all your words together in that quaint fashion till it sounds +like a brook discoursing? Why did you crinkle up your eyes when I told +you that as yet unbotanised flower was a _Calycanthus arithmelicus_? And +why did you pout at me, Avis dear? A fellow finds it entirely too hard +to forget things like that. And, oh, dear Avis, if you only knew what +nearly happened when you pouted!" + +I had come to the wall by this, but again I paused to lament. + +"It is very inconsiderate of her, very thoughtless indeed. She might at +least have asked my permission, before upsetting my plans in life. I had +firmly intended to marry a rich woman, and now I am forming all sorts of +preposterous notions--" + +Then, on the bench where I had first seen her, I perceived a book. It +was the iron-gray book she had been reading when I interrupted her, and +I now picked it up with a sort of reverence. I regarded it as an +extremely lucky book. + +Subsequently, "Good Lord!" said I, aloud, "what luck!" + +For between the pages of Justus Miles Forman's _Journey's End_--serving +as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine +fashion,--lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle, +fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters +M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of +flourishes and irrelevant tendrils. + +"Now M. E. A. H. does not stand by any stretch of the imagination for +Avis Beechinor. Whereas it fits Margaret Elizabeth Anstruther Hugonin +uncommonly well. I wonder now--?" + +I wondered for a rather lengthy interval. + +"So Byam was right, after all. And Peter was right, too. Oh, Robert +Etheridge Townsend, your reputation must truly be malodorous, when at +your approach timid heiresses seek shelter under an alias! 'I have heard +a deal of you, Mr. Townsend'--ah, yes, she had heard. She thought I +would make love to her out of hand, I suppose, because she was +wealthy--" + +I presently flung back my head and laughed. + +"Eh, well! I will let no sordid considerations stand in the way of my +true interests. I will marry this Margaret Hugonin even though she is +rich. You have begun the comedy, my lady, and I will play it to the end. +Yes, I fell honestly in love with you when I thought you were nobody in +particular. So I am going to marry this Margaret Hugonin if she will +have me; and if she won't, I am going to commit suicide on her +door-step, with a pathetic little note in my vest-pocket forgiving her +in the most noble and wholesale manner for irrevocably blighting a +future so rich in promise. Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do if +she does not appreciate her wonderful good fortune. And if she'll have +me--why, I wouldn't change places with the Pope of Rome or the Czar of +all the Russias! Ah, no, not I! for I prefer, upon the whole, to be +immeasurably, and insanely, and unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. +Why, but just to think of an adorable girl like that having so +much money!" + +All in all, my meditations were incoherent but very pleasurable. + + + + +25. + +_He Advances in the Attack on Selwoode_ + + +"Well?" said Peter. + +"Well?" said I. + +"What's the latest quotation on heiresses?" Mr. Blagden demanded. "Was +she cruel, my boy, or was she kind? Did she set the dog on you or have +you thrashed by her father? I fancy both, for your present hilarity is +suggestive of a gentleman in the act of attendance on his own funeral." +And Peter laughed, unctuously, for his gout slumbered. + +"His attempts at wit," I reflectively confided to my wine-glass, "while +doubtless amiably intended, are, to his well-wishers, painful. I +daresay, though, he doesn't know it. We must, then, smile indulgently +upon the elephantine gambols of what he is pleased to describe as his +intellect." + +"Now, that," Peter pointed out, "is not what I would term a courteous +method of discussing a man at his own table. You are damn disagreeable +this morning, Bob. So I know, of course, that you have come another +cropper in your fortune-hunting." + +"Peter," said I, in admiration, "your sagacity at times is almost human! +I have spent a most enjoyable day, though," I continued, idly. "I have +been communing with Nature, Peter. She is about her spring-cleaning in +the woods yonder, and everywhere I have seen traces of her getting +things fixed for the summer. I have seen the sky, which was washed +overnight, and the sun, which has evidently been freshly enamelled. I +have seen the new leaves as they swayed and whispered over your +extensive domains, with the fret of spring alert in every sap cell. I +have seen the little birds as they hopped among said leaves and +commented upon the scarcity of worms. I have seen the buxom flowers as +they curtsied and danced above your flower-beds like a miniature +comic-opera chorus. And besides that--" + +"Yes?" said Peter, with a grin, "and besides that?" + +"And besides that," said I, firmly, "I have seen nothing." + +And internally I appraised this bloated Peter Blagden, and reflected +that this was the man whom Stella had loved; and I appraised myself, and +remembered that this had been the boy who once loved Stella. For, as I +have said, it was the twenty-eighth of April, the day that Stella had +died, two years ago. + + + 2 + +The next morning I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon the +wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. + +"For, in spite of appearances," I debated with myself, "it is barely +possible that the handkerchief was not hers. She may have borrowed it or +have got it by mistake, somehow. In which case, it is only reasonable to +suppose that she will miss it, and ask me if I saw it; on the contrary, +if the handkerchief is hers, she will naturally understand, when I +return the book without it, that I have feloniously detained this airy +gewgaw as a souvenir, as, so to speak, a _gage d'amour_. And, in that +event, she ought to be very much pleased and a bit embarrassed; and she +will preserve upon the topic of handkerchiefs a maidenly silence. Do you +know, Robert Etheridge Townsend, there is about you the making of a very +fine logician?" + +Then I consulted my watch, and subsequently grimaced. "It is also barely +possible," said I, "that Margaret may not come at all. In which +case--Margaret! Now, isn't that a sweet name? Isn't it the very sweetest +name in the world? Now, really, you know, it is queer her being named +Margaret--extraordinarily queer,--because Margaret has always been my +favourite woman's name. I daresay, unbeknownst to myself, I am a bit of +a prophet." + + + 3 + +But she did come. She was very much surprised to see me. + +"You!" she said, with a gesture which was practically tantamount to +disbelief. "Why, how extraordinary!" + +"You rogue!" I commented, internally: "you know it is the most natural +thing in the world." Aloud I stated: "Why, yes, I happened to notice you +forgot your book yesterday, so I dropped in--or, to be more accurate, +climbed up,--to return it." + +She reached for it. Our hands touched, with the usual result to my +pulses. Also, there were the customary manual tinglings. + +"You are very kind," was her observation, "for I am wondering which one +of the two he will marry." + +"Forman tells me he has no notion, himself." + +"Oh, then you know Justus Miles Forman! How nice! I think his stories +are just splendid, especially the way his heroes talk to photographs and +handkerchiefs and dead flowers--" + +Afterward she opened the book, and turned over its pages expectantly, +and flushed a proper shade of pink, and said nothing. + +And then, and not till then, my heart consented to resume its normal +functions. And then, also, "These iron spikes--" said its owner. + +"Yes?" she queried, innocently. + +"--so humpy," I complained. + +"Are they?" said she. "Why, then, how silly of you to continue to sit on +them!" + +The result of this comment was that we were both late for luncheon. + + + 4 + +By a peculiar coincidence, at twelve o'clock the following day, I +happened to be sitting on the same wall at the same spot. Peter said at +luncheon it was a queer thing that some people never could manage to be +on time for their meals. + +I fancy we can all form a tolerably accurate idea of what took place +during the next day or so. + +It is scarcely necessary to retail our conversations. We gossiped of +simple things. We talked very little; and, when we did talk, the most +ambitiously preambled sentences were apt to result in nothing more +prodigious than a wave of the hand, and a pause, and, not infrequently, +a heightened complexion. Altogether, then, it was not oppressively wise +or witty talk, but it was eminently satisfactory to its makers. + +As when, on the third morning, I wished to sit by Margaret on the bench, +and she declined to invite me to descend from the wall. + +"On the whole," said she, "I prefer you where you are; like all +picturesque ruins, you are most admirable at a little distance." + +"Ruins!"--and, indeed, I was not yet twenty-six,--"I am a comparatively +young man." + +As a concession, "In consideration of your past, you are tolerably well +preserved." + +"--and I am not a new brand of marmalade, either." + +"No, for that comes in glass jars; whereas, Mr. Townsend, I have heard, +is more apt to figure in family ones." + +"A pun, Miss Beechinor, is the base coinage of conversation tendered +only by the mentally dishonest." + +"--Besides, one can never have enough of marmalade." + +"I trust they give you a sufficiency of it in the nursery?" + +"Dear me, you have no idea how admirably that paternal tone sits upon +you! You would make an excellent father, Mr. Townsend. You really ought +to adopt someone. I wish you would adopt _me_, Mr. Townsend." + +I said I had other plans for her. Discreetly, she forbore to ask what +they were. + + + 5 + +"Avis--" + +"You must not call me that." + +"Why not? It's your name, isn't it" + +"Yes,--to my friends." + +"Aren't we friends--Avis?" + +"We! We have not known each other long enough, Mr. Townsend." + +"Oh, what's the difference? We are going to be friends, aren't +we--Avis?" + +"Why--why, I am sure I don't know." + +"Gracious gravy, what an admirable colour you have, Avis! Well,--I know. +And I can inform you, quite confidentially, Avis, that we are not going +to be--. friends. We are going to be--" + +"We are going to be late for luncheon," said she, in haste. +"Good-morning, Mr. Townsend." + + + 6 + +Yet, the very next day, paradoxically enough, she told me: + +"I shall always think of you as a very, very dear friend. But it is +quite impossible we should ever be anything else." + +"And why, Avis?" + +"Because--" + +"That"--after an interval--"strikes me as rather a poor reason. So, +suppose we say this June?" + +Another interval. + +"Well, Avis?" + +"Dear me, aren't those roses pretty? I wish you would get me one, Mr. +Townsend." + +"Avis, we are not discussing roses." + +"Well, they _are_ pretty." + +"Avis!"--reproachfully. + +Still another interval. + +"I--I hardly know." + +"Avis!"--with disappointment. + +"I--I believe--" + +"Avis!"--very tenderly. + +"I--I almost think so,--and the horrid man looks as if he thought so, +too!" + +There was a fourth interval, during which the girl made a complete and +careful survey of her shoes. + +Then, all in a breath, "It could not possibly be June, of course, and +you must give me until to-morrow to think about November," and a sudden +flutter of skirts. + +I returned to Gridlington treading on air. + + + 7 + +For I was, by this time, as thoroughly in love as Amadis of Gaul or +Aucassin of Beaucaire or any other hero of romance you may elect +to mention. + +Some two weeks earlier I would have scoffed at the notion of such a +thing coming to pass; and I could have demonstrated, logically enough, +that it was impossible for Robert Etheridge Townsend, with his keen +knowledge of the world and of the innumerable vanities and whims of +womankind, ever again to go the way of all flesh. But the problem, like +the puzzle of the Eleatic philosophers, had solved itself. "Achilles +cannot catch the tortoise," but he does. It was impossible for me to +fall uncomfortably deep in love--but I had done so. + +And it pricked my conscience, too, that Margaret should not know I was +aware of her identity. But she had chosen to play the comedy to the end, +and in common with the greater part of trousered humanity, I had, after +all, no insuperable objection to a rich wife; though, to do me justice, +I rarely thought of her, now, as Margaret Hugonin the heiress, but +considered her, in a more comprehensive fashion, as the one woman in the +universe whose perfections triumphantly overpeered the skyiest heights +of preciosity. + + + + +26. + + +_He Assists in the Diversion of Birds_ + +We met, then, in the clear May morning, with what occult trepidations I +cannot say. You may depend upon it, though, we had our emotions. + +And about us, spring was marshaling her pageant, and from divers nooks, +the weather-stained nymphs and fauns regarded us in candid, if +preoccupied, appraisement; and above us, the clipped ilex trees were +about a knowing conference. As for the birds, they were discussing us +without any reticence whatever, for, more favoured of chance than +imperial Solomon, they have been the confidants in any number of such +affairs, and regard the way of a man with a maid as one of the most +matter-of-fact occurrences in the world. + +"Here is he! here is she!" they shrilled. "See how they meet, see how +they greet! Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring!" And that we +two would immediately set to nest-building, they considered a foregone +conclusion. + + + 2 + +I had taken both her firm, warm hands in salutation, and held them, for +a breathing-space, between my own. And my own hands seemed to me two +very gross, and hulking, and raw, and red monstrosities, in contrast +with their dimpled captives, and my hands appeared, also, to shake +unnecessarily. + +"Now, in a moment," said I, "I am going to ask you something very +important. But, first, I have a confession to make." + +And her glad, shamed eyes bemocked me. "My lord of Burleigh!" she softly +breathed. "My liege Cophetua! _My_ king Cophetua! And did you think, +then, I was blind?" + +"Eh?" said I. + +"As if I hadn't known from the first!" the girl pouted; "as if I hadn't +known from the very first day when you dropped your cigarette case! Ah, +I had heard of you before, Peter!--of Peter, the misogynist, who was +ashamed to go a-wooing in his proper guise! Was it because you were +afraid I'd marry you for your money, Peter?--poor, timid Peter! But, oh, +Peter, Peter, what possessed you to take the name of that notorious +Robert Townsend?" she demanded, with uplifted forefinger. "Couldn't you +think of a better one, Peter?--of a more respectable one, Peter? It +really is a great relief to call you Peter at last. I've had to try so +hard to keep from doing it before, Peter." + +And in answer, I made an inarticulate sound. + +"But you were so grave about it," the girl went on, happily, "that I +almost thought you were telling the truth, Peter. Then my maid told +me--I mean, she happened to mention casually that Mr. Townsend's valet +had described his master to her as an extraordinarily handsome man. So, +then, of course, I knew you were Peter Blagden." + +"I perceive," said I, reflectively, "that Byam has been somewhat too +zealous. I begin to suspect, also, that kitchen-gossip is a mischancy +petard, and rather more than apt to hoist the engineer who employs it. +So, you thought I was Peter Blagden,--the rich Peter Blagden? Ah, yes!" + +Now the birds were caroling on a wager. "Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" +they sang. "Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring." + +But the girl gave a wordless cry at sight of the change in my face. "Oh, +how dear of you to care so much! I didn't mean that you were _ugly_, +Peter. I just meant you are so big and--and so like the baby that they +probably have on the talcum-powder boxes in Brobdingnag--" + +"Because I happen to be really Robert Townsend--the notorious Robert +Etheridge Townsend," I continued, with a smile. "I am sorry you were +deceived by the cigarette-case. I remember now; I borrowed it from +Peter. What I meant to confess was that I have known all along you were +Margaret Hugonin." + +"But I'm not," the girl said, in bewilderment. "Why--Why I _told_ you I +was Avis Beechinor." + +"This handkerchief?" I queried, and took it from my pocket. I had been +absurd enough to carry it next to my heart. + +"Oh--!" And now the tension broke, and her voice leapt to high, shrill, +half-hysterical speaking. + +"I am Avis Beechinor. I am a poor relation, a penniless cousin, a +dependent, a hanger-on, do you understand? And you--Ah, how--how funny! +Why, Margaret _always_ gives me her cast-off finery, the scraps, the +remnants, the clothes she is tired of, the misfit things,--so that she +won't be ashamed of me, so that I may be fairly presentable. She gave me +eight of those handkerchiefs. I meant to pick the monograms out with a +needle, you understand, because I haven't any money to buy such +handkerchiefs for myself. I remember now,--she gave them to me on that +day--that first day, and I missed one of them a little later on. Ah, +how--how funny!" she cried, again; "ah, how very, very funny! No, Mr. +Townsend, I am not an heiress,--I'm a pauper, a poor relation. No, you +have failed again, just as you did with Mrs. Barry-Smith and with Miss +Jemmett, Mr. Townsend. I--I wish you better luck the next time." + +I must have raised one hand as though in warding off a physical blow. +"Don't!" I said. + +And all the woman in her leapt to defend me. "Ah no, ah no!" she +pleaded, and her hands fell caressingly upon my shoulder; and she raised +a penitent, tear-stained face toward mine; "ah no, forgive me! I didn't +mean that altogether. It is different with a man. Of course, you must +marry sensibly,--of course you must, Mr. Townsend. It is I who am to +blame--why, of _course_ it's only I who am to blame. I have encouraged +you, I know--" + +"You haven't! you haven't" I barked. + +"But, yes,--for I came back that second day because I thought you were +the rich Mr. Blagden. I was so tired of being poor, so tired of being +dependent, that it simply seemed to me I could not stand it for a moment +longer. Ah, I tell you, I was tired, tired, tired! I was tired and sick +and worn out with it all!" + +I did not interrupt her. I was nobly moved; but even then at the back of +my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to this girl, so +young and desirable, and now so like a plaintive child who has been +punished and does not understand exactly why. + +"Mr. Townsend, you don't know what it means to a girl to be poor!--you +can't ever know, because you are only a man. My mother--ah, you don't +know the life I have led! You don't know how I have been hawked about, +and set up for inspection by the men who could afford to pay my price, +and made to show off my little accomplishments for them, and put through +my paces before them like any horse in the market! For we are poor, Mr. +Townsend,--we are bleakly, hopelessly poor. We are only hangers-on, you +see. And ever since I can remember, she has been telling me I must make +a rich marriage--_must_ make a rich marriage--" + +And the girl's voice trailed off into silence, and her eyes closed for a +moment, and she swayed a little on her feet, so that I caught her by +both arms. + +But, presently, she opened her eyes, with a wearied sigh, and presently +the two fortune-hunters stared each other in the face. + +"Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" sang the birds. "Can you see, can you see, +can you see? It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" They were extremely gay over +it, were the birds. + +After a little, though, I opened my lips, and moistened them two or +three times before I spoke. "Yes," said I, "I think I understand. We +have both been hangers-on. But that seems, somehow, a long while ago. +Yes, it was a knave who scaled that wall the first time,--one who needed +and had earned a kicking from here to Aldebaran. But I think that I +loved you from the very moment I saw you. Will you marry me, Avis?" + +And in her face there was a wonderful and tender change. "You care for +me--just me?" she breathed. + +"Just you," I answered, gravely. + +And I saw the start, and the merest ghost of a shiver which shook her +body, as she leaned toward me a little, almost in surrender; but, +quickly, she laughed. + +"That was very gentlemanly in you," she said; "but, of course, I +understand. Let us part friends, then,--Robert. Even if--if you really +cared, we couldn't marry. We are too poor." + +"Too poor!" I scoffed,--and my voice was joyous, for I knew now that it +was I she loved and not just Peter Blagden's money; "too _poor_, Avis! I +am to the contrary, an inordinately rich man, I tell you, for I have +your love. Oh you needn't try to deny it. You are heels over head in +love with me. And we have made, no doubt, an unsavoury mess of the past; +but the future remains to us. We are the earthen pots, you and I, who +wanted to swim with the brazen ones. Well! they haven't quite smashed +us, these big, stupid, brazen pots, but they have shown us that they +have the power to do it. And so we are going back where we belong--to +the poor man's country, Avis,--or, in any event, to the country of those +God-fearing, sober and honest folk who earn their bread and, just +occasionally, a pat of butter to season it." + +The world was very beautiful. I knew that I was excellent throughout and +unconquerable. So I moved more near to her. + +"For you will come with me, won't you, dear? Oh, you won't have quite so +many gowns in this new country, Avis, and, may be, not even a horse and +surrey of your own; but you will have love, and you will have happiness, +and, best of all, Avis, you will give a certain very undeserving man his +chance--his one sole chance--to lead a real man's life. Are you going +to deny him that chance, Avis?" + +Her gaze read me through and through; and I bore myself a bit proudly +under it; and it seemed to me that my heart was filled with love of her, +and that some sort of new-born manhood in Robert Etheridge Townsend was +enabling me to meet her big brown eyes unflinchingly. + +"It wouldn't be sensible," she wavered. + +I laughed at that. "Sensible! If there is one thing more absurd than +another in this very absurd world, it is common-sense. Be sensible and +you will be miserable, Avis, not to mention being disliked. Sensible! +Why, of course, it is not sensible. It is stark, rank, staring idiocy +for us two not to make a profitable investment of, we will say, our +natural endowments, when we come to marry. For what will Mrs. Grundy say +if we don't? Ah, what will she say, indeed? Avis, just between you and +me, I do not care a double-blank domino what Mrs. Grundy says. You will +obligingly remember that the car for the Hesperides is in the rear, and +that this is the third and last call. And in consequence--will you +marry me, Avis?" + +She gave me her hand frankly, as a man might have done. "Yes, Robert," +said Miss Beechinor, "and God helping us, we will make something better +of the future than we have of the past." + +In the silence that fell, one might hear the birds. "Sweet, sweet, +sweet!" they twittered. "Can you see, can you see, can you see? Their +lips meet. It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" + + + 3 + +But, by and by, she questioned me. "Are you sure--quite sure," she +queried, wistfully, "that you wouldn't rather have me Margaret Hugonin, +the heiress?" + +I raised a deprecatory hand. "Avis!" I reproached her; "Avis, Avis, how +little you know me! That was the solitary fly in the amber,--that I +thought I was to marry a woman named Margaret. For I am something of a +connoisseur in nomenclature, and Margaret has always--_always_--been my +pet detestation in the way of names." + +"Oh, what a child you are!" she said. + + + + +27. + +_He Calls, and Counsels, and Considers_ + + +"I am now" said I, in my soul, "quite immeasurably, and insanely, and +unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. Why, of course I am." + +This statement was advanced just two weeks later than the events +previously recorded. And the origin of it was the fact that I was now +engaged to Avis Beechinor though it was not as yet to be "announced"; +just this concession alone had Mrs. Beechinor wrested from an indignant +and, latterly, a tearful interview.... For I had called at Selwoode, in +due form; and after leaving Mrs. Beechinor had been pounced upon by an +excited and comely little person in black. + +"Don't you mind a word she said," this lady had exhorted, "because she +is _the_ Gadarene swine, and Avis has told me everything! Of course you +are to be married at once, and I only wish _I_ could find the only man +in the world who can keep me interested for four hours on a stretch and +send my pulse up to a hundred and make me feel those thrilly thrills +I've always longed for." + +"But surely--" said I. + +"No, I'm beginning to be afraid not, beautiful, though of course I used +to be crazy about Billy Woods; and then once I was engaged to another +man for a long time, and I was perfectly devoted to him, but he _never_ +made me feel a single thrilly thrill. And would you believe it, Mr. +Townsend?--after a while he came back, precisely as though he had been a +bad penny or a cat. He had been in the Boer War and came home just a +night before I left, wounded and promoted several times and completely +covered with glory and brass buttons. He came seven miles to see me, and +I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him, for I had on my best dress and was +feeling rather talkative. Well! at ten I was quite struck on him. At +eleven perfectly willing to part friends, and at twelve _crazy_ for him +to go. He stayed till half-past, and I didn't want to think of him for +days. And, by the way, I am Miss Hugonin, and I hope you and Avis will +be very happy. _Good-bye!_" + +"Good-bye!" said I. + + + 2 + +And that, oddly enough, was the one private talk I ever had with the +Margaret Hugonin whom, for some two weeks, I had believed myself to be +upon the verge of marrying; for the next time I conversed with her alone +she was Mrs. William Woods. + +"Oh, go away, Billy!" she then said, impatiently "How often will I have +to tell you it isn't decent to be always hanging around your wife? Oh, +you dear little crooked-necktied darling!"--and she remedied the fault +on tiptoe,--"_please_ run away and make love to somebody else, and be +sure to get her name right, so that I shan't assassinate the wrong +person,--because I want to tell this very attractive child all about +Avis, and not be bothered." And subsequently she did. + +But I must not forestall her confidences, lest I get my cart even +further in advance of my nominal Pegasus than the loosely-made +conveyance is at present lumbering. + + + 3 + +And meanwhile Peter Blagden and I had called at Selwoode once or twice +in unison and due estate. And Peter considered "Miss Beechinor a damn +fine girl, and Miss Hugonin too, only--" + +"Only," I prompted, between puffs, "Miss Hugonin keeps everybody, as my +old Mammy used to say, 'in a perpetual swivet.' I never understood what +the phrase meant, precisely, but I somehow always knew that it was +eloquent." + +"Just so," said Peter. "You prefer--ah--a certain amount of +tranquillity. I haven't been abroad for a long while," said Mr. Blagden; +and then, after another meditative pause: "Now Stella--well, Stella was +a damn sight too good for me, of course--" + +"She was," I affably assented. + +"--and I'd be the very last man in the world to deny it. But still you +_do_ prefer--" Then Peter broke off short and said: "My God, Bob! what's +the matter?" + +So I think I must have had the ill-taste to have laughed a little over +Mr. Blagden's magnanimity in regard to Stella's foibles. But I only +said: "Oh, nothing, Peter! I was just going to tell you that travelling +_does_ broaden the mind, and that you will find an overcoat +indispensable in Switzerland, and that during the voyage you ought to +keep in the open air as much as possible, and that you should give the +steward who waits on you at table at least ten shillings,--I was just +going to tell you, in fine, that you would be a fool to squander any +money on a guide-book, when I am here to give you all the necessary +pointers." + +"But I didn't mean to go to Europe exactly," said Mr. Blagden; "--I just +meant to go abroad in a general sense. Any place would be abroad, you +know, where people weren't always remembering how rich you were, and +weren't scrambling to marry you out of hand, but really cared, you know, +like she does. Oh, may be it _is_ bad form to mention it, but I couldn't +help seeing how she looked at you, Bob. And it waked something--Oh, I +don't know what I mean," said Peter--"it's just damn foolishness, +I suppose." + +"It's very far from that," I said; and I was honestly moved, just as I +always am when pathos, preferably grotesque, has caught me unprepared. +This millionaire was lonely, because of his millions, and Stella was +dead; and somehow I understood, and laid one hand upon his shoulder. + +"Oh, _you_ can't help it, I suppose, if all women love by ordinary +because he is so like another person, where as men love because she is +so different. My poor caliph, I would sincerely advise you to play the +fool just as you plan to do,--oh, anywhere,--and without even a Mesrour. +In fine go Bunburying at once. For very frankly, First Cousin of the +Moon, it is the one thing worth while in life." + +"I half believe I will," said Peter.... So he was packing in the interim +during which I pretended to be writing, and was in reality fretting to +think that, whilst Avis was in England by this, I could not decently +leave America until those last five chapters were finished. So, in part +as an excuse for not scrawling the dullest of nonsense and subsequently +tearing it up, I fell to considering the unquestionable fact that I was +in love with Avis, and upon the verge of marrying her, and was in +consequence, as a matter of plain logic, deliriously happy. + +"For when you are in love with a woman you, of course, want to marry her +more than you want anything else. In nature, it is a serious and--well, +an almost irretrievable business. And I shall have to cultivate the +domestic virtues and smoke cheaper cigarettes and all that, but I shall +be glad to do every one of these things, for her sake--after a while. I +shall probably enjoy doing them." + +And I read Bettie Hamlyn's letter for the seventeenth time.... + + + 4 + +For Bettie had answered the wild rhapsody which I wrote to tell her how +much in love I was with Elena Barry-Smith. And in the nature of things I +had not written Bettie again to tell her I was, and by a deal the more, +in love with Avis Beechinor. The task was delicate, the reasons for my +not unnatural change were such as you must transmit in a personal +interview during which you are particularly boyish and talk very fast. + +Besides, I do not like writing letters; and moreover, there was no real +need to write. I was going to Gridlington; what more natural than to +ride over to Fairhaven some clear morning and tell Bettie everything? I +pictured her surprise and her delight at seeing me, and reflected it +would be unfair to her to render an inaccurate account of matters, such +as any letter must necessarily give. + +Only, first, there was the garden of Peter's aunt,--which sounds like +an introductory French exercise,--and then Avis came. And, somehow, I +had not, in consequence, traversed the scant nine miles that lay as yet +between me and Bettie Hamlyn. I kept on meaning to do it the next day. + +And the next day after this I really did. + +"For I ought to tell Bettie about everything," I reflected. "No matter +if the engagement is a secret, I ought to tell Bettie about it." + + + 5 + +When I had done so, Bettie shook her head. "Oh, Robin, Robin!" she said, +"how did I ever come to raise a child that doesn't know his own mind for +as much as two minutes? And how dared that Barry-Smith person to slap +you, I would like to know." + +"Now you're jealous, Bettie. You are thinking she infringed upon an +entirely personal privilege, and you resent it." + +"Well,--but I've the right to, you see, and she hadn't. I consider her +to be a bold-faced jig. And I don't approve of this Avis person either, +you understand; but we poor mothers are always being annoyed by slushy, +mushy Avises. I suppose there's a reason for it. She'll throw you over, +you know, as soon as _her_ mother has had an inning or two. That's why +she took her to Europe," Bettie explained, with a fine confusion of +personalities. "Only she just wanted any quiet place where she could +take aromatic spirits of ammonia and point out between doses that she +has given up her entire life to her child and has never made any demands +on her and hasn't the strength to argue with her, because her heart is +simply broken. We mothers always say that; and the funny part is that if +you say it often enough it invariably works far better than any possible +argument." + +I told her she was talking nonsense, and she said, irrelevantly enough: +"Setebos, and Setebos, and Setebos! I don't think very highly of Setebos +sometimes, because He muddles things so. Oh, well, I shan't cry Willow. +Besides there _aren't_ any sycamore-trees in the garden. So let's go +into the garden, dear. That sounds as if I ate in the back pantry, +doesn't it? Of course you aren't of any account any more, and you never +will be, but at least you don't look at people as though they were a new +sort of bug whenever they have just thought a sentence or two and then +gone on, without bothering to say it." + +So we went into Bettie's garden. It had not changed.... + + + 6 + +Nothing had changed. It was as though I had somehow managed, after all, +to push back the hands of the clock. Fairhaven accepted me incuriously. +I was only "an old student." In addition, I was vaguely rumoured to +write "pieces" for the magazines. Probably I did; "old students" were +often prone to vagaries after leaving King's College; for instance, they +told me, Ralph Means was a professional gambler, and Ox Selwyn had +lately gone to Shanghai and had settled there,--and Shanghai, in common +with most other places, Fairhaven accorded the negative tribute of just +not absolutely disbelieving in its existence. + +Nothing had changed. The Finals were over; and with the noisy exodus of +the college-boys, Fairhaven had sunk contentedly into an even deeper +stupor, as Fairhaven always does in summer. And, for the rest, the +unpaved sidewalks were just as dusty, the same deep ruts and the puddles +which never dry, not even in mid-August, adorned Fairhaven's single +street; the comfortable moss upon Fairhaven's roofs had not varied by a +shade; and George Washington or Benjamin Franklin might have stepped out +of any one of those brass-knockered doorways without incongruity and +without finding any noticeable innovation to marvel at. + +Nothing had changed. In the precise middle of the campus Lord Penniston, +our Governor in Colonial days, still posed, in dingy marble; and the +fracture of the finger I had inadvertently broken off, the night that +Billy Woods and I painted the statue all over, in six colours, was white +and new-looking. Kathleen Eppes had married her Spaniard and had left +Fairhaven; otherwise the same girls were already planning their toilets +for the Y.M.C.A. reception in October, which formally presents the "new +students" to society at large; and presently these girls would be going +to the germans or the Opera House with the younger brother of the boy +who used to take them thither.... + +Nothing had changed; not even I was changed. For I had soon discovered +that Bettie Hamlyn did not care a pin for me in myself. She was simply +very fond of me because, at times, I reminded her of a boy who had gone +to King's College; and her reception of me, for the first two days, was +unmistakably provisional. + +"Very well!" I said. + +And I did it. For I knew how difficult it was to deceive Bettie, and in +consequence all my faculties rose to the challenge. I did not merely +mimic my former self, I was compelled, almost, to believe I was indeed +that former self, because not otherwise could I get Bettie Hamlyn's +toleration. Had I paused even momentarily to reflect upon the excellence +of my acting, she would have known. So I resolutely believed I was being +perfectly candid; and with constant use those older tricks of speech and +gesture and almost of thought, at first laborious mimicry, became +well-nigh involuntary. + +In fine, we could not wipe away five years, but with practice we found +that you would very often forget them, and for quite a while.... + +I had explained to Bettie's father I was going to board with them that +summer. Had I not been so haphazard in the progress of this narrative, I +would have earlier announced that Bettie's father was the Latin +professor at King's College. He was very old and vague, and his general +attitude toward the universe was that of remote recollection of having +noticed something of the sort before. Professor Hamlyn, therefore, told +me he was glad to hear of my intended stay beneath his roof; hazarded +the speculation that I had written a book which he meant to read upon +the very first opportunity; blinked once or twice; and forthwith lapsed +into consideration of some Pliocene occurrence which, if you were to +judge by the expression of his mild old countenance, he did not find +entirely satisfactory.... + +So I spent three months in Fairhaven; and Bettie and I read all the old +books over again, and were perfectly happy. + + + 7 + +And what I wrote in those last five chapters of my book was so good that +in common decency I was compelled to alter the preceding twenty-nine and +bring them a bit nearer to Bettie's standard. For I was utilising +Bettie's ideas. She did not have the knack of putting them on paper; +that was my trivial part, as I now recognised with a sort of scared +reverence. + +"Of course, though, you had to meddle," I would scold at her. "I had +meant the infernal thing to be a salable book. To-day it is just a +stenographic report of how these people elected to behave. I haven't +anything to do with it. I wash my hands of it. I consider you, in fine, +a cormorant, a conscienceless marauder, a meddlesome Mattie, _and_ a +born dramatist." + +"But, it's _much_ better than anything you've ever done, Robin--" + +"That is what I'm grumbling about. I consider it very unfeeling of you +to write better novels than I do," I retorted. "But, oh, how good that +scene is!" I said, a little later. + +"Let's see--'For you, dear clean-souled girl, were born to be the wife +of a strong man, and the mother of his dirty children'--no, it's +'sturdy', but then you hardly ever cross your T's. And where he goes on +to tell her he can't marry her, because he is artistic, and she is too +practical for them to be real mates, and all that other +feeble-mindedness? Dear me, did I forget to tell you we were going to +cut that out?" + +"But I particularly like that part--" + +"Do you?" said Bettie, as her pen scrunched vicious lines through it. +Then she said: "I only hope she had the civility and self-control not to +laugh until you had gone away. And 'We irrelevant folk that design all +useless and beautiful things,' indeed! No, I couldn't have blamed her if +she laughed right out. I wonder if you will never understand that what +you take to be your love for beautiful things is really just a dislike +of ugly ones? Oh, I've no patience with you! And wanting to print it in +a book, too, instead of being content to make yourself ridiculous in +tete-a-tetes with minxes that don't especially matter!" + +"Well--! Anyhow, I agree with you that, thanks to your editing and +carping and general scurrility, this book is going to be," I meekly +stated, "a little better than _The Apostates_ and not just 'pretty much +like any other book'." + +"Do you know that's just what I was thinking," said Bettie, dolefully. +She clasped both hands behind her crinkly small black head, and in that +queer habitual pose appraised me, from between her elbows, in that way +which always made me feel I had better be careful. "Damn you!" was +her verdict. + +"Whence this unmaidenliness?" I queried, with due horror. + +"You are trying to prove to me that it has been worth while. This nasty +book is coming alive, here in our own eight-cornered room, with a horrid +crawly life of its own that it would never have had if you hadn't been +learning things my boy knew nothing about. That's what you are crowing +in my face, when you keep quiet and smirk. Oh, but I know you!" + +"You do think, then, that, between you and me, it is really coming +alive?" + +"Yes,--if that greatly matters to the fat literary gent that I don't +care for greatly. Yes, the infernal thing will be a Book, with quite a +sizable B. I am feeding its maw with more important things than a few +ideas, though. The thing is a monster that isn't worth its keep. For my +boy was worth more than a Book," she said, forlornly,--"oh, +oceans more!" + + + 8 + +All in all, we were a deal more than happy during these three very hot +months. It was a sort of Lotus Eaters' existence, shared by just us two, +with Josiah Clarriker intruding occasionally, and with echoes from the +outer world, when heard at all, resounding very dimly and unimportantly. +I began almost to assume, as Fairhaven tacitly assumed, that there was +really no outer world, or none at least to be considered seriously.... + +For instance: Marian Winwood had come to Lichfield, and wrote me from +there, "hoping that we would renew an acquaintance which she remembered +so pleasurably." It did not seem worth while, of course, to answer the +minx; I decided, at a pinch, to say that the Fairhaven mail-service was +abominable, and that her letter had never reached me. But the young +fellow who two years ago had wandered about the Green Chalybeate with +her had become, now, as unreal as she. I glimpsed the couple, with +immeasurable aloofness, as phantoms flickering about the mirage of a +brook, throwing ghostly bread crumbs to Lethean minnows. + +And then, too, when the police caught Ned Lethbury that summer, it +hardly seemed worth while to wonder about his wife. For she was, +inexplicably, with him, all through the trial at Chiswick, you may +remember, though you were probably more interested at the time by the +Humbert trial in Paris. In any event, no rumor came to me in Fairhaven +to connect Amelia Lethbury with Nadine Neroni, but, instead, a deal of +journalistic pity and sympathy for her, the faithful, much-enduring +wife. Still quite a handsome woman, they said, for all her suffering and +poverty.... And when he went to the penitentiary, Amelia Lethbury +disappeared, nobody knew whither, except that I suspected Anton von +Anspach knew. I could not explain the mystery. I did not greatly care +to, for to me it did not seem important, now.... + + + 9 + +Meantime, I meditated. + +"I am in love with Avis--oh, granted! I am not the least bit in love +with--we will euphemistically say 'anyone else.' But confound it! I am +coming to the conclusion that marrying a woman because you happen to be +in love with her is about as logical a proceeding as throwing the cat +out of the window because the rhododendrons are in bloom. Why, if I +marry Avis I shall probably have to live with her the rest of my life! + +"What if that obsolete notion of Schopenhauer's were true after +all,--that love is a blind instinct which looks no whit toward the +welfare of the man and woman it dominates, but only to the equipment a +child born of them would inherit? What if, after all, love tends, +without variation, to yoke the most incompatible in order that the +average type of humanity may be preserved? Then the one passion we +esteem as sacred would be simply the deranged condition of any other +beast in rutting-time. Then we, with the pigs and sparrows, would be +just so many pieces on the chess-board, and our evolutions would be just +a friendly trial of skill between what we call life and death. + +"I love Avis Beechinor. But I have loved, in all sincerity, many other +women, and I rejoice to-day, unfeignedly, that I never married any of +them. For marriage means a life-long companionship, a long, long journey +wherein must be adjusted, one by one, each tiniest discrepancy between +the fellow-wayfarers; and always a pebble if near enough to the eye will +obscure a mountain. + +"Why, Avis cannot attempt a word of four syllables without coming at +least once to grief! It is a trifle of course, but in a life-long +companionship there are exactly fourteen thousand trifles to one event +of importance. And deuce take it! the world is populated by men and +women, not demi-gods; the poets are specious and abandoned rhetoricians; +for it never was, and never will be, possible to love anybody 'to the +level of every-day's Most quiet need by sun or candlelight.' + +"Or not to me at least. + +"In a sentence, when it comes to a life-long companionship, I prefer not +the woman who would make me absolutely happy for a twelvemonth, but +rather the woman with whom I could chat contentedly for twenty years, +and who would keep me to the mark. I am rather tired of being futile; +and not for any moral reason, but because it is not worthy of _me_. In +fine, I do not want to die entirely. I want to leave behind some not +inadequate expression of Robert Etheridge Townsend, and I do not care at +all what people say of it, so that it is here when I am gone. Oh, Stella +understood! 'I want my life to count, I want to leave something in the +world that wasn't there before I came.' + +"Now Bettie--" + +I arose resolutely. "I had much better go for a long, and tedious, and +jolting, and universally damnable walk. Bettie would make something +vital of me--if I could afford her the material--" + +And I grinned a little. "'Go, therefore, now, and work; for there shall +no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.' Yes, +you would certainly have need of a miracle, dear Bettie--" + + + 10 + +I started for that walk I was to take. But Dr. Jeal and Colonel Snawley +were seated in armchairs in front of Clarriker's Emporium, just as they +had been used to sit there in my college days, enjoying, as the Colonel +mentioned, "the cool of the evening," although to the casual observer +the real provider of their pleasure would have appeared to be an +unlimited supply of chewing-tobacco. + +So I lingered here, and garnered, to an accompaniment of leisurely +expectorations, much knowledge as to the fall crops and the carryings-on +of the wife of a celebrated general, upon whose staff the Colonel had +served during the War,--and there has never been in the world's history +but one war, so far as Fairhaven is concerned,--and how the Colonel +walked right in on them, and how it was hushed up. + +Then we discussed the illness of Pope Leo and what everybody knew about +those derned cardinals, and the riots in Evansville, and the Panama +Canal business, and the squally look of things at Port Arthur, and +attributed all these imbroglios, I think, to the Republican +administration. Even at our bitterest, though, we conceded that +"Teddy's" mother was a Bulloch, and that his uncle fired the last shot +before the Alabama went down. And that inclined us to forgive him +everything, except of course, the Booker Washington luncheon. + +Then half a block farther on, Mrs. Rabbet wanted to know if I had ever +seen such weather, and to tell me exactly what Adrian, Junior--no longer +little Adey, no indeed, sir, but ready to start right in at the College +session after next, and as she often said to Mr. Rabbet you could hardly +believe it,--had observed the other day, and quick as a flash too, +because it would make such a funny story. Only she could never quite +decide whether it happened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, so that, after +precisely seven digressions on this delicate point, the denouement of +the tale, I must confess, fell rather flat. + +And then Mab Spessifer demanded that I come up on the porch and draw +some pictures for her. The child was waiting with three sheets of paper +and a chewed pencil all ready, just on the chance that I might pass; and +you cannot very well refuse a cripple who adores you and is not able to +play with the other brats. You get instead into a kind of habit of +calling every day and trying to make her laugh, because she is such a +helpless little nuisance. + +And tousled mothers weep over you in passageways and tell you how good +you are, and altogether the entire affair is tedious; but having started +it, you keep it up, somehow. + + + 11 + +In fine, it is a symbol that I never took the walk which was to dust the +cobwebs from my brain and make me just like all the other persons, thick +about me, who grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious +fashion of oxen, without ever wondering if there is any plausible reason +for doing it; and my brief progress was upon the surface very like that +of the bedeviled fellow in _Les Facheux_. Yet I enjoyed it somehow. +Never to be hurried, and always to stop and talk with every person whom +you meet, upon topics in which no conceivable human being could possibly +be interested, may not sound attractive, but in Fairhaven it is the +rule; and, oddly enough, it breeds, in practice, a sort of family +feeling,--if only by entitling everybody to the condoned and +matter-of-course stupidity of aunts and uncles,--which is not really all +unpleasant. + +So I went home at half-past seven, to supper and to Bettie, in a quite +contented frame of mind. It did not seem conceivable that any world so +beautiful and stupid and well-meaning could have either the heart or the +wit to thwart my getting anything I really wanted; and the thought +elated me. + +Only I did not know, precisely, what I wanted. + + + + +28. + +_He Participates in Sundry Confidences_ + + +I was in the act of writing to Avis when the letter came; and I put it +aside unopened, until after supper, for I had never found the letters of +Avis particularly interesting reading. + +"It will be what they call a newsy letter, of course. I do wish that +Avis would not write to me as if she were under oath to tell the entire +truth. She communicates so many things which actually happened that it +reads like a 'special correspondent' in some country town writing for a +Sunday morning's paper,--and with, to a moral certainty, the word +'separate' lurking somewhere spelt with three E's, and an 'always' with +two L's, and at least one 'alright.' No, my dear, I am at present too +busy expressing my adoration for you to be exposed to such +inharmonious jars." + +Then I wrote my dithyrambs and sealed them. Subsequently I poised the +unopened letter between my fingers. + +"But remember that if she were here to _say_ all this to you, your +pulses would be pounding like the pistons of an excited locomotive! +Nature, you are a jade! I console myself with the reflection that it is +frequently the gift of facile writing which makes the co-respondent, +--but I _do_ wish you were not such a hazardous matchmaker. Oh, well! +there was no pleasant way of getting out of it, and that particular +Rubicon is miles behind." + +I slit the envelope. + +I read the letter through again, with redoubling interest, and presently +began to laugh. "So she begins to fear we have been somewhat hasty, asks +a little time for reconsideration of her precise sentiment toward me, +and feels meanwhile in honour bound to release me from our engagement! +Yet if upon mature deliberation--eh, oh, yes! twaddle! _and_ +commonplace! and dashed, of course, with a jigger of Scriptural +quotation!" + +I paused to whistle. "There is strange milk in this cocoanut, could I +but discern its nature." + +I did, some four weeks later, when with a deal of mail I received the +last letter I was ever to receive from Avis Beechinor. + +Wrote Avis: + +DEAR ROBERT: + +Thank you very much for returning my letters and for the beautiful +letter you wrote me. No I believe it better you should not come on to +see me now and talk the matter over as you suggest because it would +probably only make you unhappy. And then too I am sure some day you will +be friends with me and a very good and true one. I return the last +letter you sent me in a seperate envelope, and I hope it will reach you +alright, but as I destroy all my mail as soon as I have read it I cannot +send you the others. I have promised to marry Mr. Blagden and we are +going to be married on the fifteenth of this month very quietly with no +outsiders. So good bye Robert. I wish you every success and happiness +that you may desire and with all my heart I pray you to be true to your +better self. God bless you allways. Your sincere friend, + +AVIS M. BEECHINOR + +I indulged in a low and melodious whistle. "The little slut!" + +Then I said: "Peter Blagden again! I _do_ wish that life would try to be +a trifle more plausible. Why, but, of course! Peter meant to go chasing +after her the minute my back was turned, and that was why he salved his +conscience by presenting me with that thousand 'to get married on,' Even +at the time it seemed peculiarly un-Petrine. Well, anyhow, in simple +decency, he cannot combine the part of Shylock with that of Judas, and +expect to have back his sordid lucre, so I am that much to the good, +apart from everything else. Yes, I can see how it all happened,--and I +can foresee what is going to happen, too, thank heaven!" + +For, as drowning men are said to recollect the unrecallable, I had +vividly seen in that instant the two months' action just overpast, and +its three participants,--the thin-lipped mother, the besotted +millionaire, and the girl shakily hesitant between ideals and the habits +of a life-time. + +"But I might have known the mother would win," I reflected: "Why, didn't +Bettie say she would?" + +I refolded the letter I had just read, to keep it as a salutary relic; +and then: + +"Dear Avis!" said I; "now heaven bless your common-sense! and I don't +especially mind if heaven blesses your horrific painted hag of a mother, +also, if they've a divine favor or two to spare." + +And I saw there was a letter from Peter Blagden, too. It said, in part: + +I am everything that you think me, Bob. My one defence is that I could +not help it. I loved her from the moment I saw her ... You did not +appreciate her, you know. You take, if you will forgive my saying it, +too light a view of life to value the love of a good woman properly, and +Avis noticed it of course. Now I do understand what the unselfish love +of woman means, because my first wife was an angel, as you know ... It +is a comfort to think that my dear saint in heaven knows I am not quite +so lonely now, and is gladdened by that knowledge. I know she would have +wished it-- + +I read no further. "Oh, Stella! they have all forgotten. They all insist +to-day that you were an angel, and they have come almost to believe that +you habitually flew about the world in a night-gown, with an Easter lily +in your hand--But I remember, dear. I know you'd scratch her eyes out. I +know you'd do it now, if only you were able, because you loved this +Peter Blagden." + +Thereafter I must have wasted a full quarter of an hour in recalling all +sorts of bygone unimportant happenings, and I was not bothering one way +or the other about Avis ... + + + 3 + +In the moonlighted garden I found Bettie. But with her was Josiah +Clarriker, Fairhaven's leading business-man. He shook hands, and +whatever delight he may have felt at seeing me was admirably controlled. + +"Now don't let me interfere with your eloquence," I urged, "but go right +on with the declamation." + +"I make no pretension to eloquence, Mr. Townsend. I was merely recalling +to Miss Hamlyn's attention the beautiful lines of our immortal poet, +Owen Meredith, which run, as I remember them: + + "'I thought of the dress she wore that time + That we stood under the cypress-tree together, + In that land, in that clime, + And I turned and looked, and she was sitting there + In the box next to the stage, and dressed + In that muslin dress, with that full soft hair + And that jessamine blossom at her breast.'" + +"But I am not permitted to wear flowers when Mr. Townsend is about," +said Bettie. "Did you know, Jo, that he is crazy about that too?" + +"Well--! Anyhow, Meredith is full of very beautiful sentiments," said +Mr. Clarriker, "and I have always been particularly fond of that piece. +It is called _'Ox Italians.'_" + +"Yes, I have been previously affected by it," said I, "and very deeply +moved." + +"And so--as I was about to observe, Miss Hamlyn,--you will notice that +the poet Meredith gowned one of the most beautiful characters he ever +created in white, and laid great stress upon the fact that her beauty +was immeasurably enhanced by the dainty simplicity of her muslin dress. +This fabric, indeed, suits all types of faces and figures, and is +Economical too, especially the present popular mercerised waistings and +vestings that are fast invading the realm of silks. We show at our +Emporium an immense quantity of these beautiful goods, in more than a +hundred styles, elaborate enough for the most formal occasions, at fifty +and seventy-five cents a yard; and--as I was about to observe, Miss +Hamlyn,--I would indeed esteem it a favour should you permit me to send +up a few samples to-morrow, from which to make a selection at, I need +not add, my personal expense. + +"You see, Mr. Townsend," he continued, more inclusively, "we have no +florists in Fairhaven, and I have heard that candy--" He talked on, +hygienically now.... + + + 4 + +"And that," said I, when Mr. Clarriker had gone, "is what you are +actually considering! I have always believed Dickens invented that man +to go into one of the latter chapters of _Edwin Drood_. It is the +solitary way of explaining certain people,--that they were invented by +some fagged novelist who unfortunately died before he finished the book +they were to be locked up in. As it was, they got loose, to annoy you by +their incredibility. No actual human being, you know, would suggest a +white shirtwaist as a substitute for a box of candy." + +"Oh, I have seen worse," said Bettie, as in meditation. "It's just Jo's +way of expressing the fact that I am stupendously beautiful in white. +Poor dear, my loveliness went to his head, I suppose, and got tangled +with next week's advertisement for the _Gazette_. Anyhow, he is a deal +more considerate than you. For instance, I was crazy to go to the show +on Tuesday night, and Josiah Clarriker was the only person who thought +to ask me, even though he is one of those little fireside companions who +always get so syrupy whenever they take you anywhere that you simply +can't stand it. The combination both prevented my acceptance and +accentuated his devotion; and quite frankly, Robin, I am thinking of +him, for at bottom Jo is a dear." + +I laid one hand on each of Bettie's shoulders; and it was in my mind at +the time that this was the gesture of a comrade, and had not any sexual +tinge at all. I wished that Bettie had better teeth, of course, but that +could not be helped. + +"You are to marry me as soon as may be possible," said I, "and +preferably to-morrow afternoon. Avis has thrown me over, God bless her, +and I am free,--until of course you take charge of me. There was a +clever woman once who told me I was not fit to be the captain of my +soul, though I would make an admirable lieutenant. She was right. It is +understood you are to henpeck me to your heart's content and to my +ultimate salvation." + +"I shall assuredly not marry you," observed Miss Hamlyn, "until you have +at least asked me to do so. And besides, how dared she throw +you over--!" + +"But I don't intend to ask you, for I have not a single bribe to offer. +I merely intend to marry you. I am a ne'er-do-well, a debauchee, a +tippler, a compendium of all the vices you care to mention. I am not a +bit in love with you, and as any woman will forewarn you, I am sure to +make you a vile husband. Your solitary chance is to bully me into +temperance and propriety and common-sense, with precisely seven million +probabilities against you, because I am a seasoned and accomplished +liar. Can you do that bullying, Bettie,--and keep it up, I mean?" + +And she was silent for a while. "Robin," she said, at last, "you'll +never understand why women like you. You will always think it is because +they admire you for some quality or another. It is really because they +pity you. You are such a baby, riding for a fall--No, I don't mean the +boyishness you trade upon. I have known for a long while all that was +just put on. And, oh, how hard you've tried to be a boy of late!" + +"And I thought I had fooled you, Bettie! Well, I never could. I am +sorry, though, if I have been annoyingly clumsy--" + +"But you were doing it for me," she said. "You were doing it because you +thought I'd like it. Oh, can't you understand that I _know_ you are +worthless, and that you have never loved any human being in all your +life except that flibbertigibbet Stella Blagden, and that I know, too, +you have so rarely failed me! If you were an admirable person, or a +person with commendable instincts, or an unselfish person, or if you +were even in love with me, it wouldn't count of course. It is because +you are none of these things that it counts for so much to see you +honest with me--sometimes,--and even to see you scheming and +play-acting--and so transparently!--just to bring about a little +pleasure for me. Oh, Robin, I am afraid that nowadays I love you +_because_ of your vices!" + +"And I you because of your virtues," said I; "so that there is no +possible apprehension of either affection ever going into bankruptcy. +Therefore the affair is settled; and we will be married in November." + +"Well," Bettie said, "I suppose that somebody has to break you of this +habit of getting married next November--" + +Then, and only then, my hands were lifted from her shoulders. And we +began to talk composedly of more impersonal matters. + + + 5 + +It was two days later that John Charteris came to Fairhaven; and I met +him the same afternoon upon Cambridge street. The little man stopped +short and in full view of the public achieved what, had he been a child, +were most properly describable as making a face at me. + +"That," he explained, "expresses the involuntary confusion of Belial on +re-encountering the anchorite who escaped his diabolical machinations. +But, oh, dear me! haven't you been translated yet? Why, I thought the +carriage would have called long ago, just as it did for Elijah." + +"Now, don't be an ass, John. I _was_ rather idiotic, I suppose--" + +"Of course you were," he said, as we shook hands. "It is your unfailing +charm. You silly boy, I came from the pleasantest sort of house-party at +Matocton because I heard you were here, and I have been foolish enough +to miss you. Anne and the others don't arrive until October. Oh, you +adorable child, I have read the last book, and every one of the short +stories as well, and I want to tell you that in their own peculiar line +the two volumes are masterpieces. Anne wept and chuckled over them, and +so did I, with an equal lack of restraint; only it was over the noble +and self-sacrificing portions that Anne wept, and she laughed at the +places where you were droll intentionally. Whereas I--!! Well, we will +let the aposiopesis stand." + +"Of course," I sulkily observed, "if you have simply come to Fairhaven +to make fun of me, I can only pity your limitations." + +He spoke in quite another voice. "You silly boy, it was not at all for +that. I think you must know I have read what you have published thus far +with something more than interest; but I wanted to tell you this in so +many words. _Afield_ is not perhaps an impeccable masterwork, if one may +be thus brutally frank; but the woman--modeled after discretion will not +inquire whom,--is distinctly good. And what, with you only twenty-five, +does _A field_ not promise! Child, you have found your metier. Now I +shall look forward to the accomplishment of what I have always felt sure +that you could do. I am very, very glad. More so than I can say. And I +had thought you must know this without my saying it." + +The man was sincere. And I was very much pleased, and remembered what +invaluable help he could give me on my unfinished book, and what fun it +would be to go over the manuscript with him. And, in fine, we became +again, upon the spot as it were, the very best of friends. + + + 6 + +It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against. The little man had +many tales to tell me of those dissolute gay people we had known and +frolicked with; indeed, I think that he was trying to allure me back to +the old circles, for he preoccupied his life by scheming to bring about +by underhand methods some perfectly unimportant consummation, which very +often a plain word would have secured at once. But now he swore he was +not "making tea." + +That had always been a byword between us, by the way, since I applied to +him the phrase first used of Alexander Pope--"that he could not make tea +without a conspiracy." And it may be that in this case Charteris spoke +the truth, and had come to Fairhaven just for the pleasure of seeing me, +for certainly he must have had some reason for leaving the Musgraves' +house-party so abruptly. + +"You are very well rid of the Hardresses," he adjudged. "Did I tell you +of the male one's exhibition of jealousy last year! I can assure you +that the fellow now entertains for me precisely the same affection I +have always borne toward cold lamb. It is the real tragedy of my life +that Anne is ethically incapable of letting a week pass without +partaking of a leg of mutton. She is not particularly fond of it, and +indeed I never encountered anybody who was; she has simply been reared +with the notion that 'people' always have mutton once a week. What, have +you never noticed that with 'people,' to eat mutton once a week is a +sort of guarantee of respectability? I do not refer to chops of course, +which are not wholly inconsistent with depravity. But the ability to eat +mutton in its roasted form, by some odd law of nature, connotes the +habit of paying your pew-rent regularly and of changing your flannels on +the proper date. However, I was telling you about Jasper Hardress--" And +Charteris repeated the story of their imbroglio in such a fashion that +it sounded farcical. + +"But, after all, John, you _did_ make love to her." + +"I have forgotten what was exactly the last observation of the lamented +Julius Caesar," Mr. Charteris leisurely observed,--"though I remember +that at the time it impressed me as being uncommonly appropriate--But to +get back: do you not see that this clause ought to come here, at the end +of the sentence? And, child, on all my ancient bended knees, I implore +you to remember that 'genuine' does not mean the same thing as +'real'...." + + + 7 + +Meanwhile he and Bettie got on together a deal better than I had ever +anticipated. + +Charteris, though, received my confidence far too lightly. "You are +going to marry her! Why, naturally! Ever since I encountered you, you +have been 'going to marry' somebody or other. It is odd I should have +written about the Foolish Prince so long before I knew you. But then, +_I_ helped to mould you--a little--" + +And resolutely Bettie said the most complimentary things about him. But +I trapped her once. + +"Still," I observed, when he had gone, and she had finished telling me +how delightful Mr. Charteris was, "still he shan't ever come to _our_ +house, shall he?" + +"Why, of course not!" said Bettie, who was meditating upon some cosmic +question which required immediate attention. And then she grew very +angry and said, "Oh, you _dog!_" and threw a sofa-cushion at me. + +"I hate that wizened man," she presently volunteered, "more bitterly +than I do any person on earth. For it was he who taught you to adopt +infancy as a profession. He robbed me. And Setebos permitted it. And now +you are just a man I am going to marry--Oh, well!" said Bettie, more +sprightlily, "I was getting on, and you are rather a dear even in that +capacity. Only I wonder what _becomes_ of all the first choices?" + +"They must keep them for us somewhere, Bettie dear. And that is probably +the explanation of everything." + +And a hand had snuggled into mine. "You do understand without having to +have it all spelt out for you. And that's a comfort, too. But, oh," said +Bettie, "what a wasteful Setebos it is!" + + + + +29. + +_He Allows the Merits of Imperfection_ + + +I was quite contented now and assured as to the future. I foreknew the +future would be tranquil and lacking in any particular excitement, and I +had already ceded, in anticipation, the last tittle of mastery over my +own actions; but Bettie would keep me to the mark, would wring--not +painlessly perhaps--from Robert Townsend the very best there was in him; +and it would be this best which, unalloyed, would endure, in what I +wrote. I had never imagined that, for the ore, smelting was an agreeable +process; so I shrugged, and faced my future contentedly. + +One day I said, "To-morrow I must have holiday. There are certain things +that need burying, Bettie dear, and--it is just the funeral of my youth +I want to go to." + +"So it is to-morrow that we go for an admiring walk around our +emotions!" Bettie said. She knew well enough of what event to-morrow was +the anniversary, and it is to her credit she added: "Well, for this +once--!" For of all the women whom I had loved, there was but one that +Bettie Hamlyn had ever bothered about. And to-morrow was Stella's +birthday, as I had very unconcernedly mentioned a few moments earlier, +when I was looking for the Austin Dobson book, and had my back turned +to Bettie. + + + 2 + +Next day, in Cedarwood, a woman in mourning--in mourning fluffed and +jetted and furbelowed in such pleasing fashion that it seemed +flamboyantly to demand immediate consolation of all marriageable +males,--viewed me with a roving eye as I heaped daffodils on Stella's +grave. They had cost me a pretty penny, too, for this was in September. +But then I must have daffodils, much as I loathe the wet, limp feel o. +them, because she would have chosen daffodils.... Well! I fancied this +woman thought me sanctioned by both church and law in what I did,--and +viewed me in my supposedly recent bereavement and gauged my +potentialities,--viewed me, in short, with the glance of adventurous +widowhood. + +My faith (I meditated) if she knew!--if I could but speak my thought to +her! + +"Madam,"--let us imagine me, my hat raised, my voice grave,--"the woman +who lies here was a stranger to me. I did not know her. I knew that her +eyes were blue, that her hair was sunlight, that her voice had pleasing +modulations; but I did not know the woman. And she cared nothing for me. +That is why my voice shakes as I tell you of it. And I have brought her +daffodils, because of all flowers she loved them chiefly, and because +there is no one else who remembers this. It is the flower of spring, and +Stella--for that was her name, madam,--died in the spring of the year, +in the spring of her life; and Stella would have been just twenty-six +to-day. Oh, and daffodils, madam, are all white and gold, even as that +handful of dust beneath us was all white and gold when we buried it with +a flourish of crepe and lamentation, some two years and five months ago. +Yet the dust there was tender flesh at one time, and it clad a brave +heart; but we thought of it--and I among the rest,--as a plaything with +which some lucky man might while away his leisure hours. I believe now +that it was something more. I believe--ah, well, my _credo_ is of little +consequence. But whatever this woman may have been, I did not know her. +And she cared nothing for me." + +I reflected I would like to do it. I could imagine the stare, the +squawk, the rustling furbelows, as madam fled from this grave madman. +She would probably have me arrested. + +You see I had come to think differently of Stella. At times I remembered +her childish vanity, her childish, morbid views, her childish gusts of +petulance and anger and mirth; and I smiled,--oh, very tenderly, yet +I smiled. + +Then would awake the memory of Stella and myself in that ancient +moonlight and of our first talk of death--two infants peering into +infinity, somewhat afraid, and puzzled; of Stella making tea in the +firelight, and prattling of her heart's secrets, half-seriously, half in +fun; and of Stella striving to lift a very worthless man to a higher +level and succeeding--yes, for the time, succeeding; and of Stella dying +with a light heart, elate with dreams of Peter Blagden's future and of +"a life that counted"; and of what she told me at the very last. And, +irrationally perhaps, there would seem to be a sequence in it all, and I +could not smile over it, not even tenderly. + +And I would depicture her, a foiled and wistful little wraith, very +lonely in eternity, and a bit regretful of the world she loved and of +its blundering men, and unhappy,--for she could never be entirely happy +without Peter,--and I feared, indignant. For Stella desired very +heartily to be remembered--she was vain, you know,--and they have all +forgotten. Yes, I am sure that even as a wraith, Stella would be +indignant, for she had a fine sense of her own merits. + +"But I am just a little butterfly-woman," she would say, sadly; then, +with a quick smile, "Aren't I?" And her eyes would be like stars--like +big, blue stars,--and afterward her teeth would glint of a sudden, and +innumerable dimples would come into being, and I would know she was +never meant to be taken seriously.... + +But we must avoid all sickly sentiment. + +You see the world had advanced since Stella died,--twice around the sun, +from solstice to solstice, from spring to winter and back again, +travelling through I forget how many millions of miles; and there had +been wars and scandals and a host of debutantes and any number of +dinners; and, after all, the world is for the living. + +So we of Lichfield agreed unanimously that it was very sad, and spoke of +her for a while, punctiliously, as "poor dear Stella"; and the next week +Emily Van Orden ran away with Tom Whately; and a few days later Alicia +Wade's husband died, and we debated whether Teddy Anstrother would do +the proper thing or sensibly marry Celia Reindan: and so, a little by a +little, we forgot our poor, dear Stella in precisely the decorous +graduations of regret with which our poor dear Stella would have +forgotten any one of us. + +Yes, even those who loved her most deeply have forgotten Stella. They +remember only an imaginary being who was entirely perfect, and of whom +they were not worthy. It is this fictitious woman who has usurped the +real Stella's place in the heart of the real Stella's own mother, and +whom even Lizzie d'Arlanges believes to have been once her sister, and +over whom Peter Blagden is always ready to grow maudlin; and it is this +immaculate woman--who never existed,--that will be until the end of +Avis' matrimonial existence the standard by which Avis is measured and +found wanting. And thus again the whirligig of time, by an odd turn, +brings in his revenges. + +And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. And the woman they speak of +to-day, in that hushed, hateful, sanctimonious voice, I must confess I +never knew. And of all persons I chiefly rage against that faultless +angel, that "poor dear Stella," who has pilfered even the paltry tribute +of being remembered from the Stella that to-day is mine alone. For it is +to this fictitious person that the people whom my Stella loved, as she +did not love me, now bring their flowers; and it was to this person they +erected their pompous monument,--nay, more, it was for this atrocious +woman they ordered the very coffin in which my Stella lay when I last +saw her. And it is not fair. + +And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. It would be good to have her +back,--to have her back to jeer at me, to make me feel red and +uncomfortable and ridiculous, to say rude things about my waist, and +indeed to fluster me just by being there. Yes, it would be good. But, +upon the whole, I am not sorry that Stella is gone. + +For there is Peter Blagden to be considered. We can all agree to-day +that Peter is a good fellow, that he is making the most of his Uncle +Larry's money, and that he is nobody's enemy but his own; and we have +smugly forgotten the time when we expected him to become a great lawyer. +We do not expect that of Peter now; instead, we are content +enough--particularly since Peter has so admirably dressed his part by +taking to longish hair and gruffness and a cane,--to point him out to +strangers in Lichfield as "one of our wealthiest men," and to elect him +to all civic committees, and to discuss his semi-annual sprees and his +monetary relations with various women whom one does not "know." And the +present Mrs. Blagden, too, appears content enough. + +And as Stella loved him-- + +Well, as it was, Peter was then off on his honeymoon, and there was only +I to bring the daffodils to Stella. She was always vain, was Stella; it +would have grieved her had no one remembered. + + + 3 + +Then I caught the afternoon train for Fairhaven, and went back to my +capable fiancee. + +But I walked over to Willoughby Hall that night and found Charteris +alone in his queer library, among the serried queer books and the +portraits of his "literary creditors." When I came into the apartment he +was mending a broken tea-cup, for he peculiarly delighted in such +infinitesimal task-work; but the vexed countenance at once took on the +fond young look my coming would invariably provoke, and he shoved aside +the fragments.... + +We talked of trifles; apropos of nothing, Charteris said, "Yes,--but, +then, I devoted the morning to drawing up my will." And I laughed over +such forethought. + +The man rose and with clenched fist struck upon the littered table. "It +is in the air. I swear to you that, somehow, _I_ have been warned. But +always I have been favoured--Why, man, I protest that never in my life +have I encountered any person in associating with whom I did not +condescend, with reason to back me! Yet today Death stands within arm's +reach, and I have accomplished--some three or four little books! And +yet--why, _Ashtaroth's Lackey_, now--Yes, by God! it is perfected speech +such as few other men have ever written. I know it, and I do not care at +all even though you piteous dullards should always lack the wit to +recognise and revere perfected speech when it confronts you. But +presently I die! and there is nothing left of me save the inefficient +testimony of those three or four little books!" + +I patted his shoulder and protested he had over-worked himself. + +"Eh, well," he said, and with that easy laugh I knew of old; "in any +event, I have been thinking for a whole two hours of my wife, and of how +from the very beginning I have utilised her, and of how good and +credulous she is, and of how happy I have made her--! For I have made +her happy. That is the preposterous part of it--" + +"Why, yes; Anne loves you very dearly. Oh, I think that everybody is +irrationally fond of you, John. No, that is not a compliment, it is +rather the reverse. It is simply an instance of what I have been +brooding over all this afternoon,--that we like people on account of +their good qualities and love them on account of their defects. I +honestly believe that the cornerstone of affection is the agreeable +perception of our superiority in some one point, at least, to the +beloved. And that is why so many people are fond of you, I think." + +He laughed a little. "And _de te fabula_--Yet I would distinguish. You +think me a futile person and not, as we will put it, a disastrously +truthful person, and so on through the entire list of all those +so-called vices which are really just a habit of not doing this or that +particular thing. Well! it is no longer _a la mode_ to talk about +God,--yet I must confess to an old-fashioned faith in our Author's +existence and even in His amiability. I believe He placed me in this +colourful world, and that He is not displeased because I have spent +therein some forty-odd years pleasurably. Then too I have not wasted +that pleasure, I have philanthropically passed it on. I have bequeathed +posterity the chance to spend an enjoyable half-hour or so over one or +two little books. That is not much to claim, but it is something." + +John Charteris was talking to himself now. + +"Had I instead the daily prayers of seven orphans, or the proud +consciousness of having always been afraid to do what I wanted +to,--which I take to be the universally accredited insurance of a +blissful eternity,--or even a whole half-column with portrait in the New +York papers to indicate what a loss my premature demise had been to +America,--or actually all three together, say, to exhibit as the +increment of this period, I honestly cannot imagine any of the more +intelligent archangels lining up to cheer my entry into Paradise. I +believe, however, that to be contented, to partake of the world's +amenities with moderation as a sauce, and to aggrieve no fellow-being, +except in self-protection, and to make other people happy as often as +you find it possible, is a recipe for living that will pass muster even +in heaven. There you have my creed; and it may not be impeccable, but I +believe in it." + +"You have forgotten something," I said, with a grin. "'One must not +think too despondently nor too often of the grim Sheriff who arrives +anon to dispossess you, no less than all the others, nor of any +subsequent and unpredictable legal adjustments.' See, here it is, your +own words printed in the book." + +"Dear me, did I say that? How nicely phrased it is! Well! you and I have +defiantly preserved the gallant attitude in an era not very favorable +thereto. And we seem to prosper--as yet--" + +"But certainly! We are the highly exceptional round pegs that flourish +like green bay-trees in a square hole," I summed it up. "Presently of +course our place knoweth us not. But in the mean while--well, as it +happens, I was recalling to-day how adroitly I scaled the summit of +human wisdom when I was only fourteen. For I said then, 'You can have a +right good time first, any way, if you keep away from ugly things and +fussy people.' And at twenty-five I stick to it." + +"I wonder now if it is not at a price?" said Charteris, rather +mirthlessly. "Either way, you have as yet the courage of the +unconvicted. And you have managed, out of it all, to get together the +makings of an honest book. I do not generally believe in heaping +flattery upon young authors, but if I had written that last book of +yours it would not grieve me. Even so, I wonder--? But it is dreary +here, in this old house, with all my wife's high-minded ancestors +chilling the air. Come, let us concoct some curious sort of drink." + +I looked at him compassionately. "And have Bettie staying up to let me +in and smelling it on me! You must be out of your head." + +And then Charteris laughed and derided me, and afterward we chatted for +a good two hours,--quite at random, and disposing of the most important +subjects, as was our usage when in argument, in a half-sentence. + +It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against, and I enjoyed it. +Taking him by and large, I loved the little fellow as I have loved no +other man. + + + + +30. + +_He Gilds the Weather-Vane_ + + +But I would not go along with Charteris the next morning when he came by +the Hamlyns' on his way to King's College. I could not, because I was +labouring over a batch of proof-sheets; and as I laboured my admiration +for the very clever young man who had concocted this new book augmented +comfortably; so that I told Charteris he was a public nuisance, and +please to go to Tillietudlem. + +He had procured the key to the Library,--for the College had not opened +as yet,--and meant to borrow an odd volume or so of Lucian. Charteris +had evolved the fantastic notion of treating Lucian's Zeus as a tragic +figure. He sketched a sympathetic picture of the fallen despot, and of +the smokeless altars, girdled by a jeering rabble of so-called +philosophers, and of how irritating it must be to anybody to have your +actual existence denied. Did I not see the pathos of poor Zeus's +situation with the god business practically "cornered," and the Jews +getting all the trade? + +I informed him that the only pathos in life just at present was my +inability to disprove, in default of abolishing, the existence of people +who bothered me when I was busy. So Charteris went away, just as Byam +brought the mail from the post-office. + + + 2 + +There were two cheques from magazines. Life was very pleasant, in a +quiet uneventful world. The _Fairhaven Gazette_ for the week had come, +too, to indicate that, as usual, nothing of grave import was happening +in an agreeably monotonous world. True, the Bulgarians were issuing an +appeal to civilization on the ground that they objected to being +massacred, and cyclones were wrecking towns and killing quite a number +of persons in Florida, and the strikes in Colorado were leading to +divers homicides; but in Fairhaven these things did not seem to matter. +And so the front page of the _Gazette_ was, rightfully, reserved for +Plans of the College for the Session of 1903-4.... + +I looked again. The President was explaining that he had intended no +discourtesy to Sir Thomas Lipton by declining to attend the +Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht Club dinner; Major Delmar had failed to beat +Lou Dillon's time, on the same track; the National Dressmakers' +Association had declared that the kangaroo walk and Gibson shoulders +would shortly be eschewed by all really fashionable women; and these +matters were more interesting, of course, but certainly no cause for +excitement. Well, I reflected, no news was good news proverbially; and I +was content to let the axiom pass. + +In fine, there was nothing to worry over anywhere. And the book was +going to be good, quite astonishingly good.... + +And yonder Bettie waited for me, and I could hear the piano that +proclaimed she was not idle. I was ineffably content; and at ease within +a rather kindly universe, taking it by and large.... + +"Quite a nice Setebos, after all! a big, fine generous-hearted fellow, +who doesn't bother to keep accounts to the last penny. I heartily +approve of Setebos, and Bettie ought not to rag Him so. She would think +it tremendously nice and boyish of me if I were to go impulsively and +tell her something like that--" + +So I decided I had worked quite long enough. + + + 3 + +But as I reached out toward the portieres, a man came into the room, +entering from the hall-way. And I gave a little whistling sound of +astonishment and hastened to him with extended hand. + +"My dear fellow," I began; "why, have you dropped from the moon?" + +"They--they told me you were here," said Jasper Hardress, and paused to +moisten his lips. "My wife died, yonder in Montana, ten days ago last +Thursday,--yes, it was on a Tuesday she died, I think." + +And I was silent for a breathing-space. "Yes?" I said, at last; for I +had seen the shining thing in Jasper Hardress's hand, and I was +wondering now why he had pocketed the toy, and for how long. + +"It was of a fever she died. She was delirious,--oh, quite three days. +And she talked in her delirium." + +I began to smile; it was like witnessing a play. "Yonder is Bettie and +my one chance of manhood; and blind chance, just the machination of a +tiny microbe, entraps me as I tread toward all this. I was wrong about +Setebos. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven." + +I said, aloud: "Well, Hardress, you wouldn't have me dispute the +veracity of a lady?" + +But the man did not appear to hear me. "Oh, it was very horrible," he +said. "Oh, I would like you, first of all, to comprehend how horrible it +was. She was always calling--no, not calling exactly, but just moaning +one name, and over and over again. He had been so cruel, she said. He +didn't really care for anything, she said, except to write his hateful +books. And I had loved her, you understand. And for three whole days I +must sit there and hear her tell of what another man had meant to her! I +have not been wholly sane, I think, since then, for I had loved her for +a long time. And her throat was so little that I often thought how easy +it would be to stop the moaning and talking, but somehow I did not like +to do it. And it isn't my honour that I mean to avenge. It is Gillian +that I must avenge,--Gillian who died because a coward had robbed her of +the will to live. For it was that in chief. Why, even you must +understand that," he said, as though he pleaded with me. + +And yonder Bettie played,--with lithe fingers which caressed the keys +rather than struck them, I remembered. And always at the back of my mind +some being that was not I was taking notes as to how unruffled the man +was; and I smiled a little, in recognition of the air, as Bettie began +_The Funeral March of a Marionette_.... + +"Yes," I said; "I think I understand. There is something to be advanced +upon the other side perhaps; but that scarcely matters. You act within +your rights; and, besides, you have a pistol, and I haven't. I am +getting afraid, though, Jasper. I can't stand this much longer. So for +God's sake, make an end of this!" + +Jasper Hardress said: "I mean to. But they told me he was here? Yes, I +am sure that someone told me he was here." + +I think I must have reeled a little. I know my brain was working +automatically. Gillian Hardress had always called me Jack; and Jasper +Hardress was past reason; and yonder was Bettie, who had made life too +fine and dear a thing to be relinquished.... + +"Jasper," someone was saying, and that someone seemed to laugh, "we +aren't living in the Middle Ages, remember. No, just as I said, I cannot +stand this nonsense any longer, and you must make an end of this +foolishness. Just on a bare suspicion--just on the ravings of a +delirious woman--! Why, she used to call _me_ Jack,--and I write +books--Why, you might just as logically murder _me_!" + +"I thought at first it was you. Oh, only for a moment, boy. I was not +quite sane, I think, for at first I suspected you of such treachery as +in my sober senses I know you never dreamed of. And I had forgotten you +were just a child--But she was conscious at the end," said Jasper +Hardress, "and when I--talked with her about what she had said in +delirium, she told me it was Charteris whose son we christened Jasper +Hardress some two years ago--" + +I said: "I never knew there was a child." But I was thinking of a +hitherto unaccounted-for photograph. + +"He only lived three months. I had always wanted a son. You cannot fancy +how proud I was of him." Hardress laughed here. + +"And she told you it was Charteris! in the moment of death when--when +you were threatening me, she told you it was Charteris!" + +"It is different when you are dying. You see--Gillian knew that eternity +depended on what she said to me then--" He spoke as with difficulty, and +he kept licking at restless lips. + +"Yes,--she did believe that. And she told you--!" I comprehended how +Gillian Hardress had loved me, and my shame was such that now it was the +mere brute will to live which held me. But it held me, none the less. +Besides, I saw the least unpleasant solution. + +"I suppose I can't blame you," I said,--"for if she told you, why, of +course--" Then I barked out: "He was here a moment ago. You must have +come around one corner, in fact, just as he turned the other. You will +find him at Willoughby Hall, I suppose. He said he was going +straight home." + +For I knew that Charteris was at King's College, a mile away from +Willoughby Hall; and, I assured myself, there would be ample time to +warn him. Only how much must now depend upon the diverting qualities of +Lucian! For should the Samosatan flag in interest, John would be leaving +the College presently; and there is but one street in Fairhaven. + + + 4 + +I had my hand upon the garden-gate, and Hardress had just turned the +corner below, going toward Cambridge Street, when Bettie came upon +the porch. + +"Well," she said, "and who's your fat friend, Mr. Sheridan?" + +"I can't stop now, dear. I forgot to tell John about something which is +rather important--" + +"Gracious!" Bettie Hamlyn said; "that sounds like shooting. Why, it is +shooting, isn't it?" + +"Yes," said I. + +"--Quite as though the Monnachins and the Massawomeks and all the other +jaw-breakers were attacking Fairhaven as they used to do on alternate +Thursdays, and affording both of us an excellent opportunity to get +nicely scalped in time for dinner. So I don't mind confessing that it +was against precisely such an emergency I declined to turn out an +elaborate suite of hair; and now I expect the world at large to +acknowledge that I acted very sensibly." + +"It is much more likely to be some drunken country-man on his monthly +spree--" I was reflecting while Bettie talked nonsense that there had +been no less than four shots. I was wondering whom the last was for. It +would be much pleasanter, all around, if Hardress had sent it into his +own disordered brain. Yes, certainly, three bullets ought amply to +account for an unprepared and unarmed and puny Charteris.... + +So I said: "Well, I suppose my business with John must wait for a while. +Besides, Bettie, you are such a dear in that get-up. And if you will +come down into the garden at once, I will explain a few of my reasons +for advancing the assertion." + +Standing upon the porch, she patted me ever so lightly upon the head. +"What a child it is!" she said. "I don't think that, after all, I shall +put twenty-six candles on your cake next week. The fat and lazy literary +gent is not really old enough, not really more than ten." + +"--And besides, apart from the proposed discussion of your physical +charms, I have something else quite equally important to tell +you about." + +"Oh, drat the pertinacious infant, then I'll come for half an hour. Just +wait until I get a hat. Still, what a worthless child it is! to be +quitting work before noon." + +And she would have gone, but I detained her. "Yes, what a worthless +child it is,--or rather, what an unproverbial sort of busy bee it has +been, Bettie dear. For his has been the summer air, and the sunshine, +and the flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes +have been upon him. Now it is autumn. And he has let others eat his +honey-which I take to include all that he actually made, all that wasn't +in the world before he came, as Stella used to say,--so that he might +have his morsel and his song. And sometimes it has been Sardinian honey, +very bitter in the mouth,--and even then he has let others eat it--" + +"You are a most irrelevant infant," said Miss Hamlyn, "with these +insectean divagations--Dear me, what lovely words! And of course if you +really want to drag me into that baking-hot garden, and have the only +fiancee you just at present possess laid up by a sunstroke--" + + + + +_The Epilogue: Which Suggests that Second Thoughts--_ + + +So I waited there alone. Whatever the four shots implied, I must tell +Bettie everything, because she was Bettie, and it was not fair I should +have any secrets from her. "Oh, just be honest with me," she had said, +in this same garden, "and I don't care what you do!" And I had never +lied to Bettie: at worst, I simply had not told her anything concerning +matters about which I was glad she had not happened to ask any +questions. But this was different.... + +Dimly I knew that everything must pivot on my telling Bettie. John was +done for, the Hardress woman was done for, and whether or no Jasper had +done for himself, there was no danger, now, that anyone would ever know +how that infernal Gillian had badgered me into, probably, three +homicides. There might be some sort of supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, +but very certainly it was not conformable to any human mathematics.... +And therefore I must tell Bettie. + +I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. She had pardoned much. It +might be she would pardon even this, "because I had been honest with her +when I didn't want to be." And in any event--even in her loathing,-- +Bettie would understand, and know I had at least kept faith with her.... + +I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. For living seemed somehow +to have raised barriers about me a little by a little, so that I must +view and talk with all my fellows more and more remotely, and could not, +as it were, quite touch anybody save Bettie. At all other persons I was +but grimacing falsely across an impalpable barrier. And now just such a +barrier was arising between Bettie and me, as I perceived in a sort of +panic. Yes, it was rising resistlessly, like an augmenting mist not ever +to be put aside, except by plunging forthwith into hours, or days, or +even into months perhaps, of ugliness and discomfort.... + +It was the season of harvest. The leaves were not yet turned, and upon +my face the heatless, sun-steeped air was like a caress. The whole world +was at full-tide, ineffably sweet and just a little languorous: and bees +were audible, as in a humorous pretence of vexation.... + +The world was very beautiful. I must tell Bettie presently, of course; +only the world was such a comfortable place precisely as it was; and I +began to wonder if I need tell Bettie after all? + +For, after all, to tell the truth could resurrect nobody; and to know +the truth would certainly make Bettie very unhappy; and never in my life +have I been able to endure the contact of unhappiness. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cords of Vanity, by +James Branch Cabell and Willson Follett + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORDS OF VANITY *** + +***** This file should be named 9608-8.txt or 9608-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/6/0/9608/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Virginia Paque, Anuradha Valsa, +and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + +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/9608-8.zip b/9608-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..40e1c40 --- /dev/null +++ b/9608-8.zip diff --git a/9608.txt b/9608.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ef95e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/9608.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10782 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cords of Vanity, by +James Branch Cabell and Willson Follett + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Cords of Vanity + +Author: James Branch Cabell + Willson Follett + +Posting Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #9608] +Release Date: January, 2006 +First Posted: October 9, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORDS OF VANITY *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Virginia Paque, Anuradha Valsa, +and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + + +THE CORDS OF VANITY + +A Comedy of Shirking + +Revised and Expanded Edition + +by JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +with INTRODUCTION by WILSON FOLLETT + + + + + + + +To + +GABRIELLE BROOKE MONCURE + +_Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit._ + + + + + +AN INTRODUCTION + +by Wilson Follett + + +Mr. Cabell, in making ready this second or intended edition of THE +CORDS OF VANITY, performs an act of reclamation which is at the same +time an act of fresh creation. + +For the purely reclamatory aspect of what he has done, his reward (so +far as that can consist in anything save the doing) must come from +insignificantly few directions; so few indeed that he, with a wrily +humorous exaggeration, affects to believe them singular. The author of +this novel has been pleased to describe the author of this +introduction as "the only known purchaser of the book" and, further, +as "the other person to own a CORDS OF VANITY". I could readily enough +acquit myself, with good sound legal proofs, of any such singularity +as stands charged in this soft impeachment--and that without appeal to +_The Cleveland Plain Dealer_ of eleven years ago ("slushy and +disgusting"), or to _The New York Post_ ("sterile and malodorous ... +worse than immoral--dull"), or to _Ainslee's Magazine_ ("inconsequent +and rambling ... rather nauseating at times"). These devotees of the +adjective that hunts in pairs are hardly to be discussed, I suppose, +in connection with any rewards except such as accrue to the possessors +of a certain obtuseness, who always and infallibly reap at least the +reward of not being hurt by what they do not know--or, for that +matter, by what they do know. He who writes such a book as THE CORDS +OF VANITY is committing himself to the supremely irrational faith that +this dullness is somehow not the ultimate arbiter; and for him the +pronouncements of this dullness simply do not figure among either his +rewards or his penalties. So, it is not exactly to these tributes of +the press that one reverts in noting that THE CORDS OF VANITY, on its +publication eleven years ago, promptly became a book which there +were--almost--none to praise and very few to love. After all, its +author's computation of that former audience of his--his actual +individual voluntary readers of a decade ago--appears to be but +slightly and pardonably exaggerated on the more modest side of the +fact. If there were a Cabell Club of membership determined solely by +the number of those who, already possessing THE CORDS OF VANITY in its +first edition, recognize it as the work of a serious artist of high +achievement and higher capacity, I suspect that the smallness of that +club would be in inordinate disproportion to everything but its +selectness and its members' pride in "belonging". + +Be that as it may, the economist-author, on the eve of his book's +emergence from the limbo of "out of print", prefers that it come into +its redemption carrying a foreword by someone who knew it without +dislike in its former incarnation. No contingent liability, it seems, +can dissuade Mr. Cabell from this preference. An author who once +elected to precede a group of his best tales with an introduction +eloquently setting forth reasons why the collection ought not to be +published at all, is hardly to be deterred now by the mere +inexpediency of hitching his star to a farm-wagon. His own graciously +unreasonable insistence must be the excuse, such as it is, for the +present introduction, such as it is. If there may be said to exist a +sort of charter membership in Mr. Cabell's audience, this document is +to be construed as representing its very enthusiastic welcome to the +later and vastly larger elective membership. + +And if, weighed as such a welcome, it proves hopelessly inadequate, at +least it provides a number of possible compensations by the way. For +instance, that _New York World_ critic who damned the book but praised +its frontispiece of 1909, has now a uniquely pat opportunity to +balance his ledger by praising the book and damning this foreword, +which, more or less, replaces the frontispiece. Similarly, the more +renowned critic and anthologist who so well knows the "originals" of +the verses in _From the Hidden Way_, can now render poetically perfect +justice to all who will care by perceiving that both the earlier +edition of this book and the author of this foreword are but figments +of Mr. Cabell's slightly puckish invention. + +But these pages must not be, like those which follow, a comedy of +shirking. They will have flouted a plain duty unless they speak of the +sense and the degree in which this novel, during the process of +reclaiming it, has been actually recreated. Perhaps the matter can be +packed most succinctly into the statement that Mr. Cabell's hero has +been subjected to such a process of growth as has made him +commensurate in stature with the other two modern writers of Mr. +Cabell's invention. As _The Cream of the Jest_ is essentially the book +of Felix Kennaston and _Beyond Life_ that of John Charteris, so THE +CORDS OF VANITY is essentially the book of Robert Etheridge Townsend. +Now, this Townsend has accomplished a deal of growing since 1909. By +this I do not mean that he is taken at a later period of his own +imagined life, or that he fails to act consonantly with the extreme +youth imputed to him: I mean that he is the creation of a more mature +mind, a deeper philosophy, a more probing insight into the +implications of things. A given youth of twenty-five will be very +differently interpreted by an observer of thirty and by the same +observer at forty, very much as a given era of the past will be +understood differently by a single historian before and after certain +cycles of his own social and political experience. The past never +remains to us the same past; it grows up along with us; the physical +facts may remain admittedly the same, but our understanding accents +them differently, finds more in them at some points and less at +others. So Robert Etheridge Townsend remains an example of that +special temperament which, being unable to endure the contact of +unhappiness, consistently shirks every responsibility that entails or +threatens discomfort; and the truth about him, taking him as an +example of just that temperament, is still inexorably told. But his +weakness as a man becomes much more tolerable in this second version, +because it is much more intimately and poignantly correlated with his +strength as an artist. One is made to feel that he, like Charteris, +may the better consummate in his art the auctorial virtues of +distinction and clarity, beauty and symmetry, tenderness and truth and +urbanity, precisely because his personal life is bereft of those +virtues. Less than before, the accent is on the wastrel in Townsend; +more than before, it is on the potential creator of beauty in him. The +earlier readers will hardly count it as a fault that Mr. Cabell has +contrived to make his novel, without detriment to any truth +whatsoever, a far less unpleasant book. Sardonic it still is, by a +necessary implication, but not wantonly, and with a mellowness. The +irony, which at its harshest was capable of rasping the nerves, has +become capable of wringing the heart. + +Other reasons there are, too, for holding that THE CORDS OF VANITY is +certain to make its second appeal to a many times multiplied audience. +Since divers momentous transactions of the years just gone, the whole +world stands in a moral position extraordinarily well adapted to the +comprehension of just such a comedy of shirking; and especially the +world of thought has received a powerful impulsion toward the area +long occupied by Mr. Cabell's romantic pessimism. There is perhaps +somewhat more demand for satire, or at least a growing toleration of +it. Moreover, by sheer patience and reiteration Mr. Cabell has +procured no little currency for some of his most characteristic ideas. +Chivalry and gallantry, as he analyzes them, are concepts which play +their part in the inevitable present re-editing of social and literary +history. _The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck_, _The Cream of the Jest_, +and _The Certain Hour_ have somewhat to say to the discriminating, +even on other than purely aesthetic grounds; _Beyond Life_ is on the +threshold of its day as the _Sartor Resartus_ of one side, the +aesthetic side, of modernism; + +"_Of_ Jurgen _eke they maken mencion";_ + +and THE CORDS OF VANITY is but the first of the earlier books to be +reissued in the format of the uniform and accessible Intended Edition. + +While THE CORDS OF VANITY was out of print, a fresh copy is known to +have been acquired for twenty-five cents. Copies of a more recent work +by the same hand--a tale which has been rendered equally unavailable +to the public, though by slightly different considerations--have +fetched as much as one hundred times that sum. This arithmetic may be, +in part, the gauge of an unsought and distasteful notoriety; but that +very notoriety, by the most natural of transitions, will lead the +curious on from what cannot be obtained to what can, and some who have +begun by seeking one particular work of a great artist will end by +discovering the artist. In short, it is rational to expect that the +fortunes hereafter of this rewritten novel will very excellently +illustrate the uses of adversity. + +Not, I repeat, that any great part of the reward for such writing can +come from without. According to Robert Etheridge Townsend, "a man +writes admirable prose not at all for the sake of having it read, but +for the more sensible reason that he enjoys playing solitaire"--a not +un-Cabellian saying. And, even of the reward from without, it may be +questioned whether the really indispensable part ever comes from the +multitude. A lady with whose more candid opinions the writer of this +is more frequently favored nowadays than of old has said: "Every time +I hear of somebody who has wanted one of these books without being +able to get it, or who, having got it, has conceded it nothing better +than the disdain of an ignoramus, I feel as if I must forthwith get +out the copy and read it through again and again, until I have read it +once for every person who has rejected it or been denied it." One may +feel reasonably sure that it is this kind of solicitude, rather than +any possible sanction from the crowd, which would be thought of by the +author of this book as "the exact high prize through desire of which +we write". + +WILSON FOLLETT. + +CHESHIRE, CONNECTICUT + +_May, 1920_ + + + + + + CONTENTS: + + THE PROLOGUE + + I HE SITS OUT A DANCE + + II HE LOVES EXTENSIVELY + + III HE EARNS A STICK-PIN + + IV HE TALKS WITH CHARTERIS + + V HE REVISITS FAIRHAVEN AND THE PLAY + + VI HE CHATS OVER A HEDGE + + VII HE GOES MAD IN A GARDEN + + VIII HE DUELS WITH A STUPID WOMAN + + IX HE PUTS HIS TONGUE IN HIS CHEEK + + X HE SAMPLES NEW EMOTIONS + + XI HE POSTURES AMONG CHIMNEY-POTS + + XII HE FACES HIMSELF AND REMEMBERS + + XIII HE BAITS UPON THE JOURNEY + + XIV HE PARTICIPATES IN A BRAVE JEST + + XV HE DECIDES TO AMUSE HIMSELF + + XVI HE SEEKS FOR COPY + + XVII HE PROVIDES COPY + + XVIII HE SPENDS AN AFTERNOON IN ARDEN + + XIX HE PLAYS THE IMPROVIDENT FOOL + + XX HE DINES OUT, IMPEDED BY SUPERSTITIONS + + XXI HE IS URGED TO DESERT HIS GALLEY + + XXII HE CLEANS THE SLATE + + XXIII HE REVILES DESTINY AND CLIMBS A WALL + + XXIV HE RECONCILES SENTIMENT AND REASON + + XXV HE ADVANCES IN THE ATTACK ON SELWOODE + + XXVI HE ASSISTS IN THE DIVERSION OF BIRDS + + XXVII HE CALLS, COUNSELS, AND CONSIDERS + +XXVIII HE PARTICIPATES IN SUNDRY CONFIDENCES + + XXIX HE ALLOWS THE MERITS OF IMPERFECTION + + XXX HE GILDS THE WEATHER-VANE + + THE EPILOGUE: WHICH SUGGESTS THAT SECOND THOUGHTS-- + + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + +_"In the house and garden of his dream he saw a child moving, and +could divide the main streams at least of the winds that had played on +him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey."_ + + + +_The Prologue: Which Deals with the Essentials_ + + +_1--Writing_ + +It appeared to me that my circumstances clamored for betterment, +because never in my life have I been able to endure the contact of +unhappiness. And my mother was always crying now, over (though I did +not know it) the luckiest chance which had ever befallen her; and that +made me cry too, without understanding exactly why. + +So the child, that then was I, procured a pencil and a bit of +wrapping-paper, and began to write laboriously: + +"DEAR LORD + +"You know that Papa died and please comfort Mama +and give Father a crown of Glory Ammen + +"Your lamb and very sincerely yours + +"ROBERT ETHERIDGE TOWNSEND." + +This appeared to the point as I re-read it, and of course God would +understand that children were not expected to write quite as straight +across the paper as grown people. The one problem was how to deliver +this, my first letter, most expeditiously, because when your mother +cried you always cried too, and couldn't stop, not even when you +wanted to, not even when she promised you five cents, and it all made +you horribly uncomfortable. + +I knew that the big Bible on the parlor table was God's book. Probably +God read it very often, since anybody would be proud of having written +a book as big as that and would want to look at it every day. So I +tiptoed into the darkened parlor. I use the word advisedly, for there +was not at this period any drawing-room in Lichfield, and besides, a +drawing-room is an entirely different matter. + +Everywhere the room was cool, and, since the shades were down, the +outlines of the room's contents were uncomfortably dubious; for just +where the table stood had been, five days ago, a big and oddly-shaped +black box with beautiful silver handles; and Uncle George had lifted +me so that I could see through the pane of glass, which was a part of +this funny box, while an infinity of decorous people rustled and +whispered.... + +I remember knowing they were "company" and thinking they coughed and +sniffed because they were sorry that my father was dead. In the light +of knowledge latterly acquired, I attribute these actions to the then +prevalent weather, for even now I recall how stiflingly the room smelt +of flowers--particularly of magnolia blossoms--and of rubber and of +wet umbrellas. For my own part, I was not at all sorry, though of +course I pretended to be, since I had always known that as a rule my +father whipped me because he had just quarreled with my mother, and +that he then enjoyed whipping me. + +I desired, in fine, that he should stay dead and possess his crown of +glory in Heaven, which was reassuringly remote, and that my mother +should stop crying. So I slipped my note into the Apocrypha.... + +I felt that somewhere in the room was God and that God was watching +me, but I was not afraid. Yet I entertained, in common with most +children, a nebulous distrust of this mysterious Person, a distrust of +which I was particularly conscious on winter nights when the gas had +been turned down to a blue fleck, and the shadow of the mantelpiece +flickered and plunged on the ceiling, and the clock ticked louder and +louder, in prediction (I suspected) of some terrible event very close +at hand. + +Then you remembered such unpleasant matters as Elisha and his bears, +and those poor Egyptian children who had never even spoken to Moses, +and that uncomfortably abstemious lady, in the fat blue-covered +_Arabian Nights_, who ate nothing but rice, grain by grain--in the +daytime.... And you called Mammy, and said you were very thirsty and +wanted a glass of water, please. + +To-day, though, while acutely conscious of that awful inspection, and +painstakingly careful not to look behind me, I was not, after all, +precisely afraid. If God were a bit like other people I knew He would +say, "What an odd child!" and I liked to have people say that. Still, +there was sunlight in the hall, and lots of sunlight, not just long +and dusty shreds of sunlight, and I felt more comfortable when I was +back in the hall. + + +2--_Reading_ + +I lay flat upon my stomach, having found that posture most conformable +to the practice of reading, and I considered the cover of this slim, +green book; the name of John Charteris, stamped thereon in fat-bellied +letters of gold, meant less to me than it was destined to signify +thereafter. + +A deal of puzzling matter I found in this book, but in my memory, +always, one fantastic passage clung as a burr to sheep's wool. That +fable, too, meant less to me than it was destined to signify +thereafter, when the author of it was used to declare that he had, +unwittingly, written it about me. Then I read again this + +_Fable of the Foolish Prince_ + +"As to all earlier happenings I choose in this place to be silent. +Anterior adventures he had known of the right princely sort. But +concerning his traffic with Schamir, the chief talisman, and how +through its aid he won to the Sun's Sister for a little while; and +concerning his dealings with the handsome Troll-wife (in which affair +the cat he bribed with butter and the elm-tree he had decked with +ribbons helped him); and with that beautiful and dire Thuringian woman +whose soul was a red mouse: we have in this place naught to do. +Besides, the Foolish Prince had put aside such commerce when the Fairy +came to guide him; so he, at least, could not in equity have grudged +the same privilege to his historian. + +"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping along his +father's highway. But the road was bordered by so many wonders--as +here a bright pebble and there an anemone, say, and, just beyond, a +brook which babbled an entreaty to be tasted,--that many folk had +presently overtaken and had passed the loitering Foolish Prince. First +came a grandee, supine in his gilded coach, with half-shut eyes, +uneagerly meditant upon yesterday's statecraft or to-morrow's +gallantry; and now three yokels, with ruddy cheeks and much dust upon +their shoulders; now a haggard man in black, who constantly glanced +backward; and now a corporal with an empty sleeve, who whistled as he +went. + +"A butterfly guided every man of them along the highway. 'For the Lord +of the Fields is a whimsical person,' said the Fairy,' and such is his +very old enactment concerning the passage even of his cowpath; but +princes each in his day and in his way may trample this domain as +prompt their will and skill.' + +"'That now is excellent hearing,' said the Foolish Prince; and he +strutted. + +"'Look you,' said the Fairy, 'a man does not often stumble and break +his shins in the highway, but rather in the byway.'.... + +"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping on his +allotted journey, though he paused once in a while to shake his bauble +at the staring sun. + +"'The stars,' he considered, 'are more sympathetic.... + +"And thus, the Fairy leading, they came at last to a tall hedge +wherein were a hundred wickets, all being closed; and those who had +passed the Foolish Prince disputed before the hedge and measured the +hundred wickets with thirty-nine articles and with a variety of +instruments, and each man entered at his chosen wicket, and a +butterfly went before him; but no man returned into the open country. + +"'Now beyond each wicket,' said the Fairy, 'lies a great crucible, and +by ninety and nine of these crucibles is a man consumed, or else +transmuted into this animal or that animal. For such is the law in +these parts and in human hearts.' + +"The Prince demanded how if one found by chance the hundredth wicket? +But she shook her head and said that none of the Tylwydd Teg was +permitted to enter the Disenchanted Garden. Rumor had it that within +the Garden, beyond the crucibles, was a Tree, but whether the fruit of +this Tree were sweet or bitter no person in the Fields could tell, nor +did the Fairy pretend to know what happened in the Garden. + +"'Then why, in heaven's name, need a man test any of these wickets?' +cried the Foolish Prince; 'with so much to lose and, it may be, +nothing to gain? For one, I shall enter none of them.' + +"But once more she shook her glittering head. 'In your House and in +your Sign it was decreed. Time will be, my Prince; to-day the kid +gambols and the ox chews his cud. Presently the butcher cries, _Time +is!_ Comes the hour and the power, and the cook bestirs herself and +says, _Time was!_ The master has his dinner, either way, all say, and +every day.' + +"And the Fairy vanished as she talked with him, her radiances thinning +into the neutral colors of smoke, and thence dwindling a little by a +little into the vaulting spiral of a windless and a burnt-out fire, +until nothing remained of her save her voice; and that was like the +moving of dead leaves before they fall. + +"'Truly,' said the Foolish Prince, 'I am compelled to consider this a +vexatious business. For, look you, the butterfly I just now admire +flits over this wicket, and then her twin flutters over that wicket, +and between them there is absolutely no disparity in attraction. Hoo! +here is a more sensible insect.' + +"And he leaped and cracked his heels together and ran after a golden +butterfly that drifted to the rearward Fields. There was such a host +of butterflies about that presently he had lost track of his first +choice, and was in boisterous pursuit of a second, and then of a +third, and then of yet others; but none of them did he ever capture, +the while that one by one he followed divers butterflies of varying +colors, and never a golden butterfly did he find any more. + +"When it was evening, the sky drew up the twilight from the east as a +blotter draws up ink, and stars were kindling everywhere like tiny +signal-fires, and a light wind came out of the murky east and rustled +very plaintively in places where the more ambiguous shadows were; and +the Foolish Prince shivered, for the air was growing chill, and the +tips of his fingers were aware of it. + +"'A crucible,' he reflected, 'possesses the minor virtue of continuous +warmth.' + +"And before the hedge he found a Rational Person, led hither by a +Clothes' Moth, working out the problem of the hundred wickets in +consonance with the most approved methods. 'I have very nearly solved +it,' the Rational Person said, in genteel triumph, 'but this evening +grows too dark for any further ciphering, and again I must wait until +to-morrow. I regret, sir, that you have elected to waste the day, in +pursuit of various meretricious Lepidoptera.' + +"'A happy day, my brother, is never wasted." + +"'That appears to me to be nonsense,' said the Rational Person; and he +put up his portfolio, preparatory to spending another night under his +umbrella in the Fields. + +"'Indeed, my brother?' laughed the Foolish Prince. 'Then, farewell, +for I am assured that yonder, as here, our father makes the laws, and +that to dispute his appreciation of the enticing qualities of +butterflies were an impertinence.' + +"Thereafter, pushing open the wicket nearest to his hand, the Foolish +Prince tucked his bauble under his left arm and skipped into the +Disenchanted Garden; and as he went he sang, not noting that, from +somewhere in the thickening shadows, had arisen a golden butterfly +which went before him through the wicket. + +"Sang the Foolish Prince: + + "'Farewell to Fields and Butterflies + And levities of Yester-year! + For we espy, and hold more dear, + The Wicket of our Destinies. + + "'Whereby we enter, once for all, + A Garden which such fruit doth yield + As, tasted once, no more Afield + We fare where Youth holds carnival. + + "'Farewell, fair Fields, none found amiss + When laughter was a frequent noise + And golden-hearted girls and boys + Appraised the mouth they meant to kiss. + + "'Farewell, farewell! but for a space + We, being young, Afield might stray, + That in our Garden nod and say, + _Afield is no unpleasant place.'"_ + + +3--_Arithmetic_ + +In such disconnected fashion, as hereafter, I record the moments of my +life which I most vividly remember. For it is possible only in the +last paragraphs of a book, and for a book's people only, to look back +upon an ordered and proportionate progression to what one has become; +in life the thing arrives with scantier dignity; and one appears, in +retrospection, less to have marched toward any goal than always to +have jumped and scrambled from one stepping-stone to another because, +however momentarily, "just this or that poor impulse seemed the sole +work of a lifetime." + +Well! at least I have known these moments and the rapture of their +dominance; and I am not lightly to be stripped of recollection of +them, nor of the attendant thrill either, by any cheerless hour +wherein, as sometimes happens, my personal achievements confront me +like a pile of flimsy jack-straws. + +What does it all amount to?--I do not know. There may be some sort of +supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, but very certainly it is not +conformable to any human mathematics. + + + + + + + _THE CORDS OF VANITY + +"His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the flowers; and +gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been upon him. +Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his morsel +and his song."_ + + + + + + +1. + +_He Sits Out a Dance_ + + +When I first knew Stella she was within a month of being fifteen, +which is for womankind an unattractive age. There were a startling +number of corners to her then, and she had but vague notions as to the +management of her hands and feet. In consequence they were perpetually +turning up in unexpected places and surprising her by their size and +number. Yes, she was very hopelessly fifteen; and she was used to +laugh, unnecessarily, in a nervous fashion, approximating to a whinny, +and when engaged in conversation she patted down her skirts six times +to the minute. + +It seems oddly unbelievable when I reflect that Rosalind--"daughter to +the banished Duke"--and Stella and Helen of Troy, and all the other +famous fair ones of history, were each like that at one period or +another. + +As for myself, I was nine days younger than Stella, and so I was at +this time very old--much older than it is ever permitted anyone to be +afterward. I cherished the most optimistic ideas as to my impendent +moustache, and was wont in privacy to encourage it with the +manicure-scissors. I still entertained the belief that girls were +upon the whole superfluous nuisances, but was beginning to perceive +the expediency of concealing this opinion, even in private converse +with my dearest chum, where, in our joyous interchange of various +heresies, we touched upon this especial sub-division of fauna very +lightly, and, I now suspect, with some self-consciousness. + + + 2 + +All this was at a summer resort, which was called the Green +Chalybeate. Stella and I and others of our age attended the hotel hops +in the evening with religious punctuality, for well-meaning elders +insisted these dances amused us, and it was easier to go than to argue +the point. At least, that was the feeling of the boys. + +Stella has since sworn the girls liked it. I suspect in this statement +a certain parsimony as to the truth. They giggled too much and were +never entirely free from that haunting anxiety concerning their +skirts. + +We danced together, Stella and I, to the strains of the last Sousa +two-step (it was the _Washington Post_), and we conversed, meanwhile, +with careful disregard of the amenities of life, since each feared +lest the other might suspect in some common courtesy an attempt +at--there is really no other word--spooning. And spooning was absurd. + +Well, as I once read in the pages of a rare and little known author, +one lives and learns. + +I asked Stella to sit out a dance. I did this because I had heard Mr. +Lethbury--a handsome man with waxed mustachios and an absolutely +piratical amount of whiskers,--make the same request of Miss Van +Orden, my just relinquished partner, and it was evident that such +whiskers could do no wrong. + +Stella was not uninfluenced, it may be, by Miss Van Orden's example, +for even in girlhood the latter was a person of extraordinary beauty, +whereas, as has been said, Stella's corners were then multitudinous; +and it is probable that those two queer little knobs at the base of +Stella's throat would be apt to render their owner uncomfortable and a +bit abject before--let us say--more ample charms. In any event, Stella +giggled and said she thought it would be just fine, and I presently +conducted her to the third piazza of the hotel. + +There we found a world that was new. + + + 3 + +It was a world of sweet odors and strange lights, flooded with a +kindly silence which was, somehow, composed of many lispings and +trepidations and thin echoes. The night was warm, the sky all +transparency. If the comparison was not manifestly absurd, I would +liken that remembered sky's pale color to the look of blue plush +rubbed the wrong way. And in its radiance the stars bathed, large and +bright and intimate, yet blurred somewhat, like shop-lights seen +through frosted panes; and the moon floated on it, crisp and clear as +a new-minted coin. This was the full midsummer moon, grave and +glorious, that compelled the eye; and its shield was obscurely marked, +as though a Titan had breathed on its chill surface. Its light +suffused the heavens and lay upon the earth beneath us in broad +splashes; and the foliage about us was dappled with its splendor, save +in the open east, where the undulant, low hills wore radiancy as a +mantle. + +For the trees, mostly maples of slight stature, clustered thickly +about the hotel, and their branches mingled in a restless pattern of +blacks and silvers and dim greens that mimicked the laughter of the +sea under an April wind. Looking down from the piazza, over the +expanse of tree-tops, all this was strangely like the sea; and it gave +one, somehow, much the same sense of remote, unbounded spaces and of a +beauty that was a little sinister. At times whippoorwills called to +one another, eerie and shrill; and the distant dance-music was a +vibration in the air, which was heavy with the scent of bruised +growing things and was filled with the cool, healing magic of the +moonlight. + +Taking it all in all, we had blundered upon a very beautiful place. +And there we sat for a while and talked in an aimless fashion. We did +not know quite how one ought to "sit out" a dance, you conceive.... + + + 4 + +Then, moved by some queer impulse, I stared over the railing for a +little at this great, wonderful, ambiguous world, and said solemnly: + +"It is good." + +"Yes," Stella agreed, in a curious, quiet and tiny voice, "it--it's +very large, isn't it?" She looked out for a moment over the tree-tops. +"It makes me feel like a little old nothing," she said, at last. "The +stars are so big, and--so uninterested." Stella paused for an +interval, and then spoke again, with an uncertain laugh. "I think I am +rather afraid." + +"Afraid?" I echoed. + +"Yes," she said, vaguely; "of--of everything." + +I understood. Even then I knew something of the occasional +insufficiency of words. + +"It is a big world," I assented, "and lots of people are having a +right hard time in it right now. I reckon there is somebody dying this +very minute not far off." + +"It's all--waiting for us!" Stella had forgotten my existence. "It's +bringing us so many things--and we don't know what any of them are. +But we've got to take them, whether we want to or not. It isn't fair. +We've got to--well, got to grow up, and--marry, and--die, whether we +want to or not. We've no choice. And it may not matter, after all. +Everything will keep right on like it did before; and the stars won't +care; and what we've done and had done to us won't really matter!" + +"Well, but, Stella, you can have a right good time first, anyway, if +you keep away from ugly things and fussy people. And I reckon you +really go to Heaven afterwards if you haven't been really bad,--don't +you?" + +"Rob,--are you ever afraid of dying?" Stella asked, "very much +afraid--Oh, you know what I mean." + +I did. I was about ten once more. It was dark, and I was passing a +drug-store, with huge red and green and purple bottles glistening in +the gas-lit windows; and it had just occurred to me that I, too, must +die, and be locked up in a box, and let down with trunk-straps into a +hole, like Father was.... So I said, "Yes." + +"And yet we've got to! Oh, I don't see how people can go on living +like everything was all right when that's always getting nearer,--when +they know they've got to die before very long. Because they dance and +go on picnics and buy hats as if they were going to live forever. +I--oh, I can't understand." + +"They get used to the idea, I reckon. We're sort of like the rats in +the trap at home, in our stable," I suggested, poetically. "We can bite +the wires and go crazy, like lots of them do, if we want to, or we can +eat the cheese and kind of try not to think about it. Either way, there's +no getting out till they come to kill us in the morning." + +"Yes," sighed Stella; "I suppose we must make the best of it." + +"It's the only sensible thing to do, far as I can see." + +"But it is all so big--and so careless about us!" she said, after a +little. "And we don't know--we can't know!--what is going to happen to +you and me. And we can't stop its happening!" + +"We'll just have to make the best of that, too," I protested, +dolefully. + +Stella sighed again, "I hope so," she assented; "still, I'm scared of +it." + +"I think I am, too--sort of," I conceded, after reflection. "Anyhow, I +am going to have as good a time as I can." + +There was now an even longer pause. Pitiable, ridiculous infants were +pondering, somewhat vaguely but very solemnly, over certain mysteries +of existence, which most of us have learned to accept with stolidity. +We were young, and to us the miraculous insecurity and inconsequence +of human life was still a little impressive, and we had not yet come +to regard the universe as a more or less comfortable place, +well-meaningly constructed anyhow--by Somebody--for us to reside in. + +Therefore we moved a trifle closer together, Stella and I, and were +commonly miserable over the _Weltschmerz_. After a little a distant +whippoorwill woke me from a chaos of reverie, and I turned to Stella, +with a vague sense that we two were the only people left in the whole +world, and that I was very, very fond of her. + +Stella's head was leaned backward. Her lips were parted, and the +moonlight glinted in her eyes. Her eyes were blue. + +"Don't!" said Stella, faintly. + +I did.... + +It was a matter out of my volition, out of my planning. And, oh, the +wonder, and sweetness, and sacredness of it! I thought, even in the +instant; and, oh, the pity that, after all, it is slightly +disappointing.... + +Stella was not angry, as I had half expected. "That was dear of you," +she said, impulsively, "but don't try to do it again." There was the +wisdom of centuries in this mandate of Stella's as she rose from the +bench. The spell was broken, utterly. "I think," said Stella, in the +voice of a girl of fifteen, "I think we'd better go and dance some +more." + + + 5 + +In the crude morning I approached Stella, with a fatuous smile. She +apparently both perceived and resented my bearing, although she never +once looked at me. There was something of great interest to her in the +distance, apparently down by the springhouse; she was flushed and +indignant; and her eyes wouldn't, couldn't, and didn't turn for an +instant in my direction. + +I fidgeted. + +"If," said she, impersonally, "if you believe it was because of _you_, +you are very much mistaken. It would have been the same with anybody. +You don't understand, and I don't either. Anyhow, I think you are a +mess, and I hate you. Go away from me!" + +And she stamped her foot in a fine rage. + +For the moment I entertained an un-Christian desire that Stella had +been born a boy. In that case, I felt, I would, just then, have really +enjoyed sitting upon the back of her head, and grinding her nose into +the lawn, and otherwise persuading her to cry "'Nough." These virile +pleasures being denied me, I sought for comfort in discourteous +speech. + +"Umph-huh!" said I, "and you think you're mighty smart, don't you? +Well, I don't want you pawing around me any more, either. I won't have +it, do you understand! That was what I was going to tell you anyhow, +you kissing-bug, even if you hadn't acted so smart. And you can just +stick that right in your pipe and smoke it, you old Miss Smart Alec." + +Thereupon I--wisely--departed without delay. A rock struck me rather +forcibly between the shoulder blades, but I did not deign to notice +this phenomenon. + +"You can't fight girls with fists," I reflected. "You've just got to +talk to them in the right way." + + + + +2. + +_He Loves Extensively_ + + +I saw no more of Stella for a lengthy while, since within two days of +the events recorded it pleased my mother to seek out another summer +resort. + +"For in September," she said, "I really must have perfect quiet and +unimpeachable butter, and falling leaves, and only a very few +congenial people to be melancholy with,--and that sort of thing, you +know. I find it freshens one up so against the winter." + +It was a signal feature of my mother's conversation that you never +understood, precisely, what she was talking about. + +Thus in her train the silly, pretty woman drew otherwhither her +hobbledehoy son, as indeed Claire Bulmer Townsend had aforetime drawn +an armament of more mature and stolid members of my sex. I was always +proud of my handsome mother, but without any aspirations, however +theoretical, toward intimacy; and her periods of conscientious if +vague affection, when she recollected its propriety, I endured with +consolatory foreknowledge of an impendent, more agreeable era of +neglect. + +I fancy that at bottom I was without suspecting it lonely. I was an +only child; my father had died, as has been hinted, when I was in +kilts.... No, I must have graduated from kilts into "knee-pants" when +the Democracy of Lichfield celebrated Grover Cleveland's first +election as President, for I was seven years old then, and was allowed +to stay up ever so late after supper to watch the torchlight parade. I +recollect being rather pleasantly scared by the yells of all those +marching people and by the glistening of their faces as the irregular +flaring torches heaved by; and I recollect how delightfully the cold +night air was flavored with kerosene. In any event, it was on this +generally festive November night that my father again took too much to +drink, and, coming home toward morning, lay down and went to sleep in +the vestibule between our front-door and the storm-doors; and five +days later died of pneumonia...In that era I was accounted an odd boy; +given to reading and secretive ways, and, they record, to long +silences throughout which my lips would move noiselessly. "Just +talking to one of my friends," they tell me I was used to explain; +though it was not until my career at King's College that I may be said +to have pretended to intimacy with anybody. + + + 2 + +For in old Fairhaven I spent, of course, a period of ostensible study, +as four generations of my fathers had done aforetime. But in that +leisured, slatternly and ancient city I garnered a far larger harvest +of (comparatively) innocuous cakes and ale than of authentic learning, +and at my graduation carried little of moment from the place save many +memories of Bettie Hamlyn.... Her father taught me Latin at King's +College, while Bettie taught me human intimacy--almost. Looking back, +I have not ever been intimate with anybody.... + +Not but that I had my friends. In particular I remember those four of +us who always called ourselves--in flat defiance, just as Dumas did, +of mere arithmetic--"The Three Musketeers." I think that we loved one +another very greatly during the four years we spent together in our +youth. I like to believe we did, and to remember the boys who were +once unreasonably happy, even now. It does not seem to count, somehow, +that Aramis has taken to drink and every other inexpedient course, I +hear, and that I would not recognize him today, were we two to +encounter casually--or Athos, either, I suppose, now that he has been +so long in the Philippines. + +And as for D'Artagnan--or Billy Woods, if you prefer the appellation +which his sponsors gave him,--why we are still good friends and always +will be, I suppose. But we are not particularly intimate; and very +certainly we will never again read _Chastelard_ together and declaim +the more impassioned parts of it,--and in fine, I cannot help seeing, +nowadays, that, especially since his marriage, Billy has developed +into a rather obvious and stupid person, and that he considers me to +be a bit of a bad egg. And in a phrase, when we are together, just we +two, we smoke a great deal and do not talk any more than is necessary. + +And once I would have quite sincerely enjoyed any death, however +excruciating, which promoted the well-being of Billy Woods; and he +viewed me not dissimilarly, I believe.... However, after all, this was +a long, long while ago, and in a period almost antediluvian. + +And during this period they of Fairhaven assumed I was in love with +Bettie Hamlyn; and for a very little while, at the beginning, had I +assumed as much. More lately was my error flagrantly apparent when I +fell in love with someone else, and sincerely in love, and found to my +amazement that, upon the whole, I preferred Bettie's companionship to +that of the woman I adored. By and by, though, I learned to accept +this odd, continuing phenomenon much as I had learned to accept the +sunrise. + + + 3 + +Once Bettie demanded of me, "I often wonder what you really think of +me? Honest injun, I mean." + +I meditated, and presently began, with leisure: + +"Miss Hamlyn is a young woman of considerable personal attractions, +and with one exception is unhandicapped by accomplishments. She plays +the piano, it is true, but she does it divinely and she neither +crochets nor embroiders presents for people, nor sketches, nor +recites, nor sings, or in fine annoys the public in any way +whatsoever. Her enemies deny that she is good-looking, but even her +friends concede her curious picturesqueness and her knowledge of it. +Her penetration, indeed, is not to be despised; she has even grasped +the fact that all men are not necessarily fools in spite of the +fashion in which they talk to women. It must be admitted, however, +that her emotions are prone to take precedence of her reasoning +powers: thus she is not easily misled from getting what she desires, +save by those whom she loves, because in argument, while always +illogical, she is invariably convincing--" + +Miss Hamlyn sniffed. "This is, perhaps, the inevitable effect of +twenty cigarettes a day," was her cryptic comment. "Nevertheless, it +does affect me with ennui." + +"--For, the mere facts of the case she plainly demonstrates, with the +abettance of her dimples, to be an affair of unimportance; the real +point is what she wishes done about it. Yet the proffering of any +particular piece of advice does not necessarily signify that she +either expects or wishes it to be followed, since had she been present +at the Creation she would have cheerfully pointed out to the Deity His +various mistakes, and have offered her co-operation toward bettering +matters, and have thought a deal less of Him had He accepted it; but +this is merely a habit--" "Yes?" said Bettie, yawning; and she added: +"Do you know, Robin, the saddest and most desolate thing in the world +is to practise an _etude_ of Schumann's in nine flats, and the next is +to realize that a man who has been in love with you has recovered for +keeps?" + +"--It must not be imagined, however, that Miss Hamlyn is untruthful, +for when driven by impertinences into a corner she conceals her real +opinion by voicing it quite honestly as if she were joking. Thereupon +you credit her with the employment of irony and the possession of +every imaginable and super-angelical characteristic--" + +"Unless we come to a better understanding," Miss Hamlyn crisply began, +"we had better stop right here before we come to a worse--" + +"--Miss Hamlyn, in a word, is possessed of no insufferable virtues and +of many endearing faults; and in common with the rest of humanity, she +regards her disapproval of any proceeding as clear proof of its +impropriety." This was largely apropos of a fire-new debate concerning +the deleterious effects of cigarette-smoking; and when I had made an +end, and doggedly lighted another one of them, Bettie said nothing.... +She minded chiefly that one of us should have thought of the other +without bias. She said it was not fair. And I know now that she was +right. + +But of Bettie Hamlyn, for reasons you may learn hereafter if you so +elect, I honestly prefer to write not at all. Four years, in fine, we +spent to every purpose together, and they were very happy years. To +record them would be desecration. + + + 4 + +Meantime, during these years, I had fallen in and out of love +assiduously. Since the Anabasis of lad's love traverses a monotonous +country, where one hill is largely like another, and one meadow a +duplicate of the next to the last daffodil, I may with profit dwell +upon the green-sickness lightly. It suffices that in the course of +these four years I challenged superstition by adoring thirteen girls, +and, worse than that, wrote verses of them. + +I give you their names herewith--though not their workaday names, lest +the wives of divers people be offended (and in many cases, surprised), +but the appellatives which figured in my rhymes. They were Heart's +Desire, Florimel, Dolores, Yolande, Adelais, Sylvia, Heart o' My +Heart, Chloris, Felise, Ettarre, Phyllis, Phyllida, and Dorothy. Here +was a rosary of exquisite names, I even now concede; and the owner of +each _nom de plume_ I, for however brief a period, adored for this or +that peculiar excellence; and by ordinary without presuming to mention +the fact to any of these divinities save Heart o' My Heart, who was, +after all, only a Penate. + +Outside the elevated orbits of rhyme she was called Elizabeth Hamlyn; +and it afterward became apparent to me that I, in reality, wrote all +the verses of this period solely for the pleasure of reading them +aloud to Bettie, for certainly I disclosed their existence to no one +else--except just one or two to Phyllida, who was "literary." + +And the upshot of all this heart-burning is most succinctly given in +my own far from impeccable verse, as Bettie Hamlyn heard the summing-up +one evening in May. It was the year I graduated from King's +College, and the exact relation of the date to the Annos Domini is +trivial. But the battle of Manila had just been fought, and off +Santiago Captain Sampson and Commander Schley were still hunting for +Cervera's "phantom fleet." And in Fairhaven, as I remember it, +although there was a highly-colored picture of Commodore Dewey in the +barber-shop window, nobody was bothering in the least about the war +except when Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal foregathered at Clarriker's +Emporium to denounce the colossal errors of "imperialism".... + + "Thus, then, I end my calendar + Of ancient loves more light than air;-- + And now Lad's Love, that led afar + In April fields that were so fair, + Is fled, and I no longer share + Sedate unutterable days + With Heart's Desire, nor ever praise + Felise, or mirror forth the lures + Of Stella's eyes nor Sylvia's, + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "Chloris is wedded, and Ettarre + Forgets; Yolande loves otherwhere, + And worms long since made bold to mar + The lips of Dorothy and fare + Mid Florimel's bright ruined hair; + And Time obscures that roseate haze + Which glorified hushed woodland ways + When Phyllis came, as Time obscures + That faith which once was Phyllida's,-- + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "That boy is dead as Schariar, + Tiglath-pileser, or Clotaire, + Who once of love got many a scar. + And his loved lasses past compare?-- + None is alive now anywhere. + Each is transmuted nowadays + Into a stranger, and displays + No whit of love's investitures. + I let these women go their ways, + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "Heart o' My Heart, thine be the praise + If aught of good in me betrays + Thy tutelage--whose love matures + Unmarred in these more wistful days,-- + Yet love for each loved lass endures." + +For this was the year that I graduated, and Chloris--I violate no +confidence in stating that her actual name was Aurelia Minns, and that +she had been, for a greater number of years than it would be courteous +to remember, the undisputed belle of Fairhaven,--had that very +afternoon married a promising young doctor; and I was draining the cup +of my misery to the last delicious drop, and was of course inspired +thereby to the perpetration of such melancholy bathos as only a +care-free youth of twenty is capable of evolving. + + + 5 + +"Dear boy," said Bettie, when I had made an end of reading, "and are +you very miserable?" + +Her fingers were interlocked behind her small black head; and the +sympathy with which she regarded me was tenderly flavored with +amusement. + +This much I noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and +mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the +least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I +believe I never will." + +"Oh--? But I don't count." The girl continued, with composure: "Or +rather, I have always counted your affairs, so that I know precisely +what it all amounts to." + +"Sum total?" + +"A lot of imitation emotions." She added hastily: "Oh, quite a good +imitation, dear; you are smooth enough to see to that. Why, I remember +once--when you read me that first sonnet, sitting all hunched up on +the little stool, and pretending you didn't know I knew who you meant +me to know it was for, and ending with a really very effective, +breathless sob--and caught my hand and pressed it to your forehead for +a moment--Why, that time I was thoroughly rattled and almost +believed--even I--that--" She shrugged. "And if I had been +younger--!" she said, half regretfully, for at this time Bettie was +very nearly twenty-two. + +"Yes." The effective breathless sob responded to what had virtually +been an encore. "I have not forgotten." + +"Only for a moment, though." Miss Hamlyn reflected, and then added, +brightly: "Now, most girls would have liked it, for it sounded all +wool. And they would have gone into it, as you wanted, and have been +very, very happy for a while. Then, after a time--after you had got a +sonnet or two out of it, and had made a sufficiency of pretty +speeches,--you would have gone for an admiring walk about yourself, +and would have inspected your sensations and have applauded them, +quite enthusiastically, and would have said, in effect: 'Madam, I +thank you for your attention. Pray regard the incident as closed.'" + +"You are doing me," I observed, "an injustice. And however tiny they +may be, I hate 'em." + +"But, Robin, can't you see," she said, with an odd earnestness, "that +to be fond of you is quite disgracefully easy, even though--" Bettie +Hamlyn said, presently: "Why, your one object in life appears to be to +find a girl who will allow you to moon around her and make verses +about her. Oh, very well! I met to-day just the sort of pretty idiot +who will let you do it. She is visiting Kathleen Eppes for the Finals. +She has a great deal of money, too, I hear." And Bettie mentioned a +name. + +"That's rather queer," said I. "I used to know that girl. She will be +at the K. A. dance to-morrow night, I suppose,"--and I put up my +manuscript with a large air of tolerance. "I dare say that I have been +exaggerating matters a bit, after all. Any woman who treated me +in the way that Miss Aurelia did is not, really, worthy of regret. And +in any event, I got a ballade out of her and six--no, seven--other +poems." + +For the name which Bettie had mentioned was that of Stella Musgrave, +and I was, somehow, curiously desirous to come again to Stella, and +nervous about it, too, even then.... + + + + +3. + +_He Earns a Stick-pin_ + + +"Dear me!" said Stella, wonderingly; "I would never have known you in +the world! You've grown so fa--I mean, you are so well built. I've +grown? Nonsense!--and besides, what did you expect me to do in six +years?--and moreover, it is abominably rude of you to presume to speak +of me in that abstracted and figurative manner--quite as if I were a +debt or a taste for drink. It is really only French heels and a +pompadour, and, of course, you can't have this dance. It's promised, +and I hop, you know, frightfully.... Why, naturally, I haven't +forgotten--How could I, when you were the most disagreeable boy I ever +knew?" + +I ventured a suggestion that caused Stella to turn an attractive pink, +and laugh. "No," said she, demurely, "I shall never never sit out +another dance with you." + +So she did remember! + +Subsequently: "Our steps suit perfectly--Heavens! you are the fifth +man who has said that to-night, and I am sure it would be very silly +and very tiresome to dance through life with anybody. Men are so +absurd, don't you think? Oh, yes, I tell them all--every one of +them--that our steps suit, even when they have just ripped off a yard +or so of flounce in an attempt to walk up the front of my dress. It +makes them happy, poor things, and injures nobody. You liked it, you +know; you grinned like a pleased cat. I like cats, don't you?" + +Later: "That is absolute nonsense, you know," said Stella, critically. +"Do you always get red in the face when you make love? I wouldn't if I +were you. You really have no idea how queer it makes you look." + +Still later: "No, I don't think I am going anywhere to-morrow +afternoon," said Stella. + + + 2 + +So that during the fleet moments of these Finals, while our army was +effecting a landing in Cuba, I saw as much of Stella as was possible; +and veracity compels the admission that she made no marked effort to +prevent my doing so. Indeed, she was quite cross, and scornful, about +the crowning glory being denied her, of going with me to the +Baccalaureate Address the morning I received my degree. To that of +course I took Bettie. + + + 3 + +I said good-bye to Bettie Hamlyn rather late one evening. It was in +her garden. The Finals were over, and Stella had left Fairhaven that +afternoon. I was to follow in the morning, by an early train. + +It was a hot, still night in June, with never a breath of air +stirring. In the sky was a low-hung moon, full and very red. It was an +evil moon, and it lighted a night that was unreasonably ominous. And +Bettie and I had talked of trifles resolutely for two hours. + +"Well--good-bye Bettie," I said at last. "I'm glad it isn't for long." +For of course we meant never to let a month elapse without our seeing +each other. + +"Good-bye," she said, and casually shook hands. + +Then Bettie Hamlyn said, in a different voice: "Robin, you come of +such a bad lot, and already you are by way of being a rather frightful +liar. And I'm letting you go. I'm turning you over to Stellas and +mothers and things like that just because I have to. It isn't fair. +They will make another Townsend of my boy, and after all I've tried to +do. Oh, Robin, don't let anybody or anything do that to you! Do try to +do the unpleasant thing sometimes, my dear!--But what's the good of +promising?" + +"And have I ever failed you, Bettie?" + +"No,--not me," she answered, almost as though she grudged the fact. +Then Bettie laughed a little. "Indeed, I'm trying to believe you never +will. Oh, indeed, I am. But just be honest with me, Robin, and nothing +else will ever matter very much. I don't care what you do, if only you +are always honest with me. You can murder people, if you like, and +burn down as many houses as you choose. You probably will. But you'll +be honest with me--won't you?--and particularly when you don't want to +be?" + +So I promised her that. And sometimes I believe it is the only promise +which I ever tried to keep quite faithfully.... + + + 4 + +And all the ensuing summer I followed Stella Musgrave from one +watering place to another, with an engaging and entire candor as to my +desires. I was upon the verge of my majority, when, under the terms of +my father's will, I would come into possession of such fragments of +his patrimony as he had omitted to squander. And afterward I intended +to become excessively distinguished in this or that profession, not as +yet irrevocably fixed upon, but for choice as a writer of immortal +verse; and I was used to dwell at this time very feelingly, and very +frequently, upon the wholesome restraint which matrimony imposes upon +the possessor of an artistic temperament. + +Stella promised to place my name upon her waiting list, and to take up +the matter in due season; and she lamented, with a tiny and +pre-meditated yawn, that as a servitor of system she was compelled to +list her "little lovers and suitors in alphabetical order, Mr. +Townsend. Besides, you would probably strangle me before the year was +out." + +"I would thoroughly enjoy doing it," I said, grimly, "right now." She +regarded me for a while. "You would, too," she said at last, with an +alien gravity; "and that is why--Oh, Rob dear, you are out of my +dimension. I am rather afraid of you. I am a poor bewildered triangle +who is being wooed by a cube!" the girl wailed, and but half +humorously. + +And I began to plead. It does not matter what I said. It never +mattered. + +And persons more sensible than I found then far more important things +to talk about, such as General Alger's inefficiency, and General +Shafter's hammock, and "embalmed beef," and the folly of taking over +the Philippines, and Admiral von Diedrich's behavior, and the yellow +fever in our camps and the comparative claims of Messrs. Sampson and +Schley to be made rear-admiral; and everybody more or less was +demanding "an investigation," as the natural aftermath of a war. + + + 5 + +Stella's mother had closed Bellemeade for the year, however, and they +were to spend the winter in Lichfield; and Stella, to reduplicate her +phrase, promised to "think it over very seriously." + +But I suppose I had never any real chance against Peter Blagden. To +begin with,--though Stella herself, of course, would inherit plenty +of money when her mother died,--Peter was the only nephew of a +childless uncle who was popularly reported to "roll in wealth"; and in +addition, Peter was seven years older than I and notoriously +dissipated. No other girl of twenty would have hesitated between us +half so long as Stella did. She hesitated through a whole winter; and +even now there is odd, if scanty, comfort in the fact that Stella +hesitated.... + +Besides Peter was eminently likeable. At times I almost liked him +myself, for all my fervent envy of his recognized depravity and of the +hateful ease with which he thought of something to say in those +uncomfortable moments when he and I and Stella were together. At most +other times I could talk glibly enough, but before this seasoned +scapegrace I was dumb, and felt my reputation to be hopelessly +immaculate ... If only Stella would believe me to be just the tiniest +bit depraved! I blush to think of the dark hints I dropped as to +entirely fictitious women who "had been too kind to me. But then"--as +I would feelingly lament,--"we could never let women alone, we +Townsends, you know--" + + + 6 + +One woman at least I was beginning to "let alone", in that I was +writing Bettie Hamlyn letters which grew shorter and shorter.... Her +mother had fallen ill, not long after I left college; and she and +Bettie were now a great way off, in Colorado, where the old lady was +dying, with the most selfish sort of laziness about it, and so was +involving me in endless correspondence.... At least, I wrote to Bettie +punctually, if briefly, though I had not seen her since that night +when the moon was red, and big, and very evil. I had to do it, because +she had insisted that I write. + +"But letters don't mean anything, Bettie. And besides, I hate writing +letters." + +"That is just why you must write to me regularly. You never do the +things you don't want to do. I know it. But for me you always will, +and that makes all the difference." + +"Shylock!" I retorted. + +"If you like. In any event, I mean to have my pound of flesh, and +regularly." + +So I wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month--because +that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because that +was mine. The rest of my time I gave whole-heartedly to Stella.... + + + 7 + +They named her Stella, I fancy, because her eyes were so like stars. +It is manifestly an irrelevant detail that there do not happen to be +any azure stars. Indeed, I am inclined to think that Nature belatedly +observed this omission, and created Stella's eyes to make up for it; +at any rate, if you can imagine Aldebaran or Benetnasch polished up a +bit and set in a speedwell-cup, you will have a very fair idea of one +of them. You cannot, however, picture to yourself the effect of the +pair of them, because the human mind is limited. + +Really, though, their effect was curious. You noticed them casually, +let us say; then, without warning, you ceased to notice anything. You +simply grew foolish and gasped like a newly-hooked trout, and went mad +and babbled as meaninglessly as a silly little rustic brook trotting +under a bridge. + +I have seen the thing happen any number of times. And, strangely +enough, you liked it. Numbers of young men would venture into the same +room with those disconcerting eyes the very next evening, even +appearing to seek them out and to court peril, as it were,--young men +who must have known perfectly well, either by report or experience, +the unavoidable result of such fool-hardy conduct. For eventually it +always culminated in Stella's being deeply surprised and grieved,--at +a dance, for choice, with music and color and the unthinking laughter +of others to heighten the sadness and the romance of it all,--she +never having dreamed of such a thing, of course, and having always +regarded you only as a dear, dear friend. Yes, and she used certainly +to hope that nothing she had said or done could have led you to +believe she had even for a moment considered such a thing. Oh, she did +it well, did Stella, and endured these frequent griefs and surprises +with, I must protest, quite exemplary patience. In a phrase, she was +the most adorable combination of the prevaricator, the jilt and the +coquette I have ever encountered. + + + 8 + +So, for the seventh time, I asked Stella to marry me. Nearly every +fellow I knew had done as much, particularly Peter Blagden; and it is +always a mistake to appear unnecessarily reserved or exclusive. And +this time in declining--with a fluency that bespoke considerable +practice,--she informed me that, as the story books have it, she was +shortly to be wedded to another. + +And Peter Blagden clapped the pinnacle upon my anguish by asking me to +be the best man. I knew even then whose vanity and whose sense of the +appropriate had put him up to it.... + +"For I haven't a living male relative of the suitable age except two +second cousins that I don't see much of--praise God!" said Peter, +fervently; "and Hugh Van Orden looks about half-past ten, whereas I +class John Charteris among the lower orders of vermin." + +I consented to accept the proffered office and the incidental stick-pin; +and was thus enabled to observe from the inside this episode of Stella's +life, and to find it quite like other weddings. + +Something like this: + +"Look here," a perspiring and fidgety Peter protested, at the last +moment, as we lurked in the gloomy vestry with not a drop left in +either flask; "look here, Henderson hasn't blacked the soles of these +blessed shoes. I'll look like an ass when it comes to the kneeling +part--like an ass, I tell you! Good heavens, they'll look like +tombstones!" + +"If you funk now," said I, severely, "I'll never help you get married +again. Oh, sainted Ebenezer in bliss, and whatever have I done with +that ring? No, it's here all right, but you are on the wrong side of +me again. And there goes the organ--Good God, Peter, look at her! +simply look at her, man! Oh, you lucky devil! you lucky jackass!" + +I spoke enviously, you understand, simply to encourage him. + +Followed a glaring of lights, a swishing of fans, a sense that Peter +was not keeping step with me, and the hum of densely packed, expectant +humanity; a blare of music; then Stella, an incredible vision with +glad, frightened eyes. My shoulders straightened, and I was not out of +temper any longer. The organist was playing softly, _Oh, Promise Me_, +and I was thinking of the time, last January, that Stella and I heard +The Bostonians, and how funny Henry Clay Barnabee was.... "--so long +as ye both may live?" ended the bishop. + +"I will," poor Peter quavered, with obvious uncertainty about it. + +And still one saw in Stella's eyes unutterable happiness and fear, but +her voice was tranquil. I found time to wonder at its steadiness, even +though, just about this time, I resonantly burst a button off one of +my new gloves. I fancy they must have been rather tight. + +"And thereto," said Stella, calmly, "I give thee my troth." + +And subsequently they were Mendelssohned out of church to the +satisfaction of a large and critical audience. I came down the aisle +with Stella's only sister--who afterward married the Marquis +d'Arlanges,--and found Lizzie very entertaining later in the +evening.... + + + 9 + +Yes, it was quite like other weddings. I only wonder for what +conceivable reason I remember its least detail, and so vividly. For it +all happened a great while ago, when--of such flimsy stuff is glory +woven,--Emilio Aguinaldo and Captain Coghlan were the persons most +talked of in America; and when the Mazet committee was "investigating" +I forget what, but with column after column about it in the papers +every day; and when _Me und Gott_ was a famous poem, and "to +hobsonize" was the most popular verb; and when I was twenty-one. _Sic +transit gloria mundi_, as it says in the back of the dictionary. + + + + +4. + +_He Talks with Charteris_ + + +It was upon the evening of this day, after Mr. and Mrs. Blagden had +been duly rice-pelted and entrained, that I first talked against John +Charteris. The novelist was, as has been said, a cousin of Peter +Blagden, and as such, was one of the wedding guests at Bellemeade; and +that evening, well toward midnight, the little man, midway in the +consumption of one of his interminable cigarettes, happened to come +upon me seated upon the terrace and gazing, rather vacantly, in the +direction of the moon. + +I was not thinking of anything in particular; only there was a by-end +of verse which sang itself over and over again, somewhere in the back +of my brain--"Her eyes were the eyes of a bride whom delight makes +afraid, her eyes were the eyes of a bride"--and so on, all over again, +as at night a traveller may hear his train jogging through a +monotonous and stiff-jointed song; and in my heart there was just +hunger. + + + 2 + +Charteris had heard, one may presume, of my disastrous love-business; +and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his +gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light +upon thee, Mr. Townsend,--whatever a murrain may happen to be,--since +you have disturbed me in the concoction of an ever-living and +entrancing fable." + +"I may safely go as far," said I, "as to offer the proverbial penny." + +"Done!" cried Mr. Charteris. He meditated for a moment, and then +began, in a low and curiously melodious voice, to narrate + +_The Apologue of the First Conjugation_ + +"When the gods of Hellas were discrowned, there was a famous scurrying +from Olympos to the world of mortals, where each deity must +henceforward make shift to do without godhead:--Aphrodite in her +hollow hill, where the good knight Tannhauser revels yet, it may be; +Hephaestos, in some smithy; whilst Athene, for aught I know, +established a girls' boarding school, and Helios, as is notorious, +died under priestly torture, and Dionysos cannily took holy orders, +and Hermes set up as a merchant in Friesland. But Eros went to the +Grammarians. He would be a schoolmaster. + +"The Grammarians, grim, snuffy and wrinkled though they might be, were +no more impervious to his allures than are the rest of us, and in +consequence appointed him to an office. This office was, I glean of +mediaeval legend, that of teaching dunderheaded mortals the First +Conjugation. So Eros donned cap and gown, took lodgings with a quiet +musical family, and set _amo_ as the first model verb; and ever since +this period has the verb 'to love' been the first to be mastered in +all well-constituted grammars, as it is in life. + +"Heigho! it is not an easy verb to conjugate. One gets into trouble +enough, in floundering through its manifold nuances, which range +inevitably through the bold-faced 'I love', the confident 'I will +love', the hopeful 'I may be loved', and so on to the wistful, pitiful +Pluperfect Subjunctive Passive, 'I might have been loved +if'--Then each of us may supply the Protasis as best befits his +personal opinion and particular scars, and may tear his hair, or +scribble verses, or adopt the cynical, or, in fine, assume any pose +which strikes his fancy. For he has graduated into the Second +Conjugation, which is _moneo_; and may now admonish to his heart's +content, whilst looking back complacently into the First Classroom, +where others--and so many others!--are still struggling with that +mischancy verb, and are involved in the very conditions--verbal or +otherwise--which aforetime saddened him, or showed him a possible +byway toward recreation, or played the deuce with his liver, according +to the nature of the man. + +"Eros is a hard, implacable pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars +suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers +fabled,--no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised +in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging +nothingness; and not a scholar escapes at least a flick of it. + +"I can fancy the class called up as Eros administers, with zest, his +penalties. Master Paris! for loving his neighbor a little less than +himself, and his neighbor's wife a little more. Master Lancelot! +ditto. Masters Petrarch, Tristram, Antony, Juan Tenorio, Dante +Alighieri, and others! ditto. There are a great many called up for +this particular form of peccancy, you observe; even Master David has +to lay aside his Psalm Book, and go forward with the others for +chastisement. Master Romeo! for trespassing in other people's gardens +and mausoleums. Master Leander! for swimming in the Hellespont after +dark; and Master Tarquin! for mistaking his bedroom at the Collatini's +house-party. + +"Thus, one by one, each scholar goes into the darkened private office. +The master handles his rod--eia! 'tis borrowed from the +Erinnyes,--lovingly, caressingly, like a very conscientious person +about the performance of his duty. Then comes the dreadful order, +'Take down your breeches, sir!'.... But the scene is too horrible to +contemplate. He punishes all, this schoolmaster, for he is +unbelievably old, and with the years' advance has grown querulous. + +"Well, now I approach my moral, Mr. Townsend. One must have one's +birching with the others, and of necessity there remains but to make +the best of it. Birching is not a dignified process, and the endurer +comes therefrom both sore and shamefaced. Yet always in such +contretemps it is expedient to brazen out the matter, and to present +as stately an appearance, we will say, as one's welts permit. + +"First, to the world--" + + + 3 + +But at this point I raised my hand. "That is easily done, Mr. +Charteris, inasmuch as the world cares nothing whatever about it. The +world is composed of men and women who have their own affairs to mind. +How in heaven's name does it concern them that a boy has dreamed +dreams and has gone mad like a star-struck moth? It was foolish of +him. Such is the verdict, given in a voice that is neither kindly nor +severe; and the world, mildly wondering, passes on to deal with more +weighty matters. For vegetables are higher than ever this year, and, +upon my word, Mrs. Grundy, ma'am, a housekeeper simply doesn't know +where to turn, with the outrageous prices they are asking for +everything these days. No, believe me, the world does not take +love-affairs very seriously--not even the great ones," I added, in +noble toleration. + +And with an appreciative chuckle, Charteris sank beside me upon the +bench. + +"My adorable boy! so you have a tongue in your head." + +"But can't you imagine the knights talking over Lancelot's affair with +Guenevere, at whatever was the Arthurian substitute for a club? and +sniggering over it? and Lamoracke sagaciously observing that there was +always a crooked streak in the Leodograunce family? Or one Roman +matron punching a chicken in the ribs, and remarking to her neighbor +at the poultry man's stall: 'Well, Mrs. Gracchus, they do say Antony +is absolutely daft over that notorious Queen of Egypt. A brazen-faced +thing, with a very muddy complexion, I'm told, and practically no +reputation, of course, after the way she carried on with Caesar. And +that reminds me, I hear your little Caius suffers from the croup. Now +_my_ remedy'--and so they waddle on, to price asparagus." + +Charteris said: "Well! we need not go out of our way to meddle with +the affairs of others; the entanglement is most disastrously apt to +come about of itself quite soon enough. Yet a little while and +Lancelot will be running Lamoracke through the body, while the King +storms Joyeuse Garde; a few months and your Roman matron will weep +quietly on her unshared pillow--not aloud, though, for fear of +disturbing the children,--while Gracchus is dreadfully seasick at +Actium." + +"But that doesn't prove anything," I stammered. "Why, it doesn't +follow logically--" + +"Nor does anything else. This fact is the chief charm of life. You +will presently find, I think, that living means a daily squandering of +interest upon the first half of a number of two-part stories which +have not ever any sequel. Oh, my adorable boy, I envy you to-night's +misery so profoundly I am half unwilling to assure you that in the +ultimate one finds a broken heart rather fattening than otherwise; and +that a blighted life has never yet been known to prevent queer +happenings in conservatories and such-like secluded places or to rob a +solitude _a deux_ of possibilities. I grant you that love is a +wonderful thing; but there are a many emotions which stand toward love +much as the makers of certain marmalades assert their wares to stand +toward butter--'serving as an excellent occasional substitute.' At +least, so you will find it. And unheroic as it is, within the month +you will forget." + +"No,--I shall not quite forget," said I. + +"Then were you the more unwise. To forget, both speedily and +frequently, is the sole method of rendering life livable. One is here; +the importance of the fact in the eternal scheme of things is perhaps +a shade more trivial than one is disposed to concede, but in any +event, one is here; and here, for a very little while in youth, one is +capable of happiness. For it is a colorful world, Mr. Townsend, +containing much, upon the whole, to captivate both eye and taste; a +world manured and fertilized by the no longer lovely bodies of persons +who died in youth. Oh, their coffins lie everywhere beneath our feet, +thick as raisins in a pudding, whithersoever we tread. Yet every one +of these poor relics was once a boy or a girl, and wore a body that +was capable of so much pleasure! To-day, unused to gain the fullness +of that pleasure, and now not ever to be used, they lie beneath us, in +their coffins, these white, straight bodies, like swords untried that +rust in the scabbard. Meanwhile, on every side is apparent the not yet +out-wasted instrument, and one is naturally inquisitive,--so that +one's fingers and one's nostrils twitch at times, even in the hour +when one is most miserable, very much as yours do now." + +For a long while I meditated. Then I said: "I am not really miserable, +because, all in all, one is content to pay the price of happiness. I +have been very happy sometimes during the past year; and whatever the +blind Fate that mismanages the world may elect to demand in payment, I +shall not haggle. No, by heavens! I would have nothing changed, and +least of all would I forget; having drunk nectar neat, one would not +qualify it with the water of Lethe." + +I rose, not unhandsome, I trusted, in the moonlight. I was hoping Mr. +Charteris would notice my new dress-suit, procured in honor of +Stella's wedding. And I said: "The play is over, the little comedy is +played out. She must go; at least she has tarried for a little. She +does not love you; ah! but she did. God speed her, then, the woman we +have all loved and lost, and still dream of on sleepy Sundays; and all +possible happiness to her! One must be grateful that through her one +has known the glory of loving. Even though she never cared--'and never +could understand',--one may not but be glad that one has known and +loved in youth the Only Woman." + +"The Only Woman has a way of leaving many heirs, Mr. Townsend, that +play the deuce with the estate." + +"--So to-morrow, like the person in _Lycidas_, I am for fresh fields, +Mr. Charteris. And indeed it is high time that I were journeying, +since she and I have rested, and have laughed and eaten and drunk our +fill at this particular tavern; and now it is closing time. A plague +on these foolish and impertinent laws, say I quite heartily; for it is +cold and cheerless outside, whereas here within I was perfectly +comfortable. None the less I must go, or else be evicted by the +constable; so good-night, my sweet; and as for you, Madam Clotho, pray +what unconscionable score have you chalked up against me?" + +I grimaced. "Heavens! what an infinity of sighs, sonnets, +lamentations, and heart-burnings is this that I owe to Fate and +Decency!" + +Charteris applauded as though it were a comedy. "In effect, Marian's +married and you stand here, alive and merry at--pray what precise +period of life, Mr. Townsend?" + +"I confess to twenty-one at present, sir, though I trust to live it +down in time." + +"I would hardly have thought you that venerable. Well, I predict for +you a life without achievements but of gusto. Yes, you will bring a +seasoned palate to your grave,--and I envy you. We open Willoughby +Hall next week, and of course you will make one of the party. For you +write, I know; and you will want to talk to me about editors and read +me all your damnable verses. Nothing could please me more. Good-night, +you glorious boy." + +And the little man wheeled and departed, leaving me to reflect, with +appropriate emotions, that I had been formally invited to visit the +founder of the Economist school of writers. + + + 4 + +"He said it," I more lately observed--"yes, he undoubtedly said it. +And he wrote _Ashtaroth's Lackey_ and _In Old Lichfield_ and _The +Foolish Prince_, and he knows all the magazine editors personally, and +they are probably only too glad to oblige him about anything, and--Oh, +may be, it is only a dream, after all." My heart was pounding, but not +with sorrow or despair or any other maudlin passion; and Stella was +now as remote from my thoughts as was Joan of Arc or Pharaoh's +daughter. + + + + +5. + +_He Revisits Fairhaven and the Play_ + + +So I went to Willoughby Hall, which stands, as you may be aware, upon +the eastern outskirt of Fairhaven. My reappearance created some stir +among the older students and the town-folk, though, one and all, they +presently declared me to be "too stuck-up for any use," inasmuch as I +ignored them in favour of the Charteris house-party,--after, of +course, one visit to Chapel, which I paid a little obviously _en +prince_, and affably shook hands with all the Faculty, and was +completely conscious of how such happenings impressed us when I, too, +was a student. + +So much had happened since then, and I felt so much older,--with my +existence so delightfully blighted, too,--that it seemed droll to find +Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal still sitting in arm chairs before +Clarriker's Emporium, very much as I had left them there ten months +ago. + + + 2 + +By a disastrous chance did Bettie Hamlyn spend that spring, as well as +the preceding year, in Colorado with her mother, who died there that +summer; and to me Fairhaven proper without Bettie Hamlyn seemed a +tawdry and desolate place; and I know that but for Mrs. Hamlyn's +illness--a querulous woman for whom I never cared a jot,--my future +life had been quite otherwise. For, as I told Bettie once, and it was +true, I have found in the world but three sorts of humanity--"Myself, +and Bettie Hamlyn, and the other people." + +So I still wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month-- +because that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because +that was mine. + +And I thought of many things as I walked by the deserted garden, where +there was nothing which concerned me now, not even a ghost. I did not +go in to leave a card upon Professor Hamlyn. The empty house +confronted me too blankly, with its tight-shuttered windows, like +blind eyes, and I hurried by. + + + 3 + +Meanwhile, this was the first time for many years that Willoughby Hall +had been occupied by any other than caretakers; and Fairhaven, to +confess the truth, was a trifle ill-at-ease before the modish persons +who now tenanted the old mansion; and consoled itself after an +immemorial usage by backbiting. + +And meanwhile I enjoyed myself tremendously. It was the first time I +was ever thrown with people who were unanimously agreed that, after +all, nothing is very serious. Mrs. Charteris, of course, was +different; but she, like the others, found me divertingly naive and, +in consequence, petted and cosseted me. I like petting; and since +everyone seemed agreed to regard me as "the Child in the House"--that +was Alicia Wade's nickname, and it clung,--and to like having a child +in the house, I began a little to heighten my very real boyishness. +There was no harm in it; and if people were fonder of me because I sat +upon the floor by preference, and drolly exaggerated what I really +thought, it became a sort of public duty to do these things. So I did, +and found it astonishingly pleasant. + + + 4 + +And meanwhile too, John Charteris could never see enough of me, whom, +as I to-day suspect, Charteris was studying conscientiously, to the +end that I should be converted into "copy." For me, I was waiting +cannily until he should actually ask to see those manuscripts I had +brought to Willoughby Hall, and should help me to get them published. +So there were two of us.... In any event, it was just three weeks +after Stella's marriage that Charteris coaxed me into Fairhaven's +Opera House to witness a performance of _Romeo and Juliet_, by the +Imperial Dramatic Company. + +I went under protest; I had witnessed the butchery of so many dramas +within these walls during my college days, that I knew what I must +anticipate, I said. I had, as a matter of fact, always enjoyed the +Opera House "shows," but I did not wish to acknowledge the harboring +of such crude tastes to Charteris. In any event, at the conclusion of +the second act,-- + +"By Jove!" said I, in a voice that shook a little. "She's a stunner!" +I jolted out, as I proceeded to applaud, vigorously, with both hands and +feet. "And who would have thought it! Good Lord, who would have +thought it!" + +Charteris smiled, in that infernally patronizing way he had sometimes. +"A beautiful woman, my dear boy,--an inordinately beautiful woman, in +fact, but entirely lacking in temperament." + +"Temperament!" I scoffed; "what's temperament to two eyes like those? +Why, they're as big as golf-balls! And her voice--why, a violin--a +very superior violin--if it could talk, would have just such a voice +as that woman has! Temperament! Oh, you make me ill! Why, man, just +look at her!" I said, conclusively. + +Charteris looked, I presume. In any event, the Juliet of the evening +stood before the curtain, smiling, bowing to right and left. The +citizens of Fairhaven were applauding her with a certain conscientious +industry, for they really found Romeo and Juliet a rather dull couple. +The general opinion, however, was that Miss Montmorenci seemed an +elegant actress, and in some interesting play, like _The Two Orphans_ +or _Lady Audley's Secret_, would be well worth seeing. Upon those who +had witnessed her initial performance, she had made a most favorable +impression in _The Lady of Lyons_; while at the Tuesday matinee, as +Lady Isabel in _East Lynne_, she had wrung the souls of her hearers, +and had brought forth every handkerchief in the house. Moreover, she +was very good-looking,--quite the lady, some said; and, after all, one +cannot expect everything for twenty-five cents; considering which +circumstances, Fairhaven applauded with temperate ardor, and made due +allowance for Shakespeare as being a classic, and, therefore, of +course, commendable, but not necessarily interesting. + + + 5 + +"Well?" I queried, when she had vanished. I was speaking under cover +of the orchestra,--a courtesy title accorded a very ancient and very +feeble piano. "Well, and what do you think of her--of her looks, I +means? Who cares for temperament in a woman!" + +Charteris assumed a virtuous expression. "I don't dare tell you," said +he; "you forget I am a married man." + +Then I frowned a little. I often resented Charteris's flippant +allusion to a wife whom I considered, with some reason, to be vastly +too good for her husband. And I considered how near I had come to +remaining with the others at Willoughby Hall--for that new game they +called bridge-whist! And I decided I would never care for bridge. How +on earth could presumably sensible people be content to coop +themselves in a drawing-room on a warm May evening, when hardly a +mile away was a woman with perfectly unfathomable eyes and a voice +which was a love-song? Of course, she couldn't act, but, then, who +wanted her to act? I indignantly demanded of my soul. + +One simply wanted to look at her, and hear her speak. Charteris, with +his prattle about temperament, was an ass; when a woman is born with +such eyes and with a voice like that, she has done her full duty by +the world, and has prodigally accomplished all one has the tiniest +right to expect of her. + +It was impossible she was in reality as beautiful as she seemed, +because no woman was quite so beautiful as that; most of it was +undoubtedly due to rouge and rice-powder and the footlights; but one +could not be mistaken about the voice. And if her speech was that, +what must her singing be! I thought; and in the outcome I remembered +this reflection best of all. + +I consulted my programme. It informed me, in large type at the end, +that Juliet was "old Capulet's daughter," and that the part was played +by Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci. + +And I sighed. I admitted to myself that from a woman who wilfully +assumed such a name little could be hoped. Still, I would like to see +her off the stage...without all those gaudy fripperies and +gewgaws...merely from curiosity.... Then too, they said those +actresses were pretty gay.... + + + 6 + +"A most enjoyable performance," said Mr. Charteris, as we came out of +the Opera House. "I have always had a sneaking liking for burlesque." + +Thereupon he paused to shake hands with Mrs. Adrian Rabbet, wife to +the rector of Fairhaven. + +"Such a sad play," she chirped, "and, do you know, I am afraid it is +rather demoralizing in its effects on young people. No, of course, I +didn't think of bringing the children, Mr. Charteris--Shakespeare's +language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that +safe. And besides, as I so often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think +of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite +depressed me all through the play to think of him hobnobbing with Dr. +Johnson at the Tabard Inn, and making such irregular marriages, and +stealing sheep--or was it sheep, now?" + +I said that, as I remembered, it was a fox, which he hid under his +cloak until the beast bit him. + +"Well, at any rate, it was something extremely deplorable and +characteristic of genius, and I quite feel for his wife." Mrs. Rabbet +sighed, and endeavored, I think, to recollect whether it was _Ingomar_ +or _Spartacus_ that Shakespeare wrote. "However," she concluded, "they +play _Ten Nights in a Barroom_ on Thursday, and I shall certainly +bring the children then, for I am always glad for them to see a really +moral and instructive drama. That reminds me! I absolutely must tell +you what Tom said about actors the other day--" + +And she did. This led naturally to Matilda's recent and blasphemous +comments on George Washington, and her observations as to the rector's +dog, and little Adey's personal opinion of Elisha. And so on, in a +manner not unfamiliar to fond parents. Mrs. Rabbet said toward the end +that it was a most enjoyable chat, although to me it appeared to +partake rather of the nature of a monologue. It consumed perhaps a +half-hour; and when we two at last relinquished Mrs. Rabbet to her +husband's charge, it was with a feeling not altogether unakin to +relief. + + + 7 + +We walked slowly down Fairhaven's one real street, which extends due +east from the College for as much as a mile, to end inconsequently in +those carefully preserved foundations, which are now the only remnant +of a building wherein a number of important matters were settled in +Colonial days. There Cambridge Street divides like a Y, one branch of +which leads to Willoughby Hall. + +Our route from the Opera House thus led through the major part of +Fairhaven, which, after an evening of unwonted dissipation, was now +largely employed in discussing the play, and turning the cat out for +the night. The houses were mostly dark, and the moon, nearing its +full, silvered row after row of blank windows. There was an odour of +growing things about, for in Fairhaven the gardens are many. + +Then it befell that I made a sudden exclamation. + +"Eh?" said Charteris. + +"Why, nothing," I explained, lucidly. + +It may be mentioned, however, that we were, at this moment, passing a +tall hedge of box, set about a large garden. The hedge was perhaps +five feet six in height; Charteris was also five feet six, whereas I +was an unusually tall young man, and topped my host by a good +half-foot. + +"I say," I observed, after a little, "I'm all out of cigarettes. I'll +go back to the drug-store," I suggested, as seized with a happy +thought, "and get some. I noticed it was still open. Don't think of +waiting for me," I urged, considerately. + +"Why, great heavens!" Charteris ejaculated; "take one of mine. I can +recommend them, I assure you--and, in any event, there are all sorts, +I fancy, at the house. They keep only the rankest kind of domestic +tobacco yonder." + +"I prefer it," I insisted, "oh, yes, I really prefer it. So much +milder and more wholesome, you know. I never smoke any other sort. My +doctor insists on my smoking the very rankest tobacco I can get. It is +much better for the heart, he says, because you don't smoke so much of +it, you know. Besides," I concluded, virtuously, "it is infinitely +cheaper; you can get twenty cigarettes all for five cents at some +places. I really must economize, I think." + +Charteris turned, and with great care stared in every direction. He +discovered nothing unusual. "Very well!" assented Mr. Charteris; "I, +too, have an eye for bargains. I will go with you." + +"If you do alive," quoth I, quite honestly, "I devoutly desire that +all sorts of unpleasant things may happen to me for not having wrung +your neck first." + +Charteris grinned. "Immoral young rip!" said he; "I warn you, before +entering the ministry, Mr. Rabbet was accounted an excellent shot." + +"Get out!" said I. + +And the fervour of my utterance was such that Charteris proceeded to +obey. "Don't be late for breakfast, if you can help it," he urged, +kindly. "Of course, though, you are up to some new form of insanity, +and I shall probably be sent for in the morning, to bail you out of +the lock-up." + +Thereupon he turned on his heel, and went down the deserted street, +singing sweetly. + +Sang Mr. Charteris: + + "Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, + Billing and cooing is all your cheer, + Sighing and singing of midnight strains + Under bonnybells" window-panes. + Wait till you've come to forty year! + + "Forty times over let Michaelmas pass, + Grizzling hair the brain doth clear; + Then you know a boy is an ass, + Then you know the worth of a lass, + Once you have come to forty-year." + + + + +6. + +_He Chats Over a Hedge_ + + +Left to myself, I began to retrace my steps. Solitude had mitigated my +craving for tobacco in a surprising manner; indeed, a casual observer +might have thought it completely forgotten, for I walked with curious +leisure. When I had come again to the box-hedge my pace had +degenerated, a little by a little, into an aimless lounge. Mr. Robert +Etheridge Townsend was rapt with admiration of the perfect beauty of +the night. + +Followed a strange chance. There was only the mildest breeze about; it +was barely audible among the leaves above; and yet--so unreliable are +the breezes of still summer nights,--with a sudden, tiny and almost +imperceptible outburst, did this treacherous breeze lift Mr. +Townsend's brand-new straw hat from his head, and waft it over the +hedge of trim box-bushes. This was unfortunate, for, as has been said, +the hedge was a tall and sturdy hedge. So I peeped over it, with +disconsolate countenance. + + + 2 + +"Beastly awkward," said I, as meditatively; "I'd give a great deal to +know how I'm going to get my hat back without breaking through the +blessed hedge, and rousing the house, and being taken for a burglar, +may be--" + +"It is terrible," assented a quite tranquil voice; "but if gentlemen +_will_ venture abroad on such terrible nights--" + +"Eh?" said I. I looked up quickly at the moon; then back toward the +possessor of the voice. It was peculiar I had not noticed her before, +for she sat on a rustic bench not more than forty feet away, and in +full view of the street. It was, perhaps, the strangeness of the +affair that was accountable for the great wonder in my soul; and the +little tremor which woke in my speech. + +"--so windy," she complained. + +"Er--ah--yes, quite so!" I agreed, hastily. + +"I am really afraid that it must be a tornado. Ah," she continued, +emotion catching at her voice, "heaven help all poor souls at sea! How +the wind must whistle through the cordage! how the marlin-spikes must +quiver, and the good ship reel on such a night!" She looked up at a +cloudless sky, and sighed. + +"Er h'm!" I observed. + +For she had come forward and had held out my hat toward me, and I +could see her very plainly now; and my mouth was making foolish +sounds, and my heart was performing certain curious and varied +gymnastics which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be +included among its proper duties, and which interfered with my +breathing. + + + 3 + +"Didn't I know it--didn't I know it?" I demanded of my soul, and my +pulses sang a paean; "I knew, with that voice, she couldn't be a +common actress--a vulgar, raddled creature out of a barn! You not a +gentlewoman! Nonsense! Why--why, you're positively incredible! Oh, you +great, wonderful, lazy woman, you are probably very stupid, and you +certainly can't act, but your eyes are black velvet, and your voice is +evidently stolen from a Cremona, and as for your hair, there must be +pounds of it, and, altogether, you ought to be set up on a pedestal +for men to worship! There is just one other woman in the whole wide +world as beautiful as you are; and she is two thousand years old, and +is securely locked up in the Louvre, and belongs to the French +Government, and, besides, she hasn't any arms, so that even there you +have the advantage!" + +Indeed, Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci was of much the same large, +placid type as the Venus of Milo, nor were the upper portions of the +two faces dissimilar. Miss Montmorenci's lips, however, were far more +curved, more buxom, and were, at the present moment, bordered by an +absolutely bewildering assemblage of dimples which the statue may not +boast. + + + 4 + +"I really think," said Miss Montmorenci, judicially, "that it would be +best for you to seek some shelter from this devastating wind. It +really is not safe, you know, in the open. You might be swept away, +just as your hat was." + +"The shelter of a tree--" I began, looking doubtfully into the garden, +which had any number of trees. + +"The very thing," she assented. "There is a splendid oak yonder, just +half a block up the street." And she graciously pointed it out. + +I regarded it with disapproval. "Such a rickety old tree," I objected, +sulkily. + +Followed a silence. She bent her head to one side, and looked up at +me. She was now grave with a difference. "A strolling actress isn't +supposed to be very particular, is she?" asked Miss Montmorenci. "She +wouldn't object to a man's coming by night and trying to scrape +acquaintance with her,--a man who wouldn't think of being seen with +her by day? She would like it, probably. She--she'd probably be +accustomed to it, wouldn't she?" And Miss Montmorenci smiled. + +And I, on a sudden, was abjectly ashamed of myself. "Why, you can't +think that of me!" I babbled. "I--oh, don't think me that sort, I beg +of you! I'm not--really, I'm not, Miss Montmorenci! But I admired you +so much to-night--I--oh, of course, I was very silly and very +presumptuous, but, really, you know--" + +I paused for a little. This was miles apart from the glib talk I had +designed. + +"My name is Robert Townsend," I then continued; "I am staying at Mr. +Charteris's place, just outside of Fairhaven. And I am delighted to +meet you, Miss Montmorenci. So now, you see, we have been quite +properly introduced, haven't we? And, by the way," I suggested, after +a moment's meditation, "there is a very interesting old college here-- +old pictures, records, historical association and such like. I would +like to inspect it, vastly. Can't I call for you in the morning. We +can do it together, if you don't mind, and if you haven't already seen +it. Won't you, Miss Montmorenci? You really ought to see King's +College, you know; it is quite famous, because I was educated there, +and no end of other interesting things have happened within its +venerable confines." + +She had drawn close to the hedge. "You really mean it?" she asked. +"You would walk through the streets of this Fairhaven with me--with a +barn-stormer, with a strolling actress? You'd be afraid!" she cried, +suddenly; "oh, yes, you talk bravely enough, but you'd be afraid, of +course, when the time came! You'd be afraid!" + +I had taken the hat, but my head was still uncovered. "I don't think," +said I, reflectively, "that I am afraid of many things, somehow. But +of one thing I am certainly not afraid, and that is of mistaking a +good woman for--for anything else. Their eyes are different somehow," +I haltingly explained, as to myself; then I smiled. "Shall we say +eleven o'clock?" + +Miss Montmorenci laid one hand upon the hedgetop and slowly twisted +off four box-leaves what while I waited. "I--I believe you," she said, +in' meditation; "oh, yes, I believe you, somehow, Mr. Townsend. But we +rehearse in the morning, and there is a matinee every day, you know, +and--and there are other reasons--" She paused, irresolutely. "No," +said Miss Montmorenci, "I thank you, but--good night." + +"Oh, I say! am I never to see any more of you?" + +A century or so of silence now. Her deliberation seemed endless. + +At last: "Matinees and rehearsal keep us busy by day. But I am +boarding here for the week, and--and I rest here in the garden after +the evening performance. It is cool, it--it is like a glass of water +after taking rather bitter medicine. And you aren't a bad sort, are +you? No; you look too big and strong and clean, Mr. Townsend. And, +besides, you're just a boy--" + +"In that case," cried Mr. Townsend, "I shall say goodnight with a +light heart." And I turned to go. + +"A moment--" said she. + +"An eternity," I proffered. + +"Promise me," she said, "that you will not come again this week to the +Opera House." + +My brows were raised a trifle. "I adore the drama," I pleaded. + +"And I loathe it. And I act very badly--hopelessly so," said Miss +Montmorenci, with an indolent shrug; "and, somehow, I don't want you +to see me do it. Why did you mind my calling you a boy? You _are_, you +know." + +So I protested I had not minded it at all; and I promised. "But at +least," I said, triumphantly, "you can't prevent my remembering +Juliet!" + +She said of course not, only I was not to be silly. + +"And therefore," quoth I, "Juliet shall be remembered always." I +smiled and waved my hand. "_Au revoir_, Signorina Capulet," said I. + +And I took my departure. My blood rejoiced, with a strange fervor, in +the summer moonlight. It was good to be alive. + + + + +7. + +_He Goes Mad in a Garden_ + + +"And, oh, but it is good to be with you again, Signorina!" cried I, as +I came with quick strides into the moonlit garden. I caught both her +hands in mine, and laughed like an ineffably contented person. There +was nothing very subtle about the boy that then was I; at worst, he +overacted what he really felt; and just at present he was pleased with +the universe, and he saw no possible reason for concealing the fact. + +It was characteristic, also, that she made no pretence at being +surprised by my coming. She was expecting me and she smiled very +frankly at seeing me. Also, in place of the street dress of Tuesday, +she wore something that was white and soft and clinging, and left her +throat but half concealed. This, for two reasons, was sensible and +praiseworthy; one being that the night was warm, and the other that it +really broadened my ideas as to the state of perfection which it is +possible for the human throat to attain. + + + 2 + +"So you don't like my stage-name?" she asked, as I sat down beside +her. "Well, for that matter, no more do I." "It doesn't suit you," I +protested--"not in the least. Whereas, you might be a Signorina +Somebody-or-other, you know. You are dark and stately and--well, I +can't tell you all the things you are," I complained, "because the +English language is so abominably limited. But, upon the whole, I am +willing to take the word of the playbill,--yes, I am quite willing to +accept you as Signorina Capulet. She had a habit of sitting in gardens +at night, I remember. Yes," I decided, after reflection, "I really +think it highly probable that you are old Capulet's daughter. I shall +make a point of it to pick a quarrel as soon as possible, with that +impertinent, trespassing young Montague. He really doesn't deserve +you, you know." + +Unaccountably, her face saddened. Then, "Signorina? Signorina?" she +appraised the title. "It _is_ rather a pretty name. And the other is +horrible. Yes, you may call me Signorina, if you like." + + + 3 + +She would not tell me her real name. She was unmarried,--this much she +told me, but of her past life, her profession, or of her future she +never spoke. "I don't want to talk about it," she said, candidly. "We +play for a week in Fairhaven, and here, once off the stage, I intend +to forget I am an actress. When I am on the stage," she added, in +meditative wise, "of course everyone knows I am not." + +I laughed. I found her very satisfying; she was not particularly +intelligent, perhaps, but then I was beginning to consider clever +women rather objectionable creatures. There was a sufficiency of them +among the Charteris house-party--Alicia Wade, for instance, and +Pauline Ashmeade and Cynthia Chaytor,--and I thought of them almost +resentfully. The world had accorded them not exactly what they most +wanted, perhaps, but, at least, they had its luxuries; and they said +sharp, cynical things about the world in return. In a woman's mouth +epigrams were as much out-of-place as a meerschaum pipe. + +Here, on the contrary, was a woman whom the world had accorded nothing +save hard knocks, and she regarded it, upon the whole, as an eminently +pleasant place to live in. She accepted its rebuffs with a certain +large calm, as being all in the day's work. There was, no doubt, some +good and sufficient reason for these inconveniences; not for a moment, +however, did she puzzle her handsome head in speculating over this +reason. She was probably too lazy. And the few favours the world +accorded her she took thankfully. + +"You see," she explained to me--this was on Thursday night, when I +found her contentedly eating cheap candy out of a paper bag,--"the +world is really very like a large chocolate drop; it's rather bitter +on the outside, but when you have bitten through, you find the heart +of it sweet. Oh, how greedy!--you've taken the last candied cherry, +and I am specially fond of candied cherries!" And indeed, she looked +frankly regretful as I munched it. + +I thought her adorable; and in exchange for that last candied cherry I +promised her some of the new books,--_David Harum_ certainly, and, +_When Knighthood Was in Flower_, because everybody was reading it, and +Mr. Dooley, because they said this young fellow Dunne was nearly as +funny as Bill Nye.... + + + 4 + +In fact, the moon seemed to shine down each night upon that particular +garden in a more and more delightful and dangerous manner. And I being +a fairly normal and healthy young man, the said moonshine affected me +in a fashion which has been peculiar to moonshine since Noah was a +likely stripling; my blood appeared to me, at times, to leap and +bubble in my veins as if it had been some notably invigorating and +heady tipple; and my heart was unreasonably contented, and I gave due +thanks for this woman who had come to me unsullied through the world's +gutter. For she came unsullied; there was no questioning that. + +I pictured her in certain execrable rhymes as the Lady in _Comus_, +moving serene and unafraid among a rabble of threatening, bestial +shapes. And I rejoiced that there were women like this in the world,-- +brave, wholesome, unutterably honest women, whose very lack of +cleverness--oh, subtle appeal to my vanity!--demanded a gentleman's +protection. + +As has been said, I was a well-grown lad, but when I thought in this +fashion I seemed to myself, at a moderate computation, ten feet in +height,--and just the person, in short, who would be an ideal +protector. + +Thus far my callow meditations. My course of reasoning was perhaps +faulty, but then there are, at twenty-one, many processes more +interesting and desirable than the perfecting of a mathematical +demonstration. And so, for a little, my blood rejoiced with a strange +fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive. + + + 5 + +Thursday was the twenty-third of the month, so upon that afternoon I +wrote to Bettie Hamlyn, in far-off Colorado. + +It was a lengthy letter. It told her of how desolate her garden was +and of how odd Fairhaven seemed without her. It told how I had half +changed my mind, and would probably not go to Europe with Mr. +Charteris, after all. Bettie had been at pains, in the letter I was +answering, to expatiate upon her hatred of Charteris, whom she had +never seen. My letter told her, in fine, of a variety of matters. And +it ended: + +"I went to the Opera House on Monday. But that, like everything else, +isn't the same without you, dear. The woman who played Juliet was, I +believe, rather good-looking, but I scarcely noticed her in worrying +over the pitiful circumstance that the Apothecary and the Populace of +Verona had only one pair of shoes between them. Besides, Mercutio kept +putting on a bathrobe and insisting he was Friar Laurence.... I would +write more about it, if I had not almost used up all my paper. There +is just room to say--" + + + 6 + +This was, as I have stated, on Thursday afternoon. Upon the following +evening-- + +"And why not?" I demanded, for the ninth time. + +But she was resolute. "Oh, it is dear of you!" she cried; "and I--I do +care for you,--how could I help it? But it can't be,--it can't ever +be," she repeated wearily; and then she looked at me, and smiled a +little. "Oh, boy, boy! dear, dear boy!" she murmured, half in wonder, +"how foolish of you and--how dear of you!" + +"And why not?" said I--for the tenth time. + +She gave a sobbing laugh. "Oh, the great, brave, stupid boy!" she +said, and, for a moment, her hand rested on my hair; "he doesn't know +what he is doing,--ah, no, he doesn't know! Why, I might hold you to +your word! I might sue you for breach of promise! I might marry you +out of hand! Think of that! Why I am only a strolling actress, and +fair game for any man,--any man who isn't particular," she added, with +the first trace of bitterness I had ever observed in her odd, throaty +voice. "And you would marry me,--you! you would give me your name, you +would make me your wife! You have actually begged me to be your wife, +haven't you? Ah, my brave, strong, stupid Bobbie, how many women must +love you,--women who have a right to love you! And you would give them +all up for me,--for me, you foolish Bobbie, whom you haven't known a +week! Ah, how dear of you!" And she caught her breath swiftly, and her +voice broke. + +"Yes," I brazenly confessed; "I really believe I would give them all +up--every blessed one of them--for you." I inspected her, critically, +and then smiled. "And I don't think that I would be deserving any very +great credit for self sacrifice, either, Signorina." + +"My dear," she answered, "it pleases you to call me old Capulet's +daughter,--but if I were only a Capulet, and you a Montague, don't you +see how much easier it would be? But we don't belong to rival +families, we belong to rival worlds, to two worlds that have nothing +in common, and never can have anything in common. They are too strong +for us, Bobbie,--my big, dark, squalid world, that you could never +sink to, and your gay little world which I can never climb to,--your +world that would have none of me, even if--even _if_--" But the +condition was not forthcoming. + +"The world," said I, in an equable tone--"My dear, I may as well warn +you I am shockingly given to short and expressive terms, and as we are +likely to see a deal of each other for the future, you will have to be +lenient with them,--accordingly, I repeat, the world may be damned." + +And I laughed, in unutterable content. "Have none of you!" I cried. +"My faith, I would like to see a world which would have none of you! +Ah, Signorina, it is very plain to me that you don't realize what a +beauty, what a--a--good Lord, what an unimaginative person it was that +invented the English language! Why, you have only to be seen, heart's +dearest,--only to be seen, and the world is at your feet,--my world, +to which you belong of rights; my world, that you are going to honour +by living in; my world, that in a little will go mad for sheer envy of +blundering, stupid, lucky me!" And I laughed her to scorn. + +There was a long silence. Then, "I belonged to your world once, you +know." + +"Why, of course, I knew as much as that." + +"And yet--you never asked--" "Ah, Signorina, Signorina!" I cried; +"what matter? Don't I know you for the bravest, tenderest, purest, +most beautiful woman God ever made? I doubt you--I! My word!" said I, +and stoutly, "that _would_ be a pretty go! You are to tell me just +what you please," I went on, almost belligerently, "and when and where +you please, my lady. And I would thank you," I added, with appropriate +sternness, "to discontinue your pitiful and transparent efforts to +arouse unworthy suspicions as to my future wife. They are wasted, +madam,--utterly wasted, I assure you." + +"Oh, Bobbie, Bobbie!" she sighed; "you are such a beautiful baby! Give +me time," she pleaded weakly. + +And, when I scowled my disapproval, "Only till tomorrow--only a +little, little twenty-four hours. And promise me, you won't speak of +this--this crazy nonsense again tonight. I must think." + +"Never!" said I, promptly; "because I couldn't be expected to keep +such an absurd promise," I complained, in indignation. + +"And you look so strong," she murmured, with evident disappointment,-- +"so strong and firm and--and--admirable!" + +So I promised at once. And I kept the promise--that is, I did +subsequently refer to the preferable and proper course to pursue in +divers given circumstances "when we are married;" but it was on six +occasions only, and then quite casually,--and six times, as I myself +observed, was, all things considered, an extremely moderate allowance +and one that did great credit to my self-control. + + + 7 + +"And besides, why _not_?" I said,--for the eleventh time. + +"There are a thousand reasons. I am not your equal, I am just an +ostensible actress--Why, it would be your ruin!" + +"My dear Mrs. Grundy, I confess that, for the moment, your disguise +had deceived me. But now: I recognize your voice." + +She laughed a little. "And after all," the grave voice said, which +was, to me at least, the masterwork of God, "after all, hasn't one +always to answer Mrs. Grundy--in the end?" + +"Why, then, you disgusting old harridan," said I, "I grant you it is +utterly impossible to defend my behaviour in this matter, and, believe +me, I don't for an instant undertake the task. To the contrary, I +agree with you perfectly,--my conduct is most thoughtless and +reprehensible, and merits your very severest condemnation. For look +you, here is a young man, well born, well-bred, sufficiently well +endowed with this world's goods, in short, an eminently eligible +match, preparing to marry an 'ostensible actress' a year or two his +senior,--why, of course, you are,--and of whose past he knows +nothing,--absolutely nothing. Don't you shudder at the effrontery of +the minx? Is it not heart-breaking to contemplate the folly, the utter +infatuation of the misguided youth who now stands ready to foist such +a creature upon the circles of which your ladyship is a distinguished +ornament? I protest it is really incredible. I don't believe a word of +it." + +"I cannot quite believe it, either, Bobbie--" + +"But you see, he loves her. You, my dear madam, blessed with a wiser +estimation of our duties to society, of the responsibilities of our +position, of the cost of even the most modest establishment, and, +above all, of the sacredness of matrimony and the main chance, may +well shrug your shoulders at such a plea. For, as you justly observe, +what, after all, is this love? only a passing madness, an exploded +superstition, an irresponsible _ignis fatuus_ flickering over the +quagmires and shallows of the divorce court. People's lives are no +longer swayed by such absurdities; it is quite out of date." + +"Yes; you are joking, Bobbie, I know; yet it is really out of date--" + +"But I protest, loudly, my hand upon my heart, that it is true; people +no longer do mad things for love, or ever did, in spite of lying +poets; any more than the birds mate in the spring, or the sun rises in +the morning; popular fallacies, my dear madam, every one of them. You +and I know better, and are not to be deceived by appearances, however +specious they may be. Ah, but come now! Having attained this highly +satisfactory condition, we can well afford to laugh at all our past +mistakes,--yes, even at our own! For let us be quite candid. Wasn't +there a time, dear lady, before Mr. Grundy came a-wooing, when, +somehow, one was constantly meeting unexpected people in the garden, +and, somehow, one sat out a formidable number of dances during the +evening, and, somehow, the poets seemed a bit more plausible than they +do today? It was very foolish, of course,--but, ah, madam, there _was_ +a time,--a time when even our staid blood rejoiced with a strange +fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive! Come +now, have you the face to deny it,--Mrs. Methuselah?" + +"It has not been quite bad to be alive, these last few hours--" + +"And, oh, my dear, how each of us will look back some day to this very +moment! And we are wasting it! And I have not any words to tell you +how I love you! I am just a poor, dumb brute!" I groaned. + +Then very tenderly she began to talk with me in a voice I cannot tell +you of, and concerning matters not to be recorded. + +And still she would not promise anything; and I would give an arm, I +think, could it replevin all the idiotic and exquisite misery I knew +that night. + + + + +8. + +_He Duels with a Stupid Woman_ + + +Yet I approached the garden on Saturday night with an elated heart. +This was the last evening of the engagement of the Imperial Dramatic +Company. To-morrow the troupe was to leave Fairhaven; but I was very +confident that the leading lady would not accompany them, and by +reason of this confidence, I smiled as I strode through the city of +Fairhaven, and hummed under my breath an inane ditty of an extremely +sentimental nature. + +As I bent over the little wooden gate, and searched for its elusive +latch, a man came out of the garden, wheeling sharply about the hedge +that, until this, had hidden him; and simultaneously, I was aware of +the mingled odour of bad tobacco and of worse whiskey. Well, she would +have done with such people soon! I threw open the gate, and stood +aside to let him pass; then, as the moon fell full upon the face of +the man, I gave an inarticulate, startled sound. + +"Fine evening, sir," suggested the stranger. + +"Eh?" said I; "eh? Oh, yes, yes! quite so!" Afterward I shrugged my +shoulders, and went into the garden, a trifle puzzled. + + + 2 + +I found her beneath a great maple in the heart of the enclosure. It +was a place of peace; the night was warm and windless, and the moon, +now come to its full glory, rode lazily in the west through a froth of +clouds. Everywhere the heavens were faintly powdered with stardust, +but even the planets seemed pale and ineffectual beside the splendour +of the moon. + +The garden was drenched in moonshine--moonshine that silvered the +unmown grass-plots, and converted the white rose-bushes into squat-figured +wraiths, and tinged the red ones with dim purple hues. On every side the +foliage blurred into ambiguous vistas, where fireflies loitered; and the +long shadows of the nearer trees, straining across the grass, were wried +patterns scissored out of blue velvet. It was a place of peace and light +and languid odours, and I came into it, laughing, the possessor of an +over-industrious heart and of a perfectly unreasoning joy over the fact +that I was alive. + +"I say," I observed, as I stretched luxuriously upon the grass beside +her, "you put up at a shockingly disreputable place, Signorina." +"Yes?" said she. + +"That fellow who just went out," I explained--"do you know the police +want his address, I think? No," I continued, after consideration, "I +am sure I'm not mistaken,--that is either Ned Lethbury, the embezzler, +or his twin-brother. It's been five years since I saw him, but that is +he. And that", said I, with proper severity, "is a sample of the sort +of associate you prefer to your humble servant! Ah, Signorina, +Signorina, I am a tolerably worthless chap, I admit, but at least I +never forged and embezzled and then skipped my bail! So you had much +better marry me, my dear, and say good-bye to your peculating friends. +But, deuce take it! I forgot--I ought to notify the police or +something, I suppose." + +She caught my arm. Her mouth opened and shut again before she spoke. +"He--he is my husband," she said, in a toneless voice. Then, on a +sudden, she wailed: "Oh, forgive me! Oh, my great, strong, beautiful +boy, forgive me, for I am very unhappy, and I cannot meet your eyes-- +your honest eyes! Ah, my dear, my dear, do not look at me like that,-- +you don't know how it hurts!" + +The garden noises lisped about us in the long silence that fell. Then +the far-off whistling of some home going citizen of Fairhaven tinkled +shrilly through the night, and I shuddered a bit. + +"I don't understand," I commenced, strangely quiet. "You told me--" + +"Ah, I lied to you! I lied to you!" she cried. "I didn't, mean to-- +hurt you. I did not know--I couldn't know--I was so lonely, Bobbie," +she pleaded, with wide eyes; "oh, you don't know how lonely I am. And +when you came to me that first night, you--why, you spoke to me as the +men I once knew used to speak. There was respect in your voice, and I +wanted that so; I hadn't had a man speak to me like that for years, +you know, Bobbie. And, boy dear, I was so lonely in my squalid +world,--and it seemed as if the world I used to know was calling me-- +your world, Bobbie--the world I am shut out from." + +"Yes," I said; "I think I understand." + +"And I thought for a week--just to peep into it, to be a lady again +for an hour or two--why, it didn't seem wicked, then, and I wanted it +so much! I--I knew I could trust you, because you were only a boy. And +I was hungry--_so_ hungry for a little respect, a little courtesy, +such as men don't accord strolling actresses. So I didn't tell you +till the very last I was married. I lied to you. Oh, but you don't +understand, this stupid, honest boy doesn't understand anything except +that I have lied to him!" + +"Signorina," I said, again, and I smiled, resolutely, "I think I +understand." I took both her hands in mine, and laughed a little. +"But, oh, my dear, my dear," I said, "you should have told me that you +loved another man; for you have let me love you for a week, and now I +think that I must love you till I die." + +"Love him!" she echoed. "Oh, boy dear, boy dear, what a Galahad it is! +I don't think Ned ever cared for anything but Father's money; and I-- +why, you have seen him. How _could_ I love him?" she asked, as simply +as a child. + +I bowed my head. "And yet--" said I. Then I laughed again, somewhat +bitterly. "Don't let's tell stories, Mrs. Lethbury," I said; "it is +kindly meant, I know, but I remember you now. I even danced with you +once, some seven years ago,--yes, at the Green Chalybeate. I remember +the night, for a variety of reasons. You are Alfred Van Orden's +daughter; your father is a wealthy man, a very wealthy man; and yet, +when your--your husband disappeared you followed him--to become a +strolling actress. Ah, no, a woman doesn't sacrifice everything for a +man in the way you have done, unless she loves him." + +I caught my breath. Some unknown force kept tugging down the corners +of my mouth, in a manner that hampered speech; moreover, nothing +seemed worth talking about. I had lost her. That was the one thing +which mattered. + +"Why, of course, I went with him," she assented, a shade surprised; +"he was my husband, you know. But as for loving,--no, I don't think +Ned ever really loved me," she reflected, with puckering brows. "He +took that money for--for another woman, if you remember. But he is +fond of me, and--and he _needs_ me." + +I did not say anything; and after a little she went on, with a quick +lift of speech. + +"Oh, what a queer life we have led since then! You can't imagine it, +my dear. He has been a tavern-keeper, a drummer,--everything! Why, +last summer we sold rugs and Turkish things in Atlantic City! But he +is always afraid of meeting someone who knows him, and--and he drinks +too much. So we have not got on in the world, Ned and I; and now, +after three years, I'm the leading lady of the Imperial Dramatic +Company, and he is the manager. I forgot, though,--he is advance-agent +this week, for he didn't dare stay in Fairhaven, lest some of the men +at Mr. Charteris's should recognize him, you know. He came back only +this evening--" + +She paused for a moment; a wistful quaver crept into her speech. "Oh, +it's queer, it's queer, Bobbie! Sometimes--sometimes when I have time +to think, say on long Sunday afternoons, I remember my old life, every +bit of it,--oh, I do remember such strange little details! I remember +the designs on the bread and butter plates, and all the silver things +on my desk, and the plank by my door that always creaked and somehow +never got fixed, and the big, shiny buttons on the coachman's coat,-- +just trifles like that. And--and they hurt, they hurt, Bobbie, those +little, unimportant things! They--grip my throat." + +She laughed, not very mirthfully. "Then I am like the old lady in the +nursery rhyme, and say, Surely, this can't be I. But it is I, boy +dear,--a strolling actress, a barn-stormer! Isn't it queer, Bobbie? +But, oh, you don't know half--" + +I was remembering many things. I remembered Lethbury, a gross man, +superfluously genial, whom I had never liked, although I recalled my +admiration of his whiskers. I recollected young Amelia Van Orden, not +come to her full beauty then, the bud of girlhood scarce slipped; and +I remembered very vividly the final crash, the nine days' talk over +Lethbury's flight in the face of certain conviction,--by his father-in- +law's advice (as some said) who had furnished and forfeited heavy bail +for the absconder. Oh, the brave woman who had followed! Oh, the brave, +foolish woman! And, for the action's recompense, he was content to +exhibit her to yokels, to make of her beauty an article of traffic. +Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. And then hope +blazed. + +"Your husband," I said, quickly, "he does not love you? He--he is not +faithful to you?" + +"No," she answered; "there is a Miss Fortescue--she plays second +parts--" + +"Ah, my dear, my dear!" I cried, with a shaking voice; "come away, +Signorina,--come away with me! He _doesn't_ need you,--and, oh, my +dear, I need you so! You can get your divorce and marry me. Ah, +Signorina, come away,--come away from this squalid life that is +killing you, to the world you are meant for, to the life you hunger +for! Come back to the clean, lighthearted world you love, the world +that is waiting to pet and caress you just as it used to do,--our +world, Signorina! You don't belong here with--with the Fortescues. You +belong to us." + +I sprang to my feet. "Come now!" said I. "There's Anne Charteris; she +is a good woman, if ever lived one. She used to know you, too, didn't +she? Well, then, come with me to her, dearest--and tonight! You shall +see your father tomorrow. Your father--why, think how that old man +loves you, how he has longed for you, his only daughter, all these +years. And I?" I spread out my hands, in the tiniest, impotent +gesture. "I love you," I said, simply. "I cannot do without you, +heart's dearest." + +Impulsively, she rested both hands upon my breast; then bowed her head +a little. The nearness of her seemed to shake in my blood, to catch at +my throat, and my hands, lifted for a moment, trembled with desire of +her. + +"You don't understand," she said. "I am a Catholic--my mother was one, +you know. There is no divorce for us. And--and besides, I'm not +modern. I am very old-fashioned, I suppose, in my ideas. Do you know," +she asked, with a smile upon the face which lifted confidingly toward +me, "I--I _really_ believe the world was made in six days; and that +the whale swallowed Jonah, and that there is a real purgatory and a +hell of fire and brimstone. You don't, do you, Bobbie? But I do,--and +I promised to stay with him till death parted us, you know, and I must +do it. I am all he has. He would get even worse without me. I--oh, boy +dear, boy dear, I love you so!" And her voice broke, in a great, +choking sob. + +"A promise--a promise made by an ungrown girl to a brute--a thief--!" + +"No, dear," she answered, quietly; "a promise made to God." + +And looking into her face, I saw love there, and anguish, and +determination. It seemed monstrous, but of a sudden I knew with a dull +surety; she loved me, but she thought she had no right to love me; she +would not go with me. She would go with that drunken, brutish thief. + +And I suddenly recalled certain clever women--Alicia Wade, Pauline +Ashmeade, Cynthia Chaytor--the women of that world wherein I was +novitiate; beyond question, they would raise delicately penciled +eyebrows to proclaim this woman a fool--and to wonder. + +They would be right, I thought. She was only a splendid, tender-hearted, +bright-eyed fool, the woman that I loved. My heart sickened as her +folly rose between us, an impassable barrier. I hated it; and I revered +it. + +Thus we two stood silent for a time. The wind murmured above in the +maples, lazily, ominously. Then the gate clicked, with a vicious snap +that pierced the silence like the report of a distant rifle. "That is +probably Ned," she said wearily. "I had forgotten they close the +barrooms earlier on Saturday nights. So good-bye, Bobbie. You--you may +kiss me, if you like." + +So for a moment our lips met. Afterward I caught her hands in mine, +and gripped them close to my breast, looking down into her eyes. They +glinted in the moonlight, deep pools of sorrow, and tender--oh, +unutterably tender and compassionate. + +But I found no hope there. I lifted her hand to my lips, and left her +alone in the garden. + + + 3 + +Lethbury was fumbling at the gate. + +"Such nuishance," he complained, "havin' gate won't unlock. Latch mus' +got los'--po' li'l latch," murmured Mr. Lethbury, plaintively--"all +'lone in cruel worl'!" + +I opened the gate for him, and stood aside to let him pass toward his +wife. + + + + +9. + +_He Puts His Tongue in His Cheek_ + + +It was not long before John Charteris knew of the entire affair, for +in those days I had few concealments from him: and the little wizened +man brooded awhile over my misery, with an odd wistfulness. + +"I remember Amelia Van Orden perfectly," he said--"now. I ought to +have recognized her. Only, she was never, in her best days, the +paragon you depict. She sang, I recollect; people made quite a to-do +over her voice. But she was very, very stupid, and used to make loud +shrieking noises when she was amused, and was generally reputed to be +'fast.' I never investigated. Even so, there was not any real doubt as +to her affair, in any event, with Anton von Anspach, after that night +the sleigh broke down--" + +"Oh, spare me all those ancient Lichfield scandals! She is an angel, +John, if there was ever one." + +"In your eyes, doubtless! So your heart is broken. Yet do you not +realize that not a month ago you were heartbroken over Stella +Musgrave? Child, I repeat, I envy you this perpetual unhappiness, for +I have lost, as you will presently lose, the capacity of being quite +miserable." + +"But, John, it seems as if there were nothing left to live for, now--" + +"At twenty-one! Well, certainly, at that age one loves to think of +life as being implacable. But you will soon discover that she is +merely inconsequential, and that none of her antics are of lasting +importance; and you will learn to smile a deal more often than you +weep or laugh." + +Then we talked of other matters. It was presently settled that +Charteris was to take me abroad with him that summer; and with the +thorough approval of my mother. + +"Mr. Charteris will be of incalculable benefit to you," she told me, +"in introducing you to the very best people, all of whom he knows, of +course, and besides you are getting to look older than I, and it is +unpleasant to have to be always explaining you are only my stepson, +particularly as your father never married anybody but me, though, +heaven knows, I wish he had. Of course you will be just as wild as +your father and your Uncle George. I suppose that is to be expected, +and I daresay it will break my heart, but all I ask of you is please +to keep out of the newspapers, except of course the social items. And +if you _must_ associate with abandoned women, please for my sake, +Robert, don't have anything to do with those who can prove that they +are only misunderstood, because they are the most dangerous kind." + +I kissed her. "Dear little mother, I honestly believe that when you +get to heaven you will refuse to speak to Mary Magdalen." + +"Robert, let us remember the Bible says, 'in my Father's house are +many mansions,' and of course nobody would think of putting me in the +same mansion with her." + +It was well-nigh the last conversation I was to hold with my mother; +and I was to remember it with an odd tenderness.... + + + 2 + +Upon the doings of myself in Europe during the ensuing two years I +prefer to dwell as lightly as possible. I had long anticipated a +sojourn in divers old-world cities; but the London I had looked to +find was the London of Dickens, say, and my Paris the Paris of Dumas, +or at the very least of Balzac. It is needless to mention that in the +circles to which the, quite real, friendship of John Charteris +afforded an entry I found little that smacked of such antiquity. I had +entered a world inhabited by people who amused themselves and +apparently did nothing else; and I was at first troubled by their +levity, and afterward envious of it, and in the end embarked upon +sedulous attempt to imitate it. I continued to be very boyish; indeed, +I found myself by this in much the position of an actor who has made +such a success in one particular role that the public declines to +patronize him in any other. + + + 3 + +It was during this first year abroad that I wrote _The Apostates_, +largely through the urging of John Charteris. + +"You have the ability, though, that dances most gracefully in fetters. +You will never write convincingly about the life you know, because +life is, to you, my adorable boy, a series of continuous miracles, to +which the eyes of other men are case-hardened. Write me, then, a book +about the past." + +"I have thought of it," said I, "for being over here makes the past +seem pretty real, somehow. Last month when I was at Ingilby I was on +fire with the notion of writing something about old Ormskirk--my +mother's ancestor, you know. And since I've seen what's left of +Bellegarde I have wanted to write about his wife's people too,--the +dukes and vicomtes of Puysange, or even about the great Jurgen. You +see, I am just beginning to comprehend that these are not merely +characters in Lowe's and La Vrilliere's books, but my flesh and blood +kin, like Uncle George Bulmer--" + +"And for that reason you want to write about them! You would, though; +it is eminently characteristic. Well, then, why should you not +immortalize the persons who had the honor of begetting you--oh, most +handsome and most naive of children!--by writing your very best about +them?" "Because to succeed--not only among the general but with the +'cultured few,' God save the mark!--it is now necessary to write not +badly but abominably." + +"What would you demand, then, of a book?" + +I meditated. "What one most desiderates in the writings of to-day is +clarity, and beauty, and tenderness and urbanity, and truth." + +"Not a bad recipe, upon the whole, though I would stipulate for +symmetry and distinction also--Write the book!" + +"Ah," said I, "but this is the kind of book I wish to read when, of +course, the mood seizes me. It is not at all the sort of book, though, +I would elect to write. The main purpose of writing any book, I take +it, is to be read; and people simply will not read a book when they +suspect it of being carefully written. That sort of thing gets on a +reader's nerves; it's too much like watching a man walk a tight-rope +and wondering if he won't slip presently." + +"Oh, 'people!'" Charteris flung out, in an extremity of scorn. "Since +time was young, a generally incompetent humanity has been willing to +pardon anything rather than the maddening spectacle of labour +competently done. And they are perfectly right; it is abominable how +such weak-minded persons occasionally thrust themselves into a world +quite obviously designed for persons who have not any minds at all. +But I was not asking you to write a 'best-seller.'" + +"No, you were asking me to become an Economist, and be one of 'the few +rare spirits which every age providentially affords,' and so on. That +is absolute and immoral nonsense. When you publish a novel you are at +least pretending to supply a certain demand; and if you don't +endeavour honestly to supply it, you are a swindler, no more and no +less. No, it is all very well to write for posterity, if it amuses +you, John; personally, I cannot imagine what possible benefit you will +derive from it, even though posterity _does_ read your books. And for +myself, I want to be read and to be a power while I can appreciate the +fact that I _am_ a sort of power, however insignificant. Besides, I +want to make some money out of the blamed thing. Mother is a dear, of +course, but, like all the Bulmers, with age she is becoming tight-fisted." + +"And Esau--" Charteris began. + +"Yes,--but that's Biblical, and publishing a book is business. People +say to authors, just as they do to tailors: 'I want such and such an +article. Make it and I'll pay you for it.' Now, your tailor may +consider the Imperial Roman costume more artistic than that of today, +and so may you in the abstract, but if he sent home a toga in place of +a pair of trousers, you would discontinue dealing with him. So if it +amuses you to make togas, well and good; I don't quarrel with it; but, +personally, I mean to go into the gents' furnishing line and to do my +work efficiently." + +"Yes,--but with your tongue in your cheek." + +"It is the one and only attitude," I sweetly answered, "in which to +write if you indeed desire to be read with enjoyment." And presently I +rose and launched upon + +_A Defence of That Attitude_ + +"The main trouble with you, John Charteris, is that you will never +recover from being _fin de siecle_. Yes, you belong to that queer +dying nineteenth century. And even so, you have quite overlooked what +is, perhaps, the signal achievement of the nineteenth century,--the +relegation of its literature to the pharmacopoeia. The comparison of +the tailor, I willingly admit, is a bad one. Those who write +successfully nowadays must appeal to men and women who seek in fiction +not only a means of relaxation, but spiritual comfort as well, and an +uplifting rather than a mere diversion of the mind; so that they are +really druggists who trade exclusively in intoxicants and hypnotics. + +"Half of the customers patronize the reading-matter shops because they +want to induce delusions about a world they know, and do not find +particularly roseate and the other half skim through a book because +they haven't anything else to do and aren't sleepy, as yet. + +"Oh, in filling either prescription the trick is much the same; you +have simply to avoid bothering the reader's intellect in any way +whatever. You have merely to drug it, you have merely to caress it +with interminable platitudes, or else with the most uplifting +avoidances of anything which happens to be unprintably rational. And +you must remember always that the crass emotions of half-educated +persons are, in reality, your chosen keyboard; so play upon it with an +axe if you haven't any handier implement, but hit it somehow, and for +months your name will be almost as famous as that of my mother's +father remains the year round because he invented a celebrated +baking-powder. + +"It is all very well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there +are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can +hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, +for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, +entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But +why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with +one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, +whenever humanity goes into the library to take a nap? For what other +purpose do you suppose a gentleman goes into his library, pray? When +he is driven to reading he does it decently in bed. + +"Besides, if I like a book, why, then, in so far as I am concerned, it +_is_ a good book. No, please don't talk to me about 'the dignity of +literature'; modern fiction has precisely as much to do with dignity +as has vaudeville or billiards or that ridiculous Prohibitionist +Party, since the object of all four, I take it, is to afford diversion +to people who haven't anything better to do. Thus, a novel which has +diverted a thousand semi-illiterate persons is exactly ten times as +good as a novel that has pleased a hundred superior persons. It is +simply a matter of arithmetic. + +"You prefer to look upon writing as an art, rather than a business? +Oh, you silly little man, the touchstone of any artist is the skill +with which he adapts his craftsmanship to his art's limitations. He +will not attempt to paint a sound or to sculpture a colour, because he +knows that painting and sculpture have their limitations, and he, +quite consciously, recognizes this fact whenever he sets to work. + +"Well, the most important limitation of writing fiction nowadays is +that you have to appeal to people who would never think of reading you +or anybody else, if they could possibly imagine any other employment +for that particular vacant half-hour. And you cannot hope for an +audience of even moderately intelligent persons, because intelligent +persons do not attempt to keep abreast with modern fiction. It is +probably ascribable to the fact that they enjoy being intelligent, and +wish to remain so. + +"You sneer at the 'best-sellers.' I tell you, in sober earnest, that +the writing of a frankly trashy novel which will 'sell,' is the +highest imaginable form of art. For true art, in its last terms, is +the adroit circumvention of an unsurmountable obstacle. I suppose that +form and harmony and colour are very difficult to tame; and the +sculptor, the musician and the painter quite probably earn their hire. +But people don't go to concerts unless they want to hear music; +whereas the people who buy the 'best-sellers' are the people who would +prefer to do _anything_ rather than be reduced to reading. I protest +that the man who makes these people read on until they see how 'it all +came out' is a deal more than an artist; he is a sorcerer." + +And I paused, a little out of breath. + +"What a boy it is!" said Charteris. "Do you know, you are uncommonly +handsome when you are talking nonsense? Write the trashy book, then. I +never argue with children; and besides, I do not have to read it." + + + 4 + +It thus fell about that in the second European year, not very long +after my mother's death, _The Apostates_ was given to the world, with +what result the world has had a plenty of time wherein to forget.... +It was first published in _The Quaker Post_, with pictures by Roderick +King Hill, and in the autumn was brought out as a book by Stuyvesant +and Brothers. I made rather a good thing cut of it financially; but +the numerous letters I received from the people who had liked it I +found extremely objectionable. They were not the right sort of people, +I felt forlornly.... So I endured my plaudits without undue elation, +for I always held _The Apostates_ to be, at best, a medley of +conventional tricks and extravagant rhetoric, inanimate by any least +particle of myself,--and its success, say, as though the splendiferous +trappings of an emperor were hung upon a clothier's dummy, and the +result accepted as an adequate presentation of Charlemagne. + +In other words, the book was the most unbridled kind of balderdash, +founded on my callow recollections of the Green Chalybeate,--not the +least bit accurate, as I was afterward to discover,--with all the good +people exceedingly oratorical and the bad ones singularly epigrammatic +and abandoned and obtuse. I introduced a depraved nobleman, of course, +to give the requisite touch of high society, seasoned the mixture with +French and botany and with a trifle of Dolly Dialoguishness, and +inserted, at judicious intervals, the most poetical of descriptions, +so that the skipping of them might afford an agreeable rest to the +reader's eye. There was also a sufficiency of piddling with unsavoury +matters to insure the suffrage of schoolgirls. + +And a number of persons, in fine, were so misguided as to enthuse over +the result. The verb is carefully selected, for they one and all were +just the sort of people who "enthuse." + + + 5 + +I was vexed, however, at the time to find I could not achieve an +appropriate emotion over my mother's death. The news came, to be sure, +at a season when I was preoccupied with getting rid of Agnes Faroy.... +I have not ever heard of any rational excuse for the quite common +assumption that children ought to be particularly fond of their +parents. Still, my mother was the prettiest woman I had ever known, +though without any claim to beauty, and I had always gloried in our +kinship; for I believed her nature to be generous and amiable when she +thought of it; and the cablegram which announced the event aroused in +me sincere regret that a comely ornament to my progress had been +smashed irrevocably. + +For a little I reflected as to whither she had vanished, and decided +she had been too futile and well-meaning ever to be punished by any +reasonable Being. Yet how she would have enjoyed the publication of my +book!--without any attempt to read it, however, since she had never, +to my knowledge, read anything, with the exception of the daily +papers.... And besides, I disliked being unable to have the +appropriate emotion. + +But I simply could not manage it. For here, in the midst of the Faroy +mess,--with Agnes weeping all over the place, and her brothers +flourishing pistols and declaiming idiocies,--came the news from Uncle +George that my mother had left me virtually nothing. She must have +used up, of course, a good share of her Bulmer Baking Powder money in +supporting my father comfortably; but she had always lived in such +estate as to make me assume she had retained, anyhow, enough of the +Bulmer money to last my time. So it was naturally a shock to discover +that this monetary attitude was inherited from my mother, who had been +cheerfully "living on her principle" all these years, without +considering my future. I had no choice but to regard it as abominably +selfish. + +"I think Claire was afraid to tell you," wrote Uncle George, "how +little there was left. In any event, she always shirked doing it, so +as to stave off unpleasantness. And when we cabled you how ill she +was, it now seems most unfortunate you could not see your way clear to +giving up your trip through the chateau country, as your not coming +appeared to be on her mind a great deal at the last. I do not wish to +seem to criticize you in any way, Robert, but I must say...." + +Well, but you know what sort of nonsense that smug gambit heralds in +letters from your kindred. Even so, I now owned the Townsend house and +an income sufficient for daily bread; and it looked just then as +though the magazine editors were willing to furnish the butter, and +occasional cakes. So the future promised to be pleasant enough. + + + 6 + +Charteris had returned to Algiers in the autumn my book was published, +but I elected to pass the winter in England. "Of course," was Mr. +Charteris's annotation--"because it is precisely the most dangerous +spot in the world for you. And you are to spend October at Negley? I +warn you that Jasper Hardress is in love with his wife, and that the +woman has an incurable habit of making experiments and an utter +inability to acquire experience. Take my advice, and follow Mrs. +Monteagle to the Riviera, instead. Cissie will strip you of every +penny you have, of course, but in the end you will find her a deal +less expensive than Gillian Hardress." + +"You possess a low and evil mind," I observed, "since I am fond, in +all sincerity, of Hardress, whereas his wife is not even civil to me. +Why, she goes out of her way to be rude to me." + +"Yes," said Mr. Charteris; "but that is because she is getting worried +about her interest in you. And what is the meaning of this, by the +way? I found it on your table this morning." He read the doggerel +aloud with an unkindly and uncalled-for exaggeration of the rhyming +words. + + "We did not share the same inheritance,-- + I and this woman, five years older than I, + Yet daughter of a later century,-- + Who is therefore only wearied by that dance + Which has set my blood a-leaping. + + "It is queer + To note how kind her face grows, listening + To my wild talk, and plainly pitying + My callow youth, and seeing in me a dear + Amusing boy,--yet somewhat old to be + Still reading _Alice Through the Looking-Glass_ + And _Water-Babies_.... With light talk we pass, + + "And I that have lived long in Arcady-- + I that have kept so many a foolish tryst, + And written drivelling rhymes--feel stirring in me + Droll pity for this woman who pities me, + And whose weak mouth so many men have kissed." + +"That," I airily said, "is, in the first place, something you had no +business to read; and, in the second, simply the blocking out of an +entrancingly beautiful poem. It represents a mood." + +"It is the sort of mood that is not good for people, particularly for +children. It very often gets them shot too full of large and untidy +holes." + +"Nonsense!" said I, but not in displeasure, because it made me feel +like such a devil of a fellow. So I finished my letter to Bettie +Hamlyn,--for this was on the seventh,--and I went to Negley precisely +as I had planned. + + + 7 + +"We were just speaking of you," Mrs. Hardress told me, the afternoon +of my arrival,--"Blanche and I were talking of you, Mr. Townsend, the +very moment we heard your wheels." + +I shook hands. "I trust you had not entirely stripped me of my +reputation?" + +"Surely, that is the very last of your possessions any reasonable +person would covet?" + +"A palpable hit," said I. "Nevertheless, you know that all I possess +in the world is yours for the asking." + +"Yes, you mentioned as much, I think, at Nice. Or was it Colonel +Tatkin who offered me a heart's devotion and an elopement? No, I +believe it was you. But, dear me, Jasper is so disgustingly healthy +that I shall probably never have any chance of recreation." + +I glanced toward Jasper Hardress. "I have heard," said I, hopefully, +"that there is consumption in the family?" + +"Heavens, no! he told me that before marriage to encourage me, but I +find there is not a word of truth in it." + +Then Jasper Hardress came to welcome his guest, and save from a +distance I saw no more that evening of Gillian Hardress. + + + + +10. + +_He Samples New Emotions_ + + +It was the following day, about noon, as I sat intent upon my Paris +_Herald_ that a tiny finger thrust a hole in it. I gave an inaudible +observation, and observed a very plump young person in white with +disfavour. + +"And who may you happen to be?" I demanded. + +"I'm Gladys," the young lady responded; "and I've runned away." + +"But not without an escort, I trust, Miss Gladys? Really--upon my +word, you know, you surprise me, Gladys! An elopement without even a +tincture of masculinity is positively not respectable." I took the +little girl into my lap, for I loved children, and all helpless +things. "Gladys," I said, "why don't you elope with me? And we will +spend our honeymoon in the Hesperides." + +"All right," said Gladys, cheerfully. She leaned upon my chest, and +the plump, tiny hand clasped mine, in entire confidence; and the +contact moved me to an irrational transport and to a yearning whose +aim I could not comprehend. "Now tell me a story," said Gladys. + +So that I presently narrated to Gladys the ensuing + + _Story of the Flowery Kingdom_ + + "Fair Sou-Chong-Tee, by a shimmering brook + Where ghost-like lilies loomed tall and straight, + Met young Too-Hi, in a moonlit nook, + Where they cooed and kissed till the hour was late: + Then, with lanterns, a mandarin passed in state, + Named Hoo-Hung-Hoo of the Golden Band, + Who had wooed the maiden to be his mate-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "Now, Hoo-Hung-Hoo had written a book, + In seven volumes, to celebrate + The death of the Emperor's thirteenth cook: + So, being a person whose power was great, + He ordered a herald to indicate + He would blind Too-Hi with a red-hot brand + And marry Sou-Chong at a quarter-past-eight,-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "And the brand was hot, and the lovers shook + In their several shoes, when by lucky fate + A Dragon came, with his tail in a crook,-- + A Dragon out of a Nankeen Plate,-- + And gobbled the hard-hearted potentate + And all of his servants, and snorted, _and_ + Passed on at a super-cyclonic rate,-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "The lovers were wed at an early date, + And lived for the future, I understand, + In one continuous tete-a-tete,-- + For these things occur...in the Flowery Land." + + +Gladys wanted to know: "But what sort of house is a tete-a-tete? Is it +like a palace?" + +"It is very often much nicer than a palace," I declared,--"provided of +course you are only stopping over for a week-end." + +"And wasn't it odd the Dragon should have come just when he did?" + +"Oh, Gladys, Gladys! don't tell me you are a realist." + +"No, I'm a precious angel," she composedly responded, with a flavour +of quotation. + +"Well! it is precisely the intervention of the Dragon, Gladys, which +proves the story is literature," I announced. "Don't you pity the poor +Dragon, Gladys, who never gets a chance in life and has to live always +between two book-covers?" + +She said that couldn't be so, because it would squash him. + +"And yet, dear, it is perfectly true," said Mrs. Hardress. The lean +and handsome woman was regarding the pair of us curiously. "I didn't +know you cared for children, Mr. Townsend. Yes, she is my daughter." +She carried Gladys away, without much further speech. + +Yet one Parthian comment in leaving me was flung over her shoulder, +snappishly. "I wish you wouldn't imitate John Charteris so. You are +getting to be just a silly copy of him. You are just Jack where he is +John. I think I shall call you Jack." + +"I wish you would," I said, "if only because your sponsors happened to +christen you Gillian. So it's a bargain. And now when are we going for +that pail of water?" + +Mrs. Hardress wheeled, the child in her arms, so that she was looking +at me, rather queerly, over the little round, yellow head. "And it was +only Jill, as I remember, who got the spanking," she said. "Oh, well! +it always is just Jill who gets the spanking--Jack." + +"But it was Jack who broke his crown," said I; "Wasn't it--Jill?" It +seemed a jest at the time. But before long we had made these nicknames +a habit, when just we two were together. And the outcome of it all was +not precisely a jest.... + + + 2 + +She told me not long after this, "When I saw Gladys loved you, of +course I loved you too." And I hereby soberly record the statement +that to have a woman fall thoroughly in love with him is the most +uncomfortable experience which can ever befall any man. + +I am tolerably sure I never made any amorous declaration. Rather, it +simply bewildered me to observe the shameless and irrational +infatuation this woman presently bore for me, and before it I was +powerless. When I told her frankly I did not love her, had never loved +her, had no intention of ever loving her, she merely bleated, "You are +cruel!" and wept. When I attempted to restrain her paroxysms of +anguish, she took it as a retraction of what I had told her. + +I would then have given anything in the world to be rid of Gillian +Hardress. This led to scenes, and many scenes, and played the very +devil with the progress of my second novel. You cannot write when +anyone insists on sitting in the same room with you, on the irrelevant +plea that she is being perfectly quiet, and therefore is not +disturbing you. Besides, she had no business in my room, and was apt +to get caught there. + + + 3 + +I remember one of these contentions. She is abominably rouged, and +before me she is grovelling, as she must have seen some actress do +upon the stage. + +"Oh, I lied to you," she wailed; "but you are so cruel! Ah, don't be +cruel, Jack!" + +Then I lifted the scented woman to her feet, and she stayed +motionless, regarding me. She had really wonderful eyes. + +"You are evil," I said, "through and through you are evil, I think, +and I can't help thinking you are a little crazy. But I wish you would +teach me to be as you are, for tonight the hands of my dead father +strain from his grave and clutch about my ankles. He has the right +because it is his flesh I occupy. And I must occupy the body of a +Townsend always. It is not quite the residence I would have chosen-- +Eh, well, for all that, I am I! And at bottom I loathe you!" + +"You love me!" she breathed. + +I thrust her aside and paced the floor. "This is an affair of moment. +I may not condescend to sell, as Faustus did, but of my own volition +must I will to squander or preserve that which is really Robert +Townsend." + +I wheeled upon Gillian Hardress, and spoke henceforward with +deliberation. You must remember I was very young as yet. + +"I have often regretted that the colour element of vice is so oddly +lacking in our life of to-day. We appear, one and all, to have been +born at an advanced age and with ladylike manners, and we reach our +years of indiscretion very slowly; and meanwhile we learn, too late, +that prolonged adherence to morality trivialises the mind as +hopelessly as a prolonged vice trivialises the countenance. I fear +this has been said by someone else, my too impetuous Jill, and I hope +not, for in that event I might possibly be speaking sensibly, and to +be sensible is a terrible thing and almost as bad as being +intelligible." + +"You are not being very intelligible now, sweetheart. But I love to +hear you talk." + +"Meanwhile, I am young, and in youth--_il faut des emotions_, as +Blanche Amory is reported to have said, by a novelist named Thackeray, +whose productions are now read in public libraries. Still, for a +respectable and brougham-supporting person, Thackeray came then as +near to speaking the truth as is possible for people of that class. In +youth emotions are necessary. Find me, therefore, a new emotion!" + +"So many of them, dear!" she promised. + +"I do not love you, understand,--and your husband is my friend, and I +admire him. But I am I! I have endowments, certain faculties which +many men are flattering enough to envy--and I will to make of them a +carpet for your quite unworthy feet. I will to degrade all that in me +is most estimable, and in return I demand a new emotion." + + + 4 + +Well, but women are queer. There is positively no way of affronting +them, sometimes. She had not even the grace to note that I had taken a +little too much to drink that night.... But over all this part of my +life I prefer to pass as quickly as may be expedient. + + + 5 + +I remembered, anyway, after Gillian had gone from my room, to write +Bettie Hamlyn a post-card. It was no longer, strictly speaking, the +twenty-third, but considerably after midnight, of course. Still, it +was the writing regularly when I loathed writing letters that counted +with Bettie, I reflected; and virtually I was writing on the twenty-third, +and besides, Bettie would never know. + + + 6 + +And thereafter Gillian Hardress made almost no concealment of her +feeling toward me, or employed at best the flimsiest of disguises. All +that winter she wrote to me daily, and, when the same roof sheltered +us, would slip the scribblings into my hand at odd moments, but +preferably before her husband's eyes. She demanded an account of every +minute I spent apart from her, and never believed a syllable of my +explanations; and in a sentence, she pestered me to the verge of +distraction. + +And always the circumstance which chiefly puzzled me was the host of +men that were infatuated by Gillian Hardress. There was no doubt about +it; she made fools of the staidest, if for no better end than that the +spectacle might amuse me. + +"Now you watch me, Jack!" she would say. And I obediently would watch +her wriggling beguilements, and the man's smirking idiocy, with +bewilderment. + +For in me her allurements aroused, now, absolutely no sensation save +that of boredom. Often I used to wonder for what reason it seemed +impossible for me, alone, to adore this woman insanely. It would have +been so much more pleasant, all around. + +But, I repeat, I wish to have done with this portion of my life as +quickly as may be expedient. I am not particularly proud of it. I +would elide it altogether, were it possible, but as you will presently +see, that is not possible if I am to make myself intelligible. And I +find that the more I write of myself the more I am affected by the +same poor itch for self-exposure which has made Pepys and Casanova and +Rousseau famous, and later feminine diarists notorious. + +Were I writing fiction, now, I would make the entire affair more +plausible. As it stands, I am free to concede that this chapter in my +life history rings false throughout, just as any candid record of an +actual occurrence does invariably. It is not at all probable that a +woman so much older than I should have taken possession of me in this +fashion, almost against my will. It is even less probable that her +husband, who was by ordinary absurdly jealous of her, should have +suspected nothing and have been sincerely fond of me. + +But then I was only twenty-two, as age went physically, and he looked +upon me as an infant. I was, I think, quite conscientiously childish +with Jasper Hardress. I prattled with him, and he liked it. And so +often, especially when we three were together--say, at luncheon,--I +was teased by an insane impulse to tell him everything, just casually, +and see what he would do. + +I think it was the same feeling which so often prompted her to tell +him, in her flighty way, of how profoundly she adored me. I would +wriggle and blush; and Jasper Hardress would laugh and protest that he +adored me too. Or she would expatiate upon this or that personal +feature of mine, or the becomingness of a new cravat, say; and would +demand of her husband if Jack--for so she always called me,--wasn't +the most beautiful boy in the world? And he would laugh and answer +that he thought it very likely. + + + 7 + +They were Americans, I should have said earlier, but to all intents +they lived abroad, and had done so for years. Hardress's father had +been thoughtful enough to leave him a sufficient fortune to +countenance the indulgence of this or any other whim, so that the +Hardresses divided the year pretty equally between their real home at +Negley and a tiny chateau which they owned near Aix-les-Bains. I +visited them at both places. + +It was a pleasant fiction that I came to see Gladys. Regularly, I was +told off to play with her, as being the only other child in the house. +It was rather hideous, for the little girl adored me, and I was +beginning to entertain an odd aversion toward her, as being in a way +responsible for everything. Had Gillian Hardress never found me +cuddling the child, whose sex was visibly a daily aggrievement to +Jasper Hardress, however conscientiously he strove to conceal the +fact,--so that in consequence "I have to love my precious lamb for +two, Jack,"--Gillian would never, I think, have distinguished me from +the many other men who, so lightly, tendered a host of gallant +speeches.... But I never fathomed Gillian Hardress, beyond learning +very early in our acquaintance that she rarely told me the truth about +anything. + +Also I should have said that Hardress cordially detested Charteris, +just as Bettie Hamlyn did, because for some reason he suspected the +little novelist of being in love with Hardress's wife. I do not know; +but I imagine Charteris had made advances to her, in his own ambiguous +fashion, as he was apt to do, barring strenuous discouragement, to +every passably handsome woman he was left alone with. I do know he +made love to her a little later. + +Hardress distrusted a number of other men, for precisely the same +reason. Heaven only is familiar with what grounds he had. I merely +know that Gillian Hardress loathed John Charteris; she was jealous of +his influence over me. But me her husband never distrusted. I was only +an amusing and ingenuous child of twenty-two, and not for a moment did +it occur to him that I might be in love with his wife. + +Indeed, I believe upon reflection that he was in the right. I think I +never was. + + + 8 + +"Yes," I said, "I am to meet the Charterises in Genoa. Yes, it is +rather sudden. I am off to-morrow. I shall not see you dear good +people for some time, I fancy...." + +When Hardress had gone the woman said in a stifled voice: "No, I will +not dance. Take me somewhere--there is a winter-garden, I know--" + +"No, Jill," said I, with decision. "It's no use. I am really going. We +will not argue it." + +Gillian Hardress watched the dancers for a moment, as with languid +interest. "You fear that I am going to make a scene. Well! I can't. +You have selected your torture chamber too carefully. Oh, after all +that's been between us, to tell me here, to my husband's face, in the +presence of some three hundred people, without a moment's warning, +that you are 'off to-morrow!' It--it is for good, isn't it?" + +"Yes," I said. "It had to be--some time, you know." + +"No, don't look at me. Watch the dancing, I will fan myself and seem +bored. No, I shall not do anything rash." + +I was uncomfortable. Yet at bottom it was the theatric value of this +scene which impressed me,--the gaiety and the brilliance on every side +of her misery. And I did not look at her. I did just as she ordered +me. + +"I was proud once. I haven't any pride now. You say you must leave me. +Oh, dearest boy, if you only knew how unhappy I will be without you, +you could not leave me. Sweetheart, you must know how I love you. I +long every minute to be with you, and to see you even at a distance is +a pleasure. I know it is not right for me to ask or expect you to love +me always, but it seems so hard." + +"It's no use, Jill--" + +"Is it another woman? I won't mind. I won't be jealous. I won't make +scenes, for I know you hate scenes, and I have made so many. It was +because I cared so much. I never cared before, Jack. You have tired of +me, I know. I have seen it coming. Well, you shall have your way in +everything. But don't leave me, dear! oh, my dear, my dear, don't +leave me! Oh, I have given you everything, and I ask so little in +return--just to see you sometimes, just to touch your hand sometimes, +as the merest stranger might do...." + +So her voice went on and on while I did not look at her. There was no +passion in this voice of any kind. It was just the long monotonous +wail of some hurt animal.... They were playing the _Valse Bleu_, I +remember. It lasted a great many centuries, and always that low voice +was pleading with me. Yes, it was uncommonly unpleasant; but always at +the back of my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to +precisely how I felt, because some day they might be useful, for the +book I had already outlined. "It is no use, Jill," I kept repeating, +doggedly. + +Then Armitage came smirking for his dance. Gillian Hardress rose, and +her fan shut like a pistol-shot. She was all in black, and throughout +that moment she was more beautiful than any other woman I have ever +seen. + +"Yes, this is our dance," she said, brightly. "I thought you had +forgotten me, Mr. Armitage. Well! good-bye, Mr. Townsend. Our little +talk has been very interesting--hasn't it? Oh, this dress _always_ +gets in my way--" + +She was gone. I felt that I had managed affairs rather crudely, but it +was the least unpleasant way out, and I simply had not dared to trust +myself alone with her. So I made the best of an ill bargain, and +remodeled the episode more artistically when I used it later, in +_Afield_. + + + + +11. + +_He Postures Among Chimney-Pots_ + + +I met the Charterises in Genoa, just as I had planned. Anne's first +exclamation was, "Heavens, child, how dissipated you look! I would +scarcely have known you." + +Charteris said nothing. But he and I lunched at the Isotta the +following day, and at the conclusion of the meal the little man leaned +back and lighted a cigarette. + +"You must overlook my wife's unfortunate tendency toward the most +unamiable of virtues. But, after all, you are clamantly not quite the +boy I left at Liverpool last October. Where are your Hardresses now?" + +"In London for the season. And why is your wife rushing on to Paris, +John?" + +"Shopping, as usual. Yes, I believe I did suggest it was as well to +have it over and done with. Anne is very partial to truisms. Besides, +she has an aunt there, you know. Take my advice, and always marry a +woman who is abundantly furnished with attractive and visitable +relations, for this precaution is the true secret of every happy +marriage. We may, then, regard the Hardress incident as closed?" + +"Oh, Lord, yes!" said I, emphatically. + +"Well, after all, you have been sponging off them for a full year. The +adjective is not ill-chosen, from what I hear. I fancy Mrs. Hardress +has found you better company after she had mixed a few drinks for you, +and so--But a truce to moral reflections! for I am desirous once more +to hear the chimes at midnight. I hear Francine is in Milan?" + +"There is at any rate in Milan," said I, "a magnificent Gothic +Cathedral of international reputation; and upon the upper gallery of +its tower, as my guidebook informs me, there is a watchman with an +efficient telescope. Should I fail to meet that watchman, John, I would +feel that I had lived futilely. For I want both to view with him the +Lombard plain, and to ask him his opinion of Cino da Pistoia, and as to +what was in reality the middle name of Cain's wife." + + + 2 + +Francine proved cordial; but John Charteris was ever fickle, and not +long afterward an Italian countess, classic in feature, but in coloring +smacking of an artistic renaissance, had drawn us both to Switzerland, +and thence to Liege. It was great fun, knocking about the Continent +with John, for he knew exactly how to order a dinner, and spoke I don't +know how many languages, and seemed familiar with every side-street and +back-alley in Europe. For myself, my French as acquired in Fairhaven +appeared to be understood by everybody, but in replying very few of the +natives could speak their own foolish language comprehensibly. I could +rarely make head or tail out of what they were jabbering about. + +I was alone that evening, because Annette's husband had turned up +unexpectedly; and Charteris had gone again to hear Nadine Neroni, the +new prima donna, concerning whom he and his enameled Italian friend +raved tediously. But I never greatly cared for music; besides, the +opera that night was _Faust_; the last act of which in particular, when +three persons align before the footlights and scream at the top of +their voices, for a good half hour, about how important it is not to +disturb anybody, I have never been able to regard quite seriously. + +So I was spending this evening sedately in my own apartments at the +Continental; and meanwhile I lisped in numbers that (or I flattered +myself) had a Homeric tang; and at times chewed the end of my pencil +meditatively. "From present indications," I was considering, "that +Russian woman is cooking something on her chafing-dish again. It +usually affects them that way about dawn." + +I began on the next verse viciously, and came a cropper over the clash +of two sibilants, as the distant clamour increased. "Brutes!" said I, +disapprovingly. "Sere, clear, dear--Now they have finished, '_Jamais, +monsieur_', and begun crying, 'Fire!' Oh, this would draw more than +three souls out of a weaver, you know! Mere, near, hemisphere--no, but +the Greeks thought it was flat. By Jove! I do smell smoke!" + +Wrapping my dressing-gown about me--I had afterward reason to thank the +kindly fates that it was the green one with the white fleurs-de-lis, +and not my customary, unspeakably disreputable bath-robe, scorched by +the cigarette ashes of years,--I approached the door and peeped out +into the empty hotel corridor. The incandescent lights glimmered mildly +through a gray haze which was acrid and choking to breathe; little +puffs of smoke crept lazily out of the lift-shaft just opposite; and +down-stairs all Liege was shouting incoherently, and dragging about the +heavier pieces of hotel furniture. + +"By Jove!" said I, and whistled a little disconsolately as I looked +downward through the bars about the lift-shaft. + +"Do you reckon," spoke a voice--a most agreeable voice,--"we are in any +danger?" + +The owner of the voice was tall; not even the agitation of the moment +prevented my observing that, big as I am, her eyes were almost on a +level with my shoulder. They were not unpleasant eyes, and a stray +dream or two yet lingered under their heavy lids. The owner of the +voice wore a strange garment that was fluffy and pink,--pale pink like +the lining of a sea-shell--and billows of white and the ends of various +blue ribbons peeped out about her neck. I made mental note of the fact +that disordered hair is not necessarily unbecoming; it sometimes has +the effect of an unusually heavy halo set about the face of a +half-awakened angel. + +"It would appear," said I, meditatively, "that, in consideration of our +being on the fifth floor, with the lift-shaft drawing splendidly, and +the stairs winding about it,--except the two lower flights, which have +just fallen in,--and in consideration of the fire department's probable +incompetence to extinguish anything more formidable than a tar-barrel, +--yes, it would appear, I think, that we might go further than +'dangerous' and find a less appropriate adjective to describe the +situation." + +"You mean we cannot get down?" The beautiful voice was tremulous. + +And my silence made reply. + +"Well, then," she suggested, cheerfully, after due reflection, "since +we can't go down, why not go up?" + +As a matter of fact, nothing could be more simple. We were on the top +floor of the hotel, and beside us, in the niche corresponding to the +stairs below, was an iron ladder that led to a neatly-whitewashed +trapdoor in the roof. Adopting her suggestion, I pushed against this +trap-door and found that it yielded readily; then, standing at the top +of the ladder, I looked about me on a dim expanse of tiles and +chimneys; yet farther off were the huddled roofs and gables of Liege, +and just a stray glimpse of the Meuse; and above me brooded a clear sky +and the naked glory of the moon. + + + 3 + +I lowered my head with a distinct sigh of relief. + +"I say," I called, "it is infinitely nicer up here--superb view of the +city, and within a minute's drop of the square! Better come up." + +"Go first," said she; and subsequently I held for a moment a very +slender hand--a ridiculously small hand for a woman whose eyes were +almost on a level with my shoulder,--and we two stood together on the +roof of the Hotel Continental. We enjoyed, as I had predicted, an +unobstructed view of Liege and of the square, wherein two toy-like +engines puffed viciously and threw impotent threads of water against +the burning hotel beneath us, and, at times, on the heads of an excited +throng erratically clad. + +But I looked down moodily, "That," said I, as a series of small +explosions popped like pistol shots, "is the cafe; and, oh, Lord! there +goes the only decent Scotch in all Liege!" + +"There is Mamma!" she cried, excitedly; "there!" She pointed to a stout +woman, who, with a purple? shawl wrapped about her head, was wringing +her hands as heartily as a bird-cage, held in one of them, would +permit. "And she has saved Bill Bryan!" + +"In that case," said I, "I suppose it is clearly my duty to rescue the +remaining member of the family. You see," I continued, in bending over +the trap-door and tugging at the ladder, "this thing is only about +twenty feet long; but the kitchen wing of the hotel is a little less +than that distance from the rear of the house behind it; and with this +as a bridge I think we might make it. In any event, the roof will be +done for in a half-hour, and it is eminently worth trying." I drew the +ladder upward. + +Then I dragged this ladder down the gentle slant of the roof, through a +maze of ghostly chimneys and dim skylights, to the kitchen wing, which +was a few feet lower than the main body of the building. I skirted the +chimney and stepped lightly over the eaves, calling, "Now then!" when a +muffled cry, followed by a crash in the courtyard beneath, shook my +heart into my mouth. I turned, gasping; and found the girl lying safe, +but terrified, on the verge of the roof. + +"It was a bucket," she laughed, "and I stumbled over it,--and it +fell--and--and I nearly did,--and I am frightened!" + +And somehow I was holding her hand in mine, and my mouth was making +irrelevant noises, and I was trembling. "It was close, but--look here, +you must pull yourself together!" I pleaded; "because we haven't, as it +were, the time for airy badinage and repartee--just now." + +"I can't," she cried, hysterically. "Oh, I am so frightened! I can't!" + +"You see," I said, with careful patience, "we must go on. I hate to +seem too urgent, but we _must_, do you understand?" I waved my hand +toward the east. "Why, look!" said I, as a thin tongue of flame leaped +through the open trap-door and flickered wickedly for a moment against +the paling gray of the sky. + +She saw and shuddered. "I'll come," she murmured, listlessly, and rose +to her feet. + + + 4 + +I heaved another sigh of relief, and waving her aside from the ladder, +dragged it after me to the eaves of the rear wing. As I had foreseen, +this ladder reached easily to the eaves of the house behind the rear +wing, and formed a passable though unsubstantial-looking bridge. I +regarded it disapprovingly. + +"It will only bear one," said I; "and we will have to crawl over +separately after all. Are you up to it?" + +"Please go first," said she, very quiet. And, after gazing into her +face for a moment, I crept over gingerly, not caring to look down into +the abyss beneath. + +Then I spent a century in impotence, watching a fluffy, pink figure +that swayed over a bottomless space and moved forward a hair's breadth +each year. I made no sound during this interval. In fact, I do not +remember drawing a really satisfactory breath from the time I left the +hotel-roof, until I lifted a soft, faint-scented, panting bundle to the +roof of the Councillor von Hollwig. + + + 5 + +"You are," I cried, with conviction, "the bravest, the most--er--the +bravest woman I ever knew!" I heaved a little sigh, but this time of +content. "For I wonder," said I, in my soul, "if you have any idea what +a beauty you are! what a wonderful, unspeakable beauty you are! Oh, you +are everything that men ever imagined in dreams that left them weeping +for sheer happiness--and more! You are--you, and I have held you in my +arms for a moment; and, before high heaven, to repurchase that +privilege I would consent to the burning of three or four more hotels +and an odd city or so to boot!" But, aloud, I only said, "We are quite +safe now, you know." + +She laughed, bewilderingly. "I suppose," said she, "the next thing is +to find a trap-door." + +But there were, so far as we could discover, no trapdoors in the roof +of the Councillor von Hollwig, or in the neighbouring roofs; and, after +searching three of them carefully, I suggested the propriety of waiting +till dawn to be melodramatically rescued. + +"You see," I pointed out, "everybody is at the fire over yonder. But we +are quite safe here, I would say, with an entire block of houses to +promenade on; moreover, we have cheerful company, eligible central +location in the very heart of the city, and the superb spectacle of a +big fire at exactly the proper distance. Therefore," I continued, and +with severity, "you will please have the kindness to explain your +motives for wandering about the corridors of a burning hotel at four +o'clock in the morning." + +She sat down against a chimney and wrapped her gown about her. "I sleep +very soundly," said she, "and we did both museums and six churches and +the Palais de Justice and a deaf and dumb place and the cannon-foundry +today,--and the cries awakened me,--and I reckon Mamma lost her head." + +"And left you," thought I, "left you--to save a canary-bird! Good Lord! +And so, you are an American and a Southerner as well." + +"And you?" she asked. + +"Ah--oh, yes, me!" I awoke sharply from admiration of her trailing +lashes. The burning hotel was developing a splendid light wherein to +see them. "I was writing--and I thought that Russian woman had a few +friends to supper,--and I was looking for a rhyme when I found you," I +concluded, with a fine coherence. + +She looked up. It was incredible, but those heavy lashes disentangled +quite easily. I was seized with a desire to see them again perform this +interesting feat. "Verses?" said she, considering my slippers in a new +light. + +"Yes," I admitted, guiltily--"of Helen." + +She echoed the name. It is an unusually beautiful name when properly +spoken. "Why, that is my name, only we call it Elena." + +"Late of Troy Town," said I, in explanation. + +"Oh!" The lashes fell into their former state. It was hopeless this +time; and manual aid would be required, inevitably. "I should think," +said my compatriot, "that live women would be more--inspiring" + +"Surely," I assented. I drew my gown about me and sat down. "But, you +see, she is alive--to me." And I dwelt a trifle upon the last word. + +"One would gather," said she, meditatively, "that you have an +unrequited attachment for Helen of Troy." + +I sighed a melancholy assent. The great eyes opened to their utmost. +The effect was as disconcerting as that of a ship firing a broadside at +you, but pleasanter. "Tell me all about it," said she, coaxingly. + +"I have always loved her," I said, with gravity. "Long ago, when I was +a little chap, I had a book--_Stories of the Trojan War_, or something +of the sort. And there I first read of Helen--and remembered. There +were pictures--outline pictures,--of quite abnormally straight-nosed +warriors, with flat draperies which amply demonstrated that the laws of +gravity were not yet discovered; and the pictures of slender goddesses, +who had done their hair up carefully and gone no further in their +dressing. Oh, the book was full of pictures,--and Helen's was the most +manifestly impossible of them all. But I knew--I knew, even then, of +her beauty, of that flawless beauty which made men's hearts as water +and drew the bearded kings to Ilium to die for the woman at sight of +whom they had put away all memories of distant homes and wives; that +flawless beauty which buoyed the Trojans through the ten years of +fighting and starvation, just with delight in gazing upon Queen Helen +day by day, and with the joy of seeing her going about their streets. +For I remembered!" And as I ended, I sighed effectively. + +"I know," said she. + +"'Or ever the knightly years had gone +With the old world to the grave, +I was a king in Babylon +And you were a Christian slave.'" + +"Yes, only I was the slave, I think, and you--er--I mean, there goes +the roof, and it is an uncommonly good thing for posterity you thought +of the trap-door. Good thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at +those flames!" I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled +inward like a house of cards; "they are splashing, actually splashing, +like waves over a breakwater!" + +I drew a deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to +encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. "Yes, I was a Trojan +warrior," I resumed; "one of the many unknown men who sought and found +death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they +died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they +had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness. +She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved her; I had overheard +some laughing words of hers in passing, and I treasured them as men +treasure gold. Or she had spoken, perhaps--oh, day of days!--to me, in +a low, courteous voice that came straight from the back of the throat +and blundered very deliciously over the perplexities of our alien +speech. I remembered--even as a boy, I remembered." + +She cast back her head and laughed merrily. "I reckon," said she, "you +are still a boy, or else you are the most amusing lunatic I ever met." + +"No," I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, "that tale +about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen--and the gods be praised for +it!--can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of +unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently +as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose, +with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very +certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she + +"Abides the symbol of all loveliness, +Of beauty ever stainless in the stress +Of warring lusts and fears. + +"For she is to each man the one woman that he might have loved +perfectly. She is as old as youth, she is more old than April even, and +she is as ageless. And, again like youth and April, this Helen goes +about the world in varied garments, and to no two men is her face the +same. Oh, very often she transmutes her fleshly covering. But through +countless ages I, like every man alive, have followed her, and fought +for her, and won her, and have lost her in the end,--but always loving +her as every man must do. And I prefer to think that some day--" But my +voice here died into a whisper, which was in part due to emotion and +partly to an inability to finish the sentence satisfactorily. The logic +of my verses when thus paraphrased from memory, seemed rather vague. + +"Yes--like Pythagoras" she said, a bit at random. "Oh, I know. There +really must be something in it, I have often thought, because you +actually do remember having done things before sometimes." + +"And why not? as the March Hare very sensibly demanded." But now my +voice was earnest. "Yes, I believe that Helen always comes. Is it +simply a proof that I, too, am qualified to sit next to the Hatter?" I +spread out my hands in a helpless little gesture. "I do not know. But I +believe that she will come,--and by and by pass on, of course, as Helen +always does." + +"You will know her?" she queried, softly. + +Now I at last had reached firm ground. "She will be very tall," I said, +"very tall and exquisite,--like a young birch-tree, you know, when its +new leaves are whispering over to one another the secrets of spring. +Yes, that is a ridiculous sounding simile, but it expresses the general +effect of her--the _coup d'oeil_, so to speak,--quite perfectly. +Moreover, her hair will be a miser's dream of gold; and it will hang +heavily about a face that will be--quite indescribable, just as the +dawn yonder is past the utmost preciosity of speech. But her face will +flush and will be like the first of all anemones to peep through black, +good-smelling, and as yet unattainable earth; and her eyes will be +deep, shaded wells where, just as in the proverb, truth lurks." + +But now I could not see her eyes. + +"No," I conceded, "I was wrong. For when men talk to her as--as they +cannot but talk to her, her face will flush dull red, almost like +smouldering wood; and she will smile a little, and look out over a +great fire, such as that she saw on the night when Ilium was sacked and +the slain bodies were soft under her stumbling feet, as she fled +through flaming Troy Town. And then I shall know her." + +My companion sighed; and the woes of centuries weighed down her eyelids +obstinately. "It is bad enough," she lamented, "to have lost all one's +clothes--that new organdie was a dream, and I had never worn it; but to +find yourself in a dressing-gown--at daybreak, on a strange roof--and +with an unintroduced lunatic--is positively terrible!" + +The unintroduced lunatic rose to his feet and waved his hand toward the +east. The dawn was breaking in angry scarlet and gold that spread like +fire over half the visible horizon; the burning hotel shut out the +remaining half with tall flames, which shouldered one another +monotonously, and seemed lustreless against the pure radiance of the +sky. Chill daylight showed in melting patches through the clouds of +black smoke overhead. + +It was a world of fire, transfigured by the austere magnificence of +dawn and the grim splendour of the shifting, roaring conflagration; and +at our feet lay the orchard of the Councillor von Hollwig, and there +the awakened birds piped querulously, and sparks fell crackling among +apple-blossoms. + +"Ilium is ablaze," I quoted; "and the homes of Pergamos and its +towering walls are now one sheet of flame." + +She inspected the scene, critically. "It does look like Ilium," she +admitted. "And that," peering over the eaves into the deserted +by-street, "looks like a milkman." + +I was unable to deny this, though an angry concept crossed my mind that +any milkman, with commendable tastes and feelings, would at this moment +be gaping at the fire at the other end of the block, rather than +prosaically measuring quarts at the Councillor's side-entrance. But +there was no help for it, when chance thus unblushingly favoured the +proprieties; in consequence I clung to a water-pipe, and explained the +situation to the milkman, with a fretted mind and King's College +French. + +I turned to my companion. She was regarding the burning hotel with an +impersonal expression. + +"Now I would give a deal," I thought, "to know just how long you would +prefer that milkman to take in coming back." + + + + +12. + +_He Faces Himself and Remembers_ + + +Into the lobby of the Hotel d'Angleterre strolled, an hour later, a +tall young man, in a green dressing-gown, and inquired for Charteris. +The latter, in evening dress, was mournfully breakfasting in his new +quarters. + +Charteris sprang to his feet. I saw, with real emotion, that he had +been weeping; but now he was all flippancy. "My dear boy! I have just +torn my hair and the rough drafts of several cablegrams on your +account! Sit down at once, and try the bacon, since, for a wonder, it +is not burnt--and, in passing, I had thought of course that you were." + +Instead, I took a drink, and went to sleep upon the nearest sofa. + + + 2 + +I was very tired, but I awakened about noon and managed to procure +enough clothes to make myself not altogether unpresentable to the +public eye. Charteris had gone already about his own affairs, and I did +not regret it, for I meant, without delay, to follow up my adventure of +the night before. + +But when I had come out of the Rue de la Casquette, and was approaching +the statue of Gretry, I came upon a very ornately-dressed woman, who +was about to enter en open carriage. I stared; and preposterous as it +was, I knew that I was not mistaken. And I said aloud, "Signorina!" + +It was a long while before she said, "Don't--don't ever call me that +again!" And since the world in general appeared just then to be largely +flavoured with the irresponsibility of dreams, it did not surprise me +that we were presently alone in somebody's sitting-room. + +"I have seen you twice in Liege," she said. "I suppose this had to come +about. I would have preferred to avoid it, though. Well! _che sara!_ +You don't care for music, do you? No,--otherwise you would have known +earlier that I am Nadine Neroni now." + +"Ah!" I said, very quietly. I had heard, as everybody had, a deal +concerning the Neroni. "I think, if you will pardon me, I will not +intrude upon Baron von Anspach's hospitality any longer," I said. + +"That is unworthy of you,--no, I mean it would have been unworthy of a +boy we knew of." There was a long pier-glass in these luxurious rooms. +She led me to it now. "Look, Bobbie. We have altered a little, haven't +we? I at least, am unmistakable. 'Their eyes are different, somehow', +you remember. You haven't changed as much,--not outwardly. I think you +are like Dorian Gray. Yes, as soon--as soon as I could afford it, I +read every book you ever talked about, I think. It was damnably foolish +of me. For I've heard things. And there was a girl I tried to help in +London--an Agnes Faroy--" + +"Ah!" I said. + +"She had your picture even then, poor creature. She kissed it just +before she died. She didn't know that I had ever heard of you. She +never knew. Oh, how _could_ you!" the Neroni said, with something very +like a sob, "Or were you always--just that, at bottom?" + +"And have you ever noticed, Mademoiselle Neroni, that every one of us +is several people? In consequence I must confess to have been +wondering--?" + +"Well! I wasn't. You won't believe it now, perhaps. And it doesn't +matter, anyhow." Her grave voice lifted and upon a sudden was changed. +"Bobbie, when you had gone I couldn't stand it! I couldn't let you ruin +your life for me, but I could not go on as I had done before--Oh, well, +you'll never understand," she added, wearily. "But Von Anspach had +always wanted me to go with him. So I wrote to him, at the Embassy. And +after all, what is the good of talking--now!" + +We two were curiously quiet. "No, I suppose there is no good in talking +now." We stood there, as yet, hand in hand. The mirror was candid. "Oh, +Signorina, I want to laugh as God laughs, and I cannot!" + + + 3 + +But I lack the heart to set down all that brief and dreary talk of +ours. How does it matter what we said? We two at least knew, even as we +talked, that all we said meant in the outcome, nothing. Yet we talked +awhile and spoke, I think, quite honestly. + +She was not unhappy; and there were inbred Lichfeldian traditions which +prompted me to virtuous indignation over her defects in remorse and +misery. There were my memories, too. + +"I don't sing very well, of course, but then I'm not dependent on my +singing, you know. Oh, why not be truthful? And Von Anspach always sees +to it I get the tendered of criticism--in print. And, moreover, I've a +deal put by. I'm a miser, _he_ says, and I suppose I am, because I know +what it is to be poor. So when the rainy day comes--as of course it +will,--I'll have quite enough to purchase a serviceable umbrella. +Meanwhile, I have pretty much everything I want. People talk of course, +but it is only on the stage they ever drive you out into a snow-storm. +Besides, they don't talk to _me_." + +In fine, I found that the Neroni was a very different being from Miss +Montmorenci.... + + + 4 + +Then I left her. I had not any inclination just now to pursue my fair +Elena. Rather I sat alone in my new bedroom, thinking, confusedly, +first of Amelia Van Orden, and how I danced with her a good eight years +ago; of that woman who had come to me in remote Fairhaven, coming +through the world's gutter, unsullied,--because that much I yet +believe, although I do not know.... She may have been always the same, +even in the old days when Lichfield thought her "fast," and she was +more or less "compromised,"--and years before I met her, a blind, +inexperienced boy. Only she may then have been a better actress than I +suspected.... I thought, in any event, of those execrable rhymes that +likened her to the Lady in _Comus_, moving serene and unafraid among a +rabble of threatening bestial shapes; and I thought of the woman who +would, by this time, be with Von Anspach. + +For here again were inbred Lichfieldian traditions of the sort I rarely +dare confess to, even to myself, because they are so patently hidebound +and ridiculous. These traditions told me that this woman, whom I had +loved, was Von Anspach's harlot. I might--and I did--endeavor to be +ironical and to be broadminded and to be up-to-date about the whole +affair, and generally to view the matter through the sophisticated eyes +of the author of The Apostates, that Robert Etheridge Townsend who was +a connoisseur of ironies and human foibles; but these futilities did no +good at all. Lichfield had got at and into me when I was too young to +defend myself; and I could no more alter the inbred traditions of +Lichfield, that were a part of me, than a carpet could change its +texture. My traditions merely told me that the dear woman whom I +remembered had come--in fleeing from discomforts which were unbearable, +if that mattered--to be Von Anspach's harlot: and finding her this, my +traditions declined to be the least bit broadminded. In Lichfield such +women were simply not respectable; nor could you get around that fact +by going to Liege. + +There was in the room a _Matin,_ which contained a brief account of the +burning of the Continental, and a very lengthy one of the Neroni's +appearance the night before. Drearily, to keep from thinking, I read a +deal concerning _la gracieuse cantatrice americaine._ Whether or not +she had made a fool of me with histrionics in Fairhaven, there was no +doubt that she had chosen wisely in forsaking Lethbury, and the round +of village "Opera Houses." She had chosen, after all, and precisely as +I had done, to make the most of youth while it lasted; and she +appeared, just now, to harvest prodigally. + +"On jouait Faust," I read, "et jamais le celebre personnage de Goethe +n'adore plus exquise Gretchen. Miss Nadine Neroni est, en effet, une +ideale Marguerite a la taille bien prise, au visage joli eclaire des +deux yeux grands et doux. Et lorsqu'elle commenca a chanter, ce fut un +veritable ravissement: sa voix se fit l'interprete revee de la divine +musique de Gounod, tandis que sa personne et son coeur incarnaient +physiquement et moralement l'heroine de Goethe".... + +And so on, for Von Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, +well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what +in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only +doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is +possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we +are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, I had better go and look for that +preposterously beautiful Elena. And a fig for the provincial notions of +Lichfield, that are poisoning me with their nonsense! and for the +notions of Fairhaven, too, I suppose--" + + + 5 + +Then Charteris came into the room. "John," said I, "this is a truly +remarkable world, and only hypercriticism would venture to suggest that +it is probably conducted by an inveterate humourist. So lend me that +pocket-piece of yours, and we will permit chance to settle the entire +matter. That is the one intelligent way of treating anything which is +really serious. You probably believe I am Robert Etheridge Townsend, +but as a matter of fact, I am Hercules in the allegory. So! the +beautiful lady or America? Why, the eagle flutters uppermost, and from +every mountain side let praises ring. Accordingly I am off." + +"And you will cross half the world," said Charteris, "in the green +dressing-gown, or in the coat which Byam borrowed for you this morning? +I do not wish to seem inquisitive, you understand--" + +"No, I believe I am through with borrowed coats--as with yours, for +instance. But I am quite ready to go in my own dressing-gown if +necessary--" + +I wheeled at the door. + +"By the way, I am done with you, John. I am fond of you, and all that, +and I sincerely admire my chimney-pot coquette--of whom you haven't +heard,--but, after all, there are real people yonder. And by God, even +after two years of being pickled in alcohol and chasing after women +that are quite used to being chased--well, even now I am one of those +real people. So I am done with you and this perpetual making light of +things--!" + +"The Declaration of Independence," Charteris observed, "is undoubtedly +the best thing in imaginative literature that we Americans have as yet +accomplished; but I am sufficiently familiar with it, thank you, and I +find, with age, that only the more untruthful platitudes are endurable. +Oh, I predicted for you, at our first meeting, a life without +achievements but of gusto! Now, it would appear, you plan to prance +among an interminable saturnalia of the domestic virtues. So be it! +but I warn you that the house of righteousness is but a wayside inn +upon the road to being a representative citizen." + +"You are talking nonsense," I rapped out--"and immoral nonsense." + +"It is very strange," John Charteris complained, "how so many of us +manage to reduce everything to a question of morality,--that is, to the +alternative of being right or wrong. Now a man's personality, as +somebody or other very properly observes, has many parts besides the +moral area; and the intelligent, the artistic, even the religious part, +need not necessarily have anything to do with ethics--" + +"Ah, yes," said I, "so there is a train at noon--" + +"And a virtuous man," continued Charteris, amicably, "is no more the +perfect type of humanity than an intellectual man. In fact, the lowest +and certainly the most disagreeable type of all troublesome people is +that which combines an immaculate past with a limited understanding. +The religious tenets of this class consist of an unshakable belief that +the Bible was originally written in English, and contains nothing +applicable to any of the week-days. And in consequence--" + +I left him mid-course in speech. "Words, words!" said I; and it +appeared to me for the moment that words were of astonishingly trivial +import, however carefully selected, which was in me a wholesome, +although fleet, apostacy of yesterday's creed. And I sent a cablegram +to Bettie Hamlyn. + + + 6 + +It was on the trip homeward I first met with Celia Reindan. I then +considered her a silly little nuisance.... + +For I crossed the Atlantic in a contained fury of repentance for the +wasted months. I had achieved nothing that was worthy of me, and +presently I would be dead. Why, I might die within the five minutes! I +might never see the lagging minute-hand of my little traveling clock +pass that next numeral, say! The thought obsessed me, especially at +night. Once, in a panic, I rose from my berth, and pushed the +minute-hand forward a half-hour. "Now, I have tricked You!" I said, +aloud; for nervously I was footing a pretty large bill. At twenty-three +one has the funds wherewith to balance these accounts.... + +I wanted to live normally--to live as these persons thick about me, who +seemed to grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious +fashion of oxen. I wanted to think only from hand to mouth, to think if +possible not at all, and to be guided always in the conduct of my life +by gross and obvious truisms, so that I must be judged at last but as +one of the herd. "And what is accustomed--what holds of familiar +usage--had come to seem the whole essence of wisdom, on all subjects"; +for I wanted just the sense of companionship, irrevocable and eternal +and commonly shared with every one of my kind. And yonder was Bettie +Hamlyn.... "Oh, make a man of me, Bettie! just a common man!" + +And Bettie might have done it, one considers, even then, for I was +astir with a new impetus. Now, with a grin, the Supernal Aristophanes +slipped the tiniest temptation in my way; to reach Fairhaven I was +compelled to spend some three hours of an April afternoon in Lichfield, +where upon Regis Avenue was to be met, in the afternoon, everyone worth +meeting in Lichfield; and Stella drove there on fine afternoons, under +the protection of a trim and preternaturally grave tiger; and the +afternoon was irreproachable. + + + 7 + +By the way she looked back over her shoulder, I knew that Stella had +not recognized me. I stood with a yet lifted hat, irresolute. + +"By Jove!" said I, in my soul, "then the Blagdens are in Lichfield! +Why, of course! they always come here after Lent. And Bettie would not +mind; to call on them would be only courteous; and besides, Bettie need +not ever know. And moreover, I was always very fond of Peter." + +So the next afternoon but four, Stella was making tea for me.... + + + + +13. + +_He Baits Upon the Journey_ + + +"You are quite by way of being a gentleman," had been Stella's +greeting, that afternoon. Then, on a sudden, she rested both hands upon +my breast. When she did that you tingled all over, in an agreeable +fashion. "It was uncommonly decent of you to remember", said this +impulsive young woman. "It was dear of you! And the flowers were +lovely." + +"They ought to have been immortelles, of course," I apologised, "but +the florist was out of them. Yes, and of daffodils, too." I sat down, +and sighed, pensively. "Dear, dear!" said I, "to think it was only two +years ago I buried my dearest hopes and aspirations and--er--all that +sort of thing." + +"Nonsense!" said Stella, and selected a blue cup with dragons on it. +"At any rate," she continued, "it is very disagreeable of you to come +here and prate like a death's-head on my wedding anniversary." + +"Gracious gravy!" said I, with a fine surprise, "so it is an +anniversary with you, too?" She was absorbed in the sugar-bowl. "What a +coincidence!" I suggested, pleasantly. + +I paused. The fire crackled. I sighed. + +"You are such poor company, nowadays, even after the advantages of +foreign travel," Stella reflected. "You really ought to do something to +enliven yourself." After a little, she brightened as to the eyes, and +concentrated them upon the tea-making, and ventured a suggestion. "Why +not fall in love?" said Stella. + +"I am," I confided, "already in that deplorable condition." +And I ventured on sigh number two. + +"I don't mean--anything silly," said she, untruthfully. "Why," she +continued, with a certain lack of relevance, "why not fall in love with +somebody else?" Thereupon, I regret to say, her glance strayed toward +the mirror. Oh, she was vain,--I grant you that. But I must protest she +had a perfect right to be. + +"Yes," said I, quite gravely, "that is the reason." + +"Nonsense!" said Stella, and tossed her head. She now assumed her most +matronly air, and did mysterious things with a perforated silver ball. +I was given to understand I had offended, by a severe compression of +her lips, which, however, was not as effective as it might have been. +They twitched too mutinously. + + + 2 + +Stella was all in pink, with golden fripperies sparkling in +unanticipated localities. Presumably the gown was tucked and ruched and +appliqued, and had been subjected to other processes past the +comprehension of trousered humanity; it was certainly becoming. + +I think there was an eighteenth-century flavour about it,--for it +smacked, somehow, of a patched, mendacious, dainty womanhood, and its +artfulness was of a gallant sort that scorned to deceive. It defied +you, it allured you, it conquered you at a glance. It might have been +the last cry from the court of an innocent Louis Quinze. It was, in +fine, inimitable; and if only I were a milliner, I would describe for +you that gown in some not unbefitting fashion. As it is, you may draft +the world's modistes to dredge the dictionary, and they will fail, as +ignominiously as I would do, in the attempt. + +For, after all, its greatest charm was that it contained Stella, and +converted Stella into a marquise--not such an one as was her sister, +the Marquise d'Arlanges, but a marquise out of Watteau or of Fragonard, +say. Stella in this gown seemed out of place save upon a high-backed +stone bench, set in an _allee_ of lime-trees, of course, and under a +violet sky,--with a sleek abbe or two for company, and with beribboned +gentlemen tinkling on their mandolins about her. + +I had really no choice but to regard her as an agreeable anachronism +the while she chatted with me, and mixed hot water and sugar and lemon +into ostensible tea. She seemed so out of place,--and yet, somehow, I +entertained no especial desire upon this sleety day to have her +different, nor, certainly, otherwhere than in this pleasant, half-lit +room, that consisted mostly of ambiguous vistas where a variety of +brass bric-a-brac blinked in the firelight. + +We had voted it cosier without lamps or candles, for this odorous +twilight was far more companionable. Odorous, for there were a great +number of pink roses about. I imagine that someone must have sent +them--because there were not any daffodils obtainable, by reason of the +late and nipping frost--in honour of Stella's second wedding +anniversary. + + + 3 + +"Peter says you talk to everybody that way," quoth she,--almost +resentfully, and after a pause. + +"Oh!" said I. For it was really no affair of Peter's. And so-- + +"Peter, everybody tells me, is getting fat," I announced, presently. + +Stella witheringly glanced toward the region where my waist used to be. +"He isn't!" said she, indignant. + +"Quite like a pig, they assure me," I continued, with relish. She +objected to people being well-built. "His obscene bloatedness appears +to be an object of general comment." + +Silence. I stirred my tea. + +"Dear Peter!" said she. And then--but unless a woman of Stella's sort +is able to exercise a proper control over her countenance, she has +absolutely no right to discuss her husband with his bachelor friends. +It is unkind; for it causes them to feel like social outcasts and +lumbering brutes and Peeping Toms. If they know the husband well, it +positively awes them; for, after all, it is a bit overwhelming, this +sudden glimpse of the simplicity, and the credulity, and the merciful +blindness of women in certain matters. Besides, a bachelor has no +business to know such things; it merely makes him envious and +uncomfortable. + +Accordingly, "Stella," said I, with firmness, "if you flaunt your +connubial felicity in my face like that, I shall go home." + +She was deaf to my righteous rebuke. "Peter is in Washington this +week," she went on, looking fondly into the fire. "I had planned a +party to celebrate to-day, but he was compelled to go--business, you +know. He is doing so well nowadays," she said, after a little, "that I +am quite insufferably proud of him. And I intend for him to be a great +lawyer--oh, much the greatest in America. And I won't ever be content +till then." + +"H'm!" said I. "H'm" seemed fairly non-committal. + +"Sometimes," Stella declared, irrelevantly, "I almost wish I had been +born a man." + +"I wish you had been," quoth I, in gallant wise. "There are so few +really attractive men!" + +Stella looked up with a smile that was half sad. + +"I'm just a little butterfly-woman, aren't I?" she asked. + +"You are," I assented, with conviction, "a butterfly out of a queen's +garden--a marvellous pink-and-gold butterfly, such as one sees only in +dreams and--er--in a London pantomime. You are a decided ornament to +the garden," I continued, handsomely, "and the roses bow down in +admiration as you pass, and--ah--at least, the masculine ones do." + +"Yes,--we butterflies don't love one another overmuch, do we? Ah, well, +it scarcely matters! We were not meant to be taken seriously, you +know,--only to play in the sunlight, and lend an air to the garden +and--amuse the roses, of course. After all," Stella summed it up, "our +duties are very simple; first, we are expected to pass through a +certain number of cotillions and a certain number of various happenings +in various tete-a-tetes; then to make a suitable match,--so as to +enable the agreeable detrimentals to make love to us, with perfect +safety--as you were doing just now, for instance. And after that, we +develop into bulbous chaperones, and may aspire eventually to a kindly +quarter of a column in the papers, and, quite possibly, the honour of +having as many as two dinners put off on account of our death. +Yes, it is very simple. But, in heaven's name," Stella demanded, with a +sudden lift of speech, "how can any woman--for, after all, a woman is +presumably a reasoning animal--be satisfied with such a life! Yet that +is everything--everything!--this big world offers to us shallow-minded +butterfly-women!" + +Personally, I disapprove of such morbid and hysterical talk outside of +a problem novel; there I heartily approve of it, on account of the +considerable and harmless pleasure that is always to be derived from +throwing the book into the fireplace. And, coming from Stella, this +farrago doubly astounded me. She was talking grave nonsense now, +whereas Nature had, beyond doubt, planned her to discuss only the +lighter sort. So I decided it was quadruply absurd, little Stella +talking in this fashion,--Stella, who, as all knew, was only meant to +be petted and flattered and flirted with. + +And therefore, "Stella," I admonished, "you have been reading something +indigestible." I set down my teacup, and I clasped my hands. "Don't +tell me," I pleaded, "that you want to vote!" + +She remained grave. "The trouble is," said she, "that I am not really a +butterfly, for all my tinsel wings. I am an ant." + +"Oh," said I, shamelessly, "I hadn't heard that Lizzie had an item for +the census man. I don't care for brand-new babies, though; they always +look so disgracefully sun-burned." + +The pun was atrocious and, quite properly, failed to win a smile or +even a reproof from the morbid young person opposite. "My grandfather," +said she in meditation, "began as a clerk in a country store. Oh of +course, we have discovered, since he made his money and since Mother +married a Musgrave, that his ancestors came over with William the +Conqueror, and that he was descended from any number of potentates. But +he lived. He was a rip at first--ah, yes, I'm glad of that as well, +--and he became a religious fanatic because his oldest son died very +horribly of lockjaw. And he browbeat people and founded banks, and made +a spectacle of himself at every Methodist conference, and everybody was +afraid of him and honoured him. And I fancy I am prouder of Old Tim +Ingersoll than I am of any of the emperors and things that make such a +fine show in the Musgrave family tree. For I am like him. And I want to +leave something in the world that wasn't there before I came. I want my +life to count, I want--why, a hundred years from now I _do_ want to be +something more than a name on a tombstone. I--oh, I daresay it _is_ +only my ridiculous egotism," she ended, with a shrug and Stella's usual +quick smile,--a smile not always free from insolence, but always +satisfactory, somehow. + +"It's late hours," I warned her, with uplifted forefinger, "late hours +and too much bridge and too many sweetmeats and too much bothering over +silly New Women ideas. What is the sense of a woman's being useful," I +demanded, conclusively, "when it is so much easier and so much more +agreeable all around for her to be adorable?" + +She pouted. "Yes," she assented, "that is my career--to be adorable. It +is my one accomplishment," she declared, unblushingly,--yet not without +substantiating evidence. + +After a little, though, her gravity returned. "When I was a girl--oh, I +dreamed of accomplishing all sorts of beautiful and impossible things! +But, you see, there was really nothing I could do. Music, painting, +writing--I tried them all, and the results were hopeless. Besides, Rob, +the women who succeed in anything like that are always so queer +looking. I couldn't be expected to give up my complexion for a career, +you know, or to wear my hair like a golf-caddy's. At any rate, I +couldn't make a success by myself. But there was one thing I could do, +--I could make a success of Peter. And so," said Stella, calmly, "I did +it." + +I said nothing. It seemed expedient. + +"You know, he was a little--" + +"Yes," I assented, hastily. Peter had gone the pace, of course, but +there was no need of raking that up. That was done with, long ago. + +"Well, he isn't the least bit dissipated now. You know he isn't. That +is the first big thing I have done." Stella checked it off with a +small, spear-pointed, glinting finger-nail. "Then--oh, I have helped +him in lots of ways. He is doing splendidly in consequence; and it is +my part to see that the proper people are treated properly." + +Stella reflected a moment. "There was the last appointment, for +instance. I found that the awarding of it lay with that funny old Judge +Willoughby, with the wart on his nose, and I asked him for it--not the +wart, you understand,--and got it. We simply had him to dinner, and I +was specially butterfly; I fluttered airily about, was as silly as I +knew how to be, looked helpless and wore my best gown. He thought me a +pretty little fool, and gave Peter the appointment. That is only an +instance, but it shows how I help." Stella regarded me, uncertainly. +"Why, but an authorman ought to understand!" + +Of a sudden I understood a number of things--things that had puzzled. +This was the meaning of Stella's queer dinner the night before, and the +ensuing theatre-party, for instance; this was the explanation of those +impossible men, vaguely heralded as "very influential in politics," and +of the unaccountable women, painfully condensed in every lurid shade of +satin, and so liberally adorned with gems as to make them almost +valuable. Stella, incapable by nature of two consecutive ideas, was +determined to manipulate the unseen wires, and to be, as she probably +phrased it, the power behind the throne.... + +"Eh, it would be laughable," I thought, "were not her earnestness so +pathetic! For here is Columbine mimicking Semiramis." + +Yet it was true that Peter Blagden had made tremendous strides in his +profession, of late. For a moment, I wondered--? Then I looked at this +butterfly young person opposite, and I frowned. "I don't like it," I +said, decisively. "It is a bit cold-blooded. It isn't worthy of you, +Stella." + +"It is my career," she flouted me, with shrugging shoulders. "It is the +one career the world--our Lichfield world--has left me. And I am doing +it for Peter." + +The absurd look that I objected to--on principle, you understand-- +returned at this point in the conversation. I arose, resolutely, for I +was really unable to put up with her nonsense. + +"You are in love with your husband," I grumbled, "and I cannot +countenance such eccentricities. These things are simply not done--" + +She touched my hand. "Old crosspatch, and to think how near I came to +marrying you." + +"I do think of it--sometimes. So you had better stop pawing at me. It +isn't safe." + +I wish I could describe her smile. I wish I knew just what it was that +Stella wanted me to say or do as we stood for a moment silent, in this +pleasant, half-lit room where brass things blinked in the firelight. + +"Old crosspatch!" she repeated.... + +"Stella," said I, with dignity, "I wish it distinctly understood that I +am not a funny old judge with a wart on his nose." + +Whereupon I went away. + + + + +14. + +_He Participates in a Brave Jest_ + + +Stella drove on fine afternoons, under the protection of a trim and +preternaturally grave tiger. The next afternoon, by a Lichfieldian +transition, was irreproachable. I was to remember, afterward, wondering +in a vague fashion, as the equipage passed, if the boy's lot was not +rather enviable. There might well be less attractive methods of earning +the daily bread and butter than to whirl through life behind Stella. +One would rarely see her face, of course, but there would be such +compensations as an unfailing sense of her presence, and the faint +odour of her hair at times and, always, blown scraps of her laughter or +shreds of her talk, and, almost always, the piping of the sweet voice +that was stilled so rarely. + +Perhaps the conscienceless tiger listened when she was "seeing the +proper people were treated properly"? Yes, one would. Perhaps he ground +his teeth? Well, one would, I suspected. And perhaps--? + +There was a nod of recognition from Stella; and I lifted my hat as they +bowled by toward the Reservoir. I went down Regis Avenue, mildly +resentful that she had not offered me a lift. + + + 2 + +A vagrant puff of wind was abroad in the Boulevard that afternoon. It +paused for a while to amuse itself with a stray bit of paper. Presently +the wind grew tired of this plaything and tossed between the eyes of a +sorrel horse. Prince lurched and bolted; and Rex, always a vicious +brute, followed his mate. One fancies the vagabond wind must have +laughed over that which ensued. + +After a moment it returned and lifted a bit of paper from the roadway, +with a new respect, perhaps, and the two of them frolicked away over +close-shaven turf. It was a merry game they played there in the spring +sunlight. The paper fluttered a little, whirled over and over, and +scuttled off through the grass; with a gust of mirth, the wind was +after it, now gained upon it, now lost ground in eddying about a tree, +and now made up the disadvantage in the open, and at last chuckled over +its playmate pinned to the earth and flapping in sharp, indignant +remonstrances. Then _da capo_. + +It was a merry game that lasted till the angry sunset had flashed its +final palpitant lance through the treetrunks farther down the roadway. +There were gaping people in this place, and broken wheels and shafts, +and a policeman with a smoking pistol, and two dead horses, and a +horrible looking dead boy in yellow-topped boots. Somebody had +charitably covered his face with a handkerchief; and men were lifting a +limp, white heap from among the splintered rubbish. + +Then wind and paper played half-heartedly in the twilight until the +night had grown too chilly for further sport. There was no more murder +to be done; and so the vagabond wind was puffed out into nothingness, +and the bit of paper was left alone, and at about this season the big +stars--the incurious stars--peeped out of heaven, one by one. + + + 3 + +It was Stella's sister, the Marquise d'Arlanges, who sent for me that +night. Across the street a hand-organ ground out its jingling tune as +Lizzie's note told me what the playful wind had brought about. It was a +despairing, hopeless and insistent air that shrilled and piped across +the way. It seemed very appropriate. + +The doctors feared--Ah, well, telegrams had failed to reach Peter in +Washington. Peter Blagden was not in Washington, he had not been in +Washington. He could not be found. And did I think--? + +No, I thought none of the things that Stella's sister suggested. Of a +sudden I knew. I stood silent for a little and heard that damned, +clutching tune cough and choke and end; I heard the renewed babblement +of children; and I heard the organ clatter down the street, and set up +its faint jingling in the distance. And I knew with an unreasoning +surety. I pitied Stella now ineffably, not for the maiming and crippling +of her body, for the spoiling of that tender miracle, that white flower +of flesh, but for the falling of her air-castle, the brave air-castle +which to her meant everything. I guessed what had happened. + +Later I found Peter Blagden, no matter where. It is not particularly to +my credit that I knew where to look for him. Yet the French have a +saying of infinite wisdom in their _qui a bu boira_. The old vice had +gripped the man, irresistibly, and he had stolen off to gratify it in +secret; and he had not been sober for a week. He was on the verge of +collapse even when I told him--oh, with a deliberate cruelty, I grant +you,--what had happened that afternoon. + +Then, swiftly, his demolishment came; and I could not--could not for +very shame--bring this shivering, weeping imbecile to the bedside of +Stella, who was perhaps to die that night. Such was the news I brought +to Stella's sister; through desolate streets already blanching in the +dawn. + +Stella was calling for Peter. We manufactured explanations. + + + 4 + +Nice customs curtsey to death. I am standing at Stella's bedside, and +the white-capped nurse has gone. There are dim lights about the room, +and heavy carts lumber by in the dawn without. A petulant sparrow is +cheeping somewhere. + +"Tell me the truth," says Stella, pleadingly. Her face, showing over +billows of bedclothes, is as pale as they. But beautiful, and +exceedingly beautiful, is Stella's face, now that she is come to die. + +It heartened me to lie to her. Peter had been retained in the great +Western Railway case. He had been called to Denver, San Francisco +and--I forget today just why or even whither. He had kept it as a +surprise for her. He was hurrying back. He would arrive in two days. I +showed her telegrams from Peter Blagden,--clumsy forgeries I had +concocted in the last half-hour. + +Oh, the story ran lamely, I grant you. But, vanity apart, I told it +with conviction. Stella must and should die in content; that much at +least I could purchase for her; and my thoughts were strangely nimble, +there was a devilish fluency in my speech, and lie after lie was fitted +somehow into an entity that surprised even me as it took plausible +form. And I got my reward. Little by little, the doubt died from her +eyes as I lied stubbornly in a drug-scented silence; a little by a +little, her cheeks flushed brighter, and ever brighter, as I dilated on +this wonderful success that had come to Peter Blagden, till at last her +face was all aflame with happiness. + +She had dreamed of this, half conscious of her folly; she had worked +toward this consummation for months. But she had hardly dared to hope +for absolute success; it almost worried her; and she could not be +certain, even now, whether it was the soup or her blue silk that had +influenced Allardyce most potently. Both had been planned to wheedle +him, to gain this glorious chance for Peter Blagden.... + +"You--you are sure you are not lying?" said Stella, and smiled in +speaking, for she believed me infinitely. + +"Stella, before God, it is true!" I said, with fervour. "On my word of +honour, it is as I tell you!" And my heart was sick within me as I +thought of the stuttering brute, the painted female thing with tumbled +hair, and the stench of liquor in the room--Ah, well, the God I called +to witness strengthened me to smile back at Stella. + +"I believe you," she said, simply. "I--I am glad. It is a big thing for +Peter." Her eyes widened in wonder and pride, and she dreamed for just +a moment of his future. But, upon a sudden, her face fell. "Dear, +dear!" said Stella, petulantly; "I'd forgotten. I'll be dead by then." + +"Stella! Stella!" I cried, and very hoarsely; "why--why, nonsense, +child! The doctor thinks--he is quite sure, I mean--" I had a horrible +desire to laugh. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. + +"Ah, I know," she interrupted. "I am a little afraid to die," she went +on, reflectively. "If one only knew--" Stella paused for a moment; then +she smiled. "After all," she said, "it isn't as if I hadn't +accomplished anything. I have made Peter. The ball is at his feet now; +he has only to kick it. And I helped." + +"Yes," said I. My voice was shaken, broken out of all control. "You +have helped. Why, you have done everything, Stella! There is not a +young man in America with his prospects. In five years, he will be one +of our greatest lawyers,--everybody says so--everybody! And you have +done it all, Stella--every bit of it! You have made a man of him, I +tell you! Look at what he was!--and then look at what he is! And--and +you talk of leaving him now! Why, it's preposterous! Peter needs you, I +tell you--he needs you to cajole the proper people and keep him steady +and--and--Why, you artful young woman, how could he possibly get on +without you, do you think? Oh, how can any of us get on without you? +You _must_ get well, I tell you. In a month, you will be right as a +trivet. You die! Why, nonsense!" I laughed. I feared I would never have +done with laughter over the idea of Stella's dying. + +"But I have done all I could. And so he doesn't need me now." Stella +meditated for yet another moment. "I believe I shall always know when +he does anything especially big. God would be sure to tell me, you see, +because He understands how much it means to me. And I shall be +proud--ah, yes, wherever I am, I shall be proud of Peter. You see, he +didn't really care about being a success, for of course he knows that +Uncle Larry will leave him a great deal of money one of these days. But +I am such a vain little cat--so bent on making a noise in the world, +--that, I think, he did it more to please my vanity than anything else. +I nagged him, frightfully, you know," Stella confessed, "but he was +always--oh, _so_ dear about it, Rob! And he has never failed me--not +even once, although I know at times it has been very hard for him." +Stella sighed; and then laughed. "Yes," said she, "I think I am +satisfied with my life altogether. Somehow, I am sure I shall be told +about it when he is a power in the world--a power for good, as he will +be,--and then I shall be very perky--somewhere. I ought to sing _Nunc +Dimittis_, oughtn't I?" I was not unmoved; nor did it ever lie within +my power to be unmoved when I thought of Stella and how gaily she went +to meet her death.... + + + 5 + + +"Good-bye," said she, in a tired voice. + +"Good-bye, Stella," said I; and I kissed her. + +"And I don't think you are a mess. And I _don't_ hate you." She was +smiling very strangely. "Yes, I remember that first time. And no matter +what they said, I always cared heaps more about you, Rob, than I dared +let you know. And if only you had been as dependable as Peter--But, you +see, you weren't--" + +"No, dear, you did the right thing--what was best for all of us--" + +"Then don't mind so much. Oh, Bob, it hurts me to see you mind so much! +You aren't--being dependable, like Peter, even now," she said, +reproachfully.... + +Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. + + + + +15. + +_He Decides to Amuse Himself_ + + +I came to Fairhaven half-bedrugged with memories of Stella's funeral, +--say, of how lightly she had lain, all white and gold, in the +grotesque and horrid box, and of Peter's vacant red-rimmed eyes that +seemed to wonder why this decorous company should have assembled about +the deep and white-lined cavity at his feet and find no answer. Nor, +for that matter, could I. + +"But it was flagrant, flagrant!" my heart screeched in a grill of +impotent wrath. "Eh, You gave me power to reason, so they say! and will +You slay me, too, if I presume to use that power? I say, then, it was +flagrant and tyrannical and absurd! 'Let twenty pass, and stone the +twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!' O Setebos, it +wasn't worthy of omnipotence. You know it wasn't!" In such a frame of +mind I came again to Bettie Hamlyn. + + + 2 + +It was very odd to see Bettie again. I had been sublimely confident, +though, that we would pick up our intercourse precisely where we had +left off; and this, as I now know, is something which can never happen +to anybody. So I was vaguely irritated before we had finished shaking +hands, and became so resolutely boyish and effusive in my delight at +seeing her that anyone in the world but Bettie Hamlyn would have been +quite touched. And my conversational gambit, I protest, was masterly, +and would have made anybody else think, "Oh how candid is the egotism +of this child!" and would have moved that person, metaphorically +anyhow, to pat me upon the head. + +But Bettie only smiled, a little sadly, and answered: + +"Your book?--Why, dear me, did I forget to write you a nice little +letter about how wonderful it was?" + +"You wrote the letter all right. I think you copied it out of _The +Complete Letter Writer_. There was not a bit of you in it." + +"Well, that is why I dislike your book--because there was not a bit of +_you_ in it. Of course I am glad it was the big noise of the month, and +also a little jealous of it, if you can understand that phase of the +feminine mind. I doubt it, because you write about women as though they +were pterodactyls or some other extinct animal, which you had never +seen, but had read a lot about." + +"Which attests, in any event, my morals to be above reproach. You +should be pleased." + +"To roll it into a pill, your book seems pretty much like any other +book; and it has made me hold my own particular boy's picture more than +once against my cheek and say, 'You didn't write books, did you, dear? +--You did nicer things than write books'--and he did .... I hear many +things of you...." + +"Oh, well!" I brilliantly retorted, "you mustn't believe all you hear." +And I felt that matters were going very badly indeed. + +"Robin, do you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with +you by the people who care for you?--and one of them dislikes pottage. +Indeed, I _would_ have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I +almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great +length of liking you,--because 'if only for old sake's sake, dear, +you're the loveliest doll in the world.' There might be a better +reason, if you could only make up your mind to dispense with +pottage...." + +The odd part of it, even to-day, is that Bettie was saying precisely +what I had been thinking, and that to hear her say it made me just +twice as petulant as I was already. + +"Now, please don't preach," I said. "I've heard so much preaching +lately--dear," I added, though I am afraid the word was rather +obviously an afterthought. + +"Oh, I forgot you stayed over for Stella Blagden's funeral. You were +quite right. Stella was a dear child, and I was really sorry to hear of +her death." + +"Really!" It was the lightest possible additional flick upon the raw, +but it served. + +"Yes,--I, too, was rather sorry, Bettie, because I have loved Stella +all my life. She was the first, you see, and, somehow, the others have +been different. And--she disliked dying. I tell you, it is unfair, +Bettie,--it is hideously unfair!" + +"Robin--" she began. + +"And why should you be living," I said, in half-conscious absurdity, +"when she is dead? Why, look, Bettie! even that fly yonder is alive. +Setebos accords an insect what He grudges Stella! Her dying is not even +particularly important. The big news of the day is that the President +has started his Pacific tour, and that the Harvard graduates object to +his being given an honorary degree, and are sending out seven thousand +protests to be signed. And you're alive, and I'm alive, and Peter +Blagden is alive, and only Stella is dead. I suppose she is an angel by +this. But I don't care for angels. I want just the silly little Stella +that I loved,--the Stella that was the first and will always be the +first with me. For I want her--just Stella--! Oh, it is an excellent +jest; and I will cap it with another now. For the true joke is, I came +to Fairhaven, across half the world, with an insane notion of asking +you to marry me,--you who are 'really' sorry that Stella is dead!" And +I laughed as pleasantly as one may do in anger. + +But the girl, too, was angry. "Marry you!" she said. "Why, Robin, you +were wonderful once; and now you are simply not a bad sort of fellow, +who imagines himself to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether +she's dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but just enough +to make a spectacle of you, even now." + +"I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north of your +opinion," said I. "Though, as I dare assert, you are quite probably in +the right. So I'll be off to my husks again, Bettie." And I kissed her +hand. "And that too is only for old sake's sake, dear," I said. + +Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train. +And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt "Good +evening, gentlemen," as I passed Clarriker's Emporium, where Colonel +Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had +left them there two years ago. + + + 3 + +It was a long while afterward I discovered that "some damned +good-natured friend," as Sir Fretful has immortally phrased it, had +told Bettie Hamlyn of seeing me at the theatre in Lichfield, with +Stella and her marvellous dinner-company. It was by an odd quirk the +once Aurelia Minns, in Lichfield for the "summer's shopping," who had +told Bettie. And the fact is that I had written Bettie upon the day of +Stella's death and, without explicitly saying so, had certainly +conveyed the impression I had reached Lichfield that very morning, and +was simply stopping over for Stella's funeral. And, in addition, I +cannot say that Bettie and Stella were particularly fond of each other. + +As it was, I left Fairhaven the same day I reached it, and in some +dissatisfaction with the universe. And I returned to Lichfield and +presently reopened part of the old Townsend house .... "Robert and I," +my mother had said, to Lichfield's delectation, "just live downstairs +in the two lower stories, and ostracise the third floor...." And I was +received by Lichfield society, if not with open arms at least with +acquiescence. And Byam, an invaluable mulatto, the son of my cousin +Dick Townsend and his housekeeper, made me quite comfortable. + +Depend upon it, Lichfield knew a deal more concerning my escapades than +I did. That I was "deplorably wild" was generally agreed, and a +reasonable number of seductions, murders and arsons was, no doubt, +accredited to me "on quite unimpeachable authority, my dear." + +But I was a Townsend, and Lichfield had been case-hardened to +Townsendian vagaries since Colonial days; and, besides, I had written a +book which had been talked about; and, as an afterthought, I was +reputed not to be an absolute pauper, if only because my father had +taken the precaution, customary with the Townsends, to marry a woman +with enough money to gild the bonds of matrimony. For Lichfield, +luckily, was not aware how near my pleasure-loving parents had come, +between them, to spending the last cent of this once ample fortune. + +And, in fine, "Well, really now--?" said Lichfield. Then there was a +tentative invitation or two, and I cut the knot by accepting all of +them, and talking to every woman as though she were the solitary +specimen of feminity extant. It was presently agreed that gossip often +embroidered the actual occurrence and that wild oats were, after all, a +not unheard-of phenomenon, and that though genius very often, in a +phrase, forgot to comb its hair, these tonsorial deficiencies were by +the broadminded not appraised too strictly. + +I did not greatly care what Lichfield said one way or the other. I was +too deeply engrossed: first, in correcting the final proofs of +_Afield_, my second book, which appeared that spring and was built +around--there is no harm in saying now,--my relations with Gillian +Hardress; secondly, in the remunerative and uninteresting task of +writing for _Woman's Weekly_ five "wholesome love-stories with a dash +of humor," in which She either fell into His arms "with a contented +sigh" or else "their lips met" somewhere toward the ending of the +seventh page; and, thirdly, in diverting myself with Celia Reindan.... + + + 4 + +That, though, is a business I shall not detail, because it was one of +the very vulgarest sort. It was the logical outgrowth of my admiration +for her yellow hair,--she did have extraordinary hair, confound her! +--and of a few moonlit nights. It was simply the result of our common +vanity and of her book-fed sentimentality and, eventually, of her +unbridled temper; and in nature the compound was an unsavoury mess +which thoroughly delighted Lichfield. Lichfield will be only too glad, +even nowadays, to discourse to you of how I got wedged in that infernal +transom, and of how Celia alarmed everybody within two blocks of her +bedroom by her wild yells. + + + 5 + +I had meanwhile decided, first, to write another and a better book than +_The Apostates_ or _Afield_ had ever pretended to be; and afterward to +marry Rosalind Jemmett, whom I found, in my too-hackneyed but habitual +phrase, "adorable." For this Rosalind was an eminently "sensible +match," and as such, I considered, quite appropriate for a Townsend. + +The main thing though, to me, was to write the book of which I had +already the central idea,--very vague, as yet, but of an unquestionable +magnificence. Development of it, on an at all commensurate scale, +necessitated many inconveniences, and among them, the finding of +someone who would assist me in imbuing the love-scenes--of which there +must unfortunately be a great many--with reality; and for the tale's +_milieu_ I again pitched upon the Green Chalybeate,--where, as you may +remember, I first met with Stella. + +So I said a not unpromising farewell to Rosalind Jemmett, who was going +into Canada for the summer. She was quite frankly grieved by the +absolute necessity of my taking a rigorous course of the Chalybeate +waters, but agreed with me that one's health is not to be trifled with. +And of course she would write if I really wanted her to, though she +couldn't imagine _why_--But I explained why, with not a little detail. +And she told me, truthfully, that I was talking like an idiot; and was +not, I thought, irrevocably disgusted by my idiocy. So that, all in +all, I was not discontented when I left her. + +Then I ordered Byam to pack and, by various unveracious +representations, induced my Uncle George Bulmer--as a sort of visible +and outward sign that I forgave him for declining to lend me another +penny--to accompany me to the Green Chalybeate. Besides, I was fond of +the old scoundrel.... + + + 6 + +When I began to scribble these haphazard memories I had designed to be +very droll concerning the "provincialism" of Lichfield; for, as every +inhabitant of it will tell you, it is "quite hopelessly provincial," +--and this is odd, seeing that, as investigation will assure you, the +city is exclusively inhabited by self-confessed cosmopolitans. I had +meant to depict Fairhaven, too, in the broad style of _Cranford_, say; +and to be so absolutely side-splitting when I touched upon the Green +Chalybeate as positively to endanger the existence of any apoplectic +reader, who presumed to peruse the chapter which dealt with this +resort. + +But, upon reflection, I am too familiar with these places to attempt to +treat them humorously. The persons who frequent their byways are too +much like the persons who frequent the byways of any other place, I +find, at bottom. For to write convincingly of the persons peculiar to +any locality it is necessary either to have thoroughly misunderstood +them, or else perseveringly to have been absent from daily intercourse +with them until age has hardened the brain-cells, and you have +forgotten what they are really like. Then, alone, you may write the +necessary character studies which will be sufficiently abundant in +human interest. + +For, at bottom, any one of us is tediously like any other. +Comprehension is the grave of sympathy; scratch deeply enough and you +will find not any livelily-coloured Tartarism, but just a mediocre and +thoroughly uninteresting human being. So I may not ever be so droll as +I had meant to be; and if you wish to chuckle over the grotesque places +I have lived in, you must apply to persons who have spent two weeks +there, and no more. + +For the rest, Lichfield, and Fairhaven also, got at and into me when I +was too young to defend myself. Therefore Lichfield and Fairhaven +cannot ever, really, seem to me grotesque. To the contrary, it is the +other places which must always appear to me a little queer when judged +by the standards of Fairhaven and Lichfield. + + + + +16. + +_He Seeks for Copy_ + + +I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read _The Apostates_, and, +as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely +well-meaning. To-night I was superintending the process. + +"For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate," said I; "and it +may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul, +Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate +scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently +fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to +overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent cafe! Try now, nunky! +try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the +right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you." + +Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the +contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was "frosted" to a +nicety. We were drinking "Mamie Taylors" that summer, you may remember; +and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar. + +"Oh, I say, you know!" observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth +chapter, and flung down the book. + +"Rot, utter rot," I assented pleasantly; "puerile and futile trifling +with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your sturdy common-sense +instantly detected. In fact," I added, hopefully, "I think that chapter +is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In _Afield_, +you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the noblest sentiments, +the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father's whiskey and water; and +'Old-Fashioned' and 'Fair Play' have been obliging enough to write to +the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low +moral standards of to-day. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady +is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to +meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question +nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot +to show you--all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit, +and my fine impersonal attitude, and the survival of the fittest, and +so on." + +But Uncle George refused to be comforted. "Look here, Bob!" said he, +pathetically, "why don't you brace up and write something--well! we'll +put it, something of the sort you _can_ do. For you can, you know." + +"Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second +edition before publication?" I softly queried. "I had no money. I was +ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything +adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle's +deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to +this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread." I refilled my +glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. +"This time next year," said I, as dreamily, "I shall be able to afford +cake; for I shall have written _As the Coming of Dawn_." + +Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. "You catch me +lending you any money for your--brief Biblical words!" he said. + +"For the reign of subtle immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. +Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of +men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know +that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes +dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and +that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly--sordidly, at +times,--and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a +scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow +journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, +and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!" + +"Dearest Robert!" remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, "you are sadly _passe_: that +pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago." + +"The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is +already reflected--faintly, I grant you,--in the best-selling books. We +have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness +and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of +primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if +his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have +tossed over the contents of every closet in the _menage a trois_. And +I--_moi, qui vous parle_,--I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring +lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in _Afield_; and +henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence." + +"Saul among the prophets," Uncle George suggested, helpfully. + +"Quite so," I assented, "and my first prophecy will be _As the Coming +of Dawn_." + +Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. "Mad, quite mad!" said +he, in parenthesis. + +"I shall be idyllic," I continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the +ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the +keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met +after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs +blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is +love,--the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not +the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as +it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that +will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I +will!" + +I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table. + +"H'm!" said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; "going back to renew associations +with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her +grandchildren terribly in the way." + +"It is imperative," said I,--"yes, imperative for the scope of my book, +that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I +discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban +product to serve my purpose. And I can't find any one who will." + +Uncle George whistled softly. "'Honourable young gentleman,'" he +murmured, as to himself, "'desires to meet attractive and innocent +young lady. Object: to learn how to be idyllic in three-hundred +pages.'" + +There was no commentary upon his text. + +"I say," queried Mr. Bulmer, "do you think this sort of thing is fair +to the girl? Isn't it a little cold-blooded?" + +"Respected nunky, you are at times very terribly the man in the street! +Anyhow, I leave the Green Chalybeate to-morrow in search of _As the +Coming of Dawn_." + +"Look here," said Mr. Bulmer, rising, "if you start on a tour of the +country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my +abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a +liver-pill and go to bed! I don't promise anything, mind, but perhaps +about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath +on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there," +he added unkindlily, "are not built for those full rich figures." + +Next morning, I notified the desk-clerk, and, quite casually, both the +newspaper correspondents, that the Green Chalybeate was about to be +bereft of the presence of a distinguished novelist. Then, as my train +did not leave till night, I resolved to be bored on horseback, rather +than on the golf-links, and had Guendolen summoned, from the stable, +for a final investigation of the country roads thereabouts. + +Guendolen this afternoon elected to follow a new route; and knowing by +experience that any questioning of this decision could but result in +undignified defeat, I assented. Thus it came about that we circled +parallel to the boardwalk, which leads uphill to the deserted Royal +Hotel, and passed its rows of broken windows; and went downhill again, +always at Guendolen's election; and thus came to the creek, which +babbled across the roadway and was overhung with thick foliage that +lisped and whispered cheerfully in the placid light of the declining +sun. It was there that the germ of _As the Coming of Dawn_ was found. + +For I had fallen into a reverie over the deplorable obstinacy of my new +heroine, who declined, for all my labours, to be unsophisticated; and +taking advantage of this, Guendolen had twitched the reins from my hand +and proceeded to satisfy her thirst in a manner that was rather too +noisy to be quite good form. I sat in patience, idly observing the +sparkling reflection of the sunlight on the water. I was elaborating a +comparison between my obstinate heroine and Guendolen. Then Guendolen +snorted, as something rustled through the underbrush, and turning, I +perceived a Vision. + +The Vision was in white, with a profusion of open-work. There were blue +ribbons connected with it. There were also black eyes, of the +almond-shaped, heavy-lidded variety that I had thought existed only in +Lely's pictures, and great coils of brown hair which was gold where the +chequered sunlight fell upon it, and two lips that were inexpressibly +red. I was filled with pity for my tired horse, and a resolve that for +this once her thirst should be quenched. + +Thereupon, I lifted my cap hastily; and Guendolen scrambled to the +other bank, and spluttered, and had carried me well past the Iron +Spring, before I announced to the evening air that I was a fool, and +that Guendolen was describable by various quite picturesque and +derogatory epithets. And I smiled. + +"Now, Robert Etheridge Townsend, you writer of books, here is a subject +made to your hand!" And then: + + "Only 'twixt the light and shade +Floating memories of my maid +Make me pray for Guendolen." + +After this we retraced our steps. I was peering anxiously about the +roadway. + +"Pardon me," said I, subsequently; "but _have_ you seen anything of a +watch--a small gold one, set with pearls?" + +"Heavens!" said the Vision, sympathetically, "what a pity! Are you sure +it fell here?" + +"I don't seem to have it about me," I answered, with cryptic, but +entire veracity. I searched about my pockets, with a puckered brow. +"And as we stopped here--" + +I looked inquiringly into the water. + +"From this side," observed the Vision, impersonally, "there is less +glare from the brook." + +Having tied Guendolen to a swinging limb, I sat down contentedly in +these woods. The Vision moved a little, lest I be crowded. + +"It might be further up the road," she suggested. + +"Oh, I must have left it at the hotel," I observed. + +"You might look--" said she, peering into the water. + +"Forever!" I assented. + +The Vision flushed, "I didn't mean--" she began. + +"But I did," quoth I,--"and every word of it." + +"Why, in that case," said she, and rose to her feet, "I'd better--" A +frown wrinkled her brow; then a deep, curved dimple performed a similar +office for her cheek. "I wonder--" said she. + +"Why, you would be a bold-faced jig," said I, composedly; "but, after +all there is nobody about. And, besides,--for I suspect you of being +one of the three dilapidated persons in veils who came last night,--we +are going to be introduced right after supper, anyway." + +The Vision sat down. "You mentioned your sanatorium?" quoth she. + +"The Asylum of Love," said I; "discharged--under a false impression, +--as cured, and sent to paradise. + +"Oh!" said I, defiant, "but it _is_!" + +She looked about her. "The woods _are_ rather beautiful," she conceded, +softly. + +"They form a quite appropriate background," said I. "It is a veritable +Eden, before the coming of the snake." + +"Before?" she queried, dubiously. + +"Undoubtedly," said I, and felt my ribs, in meditative wise. "Ah, but I +thought I missed something! We participate in a historic moment. This +is in Eden immediately after the creation of--Well, but of course you +are acquainted with that famous bull about Eve's being the fairest of +her daughters?" + +"It is _quite_ time," said she, judicially, "for me to go back to the +hotel, before--since we are speaking of animals,--your presence here is +noticed by one of the squirrels." + +"It is not good," I pleaded, "for man to be alone." + +"I have heard," said she, "that--almost any one can cite scripture to +his purpose." + +I thrust out a foot for inspection. "No suggestion of a hoof," said I; +"and not the slightest odour of brimstone, as you will kindly note; and +my inoffensive name is Robert Townsend." + +"Of course," she submitted, "I could never think of making your +acquaintance in this irregular fashion; and, therefore, of course, I +could not think of telling you that my name is Marian Winwood." + +"Of course not," I agreed; "it would be highly improper." + +"--And it is more than time for me to go to supper," she concluded +again, with a lacuna, as it seemed to me, in the deduction. + +"Look here!" I remonstrated; "it isn't anywhere near six yet." I +exhibited my watch to support this statement. + +"Oh!" she observed, with wide, indignant eyes. + +"I--I mean--" I stammered. + +She rose to her feet. + +"--I will explain how I happened to be carrying two watches--" + +"I do not care to listen to any explanations. Why should I?" + +"--upon," I firmly said, "the third piazza of the hotel. And this very +evening." + +"You will not." And this was said even more firmly. "And I hope you +will have the kindness to keep away from these woods; for I shall +probably always walk here in the afternoon." Then, with an indignant +toss of the head, the Vision disappeared. + + + 3 + +I whistled. Subsequently I galloped back to the hotel. + +"See here!" said I, to the desk-clerk; "how long does this place keep +open?" + +"Season closes latter part of September, sir." + +I told him I would need my rooms till then. + + + + +17. + +_He Provides Copy_ + + +So it was Uncle George Bulmer who presently left the Green Chalybeate, +to pursue Mrs. Chaytor with his lawless arts. I stayed out the season. + +Now I cannot conscientiously recommend the Green Chalybeate against +your next vacation. Once very long ago, it was frequented equally for +the sake of gaiety and of health. In the summer that was Marian's the +resort was a beautiful and tumble-down place where invalids congregated +for the sake of the nauseous waters,--which infallibly demolish a solid +column of strange maladies I never read quite through, although it +bordered every page of the writing-paper you got there from the +desk-clerk,--and a scanty leaven of persons who came thither, +apparently, in order to spend a week or two in lamenting "how very dull +the season is this year, and how abominable the fare is." + +But for one I praise the place, and I believe that Marian Winwood also +bears it no ill-will. For we two were very happy there. We took part in +the "subscription euchres" whenever we could not in time devise an +excuse which would pass muster with the haggard "entertainer." We +danced conscientiously beneath the pink and green icing of the +ball-room's ceiling, with all three of the band playing _Hearts and +Flowers_; and with a dozen "chaperones"--whom I always suspected of +taking in washing during the winter months,--lined up as closely as was +possible to the door, as if in preparation for the hotel's catching +fire any moment, to give us pessimistic observal. And having thus +discharged our duty to society at large, we enjoyed ourselves +tremendously. + +For instance, we would talk over the book I was going to write in the +autumn. That was the main thing. Then one could golf, or drive, or--I +blush to write it even now--croquet. Croquet, though, is a much +maligned game, as you will immediately discover if you ever play it on +the rambling lawn of the Chalybeate, about six in the afternoon, say, +when the grass is greener than it is by ordinary, and the shadows are +long, and the sun is well beneath the tree-tops of the Iron Bank, and +your opponent makes a face at you occasionally, and on each side the +old, one-storied cottages are builded of unusually red bricks and are +quite ineffably asleep. + +Or again there is always the creek to divert yourself in. Once I caught +five crawfishes there, while Marian waited on the bank; and afterward +we found an old tomato-can and boiled them in it, and they came out a +really gorgeous crimson. This was the afternoon that we were Spanish +Inquisitors.... Oh, believe me, you can have quite a good time at the +Chalybeate, if you set about it in the proper way. + + + 2 + +Only it is true that sometimes, when it rained, say, with that hopeless +insistency which, I protest, is unknown anywhere else in the world; and +when Marian was not immediately accessible, and cigarettes were not +quite satisfactory, because the entire universe was so sodden that +matches had to be judiciously coaxed before they would strike; and when +if you happened to be writing a fervid letter to Rosalind Jemmett, let +us say, the ink would not dry for ever so long:--why, it is true that +in these circumstances you would feel a shade too like the wicked Lord +So-and-So of a melodrama to be comfortable. + +Yet even in these circumstances, reason told me that the Book was the +main thing, that the girl would be thoroughly over the affair by +November at latest, and that at the cost of a few inconsequent tears, +she would have meanwhile immeasurably obliged posterity. And I knew +that no man may ever write in perdurable fashion save by ruthlessly +converting his own life into "copy," since of other persons' lives he +can, at most, reproduce but the blurred and misinterpreted by-ends, by +reason of almost any author's deplorable lack of omniscience. Yes, the +Book was the main thing; and yet the girl--knowingly to dip my pen into +her heart as into an inkstand was not, at best, chivalric.... + +"But the Book!" said I. "Why, I must be quite idiotically in love to +think of letting that Book perish!" And I viciously added: "Confound +the pretty simpleton!"... + + + 3 + +So the book was builded, after all, a little by a little. Hardly an +evening came when after leaving Marian I had not at least one excellent +and pregnant jotting to record in my note-book. Now it would be just an +odd turn of language, or a description of some gesture she had made, or +of a gown she had worn that day; and now a simile or some other rather +good figure of speech which had popped into my mind when I was making +love to her. + +Nor had I any difficulty in preserving nearly all she said to me, for +Marian was never a chatterbox; yet her responses had, somehow, that +long-sought tang it wasn't in me to invent for any imaginary young +woman who must be, for the sake of my new novel, quite heels over head +in love. + +And I began to see that Bettie was right, as usual. I had portrayed +Gillian Hardress pretty well in _Afield_; but by and large, I had +always written about women as though they were "pterodactyls or some +other extinct animal, which you had never seen, but had read a lot +about." + +And now, in looking over my notes, I knew, and my heart glowed to know, +that I was not about to repeat the error. + +So the Book was builded, after all, a little by a little. And a little +by a little the summer wore on; and in the lobby of the Main Hotel was +hung the beautiful Spirit of the Falls poster of the Buffalo +Exposition; and we talked of Oom Paul Krueger, and Shamrock II, and the +Nicaragua Canal, and lanky Bob Fitzsimmons, and the Boxer outrages; and +we read _To Have and To Hold_ and _The Cardinal's Snuff Box_, and +thought it droll that the King of England was not going to call himself +King Albert, after all. + +And then came the news of how the President had been shot, "with a +poisoned bullet," and a week of contradictory bulletins from the +Milburn House in Buffalo. And there were panicky surmises raised +everywhere as to "what these anarchists may do next," so that Maggio +was mobbed in Columbus, and Emma Goldman in Chicago; and Colonel +Roosevelt was found, after days of search, on Mt. Marcy in the +Adirondacks, and was told in the heart of a forest that to-morrow he +would be at the head of a nation. And the country's guidance was +entrusted to a mere lad of forty-three, with general uneasiness as to +what might come of it; and the dramatic tale of Colonel Roosevelt's +taking of the oath of office was in that morning's paper; and Marian +and I were about to part. + + + 4 + +"It will be dreadful," sighed she; "for we have to stay a whole week +longer, and I shall come here every afternoon. And there will be only +ghosts in the woods, and I shall be very lonely." + +"Dear," said I, "is it not something to have been happy? It has been +such a wonderful summer; and come what may, nothing can rob us now of +its least golden moment. And it is only for a little." + +"You will come back?" said she, half-doubtingly. + +"Yes," I said. "You wonderful, elfin creature, I shall undoubtedly come +back--to your real home, and claim you there. Only I don't believe you +do live in Aberlin,--you probably live in some great, gnarled oak +hereabouts; and at night its bark uncloses to set you free, and you and +your sisters dance out the satyrs' hearts in the moonlight. Oh, I know, +Marian! I simply _know_ you are a dryad,--a wonderful, laughing, +clear-eyed dryad strayed out of the golden age." + +"What a boy it is!" she said. "No, I am only a really and truly girl, +dear,--a rather frightened girl, with very little disposition to +laughter, just now. For you are going away--Oh, my dear, you have meant +so much to me! The world is so different since you have come, and I am +so happy and so miserable that--that I am afraid." An infinitesimal +handkerchief went upward to two great, sparkling eyes, and dabbed at +them. + +"Dear!" said I. And this remark appeared to meet the requirements of +the situation. + +There was a silence now. We sat in the same spot where I had first +encountered Marian Winwood. Only this was an autumnal forest that +glowed with many gem-like hues about us; and already the damp odour of +decaying leaves was heavy in the air. It was like the Tosti thing +translated out of marine terms into a woodland analogue. The summer was +ended; but _As the Coming of Dawn_ was practically complete. + +It was not the book that I had planned, but a far greater one which was +scarcely mine. There was no word written as yet. But for two months I +had viewed life through Marian Winwood's eyes; day by day, my +half-formed, tentative ideas had been laid before her with elaborate +fortuitousness, to be approved, or altered, or rejected, just as she +decreed; until at last they had been welded into a perfect whole that +was a Book, bit by bit, we had planned it, I and she; and, as I dreamed +of it as it would be in print, my brain was fired with exultation, and +I defied my doubt and I swore that the Book, for which I had pawned a +certain portion of my self-respect, was worth--and triply worth--the +price which had been paid.... This was in Marian's absence. + +"Dear!" said she.... + +Her eyes were filled with a tender and unutterable confidence that +thrilled me like physical cold. "Marian," said I, simply, "I shall +never come back." + +The eyes widened a trifle, but she did not seem to comprehend. + +"Have you not wondered," said I, "that I have never kissed you, except +as if you were a very holy relic or a cousin or something of that +sort?" + +"Yes," she answered. Her voice was quite emotionless. + +"And yet--yet--" I sprang to my feet. "Dear God, how I have longed! +Yesterday, only yesterday, as I read to you from the verses I had made +to other women, those women that are colourless shadows by the side of +your vivid beauty,--and you listened wonderingly and said the proper +things and then lapsed into dainty boredom,--_how_ I longed to take you +in my arms, and to quicken your calm blood a little with another sort +of kissing. You knew--you must have known! Last night, for instance--" + +"Last night," she said, very simply, "I thought--And I hoped you +would." + +"What a confession for a nicely brought up girl! Well! I didn't. And +afterward, all night, I tossed in sick, fevered dreams of you. I am mad +for love of you. And so, once in a while I kiss your hand. Dear God, +your hand!" My voice quavered, effectively. + +"Yes," said she; "still, I remember--" + +"I have struggled; and I have conquered this madness,--for a madness it +is. We can laugh together and be excellent friends; and we can never, +never be anything more. Well! we have laughed, have we not, dear, a +whole summer through? Now comes the ending. Ah, I have seen you +puzzling over my meaning before this. You never understood me +thoroughly; but it is always safe to laugh." + +She smiled; and I remember now it was rather as Mona Lisa smiles. + +"For we can laugh together,--that is all. We are not mates. You were +born to be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy +children; and you and your sort will inherit the earth and make the +laws for us weaklings who dream and scribble and paint. We are not +mates. But you have been very kind to me, Marian dear. So I thank you +and say good-bye; and I pray that I may never see you after to-day." + +There was a sub-tang of veracity in my deprecation of an unasked-for +artistic temperament; the thing is very often a nuisance, and was just +then a barrier which I perceived plainly; and with equal plainness I +perceived the pettier motives that now caused me to point it out as a +barrier to Marian. My lips curled half in mockery of myself, as I +framed the bitter smile I felt the situation demanded; but I was fired +with the part I was playing; and half-belief had crept into my mind +that Marian Winwood was created, chiefly, for the purpose which she had +already served. + +I regarded her, in fine, as through the eyes of future readers of my +biography. She would represent an episode in my life, as others do in +that of Byron or of Goethe. I pitied her sincerely; and, under all, +what moralists would call my lower nature, held in leash for two months +past, chuckled, and grinned, and leaped, at the thought of a holiday. + +She rose to her feet. "Good-bye," said she. + +"You--you understand, dear?" I queried, tenderly. + +"Yes," she answered; "I understand--not what you have just told me, for +in that, of course, you have lied. That Jemmett girl and her money is +at the bottom of it all, of course. You didn't want to lose her, and +still you wanted to play with me. So you were pulled two ways, poor +dear." + +"Oh, well, if that is what you think of me--!" + +"You see, you are not an uncommon type,--a type not strong enough to +live life healthily, just strong enough to dabble in life, to trifle +with emotions, to experiment with other people's lives. Indeed, I am +not angry, dear; I am only--sorry; for you have played with me very +nicely indeed, and very boyishly, and the summer has been very happy." + + + 5 + +I returned to Lichfield and wrote _As the Coming of Dawn_. + +I spent six months in this. My work at first was mere copying of the +book that already existed in my brain; but when it was transcribed +therefrom, I wrote and rewrote, shifted and polished and adorned until +it seemed I would never have done; and indeed I was not anxious to have +done with any labour so delightful. + +Particularly did I rejoice in the character for which Marian Winwood +had posed. Last summer's note-book here came into play; and now, for +once, my heroine was in no need of either shoving or prompting. She did +things of her own accord, and I was merely her scribe... + +I would vain-gloriously protest, just to myself, that the love scenes +in this story were the most exquisite and, with all that, the most +genuine love scenes I knew of anywhere. "By God!" I would occasionally +say with Thackeray; "I _am_ a genius!" + +Besides, the story of the book, I knew, was novel and astutely wrought; +its progress caught at once and teased your interest always, so that +having begun it, most people would read to the end, if only to discover +"how it all came out." I knew the book, in fine, could hardly fail to +please and interest a number of people by reason of its plot alone. + +I ought to have been content with this. But I had somehow contracted an +insane notion that a novel is the more enjoyable when it is adroitly +written. In point of fact, of course, no man who writes with care is +ever read with pleasure; you may toil through a page or two perhaps, +but presently you are noting how precisely every word is fitted to the +thought, and later you are noting nothing else. You are insensibly +beguiled into a fidgety-footed analysis of every clause, which fatigues +in the outcome, and by the tenth page you are yawning. + +But I did not comprehend this then. And so I fashioned my apt phrases, +and weighed my synonyms, and echoed this or that vowel very skilfully, +I thought, and alliterated my consonants with discretion. In fine, I +did not overlook the most meticulous device of the stylist; and I +enjoyed it. It was a sort of game; and they taught me at least, those +six delightful months, that a man writes admirable prose not at all for +the sake of having it read, but for the more sensible reason that he +enjoys playing solitaire. + +I led a hermit's life that winter; and I enjoyed that too. Night, after +all, is the one time for writing, particularly when you are inane +enough to hanker after perfected speech, and so misguided as to be the +slave of the "right word." You sit alone in a bright, comfortable room; +the clock ticks companionably; there is no other sound in the world +except the constant scratching of your pen, and the occasional far-off +puffing of a freight-train coming into Lichfield; there is snow +outside, but before your eyes someone, that is not you exactly, +arranges and redrills the scrawls which will bring back the sweet and +languid summer and remarshal all its pleasant trivialities for anyone +that chooses to read through the printed page, although he read two +centuries hence, in Nova Zembla.... + +Then you dip into an Unabridged, and change every word that has been +written, for a better one, and do it leisurely, rolling in the mouth, +as it were, the flavour of every possible synonym, before decision. +Then you reread, with a corrective pen in hand the while, and you +venture upon the whole to agree with Merimee that it is preferable to +write one's own books, since those of others are not, after all, +particularly worth reading in comparison. + +And by this time the windows are pale blue, like the blue of a dying +flame, and you peep out and see the sparrows moving like rather poorly +made mechanical toys about the middle of the deserted street, where +there is neither light nor shade. The colour of everything is perfectly +discernible, but there is no lustre in the world as yet, though yonder +the bloat sun is already visible in the blue and red east, which is +like a cosmic bruise; and upon a sudden you find it just possible to +stay awake long enough to get safely into bed.... + + + 6 + +Thus I dandled the child of my brain for a long while, and arrayed it +in beautiful and curious garments, adorning each beloved notion with +far-sought words that had a taste in the mouth, and would one day lend +an aroma to the printed page; and I rejoiced shamelessly in that which +I had done. Then it befell that I went forth and sought the luxury of a +Turkish bath, and in the morning, after a rub-down and an ammonia +cocktail, awoke to the fact that the world had been going on much as +usual, that winter. + +Young Colonel Roosevelt seemed not to have wrecked civilization, after +all, according to the morning _Courier-Herald_, despite that Democratic +paper's colorful prophecies last autumn in the vein of Jeremiah. To the +contrary, Major-General McArthur was testifying before the Senate as to +the abysmal unfitness of the Filipinos for self-government; the Women's +Clubs were holding a convention in Los Angeles; there had been terrible +hailstorms this year to induce the annual ruining of the peach-crop, +and the submarine Fulton had exploded; the California Limited had been +derailed in Iowa, and in Memphis there was some sort of celebration in +honor of Admiral Schley; and the Boer War seemed over; and Mr. +Havemeyer also was before the Senate, to whom he was making it clear +that his companies were in no wise responsible for sugar having reached +the unprecedentedly high price of four and a half cents a pound. + +The world, in short, in spite of my six months' retiring therefrom, +seemed to be getting on pleasantly enough, as I turned from the paper +to face the six months' accumulation of mail. + + + 7 + +A few weeks later, I sent for Mr. George Bulmer, and informed him of +his avuncular connection with a genius; and waved certain typewritten +pages to establish his title. + +Subsequently I read aloud divers portions of _As the Coming of Dawn_, +and Mr. Bulmer sipped Chianti, and listened. + +"Look here!" he said, suddenly; "have you seen _The Imperial +Votaress?_" + +I frowned. It is always annoying to be interrupted in the middle of a +particularly well-balanced sentence. "Don't know the lady," said I. + +"She is advertised on half the posters in town," said Mr. Bulmer. "And +it is the book of the year. And it is your book." + +At this moment I laid down my manuscript. '"I _beg_ your pardon?" said +I. + +"Your book!" Uncle George repeated firmly; "and scarcely a hair's +difference between them, except in the names." + +"H'm!" I observed, in a careful voice. "Who wrote it?" + +"Some female woman out west," said Mr. Bulmer. "She's a George +Something-or-other when she publishes, of course, like all those +authorines when they want to say about mankind at large what less +gifted women only dare say about their sisters-in-law. I wish to heaven +they would pick out some other Christian name when they want to cut up +like pagans. Anyhow, I saw her real name somewhere, and I remember it +began with an S--Why, to be sure! it's Marian Winwood." + +"Amaimon sounds well," I observed; "Lucifer, well; Larbason, well; yet +they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but--Marian Winwood!" + +"Dear me!" he remonstrated. "Why, she wrote _A Bright Particular Star_, +you know, and _The Acolytes_, and lots of others." + +The author of _As the Coming of Dawn_ swallowed a whole glass of +Chianti at a gulp. + +"Of course," I said, slowly, "I cannot, in my rather peculiar position, +run the risk of being charged with plagiarism--by a Chinese-eyed mental +sneak-thief...." + +Thereupon I threw the manuscript into the open fire, which my +preference for the picturesque rendered necessary, even in May. + +"Oh, look here!" my uncle cried, and caught up the papers. "It is +infernally good, you know! Can't you--can't you fix it,--and--er-- +change it a bit? Typewriting is so expensive these days that it seems a +pity to waste all this." + +I took the manuscript and replaced it firmly among the embers. "As you +justly observe," said I, "it is infernally good. It is probably a deal +better than anything else I shall ever write." + +"Why, then--" said Uncle George. + +"Why, then," said I, "the only thing that remains to do is to read _The +Imperial Votaress._" + + + 8 + +And I read it with an augmenting irritation. Here was my great and +comely idea transmuted by "George Glock"--which was the woman's foolish +pen-name,--into a rather clever melodrama, and set forth anyhow, in a +hit or miss style that fairly made me squirm. I would cheerfully have +strangled Marian Winwood just then, and not upon the count of larceny, +but of butchery. + +"And to cap it all, she has assigned her hero every pretty speech I +ever made to her! I honestly believe the rogue took shorthand jottings +on her cuffs. 'There is a land where lovers may meet face to face, and +heart to heart, and mouth to mouth'--why, that's the note I wrote her +on the day she wasn't feeling well!" + +Presently, however, I began to laugh, and presently sitting there +alone, I began to applaud as if I were witnessing a play that took my +fancy. + +"Oh, the adorable jade!" I said; and then: "George Glock, forsooth! +_George Dandin, tu l' as voulu._" + + + 9 + +Naturally I put the entire affair into a short story. And--though even +to myself it seems incredible,--Miss Winwood wrote me within three days +of the tale's appearance, a very indignant letter. + +For she was furious, to the last exclamation point and underlining, +about my little magazine tale.... "Why don't you stop writing, and try +plumbing or butchering or traveling for scented soap? _You can't +write!_ If you had the light of creation you wouldn't be using my +material".... + +--Which caused me to reflect forlornly that I had wasted a great deal +of correct behavior upon Marian, since any of the more intimately +amorous advances which I might have made, and had scrupulously +refrained from making, would very probably have been regarded as raw +"material," to be developed rather than shocked by.... + + + + +18. + +_He Spends an Afternoon in Arden_ + + +I had, in a general way, intended to marry Rosalind Jemmett so soon as +I had completed _As the Coming of Dawn_; but in the fervour of writing +that unfortunate volume, I had at first put off a little, and then a +little longer, the answering of her last letter, because I was +interested just then in writing well and not particularly interested in +anything else; and I had finally approximated to forgetfulness of the +young lady's existence. + +Now, however, my thoughts harked back to her; and I found, upon +inquiry, that Rosalind had spent all of May and a good half of April in +Lichfield, in the same town with myself, and was now engaged to Alfred +Chaytor,--an estimable person, but popularly known as "Sissy" Chaytor. + + + 2 + +And this gave an additional whet to my intentions. So I called upon the +girl, and she, to my chagrin, received me with an air of having danced +with me some five or six times the night before; our conversation was +at first trivial and, on her part, dishearteningly cordial; and, in +fine, she completely baffled me by not appearing to expect any least +explanation of my discourteous neglect. This, look you, when I had been +at pains to prepare a perfectly convincing one. + +It must be conceded I completely lost my temper; shortly afterward +neither of us was speaking with excessive forethought; and each of us +languidly advanced a variety of observations which were more dexterous +than truthful. But I followed the intractable heiress to the Moncrieffs +that spring, in spite of this rebuff, being insufferably provoked by +her unshakable assumptions of my friendship and of nothing more. + + + 3 + +It was perhaps a week later she told me: "This, beyond any reasonable +doubt, is the Forest of Arden." + +"But where Rosalind is is always Arden," I said, politely. Yet I made a +mental reservation as to a glimpse of the golf-links, which this +particular nook of the forest afforded, and of a red-headed caddy in +search of a lost ball. + +But beyond these things the sun was dying out in a riot of colour, and +its level rays fell kindlily upon the gaunt pines that were thick about +us two, converting them into endless aisles of vaporous gold. + +There was primeval peace about; an evening wind stirred lazily above, +and the leaves whispered drowsily to one another over the waters of +what my companion said was a "brawling loch," though I had previously +heard it reviled as a particularly treacherous and vexatious hazard. +Altogether, I had little doubt that we had reached, in any event, the +outskirts of Arden. + +"And now," quoth she, seating herself on a fallen log, "what would you +do if I were your very, very Rosalind?" + +"Don't!" I cried in horror. "It wouldn't be proper! For as a decent +self-respecting heroine, you would owe it to Orlando not to listen." + +"H'umph!" said Rosalind. The exclamation does not look impressive, +written out; but, spoken, it placed Orlando in his proper niche. + +"Oh, well," said I, and stretched myself at her feet, full +length,--which is supposed to be a picturesque attitude,--"why quarrel +over a name? It ought to be Gamelyn, anyhow; and, moreover, by the +kindness of fate, Orlando is golfing." + +Rosalind frowned, dubiously. + +"But golf is a very ancient game," I reassured her. Then I bit a +pine-needle in two and sighed. "Foolish fellow, when he might be--" + +"Admiring the beauties of nature," she suggested. + +Just then an impudent breeze lifted a tendril of honey-coloured hair +and toyed with it, over a low, white brow,--and I noted that Rosalind's +hair had a curious coppery glow at the roots, a nameless colour that I +have never observed anywhere else.... + +"Yes," said I, "of nature." + +"Then," queried she, after a pause, "who are you? And what do you in +this forest?" + +"You see," I explained, "there were conceivably other men in Arden--" + +"I suppose so," she sighed, with exemplary resignation. + +"--For you were," I reminded her, "universally admired at your uncle's +court,--and equally so in the forest. And while Alfred--or, strictly +speaking, Gamelyn, or, if you prefer it, Orlando,--is the great love of +your life, still--" + +"Men are so foolish!" said Rosalind, irrelevantly. + +"--it did not prevent you--" + +"Me!" cried she, indignant. + +"You had such a tender heart," I suggested, "and suffering was +abhorrent to your gentle nature." + +"I don't like cynicism, sir," said she; "and inasmuch as tobacco is not +yet discovered--" + +"It is clearly impossible that I am smoking," I finished; "quite true." + +"I don't like cheap wit, either," said Rosalind. "You," she went on, +with no apparent connection, "are a forester, with a good cross-bow and +an unrequited attachment,--say, for me. You groan and hang verses and +things about on the trees." + +"But I don't write verses--any longer," I amended. "Still how would +this do,--for an oak, say,-- + +"I found a lovely centre-piece +Upon the supper-table, +But when I looked at it again +I saw I wasn't able, +And so I took my mother home +And locked her in the stable." + +She considered that the plot of this epic was not sufficiently +inevitable. It hadn't, she lamented, a quite logical ending; and the +plot of it, in fine, was not, somehow, convincing. + +"Well, in any event," I optimistically reflected, "I am a nickel in. If +your dicta had emanated from a person in Peoria or Seattle, who hadn't +bothered to read my masterpiece, they would have sounded exactly the +same, and the clipping-bureau would have charged me five cents. +Maybe I can't write verses, then. But I am quite sure I can groan." And +I did so. + +"It sounds rather like a fog-horn," said Rosalind, still in the +critic's vein; "but I suppose it is the proper thing. Now," she +continued, and quite visibly brightening, "you can pretend to have an +unrequited attachment for me." + +"But I can't--" I decisively said. + +"Can't," she echoed. It has not been mentioned previously that Rosalind +was pretty. She was especially so just now, in pouting. And, therefore, +"--pretend," I added. + +She preserved a discreet silence. + +"Nor," I continued, with firmness, "am I a shambling, nameless, +unshaven denizen of Arden, who hasn't anything to do except to carry a +spear and fall over it occasionally. I will no longer conceal the +secret of my identity. I am Jaques." + +"You can't be Jaques," she dissented; "you are too stout." + +"I am well-built," I admitted, modestly; "as in an elder case, sighing +and grief have blown me up like a bladder; yet proper pride, if nothing +else, demands that my name should appear on the programme." + +"But would Jaques be the sort of person who'd--?" + +"Who wouldn't be?" I asked, with appropriate ardour. "No, depend upon +it, Jaques was not any more impervious to temptation than the rest of +us; and, indeed, in the French version, as you will find, he eventually +married Celia." + +"Minx!" said she; and it seemed to me quite possible that she referred +to Celia Reindan, and my heart glowed. + +"And how," queried Rosalind, presently, "came you to the Forest of +Arden, good Jaques?" + +I groaned once more. "It was a girl," I darkly said. + +"Of course," assented Rosalind, beaming as to the eyes. Then she went +on, and more sympathetically: "Now, Jaques, you can tell me the whole +story." + +"Is it necessary?" I asked. + +"Surely," said she, with sudden interest in the structure of +pine-cones; "since for a long while I have wanted to know all about +Jaques. You see Mr. Shakespeare is a bit hazy about him." + +"_So_!" I thought, triumphantly. + +And aloud, "It is an old story," I warned her, "perhaps the oldest of +all old stories. It is the story of a man and a girl. It began with a +chance meeting and developed into a packet of old letters, which is the +usual ending of this story." + +Rosalind's brows protested. + +"Sometimes," I conceded, "it culminates in matrimony; but the ending is +not necessarily tragic." + +I dodged exactly in time; and the pine-cone splashed into the hazard. + +"It happened," I continued, "that, on account of the man's health, they +were separated for a whole year's time before--before things had +progressed to any extent. When they did progress, it was largely by +letters. That is why this story ended in such a large package. + +"Letters," Rosalind confided, to one of the pines, "are so +unsatisfactory. They mean so little." + +"To the man," I said, firmly, "they meant a great deal. They brought +him everything that he most wished for,--comprehension, sympathy, and, +at last, comfort and strength when they were sore needed. So the man, +who was at first but half in earnest, announced to himself that he had +made a discovery. 'I have found,' said he, 'the great white love which +poets have dreamed of. I love this woman greatly, and she, I think, +loves me. God has made us for each other, and by the aid of her love I +will be pure and clean and worthy even of her.' You have doubtless +discovered by this stage in my narrative," I added, as in parenthesis, +"that the man was a fool." + +"Don't!" said Rosalind. + +"Oh, he discovered it himself in due time--but not until after he had +written a book about her. _As the Coming of Dawn_ the title was to have +been. It was--oh, just about her. It tried to tell how greatly he loved +her. It tried--well, it failed of course, because it isn't within the +power of any writer to express what the man felt for that girl. Why, +his love was so great--to him, poor fool!--that it made him at times +forget the girl herself, apparently. He didn't want to write her +trivial letters. He just wanted to write that great book in her honour, +which would _make_ her understand, even against her will, and then to +die, if need be, as Geoffrey Rudel did. For that was the one thing +which counted--to make her understand--" I paused, and anyone could see +that I was greatly moved. In fact, I was believing every word of it by +this time. + +"Oh, but who wants a man to _die_ for her?" wailed Rosalind. + +"It is quite true that one infinitely prefers to see him make a fool of +himself. So the man discovered when he came again to bring his foolish +book to her,--the book that was to make her understand. And so he +burned it--in a certain June. For the girl had merely liked him, and +had been amused by him. So she had added him to her collection of men, +--quite a large one, by the way,--and was, I believe, a little proud of +him. It was, she said, rather a rare variety, and much prized by +collectors." + +"And how was _she_ to know?" said Rosalind; and then, remorsefully: +"Was it a very horrid girl?" + +"It was not exactly repulsive," said I, as dreamily, and looking up +into the sky. + +There was a pause. Then someone in the distance--a forester, probably, +--called "Fore!" and Rosalind awoke from her reverie. + +"Then--?" said she. + +"Then came the customary Orlando--oh, well! Alfred, if you like. The +name isn't altogether inappropriate, for he does encounter existence +with much the same abandon which I have previously noticed in a muffin. +For the rest, he was a nicely washed fellow, with a sufficiency of the +mediaeval equivalents for bonds and rubber-tired buggies and country +places. Oh, yes! I forgot to say that the man was poor,--also that the +girl had a great deal of common-sense and no less than three longheaded +aunts. And so the girl talked to the man in a common-sense fashion--and +after that she was never at home." + +"Never?" said Rosalind. + +"Only that time they talked about the weather," said I. "So the man +fell out of bed just about then, and woke up and came to his sober +senses." + +"He did it very easily," said Rosalind, almost as if in resentment. + +"The novelty of the process attracted him," I pleaded. "So he said--in +a perfectly sensible way--that he had known all along it was only a +game they were playing,--a game in which there were no stakes. That was +a lie. He had put his whole soul into the game, playing as he knew for +his life's happiness; and the verses, had they been worthy of the love +which caused them to be written, would have been among the great songs +of the world. But while the man knew at last that he had been a fool, +he was swayed by a man-like reluctance against admitting it. So he +laughed--and lied--and broke away, hurt, but still laughing." + +"You hadn't mentioned any verses before," said Rosalind. + +"I told you he was a fool," said I. "And, after all, that is the entire +story." + +Then I spent several minutes in wondering what would happen next. +During this time I lost none of my interest in the sky. I believed +everything I had said: my emotions would have done credit to a Romeo or +an Amadis. + +"The first time that the girl was not at home," Rosalind observed, +impersonally, "the man had on a tan coat and a brown derby. He put on +his gloves as he walked down the street. His shoulders were the most +indignant--and hurt things she had ever seen. Then the girl wrote to +him,--a strangely sincere letter,--and tore it up." + +"Historical research," I murmured, "surely affords no warrant for such +attire among the rural denizens of tranquil Arden." + +"You see," continued Rosalind, oblivious to interruption, "I know all +about the girl,--which is more than you do." + +"That," I conceded, "is disastrously probable." + +"When she realised that she was to see the man again--_Did_ you ever +feel as if something had lifted you suddenly hundreds of feet above +rainy days and cold mutton for luncheon, and the possibility of other +girls' wearing black evening dresses, when you wanted yours to be the +only one in the room? Well, that is the way she felt at first, when she +read his note. At first, she realised nothing beyond the fact that he +was nearing her, and that she would presently see him. She didn't even +plan what she would wear, or what she would say to him. In an +indefinite way, she was happier than she had ever been before--or has +been since--until the doubts and fears and knowledge that give children +and fools a wide berth came to her,--and _then_ she saw it all against +her will, and thought it all out, and came to a conclusion." + +I sat up. There was really nothing of interest occurring overhead. + +"They had played at loving--lightly, it is true, but they had gone so +far in their letter writing that they could not go backward,--only +forward, or not at all. She had known all along that the man was but +half in earnest--believe me, a girl always knows that, even though she +may not admit it to herself,--and she had known that a love affair +meant to him material for a sonnet or so, and a well-turned letter or +two, and nothing more. For he was the kind of man that never quite +grows up. He was coming to her, pleased, interested, and a little +eager--in love with the idea of loving her,--willing to meet her +half-way, and very willing to follow her the rest of the way--if she +could draw him. And what was she to do? Could she accept his gracefully +insulting semblance of a love she knew he did not feel? Could they see +each other a dozen times, swearing not to mention the possibility of +loving,--so that she might have a chance to reimpress him with her +blondined hair--it _is_ touched up, you know--and small talk? And--and +_besides_--" + +"It is the duty of every young woman to consider what she owes to her +family," said I, absentmindedly. Rosalind Jemmett's family consists of +three aunts, and the chief of these is Aunt Marcia, who lives in +Lichfield. Aunt Marcia is a portly, acidulous and discomposing person, +with eyes like shoe-buttons and a Savonarolan nose. She is also a +well-advertised philanthropist, speaks neatly from the platform, and +has wide experience as a patroness, and extreme views as to +ineligibles. + +Rosalind flushed somewhat. "And so," said she, "the girl exercised her +common-sense, and was nervous, and said foolish things about new plays, +and the probability of rain--to keep from saying still more foolish +things about herself; and refused to talk personalities; and let him +go, with the knowledge that he would not come back. Then she went to +her room, and had a good cry. Now," she added, after a pause, "you +understand." + +"I do not," I said, very firmly, "understand a lot of things." + +"Yet a woman would," she murmured. + +This being a statement I was not prepared to contest, I waved it aside. +"And so," said I, "they laughed; and agreed it was a boy-and-girl +affair; and were friends." + +"It was the best thing--" said she. + +"Yes," I assented,--"for Orlando." + +"--and it was the most sensible thing." + +"Oh, eminently!" + +This seemed to exhaust the subject, and I lay down once more among the +pine-needles. + +"And that," said Rosalind, "was the reason Jaques came to Arden?" + +"Yes," said I. + +"And found it--?" + +"Shall we say--Hades?" + +"Oh!" she murmured, scandalised. + +"It happened," I continued, "that he was cursed with a good memory. And +the zest was gone from his little successes and failures, now there was +no one to share them; and nothing seemed to matter very much. Oh, he +really was the sort of man that never grows up! And it was dreary to +live among memories of the past, and his life was now somewhat +perturbed by disapproval of his own folly and by hunger for a woman who +was out of his reach." + +"And Rosalind--I mean the girl--?" + +"She married Orlando--or Gamelyn, or Alfred, or Athelstane, or +Ethelred, or somebody,--and, whoever it was, they lived happily ever +afterward," I said, morosely. + +Rosalind pondered over this denouement for a moment. + +"Do you know," said she, "I think--" + +"It's a rather dangerous practice," I warned her. + +Rosalind sighed, wearily; but in her cheek at about this time occurred +a dimple. + +"--I think that Rosalind must have thought the play +very badly named." + +"_As You Like It_?" I queried, obtusely. + +"Yes--since it wasn't, for her." + +It is unwholesome to lie on the ground after sunset. + + + 4 + +"I had rather a scene with Alfred yesterday morning. He said you drank, +and gambled, and were always running after--people, and weren't in +fine, a desirable person for me to know. He insinuated, in fact, that +you were a villain of the very deepest and non-crocking dye. He told me +of instances. His performance would have done credit to Ananias. I was +_mad_! So I gave him his old ring back, and told him things I can't +tell _you_,--no, not just yet, dear. He is rather like a muffin, isn't +he?" she said, with the lightest possible little laugh--"particularly +like one that isn't quite done." + +"Oh, Rosalind," I babbled, "I mean to prove that you were right. And I +_will_ prove it, too!" + +And indeed I meant all that I said--just then. + +Rosalind said: "Oh, Jaques, Jaques! what a child you are!" + + + + +19. + +_He Plays the Improvident Fool_ + + +Now was I come near to the summit of my desires, and advantageously +betrothed to a girl with whom I was, in any event, almost in love; but +I presently ascertained, to my dismay, that sophisticated, "proper" +little Rosalind was thoroughly in love with me, and always in the back +of my mind this knowledge worried me. + +Imprimis, she persisted in calling me Jaques, which was uncomfortably +reminiscent of that time wherein I was called Jack. Yet my objection to +this silly nickname was a mischancy matter to explain. There was no way +of telling her that I disliked anything which reminded me of Gillian +Hardress, without telling more about Gillian than would be pleasant to +tell. So Rosalind went on calling me Jaques; and I was compelled to put +up with a trivial and unpremeditated, but for all that a daily, +annoyance; and I fretted under it. + +Item, she insisted on presenting me with all sorts of expensive +knick-knacks, and being childishly grieved when I remonstrated. + +"But I have the money," Rosalind would say, "and you haven't. So why +shouldn't I? And besides, it's really only selfishness on my part, +because I like doing things for you, and _if_ you liked doing things +for me, Jaques, you'd understand." + +So I would eventually have to swear that I did like "doing things" for +her; and it followed--somehow--that in consequence she had a perfect +right to give me anything she wanted to. + +And this too fretted me, mildly, all the summer I spent at Birnam Beach +with Rosalind and with the opulent friends of Rosalind's aunt from St. +Louis.... They were a queer lot. They all looked so unspeakably new; +their clothes were spick and span, and as expensive as possible, but +that was not it; even in their bathing suits these middle-aged +people--they were mostly middle-aged--seemed to have been very recently +finished, like animated waxworks of middle-aged people just come from +the factory. And they spent money in a continuous careless way that +frightened me. + +But I was on my very best, most dignified behavior; and when Aunt Lora +presented me as "one of the Lichfield Townsends, you know," these +brewers and breweresses appeared to be properly impressed. One of +them--actually--"supposed that I had a coat-of-arms"; which in +Lichfield would be equivalent to "supposing" that a gentleman possessed +a pair of trousers. But they were really very thoughtful about never +letting me pay for anything; in this regard there seemed afoot a sort +of friendly conspiracy. + +So the summer passed pleasantly enough; and we bathed, and held hands +in the moonlight, and danced at the Casino, and rode the +merry-go-round, and played ping-pong, and read _Dorothy Vernon of +Haddon Hall_,--which was much better, I told everybody, than that +idiotic George Clock book, _The Imperial Votaress_. And we drank +interminable suissesses, and it was all very pleasant. + +Yet always in the rear of my mind was stirring restively the instinct +to get back to my writing; and these sedately frolicsome benevolent +people--even Rosalind--plainly thought that "writing things" was just +the unimportant foible of an otherwise fine young fellow. + + + 2 + +And in September Rosalind came to visit her Aunt Marcia in Lichfield, +to get clothes and all other matters ready for our wedding in November; +and Lichfield, as always, made much of Rosalind, and she had the honor +of "leading" the first Lichfield German with Colonel Rudolph Musgrave. +My partner at that dance was the Marquise d'Arlanges.... + +I was seeing a deal of the Marquise d'Arlanges. She was Stella's only +sister, as you may remember, and was that autumn paying a perfunctory +visit to her parents--the second since her marriage. + +I shall not expatiate, however, concerning Madame la Marquise. You have +doubtless heard of her. For Lizzie has not, even yet, found a time +wherein to be idle; she has been busied since the hour of her birth in +acquiring first, plain publicity, and then social power, and every +other amenity of life in turn. I had not the least doubt even then of +her ending where she is now.... + +She was at this time still well upon the preferable side o! thirty, and +had no weaknesses save a liking for gossip, cigarettes, and admiration. +Lizzie was never the woman to marry a Peter Blagden. Once Stella was +settled, Lizzie Musgrave had sailed for Europe, and eventually had +arrived at Monaco with an apologetic mother, several letters of +introduction, and a Scotch terrier; and had established herself at the +Hotel de la Paix, to look over the "available" supply of noblemen in +reduced circumstances. Before the end of a month Miss Musgrave had +reached a decision, had purchased her Marquis, much as she would have +done any other trifle that took her fancy, and had shipped her mother +back to America. Lizzie retained the terrier, however, as she was +honestly attached to it. + +Her marriage had been happy, and she found her husband on further +acquaintance, as she told me, a mild-mannered and eminently suitable +person, who was unaccountably addicted to playing dominoes, and who +spent a great deal of money, and dined with her occasionally. In a +sentence, the marquise was handsome, "had a tongue in her head," and, +to utilise yet another ancient phrase, was as hard as nails. + +And yet there was a family resemblance. Indeed, in voice and feature +she was strangely like an older Stella; and always I was cheating +myself into a half-belief that this woman I was talking with was +Stella; and Lizzie would at least enable me to forget, for a whole +half-hour sometimes, that Stella was dead.... + + * * * * * + +"I must thank you," I said, one afternoon, when I arose to go, "for a +most pleasant dream of--what we'll call the Heart's Desire. I suppose I +have been rather stupid, Lizzie; and I apologise for it; but people are +never exceedingly hilarious in dreams, you know." + +She said, very gently: "I understand. For I loved Stella too. And that +is why the room is never really lighted when you come. Oh, you stupid +man, how could I have _helped_ knowing it--that all the love you have +made to me was because you have been playing I was Stella? That +knowledge has preserved me, more than once, my child, from succumbing +to your illicit advances in this dead Lichfield." + +And I was really astonished, for she was not by ordinary the sort of +woman who consents to be a makeshift. + +I said as much, "And it _has_ been a comfort, Lizzie, because she +doesn't come as often now, for some reason--" + +"Why--what do you mean?" + +The room was very dark, lit only by the steady, comfortable glow of a +soft-coal fire. For it was a little after sunset, and outside, +carriages were already rumbling down Regis Avenue, and people were +returning from the afternoon drive. I could not see anything +distinctly, excepting my own hands, which were like gold in the +firelight; and so I told her all about _The Indulgences of Ole-Luk-Ole_. + +"She came, that first time, over the crest of a tiny upland that lay in +some great forest,--Brocheliaunde, I think. I knew it must be autumn, +for the grass was brown and every leaf upon the trees was brown. And +she too was all in brown, and her big hat, too, was of brown felt, and +about it curled a long ostrich feather dyed brown; and my first +thought, as I now remember, was how in the dickens could any mediaeval +lady have come by such a garb, for I knew, somehow, that this was a +woman of the Middle Ages. + +"Only her features were those of Stella, and the eyes of this woman +were filled with an unutterable happiness and fear, as she came toward +me,--just as the haunting eyes of Stella were upon the night she +married Peter Blagden, and I babbled nonsense to the moon. + +"'Oh, I have wanted you,--I have wanted you!' she said; and afterward, +unarithmeticably dimpling, just as she used to do, you may remember: +_'Depardieux,_ messire! have you then forgotten that upon this forenoon +we hunt the great boar?" + +"'Stella!' I said, 'O dear, dear Stella! what does it mean?' + +"'You silly! it means, of course, that Ole-Luk-Oie is kind, and has put +us both into the glaze of the mustard-jar--only I wonder which one we +have gotten into?' Stella said. 'Don't you remember them, dear--the +blue mustard-jar and the red one your Mammy had that summer at the +Green Chalybeate, with men on them hunting a boar?' + +"'They stood, one on each corner of the mantelpiece,' I said; 'and in +the blue one she kept matches, and in the other--' + +"'She kept buttons in the red one,' said Stella,--'big, shiny white +buttons, with four holes in them, that had come off your underclothes, +and were to be sewed on again. One day you swallowed one of 'em, I +remember, because you _would_ keep it in your mouth while you swung in +the hammock. And you thought it would surely kill you, so you knelt +down in the dry leaves and prayed God He wouldn't let it kill you.' + +"'But you weren't there,' I protested; 'nobody was there. So nobody +ever knew anything about it, though may be you--' For I had just +remembered that Stella was dead, only I knew it was against some rule +to mention it. + +"'Well, at any rate I'm _here_,' said Stella, 'and Ole-Luk-Oie is kind; +and we had better go and hunt the great boar at once, I suppose, since +that is what the people on the mustard-jars always do.' + +"'But how did you come hither, O my dear--?' + +"'Why, through your wanting me so much,' she said. 'How else?' + +"And I understood.... + +"So we went and slew the great boar. I slew it personally, with a long +spear, and with Stella clasping her hands in the background. Only there +was a nicked place in the mustard-jar, where I had dropped it on the +hearth some fifteen years ago, and my horse kept stumbling over this +crevice, so that I knew it was the red jar and the buttons we were +riding around. And afterward I made a song in honour of my Stella,--a +song so perfect that I presently awoke, weeping with joy that I had +made a song so beautiful, and with the knowledge I could not now +recollect a single word of it; and I knew that neither I nor any other +man could ever make again a song one-half so beautiful.... + +"Since then Ole-Luk-Oie--or someone--has been very kind at times. He +always lets me into pictures, though, never into mouse-holes and +hen-houses and silly places like that, as he did little Hjalmar. I +don't know why.... + +"Once it was into the illustrations to the _Popular Tales of +Poictesme_, and we met my great grandfather Jurgen there. And once it +was into the picture on the cover of that unveracious pamphlet the +manager of the Green Chalybeate sends in the spring to everybody who +has once been there. That time was very odd. + +"It is a picture of the Royal Hotel, you may remember, as it used to be +a good ten years ago. Both fountains were playing in the sunlight, +--they were torn down when I was at college, and I had almost forgotten +their existence; and elegant and languid ladies were riding by, in +victorias, and under tiny parasols trimmed with fringe, and all these +ladies wore those preposterously big sleeves they used to wear then; +and men in little visored skull caps were passing on tall old-fashioned +bicycles, just as they do in the picture. Even the silk-hatted +gentleman in the corner, pointing out the beauties of the building with +his cane, was there. + +"And Stella and I walked past the margin of the picture, and so on down +the boardwalk to the other hotel, to look for our parents. And we +agreed not to tell anyone that we had ever grown up, but just to let it +be a secret between us two; and we were to stay in the picture forever, +and grow up all over again, only we would arrange everything +differently. And Stella was never to go driving on the twenty-seventh +of April, so that we would be quite safe, and would live together for a +long, long while. + +"She wouldn't promise, though, that when Peter Blagden asked to be +introduced, she would refuse to meet him. She just giggled and shook +her sunny head. She hadn't any hat on. She was wearing the +blue-and-white sailor-suit, of course.".... + + + 4 + +But a servant was lighting up the front-hall, and the glare of it came +through the open door, and now the room was just like any other room. + +"And you are Robert Townsend!" the marquise observed. "The one my +mother doesn't approve of as a visitor!" + +Madame d'Arlanges said, with a certain lack of sequence: "And yet you +are planning to do precisely what Peter Blagden did. He liked Stella, +she amused him, and he thought her money would come in very handy; and +so he, somehow, contrived to marry her in the end, because she was just +a child, and you were a child, and he wasn't. And he always lied to her +about--about those business-trips--even from the very first. I knew, +because I'm not a sentimental person. But, Bob, how can you stoop to +mimic Peter Blagden! For you are doing precisely what he did; and for +Rosalind, just as it was for Stella, it is almost irresistible, to have +the chance of reforming a man who has notoriously been 'talked about.' +Still, I see that for Stella's sake you won't lie as steadfastly to +Rosalind as Peter did to Stella. It is none of my business of course; +oh, I don't meddle. I merely prophesy that you won't." + +But those lights had made an astonishing difference. And so, "But why +not?" said I. "It is the immemorial method of dealing with savages; and +surely women can never expect to become quite civilised so long as +chivalry demands that a man say to a woman only what he believes she +wants to hear? Ah, no, my dear Lizzie; when a man tries to get into a +woman's favour, custom demands that he palliate the invasion with +flatteries and veiled truths--or, more explicitly, with lies,--just as +any sensible explorer must come prepared to leave a trail of +looking-glasses and valueless bright beads among the original owners of +any unknown country. For he doesn't know what obstacles he may +encounter, and he has been taught, from infancy, to regard any woman as +a baleful and unfathomable mystery--" + +"She is never so--heaven help her!--if the man be sufficiently +worthless." + +"I rejoice that we are so thoroughly at one. For upon my word, I +believe this widespread belief in feminine inscrutability is the result +of a conspiracy on the part of the weaker sex; and that every mother is +somehow pledged to inculcate this belief into the immature masculine +mind. Apparently the practice originated in the Middle Ages, for it +never seemed to occur to anybody before then that a woman was +particularly complex. Though, to be sure, Catullus now--" "This is not +a time for pedantry. I don't in the least care what Catullus or anyone +else observed concerning anything--" "But I had not aspired, my dear +Lizzie, to be even remotely pedantic. I was simply about to remark that +Catullus, or Ariosto, or Coventry Patmore, or King Juba, or Posidonius, +or Sir John Vanbrugh, or perhaps, Agathocles of Chios, or else +Simonides the Younger, has conceded somewhere, that women are, in +certain respects, dissimilar, as it were, to men." "I am merely urging +you not to marry this silly little Rosalind, for the excellent reason +that you _did_ love my darling Stella even more than I, and that +Rosalind is in love with you." "Do you really think so?" said I. "Why, +then, actuated by the very finest considerations of decency and +prudence and generosity, I shall, of course, espouse her the very next +November that ever is." + +The marquise retorted: "No,--because you are at bottom too fond of +Rosalind Jemmett; and, besides, it isn't really a question of your +feeling toward _her_. In any event, I begin to like you too well, Bob, +to let you kiss me any more." + +I declared that I detested paradox. Then I went home to supper. + + + 5 + +But, for all this, I meditated for a long while upon what Lizzie had +said. It was true that I was really fond of "proper" little Rosalind +Jemmett; concerning myself I had no especial illusions; and, to my +credit, I faced what I considered the real issue, squarely. + +We were in Aunt Marcia's parlour. Rosalind was an orphan, and lived in +turn with her three aunts. She said the other two were less unendurable +than Aunt Marcia, and I believed her. I consider, to begin with, that a +person is not civilised who thumps upon the floor upstairs with a +poker, simply because it happens to be eleven o'clock; and moreover, +Aunt Marcia's parlour--oh, it really was a "parlour,"--was entirely too +like the first night of a charity bazaar, when nothing has been sold. + +The room was not a particularly large one; but it contained exactly +three hundred and seven articles of bijouterie, not estimating the +china pug-dog upon the hearth. I know, for I counted them. + +Besides, there were twenty-eight pictures upon the walls--one in oils +of the late Mr. Dumby (for Aunt Marcia was really Mrs. Clement Dumby), +painted, to all appearances, immediately after the misguided gentleman +who married Aunt Marcia had been drowned, and before he had been wiped +dry,--and for the rest, everywhere the eye was affronted by engravings +framed in gilt and red-plush of "Sanctuary," "Le Hamac," "Martyre +Chretienne," "The Burial of Latane," and other Victorian outrages. + +Then on an easel there was a painting of a peacock, perched upon an +urn, against a gilded background; this painting irrelevantly deceived +your expectations, for it was framed in blue plush. Also there were +"gift-books" on the centre table, and a huge volume, again in red +plush, with its titular "Album" cut out of thin metal and nailed to the +cover. This album contained calumnious portraits of Aunt Marcia's +family, the most of them separately enthroned upon the same imitation +rock, in all the pride of a remote, full-legged and starchy youth, each +picture being painfully "coloured by hand." + + + 6 + +"Do you know why I want to marry you?" I demanded of Rosalind, in such +surroundings, apropos of a Mrs. Vokins who had taken a house in +Lichfield for the winter, and had been at school somewhere in the +backwoods with Aunt Marcia, and was "dying to meet me." + +She answered, in some surprise: "Why, because you have the good taste +to be heels over head in love with me, of course." + +I took possession of her hands. "If there is anything certain in this +world of uncertainties, it is that I am not the least bit in love with +you. Yet, only yesterday--do you remember, dear?" + +She answered, "I remember." + +"But I cannot, for the life of me, define what happened yesterday. I +merely recall that we were joking, as we always do when together, and +that on a wager I loosened your hair. Then as it tumbled in great +honey-coloured waves about you, you were silent, and there came into +your eyes a look I had never seen before. And even now I cannot define +what happened, Rosalind! I only know I caught your face between my +hands, and for a moment held it so, with fingers that have not yet +forgotten the feel of your soft, thick hair,--and that for a breathing +space your eyes looked straight into mine. Something changed in me +then, my lady. Something changed in you, too, I think." + +Then Rosalind said, "Don't, Jaques--!" She was horribly embarrassed. + +"For I knew you willed me to possess you, and that possession would +seem as trivial as a fiddle in a temple.... Yet, too, there was a +lustful beast, somewhere inside of me, which nudged me to--kiss you, +say! But nothing happened. I did not even kiss you, my beautiful and +wealthy Rosalind." + +"Don't keep on talking about the money," she wailed. "Why, you can't +believe I think you mercenary!" + +"I would estimate your intellect far more cheaply, my charming +Rosalind, if you thought anything else; for of course I am. I wanted to +settle myself, you conceive, and as an accomplice you were very +eligible. I now comprehend it is beyond the range of rationality, dear +stranger, that we should ever marry each other; and so we must not. We +must not, you comprehend, since though we lived together through ten +patriarchal lifetimes we would die strangers to each other. +For you, dear clean-souled girl that you are, were born that you might +be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy children. The +world was made for you and for your offspring; and in time your +children will occupy this world and make the laws for us irrelevant +folk that scribble and paint and design all useless and beautiful +things, and thus muddle away our precious lives. No, you may not wisely +mate with us, for you are a shade too terribly at ease in the universe, +you sensible people." + +"But I love Art," said Rosalind, bewildered. + +"Yes,--but by the tiniest syllable a thought too volubly, my dear. You +are the sort that quotes the Rubaiyat. Whereas I--was it yesterday or +the day before you told me, with a wise pucker of your beautiful low, +white brow, that I had absolutely no sense of the responsibilities of +life? Well, I really haven't, dear stranger, as you appraise them; and, +indeed, I fear we must postpone our agreement upon any possible +subject, until the coming of the Coquecigrues. We see the world so +differently, you and I,--and for that same reason I cannot but adore +you, Rosalind. For with you I can always speak my true thought and know +that you will never for a moment suspect it to be anything but irony. +Ah, yes, we can laugh and joke together, and be thorough friends; but +if there is anything certain in this world of uncertainties, it is that +I am not, and cannot be, in love with you. And yet--I wonder now?" said +I, and I rose and paced Aunt Marcia's parlour. + +"You wonder? Don't you understand even now?" the girl said shyly. "I am +not as clever as you, of course; I have known that for a long while, +Jaques; and to-night in particular I don't quite follow you, my dear, +but I love you, and--why, there is _nothing_ I could deny you!" + +"Then give me back my freedom," said I. "For, look you, Rosalind, +marriage is proverbially a slippery business. Always there are a +variety of excellent reasons for perpetrating matrimony; but the rub of +it is that not any one of them insures you against to-morrow. Love, for +example, we have all heard of; but I have known fine fellows to fling +away their chances in life, after the most approved romantic fashion, +on account of a pretty stenographer, and to beat her within the +twelvemonth. And upon my word, you know, nobody has a right to blame +the swindled lover for doing this--" + +I paused to inspect the china pug-dog which squatted on the pink-tiled +hearth and which glared inanely at the huge brass coal-box just +opposite. Then I turned from these two abominations and faced Rosalind +with a bantering flirt of my head. + +"--For put it that I marry some entrancing slip of girlhood, what am I +to say when, later, I discover myself irrevocably chained to a fat and +dowdy matron? I married no such person, I have indeed sworn eternal +fidelity to an entirely different person; and this unsolicited usurper +of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my +entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to justify the +ensuing action before an irrational audience, which faces common logic +in very much the attitude of Augustine's famed adder! Decidedly I think +that, on the whole, I would prefer my Freedom." + +It was as though I had struck her. She sat as if frozen. "Jaques, is +there another woman in this?" + +"Why, in a fashion, yes. Yet it is mainly because I am really fond of +you, Rosalind." + +She handed me that exceedingly expensive ring the jeweler had charged +to me. I thought her action damnably theatrical, but still, it was not +as though I could afford to waste money on rings, so I took the trinket +absent-mindedly. + +"You are unflatteringly prompt in closing out the account," I said, +with a grieved smile.... + +"Good-bye!" said Rosalind, and her voice broke. "Oh, and I had +thought--! Well, as it is, I pay for the luxury of thinking, just as +you forewarned me, don't I, Jaques? And you won't forget the +hall-light? Aunt Marcia, you know--but how glad _she_ will be! I feel +rather near to Aunt Marcia to-night," said Rosalind. + + + 7 + +She left Lichfield the next day but one, and spent the following winter +with the aunt that lived in Brooklyn. She was Rosalind Gelwix the next +time I saw her.... + +And Aunt Marcia, whose taste is upon a par with her physical +attractions, inserted a paragraph in the "Social Items" of the +Lichfield _Courier-Herald_ to announce the breaking-off of the +engagement. Aunt Marcia also took the trouble to explain, quite +confidentially, to some seven hundred and ninety-three people, just why +the engagement had been broken off: and these explanations were more +creditable to Mrs. Dumby's imagination than to me. + +And I remembered, then, that the last request my mother made of me was +to keep out of the newspapers--"except, of course, the social +items".... + + + + +20. + +_He Dines Out, Impeded by Superstitions_ + + +Within the week I had repented of what I termed my idiotic quixotism, +and for precisely nine days after that I cursed my folly. And then, at +the Provises, I comprehended that in breaking off my engagement to +Rosalind Jemmett I had acted with profound wisdom, and I unfolded my +napkin, and said: + +"Do you know I didn't catch your name--not even this time?" + +She took a liberal supply of lemon juice. "How delightful!" she +murmured, "for I heard yours quite distinctly, and these oysters are +delicious." + +I noted with approval that her gown was pink and fluffy; it had also the +advantage of displaying shoulders that were incredibly white, and a +throat which was little short of marvellous. "I am glad," I whispered, +confidentially, "that you are still wearing that faint vein about your +left temple. I thought it admirable for early morning wear upon the +house tops of Liege, but it seems equally effective for dinner parties." + +She raised her eyebrows slightly and selected a biscuit. + +"You see," said I, "I was horribly late. And when Kittie Provis said, +'Allow me,' and I saw--well, I didn't care," I concluded, lucidly, +"because to have every one of your dreams come true, all of a sudden, +leaves you past caring." + +"It really is funny," she confided to a spoonful of _consomme a la +Julienne_. + +"After almost two years!" sighed I, ever so happily. But I continued, +with reproach, "To go without a word--that very day--" + +"Mamma--" she began. + +I recalled the canary-bird, and the purple shawl. "I sought wildly," +said I; "you were evanished. The _proprietaire_ was tearing his hair--no +insurance--he knew nothing. So I too tore my hair; and I said things. +There was a row. For he also said things: 'Figure to yourselves, +messieurs! I lose the Continental--two ladies come and go, I know not +who--I am ruined, desolated, is it not?--and this pig of an American +blusters--ah, my new carpets, just down, what horror!' And then, you +know, he launched into a quite feeling peroration concerning our +notorious custom of tomahawking one another-- + +"Yes," I coldly concluded into Mrs. Clement Dumby's ear, "we all behaved +disgracefully. As you very justly observe, liquor has been the curse of +the South." It was of a piece with Kittie Provis to put me next to Aunt +Marcia, I reflected. + +And mentally I decided that even though a portion of my assertions had +not actually gone through the formality of occurring, it all might very +easily have happened, had I remained a while longer in Liege; and then +ensued a silent interval and an entree. + +"And so--?" + +"And so I knocked about the world, in various places, hoping against +hope that at last--" + +"Your voice carries frightfully--" + +I glanced toward Mrs. Clement Dumby, who, as a dining dowager of many +years' experience, was, to all appearances, engrossed by the contents of +her plate. "My elderly neighbour is as hard of hearing as a +telephone-girl," I announced. She was the exact contrary, which was why +I said it quite audibly. "And your neighbour--why, _his_ neighbour is +Nannie Allsotts. We might as well be on a desert island, Elena--" And +the given name slipped out so carelessly as to appear almost accidental. + +"Sir!" said she, with proper indignation; "after so short an +acquaintance--" + +"Centuries," I suggested, meekly. "You remember I explained about that." + +She frowned,--an untrustworthy frown that was tinged with laughter. "One +meets so many people! Yes, it really is frightfully warm, Colonel +Grimshaw; they ought to open some of the windows." + +"Er--haw--hum! Didn't see you at the Anchesters." + +"No; I am usually lucky enough to be in bed with a sick headache when +Mrs. Anchester entertains. Of two evils one should choose the lesser, +you know." + +In the manner of divers veterans Colonel Grimshaw evinced his mirth upon +a scale more proper to an elephant; and relapsed, with a reassuring air +of having done his duty once and for all. + +"I never," she suggested, tentatively, "heard any more of your poem, +about--?" + +"Oh, I finished it; every magazine in the country knows it. It is poor +stuff, of course, but then how could I write of Helen when Helen had +disappeared?" + +The lashes exhibited themselves at full length. "I looked her up," +confessed their owner, guiltily, "in the encyclopaedia. It was very +instructive--about sun-myths and bronzes and the growth of the epic, you +know, and tree-worship and moon-goddesses. Of course"--here ensued a +flush and a certain hiatus in logic,--"of course it is nonsense." + +"Nonsense?" My voice sank tenderly. "Is it nonsense, Elena, that for two +years I have remembered the woman whose soft body I held, for one +unforgettable moment, in my arms? and nonsense that I have fought all +this time against--against the temptations every man has,--that I might +ask her at last--some day when she at last returned, as always I knew +she would--to share a fairly decent life? and nonsense that I have +dreamed, waking and sleeping, of a wondrous face I knew in Ilium first, +and in old Rome, and later on in France, I think, when the Valois were +kings? Well!" I sighed, after vainly racking my brain for a tenderer +fragment of those two-year-old verses, "I suppose it is nonsense!" + +"The salt, please," quoth she. She flashed that unforgotten broadside at +me. "I believe you need it." + +"Why, dear me! of course not!" said I, to Mrs. Dumby; "immorality lost +the true _cachet_ about the same time that ping-pong did. Nowadays +divorces are going out, you know, and divorcees are not allowed to. +Quite modish women are seen in public with their husbands nowadays." + +"H'mph!" said Mrs. Dumby; "I've no doubt that you must find it a most +inconvenient fad!" + +I ate my portion of duck abstractedly. "Thus to dive into the +refuse-heap of last year's slang does not quite cover the requirements +of the case. For I wish--only I hardly dare to ask--" + +"If I were half of what you make out," meditatively said she, "I would +be a regular fairy, and couldn't refuse you the usual three wishes." + +"Two," I declared, "would be sufficient." + +"First?" + +"That you tell me your name." + +"I adore orange ices, don't you? And the second?" was her comment. + +"Well, then, you' re a pig," was mine. "You are simply a nomenclatural +Berkshire. But the second is that you let me measure your finger--oh, +any finger will do. Say, the third on the left hand." + +"You really talk to me as if--" But this non-existent state of affairs +proved indescribable, and the unreal condition lapsed into a pout. + +"Oh, very possibly!" I conceded; "since the way in which a man talks to +a woman--to _the_ woman--depends by ordinary upon the depth--" + +"The depth of his devotion?" she queried, helpfully. "Of course!" + +I faced the broadside, without flinching. "No," said I, critically; "the +depth of her dimples." + +"Nonsense!" Nevertheless, the dimples were, and by a deal, the more +conspicuous. We were getting on pretty well. + +I bent forward; there was a little catch in my voice. Aunt Marcia was +listening. I wanted her to listen. + +"You must know that I love you," I said, simply, "I have always loved +you, I think, since the moment my eyes first fell upon you in +that--other pink thing. Of course, I realize the absurdity of my talking +in this way to a woman whose name I don't know; but I realise more +strongly that I love you. Why, there is not a pulse in my body which +isn't throbbing and tingling and leaping riotously from pure joy of +being with you again, Elena! And in time, you will love me a little, +simply because I want you to,--isn't that always a woman's main reason +for caring for a man?" + +She considered this, dubious and flushed. + +"I will not insist," said I, with a hurried and contented laugh, "that +you were formerly an Argive queen. I mean I will not be obstinate about +it, because that, I confess, was a paraphrase of my verses. But Helen +has always been to me the symbol of perfect loveliness, and so it was +not unnatural that I should confuse you with her." + +"Thank you, sir," said she, demurely. + +"I half believe it is true, even now; and if not--well, Helen was +acceptable enough in her day, Elena, but I am willing to Italianise, for +I have seen you and loved you, and Helen is forgot. It is not exactly +the orthodox pace for falling in love," I added, with a boyish candour, +"but it is very real to me." + +"You--you couldn't have fallen in love--really--" + +"It was not in the least difficult," I protested. + +"And you don't even know my _name_--" + +"I know, however, what it is going to be," said I; "and Mrs. 'Enry +'Awkins, as we'll put it, has found favour in the judgment of +connoisseurs. So after dinner--in an hour--?" + +"Oh, very well! since you're an author and insist, I will be ready, in +an hour, to decline you, with thanks." + +"Rejection not implying any lack of merit," I suggested. "This is +damnable iteration; but I am accustomed to it." + +But by this, Mrs. Provis was gathering eyes around the table, and her +guests arose, with the usual outburst of conversation, and swishing of +dresses, and the not always unpremeditated dropping of handkerchiefs and +fans. Mrs. Clement Dumby bore down upon us now, a determined and +generously proportioned figure in her notorious black silk. + +"Really," said she, aggressively, "I never saw two people more +engrossed. My dear Mrs. Barry-Smith, you have been so taken up with Mr. +Townsend, all during dinner, that I haven't had a chance to welcome you +to Lichfield. Your mother and I were at school together, you know. And +your husband was quite a beau of mine. So I don't feel, now, at all as +if we were strangers--" + +And thus she bore Elena off, and I knew that within ten minutes Elena +would have been warned against me, as "not quite a desirable +acquaintance, you know, my dear, and it is only my duty to tell you that +as a young and attractive married woman--" + + + 2 + +"And so," I said in my soul, as the men redistributed themselves, "she +is married,--married while you were pottering with books and the turn of +phrases and immortality and such trifles--oh, you ass! And to a man +named Barry-Smith--damn him, I wonder whether he is the hungry scut that +hasn't had his hair cut this fall, or the blancmange-bellied one with +the mashed-strawberry nose? Yes, I know everybody else. And Jimmy Travis +is telling a funny story, so _laugh_! People will think you are grieving +over Rosalind.... But why in heaven's name isn't Jimmy at home this very +moment,--with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of +paregoric on his mantelpiece,--instead of here, grinning like a fool +over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to +marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron +that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren't _you_ married--married +years ago,--with a home of your own, and a victoria for Mrs. Townsend +and bills from the kindergarten every quarter? Oh, you bartender of +verbal cocktails! I believe your worst enemy flung your mind at you in a +moment of unbridled hatred." + +So I snapped the stem of my glass carefully, and scowled with morose +disapproval at the unconscious Mr. Travis, and his now-applauded and +very Fescennine jest.... + + + 3 + +I found her inspecting a bulky folio with remarkable interest. There was +a lamp, with a red shade, that cast a glow over her, such as one +sometimes sees reflected from a great fire. The people about us were +chattering idiotically, and something inside my throat prevented my +breathing properly, and I was miserable. + +"Mrs. Barry-Smith,"--thus I began,--"if you've the tiniest scrap of pity +in your heart for a very presumptuous, blundering and unhappy person, I +pray you to forgive and to forget, as people say, all that I have +blatted out to you. I spoke, as I thought, to a free woman, who had the +right to listen to my boyish talk, even though she might elect to laugh +at it. And now I hardly dare to ask forgiveness." + +Mrs. Barry-Smith inspected a view of the Matterhorn, with careful +deliberation. "Forgiveness?" said she. + +"Indeed," said I, "I _don't_ deserve it." And I smiled most resolutely. +"I had always known that somewhere, somehow, you would come into my life +again. It has been my dream all these two years; but I dream carelessly. +My visions had not included this--obstacle." + +She made wide eyes at me. "What?" said she. + +"Your husband," I suggested, delicately. + +The eyes flashed. And a view of Monaco, to all appearances, awoke some +pleasing recollection. "I confess," said Mrs. Barry-Smith, "that--for +the time--I had quite forgotten him. I--I reckon you must think me +very horrid?" + +But she was at pains to accompany this query with a broadside that +rendered such a supposition most unthinkable. And so-- + +"I think you--" My speech was hushed and breathless, and ended in a +click of the teeth. "Oh, don't let's go into the minor details," +I pleaded. + +Then Mrs. Barry-Smith descended to a truism. "It is usually better not +to," said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing +the facade of Notre Dame, "You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so much +older than I--" + +"I would prefer that. Of course, though, it is none of my business." + +"You see, you came and went so suddenly that--of course I never thought +to see you again--not that I ever thought about it, I reckon--" Her +candour would have been cruel had it not been reassuringly +over-emphasized. "And Mr. Barry-Smith was very pressing--" + +"He would be," I assented, after consideration. "It is, indeed, the +single point in his outrageous conduct I am willing to condone." + +"--and he was a great friend of my father's, and I _liked_ him--" + +"So you married him and lived together ever afterward, without ever +throwing the tureen at each other. That is the most modern version; but +there is usually a footnote concerning the bread-and-butter plates." + +She smiled, inscrutably, a sphinx in Dresden china. "And yet," she +murmured, plaintively, "I _would_ like to know what you think of me." + +"Why, prefacing with the announcement that I pray God I may never see +you after to-night, I think you the most adorable creature He ever made. +What does it matter now? I have lost you. I think--ah, desire o' the +world, what can I think of you? The notion of you dazzles me like +flame,--and I dare not think of you, for I love you." + +"Yes?" she queried, sweetly; "then I reckon Mrs. Dumby was right after +all. She said you were a most depraved person and that, as a young +and--well, _she_ said it, you know--attractive widow--" + +"H'm!" said I; and I sat down. "Elena Barry-Smith," I added, "you are an +unmitigated and unconscionable and unpardonable rascal. There is just +one punishment which would be adequate to meet your case; and I warn you +that I mean to inflict it. Why, how dare you be a widow! The court +decides it is unable to put up with any such nonsense, and that you've +got to stop it at once." + +"Really," said she, tossing her head and moving swiftly, "one would +think we _were_ on a desert island!" + +"Or a strange roof"--and I laughed, contentedly. "Meanwhile, about that +ring--it should be, I think, a heavy, Byzantine ring, with the stones +sunk deep in the dull gold. Yes, we'll have six stones in it; say, R, a +ruby; O, an opal; B, a beryl; E, an emerald; R, a ruby again, I suppose; +and T, a topaz. Elena, that's the very ring I mean to buy as soon as +I've had breakfast, tomorrow, as a token of my mortgage on the desire of +the world, and as the badge of your impendent slavery." And I reflected +that Rosalind had, after all, behaved commendably in humiliating me by +so promptly returning this ring. + +Very calmly Elena Barry-Smith regarded the Bay of Naples; very calmly +she turned to the Taj Mahal. "An obese young Lochinvar," she reflected +aloud, "who has seen me twice, unblushingly assumes he is about to marry +me! Of course," she sighed, quite tolerantly, "I know he is clean out of +his head, for otherwise--" "Yes,--otherwise?" I prompted. + +"--he would never ask me to wear an opal. Why," she cried in horror, "I +couldn't think of it!" "You mean--?" said I. + +She closed the album, with firmness. "Why, you are just a child," said +Mrs. Barry-Smith. "We are utter strangers to each other. Please remember +that, for all you know, I may have an unbridled temper, or an imported +complexion, or a liking for old man Ibsen. What you ask--only you don't, +you simply assume it,--is preposterous. And besides, opals +_are_ unlucky." + +"Desire o' the world," I said, in dolorous wise, "I have just remembered +the black-lace mitts and reticule you left upon the dinner-table. Oh, +truly, I had meant to bring 'em to you--Only _do_ you think it quite +good form to put on those cloth-sided shoes when you've been invited to +a real party?" + +For a moment Mrs. Barry-Smith regarded me critically. Then she shook her +head, and tried to frown, and reopened the album, and inspected the +crater of Vesuvius, and quite frankly laughed. And a tender, pink-tipped +hand rested upon my arm for an instant,--a brief instant, yet pulsing +with a sense of many lights and of music playing somewhere, and of a +man's heart keeping time to it. + +"If you were to make it an onyx--" said Mrs. Barry-Smith. + + + + +21. + +_He is Urged to Desert His Galley_ + + +She had been a widow even when I first encountered her in Liege. I may +have passed her dozens of times, only she was in mourning then, for +Barry-Smith, and so I never really saw her. + +It seems, though, that "in the second year" it is permissible to wear +pink garments in the privacy of your own apartments, and that if people +see you in them, accidentally, it is simply their own fault. + +And very often they are punished for it; as most certainly was I, for +Elena led me a devil's dance of jealousy, and rapture, and abject +misery, and suspicion, and supreme content, that next four months. She +and her mother had rented a house on Regis Avenue for the winter; and I +frequented it with zeal. Mrs. Vokins said I "came reg'lar as +the milkman." + + + 2 + +Now of Mrs. Vokins I desire to speak with the greatest respect, if only +for the reason that she was Elena Barry-Smith's mother. Mrs. Vokins had, +no doubt, the kindest heart in the world; but she had spent the first +thirty years of her life in a mountain-girdled village, and after her +husband's wonderful luck--if you will permit me her vernacular,--in +being "let in on the groundfloor" when the Amalgamated Tobacco Company +was organised, I believe that Mrs. Vokins was never again quite at ease. + +I am abysmally sure she never grew accustomed to being waited on by any +servant other than a girl who "came in by the day"; though, oddly +enough, she was incessantly harassed by the suspicion that one or +another "good-for-nothing nigger was getting ready to quit." Her time +was about equally devoted to tending her canary, Bill Bryan, and to +furthering an apparently diurnal desire to have supper served a quarter +of an hour earlier to-night, "so that the servants can get off." + +Finally Mrs. Vokins considered that "a good woman's place was right in +her own home, with a nice clean kitchen," and was used to declare that +the fummadiddles of Mrs. Carrie Nation--who was in New York that winter, +you may remember, advocating Prohibition,--would never have been stood +for where Mrs. Vokins was riz. Them Yankee huzzies, she estimated, did +beat her time. + + + 3 + +It was, and is, the oddest thing I ever knew of that Elena could have +been her daughter. Though, mind you, even to-day, I cannot commit myself +to any statement whatever as concerns Elena Barry-Smith, beyond +asserting that she was beautiful. I am willing to concede that since the +world's creation there may have lived, say, six or seven women who were +equally good to look upon; but at the bottom of my heart I know the +concession is simply verbal. For she was not pretty; she was not +handsome; she was beautiful. Indeed, I sometimes thought her beauty +overshadowed any serious consideration of the woman who wore it, just as +in admiration of a picture you rarely think to wonder what sort of +canvas it is painted on. + +Yes, I am quite sure, upon reflection, that to Elena Barry-Smith her +beauty was a sort of tyrant. She devoted her life, I think, to the +retention of her charms; and what with the fixed seven hours for +sleep--no more and not a moment less,--the rigid limits of her diet, the +walking of exactly five miles a day, and her mathematical adherence to a +predetermined programme of massage and hair-treatment and manicuring and +face-creams and so on, Elena had hardly two hours in a day at her +own disposal. + +She would as soon have thought of sacrificing her afternoon walk to the +Musgrave Monument and back, as of having a front-tooth unnecessarily +removed; and would as willingly have partaken of prussic acid as of +candy or potatoes. She was, in fine, an artist of the truest type, in +that she immolated her body, and her own preferences, in the cause +of beauty. + +Nor was she vain, or stupid either, though what I have written vaguely +sounds as though she were both. She was just Elena Barry-Smith, of whom +your memory was always how beautiful she had been at this or that +particular moment, rather than what she said or did. And I believe that +every man in Lichfield was in love with her. + +But, in recollection of any person with whom you have had intimate and +tender intercourse, the pre-eminent feature is the big host of questions +which you cannot answer, or not, at least, with certainty.... + + + 4 + +For instance: the night of the Allardyce dance, after seeing Elena home, +I stepped in for a moment to get warm and have her mix me a highball. We +sat for a considerable while on the long sofa in the dimly-lighted +dining room, talking in whispers so as not to disturb the rest of the +house: and Elena was unusually beautiful that night, and I was more than +usually in love, more thanks to three of the five drinks she mixed.... + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she stated, sighing. + +I did not say anything. + +"Oh, well, then--! If you will just promise me," she stipulated, "that +you will never in any way refer to it afterwards--" + +So I promised.... And the next day she met me, cool as the proverbial +cucumber, and never once did she "refer to it afterwards," nor did I +think it wise to do so either. But the incident, however delightful, +puzzled me. It puzzles me even now.... + + + 5 + +In any event, she was not only beautiful but exceedingly well-to-do +likewise, since her dead father and her husband also had provided for +her amply; and Lichfield sniggered in consequence, and as a matter of +course assumed my devotion to be of astute and mercenary origin. But I +had, in this period, a variety of reasons to know that Lichfield was for +once entirely in the wrong; and that what Lichfield mistook to be the +begetter of, was in reality--so we will phrase it--the almost +unnecessary augmenter of my infatuation. Of course I did not exactly +object to her having money.... + +Meantime Elena was profoundly various. I told her once that being +married to her would be the very next thing to owning a harem. And in +consequence of this same mutability, it was as late as March before +Elena Barry-Smith made up her mind to marry me; and I was so deliciously +perturbed that the same night I wrote to tell Bettie Hamlyn all about +it. I had accepted Rosalind more calmly somehow. Now I was dithyrambic; +and you would never have suspected I had lived within fifty miles of +Bettie for an entire two years without attempting to communicate with +her, for very certainly my letter did not touch upon the fact. I was, in +fine, supremely happy, and I wanted Bettie, first of all, to know of +this circumstance, because my happiness had always made her happy too. + +The act was natural enough; only Elena telephoned, at nine the following +morning, that she had altered her intention. + +"My regret is beyond expression," said I, politely, "I shall come for my +tea at five, however." + +She entered upon a blurred protest. "You have already broken my heart," +I said, with some severity, "and now it would appear you contemplate +swindling the remainder of my anatomy out of its deserts. You are a +curmudgeon." And I hung up the receiver. + +And my first thought was, "Oh, how gladly I would give the gold of Ormus +and of Alaska just to have my letter back!" But I had mailed it, +shuffling to the corner in my slippers, and without any collar on, in +the hushed middle of the night, because my letter had seemed so +important then. + + + 6 + +"Will you not have me, lady?" I began that afternoon. + +"No, my lord," she demurely responded, "for I've decided it would be too +much like living in my Sunday-clothes." + +And "I give it up. So what's the answer?" was my annotation. + +"Oh, I'm not making jokes to-day. Why are you so--Oh, as we used to say +at school," she re-began, _"Que diable allais-tu faire dans +cette galere?"_ + +"I was born in a vale of tears, Elena, and must take the consequences of +being found in such a situation." + +She came to me, and her finger-tips touched my hand ever so lightly. +"That is another quotation, I suppose. And it is one other reason why I +mean not to marry you. Frankly, you bore me to death with your +erudition; you are three-quarters in love with me, but you pay heaps +less attention to what I say about anything than to what Aristotle or +some other old fellow said about it. Oh, that I should have lived to be +jealous of Aristotle! Indeed I am, for I have the misfortune to be +hideously in love with you. You are so exactly the sort of infant I +would like to adopt." + +"Love," I suggested, "while no longer an excuse for marriage, is at +least a palliation." + +"Listen, dear. From the first I have liked you, but that was not very +strange, because I like almost everybody; but it was strange I should +have remembered you and have liked the idea of you ever since you went +away that first time." + +"Oh, well, this once I will excuse you--" + +"But it happened in this way: I had found everybody--very nice, you +know--particularly the men,--and the things which cannot be laughed at I +had always put aside as not worth thinking about. You like to laugh, +too, but I have always known--and sometimes it gets me real mad to think +about it, I can tell you--that you could be in earnest if you chose, and +I can't. And that makes me a little sorry and tremendously glad, +because, quite frankly, I _am_ head over heels in love with you. That is +why I don't intend to marry you." + +And I was not a little at sea. "Oh, very well!" I pleasantly announced, +"I shall become a prominent citizen at once, if that's all that is +necessary. I will join every one of the patriotic societies, and sit +perpetually on platforms with a perspiring water-pitcher, and unveil +things every week, with felicitous allusions to the glorious past of our +grand old State; and have columns of applause in brackets on the front +page of the _Courier-Herald_. I will even go into civic politics, if you +insist upon it, and leave round-cornered cards at all the drugstores, so +that everybody who buys a cigar will know I am subject to the Democratic +primary. I wonder, by the way, if people ever survive that malady? It +sounds to me a deal more dangerous that epilepsy, say, yet lots of +persons seem to have it--" + +But Elena was not listening. "You know," she re-began, "I could get out +of it all very gracefully by telling you you drink too much. You +couldn't argue it, you know--particularly after your behavior +last Tuesday." + +"Oh, now and then one must be sociable. You aren't a prude, Elena--" + +"However, I am not really afraid of that, somehow. I even confess I +don't actually _mind_ your being rather good for nothing. No woman ever +really does, though she has her preference, and pretends, of course, to +mind a great deal. What I mean, then, is this: You don't marry just me. +I--I have very few relations, just two brothers and my mother; yet, in a +sense, you know, you marry them as well. But I don't believe you would +like being married to them. They are so different from you, dear. Your +whole view-point of life is different--" + +I had begun to speak when she broke in: "No, don't say anything, please, +until I'm quite, quite through. My brothers are the most admirable men I +ever knew. I love them more than I can say. I trust them more than I do +you. But they are just _good_. They don't fail in the really important +things of life, but they are remiss in little ways, they--they don't +_care_ for the little elegantnesses, if that's a word. Even Arthur chews +tobacco when he feels inclined. And he thinks no _man_ would smoke a +cigarette. Oh, I can't explain just what I mean--" + +"I think I understand, Elena. Suppose we let it pass as said." + +"And Mamma is not--we'll say, particularly highly educated. Oh, you've +been very nice to her. She adores you. You won _her_ over completely +when you took so much trouble to get her the out-of-print paper +novels--about the village maidens and the wicked dukes--in that idiotic +Carnation Series she is always reading. The whole affair was just like +both of you, I think." + +"But, oh, my dear--!" I laughed. + +"No, not one man in a thousand would have remembered it after she had +said she did think the titles 'were real tasty'; and I don't believe any +other man in the world would have spent a week in rummaging the +second-hand bookstores, until he found them. Only I don't know, even +yet, whether it was really kindness, or just cleverness that put you up +to it--on account of me. And I do know that you are nice to her in +pretty much the same way you were nice to the negro cook yesterday. And +I have had more advantages than she's had. But at bottom I'm really just +like her. You'd find it out some day. And--and that is what I mean, +I think." + +I spoke at some length. It was atrocious nonsense which I spoke; in any +event, it looked like atrocious nonsense when I wrote it down just now, +and so I tore it up. But I was quite sincere throughout that moment; it +is the Townsend handicap, I suspect, always to be perfectly sincere for +the moment. + +"Oh, well!" she said; "I'll think about it." + + + 7 + +That night Elena and I played bridge against Nannie Allsotts and Warwick +Risby. I was very much in love with Elena, but I hold it against her, +even now, that she insisted on discarding from strength. However, there +was to be a little supper afterward, and you may depend upon it that +Mrs. Vokins was seeing to its preparation. + +She came into the room about eleven o'clock, beaming with kindliness and +flushed--I am sure,--by some slight previous commerce with the +kitchen-fire. + +"Well, well!" said Mrs. Vokins, comfortably; "and who's a-beating?" + +I looked up. I must protest, until my final day, I could not help it. +"Why, we is," I said. + +And Nannie Allsotts giggled, ever so slightly, and Warwick Risby had +half risen, with a quite infuriate face, and I knew that by to-morrow +the affair would be public property, and promptly lost the game and +rubber. Afterward we had our supper. + +When the others had gone--for my footing in the house was such that I, +by ordinary, stayed a moment or two after the others had gone,--Elena +Barry-Smith came to me and soundly boxed my jaws. + +"That," she said, "is one way to deal with you." + +A minute ago I had been ashamed of myself. I had not room to be that +now; I was too full of anger. "I did make rather a mess of it," I +equably remarked, "but, you see, Nannie had shown strength in diamonds, +and I simply couldn't resist the finesse. So they made every one of +their clubs. And I hadn't any business to take the chance of course at +that stage, with the ace right in my hand--" + +"Arthur would have said, before he'd thought of it, 'You damn fool--!' +And then he would have apologised for forgetting himself in the presence +of a lady," she said, in a sorry little voice. "Yes, you--you _have_ +hurt me," she presently continued,--"just as you meant to do, if that's +a comfort to you. I feel as though I'd smacked a marble statue. You are +the sort that used to take snuff just before they had their heads cut +off, and when _they_ were in the wrong. And I'm not. That's always been +the trouble." + +"Elena!" I began,--"wait, just a moment! I'm in anger now--!" It was not +much to stammer out, but for me, who have the Townsend temper, it was +very hard to say. + +"You talk about loving me! and I believe you do love me, in at any rate +a sort of way. But you'll never forget, you never _have_ forgotten, +those ancestors of yours who were in the House of Burgesses when I +hadn't any ancestors at all. It isn't fair, because we haven't got the +chance to pick our parents, and it's absurd, and--it's true. The woman +is my mother, and I'll be like her some day, very probably. Yes, she +_is_ ignorant and tacky, and at times she is ridiculous. She hadn't even +the smartness to notice it when you made a fool of her; and if anybody +were to explain it to her she would just laugh and say, 'Law, I don't +mind, because young people always have to have their fun, I reckon.' And +she would forgive you! Why, she adores you! she's been telling me for +months that you're 'a heap the nicest young man that visits with me.'" + +Afterward Elena paused for an instant. "I think that is all," she said. +"It's a difference that isn't curable. Yes, I simply wanted to tell you +that much, and then ask you to go, I believe--" + +"So you don't wish me, Elena, in the venerable phrase, to make an honest +woman of you?" + +She had half turned, standing, in pink and silver fripperies, with one +bared arm resting on the chair back, in one of her loveliest attitudes. +"What do you mean?" + +"I was referring to what happened the other night, after the Allardyce +dance." + +And Elena smiled rather strangely. "You baby! how much would it shock +you if I told you no woman really minds about that either? Any way, you +have broken your solemn promise," she said, with indignation. + +"Ah, but perfidy seemed, somehow, in tone with an establishment wherein +one concludes the evening's entertainment by physical assault upon the +guests. Frankly, my dear"--I observed, with my most patronizing languor, +--"your breeding is not quite that to which I have been accustomed, and +I have had a rather startling glimpse of Lena Vokins, with all the +laboriously acquired veneering peeling off. Still, in view of +everything, I suppose I do owe it to you to marry you, if you insist--" + +"Insist! I wouldn't wipe my feet on you!" + +"That especial demonstration of affection was not, as I recall, +requested of you. So it is all off? along with the veneering, eh? Well, +perhaps I did attach too much importance to that diverting epilogue to +the Allardyce dance. And as you say, Elena--and I take your word for it, +gladly,--once one has become used to granting these little favors +indiscriminately--" + +"Get out of my house!" Elena said, quite splendid in her fury, "or I +will have you horsewhipped. I was fond of you. You would not let me be +in peace. And I didn't know you until to-night for the sneering, +stuck-up dirty beast you are at heart--" She came nearer, and her +glittering eyes narrowed. "And you have no hold on me, no letters to +blackmail me with, and nobody anywhere would take your word for anything +against mine. You would only be whipped by some real man, and probably +shot. So do you remember to keep a watch upon that lying, sneering mouth +of yours! And do you get out of my house!" + +"It is only rented," I submitted: "yet, after all, to boast +vaingloriously of their possessions is pardonable in those who have +risen in the world, and aren't quite accustomed to it...." There were a +pair of us when it came to tempers. + + + 8 + +And I went homeward almost physically sick with rage. I knew, even then, +that, while Elena would forgive me in the outcome, if I set about the +matter properly, I could never bring myself to ask forgiveness. If only +she had been in the wrong, I could have eagerly gone back and have +submitted to the extremest and the most outrageous tyranny she +could devise. + +But--although I would never have blackmailed her, I think,--she had been +mainly in the right. She had humiliated me, with a certain lack of +decorum, to be sure, but with some justice: and to pardon plain +retaliation is beyond the compass of humanity. At least, it ranks among +achievements which have always baffled me. + + + + +22. + +_He Cleans the Slate_ + + +It was within a month of this other disaster that Jasper Hardress came +to America, accompanied by his wife. They planned a tour of the States, +which they had not visited in seven years, and more particularly, as his +forerunning letter said, they meant to investigate certain mining +properties which Hardress had acquired in Montana. So, not unstirred by +trepidations, I met them at the pier. + +For I was already in New York, in part to see a volume of my short +stories through the press--which you may or may not have read, in its +elaborate "gift-book" form, under the title of _The Aspirants_,--and in +part about less edifying employments. I was trying to forget Elena, and +in Lichfield it was not possible to induce such forgetfulness without +affording unmerited pleasure for gabbling busybodies.... It was not in +me to apologise, except in a letter, where the wording and interminable +tinkering with phraseology would enable me to forget it was I who was +apologising, until a bit of nearly perfect prose was safely mailed; and +I knew she would not read any letter from me, because Elena comprehended +that I always persuaded her to do what I prompted, if only she +listened to me. + +As it was, I talked that morning for an hour or more with fat Jasper +Hardress.... Even now I find the two errands which brought him to +America of not unlaughable incongruity. + + + 2 + +For, first, he came as an agent of the Philomatheans, who were +endeavouring to secure official recognition by the churches of America +and England of a revised translation of, in any event, the New +Testament. + +He told me of a variety of buttressing reasons,--which I suppose are +well-founded, though I must confess I never investigated the matter. He +told me how the Authorised Version was a paraphrase, abounding in +confusions and in mistranslations from the Greek of Erasmus's New +Testament, which, as the author confessed, "was rather tumbled headlong +into the world than edited." And he told me how the edition of Erasmus +itself was hastily prepared from careless copies of inaccurate +transcriptions of yet further copies of divers manuscripts of which the +oldest dates no further back than the fourth century, and is in turn, +most probably, just a liberal paraphrase, as all the others are, of +still another manuscript. + +So that the English version, as I gathered, may be very fine English, +but has scarcely a leg left, when you consider it as a safe foundation +for superiority, or pillorying, or as a guide in conduct. + +I suspect, however, that Jasper Hardress somewhat overstated the case, +since on this subject he was a fanatic. To me it seemed rather quaint +that Hardress or anybody else should be bothering about such things. + +And as he feelingly declaimed concerning the great Uncials, and +explained why in this particular verse the Ephraem manuscript was in the +right, whereas to probe the meaning of the following verse we clearly +must regard the Syriac version as of supreme authority, I could well +understand how at one period or another his young wife must inevitably +have considered him in the light of a rather tedious person. + +And I told him that it hardly mattered, because the true test of a +church-member was the ability to believe that when the Bible said +anything inconvenient it really meant something else. + +But actually I was not feeling over-cheerful, because Jasper's second +object in coming to America was to leave his wife in Sioux City, so that +she could secure a divorce from him, on quite un-Scriptural grounds. +Hardress told me of this at least without any excitement. He did not +blame her. He was too old for her, too stolid, too dissimilar in every +respect, he said. Their marriage had been a mistake, that was all,--a +mismating, as many marriages were. She wanted to marry someone else, he +rather thought. + +And "Oh, Lord! yes!" I inwardly groaned. "She probably does." + +Aloud I said: "But the Bible--Yes, I _am_ provincial at bottom. It's +because I always think in nigger-English and translate it when I talk. +It was my Mammy, you see, who taught me how to think,--and in our +nigger-English, what the Bible says is true. Why, Jasper, even this +Revised Version of yours says flatly that a man--" + +"Child, child!" said Jasper Hardress, and he patted my hair, and I +really think it crinkled under his touch, "when you grow up--if indeed +you ever do,--you will find that a man's feeling for his wife and the +mother of his children, is not altogether limited by what he has read in +a book. He wants--well, just her happiness." + +I looked up without thinking; and the aspect of that gross and +unattractive man humiliated me. He had reached a height denied to such +as I; and inwardly I cursed and envied this fat Jasper Hardress.... I +would have told him everything, had not the waiter come just then. + + + 3 + +And the same afternoon I was alone with Gillian Hardress, for the first +time in somewhat more than two years. We had never written each other; I +had been too cautious for that; and now when the lean, handsome woman +came toward me, murmuring "Jack--" very tenderly,--for she had always +called me Jack, you may remember,--I raised a hand in protest. + +"No,--that is done with, Jill. That is dead and buried now, my dear." + +She remained motionless; only her eyes, which were like chrysoberyls, +seemed to grow larger and yet more large. There was no anger in them, +only an augmenting wonder. + +"Ah, yes," she said at last, and seemed again to breathe; "so that is +dead and buried--in two years." Gillian Hardress spoke with laborious +precision, like a person struggling with a foreign language, and +articulating each word to its least sound before laying tongue to its +successor. + +"Yes! we have done with each other, once for all," said I, half angrily. +"I wash my hands of the affair, I clean the slate today. I am not polite +about it, and--I am sorry, dear. But I talked with your husband this +morning, and I will deceive Jasper Hardress no longer. The man loves you +as I never dreamed of loving any woman, as I am incapable of loving any +woman. He dwarfs us. Oh, go and tell him, so that he may kill us both! I +wish to God he would!" + +Mrs. Hardress said: "You have planned to marry. It is time the prodigal +marry and settle down, is it not? So long as we were in England it did +not matter, except to that Faroy girl you seduced and flung out into the +streets--" + +"I naturally let her go when I found out--" + +"As if I cared about the creature! She's done with. But now we are in +America, and Mr. Townsend desires no entanglements just now that might +prevent an advantageous marriage. So he is smitten--very +conveniently--with remorse." Gillian began to laugh. "And he discovers +that Jasper Hardress is a better man than he. Have I not always known +that, Jack?" + +Now came a silence. "I cannot argue with you as to my motives. Let us +have no scene, my dear--" + +"God keep us respectable!" the woman said; and then: "No; I can afford +to make no scene. I can only long to be omnipotent for just one instant +that I might deal with you, Robert Townsend, as I desire--and even then, +heaven help me, I would not do it!" Mrs. Hardress sat down upon the +divan and laughed, but this time naturally. "So! it is done with? I have +had my dismissal, and, in common justice, you ought to admit that I have +received it not all ungracefully." + +"From the first," I said, "you have been the most wonderful woman I have +ever known." And I knew that I was sincerely fond of Gillian Hardress. + +"But please go now," she said, "and have a telegram this evening that +will call you home, or to Kamchatka, or to Ecuador, or anywhere, on +unavoidable business. No, it is not because I loathe the sight of you or +for any melodramatic reason of that sort. It is because, I think, I had +fancied you to be not completely self-centred, after all, and I cannot +bear to face my own idiocy. Why, don't you realize it was only yesterday +you borrowed money from Jasper Hardress--some more money!" + +"Well, but he insisted on it: and I owed it to you to do nothing to +arouse his suspicions--" + +"And I don't hate you even now! I wish God would explain to me why He +made women so." + +"You accuse me of selfishness," I cried. "Ah, let us distinguish, for +there is at times a deal of virtue in this vice. A man who devotes +himself to any particular art or pursuit, for instance, becomes more and +more enamoured of it as time wears on, because he comes to identify it +with himself; and a husband is fonder of his wife than of any other +woman,--at least, he ought to be,--not because he considers her the most +beautiful and attractive person of his acquaintance, but because she is +the one in whom he is most interested and concerned. He has a +proprietary interest in her welfare, and she is in a manner part of +himself. Thus the arts flourish and the home-circle is maintained, and +all through selfishness." + +I snapped my fingers airily; I was trying, of course, to disgust her by +my callousness. And it appeared I had almost succeeded. + +"Please go!" she said. + +"But surely not while we are as yet involved in a question of plain +logic? You think selfishness a vice. None the less you must concede that +the world has invariably progressed because, upon the whole, we find +civilisation to be more comfortable than barbarism; and that a wholesome +apprehension of the penitentiary enables many of us to rise to +deaconships. Why, deuce take it, Jill! I may endow a hospital because I +want to see my name over the main entrance, I may give a beggar a penny +because his gratitude puts me in a glow of benevolence that is cheap at +the price. So let us not rashly declare that selfishness is a vice, +and--let us part friends, my dear." + +And I assumed possession of the thin hands that seemed to push me from +her in a species of terror, and I gallantly lifted them to my lips. + +The ensuing event was singular. Gillian Hardress turned to the door of +her bedroom and brutally, as with two bludgeons, struck again and again +upon its panels with clenched hand. She extended her hands to me, and +everywhere their knuckles oozed blood. "You kissed them," she said, "and +even today they liked it, and so they are not clean. They will never +again be clean, my dear. But they were clean before you came." + +Then Gillian Hardress left me, and where she had touched it, the brass +door knob of her bedroom door was smeared with blood.... + + + 4 + +When I had come again to Lichfield I found that in the brief interim of +my absence Elena Barry-Smith, without announcement, had taken the train +for Washington, and had in that city married Warwick Risby. This was, I +knew, because she comprehended that, if I so elected, it was always in +my power to stop her halfway up the aisle and to dissuade her from +advancing one step farther.... "I don't know _how_ it is!--" she would +have said, in that dear quasi-petulance I knew so well.... + +But as it was, I met the two one evening at the Provises', and with +exuberant congratulation. Then straddling as a young Colossus on the +hearth-rug, and with an admonitory forefinger, I proclaimed to the +universe at large that Mrs. Risby had blighted my existence and +beseeched for Warwick some immediate and fatal and particularly +excruciating malady. In fine, I was abjectly miserable the while that I +disarmed all comment by being quite delightfully boyish for a whole +two hours. + +I must record it, though, that Mrs. Vokins patted my hand when nobody +else was looking, and said: "Oh, my dear Mr. Bob, I wish it had been +you! You was always the one I liked the best." For that, in view of +every circumstance, was humorous, and hurt as only humour can. + +So in requital, on the following morning, I mailed to Mrs. Risby some +verses. This sounds a trifle like burlesque; but Elena had always a sort +of superstitious reverence for the fact that I "wrote things." It would +not matter at all that the verses were abominable; indeed, Elena would +never discover this; she would simply set about devising an excellent +reason for not showing them to anybody, and would consider Warwick +Risby, if only for a moment, in the light of a person who, whatever his +undeniable merits, had neither the desire nor the ability to write +"poetry." And, though it was hideously petty, this was precisely what I +desired her to do. + +So I dispatched to her a sonnet-sequence which I had originally +plagiarized from the French of Theodore Passerat in honour of Stella. I +loathed sending Stella's verses to anyone else, somehow; but, after all, +my one deterrent was merely a romantic notion; and there was not time to +compose a new set. Moreover, "your eyes are blue, your speech is +gracious, but you are not she; and I am older,--and changed how +utterly!--I am no longer I, you are not you," and so on, was absolutely +appropriate. And Elena most undoubtedly knew nothing of Theodore +Passerat. And Stella, being dead, could never know what I had done. + +So I sent the verses, with a few necessitated alterations, to the +address of Mrs. Warwick Risby. + + + 5 + +I had within the week, an unsigned communication which, for a long while +afterward, I did not comprehend. It was the photograph of an infant, +with the photographer's address scratched from the cardboard and without +of course any decipherable postmark; and upon the back of the thing was +written: "His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the +flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been +upon him. Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his +morsel and his song." + +I thought it was a joke of some sort. + +Then it occurred to me that this might be--somehow--Elena's answer. It +was an interpretation which probably appealed to the Supernal +Aristophanes. + + + + +23. + +_He Reviles Destiny and Climbs a Wall_ + + +But now the spring was come again, and, as always at this season, I was +pricked with vague longings to have done with roofs and paven places. I +wanted to be in the open. I think I wanted to fall in love with +somebody, and thereby somewhat to prolong the daily half-minute, +immediately after awakening in the morning, during which I did not think +about Elena Risby. + +I was bored in Lichfield. For nothing of much consequence seemed, as I +yawned over the morning paper, to be happening anywhere. The Illinois +Legislature had broken up in a free fight, a British square had been +broken in Somaliland, and at the Aqueduct track Alado had broken his +jockey's neck. A mob had chased a negro up Broadway: Russia had demanded +that China cede the sovereignty of Manchuria; and Dr. Lyman Abbott was +explaining why the notion of equal suffrage had been abandoned finally +by thinking people. + +Such negligible matters contributed not at all to the comfort or the +discomfort of Robert Etheridge Townsend; and I was pricked with vague +sweet longings to have done with roofs and paven places. If only I +possessed a country estate, a really handsome Manor or a Grange, I was +reflecting as I looked over the "Social Items," and saw that Miss +Hugonin and Colonel Hugonin had re-opened Selwoode for the summer +months.... + +So I decided I would go to Gridlington, whither Peter Blagden had +forgotten to invite me. He was extremely glad to see me, though, to do +him justice. For Peter--by this time the inheritor of his unlamented +uncle's estate,--had, very properly, developed gout, which is, I take +it, the time-honoured appendage of affluence and, so to speak, its +trade-mark; and was, for all his wealth, unable to get up and down the +stairs of his fine house without, as we will delicately word it, the +display and, at times, the overtaxing of a copious vocabulary. + + + 2 + +I was at Gridlington entirely comfortable. It was spring, to begin with, +and out of doors in spring you always know, at twenty-five, that +something extremely pleasant is about to happen, and that She is quite +probably around the very next turn of the lane. + +Moreover, there was at Gridlington a tiny private garden which had once +been the recreation of Peter Blagden's aunt (dead now twelve years ago), +and which had remained untended since her cosseting; and I in nature +took charge of it. + +There was in the place a wilding peach-tree, which I artistically sawed +into shape and pruned and grafted, and painted all those profitable +wounds with tar; and I grew to love it, just as most people do their +children, because it was mine. And Peter, who is a person of no +sensibility, wanted to ring for a servant one night, when there was a +hint of frost and I had started out to put a bucket of water under my +tree to protect it. I informed him that he was irrevocably dead to all +the nobler sentiments, and went to the laundry and got a wash-tub. + +Peter was not infrequently obtuse. He would contend, for instance, that +it was absurd for any person to get so gloriously hot and dirty while +setting out plants, when that person objected to having a flower in the +same room. For Peter could not understand that a cut flower is a dead +or, at best, a dying thing, and therefore to considerate people is just +so much abhorrent carrion; and denied it would be really quite as +rational to decorate your person or your dinner table with the severed +heads of chickens as with those of daffodils. + +"But that is only because you are not particularly bright," I told him. +"Oh, I suppose you can't help it. But why make _all_ the actions of your +life so foolish? What good do you get out of having the gout, for +instance?" + +Whereupon Mr. Blagden desired to be informed if I considered those +with-various-adjectives-accompanied twinges in that qualified foot to be +a source of personal pleasure to the owner of the very-extensively-hiatused +foot. In which case, Mr. Blagden felt at liberty to express his opinion of +my intellectual attainments, which was of an uncomplimentary nature. + +"Because, you know," I pursued, equably, "you wouldn't have the gout if +you did not habitually overeat yourself and drink more than is good for +you. In consequence, here you are at thirty-two with a foot the same +general size and shape as a hayrick, only rather less symmetrical, and +quite unable to attend to the really serious business of life, which is +to present me to the heiress. It is a case of vicarious punishment which +strikes me as extremely unfair. You have made of your stomach a god, +Peter, and I am the one to suffer for it. You have made of your +stomach," I continued, venturing aspiringly into metaphor, "a brazen +Moloch, before which you are now calmly preparing to immolate my +prospects in life. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Peter!" + +Mr. Blagden's next observation was describable as impolite. + +"Fate, too," I lamented, in a tragic voice, "appears to have entered +into this nefarious conspiracy. Here, not two miles away, is one of the +greatest heiresses in America,--clever, I am told, beautiful, I am sure, +for I have yet to discover a woman who sees anything in the least +attractive about her,--and, above all, with the Woods millions at her +disposal. Why, Peter, Margaret Hugonin is the woman I have been looking +for these last three years. She is, to a hair, the sort of woman I have +always intended to make unhappy. And I can't even get a sight of her! +Here are you, laid up with the gout, and unable to help me; and yonder +is the heiress, making a foolish pretence at mourning for the old +curmudgeon who left her all that money, and declining to meet people. +Oh, but she is a shiftless woman, Peter! At this very moment she might +be getting better acquainted with me; at this very moment, Peter, I +might be explaining to her in what points she is utterly and entirely +different from all the other women I have ever known. And she prefers to +immure herself in Selwoode, with no better company than her father, that +ungodly old retired colonel, and a she-cousin, somewhere on the +undiscussable side of forty--when she might be engaging me in amorous +dalliance! That Miss Hugonin is a shiftless woman, I tell you! And +Fate--oh, but Fate, too, is a vixenish jade!" I cried, and shook my fist +under the nose of an imaginary Lachesis. + +"You appear," said Peter, drily, "to be unusually well-informed as to +what is going on at Selwoode." + +"You flatter me," I answered, as with proper modesty. "You must remember +that there are maids at Selwoode. You must remember that my man Byam, +is--and will be until that inevitable day when he will attempt to +blackmail me, and I shall kill him in the most lingering fashion I can +think of,--that Byam is, I say, something of a diplomatist." + +Mr. Blagden regarded me with disapproval. + +"So you've been sending your nigger cousin over to Selwoode to spy for +you! You're a damn cad, you know, Bob," he pensively observed. "Now most +people think that when you carry on like a lunatic you're simply acting +on impulse. I don't. I believe you plan it out a week ahead. I sometimes +think you are the most adroit and unblushing looker-out for number one I +ever knew; and I can't for the life of me understand why I don't turn +you out of doors." + +"I don't know where you picked up your manners," said I, reflectively, +"but it must have been in devilish low company. I would cut your +acquaintance, Peter, if I could afford it." Then I fell to pacing up and +down the floor. "I incline, as you have somewhat grossly suggested, to a +certain favouritism among the digits. And why the deuce shouldn't I? A +fortune is the only thing I need. I have good looks, you know, of a +sort; ah, I'm not vain, but both my glass and a number of women have +been kind enough to reassure me on this particular point. And that I +have a fair amount of wits my creditors will attest, who have lived +promise-crammed for the last year or two, feeding upon air like +chameleons. Then I have birth,--not that good birth ensures anything but +bad habits though, for you will observe that, by some curious freak of +nature, an old family-tree very seldom produces anything but wild oats. +And, finally, I have position. I can introduce my wife into the best +society; ah, yes, you may depend upon it, Peter, she will have the +privilege of meeting the very worst and stupidest and silliest people in +the country on perfectly equal terms. You will perceive, then, that the +one desirable thing I lack is wealth. And this I shall naturally expect +my wife to furnish. So, the point is settled, and you may give me a +cigarette." + +Peter handed me the case, with a snort. "You are a hopelessly conceited +ass," Mr. Blagden was pleased to observe, "for otherwise you would have +learned, by this, that you'll, most likely, never have the luck of +Charteris, and land a woman who will take it as a favour that you let +her pay your bills. God knows you've angled for enough of 'em!" + +"You are painfully coarse, Peter," I pointed out, with a sigh. "Indeed, +your general lack of refinement might easily lead one to think you owed +your millions to your own thrifty industry, or some equally unpleasant +attribute, rather than to your uncle's very commendable and lucrative +innovation in the line of--well, I remember it was something extremely +indigestible, but, for the moment, I forget whether it was steam-reapers +or a new sort of pickle. Yes, in a great many respects, you are +hopelessly parvenuish. This cigarette-case, for instance--studded with +diamonds and engraved with a monogram big enough for a coach-door! Why, +Peter, it simply reeks with the ostentation of honestly acquired +wealth,--and with very good tobacco, too, by the way. I shall take it, +for I am going for a walk, and I haven't any of my own. And some day I +shall pawn this jewelled abortion, Peter,--pawn it for much fine gold; +and upon the proceeds I shall make merriment for myself and for my +friends." And I pocketed the case. + +"That's all very well," Peter growled, "but you needn't try to change +the subject. You know you _have_ angled after any number of rich women +who have had sense enough, thank God, to refuse you. You didn't use to +be--but now you're quite notoriously good-for-nothing." + +"It is the one blemish," said I, sweetly, "upon an otherwise perfect +character. And it is true," I continued, after an interval of +meditation, "that I have, in my time, encountered some very foolish +women. There was, for instance, Elena Barry-Smith, who threw me over for +Warwick Risby; and Celia Reindan, who had the bad taste to prefer Teddy +Anstruther; and Rosalind Jemmett, who is, very inconsiderately, going to +marry Tom Gelwix, instead of me. These were staggeringly foolish women, +Peter, but while their taste is bad, their dinners are good, so I have +remained upon the best of terms with them. They have trodden me under +their feet, but I am the long worm that has no turning. Moreover, you +are doubtless aware of the axiomatic equality between the fish in the +sea and those out of it. I hope before long to better my position in +life. I hope--Ah, well, that would scarcely interest you. Good morning, +Peter. And I trust, when I return," I added, with chastening dignity, +"that you will evince a somewhat more Christian spirit toward the world +in general, and that your language will be rather less reminiscent of +the blood-stained buccaneer of historical fiction." + +"You're a grinning buffoon," said Peter. "You're a fat Jack-pudding. +You're an ass. Where are you going, anyway?" + +"I am going," said I, "to the extreme end of Gridlington. Afterward I am +going to climb the wall that stands between Gridlington and Selwoode." + +"And after that?" said Peter. + +I gave a gesture. "Why, after that," said I, "fortune will favour the +brave. And I, Peter, am very, very brave." + +Then I departed, whistling. In view of all my memories it had been +strangely droll to worry Peter Blagden into an abuse of marrying for +money. For this was on the twenty-eighth of April, the anniversary of +the day that Stella had died, you may remember.... + + + 3 + +And a half-hour subsequently, true to my word, I was scaling a ten-foot +stone wall, thickly overgrown with ivy. At the top of it I paused, and +sat down to take breath and to meditate, my legs meanwhile bedangling +over an as flourishing Italian garden as you would wish to see. + +"Now, I wonder," I queried, of my soul, "what will be next? There is a +very cheerful uncertainty about what will be next. It may be a +spring-gun, and it may be a bull-dog, and it may be a susceptible +heiress. But it is apt to be--No, it isn't," I amended, promptly; "it is +going to be an angel. Or perhaps it is going to be a dream. She can't be +real, you know--I am probably just dreaming her. I would be quite +certain I was just dreaming her, if this wall were not so humpy and +uncomfortable. For it stands to reason, I would not be fool enough to +dream of such unsympathetic iron spikes as I am sitting on." + +"Perhaps you are not aware," hazarded a soprano voice, "that this is +private property?" + +"Why, no," said I, very placidly; "on the contrary I was just thinking +it must be heaven. And I am tolerably certain," I commented further, in +my soul, "that you are one of the more influential seraphim." + +The girl had lifted her brows. She sat upon a semi-circular stone bench, +some twenty feet from the wall, and had apparently been reading, for a +book lay open in her lap. She now inspected me, with a sort of languid +wonder in her eyes, and I returned the scrutiny with unqualified +approval in mine. + +And in this I had reason. The heiress of Selwoode was eminently good to +look upon. + + + + +24. + +_He Reconciles Sentiment and Reason_ + + +So I regarded her for a rather lengthy interval, considering meanwhile, +with an immeasurable content how utterly and entirely impossible it +would always be to describe her. + +Clearly, it would be out of the question to trust to words, however +choicely picked, for, upon inspection, there was a delightful ambiguity +about every one of this girl's features that defied such idiotic +makeshifts. Her eyes, for example, I noted with a faint thrill of +surprise, just escaped being brown by virtue of an amber glow they had; +what colour, then, was I conscientiously to call them? + +And her hair I found a bewildering, though pleasing, mesh of shadow and +sunlight, all made up of multitudinous graduations of some anonymous +colour that seemed to vary with the light you chanced to see it in, +through the whole gamut of bronze and chestnut and gold; and where, +pray, in the bulkiest lexicon, in the very weightiest thesaurus, was I +to find the adjective which could, if but in desperation, be applied to +hair like that without trenching on sacrilege? ... For it was spring, +you must remember, and I was twenty-five. + +So that in my appraisal, you may depend upon it, her lips were quickly +passed over as a dangerous topic, and were dismissed with the mental +statement that they were red and not altogether unattractive. Whereas +her cheeks baffled me for a time,--but always with a haunting sense of +familiarity--till I had, at last, discovered they reminded me of those +little tatters of cloud that sometimes float about the setting +sun,--those irresolute wisps which cannot quite decide whether to be +pink or white, and waver through their tiny lives between the +two colours. + + + 2 + +To this effect, then, I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon +the wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. By +and by, though, the girl sighed. + +"You are placing me in an extremely unpleasant position," she +complained, as if wearily. "Would you mind returning to your sanatorium +and allowing me to go on reading? For I am interested in my book, and I +can't possibly go on in any comfort so long as you elect to perch up +there like Humpty-Dumpty, and grin like seven dozen Cheshire cats." + +"Now, that," I spoke, in absent wise, "is but another instance of the +widely prevalent desire to have me serve as scapegoat for the sins of +all humanity. I am being blamed now for sitting on top of this wall. One +would think I wanted to sit here. One would actually think," I cried, +and raised my eyes to heaven, "that sitting on the very humpiest kind of +iron spikes was my favorite form of recreation! No,--in the interests of +justice," I continued, and fell into a milder tone, "I must ask you to +place the blame where it more rightfully belongs. The injuries which are +within the moment being inflicted on my sensitive nature, and, +incidentally, upon my not overstocked wardrobe, I am willing to pass +over. But the claims of justice are everywhere paramount. Miss Hugonin, +and Miss Hugonin alone, is responsible for my present emulation of +Mohammed's coffin, and upon that responsibility I am compelled +to insist." + +"May one suggest," she queried gently, "that you are +probably--mistaken?" + +I sketched a bow. "Recognising your present point of view," said I, +gallantly, "I thank you for the kindly euphemism. But may one allowably +demonstrate the fallacy of this same point of view? I thank you: for +silence, I am told, is proverbially equal to assent. I am, then, one +Robert Townsend, by birth a gentleman, by courtesy an author, by +inclination an idler, and by lucky chance a guest of Mr. Peter Blagden, +whose flourishing estate extends indefinitely yonder to the rear of my +coat-tails. My hobby chances to be gardening. I am a connoisseur, an +admirer, a devotee of gardens. It is, indeed, hereditary among the +Townsends; a love for gardens runs in our family just as a love for gin +runs in less favoured races. It is with us an irresistible passion. The +very founder of our family--one Adam, whom you may have heard of,--was a +gardener. Owing to the unfortunate loss of his position, the family +since then has sunken somewhat in the world; but time and poverty alike +have proven powerless against our horticultural tastes and botanical +inclinations. And then," cried I, with a flourish, "and then, what +follows logically?" + +"Why, if you are not more careful," she languidly made answer, "I am +afraid that, owing to the laws of gravitation, a broken neck is what +follows logically." + +"You are a rogue," I commented, in my soul, "and I like you all the +better for it." + +Aloud, I stated: "What follows is that we can no more keep away from a +creditable sort of garden than a moth can from a lighted candle. +Consider, then, my position. Here am I on one side of the wall, and with +my peach-tree, to be sure--but on the other side is one of the most +famous masterpieces of formal gardening in the whole country. Am I to +blame if I succumb to the temptation? Surely not," I argued; "for surely +to any fair-minded person it will be at once apparent that I am brought +to my present very uncomfortable position upon the points of these very +humpy iron spikes by a simple combination of atavism and +injustice,--atavism because hereditary inclination draws me irresistibly +to the top of the wall, and injustice because Miss Hugonin's perfectly +unreasonable refusal to admit visitors prevents my coming any farther. +Surely, that is at once apparent?" + +But now the girl yielded to my grave face, and broke into a clear, +rippling carol of mirth. She laughed from the chest, this woman. And +perched in insecure discomfort on my wall, I found time to rejoice that +I had finally discovered that rarity of rarities, a woman who neither +giggles nor cackles, but has found the happy mean between these two +abominations, and knows how to laugh. + +"I have heard of you, Mr. Townsend," she said at last. "Oh, yes, I have +heard a deal of you. And I remember now that I never heard you were +suspected of sanity." + +"Common-sense," I informed her, from my pedestal, "is confined to that +decorous class of people who never lose either their tempers or their +umbrellas. Now, I haven't any temper to speak of--or not at least in the +presence of ladies,--and, so far, I have managed to avoid laying aside +anything whatever for a rainy day; so that it stands to reason I must +possess uncommon sense." + +"If that is the case," said the girl "you will kindly come down from +that wall and attempt to behave like a rational being." + +I was down--as the phrase runs,--in the twinkling of a bed-post. On +which side of the wall, I leave you to imagine. + +"--For I am sure," the girl continued, "that I--that Margaret, I should +say,--would not object in the least to your seeing the gardens, since +they interest you so tremendously. I'm Avis Beechinor, you know,--Miss +Hugonin's cousin. So, if you like, we will consider that a proper +introduction, Mr. Townsend, and I will show you the gardens, if--if you +really care to see them." + +My face, I must confess, had fallen slightly. Up to this moment, I had +not a suspicion but that it was Miss Hugonin I was talking to: and I now +reconsidered, with celerity, the information Byam had brought me +from Selwoode. + +"For, when I come to think of it," I reflected, "he simply said she was +older than Miss Hugonin. I embroidered the tale so glibly for Peter's +benefit that I was deceived by my own ornamentations. I had looked for +corkscrew ringlets and false teeth a-gleam like a new bath-tub in Miss +Hugonin's cousin,--not an absolutely, supremely, inexpressibly +unthinkable beauty like this!" I cried, in my soul. "Older! Why, good +Lord, Miss Hugonin must be an infant in arms!" + +But my audible discourse was prefaced with an eloquent gesture. "If I'd +care!" I said. "Haven't I already told you I was a connoisseur in +gardens? Why, simply look, Miss Beechinor!" I exhorted her, and threw +out my hands in a large pose of admiration. "Simply regard those +yew-hedges, and parterres, and grassy amphitheatres, and palisades, and +statues, and cascades, and everything--_everything_ that goes to make a +formal garden the most delectable sight in the world! Simply feast your +eyes upon those orderly clipped trees and the fantastic patterns those +flowers are laid out in! Why, upon my word, it looks as if all four +books of Euclid had suddenly burst into blossom! And you ask me if I +would _care_! Ah, it is evident _you_ are not a connoisseur in gardens, +Miss Beechinor!" + +And I had started on my way into this one, when the girl stopped me. + +"This must be yours," she said. "You must have spilled it coming over +the wall, Mr. Townsend." + +It was Peter's cigarette-case. + +"Why, dear me, yes!" I assented, affably. "Do you know, now, I would +have been tremendously sorry to lose that? It is a sort of present--an +unbirthday present from a quite old friend." + +She turned it over in her hand. + +"It's very handsome," she marvelled. "Such a pretty monogram! Does it +stand for Poor Idiot Boy?" + +"Eh?" said I. "P.I.B., you mean? No, that stands for Perfectly +Immaculate Behaviour. My friend gave it to me because, he said, I was so +good. And--oh, well, he added a few things to that,--partial sort of a +friend, you know,--and, really--Why, really, Miss Beechinor, it would +embarrass me to tell you what he added," I protested, and modestly waved +the subject aside. + +"Now that," my meditations ran, "is the absolute truth. Peter did tell +me I was good. And it really would embarrass me to tell her he added +'for-nothing.' So, this far, I have been a model of veracity." + +Then I took the case,--gaining thereby the bliss of momentary contact +with a velvet-soft trifle that seemed, somehow, to set my own grosser +hand a-tingle--and I cried: "Now, Miss Beechinor, you must show me the +pergola. I am excessively partial to pergolas." + +And in my soul, I wondered what a pergola looked like, and why on earth +I had been fool enough to waste the last three days in bedeviling Peter, +and how under the broad canopy of heaven I could ever have suffered from +the delusion that I had seen a really adorable woman before to-day. + + + 3 + +But, "She is entirely too adorable," I reasoned with myself, some +three-quarters of an hour later. "In fact, I regard it as positively +inconsiderate in any impecunious young person to venture to upset me in +the way she has done. Why, my heart is pounding away inside me like a +trip-hammer, and I am absolutely light-headed with good-will and charity +and benevolent intentions toward the entire universe! Oh, Avis, Avis, +you know you hadn't any right to put me in this insane state of mind!" + +I was, at this moment, retracing my steps toward the spot where I had +climbed the wall between Gridlington and Selwoode, but I paused now to +outline a reproachful gesture in the direction from which I came. + +"What do you mean by having such a name?" I queried, sadly. "Avis! Why, +it is the very soul of music, clear, and sweet and as insistent as a +bird-call, an unforgettable lyric in four letters! It is just the sort +of name a fellow cannot possibly forget. Why couldn't you have been +named Polly or Lena or Margaret, or something commonplace like that, +Avis--dear?" + +And the juxtaposition of these words appealing to my sense of euphony, I +repeated it, again and again, each time with a more relishing gusto. +"Avis dear! dear Avis! dear, _dear_ Avis!" I experimented. "Why, each +one is more hopelessly unforgettable than the other! Oh, Avis dear, why +are you so absolutely and entirely unforgettable all around? Why do you +ripple all your words together in that quaint fashion till it sounds +like a brook discoursing? Why did you crinkle up your eyes when I told +you that as yet unbotanised flower was a _Calycanthus arithmelicus_? And +why did you pout at me, Avis dear? A fellow finds it entirely too hard +to forget things like that. And, oh, dear Avis, if you only knew what +nearly happened when you pouted!" + +I had come to the wall by this, but again I paused to lament. + +"It is very inconsiderate of her, very thoughtless indeed. She might at +least have asked my permission, before upsetting my plans in life. I had +firmly intended to marry a rich woman, and now I am forming all sorts of +preposterous notions--" + +Then, on the bench where I had first seen her, I perceived a book. It +was the iron-gray book she had been reading when I interrupted her, and +I now picked it up with a sort of reverence. I regarded it as an +extremely lucky book. + +Subsequently, "Good Lord!" said I, aloud, "what luck!" + +For between the pages of Justus Miles Forman's _Journey's End_--serving +as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine +fashion,--lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle, +fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters +M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of +flourishes and irrelevant tendrils. + +"Now M. E. A. H. does not stand by any stretch of the imagination for +Avis Beechinor. Whereas it fits Margaret Elizabeth Anstruther Hugonin +uncommonly well. I wonder now--?" + +I wondered for a rather lengthy interval. + +"So Byam was right, after all. And Peter was right, too. Oh, Robert +Etheridge Townsend, your reputation must truly be malodorous, when at +your approach timid heiresses seek shelter under an alias! 'I have heard +a deal of you, Mr. Townsend'--ah, yes, she had heard. She thought I +would make love to her out of hand, I suppose, because she was +wealthy--" + +I presently flung back my head and laughed. + +"Eh, well! I will let no sordid considerations stand in the way of my +true interests. I will marry this Margaret Hugonin even though she is +rich. You have begun the comedy, my lady, and I will play it to the end. +Yes, I fell honestly in love with you when I thought you were nobody in +particular. So I am going to marry this Margaret Hugonin if she will +have me; and if she won't, I am going to commit suicide on her +door-step, with a pathetic little note in my vest-pocket forgiving her +in the most noble and wholesale manner for irrevocably blighting a +future so rich in promise. Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do if +she does not appreciate her wonderful good fortune. And if she'll have +me--why, I wouldn't change places with the Pope of Rome or the Czar of +all the Russias! Ah, no, not I! for I prefer, upon the whole, to be +immeasurably, and insanely, and unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. +Why, but just to think of an adorable girl like that having so +much money!" + +All in all, my meditations were incoherent but very pleasurable. + + + + +25. + +_He Advances in the Attack on Selwoode_ + + +"Well?" said Peter. + +"Well?" said I. + +"What's the latest quotation on heiresses?" Mr. Blagden demanded. "Was +she cruel, my boy, or was she kind? Did she set the dog on you or have +you thrashed by her father? I fancy both, for your present hilarity is +suggestive of a gentleman in the act of attendance on his own funeral." +And Peter laughed, unctuously, for his gout slumbered. + +"His attempts at wit," I reflectively confided to my wine-glass, "while +doubtless amiably intended, are, to his well-wishers, painful. I +daresay, though, he doesn't know it. We must, then, smile indulgently +upon the elephantine gambols of what he is pleased to describe as his +intellect." + +"Now, that," Peter pointed out, "is not what I would term a courteous +method of discussing a man at his own table. You are damn disagreeable +this morning, Bob. So I know, of course, that you have come another +cropper in your fortune-hunting." + +"Peter," said I, in admiration, "your sagacity at times is almost human! +I have spent a most enjoyable day, though," I continued, idly. "I have +been communing with Nature, Peter. She is about her spring-cleaning in +the woods yonder, and everywhere I have seen traces of her getting +things fixed for the summer. I have seen the sky, which was washed +overnight, and the sun, which has evidently been freshly enamelled. I +have seen the new leaves as they swayed and whispered over your +extensive domains, with the fret of spring alert in every sap cell. I +have seen the little birds as they hopped among said leaves and +commented upon the scarcity of worms. I have seen the buxom flowers as +they curtsied and danced above your flower-beds like a miniature +comic-opera chorus. And besides that--" + +"Yes?" said Peter, with a grin, "and besides that?" + +"And besides that," said I, firmly, "I have seen nothing." + +And internally I appraised this bloated Peter Blagden, and reflected +that this was the man whom Stella had loved; and I appraised myself, and +remembered that this had been the boy who once loved Stella. For, as I +have said, it was the twenty-eighth of April, the day that Stella had +died, two years ago. + + + 2 + +The next morning I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon the +wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. + +"For, in spite of appearances," I debated with myself, "it is barely +possible that the handkerchief was not hers. She may have borrowed it or +have got it by mistake, somehow. In which case, it is only reasonable to +suppose that she will miss it, and ask me if I saw it; on the contrary, +if the handkerchief is hers, she will naturally understand, when I +return the book without it, that I have feloniously detained this airy +gewgaw as a souvenir, as, so to speak, a _gage d'amour_. And, in that +event, she ought to be very much pleased and a bit embarrassed; and she +will preserve upon the topic of handkerchiefs a maidenly silence. Do you +know, Robert Etheridge Townsend, there is about you the making of a very +fine logician?" + +Then I consulted my watch, and subsequently grimaced. "It is also barely +possible," said I, "that Margaret may not come at all. In which +case--Margaret! Now, isn't that a sweet name? Isn't it the very sweetest +name in the world? Now, really, you know, it is queer her being named +Margaret--extraordinarily queer,--because Margaret has always been my +favourite woman's name. I daresay, unbeknownst to myself, I am a bit of +a prophet." + + + 3 + +But she did come. She was very much surprised to see me. + +"You!" she said, with a gesture which was practically tantamount to +disbelief. "Why, how extraordinary!" + +"You rogue!" I commented, internally: "you know it is the most natural +thing in the world." Aloud I stated: "Why, yes, I happened to notice you +forgot your book yesterday, so I dropped in--or, to be more accurate, +climbed up,--to return it." + +She reached for it. Our hands touched, with the usual result to my +pulses. Also, there were the customary manual tinglings. + +"You are very kind," was her observation, "for I am wondering which one +of the two he will marry." + +"Forman tells me he has no notion, himself." + +"Oh, then you know Justus Miles Forman! How nice! I think his stories +are just splendid, especially the way his heroes talk to photographs and +handkerchiefs and dead flowers--" + +Afterward she opened the book, and turned over its pages expectantly, +and flushed a proper shade of pink, and said nothing. + +And then, and not till then, my heart consented to resume its normal +functions. And then, also, "These iron spikes--" said its owner. + +"Yes?" she queried, innocently. + +"--so humpy," I complained. + +"Are they?" said she. "Why, then, how silly of you to continue to sit on +them!" + +The result of this comment was that we were both late for luncheon. + + + 4 + +By a peculiar coincidence, at twelve o'clock the following day, I +happened to be sitting on the same wall at the same spot. Peter said at +luncheon it was a queer thing that some people never could manage to be +on time for their meals. + +I fancy we can all form a tolerably accurate idea of what took place +during the next day or so. + +It is scarcely necessary to retail our conversations. We gossiped of +simple things. We talked very little; and, when we did talk, the most +ambitiously preambled sentences were apt to result in nothing more +prodigious than a wave of the hand, and a pause, and, not infrequently, +a heightened complexion. Altogether, then, it was not oppressively wise +or witty talk, but it was eminently satisfactory to its makers. + +As when, on the third morning, I wished to sit by Margaret on the bench, +and she declined to invite me to descend from the wall. + +"On the whole," said she, "I prefer you where you are; like all +picturesque ruins, you are most admirable at a little distance." + +"Ruins!"--and, indeed, I was not yet twenty-six,--"I am a comparatively +young man." + +As a concession, "In consideration of your past, you are tolerably well +preserved." + +"--and I am not a new brand of marmalade, either." + +"No, for that comes in glass jars; whereas, Mr. Townsend, I have heard, +is more apt to figure in family ones." + +"A pun, Miss Beechinor, is the base coinage of conversation tendered +only by the mentally dishonest." + +"--Besides, one can never have enough of marmalade." + +"I trust they give you a sufficiency of it in the nursery?" + +"Dear me, you have no idea how admirably that paternal tone sits upon +you! You would make an excellent father, Mr. Townsend. You really ought +to adopt someone. I wish you would adopt _me_, Mr. Townsend." + +I said I had other plans for her. Discreetly, she forbore to ask what +they were. + + + 5 + +"Avis--" + +"You must not call me that." + +"Why not? It's your name, isn't it" + +"Yes,--to my friends." + +"Aren't we friends--Avis?" + +"We! We have not known each other long enough, Mr. Townsend." + +"Oh, what's the difference? We are going to be friends, aren't +we--Avis?" + +"Why--why, I am sure I don't know." + +"Gracious gravy, what an admirable colour you have, Avis! Well,--I know. +And I can inform you, quite confidentially, Avis, that we are not going +to be--. friends. We are going to be--" + +"We are going to be late for luncheon," said she, in haste. +"Good-morning, Mr. Townsend." + + + 6 + +Yet, the very next day, paradoxically enough, she told me: + +"I shall always think of you as a very, very dear friend. But it is +quite impossible we should ever be anything else." + +"And why, Avis?" + +"Because--" + +"That"--after an interval--"strikes me as rather a poor reason. So, +suppose we say this June?" + +Another interval. + +"Well, Avis?" + +"Dear me, aren't those roses pretty? I wish you would get me one, Mr. +Townsend." + +"Avis, we are not discussing roses." + +"Well, they _are_ pretty." + +"Avis!"--reproachfully. + +Still another interval. + +"I--I hardly know." + +"Avis!"--with disappointment. + +"I--I believe--" + +"Avis!"--very tenderly. + +"I--I almost think so,--and the horrid man looks as if he thought so, +too!" + +There was a fourth interval, during which the girl made a complete and +careful survey of her shoes. + +Then, all in a breath, "It could not possibly be June, of course, and +you must give me until to-morrow to think about November," and a sudden +flutter of skirts. + +I returned to Gridlington treading on air. + + + 7 + +For I was, by this time, as thoroughly in love as Amadis of Gaul or +Aucassin of Beaucaire or any other hero of romance you may elect +to mention. + +Some two weeks earlier I would have scoffed at the notion of such a +thing coming to pass; and I could have demonstrated, logically enough, +that it was impossible for Robert Etheridge Townsend, with his keen +knowledge of the world and of the innumerable vanities and whims of +womankind, ever again to go the way of all flesh. But the problem, like +the puzzle of the Eleatic philosophers, had solved itself. "Achilles +cannot catch the tortoise," but he does. It was impossible for me to +fall uncomfortably deep in love--but I had done so. + +And it pricked my conscience, too, that Margaret should not know I was +aware of her identity. But she had chosen to play the comedy to the end, +and in common with the greater part of trousered humanity, I had, after +all, no insuperable objection to a rich wife; though, to do me justice, +I rarely thought of her, now, as Margaret Hugonin the heiress, but +considered her, in a more comprehensive fashion, as the one woman in the +universe whose perfections triumphantly overpeered the skyiest heights +of preciosity. + + + + +26. + + +_He Assists in the Diversion of Birds_ + +We met, then, in the clear May morning, with what occult trepidations I +cannot say. You may depend upon it, though, we had our emotions. + +And about us, spring was marshaling her pageant, and from divers nooks, +the weather-stained nymphs and fauns regarded us in candid, if +preoccupied, appraisement; and above us, the clipped ilex trees were +about a knowing conference. As for the birds, they were discussing us +without any reticence whatever, for, more favoured of chance than +imperial Solomon, they have been the confidants in any number of such +affairs, and regard the way of a man with a maid as one of the most +matter-of-fact occurrences in the world. + +"Here is he! here is she!" they shrilled. "See how they meet, see how +they greet! Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring!" And that we +two would immediately set to nest-building, they considered a foregone +conclusion. + + + 2 + +I had taken both her firm, warm hands in salutation, and held them, for +a breathing-space, between my own. And my own hands seemed to me two +very gross, and hulking, and raw, and red monstrosities, in contrast +with their dimpled captives, and my hands appeared, also, to shake +unnecessarily. + +"Now, in a moment," said I, "I am going to ask you something very +important. But, first, I have a confession to make." + +And her glad, shamed eyes bemocked me. "My lord of Burleigh!" she softly +breathed. "My liege Cophetua! _My_ king Cophetua! And did you think, +then, I was blind?" + +"Eh?" said I. + +"As if I hadn't known from the first!" the girl pouted; "as if I hadn't +known from the very first day when you dropped your cigarette case! Ah, +I had heard of you before, Peter!--of Peter, the misogynist, who was +ashamed to go a-wooing in his proper guise! Was it because you were +afraid I'd marry you for your money, Peter?--poor, timid Peter! But, oh, +Peter, Peter, what possessed you to take the name of that notorious +Robert Townsend?" she demanded, with uplifted forefinger. "Couldn't you +think of a better one, Peter?--of a more respectable one, Peter? It +really is a great relief to call you Peter at last. I've had to try so +hard to keep from doing it before, Peter." + +And in answer, I made an inarticulate sound. + +"But you were so grave about it," the girl went on, happily, "that I +almost thought you were telling the truth, Peter. Then my maid told +me--I mean, she happened to mention casually that Mr. Townsend's valet +had described his master to her as an extraordinarily handsome man. So, +then, of course, I knew you were Peter Blagden." + +"I perceive," said I, reflectively, "that Byam has been somewhat too +zealous. I begin to suspect, also, that kitchen-gossip is a mischancy +petard, and rather more than apt to hoist the engineer who employs it. +So, you thought I was Peter Blagden,--the rich Peter Blagden? Ah, yes!" + +Now the birds were caroling on a wager. "Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" +they sang. "Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring." + +But the girl gave a wordless cry at sight of the change in my face. "Oh, +how dear of you to care so much! I didn't mean that you were _ugly_, +Peter. I just meant you are so big and--and so like the baby that they +probably have on the talcum-powder boxes in Brobdingnag--" + +"Because I happen to be really Robert Townsend--the notorious Robert +Etheridge Townsend," I continued, with a smile. "I am sorry you were +deceived by the cigarette-case. I remember now; I borrowed it from +Peter. What I meant to confess was that I have known all along you were +Margaret Hugonin." + +"But I'm not," the girl said, in bewilderment. "Why--Why I _told_ you I +was Avis Beechinor." + +"This handkerchief?" I queried, and took it from my pocket. I had been +absurd enough to carry it next to my heart. + +"Oh--!" And now the tension broke, and her voice leapt to high, shrill, +half-hysterical speaking. + +"I am Avis Beechinor. I am a poor relation, a penniless cousin, a +dependent, a hanger-on, do you understand? And you--Ah, how--how funny! +Why, Margaret _always_ gives me her cast-off finery, the scraps, the +remnants, the clothes she is tired of, the misfit things,--so that she +won't be ashamed of me, so that I may be fairly presentable. She gave me +eight of those handkerchiefs. I meant to pick the monograms out with a +needle, you understand, because I haven't any money to buy such +handkerchiefs for myself. I remember now,--she gave them to me on that +day--that first day, and I missed one of them a little later on. Ah, +how--how funny!" she cried, again; "ah, how very, very funny! No, Mr. +Townsend, I am not an heiress,--I'm a pauper, a poor relation. No, you +have failed again, just as you did with Mrs. Barry-Smith and with Miss +Jemmett, Mr. Townsend. I--I wish you better luck the next time." + +I must have raised one hand as though in warding off a physical blow. +"Don't!" I said. + +And all the woman in her leapt to defend me. "Ah no, ah no!" she +pleaded, and her hands fell caressingly upon my shoulder; and she raised +a penitent, tear-stained face toward mine; "ah no, forgive me! I didn't +mean that altogether. It is different with a man. Of course, you must +marry sensibly,--of course you must, Mr. Townsend. It is I who am to +blame--why, of _course_ it's only I who am to blame. I have encouraged +you, I know--" + +"You haven't! you haven't" I barked. + +"But, yes,--for I came back that second day because I thought you were +the rich Mr. Blagden. I was so tired of being poor, so tired of being +dependent, that it simply seemed to me I could not stand it for a moment +longer. Ah, I tell you, I was tired, tired, tired! I was tired and sick +and worn out with it all!" + +I did not interrupt her. I was nobly moved; but even then at the back of +my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to this girl, so +young and desirable, and now so like a plaintive child who has been +punished and does not understand exactly why. + +"Mr. Townsend, you don't know what it means to a girl to be poor!--you +can't ever know, because you are only a man. My mother--ah, you don't +know the life I have led! You don't know how I have been hawked about, +and set up for inspection by the men who could afford to pay my price, +and made to show off my little accomplishments for them, and put through +my paces before them like any horse in the market! For we are poor, Mr. +Townsend,--we are bleakly, hopelessly poor. We are only hangers-on, you +see. And ever since I can remember, she has been telling me I must make +a rich marriage--_must_ make a rich marriage--" + +And the girl's voice trailed off into silence, and her eyes closed for a +moment, and she swayed a little on her feet, so that I caught her by +both arms. + +But, presently, she opened her eyes, with a wearied sigh, and presently +the two fortune-hunters stared each other in the face. + +"Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" sang the birds. "Can you see, can you see, +can you see? It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" They were extremely gay over +it, were the birds. + +After a little, though, I opened my lips, and moistened them two or +three times before I spoke. "Yes," said I, "I think I understand. We +have both been hangers-on. But that seems, somehow, a long while ago. +Yes, it was a knave who scaled that wall the first time,--one who needed +and had earned a kicking from here to Aldebaran. But I think that I +loved you from the very moment I saw you. Will you marry me, Avis?" + +And in her face there was a wonderful and tender change. "You care for +me--just me?" she breathed. + +"Just you," I answered, gravely. + +And I saw the start, and the merest ghost of a shiver which shook her +body, as she leaned toward me a little, almost in surrender; but, +quickly, she laughed. + +"That was very gentlemanly in you," she said; "but, of course, I +understand. Let us part friends, then,--Robert. Even if--if you really +cared, we couldn't marry. We are too poor." + +"Too poor!" I scoffed,--and my voice was joyous, for I knew now that it +was I she loved and not just Peter Blagden's money; "too _poor_, Avis! I +am to the contrary, an inordinately rich man, I tell you, for I have +your love. Oh you needn't try to deny it. You are heels over head in +love with me. And we have made, no doubt, an unsavoury mess of the past; +but the future remains to us. We are the earthen pots, you and I, who +wanted to swim with the brazen ones. Well! they haven't quite smashed +us, these big, stupid, brazen pots, but they have shown us that they +have the power to do it. And so we are going back where we belong--to +the poor man's country, Avis,--or, in any event, to the country of those +God-fearing, sober and honest folk who earn their bread and, just +occasionally, a pat of butter to season it." + +The world was very beautiful. I knew that I was excellent throughout and +unconquerable. So I moved more near to her. + +"For you will come with me, won't you, dear? Oh, you won't have quite so +many gowns in this new country, Avis, and, may be, not even a horse and +surrey of your own; but you will have love, and you will have happiness, +and, best of all, Avis, you will give a certain very undeserving man his +chance--his one sole chance--to lead a real man's life. Are you going +to deny him that chance, Avis?" + +Her gaze read me through and through; and I bore myself a bit proudly +under it; and it seemed to me that my heart was filled with love of her, +and that some sort of new-born manhood in Robert Etheridge Townsend was +enabling me to meet her big brown eyes unflinchingly. + +"It wouldn't be sensible," she wavered. + +I laughed at that. "Sensible! If there is one thing more absurd than +another in this very absurd world, it is common-sense. Be sensible and +you will be miserable, Avis, not to mention being disliked. Sensible! +Why, of course, it is not sensible. It is stark, rank, staring idiocy +for us two not to make a profitable investment of, we will say, our +natural endowments, when we come to marry. For what will Mrs. Grundy say +if we don't? Ah, what will she say, indeed? Avis, just between you and +me, I do not care a double-blank domino what Mrs. Grundy says. You will +obligingly remember that the car for the Hesperides is in the rear, and +that this is the third and last call. And in consequence--will you +marry me, Avis?" + +She gave me her hand frankly, as a man might have done. "Yes, Robert," +said Miss Beechinor, "and God helping us, we will make something better +of the future than we have of the past." + +In the silence that fell, one might hear the birds. "Sweet, sweet, +sweet!" they twittered. "Can you see, can you see, can you see? Their +lips meet. It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" + + + 3 + +But, by and by, she questioned me. "Are you sure--quite sure," she +queried, wistfully, "that you wouldn't rather have me Margaret Hugonin, +the heiress?" + +I raised a deprecatory hand. "Avis!" I reproached her; "Avis, Avis, how +little you know me! That was the solitary fly in the amber,--that I +thought I was to marry a woman named Margaret. For I am something of a +connoisseur in nomenclature, and Margaret has always--_always_--been my +pet detestation in the way of names." + +"Oh, what a child you are!" she said. + + + + +27. + +_He Calls, and Counsels, and Considers_ + + +"I am now" said I, in my soul, "quite immeasurably, and insanely, and +unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. Why, of course I am." + +This statement was advanced just two weeks later than the events +previously recorded. And the origin of it was the fact that I was now +engaged to Avis Beechinor though it was not as yet to be "announced"; +just this concession alone had Mrs. Beechinor wrested from an indignant +and, latterly, a tearful interview.... For I had called at Selwoode, in +due form; and after leaving Mrs. Beechinor had been pounced upon by an +excited and comely little person in black. + +"Don't you mind a word she said," this lady had exhorted, "because she +is _the_ Gadarene swine, and Avis has told me everything! Of course you +are to be married at once, and I only wish _I_ could find the only man +in the world who can keep me interested for four hours on a stretch and +send my pulse up to a hundred and make me feel those thrilly thrills +I've always longed for." + +"But surely--" said I. + +"No, I'm beginning to be afraid not, beautiful, though of course I used +to be crazy about Billy Woods; and then once I was engaged to another +man for a long time, and I was perfectly devoted to him, but he _never_ +made me feel a single thrilly thrill. And would you believe it, Mr. +Townsend?--after a while he came back, precisely as though he had been a +bad penny or a cat. He had been in the Boer War and came home just a +night before I left, wounded and promoted several times and completely +covered with glory and brass buttons. He came seven miles to see me, and +I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him, for I had on my best dress and was +feeling rather talkative. Well! at ten I was quite struck on him. At +eleven perfectly willing to part friends, and at twelve _crazy_ for him +to go. He stayed till half-past, and I didn't want to think of him for +days. And, by the way, I am Miss Hugonin, and I hope you and Avis will +be very happy. _Good-bye!_" + +"Good-bye!" said I. + + + 2 + +And that, oddly enough, was the one private talk I ever had with the +Margaret Hugonin whom, for some two weeks, I had believed myself to be +upon the verge of marrying; for the next time I conversed with her alone +she was Mrs. William Woods. + +"Oh, go away, Billy!" she then said, impatiently "How often will I have +to tell you it isn't decent to be always hanging around your wife? Oh, +you dear little crooked-necktied darling!"--and she remedied the fault +on tiptoe,--"_please_ run away and make love to somebody else, and be +sure to get her name right, so that I shan't assassinate the wrong +person,--because I want to tell this very attractive child all about +Avis, and not be bothered." And subsequently she did. + +But I must not forestall her confidences, lest I get my cart even +further in advance of my nominal Pegasus than the loosely-made +conveyance is at present lumbering. + + + 3 + +And meanwhile Peter Blagden and I had called at Selwoode once or twice +in unison and due estate. And Peter considered "Miss Beechinor a damn +fine girl, and Miss Hugonin too, only--" + +"Only," I prompted, between puffs, "Miss Hugonin keeps everybody, as my +old Mammy used to say, 'in a perpetual swivet.' I never understood what +the phrase meant, precisely, but I somehow always knew that it was +eloquent." + +"Just so," said Peter. "You prefer--ah--a certain amount of +tranquillity. I haven't been abroad for a long while," said Mr. Blagden; +and then, after another meditative pause: "Now Stella--well, Stella was +a damn sight too good for me, of course--" + +"She was," I affably assented. + +"--and I'd be the very last man in the world to deny it. But still you +_do_ prefer--" Then Peter broke off short and said: "My God, Bob! what's +the matter?" + +So I think I must have had the ill-taste to have laughed a little over +Mr. Blagden's magnanimity in regard to Stella's foibles. But I only +said: "Oh, nothing, Peter! I was just going to tell you that travelling +_does_ broaden the mind, and that you will find an overcoat +indispensable in Switzerland, and that during the voyage you ought to +keep in the open air as much as possible, and that you should give the +steward who waits on you at table at least ten shillings,--I was just +going to tell you, in fine, that you would be a fool to squander any +money on a guide-book, when I am here to give you all the necessary +pointers." + +"But I didn't mean to go to Europe exactly," said Mr. Blagden; "--I just +meant to go abroad in a general sense. Any place would be abroad, you +know, where people weren't always remembering how rich you were, and +weren't scrambling to marry you out of hand, but really cared, you know, +like she does. Oh, may be it _is_ bad form to mention it, but I couldn't +help seeing how she looked at you, Bob. And it waked something--Oh, I +don't know what I mean," said Peter--"it's just damn foolishness, +I suppose." + +"It's very far from that," I said; and I was honestly moved, just as I +always am when pathos, preferably grotesque, has caught me unprepared. +This millionaire was lonely, because of his millions, and Stella was +dead; and somehow I understood, and laid one hand upon his shoulder. + +"Oh, _you_ can't help it, I suppose, if all women love by ordinary +because he is so like another person, where as men love because she is +so different. My poor caliph, I would sincerely advise you to play the +fool just as you plan to do,--oh, anywhere,--and without even a Mesrour. +In fine go Bunburying at once. For very frankly, First Cousin of the +Moon, it is the one thing worth while in life." + +"I half believe I will," said Peter.... So he was packing in the interim +during which I pretended to be writing, and was in reality fretting to +think that, whilst Avis was in England by this, I could not decently +leave America until those last five chapters were finished. So, in part +as an excuse for not scrawling the dullest of nonsense and subsequently +tearing it up, I fell to considering the unquestionable fact that I was +in love with Avis, and upon the verge of marrying her, and was in +consequence, as a matter of plain logic, deliriously happy. + +"For when you are in love with a woman you, of course, want to marry her +more than you want anything else. In nature, it is a serious and--well, +an almost irretrievable business. And I shall have to cultivate the +domestic virtues and smoke cheaper cigarettes and all that, but I shall +be glad to do every one of these things, for her sake--after a while. I +shall probably enjoy doing them." + +And I read Bettie Hamlyn's letter for the seventeenth time.... + + + 4 + +For Bettie had answered the wild rhapsody which I wrote to tell her how +much in love I was with Elena Barry-Smith. And in the nature of things I +had not written Bettie again to tell her I was, and by a deal the more, +in love with Avis Beechinor. The task was delicate, the reasons for my +not unnatural change were such as you must transmit in a personal +interview during which you are particularly boyish and talk very fast. + +Besides, I do not like writing letters; and moreover, there was no real +need to write. I was going to Gridlington; what more natural than to +ride over to Fairhaven some clear morning and tell Bettie everything? I +pictured her surprise and her delight at seeing me, and reflected it +would be unfair to her to render an inaccurate account of matters, such +as any letter must necessarily give. + +Only, first, there was the garden of Peter's aunt,--which sounds like +an introductory French exercise,--and then Avis came. And, somehow, I +had not, in consequence, traversed the scant nine miles that lay as yet +between me and Bettie Hamlyn. I kept on meaning to do it the next day. + +And the next day after this I really did. + +"For I ought to tell Bettie about everything," I reflected. "No matter +if the engagement is a secret, I ought to tell Bettie about it." + + + 5 + +When I had done so, Bettie shook her head. "Oh, Robin, Robin!" she said, +"how did I ever come to raise a child that doesn't know his own mind for +as much as two minutes? And how dared that Barry-Smith person to slap +you, I would like to know." + +"Now you're jealous, Bettie. You are thinking she infringed upon an +entirely personal privilege, and you resent it." + +"Well,--but I've the right to, you see, and she hadn't. I consider her +to be a bold-faced jig. And I don't approve of this Avis person either, +you understand; but we poor mothers are always being annoyed by slushy, +mushy Avises. I suppose there's a reason for it. She'll throw you over, +you know, as soon as _her_ mother has had an inning or two. That's why +she took her to Europe," Bettie explained, with a fine confusion of +personalities. "Only she just wanted any quiet place where she could +take aromatic spirits of ammonia and point out between doses that she +has given up her entire life to her child and has never made any demands +on her and hasn't the strength to argue with her, because her heart is +simply broken. We mothers always say that; and the funny part is that if +you say it often enough it invariably works far better than any possible +argument." + +I told her she was talking nonsense, and she said, irrelevantly enough: +"Setebos, and Setebos, and Setebos! I don't think very highly of Setebos +sometimes, because He muddles things so. Oh, well, I shan't cry Willow. +Besides there _aren't_ any sycamore-trees in the garden. So let's go +into the garden, dear. That sounds as if I ate in the back pantry, +doesn't it? Of course you aren't of any account any more, and you never +will be, but at least you don't look at people as though they were a new +sort of bug whenever they have just thought a sentence or two and then +gone on, without bothering to say it." + +So we went into Bettie's garden. It had not changed.... + + + 6 + +Nothing had changed. It was as though I had somehow managed, after all, +to push back the hands of the clock. Fairhaven accepted me incuriously. +I was only "an old student." In addition, I was vaguely rumoured to +write "pieces" for the magazines. Probably I did; "old students" were +often prone to vagaries after leaving King's College; for instance, they +told me, Ralph Means was a professional gambler, and Ox Selwyn had +lately gone to Shanghai and had settled there,--and Shanghai, in common +with most other places, Fairhaven accorded the negative tribute of just +not absolutely disbelieving in its existence. + +Nothing had changed. The Finals were over; and with the noisy exodus of +the college-boys, Fairhaven had sunk contentedly into an even deeper +stupor, as Fairhaven always does in summer. And, for the rest, the +unpaved sidewalks were just as dusty, the same deep ruts and the puddles +which never dry, not even in mid-August, adorned Fairhaven's single +street; the comfortable moss upon Fairhaven's roofs had not varied by a +shade; and George Washington or Benjamin Franklin might have stepped out +of any one of those brass-knockered doorways without incongruity and +without finding any noticeable innovation to marvel at. + +Nothing had changed. In the precise middle of the campus Lord Penniston, +our Governor in Colonial days, still posed, in dingy marble; and the +fracture of the finger I had inadvertently broken off, the night that +Billy Woods and I painted the statue all over, in six colours, was white +and new-looking. Kathleen Eppes had married her Spaniard and had left +Fairhaven; otherwise the same girls were already planning their toilets +for the Y.M.C.A. reception in October, which formally presents the "new +students" to society at large; and presently these girls would be going +to the germans or the Opera House with the younger brother of the boy +who used to take them thither.... + +Nothing had changed; not even I was changed. For I had soon discovered +that Bettie Hamlyn did not care a pin for me in myself. She was simply +very fond of me because, at times, I reminded her of a boy who had gone +to King's College; and her reception of me, for the first two days, was +unmistakably provisional. + +"Very well!" I said. + +And I did it. For I knew how difficult it was to deceive Bettie, and in +consequence all my faculties rose to the challenge. I did not merely +mimic my former self, I was compelled, almost, to believe I was indeed +that former self, because not otherwise could I get Bettie Hamlyn's +toleration. Had I paused even momentarily to reflect upon the excellence +of my acting, she would have known. So I resolutely believed I was being +perfectly candid; and with constant use those older tricks of speech and +gesture and almost of thought, at first laborious mimicry, became +well-nigh involuntary. + +In fine, we could not wipe away five years, but with practice we found +that you would very often forget them, and for quite a while.... + +I had explained to Bettie's father I was going to board with them that +summer. Had I not been so haphazard in the progress of this narrative, I +would have earlier announced that Bettie's father was the Latin +professor at King's College. He was very old and vague, and his general +attitude toward the universe was that of remote recollection of having +noticed something of the sort before. Professor Hamlyn, therefore, told +me he was glad to hear of my intended stay beneath his roof; hazarded +the speculation that I had written a book which he meant to read upon +the very first opportunity; blinked once or twice; and forthwith lapsed +into consideration of some Pliocene occurrence which, if you were to +judge by the expression of his mild old countenance, he did not find +entirely satisfactory.... + +So I spent three months in Fairhaven; and Bettie and I read all the old +books over again, and were perfectly happy. + + + 7 + +And what I wrote in those last five chapters of my book was so good that +in common decency I was compelled to alter the preceding twenty-nine and +bring them a bit nearer to Bettie's standard. For I was utilising +Bettie's ideas. She did not have the knack of putting them on paper; +that was my trivial part, as I now recognised with a sort of scared +reverence. + +"Of course, though, you had to meddle," I would scold at her. "I had +meant the infernal thing to be a salable book. To-day it is just a +stenographic report of how these people elected to behave. I haven't +anything to do with it. I wash my hands of it. I consider you, in fine, +a cormorant, a conscienceless marauder, a meddlesome Mattie, _and_ a +born dramatist." + +"But, it's _much_ better than anything you've ever done, Robin--" + +"That is what I'm grumbling about. I consider it very unfeeling of you +to write better novels than I do," I retorted. "But, oh, how good that +scene is!" I said, a little later. + +"Let's see--'For you, dear clean-souled girl, were born to be the wife +of a strong man, and the mother of his dirty children'--no, it's +'sturdy', but then you hardly ever cross your T's. And where he goes on +to tell her he can't marry her, because he is artistic, and she is too +practical for them to be real mates, and all that other +feeble-mindedness? Dear me, did I forget to tell you we were going to +cut that out?" + +"But I particularly like that part--" + +"Do you?" said Bettie, as her pen scrunched vicious lines through it. +Then she said: "I only hope she had the civility and self-control not to +laugh until you had gone away. And 'We irrelevant folk that design all +useless and beautiful things,' indeed! No, I couldn't have blamed her if +she laughed right out. I wonder if you will never understand that what +you take to be your love for beautiful things is really just a dislike +of ugly ones? Oh, I've no patience with you! And wanting to print it in +a book, too, instead of being content to make yourself ridiculous in +tete-a-tetes with minxes that don't especially matter!" + +"Well--! Anyhow, I agree with you that, thanks to your editing and +carping and general scurrility, this book is going to be," I meekly +stated, "a little better than _The Apostates_ and not just 'pretty much +like any other book'." + +"Do you know that's just what I was thinking," said Bettie, dolefully. +She clasped both hands behind her crinkly small black head, and in that +queer habitual pose appraised me, from between her elbows, in that way +which always made me feel I had better be careful. "Damn you!" was +her verdict. + +"Whence this unmaidenliness?" I queried, with due horror. + +"You are trying to prove to me that it has been worth while. This nasty +book is coming alive, here in our own eight-cornered room, with a horrid +crawly life of its own that it would never have had if you hadn't been +learning things my boy knew nothing about. That's what you are crowing +in my face, when you keep quiet and smirk. Oh, but I know you!" + +"You do think, then, that, between you and me, it is really coming +alive?" + +"Yes,--if that greatly matters to the fat literary gent that I don't +care for greatly. Yes, the infernal thing will be a Book, with quite a +sizable B. I am feeding its maw with more important things than a few +ideas, though. The thing is a monster that isn't worth its keep. For my +boy was worth more than a Book," she said, forlornly,--"oh, +oceans more!" + + + 8 + +All in all, we were a deal more than happy during these three very hot +months. It was a sort of Lotus Eaters' existence, shared by just us two, +with Josiah Clarriker intruding occasionally, and with echoes from the +outer world, when heard at all, resounding very dimly and unimportantly. +I began almost to assume, as Fairhaven tacitly assumed, that there was +really no outer world, or none at least to be considered seriously.... + +For instance: Marian Winwood had come to Lichfield, and wrote me from +there, "hoping that we would renew an acquaintance which she remembered +so pleasurably." It did not seem worth while, of course, to answer the +minx; I decided, at a pinch, to say that the Fairhaven mail-service was +abominable, and that her letter had never reached me. But the young +fellow who two years ago had wandered about the Green Chalybeate with +her had become, now, as unreal as she. I glimpsed the couple, with +immeasurable aloofness, as phantoms flickering about the mirage of a +brook, throwing ghostly bread crumbs to Lethean minnows. + +And then, too, when the police caught Ned Lethbury that summer, it +hardly seemed worth while to wonder about his wife. For she was, +inexplicably, with him, all through the trial at Chiswick, you may +remember, though you were probably more interested at the time by the +Humbert trial in Paris. In any event, no rumor came to me in Fairhaven +to connect Amelia Lethbury with Nadine Neroni, but, instead, a deal of +journalistic pity and sympathy for her, the faithful, much-enduring +wife. Still quite a handsome woman, they said, for all her suffering and +poverty.... And when he went to the penitentiary, Amelia Lethbury +disappeared, nobody knew whither, except that I suspected Anton von +Anspach knew. I could not explain the mystery. I did not greatly care +to, for to me it did not seem important, now.... + + + 9 + +Meantime, I meditated. + +"I am in love with Avis--oh, granted! I am not the least bit in love +with--we will euphemistically say 'anyone else.' But confound it! I am +coming to the conclusion that marrying a woman because you happen to be +in love with her is about as logical a proceeding as throwing the cat +out of the window because the rhododendrons are in bloom. Why, if I +marry Avis I shall probably have to live with her the rest of my life! + +"What if that obsolete notion of Schopenhauer's were true after +all,--that love is a blind instinct which looks no whit toward the +welfare of the man and woman it dominates, but only to the equipment a +child born of them would inherit? What if, after all, love tends, +without variation, to yoke the most incompatible in order that the +average type of humanity may be preserved? Then the one passion we +esteem as sacred would be simply the deranged condition of any other +beast in rutting-time. Then we, with the pigs and sparrows, would be +just so many pieces on the chess-board, and our evolutions would be just +a friendly trial of skill between what we call life and death. + +"I love Avis Beechinor. But I have loved, in all sincerity, many other +women, and I rejoice to-day, unfeignedly, that I never married any of +them. For marriage means a life-long companionship, a long, long journey +wherein must be adjusted, one by one, each tiniest discrepancy between +the fellow-wayfarers; and always a pebble if near enough to the eye will +obscure a mountain. + +"Why, Avis cannot attempt a word of four syllables without coming at +least once to grief! It is a trifle of course, but in a life-long +companionship there are exactly fourteen thousand trifles to one event +of importance. And deuce take it! the world is populated by men and +women, not demi-gods; the poets are specious and abandoned rhetoricians; +for it never was, and never will be, possible to love anybody 'to the +level of every-day's Most quiet need by sun or candlelight.' + +"Or not to me at least. + +"In a sentence, when it comes to a life-long companionship, I prefer not +the woman who would make me absolutely happy for a twelvemonth, but +rather the woman with whom I could chat contentedly for twenty years, +and who would keep me to the mark. I am rather tired of being futile; +and not for any moral reason, but because it is not worthy of _me_. In +fine, I do not want to die entirely. I want to leave behind some not +inadequate expression of Robert Etheridge Townsend, and I do not care at +all what people say of it, so that it is here when I am gone. Oh, Stella +understood! 'I want my life to count, I want to leave something in the +world that wasn't there before I came.' + +"Now Bettie--" + +I arose resolutely. "I had much better go for a long, and tedious, and +jolting, and universally damnable walk. Bettie would make something +vital of me--if I could afford her the material--" + +And I grinned a little. "'Go, therefore, now, and work; for there shall +no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.' Yes, +you would certainly have need of a miracle, dear Bettie--" + + + 10 + +I started for that walk I was to take. But Dr. Jeal and Colonel Snawley +were seated in armchairs in front of Clarriker's Emporium, just as they +had been used to sit there in my college days, enjoying, as the Colonel +mentioned, "the cool of the evening," although to the casual observer +the real provider of their pleasure would have appeared to be an +unlimited supply of chewing-tobacco. + +So I lingered here, and garnered, to an accompaniment of leisurely +expectorations, much knowledge as to the fall crops and the carryings-on +of the wife of a celebrated general, upon whose staff the Colonel had +served during the War,--and there has never been in the world's history +but one war, so far as Fairhaven is concerned,--and how the Colonel +walked right in on them, and how it was hushed up. + +Then we discussed the illness of Pope Leo and what everybody knew about +those derned cardinals, and the riots in Evansville, and the Panama +Canal business, and the squally look of things at Port Arthur, and +attributed all these imbroglios, I think, to the Republican +administration. Even at our bitterest, though, we conceded that +"Teddy's" mother was a Bulloch, and that his uncle fired the last shot +before the Alabama went down. And that inclined us to forgive him +everything, except of course, the Booker Washington luncheon. + +Then half a block farther on, Mrs. Rabbet wanted to know if I had ever +seen such weather, and to tell me exactly what Adrian, Junior--no longer +little Adey, no indeed, sir, but ready to start right in at the College +session after next, and as she often said to Mr. Rabbet you could hardly +believe it,--had observed the other day, and quick as a flash too, +because it would make such a funny story. Only she could never quite +decide whether it happened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, so that, after +precisely seven digressions on this delicate point, the denouement of +the tale, I must confess, fell rather flat. + +And then Mab Spessifer demanded that I come up on the porch and draw +some pictures for her. The child was waiting with three sheets of paper +and a chewed pencil all ready, just on the chance that I might pass; and +you cannot very well refuse a cripple who adores you and is not able to +play with the other brats. You get instead into a kind of habit of +calling every day and trying to make her laugh, because she is such a +helpless little nuisance. + +And tousled mothers weep over you in passageways and tell you how good +you are, and altogether the entire affair is tedious; but having started +it, you keep it up, somehow. + + + 11 + +In fine, it is a symbol that I never took the walk which was to dust the +cobwebs from my brain and make me just like all the other persons, thick +about me, who grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious +fashion of oxen, without ever wondering if there is any plausible reason +for doing it; and my brief progress was upon the surface very like that +of the bedeviled fellow in _Les Facheux_. Yet I enjoyed it somehow. +Never to be hurried, and always to stop and talk with every person whom +you meet, upon topics in which no conceivable human being could possibly +be interested, may not sound attractive, but in Fairhaven it is the +rule; and, oddly enough, it breeds, in practice, a sort of family +feeling,--if only by entitling everybody to the condoned and +matter-of-course stupidity of aunts and uncles,--which is not really all +unpleasant. + +So I went home at half-past seven, to supper and to Bettie, in a quite +contented frame of mind. It did not seem conceivable that any world so +beautiful and stupid and well-meaning could have either the heart or the +wit to thwart my getting anything I really wanted; and the thought +elated me. + +Only I did not know, precisely, what I wanted. + + + + +28. + +_He Participates in Sundry Confidences_ + + +I was in the act of writing to Avis when the letter came; and I put it +aside unopened, until after supper, for I had never found the letters of +Avis particularly interesting reading. + +"It will be what they call a newsy letter, of course. I do wish that +Avis would not write to me as if she were under oath to tell the entire +truth. She communicates so many things which actually happened that it +reads like a 'special correspondent' in some country town writing for a +Sunday morning's paper,--and with, to a moral certainty, the word +'separate' lurking somewhere spelt with three E's, and an 'always' with +two L's, and at least one 'alright.' No, my dear, I am at present too +busy expressing my adoration for you to be exposed to such +inharmonious jars." + +Then I wrote my dithyrambs and sealed them. Subsequently I poised the +unopened letter between my fingers. + +"But remember that if she were here to _say_ all this to you, your +pulses would be pounding like the pistons of an excited locomotive! +Nature, you are a jade! I console myself with the reflection that it is +frequently the gift of facile writing which makes the co-respondent, +--but I _do_ wish you were not such a hazardous matchmaker. Oh, well! +there was no pleasant way of getting out of it, and that particular +Rubicon is miles behind." + +I slit the envelope. + +I read the letter through again, with redoubling interest, and presently +began to laugh. "So she begins to fear we have been somewhat hasty, asks +a little time for reconsideration of her precise sentiment toward me, +and feels meanwhile in honour bound to release me from our engagement! +Yet if upon mature deliberation--eh, oh, yes! twaddle! _and_ +commonplace! and dashed, of course, with a jigger of Scriptural +quotation!" + +I paused to whistle. "There is strange milk in this cocoanut, could I +but discern its nature." + +I did, some four weeks later, when with a deal of mail I received the +last letter I was ever to receive from Avis Beechinor. + +Wrote Avis: + +DEAR ROBERT: + +Thank you very much for returning my letters and for the beautiful +letter you wrote me. No I believe it better you should not come on to +see me now and talk the matter over as you suggest because it would +probably only make you unhappy. And then too I am sure some day you will +be friends with me and a very good and true one. I return the last +letter you sent me in a seperate envelope, and I hope it will reach you +alright, but as I destroy all my mail as soon as I have read it I cannot +send you the others. I have promised to marry Mr. Blagden and we are +going to be married on the fifteenth of this month very quietly with no +outsiders. So good bye Robert. I wish you every success and happiness +that you may desire and with all my heart I pray you to be true to your +better self. God bless you allways. Your sincere friend, + +AVIS M. BEECHINOR + +I indulged in a low and melodious whistle. "The little slut!" + +Then I said: "Peter Blagden again! I _do_ wish that life would try to be +a trifle more plausible. Why, but, of course! Peter meant to go chasing +after her the minute my back was turned, and that was why he salved his +conscience by presenting me with that thousand 'to get married on,' Even +at the time it seemed peculiarly un-Petrine. Well, anyhow, in simple +decency, he cannot combine the part of Shylock with that of Judas, and +expect to have back his sordid lucre, so I am that much to the good, +apart from everything else. Yes, I can see how it all happened,--and I +can foresee what is going to happen, too, thank heaven!" + +For, as drowning men are said to recollect the unrecallable, I had +vividly seen in that instant the two months' action just overpast, and +its three participants,--the thin-lipped mother, the besotted +millionaire, and the girl shakily hesitant between ideals and the habits +of a life-time. + +"But I might have known the mother would win," I reflected: "Why, didn't +Bettie say she would?" + +I refolded the letter I had just read, to keep it as a salutary relic; +and then: + +"Dear Avis!" said I; "now heaven bless your common-sense! and I don't +especially mind if heaven blesses your horrific painted hag of a mother, +also, if they've a divine favor or two to spare." + +And I saw there was a letter from Peter Blagden, too. It said, in part: + +I am everything that you think me, Bob. My one defence is that I could +not help it. I loved her from the moment I saw her ... You did not +appreciate her, you know. You take, if you will forgive my saying it, +too light a view of life to value the love of a good woman properly, and +Avis noticed it of course. Now I do understand what the unselfish love +of woman means, because my first wife was an angel, as you know ... It +is a comfort to think that my dear saint in heaven knows I am not quite +so lonely now, and is gladdened by that knowledge. I know she would have +wished it-- + +I read no further. "Oh, Stella! they have all forgotten. They all insist +to-day that you were an angel, and they have come almost to believe that +you habitually flew about the world in a night-gown, with an Easter lily +in your hand--But I remember, dear. I know you'd scratch her eyes out. I +know you'd do it now, if only you were able, because you loved this +Peter Blagden." + +Thereafter I must have wasted a full quarter of an hour in recalling all +sorts of bygone unimportant happenings, and I was not bothering one way +or the other about Avis ... + + + 3 + +In the moonlighted garden I found Bettie. But with her was Josiah +Clarriker, Fairhaven's leading business-man. He shook hands, and +whatever delight he may have felt at seeing me was admirably controlled. + +"Now don't let me interfere with your eloquence," I urged, "but go right +on with the declamation." + +"I make no pretension to eloquence, Mr. Townsend. I was merely recalling +to Miss Hamlyn's attention the beautiful lines of our immortal poet, +Owen Meredith, which run, as I remember them: + + "'I thought of the dress she wore that time + That we stood under the cypress-tree together, + In that land, in that clime, + And I turned and looked, and she was sitting there + In the box next to the stage, and dressed + In that muslin dress, with that full soft hair + And that jessamine blossom at her breast.'" + +"But I am not permitted to wear flowers when Mr. Townsend is about," +said Bettie. "Did you know, Jo, that he is crazy about that too?" + +"Well--! Anyhow, Meredith is full of very beautiful sentiments," said +Mr. Clarriker, "and I have always been particularly fond of that piece. +It is called _'Ox Italians.'_" + +"Yes, I have been previously affected by it," said I, "and very deeply +moved." + +"And so--as I was about to observe, Miss Hamlyn,--you will notice that +the poet Meredith gowned one of the most beautiful characters he ever +created in white, and laid great stress upon the fact that her beauty +was immeasurably enhanced by the dainty simplicity of her muslin dress. +This fabric, indeed, suits all types of faces and figures, and is +Economical too, especially the present popular mercerised waistings and +vestings that are fast invading the realm of silks. We show at our +Emporium an immense quantity of these beautiful goods, in more than a +hundred styles, elaborate enough for the most formal occasions, at fifty +and seventy-five cents a yard; and--as I was about to observe, Miss +Hamlyn,--I would indeed esteem it a favour should you permit me to send +up a few samples to-morrow, from which to make a selection at, I need +not add, my personal expense. + +"You see, Mr. Townsend," he continued, more inclusively, "we have no +florists in Fairhaven, and I have heard that candy--" He talked on, +hygienically now.... + + + 4 + +"And that," said I, when Mr. Clarriker had gone, "is what you are +actually considering! I have always believed Dickens invented that man +to go into one of the latter chapters of _Edwin Drood_. It is the +solitary way of explaining certain people,--that they were invented by +some fagged novelist who unfortunately died before he finished the book +they were to be locked up in. As it was, they got loose, to annoy you by +their incredibility. No actual human being, you know, would suggest a +white shirtwaist as a substitute for a box of candy." + +"Oh, I have seen worse," said Bettie, as in meditation. "It's just Jo's +way of expressing the fact that I am stupendously beautiful in white. +Poor dear, my loveliness went to his head, I suppose, and got tangled +with next week's advertisement for the _Gazette_. Anyhow, he is a deal +more considerate than you. For instance, I was crazy to go to the show +on Tuesday night, and Josiah Clarriker was the only person who thought +to ask me, even though he is one of those little fireside companions who +always get so syrupy whenever they take you anywhere that you simply +can't stand it. The combination both prevented my acceptance and +accentuated his devotion; and quite frankly, Robin, I am thinking of +him, for at bottom Jo is a dear." + +I laid one hand on each of Bettie's shoulders; and it was in my mind at +the time that this was the gesture of a comrade, and had not any sexual +tinge at all. I wished that Bettie had better teeth, of course, but that +could not be helped. + +"You are to marry me as soon as may be possible," said I, "and +preferably to-morrow afternoon. Avis has thrown me over, God bless her, +and I am free,--until of course you take charge of me. There was a +clever woman once who told me I was not fit to be the captain of my +soul, though I would make an admirable lieutenant. She was right. It is +understood you are to henpeck me to your heart's content and to my +ultimate salvation." + +"I shall assuredly not marry you," observed Miss Hamlyn, "until you have +at least asked me to do so. And besides, how dared she throw +you over--!" + +"But I don't intend to ask you, for I have not a single bribe to offer. +I merely intend to marry you. I am a ne'er-do-well, a debauchee, a +tippler, a compendium of all the vices you care to mention. I am not a +bit in love with you, and as any woman will forewarn you, I am sure to +make you a vile husband. Your solitary chance is to bully me into +temperance and propriety and common-sense, with precisely seven million +probabilities against you, because I am a seasoned and accomplished +liar. Can you do that bullying, Bettie,--and keep it up, I mean?" + +And she was silent for a while. "Robin," she said, at last, "you'll +never understand why women like you. You will always think it is because +they admire you for some quality or another. It is really because they +pity you. You are such a baby, riding for a fall--No, I don't mean the +boyishness you trade upon. I have known for a long while all that was +just put on. And, oh, how hard you've tried to be a boy of late!" + +"And I thought I had fooled you, Bettie! Well, I never could. I am +sorry, though, if I have been annoyingly clumsy--" + +"But you were doing it for me," she said. "You were doing it because you +thought I'd like it. Oh, can't you understand that I _know_ you are +worthless, and that you have never loved any human being in all your +life except that flibbertigibbet Stella Blagden, and that I know, too, +you have so rarely failed me! If you were an admirable person, or a +person with commendable instincts, or an unselfish person, or if you +were even in love with me, it wouldn't count of course. It is because +you are none of these things that it counts for so much to see you +honest with me--sometimes,--and even to see you scheming and +play-acting--and so transparently!--just to bring about a little +pleasure for me. Oh, Robin, I am afraid that nowadays I love you +_because_ of your vices!" + +"And I you because of your virtues," said I; "so that there is no +possible apprehension of either affection ever going into bankruptcy. +Therefore the affair is settled; and we will be married in November." + +"Well," Bettie said, "I suppose that somebody has to break you of this +habit of getting married next November--" + +Then, and only then, my hands were lifted from her shoulders. And we +began to talk composedly of more impersonal matters. + + + 5 + +It was two days later that John Charteris came to Fairhaven; and I met +him the same afternoon upon Cambridge street. The little man stopped +short and in full view of the public achieved what, had he been a child, +were most properly describable as making a face at me. + +"That," he explained, "expresses the involuntary confusion of Belial on +re-encountering the anchorite who escaped his diabolical machinations. +But, oh, dear me! haven't you been translated yet? Why, I thought the +carriage would have called long ago, just as it did for Elijah." + +"Now, don't be an ass, John. I _was_ rather idiotic, I suppose--" + +"Of course you were," he said, as we shook hands. "It is your unfailing +charm. You silly boy, I came from the pleasantest sort of house-party at +Matocton because I heard you were here, and I have been foolish enough +to miss you. Anne and the others don't arrive until October. Oh, you +adorable child, I have read the last book, and every one of the short +stories as well, and I want to tell you that in their own peculiar line +the two volumes are masterpieces. Anne wept and chuckled over them, and +so did I, with an equal lack of restraint; only it was over the noble +and self-sacrificing portions that Anne wept, and she laughed at the +places where you were droll intentionally. Whereas I--!! Well, we will +let the aposiopesis stand." + +"Of course," I sulkily observed, "if you have simply come to Fairhaven +to make fun of me, I can only pity your limitations." + +He spoke in quite another voice. "You silly boy, it was not at all for +that. I think you must know I have read what you have published thus far +with something more than interest; but I wanted to tell you this in so +many words. _Afield_ is not perhaps an impeccable masterwork, if one may +be thus brutally frank; but the woman--modeled after discretion will not +inquire whom,--is distinctly good. And what, with you only twenty-five, +does _A field_ not promise! Child, you have found your metier. Now I +shall look forward to the accomplishment of what I have always felt sure +that you could do. I am very, very glad. More so than I can say. And I +had thought you must know this without my saying it." + +The man was sincere. And I was very much pleased, and remembered what +invaluable help he could give me on my unfinished book, and what fun it +would be to go over the manuscript with him. And, in fine, we became +again, upon the spot as it were, the very best of friends. + + + 6 + +It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against. The little man had +many tales to tell me of those dissolute gay people we had known and +frolicked with; indeed, I think that he was trying to allure me back to +the old circles, for he preoccupied his life by scheming to bring about +by underhand methods some perfectly unimportant consummation, which very +often a plain word would have secured at once. But now he swore he was +not "making tea." + +That had always been a byword between us, by the way, since I applied to +him the phrase first used of Alexander Pope--"that he could not make tea +without a conspiracy." And it may be that in this case Charteris spoke +the truth, and had come to Fairhaven just for the pleasure of seeing me, +for certainly he must have had some reason for leaving the Musgraves' +house-party so abruptly. + +"You are very well rid of the Hardresses," he adjudged. "Did I tell you +of the male one's exhibition of jealousy last year! I can assure you +that the fellow now entertains for me precisely the same affection I +have always borne toward cold lamb. It is the real tragedy of my life +that Anne is ethically incapable of letting a week pass without +partaking of a leg of mutton. She is not particularly fond of it, and +indeed I never encountered anybody who was; she has simply been reared +with the notion that 'people' always have mutton once a week. What, have +you never noticed that with 'people,' to eat mutton once a week is a +sort of guarantee of respectability? I do not refer to chops of course, +which are not wholly inconsistent with depravity. But the ability to eat +mutton in its roasted form, by some odd law of nature, connotes the +habit of paying your pew-rent regularly and of changing your flannels on +the proper date. However, I was telling you about Jasper Hardress--" And +Charteris repeated the story of their imbroglio in such a fashion that +it sounded farcical. + +"But, after all, John, you _did_ make love to her." + +"I have forgotten what was exactly the last observation of the lamented +Julius Caesar," Mr. Charteris leisurely observed,--"though I remember +that at the time it impressed me as being uncommonly appropriate--But to +get back: do you not see that this clause ought to come here, at the end +of the sentence? And, child, on all my ancient bended knees, I implore +you to remember that 'genuine' does not mean the same thing as +'real'...." + + + 7 + +Meanwhile he and Bettie got on together a deal better than I had ever +anticipated. + +Charteris, though, received my confidence far too lightly. "You are +going to marry her! Why, naturally! Ever since I encountered you, you +have been 'going to marry' somebody or other. It is odd I should have +written about the Foolish Prince so long before I knew you. But then, +_I_ helped to mould you--a little--" + +And resolutely Bettie said the most complimentary things about him. But +I trapped her once. + +"Still," I observed, when he had gone, and she had finished telling me +how delightful Mr. Charteris was, "still he shan't ever come to _our_ +house, shall he?" + +"Why, of course not!" said Bettie, who was meditating upon some cosmic +question which required immediate attention. And then she grew very +angry and said, "Oh, you _dog!_" and threw a sofa-cushion at me. + +"I hate that wizened man," she presently volunteered, "more bitterly +than I do any person on earth. For it was he who taught you to adopt +infancy as a profession. He robbed me. And Setebos permitted it. And now +you are just a man I am going to marry--Oh, well!" said Bettie, more +sprightlily, "I was getting on, and you are rather a dear even in that +capacity. Only I wonder what _becomes_ of all the first choices?" + +"They must keep them for us somewhere, Bettie dear. And that is probably +the explanation of everything." + +And a hand had snuggled into mine. "You do understand without having to +have it all spelt out for you. And that's a comfort, too. But, oh," said +Bettie, "what a wasteful Setebos it is!" + + + + +29. + +_He Allows the Merits of Imperfection_ + + +I was quite contented now and assured as to the future. I foreknew the +future would be tranquil and lacking in any particular excitement, and I +had already ceded, in anticipation, the last tittle of mastery over my +own actions; but Bettie would keep me to the mark, would wring--not +painlessly perhaps--from Robert Townsend the very best there was in him; +and it would be this best which, unalloyed, would endure, in what I +wrote. I had never imagined that, for the ore, smelting was an agreeable +process; so I shrugged, and faced my future contentedly. + +One day I said, "To-morrow I must have holiday. There are certain things +that need burying, Bettie dear, and--it is just the funeral of my youth +I want to go to." + +"So it is to-morrow that we go for an admiring walk around our +emotions!" Bettie said. She knew well enough of what event to-morrow was +the anniversary, and it is to her credit she added: "Well, for this +once--!" For of all the women whom I had loved, there was but one that +Bettie Hamlyn had ever bothered about. And to-morrow was Stella's +birthday, as I had very unconcernedly mentioned a few moments earlier, +when I was looking for the Austin Dobson book, and had my back turned +to Bettie. + + + 2 + +Next day, in Cedarwood, a woman in mourning--in mourning fluffed and +jetted and furbelowed in such pleasing fashion that it seemed +flamboyantly to demand immediate consolation of all marriageable +males,--viewed me with a roving eye as I heaped daffodils on Stella's +grave. They had cost me a pretty penny, too, for this was in September. +But then I must have daffodils, much as I loathe the wet, limp feel o. +them, because she would have chosen daffodils.... Well! I fancied this +woman thought me sanctioned by both church and law in what I did,--and +viewed me in my supposedly recent bereavement and gauged my +potentialities,--viewed me, in short, with the glance of adventurous +widowhood. + +My faith (I meditated) if she knew!--if I could but speak my thought to +her! + +"Madam,"--let us imagine me, my hat raised, my voice grave,--"the woman +who lies here was a stranger to me. I did not know her. I knew that her +eyes were blue, that her hair was sunlight, that her voice had pleasing +modulations; but I did not know the woman. And she cared nothing for me. +That is why my voice shakes as I tell you of it. And I have brought her +daffodils, because of all flowers she loved them chiefly, and because +there is no one else who remembers this. It is the flower of spring, and +Stella--for that was her name, madam,--died in the spring of the year, +in the spring of her life; and Stella would have been just twenty-six +to-day. Oh, and daffodils, madam, are all white and gold, even as that +handful of dust beneath us was all white and gold when we buried it with +a flourish of crepe and lamentation, some two years and five months ago. +Yet the dust there was tender flesh at one time, and it clad a brave +heart; but we thought of it--and I among the rest,--as a plaything with +which some lucky man might while away his leisure hours. I believe now +that it was something more. I believe--ah, well, my _credo_ is of little +consequence. But whatever this woman may have been, I did not know her. +And she cared nothing for me." + +I reflected I would like to do it. I could imagine the stare, the +squawk, the rustling furbelows, as madam fled from this grave madman. +She would probably have me arrested. + +You see I had come to think differently of Stella. At times I remembered +her childish vanity, her childish, morbid views, her childish gusts of +petulance and anger and mirth; and I smiled,--oh, very tenderly, yet +I smiled. + +Then would awake the memory of Stella and myself in that ancient +moonlight and of our first talk of death--two infants peering into +infinity, somewhat afraid, and puzzled; of Stella making tea in the +firelight, and prattling of her heart's secrets, half-seriously, half in +fun; and of Stella striving to lift a very worthless man to a higher +level and succeeding--yes, for the time, succeeding; and of Stella dying +with a light heart, elate with dreams of Peter Blagden's future and of +"a life that counted"; and of what she told me at the very last. And, +irrationally perhaps, there would seem to be a sequence in it all, and I +could not smile over it, not even tenderly. + +And I would depicture her, a foiled and wistful little wraith, very +lonely in eternity, and a bit regretful of the world she loved and of +its blundering men, and unhappy,--for she could never be entirely happy +without Peter,--and I feared, indignant. For Stella desired very +heartily to be remembered--she was vain, you know,--and they have all +forgotten. Yes, I am sure that even as a wraith, Stella would be +indignant, for she had a fine sense of her own merits. + +"But I am just a little butterfly-woman," she would say, sadly; then, +with a quick smile, "Aren't I?" And her eyes would be like stars--like +big, blue stars,--and afterward her teeth would glint of a sudden, and +innumerable dimples would come into being, and I would know she was +never meant to be taken seriously.... + +But we must avoid all sickly sentiment. + +You see the world had advanced since Stella died,--twice around the sun, +from solstice to solstice, from spring to winter and back again, +travelling through I forget how many millions of miles; and there had +been wars and scandals and a host of debutantes and any number of +dinners; and, after all, the world is for the living. + +So we of Lichfield agreed unanimously that it was very sad, and spoke of +her for a while, punctiliously, as "poor dear Stella"; and the next week +Emily Van Orden ran away with Tom Whately; and a few days later Alicia +Wade's husband died, and we debated whether Teddy Anstrother would do +the proper thing or sensibly marry Celia Reindan: and so, a little by a +little, we forgot our poor, dear Stella in precisely the decorous +graduations of regret with which our poor dear Stella would have +forgotten any one of us. + +Yes, even those who loved her most deeply have forgotten Stella. They +remember only an imaginary being who was entirely perfect, and of whom +they were not worthy. It is this fictitious woman who has usurped the +real Stella's place in the heart of the real Stella's own mother, and +whom even Lizzie d'Arlanges believes to have been once her sister, and +over whom Peter Blagden is always ready to grow maudlin; and it is this +immaculate woman--who never existed,--that will be until the end of +Avis' matrimonial existence the standard by which Avis is measured and +found wanting. And thus again the whirligig of time, by an odd turn, +brings in his revenges. + +And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. And the woman they speak of +to-day, in that hushed, hateful, sanctimonious voice, I must confess I +never knew. And of all persons I chiefly rage against that faultless +angel, that "poor dear Stella," who has pilfered even the paltry tribute +of being remembered from the Stella that to-day is mine alone. For it is +to this fictitious person that the people whom my Stella loved, as she +did not love me, now bring their flowers; and it was to this person they +erected their pompous monument,--nay, more, it was for this atrocious +woman they ordered the very coffin in which my Stella lay when I last +saw her. And it is not fair. + +And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. It would be good to have her +back,--to have her back to jeer at me, to make me feel red and +uncomfortable and ridiculous, to say rude things about my waist, and +indeed to fluster me just by being there. Yes, it would be good. But, +upon the whole, I am not sorry that Stella is gone. + +For there is Peter Blagden to be considered. We can all agree to-day +that Peter is a good fellow, that he is making the most of his Uncle +Larry's money, and that he is nobody's enemy but his own; and we have +smugly forgotten the time when we expected him to become a great lawyer. +We do not expect that of Peter now; instead, we are content +enough--particularly since Peter has so admirably dressed his part by +taking to longish hair and gruffness and a cane,--to point him out to +strangers in Lichfield as "one of our wealthiest men," and to elect him +to all civic committees, and to discuss his semi-annual sprees and his +monetary relations with various women whom one does not "know." And the +present Mrs. Blagden, too, appears content enough. + +And as Stella loved him-- + +Well, as it was, Peter was then off on his honeymoon, and there was only +I to bring the daffodils to Stella. She was always vain, was Stella; it +would have grieved her had no one remembered. + + + 3 + +Then I caught the afternoon train for Fairhaven, and went back to my +capable fiancee. + +But I walked over to Willoughby Hall that night and found Charteris +alone in his queer library, among the serried queer books and the +portraits of his "literary creditors." When I came into the apartment he +was mending a broken tea-cup, for he peculiarly delighted in such +infinitesimal task-work; but the vexed countenance at once took on the +fond young look my coming would invariably provoke, and he shoved aside +the fragments.... + +We talked of trifles; apropos of nothing, Charteris said, "Yes,--but, +then, I devoted the morning to drawing up my will." And I laughed over +such forethought. + +The man rose and with clenched fist struck upon the littered table. "It +is in the air. I swear to you that, somehow, _I_ have been warned. But +always I have been favoured--Why, man, I protest that never in my life +have I encountered any person in associating with whom I did not +condescend, with reason to back me! Yet today Death stands within arm's +reach, and I have accomplished--some three or four little books! And +yet--why, _Ashtaroth's Lackey_, now--Yes, by God! it is perfected speech +such as few other men have ever written. I know it, and I do not care at +all even though you piteous dullards should always lack the wit to +recognise and revere perfected speech when it confronts you. But +presently I die! and there is nothing left of me save the inefficient +testimony of those three or four little books!" + +I patted his shoulder and protested he had over-worked himself. + +"Eh, well," he said, and with that easy laugh I knew of old; "in any +event, I have been thinking for a whole two hours of my wife, and of how +from the very beginning I have utilised her, and of how good and +credulous she is, and of how happy I have made her--! For I have made +her happy. That is the preposterous part of it--" + +"Why, yes; Anne loves you very dearly. Oh, I think that everybody is +irrationally fond of you, John. No, that is not a compliment, it is +rather the reverse. It is simply an instance of what I have been +brooding over all this afternoon,--that we like people on account of +their good qualities and love them on account of their defects. I +honestly believe that the cornerstone of affection is the agreeable +perception of our superiority in some one point, at least, to the +beloved. And that is why so many people are fond of you, I think." + +He laughed a little. "And _de te fabula_--Yet I would distinguish. You +think me a futile person and not, as we will put it, a disastrously +truthful person, and so on through the entire list of all those +so-called vices which are really just a habit of not doing this or that +particular thing. Well! it is no longer _a la mode_ to talk about +God,--yet I must confess to an old-fashioned faith in our Author's +existence and even in His amiability. I believe He placed me in this +colourful world, and that He is not displeased because I have spent +therein some forty-odd years pleasurably. Then too I have not wasted +that pleasure, I have philanthropically passed it on. I have bequeathed +posterity the chance to spend an enjoyable half-hour or so over one or +two little books. That is not much to claim, but it is something." + +John Charteris was talking to himself now. + +"Had I instead the daily prayers of seven orphans, or the proud +consciousness of having always been afraid to do what I wanted +to,--which I take to be the universally accredited insurance of a +blissful eternity,--or even a whole half-column with portrait in the New +York papers to indicate what a loss my premature demise had been to +America,--or actually all three together, say, to exhibit as the +increment of this period, I honestly cannot imagine any of the more +intelligent archangels lining up to cheer my entry into Paradise. I +believe, however, that to be contented, to partake of the world's +amenities with moderation as a sauce, and to aggrieve no fellow-being, +except in self-protection, and to make other people happy as often as +you find it possible, is a recipe for living that will pass muster even +in heaven. There you have my creed; and it may not be impeccable, but I +believe in it." + +"You have forgotten something," I said, with a grin. "'One must not +think too despondently nor too often of the grim Sheriff who arrives +anon to dispossess you, no less than all the others, nor of any +subsequent and unpredictable legal adjustments.' See, here it is, your +own words printed in the book." + +"Dear me, did I say that? How nicely phrased it is! Well! you and I have +defiantly preserved the gallant attitude in an era not very favorable +thereto. And we seem to prosper--as yet--" + +"But certainly! We are the highly exceptional round pegs that flourish +like green bay-trees in a square hole," I summed it up. "Presently of +course our place knoweth us not. But in the mean while--well, as it +happens, I was recalling to-day how adroitly I scaled the summit of +human wisdom when I was only fourteen. For I said then, 'You can have a +right good time first, any way, if you keep away from ugly things and +fussy people.' And at twenty-five I stick to it." + +"I wonder now if it is not at a price?" said Charteris, rather +mirthlessly. "Either way, you have as yet the courage of the +unconvicted. And you have managed, out of it all, to get together the +makings of an honest book. I do not generally believe in heaping +flattery upon young authors, but if I had written that last book of +yours it would not grieve me. Even so, I wonder--? But it is dreary +here, in this old house, with all my wife's high-minded ancestors +chilling the air. Come, let us concoct some curious sort of drink." + +I looked at him compassionately. "And have Bettie staying up to let me +in and smelling it on me! You must be out of your head." + +And then Charteris laughed and derided me, and afterward we chatted for +a good two hours,--quite at random, and disposing of the most important +subjects, as was our usage when in argument, in a half-sentence. + +It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against, and I enjoyed it. +Taking him by and large, I loved the little fellow as I have loved no +other man. + + + + +30. + +_He Gilds the Weather-Vane_ + + +But I would not go along with Charteris the next morning when he came by +the Hamlyns' on his way to King's College. I could not, because I was +labouring over a batch of proof-sheets; and as I laboured my admiration +for the very clever young man who had concocted this new book augmented +comfortably; so that I told Charteris he was a public nuisance, and +please to go to Tillietudlem. + +He had procured the key to the Library,--for the College had not opened +as yet,--and meant to borrow an odd volume or so of Lucian. Charteris +had evolved the fantastic notion of treating Lucian's Zeus as a tragic +figure. He sketched a sympathetic picture of the fallen despot, and of +the smokeless altars, girdled by a jeering rabble of so-called +philosophers, and of how irritating it must be to anybody to have your +actual existence denied. Did I not see the pathos of poor Zeus's +situation with the god business practically "cornered," and the Jews +getting all the trade? + +I informed him that the only pathos in life just at present was my +inability to disprove, in default of abolishing, the existence of people +who bothered me when I was busy. So Charteris went away, just as Byam +brought the mail from the post-office. + + + 2 + +There were two cheques from magazines. Life was very pleasant, in a +quiet uneventful world. The _Fairhaven Gazette_ for the week had come, +too, to indicate that, as usual, nothing of grave import was happening +in an agreeably monotonous world. True, the Bulgarians were issuing an +appeal to civilization on the ground that they objected to being +massacred, and cyclones were wrecking towns and killing quite a number +of persons in Florida, and the strikes in Colorado were leading to +divers homicides; but in Fairhaven these things did not seem to matter. +And so the front page of the _Gazette_ was, rightfully, reserved for +Plans of the College for the Session of 1903-4.... + +I looked again. The President was explaining that he had intended no +discourtesy to Sir Thomas Lipton by declining to attend the +Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht Club dinner; Major Delmar had failed to beat +Lou Dillon's time, on the same track; the National Dressmakers' +Association had declared that the kangaroo walk and Gibson shoulders +would shortly be eschewed by all really fashionable women; and these +matters were more interesting, of course, but certainly no cause for +excitement. Well, I reflected, no news was good news proverbially; and I +was content to let the axiom pass. + +In fine, there was nothing to worry over anywhere. And the book was +going to be good, quite astonishingly good.... + +And yonder Bettie waited for me, and I could hear the piano that +proclaimed she was not idle. I was ineffably content; and at ease within +a rather kindly universe, taking it by and large.... + +"Quite a nice Setebos, after all! a big, fine generous-hearted fellow, +who doesn't bother to keep accounts to the last penny. I heartily +approve of Setebos, and Bettie ought not to rag Him so. She would think +it tremendously nice and boyish of me if I were to go impulsively and +tell her something like that--" + +So I decided I had worked quite long enough. + + + 3 + +But as I reached out toward the portieres, a man came into the room, +entering from the hall-way. And I gave a little whistling sound of +astonishment and hastened to him with extended hand. + +"My dear fellow," I began; "why, have you dropped from the moon?" + +"They--they told me you were here," said Jasper Hardress, and paused to +moisten his lips. "My wife died, yonder in Montana, ten days ago last +Thursday,--yes, it was on a Tuesday she died, I think." + +And I was silent for a breathing-space. "Yes?" I said, at last; for I +had seen the shining thing in Jasper Hardress's hand, and I was +wondering now why he had pocketed the toy, and for how long. + +"It was of a fever she died. She was delirious,--oh, quite three days. +And she talked in her delirium." + +I began to smile; it was like witnessing a play. "Yonder is Bettie and +my one chance of manhood; and blind chance, just the machination of a +tiny microbe, entraps me as I tread toward all this. I was wrong about +Setebos. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven." + +I said, aloud: "Well, Hardress, you wouldn't have me dispute the +veracity of a lady?" + +But the man did not appear to hear me. "Oh, it was very horrible," he +said. "Oh, I would like you, first of all, to comprehend how horrible it +was. She was always calling--no, not calling exactly, but just moaning +one name, and over and over again. He had been so cruel, she said. He +didn't really care for anything, she said, except to write his hateful +books. And I had loved her, you understand. And for three whole days I +must sit there and hear her tell of what another man had meant to her! I +have not been wholly sane, I think, since then, for I had loved her for +a long time. And her throat was so little that I often thought how easy +it would be to stop the moaning and talking, but somehow I did not like +to do it. And it isn't my honour that I mean to avenge. It is Gillian +that I must avenge,--Gillian who died because a coward had robbed her of +the will to live. For it was that in chief. Why, even you must +understand that," he said, as though he pleaded with me. + +And yonder Bettie played,--with lithe fingers which caressed the keys +rather than struck them, I remembered. And always at the back of my mind +some being that was not I was taking notes as to how unruffled the man +was; and I smiled a little, in recognition of the air, as Bettie began +_The Funeral March of a Marionette_.... + +"Yes," I said; "I think I understand. There is something to be advanced +upon the other side perhaps; but that scarcely matters. You act within +your rights; and, besides, you have a pistol, and I haven't. I am +getting afraid, though, Jasper. I can't stand this much longer. So for +God's sake, make an end of this!" + +Jasper Hardress said: "I mean to. But they told me he was here? Yes, I +am sure that someone told me he was here." + +I think I must have reeled a little. I know my brain was working +automatically. Gillian Hardress had always called me Jack; and Jasper +Hardress was past reason; and yonder was Bettie, who had made life too +fine and dear a thing to be relinquished.... + +"Jasper," someone was saying, and that someone seemed to laugh, "we +aren't living in the Middle Ages, remember. No, just as I said, I cannot +stand this nonsense any longer, and you must make an end of this +foolishness. Just on a bare suspicion--just on the ravings of a +delirious woman--! Why, she used to call _me_ Jack,--and I write +books--Why, you might just as logically murder _me_!" + +"I thought at first it was you. Oh, only for a moment, boy. I was not +quite sane, I think, for at first I suspected you of such treachery as +in my sober senses I know you never dreamed of. And I had forgotten you +were just a child--But she was conscious at the end," said Jasper +Hardress, "and when I--talked with her about what she had said in +delirium, she told me it was Charteris whose son we christened Jasper +Hardress some two years ago--" + +I said: "I never knew there was a child." But I was thinking of a +hitherto unaccounted-for photograph. + +"He only lived three months. I had always wanted a son. You cannot fancy +how proud I was of him." Hardress laughed here. + +"And she told you it was Charteris! in the moment of death when--when +you were threatening me, she told you it was Charteris!" + +"It is different when you are dying. You see--Gillian knew that eternity +depended on what she said to me then--" He spoke as with difficulty, and +he kept licking at restless lips. + +"Yes,--she did believe that. And she told you--!" I comprehended how +Gillian Hardress had loved me, and my shame was such that now it was the +mere brute will to live which held me. But it held me, none the less. +Besides, I saw the least unpleasant solution. + +"I suppose I can't blame you," I said,--"for if she told you, why, of +course--" Then I barked out: "He was here a moment ago. You must have +come around one corner, in fact, just as he turned the other. You will +find him at Willoughby Hall, I suppose. He said he was going +straight home." + +For I knew that Charteris was at King's College, a mile away from +Willoughby Hall; and, I assured myself, there would be ample time to +warn him. Only how much must now depend upon the diverting qualities of +Lucian! For should the Samosatan flag in interest, John would be leaving +the College presently; and there is but one street in Fairhaven. + + + 4 + +I had my hand upon the garden-gate, and Hardress had just turned the +corner below, going toward Cambridge Street, when Bettie came upon +the porch. + +"Well," she said, "and who's your fat friend, Mr. Sheridan?" + +"I can't stop now, dear. I forgot to tell John about something which is +rather important--" + +"Gracious!" Bettie Hamlyn said; "that sounds like shooting. Why, it is +shooting, isn't it?" + +"Yes," said I. + +"--Quite as though the Monnachins and the Massawomeks and all the other +jaw-breakers were attacking Fairhaven as they used to do on alternate +Thursdays, and affording both of us an excellent opportunity to get +nicely scalped in time for dinner. So I don't mind confessing that it +was against precisely such an emergency I declined to turn out an +elaborate suite of hair; and now I expect the world at large to +acknowledge that I acted very sensibly." + +"It is much more likely to be some drunken country-man on his monthly +spree--" I was reflecting while Bettie talked nonsense that there had +been no less than four shots. I was wondering whom the last was for. It +would be much pleasanter, all around, if Hardress had sent it into his +own disordered brain. Yes, certainly, three bullets ought amply to +account for an unprepared and unarmed and puny Charteris.... + +So I said: "Well, I suppose my business with John must wait for a while. +Besides, Bettie, you are such a dear in that get-up. And if you will +come down into the garden at once, I will explain a few of my reasons +for advancing the assertion." + +Standing upon the porch, she patted me ever so lightly upon the head. +"What a child it is!" she said. "I don't think that, after all, I shall +put twenty-six candles on your cake next week. The fat and lazy literary +gent is not really old enough, not really more than ten." + +"--And besides, apart from the proposed discussion of your physical +charms, I have something else quite equally important to tell +you about." + +"Oh, drat the pertinacious infant, then I'll come for half an hour. Just +wait until I get a hat. Still, what a worthless child it is! to be +quitting work before noon." + +And she would have gone, but I detained her. "Yes, what a worthless +child it is,--or rather, what an unproverbial sort of busy bee it has +been, Bettie dear. For his has been the summer air, and the sunshine, +and the flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes +have been upon him. Now it is autumn. And he has let others eat his +honey-which I take to include all that he actually made, all that wasn't +in the world before he came, as Stella used to say,--so that he might +have his morsel and his song. And sometimes it has been Sardinian honey, +very bitter in the mouth,--and even then he has let others eat it--" + +"You are a most irrelevant infant," said Miss Hamlyn, "with these +insectean divagations--Dear me, what lovely words! And of course if you +really want to drag me into that baking-hot garden, and have the only +fiancee you just at present possess laid up by a sunstroke--" + + + + +_The Epilogue: Which Suggests that Second Thoughts--_ + + +So I waited there alone. Whatever the four shots implied, I must tell +Bettie everything, because she was Bettie, and it was not fair I should +have any secrets from her. "Oh, just be honest with me," she had said, +in this same garden, "and I don't care what you do!" And I had never +lied to Bettie: at worst, I simply had not told her anything concerning +matters about which I was glad she had not happened to ask any +questions. But this was different.... + +Dimly I knew that everything must pivot on my telling Bettie. John was +done for, the Hardress woman was done for, and whether or no Jasper had +done for himself, there was no danger, now, that anyone would ever know +how that infernal Gillian had badgered me into, probably, three +homicides. There might be some sort of supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, +but very certainly it was not conformable to any human mathematics.... +And therefore I must tell Bettie. + +I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. She had pardoned much. It +might be she would pardon even this, "because I had been honest with her +when I didn't want to be." And in any event--even in her loathing,-- +Bettie would understand, and know I had at least kept faith with her.... + +I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. For living seemed somehow +to have raised barriers about me a little by a little, so that I must +view and talk with all my fellows more and more remotely, and could not, +as it were, quite touch anybody save Bettie. At all other persons I was +but grimacing falsely across an impalpable barrier. And now just such a +barrier was arising between Bettie and me, as I perceived in a sort of +panic. Yes, it was rising resistlessly, like an augmenting mist not ever +to be put aside, except by plunging forthwith into hours, or days, or +even into months perhaps, of ugliness and discomfort.... + +It was the season of harvest. The leaves were not yet turned, and upon +my face the heatless, sun-steeped air was like a caress. The whole world +was at full-tide, ineffably sweet and just a little languorous: and bees +were audible, as in a humorous pretence of vexation.... + +The world was very beautiful. I must tell Bettie presently, of course; +only the world was such a comfortable place precisely as it was; and I +began to wonder if I need tell Bettie after all? + +For, after all, to tell the truth could resurrect nobody; and to know +the truth would certainly make Bettie very unhappy; and never in my life +have I been able to endure the contact of unhappiness. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cords of Vanity, by +James Branch Cabell and Willson Follett + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORDS OF VANITY *** + +***** This file should be named 9608.txt or 9608.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/6/0/9608/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Virginia Paque, Anuradha Valsa, +and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + +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 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: The Cords of Vanity + +Author: James Branch Cabell et al + +Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9608] +[This file was first posted on October 9, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CORDS OF VANITY *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Virginia Paque, Anuradha Valsa, and +Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + +THE CORDS OF VANITY + +A Comedy of Shirking + +Revised and Expanded Edition + +by JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +with INTRODUCTION by WILSON FOLLETT + + + + + + + +To + +GABRIELLE BROOKE MONCURE + +_Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit._ + + + + + +AN INTRODUCTION + +by Wilson Follett + + +Mr. Cabell, in making ready this second or intended edition of THE +CORDS OF VANITY, performs an act of reclamation which is at the same +time an act of fresh creation. + +For the purely reclamatory aspect of what he has done, his reward (so +far as that can consist in anything save the doing) must come from +insignificantly few directions; so few indeed that he, with a wrily +humorous exaggeration, affects to believe them singular. The author of +this novel has been pleased to describe the author of this +introduction as "the only known purchaser of the book" and, further, +as "the other person to own a CORDS OF VANITY". I could readily enough +acquit myself, with good sound legal proofs, of any such singularity +as stands charged in this soft impeachment--and that without appeal to +_The Cleveland Plain Dealer_ of eleven years ago ("slushy and +disgusting"), or to _The New York Post_ ("sterile and malodorous ... +worse than immoral--dull"), or to _Ainslee's Magazine_ ("inconsequent +and rambling ... rather nauseating at times"). These devotees of the +adjective that hunts in pairs are hardly to be discussed, I suppose, +in connection with any rewards except such as accrue to the possessors +of a certain obtuseness, who always and infallibly reap at least the +reward of not being hurt by what they do not know--or, for that +matter, by what they do know. He who writes such a book as THE CORDS +OF VANITY is committing himself to the supremely irrational faith that +this dullness is somehow not the ultimate arbiter; and for him the +pronouncements of this dullness simply do not figure among either his +rewards or his penalties. So, it is not exactly to these tributes of +the press that one reverts in noting that THE CORDS OF VANITY, on its +publication eleven years ago, promptly became a book which there +were--almost--none to praise and very few to love. After all, its +author's computation of that former audience of his--his actual +individual voluntary readers of a decade ago--appears to be but +slightly and pardonably exaggerated on the more modest side of the +fact. If there were a Cabell Club of membership determined solely by +the number of those who, already possessing THE CORDS OF VANITY in its +first edition, recognize it as the work of a serious artist of high +achievement and higher capacity, I suspect that the smallness of that +club would be in inordinate disproportion to everything but its +selectness and its members' pride in "belonging". + +Be that as it may, the economist-author, on the eve of his book's +emergence from the limbo of "out of print", prefers that it come into +its redemption carrying a foreword by someone who knew it without +dislike in its former incarnation. No contingent liability, it seems, +can dissuade Mr. Cabell from this preference. An author who once +elected to precede a group of his best tales with an introduction +eloquently setting forth reasons why the collection ought not to be +published at all, is hardly to be deterred now by the mere +inexpediency of hitching his star to a farm-wagon. His own graciously +unreasonable insistence must be the excuse, such as it is, for the +present introduction, such as it is. If there may be said to exist a +sort of charter membership in Mr. Cabell's audience, this document is +to be construed as representing its very enthusiastic welcome to the +later and vastly larger elective membership. + +And if, weighed as such a welcome, it proves hopelessly inadequate, at +least it provides a number of possible compensations by the way. For +instance, that _New York World_ critic who damned the book but praised +its frontispiece of 1909, has now a uniquely pat opportunity to +balance his ledger by praising the book and damning this foreword, +which, more or less, replaces the frontispiece. Similarly, the more +renowned critic and anthologist who so well knows the "originals" of +the verses in _From the Hidden Way_, can now render poetically perfect +justice to all who will care by perceiving that both the earlier +edition of this book and the author of this foreword are but figments +of Mr. Cabell's slightly puckish invention. + +But these pages must not be, like those which follow, a comedy of +shirking. They will have flouted a plain duty unless they speak of the +sense and the degree in which this novel, during the process of +reclaiming it, has been actually recreated. Perhaps the matter can be +packed most succinctly into the statement that Mr. Cabell's hero has +been subjected to such a process of growth as has made him +commensurate in stature with the other two modern writers of Mr. +Cabell's invention. As _The Cream of the Jest_ is essentially the book +of Felix Kennaston and _Beyond Life_ that of John Charteris, so THE +CORDS OF VANITY is essentially the book of Robert Etheridge Townsend. +Now, this Townsend has accomplished a deal of growing since 1909. By +this I do not mean that he is taken at a later period of his own +imagined life, or that he fails to act consonantly with the extreme +youth imputed to him: I mean that he is the creation of a more mature +mind, a deeper philosophy, a more probing insight into the +implications of things. A given youth of twenty-five will be very +differently interpreted by an observer of thirty and by the same +observer at forty, very much as a given era of the past will be +understood differently by a single historian before and after certain +cycles of his own social and political experience. The past never +remains to us the same past; it grows up along with us; the physical +facts may remain admittedly the same, but our understanding accents +them differently, finds more in them at some points and less at +others. So Robert Etheridge Townsend remains an example of that +special temperament which, being unable to endure the contact of +unhappiness, consistently shirks every responsibility that entails or +threatens discomfort; and the truth about him, taking him as an +example of just that temperament, is still inexorably told. But his +weakness as a man becomes much more tolerable in this second version, +because it is much more intimately and poignantly correlated with his +strength as an artist. One is made to feel that he, like Charteris, +may the better consummate in his art the auctorial virtues of +distinction and clarity, beauty and symmetry, tenderness and truth and +urbanity, precisely because his personal life is bereft of those +virtues. Less than before, the accent is on the wastrel in Townsend; +more than before, it is on the potential creator of beauty in him. The +earlier readers will hardly count it as a fault that Mr. Cabell has +contrived to make his novel, without detriment to any truth +whatsoever, a far less unpleasant book. Sardonic it still is, by a +necessary implication, but not wantonly, and with a mellowness. The +irony, which at its harshest was capable of rasping the nerves, has +become capable of wringing the heart. + +Other reasons there are, too, for holding that THE CORDS OF VANITY is +certain to make its second appeal to a many times multiplied audience. +Since divers momentous transactions of the years just gone, the whole +world stands in a moral position extraordinarily well adapted to the +comprehension of just such a comedy of shirking; and especially the +world of thought has received a powerful impulsion toward the area +long occupied by Mr. Cabell's romantic pessimism. There is perhaps +somewhat more demand for satire, or at least a growing toleration of +it. Moreover, by sheer patience and reiteration Mr. Cabell has +procured no little currency for some of his most characteristic ideas. +Chivalry and gallantry, as he analyzes them, are concepts which play +their part in the inevitable present re-editing of social and literary +history. _The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck_, _The Cream of the Jest_, +and _The Certain Hour_ have somewhat to say to the discriminating, +even on other than purely aesthetic grounds; _Beyond Life_ is on the +threshold of its day as the _Sartor Resartus_ of one side, the +aesthetic side, of modernism; + +"_Of_ Jurgen _eke they maken mencion";_ + +and THE CORDS OF VANITY is but the first of the earlier books to be +reissued in the format of the uniform and accessible Intended Edition. + +While THE CORDS OF VANITY was out of print, a fresh copy is known to +have been acquired for twenty-five cents. Copies of a more recent work +by the same hand--a tale which has been rendered equally unavailable +to the public, though by slightly different considerations--have +fetched as much as one hundred times that sum. This arithmetic may be, +in part, the gauge of an unsought and distasteful notoriety; but that +very notoriety, by the most natural of transitions, will lead the +curious on from what cannot be obtained to what can, and some who have +begun by seeking one particular work of a great artist will end by +discovering the artist. In short, it is rational to expect that the +fortunes hereafter of this rewritten novel will very excellently +illustrate the uses of adversity. + +Not, I repeat, that any great part of the reward for such writing can +come from without. According to Robert Etheridge Townsend, "a man +writes admirable prose not at all for the sake of having it read, but +for the more sensible reason that he enjoys playing solitaire"--a not +un-Cabellian saying. And, even of the reward from without, it may be +questioned whether the really indispensable part ever comes from the +multitude. A lady with whose more candid opinions the writer of this +is more frequently favored nowadays than of old has said: "Every time +I hear of somebody who has wanted one of these books without being +able to get it, or who, having got it, has conceded it nothing better +than the disdain of an ignoramus, I feel as if I must forthwith get +out the copy and read it through again and again, until I have read it +once for every person who has rejected it or been denied it." One may +feel reasonably sure that it is this kind of solicitude, rather than +any possible sanction from the crowd, which would be thought of by the +author of this book as "the exact high prize through desire of which +we write". + +WILSON FOLLETT. + +CHESHIRE, CONNECTICUT + +_May, 1920_ + + + + + + CONTENTS: + + THE PROLOGUE + + I HE SITS OUT A DANCE + + II HE LOVES EXTENSIVELY + + III HE EARNS A STICK-PIN + + IV HE TALKS WITH CHARTERIS + + V HE REVISITS FAIRHAVEN AND THE PLAY + + VI HE CHATS OVER A HEDGE + + VII HE GOES MAD IN A GARDEN + + VIII HE DUELS WITH A STUPID WOMAN + + IX HE PUTS HIS TONGUE IN HIS CHEEK + + X HE SAMPLES NEW EMOTIONS + + XI HE POSTURES AMONG CHIMNEY-POTS + + XII HE FACES HIMSELF AND REMEMBERS + + XIII HE BAITS UPON THE JOURNEY + + XIV HE PARTICIPATES IN A BRAVE JEST + + XV HE DECIDES TO AMUSE HIMSELF + + XVI HE SEEKS FOR COPY + + XVII HE PROVIDES COPY + + XVIII HE SPENDS AN AFTERNOON IN ARDEN + + XIX HE PLAYS THE IMPROVIDENT FOOL + + XX HE DINES OUT, IMPEDED BY SUPERSTITIONS + + XXI HE IS URGED TO DESERT HIS GALLEY + + XXII HE CLEANS THE SLATE + + XXIII HE REVILES DESTINY AND CLIMBS A WALL + + XXIV HE RECONCILES SENTIMENT AND REASON + + XXV HE ADVANCES IN THE ATTACK ON SELWOODE + + XXVI HE ASSISTS IN THE DIVERSION OF BIRDS + + XXVII HE CALLS, COUNSELS, AND CONSIDERS + +XXVIII HE PARTICIPATES IN SUNDRY CONFIDENCES + + XXIX HE ALLOWS THE MERITS OF IMPERFECTION + + XXX HE GILDS THE WEATHER-VANE + + THE EPILOGUE: WHICH SUGGESTS THAT SECOND THOUGHTS-- + + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + +_"In the house and garden of his dream he saw a child moving, and +could divide the main streams at least of the winds that had played on +him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey."_ + + + +_The Prologue: Which Deals with the Essentials_ + + +_1--Writing_ + +It appeared to me that my circumstances clamored for betterment, +because never in my life have I been able to endure the contact of +unhappiness. And my mother was always crying now, over (though I did +not know it) the luckiest chance which had ever befallen her; and that +made me cry too, without understanding exactly why. + +So the child, that then was I, procured a pencil and a bit of +wrapping-paper, and began to write laboriously: + +"DEAR LORD + +"You know that Papa died and please comfort Mama +and give Father a crown of Glory Ammen + +"Your lamb and very sincerely yours + +"ROBERT ETHERIDGE TOWNSEND." + +This appeared to the point as I re-read it, and of course God would +understand that children were not expected to write quite as straight +across the paper as grown people. The one problem was how to deliver +this, my first letter, most expeditiously, because when your mother +cried you always cried too, and couldn't stop, not even when you +wanted to, not even when she promised you five cents, and it all made +you horribly uncomfortable. + +I knew that the big Bible on the parlor table was God's book. Probably +God read it very often, since anybody would be proud of having written +a book as big as that and would want to look at it every day. So I +tiptoed into the darkened parlor. I use the word advisedly, for there +was not at this period any drawing-room in Lichfield, and besides, a +drawing-room is an entirely different matter. + +Everywhere the room was cool, and, since the shades were down, the +outlines of the room's contents were uncomfortably dubious; for just +where the table stood had been, five days ago, a big and oddly-shaped +black box with beautiful silver handles; and Uncle George had lifted +me so that I could see through the pane of glass, which was a part of +this funny box, while an infinity of decorous people rustled and +whispered.... + +I remember knowing they were "company" and thinking they coughed and +sniffed because they were sorry that my father was dead. In the light +of knowledge latterly acquired, I attribute these actions to the then +prevalent weather, for even now I recall how stiflingly the room smelt +of flowers--particularly of magnolia blossoms--and of rubber and of +wet umbrellas. For my own part, I was not at all sorry, though of +course I pretended to be, since I had always known that as a rule my +father whipped me because he had just quarreled with my mother, and +that he then enjoyed whipping me. + +I desired, in fine, that he should stay dead and possess his crown of +glory in Heaven, which was reassuringly remote, and that my mother +should stop crying. So I slipped my note into the Apocrypha.... + +I felt that somewhere in the room was God and that God was watching +me, but I was not afraid. Yet I entertained, in common with most +children, a nebulous distrust of this mysterious Person, a distrust of +which I was particularly conscious on winter nights when the gas had +been turned down to a blue fleck, and the shadow of the mantelpiece +flickered and plunged on the ceiling, and the clock ticked louder and +louder, in prediction (I suspected) of some terrible event very close +at hand. + +Then you remembered such unpleasant matters as Elisha and his bears, +and those poor Egyptian children who had never even spoken to Moses, +and that uncomfortably abstemious lady, in the fat blue-covered +_Arabian Nights_, who ate nothing but rice, grain by grain--in the +daytime.... And you called Mammy, and said you were very thirsty and +wanted a glass of water, please. + +To-day, though, while acutely conscious of that awful inspection, and +painstakingly careful not to look behind me, I was not, after all, +precisely afraid. If God were a bit like other people I knew He would +say, "What an odd child!" and I liked to have people say that. Still, +there was sunlight in the hall, and lots of sunlight, not just long +and dusty shreds of sunlight, and I felt more comfortable when I was +back in the hall. + + +2--_Reading_ + +I lay flat upon my stomach, having found that posture most conformable +to the practice of reading, and I considered the cover of this slim, +green book; the name of John Charteris, stamped thereon in fat-bellied +letters of gold, meant less to me than it was destined to signify +thereafter. + +A deal of puzzling matter I found in this book, but in my memory, +always, one fantastic passage clung as a burr to sheep's wool. That +fable, too, meant less to me than it was destined to signify +thereafter, when the author of it was used to declare that he had, +unwittingly, written it about me. Then I read again this + +_Fable of the Foolish Prince_ + +"As to all earlier happenings I choose in this place to be silent. +Anterior adventures he had known of the right princely sort. But +concerning his traffic with Schamir, the chief talisman, and how +through its aid he won to the Sun's Sister for a little while; and +concerning his dealings with the handsome Troll-wife (in which affair +the cat he bribed with butter and the elm-tree he had decked with +ribbons helped him); and with that beautiful and dire Thuringian woman +whose soul was a red mouse: we have in this place naught to do. +Besides, the Foolish Prince had put aside such commerce when the Fairy +came to guide him; so he, at least, could not in equity have grudged +the same privilege to his historian. + +"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping along his +father's highway. But the road was bordered by so many wonders--as +here a bright pebble and there an anemone, say, and, just beyond, a +brook which babbled an entreaty to be tasted,--that many folk had +presently overtaken and had passed the loitering Foolish Prince. First +came a grandee, supine in his gilded coach, with half-shut eyes, +uneagerly meditant upon yesterday's statecraft or to-morrow's +gallantry; and now three yokels, with ruddy cheeks and much dust upon +their shoulders; now a haggard man in black, who constantly glanced +backward; and now a corporal with an empty sleeve, who whistled as he +went. + +"A butterfly guided every man of them along the highway. 'For the Lord +of the Fields is a whimsical person,' said the Fairy,' and such is his +very old enactment concerning the passage even of his cowpath; but +princes each in his day and in his way may trample this domain as +prompt their will and skill.' + +"'That now is excellent hearing,' said the Foolish Prince; and he +strutted. + +"'Look you,' said the Fairy, 'a man does not often stumble and break +his shins in the highway, but rather in the byway.'.... + +"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping on his +allotted journey, though he paused once in a while to shake his bauble +at the staring sun. + +"'The stars,' he considered, 'are more sympathetic.... + +"And thus, the Fairy leading, they came at last to a tall hedge +wherein were a hundred wickets, all being closed; and those who had +passed the Foolish Prince disputed before the hedge and measured the +hundred wickets with thirty-nine articles and with a variety of +instruments, and each man entered at his chosen wicket, and a +butterfly went before him; but no man returned into the open country. + +"'Now beyond each wicket,' said the Fairy, 'lies a great crucible, and +by ninety and nine of these crucibles is a man consumed, or else +transmuted into this animal or that animal. For such is the law in +these parts and in human hearts.' + +"The Prince demanded how if one found by chance the hundredth wicket? +But she shook her head and said that none of the Tylwydd Teg was +permitted to enter the Disenchanted Garden. Rumor had it that within +the Garden, beyond the crucibles, was a Tree, but whether the fruit of +this Tree were sweet or bitter no person in the Fields could tell, nor +did the Fairy pretend to know what happened in the Garden. + +"'Then why, in heaven's name, need a man test any of these wickets?' +cried the Foolish Prince; 'with so much to lose and, it may be, +nothing to gain? For one, I shall enter none of them.' + +"But once more she shook her glittering head. 'In your House and in +your Sign it was decreed. Time will be, my Prince; to-day the kid +gambols and the ox chews his cud. Presently the butcher cries, _Time +is!_ Comes the hour and the power, and the cook bestirs herself and +says, _Time was!_ The master has his dinner, either way, all say, and +every day.' + +"And the Fairy vanished as she talked with him, her radiances thinning +into the neutral colors of smoke, and thence dwindling a little by a +little into the vaulting spiral of a windless and a burnt-out fire, +until nothing remained of her save her voice; and that was like the +moving of dead leaves before they fall. + +"'Truly,' said the Foolish Prince, 'I am compelled to consider this a +vexatious business. For, look you, the butterfly I just now admire +flits over this wicket, and then her twin flutters over that wicket, +and between them there is absolutely no disparity in attraction. Hoo! +here is a more sensible insect.' + +"And he leaped and cracked his heels together and ran after a golden +butterfly that drifted to the rearward Fields. There was such a host +of butterflies about that presently he had lost track of his first +choice, and was in boisterous pursuit of a second, and then of a +third, and then of yet others; but none of them did he ever capture, +the while that one by one he followed divers butterflies of varying +colors, and never a golden butterfly did he find any more. + +"When it was evening, the sky drew up the twilight from the east as a +blotter draws up ink, and stars were kindling everywhere like tiny +signal-fires, and a light wind came out of the murky east and rustled +very plaintively in places where the more ambiguous shadows were; and +the Foolish Prince shivered, for the air was growing chill, and the +tips of his fingers were aware of it. + +"'A crucible,' he reflected, 'possesses the minor virtue of continuous +warmth.' + +"And before the hedge he found a Rational Person, led hither by a +Clothes' Moth, working out the problem of the hundred wickets in +consonance with the most approved methods. 'I have very nearly solved +it,' the Rational Person said, in genteel triumph, 'but this evening +grows too dark for any further ciphering, and again I must wait until +to-morrow. I regret, sir, that you have elected to waste the day, in +pursuit of various meretricious Lepidoptera.' + +"'A happy day, my brother, is never wasted." + +"'That appears to me to be nonsense,' said the Rational Person; and he +put up his portfolio, preparatory to spending another night under his +umbrella in the Fields. + +"'Indeed, my brother?' laughed the Foolish Prince. 'Then, farewell, +for I am assured that yonder, as here, our father makes the laws, and +that to dispute his appreciation of the enticing qualities of +butterflies were an impertinence.' + +"Thereafter, pushing open the wicket nearest to his hand, the Foolish +Prince tucked his bauble under his left arm and skipped into the +Disenchanted Garden; and as he went he sang, not noting that, from +somewhere in the thickening shadows, had arisen a golden butterfly +which went before him through the wicket. + +"Sang the Foolish Prince: + + "'Farewell to Fields and Butterflies + And levities of Yester-year! + For we espy, and hold more dear, + The Wicket of our Destinies. + + "'Whereby we enter, once for all, + A Garden which such fruit doth yield + As, tasted once, no more Afield + We fare where Youth holds carnival. + + "'Farewell, fair Fields, none found amiss + When laughter was a frequent noise + And golden-hearted girls and boys + Appraised the mouth they meant to kiss. + + "'Farewell, farewell! but for a space + We, being young, Afield might stray, + That in our Garden nod and say, + _Afield is no unpleasant place.'"_ + + +3--_Arithmetic_ + +In such disconnected fashion, as hereafter, I record the moments of my +life which I most vividly remember. For it is possible only in the +last paragraphs of a book, and for a book's people only, to look back +upon an ordered and proportionate progression to what one has become; +in life the thing arrives with scantier dignity; and one appears, in +retrospection, less to have marched toward any goal than always to +have jumped and scrambled from one stepping-stone to another because, +however momentarily, "just this or that poor impulse seemed the sole +work of a lifetime." + +Well! at least I have known these moments and the rapture of their +dominance; and I am not lightly to be stripped of recollection of +them, nor of the attendant thrill either, by any cheerless hour +wherein, as sometimes happens, my personal achievements confront me +like a pile of flimsy jack-straws. + +What does it all amount to?--I do not know. There may be some sort of +supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, but very certainly it is not +conformable to any human mathematics. + + + + + + + _THE CORDS OF VANITY + +"His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the flowers; and +gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been upon him. +Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his morsel +and his song."_ + + + + + + +1. + +_He Sits Out a Dance_ + + +When I first knew Stella she was within a month of being fifteen, +which is for womankind an unattractive age. There were a startling +number of corners to her then, and she had but vague notions as to the +management of her hands and feet. In consequence they were perpetually +turning up in unexpected places and surprising her by their size and +number. Yes, she was very hopelessly fifteen; and she was used to +laugh, unnecessarily, in a nervous fashion, approximating to a whinny, +and when engaged in conversation she patted down her skirts six times +to the minute. + +It seems oddly unbelievable when I reflect that Rosalind--"daughter to +the banished Duke"--and Stella and Helen of Troy, and all the other +famous fair ones of history, were each like that at one period or +another. + +As for myself, I was nine days younger than Stella, and so I was at +this time very old--much older than it is ever permitted anyone to be +afterward. I cherished the most optimistic ideas as to my impendent +moustache, and was wont in privacy to encourage it with the +manicure-scissors. I still entertained the belief that girls were +upon the whole superfluous nuisances, but was beginning to perceive +the expediency of concealing this opinion, even in private converse +with my dearest chum, where, in our joyous interchange of various +heresies, we touched upon this especial sub-division of fauna very +lightly, and, I now suspect, with some self-consciousness. + + + 2 + +All this was at a summer resort, which was called the Green +Chalybeate. Stella and I and others of our age attended the hotel hops +in the evening with religious punctuality, for well-meaning elders +insisted these dances amused us, and it was easier to go than to argue +the point. At least, that was the feeling of the boys. + +Stella has since sworn the girls liked it. I suspect in this statement +a certain parsimony as to the truth. They giggled too much and were +never entirely free from that haunting anxiety concerning their +skirts. + +We danced together, Stella and I, to the strains of the last Sousa +two-step (it was the _Washington Post_), and we conversed, meanwhile, +with careful disregard of the amenities of life, since each feared +lest the other might suspect in some common courtesy an attempt +at--there is really no other word--spooning. And spooning was absurd. + +Well, as I once read in the pages of a rare and little known author, +one lives and learns. + +I asked Stella to sit out a dance. I did this because I had heard Mr. +Lethbury--a handsome man with waxed mustachios and an absolutely +piratical amount of whiskers,--make the same request of Miss Van +Orden, my just relinquished partner, and it was evident that such +whiskers could do no wrong. + +Stella was not uninfluenced, it may be, by Miss Van Orden's example, +for even in girlhood the latter was a person of extraordinary beauty, +whereas, as has been said, Stella's corners were then multitudinous; +and it is probable that those two queer little knobs at the base of +Stella's throat would be apt to render their owner uncomfortable and a +bit abject before--let us say--more ample charms. In any event, Stella +giggled and said she thought it would be just fine, and I presently +conducted her to the third piazza of the hotel. + +There we found a world that was new. + + + 3 + +It was a world of sweet odors and strange lights, flooded with a +kindly silence which was, somehow, composed of many lispings and +trepidations and thin echoes. The night was warm, the sky all +transparency. If the comparison was not manifestly absurd, I would +liken that remembered sky's pale color to the look of blue plush +rubbed the wrong way. And in its radiance the stars bathed, large and +bright and intimate, yet blurred somewhat, like shop-lights seen +through frosted panes; and the moon floated on it, crisp and clear as +a new-minted coin. This was the full midsummer moon, grave and +glorious, that compelled the eye; and its shield was obscurely marked, +as though a Titan had breathed on its chill surface. Its light +suffused the heavens and lay upon the earth beneath us in broad +splashes; and the foliage about us was dappled with its splendor, save +in the open east, where the undulant, low hills wore radiancy as a +mantle. + +For the trees, mostly maples of slight stature, clustered thickly +about the hotel, and their branches mingled in a restless pattern of +blacks and silvers and dim greens that mimicked the laughter of the +sea under an April wind. Looking down from the piazza, over the +expanse of tree-tops, all this was strangely like the sea; and it gave +one, somehow, much the same sense of remote, unbounded spaces and of a +beauty that was a little sinister. At times whippoorwills called to +one another, eerie and shrill; and the distant dance-music was a +vibration in the air, which was heavy with the scent of bruised +growing things and was filled with the cool, healing magic of the +moonlight. + +Taking it all in all, we had blundered upon a very beautiful place. +And there we sat for a while and talked in an aimless fashion. We did +not know quite how one ought to "sit out" a dance, you conceive.... + + + 4 + +Then, moved by some queer impulse, I stared over the railing for a +little at this great, wonderful, ambiguous world, and said solemnly: + +"It is good." + +"Yes," Stella agreed, in a curious, quiet and tiny voice, "it--it's +very large, isn't it?" She looked out for a moment over the tree-tops. +"It makes me feel like a little old nothing," she said, at last. "The +stars are so big, and--so uninterested." Stella paused for an +interval, and then spoke again, with an uncertain laugh. "I think I am +rather afraid." + +"Afraid?" I echoed. + +"Yes," she said, vaguely; "of--of everything." + +I understood. Even then I knew something of the occasional +insufficiency of words. + +"It is a big world," I assented, "and lots of people are having a +right hard time in it right now. I reckon there is somebody dying this +very minute not far off." + +"It's all--waiting for us!" Stella had forgotten my existence. "It's +bringing us so many things--and we don't know what any of them are. +But we've got to take them, whether we want to or not. It isn't fair. +We've got to--well, got to grow up, and--marry, and--die, whether we +want to or not. We've no choice. And it may not matter, after all. +Everything will keep right on like it did before; and the stars won't +care; and what we've done and had done to us won't really matter!" + +"Well, but, Stella, you can have a right good time first, anyway, if +you keep away from ugly things and fussy people. And I reckon you +really go to Heaven afterwards if you haven't been really bad,--don't +you?" + +"Rob,--are you ever afraid of dying?" Stella asked, "very much +afraid--Oh, you know what I mean." + +I did. I was about ten once more. It was dark, and I was passing a +drug-store, with huge red and green and purple bottles glistening in +the gas-lit windows; and it had just occurred to me that I, too, must +die, and be locked up in a box, and let down with trunk-straps into a +hole, like Father was.... So I said, "Yes." + +"And yet we've got to! Oh, I don't see how people can go on living +like everything was all right when that's always getting nearer,--when +they know they've got to die before very long. Because they dance and +go on picnics and buy hats as if they were going to live forever. +I--oh, I can't understand." + +"They get used to the idea, I reckon. We're sort of like the rats in +the trap at home, in our stable," I suggested, poetically. "We can bite +the wires and go crazy, like lots of them do, if we want to, or we can +eat the cheese and kind of try not to think about it. Either way, there's +no getting out till they come to kill us in the morning." + +"Yes," sighed Stella; "I suppose we must make the best of it." + +"It's the only sensible thing to do, far as I can see." + +"But it is all so big--and so careless about us!" she said, after a +little. "And we don't know--we can't know!--what is going to happen to +you and me. And we can't stop its happening!" + +"We'll just have to make the best of that, too," I protested, +dolefully. + +Stella sighed again, "I hope so," she assented; "still, I'm scared of +it." + +"I think I am, too--sort of," I conceded, after reflection. "Anyhow, I +am going to have as good a time as I can." + +There was now an even longer pause. Pitiable, ridiculous infants were +pondering, somewhat vaguely but very solemnly, over certain mysteries +of existence, which most of us have learned to accept with stolidity. +We were young, and to us the miraculous insecurity and inconsequence +of human life was still a little impressive, and we had not yet come +to regard the universe as a more or less comfortable place, +well-meaningly constructed anyhow--by Somebody--for us to reside in. + +Therefore we moved a trifle closer together, Stella and I, and were +commonly miserable over the _Weltschmerz_. After a little a distant +whippoorwill woke me from a chaos of reverie, and I turned to Stella, +with a vague sense that we two were the only people left in the whole +world, and that I was very, very fond of her. + +Stella's head was leaned backward. Her lips were parted, and the +moonlight glinted in her eyes. Her eyes were blue. + +"Don't!" said Stella, faintly. + +I did.... + +It was a matter out of my volition, out of my planning. And, oh, the +wonder, and sweetness, and sacredness of it! I thought, even in the +instant; and, oh, the pity that, after all, it is slightly +disappointing.... + +Stella was not angry, as I had half expected. "That was dear of you," +she said, impulsively, "but don't try to do it again." There was the +wisdom of centuries in this mandate of Stella's as she rose from the +bench. The spell was broken, utterly. "I think," said Stella, in the +voice of a girl of fifteen, "I think we'd better go and dance some +more." + + + 5 + +In the crude morning I approached Stella, with a fatuous smile. She +apparently both perceived and resented my bearing, although she never +once looked at me. There was something of great interest to her in the +distance, apparently down by the springhouse; she was flushed and +indignant; and her eyes wouldn't, couldn't, and didn't turn for an +instant in my direction. + +I fidgeted. + +"If," said she, impersonally, "if you believe it was because of _you_, +you are very much mistaken. It would have been the same with anybody. +You don't understand, and I don't either. Anyhow, I think you are a +mess, and I hate you. Go away from me!" + +And she stamped her foot in a fine rage. + +For the moment I entertained an un-Christian desire that Stella had +been born a boy. In that case, I felt, I would, just then, have really +enjoyed sitting upon the back of her head, and grinding her nose into +the lawn, and otherwise persuading her to cry "'Nough." These virile +pleasures being denied me, I sought for comfort in discourteous +speech. + +"Umph-huh!" said I, "and you think you're mighty smart, don't you? +Well, I don't want you pawing around me any more, either. I won't have +it, do you understand! That was what I was going to tell you anyhow, +you kissing-bug, even if you hadn't acted so smart. And you can just +stick that right in your pipe and smoke it, you old Miss Smart Alec." + +Thereupon I--wisely--departed without delay. A rock struck me rather +forcibly between the shoulder blades, but I did not deign to notice +this phenomenon. + +"You can't fight girls with fists," I reflected. "You've just got to +talk to them in the right way." + + + + +2. + +_He Loves Extensively_ + + +I saw no more of Stella for a lengthy while, since within two days of +the events recorded it pleased my mother to seek out another summer +resort. + +"For in September," she said, "I really must have perfect quiet and +unimpeachable butter, and falling leaves, and only a very few +congenial people to be melancholy with,--and that sort of thing, you +know. I find it freshens one up so against the winter." + +It was a signal feature of my mother's conversation that you never +understood, precisely, what she was talking about. + +Thus in her train the silly, pretty woman drew otherwhither her +hobbledehoy son, as indeed Claire Bulmer Townsend had aforetime drawn +an armament of more mature and stolid members of my sex. I was always +proud of my handsome mother, but without any aspirations, however +theoretical, toward intimacy; and her periods of conscientious if +vague affection, when she recollected its propriety, I endured with +consolatory foreknowledge of an impendent, more agreeable era of +neglect. + +I fancy that at bottom I was without suspecting it lonely. I was an +only child; my father had died, as has been hinted, when I was in +kilts.... No, I must have graduated from kilts into "knee-pants" when +the Democracy of Lichfield celebrated Grover Cleveland's first +election as President, for I was seven years old then, and was allowed +to stay up ever so late after supper to watch the torchlight parade. I +recollect being rather pleasantly scared by the yells of all those +marching people and by the glistening of their faces as the irregular +flaring torches heaved by; and I recollect how delightfully the cold +night air was flavored with kerosene. In any event, it was on this +generally festive November night that my father again took too much to +drink, and, coming home toward morning, lay down and went to sleep in +the vestibule between our front-door and the storm-doors; and five +days later died of pneumonia...In that era I was accounted an odd boy; +given to reading and secretive ways, and, they record, to long +silences throughout which my lips would move noiselessly. "Just +talking to one of my friends," they tell me I was used to explain; +though it was not until my career at King's College that I may be said +to have pretended to intimacy with anybody. + + + 2 + +For in old Fairhaven I spent, of course, a period of ostensible study, +as four generations of my fathers had done aforetime. But in that +leisured, slatternly and ancient city I garnered a far larger harvest +of (comparatively) innocuous cakes and ale than of authentic learning, +and at my graduation carried little of moment from the place save many +memories of Bettie Hamlyn.... Her father taught me Latin at King's +College, while Bettie taught me human intimacy--almost. Looking back, +I have not ever been intimate with anybody.... + +Not but that I had my friends. In particular I remember those four of +us who always called ourselves--in flat defiance, just as Dumas did, +of mere arithmetic--"The Three Musketeers." I think that we loved one +another very greatly during the four years we spent together in our +youth. I like to believe we did, and to remember the boys who were +once unreasonably happy, even now. It does not seem to count, somehow, +that Aramis has taken to drink and every other inexpedient course, I +hear, and that I would not recognize him today, were we two to +encounter casually--or Athos, either, I suppose, now that he has been +so long in the Philippines. + +And as for D'Artagnan--or Billy Woods, if you prefer the appellation +which his sponsors gave him,--why we are still good friends and always +will be, I suppose. But we are not particularly intimate; and very +certainly we will never again read _Chastelard_ together and declaim +the more impassioned parts of it,--and in fine, I cannot help seeing, +nowadays, that, especially since his marriage, Billy has developed +into a rather obvious and stupid person, and that he considers me to +be a bit of a bad egg. And in a phrase, when we are together, just we +two, we smoke a great deal and do not talk any more than is necessary. + +And once I would have quite sincerely enjoyed any death, however +excruciating, which promoted the well-being of Billy Woods; and he +viewed me not dissimilarly, I believe.... However, after all, this was +a long, long while ago, and in a period almost antediluvian. + +And during this period they of Fairhaven assumed I was in love with +Bettie Hamlyn; and for a very little while, at the beginning, had I +assumed as much. More lately was my error flagrantly apparent when I +fell in love with someone else, and sincerely in love, and found to my +amazement that, upon the whole, I preferred Bettie's companionship to +that of the woman I adored. By and by, though, I learned to accept +this odd, continuing phenomenon much as I had learned to accept the +sunrise. + + + 3 + +Once Bettie demanded of me, "I often wonder what you really think of +me? Honest injun, I mean." + +I meditated, and presently began, with leisure: + +"Miss Hamlyn is a young woman of considerable personal attractions, +and with one exception is unhandicapped by accomplishments. She plays +the piano, it is true, but she does it divinely and she neither +crochets nor embroiders presents for people, nor sketches, nor +recites, nor sings, or in fine annoys the public in any way +whatsoever. Her enemies deny that she is good-looking, but even her +friends concede her curious picturesqueness and her knowledge of it. +Her penetration, indeed, is not to be despised; she has even grasped +the fact that all men are not necessarily fools in spite of the +fashion in which they talk to women. It must be admitted, however, +that her emotions are prone to take precedence of her reasoning +powers: thus she is not easily misled from getting what she desires, +save by those whom she loves, because in argument, while always +illogical, she is invariably convincing--" + +Miss Hamlyn sniffed. "This is, perhaps, the inevitable effect of +twenty cigarettes a day," was her cryptic comment. "Nevertheless, it +does affect me with ennui." + +"--For, the mere facts of the case she plainly demonstrates, with the +abettance of her dimples, to be an affair of unimportance; the real +point is what she wishes done about it. Yet the proffering of any +particular piece of advice does not necessarily signify that she +either expects or wishes it to be followed, since had she been present +at the Creation she would have cheerfully pointed out to the Deity His +various mistakes, and have offered her co-operation toward bettering +matters, and have thought a deal less of Him had He accepted it; but +this is merely a habit--" "Yes?" said Bettie, yawning; and she added: +"Do you know, Robin, the saddest and most desolate thing in the world +is to practise an _etude_ of Schumann's in nine flats, and the next is +to realize that a man who has been in love with you has recovered for +keeps?" + +"--It must not be imagined, however, that Miss Hamlyn is untruthful, +for when driven by impertinences into a corner she conceals her real +opinion by voicing it quite honestly as if she were joking. Thereupon +you credit her with the employment of irony and the possession of +every imaginable and super-angelical characteristic--" + +"Unless we come to a better understanding," Miss Hamlyn crisply began, +"we had better stop right here before we come to a worse--" + +"--Miss Hamlyn, in a word, is possessed of no insufferable virtues and +of many endearing faults; and in common with the rest of humanity, she +regards her disapproval of any proceeding as clear proof of its +impropriety." This was largely apropos of a fire-new debate concerning +the deleterious effects of cigarette-smoking; and when I had made an +end, and doggedly lighted another one of them, Bettie said nothing.... +She minded chiefly that one of us should have thought of the other +without bias. She said it was not fair. And I know now that she was +right. + +But of Bettie Hamlyn, for reasons you may learn hereafter if you so +elect, I honestly prefer to write not at all. Four years, in fine, we +spent to every purpose together, and they were very happy years. To +record them would be desecration. + + + 4 + +Meantime, during these years, I had fallen in and out of love +assiduously. Since the Anabasis of lad's love traverses a monotonous +country, where one hill is largely like another, and one meadow a +duplicate of the next to the last daffodil, I may with profit dwell +upon the green-sickness lightly. It suffices that in the course of +these four years I challenged superstition by adoring thirteen girls, +and, worse than that, wrote verses of them. + +I give you their names herewith--though not their workaday names, lest +the wives of divers people be offended (and in many cases, surprised), +but the appellatives which figured in my rhymes. They were Heart's +Desire, Florimel, Dolores, Yolande, Adelais, Sylvia, Heart o' My +Heart, Chloris, Felise, Ettarre, Phyllis, Phyllida, and Dorothy. Here +was a rosary of exquisite names, I even now concede; and the owner of +each _nom de plume_ I, for however brief a period, adored for this or +that peculiar excellence; and by ordinary without presuming to mention +the fact to any of these divinities save Heart o' My Heart, who was, +after all, only a Penate. + +Outside the elevated orbits of rhyme she was called Elizabeth Hamlyn; +and it afterward became apparent to me that I, in reality, wrote all +the verses of this period solely for the pleasure of reading them +aloud to Bettie, for certainly I disclosed their existence to no one +else--except just one or two to Phyllida, who was "literary." + +And the upshot of all this heart-burning is most succinctly given in +my own far from impeccable verse, as Bettie Hamlyn heard the summing-up +one evening in May. It was the year I graduated from King's +College, and the exact relation of the date to the Annos Domini is +trivial. But the battle of Manila had just been fought, and off +Santiago Captain Sampson and Commander Schley were still hunting for +Cervera's "phantom fleet." And in Fairhaven, as I remember it, +although there was a highly-colored picture of Commodore Dewey in the +barber-shop window, nobody was bothering in the least about the war +except when Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal foregathered at Clarriker's +Emporium to denounce the colossal errors of "imperialism".... + + "Thus, then, I end my calendar + Of ancient loves more light than air;-- + And now Lad's Love, that led afar + In April fields that were so fair, + Is fled, and I no longer share + Sedate unutterable days + With Heart's Desire, nor ever praise + Felise, or mirror forth the lures + Of Stella's eyes nor Sylvia's, + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "Chloris is wedded, and Ettarre + Forgets; Yolande loves otherwhere, + And worms long since made bold to mar + The lips of Dorothy and fare + Mid Florimel's bright ruined hair; + And Time obscures that roseate haze + Which glorified hushed woodland ways + When Phyllis came, as Time obscures + That faith which once was Phyllida's,-- + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "That boy is dead as Schariar, + Tiglath-pileser, or Clotaire, + Who once of love got many a scar. + And his loved lasses past compare?-- + None is alive now anywhere. + Each is transmuted nowadays + Into a stranger, and displays + No whit of love's investitures. + I let these women go their ways, + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "Heart o' My Heart, thine be the praise + If aught of good in me betrays + Thy tutelage--whose love matures + Unmarred in these more wistful days,-- + Yet love for each loved lass endures." + +For this was the year that I graduated, and Chloris--I violate no +confidence in stating that her actual name was Aurelia Minns, and that +she had been, for a greater number of years than it would be courteous +to remember, the undisputed belle of Fairhaven,--had that very +afternoon married a promising young doctor; and I was draining the cup +of my misery to the last delicious drop, and was of course inspired +thereby to the perpetration of such melancholy bathos as only a +care-free youth of twenty is capable of evolving. + + + 5 + +"Dear boy," said Bettie, when I had made an end of reading, "and are +you very miserable?" + +Her fingers were interlocked behind her small black head; and the +sympathy with which she regarded me was tenderly flavored with +amusement. + +This much I noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and +mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the +least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I +believe I never will." + +"Oh--? But I don't count." The girl continued, with composure: "Or +rather, I have always counted your affairs, so that I know precisely +what it all amounts to." + +"Sum total?" + +"A lot of imitation emotions." She added hastily: "Oh, quite a good +imitation, dear; you are smooth enough to see to that. Why, I remember +once--when you read me that first sonnet, sitting all hunched up on +the little stool, and pretending you didn't know I knew who you meant +me to know it was for, and ending with a really very effective, +breathless sob--and caught my hand and pressed it to your forehead for +a moment--Why, that time I was thoroughly rattled and almost +believed--even I--that--" She shrugged. "And if I had been +younger--!" she said, half regretfully, for at this time Bettie was +very nearly twenty-two. + +"Yes." The effective breathless sob responded to what had virtually +been an encore. "I have not forgotten." + +"Only for a moment, though." Miss Hamlyn reflected, and then added, +brightly: "Now, most girls would have liked it, for it sounded all +wool. And they would have gone into it, as you wanted, and have been +very, very happy for a while. Then, after a time--after you had got a +sonnet or two out of it, and had made a sufficiency of pretty +speeches,--you would have gone for an admiring walk about yourself, +and would have inspected your sensations and have applauded them, +quite enthusiastically, and would have said, in effect: 'Madam, I +thank you for your attention. Pray regard the incident as closed.'" + +"You are doing me," I observed, "an injustice. And however tiny they +may be, I hate 'em." + +"But, Robin, can't you see," she said, with an odd earnestness, "that +to be fond of you is quite disgracefully easy, even though--" Bettie +Hamlyn said, presently: "Why, your one object in life appears to be to +find a girl who will allow you to moon around her and make verses +about her. Oh, very well! I met to-day just the sort of pretty idiot +who will let you do it. She is visiting Kathleen Eppes for the Finals. +She has a great deal of money, too, I hear." And Bettie mentioned a +name. + +"That's rather queer," said I. "I used to know that girl. She will be +at the K. A. dance to-morrow night, I suppose,"--and I put up my +manuscript with a large air of tolerance. "I dare say that I have been +exaggerating matters a bit, after all. Any woman who treated me +in the way that Miss Aurelia did is not, really, worthy of regret. And +in any event, I got a ballade out of her and six--no, seven--other +poems." + +For the name which Bettie had mentioned was that of Stella Musgrave, +and I was, somehow, curiously desirous to come again to Stella, and +nervous about it, too, even then.... + + + + +3. + +_He Earns a Stick-pin_ + + +"Dear me!" said Stella, wonderingly; "I would never have known you in +the world! You've grown so fa--I mean, you are so well built. I've +grown? Nonsense!--and besides, what did you expect me to do in six +years?--and moreover, it is abominably rude of you to presume to speak +of me in that abstracted and figurative manner--quite as if I were a +debt or a taste for drink. It is really only French heels and a +pompadour, and, of course, you can't have this dance. It's promised, +and I hop, you know, frightfully.... Why, naturally, I haven't +forgotten--How could I, when you were the most disagreeable boy I ever +knew?" + +I ventured a suggestion that caused Stella to turn an attractive pink, +and laugh. "No," said she, demurely, "I shall never never sit out +another dance with you." + +So she did remember! + +Subsequently: "Our steps suit perfectly--Heavens! you are the fifth +man who has said that to-night, and I am sure it would be very silly +and very tiresome to dance through life with anybody. Men are so +absurd, don't you think? Oh, yes, I tell them all--every one of +them--that our steps suit, even when they have just ripped off a yard +or so of flounce in an attempt to walk up the front of my dress. It +makes them happy, poor things, and injures nobody. You liked it, you +know; you grinned like a pleased cat. I like cats, don't you?" + +Later: "That is absolute nonsense, you know," said Stella, critically. +"Do you always get red in the face when you make love? I wouldn't if I +were you. You really have no idea how queer it makes you look." + +Still later: "No, I don't think I am going anywhere to-morrow +afternoon," said Stella. + + + 2 + +So that during the fleet moments of these Finals, while our army was +effecting a landing in Cuba, I saw as much of Stella as was possible; +and veracity compels the admission that she made no marked effort to +prevent my doing so. Indeed, she was quite cross, and scornful, about +the crowning glory being denied her, of going with me to the +Baccalaureate Address the morning I received my degree. To that of +course I took Bettie. + + + 3 + +I said good-bye to Bettie Hamlyn rather late one evening. It was in +her garden. The Finals were over, and Stella had left Fairhaven that +afternoon. I was to follow in the morning, by an early train. + +It was a hot, still night in June, with never a breath of air +stirring. In the sky was a low-hung moon, full and very red. It was an +evil moon, and it lighted a night that was unreasonably ominous. And +Bettie and I had talked of trifles resolutely for two hours. + +"Well--good-bye Bettie," I said at last. "I'm glad it isn't for long." +For of course we meant never to let a month elapse without our seeing +each other. + +"Good-bye," she said, and casually shook hands. + +Then Bettie Hamlyn said, in a different voice: "Robin, you come of +such a bad lot, and already you are by way of being a rather frightful +liar. And I'm letting you go. I'm turning you over to Stellas and +mothers and things like that just because I have to. It isn't fair. +They will make another Townsend of my boy, and after all I've tried to +do. Oh, Robin, don't let anybody or anything do that to you! Do try to +do the unpleasant thing sometimes, my dear!--But what's the good of +promising?" + +"And have I ever failed you, Bettie?" + +"No,--not me," she answered, almost as though she grudged the fact. +Then Bettie laughed a little. "Indeed, I'm trying to believe you never +will. Oh, indeed, I am. But just be honest with me, Robin, and nothing +else will ever matter very much. I don't care what you do, if only you +are always honest with me. You can murder people, if you like, and +burn down as many houses as you choose. You probably will. But you'll +be honest with me--won't you?--and particularly when you don't want to +be?" + +So I promised her that. And sometimes I believe it is the only promise +which I ever tried to keep quite faithfully.... + + + 4 + +And all the ensuing summer I followed Stella Musgrave from one +watering place to another, with an engaging and entire candor as to my +desires. I was upon the verge of my majority, when, under the terms of +my father's will, I would come into possession of such fragments of +his patrimony as he had omitted to squander. And afterward I intended +to become excessively distinguished in this or that profession, not as +yet irrevocably fixed upon, but for choice as a writer of immortal +verse; and I was used to dwell at this time very feelingly, and very +frequently, upon the wholesome restraint which matrimony imposes upon +the possessor of an artistic temperament. + +Stella promised to place my name upon her waiting list, and to take up +the matter in due season; and she lamented, with a tiny and +pre-meditated yawn, that as a servitor of system she was compelled to +list her "little lovers and suitors in alphabetical order, Mr. +Townsend. Besides, you would probably strangle me before the year was +out." + +"I would thoroughly enjoy doing it," I said, grimly, "right now." She +regarded me for a while. "You would, too," she said at last, with an +alien gravity; "and that is why--Oh, Rob dear, you are out of my +dimension. I am rather afraid of you. I am a poor bewildered triangle +who is being wooed by a cube!" the girl wailed, and but half +humorously. + +And I began to plead. It does not matter what I said. It never +mattered. + +And persons more sensible than I found then far more important things +to talk about, such as General Alger's inefficiency, and General +Shafter's hammock, and "embalmed beef," and the folly of taking over +the Philippines, and Admiral von Diedrich's behavior, and the yellow +fever in our camps and the comparative claims of Messrs. Sampson and +Schley to be made rear-admiral; and everybody more or less was +demanding "an investigation," as the natural aftermath of a war. + + + 5 + +Stella's mother had closed Bellemeade for the year, however, and they +were to spend the winter in Lichfield; and Stella, to reduplicate her +phrase, promised to "think it over very seriously." + +But I suppose I had never any real chance against Peter Blagden. To +begin with,--though Stella herself, of course, would inherit plenty +of money when her mother died,--Peter was the only nephew of a +childless uncle who was popularly reported to "roll in wealth"; and in +addition, Peter was seven years older than I and notoriously +dissipated. No other girl of twenty would have hesitated between us +half so long as Stella did. She hesitated through a whole winter; and +even now there is odd, if scanty, comfort in the fact that Stella +hesitated.... + +Besides Peter was eminently likeable. At times I almost liked him +myself, for all my fervent envy of his recognized depravity and of the +hateful ease with which he thought of something to say in those +uncomfortable moments when he and I and Stella were together. At most +other times I could talk glibly enough, but before this seasoned +scapegrace I was dumb, and felt my reputation to be hopelessly +immaculate ... If only Stella would believe me to be just the tiniest +bit depraved! I blush to think of the dark hints I dropped as to +entirely fictitious women who "had been too kind to me. But then"--as +I would feelingly lament,--"we could never let women alone, we +Townsends, you know--" + + + 6 + +One woman at least I was beginning to "let alone", in that I was +writing Bettie Hamlyn letters which grew shorter and shorter.... Her +mother had fallen ill, not long after I left college; and she and +Bettie were now a great way off, in Colorado, where the old lady was +dying, with the most selfish sort of laziness about it, and so was +involving me in endless correspondence.... At least, I wrote to Bettie +punctually, if briefly, though I had not seen her since that night +when the moon was red, and big, and very evil. I had to do it, because +she had insisted that I write. + +"But letters don't mean anything, Bettie. And besides, I hate writing +letters." + +"That is just why you must write to me regularly. You never do the +things you don't want to do. I know it. But for me you always will, +and that makes all the difference." + +"Shylock!" I retorted. + +"If you like. In any event, I mean to have my pound of flesh, and +regularly." + +So I wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month--because +that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because that +was mine. The rest of my time I gave whole-heartedly to Stella.... + + + 7 + +They named her Stella, I fancy, because her eyes were so like stars. +It is manifestly an irrelevant detail that there do not happen to be +any azure stars. Indeed, I am inclined to think that Nature belatedly +observed this omission, and created Stella's eyes to make up for it; +at any rate, if you can imagine Aldebaran or Benetnasch polished up a +bit and set in a speedwell-cup, you will have a very fair idea of one +of them. You cannot, however, picture to yourself the effect of the +pair of them, because the human mind is limited. + +Really, though, their effect was curious. You noticed them casually, +let us say; then, without warning, you ceased to notice anything. You +simply grew foolish and gasped like a newly-hooked trout, and went mad +and babbled as meaninglessly as a silly little rustic brook trotting +under a bridge. + +I have seen the thing happen any number of times. And, strangely +enough, you liked it. Numbers of young men would venture into the same +room with those disconcerting eyes the very next evening, even +appearing to seek them out and to court peril, as it were,--young men +who must have known perfectly well, either by report or experience, +the unavoidable result of such fool-hardy conduct. For eventually it +always culminated in Stella's being deeply surprised and grieved,--at +a dance, for choice, with music and color and the unthinking laughter +of others to heighten the sadness and the romance of it all,--she +never having dreamed of such a thing, of course, and having always +regarded you only as a dear, dear friend. Yes, and she used certainly +to hope that nothing she had said or done could have led you to +believe she had even for a moment considered such a thing. Oh, she did +it well, did Stella, and endured these frequent griefs and surprises +with, I must protest, quite exemplary patience. In a phrase, she was +the most adorable combination of the prevaricator, the jilt and the +coquette I have ever encountered. + + + 8 + +So, for the seventh time, I asked Stella to marry me. Nearly every +fellow I knew had done as much, particularly Peter Blagden; and it is +always a mistake to appear unnecessarily reserved or exclusive. And +this time in declining--with a fluency that bespoke considerable +practice,--she informed me that, as the story books have it, she was +shortly to be wedded to another. + +And Peter Blagden clapped the pinnacle upon my anguish by asking me to +be the best man. I knew even then whose vanity and whose sense of the +appropriate had put him up to it.... + +"For I haven't a living male relative of the suitable age except two +second cousins that I don't see much of--praise God!" said Peter, +fervently; "and Hugh Van Orden looks about half-past ten, whereas I +class John Charteris among the lower orders of vermin." + +I consented to accept the proffered office and the incidental stick-pin; +and was thus enabled to observe from the inside this episode of Stella's +life, and to find it quite like other weddings. + +Something like this: + +"Look here," a perspiring and fidgety Peter protested, at the last +moment, as we lurked in the gloomy vestry with not a drop left in +either flask; "look here, Henderson hasn't blacked the soles of these +blessed shoes. I'll look like an ass when it comes to the kneeling +part--like an ass, I tell you! Good heavens, they'll look like +tombstones!" + +"If you funk now," said I, severely, "I'll never help you get married +again. Oh, sainted Ebenezer in bliss, and whatever have I done with +that ring? No, it's here all right, but you are on the wrong side of +me again. And there goes the organ--Good God, Peter, look at her! +simply look at her, man! Oh, you lucky devil! you lucky jackass!" + +I spoke enviously, you understand, simply to encourage him. + +Followed a glaring of lights, a swishing of fans, a sense that Peter +was not keeping step with me, and the hum of densely packed, expectant +humanity; a blare of music; then Stella, an incredible vision with +glad, frightened eyes. My shoulders straightened, and I was not out of +temper any longer. The organist was playing softly, _Oh, Promise Me_, +and I was thinking of the time, last January, that Stella and I heard +The Bostonians, and how funny Henry Clay Barnabee was.... "--so long +as ye both may live?" ended the bishop. + +"I will," poor Peter quavered, with obvious uncertainty about it. + +And still one saw in Stella's eyes unutterable happiness and fear, but +her voice was tranquil. I found time to wonder at its steadiness, even +though, just about this time, I resonantly burst a button off one of +my new gloves. I fancy they must have been rather tight. + +"And thereto," said Stella, calmly, "I give thee my troth." + +And subsequently they were Mendelssohned out of church to the +satisfaction of a large and critical audience. I came down the aisle +with Stella's only sister--who afterward married the Marquis +d'Arlanges,--and found Lizzie very entertaining later in the +evening.... + + + 9 + +Yes, it was quite like other weddings. I only wonder for what +conceivable reason I remember its least detail, and so vividly. For it +all happened a great while ago, when--of such flimsy stuff is glory +woven,--Emilio Aguinaldo and Captain Coghlan were the persons most +talked of in America; and when the Mazet committee was "investigating" +I forget what, but with column after column about it in the papers +every day; and when _Me und Gott_ was a famous poem, and "to +hobsonize" was the most popular verb; and when I was twenty-one. _Sic +transit gloria mundi_, as it says in the back of the dictionary. + + + + +4. + +_He Talks with Charteris_ + + +It was upon the evening of this day, after Mr. and Mrs. Blagden had +been duly rice-pelted and entrained, that I first talked against John +Charteris. The novelist was, as has been said, a cousin of Peter +Blagden, and as such, was one of the wedding guests at Bellemeade; and +that evening, well toward midnight, the little man, midway in the +consumption of one of his interminable cigarettes, happened to come +upon me seated upon the terrace and gazing, rather vacantly, in the +direction of the moon. + +I was not thinking of anything in particular; only there was a by-end +of verse which sang itself over and over again, somewhere in the back +of my brain--"Her eyes were the eyes of a bride whom delight makes +afraid, her eyes were the eyes of a bride"--and so on, all over again, +as at night a traveller may hear his train jogging through a +monotonous and stiff-jointed song; and in my heart there was just +hunger. + + + 2 + +Charteris had heard, one may presume, of my disastrous love-business; +and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his +gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light +upon thee, Mr. Townsend,--whatever a murrain may happen to be,--since +you have disturbed me in the concoction of an ever-living and +entrancing fable." + +"I may safely go as far," said I, "as to offer the proverbial penny." + +"Done!" cried Mr. Charteris. He meditated for a moment, and then +began, in a low and curiously melodious voice, to narrate + +_The Apologue of the First Conjugation_ + +"When the gods of Hellas were discrowned, there was a famous scurrying +from Olympos to the world of mortals, where each deity must +henceforward make shift to do without godhead:--Aphrodite in her +hollow hill, where the good knight Tannhauser revels yet, it may be; +Hephaestos, in some smithy; whilst Athene, for aught I know, +established a girls' boarding school, and Helios, as is notorious, +died under priestly torture, and Dionysos cannily took holy orders, +and Hermes set up as a merchant in Friesland. But Eros went to the +Grammarians. He would be a schoolmaster. + +"The Grammarians, grim, snuffy and wrinkled though they might be, were +no more impervious to his allures than are the rest of us, and in +consequence appointed him to an office. This office was, I glean of +mediaeval legend, that of teaching dunderheaded mortals the First +Conjugation. So Eros donned cap and gown, took lodgings with a quiet +musical family, and set _amo_ as the first model verb; and ever since +this period has the verb 'to love' been the first to be mastered in +all well-constituted grammars, as it is in life. + +"Heigho! it is not an easy verb to conjugate. One gets into trouble +enough, in floundering through its manifold nuances, which range +inevitably through the bold-faced 'I love', the confident 'I will +love', the hopeful 'I may be loved', and so on to the wistful, pitiful +Pluperfect Subjunctive Passive, 'I might have been loved +if'--Then each of us may supply the Protasis as best befits his +personal opinion and particular scars, and may tear his hair, or +scribble verses, or adopt the cynical, or, in fine, assume any pose +which strikes his fancy. For he has graduated into the Second +Conjugation, which is _moneo_; and may now admonish to his heart's +content, whilst looking back complacently into the First Classroom, +where others--and so many others!--are still struggling with that +mischancy verb, and are involved in the very conditions--verbal or +otherwise--which aforetime saddened him, or showed him a possible +byway toward recreation, or played the deuce with his liver, according +to the nature of the man. + +"Eros is a hard, implacable pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars +suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers +fabled,--no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised +in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging +nothingness; and not a scholar escapes at least a flick of it. + +"I can fancy the class called up as Eros administers, with zest, his +penalties. Master Paris! for loving his neighbor a little less than +himself, and his neighbor's wife a little more. Master Lancelot! +ditto. Masters Petrarch, Tristram, Antony, Juan Tenorio, Dante +Alighieri, and others! ditto. There are a great many called up for +this particular form of peccancy, you observe; even Master David has +to lay aside his Psalm Book, and go forward with the others for +chastisement. Master Romeo! for trespassing in other people's gardens +and mausoleums. Master Leander! for swimming in the Hellespont after +dark; and Master Tarquin! for mistaking his bedroom at the Collatini's +house-party. + +"Thus, one by one, each scholar goes into the darkened private office. +The master handles his rod--eia! 'tis borrowed from the +Erinnyes,--lovingly, caressingly, like a very conscientious person +about the performance of his duty. Then comes the dreadful order, +'Take down your breeches, sir!'.... But the scene is too horrible to +contemplate. He punishes all, this schoolmaster, for he is +unbelievably old, and with the years' advance has grown querulous. + +"Well, now I approach my moral, Mr. Townsend. One must have one's +birching with the others, and of necessity there remains but to make +the best of it. Birching is not a dignified process, and the endurer +comes therefrom both sore and shamefaced. Yet always in such +contretemps it is expedient to brazen out the matter, and to present +as stately an appearance, we will say, as one's welts permit. + +"First, to the world--" + + + 3 + +But at this point I raised my hand. "That is easily done, Mr. +Charteris, inasmuch as the world cares nothing whatever about it. The +world is composed of men and women who have their own affairs to mind. +How in heaven's name does it concern them that a boy has dreamed +dreams and has gone mad like a star-struck moth? It was foolish of +him. Such is the verdict, given in a voice that is neither kindly nor +severe; and the world, mildly wondering, passes on to deal with more +weighty matters. For vegetables are higher than ever this year, and, +upon my word, Mrs. Grundy, ma'am, a housekeeper simply doesn't know +where to turn, with the outrageous prices they are asking for +everything these days. No, believe me, the world does not take +love-affairs very seriously--not even the great ones," I added, in +noble toleration. + +And with an appreciative chuckle, Charteris sank beside me upon the +bench. + +"My adorable boy! so you have a tongue in your head." + +"But can't you imagine the knights talking over Lancelot's affair with +Guenevere, at whatever was the Arthurian substitute for a club? and +sniggering over it? and Lamoracke sagaciously observing that there was +always a crooked streak in the Leodograunce family? Or one Roman +matron punching a chicken in the ribs, and remarking to her neighbor +at the poultry man's stall: 'Well, Mrs. Gracchus, they do say Antony +is absolutely daft over that notorious Queen of Egypt. A brazen-faced +thing, with a very muddy complexion, I'm told, and practically no +reputation, of course, after the way she carried on with Caesar. And +that reminds me, I hear your little Caius suffers from the croup. Now +_my_ remedy'--and so they waddle on, to price asparagus." + +Charteris said: "Well! we need not go out of our way to meddle with +the affairs of others; the entanglement is most disastrously apt to +come about of itself quite soon enough. Yet a little while and +Lancelot will be running Lamoracke through the body, while the King +storms Joyeuse Garde; a few months and your Roman matron will weep +quietly on her unshared pillow--not aloud, though, for fear of +disturbing the children,--while Gracchus is dreadfully seasick at +Actium." + +"But that doesn't prove anything," I stammered. "Why, it doesn't +follow logically--" + +"Nor does anything else. This fact is the chief charm of life. You +will presently find, I think, that living means a daily squandering of +interest upon the first half of a number of two-part stories which +have not ever any sequel. Oh, my adorable boy, I envy you to-night's +misery so profoundly I am half unwilling to assure you that in the +ultimate one finds a broken heart rather fattening than otherwise; and +that a blighted life has never yet been known to prevent queer +happenings in conservatories and such-like secluded places or to rob a +solitude _a deux_ of possibilities. I grant you that love is a +wonderful thing; but there are a many emotions which stand toward love +much as the makers of certain marmalades assert their wares to stand +toward butter--'serving as an excellent occasional substitute.' At +least, so you will find it. And unheroic as it is, within the month +you will forget." + +"No,--I shall not quite forget," said I. + +"Then were you the more unwise. To forget, both speedily and +frequently, is the sole method of rendering life livable. One is here; +the importance of the fact in the eternal scheme of things is perhaps +a shade more trivial than one is disposed to concede, but in any +event, one is here; and here, for a very little while in youth, one is +capable of happiness. For it is a colorful world, Mr. Townsend, +containing much, upon the whole, to captivate both eye and taste; a +world manured and fertilized by the no longer lovely bodies of persons +who died in youth. Oh, their coffins lie everywhere beneath our feet, +thick as raisins in a pudding, whithersoever we tread. Yet every one +of these poor relics was once a boy or a girl, and wore a body that +was capable of so much pleasure! To-day, unused to gain the fullness +of that pleasure, and now not ever to be used, they lie beneath us, in +their coffins, these white, straight bodies, like swords untried that +rust in the scabbard. Meanwhile, on every side is apparent the not yet +out-wasted instrument, and one is naturally inquisitive,--so that +one's fingers and one's nostrils twitch at times, even in the hour +when one is most miserable, very much as yours do now." + +For a long while I meditated. Then I said: "I am not really miserable, +because, all in all, one is content to pay the price of happiness. I +have been very happy sometimes during the past year; and whatever the +blind Fate that mismanages the world may elect to demand in payment, I +shall not haggle. No, by heavens! I would have nothing changed, and +least of all would I forget; having drunk nectar neat, one would not +qualify it with the water of Lethe." + +I rose, not unhandsome, I trusted, in the moonlight. I was hoping Mr. +Charteris would notice my new dress-suit, procured in honor of +Stella's wedding. And I said: "The play is over, the little comedy is +played out. She must go; at least she has tarried for a little. She +does not love you; ah! but she did. God speed her, then, the woman we +have all loved and lost, and still dream of on sleepy Sundays; and all +possible happiness to her! One must be grateful that through her one +has known the glory of loving. Even though she never cared--'and never +could understand',--one may not but be glad that one has known and +loved in youth the Only Woman." + +"The Only Woman has a way of leaving many heirs, Mr. Townsend, that +play the deuce with the estate." + +"--So to-morrow, like the person in _Lycidas_, I am for fresh fields, +Mr. Charteris. And indeed it is high time that I were journeying, +since she and I have rested, and have laughed and eaten and drunk our +fill at this particular tavern; and now it is closing time. A plague +on these foolish and impertinent laws, say I quite heartily; for it is +cold and cheerless outside, whereas here within I was perfectly +comfortable. None the less I must go, or else be evicted by the +constable; so good-night, my sweet; and as for you, Madam Clotho, pray +what unconscionable score have you chalked up against me?" + +I grimaced. "Heavens! what an infinity of sighs, sonnets, +lamentations, and heart-burnings is this that I owe to Fate and +Decency!" + +Charteris applauded as though it were a comedy. "In effect, Marian's +married and you stand here, alive and merry at--pray what precise +period of life, Mr. Townsend?" + +"I confess to twenty-one at present, sir, though I trust to live it +down in time." + +"I would hardly have thought you that venerable. Well, I predict for +you a life without achievements but of gusto. Yes, you will bring a +seasoned palate to your grave,--and I envy you. We open Willoughby +Hall next week, and of course you will make one of the party. For you +write, I know; and you will want to talk to me about editors and read +me all your damnable verses. Nothing could please me more. Good-night, +you glorious boy." + +And the little man wheeled and departed, leaving me to reflect, with +appropriate emotions, that I had been formally invited to visit the +founder of the Economist school of writers. + + + 4 + +"He said it," I more lately observed--"yes, he undoubtedly said it. +And he wrote _Ashtaroth's Lackey_ and _In Old Lichfield_ and _The +Foolish Prince_, and he knows all the magazine editors personally, and +they are probably only too glad to oblige him about anything, and--Oh, +may be, it is only a dream, after all." My heart was pounding, but not +with sorrow or despair or any other maudlin passion; and Stella was +now as remote from my thoughts as was Joan of Arc or Pharaoh's +daughter. + + + + +5. + +_He Revisits Fairhaven and the Play_ + + +So I went to Willoughby Hall, which stands, as you may be aware, upon +the eastern outskirt of Fairhaven. My reappearance created some stir +among the older students and the town-folk, though, one and all, they +presently declared me to be "too stuck-up for any use," inasmuch as I +ignored them in favour of the Charteris house-party,--after, of +course, one visit to Chapel, which I paid a little obviously _en +prince_, and affably shook hands with all the Faculty, and was +completely conscious of how such happenings impressed us when I, too, +was a student. + +So much had happened since then, and I felt so much older,--with my +existence so delightfully blighted, too,--that it seemed droll to find +Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal still sitting in arm chairs before +Clarriker's Emporium, very much as I had left them there ten months +ago. + + + 2 + +By a disastrous chance did Bettie Hamlyn spend that spring, as well as +the preceding year, in Colorado with her mother, who died there that +summer; and to me Fairhaven proper without Bettie Hamlyn seemed a +tawdry and desolate place; and I know that but for Mrs. Hamlyn's +illness--a querulous woman for whom I never cared a jot,--my future +life had been quite otherwise. For, as I told Bettie once, and it was +true, I have found in the world but three sorts of humanity--"Myself, +and Bettie Hamlyn, and the other people." + +So I still wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month-- +because that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because +that was mine. + +And I thought of many things as I walked by the deserted garden, where +there was nothing which concerned me now, not even a ghost. I did not +go in to leave a card upon Professor Hamlyn. The empty house +confronted me too blankly, with its tight-shuttered windows, like +blind eyes, and I hurried by. + + + 3 + +Meanwhile, this was the first time for many years that Willoughby Hall +had been occupied by any other than caretakers; and Fairhaven, to +confess the truth, was a trifle ill-at-ease before the modish persons +who now tenanted the old mansion; and consoled itself after an +immemorial usage by backbiting. + +And meanwhile I enjoyed myself tremendously. It was the first time I +was ever thrown with people who were unanimously agreed that, after +all, nothing is very serious. Mrs. Charteris, of course, was +different; but she, like the others, found me divertingly naive and, +in consequence, petted and cosseted me. I like petting; and since +everyone seemed agreed to regard me as "the Child in the House"--that +was Alicia Wade's nickname, and it clung,--and to like having a child +in the house, I began a little to heighten my very real boyishness. +There was no harm in it; and if people were fonder of me because I sat +upon the floor by preference, and drolly exaggerated what I really +thought, it became a sort of public duty to do these things. So I did, +and found it astonishingly pleasant. + + + 4 + +And meanwhile too, John Charteris could never see enough of me, whom, +as I to-day suspect, Charteris was studying conscientiously, to the +end that I should be converted into "copy." For me, I was waiting +cannily until he should actually ask to see those manuscripts I had +brought to Willoughby Hall, and should help me to get them published. +So there were two of us.... In any event, it was just three weeks +after Stella's marriage that Charteris coaxed me into Fairhaven's +Opera House to witness a performance of _Romeo and Juliet_, by the +Imperial Dramatic Company. + +I went under protest; I had witnessed the butchery of so many dramas +within these walls during my college days, that I knew what I must +anticipate, I said. I had, as a matter of fact, always enjoyed the +Opera House "shows," but I did not wish to acknowledge the harboring +of such crude tastes to Charteris. In any event, at the conclusion of +the second act,-- + +"By Jove!" said I, in a voice that shook a little. "She's a stunner!" +I jolted out, as I proceeded to applaud, vigorously, with both hands and +feet. "And who would have thought it! Good Lord, who would have +thought it!" + +Charteris smiled, in that infernally patronizing way he had sometimes. +"A beautiful woman, my dear boy,--an inordinately beautiful woman, in +fact, but entirely lacking in temperament." + +"Temperament!" I scoffed; "what's temperament to two eyes like those? +Why, they're as big as golf-balls! And her voice--why, a violin--a +very superior violin--if it could talk, would have just such a voice +as that woman has! Temperament! Oh, you make me ill! Why, man, just +look at her!" I said, conclusively. + +Charteris looked, I presume. In any event, the Juliet of the evening +stood before the curtain, smiling, bowing to right and left. The +citizens of Fairhaven were applauding her with a certain conscientious +industry, for they really found Romeo and Juliet a rather dull couple. +The general opinion, however, was that Miss Montmorenci seemed an +elegant actress, and in some interesting play, like _The Two Orphans_ +or _Lady Audley's Secret_, would be well worth seeing. Upon those who +had witnessed her initial performance, she had made a most favorable +impression in _The Lady of Lyons_; while at the Tuesday matinee, as +Lady Isabel in _East Lynne_, she had wrung the souls of her hearers, +and had brought forth every handkerchief in the house. Moreover, she +was very good-looking,--quite the lady, some said; and, after all, one +cannot expect everything for twenty-five cents; considering which +circumstances, Fairhaven applauded with temperate ardor, and made due +allowance for Shakespeare as being a classic, and, therefore, of +course, commendable, but not necessarily interesting. + + + 5 + +"Well?" I queried, when she had vanished. I was speaking under cover +of the orchestra,--a courtesy title accorded a very ancient and very +feeble piano. "Well, and what do you think of her--of her looks, I +means? Who cares for temperament in a woman!" + +Charteris assumed a virtuous expression. "I don't dare tell you," said +he; "you forget I am a married man." + +Then I frowned a little. I often resented Charteris's flippant +allusion to a wife whom I considered, with some reason, to be vastly +too good for her husband. And I considered how near I had come to +remaining with the others at Willoughby Hall--for that new game they +called bridge-whist! And I decided I would never care for bridge. How +on earth could presumably sensible people be content to coop +themselves in a drawing-room on a warm May evening, when hardly a +mile away was a woman with perfectly unfathomable eyes and a voice +which was a love-song? Of course, she couldn't act, but, then, who +wanted her to act? I indignantly demanded of my soul. + +One simply wanted to look at her, and hear her speak. Charteris, with +his prattle about temperament, was an ass; when a woman is born with +such eyes and with a voice like that, she has done her full duty by +the world, and has prodigally accomplished all one has the tiniest +right to expect of her. + +It was impossible she was in reality as beautiful as she seemed, +because no woman was quite so beautiful as that; most of it was +undoubtedly due to rouge and rice-powder and the footlights; but one +could not be mistaken about the voice. And if her speech was that, +what must her singing be! I thought; and in the outcome I remembered +this reflection best of all. + +I consulted my programme. It informed me, in large type at the end, +that Juliet was "old Capulet's daughter," and that the part was played +by Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci. + +And I sighed. I admitted to myself that from a woman who wilfully +assumed such a name little could be hoped. Still, I would like to see +her off the stage...without all those gaudy fripperies and +gewgaws...merely from curiosity.... Then too, they said those +actresses were pretty gay.... + + + 6 + +"A most enjoyable performance," said Mr. Charteris, as we came out of +the Opera House. "I have always had a sneaking liking for burlesque." + +Thereupon he paused to shake hands with Mrs. Adrian Rabbet, wife to +the rector of Fairhaven. + +"Such a sad play," she chirped, "and, do you know, I am afraid it is +rather demoralizing in its effects on young people. No, of course, I +didn't think of bringing the children, Mr. Charteris--Shakespeare's +language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that +safe. And besides, as I so often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think +of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite +depressed me all through the play to think of him hobnobbing with Dr. +Johnson at the Tabard Inn, and making such irregular marriages, and +stealing sheep--or was it sheep, now?" + +I said that, as I remembered, it was a fox, which he hid under his +cloak until the beast bit him. + +"Well, at any rate, it was something extremely deplorable and +characteristic of genius, and I quite feel for his wife." Mrs. Rabbet +sighed, and endeavored, I think, to recollect whether it was _Ingomar_ +or _Spartacus_ that Shakespeare wrote. "However," she concluded, "they +play _Ten Nights in a Barroom_ on Thursday, and I shall certainly +bring the children then, for I am always glad for them to see a really +moral and instructive drama. That reminds me! I absolutely must tell +you what Tom said about actors the other day--" + +And she did. This led naturally to Matilda's recent and blasphemous +comments on George Washington, and her observations as to the rector's +dog, and little Adey's personal opinion of Elisha. And so on, in a +manner not unfamiliar to fond parents. Mrs. Rabbet said toward the end +that it was a most enjoyable chat, although to me it appeared to +partake rather of the nature of a monologue. It consumed perhaps a +half-hour; and when we two at last relinquished Mrs. Rabbet to her +husband's charge, it was with a feeling not altogether unakin to +relief. + + + 7 + +We walked slowly down Fairhaven's one real street, which extends due +east from the College for as much as a mile, to end inconsequently in +those carefully preserved foundations, which are now the only remnant +of a building wherein a number of important matters were settled in +Colonial days. There Cambridge Street divides like a Y, one branch of +which leads to Willoughby Hall. + +Our route from the Opera House thus led through the major part of +Fairhaven, which, after an evening of unwonted dissipation, was now +largely employed in discussing the play, and turning the cat out for +the night. The houses were mostly dark, and the moon, nearing its +full, silvered row after row of blank windows. There was an odour of +growing things about, for in Fairhaven the gardens are many. + +Then it befell that I made a sudden exclamation. + +"Eh?" said Charteris. + +"Why, nothing," I explained, lucidly. + +It may be mentioned, however, that we were, at this moment, passing a +tall hedge of box, set about a large garden. The hedge was perhaps +five feet six in height; Charteris was also five feet six, whereas I +was an unusually tall young man, and topped my host by a good +half-foot. + +"I say," I observed, after a little, "I'm all out of cigarettes. I'll +go back to the drug-store," I suggested, as seized with a happy +thought, "and get some. I noticed it was still open. Don't think of +waiting for me," I urged, considerately. + +"Why, great heavens!" Charteris ejaculated; "take one of mine. I can +recommend them, I assure you--and, in any event, there are all sorts, +I fancy, at the house. They keep only the rankest kind of domestic +tobacco yonder." + +"I prefer it," I insisted, "oh, yes, I really prefer it. So much +milder and more wholesome, you know. I never smoke any other sort. My +doctor insists on my smoking the very rankest tobacco I can get. It is +much better for the heart, he says, because you don't smoke so much of +it, you know. Besides," I concluded, virtuously, "it is infinitely +cheaper; you can get twenty cigarettes all for five cents at some +places. I really must economize, I think." + +Charteris turned, and with great care stared in every direction. He +discovered nothing unusual. "Very well!" assented Mr. Charteris; "I, +too, have an eye for bargains. I will go with you." + +"If you do alive," quoth I, quite honestly, "I devoutly desire that +all sorts of unpleasant things may happen to me for not having wrung +your neck first." + +Charteris grinned. "Immoral young rip!" said he; "I warn you, before +entering the ministry, Mr. Rabbet was accounted an excellent shot." + +"Get out!" said I. + +And the fervour of my utterance was such that Charteris proceeded to +obey. "Don't be late for breakfast, if you can help it," he urged, +kindly. "Of course, though, you are up to some new form of insanity, +and I shall probably be sent for in the morning, to bail you out of +the lock-up." + +Thereupon he turned on his heel, and went down the deserted street, +singing sweetly. + +Sang Mr. Charteris: + + "Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, + Billing and cooing is all your cheer, + Sighing and singing of midnight strains + Under bonnybells" window-panes. + Wait till you've come to forty year! + + "Forty times over let Michaelmas pass, + Grizzling hair the brain doth clear; + Then you know a boy is an ass, + Then you know the worth of a lass, + Once you have come to forty-year." + + + + +6. + +_He Chats Over a Hedge_ + + +Left to myself, I began to retrace my steps. Solitude had mitigated my +craving for tobacco in a surprising manner; indeed, a casual observer +might have thought it completely forgotten, for I walked with curious +leisure. When I had come again to the box-hedge my pace had +degenerated, a little by a little, into an aimless lounge. Mr. Robert +Etheridge Townsend was rapt with admiration of the perfect beauty of +the night. + +Followed a strange chance. There was only the mildest breeze about; it +was barely audible among the leaves above; and yet--so unreliable are +the breezes of still summer nights,--with a sudden, tiny and almost +imperceptible outburst, did this treacherous breeze lift Mr. +Townsend's brand-new straw hat from his head, and waft it over the +hedge of trim box-bushes. This was unfortunate, for, as has been said, +the hedge was a tall and sturdy hedge. So I peeped over it, with +disconsolate countenance. + + + 2 + +"Beastly awkward," said I, as meditatively; "I'd give a great deal to +know how I'm going to get my hat back without breaking through the +blessed hedge, and rousing the house, and being taken for a burglar, +may be--" + +"It is terrible," assented a quite tranquil voice; "but if gentlemen +_will_ venture abroad on such terrible nights--" + +"Eh?" said I. I looked up quickly at the moon; then back toward the +possessor of the voice. It was peculiar I had not noticed her before, +for she sat on a rustic bench not more than forty feet away, and in +full view of the street. It was, perhaps, the strangeness of the +affair that was accountable for the great wonder in my soul; and the +little tremor which woke in my speech. + +"--so windy," she complained. + +"Er--ah--yes, quite so!" I agreed, hastily. + +"I am really afraid that it must be a tornado. Ah," she continued, +emotion catching at her voice, "heaven help all poor souls at sea! How +the wind must whistle through the cordage! how the marlin-spikes must +quiver, and the good ship reel on such a night!" She looked up at a +cloudless sky, and sighed. + +"Er h'm!" I observed. + +For she had come forward and had held out my hat toward me, and I +could see her very plainly now; and my mouth was making foolish +sounds, and my heart was performing certain curious and varied +gymnastics which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be +included among its proper duties, and which interfered with my +breathing. + + + 3 + +"Didn't I know it--didn't I know it?" I demanded of my soul, and my +pulses sang a paean; "I knew, with that voice, she couldn't be a +common actress--a vulgar, raddled creature out of a barn! You not a +gentlewoman! Nonsense! Why--why, you're positively incredible! Oh, you +great, wonderful, lazy woman, you are probably very stupid, and you +certainly can't act, but your eyes are black velvet, and your voice is +evidently stolen from a Cremona, and as for your hair, there must be +pounds of it, and, altogether, you ought to be set up on a pedestal +for men to worship! There is just one other woman in the whole wide +world as beautiful as you are; and she is two thousand years old, and +is securely locked up in the Louvre, and belongs to the French +Government, and, besides, she hasn't any arms, so that even there you +have the advantage!" + +Indeed, Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci was of much the same large, +placid type as the Venus of Milo, nor were the upper portions of the +two faces dissimilar. Miss Montmorenci's lips, however, were far more +curved, more buxom, and were, at the present moment, bordered by an +absolutely bewildering assemblage of dimples which the statue may not +boast. + + + 4 + +"I really think," said Miss Montmorenci, judicially, "that it would be +best for you to seek some shelter from this devastating wind. It +really is not safe, you know, in the open. You might be swept away, +just as your hat was." + +"The shelter of a tree--" I began, looking doubtfully into the garden, +which had any number of trees. + +"The very thing," she assented. "There is a splendid oak yonder, just +half a block up the street." And she graciously pointed it out. + +I regarded it with disapproval. "Such a rickety old tree," I objected, +sulkily. + +Followed a silence. She bent her head to one side, and looked up at +me. She was now grave with a difference. "A strolling actress isn't +supposed to be very particular, is she?" asked Miss Montmorenci. "She +wouldn't object to a man's coming by night and trying to scrape +acquaintance with her,--a man who wouldn't think of being seen with +her by day? She would like it, probably. She--she'd probably be +accustomed to it, wouldn't she?" And Miss Montmorenci smiled. + +And I, on a sudden, was abjectly ashamed of myself. "Why, you can't +think that of me!" I babbled. "I--oh, don't think me that sort, I beg +of you! I'm not--really, I'm not, Miss Montmorenci! But I admired you +so much to-night--I--oh, of course, I was very silly and very +presumptuous, but, really, you know--" + +I paused for a little. This was miles apart from the glib talk I had +designed. + +"My name is Robert Townsend," I then continued; "I am staying at Mr. +Charteris's place, just outside of Fairhaven. And I am delighted to +meet you, Miss Montmorenci. So now, you see, we have been quite +properly introduced, haven't we? And, by the way," I suggested, after +a moment's meditation, "there is a very interesting old college here-- +old pictures, records, historical association and such like. I would +like to inspect it, vastly. Can't I call for you in the morning. We +can do it together, if you don't mind, and if you haven't already seen +it. Won't you, Miss Montmorenci? You really ought to see King's +College, you know; it is quite famous, because I was educated there, +and no end of other interesting things have happened within its +venerable confines." + +She had drawn close to the hedge. "You really mean it?" she asked. +"You would walk through the streets of this Fairhaven with me--with a +barn-stormer, with a strolling actress? You'd be afraid!" she cried, +suddenly; "oh, yes, you talk bravely enough, but you'd be afraid, of +course, when the time came! You'd be afraid!" + +I had taken the hat, but my head was still uncovered. "I don't think," +said I, reflectively, "that I am afraid of many things, somehow. But +of one thing I am certainly not afraid, and that is of mistaking a +good woman for--for anything else. Their eyes are different somehow," +I haltingly explained, as to myself; then I smiled. "Shall we say +eleven o'clock?" + +Miss Montmorenci laid one hand upon the hedgetop and slowly twisted +off four box-leaves what while I waited. "I--I believe you," she said, +in' meditation; "oh, yes, I believe you, somehow, Mr. Townsend. But we +rehearse in the morning, and there is a matinee every day, you know, +and--and there are other reasons--" She paused, irresolutely. "No," +said Miss Montmorenci, "I thank you, but--good night." + +"Oh, I say! am I never to see any more of you?" + +A century or so of silence now. Her deliberation seemed endless. + +At last: "Matinees and rehearsal keep us busy by day. But I am +boarding here for the week, and--and I rest here in the garden after +the evening performance. It is cool, it--it is like a glass of water +after taking rather bitter medicine. And you aren't a bad sort, are +you? No; you look too big and strong and clean, Mr. Townsend. And, +besides, you're just a boy--" + +"In that case," cried Mr. Townsend, "I shall say goodnight with a +light heart." And I turned to go. + +"A moment--" said she. + +"An eternity," I proffered. + +"Promise me," she said, "that you will not come again this week to the +Opera House." + +My brows were raised a trifle. "I adore the drama," I pleaded. + +"And I loathe it. And I act very badly--hopelessly so," said Miss +Montmorenci, with an indolent shrug; "and, somehow, I don't want you +to see me do it. Why did you mind my calling you a boy? You _are_, you +know." + +So I protested I had not minded it at all; and I promised. "But at +least," I said, triumphantly, "you can't prevent my remembering +Juliet!" + +She said of course not, only I was not to be silly. + +"And therefore," quoth I, "Juliet shall be remembered always." I +smiled and waved my hand. "_Au revoir_, Signorina Capulet," said I. + +And I took my departure. My blood rejoiced, with a strange fervor, in +the summer moonlight. It was good to be alive. + + + + +7. + +_He Goes Mad in a Garden_ + + +"And, oh, but it is good to be with you again, Signorina!" cried I, as +I came with quick strides into the moonlit garden. I caught both her +hands in mine, and laughed like an ineffably contented person. There +was nothing very subtle about the boy that then was I; at worst, he +overacted what he really felt; and just at present he was pleased with +the universe, and he saw no possible reason for concealing the fact. + +It was characteristic, also, that she made no pretence at being +surprised by my coming. She was expecting me and she smiled very +frankly at seeing me. Also, in place of the street dress of Tuesday, +she wore something that was white and soft and clinging, and left her +throat but half concealed. This, for two reasons, was sensible and +praiseworthy; one being that the night was warm, and the other that it +really broadened my ideas as to the state of perfection which it is +possible for the human throat to attain. + + + 2 + +"So you don't like my stage-name?" she asked, as I sat down beside +her. "Well, for that matter, no more do I." "It doesn't suit you," I +protested--"not in the least. Whereas, you might be a Signorina +Somebody-or-other, you know. You are dark and stately and--well, I +can't tell you all the things you are," I complained, "because the +English language is so abominably limited. But, upon the whole, I am +willing to take the word of the playbill,--yes, I am quite willing to +accept you as Signorina Capulet. She had a habit of sitting in gardens +at night, I remember. Yes," I decided, after reflection, "I really +think it highly probable that you are old Capulet's daughter. I shall +make a point of it to pick a quarrel as soon as possible, with that +impertinent, trespassing young Montague. He really doesn't deserve +you, you know." + +Unaccountably, her face saddened. Then, "Signorina? Signorina?" she +appraised the title. "It _is_ rather a pretty name. And the other is +horrible. Yes, you may call me Signorina, if you like." + + + 3 + +She would not tell me her real name. She was unmarried,--this much she +told me, but of her past life, her profession, or of her future she +never spoke. "I don't want to talk about it," she said, candidly. "We +play for a week in Fairhaven, and here, once off the stage, I intend +to forget I am an actress. When I am on the stage," she added, in +meditative wise, "of course everyone knows I am not." + +I laughed. I found her very satisfying; she was not particularly +intelligent, perhaps, but then I was beginning to consider clever +women rather objectionable creatures. There was a sufficiency of them +among the Charteris house-party--Alicia Wade, for instance, and +Pauline Ashmeade and Cynthia Chaytor,--and I thought of them almost +resentfully. The world had accorded them not exactly what they most +wanted, perhaps, but, at least, they had its luxuries; and they said +sharp, cynical things about the world in return. In a woman's mouth +epigrams were as much out-of-place as a meerschaum pipe. + +Here, on the contrary, was a woman whom the world had accorded nothing +save hard knocks, and she regarded it, upon the whole, as an eminently +pleasant place to live in. She accepted its rebuffs with a certain +large calm, as being all in the day's work. There was, no doubt, some +good and sufficient reason for these inconveniences; not for a moment, +however, did she puzzle her handsome head in speculating over this +reason. She was probably too lazy. And the few favours the world +accorded her she took thankfully. + +"You see," she explained to me--this was on Thursday night, when I +found her contentedly eating cheap candy out of a paper bag,--"the +world is really very like a large chocolate drop; it's rather bitter +on the outside, but when you have bitten through, you find the heart +of it sweet. Oh, how greedy!--you've taken the last candied cherry, +and I am specially fond of candied cherries!" And indeed, she looked +frankly regretful as I munched it. + +I thought her adorable; and in exchange for that last candied cherry I +promised her some of the new books,--_David Harum_ certainly, and, +_When Knighthood Was in Flower_, because everybody was reading it, and +Mr. Dooley, because they said this young fellow Dunne was nearly as +funny as Bill Nye.... + + + 4 + +In fact, the moon seemed to shine down each night upon that particular +garden in a more and more delightful and dangerous manner. And I being +a fairly normal and healthy young man, the said moonshine affected me +in a fashion which has been peculiar to moonshine since Noah was a +likely stripling; my blood appeared to me, at times, to leap and +bubble in my veins as if it had been some notably invigorating and +heady tipple; and my heart was unreasonably contented, and I gave due +thanks for this woman who had come to me unsullied through the world's +gutter. For she came unsullied; there was no questioning that. + +I pictured her in certain execrable rhymes as the Lady in _Comus_, +moving serene and unafraid among a rabble of threatening, bestial +shapes. And I rejoiced that there were women like this in the world,-- +brave, wholesome, unutterably honest women, whose very lack of +cleverness--oh, subtle appeal to my vanity!--demanded a gentleman's +protection. + +As has been said, I was a well-grown lad, but when I thought in this +fashion I seemed to myself, at a moderate computation, ten feet in +height,--and just the person, in short, who would be an ideal +protector. + +Thus far my callow meditations. My course of reasoning was perhaps +faulty, but then there are, at twenty-one, many processes more +interesting and desirable than the perfecting of a mathematical +demonstration. And so, for a little, my blood rejoiced with a strange +fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive. + + + 5 + +Thursday was the twenty-third of the month, so upon that afternoon I +wrote to Bettie Hamlyn, in far-off Colorado. + +It was a lengthy letter. It told her of how desolate her garden was +and of how odd Fairhaven seemed without her. It told how I had half +changed my mind, and would probably not go to Europe with Mr. +Charteris, after all. Bettie had been at pains, in the letter I was +answering, to expatiate upon her hatred of Charteris, whom she had +never seen. My letter told her, in fine, of a variety of matters. And +it ended: + +"I went to the Opera House on Monday. But that, like everything else, +isn't the same without you, dear. The woman who played Juliet was, I +believe, rather good-looking, but I scarcely noticed her in worrying +over the pitiful circumstance that the Apothecary and the Populace of +Verona had only one pair of shoes between them. Besides, Mercutio kept +putting on a bathrobe and insisting he was Friar Laurence.... I would +write more about it, if I had not almost used up all my paper. There +is just room to say--" + + + 6 + +This was, as I have stated, on Thursday afternoon. Upon the following +evening-- + +"And why not?" I demanded, for the ninth time. + +But she was resolute. "Oh, it is dear of you!" she cried; "and I--I do +care for you,--how could I help it? But it can't be,--it can't ever +be," she repeated wearily; and then she looked at me, and smiled a +little. "Oh, boy, boy! dear, dear boy!" she murmured, half in wonder, +"how foolish of you and--how dear of you!" + +"And why not?" said I--for the tenth time. + +She gave a sobbing laugh. "Oh, the great, brave, stupid boy!" she +said, and, for a moment, her hand rested on my hair; "he doesn't know +what he is doing,--ah, no, he doesn't know! Why, I might hold you to +your word! I might sue you for breach of promise! I might marry you +out of hand! Think of that! Why I am only a strolling actress, and +fair game for any man,--any man who isn't particular," she added, with +the first trace of bitterness I had ever observed in her odd, throaty +voice. "And you would marry me,--you! you would give me your name, you +would make me your wife! You have actually begged me to be your wife, +haven't you? Ah, my brave, strong, stupid Bobbie, how many women must +love you,--women who have a right to love you! And you would give them +all up for me,--for me, you foolish Bobbie, whom you haven't known a +week! Ah, how dear of you!" And she caught her breath swiftly, and her +voice broke. + +"Yes," I brazenly confessed; "I really believe I would give them all +up--every blessed one of them--for you." I inspected her, critically, +and then smiled. "And I don't think that I would be deserving any very +great credit for self sacrifice, either, Signorina." + +"My dear," she answered, "it pleases you to call me old Capulet's +daughter,--but if I were only a Capulet, and you a Montague, don't you +see how much easier it would be? But we don't belong to rival +families, we belong to rival worlds, to two worlds that have nothing +in common, and never can have anything in common. They are too strong +for us, Bobbie,--my big, dark, squalid world, that you could never +sink to, and your gay little world which I can never climb to,--your +world that would have none of me, even if--even _if_--" But the +condition was not forthcoming. + +"The world," said I, in an equable tone--"My dear, I may as well warn +you I am shockingly given to short and expressive terms, and as we are +likely to see a deal of each other for the future, you will have to be +lenient with them,--accordingly, I repeat, the world may be damned." + +And I laughed, in unutterable content. "Have none of you!" I cried. +"My faith, I would like to see a world which would have none of you! +Ah, Signorina, it is very plain to me that you don't realize what a +beauty, what a--a--good Lord, what an unimaginative person it was that +invented the English language! Why, you have only to be seen, heart's +dearest,--only to be seen, and the world is at your feet,--my world, +to which you belong of rights; my world, that you are going to honour +by living in; my world, that in a little will go mad for sheer envy of +blundering, stupid, lucky me!" And I laughed her to scorn. + +There was a long silence. Then, "I belonged to your world once, you +know." + +"Why, of course, I knew as much as that." + +"And yet--you never asked--" "Ah, Signorina, Signorina!" I cried; +"what matter? Don't I know you for the bravest, tenderest, purest, +most beautiful woman God ever made? I doubt you--I! My word!" said I, +and stoutly, "that _would_ be a pretty go! You are to tell me just +what you please," I went on, almost belligerently, "and when and where +you please, my lady. And I would thank you," I added, with appropriate +sternness, "to discontinue your pitiful and transparent efforts to +arouse unworthy suspicions as to my future wife. They are wasted, +madam,--utterly wasted, I assure you." + +"Oh, Bobbie, Bobbie!" she sighed; "you are such a beautiful baby! Give +me time," she pleaded weakly. + +And, when I scowled my disapproval, "Only till tomorrow--only a +little, little twenty-four hours. And promise me, you won't speak of +this--this crazy nonsense again tonight. I must think." + +"Never!" said I, promptly; "because I couldn't be expected to keep +such an absurd promise," I complained, in indignation. + +"And you look so strong," she murmured, with evident disappointment,-- +"so strong and firm and--and--admirable!" + +So I promised at once. And I kept the promise--that is, I did +subsequently refer to the preferable and proper course to pursue in +divers given circumstances "when we are married;" but it was on six +occasions only, and then quite casually,--and six times, as I myself +observed, was, all things considered, an extremely moderate allowance +and one that did great credit to my self-control. + + + 7 + +"And besides, why _not_?" I said,--for the eleventh time. + +"There are a thousand reasons. I am not your equal, I am just an +ostensible actress--Why, it would be your ruin!" + +"My dear Mrs. Grundy, I confess that, for the moment, your disguise +had deceived me. But now: I recognize your voice." + +She laughed a little. "And after all," the grave voice said, which +was, to me at least, the masterwork of God, "after all, hasn't one +always to answer Mrs. Grundy--in the end?" + +"Why, then, you disgusting old harridan," said I, "I grant you it is +utterly impossible to defend my behaviour in this matter, and, believe +me, I don't for an instant undertake the task. To the contrary, I +agree with you perfectly,--my conduct is most thoughtless and +reprehensible, and merits your very severest condemnation. For look +you, here is a young man, well born, well-bred, sufficiently well +endowed with this world's goods, in short, an eminently eligible +match, preparing to marry an 'ostensible actress' a year or two his +senior,--why, of course, you are,--and of whose past he knows +nothing,--absolutely nothing. Don't you shudder at the effrontery of +the minx? Is it not heart-breaking to contemplate the folly, the utter +infatuation of the misguided youth who now stands ready to foist such +a creature upon the circles of which your ladyship is a distinguished +ornament? I protest it is really incredible. I don't believe a word of +it." + +"I cannot quite believe it, either, Bobbie--" + +"But you see, he loves her. You, my dear madam, blessed with a wiser +estimation of our duties to society, of the responsibilities of our +position, of the cost of even the most modest establishment, and, +above all, of the sacredness of matrimony and the main chance, may +well shrug your shoulders at such a plea. For, as you justly observe, +what, after all, is this love? only a passing madness, an exploded +superstition, an irresponsible _ignis fatuus_ flickering over the +quagmires and shallows of the divorce court. People's lives are no +longer swayed by such absurdities; it is quite out of date." + +"Yes; you are joking, Bobbie, I know; yet it is really out of date--" + +"But I protest, loudly, my hand upon my heart, that it is true; people +no longer do mad things for love, or ever did, in spite of lying +poets; any more than the birds mate in the spring, or the sun rises in +the morning; popular fallacies, my dear madam, every one of them. You +and I know better, and are not to be deceived by appearances, however +specious they may be. Ah, but come now! Having attained this highly +satisfactory condition, we can well afford to laugh at all our past +mistakes,--yes, even at our own! For let us be quite candid. Wasn't +there a time, dear lady, before Mr. Grundy came a-wooing, when, +somehow, one was constantly meeting unexpected people in the garden, +and, somehow, one sat out a formidable number of dances during the +evening, and, somehow, the poets seemed a bit more plausible than they +do today? It was very foolish, of course,--but, ah, madam, there _was_ +a time,--a time when even our staid blood rejoiced with a strange +fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive! Come +now, have you the face to deny it,--Mrs. Methuselah?" + +"It has not been quite bad to be alive, these last few hours--" + +"And, oh, my dear, how each of us will look back some day to this very +moment! And we are wasting it! And I have not any words to tell you +how I love you! I am just a poor, dumb brute!" I groaned. + +Then very tenderly she began to talk with me in a voice I cannot tell +you of, and concerning matters not to be recorded. + +And still she would not promise anything; and I would give an arm, I +think, could it replevin all the idiotic and exquisite misery I knew +that night. + + + + +8. + +_He Duels with a Stupid Woman_ + + +Yet I approached the garden on Saturday night with an elated heart. +This was the last evening of the engagement of the Imperial Dramatic +Company. To-morrow the troupe was to leave Fairhaven; but I was very +confident that the leading lady would not accompany them, and by +reason of this confidence, I smiled as I strode through the city of +Fairhaven, and hummed under my breath an inane ditty of an extremely +sentimental nature. + +As I bent over the little wooden gate, and searched for its elusive +latch, a man came out of the garden, wheeling sharply about the hedge +that, until this, had hidden him; and simultaneously, I was aware of +the mingled odour of bad tobacco and of worse whiskey. Well, she would +have done with such people soon! I threw open the gate, and stood +aside to let him pass; then, as the moon fell full upon the face of +the man, I gave an inarticulate, startled sound. + +"Fine evening, sir," suggested the stranger. + +"Eh?" said I; "eh? Oh, yes, yes! quite so!" Afterward I shrugged my +shoulders, and went into the garden, a trifle puzzled. + + + 2 + +I found her beneath a great maple in the heart of the enclosure. It +was a place of peace; the night was warm and windless, and the moon, +now come to its full glory, rode lazily in the west through a froth of +clouds. Everywhere the heavens were faintly powdered with stardust, +but even the planets seemed pale and ineffectual beside the splendour +of the moon. + +The garden was drenched in moonshine--moonshine that silvered the +unmown grass-plots, and converted the white rose-bushes into squat-figured +wraiths, and tinged the red ones with dim purple hues. On every side the +foliage blurred into ambiguous vistas, where fireflies loitered; and the +long shadows of the nearer trees, straining across the grass, were wried +patterns scissored out of blue velvet. It was a place of peace and light +and languid odours, and I came into it, laughing, the possessor of an +over-industrious heart and of a perfectly unreasoning joy over the fact +that I was alive. + +"I say," I observed, as I stretched luxuriously upon the grass beside +her, "you put up at a shockingly disreputable place, Signorina." +"Yes?" said she. + +"That fellow who just went out," I explained--"do you know the police +want his address, I think? No," I continued, after consideration, "I +am sure I'm not mistaken,--that is either Ned Lethbury, the embezzler, +or his twin-brother. It's been five years since I saw him, but that is +he. And that", said I, with proper severity, "is a sample of the sort +of associate you prefer to your humble servant! Ah, Signorina, +Signorina, I am a tolerably worthless chap, I admit, but at least I +never forged and embezzled and then skipped my bail! So you had much +better marry me, my dear, and say good-bye to your peculating friends. +But, deuce take it! I forgot--I ought to notify the police or +something, I suppose." + +She caught my arm. Her mouth opened and shut again before she spoke. +"He--he is my husband," she said, in a toneless voice. Then, on a +sudden, she wailed: "Oh, forgive me! Oh, my great, strong, beautiful +boy, forgive me, for I am very unhappy, and I cannot meet your eyes-- +your honest eyes! Ah, my dear, my dear, do not look at me like that,-- +you don't know how it hurts!" + +The garden noises lisped about us in the long silence that fell. Then +the far-off whistling of some home going citizen of Fairhaven tinkled +shrilly through the night, and I shuddered a bit. + +"I don't understand," I commenced, strangely quiet. "You told me--" + +"Ah, I lied to you! I lied to you!" she cried. "I didn't, mean to-- +hurt you. I did not know--I couldn't know--I was so lonely, Bobbie," +she pleaded, with wide eyes; "oh, you don't know how lonely I am. And +when you came to me that first night, you--why, you spoke to me as the +men I once knew used to speak. There was respect in your voice, and I +wanted that so; I hadn't had a man speak to me like that for years, +you know, Bobbie. And, boy dear, I was so lonely in my squalid +world,--and it seemed as if the world I used to know was calling me-- +your world, Bobbie--the world I am shut out from." + +"Yes," I said; "I think I understand." + +"And I thought for a week--just to peep into it, to be a lady again +for an hour or two--why, it didn't seem wicked, then, and I wanted it +so much! I--I knew I could trust you, because you were only a boy. And +I was hungry--_so_ hungry for a little respect, a little courtesy, +such as men don't accord strolling actresses. So I didn't tell you +till the very last I was married. I lied to you. Oh, but you don't +understand, this stupid, honest boy doesn't understand anything except +that I have lied to him!" + +"Signorina," I said, again, and I smiled, resolutely, "I think I +understand." I took both her hands in mine, and laughed a little. +"But, oh, my dear, my dear," I said, "you should have told me that you +loved another man; for you have let me love you for a week, and now I +think that I must love you till I die." + +"Love him!" she echoed. "Oh, boy dear, boy dear, what a Galahad it is! +I don't think Ned ever cared for anything but Father's money; and I-- +why, you have seen him. How _could_ I love him?" she asked, as simply +as a child. + +I bowed my head. "And yet--" said I. Then I laughed again, somewhat +bitterly. "Don't let's tell stories, Mrs. Lethbury," I said; "it is +kindly meant, I know, but I remember you now. I even danced with you +once, some seven years ago,--yes, at the Green Chalybeate. I remember +the night, for a variety of reasons. You are Alfred Van Orden's +daughter; your father is a wealthy man, a very wealthy man; and yet, +when your--your husband disappeared you followed him--to become a +strolling actress. Ah, no, a woman doesn't sacrifice everything for a +man in the way you have done, unless she loves him." + +I caught my breath. Some unknown force kept tugging down the corners +of my mouth, in a manner that hampered speech; moreover, nothing +seemed worth talking about. I had lost her. That was the one thing +which mattered. + +"Why, of course, I went with him," she assented, a shade surprised; +"he was my husband, you know. But as for loving,--no, I don't think +Ned ever really loved me," she reflected, with puckering brows. "He +took that money for--for another woman, if you remember. But he is +fond of me, and--and he _needs_ me." + +I did not say anything; and after a little she went on, with a quick +lift of speech. + +"Oh, what a queer life we have led since then! You can't imagine it, +my dear. He has been a tavern-keeper, a drummer,--everything! Why, +last summer we sold rugs and Turkish things in Atlantic City! But he +is always afraid of meeting someone who knows him, and--and he drinks +too much. So we have not got on in the world, Ned and I; and now, +after three years, I'm the leading lady of the Imperial Dramatic +Company, and he is the manager. I forgot, though,--he is advance-agent +this week, for he didn't dare stay in Fairhaven, lest some of the men +at Mr. Charteris's should recognize him, you know. He came back only +this evening--" + +She paused for a moment; a wistful quaver crept into her speech. "Oh, +it's queer, it's queer, Bobbie! Sometimes--sometimes when I have time +to think, say on long Sunday afternoons, I remember my old life, every +bit of it,--oh, I do remember such strange little details! I remember +the designs on the bread and butter plates, and all the silver things +on my desk, and the plank by my door that always creaked and somehow +never got fixed, and the big, shiny buttons on the coachman's coat,-- +just trifles like that. And--and they hurt, they hurt, Bobbie, those +little, unimportant things! They--grip my throat." + +She laughed, not very mirthfully. "Then I am like the old lady in the +nursery rhyme, and say, Surely, this can't be I. But it is I, boy +dear,--a strolling actress, a barn-stormer! Isn't it queer, Bobbie? +But, oh, you don't know half--" + +I was remembering many things. I remembered Lethbury, a gross man, +superfluously genial, whom I had never liked, although I recalled my +admiration of his whiskers. I recollected young Amelia Van Orden, not +come to her full beauty then, the bud of girlhood scarce slipped; and +I remembered very vividly the final crash, the nine days' talk over +Lethbury's flight in the face of certain conviction,--by his father-in- +law's advice (as some said) who had furnished and forfeited heavy bail +for the absconder. Oh, the brave woman who had followed! Oh, the brave, +foolish woman! And, for the action's recompense, he was content to +exhibit her to yokels, to make of her beauty an article of traffic. +Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. And then hope +blazed. + +"Your husband," I said, quickly, "he does not love you? He--he is not +faithful to you?" + +"No," she answered; "there is a Miss Fortescue--she plays second +parts--" + +"Ah, my dear, my dear!" I cried, with a shaking voice; "come away, +Signorina,--come away with me! He _doesn't_ need you,--and, oh, my +dear, I need you so! You can get your divorce and marry me. Ah, +Signorina, come away,--come away from this squalid life that is +killing you, to the world you are meant for, to the life you hunger +for! Come back to the clean, lighthearted world you love, the world +that is waiting to pet and caress you just as it used to do,--our +world, Signorina! You don't belong here with--with the Fortescues. You +belong to us." + +I sprang to my feet. "Come now!" said I. "There's Anne Charteris; she +is a good woman, if ever lived one. She used to know you, too, didn't +she? Well, then, come with me to her, dearest--and tonight! You shall +see your father tomorrow. Your father--why, think how that old man +loves you, how he has longed for you, his only daughter, all these +years. And I?" I spread out my hands, in the tiniest, impotent +gesture. "I love you," I said, simply. "I cannot do without you, +heart's dearest." + +Impulsively, she rested both hands upon my breast; then bowed her head +a little. The nearness of her seemed to shake in my blood, to catch at +my throat, and my hands, lifted for a moment, trembled with desire of +her. + +"You don't understand," she said. "I am a Catholic--my mother was one, +you know. There is no divorce for us. And--and besides, I'm not +modern. I am very old-fashioned, I suppose, in my ideas. Do you know," +she asked, with a smile upon the face which lifted confidingly toward +me, "I--I _really_ believe the world was made in six days; and that +the whale swallowed Jonah, and that there is a real purgatory and a +hell of fire and brimstone. You don't, do you, Bobbie? But I do,--and +I promised to stay with him till death parted us, you know, and I must +do it. I am all he has. He would get even worse without me. I--oh, boy +dear, boy dear, I love you so!" And her voice broke, in a great, +choking sob. + +"A promise--a promise made by an ungrown girl to a brute--a thief--!" + +"No, dear," she answered, quietly; "a promise made to God." + +And looking into her face, I saw love there, and anguish, and +determination. It seemed monstrous, but of a sudden I knew with a dull +surety; she loved me, but she thought she had no right to love me; she +would not go with me. She would go with that drunken, brutish thief. + +And I suddenly recalled certain clever women--Alicia Wade, Pauline +Ashmeade, Cynthia Chaytor--the women of that world wherein I was +novitiate; beyond question, they would raise delicately penciled +eyebrows to proclaim this woman a fool--and to wonder. + +They would be right, I thought. She was only a splendid, tender-hearted, +bright-eyed fool, the woman that I loved. My heart sickened as her +folly rose between us, an impassable barrier. I hated it; and I revered +it. + +Thus we two stood silent for a time. The wind murmured above in the +maples, lazily, ominously. Then the gate clicked, with a vicious snap +that pierced the silence like the report of a distant rifle. "That is +probably Ned," she said wearily. "I had forgotten they close the +barrooms earlier on Saturday nights. So good-bye, Bobbie. You--you may +kiss me, if you like." + +So for a moment our lips met. Afterward I caught her hands in mine, +and gripped them close to my breast, looking down into her eyes. They +glinted in the moonlight, deep pools of sorrow, and tender--oh, +unutterably tender and compassionate. + +But I found no hope there. I lifted her hand to my lips, and left her +alone in the garden. + + + 3 + +Lethbury was fumbling at the gate. + +"Such nuishance," he complained, "havin' gate won't unlock. Latch mus' +got los'--po' li'l latch," murmured Mr. Lethbury, plaintively--"all +'lone in cruel worl'!" + +I opened the gate for him, and stood aside to let him pass toward his +wife. + + + + +9. + +_He Puts His Tongue in His Cheek_ + + +It was not long before John Charteris knew of the entire affair, for +in those days I had few concealments from him: and the little wizened +man brooded awhile over my misery, with an odd wistfulness. + +"I remember Amelia Van Orden perfectly," he said--"now. I ought to +have recognized her. Only, she was never, in her best days, the +paragon you depict. She sang, I recollect; people made quite a to-do +over her voice. But she was very, very stupid, and used to make loud +shrieking noises when she was amused, and was generally reputed to be +'fast.' I never investigated. Even so, there was not any real doubt as +to her affair, in any event, with Anton von Anspach, after that night +the sleigh broke down--" + +"Oh, spare me all those ancient Lichfield scandals! She is an angel, +John, if there was ever one." + +"In your eyes, doubtless! So your heart is broken. Yet do you not +realize that not a month ago you were heartbroken over Stella +Musgrave? Child, I repeat, I envy you this perpetual unhappiness, for +I have lost, as you will presently lose, the capacity of being quite +miserable." + +"But, John, it seems as if there were nothing left to live for, now--" + +"At twenty-one! Well, certainly, at that age one loves to think of +life as being implacable. But you will soon discover that she is +merely inconsequential, and that none of her antics are of lasting +importance; and you will learn to smile a deal more often than you +weep or laugh." + +Then we talked of other matters. It was presently settled that +Charteris was to take me abroad with him that summer; and with the +thorough approval of my mother. + +"Mr. Charteris will be of incalculable benefit to you," she told me, +"in introducing you to the very best people, all of whom he knows, of +course, and besides you are getting to look older than I, and it is +unpleasant to have to be always explaining you are only my stepson, +particularly as your father never married anybody but me, though, +heaven knows, I wish he had. Of course you will be just as wild as +your father and your Uncle George. I suppose that is to be expected, +and I daresay it will break my heart, but all I ask of you is please +to keep out of the newspapers, except of course the social items. And +if you _must_ associate with abandoned women, please for my sake, +Robert, don't have anything to do with those who can prove that they +are only misunderstood, because they are the most dangerous kind." + +I kissed her. "Dear little mother, I honestly believe that when you +get to heaven you will refuse to speak to Mary Magdalen." + +"Robert, let us remember the Bible says, 'in my Father's house are +many mansions,' and of course nobody would think of putting me in the +same mansion with her." + +It was well-nigh the last conversation I was to hold with my mother; +and I was to remember it with an odd tenderness.... + + + 2 + +Upon the doings of myself in Europe during the ensuing two years I +prefer to dwell as lightly as possible. I had long anticipated a +sojourn in divers old-world cities; but the London I had looked to +find was the London of Dickens, say, and my Paris the Paris of Dumas, +or at the very least of Balzac. It is needless to mention that in the +circles to which the, quite real, friendship of John Charteris +afforded an entry I found little that smacked of such antiquity. I had +entered a world inhabited by people who amused themselves and +apparently did nothing else; and I was at first troubled by their +levity, and afterward envious of it, and in the end embarked upon +sedulous attempt to imitate it. I continued to be very boyish; indeed, +I found myself by this in much the position of an actor who has made +such a success in one particular role that the public declines to +patronize him in any other. + + + 3 + +It was during this first year abroad that I wrote _The Apostates_, +largely through the urging of John Charteris. + +"You have the ability, though, that dances most gracefully in fetters. +You will never write convincingly about the life you know, because +life is, to you, my adorable boy, a series of continuous miracles, to +which the eyes of other men are case-hardened. Write me, then, a book +about the past." + +"I have thought of it," said I, "for being over here makes the past +seem pretty real, somehow. Last month when I was at Ingilby I was on +fire with the notion of writing something about old Ormskirk--my +mother's ancestor, you know. And since I've seen what's left of +Bellegarde I have wanted to write about his wife's people too,--the +dukes and vicomtes of Puysange, or even about the great Jurgen. You +see, I am just beginning to comprehend that these are not merely +characters in Lowe's and La Vrilliere's books, but my flesh and blood +kin, like Uncle George Bulmer--" + +"And for that reason you want to write about them! You would, though; +it is eminently characteristic. Well, then, why should you not +immortalize the persons who had the honor of begetting you--oh, most +handsome and most naive of children!--by writing your very best about +them?" "Because to succeed--not only among the general but with the +'cultured few,' God save the mark!--it is now necessary to write not +badly but abominably." + +"What would you demand, then, of a book?" + +I meditated. "What one most desiderates in the writings of to-day is +clarity, and beauty, and tenderness and urbanity, and truth." + +"Not a bad recipe, upon the whole, though I would stipulate for +symmetry and distinction also--Write the book!" + +"Ah," said I, "but this is the kind of book I wish to read when, of +course, the mood seizes me. It is not at all the sort of book, though, +I would elect to write. The main purpose of writing any book, I take +it, is to be read; and people simply will not read a book when they +suspect it of being carefully written. That sort of thing gets on a +reader's nerves; it's too much like watching a man walk a tight-rope +and wondering if he won't slip presently." + +"Oh, 'people!'" Charteris flung out, in an extremity of scorn. "Since +time was young, a generally incompetent humanity has been willing to +pardon anything rather than the maddening spectacle of labour +competently done. And they are perfectly right; it is abominable how +such weak-minded persons occasionally thrust themselves into a world +quite obviously designed for persons who have not any minds at all. +But I was not asking you to write a 'best-seller.'" + +"No, you were asking me to become an Economist, and be one of 'the few +rare spirits which every age providentially affords,' and so on. That +is absolute and immoral nonsense. When you publish a novel you are at +least pretending to supply a certain demand; and if you don't +endeavour honestly to supply it, you are a swindler, no more and no +less. No, it is all very well to write for posterity, if it amuses +you, John; personally, I cannot imagine what possible benefit you will +derive from it, even though posterity _does_ read your books. And for +myself, I want to be read and to be a power while I can appreciate the +fact that I _am_ a sort of power, however insignificant. Besides, I +want to make some money out of the blamed thing. Mother is a dear, of +course, but, like all the Bulmers, with age she is becoming tight-fisted." + +"And Esau--" Charteris began. + +"Yes,--but that's Biblical, and publishing a book is business. People +say to authors, just as they do to tailors: 'I want such and such an +article. Make it and I'll pay you for it.' Now, your tailor may +consider the Imperial Roman costume more artistic than that of today, +and so may you in the abstract, but if he sent home a toga in place of +a pair of trousers, you would discontinue dealing with him. So if it +amuses you to make togas, well and good; I don't quarrel with it; but, +personally, I mean to go into the gents' furnishing line and to do my +work efficiently." + +"Yes,--but with your tongue in your cheek." + +"It is the one and only attitude," I sweetly answered, "in which to +write if you indeed desire to be read with enjoyment." And presently I +rose and launched upon + +_A Defence of That Attitude_ + +"The main trouble with you, John Charteris, is that you will never +recover from being _fin de siecle_. Yes, you belong to that queer +dying nineteenth century. And even so, you have quite overlooked what +is, perhaps, the signal achievement of the nineteenth century,--the +relegation of its literature to the pharmacopoeia. The comparison of +the tailor, I willingly admit, is a bad one. Those who write +successfully nowadays must appeal to men and women who seek in fiction +not only a means of relaxation, but spiritual comfort as well, and an +uplifting rather than a mere diversion of the mind; so that they are +really druggists who trade exclusively in intoxicants and hypnotics. + +"Half of the customers patronize the reading-matter shops because they +want to induce delusions about a world they know, and do not find +particularly roseate and the other half skim through a book because +they haven't anything else to do and aren't sleepy, as yet. + +"Oh, in filling either prescription the trick is much the same; you +have simply to avoid bothering the reader's intellect in any way +whatever. You have merely to drug it, you have merely to caress it +with interminable platitudes, or else with the most uplifting +avoidances of anything which happens to be unprintably rational. And +you must remember always that the crass emotions of half-educated +persons are, in reality, your chosen keyboard; so play upon it with an +axe if you haven't any handier implement, but hit it somehow, and for +months your name will be almost as famous as that of my mother's +father remains the year round because he invented a celebrated +baking-powder. + +"It is all very well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there +are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can +hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, +for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, +entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But +why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with +one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, +whenever humanity goes into the library to take a nap? For what other +purpose do you suppose a gentleman goes into his library, pray? When +he is driven to reading he does it decently in bed. + +"Besides, if I like a book, why, then, in so far as I am concerned, it +_is_ a good book. No, please don't talk to me about 'the dignity of +literature'; modern fiction has precisely as much to do with dignity +as has vaudeville or billiards or that ridiculous Prohibitionist +Party, since the object of all four, I take it, is to afford diversion +to people who haven't anything better to do. Thus, a novel which has +diverted a thousand semi-illiterate persons is exactly ten times as +good as a novel that has pleased a hundred superior persons. It is +simply a matter of arithmetic. + +"You prefer to look upon writing as an art, rather than a business? +Oh, you silly little man, the touchstone of any artist is the skill +with which he adapts his craftsmanship to his art's limitations. He +will not attempt to paint a sound or to sculpture a colour, because he +knows that painting and sculpture have their limitations, and he, +quite consciously, recognizes this fact whenever he sets to work. + +"Well, the most important limitation of writing fiction nowadays is +that you have to appeal to people who would never think of reading you +or anybody else, if they could possibly imagine any other employment +for that particular vacant half-hour. And you cannot hope for an +audience of even moderately intelligent persons, because intelligent +persons do not attempt to keep abreast with modern fiction. It is +probably ascribable to the fact that they enjoy being intelligent, and +wish to remain so. + +"You sneer at the 'best-sellers.' I tell you, in sober earnest, that +the writing of a frankly trashy novel which will 'sell,' is the +highest imaginable form of art. For true art, in its last terms, is +the adroit circumvention of an unsurmountable obstacle. I suppose that +form and harmony and colour are very difficult to tame; and the +sculptor, the musician and the painter quite probably earn their hire. +But people don't go to concerts unless they want to hear music; +whereas the people who buy the 'best-sellers' are the people who would +prefer to do _anything_ rather than be reduced to reading. I protest +that the man who makes these people read on until they see how 'it all +came out' is a deal more than an artist; he is a sorcerer." + +And I paused, a little out of breath. + +"What a boy it is!" said Charteris. "Do you know, you are uncommonly +handsome when you are talking nonsense? Write the trashy book, then. I +never argue with children; and besides, I do not have to read it." + + + 4 + +It thus fell about that in the second European year, not very long +after my mother's death, _The Apostates_ was given to the world, with +what result the world has had a plenty of time wherein to forget.... +It was first published in _The Quaker Post_, with pictures by Roderick +King Hill, and in the autumn was brought out as a book by Stuyvesant +and Brothers. I made rather a good thing cut of it financially; but +the numerous letters I received from the people who had liked it I +found extremely objectionable. They were not the right sort of people, +I felt forlornly.... So I endured my plaudits without undue elation, +for I always held _The Apostates_ to be, at best, a medley of +conventional tricks and extravagant rhetoric, inanimate by any least +particle of myself,--and its success, say, as though the splendiferous +trappings of an emperor were hung upon a clothier's dummy, and the +result accepted as an adequate presentation of Charlemagne. + +In other words, the book was the most unbridled kind of balderdash, +founded on my callow recollections of the Green Chalybeate,--not the +least bit accurate, as I was afterward to discover,--with all the good +people exceedingly oratorical and the bad ones singularly epigrammatic +and abandoned and obtuse. I introduced a depraved nobleman, of course, +to give the requisite touch of high society, seasoned the mixture with +French and botany and with a trifle of Dolly Dialoguishness, and +inserted, at judicious intervals, the most poetical of descriptions, +so that the skipping of them might afford an agreeable rest to the +reader's eye. There was also a sufficiency of piddling with unsavoury +matters to insure the suffrage of schoolgirls. + +And a number of persons, in fine, were so misguided as to enthuse over +the result. The verb is carefully selected, for they one and all were +just the sort of people who "enthuse." + + + 5 + +I was vexed, however, at the time to find I could not achieve an +appropriate emotion over my mother's death. The news came, to be sure, +at a season when I was preoccupied with getting rid of Agnes Faroy.... +I have not ever heard of any rational excuse for the quite common +assumption that children ought to be particularly fond of their +parents. Still, my mother was the prettiest woman I had ever known, +though without any claim to beauty, and I had always gloried in our +kinship; for I believed her nature to be generous and amiable when she +thought of it; and the cablegram which announced the event aroused in +me sincere regret that a comely ornament to my progress had been +smashed irrevocably. + +For a little I reflected as to whither she had vanished, and decided +she had been too futile and well-meaning ever to be punished by any +reasonable Being. Yet how she would have enjoyed the publication of my +book!--without any attempt to read it, however, since she had never, +to my knowledge, read anything, with the exception of the daily +papers.... And besides, I disliked being unable to have the +appropriate emotion. + +But I simply could not manage it. For here, in the midst of the Faroy +mess,--with Agnes weeping all over the place, and her brothers +flourishing pistols and declaiming idiocies,--came the news from Uncle +George that my mother had left me virtually nothing. She must have +used up, of course, a good share of her Bulmer Baking Powder money in +supporting my father comfortably; but she had always lived in such +estate as to make me assume she had retained, anyhow, enough of the +Bulmer money to last my time. So it was naturally a shock to discover +that this monetary attitude was inherited from my mother, who had been +cheerfully "living on her principle" all these years, without +considering my future. I had no choice but to regard it as abominably +selfish. + +"I think Claire was afraid to tell you," wrote Uncle George, "how +little there was left. In any event, she always shirked doing it, so +as to stave off unpleasantness. And when we cabled you how ill she +was, it now seems most unfortunate you could not see your way clear to +giving up your trip through the chateau country, as your not coming +appeared to be on her mind a great deal at the last. I do not wish to +seem to criticize you in any way, Robert, but I must say...." + +Well, but you know what sort of nonsense that smug gambit heralds in +letters from your kindred. Even so, I now owned the Townsend house and +an income sufficient for daily bread; and it looked just then as +though the magazine editors were willing to furnish the butter, and +occasional cakes. So the future promised to be pleasant enough. + + + 6 + +Charteris had returned to Algiers in the autumn my book was published, +but I elected to pass the winter in England. "Of course," was Mr. +Charteris's annotation--"because it is precisely the most dangerous +spot in the world for you. And you are to spend October at Negley? I +warn you that Jasper Hardress is in love with his wife, and that the +woman has an incurable habit of making experiments and an utter +inability to acquire experience. Take my advice, and follow Mrs. +Monteagle to the Riviera, instead. Cissie will strip you of every +penny you have, of course, but in the end you will find her a deal +less expensive than Gillian Hardress." + +"You possess a low and evil mind," I observed, "since I am fond, in +all sincerity, of Hardress, whereas his wife is not even civil to me. +Why, she goes out of her way to be rude to me." + +"Yes," said Mr. Charteris; "but that is because she is getting worried +about her interest in you. And what is the meaning of this, by the +way? I found it on your table this morning." He read the doggerel +aloud with an unkindly and uncalled-for exaggeration of the rhyming +words. + + "We did not share the same inheritance,-- + I and this woman, five years older than I, + Yet daughter of a later century,-- + Who is therefore only wearied by that dance + Which has set my blood a-leaping. + + "It is queer + To note how kind her face grows, listening + To my wild talk, and plainly pitying + My callow youth, and seeing in me a dear + Amusing boy,--yet somewhat old to be + Still reading _Alice Through the Looking-Glass_ + And _Water-Babies_.... With light talk we pass, + + "And I that have lived long in Arcady-- + I that have kept so many a foolish tryst, + And written drivelling rhymes--feel stirring in me + Droll pity for this woman who pities me, + And whose weak mouth so many men have kissed." + +"That," I airily said, "is, in the first place, something you had no +business to read; and, in the second, simply the blocking out of an +entrancingly beautiful poem. It represents a mood." + +"It is the sort of mood that is not good for people, particularly for +children. It very often gets them shot too full of large and untidy +holes." + +"Nonsense!" said I, but not in displeasure, because it made me feel +like such a devil of a fellow. So I finished my letter to Bettie +Hamlyn,--for this was on the seventh,--and I went to Negley precisely +as I had planned. + + + 7 + +"We were just speaking of you," Mrs. Hardress told me, the afternoon +of my arrival,--"Blanche and I were talking of you, Mr. Townsend, the +very moment we heard your wheels." + +I shook hands. "I trust you had not entirely stripped me of my +reputation?" + +"Surely, that is the very last of your possessions any reasonable +person would covet?" + +"A palpable hit," said I. "Nevertheless, you know that all I possess +in the world is yours for the asking." + +"Yes, you mentioned as much, I think, at Nice. Or was it Colonel +Tatkin who offered me a heart's devotion and an elopement? No, I +believe it was you. But, dear me, Jasper is so disgustingly healthy +that I shall probably never have any chance of recreation." + +I glanced toward Jasper Hardress. "I have heard," said I, hopefully, +"that there is consumption in the family?" + +"Heavens, no! he told me that before marriage to encourage me, but I +find there is not a word of truth in it." + +Then Jasper Hardress came to welcome his guest, and save from a +distance I saw no more that evening of Gillian Hardress. + + + + +10. + +_He Samples New Emotions_ + + +It was the following day, about noon, as I sat intent upon my Paris +_Herald_ that a tiny finger thrust a hole in it. I gave an inaudible +observation, and observed a very plump young person in white with +disfavour. + +"And who may you happen to be?" I demanded. + +"I'm Gladys," the young lady responded; "and I've runned away." + +"But not without an escort, I trust, Miss Gladys? Really--upon my +word, you know, you surprise me, Gladys! An elopement without even a +tincture of masculinity is positively not respectable." I took the +little girl into my lap, for I loved children, and all helpless +things. "Gladys," I said, "why don't you elope with me? And we will +spend our honeymoon in the Hesperides." + +"All right," said Gladys, cheerfully. She leaned upon my chest, and +the plump, tiny hand clasped mine, in entire confidence; and the +contact moved me to an irrational transport and to a yearning whose +aim I could not comprehend. "Now tell me a story," said Gladys. + +So that I presently narrated to Gladys the ensuing + + _Story of the Flowery Kingdom_ + + "Fair Sou-Chong-Tee, by a shimmering brook + Where ghost-like lilies loomed tall and straight, + Met young Too-Hi, in a moonlit nook, + Where they cooed and kissed till the hour was late: + Then, with lanterns, a mandarin passed in state, + Named Hoo-Hung-Hoo of the Golden Band, + Who had wooed the maiden to be his mate-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "Now, Hoo-Hung-Hoo had written a book, + In seven volumes, to celebrate + The death of the Emperor's thirteenth cook: + So, being a person whose power was great, + He ordered a herald to indicate + He would blind Too-Hi with a red-hot brand + And marry Sou-Chong at a quarter-past-eight,-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "And the brand was hot, and the lovers shook + In their several shoes, when by lucky fate + A Dragon came, with his tail in a crook,-- + A Dragon out of a Nankeen Plate,-- + And gobbled the hard-hearted potentate + And all of his servants, and snorted, _and_ + Passed on at a super-cyclonic rate,-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "The lovers were wed at an early date, + And lived for the future, I understand, + In one continuous tete-a-tete,-- + For these things occur...in the Flowery Land." + + +Gladys wanted to know: "But what sort of house is a tete-a-tete? Is it +like a palace?" + +"It is very often much nicer than a palace," I declared,--"provided of +course you are only stopping over for a week-end." + +"And wasn't it odd the Dragon should have come just when he did?" + +"Oh, Gladys, Gladys! don't tell me you are a realist." + +"No, I'm a precious angel," she composedly responded, with a flavour +of quotation. + +"Well! it is precisely the intervention of the Dragon, Gladys, which +proves the story is literature," I announced. "Don't you pity the poor +Dragon, Gladys, who never gets a chance in life and has to live always +between two book-covers?" + +She said that couldn't be so, because it would squash him. + +"And yet, dear, it is perfectly true," said Mrs. Hardress. The lean +and handsome woman was regarding the pair of us curiously. "I didn't +know you cared for children, Mr. Townsend. Yes, she is my daughter." +She carried Gladys away, without much further speech. + +Yet one Parthian comment in leaving me was flung over her shoulder, +snappishly. "I wish you wouldn't imitate John Charteris so. You are +getting to be just a silly copy of him. You are just Jack where he is +John. I think I shall call you Jack." + +"I wish you would," I said, "if only because your sponsors happened to +christen you Gillian. So it's a bargain. And now when are we going for +that pail of water?" + +Mrs. Hardress wheeled, the child in her arms, so that she was looking +at me, rather queerly, over the little round, yellow head. "And it was +only Jill, as I remember, who got the spanking," she said. "Oh, well! +it always is just Jill who gets the spanking--Jack." + +"But it was Jack who broke his crown," said I; "Wasn't it--Jill?" It +seemed a jest at the time. But before long we had made these nicknames +a habit, when just we two were together. And the outcome of it all was +not precisely a jest.... + + + 2 + +She told me not long after this, "When I saw Gladys loved you, of +course I loved you too." And I hereby soberly record the statement +that to have a woman fall thoroughly in love with him is the most +uncomfortable experience which can ever befall any man. + +I am tolerably sure I never made any amorous declaration. Rather, it +simply bewildered me to observe the shameless and irrational +infatuation this woman presently bore for me, and before it I was +powerless. When I told her frankly I did not love her, had never loved +her, had no intention of ever loving her, she merely bleated, "You are +cruel!" and wept. When I attempted to restrain her paroxysms of +anguish, she took it as a retraction of what I had told her. + +I would then have given anything in the world to be rid of Gillian +Hardress. This led to scenes, and many scenes, and played the very +devil with the progress of my second novel. You cannot write when +anyone insists on sitting in the same room with you, on the irrelevant +plea that she is being perfectly quiet, and therefore is not +disturbing you. Besides, she had no business in my room, and was apt +to get caught there. + + + 3 + +I remember one of these contentions. She is abominably rouged, and +before me she is grovelling, as she must have seen some actress do +upon the stage. + +"Oh, I lied to you," she wailed; "but you are so cruel! Ah, don't be +cruel, Jack!" + +Then I lifted the scented woman to her feet, and she stayed +motionless, regarding me. She had really wonderful eyes. + +"You are evil," I said, "through and through you are evil, I think, +and I can't help thinking you are a little crazy. But I wish you would +teach me to be as you are, for tonight the hands of my dead father +strain from his grave and clutch about my ankles. He has the right +because it is his flesh I occupy. And I must occupy the body of a +Townsend always. It is not quite the residence I would have chosen-- +Eh, well, for all that, I am I! And at bottom I loathe you!" + +"You love me!" she breathed. + +I thrust her aside and paced the floor. "This is an affair of moment. +I may not condescend to sell, as Faustus did, but of my own volition +must I will to squander or preserve that which is really Robert +Townsend." + +I wheeled upon Gillian Hardress, and spoke henceforward with +deliberation. You must remember I was very young as yet. + +"I have often regretted that the colour element of vice is so oddly +lacking in our life of to-day. We appear, one and all, to have been +born at an advanced age and with ladylike manners, and we reach our +years of indiscretion very slowly; and meanwhile we learn, too late, +that prolonged adherence to morality trivialises the mind as +hopelessly as a prolonged vice trivialises the countenance. I fear +this has been said by someone else, my too impetuous Jill, and I hope +not, for in that event I might possibly be speaking sensibly, and to +be sensible is a terrible thing and almost as bad as being +intelligible." + +"You are not being very intelligible now, sweetheart. But I love to +hear you talk." + +"Meanwhile, I am young, and in youth--_il faut des emotions_, as +Blanche Amory is reported to have said, by a novelist named Thackeray, +whose productions are now read in public libraries. Still, for a +respectable and brougham-supporting person, Thackeray came then as +near to speaking the truth as is possible for people of that class. In +youth emotions are necessary. Find me, therefore, a new emotion!" + +"So many of them, dear!" she promised. + +"I do not love you, understand,--and your husband is my friend, and I +admire him. But I am I! I have endowments, certain faculties which +many men are flattering enough to envy--and I will to make of them a +carpet for your quite unworthy feet. I will to degrade all that in me +is most estimable, and in return I demand a new emotion." + + + 4 + +Well, but women are queer. There is positively no way of affronting +them, sometimes. She had not even the grace to note that I had taken a +little too much to drink that night.... But over all this part of my +life I prefer to pass as quickly as may be expedient. + + + 5 + +I remembered, anyway, after Gillian had gone from my room, to write +Bettie Hamlyn a post-card. It was no longer, strictly speaking, the +twenty-third, but considerably after midnight, of course. Still, it +was the writing regularly when I loathed writing letters that counted +with Bettie, I reflected; and virtually I was writing on the twenty-third, +and besides, Bettie would never know. + + + 6 + +And thereafter Gillian Hardress made almost no concealment of her +feeling toward me, or employed at best the flimsiest of disguises. All +that winter she wrote to me daily, and, when the same roof sheltered +us, would slip the scribblings into my hand at odd moments, but +preferably before her husband's eyes. She demanded an account of every +minute I spent apart from her, and never believed a syllable of my +explanations; and in a sentence, she pestered me to the verge of +distraction. + +And always the circumstance which chiefly puzzled me was the host of +men that were infatuated by Gillian Hardress. There was no doubt about +it; she made fools of the staidest, if for no better end than that the +spectacle might amuse me. + +"Now you watch me, Jack!" she would say. And I obediently would watch +her wriggling beguilements, and the man's smirking idiocy, with +bewilderment. + +For in me her allurements aroused, now, absolutely no sensation save +that of boredom. Often I used to wonder for what reason it seemed +impossible for me, alone, to adore this woman insanely. It would have +been so much more pleasant, all around. + +But, I repeat, I wish to have done with this portion of my life as +quickly as may be expedient. I am not particularly proud of it. I +would elide it altogether, were it possible, but as you will presently +see, that is not possible if I am to make myself intelligible. And I +find that the more I write of myself the more I am affected by the +same poor itch for self-exposure which has made Pepys and Casanova and +Rousseau famous, and later feminine diarists notorious. + +Were I writing fiction, now, I would make the entire affair more +plausible. As it stands, I am free to concede that this chapter in my +life history rings false throughout, just as any candid record of an +actual occurrence does invariably. It is not at all probable that a +woman so much older than I should have taken possession of me in this +fashion, almost against my will. It is even less probable that her +husband, who was by ordinary absurdly jealous of her, should have +suspected nothing and have been sincerely fond of me. + +But then I was only twenty-two, as age went physically, and he looked +upon me as an infant. I was, I think, quite conscientiously childish +with Jasper Hardress. I prattled with him, and he liked it. And so +often, especially when we three were together--say, at luncheon,--I +was teased by an insane impulse to tell him everything, just casually, +and see what he would do. + +I think it was the same feeling which so often prompted her to tell +him, in her flighty way, of how profoundly she adored me. I would +wriggle and blush; and Jasper Hardress would laugh and protest that he +adored me too. Or she would expatiate upon this or that personal +feature of mine, or the becomingness of a new cravat, say; and would +demand of her husband if Jack--for so she always called me,--wasn't +the most beautiful boy in the world? And he would laugh and answer +that he thought it very likely. + + + 7 + +They were Americans, I should have said earlier, but to all intents +they lived abroad, and had done so for years. Hardress's father had +been thoughtful enough to leave him a sufficient fortune to +countenance the indulgence of this or any other whim, so that the +Hardresses divided the year pretty equally between their real home at +Negley and a tiny chateau which they owned near Aix-les-Bains. I +visited them at both places. + +It was a pleasant fiction that I came to see Gladys. Regularly, I was +told off to play with her, as being the only other child in the house. +It was rather hideous, for the little girl adored me, and I was +beginning to entertain an odd aversion toward her, as being in a way +responsible for everything. Had Gillian Hardress never found me +cuddling the child, whose sex was visibly a daily aggrievement to +Jasper Hardress, however conscientiously he strove to conceal the +fact,--so that in consequence "I have to love my precious lamb for +two, Jack,"--Gillian would never, I think, have distinguished me from +the many other men who, so lightly, tendered a host of gallant +speeches.... But I never fathomed Gillian Hardress, beyond learning +very early in our acquaintance that she rarely told me the truth about +anything. + +Also I should have said that Hardress cordially detested Charteris, +just as Bettie Hamlyn did, because for some reason he suspected the +little novelist of being in love with Hardress's wife. I do not know; +but I imagine Charteris had made advances to her, in his own ambiguous +fashion, as he was apt to do, barring strenuous discouragement, to +every passably handsome woman he was left alone with. I do know he +made love to her a little later. + +Hardress distrusted a number of other men, for precisely the same +reason. Heaven only is familiar with what grounds he had. I merely +know that Gillian Hardress loathed John Charteris; she was jealous of +his influence over me. But me her husband never distrusted. I was only +an amusing and ingenuous child of twenty-two, and not for a moment did +it occur to him that I might be in love with his wife. + +Indeed, I believe upon reflection that he was in the right. I think I +never was. + + + 8 + +"Yes," I said, "I am to meet the Charterises in Genoa. Yes, it is +rather sudden. I am off to-morrow. I shall not see you dear good +people for some time, I fancy...." + +When Hardress had gone the woman said in a stifled voice: "No, I will +not dance. Take me somewhere--there is a winter-garden, I know--" + +"No, Jill," said I, with decision. "It's no use. I am really going. We +will not argue it." + +Gillian Hardress watched the dancers for a moment, as with languid +interest. "You fear that I am going to make a scene. Well! I can't. +You have selected your torture chamber too carefully. Oh, after all +that's been between us, to tell me here, to my husband's face, in the +presence of some three hundred people, without a moment's warning, +that you are 'off to-morrow!' It--it is for good, isn't it?" + +"Yes," I said. "It had to be--some time, you know." + +"No, don't look at me. Watch the dancing, I will fan myself and seem +bored. No, I shall not do anything rash." + +I was uncomfortable. Yet at bottom it was the theatric value of this +scene which impressed me,--the gaiety and the brilliance on every side +of her misery. And I did not look at her. I did just as she ordered +me. + +"I was proud once. I haven't any pride now. You say you must leave me. +Oh, dearest boy, if you only knew how unhappy I will be without you, +you could not leave me. Sweetheart, you must know how I love you. I +long every minute to be with you, and to see you even at a distance is +a pleasure. I know it is not right for me to ask or expect you to love +me always, but it seems so hard." + +"It's no use, Jill--" + +"Is it another woman? I won't mind. I won't be jealous. I won't make +scenes, for I know you hate scenes, and I have made so many. It was +because I cared so much. I never cared before, Jack. You have tired of +me, I know. I have seen it coming. Well, you shall have your way in +everything. But don't leave me, dear! oh, my dear, my dear, don't +leave me! Oh, I have given you everything, and I ask so little in +return--just to see you sometimes, just to touch your hand sometimes, +as the merest stranger might do...." + +So her voice went on and on while I did not look at her. There was no +passion in this voice of any kind. It was just the long monotonous +wail of some hurt animal.... They were playing the _Valse Bleu_, I +remember. It lasted a great many centuries, and always that low voice +was pleading with me. Yes, it was uncommonly unpleasant; but always at +the back of my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to +precisely how I felt, because some day they might be useful, for the +book I had already outlined. "It is no use, Jill," I kept repeating, +doggedly. + +Then Armitage came smirking for his dance. Gillian Hardress rose, and +her fan shut like a pistol-shot. She was all in black, and throughout +that moment she was more beautiful than any other woman I have ever +seen. + +"Yes, this is our dance," she said, brightly. "I thought you had +forgotten me, Mr. Armitage. Well! good-bye, Mr. Townsend. Our little +talk has been very interesting--hasn't it? Oh, this dress _always_ +gets in my way--" + +She was gone. I felt that I had managed affairs rather crudely, but it +was the least unpleasant way out, and I simply had not dared to trust +myself alone with her. So I made the best of an ill bargain, and +remodeled the episode more artistically when I used it later, in +_Afield_. + + + + +11. + +_He Postures Among Chimney-Pots_ + + +I met the Charterises in Genoa, just as I had planned. Anne's first +exclamation was, "Heavens, child, how dissipated you look! I would +scarcely have known you." + +Charteris said nothing. But he and I lunched at the Isotta the +following day, and at the conclusion of the meal the little man leaned +back and lighted a cigarette. + +"You must overlook my wife's unfortunate tendency toward the most +unamiable of virtues. But, after all, you are clamantly not quite the +boy I left at Liverpool last October. Where are your Hardresses now?" + +"In London for the season. And why is your wife rushing on to Paris, +John?" + +"Shopping, as usual. Yes, I believe I did suggest it was as well to +have it over and done with. Anne is very partial to truisms. Besides, +she has an aunt there, you know. Take my advice, and always marry a +woman who is abundantly furnished with attractive and visitable +relations, for this precaution is the true secret of every happy +marriage. We may, then, regard the Hardress incident as closed?" + +"Oh, Lord, yes!" said I, emphatically. + +"Well, after all, you have been sponging off them for a full year. The +adjective is not ill-chosen, from what I hear. I fancy Mrs. Hardress +has found you better company after she had mixed a few drinks for you, +and so--But a truce to moral reflections! for I am desirous once more +to hear the chimes at midnight. I hear Francine is in Milan?" + +"There is at any rate in Milan," said I, "a magnificent Gothic +Cathedral of international reputation; and upon the upper gallery of +its tower, as my guidebook informs me, there is a watchman with an +efficient telescope. Should I fail to meet that watchman, John, I would +feel that I had lived futilely. For I want both to view with him the +Lombard plain, and to ask him his opinion of Cino da Pistoia, and as to +what was in reality the middle name of Cain's wife." + + + 2 + +Francine proved cordial; but John Charteris was ever fickle, and not +long afterward an Italian countess, classic in feature, but in coloring +smacking of an artistic renaissance, had drawn us both to Switzerland, +and thence to Liege. It was great fun, knocking about the Continent +with John, for he knew exactly how to order a dinner, and spoke I don't +know how many languages, and seemed familiar with every side-street and +back-alley in Europe. For myself, my French as acquired in Fairhaven +appeared to be understood by everybody, but in replying very few of the +natives could speak their own foolish language comprehensibly. I could +rarely make head or tail out of what they were jabbering about. + +I was alone that evening, because Annette's husband had turned up +unexpectedly; and Charteris had gone again to hear Nadine Neroni, the +new prima donna, concerning whom he and his enameled Italian friend +raved tediously. But I never greatly cared for music; besides, the +opera that night was _Faust_; the last act of which in particular, when +three persons align before the footlights and scream at the top of +their voices, for a good half hour, about how important it is not to +disturb anybody, I have never been able to regard quite seriously. + +So I was spending this evening sedately in my own apartments at the +Continental; and meanwhile I lisped in numbers that (or I flattered +myself) had a Homeric tang; and at times chewed the end of my pencil +meditatively. "From present indications," I was considering, "that +Russian woman is cooking something on her chafing-dish again. It +usually affects them that way about dawn." + +I began on the next verse viciously, and came a cropper over the clash +of two sibilants, as the distant clamour increased. "Brutes!" said I, +disapprovingly. "Sere, clear, dear--Now they have finished, '_Jamais, +monsieur_', and begun crying, 'Fire!' Oh, this would draw more than +three souls out of a weaver, you know! Mere, near, hemisphere--no, but +the Greeks thought it was flat. By Jove! I do smell smoke!" + +Wrapping my dressing-gown about me--I had afterward reason to thank the +kindly fates that it was the green one with the white fleurs-de-lis, +and not my customary, unspeakably disreputable bath-robe, scorched by +the cigarette ashes of years,--I approached the door and peeped out +into the empty hotel corridor. The incandescent lights glimmered mildly +through a gray haze which was acrid and choking to breathe; little +puffs of smoke crept lazily out of the lift-shaft just opposite; and +down-stairs all Liege was shouting incoherently, and dragging about the +heavier pieces of hotel furniture. + +"By Jove!" said I, and whistled a little disconsolately as I looked +downward through the bars about the lift-shaft. + +"Do you reckon," spoke a voice--a most agreeable voice,--"we are in any +danger?" + +The owner of the voice was tall; not even the agitation of the moment +prevented my observing that, big as I am, her eyes were almost on a +level with my shoulder. They were not unpleasant eyes, and a stray +dream or two yet lingered under their heavy lids. The owner of the +voice wore a strange garment that was fluffy and pink,--pale pink like +the lining of a sea-shell--and billows of white and the ends of various +blue ribbons peeped out about her neck. I made mental note of the fact +that disordered hair is not necessarily unbecoming; it sometimes has +the effect of an unusually heavy halo set about the face of a +half-awakened angel. + +"It would appear," said I, meditatively, "that, in consideration of our +being on the fifth floor, with the lift-shaft drawing splendidly, and +the stairs winding about it,--except the two lower flights, which have +just fallen in,--and in consideration of the fire department's probable +incompetence to extinguish anything more formidable than a tar-barrel, +--yes, it would appear, I think, that we might go further than +'dangerous' and find a less appropriate adjective to describe the +situation." + +"You mean we cannot get down?" The beautiful voice was tremulous. + +And my silence made reply. + +"Well, then," she suggested, cheerfully, after due reflection, "since +we can't go down, why not go up?" + +As a matter of fact, nothing could be more simple. We were on the top +floor of the hotel, and beside us, in the niche corresponding to the +stairs below, was an iron ladder that led to a neatly-whitewashed +trapdoor in the roof. Adopting her suggestion, I pushed against this +trap-door and found that it yielded readily; then, standing at the top +of the ladder, I looked about me on a dim expanse of tiles and +chimneys; yet farther off were the huddled roofs and gables of Liege, +and just a stray glimpse of the Meuse; and above me brooded a clear sky +and the naked glory of the moon. + + + 3 + +I lowered my head with a distinct sigh of relief. + +"I say," I called, "it is infinitely nicer up here--superb view of the +city, and within a minute's drop of the square! Better come up." + +"Go first," said she; and subsequently I held for a moment a very +slender hand--a ridiculously small hand for a woman whose eyes were +almost on a level with my shoulder,--and we two stood together on the +roof of the Hotel Continental. We enjoyed, as I had predicted, an +unobstructed view of Liege and of the square, wherein two toy-like +engines puffed viciously and threw impotent threads of water against +the burning hotel beneath us, and, at times, on the heads of an excited +throng erratically clad. + +But I looked down moodily, "That," said I, as a series of small +explosions popped like pistol shots, "is the cafe; and, oh, Lord! there +goes the only decent Scotch in all Liege!" + +"There is Mamma!" she cried, excitedly; "there!" She pointed to a stout +woman, who, with a purple? shawl wrapped about her head, was wringing +her hands as heartily as a bird-cage, held in one of them, would +permit. "And she has saved Bill Bryan!" + +"In that case," said I, "I suppose it is clearly my duty to rescue the +remaining member of the family. You see," I continued, in bending over +the trap-door and tugging at the ladder, "this thing is only about +twenty feet long; but the kitchen wing of the hotel is a little less +than that distance from the rear of the house behind it; and with this +as a bridge I think we might make it. In any event, the roof will be +done for in a half-hour, and it is eminently worth trying." I drew the +ladder upward. + +Then I dragged this ladder down the gentle slant of the roof, through a +maze of ghostly chimneys and dim skylights, to the kitchen wing, which +was a few feet lower than the main body of the building. I skirted the +chimney and stepped lightly over the eaves, calling, "Now then!" when a +muffled cry, followed by a crash in the courtyard beneath, shook my +heart into my mouth. I turned, gasping; and found the girl lying safe, +but terrified, on the verge of the roof. + +"It was a bucket," she laughed, "and I stumbled over it,--and it +fell--and--and I nearly did,--and I am frightened!" + +And somehow I was holding her hand in mine, and my mouth was making +irrelevant noises, and I was trembling. "It was close, but--look here, +you must pull yourself together!" I pleaded; "because we haven't, as it +were, the time for airy badinage and repartee--just now." + +"I can't," she cried, hysterically. "Oh, I am so frightened! I can't!" + +"You see," I said, with careful patience, "we must go on. I hate to +seem too urgent, but we _must_, do you understand?" I waved my hand +toward the east. "Why, look!" said I, as a thin tongue of flame leaped +through the open trap-door and flickered wickedly for a moment against +the paling gray of the sky. + +She saw and shuddered. "I'll come," she murmured, listlessly, and rose +to her feet. + + + 4 + +I heaved another sigh of relief, and waving her aside from the ladder, +dragged it after me to the eaves of the rear wing. As I had foreseen, +this ladder reached easily to the eaves of the house behind the rear +wing, and formed a passable though unsubstantial-looking bridge. I +regarded it disapprovingly. + +"It will only bear one," said I; "and we will have to crawl over +separately after all. Are you up to it?" + +"Please go first," said she, very quiet. And, after gazing into her +face for a moment, I crept over gingerly, not caring to look down into +the abyss beneath. + +Then I spent a century in impotence, watching a fluffy, pink figure +that swayed over a bottomless space and moved forward a hair's breadth +each year. I made no sound during this interval. In fact, I do not +remember drawing a really satisfactory breath from the time I left the +hotel-roof, until I lifted a soft, faint-scented, panting bundle to the +roof of the Councillor von Hollwig. + + + 5 + +"You are," I cried, with conviction, "the bravest, the most--er--the +bravest woman I ever knew!" I heaved a little sigh, but this time of +content. "For I wonder," said I, in my soul, "if you have any idea what +a beauty you are! what a wonderful, unspeakable beauty you are! Oh, you +are everything that men ever imagined in dreams that left them weeping +for sheer happiness--and more! You are--you, and I have held you in my +arms for a moment; and, before high heaven, to repurchase that +privilege I would consent to the burning of three or four more hotels +and an odd city or so to boot!" But, aloud, I only said, "We are quite +safe now, you know." + +She laughed, bewilderingly. "I suppose," said she, "the next thing is +to find a trap-door." + +But there were, so far as we could discover, no trapdoors in the roof +of the Councillor von Hollwig, or in the neighbouring roofs; and, after +searching three of them carefully, I suggested the propriety of waiting +till dawn to be melodramatically rescued. + +"You see," I pointed out, "everybody is at the fire over yonder. But we +are quite safe here, I would say, with an entire block of houses to +promenade on; moreover, we have cheerful company, eligible central +location in the very heart of the city, and the superb spectacle of a +big fire at exactly the proper distance. Therefore," I continued, and +with severity, "you will please have the kindness to explain your +motives for wandering about the corridors of a burning hotel at four +o'clock in the morning." + +She sat down against a chimney and wrapped her gown about her. "I sleep +very soundly," said she, "and we did both museums and six churches and +the Palais de Justice and a deaf and dumb place and the cannon-foundry +today,--and the cries awakened me,--and I reckon Mamma lost her head." + +"And left you," thought I, "left you--to save a canary-bird! Good Lord! +And so, you are an American and a Southerner as well." + +"And you?" she asked. + +"Ah--oh, yes, me!" I awoke sharply from admiration of her trailing +lashes. The burning hotel was developing a splendid light wherein to +see them. "I was writing--and I thought that Russian woman had a few +friends to supper,--and I was looking for a rhyme when I found you," I +concluded, with a fine coherence. + +She looked up. It was incredible, but those heavy lashes disentangled +quite easily. I was seized with a desire to see them again perform this +interesting feat. "Verses?" said she, considering my slippers in a new +light. + +"Yes," I admitted, guiltily--"of Helen." + +She echoed the name. It is an unusually beautiful name when properly +spoken. "Why, that is my name, only we call it Elena." + +"Late of Troy Town," said I, in explanation. + +"Oh!" The lashes fell into their former state. It was hopeless this +time; and manual aid would be required, inevitably. "I should think," +said my compatriot, "that live women would be more--inspiring" + +"Surely," I assented. I drew my gown about me and sat down. "But, you +see, she is alive--to me." And I dwelt a trifle upon the last word. + +"One would gather," said she, meditatively, "that you have an +unrequited attachment for Helen of Troy." + +I sighed a melancholy assent. The great eyes opened to their utmost. +The effect was as disconcerting as that of a ship firing a broadside at +you, but pleasanter. "Tell me all about it," said she, coaxingly. + +"I have always loved her," I said, with gravity. "Long ago, when I was +a little chap, I had a book--_Stories of the Trojan War_, or something +of the sort. And there I first read of Helen--and remembered. There +were pictures--outline pictures,--of quite abnormally straight-nosed +warriors, with flat draperies which amply demonstrated that the laws of +gravity were not yet discovered; and the pictures of slender goddesses, +who had done their hair up carefully and gone no further in their +dressing. Oh, the book was full of pictures,--and Helen's was the most +manifestly impossible of them all. But I knew--I knew, even then, of +her beauty, of that flawless beauty which made men's hearts as water +and drew the bearded kings to Ilium to die for the woman at sight of +whom they had put away all memories of distant homes and wives; that +flawless beauty which buoyed the Trojans through the ten years of +fighting and starvation, just with delight in gazing upon Queen Helen +day by day, and with the joy of seeing her going about their streets. +For I remembered!" And as I ended, I sighed effectively. + +"I know," said she. + +"'Or ever the knightly years had gone +With the old world to the grave, +I was a king in Babylon +And you were a Christian slave.'" + +"Yes, only I was the slave, I think, and you--er--I mean, there goes +the roof, and it is an uncommonly good thing for posterity you thought +of the trap-door. Good thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at +those flames!" I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled +inward like a house of cards; "they are splashing, actually splashing, +like waves over a breakwater!" + +I drew a deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to +encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. "Yes, I was a Trojan +warrior," I resumed; "one of the many unknown men who sought and found +death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they +died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they +had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness. +She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved her; I had overheard +some laughing words of hers in passing, and I treasured them as men +treasure gold. Or she had spoken, perhaps--oh, day of days!--to me, in +a low, courteous voice that came straight from the back of the throat +and blundered very deliciously over the perplexities of our alien +speech. I remembered--even as a boy, I remembered." + +She cast back her head and laughed merrily. "I reckon," said she, "you +are still a boy, or else you are the most amusing lunatic I ever met." + +"No," I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, "that tale +about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen--and the gods be praised for +it!--can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of +unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently +as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose, +with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very +certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she + +"Abides the symbol of all loveliness, +Of beauty ever stainless in the stress +Of warring lusts and fears. + +"For she is to each man the one woman that he might have loved +perfectly. She is as old as youth, she is more old than April even, and +she is as ageless. And, again like youth and April, this Helen goes +about the world in varied garments, and to no two men is her face the +same. Oh, very often she transmutes her fleshly covering. But through +countless ages I, like every man alive, have followed her, and fought +for her, and won her, and have lost her in the end,--but always loving +her as every man must do. And I prefer to think that some day--" But my +voice here died into a whisper, which was in part due to emotion and +partly to an inability to finish the sentence satisfactorily. The logic +of my verses when thus paraphrased from memory, seemed rather vague. + +"Yes--like Pythagoras" she said, a bit at random. "Oh, I know. There +really must be something in it, I have often thought, because you +actually do remember having done things before sometimes." + +"And why not? as the March Hare very sensibly demanded." But now my +voice was earnest. "Yes, I believe that Helen always comes. Is it +simply a proof that I, too, am qualified to sit next to the Hatter?" I +spread out my hands in a helpless little gesture. "I do not know. But I +believe that she will come,--and by and by pass on, of course, as Helen +always does." + +"You will know her?" she queried, softly. + +Now I at last had reached firm ground. "She will be very tall," I said, +"very tall and exquisite,--like a young birch-tree, you know, when its +new leaves are whispering over to one another the secrets of spring. +Yes, that is a ridiculous sounding simile, but it expresses the general +effect of her--the _coup d'oeil_, so to speak,--quite perfectly. +Moreover, her hair will be a miser's dream of gold; and it will hang +heavily about a face that will be--quite indescribable, just as the +dawn yonder is past the utmost preciosity of speech. But her face will +flush and will be like the first of all anemones to peep through black, +good-smelling, and as yet unattainable earth; and her eyes will be +deep, shaded wells where, just as in the proverb, truth lurks." + +But now I could not see her eyes. + +"No," I conceded, "I was wrong. For when men talk to her as--as they +cannot but talk to her, her face will flush dull red, almost like +smouldering wood; and she will smile a little, and look out over a +great fire, such as that she saw on the night when Ilium was sacked and +the slain bodies were soft under her stumbling feet, as she fled +through flaming Troy Town. And then I shall know her." + +My companion sighed; and the woes of centuries weighed down her eyelids +obstinately. "It is bad enough," she lamented, "to have lost all one's +clothes--that new organdie was a dream, and I had never worn it; but to +find yourself in a dressing-gown--at daybreak, on a strange roof--and +with an unintroduced lunatic--is positively terrible!" + +The unintroduced lunatic rose to his feet and waved his hand toward the +east. The dawn was breaking in angry scarlet and gold that spread like +fire over half the visible horizon; the burning hotel shut out the +remaining half with tall flames, which shouldered one another +monotonously, and seemed lustreless against the pure radiance of the +sky. Chill daylight showed in melting patches through the clouds of +black smoke overhead. + +It was a world of fire, transfigured by the austere magnificence of +dawn and the grim splendour of the shifting, roaring conflagration; and +at our feet lay the orchard of the Councillor von Hollwig, and there +the awakened birds piped querulously, and sparks fell crackling among +apple-blossoms. + +"Ilium is ablaze," I quoted; "and the homes of Pergamos and its +towering walls are now one sheet of flame." + +She inspected the scene, critically. "It does look like Ilium," she +admitted. "And that," peering over the eaves into the deserted +by-street, "looks like a milkman." + +I was unable to deny this, though an angry concept crossed my mind that +any milkman, with commendable tastes and feelings, would at this moment +be gaping at the fire at the other end of the block, rather than +prosaically measuring quarts at the Councillor's side-entrance. But +there was no help for it, when chance thus unblushingly favoured the +proprieties; in consequence I clung to a water-pipe, and explained the +situation to the milkman, with a fretted mind and King's College +French. + +I turned to my companion. She was regarding the burning hotel with an +impersonal expression. + +"Now I would give a deal," I thought, "to know just how long you would +prefer that milkman to take in coming back." + + + + +12. + +_He Faces Himself and Remembers_ + + +Into the lobby of the Hotel d'Angleterre strolled, an hour later, a +tall young man, in a green dressing-gown, and inquired for Charteris. +The latter, in evening dress, was mournfully breakfasting in his new +quarters. + +Charteris sprang to his feet. I saw, with real emotion, that he had +been weeping; but now he was all flippancy. "My dear boy! I have just +torn my hair and the rough drafts of several cablegrams on your +account! Sit down at once, and try the bacon, since, for a wonder, it +is not burnt--and, in passing, I had thought of course that you were." + +Instead, I took a drink, and went to sleep upon the nearest sofa. + + + 2 + +I was very tired, but I awakened about noon and managed to procure +enough clothes to make myself not altogether unpresentable to the +public eye. Charteris had gone already about his own affairs, and I did +not regret it, for I meant, without delay, to follow up my adventure of +the night before. + +But when I had come out of the Rue de la Casquette, and was approaching +the statue of Gretry, I came upon a very ornately-dressed woman, who +was about to enter en open carriage. I stared; and preposterous as it +was, I knew that I was not mistaken. And I said aloud, "Signorina!" + +It was a long while before she said, "Don't--don't ever call me that +again!" And since the world in general appeared just then to be largely +flavoured with the irresponsibility of dreams, it did not surprise me +that we were presently alone in somebody's sitting-room. + +"I have seen you twice in Liege," she said. "I suppose this had to come +about. I would have preferred to avoid it, though. Well! _che sara!_ +You don't care for music, do you? No,--otherwise you would have known +earlier that I am Nadine Neroni now." + +"Ah!" I said, very quietly. I had heard, as everybody had, a deal +concerning the Neroni. "I think, if you will pardon me, I will not +intrude upon Baron von Anspach's hospitality any longer," I said. + +"That is unworthy of you,--no, I mean it would have been unworthy of a +boy we knew of." There was a long pier-glass in these luxurious rooms. +She led me to it now. "Look, Bobbie. We have altered a little, haven't +we? I at least, am unmistakable. 'Their eyes are different, somehow', +you remember. You haven't changed as much,--not outwardly. I think you +are like Dorian Gray. Yes, as soon--as soon as I could afford it, I +read every book you ever talked about, I think. It was damnably foolish +of me. For I've heard things. And there was a girl I tried to help in +London--an Agnes Faroy--" + +"Ah!" I said. + +"She had your picture even then, poor creature. She kissed it just +before she died. She didn't know that I had ever heard of you. She +never knew. Oh, how _could_ you!" the Neroni said, with something very +like a sob, "Or were you always--just that, at bottom?" + +"And have you ever noticed, Mademoiselle Neroni, that every one of us +is several people? In consequence I must confess to have been +wondering--?" + +"Well! I wasn't. You won't believe it now, perhaps. And it doesn't +matter, anyhow." Her grave voice lifted and upon a sudden was changed. +"Bobbie, when you had gone I couldn't stand it! I couldn't let you ruin +your life for me, but I could not go on as I had done before--Oh, well, +you'll never understand," she added, wearily. "But Von Anspach had +always wanted me to go with him. So I wrote to him, at the Embassy. And +after all, what is the good of talking--now!" + +We two were curiously quiet. "No, I suppose there is no good in talking +now." We stood there, as yet, hand in hand. The mirror was candid. "Oh, +Signorina, I want to laugh as God laughs, and I cannot!" + + + 3 + +But I lack the heart to set down all that brief and dreary talk of +ours. How does it matter what we said? We two at least knew, even as we +talked, that all we said meant in the outcome, nothing. Yet we talked +awhile and spoke, I think, quite honestly. + +She was not unhappy; and there were inbred Lichfeldian traditions which +prompted me to virtuous indignation over her defects in remorse and +misery. There were my memories, too. + +"I don't sing very well, of course, but then I'm not dependent on my +singing, you know. Oh, why not be truthful? And Von Anspach always sees +to it I get the tendered of criticism--in print. And, moreover, I've a +deal put by. I'm a miser, _he_ says, and I suppose I am, because I know +what it is to be poor. So when the rainy day comes--as of course it +will,--I'll have quite enough to purchase a serviceable umbrella. +Meanwhile, I have pretty much everything I want. People talk of course, +but it is only on the stage they ever drive you out into a snow-storm. +Besides, they don't talk to _me_." + +In fine, I found that the Neroni was a very different being from Miss +Montmorenci.... + + + 4 + +Then I left her. I had not any inclination just now to pursue my fair +Elena. Rather I sat alone in my new bedroom, thinking, confusedly, +first of Amelia Van Orden, and how I danced with her a good eight years +ago; of that woman who had come to me in remote Fairhaven, coming +through the world's gutter, unsullied,--because that much I yet +believe, although I do not know.... She may have been always the same, +even in the old days when Lichfield thought her "fast," and she was +more or less "compromised,"--and years before I met her, a blind, +inexperienced boy. Only she may then have been a better actress than I +suspected.... I thought, in any event, of those execrable rhymes that +likened her to the Lady in _Comus_, moving serene and unafraid among a +rabble of threatening bestial shapes; and I thought of the woman who +would, by this time, be with Von Anspach. + +For here again were inbred Lichfieldian traditions of the sort I rarely +dare confess to, even to myself, because they are so patently hidebound +and ridiculous. These traditions told me that this woman, whom I had +loved, was Von Anspach's harlot. I might--and I did--endeavor to be +ironical and to be broadminded and to be up-to-date about the whole +affair, and generally to view the matter through the sophisticated eyes +of the author of The Apostates, that Robert Etheridge Townsend who was +a connoisseur of ironies and human foibles; but these futilities did no +good at all. Lichfield had got at and into me when I was too young to +defend myself; and I could no more alter the inbred traditions of +Lichfield, that were a part of me, than a carpet could change its +texture. My traditions merely told me that the dear woman whom I +remembered had come--in fleeing from discomforts which were unbearable, +if that mattered--to be Von Anspach's harlot: and finding her this, my +traditions declined to be the least bit broadminded. In Lichfield such +women were simply not respectable; nor could you get around that fact +by going to Liege. + +There was in the room a _Matin,_ which contained a brief account of the +burning of the Continental, and a very lengthy one of the Neroni's +appearance the night before. Drearily, to keep from thinking, I read a +deal concerning _la gracieuse cantatrice americaine._ Whether or not +she had made a fool of me with histrionics in Fairhaven, there was no +doubt that she had chosen wisely in forsaking Lethbury, and the round +of village "Opera Houses." She had chosen, after all, and precisely as +I had done, to make the most of youth while it lasted; and she +appeared, just now, to harvest prodigally. + +"On jouait Faust," I read, "et jamais le celebre personnage de Goethe +n'adore plus exquise Gretchen. Miss Nadine Neroni est, en effet, une +ideale Marguerite a la taille bien prise, au visage joli eclaire des +deux yeux grands et doux. Et lorsqu'elle commenca a chanter, ce fut un +veritable ravissement: sa voix se fit l'interprete revee de la divine +musique de Gounod, tandis que sa personne et son coeur incarnaient +physiquement et moralement l'heroine de Goethe".... + +And so on, for Von Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, +well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what +in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only +doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is +possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we +are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, I had better go and look for that +preposterously beautiful Elena. And a fig for the provincial notions of +Lichfield, that are poisoning me with their nonsense! and for the +notions of Fairhaven, too, I suppose--" + + + 5 + +Then Charteris came into the room. "John," said I, "this is a truly +remarkable world, and only hypercriticism would venture to suggest that +it is probably conducted by an inveterate humourist. So lend me that +pocket-piece of yours, and we will permit chance to settle the entire +matter. That is the one intelligent way of treating anything which is +really serious. You probably believe I am Robert Etheridge Townsend, +but as a matter of fact, I am Hercules in the allegory. So! the +beautiful lady or America? Why, the eagle flutters uppermost, and from +every mountain side let praises ring. Accordingly I am off." + +"And you will cross half the world," said Charteris, "in the green +dressing-gown, or in the coat which Byam borrowed for you this morning? +I do not wish to seem inquisitive, you understand--" + +"No, I believe I am through with borrowed coats--as with yours, for +instance. But I am quite ready to go in my own dressing-gown if +necessary--" + +I wheeled at the door. + +"By the way, I am done with you, John. I am fond of you, and all that, +and I sincerely admire my chimney-pot coquette--of whom you haven't +heard,--but, after all, there are real people yonder. And by God, even +after two years of being pickled in alcohol and chasing after women +that are quite used to being chased--well, even now I am one of those +real people. So I am done with you and this perpetual making light of +things--!" + +"The Declaration of Independence," Charteris observed, "is undoubtedly +the best thing in imaginative literature that we Americans have as yet +accomplished; but I am sufficiently familiar with it, thank you, and I +find, with age, that only the more untruthful platitudes are endurable. +Oh, I predicted for you, at our first meeting, a life without +achievements but of gusto! Now, it would appear, you plan to prance +among an interminable saturnalia of the domestic virtues. So be it! +but I warn you that the house of righteousness is but a wayside inn +upon the road to being a representative citizen." + +"You are talking nonsense," I rapped out--"and immoral nonsense." + +"It is very strange," John Charteris complained, "how so many of us +manage to reduce everything to a question of morality,--that is, to the +alternative of being right or wrong. Now a man's personality, as +somebody or other very properly observes, has many parts besides the +moral area; and the intelligent, the artistic, even the religious part, +need not necessarily have anything to do with ethics--" + +"Ah, yes," said I, "so there is a train at noon--" + +"And a virtuous man," continued Charteris, amicably, "is no more the +perfect type of humanity than an intellectual man. In fact, the lowest +and certainly the most disagreeable type of all troublesome people is +that which combines an immaculate past with a limited understanding. +The religious tenets of this class consist of an unshakable belief that +the Bible was originally written in English, and contains nothing +applicable to any of the week-days. And in consequence--" + +I left him mid-course in speech. "Words, words!" said I; and it +appeared to me for the moment that words were of astonishingly trivial +import, however carefully selected, which was in me a wholesome, +although fleet, apostacy of yesterday's creed. And I sent a cablegram +to Bettie Hamlyn. + + + 6 + +It was on the trip homeward I first met with Celia Reindan. I then +considered her a silly little nuisance.... + +For I crossed the Atlantic in a contained fury of repentance for the +wasted months. I had achieved nothing that was worthy of me, and +presently I would be dead. Why, I might die within the five minutes! I +might never see the lagging minute-hand of my little traveling clock +pass that next numeral, say! The thought obsessed me, especially at +night. Once, in a panic, I rose from my berth, and pushed the +minute-hand forward a half-hour. "Now, I have tricked You!" I said, +aloud; for nervously I was footing a pretty large bill. At twenty-three +one has the funds wherewith to balance these accounts.... + +I wanted to live normally--to live as these persons thick about me, who +seemed to grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious +fashion of oxen. I wanted to think only from hand to mouth, to think if +possible not at all, and to be guided always in the conduct of my life +by gross and obvious truisms, so that I must be judged at last but as +one of the herd. "And what is accustomed--what holds of familiar +usage--had come to seem the whole essence of wisdom, on all subjects"; +for I wanted just the sense of companionship, irrevocable and eternal +and commonly shared with every one of my kind. And yonder was Bettie +Hamlyn.... "Oh, make a man of me, Bettie! just a common man!" + +And Bettie might have done it, one considers, even then, for I was +astir with a new impetus. Now, with a grin, the Supernal Aristophanes +slipped the tiniest temptation in my way; to reach Fairhaven I was +compelled to spend some three hours of an April afternoon in Lichfield, +where upon Regis Avenue was to be met, in the afternoon, everyone worth +meeting in Lichfield; and Stella drove there on fine afternoons, under +the protection of a trim and preternaturally grave tiger; and the +afternoon was irreproachable. + + + 7 + +By the way she looked back over her shoulder, I knew that Stella had +not recognized me. I stood with a yet lifted hat, irresolute. + +"By Jove!" said I, in my soul, "then the Blagdens are in Lichfield! +Why, of course! they always come here after Lent. And Bettie would not +mind; to call on them would be only courteous; and besides, Bettie need +not ever know. And moreover, I was always very fond of Peter." + +So the next afternoon but four, Stella was making tea for me.... + + + + +13. + +_He Baits Upon the Journey_ + + +"You are quite by way of being a gentleman," had been Stella's +greeting, that afternoon. Then, on a sudden, she rested both hands upon +my breast. When she did that you tingled all over, in an agreeable +fashion. "It was uncommonly decent of you to remember", said this +impulsive young woman. "It was dear of you! And the flowers were +lovely." + +"They ought to have been immortelles, of course," I apologised, "but +the florist was out of them. Yes, and of daffodils, too." I sat down, +and sighed, pensively. "Dear, dear!" said I, "to think it was only two +years ago I buried my dearest hopes and aspirations and--er--all that +sort of thing." + +"Nonsense!" said Stella, and selected a blue cup with dragons on it. +"At any rate," she continued, "it is very disagreeable of you to come +here and prate like a death's-head on my wedding anniversary." + +"Gracious gravy!" said I, with a fine surprise, "so it is an +anniversary with you, too?" She was absorbed in the sugar-bowl. "What a +coincidence!" I suggested, pleasantly. + +I paused. The fire crackled. I sighed. + +"You are such poor company, nowadays, even after the advantages of +foreign travel," Stella reflected. "You really ought to do something to +enliven yourself." After a little, she brightened as to the eyes, and +concentrated them upon the tea-making, and ventured a suggestion. "Why +not fall in love?" said Stella. + +"I am," I confided, "already in that deplorable condition." +And I ventured on sigh number two. + +"I don't mean--anything silly," said she, untruthfully. "Why," she +continued, with a certain lack of relevance, "why not fall in love with +somebody else?" Thereupon, I regret to say, her glance strayed toward +the mirror. Oh, she was vain,--I grant you that. But I must protest she +had a perfect right to be. + +"Yes," said I, quite gravely, "that is the reason." + +"Nonsense!" said Stella, and tossed her head. She now assumed her most +matronly air, and did mysterious things with a perforated silver ball. +I was given to understand I had offended, by a severe compression of +her lips, which, however, was not as effective as it might have been. +They twitched too mutinously. + + + 2 + +Stella was all in pink, with golden fripperies sparkling in +unanticipated localities. Presumably the gown was tucked and ruched and +appliqued, and had been subjected to other processes past the +comprehension of trousered humanity; it was certainly becoming. + +I think there was an eighteenth-century flavour about it,--for it +smacked, somehow, of a patched, mendacious, dainty womanhood, and its +artfulness was of a gallant sort that scorned to deceive. It defied +you, it allured you, it conquered you at a glance. It might have been +the last cry from the court of an innocent Louis Quinze. It was, in +fine, inimitable; and if only I were a milliner, I would describe for +you that gown in some not unbefitting fashion. As it is, you may draft +the world's modistes to dredge the dictionary, and they will fail, as +ignominiously as I would do, in the attempt. + +For, after all, its greatest charm was that it contained Stella, and +converted Stella into a marquise--not such an one as was her sister, +the Marquise d'Arlanges, but a marquise out of Watteau or of Fragonard, +say. Stella in this gown seemed out of place save upon a high-backed +stone bench, set in an _allee_ of lime-trees, of course, and under a +violet sky,--with a sleek abbe or two for company, and with beribboned +gentlemen tinkling on their mandolins about her. + +I had really no choice but to regard her as an agreeable anachronism +the while she chatted with me, and mixed hot water and sugar and lemon +into ostensible tea. She seemed so out of place,--and yet, somehow, I +entertained no especial desire upon this sleety day to have her +different, nor, certainly, otherwhere than in this pleasant, half-lit +room, that consisted mostly of ambiguous vistas where a variety of +brass bric-a-brac blinked in the firelight. + +We had voted it cosier without lamps or candles, for this odorous +twilight was far more companionable. Odorous, for there were a great +number of pink roses about. I imagine that someone must have sent +them--because there were not any daffodils obtainable, by reason of the +late and nipping frost--in honour of Stella's second wedding +anniversary. + + + 3 + +"Peter says you talk to everybody that way," quoth she,--almost +resentfully, and after a pause. + +"Oh!" said I. For it was really no affair of Peter's. And so-- + +"Peter, everybody tells me, is getting fat," I announced, presently. + +Stella witheringly glanced toward the region where my waist used to be. +"He isn't!" said she, indignant. + +"Quite like a pig, they assure me," I continued, with relish. She +objected to people being well-built. "His obscene bloatedness appears +to be an object of general comment." + +Silence. I stirred my tea. + +"Dear Peter!" said she. And then--but unless a woman of Stella's sort +is able to exercise a proper control over her countenance, she has +absolutely no right to discuss her husband with his bachelor friends. +It is unkind; for it causes them to feel like social outcasts and +lumbering brutes and Peeping Toms. If they know the husband well, it +positively awes them; for, after all, it is a bit overwhelming, this +sudden glimpse of the simplicity, and the credulity, and the merciful +blindness of women in certain matters. Besides, a bachelor has no +business to know such things; it merely makes him envious and +uncomfortable. + +Accordingly, "Stella," said I, with firmness, "if you flaunt your +connubial felicity in my face like that, I shall go home." + +She was deaf to my righteous rebuke. "Peter is in Washington this +week," she went on, looking fondly into the fire. "I had planned a +party to celebrate to-day, but he was compelled to go--business, you +know. He is doing so well nowadays," she said, after a little, "that I +am quite insufferably proud of him. And I intend for him to be a great +lawyer--oh, much the greatest in America. And I won't ever be content +till then." + +"H'm!" said I. "H'm" seemed fairly non-committal. + +"Sometimes," Stella declared, irrelevantly, "I almost wish I had been +born a man." + +"I wish you had been," quoth I, in gallant wise. "There are so few +really attractive men!" + +Stella looked up with a smile that was half sad. + +"I'm just a little butterfly-woman, aren't I?" she asked. + +"You are," I assented, with conviction, "a butterfly out of a queen's +garden--a marvellous pink-and-gold butterfly, such as one sees only in +dreams and--er--in a London pantomime. You are a decided ornament to +the garden," I continued, handsomely, "and the roses bow down in +admiration as you pass, and--ah--at least, the masculine ones do." + +"Yes,--we butterflies don't love one another overmuch, do we? Ah, well, +it scarcely matters! We were not meant to be taken seriously, you +know,--only to play in the sunlight, and lend an air to the garden +and--amuse the roses, of course. After all," Stella summed it up, "our +duties are very simple; first, we are expected to pass through a +certain number of cotillions and a certain number of various happenings +in various tete-a-tetes; then to make a suitable match,--so as to +enable the agreeable detrimentals to make love to us, with perfect +safety--as you were doing just now, for instance. And after that, we +develop into bulbous chaperones, and may aspire eventually to a kindly +quarter of a column in the papers, and, quite possibly, the honour of +having as many as two dinners put off on account of our death. +Yes, it is very simple. But, in heaven's name," Stella demanded, with a +sudden lift of speech, "how can any woman--for, after all, a woman is +presumably a reasoning animal--be satisfied with such a life! Yet that +is everything--everything!--this big world offers to us shallow-minded +butterfly-women!" + +Personally, I disapprove of such morbid and hysterical talk outside of +a problem novel; there I heartily approve of it, on account of the +considerable and harmless pleasure that is always to be derived from +throwing the book into the fireplace. And, coming from Stella, this +farrago doubly astounded me. She was talking grave nonsense now, +whereas Nature had, beyond doubt, planned her to discuss only the +lighter sort. So I decided it was quadruply absurd, little Stella +talking in this fashion,--Stella, who, as all knew, was only meant to +be petted and flattered and flirted with. + +And therefore, "Stella," I admonished, "you have been reading something +indigestible." I set down my teacup, and I clasped my hands. "Don't +tell me," I pleaded, "that you want to vote!" + +She remained grave. "The trouble is," said she, "that I am not really a +butterfly, for all my tinsel wings. I am an ant." + +"Oh," said I, shamelessly, "I hadn't heard that Lizzie had an item for +the census man. I don't care for brand-new babies, though; they always +look so disgracefully sun-burned." + +The pun was atrocious and, quite properly, failed to win a smile or +even a reproof from the morbid young person opposite. "My grandfather," +said she in meditation, "began as a clerk in a country store. Oh of +course, we have discovered, since he made his money and since Mother +married a Musgrave, that his ancestors came over with William the +Conqueror, and that he was descended from any number of potentates. But +he lived. He was a rip at first--ah, yes, I'm glad of that as well, +--and he became a religious fanatic because his oldest son died very +horribly of lockjaw. And he browbeat people and founded banks, and made +a spectacle of himself at every Methodist conference, and everybody was +afraid of him and honoured him. And I fancy I am prouder of Old Tim +Ingersoll than I am of any of the emperors and things that make such a +fine show in the Musgrave family tree. For I am like him. And I want to +leave something in the world that wasn't there before I came. I want my +life to count, I want--why, a hundred years from now I _do_ want to be +something more than a name on a tombstone. I--oh, I daresay it _is_ +only my ridiculous egotism," she ended, with a shrug and Stella's usual +quick smile,--a smile not always free from insolence, but always +satisfactory, somehow. + +"It's late hours," I warned her, with uplifted forefinger, "late hours +and too much bridge and too many sweetmeats and too much bothering over +silly New Women ideas. What is the sense of a woman's being useful," I +demanded, conclusively, "when it is so much easier and so much more +agreeable all around for her to be adorable?" + +She pouted. "Yes," she assented, "that is my career--to be adorable. It +is my one accomplishment," she declared, unblushingly,--yet not without +substantiating evidence. + +After a little, though, her gravity returned. "When I was a girl--oh, I +dreamed of accomplishing all sorts of beautiful and impossible things! +But, you see, there was really nothing I could do. Music, painting, +writing--I tried them all, and the results were hopeless. Besides, Rob, +the women who succeed in anything like that are always so queer +looking. I couldn't be expected to give up my complexion for a career, +you know, or to wear my hair like a golf-caddy's. At any rate, I +couldn't make a success by myself. But there was one thing I could do, +--I could make a success of Peter. And so," said Stella, calmly, "I did +it." + +I said nothing. It seemed expedient. + +"You know, he was a little--" + +"Yes," I assented, hastily. Peter had gone the pace, of course, but +there was no need of raking that up. That was done with, long ago. + +"Well, he isn't the least bit dissipated now. You know he isn't. That +is the first big thing I have done." Stella checked it off with a +small, spear-pointed, glinting finger-nail. "Then--oh, I have helped +him in lots of ways. He is doing splendidly in consequence; and it is +my part to see that the proper people are treated properly." + +Stella reflected a moment. "There was the last appointment, for +instance. I found that the awarding of it lay with that funny old Judge +Willoughby, with the wart on his nose, and I asked him for it--not the +wart, you understand,--and got it. We simply had him to dinner, and I +was specially butterfly; I fluttered airily about, was as silly as I +knew how to be, looked helpless and wore my best gown. He thought me a +pretty little fool, and gave Peter the appointment. That is only an +instance, but it shows how I help." Stella regarded me, uncertainly. +"Why, but an authorman ought to understand!" + +Of a sudden I understood a number of things--things that had puzzled. +This was the meaning of Stella's queer dinner the night before, and the +ensuing theatre-party, for instance; this was the explanation of those +impossible men, vaguely heralded as "very influential in politics," and +of the unaccountable women, painfully condensed in every lurid shade of +satin, and so liberally adorned with gems as to make them almost +valuable. Stella, incapable by nature of two consecutive ideas, was +determined to manipulate the unseen wires, and to be, as she probably +phrased it, the power behind the throne.... + +"Eh, it would be laughable," I thought, "were not her earnestness so +pathetic! For here is Columbine mimicking Semiramis." + +Yet it was true that Peter Blagden had made tremendous strides in his +profession, of late. For a moment, I wondered--? Then I looked at this +butterfly young person opposite, and I frowned. "I don't like it," I +said, decisively. "It is a bit cold-blooded. It isn't worthy of you, +Stella." + +"It is my career," she flouted me, with shrugging shoulders. "It is the +one career the world--our Lichfield world--has left me. And I am doing +it for Peter." + +The absurd look that I objected to--on principle, you understand-- +returned at this point in the conversation. I arose, resolutely, for I +was really unable to put up with her nonsense. + +"You are in love with your husband," I grumbled, "and I cannot +countenance such eccentricities. These things are simply not done--" + +She touched my hand. "Old crosspatch, and to think how near I came to +marrying you." + +"I do think of it--sometimes. So you had better stop pawing at me. It +isn't safe." + +I wish I could describe her smile. I wish I knew just what it was that +Stella wanted me to say or do as we stood for a moment silent, in this +pleasant, half-lit room where brass things blinked in the firelight. + +"Old crosspatch!" she repeated.... + +"Stella," said I, with dignity, "I wish it distinctly understood that I +am not a funny old judge with a wart on his nose." + +Whereupon I went away. + + + + +14. + +_He Participates in a Brave Jest_ + + +Stella drove on fine afternoons, under the protection of a trim and +preternaturally grave tiger. The next afternoon, by a Lichfieldian +transition, was irreproachable. I was to remember, afterward, wondering +in a vague fashion, as the equipage passed, if the boy's lot was not +rather enviable. There might well be less attractive methods of earning +the daily bread and butter than to whirl through life behind Stella. +One would rarely see her face, of course, but there would be such +compensations as an unfailing sense of her presence, and the faint +odour of her hair at times and, always, blown scraps of her laughter or +shreds of her talk, and, almost always, the piping of the sweet voice +that was stilled so rarely. + +Perhaps the conscienceless tiger listened when she was "seeing the +proper people were treated properly"? Yes, one would. Perhaps he ground +his teeth? Well, one would, I suspected. And perhaps--? + +There was a nod of recognition from Stella; and I lifted my hat as they +bowled by toward the Reservoir. I went down Regis Avenue, mildly +resentful that she had not offered me a lift. + + + 2 + +A vagrant puff of wind was abroad in the Boulevard that afternoon. It +paused for a while to amuse itself with a stray bit of paper. Presently +the wind grew tired of this plaything and tossed between the eyes of a +sorrel horse. Prince lurched and bolted; and Rex, always a vicious +brute, followed his mate. One fancies the vagabond wind must have +laughed over that which ensued. + +After a moment it returned and lifted a bit of paper from the roadway, +with a new respect, perhaps, and the two of them frolicked away over +close-shaven turf. It was a merry game they played there in the spring +sunlight. The paper fluttered a little, whirled over and over, and +scuttled off through the grass; with a gust of mirth, the wind was +after it, now gained upon it, now lost ground in eddying about a tree, +and now made up the disadvantage in the open, and at last chuckled over +its playmate pinned to the earth and flapping in sharp, indignant +remonstrances. Then _da capo_. + +It was a merry game that lasted till the angry sunset had flashed its +final palpitant lance through the treetrunks farther down the roadway. +There were gaping people in this place, and broken wheels and shafts, +and a policeman with a smoking pistol, and two dead horses, and a +horrible looking dead boy in yellow-topped boots. Somebody had +charitably covered his face with a handkerchief; and men were lifting a +limp, white heap from among the splintered rubbish. + +Then wind and paper played half-heartedly in the twilight until the +night had grown too chilly for further sport. There was no more murder +to be done; and so the vagabond wind was puffed out into nothingness, +and the bit of paper was left alone, and at about this season the big +stars--the incurious stars--peeped out of heaven, one by one. + + + 3 + +It was Stella's sister, the Marquise d'Arlanges, who sent for me that +night. Across the street a hand-organ ground out its jingling tune as +Lizzie's note told me what the playful wind had brought about. It was a +despairing, hopeless and insistent air that shrilled and piped across +the way. It seemed very appropriate. + +The doctors feared--Ah, well, telegrams had failed to reach Peter in +Washington. Peter Blagden was not in Washington, he had not been in +Washington. He could not be found. And did I think--? + +No, I thought none of the things that Stella's sister suggested. Of a +sudden I knew. I stood silent for a little and heard that damned, +clutching tune cough and choke and end; I heard the renewed babblement +of children; and I heard the organ clatter down the street, and set up +its faint jingling in the distance. And I knew with an unreasoning +surety. I pitied Stella now ineffably, not for the maiming and crippling +of her body, for the spoiling of that tender miracle, that white flower +of flesh, but for the falling of her air-castle, the brave air-castle +which to her meant everything. I guessed what had happened. + +Later I found Peter Blagden, no matter where. It is not particularly to +my credit that I knew where to look for him. Yet the French have a +saying of infinite wisdom in their _qui a bu boira_. The old vice had +gripped the man, irresistibly, and he had stolen off to gratify it in +secret; and he had not been sober for a week. He was on the verge of +collapse even when I told him--oh, with a deliberate cruelty, I grant +you,--what had happened that afternoon. + +Then, swiftly, his demolishment came; and I could not--could not for +very shame--bring this shivering, weeping imbecile to the bedside of +Stella, who was perhaps to die that night. Such was the news I brought +to Stella's sister; through desolate streets already blanching in the +dawn. + +Stella was calling for Peter. We manufactured explanations. + + + 4 + +Nice customs curtsey to death. I am standing at Stella's bedside, and +the white-capped nurse has gone. There are dim lights about the room, +and heavy carts lumber by in the dawn without. A petulant sparrow is +cheeping somewhere. + +"Tell me the truth," says Stella, pleadingly. Her face, showing over +billows of bedclothes, is as pale as they. But beautiful, and +exceedingly beautiful, is Stella's face, now that she is come to die. + +It heartened me to lie to her. Peter had been retained in the great +Western Railway case. He had been called to Denver, San Francisco +and--I forget today just why or even whither. He had kept it as a +surprise for her. He was hurrying back. He would arrive in two days. I +showed her telegrams from Peter Blagden,--clumsy forgeries I had +concocted in the last half-hour. + +Oh, the story ran lamely, I grant you. But, vanity apart, I told it +with conviction. Stella must and should die in content; that much at +least I could purchase for her; and my thoughts were strangely nimble, +there was a devilish fluency in my speech, and lie after lie was fitted +somehow into an entity that surprised even me as it took plausible +form. And I got my reward. Little by little, the doubt died from her +eyes as I lied stubbornly in a drug-scented silence; a little by a +little, her cheeks flushed brighter, and ever brighter, as I dilated on +this wonderful success that had come to Peter Blagden, till at last her +face was all aflame with happiness. + +She had dreamed of this, half conscious of her folly; she had worked +toward this consummation for months. But she had hardly dared to hope +for absolute success; it almost worried her; and she could not be +certain, even now, whether it was the soup or her blue silk that had +influenced Allardyce most potently. Both had been planned to wheedle +him, to gain this glorious chance for Peter Blagden.... + +"You--you are sure you are not lying?" said Stella, and smiled in +speaking, for she believed me infinitely. + +"Stella, before God, it is true!" I said, with fervour. "On my word of +honour, it is as I tell you!" And my heart was sick within me as I +thought of the stuttering brute, the painted female thing with tumbled +hair, and the stench of liquor in the room--Ah, well, the God I called +to witness strengthened me to smile back at Stella. + +"I believe you," she said, simply. "I--I am glad. It is a big thing for +Peter." Her eyes widened in wonder and pride, and she dreamed for just +a moment of his future. But, upon a sudden, her face fell. "Dear, +dear!" said Stella, petulantly; "I'd forgotten. I'll be dead by then." + +"Stella! Stella!" I cried, and very hoarsely; "why--why, nonsense, +child! The doctor thinks--he is quite sure, I mean--" I had a horrible +desire to laugh. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. + +"Ah, I know," she interrupted. "I am a little afraid to die," she went +on, reflectively. "If one only knew--" Stella paused for a moment; then +she smiled. "After all," she said, "it isn't as if I hadn't +accomplished anything. I have made Peter. The ball is at his feet now; +he has only to kick it. And I helped." + +"Yes," said I. My voice was shaken, broken out of all control. "You +have helped. Why, you have done everything, Stella! There is not a +young man in America with his prospects. In five years, he will be one +of our greatest lawyers,--everybody says so--everybody! And you have +done it all, Stella--every bit of it! You have made a man of him, I +tell you! Look at what he was!--and then look at what he is! And--and +you talk of leaving him now! Why, it's preposterous! Peter needs you, I +tell you--he needs you to cajole the proper people and keep him steady +and--and--Why, you artful young woman, how could he possibly get on +without you, do you think? Oh, how can any of us get on without you? +You _must_ get well, I tell you. In a month, you will be right as a +trivet. You die! Why, nonsense!" I laughed. I feared I would never have +done with laughter over the idea of Stella's dying. + +"But I have done all I could. And so he doesn't need me now." Stella +meditated for yet another moment. "I believe I shall always know when +he does anything especially big. God would be sure to tell me, you see, +because He understands how much it means to me. And I shall be +proud--ah, yes, wherever I am, I shall be proud of Peter. You see, he +didn't really care about being a success, for of course he knows that +Uncle Larry will leave him a great deal of money one of these days. But +I am such a vain little cat--so bent on making a noise in the world, +--that, I think, he did it more to please my vanity than anything else. +I nagged him, frightfully, you know," Stella confessed, "but he was +always--oh, _so_ dear about it, Rob! And he has never failed me--not +even once, although I know at times it has been very hard for him." +Stella sighed; and then laughed. "Yes," said she, "I think I am +satisfied with my life altogether. Somehow, I am sure I shall be told +about it when he is a power in the world--a power for good, as he will +be,--and then I shall be very perky--somewhere. I ought to sing _Nunc +Dimittis_, oughtn't I?" I was not unmoved; nor did it ever lie within +my power to be unmoved when I thought of Stella and how gaily she went +to meet her death.... + + + 5 + + +"Good-bye," said she, in a tired voice. + +"Good-bye, Stella," said I; and I kissed her. + +"And I don't think you are a mess. And I _don't_ hate you." She was +smiling very strangely. "Yes, I remember that first time. And no matter +what they said, I always cared heaps more about you, Rob, than I dared +let you know. And if only you had been as dependable as Peter--But, you +see, you weren't--" + +"No, dear, you did the right thing--what was best for all of us--" + +"Then don't mind so much. Oh, Bob, it hurts me to see you mind so much! +You aren't--being dependable, like Peter, even now," she said, +reproachfully.... + +Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. + + + + +15. + +_He Decides to Amuse Himself_ + + +I came to Fairhaven half-bedrugged with memories of Stella's funeral, +--say, of how lightly she had lain, all white and gold, in the +grotesque and horrid box, and of Peter's vacant red-rimmed eyes that +seemed to wonder why this decorous company should have assembled about +the deep and white-lined cavity at his feet and find no answer. Nor, +for that matter, could I. + +"But it was flagrant, flagrant!" my heart screeched in a grill of +impotent wrath. "Eh, You gave me power to reason, so they say! and will +You slay me, too, if I presume to use that power? I say, then, it was +flagrant and tyrannical and absurd! 'Let twenty pass, and stone the +twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!' O Setebos, it +wasn't worthy of omnipotence. You know it wasn't!" In such a frame of +mind I came again to Bettie Hamlyn. + + + 2 + +It was very odd to see Bettie again. I had been sublimely confident, +though, that we would pick up our intercourse precisely where we had +left off; and this, as I now know, is something which can never happen +to anybody. So I was vaguely irritated before we had finished shaking +hands, and became so resolutely boyish and effusive in my delight at +seeing her that anyone in the world but Bettie Hamlyn would have been +quite touched. And my conversational gambit, I protest, was masterly, +and would have made anybody else think, "Oh how candid is the egotism +of this child!" and would have moved that person, metaphorically +anyhow, to pat me upon the head. + +But Bettie only smiled, a little sadly, and answered: + +"Your book?--Why, dear me, did I forget to write you a nice little +letter about how wonderful it was?" + +"You wrote the letter all right. I think you copied it out of _The +Complete Letter Writer_. There was not a bit of you in it." + +"Well, that is why I dislike your book--because there was not a bit of +_you_ in it. Of course I am glad it was the big noise of the month, and +also a little jealous of it, if you can understand that phase of the +feminine mind. I doubt it, because you write about women as though they +were pterodactyls or some other extinct animal, which you had never +seen, but had read a lot about." + +"Which attests, in any event, my morals to be above reproach. You +should be pleased." + +"To roll it into a pill, your book seems pretty much like any other +book; and it has made me hold my own particular boy's picture more than +once against my cheek and say, 'You didn't write books, did you, dear? +--You did nicer things than write books'--and he did .... I hear many +things of you...." + +"Oh, well!" I brilliantly retorted, "you mustn't believe all you hear." +And I felt that matters were going very badly indeed. + +"Robin, do you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with +you by the people who care for you?--and one of them dislikes pottage. +Indeed, I _would_ have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I +almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great +length of liking you,--because 'if only for old sake's sake, dear, +you're the loveliest doll in the world.' There might be a better +reason, if you could only make up your mind to dispense with +pottage...." + +The odd part of it, even to-day, is that Bettie was saying precisely +what I had been thinking, and that to hear her say it made me just +twice as petulant as I was already. + +"Now, please don't preach," I said. "I've heard so much preaching +lately--dear," I added, though I am afraid the word was rather +obviously an afterthought. + +"Oh, I forgot you stayed over for Stella Blagden's funeral. You were +quite right. Stella was a dear child, and I was really sorry to hear of +her death." + +"Really!" It was the lightest possible additional flick upon the raw, +but it served. + +"Yes,--I, too, was rather sorry, Bettie, because I have loved Stella +all my life. She was the first, you see, and, somehow, the others have +been different. And--she disliked dying. I tell you, it is unfair, +Bettie,--it is hideously unfair!" + +"Robin--" she began. + +"And why should you be living," I said, in half-conscious absurdity, +"when she is dead? Why, look, Bettie! even that fly yonder is alive. +Setebos accords an insect what He grudges Stella! Her dying is not even +particularly important. The big news of the day is that the President +has started his Pacific tour, and that the Harvard graduates object to +his being given an honorary degree, and are sending out seven thousand +protests to be signed. And you're alive, and I'm alive, and Peter +Blagden is alive, and only Stella is dead. I suppose she is an angel by +this. But I don't care for angels. I want just the silly little Stella +that I loved,--the Stella that was the first and will always be the +first with me. For I want her--just Stella--! Oh, it is an excellent +jest; and I will cap it with another now. For the true joke is, I came +to Fairhaven, across half the world, with an insane notion of asking +you to marry me,--you who are 'really' sorry that Stella is dead!" And +I laughed as pleasantly as one may do in anger. + +But the girl, too, was angry. "Marry you!" she said. "Why, Robin, you +were wonderful once; and now you are simply not a bad sort of fellow, +who imagines himself to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether +she's dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but just enough +to make a spectacle of you, even now." + +"I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north of your +opinion," said I. "Though, as I dare assert, you are quite probably in +the right. So I'll be off to my husks again, Bettie." And I kissed her +hand. "And that too is only for old sake's sake, dear," I said. + +Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train. +And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt "Good +evening, gentlemen," as I passed Clarriker's Emporium, where Colonel +Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had +left them there two years ago. + + + 3 + +It was a long while afterward I discovered that "some damned +good-natured friend," as Sir Fretful has immortally phrased it, had +told Bettie Hamlyn of seeing me at the theatre in Lichfield, with +Stella and her marvellous dinner-company. It was by an odd quirk the +once Aurelia Minns, in Lichfield for the "summer's shopping," who had +told Bettie. And the fact is that I had written Bettie upon the day of +Stella's death and, without explicitly saying so, had certainly +conveyed the impression I had reached Lichfield that very morning, and +was simply stopping over for Stella's funeral. And, in addition, I +cannot say that Bettie and Stella were particularly fond of each other. + +As it was, I left Fairhaven the same day I reached it, and in some +dissatisfaction with the universe. And I returned to Lichfield and +presently reopened part of the old Townsend house .... "Robert and I," +my mother had said, to Lichfield's delectation, "just live downstairs +in the two lower stories, and ostracise the third floor...." And I was +received by Lichfield society, if not with open arms at least with +acquiescence. And Byam, an invaluable mulatto, the son of my cousin +Dick Townsend and his housekeeper, made me quite comfortable. + +Depend upon it, Lichfield knew a deal more concerning my escapades than +I did. That I was "deplorably wild" was generally agreed, and a +reasonable number of seductions, murders and arsons was, no doubt, +accredited to me "on quite unimpeachable authority, my dear." + +But I was a Townsend, and Lichfield had been case-hardened to +Townsendian vagaries since Colonial days; and, besides, I had written a +book which had been talked about; and, as an afterthought, I was +reputed not to be an absolute pauper, if only because my father had +taken the precaution, customary with the Townsends, to marry a woman +with enough money to gild the bonds of matrimony. For Lichfield, +luckily, was not aware how near my pleasure-loving parents had come, +between them, to spending the last cent of this once ample fortune. + +And, in fine, "Well, really now--?" said Lichfield. Then there was a +tentative invitation or two, and I cut the knot by accepting all of +them, and talking to every woman as though she were the solitary +specimen of feminity extant. It was presently agreed that gossip often +embroidered the actual occurrence and that wild oats were, after all, a +not unheard-of phenomenon, and that though genius very often, in a +phrase, forgot to comb its hair, these tonsorial deficiencies were by +the broadminded not appraised too strictly. + +I did not greatly care what Lichfield said one way or the other. I was +too deeply engrossed: first, in correcting the final proofs of +_Afield_, my second book, which appeared that spring and was built +around--there is no harm in saying now,--my relations with Gillian +Hardress; secondly, in the remunerative and uninteresting task of +writing for _Woman's Weekly_ five "wholesome love-stories with a dash +of humor," in which She either fell into His arms "with a contented +sigh" or else "their lips met" somewhere toward the ending of the +seventh page; and, thirdly, in diverting myself with Celia Reindan.... + + + 4 + +That, though, is a business I shall not detail, because it was one of +the very vulgarest sort. It was the logical outgrowth of my admiration +for her yellow hair,--she did have extraordinary hair, confound her! +--and of a few moonlit nights. It was simply the result of our common +vanity and of her book-fed sentimentality and, eventually, of her +unbridled temper; and in nature the compound was an unsavoury mess +which thoroughly delighted Lichfield. Lichfield will be only too glad, +even nowadays, to discourse to you of how I got wedged in that infernal +transom, and of how Celia alarmed everybody within two blocks of her +bedroom by her wild yells. + + + 5 + +I had meanwhile decided, first, to write another and a better book than +_The Apostates_ or _Afield_ had ever pretended to be; and afterward to +marry Rosalind Jemmett, whom I found, in my too-hackneyed but habitual +phrase, "adorable." For this Rosalind was an eminently "sensible +match," and as such, I considered, quite appropriate for a Townsend. + +The main thing though, to me, was to write the book of which I had +already the central idea,--very vague, as yet, but of an unquestionable +magnificence. Development of it, on an at all commensurate scale, +necessitated many inconveniences, and among them, the finding of +someone who would assist me in imbuing the love-scenes--of which there +must unfortunately be a great many--with reality; and for the tale's +_milieu_ I again pitched upon the Green Chalybeate,--where, as you may +remember, I first met with Stella. + +So I said a not unpromising farewell to Rosalind Jemmett, who was going +into Canada for the summer. She was quite frankly grieved by the +absolute necessity of my taking a rigorous course of the Chalybeate +waters, but agreed with me that one's health is not to be trifled with. +And of course she would write if I really wanted her to, though she +couldn't imagine _why_--But I explained why, with not a little detail. +And she told me, truthfully, that I was talking like an idiot; and was +not, I thought, irrevocably disgusted by my idiocy. So that, all in +all, I was not discontented when I left her. + +Then I ordered Byam to pack and, by various unveracious +representations, induced my Uncle George Bulmer--as a sort of visible +and outward sign that I forgave him for declining to lend me another +penny--to accompany me to the Green Chalybeate. Besides, I was fond of +the old scoundrel.... + + + 6 + +When I began to scribble these haphazard memories I had designed to be +very droll concerning the "provincialism" of Lichfield; for, as every +inhabitant of it will tell you, it is "quite hopelessly provincial," +--and this is odd, seeing that, as investigation will assure you, the +city is exclusively inhabited by self-confessed cosmopolitans. I had +meant to depict Fairhaven, too, in the broad style of _Cranford_, say; +and to be so absolutely side-splitting when I touched upon the Green +Chalybeate as positively to endanger the existence of any apoplectic +reader, who presumed to peruse the chapter which dealt with this +resort. + +But, upon reflection, I am too familiar with these places to attempt to +treat them humorously. The persons who frequent their byways are too +much like the persons who frequent the byways of any other place, I +find, at bottom. For to write convincingly of the persons peculiar to +any locality it is necessary either to have thoroughly misunderstood +them, or else perseveringly to have been absent from daily intercourse +with them until age has hardened the brain-cells, and you have +forgotten what they are really like. Then, alone, you may write the +necessary character studies which will be sufficiently abundant in +human interest. + +For, at bottom, any one of us is tediously like any other. +Comprehension is the grave of sympathy; scratch deeply enough and you +will find not any livelily-coloured Tartarism, but just a mediocre and +thoroughly uninteresting human being. So I may not ever be so droll as +I had meant to be; and if you wish to chuckle over the grotesque places +I have lived in, you must apply to persons who have spent two weeks +there, and no more. + +For the rest, Lichfield, and Fairhaven also, got at and into me when I +was too young to defend myself. Therefore Lichfield and Fairhaven +cannot ever, really, seem to me grotesque. To the contrary, it is the +other places which must always appear to me a little queer when judged +by the standards of Fairhaven and Lichfield. + + + + +16. + +_He Seeks for Copy_ + + +I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read _The Apostates_, and, +as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely +well-meaning. To-night I was superintending the process. + +"For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate," said I; "and it +may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul, +Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate +scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently +fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to +overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent cafe! Try now, nunky! +try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the +right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you." + +Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the +contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was "frosted" to a +nicety. We were drinking "Mamie Taylors" that summer, you may remember; +and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar. + +"Oh, I say, you know!" observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth +chapter, and flung down the book. + +"Rot, utter rot," I assented pleasantly; "puerile and futile trifling +with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your sturdy common-sense +instantly detected. In fact," I added, hopefully, "I think that chapter +is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In _Afield_, +you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the noblest sentiments, +the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father's whiskey and water; and +'Old-Fashioned' and 'Fair Play' have been obliging enough to write to +the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low +moral standards of to-day. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady +is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to +meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question +nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot +to show you--all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit, +and my fine impersonal attitude, and the survival of the fittest, and +so on." + +But Uncle George refused to be comforted. "Look here, Bob!" said he, +pathetically, "why don't you brace up and write something--well! we'll +put it, something of the sort you _can_ do. For you can, you know." + +"Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second +edition before publication?" I softly queried. "I had no money. I was +ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything +adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle's +deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to +this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread." I refilled my +glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. +"This time next year," said I, as dreamily, "I shall be able to afford +cake; for I shall have written _As the Coming of Dawn_." + +Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. "You catch me +lending you any money for your--brief Biblical words!" he said. + +"For the reign of subtle immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. +Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of +men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know +that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes +dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and +that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly--sordidly, at +times,--and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a +scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow +journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, +and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!" + +"Dearest Robert!" remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, "you are sadly _passe_: that +pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago." + +"The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is +already reflected--faintly, I grant you,--in the best-selling books. We +have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness +and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of +primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if +his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have +tossed over the contents of every closet in the _menage a trois_. And +I--_moi, qui vous parle_,--I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring +lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in _Afield_; and +henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence." + +"Saul among the prophets," Uncle George suggested, helpfully. + +"Quite so," I assented, "and my first prophecy will be _As the Coming +of Dawn_." + +Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. "Mad, quite mad!" said +he, in parenthesis. + +"I shall be idyllic," I continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the +ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the +keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met +after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs +blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is +love,--the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not +the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as +it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that +will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I +will!" + +I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table. + +"H'm!" said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; "going back to renew associations +with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her +grandchildren terribly in the way." + +"It is imperative," said I,--"yes, imperative for the scope of my book, +that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I +discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban +product to serve my purpose. And I can't find any one who will." + +Uncle George whistled softly. "'Honourable young gentleman,'" he +murmured, as to himself, "'desires to meet attractive and innocent +young lady. Object: to learn how to be idyllic in three-hundred +pages.'" + +There was no commentary upon his text. + +"I say," queried Mr. Bulmer, "do you think this sort of thing is fair +to the girl? Isn't it a little cold-blooded?" + +"Respected nunky, you are at times very terribly the man in the street! +Anyhow, I leave the Green Chalybeate to-morrow in search of _As the +Coming of Dawn_." + +"Look here," said Mr. Bulmer, rising, "if you start on a tour of the +country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my +abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a +liver-pill and go to bed! I don't promise anything, mind, but perhaps +about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath +on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there," +he added unkindlily, "are not built for those full rich figures." + +Next morning, I notified the desk-clerk, and, quite casually, both the +newspaper correspondents, that the Green Chalybeate was about to be +bereft of the presence of a distinguished novelist. Then, as my train +did not leave till night, I resolved to be bored on horseback, rather +than on the golf-links, and had Guendolen summoned, from the stable, +for a final investigation of the country roads thereabouts. + +Guendolen this afternoon elected to follow a new route; and knowing by +experience that any questioning of this decision could but result in +undignified defeat, I assented. Thus it came about that we circled +parallel to the boardwalk, which leads uphill to the deserted Royal +Hotel, and passed its rows of broken windows; and went downhill again, +always at Guendolen's election; and thus came to the creek, which +babbled across the roadway and was overhung with thick foliage that +lisped and whispered cheerfully in the placid light of the declining +sun. It was there that the germ of _As the Coming of Dawn_ was found. + +For I had fallen into a reverie over the deplorable obstinacy of my new +heroine, who declined, for all my labours, to be unsophisticated; and +taking advantage of this, Guendolen had twitched the reins from my hand +and proceeded to satisfy her thirst in a manner that was rather too +noisy to be quite good form. I sat in patience, idly observing the +sparkling reflection of the sunlight on the water. I was elaborating a +comparison between my obstinate heroine and Guendolen. Then Guendolen +snorted, as something rustled through the underbrush, and turning, I +perceived a Vision. + +The Vision was in white, with a profusion of open-work. There were blue +ribbons connected with it. There were also black eyes, of the +almond-shaped, heavy-lidded variety that I had thought existed only in +Lely's pictures, and great coils of brown hair which was gold where the +chequered sunlight fell upon it, and two lips that were inexpressibly +red. I was filled with pity for my tired horse, and a resolve that for +this once her thirst should be quenched. + +Thereupon, I lifted my cap hastily; and Guendolen scrambled to the +other bank, and spluttered, and had carried me well past the Iron +Spring, before I announced to the evening air that I was a fool, and +that Guendolen was describable by various quite picturesque and +derogatory epithets. And I smiled. + +"Now, Robert Etheridge Townsend, you writer of books, here is a subject +made to your hand!" And then: + + "Only 'twixt the light and shade +Floating memories of my maid +Make me pray for Guendolen." + +After this we retraced our steps. I was peering anxiously about the +roadway. + +"Pardon me," said I, subsequently; "but _have_ you seen anything of a +watch--a small gold one, set with pearls?" + +"Heavens!" said the Vision, sympathetically, "what a pity! Are you sure +it fell here?" + +"I don't seem to have it about me," I answered, with cryptic, but +entire veracity. I searched about my pockets, with a puckered brow. +"And as we stopped here--" + +I looked inquiringly into the water. + +"From this side," observed the Vision, impersonally, "there is less +glare from the brook." + +Having tied Guendolen to a swinging limb, I sat down contentedly in +these woods. The Vision moved a little, lest I be crowded. + +"It might be further up the road," she suggested. + +"Oh, I must have left it at the hotel," I observed. + +"You might look--" said she, peering into the water. + +"Forever!" I assented. + +The Vision flushed, "I didn't mean--" she began. + +"But I did," quoth I,--"and every word of it." + +"Why, in that case," said she, and rose to her feet, "I'd better--" A +frown wrinkled her brow; then a deep, curved dimple performed a similar +office for her cheek. "I wonder--" said she. + +"Why, you would be a bold-faced jig," said I, composedly; "but, after +all there is nobody about. And, besides,--for I suspect you of being +one of the three dilapidated persons in veils who came last night,--we +are going to be introduced right after supper, anyway." + +The Vision sat down. "You mentioned your sanatorium?" quoth she. + +"The Asylum of Love," said I; "discharged--under a false impression, +--as cured, and sent to paradise. + +"Oh!" said I, defiant, "but it _is_!" + +She looked about her. "The woods _are_ rather beautiful," she conceded, +softly. + +"They form a quite appropriate background," said I. "It is a veritable +Eden, before the coming of the snake." + +"Before?" she queried, dubiously. + +"Undoubtedly," said I, and felt my ribs, in meditative wise. "Ah, but I +thought I missed something! We participate in a historic moment. This +is in Eden immediately after the creation of--Well, but of course you +are acquainted with that famous bull about Eve's being the fairest of +her daughters?" + +"It is _quite_ time," said she, judicially, "for me to go back to the +hotel, before--since we are speaking of animals,--your presence here is +noticed by one of the squirrels." + +"It is not good," I pleaded, "for man to be alone." + +"I have heard," said she, "that--almost any one can cite scripture to +his purpose." + +I thrust out a foot for inspection. "No suggestion of a hoof," said I; +"and not the slightest odour of brimstone, as you will kindly note; and +my inoffensive name is Robert Townsend." + +"Of course," she submitted, "I could never think of making your +acquaintance in this irregular fashion; and, therefore, of course, I +could not think of telling you that my name is Marian Winwood." + +"Of course not," I agreed; "it would be highly improper." + +"--And it is more than time for me to go to supper," she concluded +again, with a lacuna, as it seemed to me, in the deduction. + +"Look here!" I remonstrated; "it isn't anywhere near six yet." I +exhibited my watch to support this statement. + +"Oh!" she observed, with wide, indignant eyes. + +"I--I mean--" I stammered. + +She rose to her feet. + +"--I will explain how I happened to be carrying two watches--" + +"I do not care to listen to any explanations. Why should I?" + +"--upon," I firmly said, "the third piazza of the hotel. And this very +evening." + +"You will not." And this was said even more firmly. "And I hope you +will have the kindness to keep away from these woods; for I shall +probably always walk here in the afternoon." Then, with an indignant +toss of the head, the Vision disappeared. + + + 3 + +I whistled. Subsequently I galloped back to the hotel. + +"See here!" said I, to the desk-clerk; "how long does this place keep +open?" + +"Season closes latter part of September, sir." + +I told him I would need my rooms till then. + + + + +17. + +_He Provides Copy_ + + +So it was Uncle George Bulmer who presently left the Green Chalybeate, +to pursue Mrs. Chaytor with his lawless arts. I stayed out the season. + +Now I cannot conscientiously recommend the Green Chalybeate against +your next vacation. Once very long ago, it was frequented equally for +the sake of gaiety and of health. In the summer that was Marian's the +resort was a beautiful and tumble-down place where invalids congregated +for the sake of the nauseous waters,--which infallibly demolish a solid +column of strange maladies I never read quite through, although it +bordered every page of the writing-paper you got there from the +desk-clerk,--and a scanty leaven of persons who came thither, +apparently, in order to spend a week or two in lamenting "how very dull +the season is this year, and how abominable the fare is." + +But for one I praise the place, and I believe that Marian Winwood also +bears it no ill-will. For we two were very happy there. We took part in +the "subscription euchres" whenever we could not in time devise an +excuse which would pass muster with the haggard "entertainer." We +danced conscientiously beneath the pink and green icing of the +ball-room's ceiling, with all three of the band playing _Hearts and +Flowers_; and with a dozen "chaperones"--whom I always suspected of +taking in washing during the winter months,--lined up as closely as was +possible to the door, as if in preparation for the hotel's catching +fire any moment, to give us pessimistic observal. And having thus +discharged our duty to society at large, we enjoyed ourselves +tremendously. + +For instance, we would talk over the book I was going to write in the +autumn. That was the main thing. Then one could golf, or drive, or--I +blush to write it even now--croquet. Croquet, though, is a much +maligned game, as you will immediately discover if you ever play it on +the rambling lawn of the Chalybeate, about six in the afternoon, say, +when the grass is greener than it is by ordinary, and the shadows are +long, and the sun is well beneath the tree-tops of the Iron Bank, and +your opponent makes a face at you occasionally, and on each side the +old, one-storied cottages are builded of unusually red bricks and are +quite ineffably asleep. + +Or again there is always the creek to divert yourself in. Once I caught +five crawfishes there, while Marian waited on the bank; and afterward +we found an old tomato-can and boiled them in it, and they came out a +really gorgeous crimson. This was the afternoon that we were Spanish +Inquisitors.... Oh, believe me, you can have quite a good time at the +Chalybeate, if you set about it in the proper way. + + + 2 + +Only it is true that sometimes, when it rained, say, with that hopeless +insistency which, I protest, is unknown anywhere else in the world; and +when Marian was not immediately accessible, and cigarettes were not +quite satisfactory, because the entire universe was so sodden that +matches had to be judiciously coaxed before they would strike; and when +if you happened to be writing a fervid letter to Rosalind Jemmett, let +us say, the ink would not dry for ever so long:--why, it is true that +in these circumstances you would feel a shade too like the wicked Lord +So-and-So of a melodrama to be comfortable. + +Yet even in these circumstances, reason told me that the Book was the +main thing, that the girl would be thoroughly over the affair by +November at latest, and that at the cost of a few inconsequent tears, +she would have meanwhile immeasurably obliged posterity. And I knew +that no man may ever write in perdurable fashion save by ruthlessly +converting his own life into "copy," since of other persons' lives he +can, at most, reproduce but the blurred and misinterpreted by-ends, by +reason of almost any author's deplorable lack of omniscience. Yes, the +Book was the main thing; and yet the girl--knowingly to dip my pen into +her heart as into an inkstand was not, at best, chivalric.... + +"But the Book!" said I. "Why, I must be quite idiotically in love to +think of letting that Book perish!" And I viciously added: "Confound +the pretty simpleton!"... + + + 3 + +So the book was builded, after all, a little by a little. Hardly an +evening came when after leaving Marian I had not at least one excellent +and pregnant jotting to record in my note-book. Now it would be just an +odd turn of language, or a description of some gesture she had made, or +of a gown she had worn that day; and now a simile or some other rather +good figure of speech which had popped into my mind when I was making +love to her. + +Nor had I any difficulty in preserving nearly all she said to me, for +Marian was never a chatterbox; yet her responses had, somehow, that +long-sought tang it wasn't in me to invent for any imaginary young +woman who must be, for the sake of my new novel, quite heels over head +in love. + +And I began to see that Bettie was right, as usual. I had portrayed +Gillian Hardress pretty well in _Afield_; but by and large, I had +always written about women as though they were "pterodactyls or some +other extinct animal, which you had never seen, but had read a lot +about." + +And now, in looking over my notes, I knew, and my heart glowed to know, +that I was not about to repeat the error. + +So the Book was builded, after all, a little by a little. And a little +by a little the summer wore on; and in the lobby of the Main Hotel was +hung the beautiful Spirit of the Falls poster of the Buffalo +Exposition; and we talked of Oom Paul Krueger, and Shamrock II, and the +Nicaragua Canal, and lanky Bob Fitzsimmons, and the Boxer outrages; and +we read _To Have and To Hold_ and _The Cardinal's Snuff Box_, and +thought it droll that the King of England was not going to call himself +King Albert, after all. + +And then came the news of how the President had been shot, "with a +poisoned bullet," and a week of contradictory bulletins from the +Milburn House in Buffalo. And there were panicky surmises raised +everywhere as to "what these anarchists may do next," so that Maggio +was mobbed in Columbus, and Emma Goldman in Chicago; and Colonel +Roosevelt was found, after days of search, on Mt. Marcy in the +Adirondacks, and was told in the heart of a forest that to-morrow he +would be at the head of a nation. And the country's guidance was +entrusted to a mere lad of forty-three, with general uneasiness as to +what might come of it; and the dramatic tale of Colonel Roosevelt's +taking of the oath of office was in that morning's paper; and Marian +and I were about to part. + + + 4 + +"It will be dreadful," sighed she; "for we have to stay a whole week +longer, and I shall come here every afternoon. And there will be only +ghosts in the woods, and I shall be very lonely." + +"Dear," said I, "is it not something to have been happy? It has been +such a wonderful summer; and come what may, nothing can rob us now of +its least golden moment. And it is only for a little." + +"You will come back?" said she, half-doubtingly. + +"Yes," I said. "You wonderful, elfin creature, I shall undoubtedly come +back--to your real home, and claim you there. Only I don't believe you +do live in Aberlin,--you probably live in some great, gnarled oak +hereabouts; and at night its bark uncloses to set you free, and you and +your sisters dance out the satyrs' hearts in the moonlight. Oh, I know, +Marian! I simply _know_ you are a dryad,--a wonderful, laughing, +clear-eyed dryad strayed out of the golden age." + +"What a boy it is!" she said. "No, I am only a really and truly girl, +dear,--a rather frightened girl, with very little disposition to +laughter, just now. For you are going away--Oh, my dear, you have meant +so much to me! The world is so different since you have come, and I am +so happy and so miserable that--that I am afraid." An infinitesimal +handkerchief went upward to two great, sparkling eyes, and dabbed at +them. + +"Dear!" said I. And this remark appeared to meet the requirements of +the situation. + +There was a silence now. We sat in the same spot where I had first +encountered Marian Winwood. Only this was an autumnal forest that +glowed with many gem-like hues about us; and already the damp odour of +decaying leaves was heavy in the air. It was like the Tosti thing +translated out of marine terms into a woodland analogue. The summer was +ended; but _As the Coming of Dawn_ was practically complete. + +It was not the book that I had planned, but a far greater one which was +scarcely mine. There was no word written as yet. But for two months I +had viewed life through Marian Winwood's eyes; day by day, my +half-formed, tentative ideas had been laid before her with elaborate +fortuitousness, to be approved, or altered, or rejected, just as she +decreed; until at last they had been welded into a perfect whole that +was a Book, bit by bit, we had planned it, I and she; and, as I dreamed +of it as it would be in print, my brain was fired with exultation, and +I defied my doubt and I swore that the Book, for which I had pawned a +certain portion of my self-respect, was worth--and triply worth--the +price which had been paid.... This was in Marian's absence. + +"Dear!" said she.... + +Her eyes were filled with a tender and unutterable confidence that +thrilled me like physical cold. "Marian," said I, simply, "I shall +never come back." + +The eyes widened a trifle, but she did not seem to comprehend. + +"Have you not wondered," said I, "that I have never kissed you, except +as if you were a very holy relic or a cousin or something of that +sort?" + +"Yes," she answered. Her voice was quite emotionless. + +"And yet--yet--" I sprang to my feet. "Dear God, how I have longed! +Yesterday, only yesterday, as I read to you from the verses I had made +to other women, those women that are colourless shadows by the side of +your vivid beauty,--and you listened wonderingly and said the proper +things and then lapsed into dainty boredom,--_how_ I longed to take you +in my arms, and to quicken your calm blood a little with another sort +of kissing. You knew--you must have known! Last night, for instance--" + +"Last night," she said, very simply, "I thought--And I hoped you +would." + +"What a confession for a nicely brought up girl! Well! I didn't. And +afterward, all night, I tossed in sick, fevered dreams of you. I am mad +for love of you. And so, once in a while I kiss your hand. Dear God, +your hand!" My voice quavered, effectively. + +"Yes," said she; "still, I remember--" + +"I have struggled; and I have conquered this madness,--for a madness it +is. We can laugh together and be excellent friends; and we can never, +never be anything more. Well! we have laughed, have we not, dear, a +whole summer through? Now comes the ending. Ah, I have seen you +puzzling over my meaning before this. You never understood me +thoroughly; but it is always safe to laugh." + +She smiled; and I remember now it was rather as Mona Lisa smiles. + +"For we can laugh together,--that is all. We are not mates. You were +born to be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy +children; and you and your sort will inherit the earth and make the +laws for us weaklings who dream and scribble and paint. We are not +mates. But you have been very kind to me, Marian dear. So I thank you +and say good-bye; and I pray that I may never see you after to-day." + +There was a sub-tang of veracity in my deprecation of an unasked-for +artistic temperament; the thing is very often a nuisance, and was just +then a barrier which I perceived plainly; and with equal plainness I +perceived the pettier motives that now caused me to point it out as a +barrier to Marian. My lips curled half in mockery of myself, as I +framed the bitter smile I felt the situation demanded; but I was fired +with the part I was playing; and half-belief had crept into my mind +that Marian Winwood was created, chiefly, for the purpose which she had +already served. + +I regarded her, in fine, as through the eyes of future readers of my +biography. She would represent an episode in my life, as others do in +that of Byron or of Goethe. I pitied her sincerely; and, under all, +what moralists would call my lower nature, held in leash for two months +past, chuckled, and grinned, and leaped, at the thought of a holiday. + +She rose to her feet. "Good-bye," said she. + +"You--you understand, dear?" I queried, tenderly. + +"Yes," she answered; "I understand--not what you have just told me, for +in that, of course, you have lied. That Jemmett girl and her money is +at the bottom of it all, of course. You didn't want to lose her, and +still you wanted to play with me. So you were pulled two ways, poor +dear." + +"Oh, well, if that is what you think of me--!" + +"You see, you are not an uncommon type,--a type not strong enough to +live life healthily, just strong enough to dabble in life, to trifle +with emotions, to experiment with other people's lives. Indeed, I am +not angry, dear; I am only--sorry; for you have played with me very +nicely indeed, and very boyishly, and the summer has been very happy." + + + 5 + +I returned to Lichfield and wrote _As the Coming of Dawn_. + +I spent six months in this. My work at first was mere copying of the +book that already existed in my brain; but when it was transcribed +therefrom, I wrote and rewrote, shifted and polished and adorned until +it seemed I would never have done; and indeed I was not anxious to have +done with any labour so delightful. + +Particularly did I rejoice in the character for which Marian Winwood +had posed. Last summer's note-book here came into play; and now, for +once, my heroine was in no need of either shoving or prompting. She did +things of her own accord, and I was merely her scribe... + +I would vain-gloriously protest, just to myself, that the love scenes +in this story were the most exquisite and, with all that, the most +genuine love scenes I knew of anywhere. "By God!" I would occasionally +say with Thackeray; "I _am_ a genius!" + +Besides, the story of the book, I knew, was novel and astutely wrought; +its progress caught at once and teased your interest always, so that +having begun it, most people would read to the end, if only to discover +"how it all came out." I knew the book, in fine, could hardly fail to +please and interest a number of people by reason of its plot alone. + +I ought to have been content with this. But I had somehow contracted an +insane notion that a novel is the more enjoyable when it is adroitly +written. In point of fact, of course, no man who writes with care is +ever read with pleasure; you may toil through a page or two perhaps, +but presently you are noting how precisely every word is fitted to the +thought, and later you are noting nothing else. You are insensibly +beguiled into a fidgety-footed analysis of every clause, which fatigues +in the outcome, and by the tenth page you are yawning. + +But I did not comprehend this then. And so I fashioned my apt phrases, +and weighed my synonyms, and echoed this or that vowel very skilfully, +I thought, and alliterated my consonants with discretion. In fine, I +did not overlook the most meticulous device of the stylist; and I +enjoyed it. It was a sort of game; and they taught me at least, those +six delightful months, that a man writes admirable prose not at all for +the sake of having it read, but for the more sensible reason that he +enjoys playing solitaire. + +I led a hermit's life that winter; and I enjoyed that too. Night, after +all, is the one time for writing, particularly when you are inane +enough to hanker after perfected speech, and so misguided as to be the +slave of the "right word." You sit alone in a bright, comfortable room; +the clock ticks companionably; there is no other sound in the world +except the constant scratching of your pen, and the occasional far-off +puffing of a freight-train coming into Lichfield; there is snow +outside, but before your eyes someone, that is not you exactly, +arranges and redrills the scrawls which will bring back the sweet and +languid summer and remarshal all its pleasant trivialities for anyone +that chooses to read through the printed page, although he read two +centuries hence, in Nova Zembla.... + +Then you dip into an Unabridged, and change every word that has been +written, for a better one, and do it leisurely, rolling in the mouth, +as it were, the flavour of every possible synonym, before decision. +Then you reread, with a corrective pen in hand the while, and you +venture upon the whole to agree with Merimee that it is preferable to +write one's own books, since those of others are not, after all, +particularly worth reading in comparison. + +And by this time the windows are pale blue, like the blue of a dying +flame, and you peep out and see the sparrows moving like rather poorly +made mechanical toys about the middle of the deserted street, where +there is neither light nor shade. The colour of everything is perfectly +discernible, but there is no lustre in the world as yet, though yonder +the bloat sun is already visible in the blue and red east, which is +like a cosmic bruise; and upon a sudden you find it just possible to +stay awake long enough to get safely into bed.... + + + 6 + +Thus I dandled the child of my brain for a long while, and arrayed it +in beautiful and curious garments, adorning each beloved notion with +far-sought words that had a taste in the mouth, and would one day lend +an aroma to the printed page; and I rejoiced shamelessly in that which +I had done. Then it befell that I went forth and sought the luxury of a +Turkish bath, and in the morning, after a rub-down and an ammonia +cocktail, awoke to the fact that the world had been going on much as +usual, that winter. + +Young Colonel Roosevelt seemed not to have wrecked civilization, after +all, according to the morning _Courier-Herald_, despite that Democratic +paper's colorful prophecies last autumn in the vein of Jeremiah. To the +contrary, Major-General McArthur was testifying before the Senate as to +the abysmal unfitness of the Filipinos for self-government; the Women's +Clubs were holding a convention in Los Angeles; there had been terrible +hailstorms this year to induce the annual ruining of the peach-crop, +and the submarine Fulton had exploded; the California Limited had been +derailed in Iowa, and in Memphis there was some sort of celebration in +honor of Admiral Schley; and the Boer War seemed over; and Mr. +Havemeyer also was before the Senate, to whom he was making it clear +that his companies were in no wise responsible for sugar having reached +the unprecedentedly high price of four and a half cents a pound. + +The world, in short, in spite of my six months' retiring therefrom, +seemed to be getting on pleasantly enough, as I turned from the paper +to face the six months' accumulation of mail. + + + 7 + +A few weeks later, I sent for Mr. George Bulmer, and informed him of +his avuncular connection with a genius; and waved certain typewritten +pages to establish his title. + +Subsequently I read aloud divers portions of _As the Coming of Dawn_, +and Mr. Bulmer sipped Chianti, and listened. + +"Look here!" he said, suddenly; "have you seen _The Imperial +Votaress?_" + +I frowned. It is always annoying to be interrupted in the middle of a +particularly well-balanced sentence. "Don't know the lady," said I. + +"She is advertised on half the posters in town," said Mr. Bulmer. "And +it is the book of the year. And it is your book." + +At this moment I laid down my manuscript. '"I _beg_ your pardon?" said +I. + +"Your book!" Uncle George repeated firmly; "and scarcely a hair's +difference between them, except in the names." + +"H'm!" I observed, in a careful voice. "Who wrote it?" + +"Some female woman out west," said Mr. Bulmer. "She's a George +Something-or-other when she publishes, of course, like all those +authorines when they want to say about mankind at large what less +gifted women only dare say about their sisters-in-law. I wish to heaven +they would pick out some other Christian name when they want to cut up +like pagans. Anyhow, I saw her real name somewhere, and I remember it +began with an S--Why, to be sure! it's Marian Winwood." + +"Amaimon sounds well," I observed; "Lucifer, well; Larbason, well; yet +they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but--Marian Winwood!" + +"Dear me!" he remonstrated. "Why, she wrote _A Bright Particular Star_, +you know, and _The Acolytes_, and lots of others." + +The author of _As the Coming of Dawn_ swallowed a whole glass of +Chianti at a gulp. + +"Of course," I said, slowly, "I cannot, in my rather peculiar position, +run the risk of being charged with plagiarism--by a Chinese-eyed mental +sneak-thief...." + +Thereupon I threw the manuscript into the open fire, which my +preference for the picturesque rendered necessary, even in May. + +"Oh, look here!" my uncle cried, and caught up the papers. "It is +infernally good, you know! Can't you--can't you fix it,--and--er-- +change it a bit? Typewriting is so expensive these days that it seems a +pity to waste all this." + +I took the manuscript and replaced it firmly among the embers. "As you +justly observe," said I, "it is infernally good. It is probably a deal +better than anything else I shall ever write." + +"Why, then--" said Uncle George. + +"Why, then," said I, "the only thing that remains to do is to read _The +Imperial Votaress._" + + + 8 + +And I read it with an augmenting irritation. Here was my great and +comely idea transmuted by "George Glock"--which was the woman's foolish +pen-name,--into a rather clever melodrama, and set forth anyhow, in a +hit or miss style that fairly made me squirm. I would cheerfully have +strangled Marian Winwood just then, and not upon the count of larceny, +but of butchery. + +"And to cap it all, she has assigned her hero every pretty speech I +ever made to her! I honestly believe the rogue took shorthand jottings +on her cuffs. 'There is a land where lovers may meet face to face, and +heart to heart, and mouth to mouth'--why, that's the note I wrote her +on the day she wasn't feeling well!" + +Presently, however, I began to laugh, and presently sitting there +alone, I began to applaud as if I were witnessing a play that took my +fancy. + +"Oh, the adorable jade!" I said; and then: "George Glock, forsooth! +_George Dandin, tu l' as voulu._" + + + 9 + +Naturally I put the entire affair into a short story. And--though even +to myself it seems incredible,--Miss Winwood wrote me within three days +of the tale's appearance, a very indignant letter. + +For she was furious, to the last exclamation point and underlining, +about my little magazine tale.... "Why don't you stop writing, and try +plumbing or butchering or traveling for scented soap? _You can't +write!_ If you had the light of creation you wouldn't be using my +material".... + +--Which caused me to reflect forlornly that I had wasted a great deal +of correct behavior upon Marian, since any of the more intimately +amorous advances which I might have made, and had scrupulously +refrained from making, would very probably have been regarded as raw +"material," to be developed rather than shocked by.... + + + + +18. + +_He Spends an Afternoon in Arden_ + + +I had, in a general way, intended to marry Rosalind Jemmett so soon as +I had completed _As the Coming of Dawn_; but in the fervour of writing +that unfortunate volume, I had at first put off a little, and then a +little longer, the answering of her last letter, because I was +interested just then in writing well and not particularly interested in +anything else; and I had finally approximated to forgetfulness of the +young lady's existence. + +Now, however, my thoughts harked back to her; and I found, upon +inquiry, that Rosalind had spent all of May and a good half of April in +Lichfield, in the same town with myself, and was now engaged to Alfred +Chaytor,--an estimable person, but popularly known as "Sissy" Chaytor. + + + 2 + +And this gave an additional whet to my intentions. So I called upon the +girl, and she, to my chagrin, received me with an air of having danced +with me some five or six times the night before; our conversation was +at first trivial and, on her part, dishearteningly cordial; and, in +fine, she completely baffled me by not appearing to expect any least +explanation of my discourteous neglect. This, look you, when I had been +at pains to prepare a perfectly convincing one. + +It must be conceded I completely lost my temper; shortly afterward +neither of us was speaking with excessive forethought; and each of us +languidly advanced a variety of observations which were more dexterous +than truthful. But I followed the intractable heiress to the Moncrieffs +that spring, in spite of this rebuff, being insufferably provoked by +her unshakable assumptions of my friendship and of nothing more. + + + 3 + +It was perhaps a week later she told me: "This, beyond any reasonable +doubt, is the Forest of Arden." + +"But where Rosalind is is always Arden," I said, politely. Yet I made a +mental reservation as to a glimpse of the golf-links, which this +particular nook of the forest afforded, and of a red-headed caddy in +search of a lost ball. + +But beyond these things the sun was dying out in a riot of colour, and +its level rays fell kindlily upon the gaunt pines that were thick about +us two, converting them into endless aisles of vaporous gold. + +There was primeval peace about; an evening wind stirred lazily above, +and the leaves whispered drowsily to one another over the waters of +what my companion said was a "brawling loch," though I had previously +heard it reviled as a particularly treacherous and vexatious hazard. +Altogether, I had little doubt that we had reached, in any event, the +outskirts of Arden. + +"And now," quoth she, seating herself on a fallen log, "what would you +do if I were your very, very Rosalind?" + +"Don't!" I cried in horror. "It wouldn't be proper! For as a decent +self-respecting heroine, you would owe it to Orlando not to listen." + +"H'umph!" said Rosalind. The exclamation does not look impressive, +written out; but, spoken, it placed Orlando in his proper niche. + +"Oh, well," said I, and stretched myself at her feet, full +length,--which is supposed to be a picturesque attitude,--"why quarrel +over a name? It ought to be Gamelyn, anyhow; and, moreover, by the +kindness of fate, Orlando is golfing." + +Rosalind frowned, dubiously. + +"But golf is a very ancient game," I reassured her. Then I bit a +pine-needle in two and sighed. "Foolish fellow, when he might be--" + +"Admiring the beauties of nature," she suggested. + +Just then an impudent breeze lifted a tendril of honey-coloured hair +and toyed with it, over a low, white brow,--and I noted that Rosalind's +hair had a curious coppery glow at the roots, a nameless colour that I +have never observed anywhere else.... + +"Yes," said I, "of nature." + +"Then," queried she, after a pause, "who are you? And what do you in +this forest?" + +"You see," I explained, "there were conceivably other men in Arden--" + +"I suppose so," she sighed, with exemplary resignation. + +"--For you were," I reminded her, "universally admired at your uncle's +court,--and equally so in the forest. And while Alfred--or, strictly +speaking, Gamelyn, or, if you prefer it, Orlando,--is the great love of +your life, still--" + +"Men are so foolish!" said Rosalind, irrelevantly. + +"--it did not prevent you--" + +"Me!" cried she, indignant. + +"You had such a tender heart," I suggested, "and suffering was +abhorrent to your gentle nature." + +"I don't like cynicism, sir," said she; "and inasmuch as tobacco is not +yet discovered--" + +"It is clearly impossible that I am smoking," I finished; "quite true." + +"I don't like cheap wit, either," said Rosalind. "You," she went on, +with no apparent connection, "are a forester, with a good cross-bow and +an unrequited attachment,--say, for me. You groan and hang verses and +things about on the trees." + +"But I don't write verses--any longer," I amended. "Still how would +this do,--for an oak, say,-- + +"I found a lovely centre-piece +Upon the supper-table, +But when I looked at it again +I saw I wasn't able, +And so I took my mother home +And locked her in the stable." + +She considered that the plot of this epic was not sufficiently +inevitable. It hadn't, she lamented, a quite logical ending; and the +plot of it, in fine, was not, somehow, convincing. + +"Well, in any event," I optimistically reflected, "I am a nickel in. If +your dicta had emanated from a person in Peoria or Seattle, who hadn't +bothered to read my masterpiece, they would have sounded exactly the +same, and the clipping-bureau would have charged me five cents. +Maybe I can't write verses, then. But I am quite sure I can groan." And +I did so. + +"It sounds rather like a fog-horn," said Rosalind, still in the +critic's vein; "but I suppose it is the proper thing. Now," she +continued, and quite visibly brightening, "you can pretend to have an +unrequited attachment for me." + +"But I can't--" I decisively said. + +"Can't," she echoed. It has not been mentioned previously that Rosalind +was pretty. She was especially so just now, in pouting. And, therefore, +"--pretend," I added. + +She preserved a discreet silence. + +"Nor," I continued, with firmness, "am I a shambling, nameless, +unshaven denizen of Arden, who hasn't anything to do except to carry a +spear and fall over it occasionally. I will no longer conceal the +secret of my identity. I am Jaques." + +"You can't be Jaques," she dissented; "you are too stout." + +"I am well-built," I admitted, modestly; "as in an elder case, sighing +and grief have blown me up like a bladder; yet proper pride, if nothing +else, demands that my name should appear on the programme." + +"But would Jaques be the sort of person who'd--?" + +"Who wouldn't be?" I asked, with appropriate ardour. "No, depend upon +it, Jaques was not any more impervious to temptation than the rest of +us; and, indeed, in the French version, as you will find, he eventually +married Celia." + +"Minx!" said she; and it seemed to me quite possible that she referred +to Celia Reindan, and my heart glowed. + +"And how," queried Rosalind, presently, "came you to the Forest of +Arden, good Jaques?" + +I groaned once more. "It was a girl," I darkly said. + +"Of course," assented Rosalind, beaming as to the eyes. Then she went +on, and more sympathetically: "Now, Jaques, you can tell me the whole +story." + +"Is it necessary?" I asked. + +"Surely," said she, with sudden interest in the structure of +pine-cones; "since for a long while I have wanted to know all about +Jaques. You see Mr. Shakespeare is a bit hazy about him." + +"_So_!" I thought, triumphantly. + +And aloud, "It is an old story," I warned her, "perhaps the oldest of +all old stories. It is the story of a man and a girl. It began with a +chance meeting and developed into a packet of old letters, which is the +usual ending of this story." + +Rosalind's brows protested. + +"Sometimes," I conceded, "it culminates in matrimony; but the ending is +not necessarily tragic." + +I dodged exactly in time; and the pine-cone splashed into the hazard. + +"It happened," I continued, "that, on account of the man's health, they +were separated for a whole year's time before--before things had +progressed to any extent. When they did progress, it was largely by +letters. That is why this story ended in such a large package. + +"Letters," Rosalind confided, to one of the pines, "are so +unsatisfactory. They mean so little." + +"To the man," I said, firmly, "they meant a great deal. They brought +him everything that he most wished for,--comprehension, sympathy, and, +at last, comfort and strength when they were sore needed. So the man, +who was at first but half in earnest, announced to himself that he had +made a discovery. 'I have found,' said he, 'the great white love which +poets have dreamed of. I love this woman greatly, and she, I think, +loves me. God has made us for each other, and by the aid of her love I +will be pure and clean and worthy even of her.' You have doubtless +discovered by this stage in my narrative," I added, as in parenthesis, +"that the man was a fool." + +"Don't!" said Rosalind. + +"Oh, he discovered it himself in due time--but not until after he had +written a book about her. _As the Coming of Dawn_ the title was to have +been. It was--oh, just about her. It tried to tell how greatly he loved +her. It tried--well, it failed of course, because it isn't within the +power of any writer to express what the man felt for that girl. Why, +his love was so great--to him, poor fool!--that it made him at times +forget the girl herself, apparently. He didn't want to write her +trivial letters. He just wanted to write that great book in her honour, +which would _make_ her understand, even against her will, and then to +die, if need be, as Geoffrey Rudel did. For that was the one thing +which counted--to make her understand--" I paused, and anyone could see +that I was greatly moved. In fact, I was believing every word of it by +this time. + +"Oh, but who wants a man to _die_ for her?" wailed Rosalind. + +"It is quite true that one infinitely prefers to see him make a fool of +himself. So the man discovered when he came again to bring his foolish +book to her,--the book that was to make her understand. And so he +burned it--in a certain June. For the girl had merely liked him, and +had been amused by him. So she had added him to her collection of men, +--quite a large one, by the way,--and was, I believe, a little proud of +him. It was, she said, rather a rare variety, and much prized by +collectors." + +"And how was _she_ to know?" said Rosalind; and then, remorsefully: +"Was it a very horrid girl?" + +"It was not exactly repulsive," said I, as dreamily, and looking up +into the sky. + +There was a pause. Then someone in the distance--a forester, probably, +--called "Fore!" and Rosalind awoke from her reverie. + +"Then--?" said she. + +"Then came the customary Orlando--oh, well! Alfred, if you like. The +name isn't altogether inappropriate, for he does encounter existence +with much the same abandon which I have previously noticed in a muffin. +For the rest, he was a nicely washed fellow, with a sufficiency of the +mediaeval equivalents for bonds and rubber-tired buggies and country +places. Oh, yes! I forgot to say that the man was poor,--also that the +girl had a great deal of common-sense and no less than three longheaded +aunts. And so the girl talked to the man in a common-sense fashion--and +after that she was never at home." + +"Never?" said Rosalind. + +"Only that time they talked about the weather," said I. "So the man +fell out of bed just about then, and woke up and came to his sober +senses." + +"He did it very easily," said Rosalind, almost as if in resentment. + +"The novelty of the process attracted him," I pleaded. "So he said--in +a perfectly sensible way--that he had known all along it was only a +game they were playing,--a game in which there were no stakes. That was +a lie. He had put his whole soul into the game, playing as he knew for +his life's happiness; and the verses, had they been worthy of the love +which caused them to be written, would have been among the great songs +of the world. But while the man knew at last that he had been a fool, +he was swayed by a man-like reluctance against admitting it. So he +laughed--and lied--and broke away, hurt, but still laughing." + +"You hadn't mentioned any verses before," said Rosalind. + +"I told you he was a fool," said I. "And, after all, that is the entire +story." + +Then I spent several minutes in wondering what would happen next. +During this time I lost none of my interest in the sky. I believed +everything I had said: my emotions would have done credit to a Romeo or +an Amadis. + +"The first time that the girl was not at home," Rosalind observed, +impersonally, "the man had on a tan coat and a brown derby. He put on +his gloves as he walked down the street. His shoulders were the most +indignant--and hurt things she had ever seen. Then the girl wrote to +him,--a strangely sincere letter,--and tore it up." + +"Historical research," I murmured, "surely affords no warrant for such +attire among the rural denizens of tranquil Arden." + +"You see," continued Rosalind, oblivious to interruption, "I know all +about the girl,--which is more than you do." + +"That," I conceded, "is disastrously probable." + +"When she realised that she was to see the man again--_Did_ you ever +feel as if something had lifted you suddenly hundreds of feet above +rainy days and cold mutton for luncheon, and the possibility of other +girls' wearing black evening dresses, when you wanted yours to be the +only one in the room? Well, that is the way she felt at first, when she +read his note. At first, she realised nothing beyond the fact that he +was nearing her, and that she would presently see him. She didn't even +plan what she would wear, or what she would say to him. In an +indefinite way, she was happier than she had ever been before--or has +been since--until the doubts and fears and knowledge that give children +and fools a wide berth came to her,--and _then_ she saw it all against +her will, and thought it all out, and came to a conclusion." + +I sat up. There was really nothing of interest occurring overhead. + +"They had played at loving--lightly, it is true, but they had gone so +far in their letter writing that they could not go backward,--only +forward, or not at all. She had known all along that the man was but +half in earnest--believe me, a girl always knows that, even though she +may not admit it to herself,--and she had known that a love affair +meant to him material for a sonnet or so, and a well-turned letter or +two, and nothing more. For he was the kind of man that never quite +grows up. He was coming to her, pleased, interested, and a little +eager--in love with the idea of loving her,--willing to meet her +half-way, and very willing to follow her the rest of the way--if she +could draw him. And what was she to do? Could she accept his gracefully +insulting semblance of a love she knew he did not feel? Could they see +each other a dozen times, swearing not to mention the possibility of +loving,--so that she might have a chance to reimpress him with her +blondined hair--it _is_ touched up, you know--and small talk? And--and +_besides_--" + +"It is the duty of every young woman to consider what she owes to her +family," said I, absentmindedly. Rosalind Jemmett's family consists of +three aunts, and the chief of these is Aunt Marcia, who lives in +Lichfield. Aunt Marcia is a portly, acidulous and discomposing person, +with eyes like shoe-buttons and a Savonarolan nose. She is also a +well-advertised philanthropist, speaks neatly from the platform, and +has wide experience as a patroness, and extreme views as to +ineligibles. + +Rosalind flushed somewhat. "And so," said she, "the girl exercised her +common-sense, and was nervous, and said foolish things about new plays, +and the probability of rain--to keep from saying still more foolish +things about herself; and refused to talk personalities; and let him +go, with the knowledge that he would not come back. Then she went to +her room, and had a good cry. Now," she added, after a pause, "you +understand." + +"I do not," I said, very firmly, "understand a lot of things." + +"Yet a woman would," she murmured. + +This being a statement I was not prepared to contest, I waved it aside. +"And so," said I, "they laughed; and agreed it was a boy-and-girl +affair; and were friends." + +"It was the best thing--" said she. + +"Yes," I assented,--"for Orlando." + +"--and it was the most sensible thing." + +"Oh, eminently!" + +This seemed to exhaust the subject, and I lay down once more among the +pine-needles. + +"And that," said Rosalind, "was the reason Jaques came to Arden?" + +"Yes," said I. + +"And found it--?" + +"Shall we say--Hades?" + +"Oh!" she murmured, scandalised. + +"It happened," I continued, "that he was cursed with a good memory. And +the zest was gone from his little successes and failures, now there was +no one to share them; and nothing seemed to matter very much. Oh, he +really was the sort of man that never grows up! And it was dreary to +live among memories of the past, and his life was now somewhat +perturbed by disapproval of his own folly and by hunger for a woman who +was out of his reach." + +"And Rosalind--I mean the girl--?" + +"She married Orlando--or Gamelyn, or Alfred, or Athelstane, or +Ethelred, or somebody,--and, whoever it was, they lived happily ever +afterward," I said, morosely. + +Rosalind pondered over this denouement for a moment. + +"Do you know," said she, "I think--" + +"It's a rather dangerous practice," I warned her. + +Rosalind sighed, wearily; but in her cheek at about this time occurred +a dimple. + +"--I think that Rosalind must have thought the play +very badly named." + +"_As You Like It_?" I queried, obtusely. + +"Yes--since it wasn't, for her." + +It is unwholesome to lie on the ground after sunset. + + + 4 + +"I had rather a scene with Alfred yesterday morning. He said you drank, +and gambled, and were always running after--people, and weren't in +fine, a desirable person for me to know. He insinuated, in fact, that +you were a villain of the very deepest and non-crocking dye. He told me +of instances. His performance would have done credit to Ananias. I was +_mad_! So I gave him his old ring back, and told him things I can't +tell _you_,--no, not just yet, dear. He is rather like a muffin, isn't +he?" she said, with the lightest possible little laugh--"particularly +like one that isn't quite done." + +"Oh, Rosalind," I babbled, "I mean to prove that you were right. And I +_will_ prove it, too!" + +And indeed I meant all that I said--just then. + +Rosalind said: "Oh, Jaques, Jaques! what a child you are!" + + + + +19. + +_He Plays the Improvident Fool_ + + +Now was I come near to the summit of my desires, and advantageously +betrothed to a girl with whom I was, in any event, almost in love; but +I presently ascertained, to my dismay, that sophisticated, "proper" +little Rosalind was thoroughly in love with me, and always in the back +of my mind this knowledge worried me. + +Imprimis, she persisted in calling me Jaques, which was uncomfortably +reminiscent of that time wherein I was called Jack. Yet my objection to +this silly nickname was a mischancy matter to explain. There was no way +of telling her that I disliked anything which reminded me of Gillian +Hardress, without telling more about Gillian than would be pleasant to +tell. So Rosalind went on calling me Jaques; and I was compelled to put +up with a trivial and unpremeditated, but for all that a daily, +annoyance; and I fretted under it. + +Item, she insisted on presenting me with all sorts of expensive +knick-knacks, and being childishly grieved when I remonstrated. + +"But I have the money," Rosalind would say, "and you haven't. So why +shouldn't I? And besides, it's really only selfishness on my part, +because I like doing things for you, and _if_ you liked doing things +for me, Jaques, you'd understand." + +So I would eventually have to swear that I did like "doing things" for +her; and it followed--somehow--that in consequence she had a perfect +right to give me anything she wanted to. + +And this too fretted me, mildly, all the summer I spent at Birnam Beach +with Rosalind and with the opulent friends of Rosalind's aunt from St. +Louis.... They were a queer lot. They all looked so unspeakably new; +their clothes were spick and span, and as expensive as possible, but +that was not it; even in their bathing suits these middle-aged +people--they were mostly middle-aged--seemed to have been very recently +finished, like animated waxworks of middle-aged people just come from +the factory. And they spent money in a continuous careless way that +frightened me. + +But I was on my very best, most dignified behavior; and when Aunt Lora +presented me as "one of the Lichfield Townsends, you know," these +brewers and breweresses appeared to be properly impressed. One of +them--actually--"supposed that I had a coat-of-arms"; which in +Lichfield would be equivalent to "supposing" that a gentleman possessed +a pair of trousers. But they were really very thoughtful about never +letting me pay for anything; in this regard there seemed afoot a sort +of friendly conspiracy. + +So the summer passed pleasantly enough; and we bathed, and held hands +in the moonlight, and danced at the Casino, and rode the +merry-go-round, and played ping-pong, and read _Dorothy Vernon of +Haddon Hall_,--which was much better, I told everybody, than that +idiotic George Clock book, _The Imperial Votaress_. And we drank +interminable suissesses, and it was all very pleasant. + +Yet always in the rear of my mind was stirring restively the instinct +to get back to my writing; and these sedately frolicsome benevolent +people--even Rosalind--plainly thought that "writing things" was just +the unimportant foible of an otherwise fine young fellow. + + + 2 + +And in September Rosalind came to visit her Aunt Marcia in Lichfield, +to get clothes and all other matters ready for our wedding in November; +and Lichfield, as always, made much of Rosalind, and she had the honor +of "leading" the first Lichfield German with Colonel Rudolph Musgrave. +My partner at that dance was the Marquise d'Arlanges.... + +I was seeing a deal of the Marquise d'Arlanges. She was Stella's only +sister, as you may remember, and was that autumn paying a perfunctory +visit to her parents--the second since her marriage. + +I shall not expatiate, however, concerning Madame la Marquise. You have +doubtless heard of her. For Lizzie has not, even yet, found a time +wherein to be idle; she has been busied since the hour of her birth in +acquiring first, plain publicity, and then social power, and every +other amenity of life in turn. I had not the least doubt even then of +her ending where she is now.... + +She was at this time still well upon the preferable side o! thirty, and +had no weaknesses save a liking for gossip, cigarettes, and admiration. +Lizzie was never the woman to marry a Peter Blagden. Once Stella was +settled, Lizzie Musgrave had sailed for Europe, and eventually had +arrived at Monaco with an apologetic mother, several letters of +introduction, and a Scotch terrier; and had established herself at the +Hotel de la Paix, to look over the "available" supply of noblemen in +reduced circumstances. Before the end of a month Miss Musgrave had +reached a decision, had purchased her Marquis, much as she would have +done any other trifle that took her fancy, and had shipped her mother +back to America. Lizzie retained the terrier, however, as she was +honestly attached to it. + +Her marriage had been happy, and she found her husband on further +acquaintance, as she told me, a mild-mannered and eminently suitable +person, who was unaccountably addicted to playing dominoes, and who +spent a great deal of money, and dined with her occasionally. In a +sentence, the marquise was handsome, "had a tongue in her head," and, +to utilise yet another ancient phrase, was as hard as nails. + +And yet there was a family resemblance. Indeed, in voice and feature +she was strangely like an older Stella; and always I was cheating +myself into a half-belief that this woman I was talking with was +Stella; and Lizzie would at least enable me to forget, for a whole +half-hour sometimes, that Stella was dead.... + + * * * * * + +"I must thank you," I said, one afternoon, when I arose to go, "for a +most pleasant dream of--what we'll call the Heart's Desire. I suppose I +have been rather stupid, Lizzie; and I apologise for it; but people are +never exceedingly hilarious in dreams, you know." + +She said, very gently: "I understand. For I loved Stella too. And that +is why the room is never really lighted when you come. Oh, you stupid +man, how could I have _helped_ knowing it--that all the love you have +made to me was because you have been playing I was Stella? That +knowledge has preserved me, more than once, my child, from succumbing +to your illicit advances in this dead Lichfield." + +And I was really astonished, for she was not by ordinary the sort of +woman who consents to be a makeshift. + +I said as much, "And it _has_ been a comfort, Lizzie, because she +doesn't come as often now, for some reason--" + +"Why--what do you mean?" + +The room was very dark, lit only by the steady, comfortable glow of a +soft-coal fire. For it was a little after sunset, and outside, +carriages were already rumbling down Regis Avenue, and people were +returning from the afternoon drive. I could not see anything +distinctly, excepting my own hands, which were like gold in the +firelight; and so I told her all about _The Indulgences of Ole-Luk-Ole_. + +"She came, that first time, over the crest of a tiny upland that lay in +some great forest,--Brocheliaunde, I think. I knew it must be autumn, +for the grass was brown and every leaf upon the trees was brown. And +she too was all in brown, and her big hat, too, was of brown felt, and +about it curled a long ostrich feather dyed brown; and my first +thought, as I now remember, was how in the dickens could any mediaeval +lady have come by such a garb, for I knew, somehow, that this was a +woman of the Middle Ages. + +"Only her features were those of Stella, and the eyes of this woman +were filled with an unutterable happiness and fear, as she came toward +me,--just as the haunting eyes of Stella were upon the night she +married Peter Blagden, and I babbled nonsense to the moon. + +"'Oh, I have wanted you,--I have wanted you!' she said; and afterward, +unarithmeticably dimpling, just as she used to do, you may remember: +_'Depardieux,_ messire! have you then forgotten that upon this forenoon +we hunt the great boar?" + +"'Stella!' I said, 'O dear, dear Stella! what does it mean?' + +"'You silly! it means, of course, that Ole-Luk-Oie is kind, and has put +us both into the glaze of the mustard-jar--only I wonder which one we +have gotten into?' Stella said. 'Don't you remember them, dear--the +blue mustard-jar and the red one your Mammy had that summer at the +Green Chalybeate, with men on them hunting a boar?' + +"'They stood, one on each corner of the mantelpiece,' I said; 'and in +the blue one she kept matches, and in the other--' + +"'She kept buttons in the red one,' said Stella,--'big, shiny white +buttons, with four holes in them, that had come off your underclothes, +and were to be sewed on again. One day you swallowed one of 'em, I +remember, because you _would_ keep it in your mouth while you swung in +the hammock. And you thought it would surely kill you, so you knelt +down in the dry leaves and prayed God He wouldn't let it kill you.' + +"'But you weren't there,' I protested; 'nobody was there. So nobody +ever knew anything about it, though may be you--' For I had just +remembered that Stella was dead, only I knew it was against some rule +to mention it. + +"'Well, at any rate I'm _here_,' said Stella, 'and Ole-Luk-Oie is kind; +and we had better go and hunt the great boar at once, I suppose, since +that is what the people on the mustard-jars always do.' + +"'But how did you come hither, O my dear--?' + +"'Why, through your wanting me so much,' she said. 'How else?' + +"And I understood.... + +"So we went and slew the great boar. I slew it personally, with a long +spear, and with Stella clasping her hands in the background. Only there +was a nicked place in the mustard-jar, where I had dropped it on the +hearth some fifteen years ago, and my horse kept stumbling over this +crevice, so that I knew it was the red jar and the buttons we were +riding around. And afterward I made a song in honour of my Stella,--a +song so perfect that I presently awoke, weeping with joy that I had +made a song so beautiful, and with the knowledge I could not now +recollect a single word of it; and I knew that neither I nor any other +man could ever make again a song one-half so beautiful.... + +"Since then Ole-Luk-Oie--or someone--has been very kind at times. He +always lets me into pictures, though, never into mouse-holes and +hen-houses and silly places like that, as he did little Hjalmar. I +don't know why.... + +"Once it was into the illustrations to the _Popular Tales of +Poictesme_, and we met my great grandfather Jurgen there. And once it +was into the picture on the cover of that unveracious pamphlet the +manager of the Green Chalybeate sends in the spring to everybody who +has once been there. That time was very odd. + +"It is a picture of the Royal Hotel, you may remember, as it used to be +a good ten years ago. Both fountains were playing in the sunlight, +--they were torn down when I was at college, and I had almost forgotten +their existence; and elegant and languid ladies were riding by, in +victorias, and under tiny parasols trimmed with fringe, and all these +ladies wore those preposterously big sleeves they used to wear then; +and men in little visored skull caps were passing on tall old-fashioned +bicycles, just as they do in the picture. Even the silk-hatted +gentleman in the corner, pointing out the beauties of the building with +his cane, was there. + +"And Stella and I walked past the margin of the picture, and so on down +the boardwalk to the other hotel, to look for our parents. And we +agreed not to tell anyone that we had ever grown up, but just to let it +be a secret between us two; and we were to stay in the picture forever, +and grow up all over again, only we would arrange everything +differently. And Stella was never to go driving on the twenty-seventh +of April, so that we would be quite safe, and would live together for a +long, long while. + +"She wouldn't promise, though, that when Peter Blagden asked to be +introduced, she would refuse to meet him. She just giggled and shook +her sunny head. She hadn't any hat on. She was wearing the +blue-and-white sailor-suit, of course.".... + + + 4 + +But a servant was lighting up the front-hall, and the glare of it came +through the open door, and now the room was just like any other room. + +"And you are Robert Townsend!" the marquise observed. "The one my +mother doesn't approve of as a visitor!" + +Madame d'Arlanges said, with a certain lack of sequence: "And yet you +are planning to do precisely what Peter Blagden did. He liked Stella, +she amused him, and he thought her money would come in very handy; and +so he, somehow, contrived to marry her in the end, because she was just +a child, and you were a child, and he wasn't. And he always lied to her +about--about those business-trips--even from the very first. I knew, +because I'm not a sentimental person. But, Bob, how can you stoop to +mimic Peter Blagden! For you are doing precisely what he did; and for +Rosalind, just as it was for Stella, it is almost irresistible, to have +the chance of reforming a man who has notoriously been 'talked about.' +Still, I see that for Stella's sake you won't lie as steadfastly to +Rosalind as Peter did to Stella. It is none of my business of course; +oh, I don't meddle. I merely prophesy that you won't." + +But those lights had made an astonishing difference. And so, "But why +not?" said I. "It is the immemorial method of dealing with savages; and +surely women can never expect to become quite civilised so long as +chivalry demands that a man say to a woman only what he believes she +wants to hear? Ah, no, my dear Lizzie; when a man tries to get into a +woman's favour, custom demands that he palliate the invasion with +flatteries and veiled truths--or, more explicitly, with lies,--just as +any sensible explorer must come prepared to leave a trail of +looking-glasses and valueless bright beads among the original owners of +any unknown country. For he doesn't know what obstacles he may +encounter, and he has been taught, from infancy, to regard any woman as +a baleful and unfathomable mystery--" + +"She is never so--heaven help her!--if the man be sufficiently +worthless." + +"I rejoice that we are so thoroughly at one. For upon my word, I +believe this widespread belief in feminine inscrutability is the result +of a conspiracy on the part of the weaker sex; and that every mother is +somehow pledged to inculcate this belief into the immature masculine +mind. Apparently the practice originated in the Middle Ages, for it +never seemed to occur to anybody before then that a woman was +particularly complex. Though, to be sure, Catullus now--" "This is not +a time for pedantry. I don't in the least care what Catullus or anyone +else observed concerning anything--" "But I had not aspired, my dear +Lizzie, to be even remotely pedantic. I was simply about to remark that +Catullus, or Ariosto, or Coventry Patmore, or King Juba, or Posidonius, +or Sir John Vanbrugh, or perhaps, Agathocles of Chios, or else +Simonides the Younger, has conceded somewhere, that women are, in +certain respects, dissimilar, as it were, to men." "I am merely urging +you not to marry this silly little Rosalind, for the excellent reason +that you _did_ love my darling Stella even more than I, and that +Rosalind is in love with you." "Do you really think so?" said I. "Why, +then, actuated by the very finest considerations of decency and +prudence and generosity, I shall, of course, espouse her the very next +November that ever is." + +The marquise retorted: "No,--because you are at bottom too fond of +Rosalind Jemmett; and, besides, it isn't really a question of your +feeling toward _her_. In any event, I begin to like you too well, Bob, +to let you kiss me any more." + +I declared that I detested paradox. Then I went home to supper. + + + 5 + +But, for all this, I meditated for a long while upon what Lizzie had +said. It was true that I was really fond of "proper" little Rosalind +Jemmett; concerning myself I had no especial illusions; and, to my +credit, I faced what I considered the real issue, squarely. + +We were in Aunt Marcia's parlour. Rosalind was an orphan, and lived in +turn with her three aunts. She said the other two were less unendurable +than Aunt Marcia, and I believed her. I consider, to begin with, that a +person is not civilised who thumps upon the floor upstairs with a +poker, simply because it happens to be eleven o'clock; and moreover, +Aunt Marcia's parlour--oh, it really was a "parlour,"--was entirely too +like the first night of a charity bazaar, when nothing has been sold. + +The room was not a particularly large one; but it contained exactly +three hundred and seven articles of bijouterie, not estimating the +china pug-dog upon the hearth. I know, for I counted them. + +Besides, there were twenty-eight pictures upon the walls--one in oils +of the late Mr. Dumby (for Aunt Marcia was really Mrs. Clement Dumby), +painted, to all appearances, immediately after the misguided gentleman +who married Aunt Marcia had been drowned, and before he had been wiped +dry,--and for the rest, everywhere the eye was affronted by engravings +framed in gilt and red-plush of "Sanctuary," "Le Hamac," "Martyre +Chretienne," "The Burial of Latane," and other Victorian outrages. + +Then on an easel there was a painting of a peacock, perched upon an +urn, against a gilded background; this painting irrelevantly deceived +your expectations, for it was framed in blue plush. Also there were +"gift-books" on the centre table, and a huge volume, again in red +plush, with its titular "Album" cut out of thin metal and nailed to the +cover. This album contained calumnious portraits of Aunt Marcia's +family, the most of them separately enthroned upon the same imitation +rock, in all the pride of a remote, full-legged and starchy youth, each +picture being painfully "coloured by hand." + + + 6 + +"Do you know why I want to marry you?" I demanded of Rosalind, in such +surroundings, apropos of a Mrs. Vokins who had taken a house in +Lichfield for the winter, and had been at school somewhere in the +backwoods with Aunt Marcia, and was "dying to meet me." + +She answered, in some surprise: "Why, because you have the good taste +to be heels over head in love with me, of course." + +I took possession of her hands. "If there is anything certain in this +world of uncertainties, it is that I am not the least bit in love with +you. Yet, only yesterday--do you remember, dear?" + +She answered, "I remember." + +"But I cannot, for the life of me, define what happened yesterday. I +merely recall that we were joking, as we always do when together, and +that on a wager I loosened your hair. Then as it tumbled in great +honey-coloured waves about you, you were silent, and there came into +your eyes a look I had never seen before. And even now I cannot define +what happened, Rosalind! I only know I caught your face between my +hands, and for a moment held it so, with fingers that have not yet +forgotten the feel of your soft, thick hair,--and that for a breathing +space your eyes looked straight into mine. Something changed in me +then, my lady. Something changed in you, too, I think." + +Then Rosalind said, "Don't, Jaques--!" She was horribly embarrassed. + +"For I knew you willed me to possess you, and that possession would +seem as trivial as a fiddle in a temple.... Yet, too, there was a +lustful beast, somewhere inside of me, which nudged me to--kiss you, +say! But nothing happened. I did not even kiss you, my beautiful and +wealthy Rosalind." + +"Don't keep on talking about the money," she wailed. "Why, you can't +believe I think you mercenary!" + +"I would estimate your intellect far more cheaply, my charming +Rosalind, if you thought anything else; for of course I am. I wanted to +settle myself, you conceive, and as an accomplice you were very +eligible. I now comprehend it is beyond the range of rationality, dear +stranger, that we should ever marry each other; and so we must not. We +must not, you comprehend, since though we lived together through ten +patriarchal lifetimes we would die strangers to each other. +For you, dear clean-souled girl that you are, were born that you might +be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy children. The +world was made for you and for your offspring; and in time your +children will occupy this world and make the laws for us irrelevant +folk that scribble and paint and design all useless and beautiful +things, and thus muddle away our precious lives. No, you may not wisely +mate with us, for you are a shade too terribly at ease in the universe, +you sensible people." + +"But I love Art," said Rosalind, bewildered. + +"Yes,--but by the tiniest syllable a thought too volubly, my dear. You +are the sort that quotes the Rubaiyat. Whereas I--was it yesterday or +the day before you told me, with a wise pucker of your beautiful low, +white brow, that I had absolutely no sense of the responsibilities of +life? Well, I really haven't, dear stranger, as you appraise them; and, +indeed, I fear we must postpone our agreement upon any possible +subject, until the coming of the Coquecigrues. We see the world so +differently, you and I,--and for that same reason I cannot but adore +you, Rosalind. For with you I can always speak my true thought and know +that you will never for a moment suspect it to be anything but irony. +Ah, yes, we can laugh and joke together, and be thorough friends; but +if there is anything certain in this world of uncertainties, it is that +I am not, and cannot be, in love with you. And yet--I wonder now?" said +I, and I rose and paced Aunt Marcia's parlour. + +"You wonder? Don't you understand even now?" the girl said shyly. "I am +not as clever as you, of course; I have known that for a long while, +Jaques; and to-night in particular I don't quite follow you, my dear, +but I love you, and--why, there is _nothing_ I could deny you!" + +"Then give me back my freedom," said I. "For, look you, Rosalind, +marriage is proverbially a slippery business. Always there are a +variety of excellent reasons for perpetrating matrimony; but the rub of +it is that not any one of them insures you against to-morrow. Love, for +example, we have all heard of; but I have known fine fellows to fling +away their chances in life, after the most approved romantic fashion, +on account of a pretty stenographer, and to beat her within the +twelvemonth. And upon my word, you know, nobody has a right to blame +the swindled lover for doing this--" + +I paused to inspect the china pug-dog which squatted on the pink-tiled +hearth and which glared inanely at the huge brass coal-box just +opposite. Then I turned from these two abominations and faced Rosalind +with a bantering flirt of my head. + +"--For put it that I marry some entrancing slip of girlhood, what am I +to say when, later, I discover myself irrevocably chained to a fat and +dowdy matron? I married no such person, I have indeed sworn eternal +fidelity to an entirely different person; and this unsolicited usurper +of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my +entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to justify the +ensuing action before an irrational audience, which faces common logic +in very much the attitude of Augustine's famed adder! Decidedly I think +that, on the whole, I would prefer my Freedom." + +It was as though I had struck her. She sat as if frozen. "Jaques, is +there another woman in this?" + +"Why, in a fashion, yes. Yet it is mainly because I am really fond of +you, Rosalind." + +She handed me that exceedingly expensive ring the jeweler had charged +to me. I thought her action damnably theatrical, but still, it was not +as though I could afford to waste money on rings, so I took the trinket +absent-mindedly. + +"You are unflatteringly prompt in closing out the account," I said, +with a grieved smile.... + +"Good-bye!" said Rosalind, and her voice broke. "Oh, and I had +thought--! Well, as it is, I pay for the luxury of thinking, just as +you forewarned me, don't I, Jaques? And you won't forget the +hall-light? Aunt Marcia, you know--but how glad _she_ will be! I feel +rather near to Aunt Marcia to-night," said Rosalind. + + + 7 + +She left Lichfield the next day but one, and spent the following winter +with the aunt that lived in Brooklyn. She was Rosalind Gelwix the next +time I saw her.... + +And Aunt Marcia, whose taste is upon a par with her physical +attractions, inserted a paragraph in the "Social Items" of the +Lichfield _Courier-Herald_ to announce the breaking-off of the +engagement. Aunt Marcia also took the trouble to explain, quite +confidentially, to some seven hundred and ninety-three people, just why +the engagement had been broken off: and these explanations were more +creditable to Mrs. Dumby's imagination than to me. + +And I remembered, then, that the last request my mother made of me was +to keep out of the newspapers--"except, of course, the social +items".... + + + + +20. + +_He Dines Out, Impeded by Superstitions_ + + +Within the week I had repented of what I termed my idiotic quixotism, +and for precisely nine days after that I cursed my folly. And then, at +the Provises, I comprehended that in breaking off my engagement to +Rosalind Jemmett I had acted with profound wisdom, and I unfolded my +napkin, and said: + +"Do you know I didn't catch your name--not even this time?" + +She took a liberal supply of lemon juice. "How delightful!" she +murmured, "for I heard yours quite distinctly, and these oysters are +delicious." + +I noted with approval that her gown was pink and fluffy; it had also the +advantage of displaying shoulders that were incredibly white, and a +throat which was little short of marvellous. "I am glad," I whispered, +confidentially, "that you are still wearing that faint vein about your +left temple. I thought it admirable for early morning wear upon the +house tops of Liege, but it seems equally effective for dinner parties." + +She raised her eyebrows slightly and selected a biscuit. + +"You see," said I, "I was horribly late. And when Kittie Provis said, +'Allow me,' and I saw--well, I didn't care," I concluded, lucidly, +"because to have every one of your dreams come true, all of a sudden, +leaves you past caring." + +"It really is funny," she confided to a spoonful of _consomme a la +Julienne_. + +"After almost two years!" sighed I, ever so happily. But I continued, +with reproach, "To go without a word--that very day--" + +"Mamma--" she began. + +I recalled the canary-bird, and the purple shawl. "I sought wildly," +said I; "you were evanished. The _proprietaire_ was tearing his hair--no +insurance--he knew nothing. So I too tore my hair; and I said things. +There was a row. For he also said things: 'Figure to yourselves, +messieurs! I lose the Continental--two ladies come and go, I know not +who--I am ruined, desolated, is it not?--and this pig of an American +blusters--ah, my new carpets, just down, what horror!' And then, you +know, he launched into a quite feeling peroration concerning our +notorious custom of tomahawking one another-- + +"Yes," I coldly concluded into Mrs. Clement Dumby's ear, "we all behaved +disgracefully. As you very justly observe, liquor has been the curse of +the South." It was of a piece with Kittie Provis to put me next to Aunt +Marcia, I reflected. + +And mentally I decided that even though a portion of my assertions had +not actually gone through the formality of occurring, it all might very +easily have happened, had I remained a while longer in Liege; and then +ensued a silent interval and an entree. + +"And so--?" + +"And so I knocked about the world, in various places, hoping against +hope that at last--" + +"Your voice carries frightfully--" + +I glanced toward Mrs. Clement Dumby, who, as a dining dowager of many +years' experience, was, to all appearances, engrossed by the contents of +her plate. "My elderly neighbour is as hard of hearing as a +telephone-girl," I announced. She was the exact contrary, which was why +I said it quite audibly. "And your neighbour--why, _his_ neighbour is +Nannie Allsotts. We might as well be on a desert island, Elena--" And +the given name slipped out so carelessly as to appear almost accidental. + +"Sir!" said she, with proper indignation; "after so short an +acquaintance--" + +"Centuries," I suggested, meekly. "You remember I explained about that." + +She frowned,--an untrustworthy frown that was tinged with laughter. "One +meets so many people! Yes, it really is frightfully warm, Colonel +Grimshaw; they ought to open some of the windows." + +"Er--haw--hum! Didn't see you at the Anchesters." + +"No; I am usually lucky enough to be in bed with a sick headache when +Mrs. Anchester entertains. Of two evils one should choose the lesser, +you know." + +In the manner of divers veterans Colonel Grimshaw evinced his mirth upon +a scale more proper to an elephant; and relapsed, with a reassuring air +of having done his duty once and for all. + +"I never," she suggested, tentatively, "heard any more of your poem, +about--?" + +"Oh, I finished it; every magazine in the country knows it. It is poor +stuff, of course, but then how could I write of Helen when Helen had +disappeared?" + +The lashes exhibited themselves at full length. "I looked her up," +confessed their owner, guiltily, "in the encyclopaedia. It was very +instructive--about sun-myths and bronzes and the growth of the epic, you +know, and tree-worship and moon-goddesses. Of course"--here ensued a +flush and a certain hiatus in logic,--"of course it is nonsense." + +"Nonsense?" My voice sank tenderly. "Is it nonsense, Elena, that for two +years I have remembered the woman whose soft body I held, for one +unforgettable moment, in my arms? and nonsense that I have fought all +this time against--against the temptations every man has,--that I might +ask her at last--some day when she at last returned, as always I knew +she would--to share a fairly decent life? and nonsense that I have +dreamed, waking and sleeping, of a wondrous face I knew in Ilium first, +and in old Rome, and later on in France, I think, when the Valois were +kings? Well!" I sighed, after vainly racking my brain for a tenderer +fragment of those two-year-old verses, "I suppose it is nonsense!" + +"The salt, please," quoth she. She flashed that unforgotten broadside at +me. "I believe you need it." + +"Why, dear me! of course not!" said I, to Mrs. Dumby; "immorality lost +the true _cachet_ about the same time that ping-pong did. Nowadays +divorces are going out, you know, and divorcees are not allowed to. +Quite modish women are seen in public with their husbands nowadays." + +"H'mph!" said Mrs. Dumby; "I've no doubt that you must find it a most +inconvenient fad!" + +I ate my portion of duck abstractedly. "Thus to dive into the +refuse-heap of last year's slang does not quite cover the requirements +of the case. For I wish--only I hardly dare to ask--" + +"If I were half of what you make out," meditatively said she, "I would +be a regular fairy, and couldn't refuse you the usual three wishes." + +"Two," I declared, "would be sufficient." + +"First?" + +"That you tell me your name." + +"I adore orange ices, don't you? And the second?" was her comment. + +"Well, then, you' re a pig," was mine. "You are simply a nomenclatural +Berkshire. But the second is that you let me measure your finger--oh, +any finger will do. Say, the third on the left hand." + +"You really talk to me as if--" But this non-existent state of affairs +proved indescribable, and the unreal condition lapsed into a pout. + +"Oh, very possibly!" I conceded; "since the way in which a man talks to +a woman--to _the_ woman--depends by ordinary upon the depth--" + +"The depth of his devotion?" she queried, helpfully. "Of course!" + +I faced the broadside, without flinching. "No," said I, critically; "the +depth of her dimples." + +"Nonsense!" Nevertheless, the dimples were, and by a deal, the more +conspicuous. We were getting on pretty well. + +I bent forward; there was a little catch in my voice. Aunt Marcia was +listening. I wanted her to listen. + +"You must know that I love you," I said, simply, "I have always loved +you, I think, since the moment my eyes first fell upon you in +that--other pink thing. Of course, I realize the absurdity of my talking +in this way to a woman whose name I don't know; but I realise more +strongly that I love you. Why, there is not a pulse in my body which +isn't throbbing and tingling and leaping riotously from pure joy of +being with you again, Elena! And in time, you will love me a little, +simply because I want you to,--isn't that always a woman's main reason +for caring for a man?" + +She considered this, dubious and flushed. + +"I will not insist," said I, with a hurried and contented laugh, "that +you were formerly an Argive queen. I mean I will not be obstinate about +it, because that, I confess, was a paraphrase of my verses. But Helen +has always been to me the symbol of perfect loveliness, and so it was +not unnatural that I should confuse you with her." + +"Thank you, sir," said she, demurely. + +"I half believe it is true, even now; and if not--well, Helen was +acceptable enough in her day, Elena, but I am willing to Italianise, for +I have seen you and loved you, and Helen is forgot. It is not exactly +the orthodox pace for falling in love," I added, with a boyish candour, +"but it is very real to me." + +"You--you couldn't have fallen in love--really--" + +"It was not in the least difficult," I protested. + +"And you don't even know my _name_--" + +"I know, however, what it is going to be," said I; "and Mrs. 'Enry +'Awkins, as we'll put it, has found favour in the judgment of +connoisseurs. So after dinner--in an hour--?" + +"Oh, very well! since you're an author and insist, I will be ready, in +an hour, to decline you, with thanks." + +"Rejection not implying any lack of merit," I suggested. "This is +damnable iteration; but I am accustomed to it." + +But by this, Mrs. Provis was gathering eyes around the table, and her +guests arose, with the usual outburst of conversation, and swishing of +dresses, and the not always unpremeditated dropping of handkerchiefs and +fans. Mrs. Clement Dumby bore down upon us now, a determined and +generously proportioned figure in her notorious black silk. + +"Really," said she, aggressively, "I never saw two people more +engrossed. My dear Mrs. Barry-Smith, you have been so taken up with Mr. +Townsend, all during dinner, that I haven't had a chance to welcome you +to Lichfield. Your mother and I were at school together, you know. And +your husband was quite a beau of mine. So I don't feel, now, at all as +if we were strangers--" + +And thus she bore Elena off, and I knew that within ten minutes Elena +would have been warned against me, as "not quite a desirable +acquaintance, you know, my dear, and it is only my duty to tell you that +as a young and attractive married woman--" + + + 2 + +"And so," I said in my soul, as the men redistributed themselves, "she +is married,--married while you were pottering with books and the turn of +phrases and immortality and such trifles--oh, you ass! And to a man +named Barry-Smith--damn him, I wonder whether he is the hungry scut that +hasn't had his hair cut this fall, or the blancmange-bellied one with +the mashed-strawberry nose? Yes, I know everybody else. And Jimmy Travis +is telling a funny story, so _laugh_! People will think you are grieving +over Rosalind.... But why in heaven's name isn't Jimmy at home this very +moment,--with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of +paregoric on his mantelpiece,--instead of here, grinning like a fool +over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to +marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron +that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren't _you_ married--married +years ago,--with a home of your own, and a victoria for Mrs. Townsend +and bills from the kindergarten every quarter? Oh, you bartender of +verbal cocktails! I believe your worst enemy flung your mind at you in a +moment of unbridled hatred." + +So I snapped the stem of my glass carefully, and scowled with morose +disapproval at the unconscious Mr. Travis, and his now-applauded and +very Fescennine jest.... + + + 3 + +I found her inspecting a bulky folio with remarkable interest. There was +a lamp, with a red shade, that cast a glow over her, such as one +sometimes sees reflected from a great fire. The people about us were +chattering idiotically, and something inside my throat prevented my +breathing properly, and I was miserable. + +"Mrs. Barry-Smith,"--thus I began,--"if you've the tiniest scrap of pity +in your heart for a very presumptuous, blundering and unhappy person, I +pray you to forgive and to forget, as people say, all that I have +blatted out to you. I spoke, as I thought, to a free woman, who had the +right to listen to my boyish talk, even though she might elect to laugh +at it. And now I hardly dare to ask forgiveness." + +Mrs. Barry-Smith inspected a view of the Matterhorn, with careful +deliberation. "Forgiveness?" said she. + +"Indeed," said I, "I _don't_ deserve it." And I smiled most resolutely. +"I had always known that somewhere, somehow, you would come into my life +again. It has been my dream all these two years; but I dream carelessly. +My visions had not included this--obstacle." + +She made wide eyes at me. "What?" said she. + +"Your husband," I suggested, delicately. + +The eyes flashed. And a view of Monaco, to all appearances, awoke some +pleasing recollection. "I confess," said Mrs. Barry-Smith, "that--for +the time--I had quite forgotten him. I--I reckon you must think me +very horrid?" + +But she was at pains to accompany this query with a broadside that +rendered such a supposition most unthinkable. And so-- + +"I think you--" My speech was hushed and breathless, and ended in a +click of the teeth. "Oh, don't let's go into the minor details," +I pleaded. + +Then Mrs. Barry-Smith descended to a truism. "It is usually better not +to," said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing +the facade of Notre Dame, "You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so much +older than I--" + +"I would prefer that. Of course, though, it is none of my business." + +"You see, you came and went so suddenly that--of course I never thought +to see you again--not that I ever thought about it, I reckon--" Her +candour would have been cruel had it not been reassuringly +over-emphasized. "And Mr. Barry-Smith was very pressing--" + +"He would be," I assented, after consideration. "It is, indeed, the +single point in his outrageous conduct I am willing to condone." + +"--and he was a great friend of my father's, and I _liked_ him--" + +"So you married him and lived together ever afterward, without ever +throwing the tureen at each other. That is the most modern version; but +there is usually a footnote concerning the bread-and-butter plates." + +She smiled, inscrutably, a sphinx in Dresden china. "And yet," she +murmured, plaintively, "I _would_ like to know what you think of me." + +"Why, prefacing with the announcement that I pray God I may never see +you after to-night, I think you the most adorable creature He ever made. +What does it matter now? I have lost you. I think--ah, desire o' the +world, what can I think of you? The notion of you dazzles me like +flame,--and I dare not think of you, for I love you." + +"Yes?" she queried, sweetly; "then I reckon Mrs. Dumby was right after +all. She said you were a most depraved person and that, as a young +and--well, _she_ said it, you know--attractive widow--" + +"H'm!" said I; and I sat down. "Elena Barry-Smith," I added, "you are an +unmitigated and unconscionable and unpardonable rascal. There is just +one punishment which would be adequate to meet your case; and I warn you +that I mean to inflict it. Why, how dare you be a widow! The court +decides it is unable to put up with any such nonsense, and that you've +got to stop it at once." + +"Really," said she, tossing her head and moving swiftly, "one would +think we _were_ on a desert island!" + +"Or a strange roof"--and I laughed, contentedly. "Meanwhile, about that +ring--it should be, I think, a heavy, Byzantine ring, with the stones +sunk deep in the dull gold. Yes, we'll have six stones in it; say, R, a +ruby; O, an opal; B, a beryl; E, an emerald; R, a ruby again, I suppose; +and T, a topaz. Elena, that's the very ring I mean to buy as soon as +I've had breakfast, tomorrow, as a token of my mortgage on the desire of +the world, and as the badge of your impendent slavery." And I reflected +that Rosalind had, after all, behaved commendably in humiliating me by +so promptly returning this ring. + +Very calmly Elena Barry-Smith regarded the Bay of Naples; very calmly +she turned to the Taj Mahal. "An obese young Lochinvar," she reflected +aloud, "who has seen me twice, unblushingly assumes he is about to marry +me! Of course," she sighed, quite tolerantly, "I know he is clean out of +his head, for otherwise--" "Yes,--otherwise?" I prompted. + +"--he would never ask me to wear an opal. Why," she cried in horror, "I +couldn't think of it!" "You mean--?" said I. + +She closed the album, with firmness. "Why, you are just a child," said +Mrs. Barry-Smith. "We are utter strangers to each other. Please remember +that, for all you know, I may have an unbridled temper, or an imported +complexion, or a liking for old man Ibsen. What you ask--only you don't, +you simply assume it,--is preposterous. And besides, opals +_are_ unlucky." + +"Desire o' the world," I said, in dolorous wise, "I have just remembered +the black-lace mitts and reticule you left upon the dinner-table. Oh, +truly, I had meant to bring 'em to you--Only _do_ you think it quite +good form to put on those cloth-sided shoes when you've been invited to +a real party?" + +For a moment Mrs. Barry-Smith regarded me critically. Then she shook her +head, and tried to frown, and reopened the album, and inspected the +crater of Vesuvius, and quite frankly laughed. And a tender, pink-tipped +hand rested upon my arm for an instant,--a brief instant, yet pulsing +with a sense of many lights and of music playing somewhere, and of a +man's heart keeping time to it. + +"If you were to make it an onyx--" said Mrs. Barry-Smith. + + + + +21. + +_He is Urged to Desert His Galley_ + + +She had been a widow even when I first encountered her in Liege. I may +have passed her dozens of times, only she was in mourning then, for +Barry-Smith, and so I never really saw her. + +It seems, though, that "in the second year" it is permissible to wear +pink garments in the privacy of your own apartments, and that if people +see you in them, accidentally, it is simply their own fault. + +And very often they are punished for it; as most certainly was I, for +Elena led me a devil's dance of jealousy, and rapture, and abject +misery, and suspicion, and supreme content, that next four months. She +and her mother had rented a house on Regis Avenue for the winter; and I +frequented it with zeal. Mrs. Vokins said I "came reg'lar as +the milkman." + + + 2 + +Now of Mrs. Vokins I desire to speak with the greatest respect, if only +for the reason that she was Elena Barry-Smith's mother. Mrs. Vokins had, +no doubt, the kindest heart in the world; but she had spent the first +thirty years of her life in a mountain-girdled village, and after her +husband's wonderful luck--if you will permit me her vernacular,--in +being "let in on the groundfloor" when the Amalgamated Tobacco Company +was organised, I believe that Mrs. Vokins was never again quite at ease. + +I am abysmally sure she never grew accustomed to being waited on by any +servant other than a girl who "came in by the day"; though, oddly +enough, she was incessantly harassed by the suspicion that one or +another "good-for-nothing nigger was getting ready to quit." Her time +was about equally devoted to tending her canary, Bill Bryan, and to +furthering an apparently diurnal desire to have supper served a quarter +of an hour earlier to-night, "so that the servants can get off." + +Finally Mrs. Vokins considered that "a good woman's place was right in +her own home, with a nice clean kitchen," and was used to declare that +the fummadiddles of Mrs. Carrie Nation--who was in New York that winter, +you may remember, advocating Prohibition,--would never have been stood +for where Mrs. Vokins was riz. Them Yankee huzzies, she estimated, did +beat her time. + + + 3 + +It was, and is, the oddest thing I ever knew of that Elena could have +been her daughter. Though, mind you, even to-day, I cannot commit myself +to any statement whatever as concerns Elena Barry-Smith, beyond +asserting that she was beautiful. I am willing to concede that since the +world's creation there may have lived, say, six or seven women who were +equally good to look upon; but at the bottom of my heart I know the +concession is simply verbal. For she was not pretty; she was not +handsome; she was beautiful. Indeed, I sometimes thought her beauty +overshadowed any serious consideration of the woman who wore it, just as +in admiration of a picture you rarely think to wonder what sort of +canvas it is painted on. + +Yes, I am quite sure, upon reflection, that to Elena Barry-Smith her +beauty was a sort of tyrant. She devoted her life, I think, to the +retention of her charms; and what with the fixed seven hours for +sleep--no more and not a moment less,--the rigid limits of her diet, the +walking of exactly five miles a day, and her mathematical adherence to a +predetermined programme of massage and hair-treatment and manicuring and +face-creams and so on, Elena had hardly two hours in a day at her +own disposal. + +She would as soon have thought of sacrificing her afternoon walk to the +Musgrave Monument and back, as of having a front-tooth unnecessarily +removed; and would as willingly have partaken of prussic acid as of +candy or potatoes. She was, in fine, an artist of the truest type, in +that she immolated her body, and her own preferences, in the cause +of beauty. + +Nor was she vain, or stupid either, though what I have written vaguely +sounds as though she were both. She was just Elena Barry-Smith, of whom +your memory was always how beautiful she had been at this or that +particular moment, rather than what she said or did. And I believe that +every man in Lichfield was in love with her. + +But, in recollection of any person with whom you have had intimate and +tender intercourse, the pre-eminent feature is the big host of questions +which you cannot answer, or not, at least, with certainty.... + + + 4 + +For instance: the night of the Allardyce dance, after seeing Elena home, +I stepped in for a moment to get warm and have her mix me a highball. We +sat for a considerable while on the long sofa in the dimly-lighted +dining room, talking in whispers so as not to disturb the rest of the +house: and Elena was unusually beautiful that night, and I was more than +usually in love, more thanks to three of the five drinks she mixed.... + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she stated, sighing. + +I did not say anything. + +"Oh, well, then--! If you will just promise me," she stipulated, "that +you will never in any way refer to it afterwards--" + +So I promised.... And the next day she met me, cool as the proverbial +cucumber, and never once did she "refer to it afterwards," nor did I +think it wise to do so either. But the incident, however delightful, +puzzled me. It puzzles me even now.... + + + 5 + +In any event, she was not only beautiful but exceedingly well-to-do +likewise, since her dead father and her husband also had provided for +her amply; and Lichfield sniggered in consequence, and as a matter of +course assumed my devotion to be of astute and mercenary origin. But I +had, in this period, a variety of reasons to know that Lichfield was for +once entirely in the wrong; and that what Lichfield mistook to be the +begetter of, was in reality--so we will phrase it--the almost +unnecessary augmenter of my infatuation. Of course I did not exactly +object to her having money.... + +Meantime Elena was profoundly various. I told her once that being +married to her would be the very next thing to owning a harem. And in +consequence of this same mutability, it was as late as March before +Elena Barry-Smith made up her mind to marry me; and I was so deliciously +perturbed that the same night I wrote to tell Bettie Hamlyn all about +it. I had accepted Rosalind more calmly somehow. Now I was dithyrambic; +and you would never have suspected I had lived within fifty miles of +Bettie for an entire two years without attempting to communicate with +her, for very certainly my letter did not touch upon the fact. I was, in +fine, supremely happy, and I wanted Bettie, first of all, to know of +this circumstance, because my happiness had always made her happy too. + +The act was natural enough; only Elena telephoned, at nine the following +morning, that she had altered her intention. + +"My regret is beyond expression," said I, politely, "I shall come for my +tea at five, however." + +She entered upon a blurred protest. "You have already broken my heart," +I said, with some severity, "and now it would appear you contemplate +swindling the remainder of my anatomy out of its deserts. You are a +curmudgeon." And I hung up the receiver. + +And my first thought was, "Oh, how gladly I would give the gold of Ormus +and of Alaska just to have my letter back!" But I had mailed it, +shuffling to the corner in my slippers, and without any collar on, in +the hushed middle of the night, because my letter had seemed so +important then. + + + 6 + +"Will you not have me, lady?" I began that afternoon. + +"No, my lord," she demurely responded, "for I've decided it would be too +much like living in my Sunday-clothes." + +And "I give it up. So what's the answer?" was my annotation. + +"Oh, I'm not making jokes to-day. Why are you so--Oh, as we used to say +at school," she re-began, _"Que diable allais-tu faire dans +cette galere?"_ + +"I was born in a vale of tears, Elena, and must take the consequences of +being found in such a situation." + +She came to me, and her finger-tips touched my hand ever so lightly. +"That is another quotation, I suppose. And it is one other reason why I +mean not to marry you. Frankly, you bore me to death with your +erudition; you are three-quarters in love with me, but you pay heaps +less attention to what I say about anything than to what Aristotle or +some other old fellow said about it. Oh, that I should have lived to be +jealous of Aristotle! Indeed I am, for I have the misfortune to be +hideously in love with you. You are so exactly the sort of infant I +would like to adopt." + +"Love," I suggested, "while no longer an excuse for marriage, is at +least a palliation." + +"Listen, dear. From the first I have liked you, but that was not very +strange, because I like almost everybody; but it was strange I should +have remembered you and have liked the idea of you ever since you went +away that first time." + +"Oh, well, this once I will excuse you--" + +"But it happened in this way: I had found everybody--very nice, you +know--particularly the men,--and the things which cannot be laughed at I +had always put aside as not worth thinking about. You like to laugh, +too, but I have always known--and sometimes it gets me real mad to think +about it, I can tell you--that you could be in earnest if you chose, and +I can't. And that makes me a little sorry and tremendously glad, +because, quite frankly, I _am_ head over heels in love with you. That is +why I don't intend to marry you." + +And I was not a little at sea. "Oh, very well!" I pleasantly announced, +"I shall become a prominent citizen at once, if that's all that is +necessary. I will join every one of the patriotic societies, and sit +perpetually on platforms with a perspiring water-pitcher, and unveil +things every week, with felicitous allusions to the glorious past of our +grand old State; and have columns of applause in brackets on the front +page of the _Courier-Herald_. I will even go into civic politics, if you +insist upon it, and leave round-cornered cards at all the drugstores, so +that everybody who buys a cigar will know I am subject to the Democratic +primary. I wonder, by the way, if people ever survive that malady? It +sounds to me a deal more dangerous that epilepsy, say, yet lots of +persons seem to have it--" + +But Elena was not listening. "You know," she re-began, "I could get out +of it all very gracefully by telling you you drink too much. You +couldn't argue it, you know--particularly after your behavior +last Tuesday." + +"Oh, now and then one must be sociable. You aren't a prude, Elena--" + +"However, I am not really afraid of that, somehow. I even confess I +don't actually _mind_ your being rather good for nothing. No woman ever +really does, though she has her preference, and pretends, of course, to +mind a great deal. What I mean, then, is this: You don't marry just me. +I--I have very few relations, just two brothers and my mother; yet, in a +sense, you know, you marry them as well. But I don't believe you would +like being married to them. They are so different from you, dear. Your +whole view-point of life is different--" + +I had begun to speak when she broke in: "No, don't say anything, please, +until I'm quite, quite through. My brothers are the most admirable men I +ever knew. I love them more than I can say. I trust them more than I do +you. But they are just _good_. They don't fail in the really important +things of life, but they are remiss in little ways, they--they don't +_care_ for the little elegantnesses, if that's a word. Even Arthur chews +tobacco when he feels inclined. And he thinks no _man_ would smoke a +cigarette. Oh, I can't explain just what I mean--" + +"I think I understand, Elena. Suppose we let it pass as said." + +"And Mamma is not--we'll say, particularly highly educated. Oh, you've +been very nice to her. She adores you. You won _her_ over completely +when you took so much trouble to get her the out-of-print paper +novels--about the village maidens and the wicked dukes--in that idiotic +Carnation Series she is always reading. The whole affair was just like +both of you, I think." + +"But, oh, my dear--!" I laughed. + +"No, not one man in a thousand would have remembered it after she had +said she did think the titles 'were real tasty'; and I don't believe any +other man in the world would have spent a week in rummaging the +second-hand bookstores, until he found them. Only I don't know, even +yet, whether it was really kindness, or just cleverness that put you up +to it--on account of me. And I do know that you are nice to her in +pretty much the same way you were nice to the negro cook yesterday. And +I have had more advantages than she's had. But at bottom I'm really just +like her. You'd find it out some day. And--and that is what I mean, +I think." + +I spoke at some length. It was atrocious nonsense which I spoke; in any +event, it looked like atrocious nonsense when I wrote it down just now, +and so I tore it up. But I was quite sincere throughout that moment; it +is the Townsend handicap, I suspect, always to be perfectly sincere for +the moment. + +"Oh, well!" she said; "I'll think about it." + + + 7 + +That night Elena and I played bridge against Nannie Allsotts and Warwick +Risby. I was very much in love with Elena, but I hold it against her, +even now, that she insisted on discarding from strength. However, there +was to be a little supper afterward, and you may depend upon it that +Mrs. Vokins was seeing to its preparation. + +She came into the room about eleven o'clock, beaming with kindliness and +flushed--I am sure,--by some slight previous commerce with the +kitchen-fire. + +"Well, well!" said Mrs. Vokins, comfortably; "and who's a-beating?" + +I looked up. I must protest, until my final day, I could not help it. +"Why, we is," I said. + +And Nannie Allsotts giggled, ever so slightly, and Warwick Risby had +half risen, with a quite infuriate face, and I knew that by to-morrow +the affair would be public property, and promptly lost the game and +rubber. Afterward we had our supper. + +When the others had gone--for my footing in the house was such that I, +by ordinary, stayed a moment or two after the others had gone,--Elena +Barry-Smith came to me and soundly boxed my jaws. + +"That," she said, "is one way to deal with you." + +A minute ago I had been ashamed of myself. I had not room to be that +now; I was too full of anger. "I did make rather a mess of it," I +equably remarked, "but, you see, Nannie had shown strength in diamonds, +and I simply couldn't resist the finesse. So they made every one of +their clubs. And I hadn't any business to take the chance of course at +that stage, with the ace right in my hand--" + +"Arthur would have said, before he'd thought of it, 'You damn fool--!' +And then he would have apologised for forgetting himself in the presence +of a lady," she said, in a sorry little voice. "Yes, you--you _have_ +hurt me," she presently continued,--"just as you meant to do, if that's +a comfort to you. I feel as though I'd smacked a marble statue. You are +the sort that used to take snuff just before they had their heads cut +off, and when _they_ were in the wrong. And I'm not. That's always been +the trouble." + +"Elena!" I began,--"wait, just a moment! I'm in anger now--!" It was not +much to stammer out, but for me, who have the Townsend temper, it was +very hard to say. + +"You talk about loving me! and I believe you do love me, in at any rate +a sort of way. But you'll never forget, you never _have_ forgotten, +those ancestors of yours who were in the House of Burgesses when I +hadn't any ancestors at all. It isn't fair, because we haven't got the +chance to pick our parents, and it's absurd, and--it's true. The woman +is my mother, and I'll be like her some day, very probably. Yes, she +_is_ ignorant and tacky, and at times she is ridiculous. She hadn't even +the smartness to notice it when you made a fool of her; and if anybody +were to explain it to her she would just laugh and say, 'Law, I don't +mind, because young people always have to have their fun, I reckon.' And +she would forgive you! Why, she adores you! she's been telling me for +months that you're 'a heap the nicest young man that visits with me.'" + +Afterward Elena paused for an instant. "I think that is all," she said. +"It's a difference that isn't curable. Yes, I simply wanted to tell you +that much, and then ask you to go, I believe--" + +"So you don't wish me, Elena, in the venerable phrase, to make an honest +woman of you?" + +She had half turned, standing, in pink and silver fripperies, with one +bared arm resting on the chair back, in one of her loveliest attitudes. +"What do you mean?" + +"I was referring to what happened the other night, after the Allardyce +dance." + +And Elena smiled rather strangely. "You baby! how much would it shock +you if I told you no woman really minds about that either? Any way, you +have broken your solemn promise," she said, with indignation. + +"Ah, but perfidy seemed, somehow, in tone with an establishment wherein +one concludes the evening's entertainment by physical assault upon the +guests. Frankly, my dear"--I observed, with my most patronizing languor, +--"your breeding is not quite that to which I have been accustomed, and +I have had a rather startling glimpse of Lena Vokins, with all the +laboriously acquired veneering peeling off. Still, in view of +everything, I suppose I do owe it to you to marry you, if you insist--" + +"Insist! I wouldn't wipe my feet on you!" + +"That especial demonstration of affection was not, as I recall, +requested of you. So it is all off? along with the veneering, eh? Well, +perhaps I did attach too much importance to that diverting epilogue to +the Allardyce dance. And as you say, Elena--and I take your word for it, +gladly,--once one has become used to granting these little favors +indiscriminately--" + +"Get out of my house!" Elena said, quite splendid in her fury, "or I +will have you horsewhipped. I was fond of you. You would not let me be +in peace. And I didn't know you until to-night for the sneering, +stuck-up dirty beast you are at heart--" She came nearer, and her +glittering eyes narrowed. "And you have no hold on me, no letters to +blackmail me with, and nobody anywhere would take your word for anything +against mine. You would only be whipped by some real man, and probably +shot. So do you remember to keep a watch upon that lying, sneering mouth +of yours! And do you get out of my house!" + +"It is only rented," I submitted: "yet, after all, to boast +vaingloriously of their possessions is pardonable in those who have +risen in the world, and aren't quite accustomed to it...." There were a +pair of us when it came to tempers. + + + 8 + +And I went homeward almost physically sick with rage. I knew, even then, +that, while Elena would forgive me in the outcome, if I set about the +matter properly, I could never bring myself to ask forgiveness. If only +she had been in the wrong, I could have eagerly gone back and have +submitted to the extremest and the most outrageous tyranny she +could devise. + +But--although I would never have blackmailed her, I think,--she had been +mainly in the right. She had humiliated me, with a certain lack of +decorum, to be sure, but with some justice: and to pardon plain +retaliation is beyond the compass of humanity. At least, it ranks among +achievements which have always baffled me. + + + + +22. + +_He Cleans the Slate_ + + +It was within a month of this other disaster that Jasper Hardress came +to America, accompanied by his wife. They planned a tour of the States, +which they had not visited in seven years, and more particularly, as his +forerunning letter said, they meant to investigate certain mining +properties which Hardress had acquired in Montana. So, not unstirred by +trepidations, I met them at the pier. + +For I was already in New York, in part to see a volume of my short +stories through the press--which you may or may not have read, in its +elaborate "gift-book" form, under the title of _The Aspirants_,--and in +part about less edifying employments. I was trying to forget Elena, and +in Lichfield it was not possible to induce such forgetfulness without +affording unmerited pleasure for gabbling busybodies.... It was not in +me to apologise, except in a letter, where the wording and interminable +tinkering with phraseology would enable me to forget it was I who was +apologising, until a bit of nearly perfect prose was safely mailed; and +I knew she would not read any letter from me, because Elena comprehended +that I always persuaded her to do what I prompted, if only she +listened to me. + +As it was, I talked that morning for an hour or more with fat Jasper +Hardress.... Even now I find the two errands which brought him to +America of not unlaughable incongruity. + + + 2 + +For, first, he came as an agent of the Philomatheans, who were +endeavouring to secure official recognition by the churches of America +and England of a revised translation of, in any event, the New +Testament. + +He told me of a variety of buttressing reasons,--which I suppose are +well-founded, though I must confess I never investigated the matter. He +told me how the Authorised Version was a paraphrase, abounding in +confusions and in mistranslations from the Greek of Erasmus's New +Testament, which, as the author confessed, "was rather tumbled headlong +into the world than edited." And he told me how the edition of Erasmus +itself was hastily prepared from careless copies of inaccurate +transcriptions of yet further copies of divers manuscripts of which the +oldest dates no further back than the fourth century, and is in turn, +most probably, just a liberal paraphrase, as all the others are, of +still another manuscript. + +So that the English version, as I gathered, may be very fine English, +but has scarcely a leg left, when you consider it as a safe foundation +for superiority, or pillorying, or as a guide in conduct. + +I suspect, however, that Jasper Hardress somewhat overstated the case, +since on this subject he was a fanatic. To me it seemed rather quaint +that Hardress or anybody else should be bothering about such things. + +And as he feelingly declaimed concerning the great Uncials, and +explained why in this particular verse the Ephraem manuscript was in the +right, whereas to probe the meaning of the following verse we clearly +must regard the Syriac version as of supreme authority, I could well +understand how at one period or another his young wife must inevitably +have considered him in the light of a rather tedious person. + +And I told him that it hardly mattered, because the true test of a +church-member was the ability to believe that when the Bible said +anything inconvenient it really meant something else. + +But actually I was not feeling over-cheerful, because Jasper's second +object in coming to America was to leave his wife in Sioux City, so that +she could secure a divorce from him, on quite un-Scriptural grounds. +Hardress told me of this at least without any excitement. He did not +blame her. He was too old for her, too stolid, too dissimilar in every +respect, he said. Their marriage had been a mistake, that was all,--a +mismating, as many marriages were. She wanted to marry someone else, he +rather thought. + +And "Oh, Lord! yes!" I inwardly groaned. "She probably does." + +Aloud I said: "But the Bible--Yes, I _am_ provincial at bottom. It's +because I always think in nigger-English and translate it when I talk. +It was my Mammy, you see, who taught me how to think,--and in our +nigger-English, what the Bible says is true. Why, Jasper, even this +Revised Version of yours says flatly that a man--" + +"Child, child!" said Jasper Hardress, and he patted my hair, and I +really think it crinkled under his touch, "when you grow up--if indeed +you ever do,--you will find that a man's feeling for his wife and the +mother of his children, is not altogether limited by what he has read in +a book. He wants--well, just her happiness." + +I looked up without thinking; and the aspect of that gross and +unattractive man humiliated me. He had reached a height denied to such +as I; and inwardly I cursed and envied this fat Jasper Hardress.... I +would have told him everything, had not the waiter come just then. + + + 3 + +And the same afternoon I was alone with Gillian Hardress, for the first +time in somewhat more than two years. We had never written each other; I +had been too cautious for that; and now when the lean, handsome woman +came toward me, murmuring "Jack--" very tenderly,--for she had always +called me Jack, you may remember,--I raised a hand in protest. + +"No,--that is done with, Jill. That is dead and buried now, my dear." + +She remained motionless; only her eyes, which were like chrysoberyls, +seemed to grow larger and yet more large. There was no anger in them, +only an augmenting wonder. + +"Ah, yes," she said at last, and seemed again to breathe; "so that is +dead and buried--in two years." Gillian Hardress spoke with laborious +precision, like a person struggling with a foreign language, and +articulating each word to its least sound before laying tongue to its +successor. + +"Yes! we have done with each other, once for all," said I, half angrily. +"I wash my hands of the affair, I clean the slate today. I am not polite +about it, and--I am sorry, dear. But I talked with your husband this +morning, and I will deceive Jasper Hardress no longer. The man loves you +as I never dreamed of loving any woman, as I am incapable of loving any +woman. He dwarfs us. Oh, go and tell him, so that he may kill us both! I +wish to God he would!" + +Mrs. Hardress said: "You have planned to marry. It is time the prodigal +marry and settle down, is it not? So long as we were in England it did +not matter, except to that Faroy girl you seduced and flung out into the +streets--" + +"I naturally let her go when I found out--" + +"As if I cared about the creature! She's done with. But now we are in +America, and Mr. Townsend desires no entanglements just now that might +prevent an advantageous marriage. So he is smitten--very +conveniently--with remorse." Gillian began to laugh. "And he discovers +that Jasper Hardress is a better man than he. Have I not always known +that, Jack?" + +Now came a silence. "I cannot argue with you as to my motives. Let us +have no scene, my dear--" + +"God keep us respectable!" the woman said; and then: "No; I can afford +to make no scene. I can only long to be omnipotent for just one instant +that I might deal with you, Robert Townsend, as I desire--and even then, +heaven help me, I would not do it!" Mrs. Hardress sat down upon the +divan and laughed, but this time naturally. "So! it is done with? I have +had my dismissal, and, in common justice, you ought to admit that I have +received it not all ungracefully." + +"From the first," I said, "you have been the most wonderful woman I have +ever known." And I knew that I was sincerely fond of Gillian Hardress. + +"But please go now," she said, "and have a telegram this evening that +will call you home, or to Kamchatka, or to Ecuador, or anywhere, on +unavoidable business. No, it is not because I loathe the sight of you or +for any melodramatic reason of that sort. It is because, I think, I had +fancied you to be not completely self-centred, after all, and I cannot +bear to face my own idiocy. Why, don't you realize it was only yesterday +you borrowed money from Jasper Hardress--some more money!" + +"Well, but he insisted on it: and I owed it to you to do nothing to +arouse his suspicions--" + +"And I don't hate you even now! I wish God would explain to me why He +made women so." + +"You accuse me of selfishness," I cried. "Ah, let us distinguish, for +there is at times a deal of virtue in this vice. A man who devotes +himself to any particular art or pursuit, for instance, becomes more and +more enamoured of it as time wears on, because he comes to identify it +with himself; and a husband is fonder of his wife than of any other +woman,--at least, he ought to be,--not because he considers her the most +beautiful and attractive person of his acquaintance, but because she is +the one in whom he is most interested and concerned. He has a +proprietary interest in her welfare, and she is in a manner part of +himself. Thus the arts flourish and the home-circle is maintained, and +all through selfishness." + +I snapped my fingers airily; I was trying, of course, to disgust her by +my callousness. And it appeared I had almost succeeded. + +"Please go!" she said. + +"But surely not while we are as yet involved in a question of plain +logic? You think selfishness a vice. None the less you must concede that +the world has invariably progressed because, upon the whole, we find +civilisation to be more comfortable than barbarism; and that a wholesome +apprehension of the penitentiary enables many of us to rise to +deaconships. Why, deuce take it, Jill! I may endow a hospital because I +want to see my name over the main entrance, I may give a beggar a penny +because his gratitude puts me in a glow of benevolence that is cheap at +the price. So let us not rashly declare that selfishness is a vice, +and--let us part friends, my dear." + +And I assumed possession of the thin hands that seemed to push me from +her in a species of terror, and I gallantly lifted them to my lips. + +The ensuing event was singular. Gillian Hardress turned to the door of +her bedroom and brutally, as with two bludgeons, struck again and again +upon its panels with clenched hand. She extended her hands to me, and +everywhere their knuckles oozed blood. "You kissed them," she said, "and +even today they liked it, and so they are not clean. They will never +again be clean, my dear. But they were clean before you came." + +Then Gillian Hardress left me, and where she had touched it, the brass +door knob of her bedroom door was smeared with blood.... + + + 4 + +When I had come again to Lichfield I found that in the brief interim of +my absence Elena Barry-Smith, without announcement, had taken the train +for Washington, and had in that city married Warwick Risby. This was, I +knew, because she comprehended that, if I so elected, it was always in +my power to stop her halfway up the aisle and to dissuade her from +advancing one step farther.... "I don't know _how_ it is!--" she would +have said, in that dear quasi-petulance I knew so well.... + +But as it was, I met the two one evening at the Provises', and with +exuberant congratulation. Then straddling as a young Colossus on the +hearth-rug, and with an admonitory forefinger, I proclaimed to the +universe at large that Mrs. Risby had blighted my existence and +beseeched for Warwick some immediate and fatal and particularly +excruciating malady. In fine, I was abjectly miserable the while that I +disarmed all comment by being quite delightfully boyish for a whole +two hours. + +I must record it, though, that Mrs. Vokins patted my hand when nobody +else was looking, and said: "Oh, my dear Mr. Bob, I wish it had been +you! You was always the one I liked the best." For that, in view of +every circumstance, was humorous, and hurt as only humour can. + +So in requital, on the following morning, I mailed to Mrs. Risby some +verses. This sounds a trifle like burlesque; but Elena had always a sort +of superstitious reverence for the fact that I "wrote things." It would +not matter at all that the verses were abominable; indeed, Elena would +never discover this; she would simply set about devising an excellent +reason for not showing them to anybody, and would consider Warwick +Risby, if only for a moment, in the light of a person who, whatever his +undeniable merits, had neither the desire nor the ability to write +"poetry." And, though it was hideously petty, this was precisely what I +desired her to do. + +So I dispatched to her a sonnet-sequence which I had originally +plagiarized from the French of Theodore Passerat in honour of Stella. I +loathed sending Stella's verses to anyone else, somehow; but, after all, +my one deterrent was merely a romantic notion; and there was not time to +compose a new set. Moreover, "your eyes are blue, your speech is +gracious, but you are not she; and I am older,--and changed how +utterly!--I am no longer I, you are not you," and so on, was absolutely +appropriate. And Elena most undoubtedly knew nothing of Theodore +Passerat. And Stella, being dead, could never know what I had done. + +So I sent the verses, with a few necessitated alterations, to the +address of Mrs. Warwick Risby. + + + 5 + +I had within the week, an unsigned communication which, for a long while +afterward, I did not comprehend. It was the photograph of an infant, +with the photographer's address scratched from the cardboard and without +of course any decipherable postmark; and upon the back of the thing was +written: "His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the +flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been +upon him. Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his +morsel and his song." + +I thought it was a joke of some sort. + +Then it occurred to me that this might be--somehow--Elena's answer. It +was an interpretation which probably appealed to the Supernal +Aristophanes. + + + + +23. + +_He Reviles Destiny and Climbs a Wall_ + + +But now the spring was come again, and, as always at this season, I was +pricked with vague longings to have done with roofs and paven places. I +wanted to be in the open. I think I wanted to fall in love with +somebody, and thereby somewhat to prolong the daily half-minute, +immediately after awakening in the morning, during which I did not think +about Elena Risby. + +I was bored in Lichfield. For nothing of much consequence seemed, as I +yawned over the morning paper, to be happening anywhere. The Illinois +Legislature had broken up in a free fight, a British square had been +broken in Somaliland, and at the Aqueduct track Alado had broken his +jockey's neck. A mob had chased a negro up Broadway: Russia had demanded +that China cede the sovereignty of Manchuria; and Dr. Lyman Abbott was +explaining why the notion of equal suffrage had been abandoned finally +by thinking people. + +Such negligible matters contributed not at all to the comfort or the +discomfort of Robert Etheridge Townsend; and I was pricked with vague +sweet longings to have done with roofs and paven places. If only I +possessed a country estate, a really handsome Manor or a Grange, I was +reflecting as I looked over the "Social Items," and saw that Miss +Hugonin and Colonel Hugonin had re-opened Selwoode for the summer +months.... + +So I decided I would go to Gridlington, whither Peter Blagden had +forgotten to invite me. He was extremely glad to see me, though, to do +him justice. For Peter--by this time the inheritor of his unlamented +uncle's estate,--had, very properly, developed gout, which is, I take +it, the time-honoured appendage of affluence and, so to speak, its +trade-mark; and was, for all his wealth, unable to get up and down the +stairs of his fine house without, as we will delicately word it, the +display and, at times, the overtaxing of a copious vocabulary. + + + 2 + +I was at Gridlington entirely comfortable. It was spring, to begin with, +and out of doors in spring you always know, at twenty-five, that +something extremely pleasant is about to happen, and that She is quite +probably around the very next turn of the lane. + +Moreover, there was at Gridlington a tiny private garden which had once +been the recreation of Peter Blagden's aunt (dead now twelve years ago), +and which had remained untended since her cosseting; and I in nature +took charge of it. + +There was in the place a wilding peach-tree, which I artistically sawed +into shape and pruned and grafted, and painted all those profitable +wounds with tar; and I grew to love it, just as most people do their +children, because it was mine. And Peter, who is a person of no +sensibility, wanted to ring for a servant one night, when there was a +hint of frost and I had started out to put a bucket of water under my +tree to protect it. I informed him that he was irrevocably dead to all +the nobler sentiments, and went to the laundry and got a wash-tub. + +Peter was not infrequently obtuse. He would contend, for instance, that +it was absurd for any person to get so gloriously hot and dirty while +setting out plants, when that person objected to having a flower in the +same room. For Peter could not understand that a cut flower is a dead +or, at best, a dying thing, and therefore to considerate people is just +so much abhorrent carrion; and denied it would be really quite as +rational to decorate your person or your dinner table with the severed +heads of chickens as with those of daffodils. + +"But that is only because you are not particularly bright," I told him. +"Oh, I suppose you can't help it. But why make _all_ the actions of your +life so foolish? What good do you get out of having the gout, for +instance?" + +Whereupon Mr. Blagden desired to be informed if I considered those +with-various-adjectives-accompanied twinges in that qualified foot to be +a source of personal pleasure to the owner of the very-extensively-hiatused +foot. In which case, Mr. Blagden felt at liberty to express his opinion of +my intellectual attainments, which was of an uncomplimentary nature. + +"Because, you know," I pursued, equably, "you wouldn't have the gout if +you did not habitually overeat yourself and drink more than is good for +you. In consequence, here you are at thirty-two with a foot the same +general size and shape as a hayrick, only rather less symmetrical, and +quite unable to attend to the really serious business of life, which is +to present me to the heiress. It is a case of vicarious punishment which +strikes me as extremely unfair. You have made of your stomach a god, +Peter, and I am the one to suffer for it. You have made of your +stomach," I continued, venturing aspiringly into metaphor, "a brazen +Moloch, before which you are now calmly preparing to immolate my +prospects in life. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Peter!" + +Mr. Blagden's next observation was describable as impolite. + +"Fate, too," I lamented, in a tragic voice, "appears to have entered +into this nefarious conspiracy. Here, not two miles away, is one of the +greatest heiresses in America,--clever, I am told, beautiful, I am sure, +for I have yet to discover a woman who sees anything in the least +attractive about her,--and, above all, with the Woods millions at her +disposal. Why, Peter, Margaret Hugonin is the woman I have been looking +for these last three years. She is, to a hair, the sort of woman I have +always intended to make unhappy. And I can't even get a sight of her! +Here are you, laid up with the gout, and unable to help me; and yonder +is the heiress, making a foolish pretence at mourning for the old +curmudgeon who left her all that money, and declining to meet people. +Oh, but she is a shiftless woman, Peter! At this very moment she might +be getting better acquainted with me; at this very moment, Peter, I +might be explaining to her in what points she is utterly and entirely +different from all the other women I have ever known. And she prefers to +immure herself in Selwoode, with no better company than her father, that +ungodly old retired colonel, and a she-cousin, somewhere on the +undiscussable side of forty--when she might be engaging me in amorous +dalliance! That Miss Hugonin is a shiftless woman, I tell you! And +Fate--oh, but Fate, too, is a vixenish jade!" I cried, and shook my fist +under the nose of an imaginary Lachesis. + +"You appear," said Peter, drily, "to be unusually well-informed as to +what is going on at Selwoode." + +"You flatter me," I answered, as with proper modesty. "You must remember +that there are maids at Selwoode. You must remember that my man Byam, +is--and will be until that inevitable day when he will attempt to +blackmail me, and I shall kill him in the most lingering fashion I can +think of,--that Byam is, I say, something of a diplomatist." + +Mr. Blagden regarded me with disapproval. + +"So you've been sending your nigger cousin over to Selwoode to spy for +you! You're a damn cad, you know, Bob," he pensively observed. "Now most +people think that when you carry on like a lunatic you're simply acting +on impulse. I don't. I believe you plan it out a week ahead. I sometimes +think you are the most adroit and unblushing looker-out for number one I +ever knew; and I can't for the life of me understand why I don't turn +you out of doors." + +"I don't know where you picked up your manners," said I, reflectively, +"but it must have been in devilish low company. I would cut your +acquaintance, Peter, if I could afford it." Then I fell to pacing up and +down the floor. "I incline, as you have somewhat grossly suggested, to a +certain favouritism among the digits. And why the deuce shouldn't I? A +fortune is the only thing I need. I have good looks, you know, of a +sort; ah, I'm not vain, but both my glass and a number of women have +been kind enough to reassure me on this particular point. And that I +have a fair amount of wits my creditors will attest, who have lived +promise-crammed for the last year or two, feeding upon air like +chameleons. Then I have birth,--not that good birth ensures anything but +bad habits though, for you will observe that, by some curious freak of +nature, an old family-tree very seldom produces anything but wild oats. +And, finally, I have position. I can introduce my wife into the best +society; ah, yes, you may depend upon it, Peter, she will have the +privilege of meeting the very worst and stupidest and silliest people in +the country on perfectly equal terms. You will perceive, then, that the +one desirable thing I lack is wealth. And this I shall naturally expect +my wife to furnish. So, the point is settled, and you may give me a +cigarette." + +Peter handed me the case, with a snort. "You are a hopelessly conceited +ass," Mr. Blagden was pleased to observe, "for otherwise you would have +learned, by this, that you'll, most likely, never have the luck of +Charteris, and land a woman who will take it as a favour that you let +her pay your bills. God knows you've angled for enough of 'em!" + +"You are painfully coarse, Peter," I pointed out, with a sigh. "Indeed, +your general lack of refinement might easily lead one to think you owed +your millions to your own thrifty industry, or some equally unpleasant +attribute, rather than to your uncle's very commendable and lucrative +innovation in the line of--well, I remember it was something extremely +indigestible, but, for the moment, I forget whether it was steam-reapers +or a new sort of pickle. Yes, in a great many respects, you are +hopelessly parvenuish. This cigarette-case, for instance--studded with +diamonds and engraved with a monogram big enough for a coach-door! Why, +Peter, it simply reeks with the ostentation of honestly acquired +wealth,--and with very good tobacco, too, by the way. I shall take it, +for I am going for a walk, and I haven't any of my own. And some day I +shall pawn this jewelled abortion, Peter,--pawn it for much fine gold; +and upon the proceeds I shall make merriment for myself and for my +friends." And I pocketed the case. + +"That's all very well," Peter growled, "but you needn't try to change +the subject. You know you _have_ angled after any number of rich women +who have had sense enough, thank God, to refuse you. You didn't use to +be--but now you're quite notoriously good-for-nothing." + +"It is the one blemish," said I, sweetly, "upon an otherwise perfect +character. And it is true," I continued, after an interval of +meditation, "that I have, in my time, encountered some very foolish +women. There was, for instance, Elena Barry-Smith, who threw me over for +Warwick Risby; and Celia Reindan, who had the bad taste to prefer Teddy +Anstruther; and Rosalind Jemmett, who is, very inconsiderately, going to +marry Tom Gelwix, instead of me. These were staggeringly foolish women, +Peter, but while their taste is bad, their dinners are good, so I have +remained upon the best of terms with them. They have trodden me under +their feet, but I am the long worm that has no turning. Moreover, you +are doubtless aware of the axiomatic equality between the fish in the +sea and those out of it. I hope before long to better my position in +life. I hope--Ah, well, that would scarcely interest you. Good morning, +Peter. And I trust, when I return," I added, with chastening dignity, +"that you will evince a somewhat more Christian spirit toward the world +in general, and that your language will be rather less reminiscent of +the blood-stained buccaneer of historical fiction." + +"You're a grinning buffoon," said Peter. "You're a fat Jack-pudding. +You're an ass. Where are you going, anyway?" + +"I am going," said I, "to the extreme end of Gridlington. Afterward I am +going to climb the wall that stands between Gridlington and Selwoode." + +"And after that?" said Peter. + +I gave a gesture. "Why, after that," said I, "fortune will favour the +brave. And I, Peter, am very, very brave." + +Then I departed, whistling. In view of all my memories it had been +strangely droll to worry Peter Blagden into an abuse of marrying for +money. For this was on the twenty-eighth of April, the anniversary of +the day that Stella had died, you may remember.... + + + 3 + +And a half-hour subsequently, true to my word, I was scaling a ten-foot +stone wall, thickly overgrown with ivy. At the top of it I paused, and +sat down to take breath and to meditate, my legs meanwhile bedangling +over an as flourishing Italian garden as you would wish to see. + +"Now, I wonder," I queried, of my soul, "what will be next? There is a +very cheerful uncertainty about what will be next. It may be a +spring-gun, and it may be a bull-dog, and it may be a susceptible +heiress. But it is apt to be--No, it isn't," I amended, promptly; "it is +going to be an angel. Or perhaps it is going to be a dream. She can't be +real, you know--I am probably just dreaming her. I would be quite +certain I was just dreaming her, if this wall were not so humpy and +uncomfortable. For it stands to reason, I would not be fool enough to +dream of such unsympathetic iron spikes as I am sitting on." + +"Perhaps you are not aware," hazarded a soprano voice, "that this is +private property?" + +"Why, no," said I, very placidly; "on the contrary I was just thinking +it must be heaven. And I am tolerably certain," I commented further, in +my soul, "that you are one of the more influential seraphim." + +The girl had lifted her brows. She sat upon a semi-circular stone bench, +some twenty feet from the wall, and had apparently been reading, for a +book lay open in her lap. She now inspected me, with a sort of languid +wonder in her eyes, and I returned the scrutiny with unqualified +approval in mine. + +And in this I had reason. The heiress of Selwoode was eminently good to +look upon. + + + + +24. + +_He Reconciles Sentiment and Reason_ + + +So I regarded her for a rather lengthy interval, considering meanwhile, +with an immeasurable content how utterly and entirely impossible it +would always be to describe her. + +Clearly, it would be out of the question to trust to words, however +choicely picked, for, upon inspection, there was a delightful ambiguity +about every one of this girl's features that defied such idiotic +makeshifts. Her eyes, for example, I noted with a faint thrill of +surprise, just escaped being brown by virtue of an amber glow they had; +what colour, then, was I conscientiously to call them? + +And her hair I found a bewildering, though pleasing, mesh of shadow and +sunlight, all made up of multitudinous graduations of some anonymous +colour that seemed to vary with the light you chanced to see it in, +through the whole gamut of bronze and chestnut and gold; and where, +pray, in the bulkiest lexicon, in the very weightiest thesaurus, was I +to find the adjective which could, if but in desperation, be applied to +hair like that without trenching on sacrilege? ... For it was spring, +you must remember, and I was twenty-five. + +So that in my appraisal, you may depend upon it, her lips were quickly +passed over as a dangerous topic, and were dismissed with the mental +statement that they were red and not altogether unattractive. Whereas +her cheeks baffled me for a time,--but always with a haunting sense of +familiarity--till I had, at last, discovered they reminded me of those +little tatters of cloud that sometimes float about the setting +sun,--those irresolute wisps which cannot quite decide whether to be +pink or white, and waver through their tiny lives between the +two colours. + + + 2 + +To this effect, then, I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon +the wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. By +and by, though, the girl sighed. + +"You are placing me in an extremely unpleasant position," she +complained, as if wearily. "Would you mind returning to your sanatorium +and allowing me to go on reading? For I am interested in my book, and I +can't possibly go on in any comfort so long as you elect to perch up +there like Humpty-Dumpty, and grin like seven dozen Cheshire cats." + +"Now, that," I spoke, in absent wise, "is but another instance of the +widely prevalent desire to have me serve as scapegoat for the sins of +all humanity. I am being blamed now for sitting on top of this wall. One +would think I wanted to sit here. One would actually think," I cried, +and raised my eyes to heaven, "that sitting on the very humpiest kind of +iron spikes was my favorite form of recreation! No,--in the interests of +justice," I continued, and fell into a milder tone, "I must ask you to +place the blame where it more rightfully belongs. The injuries which are +within the moment being inflicted on my sensitive nature, and, +incidentally, upon my not overstocked wardrobe, I am willing to pass +over. But the claims of justice are everywhere paramount. Miss Hugonin, +and Miss Hugonin alone, is responsible for my present emulation of +Mohammed's coffin, and upon that responsibility I am compelled +to insist." + +"May one suggest," she queried gently, "that you are +probably--mistaken?" + +I sketched a bow. "Recognising your present point of view," said I, +gallantly, "I thank you for the kindly euphemism. But may one allowably +demonstrate the fallacy of this same point of view? I thank you: for +silence, I am told, is proverbially equal to assent. I am, then, one +Robert Townsend, by birth a gentleman, by courtesy an author, by +inclination an idler, and by lucky chance a guest of Mr. Peter Blagden, +whose flourishing estate extends indefinitely yonder to the rear of my +coat-tails. My hobby chances to be gardening. I am a connoisseur, an +admirer, a devotee of gardens. It is, indeed, hereditary among the +Townsends; a love for gardens runs in our family just as a love for gin +runs in less favoured races. It is with us an irresistible passion. The +very founder of our family--one Adam, whom you may have heard of,--was a +gardener. Owing to the unfortunate loss of his position, the family +since then has sunken somewhat in the world; but time and poverty alike +have proven powerless against our horticultural tastes and botanical +inclinations. And then," cried I, with a flourish, "and then, what +follows logically?" + +"Why, if you are not more careful," she languidly made answer, "I am +afraid that, owing to the laws of gravitation, a broken neck is what +follows logically." + +"You are a rogue," I commented, in my soul, "and I like you all the +better for it." + +Aloud, I stated: "What follows is that we can no more keep away from a +creditable sort of garden than a moth can from a lighted candle. +Consider, then, my position. Here am I on one side of the wall, and with +my peach-tree, to be sure--but on the other side is one of the most +famous masterpieces of formal gardening in the whole country. Am I to +blame if I succumb to the temptation? Surely not," I argued; "for surely +to any fair-minded person it will be at once apparent that I am brought +to my present very uncomfortable position upon the points of these very +humpy iron spikes by a simple combination of atavism and +injustice,--atavism because hereditary inclination draws me irresistibly +to the top of the wall, and injustice because Miss Hugonin's perfectly +unreasonable refusal to admit visitors prevents my coming any farther. +Surely, that is at once apparent?" + +But now the girl yielded to my grave face, and broke into a clear, +rippling carol of mirth. She laughed from the chest, this woman. And +perched in insecure discomfort on my wall, I found time to rejoice that +I had finally discovered that rarity of rarities, a woman who neither +giggles nor cackles, but has found the happy mean between these two +abominations, and knows how to laugh. + +"I have heard of you, Mr. Townsend," she said at last. "Oh, yes, I have +heard a deal of you. And I remember now that I never heard you were +suspected of sanity." + +"Common-sense," I informed her, from my pedestal, "is confined to that +decorous class of people who never lose either their tempers or their +umbrellas. Now, I haven't any temper to speak of--or not at least in the +presence of ladies,--and, so far, I have managed to avoid laying aside +anything whatever for a rainy day; so that it stands to reason I must +possess uncommon sense." + +"If that is the case," said the girl "you will kindly come down from +that wall and attempt to behave like a rational being." + +I was down--as the phrase runs,--in the twinkling of a bed-post. On +which side of the wall, I leave you to imagine. + +"--For I am sure," the girl continued, "that I--that Margaret, I should +say,--would not object in the least to your seeing the gardens, since +they interest you so tremendously. I'm Avis Beechinor, you know,--Miss +Hugonin's cousin. So, if you like, we will consider that a proper +introduction, Mr. Townsend, and I will show you the gardens, if--if you +really care to see them." + +My face, I must confess, had fallen slightly. Up to this moment, I had +not a suspicion but that it was Miss Hugonin I was talking to: and I now +reconsidered, with celerity, the information Byam had brought me +from Selwoode. + +"For, when I come to think of it," I reflected, "he simply said she was +older than Miss Hugonin. I embroidered the tale so glibly for Peter's +benefit that I was deceived by my own ornamentations. I had looked for +corkscrew ringlets and false teeth a-gleam like a new bath-tub in Miss +Hugonin's cousin,--not an absolutely, supremely, inexpressibly +unthinkable beauty like this!" I cried, in my soul. "Older! Why, good +Lord, Miss Hugonin must be an infant in arms!" + +But my audible discourse was prefaced with an eloquent gesture. "If I'd +care!" I said. "Haven't I already told you I was a connoisseur in +gardens? Why, simply look, Miss Beechinor!" I exhorted her, and threw +out my hands in a large pose of admiration. "Simply regard those +yew-hedges, and parterres, and grassy amphitheatres, and palisades, and +statues, and cascades, and everything--_everything_ that goes to make a +formal garden the most delectable sight in the world! Simply feast your +eyes upon those orderly clipped trees and the fantastic patterns those +flowers are laid out in! Why, upon my word, it looks as if all four +books of Euclid had suddenly burst into blossom! And you ask me if I +would _care_! Ah, it is evident _you_ are not a connoisseur in gardens, +Miss Beechinor!" + +And I had started on my way into this one, when the girl stopped me. + +"This must be yours," she said. "You must have spilled it coming over +the wall, Mr. Townsend." + +It was Peter's cigarette-case. + +"Why, dear me, yes!" I assented, affably. "Do you know, now, I would +have been tremendously sorry to lose that? It is a sort of present--an +unbirthday present from a quite old friend." + +She turned it over in her hand. + +"It's very handsome," she marvelled. "Such a pretty monogram! Does it +stand for Poor Idiot Boy?" + +"Eh?" said I. "P.I.B., you mean? No, that stands for Perfectly +Immaculate Behaviour. My friend gave it to me because, he said, I was so +good. And--oh, well, he added a few things to that,--partial sort of a +friend, you know,--and, really--Why, really, Miss Beechinor, it would +embarrass me to tell you what he added," I protested, and modestly waved +the subject aside. + +"Now that," my meditations ran, "is the absolute truth. Peter did tell +me I was good. And it really would embarrass me to tell her he added +'for-nothing.' So, this far, I have been a model of veracity." + +Then I took the case,--gaining thereby the bliss of momentary contact +with a velvet-soft trifle that seemed, somehow, to set my own grosser +hand a-tingle--and I cried: "Now, Miss Beechinor, you must show me the +pergola. I am excessively partial to pergolas." + +And in my soul, I wondered what a pergola looked like, and why on earth +I had been fool enough to waste the last three days in bedeviling Peter, +and how under the broad canopy of heaven I could ever have suffered from +the delusion that I had seen a really adorable woman before to-day. + + + 3 + +But, "She is entirely too adorable," I reasoned with myself, some +three-quarters of an hour later. "In fact, I regard it as positively +inconsiderate in any impecunious young person to venture to upset me in +the way she has done. Why, my heart is pounding away inside me like a +trip-hammer, and I am absolutely light-headed with good-will and charity +and benevolent intentions toward the entire universe! Oh, Avis, Avis, +you know you hadn't any right to put me in this insane state of mind!" + +I was, at this moment, retracing my steps toward the spot where I had +climbed the wall between Gridlington and Selwoode, but I paused now to +outline a reproachful gesture in the direction from which I came. + +"What do you mean by having such a name?" I queried, sadly. "Avis! Why, +it is the very soul of music, clear, and sweet and as insistent as a +bird-call, an unforgettable lyric in four letters! It is just the sort +of name a fellow cannot possibly forget. Why couldn't you have been +named Polly or Lena or Margaret, or something commonplace like that, +Avis--dear?" + +And the juxtaposition of these words appealing to my sense of euphony, I +repeated it, again and again, each time with a more relishing gusto. +"Avis dear! dear Avis! dear, _dear_ Avis!" I experimented. "Why, each +one is more hopelessly unforgettable than the other! Oh, Avis dear, why +are you so absolutely and entirely unforgettable all around? Why do you +ripple all your words together in that quaint fashion till it sounds +like a brook discoursing? Why did you crinkle up your eyes when I told +you that as yet unbotanised flower was a _Calycanthus arithmelicus_? And +why did you pout at me, Avis dear? A fellow finds it entirely too hard +to forget things like that. And, oh, dear Avis, if you only knew what +nearly happened when you pouted!" + +I had come to the wall by this, but again I paused to lament. + +"It is very inconsiderate of her, very thoughtless indeed. She might at +least have asked my permission, before upsetting my plans in life. I had +firmly intended to marry a rich woman, and now I am forming all sorts of +preposterous notions--" + +Then, on the bench where I had first seen her, I perceived a book. It +was the iron-gray book she had been reading when I interrupted her, and +I now picked it up with a sort of reverence. I regarded it as an +extremely lucky book. + +Subsequently, "Good Lord!" said I, aloud, "what luck!" + +For between the pages of Justus Miles Forman's _Journey's End_--serving +as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine +fashion,--lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle, +fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters +M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of +flourishes and irrelevant tendrils. + +"Now M. E. A. H. does not stand by any stretch of the imagination for +Avis Beechinor. Whereas it fits Margaret Elizabeth Anstruther Hugonin +uncommonly well. I wonder now--?" + +I wondered for a rather lengthy interval. + +"So Byam was right, after all. And Peter was right, too. Oh, Robert +Etheridge Townsend, your reputation must truly be malodorous, when at +your approach timid heiresses seek shelter under an alias! 'I have heard +a deal of you, Mr. Townsend'--ah, yes, she had heard. She thought I +would make love to her out of hand, I suppose, because she was +wealthy--" + +I presently flung back my head and laughed. + +"Eh, well! I will let no sordid considerations stand in the way of my +true interests. I will marry this Margaret Hugonin even though she is +rich. You have begun the comedy, my lady, and I will play it to the end. +Yes, I fell honestly in love with you when I thought you were nobody in +particular. So I am going to marry this Margaret Hugonin if she will +have me; and if she won't, I am going to commit suicide on her +door-step, with a pathetic little note in my vest-pocket forgiving her +in the most noble and wholesale manner for irrevocably blighting a +future so rich in promise. Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do if +she does not appreciate her wonderful good fortune. And if she'll have +me--why, I wouldn't change places with the Pope of Rome or the Czar of +all the Russias! Ah, no, not I! for I prefer, upon the whole, to be +immeasurably, and insanely, and unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. +Why, but just to think of an adorable girl like that having so +much money!" + +All in all, my meditations were incoherent but very pleasurable. + + + + +25. + +_He Advances in the Attack on Selwoode_ + + +"Well?" said Peter. + +"Well?" said I. + +"What's the latest quotation on heiresses?" Mr. Blagden demanded. "Was +she cruel, my boy, or was she kind? Did she set the dog on you or have +you thrashed by her father? I fancy both, for your present hilarity is +suggestive of a gentleman in the act of attendance on his own funeral." +And Peter laughed, unctuously, for his gout slumbered. + +"His attempts at wit," I reflectively confided to my wine-glass, "while +doubtless amiably intended, are, to his well-wishers, painful. I +daresay, though, he doesn't know it. We must, then, smile indulgently +upon the elephantine gambols of what he is pleased to describe as his +intellect." + +"Now, that," Peter pointed out, "is not what I would term a courteous +method of discussing a man at his own table. You are damn disagreeable +this morning, Bob. So I know, of course, that you have come another +cropper in your fortune-hunting." + +"Peter," said I, in admiration, "your sagacity at times is almost human! +I have spent a most enjoyable day, though," I continued, idly. "I have +been communing with Nature, Peter. She is about her spring-cleaning in +the woods yonder, and everywhere I have seen traces of her getting +things fixed for the summer. I have seen the sky, which was washed +overnight, and the sun, which has evidently been freshly enamelled. I +have seen the new leaves as they swayed and whispered over your +extensive domains, with the fret of spring alert in every sap cell. I +have seen the little birds as they hopped among said leaves and +commented upon the scarcity of worms. I have seen the buxom flowers as +they curtsied and danced above your flower-beds like a miniature +comic-opera chorus. And besides that--" + +"Yes?" said Peter, with a grin, "and besides that?" + +"And besides that," said I, firmly, "I have seen nothing." + +And internally I appraised this bloated Peter Blagden, and reflected +that this was the man whom Stella had loved; and I appraised myself, and +remembered that this had been the boy who once loved Stella. For, as I +have said, it was the twenty-eighth of April, the day that Stella had +died, two years ago. + + + 2 + +The next morning I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon the +wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. + +"For, in spite of appearances," I debated with myself, "it is barely +possible that the handkerchief was not hers. She may have borrowed it or +have got it by mistake, somehow. In which case, it is only reasonable to +suppose that she will miss it, and ask me if I saw it; on the contrary, +if the handkerchief is hers, she will naturally understand, when I +return the book without it, that I have feloniously detained this airy +gewgaw as a souvenir, as, so to speak, a _gage d'amour_. And, in that +event, she ought to be very much pleased and a bit embarrassed; and she +will preserve upon the topic of handkerchiefs a maidenly silence. Do you +know, Robert Etheridge Townsend, there is about you the making of a very +fine logician?" + +Then I consulted my watch, and subsequently grimaced. "It is also barely +possible," said I, "that Margaret may not come at all. In which +case--Margaret! Now, isn't that a sweet name? Isn't it the very sweetest +name in the world? Now, really, you know, it is queer her being named +Margaret--extraordinarily queer,--because Margaret has always been my +favourite woman's name. I daresay, unbeknownst to myself, I am a bit of +a prophet." + + + 3 + +But she did come. She was very much surprised to see me. + +"You!" she said, with a gesture which was practically tantamount to +disbelief. "Why, how extraordinary!" + +"You rogue!" I commented, internally: "you know it is the most natural +thing in the world." Aloud I stated: "Why, yes, I happened to notice you +forgot your book yesterday, so I dropped in--or, to be more accurate, +climbed up,--to return it." + +She reached for it. Our hands touched, with the usual result to my +pulses. Also, there were the customary manual tinglings. + +"You are very kind," was her observation, "for I am wondering which one +of the two he will marry." + +"Forman tells me he has no notion, himself." + +"Oh, then you know Justus Miles Forman! How nice! I think his stories +are just splendid, especially the way his heroes talk to photographs and +handkerchiefs and dead flowers--" + +Afterward she opened the book, and turned over its pages expectantly, +and flushed a proper shade of pink, and said nothing. + +And then, and not till then, my heart consented to resume its normal +functions. And then, also, "These iron spikes--" said its owner. + +"Yes?" she queried, innocently. + +"--so humpy," I complained. + +"Are they?" said she. "Why, then, how silly of you to continue to sit on +them!" + +The result of this comment was that we were both late for luncheon. + + + 4 + +By a peculiar coincidence, at twelve o'clock the following day, I +happened to be sitting on the same wall at the same spot. Peter said at +luncheon it was a queer thing that some people never could manage to be +on time for their meals. + +I fancy we can all form a tolerably accurate idea of what took place +during the next day or so. + +It is scarcely necessary to retail our conversations. We gossiped of +simple things. We talked very little; and, when we did talk, the most +ambitiously preambled sentences were apt to result in nothing more +prodigious than a wave of the hand, and a pause, and, not infrequently, +a heightened complexion. Altogether, then, it was not oppressively wise +or witty talk, but it was eminently satisfactory to its makers. + +As when, on the third morning, I wished to sit by Margaret on the bench, +and she declined to invite me to descend from the wall. + +"On the whole," said she, "I prefer you where you are; like all +picturesque ruins, you are most admirable at a little distance." + +"Ruins!"--and, indeed, I was not yet twenty-six,--"I am a comparatively +young man." + +As a concession, "In consideration of your past, you are tolerably well +preserved." + +"--and I am not a new brand of marmalade, either." + +"No, for that comes in glass jars; whereas, Mr. Townsend, I have heard, +is more apt to figure in family ones." + +"A pun, Miss Beechinor, is the base coinage of conversation tendered +only by the mentally dishonest." + +"--Besides, one can never have enough of marmalade." + +"I trust they give you a sufficiency of it in the nursery?" + +"Dear me, you have no idea how admirably that paternal tone sits upon +you! You would make an excellent father, Mr. Townsend. You really ought +to adopt someone. I wish you would adopt _me_, Mr. Townsend." + +I said I had other plans for her. Discreetly, she forbore to ask what +they were. + + + 5 + +"Avis--" + +"You must not call me that." + +"Why not? It's your name, isn't it" + +"Yes,--to my friends." + +"Aren't we friends--Avis?" + +"We! We have not known each other long enough, Mr. Townsend." + +"Oh, what's the difference? We are going to be friends, aren't +we--Avis?" + +"Why--why, I am sure I don't know." + +"Gracious gravy, what an admirable colour you have, Avis! Well,--I know. +And I can inform you, quite confidentially, Avis, that we are not going +to be--. friends. We are going to be--" + +"We are going to be late for luncheon," said she, in haste. +"Good-morning, Mr. Townsend." + + + 6 + +Yet, the very next day, paradoxically enough, she told me: + +"I shall always think of you as a very, very dear friend. But it is +quite impossible we should ever be anything else." + +"And why, Avis?" + +"Because--" + +"That"--after an interval--"strikes me as rather a poor reason. So, +suppose we say this June?" + +Another interval. + +"Well, Avis?" + +"Dear me, aren't those roses pretty? I wish you would get me one, Mr. +Townsend." + +"Avis, we are not discussing roses." + +"Well, they _are_ pretty." + +"Avis!"--reproachfully. + +Still another interval. + +"I--I hardly know." + +"Avis!"--with disappointment. + +"I--I believe--" + +"Avis!"--very tenderly. + +"I--I almost think so,--and the horrid man looks as if he thought so, +too!" + +There was a fourth interval, during which the girl made a complete and +careful survey of her shoes. + +Then, all in a breath, "It could not possibly be June, of course, and +you must give me until to-morrow to think about November," and a sudden +flutter of skirts. + +I returned to Gridlington treading on air. + + + 7 + +For I was, by this time, as thoroughly in love as Amadis of Gaul or +Aucassin of Beaucaire or any other hero of romance you may elect +to mention. + +Some two weeks earlier I would have scoffed at the notion of such a +thing coming to pass; and I could have demonstrated, logically enough, +that it was impossible for Robert Etheridge Townsend, with his keen +knowledge of the world and of the innumerable vanities and whims of +womankind, ever again to go the way of all flesh. But the problem, like +the puzzle of the Eleatic philosophers, had solved itself. "Achilles +cannot catch the tortoise," but he does. It was impossible for me to +fall uncomfortably deep in love--but I had done so. + +And it pricked my conscience, too, that Margaret should not know I was +aware of her identity. But she had chosen to play the comedy to the end, +and in common with the greater part of trousered humanity, I had, after +all, no insuperable objection to a rich wife; though, to do me justice, +I rarely thought of her, now, as Margaret Hugonin the heiress, but +considered her, in a more comprehensive fashion, as the one woman in the +universe whose perfections triumphantly overpeered the skyiest heights +of preciosity. + + + + +26. + + +_He Assists in the Diversion of Birds_ + +We met, then, in the clear May morning, with what occult trepidations I +cannot say. You may depend upon it, though, we had our emotions. + +And about us, spring was marshaling her pageant, and from divers nooks, +the weather-stained nymphs and fauns regarded us in candid, if +preoccupied, appraisement; and above us, the clipped ilex trees were +about a knowing conference. As for the birds, they were discussing us +without any reticence whatever, for, more favoured of chance than +imperial Solomon, they have been the confidants in any number of such +affairs, and regard the way of a man with a maid as one of the most +matter-of-fact occurrences in the world. + +"Here is he! here is she!" they shrilled. "See how they meet, see how +they greet! Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring!" And that we +two would immediately set to nest-building, they considered a foregone +conclusion. + + + 2 + +I had taken both her firm, warm hands in salutation, and held them, for +a breathing-space, between my own. And my own hands seemed to me two +very gross, and hulking, and raw, and red monstrosities, in contrast +with their dimpled captives, and my hands appeared, also, to shake +unnecessarily. + +"Now, in a moment," said I, "I am going to ask you something very +important. But, first, I have a confession to make." + +And her glad, shamed eyes bemocked me. "My lord of Burleigh!" she softly +breathed. "My liege Cophetua! _My_ king Cophetua! And did you think, +then, I was blind?" + +"Eh?" said I. + +"As if I hadn't known from the first!" the girl pouted; "as if I hadn't +known from the very first day when you dropped your cigarette case! Ah, +I had heard of you before, Peter!--of Peter, the misogynist, who was +ashamed to go a-wooing in his proper guise! Was it because you were +afraid I'd marry you for your money, Peter?--poor, timid Peter! But, oh, +Peter, Peter, what possessed you to take the name of that notorious +Robert Townsend?" she demanded, with uplifted forefinger. "Couldn't you +think of a better one, Peter?--of a more respectable one, Peter? It +really is a great relief to call you Peter at last. I've had to try so +hard to keep from doing it before, Peter." + +And in answer, I made an inarticulate sound. + +"But you were so grave about it," the girl went on, happily, "that I +almost thought you were telling the truth, Peter. Then my maid told +me--I mean, she happened to mention casually that Mr. Townsend's valet +had described his master to her as an extraordinarily handsome man. So, +then, of course, I knew you were Peter Blagden." + +"I perceive," said I, reflectively, "that Byam has been somewhat too +zealous. I begin to suspect, also, that kitchen-gossip is a mischancy +petard, and rather more than apt to hoist the engineer who employs it. +So, you thought I was Peter Blagden,--the rich Peter Blagden? Ah, yes!" + +Now the birds were caroling on a wager. "Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" +they sang. "Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring." + +But the girl gave a wordless cry at sight of the change in my face. "Oh, +how dear of you to care so much! I didn't mean that you were _ugly_, +Peter. I just meant you are so big and--and so like the baby that they +probably have on the talcum-powder boxes in Brobdingnag--" + +"Because I happen to be really Robert Townsend--the notorious Robert +Etheridge Townsend," I continued, with a smile. "I am sorry you were +deceived by the cigarette-case. I remember now; I borrowed it from +Peter. What I meant to confess was that I have known all along you were +Margaret Hugonin." + +"But I'm not," the girl said, in bewilderment. "Why--Why I _told_ you I +was Avis Beechinor." + +"This handkerchief?" I queried, and took it from my pocket. I had been +absurd enough to carry it next to my heart. + +"Oh--!" And now the tension broke, and her voice leapt to high, shrill, +half-hysterical speaking. + +"I am Avis Beechinor. I am a poor relation, a penniless cousin, a +dependent, a hanger-on, do you understand? And you--Ah, how--how funny! +Why, Margaret _always_ gives me her cast-off finery, the scraps, the +remnants, the clothes she is tired of, the misfit things,--so that she +won't be ashamed of me, so that I may be fairly presentable. She gave me +eight of those handkerchiefs. I meant to pick the monograms out with a +needle, you understand, because I haven't any money to buy such +handkerchiefs for myself. I remember now,--she gave them to me on that +day--that first day, and I missed one of them a little later on. Ah, +how--how funny!" she cried, again; "ah, how very, very funny! No, Mr. +Townsend, I am not an heiress,--I'm a pauper, a poor relation. No, you +have failed again, just as you did with Mrs. Barry-Smith and with Miss +Jemmett, Mr. Townsend. I--I wish you better luck the next time." + +I must have raised one hand as though in warding off a physical blow. +"Don't!" I said. + +And all the woman in her leapt to defend me. "Ah no, ah no!" she +pleaded, and her hands fell caressingly upon my shoulder; and she raised +a penitent, tear-stained face toward mine; "ah no, forgive me! I didn't +mean that altogether. It is different with a man. Of course, you must +marry sensibly,--of course you must, Mr. Townsend. It is I who am to +blame--why, of _course_ it's only I who am to blame. I have encouraged +you, I know--" + +"You haven't! you haven't" I barked. + +"But, yes,--for I came back that second day because I thought you were +the rich Mr. Blagden. I was so tired of being poor, so tired of being +dependent, that it simply seemed to me I could not stand it for a moment +longer. Ah, I tell you, I was tired, tired, tired! I was tired and sick +and worn out with it all!" + +I did not interrupt her. I was nobly moved; but even then at the back of +my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to this girl, so +young and desirable, and now so like a plaintive child who has been +punished and does not understand exactly why. + +"Mr. Townsend, you don't know what it means to a girl to be poor!--you +can't ever know, because you are only a man. My mother--ah, you don't +know the life I have led! You don't know how I have been hawked about, +and set up for inspection by the men who could afford to pay my price, +and made to show off my little accomplishments for them, and put through +my paces before them like any horse in the market! For we are poor, Mr. +Townsend,--we are bleakly, hopelessly poor. We are only hangers-on, you +see. And ever since I can remember, she has been telling me I must make +a rich marriage--_must_ make a rich marriage--" + +And the girl's voice trailed off into silence, and her eyes closed for a +moment, and she swayed a little on her feet, so that I caught her by +both arms. + +But, presently, she opened her eyes, with a wearied sigh, and presently +the two fortune-hunters stared each other in the face. + +"Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" sang the birds. "Can you see, can you see, +can you see? It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" They were extremely gay over +it, were the birds. + +After a little, though, I opened my lips, and moistened them two or +three times before I spoke. "Yes," said I, "I think I understand. We +have both been hangers-on. But that seems, somehow, a long while ago. +Yes, it was a knave who scaled that wall the first time,--one who needed +and had earned a kicking from here to Aldebaran. But I think that I +loved you from the very moment I saw you. Will you marry me, Avis?" + +And in her face there was a wonderful and tender change. "You care for +me--just me?" she breathed. + +"Just you," I answered, gravely. + +And I saw the start, and the merest ghost of a shiver which shook her +body, as she leaned toward me a little, almost in surrender; but, +quickly, she laughed. + +"That was very gentlemanly in you," she said; "but, of course, I +understand. Let us part friends, then,--Robert. Even if--if you really +cared, we couldn't marry. We are too poor." + +"Too poor!" I scoffed,--and my voice was joyous, for I knew now that it +was I she loved and not just Peter Blagden's money; "too _poor_, Avis! I +am to the contrary, an inordinately rich man, I tell you, for I have +your love. Oh you needn't try to deny it. You are heels over head in +love with me. And we have made, no doubt, an unsavoury mess of the past; +but the future remains to us. We are the earthen pots, you and I, who +wanted to swim with the brazen ones. Well! they haven't quite smashed +us, these big, stupid, brazen pots, but they have shown us that they +have the power to do it. And so we are going back where we belong--to +the poor man's country, Avis,--or, in any event, to the country of those +God-fearing, sober and honest folk who earn their bread and, just +occasionally, a pat of butter to season it." + +The world was very beautiful. I knew that I was excellent throughout and +unconquerable. So I moved more near to her. + +"For you will come with me, won't you, dear? Oh, you won't have quite so +many gowns in this new country, Avis, and, may be, not even a horse and +surrey of your own; but you will have love, and you will have happiness, +and, best of all, Avis, you will give a certain very undeserving man his +chance--his one sole chance--to lead a real man's life. Are you going +to deny him that chance, Avis?" + +Her gaze read me through and through; and I bore myself a bit proudly +under it; and it seemed to me that my heart was filled with love of her, +and that some sort of new-born manhood in Robert Etheridge Townsend was +enabling me to meet her big brown eyes unflinchingly. + +"It wouldn't be sensible," she wavered. + +I laughed at that. "Sensible! If there is one thing more absurd than +another in this very absurd world, it is common-sense. Be sensible and +you will be miserable, Avis, not to mention being disliked. Sensible! +Why, of course, it is not sensible. It is stark, rank, staring idiocy +for us two not to make a profitable investment of, we will say, our +natural endowments, when we come to marry. For what will Mrs. Grundy say +if we don't? Ah, what will she say, indeed? Avis, just between you and +me, I do not care a double-blank domino what Mrs. Grundy says. You will +obligingly remember that the car for the Hesperides is in the rear, and +that this is the third and last call. And in consequence--will you +marry me, Avis?" + +She gave me her hand frankly, as a man might have done. "Yes, Robert," +said Miss Beechinor, "and God helping us, we will make something better +of the future than we have of the past." + +In the silence that fell, one might hear the birds. "Sweet, sweet, +sweet!" they twittered. "Can you see, can you see, can you see? Their +lips meet. It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" + + + 3 + +But, by and by, she questioned me. "Are you sure--quite sure," she +queried, wistfully, "that you wouldn't rather have me Margaret Hugonin, +the heiress?" + +I raised a deprecatory hand. "Avis!" I reproached her; "Avis, Avis, how +little you know me! That was the solitary fly in the amber,--that I +thought I was to marry a woman named Margaret. For I am something of a +connoisseur in nomenclature, and Margaret has always--_always_--been my +pet detestation in the way of names." + +"Oh, what a child you are!" she said. + + + + +27. + +_He Calls, and Counsels, and Considers_ + + +"I am now" said I, in my soul, "quite immeasurably, and insanely, and +unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. Why, of course I am." + +This statement was advanced just two weeks later than the events +previously recorded. And the origin of it was the fact that I was now +engaged to Avis Beechinor though it was not as yet to be "announced"; +just this concession alone had Mrs. Beechinor wrested from an indignant +and, latterly, a tearful interview.... For I had called at Selwoode, in +due form; and after leaving Mrs. Beechinor had been pounced upon by an +excited and comely little person in black. + +"Don't you mind a word she said," this lady had exhorted, "because she +is _the_ Gadarene swine, and Avis has told me everything! Of course you +are to be married at once, and I only wish _I_ could find the only man +in the world who can keep me interested for four hours on a stretch and +send my pulse up to a hundred and make me feel those thrilly thrills +I've always longed for." + +"But surely--" said I. + +"No, I'm beginning to be afraid not, beautiful, though of course I used +to be crazy about Billy Woods; and then once I was engaged to another +man for a long time, and I was perfectly devoted to him, but he _never_ +made me feel a single thrilly thrill. And would you believe it, Mr. +Townsend?--after a while he came back, precisely as though he had been a +bad penny or a cat. He had been in the Boer War and came home just a +night before I left, wounded and promoted several times and completely +covered with glory and brass buttons. He came seven miles to see me, and +I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him, for I had on my best dress and was +feeling rather talkative. Well! at ten I was quite struck on him. At +eleven perfectly willing to part friends, and at twelve _crazy_ for him +to go. He stayed till half-past, and I didn't want to think of him for +days. And, by the way, I am Miss Hugonin, and I hope you and Avis will +be very happy. _Good-bye!_" + +"Good-bye!" said I. + + + 2 + +And that, oddly enough, was the one private talk I ever had with the +Margaret Hugonin whom, for some two weeks, I had believed myself to be +upon the verge of marrying; for the next time I conversed with her alone +she was Mrs. William Woods. + +"Oh, go away, Billy!" she then said, impatiently "How often will I have +to tell you it isn't decent to be always hanging around your wife? Oh, +you dear little crooked-necktied darling!"--and she remedied the fault +on tiptoe,--"_please_ run away and make love to somebody else, and be +sure to get her name right, so that I shan't assassinate the wrong +person,--because I want to tell this very attractive child all about +Avis, and not be bothered." And subsequently she did. + +But I must not forestall her confidences, lest I get my cart even +further in advance of my nominal Pegasus than the loosely-made +conveyance is at present lumbering. + + + 3 + +And meanwhile Peter Blagden and I had called at Selwoode once or twice +in unison and due estate. And Peter considered "Miss Beechinor a damn +fine girl, and Miss Hugonin too, only--" + +"Only," I prompted, between puffs, "Miss Hugonin keeps everybody, as my +old Mammy used to say, 'in a perpetual swivet.' I never understood what +the phrase meant, precisely, but I somehow always knew that it was +eloquent." + +"Just so," said Peter. "You prefer--ah--a certain amount of +tranquillity. I haven't been abroad for a long while," said Mr. Blagden; +and then, after another meditative pause: "Now Stella--well, Stella was +a damn sight too good for me, of course--" + +"She was," I affably assented. + +"--and I'd be the very last man in the world to deny it. But still you +_do_ prefer--" Then Peter broke off short and said: "My God, Bob! what's +the matter?" + +So I think I must have had the ill-taste to have laughed a little over +Mr. Blagden's magnanimity in regard to Stella's foibles. But I only +said: "Oh, nothing, Peter! I was just going to tell you that travelling +_does_ broaden the mind, and that you will find an overcoat +indispensable in Switzerland, and that during the voyage you ought to +keep in the open air as much as possible, and that you should give the +steward who waits on you at table at least ten shillings,--I was just +going to tell you, in fine, that you would be a fool to squander any +money on a guide-book, when I am here to give you all the necessary +pointers." + +"But I didn't mean to go to Europe exactly," said Mr. Blagden; "--I just +meant to go abroad in a general sense. Any place would be abroad, you +know, where people weren't always remembering how rich you were, and +weren't scrambling to marry you out of hand, but really cared, you know, +like she does. Oh, may be it _is_ bad form to mention it, but I couldn't +help seeing how she looked at you, Bob. And it waked something--Oh, I +don't know what I mean," said Peter--"it's just damn foolishness, +I suppose." + +"It's very far from that," I said; and I was honestly moved, just as I +always am when pathos, preferably grotesque, has caught me unprepared. +This millionaire was lonely, because of his millions, and Stella was +dead; and somehow I understood, and laid one hand upon his shoulder. + +"Oh, _you_ can't help it, I suppose, if all women love by ordinary +because he is so like another person, where as men love because she is +so different. My poor caliph, I would sincerely advise you to play the +fool just as you plan to do,--oh, anywhere,--and without even a Mesrour. +In fine go Bunburying at once. For very frankly, First Cousin of the +Moon, it is the one thing worth while in life." + +"I half believe I will," said Peter.... So he was packing in the interim +during which I pretended to be writing, and was in reality fretting to +think that, whilst Avis was in England by this, I could not decently +leave America until those last five chapters were finished. So, in part +as an excuse for not scrawling the dullest of nonsense and subsequently +tearing it up, I fell to considering the unquestionable fact that I was +in love with Avis, and upon the verge of marrying her, and was in +consequence, as a matter of plain logic, deliriously happy. + +"For when you are in love with a woman you, of course, want to marry her +more than you want anything else. In nature, it is a serious and--well, +an almost irretrievable business. And I shall have to cultivate the +domestic virtues and smoke cheaper cigarettes and all that, but I shall +be glad to do every one of these things, for her sake--after a while. I +shall probably enjoy doing them." + +And I read Bettie Hamlyn's letter for the seventeenth time.... + + + 4 + +For Bettie had answered the wild rhapsody which I wrote to tell her how +much in love I was with Elena Barry-Smith. And in the nature of things I +had not written Bettie again to tell her I was, and by a deal the more, +in love with Avis Beechinor. The task was delicate, the reasons for my +not unnatural change were such as you must transmit in a personal +interview during which you are particularly boyish and talk very fast. + +Besides, I do not like writing letters; and moreover, there was no real +need to write. I was going to Gridlington; what more natural than to +ride over to Fairhaven some clear morning and tell Bettie everything? I +pictured her surprise and her delight at seeing me, and reflected it +would be unfair to her to render an inaccurate account of matters, such +as any letter must necessarily give. + +Only, first, there was the garden of Peter's aunt,--which sounds like +an introductory French exercise,--and then Avis came. And, somehow, I +had not, in consequence, traversed the scant nine miles that lay as yet +between me and Bettie Hamlyn. I kept on meaning to do it the next day. + +And the next day after this I really did. + +"For I ought to tell Bettie about everything," I reflected. "No matter +if the engagement is a secret, I ought to tell Bettie about it." + + + 5 + +When I had done so, Bettie shook her head. "Oh, Robin, Robin!" she said, +"how did I ever come to raise a child that doesn't know his own mind for +as much as two minutes? And how dared that Barry-Smith person to slap +you, I would like to know." + +"Now you're jealous, Bettie. You are thinking she infringed upon an +entirely personal privilege, and you resent it." + +"Well,--but I've the right to, you see, and she hadn't. I consider her +to be a bold-faced jig. And I don't approve of this Avis person either, +you understand; but we poor mothers are always being annoyed by slushy, +mushy Avises. I suppose there's a reason for it. She'll throw you over, +you know, as soon as _her_ mother has had an inning or two. That's why +she took her to Europe," Bettie explained, with a fine confusion of +personalities. "Only she just wanted any quiet place where she could +take aromatic spirits of ammonia and point out between doses that she +has given up her entire life to her child and has never made any demands +on her and hasn't the strength to argue with her, because her heart is +simply broken. We mothers always say that; and the funny part is that if +you say it often enough it invariably works far better than any possible +argument." + +I told her she was talking nonsense, and she said, irrelevantly enough: +"Setebos, and Setebos, and Setebos! I don't think very highly of Setebos +sometimes, because He muddles things so. Oh, well, I shan't cry Willow. +Besides there _aren't_ any sycamore-trees in the garden. So let's go +into the garden, dear. That sounds as if I ate in the back pantry, +doesn't it? Of course you aren't of any account any more, and you never +will be, but at least you don't look at people as though they were a new +sort of bug whenever they have just thought a sentence or two and then +gone on, without bothering to say it." + +So we went into Bettie's garden. It had not changed.... + + + 6 + +Nothing had changed. It was as though I had somehow managed, after all, +to push back the hands of the clock. Fairhaven accepted me incuriously. +I was only "an old student." In addition, I was vaguely rumoured to +write "pieces" for the magazines. Probably I did; "old students" were +often prone to vagaries after leaving King's College; for instance, they +told me, Ralph Means was a professional gambler, and Ox Selwyn had +lately gone to Shanghai and had settled there,--and Shanghai, in common +with most other places, Fairhaven accorded the negative tribute of just +not absolutely disbelieving in its existence. + +Nothing had changed. The Finals were over; and with the noisy exodus of +the college-boys, Fairhaven had sunk contentedly into an even deeper +stupor, as Fairhaven always does in summer. And, for the rest, the +unpaved sidewalks were just as dusty, the same deep ruts and the puddles +which never dry, not even in mid-August, adorned Fairhaven's single +street; the comfortable moss upon Fairhaven's roofs had not varied by a +shade; and George Washington or Benjamin Franklin might have stepped out +of any one of those brass-knockered doorways without incongruity and +without finding any noticeable innovation to marvel at. + +Nothing had changed. In the precise middle of the campus Lord Penniston, +our Governor in Colonial days, still posed, in dingy marble; and the +fracture of the finger I had inadvertently broken off, the night that +Billy Woods and I painted the statue all over, in six colours, was white +and new-looking. Kathleen Eppes had married her Spaniard and had left +Fairhaven; otherwise the same girls were already planning their toilets +for the Y.M.C.A. reception in October, which formally presents the "new +students" to society at large; and presently these girls would be going +to the germans or the Opera House with the younger brother of the boy +who used to take them thither.... + +Nothing had changed; not even I was changed. For I had soon discovered +that Bettie Hamlyn did not care a pin for me in myself. She was simply +very fond of me because, at times, I reminded her of a boy who had gone +to King's College; and her reception of me, for the first two days, was +unmistakably provisional. + +"Very well!" I said. + +And I did it. For I knew how difficult it was to deceive Bettie, and in +consequence all my faculties rose to the challenge. I did not merely +mimic my former self, I was compelled, almost, to believe I was indeed +that former self, because not otherwise could I get Bettie Hamlyn's +toleration. Had I paused even momentarily to reflect upon the excellence +of my acting, she would have known. So I resolutely believed I was being +perfectly candid; and with constant use those older tricks of speech and +gesture and almost of thought, at first laborious mimicry, became +well-nigh involuntary. + +In fine, we could not wipe away five years, but with practice we found +that you would very often forget them, and for quite a while.... + +I had explained to Bettie's father I was going to board with them that +summer. Had I not been so haphazard in the progress of this narrative, I +would have earlier announced that Bettie's father was the Latin +professor at King's College. He was very old and vague, and his general +attitude toward the universe was that of remote recollection of having +noticed something of the sort before. Professor Hamlyn, therefore, told +me he was glad to hear of my intended stay beneath his roof; hazarded +the speculation that I had written a book which he meant to read upon +the very first opportunity; blinked once or twice; and forthwith lapsed +into consideration of some Pliocene occurrence which, if you were to +judge by the expression of his mild old countenance, he did not find +entirely satisfactory.... + +So I spent three months in Fairhaven; and Bettie and I read all the old +books over again, and were perfectly happy. + + + 7 + +And what I wrote in those last five chapters of my book was so good that +in common decency I was compelled to alter the preceding twenty-nine and +bring them a bit nearer to Bettie's standard. For I was utilising +Bettie's ideas. She did not have the knack of putting them on paper; +that was my trivial part, as I now recognised with a sort of scared +reverence. + +"Of course, though, you had to meddle," I would scold at her. "I had +meant the infernal thing to be a salable book. To-day it is just a +stenographic report of how these people elected to behave. I haven't +anything to do with it. I wash my hands of it. I consider you, in fine, +a cormorant, a conscienceless marauder, a meddlesome Mattie, _and_ a +born dramatist." + +"But, it's _much_ better than anything you've ever done, Robin--" + +"That is what I'm grumbling about. I consider it very unfeeling of you +to write better novels than I do," I retorted. "But, oh, how good that +scene is!" I said, a little later. + +"Let's see--'For you, dear clean-souled girl, were born to be the wife +of a strong man, and the mother of his dirty children'--no, it's +'sturdy', but then you hardly ever cross your T's. And where he goes on +to tell her he can't marry her, because he is artistic, and she is too +practical for them to be real mates, and all that other +feeble-mindedness? Dear me, did I forget to tell you we were going to +cut that out?" + +"But I particularly like that part--" + +"Do you?" said Bettie, as her pen scrunched vicious lines through it. +Then she said: "I only hope she had the civility and self-control not to +laugh until you had gone away. And 'We irrelevant folk that design all +useless and beautiful things,' indeed! No, I couldn't have blamed her if +she laughed right out. I wonder if you will never understand that what +you take to be your love for beautiful things is really just a dislike +of ugly ones? Oh, I've no patience with you! And wanting to print it in +a book, too, instead of being content to make yourself ridiculous in +tete-a-tetes with minxes that don't especially matter!" + +"Well--! Anyhow, I agree with you that, thanks to your editing and +carping and general scurrility, this book is going to be," I meekly +stated, "a little better than _The Apostates_ and not just 'pretty much +like any other book'." + +"Do you know that's just what I was thinking," said Bettie, dolefully. +She clasped both hands behind her crinkly small black head, and in that +queer habitual pose appraised me, from between her elbows, in that way +which always made me feel I had better be careful. "Damn you!" was +her verdict. + +"Whence this unmaidenliness?" I queried, with due horror. + +"You are trying to prove to me that it has been worth while. This nasty +book is coming alive, here in our own eight-cornered room, with a horrid +crawly life of its own that it would never have had if you hadn't been +learning things my boy knew nothing about. That's what you are crowing +in my face, when you keep quiet and smirk. Oh, but I know you!" + +"You do think, then, that, between you and me, it is really coming +alive?" + +"Yes,--if that greatly matters to the fat literary gent that I don't +care for greatly. Yes, the infernal thing will be a Book, with quite a +sizable B. I am feeding its maw with more important things than a few +ideas, though. The thing is a monster that isn't worth its keep. For my +boy was worth more than a Book," she said, forlornly,--"oh, +oceans more!" + + + 8 + +All in all, we were a deal more than happy during these three very hot +months. It was a sort of Lotus Eaters' existence, shared by just us two, +with Josiah Clarriker intruding occasionally, and with echoes from the +outer world, when heard at all, resounding very dimly and unimportantly. +I began almost to assume, as Fairhaven tacitly assumed, that there was +really no outer world, or none at least to be considered seriously.... + +For instance: Marian Winwood had come to Lichfield, and wrote me from +there, "hoping that we would renew an acquaintance which she remembered +so pleasurably." It did not seem worth while, of course, to answer the +minx; I decided, at a pinch, to say that the Fairhaven mail-service was +abominable, and that her letter had never reached me. But the young +fellow who two years ago had wandered about the Green Chalybeate with +her had become, now, as unreal as she. I glimpsed the couple, with +immeasurable aloofness, as phantoms flickering about the mirage of a +brook, throwing ghostly bread crumbs to Lethean minnows. + +And then, too, when the police caught Ned Lethbury that summer, it +hardly seemed worth while to wonder about his wife. For she was, +inexplicably, with him, all through the trial at Chiswick, you may +remember, though you were probably more interested at the time by the +Humbert trial in Paris. In any event, no rumor came to me in Fairhaven +to connect Amelia Lethbury with Nadine Neroni, but, instead, a deal of +journalistic pity and sympathy for her, the faithful, much-enduring +wife. Still quite a handsome woman, they said, for all her suffering and +poverty.... And when he went to the penitentiary, Amelia Lethbury +disappeared, nobody knew whither, except that I suspected Anton von +Anspach knew. I could not explain the mystery. I did not greatly care +to, for to me it did not seem important, now.... + + + 9 + +Meantime, I meditated. + +"I am in love with Avis--oh, granted! I am not the least bit in love +with--we will euphemistically say 'anyone else.' But confound it! I am +coming to the conclusion that marrying a woman because you happen to be +in love with her is about as logical a proceeding as throwing the cat +out of the window because the rhododendrons are in bloom. Why, if I +marry Avis I shall probably have to live with her the rest of my life! + +"What if that obsolete notion of Schopenhauer's were true after +all,--that love is a blind instinct which looks no whit toward the +welfare of the man and woman it dominates, but only to the equipment a +child born of them would inherit? What if, after all, love tends, +without variation, to yoke the most incompatible in order that the +average type of humanity may be preserved? Then the one passion we +esteem as sacred would be simply the deranged condition of any other +beast in rutting-time. Then we, with the pigs and sparrows, would be +just so many pieces on the chess-board, and our evolutions would be just +a friendly trial of skill between what we call life and death. + +"I love Avis Beechinor. But I have loved, in all sincerity, many other +women, and I rejoice to-day, unfeignedly, that I never married any of +them. For marriage means a life-long companionship, a long, long journey +wherein must be adjusted, one by one, each tiniest discrepancy between +the fellow-wayfarers; and always a pebble if near enough to the eye will +obscure a mountain. + +"Why, Avis cannot attempt a word of four syllables without coming at +least once to grief! It is a trifle of course, but in a life-long +companionship there are exactly fourteen thousand trifles to one event +of importance. And deuce take it! the world is populated by men and +women, not demi-gods; the poets are specious and abandoned rhetoricians; +for it never was, and never will be, possible to love anybody 'to the +level of every-day's Most quiet need by sun or candlelight.' + +"Or not to me at least. + +"In a sentence, when it comes to a life-long companionship, I prefer not +the woman who would make me absolutely happy for a twelvemonth, but +rather the woman with whom I could chat contentedly for twenty years, +and who would keep me to the mark. I am rather tired of being futile; +and not for any moral reason, but because it is not worthy of _me_. In +fine, I do not want to die entirely. I want to leave behind some not +inadequate expression of Robert Etheridge Townsend, and I do not care at +all what people say of it, so that it is here when I am gone. Oh, Stella +understood! 'I want my life to count, I want to leave something in the +world that wasn't there before I came.' + +"Now Bettie--" + +I arose resolutely. "I had much better go for a long, and tedious, and +jolting, and universally damnable walk. Bettie would make something +vital of me--if I could afford her the material--" + +And I grinned a little. "'Go, therefore, now, and work; for there shall +no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.' Yes, +you would certainly have need of a miracle, dear Bettie--" + + + 10 + +I started for that walk I was to take. But Dr. Jeal and Colonel Snawley +were seated in armchairs in front of Clarriker's Emporium, just as they +had been used to sit there in my college days, enjoying, as the Colonel +mentioned, "the cool of the evening," although to the casual observer +the real provider of their pleasure would have appeared to be an +unlimited supply of chewing-tobacco. + +So I lingered here, and garnered, to an accompaniment of leisurely +expectorations, much knowledge as to the fall crops and the carryings-on +of the wife of a celebrated general, upon whose staff the Colonel had +served during the War,--and there has never been in the world's history +but one war, so far as Fairhaven is concerned,--and how the Colonel +walked right in on them, and how it was hushed up. + +Then we discussed the illness of Pope Leo and what everybody knew about +those derned cardinals, and the riots in Evansville, and the Panama +Canal business, and the squally look of things at Port Arthur, and +attributed all these imbroglios, I think, to the Republican +administration. Even at our bitterest, though, we conceded that +"Teddy's" mother was a Bulloch, and that his uncle fired the last shot +before the Alabama went down. And that inclined us to forgive him +everything, except of course, the Booker Washington luncheon. + +Then half a block farther on, Mrs. Rabbet wanted to know if I had ever +seen such weather, and to tell me exactly what Adrian, Junior--no longer +little Adey, no indeed, sir, but ready to start right in at the College +session after next, and as she often said to Mr. Rabbet you could hardly +believe it,--had observed the other day, and quick as a flash too, +because it would make such a funny story. Only she could never quite +decide whether it happened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, so that, after +precisely seven digressions on this delicate point, the denouement of +the tale, I must confess, fell rather flat. + +And then Mab Spessifer demanded that I come up on the porch and draw +some pictures for her. The child was waiting with three sheets of paper +and a chewed pencil all ready, just on the chance that I might pass; and +you cannot very well refuse a cripple who adores you and is not able to +play with the other brats. You get instead into a kind of habit of +calling every day and trying to make her laugh, because she is such a +helpless little nuisance. + +And tousled mothers weep over you in passageways and tell you how good +you are, and altogether the entire affair is tedious; but having started +it, you keep it up, somehow. + + + 11 + +In fine, it is a symbol that I never took the walk which was to dust the +cobwebs from my brain and make me just like all the other persons, thick +about me, who grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious +fashion of oxen, without ever wondering if there is any plausible reason +for doing it; and my brief progress was upon the surface very like that +of the bedeviled fellow in _Les Facheux_. Yet I enjoyed it somehow. +Never to be hurried, and always to stop and talk with every person whom +you meet, upon topics in which no conceivable human being could possibly +be interested, may not sound attractive, but in Fairhaven it is the +rule; and, oddly enough, it breeds, in practice, a sort of family +feeling,--if only by entitling everybody to the condoned and +matter-of-course stupidity of aunts and uncles,--which is not really all +unpleasant. + +So I went home at half-past seven, to supper and to Bettie, in a quite +contented frame of mind. It did not seem conceivable that any world so +beautiful and stupid and well-meaning could have either the heart or the +wit to thwart my getting anything I really wanted; and the thought +elated me. + +Only I did not know, precisely, what I wanted. + + + + +28. + +_He Participates in Sundry Confidences_ + + +I was in the act of writing to Avis when the letter came; and I put it +aside unopened, until after supper, for I had never found the letters of +Avis particularly interesting reading. + +"It will be what they call a newsy letter, of course. I do wish that +Avis would not write to me as if she were under oath to tell the entire +truth. She communicates so many things which actually happened that it +reads like a 'special correspondent' in some country town writing for a +Sunday morning's paper,--and with, to a moral certainty, the word +'separate' lurking somewhere spelt with three E's, and an 'always' with +two L's, and at least one 'alright.' No, my dear, I am at present too +busy expressing my adoration for you to be exposed to such +inharmonious jars." + +Then I wrote my dithyrambs and sealed them. Subsequently I poised the +unopened letter between my fingers. + +"But remember that if she were here to _say_ all this to you, your +pulses would be pounding like the pistons of an excited locomotive! +Nature, you are a jade! I console myself with the reflection that it is +frequently the gift of facile writing which makes the co-respondent, +--but I _do_ wish you were not such a hazardous matchmaker. Oh, well! +there was no pleasant way of getting out of it, and that particular +Rubicon is miles behind." + +I slit the envelope. + +I read the letter through again, with redoubling interest, and presently +began to laugh. "So she begins to fear we have been somewhat hasty, asks +a little time for reconsideration of her precise sentiment toward me, +and feels meanwhile in honour bound to release me from our engagement! +Yet if upon mature deliberation--eh, oh, yes! twaddle! _and_ +commonplace! and dashed, of course, with a jigger of Scriptural +quotation!" + +I paused to whistle. "There is strange milk in this cocoanut, could I +but discern its nature." + +I did, some four weeks later, when with a deal of mail I received the +last letter I was ever to receive from Avis Beechinor. + +Wrote Avis: + +DEAR ROBERT: + +Thank you very much for returning my letters and for the beautiful +letter you wrote me. No I believe it better you should not come on to +see me now and talk the matter over as you suggest because it would +probably only make you unhappy. And then too I am sure some day you will +be friends with me and a very good and true one. I return the last +letter you sent me in a seperate envelope, and I hope it will reach you +alright, but as I destroy all my mail as soon as I have read it I cannot +send you the others. I have promised to marry Mr. Blagden and we are +going to be married on the fifteenth of this month very quietly with no +outsiders. So good bye Robert. I wish you every success and happiness +that you may desire and with all my heart I pray you to be true to your +better self. God bless you allways. Your sincere friend, + +AVIS M. BEECHINOR + +I indulged in a low and melodious whistle. "The little slut!" + +Then I said: "Peter Blagden again! I _do_ wish that life would try to be +a trifle more plausible. Why, but, of course! Peter meant to go chasing +after her the minute my back was turned, and that was why he salved his +conscience by presenting me with that thousand 'to get married on,' Even +at the time it seemed peculiarly un-Petrine. Well, anyhow, in simple +decency, he cannot combine the part of Shylock with that of Judas, and +expect to have back his sordid lucre, so I am that much to the good, +apart from everything else. Yes, I can see how it all happened,--and I +can foresee what is going to happen, too, thank heaven!" + +For, as drowning men are said to recollect the unrecallable, I had +vividly seen in that instant the two months' action just overpast, and +its three participants,--the thin-lipped mother, the besotted +millionaire, and the girl shakily hesitant between ideals and the habits +of a life-time. + +"But I might have known the mother would win," I reflected: "Why, didn't +Bettie say she would?" + +I refolded the letter I had just read, to keep it as a salutary relic; +and then: + +"Dear Avis!" said I; "now heaven bless your common-sense! and I don't +especially mind if heaven blesses your horrific painted hag of a mother, +also, if they've a divine favor or two to spare." + +And I saw there was a letter from Peter Blagden, too. It said, in part: + +I am everything that you think me, Bob. My one defence is that I could +not help it. I loved her from the moment I saw her ... You did not +appreciate her, you know. You take, if you will forgive my saying it, +too light a view of life to value the love of a good woman properly, and +Avis noticed it of course. Now I do understand what the unselfish love +of woman means, because my first wife was an angel, as you know ... It +is a comfort to think that my dear saint in heaven knows I am not quite +so lonely now, and is gladdened by that knowledge. I know she would have +wished it-- + +I read no further. "Oh, Stella! they have all forgotten. They all insist +to-day that you were an angel, and they have come almost to believe that +you habitually flew about the world in a night-gown, with an Easter lily +in your hand--But I remember, dear. I know you'd scratch her eyes out. I +know you'd do it now, if only you were able, because you loved this +Peter Blagden." + +Thereafter I must have wasted a full quarter of an hour in recalling all +sorts of bygone unimportant happenings, and I was not bothering one way +or the other about Avis ... + + + 3 + +In the moonlighted garden I found Bettie. But with her was Josiah +Clarriker, Fairhaven's leading business-man. He shook hands, and +whatever delight he may have felt at seeing me was admirably controlled. + +"Now don't let me interfere with your eloquence," I urged, "but go right +on with the declamation." + +"I make no pretension to eloquence, Mr. Townsend. I was merely recalling +to Miss Hamlyn's attention the beautiful lines of our immortal poet, +Owen Meredith, which run, as I remember them: + + "'I thought of the dress she wore that time + That we stood under the cypress-tree together, + In that land, in that clime, + And I turned and looked, and she was sitting there + In the box next to the stage, and dressed + In that muslin dress, with that full soft hair + And that jessamine blossom at her breast.'" + +"But I am not permitted to wear flowers when Mr. Townsend is about," +said Bettie. "Did you know, Jo, that he is crazy about that too?" + +"Well--! Anyhow, Meredith is full of very beautiful sentiments," said +Mr. Clarriker, "and I have always been particularly fond of that piece. +It is called _'Ox Italians.'_" + +"Yes, I have been previously affected by it," said I, "and very deeply +moved." + +"And so--as I was about to observe, Miss Hamlyn,--you will notice that +the poet Meredith gowned one of the most beautiful characters he ever +created in white, and laid great stress upon the fact that her beauty +was immeasurably enhanced by the dainty simplicity of her muslin dress. +This fabric, indeed, suits all types of faces and figures, and is +Economical too, especially the present popular mercerised waistings and +vestings that are fast invading the realm of silks. We show at our +Emporium an immense quantity of these beautiful goods, in more than a +hundred styles, elaborate enough for the most formal occasions, at fifty +and seventy-five cents a yard; and--as I was about to observe, Miss +Hamlyn,--I would indeed esteem it a favour should you permit me to send +up a few samples to-morrow, from which to make a selection at, I need +not add, my personal expense. + +"You see, Mr. Townsend," he continued, more inclusively, "we have no +florists in Fairhaven, and I have heard that candy--" He talked on, +hygienically now.... + + + 4 + +"And that," said I, when Mr. Clarriker had gone, "is what you are +actually considering! I have always believed Dickens invented that man +to go into one of the latter chapters of _Edwin Drood_. It is the +solitary way of explaining certain people,--that they were invented by +some fagged novelist who unfortunately died before he finished the book +they were to be locked up in. As it was, they got loose, to annoy you by +their incredibility. No actual human being, you know, would suggest a +white shirtwaist as a substitute for a box of candy." + +"Oh, I have seen worse," said Bettie, as in meditation. "It's just Jo's +way of expressing the fact that I am stupendously beautiful in white. +Poor dear, my loveliness went to his head, I suppose, and got tangled +with next week's advertisement for the _Gazette_. Anyhow, he is a deal +more considerate than you. For instance, I was crazy to go to the show +on Tuesday night, and Josiah Clarriker was the only person who thought +to ask me, even though he is one of those little fireside companions who +always get so syrupy whenever they take you anywhere that you simply +can't stand it. The combination both prevented my acceptance and +accentuated his devotion; and quite frankly, Robin, I am thinking of +him, for at bottom Jo is a dear." + +I laid one hand on each of Bettie's shoulders; and it was in my mind at +the time that this was the gesture of a comrade, and had not any sexual +tinge at all. I wished that Bettie had better teeth, of course, but that +could not be helped. + +"You are to marry me as soon as may be possible," said I, "and +preferably to-morrow afternoon. Avis has thrown me over, God bless her, +and I am free,--until of course you take charge of me. There was a +clever woman once who told me I was not fit to be the captain of my +soul, though I would make an admirable lieutenant. She was right. It is +understood you are to henpeck me to your heart's content and to my +ultimate salvation." + +"I shall assuredly not marry you," observed Miss Hamlyn, "until you have +at least asked me to do so. And besides, how dared she throw +you over--!" + +"But I don't intend to ask you, for I have not a single bribe to offer. +I merely intend to marry you. I am a ne'er-do-well, a debauchee, a +tippler, a compendium of all the vices you care to mention. I am not a +bit in love with you, and as any woman will forewarn you, I am sure to +make you a vile husband. Your solitary chance is to bully me into +temperance and propriety and common-sense, with precisely seven million +probabilities against you, because I am a seasoned and accomplished +liar. Can you do that bullying, Bettie,--and keep it up, I mean?" + +And she was silent for a while. "Robin," she said, at last, "you'll +never understand why women like you. You will always think it is because +they admire you for some quality or another. It is really because they +pity you. You are such a baby, riding for a fall--No, I don't mean the +boyishness you trade upon. I have known for a long while all that was +just put on. And, oh, how hard you've tried to be a boy of late!" + +"And I thought I had fooled you, Bettie! Well, I never could. I am +sorry, though, if I have been annoyingly clumsy--" + +"But you were doing it for me," she said. "You were doing it because you +thought I'd like it. Oh, can't you understand that I _know_ you are +worthless, and that you have never loved any human being in all your +life except that flibbertigibbet Stella Blagden, and that I know, too, +you have so rarely failed me! If you were an admirable person, or a +person with commendable instincts, or an unselfish person, or if you +were even in love with me, it wouldn't count of course. It is because +you are none of these things that it counts for so much to see you +honest with me--sometimes,--and even to see you scheming and +play-acting--and so transparently!--just to bring about a little +pleasure for me. Oh, Robin, I am afraid that nowadays I love you +_because_ of your vices!" + +"And I you because of your virtues," said I; "so that there is no +possible apprehension of either affection ever going into bankruptcy. +Therefore the affair is settled; and we will be married in November." + +"Well," Bettie said, "I suppose that somebody has to break you of this +habit of getting married next November--" + +Then, and only then, my hands were lifted from her shoulders. And we +began to talk composedly of more impersonal matters. + + + 5 + +It was two days later that John Charteris came to Fairhaven; and I met +him the same afternoon upon Cambridge street. The little man stopped +short and in full view of the public achieved what, had he been a child, +were most properly describable as making a face at me. + +"That," he explained, "expresses the involuntary confusion of Belial on +re-encountering the anchorite who escaped his diabolical machinations. +But, oh, dear me! haven't you been translated yet? Why, I thought the +carriage would have called long ago, just as it did for Elijah." + +"Now, don't be an ass, John. I _was_ rather idiotic, I suppose--" + +"Of course you were," he said, as we shook hands. "It is your unfailing +charm. You silly boy, I came from the pleasantest sort of house-party at +Matocton because I heard you were here, and I have been foolish enough +to miss you. Anne and the others don't arrive until October. Oh, you +adorable child, I have read the last book, and every one of the short +stories as well, and I want to tell you that in their own peculiar line +the two volumes are masterpieces. Anne wept and chuckled over them, and +so did I, with an equal lack of restraint; only it was over the noble +and self-sacrificing portions that Anne wept, and she laughed at the +places where you were droll intentionally. Whereas I--!! Well, we will +let the aposiopesis stand." + +"Of course," I sulkily observed, "if you have simply come to Fairhaven +to make fun of me, I can only pity your limitations." + +He spoke in quite another voice. "You silly boy, it was not at all for +that. I think you must know I have read what you have published thus far +with something more than interest; but I wanted to tell you this in so +many words. _Afield_ is not perhaps an impeccable masterwork, if one may +be thus brutally frank; but the woman--modeled after discretion will not +inquire whom,--is distinctly good. And what, with you only twenty-five, +does _A field_ not promise! Child, you have found your metier. Now I +shall look forward to the accomplishment of what I have always felt sure +that you could do. I am very, very glad. More so than I can say. And I +had thought you must know this without my saying it." + +The man was sincere. And I was very much pleased, and remembered what +invaluable help he could give me on my unfinished book, and what fun it +would be to go over the manuscript with him. And, in fine, we became +again, upon the spot as it were, the very best of friends. + + + 6 + +It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against. The little man had +many tales to tell me of those dissolute gay people we had known and +frolicked with; indeed, I think that he was trying to allure me back to +the old circles, for he preoccupied his life by scheming to bring about +by underhand methods some perfectly unimportant consummation, which very +often a plain word would have secured at once. But now he swore he was +not "making tea." + +That had always been a byword between us, by the way, since I applied to +him the phrase first used of Alexander Pope--"that he could not make tea +without a conspiracy." And it may be that in this case Charteris spoke +the truth, and had come to Fairhaven just for the pleasure of seeing me, +for certainly he must have had some reason for leaving the Musgraves' +house-party so abruptly. + +"You are very well rid of the Hardresses," he adjudged. "Did I tell you +of the male one's exhibition of jealousy last year! I can assure you +that the fellow now entertains for me precisely the same affection I +have always borne toward cold lamb. It is the real tragedy of my life +that Anne is ethically incapable of letting a week pass without +partaking of a leg of mutton. She is not particularly fond of it, and +indeed I never encountered anybody who was; she has simply been reared +with the notion that 'people' always have mutton once a week. What, have +you never noticed that with 'people,' to eat mutton once a week is a +sort of guarantee of respectability? I do not refer to chops of course, +which are not wholly inconsistent with depravity. But the ability to eat +mutton in its roasted form, by some odd law of nature, connotes the +habit of paying your pew-rent regularly and of changing your flannels on +the proper date. However, I was telling you about Jasper Hardress--" And +Charteris repeated the story of their imbroglio in such a fashion that +it sounded farcical. + +"But, after all, John, you _did_ make love to her." + +"I have forgotten what was exactly the last observation of the lamented +Julius Caesar," Mr. Charteris leisurely observed,--"though I remember +that at the time it impressed me as being uncommonly appropriate--But to +get back: do you not see that this clause ought to come here, at the end +of the sentence? And, child, on all my ancient bended knees, I implore +you to remember that 'genuine' does not mean the same thing as +'real'...." + + + 7 + +Meanwhile he and Bettie got on together a deal better than I had ever +anticipated. + +Charteris, though, received my confidence far too lightly. "You are +going to marry her! Why, naturally! Ever since I encountered you, you +have been 'going to marry' somebody or other. It is odd I should have +written about the Foolish Prince so long before I knew you. But then, +_I_ helped to mould you--a little--" + +And resolutely Bettie said the most complimentary things about him. But +I trapped her once. + +"Still," I observed, when he had gone, and she had finished telling me +how delightful Mr. Charteris was, "still he shan't ever come to _our_ +house, shall he?" + +"Why, of course not!" said Bettie, who was meditating upon some cosmic +question which required immediate attention. And then she grew very +angry and said, "Oh, you _dog!_" and threw a sofa-cushion at me. + +"I hate that wizened man," she presently volunteered, "more bitterly +than I do any person on earth. For it was he who taught you to adopt +infancy as a profession. He robbed me. And Setebos permitted it. And now +you are just a man I am going to marry--Oh, well!" said Bettie, more +sprightlily, "I was getting on, and you are rather a dear even in that +capacity. Only I wonder what _becomes_ of all the first choices?" + +"They must keep them for us somewhere, Bettie dear. And that is probably +the explanation of everything." + +And a hand had snuggled into mine. "You do understand without having to +have it all spelt out for you. And that's a comfort, too. But, oh," said +Bettie, "what a wasteful Setebos it is!" + + + + +29. + +_He Allows the Merits of Imperfection_ + + +I was quite contented now and assured as to the future. I foreknew the +future would be tranquil and lacking in any particular excitement, and I +had already ceded, in anticipation, the last tittle of mastery over my +own actions; but Bettie would keep me to the mark, would wring--not +painlessly perhaps--from Robert Townsend the very best there was in him; +and it would be this best which, unalloyed, would endure, in what I +wrote. I had never imagined that, for the ore, smelting was an agreeable +process; so I shrugged, and faced my future contentedly. + +One day I said, "To-morrow I must have holiday. There are certain things +that need burying, Bettie dear, and--it is just the funeral of my youth +I want to go to." + +"So it is to-morrow that we go for an admiring walk around our +emotions!" Bettie said. She knew well enough of what event to-morrow was +the anniversary, and it is to her credit she added: "Well, for this +once--!" For of all the women whom I had loved, there was but one that +Bettie Hamlyn had ever bothered about. And to-morrow was Stella's +birthday, as I had very unconcernedly mentioned a few moments earlier, +when I was looking for the Austin Dobson book, and had my back turned +to Bettie. + + + 2 + +Next day, in Cedarwood, a woman in mourning--in mourning fluffed and +jetted and furbelowed in such pleasing fashion that it seemed +flamboyantly to demand immediate consolation of all marriageable +males,--viewed me with a roving eye as I heaped daffodils on Stella's +grave. They had cost me a pretty penny, too, for this was in September. +But then I must have daffodils, much as I loathe the wet, limp feel o. +them, because she would have chosen daffodils.... Well! I fancied this +woman thought me sanctioned by both church and law in what I did,--and +viewed me in my supposedly recent bereavement and gauged my +potentialities,--viewed me, in short, with the glance of adventurous +widowhood. + +My faith (I meditated) if she knew!--if I could but speak my thought to +her! + +"Madam,"--let us imagine me, my hat raised, my voice grave,--"the woman +who lies here was a stranger to me. I did not know her. I knew that her +eyes were blue, that her hair was sunlight, that her voice had pleasing +modulations; but I did not know the woman. And she cared nothing for me. +That is why my voice shakes as I tell you of it. And I have brought her +daffodils, because of all flowers she loved them chiefly, and because +there is no one else who remembers this. It is the flower of spring, and +Stella--for that was her name, madam,--died in the spring of the year, +in the spring of her life; and Stella would have been just twenty-six +to-day. Oh, and daffodils, madam, are all white and gold, even as that +handful of dust beneath us was all white and gold when we buried it with +a flourish of crepe and lamentation, some two years and five months ago. +Yet the dust there was tender flesh at one time, and it clad a brave +heart; but we thought of it--and I among the rest,--as a plaything with +which some lucky man might while away his leisure hours. I believe now +that it was something more. I believe--ah, well, my _credo_ is of little +consequence. But whatever this woman may have been, I did not know her. +And she cared nothing for me." + +I reflected I would like to do it. I could imagine the stare, the +squawk, the rustling furbelows, as madam fled from this grave madman. +She would probably have me arrested. + +You see I had come to think differently of Stella. At times I remembered +her childish vanity, her childish, morbid views, her childish gusts of +petulance and anger and mirth; and I smiled,--oh, very tenderly, yet +I smiled. + +Then would awake the memory of Stella and myself in that ancient +moonlight and of our first talk of death--two infants peering into +infinity, somewhat afraid, and puzzled; of Stella making tea in the +firelight, and prattling of her heart's secrets, half-seriously, half in +fun; and of Stella striving to lift a very worthless man to a higher +level and succeeding--yes, for the time, succeeding; and of Stella dying +with a light heart, elate with dreams of Peter Blagden's future and of +"a life that counted"; and of what she told me at the very last. And, +irrationally perhaps, there would seem to be a sequence in it all, and I +could not smile over it, not even tenderly. + +And I would depicture her, a foiled and wistful little wraith, very +lonely in eternity, and a bit regretful of the world she loved and of +its blundering men, and unhappy,--for she could never be entirely happy +without Peter,--and I feared, indignant. For Stella desired very +heartily to be remembered--she was vain, you know,--and they have all +forgotten. Yes, I am sure that even as a wraith, Stella would be +indignant, for she had a fine sense of her own merits. + +"But I am just a little butterfly-woman," she would say, sadly; then, +with a quick smile, "Aren't I?" And her eyes would be like stars--like +big, blue stars,--and afterward her teeth would glint of a sudden, and +innumerable dimples would come into being, and I would know she was +never meant to be taken seriously.... + +But we must avoid all sickly sentiment. + +You see the world had advanced since Stella died,--twice around the sun, +from solstice to solstice, from spring to winter and back again, +travelling through I forget how many millions of miles; and there had +been wars and scandals and a host of debutantes and any number of +dinners; and, after all, the world is for the living. + +So we of Lichfield agreed unanimously that it was very sad, and spoke of +her for a while, punctiliously, as "poor dear Stella"; and the next week +Emily Van Orden ran away with Tom Whately; and a few days later Alicia +Wade's husband died, and we debated whether Teddy Anstrother would do +the proper thing or sensibly marry Celia Reindan: and so, a little by a +little, we forgot our poor, dear Stella in precisely the decorous +graduations of regret with which our poor dear Stella would have +forgotten any one of us. + +Yes, even those who loved her most deeply have forgotten Stella. They +remember only an imaginary being who was entirely perfect, and of whom +they were not worthy. It is this fictitious woman who has usurped the +real Stella's place in the heart of the real Stella's own mother, and +whom even Lizzie d'Arlanges believes to have been once her sister, and +over whom Peter Blagden is always ready to grow maudlin; and it is this +immaculate woman--who never existed,--that will be until the end of +Avis' matrimonial existence the standard by which Avis is measured and +found wanting. And thus again the whirligig of time, by an odd turn, +brings in his revenges. + +And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. And the woman they speak of +to-day, in that hushed, hateful, sanctimonious voice, I must confess I +never knew. And of all persons I chiefly rage against that faultless +angel, that "poor dear Stella," who has pilfered even the paltry tribute +of being remembered from the Stella that to-day is mine alone. For it is +to this fictitious person that the people whom my Stella loved, as she +did not love me, now bring their flowers; and it was to this person they +erected their pompous monument,--nay, more, it was for this atrocious +woman they ordered the very coffin in which my Stella lay when I last +saw her. And it is not fair. + +And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. It would be good to have her +back,--to have her back to jeer at me, to make me feel red and +uncomfortable and ridiculous, to say rude things about my waist, and +indeed to fluster me just by being there. Yes, it would be good. But, +upon the whole, I am not sorry that Stella is gone. + +For there is Peter Blagden to be considered. We can all agree to-day +that Peter is a good fellow, that he is making the most of his Uncle +Larry's money, and that he is nobody's enemy but his own; and we have +smugly forgotten the time when we expected him to become a great lawyer. +We do not expect that of Peter now; instead, we are content +enough--particularly since Peter has so admirably dressed his part by +taking to longish hair and gruffness and a cane,--to point him out to +strangers in Lichfield as "one of our wealthiest men," and to elect him +to all civic committees, and to discuss his semi-annual sprees and his +monetary relations with various women whom one does not "know." And the +present Mrs. Blagden, too, appears content enough. + +And as Stella loved him-- + +Well, as it was, Peter was then off on his honeymoon, and there was only +I to bring the daffodils to Stella. She was always vain, was Stella; it +would have grieved her had no one remembered. + + + 3 + +Then I caught the afternoon train for Fairhaven, and went back to my +capable fiancee. + +But I walked over to Willoughby Hall that night and found Charteris +alone in his queer library, among the serried queer books and the +portraits of his "literary creditors." When I came into the apartment he +was mending a broken tea-cup, for he peculiarly delighted in such +infinitesimal task-work; but the vexed countenance at once took on the +fond young look my coming would invariably provoke, and he shoved aside +the fragments.... + +We talked of trifles; apropos of nothing, Charteris said, "Yes,--but, +then, I devoted the morning to drawing up my will." And I laughed over +such forethought. + +The man rose and with clenched fist struck upon the littered table. "It +is in the air. I swear to you that, somehow, _I_ have been warned. But +always I have been favoured--Why, man, I protest that never in my life +have I encountered any person in associating with whom I did not +condescend, with reason to back me! Yet today Death stands within arm's +reach, and I have accomplished--some three or four little books! And +yet--why, _Ashtaroth's Lackey_, now--Yes, by God! it is perfected speech +such as few other men have ever written. I know it, and I do not care at +all even though you piteous dullards should always lack the wit to +recognise and revere perfected speech when it confronts you. But +presently I die! and there is nothing left of me save the inefficient +testimony of those three or four little books!" + +I patted his shoulder and protested he had over-worked himself. + +"Eh, well," he said, and with that easy laugh I knew of old; "in any +event, I have been thinking for a whole two hours of my wife, and of how +from the very beginning I have utilised her, and of how good and +credulous she is, and of how happy I have made her--! For I have made +her happy. That is the preposterous part of it--" + +"Why, yes; Anne loves you very dearly. Oh, I think that everybody is +irrationally fond of you, John. No, that is not a compliment, it is +rather the reverse. It is simply an instance of what I have been +brooding over all this afternoon,--that we like people on account of +their good qualities and love them on account of their defects. I +honestly believe that the cornerstone of affection is the agreeable +perception of our superiority in some one point, at least, to the +beloved. And that is why so many people are fond of you, I think." + +He laughed a little. "And _de te fabula_--Yet I would distinguish. You +think me a futile person and not, as we will put it, a disastrously +truthful person, and so on through the entire list of all those +so-called vices which are really just a habit of not doing this or that +particular thing. Well! it is no longer _a la mode_ to talk about +God,--yet I must confess to an old-fashioned faith in our Author's +existence and even in His amiability. I believe He placed me in this +colourful world, and that He is not displeased because I have spent +therein some forty-odd years pleasurably. Then too I have not wasted +that pleasure, I have philanthropically passed it on. I have bequeathed +posterity the chance to spend an enjoyable half-hour or so over one or +two little books. That is not much to claim, but it is something." + +John Charteris was talking to himself now. + +"Had I instead the daily prayers of seven orphans, or the proud +consciousness of having always been afraid to do what I wanted +to,--which I take to be the universally accredited insurance of a +blissful eternity,--or even a whole half-column with portrait in the New +York papers to indicate what a loss my premature demise had been to +America,--or actually all three together, say, to exhibit as the +increment of this period, I honestly cannot imagine any of the more +intelligent archangels lining up to cheer my entry into Paradise. I +believe, however, that to be contented, to partake of the world's +amenities with moderation as a sauce, and to aggrieve no fellow-being, +except in self-protection, and to make other people happy as often as +you find it possible, is a recipe for living that will pass muster even +in heaven. There you have my creed; and it may not be impeccable, but I +believe in it." + +"You have forgotten something," I said, with a grin. "'One must not +think too despondently nor too often of the grim Sheriff who arrives +anon to dispossess you, no less than all the others, nor of any +subsequent and unpredictable legal adjustments.' See, here it is, your +own words printed in the book." + +"Dear me, did I say that? How nicely phrased it is! Well! you and I have +defiantly preserved the gallant attitude in an era not very favorable +thereto. And we seem to prosper--as yet--" + +"But certainly! We are the highly exceptional round pegs that flourish +like green bay-trees in a square hole," I summed it up. "Presently of +course our place knoweth us not. But in the mean while--well, as it +happens, I was recalling to-day how adroitly I scaled the summit of +human wisdom when I was only fourteen. For I said then, 'You can have a +right good time first, any way, if you keep away from ugly things and +fussy people.' And at twenty-five I stick to it." + +"I wonder now if it is not at a price?" said Charteris, rather +mirthlessly. "Either way, you have as yet the courage of the +unconvicted. And you have managed, out of it all, to get together the +makings of an honest book. I do not generally believe in heaping +flattery upon young authors, but if I had written that last book of +yours it would not grieve me. Even so, I wonder--? But it is dreary +here, in this old house, with all my wife's high-minded ancestors +chilling the air. Come, let us concoct some curious sort of drink." + +I looked at him compassionately. "And have Bettie staying up to let me +in and smelling it on me! You must be out of your head." + +And then Charteris laughed and derided me, and afterward we chatted for +a good two hours,--quite at random, and disposing of the most important +subjects, as was our usage when in argument, in a half-sentence. + +It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against, and I enjoyed it. +Taking him by and large, I loved the little fellow as I have loved no +other man. + + + + +30. + +_He Gilds the Weather-Vane_ + + +But I would not go along with Charteris the next morning when he came by +the Hamlyns' on his way to King's College. I could not, because I was +labouring over a batch of proof-sheets; and as I laboured my admiration +for the very clever young man who had concocted this new book augmented +comfortably; so that I told Charteris he was a public nuisance, and +please to go to Tillietudlem. + +He had procured the key to the Library,--for the College had not opened +as yet,--and meant to borrow an odd volume or so of Lucian. Charteris +had evolved the fantastic notion of treating Lucian's Zeus as a tragic +figure. He sketched a sympathetic picture of the fallen despot, and of +the smokeless altars, girdled by a jeering rabble of so-called +philosophers, and of how irritating it must be to anybody to have your +actual existence denied. Did I not see the pathos of poor Zeus's +situation with the god business practically "cornered," and the Jews +getting all the trade? + +I informed him that the only pathos in life just at present was my +inability to disprove, in default of abolishing, the existence of people +who bothered me when I was busy. So Charteris went away, just as Byam +brought the mail from the post-office. + + + 2 + +There were two cheques from magazines. Life was very pleasant, in a +quiet uneventful world. The _Fairhaven Gazette_ for the week had come, +too, to indicate that, as usual, nothing of grave import was happening +in an agreeably monotonous world. True, the Bulgarians were issuing an +appeal to civilization on the ground that they objected to being +massacred, and cyclones were wrecking towns and killing quite a number +of persons in Florida, and the strikes in Colorado were leading to +divers homicides; but in Fairhaven these things did not seem to matter. +And so the front page of the _Gazette_ was, rightfully, reserved for +Plans of the College for the Session of 1903-4.... + +I looked again. The President was explaining that he had intended no +discourtesy to Sir Thomas Lipton by declining to attend the +Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht Club dinner; Major Delmar had failed to beat +Lou Dillon's time, on the same track; the National Dressmakers' +Association had declared that the kangaroo walk and Gibson shoulders +would shortly be eschewed by all really fashionable women; and these +matters were more interesting, of course, but certainly no cause for +excitement. Well, I reflected, no news was good news proverbially; and I +was content to let the axiom pass. + +In fine, there was nothing to worry over anywhere. And the book was +going to be good, quite astonishingly good.... + +And yonder Bettie waited for me, and I could hear the piano that +proclaimed she was not idle. I was ineffably content; and at ease within +a rather kindly universe, taking it by and large.... + +"Quite a nice Setebos, after all! a big, fine generous-hearted fellow, +who doesn't bother to keep accounts to the last penny. I heartily +approve of Setebos, and Bettie ought not to rag Him so. She would think +it tremendously nice and boyish of me if I were to go impulsively and +tell her something like that--" + +So I decided I had worked quite long enough. + + + 3 + +But as I reached out toward the portieres, a man came into the room, +entering from the hall-way. And I gave a little whistling sound of +astonishment and hastened to him with extended hand. + +"My dear fellow," I began; "why, have you dropped from the moon?" + +"They--they told me you were here," said Jasper Hardress, and paused to +moisten his lips. "My wife died, yonder in Montana, ten days ago last +Thursday,--yes, it was on a Tuesday she died, I think." + +And I was silent for a breathing-space. "Yes?" I said, at last; for I +had seen the shining thing in Jasper Hardress's hand, and I was +wondering now why he had pocketed the toy, and for how long. + +"It was of a fever she died. She was delirious,--oh, quite three days. +And she talked in her delirium." + +I began to smile; it was like witnessing a play. "Yonder is Bettie and +my one chance of manhood; and blind chance, just the machination of a +tiny microbe, entraps me as I tread toward all this. I was wrong about +Setebos. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven." + +I said, aloud: "Well, Hardress, you wouldn't have me dispute the +veracity of a lady?" + +But the man did not appear to hear me. "Oh, it was very horrible," he +said. "Oh, I would like you, first of all, to comprehend how horrible it +was. She was always calling--no, not calling exactly, but just moaning +one name, and over and over again. He had been so cruel, she said. He +didn't really care for anything, she said, except to write his hateful +books. And I had loved her, you understand. And for three whole days I +must sit there and hear her tell of what another man had meant to her! I +have not been wholly sane, I think, since then, for I had loved her for +a long time. And her throat was so little that I often thought how easy +it would be to stop the moaning and talking, but somehow I did not like +to do it. And it isn't my honour that I mean to avenge. It is Gillian +that I must avenge,--Gillian who died because a coward had robbed her of +the will to live. For it was that in chief. Why, even you must +understand that," he said, as though he pleaded with me. + +And yonder Bettie played,--with lithe fingers which caressed the keys +rather than struck them, I remembered. And always at the back of my mind +some being that was not I was taking notes as to how unruffled the man +was; and I smiled a little, in recognition of the air, as Bettie began +_The Funeral March of a Marionette_.... + +"Yes," I said; "I think I understand. There is something to be advanced +upon the other side perhaps; but that scarcely matters. You act within +your rights; and, besides, you have a pistol, and I haven't. I am +getting afraid, though, Jasper. I can't stand this much longer. So for +God's sake, make an end of this!" + +Jasper Hardress said: "I mean to. But they told me he was here? Yes, I +am sure that someone told me he was here." + +I think I must have reeled a little. I know my brain was working +automatically. Gillian Hardress had always called me Jack; and Jasper +Hardress was past reason; and yonder was Bettie, who had made life too +fine and dear a thing to be relinquished.... + +"Jasper," someone was saying, and that someone seemed to laugh, "we +aren't living in the Middle Ages, remember. No, just as I said, I cannot +stand this nonsense any longer, and you must make an end of this +foolishness. Just on a bare suspicion--just on the ravings of a +delirious woman--! Why, she used to call _me_ Jack,--and I write +books--Why, you might just as logically murder _me_!" + +"I thought at first it was you. Oh, only for a moment, boy. I was not +quite sane, I think, for at first I suspected you of such treachery as +in my sober senses I know you never dreamed of. And I had forgotten you +were just a child--But she was conscious at the end," said Jasper +Hardress, "and when I--talked with her about what she had said in +delirium, she told me it was Charteris whose son we christened Jasper +Hardress some two years ago--" + +I said: "I never knew there was a child." But I was thinking of a +hitherto unaccounted-for photograph. + +"He only lived three months. I had always wanted a son. You cannot fancy +how proud I was of him." Hardress laughed here. + +"And she told you it was Charteris! in the moment of death when--when +you were threatening me, she told you it was Charteris!" + +"It is different when you are dying. You see--Gillian knew that eternity +depended on what she said to me then--" He spoke as with difficulty, and +he kept licking at restless lips. + +"Yes,--she did believe that. And she told you--!" I comprehended how +Gillian Hardress had loved me, and my shame was such that now it was the +mere brute will to live which held me. But it held me, none the less. +Besides, I saw the least unpleasant solution. + +"I suppose I can't blame you," I said,--"for if she told you, why, of +course--" Then I barked out: "He was here a moment ago. You must have +come around one corner, in fact, just as he turned the other. You will +find him at Willoughby Hall, I suppose. He said he was going +straight home." + +For I knew that Charteris was at King's College, a mile away from +Willoughby Hall; and, I assured myself, there would be ample time to +warn him. Only how much must now depend upon the diverting qualities of +Lucian! For should the Samosatan flag in interest, John would be leaving +the College presently; and there is but one street in Fairhaven. + + + 4 + +I had my hand upon the garden-gate, and Hardress had just turned the +corner below, going toward Cambridge Street, when Bettie came upon +the porch. + +"Well," she said, "and who's your fat friend, Mr. Sheridan?" + +"I can't stop now, dear. I forgot to tell John about something which is +rather important--" + +"Gracious!" Bettie Hamlyn said; "that sounds like shooting. Why, it is +shooting, isn't it?" + +"Yes," said I. + +"--Quite as though the Monnachins and the Massawomeks and all the other +jaw-breakers were attacking Fairhaven as they used to do on alternate +Thursdays, and affording both of us an excellent opportunity to get +nicely scalped in time for dinner. So I don't mind confessing that it +was against precisely such an emergency I declined to turn out an +elaborate suite of hair; and now I expect the world at large to +acknowledge that I acted very sensibly." + +"It is much more likely to be some drunken country-man on his monthly +spree--" I was reflecting while Bettie talked nonsense that there had +been no less than four shots. I was wondering whom the last was for. It +would be much pleasanter, all around, if Hardress had sent it into his +own disordered brain. Yes, certainly, three bullets ought amply to +account for an unprepared and unarmed and puny Charteris.... + +So I said: "Well, I suppose my business with John must wait for a while. +Besides, Bettie, you are such a dear in that get-up. And if you will +come down into the garden at once, I will explain a few of my reasons +for advancing the assertion." + +Standing upon the porch, she patted me ever so lightly upon the head. +"What a child it is!" she said. "I don't think that, after all, I shall +put twenty-six candles on your cake next week. The fat and lazy literary +gent is not really old enough, not really more than ten." + +"--And besides, apart from the proposed discussion of your physical +charms, I have something else quite equally important to tell +you about." + +"Oh, drat the pertinacious infant, then I'll come for half an hour. Just +wait until I get a hat. Still, what a worthless child it is! to be +quitting work before noon." + +And she would have gone, but I detained her. "Yes, what a worthless +child it is,--or rather, what an unproverbial sort of busy bee it has +been, Bettie dear. For his has been the summer air, and the sunshine, +and the flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes +have been upon him. Now it is autumn. And he has let others eat his +honey-which I take to include all that he actually made, all that wasn't +in the world before he came, as Stella used to say,--so that he might +have his morsel and his song. And sometimes it has been Sardinian honey, +very bitter in the mouth,--and even then he has let others eat it--" + +"You are a most irrelevant infant," said Miss Hamlyn, "with these +insectean divagations--Dear me, what lovely words! And of course if you +really want to drag me into that baking-hot garden, and have the only +fiancee you just at present possess laid up by a sunstroke--" + + + + +_The Epilogue: Which Suggests that Second Thoughts--_ + + +So I waited there alone. Whatever the four shots implied, I must tell +Bettie everything, because she was Bettie, and it was not fair I should +have any secrets from her. "Oh, just be honest with me," she had said, +in this same garden, "and I don't care what you do!" And I had never +lied to Bettie: at worst, I simply had not told her anything concerning +matters about which I was glad she had not happened to ask any +questions. But this was different.... + +Dimly I knew that everything must pivot on my telling Bettie. John was +done for, the Hardress woman was done for, and whether or no Jasper had +done for himself, there was no danger, now, that anyone would ever know +how that infernal Gillian had badgered me into, probably, three +homicides. There might be some sort of supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, +but very certainly it was not conformable to any human mathematics.... +And therefore I must tell Bettie. + +I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. She had pardoned much. It +might be she would pardon even this, "because I had been honest with her +when I didn't want to be." And in any event--even in her loathing,-- +Bettie would understand, and know I had at least kept faith with her.... + +I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. For living seemed somehow +to have raised barriers about me a little by a little, so that I must +view and talk with all my fellows more and more remotely, and could not, +as it were, quite touch anybody save Bettie. At all other persons I was +but grimacing falsely across an impalpable barrier. And now just such a +barrier was arising between Bettie and me, as I perceived in a sort of +panic. Yes, it was rising resistlessly, like an augmenting mist not ever +to be put aside, except by plunging forthwith into hours, or days, or +even into months perhaps, of ugliness and discomfort.... + +It was the season of harvest. The leaves were not yet turned, and upon +my face the heatless, sun-steeped air was like a caress. The whole world +was at full-tide, ineffably sweet and just a little languorous: and bees +were audible, as in a humorous pretence of vexation.... + +The world was very beautiful. I must tell Bettie presently, of course; +only the world was such a comfortable place precisely as it was; and I +began to wonder if I need tell Bettie after all? + +For, after all, to tell the truth could resurrect nobody; and to know +the truth would certainly make Bettie very unhappy; and never in my life +have I been able to endure the contact of unhappiness. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CORDS OF VANITY *** + +This file should be named 7cvan10.txt or 7cvan10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7cvan11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7cvan10a.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: The Cords of Vanity + +Author: James Branch Cabell et al + +Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9608] +[This file was first posted on October 9, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CORDS OF VANITY *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Virginia Paque, Anuradha Valsa, and +Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + +THE CORDS OF VANITY + +A Comedy of Shirking + +Revised and Expanded Edition + +by JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +with INTRODUCTION by WILSON FOLLETT + + + + + + + +To + +GABRIELLE BROOKE MONCURE + +_Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit._ + + + + + +AN INTRODUCTION + +by Wilson Follett + + +Mr. Cabell, in making ready this second or intended edition of THE +CORDS OF VANITY, performs an act of reclamation which is at the same +time an act of fresh creation. + +For the purely reclamatory aspect of what he has done, his reward (so +far as that can consist in anything save the doing) must come from +insignificantly few directions; so few indeed that he, with a wrily +humorous exaggeration, affects to believe them singular. The author of +this novel has been pleased to describe the author of this +introduction as "the only known purchaser of the book" and, further, +as "the other person to own a CORDS OF VANITY". I could readily enough +acquit myself, with good sound legal proofs, of any such singularity +as stands charged in this soft impeachment--and that without appeal to +_The Cleveland Plain Dealer_ of eleven years ago ("slushy and +disgusting"), or to _The New York Post_ ("sterile and malodorous ... +worse than immoral--dull"), or to _Ainslee's Magazine_ ("inconsequent +and rambling ... rather nauseating at times"). These devotees of the +adjective that hunts in pairs are hardly to be discussed, I suppose, +in connection with any rewards except such as accrue to the possessors +of a certain obtuseness, who always and infallibly reap at least the +reward of not being hurt by what they do not know--or, for that +matter, by what they do know. He who writes such a book as THE CORDS +OF VANITY is committing himself to the supremely irrational faith that +this dullness is somehow not the ultimate arbiter; and for him the +pronouncements of this dullness simply do not figure among either his +rewards or his penalties. So, it is not exactly to these tributes of +the press that one reverts in noting that THE CORDS OF VANITY, on its +publication eleven years ago, promptly became a book which there +were--almost--none to praise and very few to love. After all, its +author's computation of that former audience of his--his actual +individual voluntary readers of a decade ago--appears to be but +slightly and pardonably exaggerated on the more modest side of the +fact. If there were a Cabell Club of membership determined solely by +the number of those who, already possessing THE CORDS OF VANITY in its +first edition, recognize it as the work of a serious artist of high +achievement and higher capacity, I suspect that the smallness of that +club would be in inordinate disproportion to everything but its +selectness and its members' pride in "belonging". + +Be that as it may, the economist-author, on the eve of his book's +emergence from the limbo of "out of print", prefers that it come into +its redemption carrying a foreword by someone who knew it without +dislike in its former incarnation. No contingent liability, it seems, +can dissuade Mr. Cabell from this preference. An author who once +elected to precede a group of his best tales with an introduction +eloquently setting forth reasons why the collection ought not to be +published at all, is hardly to be deterred now by the mere +inexpediency of hitching his star to a farm-wagon. His own graciously +unreasonable insistence must be the excuse, such as it is, for the +present introduction, such as it is. If there may be said to exist a +sort of charter membership in Mr. Cabell's audience, this document is +to be construed as representing its very enthusiastic welcome to the +later and vastly larger elective membership. + +And if, weighed as such a welcome, it proves hopelessly inadequate, at +least it provides a number of possible compensations by the way. For +instance, that _New York World_ critic who damned the book but praised +its frontispiece of 1909, has now a uniquely pat opportunity to +balance his ledger by praising the book and damning this foreword, +which, more or less, replaces the frontispiece. Similarly, the more +renowned critic and anthologist who so well knows the "originals" of +the verses in _From the Hidden Way_, can now render poetically perfect +justice to all who will care by perceiving that both the earlier +edition of this book and the author of this foreword are but figments +of Mr. Cabell's slightly puckish invention. + +But these pages must not be, like those which follow, a comedy of +shirking. They will have flouted a plain duty unless they speak of the +sense and the degree in which this novel, during the process of +reclaiming it, has been actually recreated. Perhaps the matter can be +packed most succinctly into the statement that Mr. Cabell's hero has +been subjected to such a process of growth as has made him +commensurate in stature with the other two modern writers of Mr. +Cabell's invention. As _The Cream of the Jest_ is essentially the book +of Felix Kennaston and _Beyond Life_ that of John Charteris, so THE +CORDS OF VANITY is essentially the book of Robert Etheridge Townsend. +Now, this Townsend has accomplished a deal of growing since 1909. By +this I do not mean that he is taken at a later period of his own +imagined life, or that he fails to act consonantly with the extreme +youth imputed to him: I mean that he is the creation of a more mature +mind, a deeper philosophy, a more probing insight into the +implications of things. A given youth of twenty-five will be very +differently interpreted by an observer of thirty and by the same +observer at forty, very much as a given era of the past will be +understood differently by a single historian before and after certain +cycles of his own social and political experience. The past never +remains to us the same past; it grows up along with us; the physical +facts may remain admittedly the same, but our understanding accents +them differently, finds more in them at some points and less at +others. So Robert Etheridge Townsend remains an example of that +special temperament which, being unable to endure the contact of +unhappiness, consistently shirks every responsibility that entails or +threatens discomfort; and the truth about him, taking him as an +example of just that temperament, is still inexorably told. But his +weakness as a man becomes much more tolerable in this second version, +because it is much more intimately and poignantly correlated with his +strength as an artist. One is made to feel that he, like Charteris, +may the better consummate in his art the auctorial virtues of +distinction and clarity, beauty and symmetry, tenderness and truth and +urbanity, precisely because his personal life is bereft of those +virtues. Less than before, the accent is on the wastrel in Townsend; +more than before, it is on the potential creator of beauty in him. The +earlier readers will hardly count it as a fault that Mr. Cabell has +contrived to make his novel, without detriment to any truth +whatsoever, a far less unpleasant book. Sardonic it still is, by a +necessary implication, but not wantonly, and with a mellowness. The +irony, which at its harshest was capable of rasping the nerves, has +become capable of wringing the heart. + +Other reasons there are, too, for holding that THE CORDS OF VANITY is +certain to make its second appeal to a many times multiplied audience. +Since divers momentous transactions of the years just gone, the whole +world stands in a moral position extraordinarily well adapted to the +comprehension of just such a comedy of shirking; and especially the +world of thought has received a powerful impulsion toward the area +long occupied by Mr. Cabell's romantic pessimism. There is perhaps +somewhat more demand for satire, or at least a growing toleration of +it. Moreover, by sheer patience and reiteration Mr. Cabell has +procured no little currency for some of his most characteristic ideas. +Chivalry and gallantry, as he analyzes them, are concepts which play +their part in the inevitable present re-editing of social and literary +history. _The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck_, _The Cream of the Jest_, +and _The Certain Hour_ have somewhat to say to the discriminating, +even on other than purely aesthetic grounds; _Beyond Life_ is on the +threshold of its day as the _Sartor Resartus_ of one side, the +aesthetic side, of modernism; + +"_Of_ Jurgen _eke they maken mencion";_ + +and THE CORDS OF VANITY is but the first of the earlier books to be +reissued in the format of the uniform and accessible Intended Edition. + +While THE CORDS OF VANITY was out of print, a fresh copy is known to +have been acquired for twenty-five cents. Copies of a more recent work +by the same hand--a tale which has been rendered equally unavailable +to the public, though by slightly different considerations--have +fetched as much as one hundred times that sum. This arithmetic may be, +in part, the gauge of an unsought and distasteful notoriety; but that +very notoriety, by the most natural of transitions, will lead the +curious on from what cannot be obtained to what can, and some who have +begun by seeking one particular work of a great artist will end by +discovering the artist. In short, it is rational to expect that the +fortunes hereafter of this rewritten novel will very excellently +illustrate the uses of adversity. + +Not, I repeat, that any great part of the reward for such writing can +come from without. According to Robert Etheridge Townsend, "a man +writes admirable prose not at all for the sake of having it read, but +for the more sensible reason that he enjoys playing solitaire"--a not +un-Cabellian saying. And, even of the reward from without, it may be +questioned whether the really indispensable part ever comes from the +multitude. A lady with whose more candid opinions the writer of this +is more frequently favored nowadays than of old has said: "Every time +I hear of somebody who has wanted one of these books without being +able to get it, or who, having got it, has conceded it nothing better +than the disdain of an ignoramus, I feel as if I must forthwith get +out the copy and read it through again and again, until I have read it +once for every person who has rejected it or been denied it." One may +feel reasonably sure that it is this kind of solicitude, rather than +any possible sanction from the crowd, which would be thought of by the +author of this book as "the exact high prize through desire of which +we write". + +WILSON FOLLETT. + +CHESHIRE, CONNECTICUT + +_May, 1920_ + + + + + + CONTENTS: + + THE PROLOGUE + + I HE SITS OUT A DANCE + + II HE LOVES EXTENSIVELY + + III HE EARNS A STICK-PIN + + IV HE TALKS WITH CHARTERIS + + V HE REVISITS FAIRHAVEN AND THE PLAY + + VI HE CHATS OVER A HEDGE + + VII HE GOES MAD IN A GARDEN + + VIII HE DUELS WITH A STUPID WOMAN + + IX HE PUTS HIS TONGUE IN HIS CHEEK + + X HE SAMPLES NEW EMOTIONS + + XI HE POSTURES AMONG CHIMNEY-POTS + + XII HE FACES HIMSELF AND REMEMBERS + + XIII HE BAITS UPON THE JOURNEY + + XIV HE PARTICIPATES IN A BRAVE JEST + + XV HE DECIDES TO AMUSE HIMSELF + + XVI HE SEEKS FOR COPY + + XVII HE PROVIDES COPY + + XVIII HE SPENDS AN AFTERNOON IN ARDEN + + XIX HE PLAYS THE IMPROVIDENT FOOL + + XX HE DINES OUT, IMPEDED BY SUPERSTITIONS + + XXI HE IS URGED TO DESERT HIS GALLEY + + XXII HE CLEANS THE SLATE + + XXIII HE REVILES DESTINY AND CLIMBS A WALL + + XXIV HE RECONCILES SENTIMENT AND REASON + + XXV HE ADVANCES IN THE ATTACK ON SELWOODE + + XXVI HE ASSISTS IN THE DIVERSION OF BIRDS + + XXVII HE CALLS, COUNSELS, AND CONSIDERS + +XXVIII HE PARTICIPATES IN SUNDRY CONFIDENCES + + XXIX HE ALLOWS THE MERITS OF IMPERFECTION + + XXX HE GILDS THE WEATHER-VANE + + THE EPILOGUE: WHICH SUGGESTS THAT SECOND THOUGHTS-- + + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + +_"In the house and garden of his dream he saw a child moving, and +could divide the main streams at least of the winds that had played on +him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey."_ + + + +_The Prologue: Which Deals with the Essentials_ + + +_1--Writing_ + +It appeared to me that my circumstances clamored for betterment, +because never in my life have I been able to endure the contact of +unhappiness. And my mother was always crying now, over (though I did +not know it) the luckiest chance which had ever befallen her; and that +made me cry too, without understanding exactly why. + +So the child, that then was I, procured a pencil and a bit of +wrapping-paper, and began to write laboriously: + +"DEAR LORD + +"You know that Papa died and please comfort Mama +and give Father a crown of Glory Ammen + +"Your lamb and very sincerely yours + +"ROBERT ETHERIDGE TOWNSEND." + +This appeared to the point as I re-read it, and of course God would +understand that children were not expected to write quite as straight +across the paper as grown people. The one problem was how to deliver +this, my first letter, most expeditiously, because when your mother +cried you always cried too, and couldn't stop, not even when you +wanted to, not even when she promised you five cents, and it all made +you horribly uncomfortable. + +I knew that the big Bible on the parlor table was God's book. Probably +God read it very often, since anybody would be proud of having written +a book as big as that and would want to look at it every day. So I +tiptoed into the darkened parlor. I use the word advisedly, for there +was not at this period any drawing-room in Lichfield, and besides, a +drawing-room is an entirely different matter. + +Everywhere the room was cool, and, since the shades were down, the +outlines of the room's contents were uncomfortably dubious; for just +where the table stood had been, five days ago, a big and oddly-shaped +black box with beautiful silver handles; and Uncle George had lifted +me so that I could see through the pane of glass, which was a part of +this funny box, while an infinity of decorous people rustled and +whispered.... + +I remember knowing they were "company" and thinking they coughed and +sniffed because they were sorry that my father was dead. In the light +of knowledge latterly acquired, I attribute these actions to the then +prevalent weather, for even now I recall how stiflingly the room smelt +of flowers--particularly of magnolia blossoms--and of rubber and of +wet umbrellas. For my own part, I was not at all sorry, though of +course I pretended to be, since I had always known that as a rule my +father whipped me because he had just quarreled with my mother, and +that he then enjoyed whipping me. + +I desired, in fine, that he should stay dead and possess his crown of +glory in Heaven, which was reassuringly remote, and that my mother +should stop crying. So I slipped my note into the Apocrypha.... + +I felt that somewhere in the room was God and that God was watching +me, but I was not afraid. Yet I entertained, in common with most +children, a nebulous distrust of this mysterious Person, a distrust of +which I was particularly conscious on winter nights when the gas had +been turned down to a blue fleck, and the shadow of the mantelpiece +flickered and plunged on the ceiling, and the clock ticked louder and +louder, in prediction (I suspected) of some terrible event very close +at hand. + +Then you remembered such unpleasant matters as Elisha and his bears, +and those poor Egyptian children who had never even spoken to Moses, +and that uncomfortably abstemious lady, in the fat blue-covered +_Arabian Nights_, who ate nothing but rice, grain by grain--in the +daytime.... And you called Mammy, and said you were very thirsty and +wanted a glass of water, please. + +To-day, though, while acutely conscious of that awful inspection, and +painstakingly careful not to look behind me, I was not, after all, +precisely afraid. If God were a bit like other people I knew He would +say, "What an odd child!" and I liked to have people say that. Still, +there was sunlight in the hall, and lots of sunlight, not just long +and dusty shreds of sunlight, and I felt more comfortable when I was +back in the hall. + + +2--_Reading_ + +I lay flat upon my stomach, having found that posture most conformable +to the practice of reading, and I considered the cover of this slim, +green book; the name of John Charteris, stamped thereon in fat-bellied +letters of gold, meant less to me than it was destined to signify +thereafter. + +A deal of puzzling matter I found in this book, but in my memory, +always, one fantastic passage clung as a burr to sheep's wool. That +fable, too, meant less to me than it was destined to signify +thereafter, when the author of it was used to declare that he had, +unwittingly, written it about me. Then I read again this + +_Fable of the Foolish Prince_ + +"As to all earlier happenings I choose in this place to be silent. +Anterior adventures he had known of the right princely sort. But +concerning his traffic with Schamir, the chief talisman, and how +through its aid he won to the Sun's Sister for a little while; and +concerning his dealings with the handsome Troll-wife (in which affair +the cat he bribed with butter and the elm-tree he had decked with +ribbons helped him); and with that beautiful and dire Thuringian woman +whose soul was a red mouse: we have in this place naught to do. +Besides, the Foolish Prince had put aside such commerce when the Fairy +came to guide him; so he, at least, could not in equity have grudged +the same privilege to his historian. + +"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping along his +father's highway. But the road was bordered by so many wonders--as +here a bright pebble and there an anemone, say, and, just beyond, a +brook which babbled an entreaty to be tasted,--that many folk had +presently overtaken and had passed the loitering Foolish Prince. First +came a grandee, supine in his gilded coach, with half-shut eyes, +uneagerly meditant upon yesterday's statecraft or to-morrow's +gallantry; and now three yokels, with ruddy cheeks and much dust upon +their shoulders; now a haggard man in black, who constantly glanced +backward; and now a corporal with an empty sleeve, who whistled as he +went. + +"A butterfly guided every man of them along the highway. 'For the Lord +of the Fields is a whimsical person,' said the Fairy,' and such is his +very old enactment concerning the passage even of his cowpath; but +princes each in his day and in his way may trample this domain as +prompt their will and skill.' + +"'That now is excellent hearing,' said the Foolish Prince; and he +strutted. + +"'Look you,' said the Fairy, 'a man does not often stumble and break +his shins in the highway, but rather in the byway.'.... + +"Thus, the Fairy leading, the Foolish Prince went skipping on his +allotted journey, though he paused once in a while to shake his bauble +at the staring sun. + +"'The stars,' he considered, 'are more sympathetic.... + +"And thus, the Fairy leading, they came at last to a tall hedge +wherein were a hundred wickets, all being closed; and those who had +passed the Foolish Prince disputed before the hedge and measured the +hundred wickets with thirty-nine articles and with a variety of +instruments, and each man entered at his chosen wicket, and a +butterfly went before him; but no man returned into the open country. + +"'Now beyond each wicket,' said the Fairy, 'lies a great crucible, and +by ninety and nine of these crucibles is a man consumed, or else +transmuted into this animal or that animal. For such is the law in +these parts and in human hearts.' + +"The Prince demanded how if one found by chance the hundredth wicket? +But she shook her head and said that none of the Tylwydd Teg was +permitted to enter the Disenchanted Garden. Rumor had it that within +the Garden, beyond the crucibles, was a Tree, but whether the fruit of +this Tree were sweet or bitter no person in the Fields could tell, nor +did the Fairy pretend to know what happened in the Garden. + +"'Then why, in heaven's name, need a man test any of these wickets?' +cried the Foolish Prince; 'with so much to lose and, it may be, +nothing to gain? For one, I shall enter none of them.' + +"But once more she shook her glittering head. 'In your House and in +your Sign it was decreed. Time will be, my Prince; to-day the kid +gambols and the ox chews his cud. Presently the butcher cries, _Time +is!_ Comes the hour and the power, and the cook bestirs herself and +says, _Time was!_ The master has his dinner, either way, all say, and +every day.' + +"And the Fairy vanished as she talked with him, her radiances thinning +into the neutral colors of smoke, and thence dwindling a little by a +little into the vaulting spiral of a windless and a burnt-out fire, +until nothing remained of her save her voice; and that was like the +moving of dead leaves before they fall. + +"'Truly,' said the Foolish Prince, 'I am compelled to consider this a +vexatious business. For, look you, the butterfly I just now admire +flits over this wicket, and then her twin flutters over that wicket, +and between them there is absolutely no disparity in attraction. Hoo! +here is a more sensible insect.' + +"And he leaped and cracked his heels together and ran after a golden +butterfly that drifted to the rearward Fields. There was such a host +of butterflies about that presently he had lost track of his first +choice, and was in boisterous pursuit of a second, and then of a +third, and then of yet others; but none of them did he ever capture, +the while that one by one he followed divers butterflies of varying +colors, and never a golden butterfly did he find any more. + +"When it was evening, the sky drew up the twilight from the east as a +blotter draws up ink, and stars were kindling everywhere like tiny +signal-fires, and a light wind came out of the murky east and rustled +very plaintively in places where the more ambiguous shadows were; and +the Foolish Prince shivered, for the air was growing chill, and the +tips of his fingers were aware of it. + +"'A crucible,' he reflected, 'possesses the minor virtue of continuous +warmth.' + +"And before the hedge he found a Rational Person, led hither by a +Clothes' Moth, working out the problem of the hundred wickets in +consonance with the most approved methods. 'I have very nearly solved +it,' the Rational Person said, in genteel triumph, 'but this evening +grows too dark for any further ciphering, and again I must wait until +to-morrow. I regret, sir, that you have elected to waste the day, in +pursuit of various meretricious Lepidoptera.' + +"'A happy day, my brother, is never wasted." + +"'That appears to me to be nonsense,' said the Rational Person; and he +put up his portfolio, preparatory to spending another night under his +umbrella in the Fields. + +"'Indeed, my brother?' laughed the Foolish Prince. 'Then, farewell, +for I am assured that yonder, as here, our father makes the laws, and +that to dispute his appreciation of the enticing qualities of +butterflies were an impertinence.' + +"Thereafter, pushing open the wicket nearest to his hand, the Foolish +Prince tucked his bauble under his left arm and skipped into the +Disenchanted Garden; and as he went he sang, not noting that, from +somewhere in the thickening shadows, had arisen a golden butterfly +which went before him through the wicket. + +"Sang the Foolish Prince: + + "'Farewell to Fields and Butterflies + And levities of Yester-year! + For we espy, and hold more dear, + The Wicket of our Destinies. + + "'Whereby we enter, once for all, + A Garden which such fruit doth yield + As, tasted once, no more Afield + We fare where Youth holds carnival. + + "'Farewell, fair Fields, none found amiss + When laughter was a frequent noise + And golden-hearted girls and boys + Appraised the mouth they meant to kiss. + + "'Farewell, farewell! but for a space + We, being young, Afield might stray, + That in our Garden nod and say, + _Afield is no unpleasant place.'"_ + + +3--_Arithmetic_ + +In such disconnected fashion, as hereafter, I record the moments of my +life which I most vividly remember. For it is possible only in the +last paragraphs of a book, and for a book's people only, to look back +upon an ordered and proportionate progression to what one has become; +in life the thing arrives with scantier dignity; and one appears, in +retrospection, less to have marched toward any goal than always to +have jumped and scrambled from one stepping-stone to another because, +however momentarily, "just this or that poor impulse seemed the sole +work of a lifetime." + +Well! at least I have known these moments and the rapture of their +dominance; and I am not lightly to be stripped of recollection of +them, nor of the attendant thrill either, by any cheerless hour +wherein, as sometimes happens, my personal achievements confront me +like a pile of flimsy jack-straws. + +What does it all amount to?--I do not know. There may be some sort of +supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, but very certainly it is not +conformable to any human mathematics. + + + + + + + _THE CORDS OF VANITY + +"His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the flowers; and +gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been upon him. +Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his morsel +and his song."_ + + + + + + +1. + +_He Sits Out a Dance_ + + +When I first knew Stella she was within a month of being fifteen, +which is for womankind an unattractive age. There were a startling +number of corners to her then, and she had but vague notions as to the +management of her hands and feet. In consequence they were perpetually +turning up in unexpected places and surprising her by their size and +number. Yes, she was very hopelessly fifteen; and she was used to +laugh, unnecessarily, in a nervous fashion, approximating to a whinny, +and when engaged in conversation she patted down her skirts six times +to the minute. + +It seems oddly unbelievable when I reflect that Rosalind--"daughter to +the banished Duke"--and Stella and Helen of Troy, and all the other +famous fair ones of history, were each like that at one period or +another. + +As for myself, I was nine days younger than Stella, and so I was at +this time very old--much older than it is ever permitted anyone to be +afterward. I cherished the most optimistic ideas as to my impendent +moustache, and was wont in privacy to encourage it with the +manicure-scissors. I still entertained the belief that girls were +upon the whole superfluous nuisances, but was beginning to perceive +the expediency of concealing this opinion, even in private converse +with my dearest chum, where, in our joyous interchange of various +heresies, we touched upon this especial sub-division of fauna very +lightly, and, I now suspect, with some self-consciousness. + + + 2 + +All this was at a summer resort, which was called the Green +Chalybeate. Stella and I and others of our age attended the hotel hops +in the evening with religious punctuality, for well-meaning elders +insisted these dances amused us, and it was easier to go than to argue +the point. At least, that was the feeling of the boys. + +Stella has since sworn the girls liked it. I suspect in this statement +a certain parsimony as to the truth. They giggled too much and were +never entirely free from that haunting anxiety concerning their +skirts. + +We danced together, Stella and I, to the strains of the last Sousa +two-step (it was the _Washington Post_), and we conversed, meanwhile, +with careful disregard of the amenities of life, since each feared +lest the other might suspect in some common courtesy an attempt +at--there is really no other word--spooning. And spooning was absurd. + +Well, as I once read in the pages of a rare and little known author, +one lives and learns. + +I asked Stella to sit out a dance. I did this because I had heard Mr. +Lethbury--a handsome man with waxed mustachios and an absolutely +piratical amount of whiskers,--make the same request of Miss Van +Orden, my just relinquished partner, and it was evident that such +whiskers could do no wrong. + +Stella was not uninfluenced, it may be, by Miss Van Orden's example, +for even in girlhood the latter was a person of extraordinary beauty, +whereas, as has been said, Stella's corners were then multitudinous; +and it is probable that those two queer little knobs at the base of +Stella's throat would be apt to render their owner uncomfortable and a +bit abject before--let us say--more ample charms. In any event, Stella +giggled and said she thought it would be just fine, and I presently +conducted her to the third piazza of the hotel. + +There we found a world that was new. + + + 3 + +It was a world of sweet odors and strange lights, flooded with a +kindly silence which was, somehow, composed of many lispings and +trepidations and thin echoes. The night was warm, the sky all +transparency. If the comparison was not manifestly absurd, I would +liken that remembered sky's pale color to the look of blue plush +rubbed the wrong way. And in its radiance the stars bathed, large and +bright and intimate, yet blurred somewhat, like shop-lights seen +through frosted panes; and the moon floated on it, crisp and clear as +a new-minted coin. This was the full midsummer moon, grave and +glorious, that compelled the eye; and its shield was obscurely marked, +as though a Titan had breathed on its chill surface. Its light +suffused the heavens and lay upon the earth beneath us in broad +splashes; and the foliage about us was dappled with its splendor, save +in the open east, where the undulant, low hills wore radiancy as a +mantle. + +For the trees, mostly maples of slight stature, clustered thickly +about the hotel, and their branches mingled in a restless pattern of +blacks and silvers and dim greens that mimicked the laughter of the +sea under an April wind. Looking down from the piazza, over the +expanse of tree-tops, all this was strangely like the sea; and it gave +one, somehow, much the same sense of remote, unbounded spaces and of a +beauty that was a little sinister. At times whippoorwills called to +one another, eerie and shrill; and the distant dance-music was a +vibration in the air, which was heavy with the scent of bruised +growing things and was filled with the cool, healing magic of the +moonlight. + +Taking it all in all, we had blundered upon a very beautiful place. +And there we sat for a while and talked in an aimless fashion. We did +not know quite how one ought to "sit out" a dance, you conceive.... + + + 4 + +Then, moved by some queer impulse, I stared over the railing for a +little at this great, wonderful, ambiguous world, and said solemnly: + +"It is good." + +"Yes," Stella agreed, in a curious, quiet and tiny voice, "it--it's +very large, isn't it?" She looked out for a moment over the tree-tops. +"It makes me feel like a little old nothing," she said, at last. "The +stars are so big, and--so uninterested." Stella paused for an +interval, and then spoke again, with an uncertain laugh. "I think I am +rather afraid." + +"Afraid?" I echoed. + +"Yes," she said, vaguely; "of--of everything." + +I understood. Even then I knew something of the occasional +insufficiency of words. + +"It is a big world," I assented, "and lots of people are having a +right hard time in it right now. I reckon there is somebody dying this +very minute not far off." + +"It's all--waiting for us!" Stella had forgotten my existence. "It's +bringing us so many things--and we don't know what any of them are. +But we've got to take them, whether we want to or not. It isn't fair. +We've got to--well, got to grow up, and--marry, and--die, whether we +want to or not. We've no choice. And it may not matter, after all. +Everything will keep right on like it did before; and the stars won't +care; and what we've done and had done to us won't really matter!" + +"Well, but, Stella, you can have a right good time first, anyway, if +you keep away from ugly things and fussy people. And I reckon you +really go to Heaven afterwards if you haven't been really bad,--don't +you?" + +"Rob,--are you ever afraid of dying?" Stella asked, "very much +afraid--Oh, you know what I mean." + +I did. I was about ten once more. It was dark, and I was passing a +drug-store, with huge red and green and purple bottles glistening in +the gas-lit windows; and it had just occurred to me that I, too, must +die, and be locked up in a box, and let down with trunk-straps into a +hole, like Father was.... So I said, "Yes." + +"And yet we've got to! Oh, I don't see how people can go on living +like everything was all right when that's always getting nearer,--when +they know they've got to die before very long. Because they dance and +go on picnics and buy hats as if they were going to live forever. +I--oh, I can't understand." + +"They get used to the idea, I reckon. We're sort of like the rats in +the trap at home, in our stable," I suggested, poetically. "We can bite +the wires and go crazy, like lots of them do, if we want to, or we can +eat the cheese and kind of try not to think about it. Either way, there's +no getting out till they come to kill us in the morning." + +"Yes," sighed Stella; "I suppose we must make the best of it." + +"It's the only sensible thing to do, far as I can see." + +"But it is all so big--and so careless about us!" she said, after a +little. "And we don't know--we can't know!--what is going to happen to +you and me. And we can't stop its happening!" + +"We'll just have to make the best of that, too," I protested, +dolefully. + +Stella sighed again, "I hope so," she assented; "still, I'm scared of +it." + +"I think I am, too--sort of," I conceded, after reflection. "Anyhow, I +am going to have as good a time as I can." + +There was now an even longer pause. Pitiable, ridiculous infants were +pondering, somewhat vaguely but very solemnly, over certain mysteries +of existence, which most of us have learned to accept with stolidity. +We were young, and to us the miraculous insecurity and inconsequence +of human life was still a little impressive, and we had not yet come +to regard the universe as a more or less comfortable place, +well-meaningly constructed anyhow--by Somebody--for us to reside in. + +Therefore we moved a trifle closer together, Stella and I, and were +commonly miserable over the _Weltschmerz_. After a little a distant +whippoorwill woke me from a chaos of reverie, and I turned to Stella, +with a vague sense that we two were the only people left in the whole +world, and that I was very, very fond of her. + +Stella's head was leaned backward. Her lips were parted, and the +moonlight glinted in her eyes. Her eyes were blue. + +"Don't!" said Stella, faintly. + +I did.... + +It was a matter out of my volition, out of my planning. And, oh, the +wonder, and sweetness, and sacredness of it! I thought, even in the +instant; and, oh, the pity that, after all, it is slightly +disappointing.... + +Stella was not angry, as I had half expected. "That was dear of you," +she said, impulsively, "but don't try to do it again." There was the +wisdom of centuries in this mandate of Stella's as she rose from the +bench. The spell was broken, utterly. "I think," said Stella, in the +voice of a girl of fifteen, "I think we'd better go and dance some +more." + + + 5 + +In the crude morning I approached Stella, with a fatuous smile. She +apparently both perceived and resented my bearing, although she never +once looked at me. There was something of great interest to her in the +distance, apparently down by the springhouse; she was flushed and +indignant; and her eyes wouldn't, couldn't, and didn't turn for an +instant in my direction. + +I fidgeted. + +"If," said she, impersonally, "if you believe it was because of _you_, +you are very much mistaken. It would have been the same with anybody. +You don't understand, and I don't either. Anyhow, I think you are a +mess, and I hate you. Go away from me!" + +And she stamped her foot in a fine rage. + +For the moment I entertained an un-Christian desire that Stella had +been born a boy. In that case, I felt, I would, just then, have really +enjoyed sitting upon the back of her head, and grinding her nose into +the lawn, and otherwise persuading her to cry "'Nough." These virile +pleasures being denied me, I sought for comfort in discourteous +speech. + +"Umph-huh!" said I, "and you think you're mighty smart, don't you? +Well, I don't want you pawing around me any more, either. I won't have +it, do you understand! That was what I was going to tell you anyhow, +you kissing-bug, even if you hadn't acted so smart. And you can just +stick that right in your pipe and smoke it, you old Miss Smart Alec." + +Thereupon I--wisely--departed without delay. A rock struck me rather +forcibly between the shoulder blades, but I did not deign to notice +this phenomenon. + +"You can't fight girls with fists," I reflected. "You've just got to +talk to them in the right way." + + + + +2. + +_He Loves Extensively_ + + +I saw no more of Stella for a lengthy while, since within two days of +the events recorded it pleased my mother to seek out another summer +resort. + +"For in September," she said, "I really must have perfect quiet and +unimpeachable butter, and falling leaves, and only a very few +congenial people to be melancholy with,--and that sort of thing, you +know. I find it freshens one up so against the winter." + +It was a signal feature of my mother's conversation that you never +understood, precisely, what she was talking about. + +Thus in her train the silly, pretty woman drew otherwhither her +hobbledehoy son, as indeed Claire Bulmer Townsend had aforetime drawn +an armament of more mature and stolid members of my sex. I was always +proud of my handsome mother, but without any aspirations, however +theoretical, toward intimacy; and her periods of conscientious if +vague affection, when she recollected its propriety, I endured with +consolatory foreknowledge of an impendent, more agreeable era of +neglect. + +I fancy that at bottom I was without suspecting it lonely. I was an +only child; my father had died, as has been hinted, when I was in +kilts.... No, I must have graduated from kilts into "knee-pants" when +the Democracy of Lichfield celebrated Grover Cleveland's first +election as President, for I was seven years old then, and was allowed +to stay up ever so late after supper to watch the torchlight parade. I +recollect being rather pleasantly scared by the yells of all those +marching people and by the glistening of their faces as the irregular +flaring torches heaved by; and I recollect how delightfully the cold +night air was flavored with kerosene. In any event, it was on this +generally festive November night that my father again took too much to +drink, and, coming home toward morning, lay down and went to sleep in +the vestibule between our front-door and the storm-doors; and five +days later died of pneumonia...In that era I was accounted an odd boy; +given to reading and secretive ways, and, they record, to long +silences throughout which my lips would move noiselessly. "Just +talking to one of my friends," they tell me I was used to explain; +though it was not until my career at King's College that I may be said +to have pretended to intimacy with anybody. + + + 2 + +For in old Fairhaven I spent, of course, a period of ostensible study, +as four generations of my fathers had done aforetime. But in that +leisured, slatternly and ancient city I garnered a far larger harvest +of (comparatively) innocuous cakes and ale than of authentic learning, +and at my graduation carried little of moment from the place save many +memories of Bettie Hamlyn.... Her father taught me Latin at King's +College, while Bettie taught me human intimacy--almost. Looking back, +I have not ever been intimate with anybody.... + +Not but that I had my friends. In particular I remember those four of +us who always called ourselves--in flat defiance, just as Dumas did, +of mere arithmetic--"The Three Musketeers." I think that we loved one +another very greatly during the four years we spent together in our +youth. I like to believe we did, and to remember the boys who were +once unreasonably happy, even now. It does not seem to count, somehow, +that Aramis has taken to drink and every other inexpedient course, I +hear, and that I would not recognize him today, were we two to +encounter casually--or Athos, either, I suppose, now that he has been +so long in the Philippines. + +And as for D'Artagnan--or Billy Woods, if you prefer the appellation +which his sponsors gave him,--why we are still good friends and always +will be, I suppose. But we are not particularly intimate; and very +certainly we will never again read _Chastelard_ together and declaim +the more impassioned parts of it,--and in fine, I cannot help seeing, +nowadays, that, especially since his marriage, Billy has developed +into a rather obvious and stupid person, and that he considers me to +be a bit of a bad egg. And in a phrase, when we are together, just we +two, we smoke a great deal and do not talk any more than is necessary. + +And once I would have quite sincerely enjoyed any death, however +excruciating, which promoted the well-being of Billy Woods; and he +viewed me not dissimilarly, I believe.... However, after all, this was +a long, long while ago, and in a period almost antediluvian. + +And during this period they of Fairhaven assumed I was in love with +Bettie Hamlyn; and for a very little while, at the beginning, had I +assumed as much. More lately was my error flagrantly apparent when I +fell in love with someone else, and sincerely in love, and found to my +amazement that, upon the whole, I preferred Bettie's companionship to +that of the woman I adored. By and by, though, I learned to accept +this odd, continuing phenomenon much as I had learned to accept the +sunrise. + + + 3 + +Once Bettie demanded of me, "I often wonder what you really think of +me? Honest injun, I mean." + +I meditated, and presently began, with leisure: + +"Miss Hamlyn is a young woman of considerable personal attractions, +and with one exception is unhandicapped by accomplishments. She plays +the piano, it is true, but she does it divinely and she neither +crochets nor embroiders presents for people, nor sketches, nor +recites, nor sings, or in fine annoys the public in any way +whatsoever. Her enemies deny that she is good-looking, but even her +friends concede her curious picturesqueness and her knowledge of it. +Her penetration, indeed, is not to be despised; she has even grasped +the fact that all men are not necessarily fools in spite of the +fashion in which they talk to women. It must be admitted, however, +that her emotions are prone to take precedence of her reasoning +powers: thus she is not easily misled from getting what she desires, +save by those whom she loves, because in argument, while always +illogical, she is invariably convincing--" + +Miss Hamlyn sniffed. "This is, perhaps, the inevitable effect of +twenty cigarettes a day," was her cryptic comment. "Nevertheless, it +does affect me with ennui." + +"--For, the mere facts of the case she plainly demonstrates, with the +abettance of her dimples, to be an affair of unimportance; the real +point is what she wishes done about it. Yet the proffering of any +particular piece of advice does not necessarily signify that she +either expects or wishes it to be followed, since had she been present +at the Creation she would have cheerfully pointed out to the Deity His +various mistakes, and have offered her co-operation toward bettering +matters, and have thought a deal less of Him had He accepted it; but +this is merely a habit--" "Yes?" said Bettie, yawning; and she added: +"Do you know, Robin, the saddest and most desolate thing in the world +is to practise an _etude_ of Schumann's in nine flats, and the next is +to realize that a man who has been in love with you has recovered for +keeps?" + +"--It must not be imagined, however, that Miss Hamlyn is untruthful, +for when driven by impertinences into a corner she conceals her real +opinion by voicing it quite honestly as if she were joking. Thereupon +you credit her with the employment of irony and the possession of +every imaginable and super-angelical characteristic--" + +"Unless we come to a better understanding," Miss Hamlyn crisply began, +"we had better stop right here before we come to a worse--" + +"--Miss Hamlyn, in a word, is possessed of no insufferable virtues and +of many endearing faults; and in common with the rest of humanity, she +regards her disapproval of any proceeding as clear proof of its +impropriety." This was largely apropos of a fire-new debate concerning +the deleterious effects of cigarette-smoking; and when I had made an +end, and doggedly lighted another one of them, Bettie said nothing.... +She minded chiefly that one of us should have thought of the other +without bias. She said it was not fair. And I know now that she was +right. + +But of Bettie Hamlyn, for reasons you may learn hereafter if you so +elect, I honestly prefer to write not at all. Four years, in fine, we +spent to every purpose together, and they were very happy years. To +record them would be desecration. + + + 4 + +Meantime, during these years, I had fallen in and out of love +assiduously. Since the Anabasis of lad's love traverses a monotonous +country, where one hill is largely like another, and one meadow a +duplicate of the next to the last daffodil, I may with profit dwell +upon the green-sickness lightly. It suffices that in the course of +these four years I challenged superstition by adoring thirteen girls, +and, worse than that, wrote verses of them. + +I give you their names herewith--though not their workaday names, lest +the wives of divers people be offended (and in many cases, surprised), +but the appellatives which figured in my rhymes. They were Heart's +Desire, Florimel, Dolores, Yolande, Adelais, Sylvia, Heart o' My +Heart, Chloris, Felise, Ettarre, Phyllis, Phyllida, and Dorothy. Here +was a rosary of exquisite names, I even now concede; and the owner of +each _nom de plume_ I, for however brief a period, adored for this or +that peculiar excellence; and by ordinary without presuming to mention +the fact to any of these divinities save Heart o' My Heart, who was, +after all, only a Penate. + +Outside the elevated orbits of rhyme she was called Elizabeth Hamlyn; +and it afterward became apparent to me that I, in reality, wrote all +the verses of this period solely for the pleasure of reading them +aloud to Bettie, for certainly I disclosed their existence to no one +else--except just one or two to Phyllida, who was "literary." + +And the upshot of all this heart-burning is most succinctly given in +my own far from impeccable verse, as Bettie Hamlyn heard the summing-up +one evening in May. It was the year I graduated from King's +College, and the exact relation of the date to the Annos Domini is +trivial. But the battle of Manila had just been fought, and off +Santiago Captain Sampson and Commander Schley were still hunting for +Cervera's "phantom fleet." And in Fairhaven, as I remember it, +although there was a highly-colored picture of Commodore Dewey in the +barber-shop window, nobody was bothering in the least about the war +except when Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal foregathered at Clarriker's +Emporium to denounce the colossal errors of "imperialism".... + + "Thus, then, I end my calendar + Of ancient loves more light than air;-- + And now Lad's Love, that led afar + In April fields that were so fair, + Is fled, and I no longer share + Sedate unutterable days + With Heart's Desire, nor ever praise + Felise, or mirror forth the lures + Of Stella's eyes nor Sylvia's, + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "Chloris is wedded, and Ettarre + Forgets; Yolande loves otherwhere, + And worms long since made bold to mar + The lips of Dorothy and fare + Mid Florimel's bright ruined hair; + And Time obscures that roseate haze + Which glorified hushed woodland ways + When Phyllis came, as Time obscures + That faith which once was Phyllida's,-- + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "That boy is dead as Schariar, + Tiglath-pileser, or Clotaire, + Who once of love got many a scar. + And his loved lasses past compare?-- + None is alive now anywhere. + Each is transmuted nowadays + Into a stranger, and displays + No whit of love's investitures. + I let these women go their ways, + Yet love for each loved lass endures. + + "Heart o' My Heart, thine be the praise + If aught of good in me betrays + Thy tutelage--whose love matures + Unmarred in these more wistful days,-- + Yet love for each loved lass endures." + +For this was the year that I graduated, and Chloris--I violate no +confidence in stating that her actual name was Aurelia Minns, and that +she had been, for a greater number of years than it would be courteous +to remember, the undisputed belle of Fairhaven,--had that very +afternoon married a promising young doctor; and I was draining the cup +of my misery to the last delicious drop, and was of course inspired +thereby to the perpetration of such melancholy bathos as only a +care-free youth of twenty is capable of evolving. + + + 5 + +"Dear boy," said Bettie, when I had made an end of reading, "and are +you very miserable?" + +Her fingers were interlocked behind her small black head; and the +sympathy with which she regarded me was tenderly flavored with +amusement. + +This much I noticed as I glanced upward from my manuscript, and +mustered a Spartan smile. "If misery loves company, then am I the +least unhappy soul alive. For I don't want anybody but just you, and I +believe I never will." + +"Oh--? But I don't count." The girl continued, with composure: "Or +rather, I have always counted your affairs, so that I know precisely +what it all amounts to." + +"Sum total?" + +"A lot of imitation emotions." She added hastily: "Oh, quite a good +imitation, dear; you are smooth enough to see to that. Why, I remember +once--when you read me that first sonnet, sitting all hunched up on +the little stool, and pretending you didn't know I knew who you meant +me to know it was for, and ending with a really very effective, +breathless sob--and caught my hand and pressed it to your forehead for +a moment--Why, that time I was thoroughly rattled and almost +believed--even I--that--" She shrugged. "And if I had been +younger--!" she said, half regretfully, for at this time Bettie was +very nearly twenty-two. + +"Yes." The effective breathless sob responded to what had virtually +been an encore. "I have not forgotten." + +"Only for a moment, though." Miss Hamlyn reflected, and then added, +brightly: "Now, most girls would have liked it, for it sounded all +wool. And they would have gone into it, as you wanted, and have been +very, very happy for a while. Then, after a time--after you had got a +sonnet or two out of it, and had made a sufficiency of pretty +speeches,--you would have gone for an admiring walk about yourself, +and would have inspected your sensations and have applauded them, +quite enthusiastically, and would have said, in effect: 'Madam, I +thank you for your attention. Pray regard the incident as closed.'" + +"You are doing me," I observed, "an injustice. And however tiny they +may be, I hate 'em." + +"But, Robin, can't you see," she said, with an odd earnestness, "that +to be fond of you is quite disgracefully easy, even though--" Bettie +Hamlyn said, presently: "Why, your one object in life appears to be to +find a girl who will allow you to moon around her and make verses +about her. Oh, very well! I met to-day just the sort of pretty idiot +who will let you do it. She is visiting Kathleen Eppes for the Finals. +She has a great deal of money, too, I hear." And Bettie mentioned a +name. + +"That's rather queer," said I. "I used to know that girl. She will be +at the K. A. dance to-morrow night, I suppose,"--and I put up my +manuscript with a large air of tolerance. "I dare say that I have been +exaggerating matters a bit, after all. Any woman who treated me +in the way that Miss Aurelia did is not, really, worthy of regret. And +in any event, I got a ballade out of her and six--no, seven--other +poems." + +For the name which Bettie had mentioned was that of Stella Musgrave, +and I was, somehow, curiously desirous to come again to Stella, and +nervous about it, too, even then.... + + + + +3. + +_He Earns a Stick-pin_ + + +"Dear me!" said Stella, wonderingly; "I would never have known you in +the world! You've grown so fa--I mean, you are so well built. I've +grown? Nonsense!--and besides, what did you expect me to do in six +years?--and moreover, it is abominably rude of you to presume to speak +of me in that abstracted and figurative manner--quite as if I were a +debt or a taste for drink. It is really only French heels and a +pompadour, and, of course, you can't have this dance. It's promised, +and I hop, you know, frightfully.... Why, naturally, I haven't +forgotten--How could I, when you were the most disagreeable boy I ever +knew?" + +I ventured a suggestion that caused Stella to turn an attractive pink, +and laugh. "No," said she, demurely, "I shall never never sit out +another dance with you." + +So she did remember! + +Subsequently: "Our steps suit perfectly--Heavens! you are the fifth +man who has said that to-night, and I am sure it would be very silly +and very tiresome to dance through life with anybody. Men are so +absurd, don't you think? Oh, yes, I tell them all--every one of +them--that our steps suit, even when they have just ripped off a yard +or so of flounce in an attempt to walk up the front of my dress. It +makes them happy, poor things, and injures nobody. You liked it, you +know; you grinned like a pleased cat. I like cats, don't you?" + +Later: "That is absolute nonsense, you know," said Stella, critically. +"Do you always get red in the face when you make love? I wouldn't if I +were you. You really have no idea how queer it makes you look." + +Still later: "No, I don't think I am going anywhere to-morrow +afternoon," said Stella. + + + 2 + +So that during the fleet moments of these Finals, while our army was +effecting a landing in Cuba, I saw as much of Stella as was possible; +and veracity compels the admission that she made no marked effort to +prevent my doing so. Indeed, she was quite cross, and scornful, about +the crowning glory being denied her, of going with me to the +Baccalaureate Address the morning I received my degree. To that of +course I took Bettie. + + + 3 + +I said good-bye to Bettie Hamlyn rather late one evening. It was in +her garden. The Finals were over, and Stella had left Fairhaven that +afternoon. I was to follow in the morning, by an early train. + +It was a hot, still night in June, with never a breath of air +stirring. In the sky was a low-hung moon, full and very red. It was an +evil moon, and it lighted a night that was unreasonably ominous. And +Bettie and I had talked of trifles resolutely for two hours. + +"Well--good-bye Bettie," I said at last. "I'm glad it isn't for long." +For of course we meant never to let a month elapse without our seeing +each other. + +"Good-bye," she said, and casually shook hands. + +Then Bettie Hamlyn said, in a different voice: "Robin, you come of +such a bad lot, and already you are by way of being a rather frightful +liar. And I'm letting you go. I'm turning you over to Stellas and +mothers and things like that just because I have to. It isn't fair. +They will make another Townsend of my boy, and after all I've tried to +do. Oh, Robin, don't let anybody or anything do that to you! Do try to +do the unpleasant thing sometimes, my dear!--But what's the good of +promising?" + +"And have I ever failed you, Bettie?" + +"No,--not me," she answered, almost as though she grudged the fact. +Then Bettie laughed a little. "Indeed, I'm trying to believe you never +will. Oh, indeed, I am. But just be honest with me, Robin, and nothing +else will ever matter very much. I don't care what you do, if only you +are always honest with me. You can murder people, if you like, and +burn down as many houses as you choose. You probably will. But you'll +be honest with me--won't you?--and particularly when you don't want to +be?" + +So I promised her that. And sometimes I believe it is the only promise +which I ever tried to keep quite faithfully.... + + + 4 + +And all the ensuing summer I followed Stella Musgrave from one +watering place to another, with an engaging and entire candor as to my +desires. I was upon the verge of my majority, when, under the terms of +my father's will, I would come into possession of such fragments of +his patrimony as he had omitted to squander. And afterward I intended +to become excessively distinguished in this or that profession, not as +yet irrevocably fixed upon, but for choice as a writer of immortal +verse; and I was used to dwell at this time very feelingly, and very +frequently, upon the wholesome restraint which matrimony imposes upon +the possessor of an artistic temperament. + +Stella promised to place my name upon her waiting list, and to take up +the matter in due season; and she lamented, with a tiny and +pre-meditated yawn, that as a servitor of system she was compelled to +list her "little lovers and suitors in alphabetical order, Mr. +Townsend. Besides, you would probably strangle me before the year was +out." + +"I would thoroughly enjoy doing it," I said, grimly, "right now." She +regarded me for a while. "You would, too," she said at last, with an +alien gravity; "and that is why--Oh, Rob dear, you are out of my +dimension. I am rather afraid of you. I am a poor bewildered triangle +who is being wooed by a cube!" the girl wailed, and but half +humorously. + +And I began to plead. It does not matter what I said. It never +mattered. + +And persons more sensible than I found then far more important things +to talk about, such as General Alger's inefficiency, and General +Shafter's hammock, and "embalmed beef," and the folly of taking over +the Philippines, and Admiral von Diedrich's behavior, and the yellow +fever in our camps and the comparative claims of Messrs. Sampson and +Schley to be made rear-admiral; and everybody more or less was +demanding "an investigation," as the natural aftermath of a war. + + + 5 + +Stella's mother had closed Bellemeade for the year, however, and they +were to spend the winter in Lichfield; and Stella, to reduplicate her +phrase, promised to "think it over very seriously." + +But I suppose I had never any real chance against Peter Blagden. To +begin with,--though Stella herself, of course, would inherit plenty +of money when her mother died,--Peter was the only nephew of a +childless uncle who was popularly reported to "roll in wealth"; and in +addition, Peter was seven years older than I and notoriously +dissipated. No other girl of twenty would have hesitated between us +half so long as Stella did. She hesitated through a whole winter; and +even now there is odd, if scanty, comfort in the fact that Stella +hesitated.... + +Besides Peter was eminently likeable. At times I almost liked him +myself, for all my fervent envy of his recognized depravity and of the +hateful ease with which he thought of something to say in those +uncomfortable moments when he and I and Stella were together. At most +other times I could talk glibly enough, but before this seasoned +scapegrace I was dumb, and felt my reputation to be hopelessly +immaculate ... If only Stella would believe me to be just the tiniest +bit depraved! I blush to think of the dark hints I dropped as to +entirely fictitious women who "had been too kind to me. But then"--as +I would feelingly lament,--"we could never let women alone, we +Townsends, you know--" + + + 6 + +One woman at least I was beginning to "let alone", in that I was +writing Bettie Hamlyn letters which grew shorter and shorter.... Her +mother had fallen ill, not long after I left college; and she and +Bettie were now a great way off, in Colorado, where the old lady was +dying, with the most selfish sort of laziness about it, and so was +involving me in endless correspondence.... At least, I wrote to Bettie +punctually, if briefly, though I had not seen her since that night +when the moon was red, and big, and very evil. I had to do it, because +she had insisted that I write. + +"But letters don't mean anything, Bettie. And besides, I hate writing +letters." + +"That is just why you must write to me regularly. You never do the +things you don't want to do. I know it. But for me you always will, +and that makes all the difference." + +"Shylock!" I retorted. + +"If you like. In any event, I mean to have my pound of flesh, and +regularly." + +So I wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month--because +that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because that +was mine. The rest of my time I gave whole-heartedly to Stella.... + + + 7 + +They named her Stella, I fancy, because her eyes were so like stars. +It is manifestly an irrelevant detail that there do not happen to be +any azure stars. Indeed, I am inclined to think that Nature belatedly +observed this omission, and created Stella's eyes to make up for it; +at any rate, if you can imagine Aldebaran or Benetnasch polished up a +bit and set in a speedwell-cup, you will have a very fair idea of one +of them. You cannot, however, picture to yourself the effect of the +pair of them, because the human mind is limited. + +Really, though, their effect was curious. You noticed them casually, +let us say; then, without warning, you ceased to notice anything. You +simply grew foolish and gasped like a newly-hooked trout, and went mad +and babbled as meaninglessly as a silly little rustic brook trotting +under a bridge. + +I have seen the thing happen any number of times. And, strangely +enough, you liked it. Numbers of young men would venture into the same +room with those disconcerting eyes the very next evening, even +appearing to seek them out and to court peril, as it were,--young men +who must have known perfectly well, either by report or experience, +the unavoidable result of such fool-hardy conduct. For eventually it +always culminated in Stella's being deeply surprised and grieved,--at +a dance, for choice, with music and color and the unthinking laughter +of others to heighten the sadness and the romance of it all,--she +never having dreamed of such a thing, of course, and having always +regarded you only as a dear, dear friend. Yes, and she used certainly +to hope that nothing she had said or done could have led you to +believe she had even for a moment considered such a thing. Oh, she did +it well, did Stella, and endured these frequent griefs and surprises +with, I must protest, quite exemplary patience. In a phrase, she was +the most adorable combination of the prevaricator, the jilt and the +coquette I have ever encountered. + + + 8 + +So, for the seventh time, I asked Stella to marry me. Nearly every +fellow I knew had done as much, particularly Peter Blagden; and it is +always a mistake to appear unnecessarily reserved or exclusive. And +this time in declining--with a fluency that bespoke considerable +practice,--she informed me that, as the story books have it, she was +shortly to be wedded to another. + +And Peter Blagden clapped the pinnacle upon my anguish by asking me to +be the best man. I knew even then whose vanity and whose sense of the +appropriate had put him up to it.... + +"For I haven't a living male relative of the suitable age except two +second cousins that I don't see much of--praise God!" said Peter, +fervently; "and Hugh Van Orden looks about half-past ten, whereas I +class John Charteris among the lower orders of vermin." + +I consented to accept the proffered office and the incidental stick-pin; +and was thus enabled to observe from the inside this episode of Stella's +life, and to find it quite like other weddings. + +Something like this: + +"Look here," a perspiring and fidgety Peter protested, at the last +moment, as we lurked in the gloomy vestry with not a drop left in +either flask; "look here, Henderson hasn't blacked the soles of these +blessed shoes. I'll look like an ass when it comes to the kneeling +part--like an ass, I tell you! Good heavens, they'll look like +tombstones!" + +"If you funk now," said I, severely, "I'll never help you get married +again. Oh, sainted Ebenezer in bliss, and whatever have I done with +that ring? No, it's here all right, but you are on the wrong side of +me again. And there goes the organ--Good God, Peter, look at her! +simply look at her, man! Oh, you lucky devil! you lucky jackass!" + +I spoke enviously, you understand, simply to encourage him. + +Followed a glaring of lights, a swishing of fans, a sense that Peter +was not keeping step with me, and the hum of densely packed, expectant +humanity; a blare of music; then Stella, an incredible vision with +glad, frightened eyes. My shoulders straightened, and I was not out of +temper any longer. The organist was playing softly, _Oh, Promise Me_, +and I was thinking of the time, last January, that Stella and I heard +The Bostonians, and how funny Henry Clay Barnabee was.... "--so long +as ye both may live?" ended the bishop. + +"I will," poor Peter quavered, with obvious uncertainty about it. + +And still one saw in Stella's eyes unutterable happiness and fear, but +her voice was tranquil. I found time to wonder at its steadiness, even +though, just about this time, I resonantly burst a button off one of +my new gloves. I fancy they must have been rather tight. + +"And thereto," said Stella, calmly, "I give thee my troth." + +And subsequently they were Mendelssohned out of church to the +satisfaction of a large and critical audience. I came down the aisle +with Stella's only sister--who afterward married the Marquis +d'Arlanges,--and found Lizzie very entertaining later in the +evening.... + + + 9 + +Yes, it was quite like other weddings. I only wonder for what +conceivable reason I remember its least detail, and so vividly. For it +all happened a great while ago, when--of such flimsy stuff is glory +woven,--Emilio Aguinaldo and Captain Coghlan were the persons most +talked of in America; and when the Mazet committee was "investigating" +I forget what, but with column after column about it in the papers +every day; and when _Me und Gott_ was a famous poem, and "to +hobsonize" was the most popular verb; and when I was twenty-one. _Sic +transit gloria mundi_, as it says in the back of the dictionary. + + + + +4. + +_He Talks with Charteris_ + + +It was upon the evening of this day, after Mr. and Mrs. Blagden had +been duly rice-pelted and entrained, that I first talked against John +Charteris. The novelist was, as has been said, a cousin of Peter +Blagden, and as such, was one of the wedding guests at Bellemeade; and +that evening, well toward midnight, the little man, midway in the +consumption of one of his interminable cigarettes, happened to come +upon me seated upon the terrace and gazing, rather vacantly, in the +direction of the moon. + +I was not thinking of anything in particular; only there was a by-end +of verse which sang itself over and over again, somewhere in the back +of my brain--"Her eyes were the eyes of a bride whom delight makes +afraid, her eyes were the eyes of a bride"--and so on, all over again, +as at night a traveller may hear his train jogging through a +monotonous and stiff-jointed song; and in my heart there was just +hunger. + + + 2 + +Charteris had heard, one may presume, of my disastrous love-business; +and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his +gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light +upon thee, Mr. Townsend,--whatever a murrain may happen to be,--since +you have disturbed me in the concoction of an ever-living and +entrancing fable." + +"I may safely go as far," said I, "as to offer the proverbial penny." + +"Done!" cried Mr. Charteris. He meditated for a moment, and then +began, in a low and curiously melodious voice, to narrate + +_The Apologue of the First Conjugation_ + +"When the gods of Hellas were discrowned, there was a famous scurrying +from Olympos to the world of mortals, where each deity must +henceforward make shift to do without godhead:--Aphrodite in her +hollow hill, where the good knight Tannhauser revels yet, it may be; +Hephaestos, in some smithy; whilst Athene, for aught I know, +established a girls' boarding school, and Helios, as is notorious, +died under priestly torture, and Dionysos cannily took holy orders, +and Hermes set up as a merchant in Friesland. But Eros went to the +Grammarians. He would be a schoolmaster. + +"The Grammarians, grim, snuffy and wrinkled though they might be, were +no more impervious to his allures than are the rest of us, and in +consequence appointed him to an office. This office was, I glean of +mediaeval legend, that of teaching dunderheaded mortals the First +Conjugation. So Eros donned cap and gown, took lodgings with a quiet +musical family, and set _amo_ as the first model verb; and ever since +this period has the verb 'to love' been the first to be mastered in +all well-constituted grammars, as it is in life. + +"Heigho! it is not an easy verb to conjugate. One gets into trouble +enough, in floundering through its manifold nuances, which range +inevitably through the bold-faced 'I love', the confident 'I will +love', the hopeful 'I may be loved', and so on to the wistful, pitiful +Pluperfect Subjunctive Passive, 'I might have been loved +if'--Then each of us may supply the Protasis as best befits his +personal opinion and particular scars, and may tear his hair, or +scribble verses, or adopt the cynical, or, in fine, assume any pose +which strikes his fancy. For he has graduated into the Second +Conjugation, which is _moneo_; and may now admonish to his heart's +content, whilst looking back complacently into the First Classroom, +where others--and so many others!--are still struggling with that +mischancy verb, and are involved in the very conditions--verbal or +otherwise--which aforetime saddened him, or showed him a possible +byway toward recreation, or played the deuce with his liver, according +to the nature of the man. + +"Eros is a hard, implacable pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars +suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers +fabled,--no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised +in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging +nothingness; and not a scholar escapes at least a flick of it. + +"I can fancy the class called up as Eros administers, with zest, his +penalties. Master Paris! for loving his neighbor a little less than +himself, and his neighbor's wife a little more. Master Lancelot! +ditto. Masters Petrarch, Tristram, Antony, Juan Tenorio, Dante +Alighieri, and others! ditto. There are a great many called up for +this particular form of peccancy, you observe; even Master David has +to lay aside his Psalm Book, and go forward with the others for +chastisement. Master Romeo! for trespassing in other people's gardens +and mausoleums. Master Leander! for swimming in the Hellespont after +dark; and Master Tarquin! for mistaking his bedroom at the Collatini's +house-party. + +"Thus, one by one, each scholar goes into the darkened private office. +The master handles his rod--eia! 'tis borrowed from the +Erinnyes,--lovingly, caressingly, like a very conscientious person +about the performance of his duty. Then comes the dreadful order, +'Take down your breeches, sir!'.... But the scene is too horrible to +contemplate. He punishes all, this schoolmaster, for he is +unbelievably old, and with the years' advance has grown querulous. + +"Well, now I approach my moral, Mr. Townsend. One must have one's +birching with the others, and of necessity there remains but to make +the best of it. Birching is not a dignified process, and the endurer +comes therefrom both sore and shamefaced. Yet always in such +contretemps it is expedient to brazen out the matter, and to present +as stately an appearance, we will say, as one's welts permit. + +"First, to the world--" + + + 3 + +But at this point I raised my hand. "That is easily done, Mr. +Charteris, inasmuch as the world cares nothing whatever about it. The +world is composed of men and women who have their own affairs to mind. +How in heaven's name does it concern them that a boy has dreamed +dreams and has gone mad like a star-struck moth? It was foolish of +him. Such is the verdict, given in a voice that is neither kindly nor +severe; and the world, mildly wondering, passes on to deal with more +weighty matters. For vegetables are higher than ever this year, and, +upon my word, Mrs. Grundy, ma'am, a housekeeper simply doesn't know +where to turn, with the outrageous prices they are asking for +everything these days. No, believe me, the world does not take +love-affairs very seriously--not even the great ones," I added, in +noble toleration. + +And with an appreciative chuckle, Charteris sank beside me upon the +bench. + +"My adorable boy! so you have a tongue in your head." + +"But can't you imagine the knights talking over Lancelot's affair with +Guenevere, at whatever was the Arthurian substitute for a club? and +sniggering over it? and Lamoracke sagaciously observing that there was +always a crooked streak in the Leodograunce family? Or one Roman +matron punching a chicken in the ribs, and remarking to her neighbor +at the poultry man's stall: 'Well, Mrs. Gracchus, they do say Antony +is absolutely daft over that notorious Queen of Egypt. A brazen-faced +thing, with a very muddy complexion, I'm told, and practically no +reputation, of course, after the way she carried on with Caesar. And +that reminds me, I hear your little Caius suffers from the croup. Now +_my_ remedy'--and so they waddle on, to price asparagus." + +Charteris said: "Well! we need not go out of our way to meddle with +the affairs of others; the entanglement is most disastrously apt to +come about of itself quite soon enough. Yet a little while and +Lancelot will be running Lamoracke through the body, while the King +storms Joyeuse Garde; a few months and your Roman matron will weep +quietly on her unshared pillow--not aloud, though, for fear of +disturbing the children,--while Gracchus is dreadfully seasick at +Actium." + +"But that doesn't prove anything," I stammered. "Why, it doesn't +follow logically--" + +"Nor does anything else. This fact is the chief charm of life. You +will presently find, I think, that living means a daily squandering of +interest upon the first half of a number of two-part stories which +have not ever any sequel. Oh, my adorable boy, I envy you to-night's +misery so profoundly I am half unwilling to assure you that in the +ultimate one finds a broken heart rather fattening than otherwise; and +that a blighted life has never yet been known to prevent queer +happenings in conservatories and such-like secluded places or to rob a +solitude _a deux_ of possibilities. I grant you that love is a +wonderful thing; but there are a many emotions which stand toward love +much as the makers of certain marmalades assert their wares to stand +toward butter--'serving as an excellent occasional substitute.' At +least, so you will find it. And unheroic as it is, within the month +you will forget." + +"No,--I shall not quite forget," said I. + +"Then were you the more unwise. To forget, both speedily and +frequently, is the sole method of rendering life livable. One is here; +the importance of the fact in the eternal scheme of things is perhaps +a shade more trivial than one is disposed to concede, but in any +event, one is here; and here, for a very little while in youth, one is +capable of happiness. For it is a colorful world, Mr. Townsend, +containing much, upon the whole, to captivate both eye and taste; a +world manured and fertilized by the no longer lovely bodies of persons +who died in youth. Oh, their coffins lie everywhere beneath our feet, +thick as raisins in a pudding, whithersoever we tread. Yet every one +of these poor relics was once a boy or a girl, and wore a body that +was capable of so much pleasure! To-day, unused to gain the fullness +of that pleasure, and now not ever to be used, they lie beneath us, in +their coffins, these white, straight bodies, like swords untried that +rust in the scabbard. Meanwhile, on every side is apparent the not yet +out-wasted instrument, and one is naturally inquisitive,--so that +one's fingers and one's nostrils twitch at times, even in the hour +when one is most miserable, very much as yours do now." + +For a long while I meditated. Then I said: "I am not really miserable, +because, all in all, one is content to pay the price of happiness. I +have been very happy sometimes during the past year; and whatever the +blind Fate that mismanages the world may elect to demand in payment, I +shall not haggle. No, by heavens! I would have nothing changed, and +least of all would I forget; having drunk nectar neat, one would not +qualify it with the water of Lethe." + +I rose, not unhandsome, I trusted, in the moonlight. I was hoping Mr. +Charteris would notice my new dress-suit, procured in honor of +Stella's wedding. And I said: "The play is over, the little comedy is +played out. She must go; at least she has tarried for a little. She +does not love you; ah! but she did. God speed her, then, the woman we +have all loved and lost, and still dream of on sleepy Sundays; and all +possible happiness to her! One must be grateful that through her one +has known the glory of loving. Even though she never cared--'and never +could understand',--one may not but be glad that one has known and +loved in youth the Only Woman." + +"The Only Woman has a way of leaving many heirs, Mr. Townsend, that +play the deuce with the estate." + +"--So to-morrow, like the person in _Lycidas_, I am for fresh fields, +Mr. Charteris. And indeed it is high time that I were journeying, +since she and I have rested, and have laughed and eaten and drunk our +fill at this particular tavern; and now it is closing time. A plague +on these foolish and impertinent laws, say I quite heartily; for it is +cold and cheerless outside, whereas here within I was perfectly +comfortable. None the less I must go, or else be evicted by the +constable; so good-night, my sweet; and as for you, Madam Clotho, pray +what unconscionable score have you chalked up against me?" + +I grimaced. "Heavens! what an infinity of sighs, sonnets, +lamentations, and heart-burnings is this that I owe to Fate and +Decency!" + +Charteris applauded as though it were a comedy. "In effect, Marian's +married and you stand here, alive and merry at--pray what precise +period of life, Mr. Townsend?" + +"I confess to twenty-one at present, sir, though I trust to live it +down in time." + +"I would hardly have thought you that venerable. Well, I predict for +you a life without achievements but of gusto. Yes, you will bring a +seasoned palate to your grave,--and I envy you. We open Willoughby +Hall next week, and of course you will make one of the party. For you +write, I know; and you will want to talk to me about editors and read +me all your damnable verses. Nothing could please me more. Good-night, +you glorious boy." + +And the little man wheeled and departed, leaving me to reflect, with +appropriate emotions, that I had been formally invited to visit the +founder of the Economist school of writers. + + + 4 + +"He said it," I more lately observed--"yes, he undoubtedly said it. +And he wrote _Ashtaroth's Lackey_ and _In Old Lichfield_ and _The +Foolish Prince_, and he knows all the magazine editors personally, and +they are probably only too glad to oblige him about anything, and--Oh, +may be, it is only a dream, after all." My heart was pounding, but not +with sorrow or despair or any other maudlin passion; and Stella was +now as remote from my thoughts as was Joan of Arc or Pharaoh's +daughter. + + + + +5. + +_He Revisits Fairhaven and the Play_ + + +So I went to Willoughby Hall, which stands, as you may be aware, upon +the eastern outskirt of Fairhaven. My reappearance created some stir +among the older students and the town-folk, though, one and all, they +presently declared me to be "too stuck-up for any use," inasmuch as I +ignored them in favour of the Charteris house-party,--after, of +course, one visit to Chapel, which I paid a little obviously _en +prince_, and affably shook hands with all the Faculty, and was +completely conscious of how such happenings impressed us when I, too, +was a student. + +So much had happened since then, and I felt so much older,--with my +existence so delightfully blighted, too,--that it seemed droll to find +Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal still sitting in arm chairs before +Clarriker's Emporium, very much as I had left them there ten months +ago. + + + 2 + +By a disastrous chance did Bettie Hamlyn spend that spring, as well as +the preceding year, in Colorado with her mother, who died there that +summer; and to me Fairhaven proper without Bettie Hamlyn seemed a +tawdry and desolate place; and I know that but for Mrs. Hamlyn's +illness--a querulous woman for whom I never cared a jot,--my future +life had been quite otherwise. For, as I told Bettie once, and it was +true, I have found in the world but three sorts of humanity--"Myself, +and Bettie Hamlyn, and the other people." + +So I still wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month-- +because that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because +that was mine. + +And I thought of many things as I walked by the deserted garden, where +there was nothing which concerned me now, not even a ghost. I did not +go in to leave a card upon Professor Hamlyn. The empty house +confronted me too blankly, with its tight-shuttered windows, like +blind eyes, and I hurried by. + + + 3 + +Meanwhile, this was the first time for many years that Willoughby Hall +had been occupied by any other than caretakers; and Fairhaven, to +confess the truth, was a trifle ill-at-ease before the modish persons +who now tenanted the old mansion; and consoled itself after an +immemorial usage by backbiting. + +And meanwhile I enjoyed myself tremendously. It was the first time I +was ever thrown with people who were unanimously agreed that, after +all, nothing is very serious. Mrs. Charteris, of course, was +different; but she, like the others, found me divertingly naive and, +in consequence, petted and cosseted me. I like petting; and since +everyone seemed agreed to regard me as "the Child in the House"--that +was Alicia Wade's nickname, and it clung,--and to like having a child +in the house, I began a little to heighten my very real boyishness. +There was no harm in it; and if people were fonder of me because I sat +upon the floor by preference, and drolly exaggerated what I really +thought, it became a sort of public duty to do these things. So I did, +and found it astonishingly pleasant. + + + 4 + +And meanwhile too, John Charteris could never see enough of me, whom, +as I to-day suspect, Charteris was studying conscientiously, to the +end that I should be converted into "copy." For me, I was waiting +cannily until he should actually ask to see those manuscripts I had +brought to Willoughby Hall, and should help me to get them published. +So there were two of us.... In any event, it was just three weeks +after Stella's marriage that Charteris coaxed me into Fairhaven's +Opera House to witness a performance of _Romeo and Juliet_, by the +Imperial Dramatic Company. + +I went under protest; I had witnessed the butchery of so many dramas +within these walls during my college days, that I knew what I must +anticipate, I said. I had, as a matter of fact, always enjoyed the +Opera House "shows," but I did not wish to acknowledge the harboring +of such crude tastes to Charteris. In any event, at the conclusion of +the second act,-- + +"By Jove!" said I, in a voice that shook a little. "She's a stunner!" +I jolted out, as I proceeded to applaud, vigorously, with both hands and +feet. "And who would have thought it! Good Lord, who would have +thought it!" + +Charteris smiled, in that infernally patronizing way he had sometimes. +"A beautiful woman, my dear boy,--an inordinately beautiful woman, in +fact, but entirely lacking in temperament." + +"Temperament!" I scoffed; "what's temperament to two eyes like those? +Why, they're as big as golf-balls! And her voice--why, a violin--a +very superior violin--if it could talk, would have just such a voice +as that woman has! Temperament! Oh, you make me ill! Why, man, just +look at her!" I said, conclusively. + +Charteris looked, I presume. In any event, the Juliet of the evening +stood before the curtain, smiling, bowing to right and left. The +citizens of Fairhaven were applauding her with a certain conscientious +industry, for they really found Romeo and Juliet a rather dull couple. +The general opinion, however, was that Miss Montmorenci seemed an +elegant actress, and in some interesting play, like _The Two Orphans_ +or _Lady Audley's Secret_, would be well worth seeing. Upon those who +had witnessed her initial performance, she had made a most favorable +impression in _The Lady of Lyons_; while at the Tuesday matinee, as +Lady Isabel in _East Lynne_, she had wrung the souls of her hearers, +and had brought forth every handkerchief in the house. Moreover, she +was very good-looking,--quite the lady, some said; and, after all, one +cannot expect everything for twenty-five cents; considering which +circumstances, Fairhaven applauded with temperate ardor, and made due +allowance for Shakespeare as being a classic, and, therefore, of +course, commendable, but not necessarily interesting. + + + 5 + +"Well?" I queried, when she had vanished. I was speaking under cover +of the orchestra,--a courtesy title accorded a very ancient and very +feeble piano. "Well, and what do you think of her--of her looks, I +means? Who cares for temperament in a woman!" + +Charteris assumed a virtuous expression. "I don't dare tell you," said +he; "you forget I am a married man." + +Then I frowned a little. I often resented Charteris's flippant +allusion to a wife whom I considered, with some reason, to be vastly +too good for her husband. And I considered how near I had come to +remaining with the others at Willoughby Hall--for that new game they +called bridge-whist! And I decided I would never care for bridge. How +on earth could presumably sensible people be content to coop +themselves in a drawing-room on a warm May evening, when hardly a +mile away was a woman with perfectly unfathomable eyes and a voice +which was a love-song? Of course, she couldn't act, but, then, who +wanted her to act? I indignantly demanded of my soul. + +One simply wanted to look at her, and hear her speak. Charteris, with +his prattle about temperament, was an ass; when a woman is born with +such eyes and with a voice like that, she has done her full duty by +the world, and has prodigally accomplished all one has the tiniest +right to expect of her. + +It was impossible she was in reality as beautiful as she seemed, +because no woman was quite so beautiful as that; most of it was +undoubtedly due to rouge and rice-powder and the footlights; but one +could not be mistaken about the voice. And if her speech was that, +what must her singing be! I thought; and in the outcome I remembered +this reflection best of all. + +I consulted my programme. It informed me, in large type at the end, +that Juliet was "old Capulet's daughter," and that the part was played +by Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci. + +And I sighed. I admitted to myself that from a woman who wilfully +assumed such a name little could be hoped. Still, I would like to see +her off the stage...without all those gaudy fripperies and +gewgaws...merely from curiosity.... Then too, they said those +actresses were pretty gay.... + + + 6 + +"A most enjoyable performance," said Mr. Charteris, as we came out of +the Opera House. "I have always had a sneaking liking for burlesque." + +Thereupon he paused to shake hands with Mrs. Adrian Rabbet, wife to +the rector of Fairhaven. + +"Such a sad play," she chirped, "and, do you know, I am afraid it is +rather demoralizing in its effects on young people. No, of course, I +didn't think of bringing the children, Mr. Charteris--Shakespeare's +language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that +safe. And besides, as I so often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think +of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite +depressed me all through the play to think of him hobnobbing with Dr. +Johnson at the Tabard Inn, and making such irregular marriages, and +stealing sheep--or was it sheep, now?" + +I said that, as I remembered, it was a fox, which he hid under his +cloak until the beast bit him. + +"Well, at any rate, it was something extremely deplorable and +characteristic of genius, and I quite feel for his wife." Mrs. Rabbet +sighed, and endeavored, I think, to recollect whether it was _Ingomar_ +or _Spartacus_ that Shakespeare wrote. "However," she concluded, "they +play _Ten Nights in a Barroom_ on Thursday, and I shall certainly +bring the children then, for I am always glad for them to see a really +moral and instructive drama. That reminds me! I absolutely must tell +you what Tom said about actors the other day--" + +And she did. This led naturally to Matilda's recent and blasphemous +comments on George Washington, and her observations as to the rector's +dog, and little Adey's personal opinion of Elisha. And so on, in a +manner not unfamiliar to fond parents. Mrs. Rabbet said toward the end +that it was a most enjoyable chat, although to me it appeared to +partake rather of the nature of a monologue. It consumed perhaps a +half-hour; and when we two at last relinquished Mrs. Rabbet to her +husband's charge, it was with a feeling not altogether unakin to +relief. + + + 7 + +We walked slowly down Fairhaven's one real street, which extends due +east from the College for as much as a mile, to end inconsequently in +those carefully preserved foundations, which are now the only remnant +of a building wherein a number of important matters were settled in +Colonial days. There Cambridge Street divides like a Y, one branch of +which leads to Willoughby Hall. + +Our route from the Opera House thus led through the major part of +Fairhaven, which, after an evening of unwonted dissipation, was now +largely employed in discussing the play, and turning the cat out for +the night. The houses were mostly dark, and the moon, nearing its +full, silvered row after row of blank windows. There was an odour of +growing things about, for in Fairhaven the gardens are many. + +Then it befell that I made a sudden exclamation. + +"Eh?" said Charteris. + +"Why, nothing," I explained, lucidly. + +It may be mentioned, however, that we were, at this moment, passing a +tall hedge of box, set about a large garden. The hedge was perhaps +five feet six in height; Charteris was also five feet six, whereas I +was an unusually tall young man, and topped my host by a good +half-foot. + +"I say," I observed, after a little, "I'm all out of cigarettes. I'll +go back to the drug-store," I suggested, as seized with a happy +thought, "and get some. I noticed it was still open. Don't think of +waiting for me," I urged, considerately. + +"Why, great heavens!" Charteris ejaculated; "take one of mine. I can +recommend them, I assure you--and, in any event, there are all sorts, +I fancy, at the house. They keep only the rankest kind of domestic +tobacco yonder." + +"I prefer it," I insisted, "oh, yes, I really prefer it. So much +milder and more wholesome, you know. I never smoke any other sort. My +doctor insists on my smoking the very rankest tobacco I can get. It is +much better for the heart, he says, because you don't smoke so much of +it, you know. Besides," I concluded, virtuously, "it is infinitely +cheaper; you can get twenty cigarettes all for five cents at some +places. I really must economize, I think." + +Charteris turned, and with great care stared in every direction. He +discovered nothing unusual. "Very well!" assented Mr. Charteris; "I, +too, have an eye for bargains. I will go with you." + +"If you do alive," quoth I, quite honestly, "I devoutly desire that +all sorts of unpleasant things may happen to me for not having wrung +your neck first." + +Charteris grinned. "Immoral young rip!" said he; "I warn you, before +entering the ministry, Mr. Rabbet was accounted an excellent shot." + +"Get out!" said I. + +And the fervour of my utterance was such that Charteris proceeded to +obey. "Don't be late for breakfast, if you can help it," he urged, +kindly. "Of course, though, you are up to some new form of insanity, +and I shall probably be sent for in the morning, to bail you out of +the lock-up." + +Thereupon he turned on his heel, and went down the deserted street, +singing sweetly. + +Sang Mr. Charteris: + + "Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, + Billing and cooing is all your cheer, + Sighing and singing of midnight strains + Under bonnybells" window-panes. + Wait till you've come to forty year! + + "Forty times over let Michaelmas pass, + Grizzling hair the brain doth clear; + Then you know a boy is an ass, + Then you know the worth of a lass, + Once you have come to forty-year." + + + + +6. + +_He Chats Over a Hedge_ + + +Left to myself, I began to retrace my steps. Solitude had mitigated my +craving for tobacco in a surprising manner; indeed, a casual observer +might have thought it completely forgotten, for I walked with curious +leisure. When I had come again to the box-hedge my pace had +degenerated, a little by a little, into an aimless lounge. Mr. Robert +Etheridge Townsend was rapt with admiration of the perfect beauty of +the night. + +Followed a strange chance. There was only the mildest breeze about; it +was barely audible among the leaves above; and yet--so unreliable are +the breezes of still summer nights,--with a sudden, tiny and almost +imperceptible outburst, did this treacherous breeze lift Mr. +Townsend's brand-new straw hat from his head, and waft it over the +hedge of trim box-bushes. This was unfortunate, for, as has been said, +the hedge was a tall and sturdy hedge. So I peeped over it, with +disconsolate countenance. + + + 2 + +"Beastly awkward," said I, as meditatively; "I'd give a great deal to +know how I'm going to get my hat back without breaking through the +blessed hedge, and rousing the house, and being taken for a burglar, +may be--" + +"It is terrible," assented a quite tranquil voice; "but if gentlemen +_will_ venture abroad on such terrible nights--" + +"Eh?" said I. I looked up quickly at the moon; then back toward the +possessor of the voice. It was peculiar I had not noticed her before, +for she sat on a rustic bench not more than forty feet away, and in +full view of the street. It was, perhaps, the strangeness of the +affair that was accountable for the great wonder in my soul; and the +little tremor which woke in my speech. + +"--so windy," she complained. + +"Er--ah--yes, quite so!" I agreed, hastily. + +"I am really afraid that it must be a tornado. Ah," she continued, +emotion catching at her voice, "heaven help all poor souls at sea! How +the wind must whistle through the cordage! how the marlin-spikes must +quiver, and the good ship reel on such a night!" She looked up at a +cloudless sky, and sighed. + +"Er h'm!" I observed. + +For she had come forward and had held out my hat toward me, and I +could see her very plainly now; and my mouth was making foolish +sounds, and my heart was performing certain curious and varied +gymnastics which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be +included among its proper duties, and which interfered with my +breathing. + + + 3 + +"Didn't I know it--didn't I know it?" I demanded of my soul, and my +pulses sang a paean; "I knew, with that voice, she couldn't be a +common actress--a vulgar, raddled creature out of a barn! You not a +gentlewoman! Nonsense! Why--why, you're positively incredible! Oh, you +great, wonderful, lazy woman, you are probably very stupid, and you +certainly can't act, but your eyes are black velvet, and your voice is +evidently stolen from a Cremona, and as for your hair, there must be +pounds of it, and, altogether, you ought to be set up on a pedestal +for men to worship! There is just one other woman in the whole wide +world as beautiful as you are; and she is two thousand years old, and +is securely locked up in the Louvre, and belongs to the French +Government, and, besides, she hasn't any arms, so that even there you +have the advantage!" + +Indeed, Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci was of much the same large, +placid type as the Venus of Milo, nor were the upper portions of the +two faces dissimilar. Miss Montmorenci's lips, however, were far more +curved, more buxom, and were, at the present moment, bordered by an +absolutely bewildering assemblage of dimples which the statue may not +boast. + + + 4 + +"I really think," said Miss Montmorenci, judicially, "that it would be +best for you to seek some shelter from this devastating wind. It +really is not safe, you know, in the open. You might be swept away, +just as your hat was." + +"The shelter of a tree--" I began, looking doubtfully into the garden, +which had any number of trees. + +"The very thing," she assented. "There is a splendid oak yonder, just +half a block up the street." And she graciously pointed it out. + +I regarded it with disapproval. "Such a rickety old tree," I objected, +sulkily. + +Followed a silence. She bent her head to one side, and looked up at +me. She was now grave with a difference. "A strolling actress isn't +supposed to be very particular, is she?" asked Miss Montmorenci. "She +wouldn't object to a man's coming by night and trying to scrape +acquaintance with her,--a man who wouldn't think of being seen with +her by day? She would like it, probably. She--she'd probably be +accustomed to it, wouldn't she?" And Miss Montmorenci smiled. + +And I, on a sudden, was abjectly ashamed of myself. "Why, you can't +think that of me!" I babbled. "I--oh, don't think me that sort, I beg +of you! I'm not--really, I'm not, Miss Montmorenci! But I admired you +so much to-night--I--oh, of course, I was very silly and very +presumptuous, but, really, you know--" + +I paused for a little. This was miles apart from the glib talk I had +designed. + +"My name is Robert Townsend," I then continued; "I am staying at Mr. +Charteris's place, just outside of Fairhaven. And I am delighted to +meet you, Miss Montmorenci. So now, you see, we have been quite +properly introduced, haven't we? And, by the way," I suggested, after +a moment's meditation, "there is a very interesting old college here-- +old pictures, records, historical association and such like. I would +like to inspect it, vastly. Can't I call for you in the morning. We +can do it together, if you don't mind, and if you haven't already seen +it. Won't you, Miss Montmorenci? You really ought to see King's +College, you know; it is quite famous, because I was educated there, +and no end of other interesting things have happened within its +venerable confines." + +She had drawn close to the hedge. "You really mean it?" she asked. +"You would walk through the streets of this Fairhaven with me--with a +barn-stormer, with a strolling actress? You'd be afraid!" she cried, +suddenly; "oh, yes, you talk bravely enough, but you'd be afraid, of +course, when the time came! You'd be afraid!" + +I had taken the hat, but my head was still uncovered. "I don't think," +said I, reflectively, "that I am afraid of many things, somehow. But +of one thing I am certainly not afraid, and that is of mistaking a +good woman for--for anything else. Their eyes are different somehow," +I haltingly explained, as to myself; then I smiled. "Shall we say +eleven o'clock?" + +Miss Montmorenci laid one hand upon the hedgetop and slowly twisted +off four box-leaves what while I waited. "I--I believe you," she said, +in' meditation; "oh, yes, I believe you, somehow, Mr. Townsend. But we +rehearse in the morning, and there is a matinee every day, you know, +and--and there are other reasons--" She paused, irresolutely. "No," +said Miss Montmorenci, "I thank you, but--good night." + +"Oh, I say! am I never to see any more of you?" + +A century or so of silence now. Her deliberation seemed endless. + +At last: "Matinees and rehearsal keep us busy by day. But I am +boarding here for the week, and--and I rest here in the garden after +the evening performance. It is cool, it--it is like a glass of water +after taking rather bitter medicine. And you aren't a bad sort, are +you? No; you look too big and strong and clean, Mr. Townsend. And, +besides, you're just a boy--" + +"In that case," cried Mr. Townsend, "I shall say goodnight with a +light heart." And I turned to go. + +"A moment--" said she. + +"An eternity," I proffered. + +"Promise me," she said, "that you will not come again this week to the +Opera House." + +My brows were raised a trifle. "I adore the drama," I pleaded. + +"And I loathe it. And I act very badly--hopelessly so," said Miss +Montmorenci, with an indolent shrug; "and, somehow, I don't want you +to see me do it. Why did you mind my calling you a boy? You _are_, you +know." + +So I protested I had not minded it at all; and I promised. "But at +least," I said, triumphantly, "you can't prevent my remembering +Juliet!" + +She said of course not, only I was not to be silly. + +"And therefore," quoth I, "Juliet shall be remembered always." I +smiled and waved my hand. "_Au revoir_, Signorina Capulet," said I. + +And I took my departure. My blood rejoiced, with a strange fervor, in +the summer moonlight. It was good to be alive. + + + + +7. + +_He Goes Mad in a Garden_ + + +"And, oh, but it is good to be with you again, Signorina!" cried I, as +I came with quick strides into the moonlit garden. I caught both her +hands in mine, and laughed like an ineffably contented person. There +was nothing very subtle about the boy that then was I; at worst, he +overacted what he really felt; and just at present he was pleased with +the universe, and he saw no possible reason for concealing the fact. + +It was characteristic, also, that she made no pretence at being +surprised by my coming. She was expecting me and she smiled very +frankly at seeing me. Also, in place of the street dress of Tuesday, +she wore something that was white and soft and clinging, and left her +throat but half concealed. This, for two reasons, was sensible and +praiseworthy; one being that the night was warm, and the other that it +really broadened my ideas as to the state of perfection which it is +possible for the human throat to attain. + + + 2 + +"So you don't like my stage-name?" she asked, as I sat down beside +her. "Well, for that matter, no more do I." "It doesn't suit you," I +protested--"not in the least. Whereas, you might be a Signorina +Somebody-or-other, you know. You are dark and stately and--well, I +can't tell you all the things you are," I complained, "because the +English language is so abominably limited. But, upon the whole, I am +willing to take the word of the playbill,--yes, I am quite willing to +accept you as Signorina Capulet. She had a habit of sitting in gardens +at night, I remember. Yes," I decided, after reflection, "I really +think it highly probable that you are old Capulet's daughter. I shall +make a point of it to pick a quarrel as soon as possible, with that +impertinent, trespassing young Montague. He really doesn't deserve +you, you know." + +Unaccountably, her face saddened. Then, "Signorina? Signorina?" she +appraised the title. "It _is_ rather a pretty name. And the other is +horrible. Yes, you may call me Signorina, if you like." + + + 3 + +She would not tell me her real name. She was unmarried,--this much she +told me, but of her past life, her profession, or of her future she +never spoke. "I don't want to talk about it," she said, candidly. "We +play for a week in Fairhaven, and here, once off the stage, I intend +to forget I am an actress. When I am on the stage," she added, in +meditative wise, "of course everyone knows I am not." + +I laughed. I found her very satisfying; she was not particularly +intelligent, perhaps, but then I was beginning to consider clever +women rather objectionable creatures. There was a sufficiency of them +among the Charteris house-party--Alicia Wade, for instance, and +Pauline Ashmeade and Cynthia Chaytor,--and I thought of them almost +resentfully. The world had accorded them not exactly what they most +wanted, perhaps, but, at least, they had its luxuries; and they said +sharp, cynical things about the world in return. In a woman's mouth +epigrams were as much out-of-place as a meerschaum pipe. + +Here, on the contrary, was a woman whom the world had accorded nothing +save hard knocks, and she regarded it, upon the whole, as an eminently +pleasant place to live in. She accepted its rebuffs with a certain +large calm, as being all in the day's work. There was, no doubt, some +good and sufficient reason for these inconveniences; not for a moment, +however, did she puzzle her handsome head in speculating over this +reason. She was probably too lazy. And the few favours the world +accorded her she took thankfully. + +"You see," she explained to me--this was on Thursday night, when I +found her contentedly eating cheap candy out of a paper bag,--"the +world is really very like a large chocolate drop; it's rather bitter +on the outside, but when you have bitten through, you find the heart +of it sweet. Oh, how greedy!--you've taken the last candied cherry, +and I am specially fond of candied cherries!" And indeed, she looked +frankly regretful as I munched it. + +I thought her adorable; and in exchange for that last candied cherry I +promised her some of the new books,--_David Harum_ certainly, and, +_When Knighthood Was in Flower_, because everybody was reading it, and +Mr. Dooley, because they said this young fellow Dunne was nearly as +funny as Bill Nye.... + + + 4 + +In fact, the moon seemed to shine down each night upon that particular +garden in a more and more delightful and dangerous manner. And I being +a fairly normal and healthy young man, the said moonshine affected me +in a fashion which has been peculiar to moonshine since Noah was a +likely stripling; my blood appeared to me, at times, to leap and +bubble in my veins as if it had been some notably invigorating and +heady tipple; and my heart was unreasonably contented, and I gave due +thanks for this woman who had come to me unsullied through the world's +gutter. For she came unsullied; there was no questioning that. + +I pictured her in certain execrable rhymes as the Lady in _Comus_, +moving serene and unafraid among a rabble of threatening, bestial +shapes. And I rejoiced that there were women like this in the world,-- +brave, wholesome, unutterably honest women, whose very lack of +cleverness--oh, subtle appeal to my vanity!--demanded a gentleman's +protection. + +As has been said, I was a well-grown lad, but when I thought in this +fashion I seemed to myself, at a moderate computation, ten feet in +height,--and just the person, in short, who would be an ideal +protector. + +Thus far my callow meditations. My course of reasoning was perhaps +faulty, but then there are, at twenty-one, many processes more +interesting and desirable than the perfecting of a mathematical +demonstration. And so, for a little, my blood rejoiced with a strange +fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive. + + + 5 + +Thursday was the twenty-third of the month, so upon that afternoon I +wrote to Bettie Hamlyn, in far-off Colorado. + +It was a lengthy letter. It told her of how desolate her garden was +and of how odd Fairhaven seemed without her. It told how I had half +changed my mind, and would probably not go to Europe with Mr. +Charteris, after all. Bettie had been at pains, in the letter I was +answering, to expatiate upon her hatred of Charteris, whom she had +never seen. My letter told her, in fine, of a variety of matters. And +it ended: + +"I went to the Opera House on Monday. But that, like everything else, +isn't the same without you, dear. The woman who played Juliet was, I +believe, rather good-looking, but I scarcely noticed her in worrying +over the pitiful circumstance that the Apothecary and the Populace of +Verona had only one pair of shoes between them. Besides, Mercutio kept +putting on a bathrobe and insisting he was Friar Laurence.... I would +write more about it, if I had not almost used up all my paper. There +is just room to say--" + + + 6 + +This was, as I have stated, on Thursday afternoon. Upon the following +evening-- + +"And why not?" I demanded, for the ninth time. + +But she was resolute. "Oh, it is dear of you!" she cried; "and I--I do +care for you,--how could I help it? But it can't be,--it can't ever +be," she repeated wearily; and then she looked at me, and smiled a +little. "Oh, boy, boy! dear, dear boy!" she murmured, half in wonder, +"how foolish of you and--how dear of you!" + +"And why not?" said I--for the tenth time. + +She gave a sobbing laugh. "Oh, the great, brave, stupid boy!" she +said, and, for a moment, her hand rested on my hair; "he doesn't know +what he is doing,--ah, no, he doesn't know! Why, I might hold you to +your word! I might sue you for breach of promise! I might marry you +out of hand! Think of that! Why I am only a strolling actress, and +fair game for any man,--any man who isn't particular," she added, with +the first trace of bitterness I had ever observed in her odd, throaty +voice. "And you would marry me,--you! you would give me your name, you +would make me your wife! You have actually begged me to be your wife, +haven't you? Ah, my brave, strong, stupid Bobbie, how many women must +love you,--women who have a right to love you! And you would give them +all up for me,--for me, you foolish Bobbie, whom you haven't known a +week! Ah, how dear of you!" And she caught her breath swiftly, and her +voice broke. + +"Yes," I brazenly confessed; "I really believe I would give them all +up--every blessed one of them--for you." I inspected her, critically, +and then smiled. "And I don't think that I would be deserving any very +great credit for self sacrifice, either, Signorina." + +"My dear," she answered, "it pleases you to call me old Capulet's +daughter,--but if I were only a Capulet, and you a Montague, don't you +see how much easier it would be? But we don't belong to rival +families, we belong to rival worlds, to two worlds that have nothing +in common, and never can have anything in common. They are too strong +for us, Bobbie,--my big, dark, squalid world, that you could never +sink to, and your gay little world which I can never climb to,--your +world that would have none of me, even if--even _if_--" But the +condition was not forthcoming. + +"The world," said I, in an equable tone--"My dear, I may as well warn +you I am shockingly given to short and expressive terms, and as we are +likely to see a deal of each other for the future, you will have to be +lenient with them,--accordingly, I repeat, the world may be damned." + +And I laughed, in unutterable content. "Have none of you!" I cried. +"My faith, I would like to see a world which would have none of you! +Ah, Signorina, it is very plain to me that you don't realize what a +beauty, what a--a--good Lord, what an unimaginative person it was that +invented the English language! Why, you have only to be seen, heart's +dearest,--only to be seen, and the world is at your feet,--my world, +to which you belong of rights; my world, that you are going to honour +by living in; my world, that in a little will go mad for sheer envy of +blundering, stupid, lucky me!" And I laughed her to scorn. + +There was a long silence. Then, "I belonged to your world once, you +know." + +"Why, of course, I knew as much as that." + +"And yet--you never asked--" "Ah, Signorina, Signorina!" I cried; +"what matter? Don't I know you for the bravest, tenderest, purest, +most beautiful woman God ever made? I doubt you--I! My word!" said I, +and stoutly, "that _would_ be a pretty go! You are to tell me just +what you please," I went on, almost belligerently, "and when and where +you please, my lady. And I would thank you," I added, with appropriate +sternness, "to discontinue your pitiful and transparent efforts to +arouse unworthy suspicions as to my future wife. They are wasted, +madam,--utterly wasted, I assure you." + +"Oh, Bobbie, Bobbie!" she sighed; "you are such a beautiful baby! Give +me time," she pleaded weakly. + +And, when I scowled my disapproval, "Only till tomorrow--only a +little, little twenty-four hours. And promise me, you won't speak of +this--this crazy nonsense again tonight. I must think." + +"Never!" said I, promptly; "because I couldn't be expected to keep +such an absurd promise," I complained, in indignation. + +"And you look so strong," she murmured, with evident disappointment,-- +"so strong and firm and--and--admirable!" + +So I promised at once. And I kept the promise--that is, I did +subsequently refer to the preferable and proper course to pursue in +divers given circumstances "when we are married;" but it was on six +occasions only, and then quite casually,--and six times, as I myself +observed, was, all things considered, an extremely moderate allowance +and one that did great credit to my self-control. + + + 7 + +"And besides, why _not_?" I said,--for the eleventh time. + +"There are a thousand reasons. I am not your equal, I am just an +ostensible actress--Why, it would be your ruin!" + +"My dear Mrs. Grundy, I confess that, for the moment, your disguise +had deceived me. But now: I recognize your voice." + +She laughed a little. "And after all," the grave voice said, which +was, to me at least, the masterwork of God, "after all, hasn't one +always to answer Mrs. Grundy--in the end?" + +"Why, then, you disgusting old harridan," said I, "I grant you it is +utterly impossible to defend my behaviour in this matter, and, believe +me, I don't for an instant undertake the task. To the contrary, I +agree with you perfectly,--my conduct is most thoughtless and +reprehensible, and merits your very severest condemnation. For look +you, here is a young man, well born, well-bred, sufficiently well +endowed with this world's goods, in short, an eminently eligible +match, preparing to marry an 'ostensible actress' a year or two his +senior,--why, of course, you are,--and of whose past he knows +nothing,--absolutely nothing. Don't you shudder at the effrontery of +the minx? Is it not heart-breaking to contemplate the folly, the utter +infatuation of the misguided youth who now stands ready to foist such +a creature upon the circles of which your ladyship is a distinguished +ornament? I protest it is really incredible. I don't believe a word of +it." + +"I cannot quite believe it, either, Bobbie--" + +"But you see, he loves her. You, my dear madam, blessed with a wiser +estimation of our duties to society, of the responsibilities of our +position, of the cost of even the most modest establishment, and, +above all, of the sacredness of matrimony and the main chance, may +well shrug your shoulders at such a plea. For, as you justly observe, +what, after all, is this love? only a passing madness, an exploded +superstition, an irresponsible _ignis fatuus_ flickering over the +quagmires and shallows of the divorce court. People's lives are no +longer swayed by such absurdities; it is quite out of date." + +"Yes; you are joking, Bobbie, I know; yet it is really out of date--" + +"But I protest, loudly, my hand upon my heart, that it is true; people +no longer do mad things for love, or ever did, in spite of lying +poets; any more than the birds mate in the spring, or the sun rises in +the morning; popular fallacies, my dear madam, every one of them. You +and I know better, and are not to be deceived by appearances, however +specious they may be. Ah, but come now! Having attained this highly +satisfactory condition, we can well afford to laugh at all our past +mistakes,--yes, even at our own! For let us be quite candid. Wasn't +there a time, dear lady, before Mr. Grundy came a-wooing, when, +somehow, one was constantly meeting unexpected people in the garden, +and, somehow, one sat out a formidable number of dances during the +evening, and, somehow, the poets seemed a bit more plausible than they +do today? It was very foolish, of course,--but, ah, madam, there _was_ +a time,--a time when even our staid blood rejoiced with a strange +fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive! Come +now, have you the face to deny it,--Mrs. Methuselah?" + +"It has not been quite bad to be alive, these last few hours--" + +"And, oh, my dear, how each of us will look back some day to this very +moment! And we are wasting it! And I have not any words to tell you +how I love you! I am just a poor, dumb brute!" I groaned. + +Then very tenderly she began to talk with me in a voice I cannot tell +you of, and concerning matters not to be recorded. + +And still she would not promise anything; and I would give an arm, I +think, could it replevin all the idiotic and exquisite misery I knew +that night. + + + + +8. + +_He Duels with a Stupid Woman_ + + +Yet I approached the garden on Saturday night with an elated heart. +This was the last evening of the engagement of the Imperial Dramatic +Company. To-morrow the troupe was to leave Fairhaven; but I was very +confident that the leading lady would not accompany them, and by +reason of this confidence, I smiled as I strode through the city of +Fairhaven, and hummed under my breath an inane ditty of an extremely +sentimental nature. + +As I bent over the little wooden gate, and searched for its elusive +latch, a man came out of the garden, wheeling sharply about the hedge +that, until this, had hidden him; and simultaneously, I was aware of +the mingled odour of bad tobacco and of worse whiskey. Well, she would +have done with such people soon! I threw open the gate, and stood +aside to let him pass; then, as the moon fell full upon the face of +the man, I gave an inarticulate, startled sound. + +"Fine evening, sir," suggested the stranger. + +"Eh?" said I; "eh? Oh, yes, yes! quite so!" Afterward I shrugged my +shoulders, and went into the garden, a trifle puzzled. + + + 2 + +I found her beneath a great maple in the heart of the enclosure. It +was a place of peace; the night was warm and windless, and the moon, +now come to its full glory, rode lazily in the west through a froth of +clouds. Everywhere the heavens were faintly powdered with stardust, +but even the planets seemed pale and ineffectual beside the splendour +of the moon. + +The garden was drenched in moonshine--moonshine that silvered the +unmown grass-plots, and converted the white rose-bushes into squat-figured +wraiths, and tinged the red ones with dim purple hues. On every side the +foliage blurred into ambiguous vistas, where fireflies loitered; and the +long shadows of the nearer trees, straining across the grass, were wried +patterns scissored out of blue velvet. It was a place of peace and light +and languid odours, and I came into it, laughing, the possessor of an +over-industrious heart and of a perfectly unreasoning joy over the fact +that I was alive. + +"I say," I observed, as I stretched luxuriously upon the grass beside +her, "you put up at a shockingly disreputable place, Signorina." +"Yes?" said she. + +"That fellow who just went out," I explained--"do you know the police +want his address, I think? No," I continued, after consideration, "I +am sure I'm not mistaken,--that is either Ned Lethbury, the embezzler, +or his twin-brother. It's been five years since I saw him, but that is +he. And that", said I, with proper severity, "is a sample of the sort +of associate you prefer to your humble servant! Ah, Signorina, +Signorina, I am a tolerably worthless chap, I admit, but at least I +never forged and embezzled and then skipped my bail! So you had much +better marry me, my dear, and say good-bye to your peculating friends. +But, deuce take it! I forgot--I ought to notify the police or +something, I suppose." + +She caught my arm. Her mouth opened and shut again before she spoke. +"He--he is my husband," she said, in a toneless voice. Then, on a +sudden, she wailed: "Oh, forgive me! Oh, my great, strong, beautiful +boy, forgive me, for I am very unhappy, and I cannot meet your eyes-- +your honest eyes! Ah, my dear, my dear, do not look at me like that,-- +you don't know how it hurts!" + +The garden noises lisped about us in the long silence that fell. Then +the far-off whistling of some home going citizen of Fairhaven tinkled +shrilly through the night, and I shuddered a bit. + +"I don't understand," I commenced, strangely quiet. "You told me--" + +"Ah, I lied to you! I lied to you!" she cried. "I didn't, mean to-- +hurt you. I did not know--I couldn't know--I was so lonely, Bobbie," +she pleaded, with wide eyes; "oh, you don't know how lonely I am. And +when you came to me that first night, you--why, you spoke to me as the +men I once knew used to speak. There was respect in your voice, and I +wanted that so; I hadn't had a man speak to me like that for years, +you know, Bobbie. And, boy dear, I was so lonely in my squalid +world,--and it seemed as if the world I used to know was calling me-- +your world, Bobbie--the world I am shut out from." + +"Yes," I said; "I think I understand." + +"And I thought for a week--just to peep into it, to be a lady again +for an hour or two--why, it didn't seem wicked, then, and I wanted it +so much! I--I knew I could trust you, because you were only a boy. And +I was hungry--_so_ hungry for a little respect, a little courtesy, +such as men don't accord strolling actresses. So I didn't tell you +till the very last I was married. I lied to you. Oh, but you don't +understand, this stupid, honest boy doesn't understand anything except +that I have lied to him!" + +"Signorina," I said, again, and I smiled, resolutely, "I think I +understand." I took both her hands in mine, and laughed a little. +"But, oh, my dear, my dear," I said, "you should have told me that you +loved another man; for you have let me love you for a week, and now I +think that I must love you till I die." + +"Love him!" she echoed. "Oh, boy dear, boy dear, what a Galahad it is! +I don't think Ned ever cared for anything but Father's money; and I-- +why, you have seen him. How _could_ I love him?" she asked, as simply +as a child. + +I bowed my head. "And yet--" said I. Then I laughed again, somewhat +bitterly. "Don't let's tell stories, Mrs. Lethbury," I said; "it is +kindly meant, I know, but I remember you now. I even danced with you +once, some seven years ago,--yes, at the Green Chalybeate. I remember +the night, for a variety of reasons. You are Alfred Van Orden's +daughter; your father is a wealthy man, a very wealthy man; and yet, +when your--your husband disappeared you followed him--to become a +strolling actress. Ah, no, a woman doesn't sacrifice everything for a +man in the way you have done, unless she loves him." + +I caught my breath. Some unknown force kept tugging down the corners +of my mouth, in a manner that hampered speech; moreover, nothing +seemed worth talking about. I had lost her. That was the one thing +which mattered. + +"Why, of course, I went with him," she assented, a shade surprised; +"he was my husband, you know. But as for loving,--no, I don't think +Ned ever really loved me," she reflected, with puckering brows. "He +took that money for--for another woman, if you remember. But he is +fond of me, and--and he _needs_ me." + +I did not say anything; and after a little she went on, with a quick +lift of speech. + +"Oh, what a queer life we have led since then! You can't imagine it, +my dear. He has been a tavern-keeper, a drummer,--everything! Why, +last summer we sold rugs and Turkish things in Atlantic City! But he +is always afraid of meeting someone who knows him, and--and he drinks +too much. So we have not got on in the world, Ned and I; and now, +after three years, I'm the leading lady of the Imperial Dramatic +Company, and he is the manager. I forgot, though,--he is advance-agent +this week, for he didn't dare stay in Fairhaven, lest some of the men +at Mr. Charteris's should recognize him, you know. He came back only +this evening--" + +She paused for a moment; a wistful quaver crept into her speech. "Oh, +it's queer, it's queer, Bobbie! Sometimes--sometimes when I have time +to think, say on long Sunday afternoons, I remember my old life, every +bit of it,--oh, I do remember such strange little details! I remember +the designs on the bread and butter plates, and all the silver things +on my desk, and the plank by my door that always creaked and somehow +never got fixed, and the big, shiny buttons on the coachman's coat,-- +just trifles like that. And--and they hurt, they hurt, Bobbie, those +little, unimportant things! They--grip my throat." + +She laughed, not very mirthfully. "Then I am like the old lady in the +nursery rhyme, and say, Surely, this can't be I. But it is I, boy +dear,--a strolling actress, a barn-stormer! Isn't it queer, Bobbie? +But, oh, you don't know half--" + +I was remembering many things. I remembered Lethbury, a gross man, +superfluously genial, whom I had never liked, although I recalled my +admiration of his whiskers. I recollected young Amelia Van Orden, not +come to her full beauty then, the bud of girlhood scarce slipped; and +I remembered very vividly the final crash, the nine days' talk over +Lethbury's flight in the face of certain conviction,--by his father-in- +law's advice (as some said) who had furnished and forfeited heavy bail +for the absconder. Oh, the brave woman who had followed! Oh, the brave, +foolish woman! And, for the action's recompense, he was content to +exhibit her to yokels, to make of her beauty an article of traffic. +Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. And then hope +blazed. + +"Your husband," I said, quickly, "he does not love you? He--he is not +faithful to you?" + +"No," she answered; "there is a Miss Fortescue--she plays second +parts--" + +"Ah, my dear, my dear!" I cried, with a shaking voice; "come away, +Signorina,--come away with me! He _doesn't_ need you,--and, oh, my +dear, I need you so! You can get your divorce and marry me. Ah, +Signorina, come away,--come away from this squalid life that is +killing you, to the world you are meant for, to the life you hunger +for! Come back to the clean, lighthearted world you love, the world +that is waiting to pet and caress you just as it used to do,--our +world, Signorina! You don't belong here with--with the Fortescues. You +belong to us." + +I sprang to my feet. "Come now!" said I. "There's Anne Charteris; she +is a good woman, if ever lived one. She used to know you, too, didn't +she? Well, then, come with me to her, dearest--and tonight! You shall +see your father tomorrow. Your father--why, think how that old man +loves you, how he has longed for you, his only daughter, all these +years. And I?" I spread out my hands, in the tiniest, impotent +gesture. "I love you," I said, simply. "I cannot do without you, +heart's dearest." + +Impulsively, she rested both hands upon my breast; then bowed her head +a little. The nearness of her seemed to shake in my blood, to catch at +my throat, and my hands, lifted for a moment, trembled with desire of +her. + +"You don't understand," she said. "I am a Catholic--my mother was one, +you know. There is no divorce for us. And--and besides, I'm not +modern. I am very old-fashioned, I suppose, in my ideas. Do you know," +she asked, with a smile upon the face which lifted confidingly toward +me, "I--I _really_ believe the world was made in six days; and that +the whale swallowed Jonah, and that there is a real purgatory and a +hell of fire and brimstone. You don't, do you, Bobbie? But I do,--and +I promised to stay with him till death parted us, you know, and I must +do it. I am all he has. He would get even worse without me. I--oh, boy +dear, boy dear, I love you so!" And her voice broke, in a great, +choking sob. + +"A promise--a promise made by an ungrown girl to a brute--a thief--!" + +"No, dear," she answered, quietly; "a promise made to God." + +And looking into her face, I saw love there, and anguish, and +determination. It seemed monstrous, but of a sudden I knew with a dull +surety; she loved me, but she thought she had no right to love me; she +would not go with me. She would go with that drunken, brutish thief. + +And I suddenly recalled certain clever women--Alicia Wade, Pauline +Ashmeade, Cynthia Chaytor--the women of that world wherein I was +novitiate; beyond question, they would raise delicately penciled +eyebrows to proclaim this woman a fool--and to wonder. + +They would be right, I thought. She was only a splendid, tender-hearted, +bright-eyed fool, the woman that I loved. My heart sickened as her +folly rose between us, an impassable barrier. I hated it; and I revered +it. + +Thus we two stood silent for a time. The wind murmured above in the +maples, lazily, ominously. Then the gate clicked, with a vicious snap +that pierced the silence like the report of a distant rifle. "That is +probably Ned," she said wearily. "I had forgotten they close the +barrooms earlier on Saturday nights. So good-bye, Bobbie. You--you may +kiss me, if you like." + +So for a moment our lips met. Afterward I caught her hands in mine, +and gripped them close to my breast, looking down into her eyes. They +glinted in the moonlight, deep pools of sorrow, and tender--oh, +unutterably tender and compassionate. + +But I found no hope there. I lifted her hand to my lips, and left her +alone in the garden. + + + 3 + +Lethbury was fumbling at the gate. + +"Such nuishance," he complained, "havin' gate won't unlock. Latch mus' +got los'--po' li'l latch," murmured Mr. Lethbury, plaintively--"all +'lone in cruel worl'!" + +I opened the gate for him, and stood aside to let him pass toward his +wife. + + + + +9. + +_He Puts His Tongue in His Cheek_ + + +It was not long before John Charteris knew of the entire affair, for +in those days I had few concealments from him: and the little wizened +man brooded awhile over my misery, with an odd wistfulness. + +"I remember Amelia Van Orden perfectly," he said--"now. I ought to +have recognized her. Only, she was never, in her best days, the +paragon you depict. She sang, I recollect; people made quite a to-do +over her voice. But she was very, very stupid, and used to make loud +shrieking noises when she was amused, and was generally reputed to be +'fast.' I never investigated. Even so, there was not any real doubt as +to her affair, in any event, with Anton von Anspach, after that night +the sleigh broke down--" + +"Oh, spare me all those ancient Lichfield scandals! She is an angel, +John, if there was ever one." + +"In your eyes, doubtless! So your heart is broken. Yet do you not +realize that not a month ago you were heartbroken over Stella +Musgrave? Child, I repeat, I envy you this perpetual unhappiness, for +I have lost, as you will presently lose, the capacity of being quite +miserable." + +"But, John, it seems as if there were nothing left to live for, now--" + +"At twenty-one! Well, certainly, at that age one loves to think of +life as being implacable. But you will soon discover that she is +merely inconsequential, and that none of her antics are of lasting +importance; and you will learn to smile a deal more often than you +weep or laugh." + +Then we talked of other matters. It was presently settled that +Charteris was to take me abroad with him that summer; and with the +thorough approval of my mother. + +"Mr. Charteris will be of incalculable benefit to you," she told me, +"in introducing you to the very best people, all of whom he knows, of +course, and besides you are getting to look older than I, and it is +unpleasant to have to be always explaining you are only my stepson, +particularly as your father never married anybody but me, though, +heaven knows, I wish he had. Of course you will be just as wild as +your father and your Uncle George. I suppose that is to be expected, +and I daresay it will break my heart, but all I ask of you is please +to keep out of the newspapers, except of course the social items. And +if you _must_ associate with abandoned women, please for my sake, +Robert, don't have anything to do with those who can prove that they +are only misunderstood, because they are the most dangerous kind." + +I kissed her. "Dear little mother, I honestly believe that when you +get to heaven you will refuse to speak to Mary Magdalen." + +"Robert, let us remember the Bible says, 'in my Father's house are +many mansions,' and of course nobody would think of putting me in the +same mansion with her." + +It was well-nigh the last conversation I was to hold with my mother; +and I was to remember it with an odd tenderness.... + + + 2 + +Upon the doings of myself in Europe during the ensuing two years I +prefer to dwell as lightly as possible. I had long anticipated a +sojourn in divers old-world cities; but the London I had looked to +find was the London of Dickens, say, and my Paris the Paris of Dumas, +or at the very least of Balzac. It is needless to mention that in the +circles to which the, quite real, friendship of John Charteris +afforded an entry I found little that smacked of such antiquity. I had +entered a world inhabited by people who amused themselves and +apparently did nothing else; and I was at first troubled by their +levity, and afterward envious of it, and in the end embarked upon +sedulous attempt to imitate it. I continued to be very boyish; indeed, +I found myself by this in much the position of an actor who has made +such a success in one particular role that the public declines to +patronize him in any other. + + + 3 + +It was during this first year abroad that I wrote _The Apostates_, +largely through the urging of John Charteris. + +"You have the ability, though, that dances most gracefully in fetters. +You will never write convincingly about the life you know, because +life is, to you, my adorable boy, a series of continuous miracles, to +which the eyes of other men are case-hardened. Write me, then, a book +about the past." + +"I have thought of it," said I, "for being over here makes the past +seem pretty real, somehow. Last month when I was at Ingilby I was on +fire with the notion of writing something about old Ormskirk--my +mother's ancestor, you know. And since I've seen what's left of +Bellegarde I have wanted to write about his wife's people too,--the +dukes and vicomtes of Puysange, or even about the great Jurgen. You +see, I am just beginning to comprehend that these are not merely +characters in Lowe's and La Vrilliere's books, but my flesh and blood +kin, like Uncle George Bulmer--" + +"And for that reason you want to write about them! You would, though; +it is eminently characteristic. Well, then, why should you not +immortalize the persons who had the honor of begetting you--oh, most +handsome and most naive of children!--by writing your very best about +them?" "Because to succeed--not only among the general but with the +'cultured few,' God save the mark!--it is now necessary to write not +badly but abominably." + +"What would you demand, then, of a book?" + +I meditated. "What one most desiderates in the writings of to-day is +clarity, and beauty, and tenderness and urbanity, and truth." + +"Not a bad recipe, upon the whole, though I would stipulate for +symmetry and distinction also--Write the book!" + +"Ah," said I, "but this is the kind of book I wish to read when, of +course, the mood seizes me. It is not at all the sort of book, though, +I would elect to write. The main purpose of writing any book, I take +it, is to be read; and people simply will not read a book when they +suspect it of being carefully written. That sort of thing gets on a +reader's nerves; it's too much like watching a man walk a tight-rope +and wondering if he won't slip presently." + +"Oh, 'people!'" Charteris flung out, in an extremity of scorn. "Since +time was young, a generally incompetent humanity has been willing to +pardon anything rather than the maddening spectacle of labour +competently done. And they are perfectly right; it is abominable how +such weak-minded persons occasionally thrust themselves into a world +quite obviously designed for persons who have not any minds at all. +But I was not asking you to write a 'best-seller.'" + +"No, you were asking me to become an Economist, and be one of 'the few +rare spirits which every age providentially affords,' and so on. That +is absolute and immoral nonsense. When you publish a novel you are at +least pretending to supply a certain demand; and if you don't +endeavour honestly to supply it, you are a swindler, no more and no +less. No, it is all very well to write for posterity, if it amuses +you, John; personally, I cannot imagine what possible benefit you will +derive from it, even though posterity _does_ read your books. And for +myself, I want to be read and to be a power while I can appreciate the +fact that I _am_ a sort of power, however insignificant. Besides, I +want to make some money out of the blamed thing. Mother is a dear, of +course, but, like all the Bulmers, with age she is becoming tight-fisted." + +"And Esau--" Charteris began. + +"Yes,--but that's Biblical, and publishing a book is business. People +say to authors, just as they do to tailors: 'I want such and such an +article. Make it and I'll pay you for it.' Now, your tailor may +consider the Imperial Roman costume more artistic than that of today, +and so may you in the abstract, but if he sent home a toga in place of +a pair of trousers, you would discontinue dealing with him. So if it +amuses you to make togas, well and good; I don't quarrel with it; but, +personally, I mean to go into the gents' furnishing line and to do my +work efficiently." + +"Yes,--but with your tongue in your cheek." + +"It is the one and only attitude," I sweetly answered, "in which to +write if you indeed desire to be read with enjoyment." And presently I +rose and launched upon + +_A Defence of That Attitude_ + +"The main trouble with you, John Charteris, is that you will never +recover from being _fin de siecle_. Yes, you belong to that queer +dying nineteenth century. And even so, you have quite overlooked what +is, perhaps, the signal achievement of the nineteenth century,--the +relegation of its literature to the pharmacopoeia. The comparison of +the tailor, I willingly admit, is a bad one. Those who write +successfully nowadays must appeal to men and women who seek in fiction +not only a means of relaxation, but spiritual comfort as well, and an +uplifting rather than a mere diversion of the mind; so that they are +really druggists who trade exclusively in intoxicants and hypnotics. + +"Half of the customers patronize the reading-matter shops because they +want to induce delusions about a world they know, and do not find +particularly roseate and the other half skim through a book because +they haven't anything else to do and aren't sleepy, as yet. + +"Oh, in filling either prescription the trick is much the same; you +have simply to avoid bothering the reader's intellect in any way +whatever. You have merely to drug it, you have merely to caress it +with interminable platitudes, or else with the most uplifting +avoidances of anything which happens to be unprintably rational. And +you must remember always that the crass emotions of half-educated +persons are, in reality, your chosen keyboard; so play upon it with an +axe if you haven't any handier implement, but hit it somehow, and for +months your name will be almost as famous as that of my mother's +father remains the year round because he invented a celebrated +baking-powder. + +"It is all very well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there +are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can +hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, +for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, +entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But +why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with +one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, +whenever humanity goes into the library to take a nap? For what other +purpose do you suppose a gentleman goes into his library, pray? When +he is driven to reading he does it decently in bed. + +"Besides, if I like a book, why, then, in so far as I am concerned, it +_is_ a good book. No, please don't talk to me about 'the dignity of +literature'; modern fiction has precisely as much to do with dignity +as has vaudeville or billiards or that ridiculous Prohibitionist +Party, since the object of all four, I take it, is to afford diversion +to people who haven't anything better to do. Thus, a novel which has +diverted a thousand semi-illiterate persons is exactly ten times as +good as a novel that has pleased a hundred superior persons. It is +simply a matter of arithmetic. + +"You prefer to look upon writing as an art, rather than a business? +Oh, you silly little man, the touchstone of any artist is the skill +with which he adapts his craftsmanship to his art's limitations. He +will not attempt to paint a sound or to sculpture a colour, because he +knows that painting and sculpture have their limitations, and he, +quite consciously, recognizes this fact whenever he sets to work. + +"Well, the most important limitation of writing fiction nowadays is +that you have to appeal to people who would never think of reading you +or anybody else, if they could possibly imagine any other employment +for that particular vacant half-hour. And you cannot hope for an +audience of even moderately intelligent persons, because intelligent +persons do not attempt to keep abreast with modern fiction. It is +probably ascribable to the fact that they enjoy being intelligent, and +wish to remain so. + +"You sneer at the 'best-sellers.' I tell you, in sober earnest, that +the writing of a frankly trashy novel which will 'sell,' is the +highest imaginable form of art. For true art, in its last terms, is +the adroit circumvention of an unsurmountable obstacle. I suppose that +form and harmony and colour are very difficult to tame; and the +sculptor, the musician and the painter quite probably earn their hire. +But people don't go to concerts unless they want to hear music; +whereas the people who buy the 'best-sellers' are the people who would +prefer to do _anything_ rather than be reduced to reading. I protest +that the man who makes these people read on until they see how 'it all +came out' is a deal more than an artist; he is a sorcerer." + +And I paused, a little out of breath. + +"What a boy it is!" said Charteris. "Do you know, you are uncommonly +handsome when you are talking nonsense? Write the trashy book, then. I +never argue with children; and besides, I do not have to read it." + + + 4 + +It thus fell about that in the second European year, not very long +after my mother's death, _The Apostates_ was given to the world, with +what result the world has had a plenty of time wherein to forget.... +It was first published in _The Quaker Post_, with pictures by Roderick +King Hill, and in the autumn was brought out as a book by Stuyvesant +and Brothers. I made rather a good thing cut of it financially; but +the numerous letters I received from the people who had liked it I +found extremely objectionable. They were not the right sort of people, +I felt forlornly.... So I endured my plaudits without undue elation, +for I always held _The Apostates_ to be, at best, a medley of +conventional tricks and extravagant rhetoric, inanimate by any least +particle of myself,--and its success, say, as though the splendiferous +trappings of an emperor were hung upon a clothier's dummy, and the +result accepted as an adequate presentation of Charlemagne. + +In other words, the book was the most unbridled kind of balderdash, +founded on my callow recollections of the Green Chalybeate,--not the +least bit accurate, as I was afterward to discover,--with all the good +people exceedingly oratorical and the bad ones singularly epigrammatic +and abandoned and obtuse. I introduced a depraved nobleman, of course, +to give the requisite touch of high society, seasoned the mixture with +French and botany and with a trifle of Dolly Dialoguishness, and +inserted, at judicious intervals, the most poetical of descriptions, +so that the skipping of them might afford an agreeable rest to the +reader's eye. There was also a sufficiency of piddling with unsavoury +matters to insure the suffrage of schoolgirls. + +And a number of persons, in fine, were so misguided as to enthuse over +the result. The verb is carefully selected, for they one and all were +just the sort of people who "enthuse." + + + 5 + +I was vexed, however, at the time to find I could not achieve an +appropriate emotion over my mother's death. The news came, to be sure, +at a season when I was preoccupied with getting rid of Agnes Faroy.... +I have not ever heard of any rational excuse for the quite common +assumption that children ought to be particularly fond of their +parents. Still, my mother was the prettiest woman I had ever known, +though without any claim to beauty, and I had always gloried in our +kinship; for I believed her nature to be generous and amiable when she +thought of it; and the cablegram which announced the event aroused in +me sincere regret that a comely ornament to my progress had been +smashed irrevocably. + +For a little I reflected as to whither she had vanished, and decided +she had been too futile and well-meaning ever to be punished by any +reasonable Being. Yet how she would have enjoyed the publication of my +book!--without any attempt to read it, however, since she had never, +to my knowledge, read anything, with the exception of the daily +papers.... And besides, I disliked being unable to have the +appropriate emotion. + +But I simply could not manage it. For here, in the midst of the Faroy +mess,--with Agnes weeping all over the place, and her brothers +flourishing pistols and declaiming idiocies,--came the news from Uncle +George that my mother had left me virtually nothing. She must have +used up, of course, a good share of her Bulmer Baking Powder money in +supporting my father comfortably; but she had always lived in such +estate as to make me assume she had retained, anyhow, enough of the +Bulmer money to last my time. So it was naturally a shock to discover +that this monetary attitude was inherited from my mother, who had been +cheerfully "living on her principle" all these years, without +considering my future. I had no choice but to regard it as abominably +selfish. + +"I think Claire was afraid to tell you," wrote Uncle George, "how +little there was left. In any event, she always shirked doing it, so +as to stave off unpleasantness. And when we cabled you how ill she +was, it now seems most unfortunate you could not see your way clear to +giving up your trip through the chateau country, as your not coming +appeared to be on her mind a great deal at the last. I do not wish to +seem to criticize you in any way, Robert, but I must say...." + +Well, but you know what sort of nonsense that smug gambit heralds in +letters from your kindred. Even so, I now owned the Townsend house and +an income sufficient for daily bread; and it looked just then as +though the magazine editors were willing to furnish the butter, and +occasional cakes. So the future promised to be pleasant enough. + + + 6 + +Charteris had returned to Algiers in the autumn my book was published, +but I elected to pass the winter in England. "Of course," was Mr. +Charteris's annotation--"because it is precisely the most dangerous +spot in the world for you. And you are to spend October at Negley? I +warn you that Jasper Hardress is in love with his wife, and that the +woman has an incurable habit of making experiments and an utter +inability to acquire experience. Take my advice, and follow Mrs. +Monteagle to the Riviera, instead. Cissie will strip you of every +penny you have, of course, but in the end you will find her a deal +less expensive than Gillian Hardress." + +"You possess a low and evil mind," I observed, "since I am fond, in +all sincerity, of Hardress, whereas his wife is not even civil to me. +Why, she goes out of her way to be rude to me." + +"Yes," said Mr. Charteris; "but that is because she is getting worried +about her interest in you. And what is the meaning of this, by the +way? I found it on your table this morning." He read the doggerel +aloud with an unkindly and uncalled-for exaggeration of the rhyming +words. + + "We did not share the same inheritance,-- + I and this woman, five years older than I, + Yet daughter of a later century,-- + Who is therefore only wearied by that dance + Which has set my blood a-leaping. + + "It is queer + To note how kind her face grows, listening + To my wild talk, and plainly pitying + My callow youth, and seeing in me a dear + Amusing boy,--yet somewhat old to be + Still reading _Alice Through the Looking-Glass_ + And _Water-Babies_.... With light talk we pass, + + "And I that have lived long in Arcady-- + I that have kept so many a foolish tryst, + And written drivelling rhymes--feel stirring in me + Droll pity for this woman who pities me, + And whose weak mouth so many men have kissed." + +"That," I airily said, "is, in the first place, something you had no +business to read; and, in the second, simply the blocking out of an +entrancingly beautiful poem. It represents a mood." + +"It is the sort of mood that is not good for people, particularly for +children. It very often gets them shot too full of large and untidy +holes." + +"Nonsense!" said I, but not in displeasure, because it made me feel +like such a devil of a fellow. So I finished my letter to Bettie +Hamlyn,--for this was on the seventh,--and I went to Negley precisely +as I had planned. + + + 7 + +"We were just speaking of you," Mrs. Hardress told me, the afternoon +of my arrival,--"Blanche and I were talking of you, Mr. Townsend, the +very moment we heard your wheels." + +I shook hands. "I trust you had not entirely stripped me of my +reputation?" + +"Surely, that is the very last of your possessions any reasonable +person would covet?" + +"A palpable hit," said I. "Nevertheless, you know that all I possess +in the world is yours for the asking." + +"Yes, you mentioned as much, I think, at Nice. Or was it Colonel +Tatkin who offered me a heart's devotion and an elopement? No, I +believe it was you. But, dear me, Jasper is so disgustingly healthy +that I shall probably never have any chance of recreation." + +I glanced toward Jasper Hardress. "I have heard," said I, hopefully, +"that there is consumption in the family?" + +"Heavens, no! he told me that before marriage to encourage me, but I +find there is not a word of truth in it." + +Then Jasper Hardress came to welcome his guest, and save from a +distance I saw no more that evening of Gillian Hardress. + + + + +10. + +_He Samples New Emotions_ + + +It was the following day, about noon, as I sat intent upon my Paris +_Herald_ that a tiny finger thrust a hole in it. I gave an inaudible +observation, and observed a very plump young person in white with +disfavour. + +"And who may you happen to be?" I demanded. + +"I'm Gladys," the young lady responded; "and I've runned away." + +"But not without an escort, I trust, Miss Gladys? Really--upon my +word, you know, you surprise me, Gladys! An elopement without even a +tincture of masculinity is positively not respectable." I took the +little girl into my lap, for I loved children, and all helpless +things. "Gladys," I said, "why don't you elope with me? And we will +spend our honeymoon in the Hesperides." + +"All right," said Gladys, cheerfully. She leaned upon my chest, and +the plump, tiny hand clasped mine, in entire confidence; and the +contact moved me to an irrational transport and to a yearning whose +aim I could not comprehend. "Now tell me a story," said Gladys. + +So that I presently narrated to Gladys the ensuing + + _Story of the Flowery Kingdom_ + + "Fair Sou-Chong-Tee, by a shimmering brook + Where ghost-like lilies loomed tall and straight, + Met young Too-Hi, in a moonlit nook, + Where they cooed and kissed till the hour was late: + Then, with lanterns, a mandarin passed in state, + Named Hoo-Hung-Hoo of the Golden Band, + Who had wooed the maiden to be his mate-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "Now, Hoo-Hung-Hoo had written a book, + In seven volumes, to celebrate + The death of the Emperor's thirteenth cook: + So, being a person whose power was great, + He ordered a herald to indicate + He would blind Too-Hi with a red-hot brand + And marry Sou-Chong at a quarter-past-eight,-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "And the brand was hot, and the lovers shook + In their several shoes, when by lucky fate + A Dragon came, with his tail in a crook,-- + A Dragon out of a Nankeen Plate,-- + And gobbled the hard-hearted potentate + And all of his servants, and snorted, _and_ + Passed on at a super-cyclonic rate,-- + For these things occur in the Flowery Land. + + "The lovers were wed at an early date, + And lived for the future, I understand, + In one continuous tete-a-tete,-- + For these things occur...in the Flowery Land." + + +Gladys wanted to know: "But what sort of house is a tete-a-tete? Is it +like a palace?" + +"It is very often much nicer than a palace," I declared,--"provided of +course you are only stopping over for a week-end." + +"And wasn't it odd the Dragon should have come just when he did?" + +"Oh, Gladys, Gladys! don't tell me you are a realist." + +"No, I'm a precious angel," she composedly responded, with a flavour +of quotation. + +"Well! it is precisely the intervention of the Dragon, Gladys, which +proves the story is literature," I announced. "Don't you pity the poor +Dragon, Gladys, who never gets a chance in life and has to live always +between two book-covers?" + +She said that couldn't be so, because it would squash him. + +"And yet, dear, it is perfectly true," said Mrs. Hardress. The lean +and handsome woman was regarding the pair of us curiously. "I didn't +know you cared for children, Mr. Townsend. Yes, she is my daughter." +She carried Gladys away, without much further speech. + +Yet one Parthian comment in leaving me was flung over her shoulder, +snappishly. "I wish you wouldn't imitate John Charteris so. You are +getting to be just a silly copy of him. You are just Jack where he is +John. I think I shall call you Jack." + +"I wish you would," I said, "if only because your sponsors happened to +christen you Gillian. So it's a bargain. And now when are we going for +that pail of water?" + +Mrs. Hardress wheeled, the child in her arms, so that she was looking +at me, rather queerly, over the little round, yellow head. "And it was +only Jill, as I remember, who got the spanking," she said. "Oh, well! +it always is just Jill who gets the spanking--Jack." + +"But it was Jack who broke his crown," said I; "Wasn't it--Jill?" It +seemed a jest at the time. But before long we had made these nicknames +a habit, when just we two were together. And the outcome of it all was +not precisely a jest.... + + + 2 + +She told me not long after this, "When I saw Gladys loved you, of +course I loved you too." And I hereby soberly record the statement +that to have a woman fall thoroughly in love with him is the most +uncomfortable experience which can ever befall any man. + +I am tolerably sure I never made any amorous declaration. Rather, it +simply bewildered me to observe the shameless and irrational +infatuation this woman presently bore for me, and before it I was +powerless. When I told her frankly I did not love her, had never loved +her, had no intention of ever loving her, she merely bleated, "You are +cruel!" and wept. When I attempted to restrain her paroxysms of +anguish, she took it as a retraction of what I had told her. + +I would then have given anything in the world to be rid of Gillian +Hardress. This led to scenes, and many scenes, and played the very +devil with the progress of my second novel. You cannot write when +anyone insists on sitting in the same room with you, on the irrelevant +plea that she is being perfectly quiet, and therefore is not +disturbing you. Besides, she had no business in my room, and was apt +to get caught there. + + + 3 + +I remember one of these contentions. She is abominably rouged, and +before me she is grovelling, as she must have seen some actress do +upon the stage. + +"Oh, I lied to you," she wailed; "but you are so cruel! Ah, don't be +cruel, Jack!" + +Then I lifted the scented woman to her feet, and she stayed +motionless, regarding me. She had really wonderful eyes. + +"You are evil," I said, "through and through you are evil, I think, +and I can't help thinking you are a little crazy. But I wish you would +teach me to be as you are, for tonight the hands of my dead father +strain from his grave and clutch about my ankles. He has the right +because it is his flesh I occupy. And I must occupy the body of a +Townsend always. It is not quite the residence I would have chosen-- +Eh, well, for all that, I am I! And at bottom I loathe you!" + +"You love me!" she breathed. + +I thrust her aside and paced the floor. "This is an affair of moment. +I may not condescend to sell, as Faustus did, but of my own volition +must I will to squander or preserve that which is really Robert +Townsend." + +I wheeled upon Gillian Hardress, and spoke henceforward with +deliberation. You must remember I was very young as yet. + +"I have often regretted that the colour element of vice is so oddly +lacking in our life of to-day. We appear, one and all, to have been +born at an advanced age and with ladylike manners, and we reach our +years of indiscretion very slowly; and meanwhile we learn, too late, +that prolonged adherence to morality trivialises the mind as +hopelessly as a prolonged vice trivialises the countenance. I fear +this has been said by someone else, my too impetuous Jill, and I hope +not, for in that event I might possibly be speaking sensibly, and to +be sensible is a terrible thing and almost as bad as being +intelligible." + +"You are not being very intelligible now, sweetheart. But I love to +hear you talk." + +"Meanwhile, I am young, and in youth--_il faut des emotions_, as +Blanche Amory is reported to have said, by a novelist named Thackeray, +whose productions are now read in public libraries. Still, for a +respectable and brougham-supporting person, Thackeray came then as +near to speaking the truth as is possible for people of that class. In +youth emotions are necessary. Find me, therefore, a new emotion!" + +"So many of them, dear!" she promised. + +"I do not love you, understand,--and your husband is my friend, and I +admire him. But I am I! I have endowments, certain faculties which +many men are flattering enough to envy--and I will to make of them a +carpet for your quite unworthy feet. I will to degrade all that in me +is most estimable, and in return I demand a new emotion." + + + 4 + +Well, but women are queer. There is positively no way of affronting +them, sometimes. She had not even the grace to note that I had taken a +little too much to drink that night.... But over all this part of my +life I prefer to pass as quickly as may be expedient. + + + 5 + +I remembered, anyway, after Gillian had gone from my room, to write +Bettie Hamlyn a post-card. It was no longer, strictly speaking, the +twenty-third, but considerably after midnight, of course. Still, it +was the writing regularly when I loathed writing letters that counted +with Bettie, I reflected; and virtually I was writing on the twenty-third, +and besides, Bettie would never know. + + + 6 + +And thereafter Gillian Hardress made almost no concealment of her +feeling toward me, or employed at best the flimsiest of disguises. All +that winter she wrote to me daily, and, when the same roof sheltered +us, would slip the scribblings into my hand at odd moments, but +preferably before her husband's eyes. She demanded an account of every +minute I spent apart from her, and never believed a syllable of my +explanations; and in a sentence, she pestered me to the verge of +distraction. + +And always the circumstance which chiefly puzzled me was the host of +men that were infatuated by Gillian Hardress. There was no doubt about +it; she made fools of the staidest, if for no better end than that the +spectacle might amuse me. + +"Now you watch me, Jack!" she would say. And I obediently would watch +her wriggling beguilements, and the man's smirking idiocy, with +bewilderment. + +For in me her allurements aroused, now, absolutely no sensation save +that of boredom. Often I used to wonder for what reason it seemed +impossible for me, alone, to adore this woman insanely. It would have +been so much more pleasant, all around. + +But, I repeat, I wish to have done with this portion of my life as +quickly as may be expedient. I am not particularly proud of it. I +would elide it altogether, were it possible, but as you will presently +see, that is not possible if I am to make myself intelligible. And I +find that the more I write of myself the more I am affected by the +same poor itch for self-exposure which has made Pepys and Casanova and +Rousseau famous, and later feminine diarists notorious. + +Were I writing fiction, now, I would make the entire affair more +plausible. As it stands, I am free to concede that this chapter in my +life history rings false throughout, just as any candid record of an +actual occurrence does invariably. It is not at all probable that a +woman so much older than I should have taken possession of me in this +fashion, almost against my will. It is even less probable that her +husband, who was by ordinary absurdly jealous of her, should have +suspected nothing and have been sincerely fond of me. + +But then I was only twenty-two, as age went physically, and he looked +upon me as an infant. I was, I think, quite conscientiously childish +with Jasper Hardress. I prattled with him, and he liked it. And so +often, especially when we three were together--say, at luncheon,--I +was teased by an insane impulse to tell him everything, just casually, +and see what he would do. + +I think it was the same feeling which so often prompted her to tell +him, in her flighty way, of how profoundly she adored me. I would +wriggle and blush; and Jasper Hardress would laugh and protest that he +adored me too. Or she would expatiate upon this or that personal +feature of mine, or the becomingness of a new cravat, say; and would +demand of her husband if Jack--for so she always called me,--wasn't +the most beautiful boy in the world? And he would laugh and answer +that he thought it very likely. + + + 7 + +They were Americans, I should have said earlier, but to all intents +they lived abroad, and had done so for years. Hardress's father had +been thoughtful enough to leave him a sufficient fortune to +countenance the indulgence of this or any other whim, so that the +Hardresses divided the year pretty equally between their real home at +Negley and a tiny chateau which they owned near Aix-les-Bains. I +visited them at both places. + +It was a pleasant fiction that I came to see Gladys. Regularly, I was +told off to play with her, as being the only other child in the house. +It was rather hideous, for the little girl adored me, and I was +beginning to entertain an odd aversion toward her, as being in a way +responsible for everything. Had Gillian Hardress never found me +cuddling the child, whose sex was visibly a daily aggrievement to +Jasper Hardress, however conscientiously he strove to conceal the +fact,--so that in consequence "I have to love my precious lamb for +two, Jack,"--Gillian would never, I think, have distinguished me from +the many other men who, so lightly, tendered a host of gallant +speeches.... But I never fathomed Gillian Hardress, beyond learning +very early in our acquaintance that she rarely told me the truth about +anything. + +Also I should have said that Hardress cordially detested Charteris, +just as Bettie Hamlyn did, because for some reason he suspected the +little novelist of being in love with Hardress's wife. I do not know; +but I imagine Charteris had made advances to her, in his own ambiguous +fashion, as he was apt to do, barring strenuous discouragement, to +every passably handsome woman he was left alone with. I do know he +made love to her a little later. + +Hardress distrusted a number of other men, for precisely the same +reason. Heaven only is familiar with what grounds he had. I merely +know that Gillian Hardress loathed John Charteris; she was jealous of +his influence over me. But me her husband never distrusted. I was only +an amusing and ingenuous child of twenty-two, and not for a moment did +it occur to him that I might be in love with his wife. + +Indeed, I believe upon reflection that he was in the right. I think I +never was. + + + 8 + +"Yes," I said, "I am to meet the Charterises in Genoa. Yes, it is +rather sudden. I am off to-morrow. I shall not see you dear good +people for some time, I fancy...." + +When Hardress had gone the woman said in a stifled voice: "No, I will +not dance. Take me somewhere--there is a winter-garden, I know--" + +"No, Jill," said I, with decision. "It's no use. I am really going. We +will not argue it." + +Gillian Hardress watched the dancers for a moment, as with languid +interest. "You fear that I am going to make a scene. Well! I can't. +You have selected your torture chamber too carefully. Oh, after all +that's been between us, to tell me here, to my husband's face, in the +presence of some three hundred people, without a moment's warning, +that you are 'off to-morrow!' It--it is for good, isn't it?" + +"Yes," I said. "It had to be--some time, you know." + +"No, don't look at me. Watch the dancing, I will fan myself and seem +bored. No, I shall not do anything rash." + +I was uncomfortable. Yet at bottom it was the theatric value of this +scene which impressed me,--the gaiety and the brilliance on every side +of her misery. And I did not look at her. I did just as she ordered +me. + +"I was proud once. I haven't any pride now. You say you must leave me. +Oh, dearest boy, if you only knew how unhappy I will be without you, +you could not leave me. Sweetheart, you must know how I love you. I +long every minute to be with you, and to see you even at a distance is +a pleasure. I know it is not right for me to ask or expect you to love +me always, but it seems so hard." + +"It's no use, Jill--" + +"Is it another woman? I won't mind. I won't be jealous. I won't make +scenes, for I know you hate scenes, and I have made so many. It was +because I cared so much. I never cared before, Jack. You have tired of +me, I know. I have seen it coming. Well, you shall have your way in +everything. But don't leave me, dear! oh, my dear, my dear, don't +leave me! Oh, I have given you everything, and I ask so little in +return--just to see you sometimes, just to touch your hand sometimes, +as the merest stranger might do...." + +So her voice went on and on while I did not look at her. There was no +passion in this voice of any kind. It was just the long monotonous +wail of some hurt animal.... They were playing the _Valse Bleu_, I +remember. It lasted a great many centuries, and always that low voice +was pleading with me. Yes, it was uncommonly unpleasant; but always at +the back of my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to +precisely how I felt, because some day they might be useful, for the +book I had already outlined. "It is no use, Jill," I kept repeating, +doggedly. + +Then Armitage came smirking for his dance. Gillian Hardress rose, and +her fan shut like a pistol-shot. She was all in black, and throughout +that moment she was more beautiful than any other woman I have ever +seen. + +"Yes, this is our dance," she said, brightly. "I thought you had +forgotten me, Mr. Armitage. Well! good-bye, Mr. Townsend. Our little +talk has been very interesting--hasn't it? Oh, this dress _always_ +gets in my way--" + +She was gone. I felt that I had managed affairs rather crudely, but it +was the least unpleasant way out, and I simply had not dared to trust +myself alone with her. So I made the best of an ill bargain, and +remodeled the episode more artistically when I used it later, in +_Afield_. + + + + +11. + +_He Postures Among Chimney-Pots_ + + +I met the Charterises in Genoa, just as I had planned. Anne's first +exclamation was, "Heavens, child, how dissipated you look! I would +scarcely have known you." + +Charteris said nothing. But he and I lunched at the Isotta the +following day, and at the conclusion of the meal the little man leaned +back and lighted a cigarette. + +"You must overlook my wife's unfortunate tendency toward the most +unamiable of virtues. But, after all, you are clamantly not quite the +boy I left at Liverpool last October. Where are your Hardresses now?" + +"In London for the season. And why is your wife rushing on to Paris, +John?" + +"Shopping, as usual. Yes, I believe I did suggest it was as well to +have it over and done with. Anne is very partial to truisms. Besides, +she has an aunt there, you know. Take my advice, and always marry a +woman who is abundantly furnished with attractive and visitable +relations, for this precaution is the true secret of every happy +marriage. We may, then, regard the Hardress incident as closed?" + +"Oh, Lord, yes!" said I, emphatically. + +"Well, after all, you have been sponging off them for a full year. The +adjective is not ill-chosen, from what I hear. I fancy Mrs. Hardress +has found you better company after she had mixed a few drinks for you, +and so--But a truce to moral reflections! for I am desirous once more +to hear the chimes at midnight. I hear Francine is in Milan?" + +"There is at any rate in Milan," said I, "a magnificent Gothic +Cathedral of international reputation; and upon the upper gallery of +its tower, as my guidebook informs me, there is a watchman with an +efficient telescope. Should I fail to meet that watchman, John, I would +feel that I had lived futilely. For I want both to view with him the +Lombard plain, and to ask him his opinion of Cino da Pistoia, and as to +what was in reality the middle name of Cain's wife." + + + 2 + +Francine proved cordial; but John Charteris was ever fickle, and not +long afterward an Italian countess, classic in feature, but in coloring +smacking of an artistic renaissance, had drawn us both to Switzerland, +and thence to Liege. It was great fun, knocking about the Continent +with John, for he knew exactly how to order a dinner, and spoke I don't +know how many languages, and seemed familiar with every side-street and +back-alley in Europe. For myself, my French as acquired in Fairhaven +appeared to be understood by everybody, but in replying very few of the +natives could speak their own foolish language comprehensibly. I could +rarely make head or tail out of what they were jabbering about. + +I was alone that evening, because Annette's husband had turned up +unexpectedly; and Charteris had gone again to hear Nadine Neroni, the +new prima donna, concerning whom he and his enameled Italian friend +raved tediously. But I never greatly cared for music; besides, the +opera that night was _Faust_; the last act of which in particular, when +three persons align before the footlights and scream at the top of +their voices, for a good half hour, about how important it is not to +disturb anybody, I have never been able to regard quite seriously. + +So I was spending this evening sedately in my own apartments at the +Continental; and meanwhile I lisped in numbers that (or I flattered +myself) had a Homeric tang; and at times chewed the end of my pencil +meditatively. "From present indications," I was considering, "that +Russian woman is cooking something on her chafing-dish again. It +usually affects them that way about dawn." + +I began on the next verse viciously, and came a cropper over the clash +of two sibilants, as the distant clamour increased. "Brutes!" said I, +disapprovingly. "Sere, clear, dear--Now they have finished, '_Jamais, +monsieur_', and begun crying, 'Fire!' Oh, this would draw more than +three souls out of a weaver, you know! Mere, near, hemisphere--no, but +the Greeks thought it was flat. By Jove! I do smell smoke!" + +Wrapping my dressing-gown about me--I had afterward reason to thank the +kindly fates that it was the green one with the white fleurs-de-lis, +and not my customary, unspeakably disreputable bath-robe, scorched by +the cigarette ashes of years,--I approached the door and peeped out +into the empty hotel corridor. The incandescent lights glimmered mildly +through a gray haze which was acrid and choking to breathe; little +puffs of smoke crept lazily out of the lift-shaft just opposite; and +down-stairs all Liége was shouting incoherently, and dragging about the +heavier pieces of hotel furniture. + +"By Jove!" said I, and whistled a little disconsolately as I looked +downward through the bars about the lift-shaft. + +"Do you reckon," spoke a voice--a most agreeable voice,--"we are in any +danger?" + +The owner of the voice was tall; not even the agitation of the moment +prevented my observing that, big as I am, her eyes were almost on a +level with my shoulder. They were not unpleasant eyes, and a stray +dream or two yet lingered under their heavy lids. The owner of the +voice wore a strange garment that was fluffy and pink,--pale pink like +the lining of a sea-shell--and billows of white and the ends of various +blue ribbons peeped out about her neck. I made mental note of the fact +that disordered hair is not necessarily unbecoming; it sometimes has +the effect of an unusually heavy halo set about the face of a +half-awakened angel. + +"It would appear," said I, meditatively, "that, in consideration of our +being on the fifth floor, with the lift-shaft drawing splendidly, and +the stairs winding about it,--except the two lower flights, which have +just fallen in,--and in consideration of the fire department's probable +incompetence to extinguish anything more formidable than a tar-barrel, +--yes, it would appear, I think, that we might go further than +'dangerous' and find a less appropriate adjective to describe the +situation." + +"You mean we cannot get down?" The beautiful voice was tremulous. + +And my silence made reply. + +"Well, then," she suggested, cheerfully, after due reflection, "since +we can't go down, why not go up?" + +As a matter of fact, nothing could be more simple. We were on the top +floor of the hotel, and beside us, in the niche corresponding to the +stairs below, was an iron ladder that led to a neatly-whitewashed +trapdoor in the roof. Adopting her suggestion, I pushed against this +trap-door and found that it yielded readily; then, standing at the top +of the ladder, I looked about me on a dim expanse of tiles and +chimneys; yet farther off were the huddled roofs and gables of Liége, +and just a stray glimpse of the Meuse; and above me brooded a clear sky +and the naked glory of the moon. + + + 3 + +I lowered my head with a distinct sigh of relief. + +"I say," I called, "it is infinitely nicer up here--superb view of the +city, and within a minute's drop of the square! Better come up." + +"Go first," said she; and subsequently I held for a moment a very +slender hand--a ridiculously small hand for a woman whose eyes were +almost on a level with my shoulder,--and we two stood together on the +roof of the Hôtel Continental. We enjoyed, as I had predicted, an +unobstructed view of Liége and of the square, wherein two toy-like +engines puffed viciously and threw impotent threads of water against +the burning hotel beneath us, and, at times, on the heads of an excited +throng erratically clad. + +But I looked down moodily, "That," said I, as a series of small +explosions popped like pistol shots, "is the café; and, oh, Lord! there +goes the only decent Scotch in all Liége!" + +"There is Mamma!" she cried, excitedly; "there!" She pointed to a stout +woman, who, with a purple? shawl wrapped about her head, was wringing +her hands as heartily as a bird-cage, held in one of them, would +permit. "And she has saved Bill Bryan!" + +"In that case," said I, "I suppose it is clearly my duty to rescue the +remaining member of the family. You see," I continued, in bending over +the trap-door and tugging at the ladder, "this thing is only about +twenty feet long; but the kitchen wing of the hotel is a little less +than that distance from the rear of the house behind it; and with this +as a bridge I think we might make it. In any event, the roof will be +done for in a half-hour, and it is eminently worth trying." I drew the +ladder upward. + +Then I dragged this ladder down the gentle slant of the roof, through a +maze of ghostly chimneys and dim skylights, to the kitchen wing, which +was a few feet lower than the main body of the building. I skirted the +chimney and stepped lightly over the eaves, calling, "Now then!" when a +muffled cry, followed by a crash in the courtyard beneath, shook my +heart into my mouth. I turned, gasping; and found the girl lying safe, +but terrified, on the verge of the roof. + +"It was a bucket," she laughed, "and I stumbled over it,--and it +fell--and--and I nearly did,--and I am frightened!" + +And somehow I was holding her hand in mine, and my mouth was making +irrelevant noises, and I was trembling. "It was close, but--look here, +you must pull yourself together!" I pleaded; "because we haven't, as it +were, the time for airy badinage and repartee--just now." + +"I can't," she cried, hysterically. "Oh, I am so frightened! I can't!" + +"You see," I said, with careful patience, "we must go on. I hate to +seem too urgent, but we _must_, do you understand?" I waved my hand +toward the east. "Why, look!" said I, as a thin tongue of flame leaped +through the open trap-door and flickered wickedly for a moment against +the paling gray of the sky. + +She saw and shuddered. "I'll come," she murmured, listlessly, and rose +to her feet. + + + 4 + +I heaved another sigh of relief, and waving her aside from the ladder, +dragged it after me to the eaves of the rear wing. As I had foreseen, +this ladder reached easily to the eaves of the house behind the rear +wing, and formed a passable though unsubstantial-looking bridge. I +regarded it disapprovingly. + +"It will only bear one," said I; "and we will have to crawl over +separately after all. Are you up to it?" + +"Please go first," said she, very quiet. And, after gazing into her +face for a moment, I crept over gingerly, not caring to look down into +the abyss beneath. + +Then I spent a century in impotence, watching a fluffy, pink figure +that swayed over a bottomless space and moved forward a hair's breadth +each year. I made no sound during this interval. In fact, I do not +remember drawing a really satisfactory breath from the time I left the +hotel-roof, until I lifted a soft, faint-scented, panting bundle to the +roof of the Councillor von Hollwig. + + + 5 + +"You are," I cried, with conviction, "the bravest, the most--er--the +bravest woman I ever knew!" I heaved a little sigh, but this time of +content. "For I wonder," said I, in my soul, "if you have any idea what +a beauty you are! what a wonderful, unspeakable beauty you are! Oh, you +are everything that men ever imagined in dreams that left them weeping +for sheer happiness--and more! You are--you, and I have held you in my +arms for a moment; and, before high heaven, to repurchase that +privilege I would consent to the burning of three or four more hotels +and an odd city or so to boot!" But, aloud, I only said, "We are quite +safe now, you know." + +She laughed, bewilderingly. "I suppose," said she, "the next thing is +to find a trap-door." + +But there were, so far as we could discover, no trapdoors in the roof +of the Councillor von Hollwig, or in the neighbouring roofs; and, after +searching three of them carefully, I suggested the propriety of waiting +till dawn to be melodramatically rescued. + +"You see," I pointed out, "everybody is at the fire over yonder. But we +are quite safe here, I would say, with an entire block of houses to +promenade on; moreover, we have cheerful company, eligible central +location in the very heart of the city, and the superb spectacle of a +big fire at exactly the proper distance. Therefore," I continued, and +with severity, "you will please have the kindness to explain your +motives for wandering about the corridors of a burning hotel at four +o'clock in the morning." + +She sat down against a chimney and wrapped her gown about her. "I sleep +very soundly," said she, "and we did both museums and six churches and +the Palais de Justice and a deaf and dumb place and the cannon-foundry +today,--and the cries awakened me,--and I reckon Mamma lost her head." + +"And left you," thought I, "left you--to save a canary-bird! Good Lord! +And so, you are an American and a Southerner as well." + +"And you?" she asked. + +"Ah--oh, yes, me!" I awoke sharply from admiration of her trailing +lashes. The burning hotel was developing a splendid light wherein to +see them. "I was writing--and I thought that Russian woman had a few +friends to supper,--and I was looking for a rhyme when I found you," I +concluded, with a fine coherence. + +She looked up. It was incredible, but those heavy lashes disentangled +quite easily. I was seized with a desire to see them again perform this +interesting feat. "Verses?" said she, considering my slippers in a new +light. + +"Yes," I admitted, guiltily--"of Helen." + +She echoed the name. It is an unusually beautiful name when properly +spoken. "Why, that is my name, only we call it Elena." + +"Late of Troy Town," said I, in explanation. + +"Oh!" The lashes fell into their former state. It was hopeless this +time; and manual aid would be required, inevitably. "I should think," +said my compatriot, "that live women would be more--inspiring" + +"Surely," I assented. I drew my gown about me and sat down. "But, you +see, she is alive--to me." And I dwelt a trifle upon the last word. + +"One would gather," said she, meditatively, "that you have an +unrequited attachment for Helen of Troy." + +I sighed a melancholy assent. The great eyes opened to their utmost. +The effect was as disconcerting as that of a ship firing a broadside at +you, but pleasanter. "Tell me all about it," said she, coaxingly. + +"I have always loved her," I said, with gravity. "Long ago, when I was +a little chap, I had a book--_Stories of the Trojan War_, or something +of the sort. And there I first read of Helen--and remembered. There +were pictures--outline pictures,--of quite abnormally straight-nosed +warriors, with flat draperies which amply demonstrated that the laws of +gravity were not yet discovered; and the pictures of slender goddesses, +who had done their hair up carefully and gone no further in their +dressing. Oh, the book was full of pictures,--and Helen's was the most +manifestly impossible of them all. But I knew--I knew, even then, of +her beauty, of that flawless beauty which made men's hearts as water +and drew the bearded kings to Ilium to die for the woman at sight of +whom they had put away all memories of distant homes and wives; that +flawless beauty which buoyed the Trojans through the ten years of +fighting and starvation, just with delight in gazing upon Queen Helen +day by day, and with the joy of seeing her going about their streets. +For I remembered!" And as I ended, I sighed effectively. + +"I know," said she. + +"'Or ever the knightly years had gone +With the old world to the grave, +I was a king in Babylon +And you were a Christian slave.'" + +"Yes, only I was the slave, I think, and you--er--I mean, there goes +the roof, and it is an uncommonly good thing for posterity you thought +of the trap-door. Good thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at +those flames!" I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled +inward like a house of cards; "they are splashing, actually splashing, +like waves over a breakwater!" + +I drew a deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to +encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. "Yes, I was a Trojan +warrior," I resumed; "one of the many unknown men who sought and found +death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they +died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they +had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness. +She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved her; I had overheard +some laughing words of hers in passing, and I treasured them as men +treasure gold. Or she had spoken, perhaps--oh, day of days!--to me, in +a low, courteous voice that came straight from the back of the throat +and blundered very deliciously over the perplexities of our alien +speech. I remembered--even as a boy, I remembered." + +She cast back her head and laughed merrily. "I reckon," said she, "you +are still a boy, or else you are the most amusing lunatic I ever met." + +"No," I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, "that tale +about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen--and the gods be praised for +it!--can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of +unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently +as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose, +with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very +certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she + +"Abides the symbol of all loveliness, +Of beauty ever stainless in the stress +Of warring lusts and fears. + +"For she is to each man the one woman that he might have loved +perfectly. She is as old as youth, she is more old than April even, and +she is as ageless. And, again like youth and April, this Helen goes +about the world in varied garments, and to no two men is her face the +same. Oh, very often she transmutes her fleshly covering. But through +countless ages I, like every man alive, have followed her, and fought +for her, and won her, and have lost her in the end,--but always loving +her as every man must do. And I prefer to think that some day--" But my +voice here died into a whisper, which was in part due to emotion and +partly to an inability to finish the sentence satisfactorily. The logic +of my verses when thus paraphrased from memory, seemed rather vague. + +"Yes--like Pythagoras" she said, a bit at random. "Oh, I know. There +really must be something in it, I have often thought, because you +actually do remember having done things before sometimes." + +"And why not? as the March Hare very sensibly demanded." But now my +voice was earnest. "Yes, I believe that Helen always comes. Is it +simply a proof that I, too, am qualified to sit next to the Hatter?" I +spread out my hands in a helpless little gesture. "I do not know. But I +believe that she will come,--and by and by pass on, of course, as Helen +always does." + +"You will know her?" she queried, softly. + +Now I at last had reached firm ground. "She will be very tall," I said, +"very tall and exquisite,--like a young birch-tree, you know, when its +new leaves are whispering over to one another the secrets of spring. +Yes, that is a ridiculous sounding simile, but it expresses the general +effect of her--the _coup d'oeil_, so to speak,--quite perfectly. +Moreover, her hair will be a miser's dream of gold; and it will hang +heavily about a face that will be--quite indescribable, just as the +dawn yonder is past the utmost preciosity of speech. But her face will +flush and will be like the first of all anemones to peep through black, +good-smelling, and as yet unattainable earth; and her eyes will be +deep, shaded wells where, just as in the proverb, truth lurks." + +But now I could not see her eyes. + +"No," I conceded, "I was wrong. For when men talk to her as--as they +cannot but talk to her, her face will flush dull red, almost like +smouldering wood; and she will smile a little, and look out over a +great fire, such as that she saw on the night when Ilium was sacked and +the slain bodies were soft under her stumbling feet, as she fled +through flaming Troy Town. And then I shall know her." + +My companion sighed; and the woes of centuries weighed down her eyelids +obstinately. "It is bad enough," she lamented, "to have lost all one's +clothes--that new organdie was a dream, and I had never worn it; but to +find yourself in a dressing-gown--at daybreak, on a strange roof--and +with an unintroduced lunatic--is positively terrible!" + +The unintroduced lunatic rose to his feet and waved his hand toward the +east. The dawn was breaking in angry scarlet and gold that spread like +fire over half the visible horizon; the burning hotel shut out the +remaining half with tall flames, which shouldered one another +monotonously, and seemed lustreless against the pure radiance of the +sky. Chill daylight showed in melting patches through the clouds of +black smoke overhead. + +It was a world of fire, transfigured by the austere magnificence of +dawn and the grim splendour of the shifting, roaring conflagration; and +at our feet lay the orchard of the Councillor von Hollwig, and there +the awakened birds piped querulously, and sparks fell crackling among +apple-blossoms. + +"Ilium is ablaze," I quoted; "and the homes of Pergamos and its +towering walls are now one sheet of flame." + +She inspected the scene, critically. "It does look like Ilium," she +admitted. "And that," peering over the eaves into the deserted +by-street, "looks like a milkman." + +I was unable to deny this, though an angry concept crossed my mind that +any milkman, with commendable tastes and feelings, would at this moment +be gaping at the fire at the other end of the block, rather than +prosaically measuring quarts at the Councillor's side-entrance. But +there was no help for it, when chance thus unblushingly favoured the +proprieties; in consequence I clung to a water-pipe, and explained the +situation to the milkman, with a fretted mind and King's College +French. + +I turned to my companion. She was regarding the burning hotel with an +impersonal expression. + +"Now I would give a deal," I thought, "to know just how long you would +prefer that milkman to take in coming back." + + + + +12. + +_He Faces Himself and Remembers_ + + +Into the lobby of the Hôtel d'Angleterre strolled, an hour later, a +tall young man, in a green dressing-gown, and inquired for Charteris. +The latter, in evening dress, was mournfully breakfasting in his new +quarters. + +Charteris sprang to his feet. I saw, with real emotion, that he had +been weeping; but now he was all flippancy. "My dear boy! I have just +torn my hair and the rough drafts of several cablegrams on your +account! Sit down at once, and try the bacon, since, for a wonder, it +is not burnt--and, in passing, I had thought of course that you were." + +Instead, I took a drink, and went to sleep upon the nearest sofa. + + + 2 + +I was very tired, but I awakened about noon and managed to procure +enough clothes to make myself not altogether unpresentable to the +public eye. Charteris had gone already about his own affairs, and I did +not regret it, for I meant, without delay, to follow up my adventure of +the night before. + +But when I had come out of the Rue de la Casquette, and was approaching +the statue of Gretry, I came upon a very ornately-dressed woman, who +was about to enter en open carriage. I stared; and preposterous as it +was, I knew that I was not mistaken. And I said aloud, "Signorina!" + +It was a long while before she said, "Don't--don't ever call me that +again!" And since the world in general appeared just then to be largely +flavoured with the irresponsibility of dreams, it did not surprise me +that we were presently alone in somebody's sitting-room. + +"I have seen you twice in Liége," she said. "I suppose this had to come +about. I would have preferred to avoid it, though. Well! _che sara!_ +You don't care for music, do you? No,--otherwise you would have known +earlier that I am Nadine Neroni now." + +"Ah!" I said, very quietly. I had heard, as everybody had, a deal +concerning the Neroni. "I think, if you will pardon me, I will not +intrude upon Baron von Anspach's hospitality any longer," I said. + +"That is unworthy of you,--no, I mean it would have been unworthy of a +boy we knew of." There was a long pier-glass in these luxurious rooms. +She led me to it now. "Look, Bobbie. We have altered a little, haven't +we? I at least, am unmistakable. 'Their eyes are different, somehow', +you remember. You haven't changed as much,--not outwardly. I think you +are like Dorian Gray. Yes, as soon--as soon as I could afford it, I +read every book you ever talked about, I think. It was damnably foolish +of me. For I've heard things. And there was a girl I tried to help in +London--an Agnès Faroy--" + +"Ah!" I said. + +"She had your picture even then, poor creature. She kissed it just +before she died. She didn't know that I had ever heard of you. She +never knew. Oh, how _could_ you!" the Neroni said, with something very +like a sob, "Or were you always--just that, at bottom?" + +"And have you ever noticed, Mademoiselle Neroni, that every one of us +is several people? In consequence I must confess to have been +wondering--?" + +"Well! I wasn't. You won't believe it now, perhaps. And it doesn't +matter, anyhow." Her grave voice lifted and upon a sudden was changed. +"Bobbie, when you had gone I couldn't stand it! I couldn't let you ruin +your life for me, but I could not go on as I had done before--Oh, well, +you'll never understand," she added, wearily. "But Von Anspach had +always wanted me to go with him. So I wrote to him, at the Embassy. And +after all, what is the good of talking--now!" + +We two were curiously quiet. "No, I suppose there is no good in talking +now." We stood there, as yet, hand in hand. The mirror was candid. "Oh, +Signorina, I want to laugh as God laughs, and I cannot!" + + + 3 + +But I lack the heart to set down all that brief and dreary talk of +ours. How does it matter what we said? We two at least knew, even as we +talked, that all we said meant in the outcome, nothing. Yet we talked +awhile and spoke, I think, quite honestly. + +She was not unhappy; and there were inbred Lichfeldian traditions which +prompted me to virtuous indignation over her defects in remorse and +misery. There were my memories, too. + +"I don't sing very well, of course, but then I'm not dependent on my +singing, you know. Oh, why not be truthful? And Von Anspach always sees +to it I get the tendered of criticism--in print. And, moreover, I've a +deal put by. I'm a miser, _he_ says, and I suppose I am, because I know +what it is to be poor. So when the rainy day comes--as of course it +will,--I'll have quite enough to purchase a serviceable umbrella. +Meanwhile, I have pretty much everything I want. People talk of course, +but it is only on the stage they ever drive you out into a snow-storm. +Besides, they don't talk to _me_." + +In fine, I found that the Neroni was a very different being from Miss +Montmorenci.... + + + 4 + +Then I left her. I had not any inclination just now to pursue my fair +Elena. Rather I sat alone in my new bedroom, thinking, confusedly, +first of Amelia Van Orden, and how I danced with her a good eight years +ago; of that woman who had come to me in remote Fairhaven, coming +through the world's gutter, unsullied,--because that much I yet +believe, although I do not know.... She may have been always the same, +even in the old days when Lichfield thought her "fast," and she was +more or less "compromised,"--and years before I met her, a blind, +inexperienced boy. Only she may then have been a better actress than I +suspected.... I thought, in any event, of those execrable rhymes that +likened her to the Lady in _Comus_, moving serene and unafraid among a +rabble of threatening bestial shapes; and I thought of the woman who +would, by this time, be with Von Anspach. + +For here again were inbred Lichfieldian traditions of the sort I rarely +dare confess to, even to myself, because they are so patently hidebound +and ridiculous. These traditions told me that this woman, whom I had +loved, was Von Anspach's harlot. I might--and I did--endeavor to be +ironical and to be broadminded and to be up-to-date about the whole +affair, and generally to view the matter through the sophisticated eyes +of the author of The Apostates, that Robert Etheridge Townsend who was +a connoisseur of ironies and human foibles; but these futilities did no +good at all. Lichfield had got at and into me when I was too young to +defend myself; and I could no more alter the inbred traditions of +Lichfield, that were a part of me, than a carpet could change its +texture. My traditions merely told me that the dear woman whom I +remembered had come--in fleeing from discomforts which were unbearable, +if that mattered--to be Von Anspach's harlot: and finding her this, my +traditions declined to be the least bit broadminded. In Lichfield such +women were simply not respectable; nor could you get around that fact +by going to Liége. + +There was in the room a _Matin,_ which contained a brief account of the +burning of the Continental, and a very lengthy one of the Neroni's +appearance the night before. Drearily, to keep from thinking, I read a +deal concerning _la gracieuse cantatrice américaine._ Whether or not +she had made a fool of me with histrionics in Fairhaven, there was no +doubt that she had chosen wisely in forsaking Lethbury, and the round +of village "Opera Houses." She had chosen, after all, and precisely as +I had done, to make the most of youth while it lasted; and she +appeared, just now, to harvest prodigally. + +"On jouait Faust," I read, "et jamais le célèbre personnage de Goethe +n'adore plus exquise Gretchen. Miss Nadine Neroni est, en effet, une +idéale Marguerite à la taille bien prise, au visage joli éclairé des +deux yeux grands et doux. Et lorsqu'elle commença à chanter, ce fut un +véritable ravissement: sa voix se fit l'interprète rêvée de la divine +musique de Gounod, tandis que sa personne et son coeur incarnaient +physiquement et moralement l'héroine de Goethe".... + +And so on, for Von Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, +well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what +in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only +doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is +possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we +are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, I had better go and look for that +preposterously beautiful Elena. And a fig for the provincial notions of +Lichfield, that are poisoning me with their nonsense! and for the +notions of Fairhaven, too, I suppose--" + + + 5 + +Then Charteris came into the room. "John," said I, "this is a truly +remarkable world, and only hypercriticism would venture to suggest that +it is probably conducted by an inveterate humourist. So lend me that +pocket-piece of yours, and we will permit chance to settle the entire +matter. That is the one intelligent way of treating anything which is +really serious. You probably believe I am Robert Etheridge Townsend, +but as a matter of fact, I am Hercules in the allegory. So! the +beautiful lady or America? Why, the eagle flutters uppermost, and from +every mountain side let praises ring. Accordingly I am off." + +"And you will cross half the world," said Charteris, "in the green +dressing-gown, or in the coat which Byam borrowed for you this morning? +I do not wish to seem inquisitive, you understand--" + +"No, I believe I am through with borrowed coats--as with yours, for +instance. But I am quite ready to go in my own dressing-gown if +necessary--" + +I wheeled at the door. + +"By the way, I am done with you, John. I am fond of you, and all that, +and I sincerely admire my chimney-pot coquette--of whom you haven't +heard,--but, after all, there are real people yonder. And by God, even +after two years of being pickled in alcohol and chasing after women +that are quite used to being chased--well, even now I am one of those +real people. So I am done with you and this perpetual making light of +things--!" + +"The Declaration of Independence," Charteris observed, "is undoubtedly +the best thing in imaginative literature that we Americans have as yet +accomplished; but I am sufficiently familiar with it, thank you, and I +find, with age, that only the more untruthful platitudes are endurable. +Oh, I predicted for you, at our first meeting, a life without +achievements but of gusto! Now, it would appear, you plan to prance +among an interminable saturnalia of the domestic virtues. So be it! +but I warn you that the house of righteousness is but a wayside inn +upon the road to being a representative citizen." + +"You are talking nonsense," I rapped out--"and immoral nonsense." + +"It is very strange," John Charteris complained, "how so many of us +manage to reduce everything to a question of morality,--that is, to the +alternative of being right or wrong. Now a man's personality, as +somebody or other very properly observes, has many parts besides the +moral area; and the intelligent, the artistic, even the religious part, +need not necessarily have anything to do with ethics--" + +"Ah, yes," said I, "so there is a train at noon--" + +"And a virtuous man," continued Charteris, amicably, "is no more the +perfect type of humanity than an intellectual man. In fact, the lowest +and certainly the most disagreeable type of all troublesome people is +that which combines an immaculate past with a limited understanding. +The religious tenets of this class consist of an unshakable belief that +the Bible was originally written in English, and contains nothing +applicable to any of the week-days. And in consequence--" + +I left him mid-course in speech. "Words, words!" said I; and it +appeared to me for the moment that words were of astonishingly trivial +import, however carefully selected, which was in me a wholesome, +although fleet, apostacy of yesterday's creed. And I sent a cablegram +to Bettie Hamlyn. + + + 6 + +It was on the trip homeward I first met with Celia Reindan. I then +considered her a silly little nuisance.... + +For I crossed the Atlantic in a contained fury of repentance for the +wasted months. I had achieved nothing that was worthy of me, and +presently I would be dead. Why, I might die within the five minutes! I +might never see the lagging minute-hand of my little traveling clock +pass that next numeral, say! The thought obsessed me, especially at +night. Once, in a panic, I rose from my berth, and pushed the +minute-hand forward a half-hour. "Now, I have tricked You!" I said, +aloud; for nervously I was footing a pretty large bill. At twenty-three +one has the funds wherewith to balance these accounts.... + +I wanted to live normally--to live as these persons thick about me, who +seemed to grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious +fashion of oxen. I wanted to think only from hand to mouth, to think if +possible not at all, and to be guided always in the conduct of my life +by gross and obvious truisms, so that I must be judged at last but as +one of the herd. "And what is accustomed--what holds of familiar +usage--had come to seem the whole essence of wisdom, on all subjects"; +for I wanted just the sense of companionship, irrevocable and eternal +and commonly shared with every one of my kind. And yonder was Bettie +Hamlyn.... "Oh, make a man of me, Bettie! just a common man!" + +And Bettie might have done it, one considers, even then, for I was +astir with a new impetus. Now, with a grin, the Supernal Aristophanes +slipped the tiniest temptation in my way; to reach Fairhaven I was +compelled to spend some three hours of an April afternoon in Lichfield, +where upon Regis Avenue was to be met, in the afternoon, everyone worth +meeting in Lichfield; and Stella drove there on fine afternoons, under +the protection of a trim and preternaturally grave tiger; and the +afternoon was irreproachable. + + + 7 + +By the way she looked back over her shoulder, I knew that Stella had +not recognized me. I stood with a yet lifted hat, irresolute. + +"By Jove!" said I, in my soul, "then the Blagdens are in Lichfield! +Why, of course! they always come here after Lent. And Bettie would not +mind; to call on them would be only courteous; and besides, Bettie need +not ever know. And moreover, I was always very fond of Peter." + +So the next afternoon but four, Stella was making tea for me.... + + + + +13. + +_He Baits Upon the Journey_ + + +"You are quite by way of being a gentleman," had been Stella's +greeting, that afternoon. Then, on a sudden, she rested both hands upon +my breast. When she did that you tingled all over, in an agreeable +fashion. "It was uncommonly decent of you to remember", said this +impulsive young woman. "It was dear of you! And the flowers were +lovely." + +"They ought to have been immortelles, of course," I apologised, "but +the florist was out of them. Yes, and of daffodils, too." I sat down, +and sighed, pensively. "Dear, dear!" said I, "to think it was only two +years ago I buried my dearest hopes and aspirations and--er--all that +sort of thing." + +"Nonsense!" said Stella, and selected a blue cup with dragons on it. +"At any rate," she continued, "it is very disagreeable of you to come +here and prate like a death's-head on my wedding anniversary." + +"Gracious gravy!" said I, with a fine surprise, "so it is an +anniversary with you, too?" She was absorbed in the sugar-bowl. "What a +coincidence!" I suggested, pleasantly. + +I paused. The fire crackled. I sighed. + +"You are such poor company, nowadays, even after the advantages of +foreign travel," Stella reflected. "You really ought to do something to +enliven yourself." After a little, she brightened as to the eyes, and +concentrated them upon the tea-making, and ventured a suggestion. "Why +not fall in love?" said Stella. + +"I am," I confided, "already in that deplorable condition." +And I ventured on sigh number two. + +"I don't mean--anything silly," said she, untruthfully. "Why," she +continued, with a certain lack of relevance, "why not fall in love with +somebody else?" Thereupon, I regret to say, her glance strayed toward +the mirror. Oh, she was vain,--I grant you that. But I must protest she +had a perfect right to be. + +"Yes," said I, quite gravely, "that is the reason." + +"Nonsense!" said Stella, and tossed her head. She now assumed her most +matronly air, and did mysterious things with a perforated silver ball. +I was given to understand I had offended, by a severe compression of +her lips, which, however, was not as effective as it might have been. +They twitched too mutinously. + + + 2 + +Stella was all in pink, with golden fripperies sparkling in +unanticipated localities. Presumably the gown was tucked and ruched and +appliquéd, and had been subjected to other processes past the +comprehension of trousered humanity; it was certainly becoming. + +I think there was an eighteenth-century flavour about it,--for it +smacked, somehow, of a patched, mendacious, dainty womanhood, and its +artfulness was of a gallant sort that scorned to deceive. It defied +you, it allured you, it conquered you at a glance. It might have been +the last cry from the court of an innocent Louis Quinze. It was, in +fine, inimitable; and if only I were a milliner, I would describe for +you that gown in some not unbefitting fashion. As it is, you may draft +the world's modistes to dredge the dictionary, and they will fail, as +ignominiously as I would do, in the attempt. + +For, after all, its greatest charm was that it contained Stella, and +converted Stella into a marquise--not such an one as was her sister, +the Marquise d'Arlanges, but a marquise out of Watteau or of Fragonard, +say. Stella in this gown seemed out of place save upon a high-backed +stone bench, set in an _allée_ of lime-trees, of course, and under a +violet sky,--with a sleek abbé or two for company, and with beribboned +gentlemen tinkling on their mandolins about her. + +I had really no choice but to regard her as an agreeable anachronism +the while she chatted with me, and mixed hot water and sugar and lemon +into ostensible tea. She seemed so out of place,--and yet, somehow, I +entertained no especial desire upon this sleety day to have her +different, nor, certainly, otherwhere than in this pleasant, half-lit +room, that consisted mostly of ambiguous vistas where a variety of +brass bric-à-brac blinked in the firelight. + +We had voted it cosier without lamps or candles, for this odorous +twilight was far more companionable. Odorous, for there were a great +number of pink roses about. I imagine that someone must have sent +them--because there were not any daffodils obtainable, by reason of the +late and nipping frost--in honour of Stella's second wedding +anniversary. + + + 3 + +"Peter says you talk to everybody that way," quoth she,--almost +resentfully, and after a pause. + +"Oh!" said I. For it was really no affair of Peter's. And so-- + +"Peter, everybody tells me, is getting fat," I announced, presently. + +Stella witheringly glanced toward the region where my waist used to be. +"He isn't!" said she, indignant. + +"Quite like a pig, they assure me," I continued, with relish. She +objected to people being well-built. "His obscene bloatedness appears +to be an object of general comment." + +Silence. I stirred my tea. + +"Dear Peter!" said she. And then--but unless a woman of Stella's sort +is able to exercise a proper control over her countenance, she has +absolutely no right to discuss her husband with his bachelor friends. +It is unkind; for it causes them to feel like social outcasts and +lumbering brutes and Peeping Toms. If they know the husband well, it +positively awes them; for, after all, it is a bit overwhelming, this +sudden glimpse of the simplicity, and the credulity, and the merciful +blindness of women in certain matters. Besides, a bachelor has no +business to know such things; it merely makes him envious and +uncomfortable. + +Accordingly, "Stella," said I, with firmness, "if you flaunt your +connubial felicity in my face like that, I shall go home." + +She was deaf to my righteous rebuke. "Peter is in Washington this +week," she went on, looking fondly into the fire. "I had planned a +party to celebrate to-day, but he was compelled to go--business, you +know. He is doing so well nowadays," she said, after a little, "that I +am quite insufferably proud of him. And I intend for him to be a great +lawyer--oh, much the greatest in America. And I won't ever be content +till then." + +"H'm!" said I. "H'm" seemed fairly non-committal. + +"Sometimes," Stella declared, irrelevantly, "I almost wish I had been +born a man." + +"I wish you had been," quoth I, in gallant wise. "There are so few +really attractive men!" + +Stella looked up with a smile that was half sad. + +"I'm just a little butterfly-woman, aren't I?" she asked. + +"You are," I assented, with conviction, "a butterfly out of a queen's +garden--a marvellous pink-and-gold butterfly, such as one sees only in +dreams and--er--in a London pantomime. You are a decided ornament to +the garden," I continued, handsomely, "and the roses bow down in +admiration as you pass, and--ah--at least, the masculine ones do." + +"Yes,--we butterflies don't love one another overmuch, do we? Ah, well, +it scarcely matters! We were not meant to be taken seriously, you +know,--only to play in the sunlight, and lend an air to the garden +and--amuse the roses, of course. After all," Stella summed it up, "our +duties are very simple; first, we are expected to pass through a +certain number of cotillions and a certain number of various happenings +in various tête-à-têtes; then to make a suitable match,--so as to +enable the agreeable detrimentals to make love to us, with perfect +safety--as you were doing just now, for instance. And after that, we +develop into bulbous chaperones, and may aspire eventually to a kindly +quarter of a column in the papers, and, quite possibly, the honour of +having as many as two dinners put off on account of our death. +Yes, it is very simple. But, in heaven's name," Stella demanded, with a +sudden lift of speech, "how can any woman--for, after all, a woman is +presumably a reasoning animal--be satisfied with such a life! Yet that +is everything--everything!--this big world offers to us shallow-minded +butterfly-women!" + +Personally, I disapprove of such morbid and hysterical talk outside of +a problem novel; there I heartily approve of it, on account of the +considerable and harmless pleasure that is always to be derived from +throwing the book into the fireplace. And, coming from Stella, this +farrago doubly astounded me. She was talking grave nonsense now, +whereas Nature had, beyond doubt, planned her to discuss only the +lighter sort. So I decided it was quadruply absurd, little Stella +talking in this fashion,--Stella, who, as all knew, was only meant to +be petted and flattered and flirted with. + +And therefore, "Stella," I admonished, "you have been reading something +indigestible." I set down my teacup, and I clasped my hands. "Don't +tell me," I pleaded, "that you want to vote!" + +She remained grave. "The trouble is," said she, "that I am not really a +butterfly, for all my tinsel wings. I am an ant." + +"Oh," said I, shamelessly, "I hadn't heard that Lizzie had an item for +the census man. I don't care for brand-new babies, though; they always +look so disgracefully sun-burned." + +The pun was atrocious and, quite properly, failed to win a smile or +even a reproof from the morbid young person opposite. "My grandfather," +said she in meditation, "began as a clerk in a country store. Oh of +course, we have discovered, since he made his money and since Mother +married a Musgrave, that his ancestors came over with William the +Conqueror, and that he was descended from any number of potentates. But +he lived. He was a rip at first--ah, yes, I'm glad of that as well, +--and he became a religious fanatic because his oldest son died very +horribly of lockjaw. And he browbeat people and founded banks, and made +a spectacle of himself at every Methodist conference, and everybody was +afraid of him and honoured him. And I fancy I am prouder of Old Tim +Ingersoll than I am of any of the emperors and things that make such a +fine show in the Musgrave family tree. For I am like him. And I want to +leave something in the world that wasn't there before I came. I want my +life to count, I want--why, a hundred years from now I _do_ want to be +something more than a name on a tombstone. I--oh, I daresay it _is_ +only my ridiculous egotism," she ended, with a shrug and Stella's usual +quick smile,--a smile not always free from insolence, but always +satisfactory, somehow. + +"It's late hours," I warned her, with uplifted forefinger, "late hours +and too much bridge and too many sweetmeats and too much bothering over +silly New Women ideas. What is the sense of a woman's being useful," I +demanded, conclusively, "when it is so much easier and so much more +agreeable all around for her to be adorable?" + +She pouted. "Yes," she assented, "that is my career--to be adorable. It +is my one accomplishment," she declared, unblushingly,--yet not without +substantiating evidence. + +After a little, though, her gravity returned. "When I was a girl--oh, I +dreamed of accomplishing all sorts of beautiful and impossible things! +But, you see, there was really nothing I could do. Music, painting, +writing--I tried them all, and the results were hopeless. Besides, Rob, +the women who succeed in anything like that are always so queer +looking. I couldn't be expected to give up my complexion for a career, +you know, or to wear my hair like a golf-caddy's. At any rate, I +couldn't make a success by myself. But there was one thing I could do, +--I could make a success of Peter. And so," said Stella, calmly, "I did +it." + +I said nothing. It seemed expedient. + +"You know, he was a little--" + +"Yes," I assented, hastily. Peter had gone the pace, of course, but +there was no need of raking that up. That was done with, long ago. + +"Well, he isn't the least bit dissipated now. You know he isn't. That +is the first big thing I have done." Stella checked it off with a +small, spear-pointed, glinting finger-nail. "Then--oh, I have helped +him in lots of ways. He is doing splendidly in consequence; and it is +my part to see that the proper people are treated properly." + +Stella reflected a moment. "There was the last appointment, for +instance. I found that the awarding of it lay with that funny old Judge +Willoughby, with the wart on his nose, and I asked him for it--not the +wart, you understand,--and got it. We simply had him to dinner, and I +was specially butterfly; I fluttered airily about, was as silly as I +knew how to be, looked helpless and wore my best gown. He thought me a +pretty little fool, and gave Peter the appointment. That is only an +instance, but it shows how I help." Stella regarded me, uncertainly. +"Why, but an authorman ought to understand!" + +Of a sudden I understood a number of things--things that had puzzled. +This was the meaning of Stella's queer dinner the night before, and the +ensuing theatre-party, for instance; this was the explanation of those +impossible men, vaguely heralded as "very influential in politics," and +of the unaccountable women, painfully condensed in every lurid shade of +satin, and so liberally adorned with gems as to make them almost +valuable. Stella, incapable by nature of two consecutive ideas, was +determined to manipulate the unseen wires, and to be, as she probably +phrased it, the power behind the throne.... + +"Eh, it would be laughable," I thought, "were not her earnestness so +pathetic! For here is Columbine mimicking Semiramis." + +Yet it was true that Peter Blagden had made tremendous strides in his +profession, of late. For a moment, I wondered--? Then I looked at this +butterfly young person opposite, and I frowned. "I don't like it," I +said, decisively. "It is a bit cold-blooded. It isn't worthy of you, +Stella." + +"It is my career," she flouted me, with shrugging shoulders. "It is the +one career the world--our Lichfield world--has left me. And I am doing +it for Peter." + +The absurd look that I objected to--on principle, you understand-- +returned at this point in the conversation. I arose, resolutely, for I +was really unable to put up with her nonsense. + +"You are in love with your husband," I grumbled, "and I cannot +countenance such eccentricities. These things are simply not done--" + +She touched my hand. "Old crosspatch, and to think how near I came to +marrying you." + +"I do think of it--sometimes. So you had better stop pawing at me. It +isn't safe." + +I wish I could describe her smile. I wish I knew just what it was that +Stella wanted me to say or do as we stood for a moment silent, in this +pleasant, half-lit room where brass things blinked in the firelight. + +"Old crosspatch!" she repeated.... + +"Stella," said I, with dignity, "I wish it distinctly understood that I +am not a funny old judge with a wart on his nose." + +Whereupon I went away. + + + + +14. + +_He Participates in a Brave Jest_ + + +Stella drove on fine afternoons, under the protection of a trim and +preternaturally grave tiger. The next afternoon, by a Lichfieldian +transition, was irreproachable. I was to remember, afterward, wondering +in a vague fashion, as the equipage passed, if the boy's lot was not +rather enviable. There might well be less attractive methods of earning +the daily bread and butter than to whirl through life behind Stella. +One would rarely see her face, of course, but there would be such +compensations as an unfailing sense of her presence, and the faint +odour of her hair at times and, always, blown scraps of her laughter or +shreds of her talk, and, almost always, the piping of the sweet voice +that was stilled so rarely. + +Perhaps the conscienceless tiger listened when she was "seeing the +proper people were treated properly"? Yes, one would. Perhaps he ground +his teeth? Well, one would, I suspected. And perhaps--? + +There was a nod of recognition from Stella; and I lifted my hat as they +bowled by toward the Reservoir. I went down Regis Avenue, mildly +resentful that she had not offered me a lift. + + + 2 + +A vagrant puff of wind was abroad in the Boulevard that afternoon. It +paused for a while to amuse itself with a stray bit of paper. Presently +the wind grew tired of this plaything and tossed between the eyes of a +sorrel horse. Prince lurched and bolted; and Rex, always a vicious +brute, followed his mate. One fancies the vagabond wind must have +laughed over that which ensued. + +After a moment it returned and lifted a bit of paper from the roadway, +with a new respect, perhaps, and the two of them frolicked away over +close-shaven turf. It was a merry game they played there in the spring +sunlight. The paper fluttered a little, whirled over and over, and +scuttled off through the grass; with a gust of mirth, the wind was +after it, now gained upon it, now lost ground in eddying about a tree, +and now made up the disadvantage in the open, and at last chuckled over +its playmate pinned to the earth and flapping in sharp, indignant +remonstrances. Then _da capo_. + +It was a merry game that lasted till the angry sunset had flashed its +final palpitant lance through the treetrunks farther down the roadway. +There were gaping people in this place, and broken wheels and shafts, +and a policeman with a smoking pistol, and two dead horses, and a +horrible looking dead boy in yellow-topped boots. Somebody had +charitably covered his face with a handkerchief; and men were lifting a +limp, white heap from among the splintered rubbish. + +Then wind and paper played half-heartedly in the twilight until the +night had grown too chilly for further sport. There was no more murder +to be done; and so the vagabond wind was puffed out into nothingness, +and the bit of paper was left alone, and at about this season the big +stars--the incurious stars--peeped out of heaven, one by one. + + + 3 + +It was Stella's sister, the Marquise d'Arlanges, who sent for me that +night. Across the street a hand-organ ground out its jingling tune as +Lizzie's note told me what the playful wind had brought about. It was a +despairing, hopeless and insistent air that shrilled and piped across +the way. It seemed very appropriate. + +The doctors feared--Ah, well, telegrams had failed to reach Peter in +Washington. Peter Blagden was not in Washington, he had not been in +Washington. He could not be found. And did I think--? + +No, I thought none of the things that Stella's sister suggested. Of a +sudden I knew. I stood silent for a little and heard that damned, +clutching tune cough and choke and end; I heard the renewed babblement +of children; and I heard the organ clatter down the street, and set up +its faint jingling in the distance. And I knew with an unreasoning +surety. I pitied Stella now ineffably, not for the maiming and crippling +of her body, for the spoiling of that tender miracle, that white flower +of flesh, but for the falling of her air-castle, the brave air-castle +which to her meant everything. I guessed what had happened. + +Later I found Peter Blagden, no matter where. It is not particularly to +my credit that I knew where to look for him. Yet the French have a +saying of infinite wisdom in their _qui a bu boira_. The old vice had +gripped the man, irresistibly, and he had stolen off to gratify it in +secret; and he had not been sober for a week. He was on the verge of +collapse even when I told him--oh, with a deliberate cruelty, I grant +you,--what had happened that afternoon. + +Then, swiftly, his demolishment came; and I could not--could not for +very shame--bring this shivering, weeping imbecile to the bedside of +Stella, who was perhaps to die that night. Such was the news I brought +to Stella's sister; through desolate streets already blanching in the +dawn. + +Stella was calling for Peter. We manufactured explanations. + + + 4 + +Nice customs curtsey to death. I am standing at Stella's bedside, and +the white-capped nurse has gone. There are dim lights about the room, +and heavy carts lumber by in the dawn without. A petulant sparrow is +cheeping somewhere. + +"Tell me the truth," says Stella, pleadingly. Her face, showing over +billows of bedclothes, is as pale as they. But beautiful, and +exceedingly beautiful, is Stella's face, now that she is come to die. + +It heartened me to lie to her. Peter had been retained in the great +Western Railway case. He had been called to Denver, San Francisco +and--I forget today just why or even whither. He had kept it as a +surprise for her. He was hurrying back. He would arrive in two days. I +showed her telegrams from Peter Blagden,--clumsy forgeries I had +concocted in the last half-hour. + +Oh, the story ran lamely, I grant you. But, vanity apart, I told it +with conviction. Stella must and should die in content; that much at +least I could purchase for her; and my thoughts were strangely nimble, +there was a devilish fluency in my speech, and lie after lie was fitted +somehow into an entity that surprised even me as it took plausible +form. And I got my reward. Little by little, the doubt died from her +eyes as I lied stubbornly in a drug-scented silence; a little by a +little, her cheeks flushed brighter, and ever brighter, as I dilated on +this wonderful success that had come to Peter Blagden, till at last her +face was all aflame with happiness. + +She had dreamed of this, half conscious of her folly; she had worked +toward this consummation for months. But she had hardly dared to hope +for absolute success; it almost worried her; and she could not be +certain, even now, whether it was the soup or her blue silk that had +influenced Allardyce most potently. Both had been planned to wheedle +him, to gain this glorious chance for Peter Blagden.... + +"You--you are sure you are not lying?" said Stella, and smiled in +speaking, for she believed me infinitely. + +"Stella, before God, it is true!" I said, with fervour. "On my word of +honour, it is as I tell you!" And my heart was sick within me as I +thought of the stuttering brute, the painted female thing with tumbled +hair, and the stench of liquor in the room--Ah, well, the God I called +to witness strengthened me to smile back at Stella. + +"I believe you," she said, simply. "I--I am glad. It is a big thing for +Peter." Her eyes widened in wonder and pride, and she dreamed for just +a moment of his future. But, upon a sudden, her face fell. "Dear, +dear!" said Stella, petulantly; "I'd forgotten. I'll be dead by then." + +"Stella! Stella!" I cried, and very hoarsely; "why--why, nonsense, +child! The doctor thinks--he is quite sure, I mean--" I had a horrible +desire to laugh. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. + +"Ah, I know," she interrupted. "I am a little afraid to die," she went +on, reflectively. "If one only knew--" Stella paused for a moment; then +she smiled. "After all," she said, "it isn't as if I hadn't +accomplished anything. I have made Peter. The ball is at his feet now; +he has only to kick it. And I helped." + +"Yes," said I. My voice was shaken, broken out of all control. "You +have helped. Why, you have done everything, Stella! There is not a +young man in America with his prospects. In five years, he will be one +of our greatest lawyers,--everybody says so--everybody! And you have +done it all, Stella--every bit of it! You have made a man of him, I +tell you! Look at what he was!--and then look at what he is! And--and +you talk of leaving him now! Why, it's preposterous! Peter needs you, I +tell you--he needs you to cajole the proper people and keep him steady +and--and--Why, you artful young woman, how could he possibly get on +without you, do you think? Oh, how can any of us get on without you? +You _must_ get well, I tell you. In a month, you will be right as a +trivet. You die! Why, nonsense!" I laughed. I feared I would never have +done with laughter over the idea of Stella's dying. + +"But I have done all I could. And so he doesn't need me now." Stella +meditated for yet another moment. "I believe I shall always know when +he does anything especially big. God would be sure to tell me, you see, +because He understands how much it means to me. And I shall be +proud--ah, yes, wherever I am, I shall be proud of Peter. You see, he +didn't really care about being a success, for of course he knows that +Uncle Larry will leave him a great deal of money one of these days. But +I am such a vain little cat--so bent on making a noise in the world, +--that, I think, he did it more to please my vanity than anything else. +I nagged him, frightfully, you know," Stella confessed, "but he was +always--oh, _so_ dear about it, Rob! And he has never failed me--not +even once, although I know at times it has been very hard for him." +Stella sighed; and then laughed. "Yes," said she, "I think I am +satisfied with my life altogether. Somehow, I am sure I shall be told +about it when he is a power in the world--a power for good, as he will +be,--and then I shall be very perky--somewhere. I ought to sing _Nunc +Dimittis_, oughtn't I?" I was not unmoved; nor did it ever lie within +my power to be unmoved when I thought of Stella and how gaily she went +to meet her death.... + + + 5 + + +"Good-bye," said she, in a tired voice. + +"Good-bye, Stella," said I; and I kissed her. + +"And I don't think you are a mess. And I _don't_ hate you." She was +smiling very strangely. "Yes, I remember that first time. And no matter +what they said, I always cared heaps more about you, Rob, than I dared +let you know. And if only you had been as dependable as Peter--But, you +see, you weren't--" + +"No, dear, you did the right thing--what was best for all of us--" + +"Then don't mind so much. Oh, Bob, it hurts me to see you mind so much! +You aren't--being dependable, like Peter, even now," she said, +reproachfully.... + +Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven. + + + + +15. + +_He Decides to Amuse Himself_ + + +I came to Fairhaven half-bedrugged with memories of Stella's funeral, +--say, of how lightly she had lain, all white and gold, in the +grotesque and horrid box, and of Peter's vacant red-rimmed eyes that +seemed to wonder why this decorous company should have assembled about +the deep and white-lined cavity at his feet and find no answer. Nor, +for that matter, could I. + +"But it was flagrant, flagrant!" my heart screeched in a grill of +impotent wrath. "Eh, You gave me power to reason, so they say! and will +You slay me, too, if I presume to use that power? I say, then, it was +flagrant and tyrannical and absurd! 'Let twenty pass, and stone the +twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!' O Setebos, it +wasn't worthy of omnipotence. You know it wasn't!" In such a frame of +mind I came again to Bettie Hamlyn. + + + 2 + +It was very odd to see Bettie again. I had been sublimely confident, +though, that we would pick up our intercourse precisely where we had +left off; and this, as I now know, is something which can never happen +to anybody. So I was vaguely irritated before we had finished shaking +hands, and became so resolutely boyish and effusive in my delight at +seeing her that anyone in the world but Bettie Hamlyn would have been +quite touched. And my conversational gambit, I protest, was masterly, +and would have made anybody else think, "Oh how candid is the egotism +of this child!" and would have moved that person, metaphorically +anyhow, to pat me upon the head. + +But Bettie only smiled, a little sadly, and answered: + +"Your book?--Why, dear me, did I forget to write you a nice little +letter about how wonderful it was?" + +"You wrote the letter all right. I think you copied it out of _The +Complete Letter Writer_. There was not a bit of you in it." + +"Well, that is why I dislike your book--because there was not a bit of +_you_ in it. Of course I am glad it was the big noise of the month, and +also a little jealous of it, if you can understand that phase of the +feminine mind. I doubt it, because you write about women as though they +were pterodactyls or some other extinct animal, which you had never +seen, but had read a lot about." + +"Which attests, in any event, my morals to be above reproach. You +should be pleased." + +"To roll it into a pill, your book seems pretty much like any other +book; and it has made me hold my own particular boy's picture more than +once against my cheek and say, 'You didn't write books, did you, dear? +--You did nicer things than write books'--and he did .... I hear many +things of you...." + +"Oh, well!" I brilliantly retorted, "you mustn't believe all you hear." +And I felt that matters were going very badly indeed. + +"Robin, do you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with +you by the people who care for you?--and one of them dislikes pottage. +Indeed, I _would_ have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I +almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great +length of liking you,--because 'if only for old sake's sake, dear, +you're the loveliest doll in the world.' There might be a better +reason, if you could only make up your mind to dispense with +pottage...." + +The odd part of it, even to-day, is that Bettie was saying precisely +what I had been thinking, and that to hear her say it made me just +twice as petulant as I was already. + +"Now, please don't preach," I said. "I've heard so much preaching +lately--dear," I added, though I am afraid the word was rather +obviously an afterthought. + +"Oh, I forgot you stayed over for Stella Blagden's funeral. You were +quite right. Stella was a dear child, and I was really sorry to hear of +her death." + +"Really!" It was the lightest possible additional flick upon the raw, +but it served. + +"Yes,--I, too, was rather sorry, Bettie, because I have loved Stella +all my life. She was the first, you see, and, somehow, the others have +been different. And--she disliked dying. I tell you, it is unfair, +Bettie,--it is hideously unfair!" + +"Robin--" she began. + +"And why should you be living," I said, in half-conscious absurdity, +"when she is dead? Why, look, Bettie! even that fly yonder is alive. +Setebos accords an insect what He grudges Stella! Her dying is not even +particularly important. The big news of the day is that the President +has started his Pacific tour, and that the Harvard graduates object to +his being given an honorary degree, and are sending out seven thousand +protests to be signed. And you're alive, and I'm alive, and Peter +Blagden is alive, and only Stella is dead. I suppose she is an angel by +this. But I don't care for angels. I want just the silly little Stella +that I loved,--the Stella that was the first and will always be the +first with me. For I want her--just Stella--! Oh, it is an excellent +jest; and I will cap it with another now. For the true joke is, I came +to Fairhaven, across half the world, with an insane notion of asking +you to marry me,--you who are 'really' sorry that Stella is dead!" And +I laughed as pleasantly as one may do in anger. + +But the girl, too, was angry. "Marry you!" she said. "Why, Robin, you +were wonderful once; and now you are simply not a bad sort of fellow, +who imagines himself to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether +she's dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but just enough +to make a spectacle of you, even now." + +"I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north of your +opinion," said I. "Though, as I dare assert, you are quite probably in +the right. So I'll be off to my husks again, Bettie." And I kissed her +hand. "And that too is only for old sake's sake, dear," I said. + +Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train. +And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt "Good +evening, gentlemen," as I passed Clarriker's Emporium, where Colonel +Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had +left them there two years ago. + + + 3 + +It was a long while afterward I discovered that "some damned +good-natured friend," as Sir Fretful has immortally phrased it, had +told Bettie Hamlyn of seeing me at the theatre in Lichfield, with +Stella and her marvellous dinner-company. It was by an odd quirk the +once Aurelia Minns, in Lichfield for the "summer's shopping," who had +told Bettie. And the fact is that I had written Bettie upon the day of +Stella's death and, without explicitly saying so, had certainly +conveyed the impression I had reached Lichfield that very morning, and +was simply stopping over for Stella's funeral. And, in addition, I +cannot say that Bettie and Stella were particularly fond of each other. + +As it was, I left Fairhaven the same day I reached it, and in some +dissatisfaction with the universe. And I returned to Lichfield and +presently reopened part of the old Townsend house .... "Robert and I," +my mother had said, to Lichfield's delectation, "just live downstairs +in the two lower stories, and ostracise the third floor...." And I was +received by Lichfield society, if not with open arms at least with +acquiescence. And Byam, an invaluable mulatto, the son of my cousin +Dick Townsend and his housekeeper, made me quite comfortable. + +Depend upon it, Lichfield knew a deal more concerning my escapades than +I did. That I was "deplorably wild" was generally agreed, and a +reasonable number of seductions, murders and arsons was, no doubt, +accredited to me "on quite unimpeachable authority, my dear." + +But I was a Townsend, and Lichfield had been case-hardened to +Townsendian vagaries since Colonial days; and, besides, I had written a +book which had been talked about; and, as an afterthought, I was +reputed not to be an absolute pauper, if only because my father had +taken the precaution, customary with the Townsends, to marry a woman +with enough money to gild the bonds of matrimony. For Lichfield, +luckily, was not aware how near my pleasure-loving parents had come, +between them, to spending the last cent of this once ample fortune. + +And, in fine, "Well, really now--?" said Lichfield. Then there was a +tentative invitation or two, and I cut the knot by accepting all of +them, and talking to every woman as though she were the solitary +specimen of feminity extant. It was presently agreed that gossip often +embroidered the actual occurrence and that wild oats were, after all, a +not unheard-of phenomenon, and that though genius very often, in a +phrase, forgot to comb its hair, these tonsorial deficiencies were by +the broadminded not appraised too strictly. + +I did not greatly care what Lichfield said one way or the other. I was +too deeply engrossed: first, in correcting the final proofs of +_Afield_, my second book, which appeared that spring and was built +around--there is no harm in saying now,--my relations with Gillian +Hardress; secondly, in the remunerative and uninteresting task of +writing for _Woman's Weekly_ five "wholesome love-stories with a dash +of humor," in which She either fell into His arms "with a contented +sigh" or else "their lips met" somewhere toward the ending of the +seventh page; and, thirdly, in diverting myself with Celia Reindan.... + + + 4 + +That, though, is a business I shall not detail, because it was one of +the very vulgarest sort. It was the logical outgrowth of my admiration +for her yellow hair,--she did have extraordinary hair, confound her! +--and of a few moonlit nights. It was simply the result of our common +vanity and of her book-fed sentimentality and, eventually, of her +unbridled temper; and in nature the compound was an unsavoury mess +which thoroughly delighted Lichfield. Lichfield will be only too glad, +even nowadays, to discourse to you of how I got wedged in that infernal +transom, and of how Celia alarmed everybody within two blocks of her +bedroom by her wild yells. + + + 5 + +I had meanwhile decided, first, to write another and a better book than +_The Apostates_ or _Afield_ had ever pretended to be; and afterward to +marry Rosalind Jemmett, whom I found, in my too-hackneyed but habitual +phrase, "adorable." For this Rosalind was an eminently "sensible +match," and as such, I considered, quite appropriate for a Townsend. + +The main thing though, to me, was to write the book of which I had +already the central idea,--very vague, as yet, but of an unquestionable +magnificence. Development of it, on an at all commensurate scale, +necessitated many inconveniences, and among them, the finding of +someone who would assist me in imbuing the love-scenes--of which there +must unfortunately be a great many--with reality; and for the tale's +_milieu_ I again pitched upon the Green Chalybeate,--where, as you may +remember, I first met with Stella. + +So I said a not unpromising farewell to Rosalind Jemmett, who was going +into Canada for the summer. She was quite frankly grieved by the +absolute necessity of my taking a rigorous course of the Chalybeate +waters, but agreed with me that one's health is not to be trifled with. +And of course she would write if I really wanted her to, though she +couldn't imagine _why_--But I explained why, with not a little detail. +And she told me, truthfully, that I was talking like an idiot; and was +not, I thought, irrevocably disgusted by my idiocy. So that, all in +all, I was not discontented when I left her. + +Then I ordered Byam to pack and, by various unveracious +representations, induced my Uncle George Bulmer--as a sort of visible +and outward sign that I forgave him for declining to lend me another +penny--to accompany me to the Green Chalybeate. Besides, I was fond of +the old scoundrel.... + + + 6 + +When I began to scribble these haphazard memories I had designed to be +very droll concerning the "provincialism" of Lichfield; for, as every +inhabitant of it will tell you, it is "quite hopelessly provincial," +--and this is odd, seeing that, as investigation will assure you, the +city is exclusively inhabited by self-confessed cosmopolitans. I had +meant to depict Fairhaven, too, in the broad style of _Cranford_, say; +and to be so absolutely side-splitting when I touched upon the Green +Chalybeate as positively to endanger the existence of any apoplectic +reader, who presumed to peruse the chapter which dealt with this +resort. + +But, upon reflection, I am too familiar with these places to attempt to +treat them humorously. The persons who frequent their byways are too +much like the persons who frequent the byways of any other place, I +find, at bottom. For to write convincingly of the persons peculiar to +any locality it is necessary either to have thoroughly misunderstood +them, or else perseveringly to have been absent from daily intercourse +with them until age has hardened the brain-cells, and you have +forgotten what they are really like. Then, alone, you may write the +necessary character studies which will be sufficiently abundant in +human interest. + +For, at bottom, any one of us is tediously like any other. +Comprehension is the grave of sympathy; scratch deeply enough and you +will find not any livelily-coloured Tartarism, but just a mediocre and +thoroughly uninteresting human being. So I may not ever be so droll as +I had meant to be; and if you wish to chuckle over the grotesque places +I have lived in, you must apply to persons who have spent two weeks +there, and no more. + +For the rest, Lichfield, and Fairhaven also, got at and into me when I +was too young to defend myself. Therefore Lichfield and Fairhaven +cannot ever, really, seem to me grotesque. To the contrary, it is the +other places which must always appear to me a little queer when judged +by the standards of Fairhaven and Lichfield. + + + + +16. + +_He Seeks for Copy_ + + +I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read _The Apostates_, and, +as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely +well-meaning. To-night I was superintending the process. + +"For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate," said I; "and it +may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul, +Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate +scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently +fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to +overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent café! Try now, nunky! +try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the +right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you." + +Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the +contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was "frosted" to a +nicety. We were drinking "Mamie Taylors" that summer, you may remember; +and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar. + +"Oh, I say, you know!" observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth +chapter, and flung down the book. + +"Rot, utter rot," I assented pleasantly; "puerile and futile trifling +with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your sturdy common-sense +instantly detected. In fact," I added, hopefully, "I think that chapter +is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In _Afield_, +you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the noblest sentiments, +the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father's whiskey and water; and +'Old-Fashioned' and 'Fair Play' have been obliging enough to write to +the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low +moral standards of to-day. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady +is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to +meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question +nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot +to show you--all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit, +and my fine impersonal attitude, and the survival of the fittest, and +so on." + +But Uncle George refused to be comforted. "Look here, Bob!" said he, +pathetically, "why don't you brace up and write something--well! we'll +put it, something of the sort you _can_ do. For you can, you know." + +"Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second +edition before publication?" I softly queried. "I had no money. I was +ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything +adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle's +deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to +this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread." I refilled my +glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. +"This time next year," said I, as dreamily, "I shall be able to afford +cake; for I shall have written _As the Coming of Dawn_." + +Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. "You catch me +lending you any money for your--brief Biblical words!" he said. + +"For the reign of subtle immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. +Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of +men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know +that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes +dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and +that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly--sordidly, at +times,--and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a +scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow +journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, +and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!" + +"Dearest Robert!" remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, "you are sadly _passé_: that +pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago." + +"The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is +already reflected--faintly, I grant you,--in the best-selling books. We +have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness +and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of +primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if +his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have +tossed over the contents of every closet in the _menage à trois_. And +I--_moi, qui vous parle_,--I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring +lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in _Afield_; and +henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence." + +"Saul among the prophets," Uncle George suggested, helpfully. + +"Quite so," I assented, "and my first prophecy will be _As the Coming +of Dawn_." + +Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. "Mad, quite mad!" said +he, in parenthesis. + +"I shall be idyllic," I continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the +ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the +keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met +after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs +blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is +love,--the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not +the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as +it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that +will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I +will!" + +I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table. + +"H'm!" said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; "going back to renew associations +with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her +grandchildren terribly in the way." + +"It is imperative," said I,--"yes, imperative for the scope of my book, +that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I +discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban +product to serve my purpose. And I can't find any one who will." + +Uncle George whistled softly. "'Honourable young gentleman,'" he +murmured, as to himself, "'desires to meet attractive and innocent +young lady. Object: to learn how to be idyllic in three-hundred +pages.'" + +There was no commentary upon his text. + +"I say," queried Mr. Bulmer, "do you think this sort of thing is fair +to the girl? Isn't it a little cold-blooded?" + +"Respected nunky, you are at times very terribly the man in the street! +Anyhow, I leave the Green Chalybeate to-morrow in search of _As the +Coming of Dawn_." + +"Look here," said Mr. Bulmer, rising, "if you start on a tour of the +country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my +abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a +liver-pill and go to bed! I don't promise anything, mind, but perhaps +about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath +on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there," +he added unkindlily, "are not built for those full rich figures." + +Next morning, I notified the desk-clerk, and, quite casually, both the +newspaper correspondents, that the Green Chalybeate was about to be +bereft of the presence of a distinguished novelist. Then, as my train +did not leave till night, I resolved to be bored on horseback, rather +than on the golf-links, and had Guendolen summoned, from the stable, +for a final investigation of the country roads thereabouts. + +Guendolen this afternoon elected to follow a new route; and knowing by +experience that any questioning of this decision could but result in +undignified defeat, I assented. Thus it came about that we circled +parallel to the boardwalk, which leads uphill to the deserted Royal +Hotel, and passed its rows of broken windows; and went downhill again, +always at Guendolen's election; and thus came to the creek, which +babbled across the roadway and was overhung with thick foliage that +lisped and whispered cheerfully in the placid light of the declining +sun. It was there that the germ of _As the Coming of Dawn_ was found. + +For I had fallen into a reverie over the deplorable obstinacy of my new +heroine, who declined, for all my labours, to be unsophisticated; and +taking advantage of this, Guendolen had twitched the reins from my hand +and proceeded to satisfy her thirst in a manner that was rather too +noisy to be quite good form. I sat in patience, idly observing the +sparkling reflection of the sunlight on the water. I was elaborating a +comparison between my obstinate heroine and Guendolen. Then Guendolen +snorted, as something rustled through the underbrush, and turning, I +perceived a Vision. + +The Vision was in white, with a profusion of open-work. There were blue +ribbons connected with it. There were also black eyes, of the +almond-shaped, heavy-lidded variety that I had thought existed only in +Lely's pictures, and great coils of brown hair which was gold where the +chequered sunlight fell upon it, and two lips that were inexpressibly +red. I was filled with pity for my tired horse, and a resolve that for +this once her thirst should be quenched. + +Thereupon, I lifted my cap hastily; and Guendolen scrambled to the +other bank, and spluttered, and had carried me well past the Iron +Spring, before I announced to the evening air that I was a fool, and +that Guendolen was describable by various quite picturesque and +derogatory epithets. And I smiled. + +"Now, Robert Etheridge Townsend, you writer of books, here is a subject +made to your hand!" And then: + + "Only 'twixt the light and shade +Floating memories of my maid +Make me pray for Guendolen." + +After this we retraced our steps. I was peering anxiously about the +roadway. + +"Pardon me," said I, subsequently; "but _have_ you seen anything of a +watch--a small gold one, set with pearls?" + +"Heavens!" said the Vision, sympathetically, "what a pity! Are you sure +it fell here?" + +"I don't seem to have it about me," I answered, with cryptic, but +entire veracity. I searched about my pockets, with a puckered brow. +"And as we stopped here--" + +I looked inquiringly into the water. + +"From this side," observed the Vision, impersonally, "there is less +glare from the brook." + +Having tied Guendolen to a swinging limb, I sat down contentedly in +these woods. The Vision moved a little, lest I be crowded. + +"It might be further up the road," she suggested. + +"Oh, I must have left it at the hotel," I observed. + +"You might look--" said she, peering into the water. + +"Forever!" I assented. + +The Vision flushed, "I didn't mean--" she began. + +"But I did," quoth I,--"and every word of it." + +"Why, in that case," said she, and rose to her feet, "I'd better--" A +frown wrinkled her brow; then a deep, curved dimple performed a similar +office for her cheek. "I wonder--" said she. + +"Why, you would be a bold-faced jig," said I, composedly; "but, after +all there is nobody about. And, besides,--for I suspect you of being +one of the three dilapidated persons in veils who came last night,--we +are going to be introduced right after supper, anyway." + +The Vision sat down. "You mentioned your sanatorium?" quoth she. + +"The Asylum of Love," said I; "discharged--under a false impression, +--as cured, and sent to paradise. + +"Oh!" said I, defiant, "but it _is_!" + +She looked about her. "The woods _are_ rather beautiful," she conceded, +softly. + +"They form a quite appropriate background," said I. "It is a veritable +Eden, before the coming of the snake." + +"Before?" she queried, dubiously. + +"Undoubtedly," said I, and felt my ribs, in meditative wise. "Ah, but I +thought I missed something! We participate in a historic moment. This +is in Eden immediately after the creation of--Well, but of course you +are acquainted with that famous bull about Eve's being the fairest of +her daughters?" + +"It is _quite_ time," said she, judicially, "for me to go back to the +hotel, before--since we are speaking of animals,--your presence here is +noticed by one of the squirrels." + +"It is not good," I pleaded, "for man to be alone." + +"I have heard," said she, "that--almost any one can cite scripture to +his purpose." + +I thrust out a foot for inspection. "No suggestion of a hoof," said I; +"and not the slightest odour of brimstone, as you will kindly note; and +my inoffensive name is Robert Townsend." + +"Of course," she submitted, "I could never think of making your +acquaintance in this irregular fashion; and, therefore, of course, I +could not think of telling you that my name is Marian Winwood." + +"Of course not," I agreed; "it would be highly improper." + +"--And it is more than time for me to go to supper," she concluded +again, with a lacuna, as it seemed to me, in the deduction. + +"Look here!" I remonstrated; "it isn't anywhere near six yet." I +exhibited my watch to support this statement. + +"Oh!" she observed, with wide, indignant eyes. + +"I--I mean--" I stammered. + +She rose to her feet. + +"--I will explain how I happened to be carrying two watches--" + +"I do not care to listen to any explanations. Why should I?" + +"--upon," I firmly said, "the third piazza of the hotel. And this very +evening." + +"You will not." And this was said even more firmly. "And I hope you +will have the kindness to keep away from these woods; for I shall +probably always walk here in the afternoon." Then, with an indignant +toss of the head, the Vision disappeared. + + + 3 + +I whistled. Subsequently I galloped back to the hotel. + +"See here!" said I, to the desk-clerk; "how long does this place keep +open?" + +"Season closes latter part of September, sir." + +I told him I would need my rooms till then. + + + + +17. + +_He Provides Copy_ + + +So it was Uncle George Bulmer who presently left the Green Chalybeate, +to pursue Mrs. Chaytor with his lawless arts. I stayed out the season. + +Now I cannot conscientiously recommend the Green Chalybeate against +your next vacation. Once very long ago, it was frequented equally for +the sake of gaiety and of health. In the summer that was Marian's the +resort was a beautiful and tumble-down place where invalids congregated +for the sake of the nauseous waters,--which infallibly demolish a solid +column of strange maladies I never read quite through, although it +bordered every page of the writing-paper you got there from the +desk-clerk,--and a scanty leaven of persons who came thither, +apparently, in order to spend a week or two in lamenting "how very dull +the season is this year, and how abominable the fare is." + +But for one I praise the place, and I believe that Marian Winwood also +bears it no ill-will. For we two were very happy there. We took part in +the "subscription euchres" whenever we could not in time devise an +excuse which would pass muster with the haggard "entertainer." We +danced conscientiously beneath the pink and green icing of the +ball-room's ceiling, with all three of the band playing _Hearts and +Flowers_; and with a dozen "chaperones"--whom I always suspected of +taking in washing during the winter months,--lined up as closely as was +possible to the door, as if in preparation for the hotel's catching +fire any moment, to give us pessimistic observal. And having thus +discharged our duty to society at large, we enjoyed ourselves +tremendously. + +For instance, we would talk over the book I was going to write in the +autumn. That was the main thing. Then one could golf, or drive, or--I +blush to write it even now--croquet. Croquet, though, is a much +maligned game, as you will immediately discover if you ever play it on +the rambling lawn of the Chalybeate, about six in the afternoon, say, +when the grass is greener than it is by ordinary, and the shadows are +long, and the sun is well beneath the tree-tops of the Iron Bank, and +your opponent makes a face at you occasionally, and on each side the +old, one-storied cottages are builded of unusually red bricks and are +quite ineffably asleep. + +Or again there is always the creek to divert yourself in. Once I caught +five crawfishes there, while Marian waited on the bank; and afterward +we found an old tomato-can and boiled them in it, and they came out a +really gorgeous crimson. This was the afternoon that we were Spanish +Inquisitors.... Oh, believe me, you can have quite a good time at the +Chalybeate, if you set about it in the proper way. + + + 2 + +Only it is true that sometimes, when it rained, say, with that hopeless +insistency which, I protest, is unknown anywhere else in the world; and +when Marian was not immediately accessible, and cigarettes were not +quite satisfactory, because the entire universe was so sodden that +matches had to be judiciously coaxed before they would strike; and when +if you happened to be writing a fervid letter to Rosalind Jemmett, let +us say, the ink would not dry for ever so long:--why, it is true that +in these circumstances you would feel a shade too like the wicked Lord +So-and-So of a melodrama to be comfortable. + +Yet even in these circumstances, reason told me that the Book was the +main thing, that the girl would be thoroughly over the affair by +November at latest, and that at the cost of a few inconsequent tears, +she would have meanwhile immeasurably obliged posterity. And I knew +that no man may ever write in perdurable fashion save by ruthlessly +converting his own life into "copy," since of other persons' lives he +can, at most, reproduce but the blurred and misinterpreted by-ends, by +reason of almost any author's deplorable lack of omniscience. Yes, the +Book was the main thing; and yet the girl--knowingly to dip my pen into +her heart as into an inkstand was not, at best, chivalric.... + +"But the Book!" said I. "Why, I must be quite idiotically in love to +think of letting that Book perish!" And I viciously added: "Confound +the pretty simpleton!"... + + + 3 + +So the book was builded, after all, a little by a little. Hardly an +evening came when after leaving Marian I had not at least one excellent +and pregnant jotting to record in my note-book. Now it would be just an +odd turn of language, or a description of some gesture she had made, or +of a gown she had worn that day; and now a simile or some other rather +good figure of speech which had popped into my mind when I was making +love to her. + +Nor had I any difficulty in preserving nearly all she said to me, for +Marian was never a chatterbox; yet her responses had, somehow, that +long-sought tang it wasn't in me to invent for any imaginary young +woman who must be, for the sake of my new novel, quite heels over head +in love. + +And I began to see that Bettie was right, as usual. I had portrayed +Gillian Hardress pretty well in _Afield_; but by and large, I had +always written about women as though they were "pterodactyls or some +other extinct animal, which you had never seen, but had read a lot +about." + +And now, in looking over my notes, I knew, and my heart glowed to know, +that I was not about to repeat the error. + +So the Book was builded, after all, a little by a little. And a little +by a little the summer wore on; and in the lobby of the Main Hotel was +hung the beautiful Spirit of the Falls poster of the Buffalo +Exposition; and we talked of Oom Paul Krüger, and Shamrock II, and the +Nicaragua Canal, and lanky Bob Fitzsimmons, and the Boxer outrages; and +we read _To Have and To Hold_ and _The Cardinal's Snuff Box_, and +thought it droll that the King of England was not going to call himself +King Albert, after all. + +And then came the news of how the President had been shot, "with a +poisoned bullet," and a week of contradictory bulletins from the +Milburn House in Buffalo. And there were panicky surmises raised +everywhere as to "what these anarchists may do next," so that Maggio +was mobbed in Columbus, and Emma Goldman in Chicago; and Colonel +Roosevelt was found, after days of search, on Mt. Marcy in the +Adirondacks, and was told in the heart of a forest that to-morrow he +would be at the head of a nation. And the country's guidance was +entrusted to a mere lad of forty-three, with general uneasiness as to +what might come of it; and the dramatic tale of Colonel Roosevelt's +taking of the oath of office was in that morning's paper; and Marian +and I were about to part. + + + 4 + +"It will be dreadful," sighed she; "for we have to stay a whole week +longer, and I shall come here every afternoon. And there will be only +ghosts in the woods, and I shall be very lonely." + +"Dear," said I, "is it not something to have been happy? It has been +such a wonderful summer; and come what may, nothing can rob us now of +its least golden moment. And it is only for a little." + +"You will come back?" said she, half-doubtingly. + +"Yes," I said. "You wonderful, elfin creature, I shall undoubtedly come +back--to your real home, and claim you there. Only I don't believe you +do live in Aberlin,--you probably live in some great, gnarled oak +hereabouts; and at night its bark uncloses to set you free, and you and +your sisters dance out the satyrs' hearts in the moonlight. Oh, I know, +Marian! I simply _know_ you are a dryad,--a wonderful, laughing, +clear-eyed dryad strayed out of the golden age." + +"What a boy it is!" she said. "No, I am only a really and truly girl, +dear,--a rather frightened girl, with very little disposition to +laughter, just now. For you are going away--Oh, my dear, you have meant +so much to me! The world is so different since you have come, and I am +so happy and so miserable that--that I am afraid." An infinitesimal +handkerchief went upward to two great, sparkling eyes, and dabbed at +them. + +"Dear!" said I. And this remark appeared to meet the requirements of +the situation. + +There was a silence now. We sat in the same spot where I had first +encountered Marian Winwood. Only this was an autumnal forest that +glowed with many gem-like hues about us; and already the damp odour of +decaying leaves was heavy in the air. It was like the Tosti thing +translated out of marine terms into a woodland analogue. The summer was +ended; but _As the Coming of Dawn_ was practically complete. + +It was not the book that I had planned, but a far greater one which was +scarcely mine. There was no word written as yet. But for two months I +had viewed life through Marian Winwood's eyes; day by day, my +half-formed, tentative ideas had been laid before her with elaborate +fortuitousness, to be approved, or altered, or rejected, just as she +decreed; until at last they had been welded into a perfect whole that +was a Book, bit by bit, we had planned it, I and she; and, as I dreamed +of it as it would be in print, my brain was fired with exultation, and +I defied my doubt and I swore that the Book, for which I had pawned a +certain portion of my self-respect, was worth--and triply worth--the +price which had been paid.... This was in Marian's absence. + +"Dear!" said she.... + +Her eyes were filled with a tender and unutterable confidence that +thrilled me like physical cold. "Marian," said I, simply, "I shall +never come back." + +The eyes widened a trifle, but she did not seem to comprehend. + +"Have you not wondered," said I, "that I have never kissed you, except +as if you were a very holy relic or a cousin or something of that +sort?" + +"Yes," she answered. Her voice was quite emotionless. + +"And yet--yet--" I sprang to my feet. "Dear God, how I have longed! +Yesterday, only yesterday, as I read to you from the verses I had made +to other women, those women that are colourless shadows by the side of +your vivid beauty,--and you listened wonderingly and said the proper +things and then lapsed into dainty boredom,--_how_ I longed to take you +in my arms, and to quicken your calm blood a little with another sort +of kissing. You knew--you must have known! Last night, for instance--" + +"Last night," she said, very simply, "I thought--And I hoped you +would." + +"What a confession for a nicely brought up girl! Well! I didn't. And +afterward, all night, I tossed in sick, fevered dreams of you. I am mad +for love of you. And so, once in a while I kiss your hand. Dear God, +your hand!" My voice quavered, effectively. + +"Yes," said she; "still, I remember--" + +"I have struggled; and I have conquered this madness,--for a madness it +is. We can laugh together and be excellent friends; and we can never, +never be anything more. Well! we have laughed, have we not, dear, a +whole summer through? Now comes the ending. Ah, I have seen you +puzzling over my meaning before this. You never understood me +thoroughly; but it is always safe to laugh." + +She smiled; and I remember now it was rather as Mona Lisa smiles. + +"For we can laugh together,--that is all. We are not mates. You were +born to be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy +children; and you and your sort will inherit the earth and make the +laws for us weaklings who dream and scribble and paint. We are not +mates. But you have been very kind to me, Marian dear. So I thank you +and say good-bye; and I pray that I may never see you after to-day." + +There was a sub-tang of veracity in my deprecation of an unasked-for +artistic temperament; the thing is very often a nuisance, and was just +then a barrier which I perceived plainly; and with equal plainness I +perceived the pettier motives that now caused me to point it out as a +barrier to Marian. My lips curled half in mockery of myself, as I +framed the bitter smile I felt the situation demanded; but I was fired +with the part I was playing; and half-belief had crept into my mind +that Marian Winwood was created, chiefly, for the purpose which she had +already served. + +I regarded her, in fine, as through the eyes of future readers of my +biography. She would represent an episode in my life, as others do in +that of Byron or of Goethe. I pitied her sincerely; and, under all, +what moralists would call my lower nature, held in leash for two months +past, chuckled, and grinned, and leaped, at the thought of a holiday. + +She rose to her feet. "Good-bye," said she. + +"You--you understand, dear?" I queried, tenderly. + +"Yes," she answered; "I understand--not what you have just told me, for +in that, of course, you have lied. That Jemmett girl and her money is +at the bottom of it all, of course. You didn't want to lose her, and +still you wanted to play with me. So you were pulled two ways, poor +dear." + +"Oh, well, if that is what you think of me--!" + +"You see, you are not an uncommon type,--a type not strong enough to +live life healthily, just strong enough to dabble in life, to trifle +with emotions, to experiment with other people's lives. Indeed, I am +not angry, dear; I am only--sorry; for you have played with me very +nicely indeed, and very boyishly, and the summer has been very happy." + + + 5 + +I returned to Lichfield and wrote _As the Coming of Dawn_. + +I spent six months in this. My work at first was mere copying of the +book that already existed in my brain; but when it was transcribed +therefrom, I wrote and rewrote, shifted and polished and adorned until +it seemed I would never have done; and indeed I was not anxious to have +done with any labour so delightful. + +Particularly did I rejoice in the character for which Marian Winwood +had posed. Last summer's note-book here came into play; and now, for +once, my heroine was in no need of either shoving or prompting. She did +things of her own accord, and I was merely her scribe... + +I would vain-gloriously protest, just to myself, that the love scenes +in this story were the most exquisite and, with all that, the most +genuine love scenes I knew of anywhere. "By God!" I would occasionally +say with Thackeray; "I _am_ a genius!" + +Besides, the story of the book, I knew, was novel and astutely wrought; +its progress caught at once and teased your interest always, so that +having begun it, most people would read to the end, if only to discover +"how it all came out." I knew the book, in fine, could hardly fail to +please and interest a number of people by reason of its plot alone. + +I ought to have been content with this. But I had somehow contracted an +insane notion that a novel is the more enjoyable when it is adroitly +written. In point of fact, of course, no man who writes with care is +ever read with pleasure; you may toil through a page or two perhaps, +but presently you are noting how precisely every word is fitted to the +thought, and later you are noting nothing else. You are insensibly +beguiled into a fidgety-footed analysis of every clause, which fatigues +in the outcome, and by the tenth page you are yawning. + +But I did not comprehend this then. And so I fashioned my apt phrases, +and weighed my synonyms, and echoed this or that vowel very skilfully, +I thought, and alliterated my consonants with discretion. In fine, I +did not overlook the most meticulous device of the stylist; and I +enjoyed it. It was a sort of game; and they taught me at least, those +six delightful months, that a man writes admirable prose not at all for +the sake of having it read, but for the more sensible reason that he +enjoys playing solitaire. + +I led a hermit's life that winter; and I enjoyed that too. Night, after +all, is the one time for writing, particularly when you are inane +enough to hanker after perfected speech, and so misguided as to be the +slave of the "right word." You sit alone in a bright, comfortable room; +the clock ticks companionably; there is no other sound in the world +except the constant scratching of your pen, and the occasional far-off +puffing of a freight-train coming into Lichfield; there is snow +outside, but before your eyes someone, that is not you exactly, +arranges and redrills the scrawls which will bring back the sweet and +languid summer and remarshal all its pleasant trivialities for anyone +that chooses to read through the printed page, although he read two +centuries hence, in Nova Zembla.... + +Then you dip into an Unabridged, and change every word that has been +written, for a better one, and do it leisurely, rolling in the mouth, +as it were, the flavour of every possible synonym, before decision. +Then you reread, with a corrective pen in hand the while, and you +venture upon the whole to agree with Mérimée that it is preferable to +write one's own books, since those of others are not, after all, +particularly worth reading in comparison. + +And by this time the windows are pale blue, like the blue of a dying +flame, and you peep out and see the sparrows moving like rather poorly +made mechanical toys about the middle of the deserted street, where +there is neither light nor shade. The colour of everything is perfectly +discernible, but there is no lustre in the world as yet, though yonder +the bloat sun is already visible in the blue and red east, which is +like a cosmic bruise; and upon a sudden you find it just possible to +stay awake long enough to get safely into bed.... + + + 6 + +Thus I dandled the child of my brain for a long while, and arrayed it +in beautiful and curious garments, adorning each beloved notion with +far-sought words that had a taste in the mouth, and would one day lend +an aroma to the printed page; and I rejoiced shamelessly in that which +I had done. Then it befell that I went forth and sought the luxury of a +Turkish bath, and in the morning, after a rub-down and an ammonia +cocktail, awoke to the fact that the world had been going on much as +usual, that winter. + +Young Colonel Roosevelt seemed not to have wrecked civilization, after +all, according to the morning _Courier-Herald_, despite that Democratic +paper's colorful prophecies last autumn in the vein of Jeremiah. To the +contrary, Major-General McArthur was testifying before the Senate as to +the abysmal unfitness of the Filipinos for self-government; the Women's +Clubs were holding a convention in Los Angeles; there had been terrible +hailstorms this year to induce the annual ruining of the peach-crop, +and the submarine Fulton had exploded; the California Limited had been +derailed in Iowa, and in Memphis there was some sort of celebration in +honor of Admiral Schley; and the Boer War seemed over; and Mr. +Havemeyer also was before the Senate, to whom he was making it clear +that his companies were in no wise responsible for sugar having reached +the unprecedentedly high price of four and a half cents a pound. + +The world, in short, in spite of my six months' retiring therefrom, +seemed to be getting on pleasantly enough, as I turned from the paper +to face the six months' accumulation of mail. + + + 7 + +A few weeks later, I sent for Mr. George Bulmer, and informed him of +his avuncular connection with a genius; and waved certain typewritten +pages to establish his title. + +Subsequently I read aloud divers portions of _As the Coming of Dawn_, +and Mr. Bulmer sipped Chianti, and listened. + +"Look here!" he said, suddenly; "have you seen _The Imperial +Votaress?_" + +I frowned. It is always annoying to be interrupted in the middle of a +particularly well-balanced sentence. "Don't know the lady," said I. + +"She is advertised on half the posters in town," said Mr. Bulmer. "And +it is the book of the year. And it is your book." + +At this moment I laid down my manuscript. '"I _beg_ your pardon?" said +I. + +"Your book!" Uncle George repeated firmly; "and scarcely a hair's +difference between them, except in the names." + +"H'm!" I observed, in a careful voice. "Who wrote it?" + +"Some female woman out west," said Mr. Bulmer. "She's a George +Something-or-other when she publishes, of course, like all those +authorines when they want to say about mankind at large what less +gifted women only dare say about their sisters-in-law. I wish to heaven +they would pick out some other Christian name when they want to cut up +like pagans. Anyhow, I saw her real name somewhere, and I remember it +began with an S--Why, to be sure! it's Marian Winwood." + +"Amaimon sounds well," I observed; "Lucifer, well; Larbason, well; yet +they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but--Marian Winwood!" + +"Dear me!" he remonstrated. "Why, she wrote _A Bright Particular Star_, +you know, and _The Acolytes_, and lots of others." + +The author of _As the Coming of Dawn_ swallowed a whole glass of +Chianti at a gulp. + +"Of course," I said, slowly, "I cannot, in my rather peculiar position, +run the risk of being charged with plagiarism--by a Chinese-eyed mental +sneak-thief...." + +Thereupon I threw the manuscript into the open fire, which my +preference for the picturesque rendered necessary, even in May. + +"Oh, look here!" my uncle cried, and caught up the papers. "It is +infernally good, you know! Can't you--can't you fix it,--and--er-- +change it a bit? Typewriting is so expensive these days that it seems a +pity to waste all this." + +I took the manuscript and replaced it firmly among the embers. "As you +justly observe," said I, "it is infernally good. It is probably a deal +better than anything else I shall ever write." + +"Why, then--" said Uncle George. + +"Why, then," said I, "the only thing that remains to do is to read _The +Imperial Votaress._" + + + 8 + +And I read it with an augmenting irritation. Here was my great and +comely idea transmuted by "George Glock"--which was the woman's foolish +pen-name,--into a rather clever melodrama, and set forth anyhow, in a +hit or miss style that fairly made me squirm. I would cheerfully have +strangled Marian Winwood just then, and not upon the count of larceny, +but of butchery. + +"And to cap it all, she has assigned her hero every pretty speech I +ever made to her! I honestly believe the rogue took shorthand jottings +on her cuffs. 'There is a land where lovers may meet face to face, and +heart to heart, and mouth to mouth'--why, that's the note I wrote her +on the day she wasn't feeling well!" + +Presently, however, I began to laugh, and presently sitting there +alone, I began to applaud as if I were witnessing a play that took my +fancy. + +"Oh, the adorable jade!" I said; and then: "George Glock, forsooth! +_George Dandin, tu l' as voulu._" + + + 9 + +Naturally I put the entire affair into a short story. And--though even +to myself it seems incredible,--Miss Winwood wrote me within three days +of the tale's appearance, a very indignant letter. + +For she was furious, to the last exclamation point and underlining, +about my little magazine tale.... "Why don't you stop writing, and try +plumbing or butchering or traveling for scented soap? _You can't +write!_ If you had the light of creation you wouldn't be using my +material".... + +--Which caused me to reflect forlornly that I had wasted a great deal +of correct behavior upon Marian, since any of the more intimately +amorous advances which I might have made, and had scrupulously +refrained from making, would very probably have been regarded as raw +"material," to be developed rather than shocked by.... + + + + +18. + +_He Spends an Afternoon in Arden_ + + +I had, in a general way, intended to marry Rosalind Jemmett so soon as +I had completed _As the Coming of Dawn_; but in the fervour of writing +that unfortunate volume, I had at first put off a little, and then a +little longer, the answering of her last letter, because I was +interested just then in writing well and not particularly interested in +anything else; and I had finally approximated to forgetfulness of the +young lady's existence. + +Now, however, my thoughts harked back to her; and I found, upon +inquiry, that Rosalind had spent all of May and a good half of April in +Lichfield, in the same town with myself, and was now engaged to Alfred +Chaytor,--an estimable person, but popularly known as "Sissy" Chaytor. + + + 2 + +And this gave an additional whet to my intentions. So I called upon the +girl, and she, to my chagrin, received me with an air of having danced +with me some five or six times the night before; our conversation was +at first trivial and, on her part, dishearteningly cordial; and, in +fine, she completely baffled me by not appearing to expect any least +explanation of my discourteous neglect. This, look you, when I had been +at pains to prepare a perfectly convincing one. + +It must be conceded I completely lost my temper; shortly afterward +neither of us was speaking with excessive forethought; and each of us +languidly advanced a variety of observations which were more dexterous +than truthful. But I followed the intractable heiress to the Moncrieffs +that spring, in spite of this rebuff, being insufferably provoked by +her unshakable assumptions of my friendship and of nothing more. + + + 3 + +It was perhaps a week later she told me: "This, beyond any reasonable +doubt, is the Forest of Arden." + +"But where Rosalind is is always Arden," I said, politely. Yet I made a +mental reservation as to a glimpse of the golf-links, which this +particular nook of the forest afforded, and of a red-headed caddy in +search of a lost ball. + +But beyond these things the sun was dying out in a riot of colour, and +its level rays fell kindlily upon the gaunt pines that were thick about +us two, converting them into endless aisles of vaporous gold. + +There was primeval peace about; an evening wind stirred lazily above, +and the leaves whispered drowsily to one another over the waters of +what my companion said was a "brawling loch," though I had previously +heard it reviled as a particularly treacherous and vexatious hazard. +Altogether, I had little doubt that we had reached, in any event, the +outskirts of Arden. + +"And now," quoth she, seating herself on a fallen log, "what would you +do if I were your very, very Rosalind?" + +"Don't!" I cried in horror. "It wouldn't be proper! For as a decent +self-respecting heroine, you would owe it to Orlando not to listen." + +"H'umph!" said Rosalind. The exclamation does not look impressive, +written out; but, spoken, it placed Orlando in his proper niche. + +"Oh, well," said I, and stretched myself at her feet, full +length,--which is supposed to be a picturesque attitude,--"why quarrel +over a name? It ought to be Gamelyn, anyhow; and, moreover, by the +kindness of fate, Orlando is golfing." + +Rosalind frowned, dubiously. + +"But golf is a very ancient game," I reassured her. Then I bit a +pine-needle in two and sighed. "Foolish fellow, when he might be--" + +"Admiring the beauties of nature," she suggested. + +Just then an impudent breeze lifted a tendril of honey-coloured hair +and toyed with it, over a low, white brow,--and I noted that Rosalind's +hair had a curious coppery glow at the roots, a nameless colour that I +have never observed anywhere else.... + +"Yes," said I, "of nature." + +"Then," queried she, after a pause, "who are you? And what do you in +this forest?" + +"You see," I explained, "there were conceivably other men in Arden--" + +"I suppose so," she sighed, with exemplary resignation. + +"--For you were," I reminded her, "universally admired at your uncle's +court,--and equally so in the forest. And while Alfred--or, strictly +speaking, Gamelyn, or, if you prefer it, Orlando,--is the great love of +your life, still--" + +"Men are so foolish!" said Rosalind, irrelevantly. + +"--it did not prevent you--" + +"Me!" cried she, indignant. + +"You had such a tender heart," I suggested, "and suffering was +abhorrent to your gentle nature." + +"I don't like cynicism, sir," said she; "and inasmuch as tobacco is not +yet discovered--" + +"It is clearly impossible that I am smoking," I finished; "quite true." + +"I don't like cheap wit, either," said Rosalind. "You," she went on, +with no apparent connection, "are a forester, with a good cross-bow and +an unrequited attachment,--say, for me. You groan and hang verses and +things about on the trees." + +"But I don't write verses--any longer," I amended. "Still how would +this do,--for an oak, say,-- + +"I found a lovely centre-piece +Upon the supper-table, +But when I looked at it again +I saw I wasn't able, +And so I took my mother home +And locked her in the stable." + +She considered that the plot of this epic was not sufficiently +inevitable. It hadn't, she lamented, a quite logical ending; and the +plot of it, in fine, was not, somehow, convincing. + +"Well, in any event," I optimistically reflected, "I am a nickel in. If +your dicta had emanated from a person in Peoria or Seattle, who hadn't +bothered to read my masterpiece, they would have sounded exactly the +same, and the clipping-bureau would have charged me five cents. +Maybe I can't write verses, then. But I am quite sure I can groan." And +I did so. + +"It sounds rather like a fog-horn," said Rosalind, still in the +critic's vein; "but I suppose it is the proper thing. Now," she +continued, and quite visibly brightening, "you can pretend to have an +unrequited attachment for me." + +"But I can't--" I decisively said. + +"Can't," she echoed. It has not been mentioned previously that Rosalind +was pretty. She was especially so just now, in pouting. And, therefore, +"--pretend," I added. + +She preserved a discreet silence. + +"Nor," I continued, with firmness, "am I a shambling, nameless, +unshaven denizen of Arden, who hasn't anything to do except to carry a +spear and fall over it occasionally. I will no longer conceal the +secret of my identity. I am Jaques." + +"You can't be Jaques," she dissented; "you are too stout." + +"I am well-built," I admitted, modestly; "as in an elder case, sighing +and grief have blown me up like a bladder; yet proper pride, if nothing +else, demands that my name should appear on the programme." + +"But would Jaques be the sort of person who'd--?" + +"Who wouldn't be?" I asked, with appropriate ardour. "No, depend upon +it, Jaques was not any more impervious to temptation than the rest of +us; and, indeed, in the French version, as you will find, he eventually +married Celia." + +"Minx!" said she; and it seemed to me quite possible that she referred +to Celia Reindan, and my heart glowed. + +"And how," queried Rosalind, presently, "came you to the Forest of +Arden, good Jaques?" + +I groaned once more. "It was a girl," I darkly said. + +"Of course," assented Rosalind, beaming as to the eyes. Then she went +on, and more sympathetically: "Now, Jaques, you can tell me the whole +story." + +"Is it necessary?" I asked. + +"Surely," said she, with sudden interest in the structure of +pine-cones; "since for a long while I have wanted to know all about +Jaques. You see Mr. Shakespeare is a bit hazy about him." + +"_So_!" I thought, triumphantly. + +And aloud, "It is an old story," I warned her, "perhaps the oldest of +all old stories. It is the story of a man and a girl. It began with a +chance meeting and developed into a packet of old letters, which is the +usual ending of this story." + +Rosalind's brows protested. + +"Sometimes," I conceded, "it culminates in matrimony; but the ending is +not necessarily tragic." + +I dodged exactly in time; and the pine-cone splashed into the hazard. + +"It happened," I continued, "that, on account of the man's health, they +were separated for a whole year's time before--before things had +progressed to any extent. When they did progress, it was largely by +letters. That is why this story ended in such a large package. + +"Letters," Rosalind confided, to one of the pines, "are so +unsatisfactory. They mean so little." + +"To the man," I said, firmly, "they meant a great deal. They brought +him everything that he most wished for,--comprehension, sympathy, and, +at last, comfort and strength when they were sore needed. So the man, +who was at first but half in earnest, announced to himself that he had +made a discovery. 'I have found,' said he, 'the great white love which +poets have dreamed of. I love this woman greatly, and she, I think, +loves me. God has made us for each other, and by the aid of her love I +will be pure and clean and worthy even of her.' You have doubtless +discovered by this stage in my narrative," I added, as in parenthesis, +"that the man was a fool." + +"Don't!" said Rosalind. + +"Oh, he discovered it himself in due time--but not until after he had +written a book about her. _As the Coming of Dawn_ the title was to have +been. It was--oh, just about her. It tried to tell how greatly he loved +her. It tried--well, it failed of course, because it isn't within the +power of any writer to express what the man felt for that girl. Why, +his love was so great--to him, poor fool!--that it made him at times +forget the girl herself, apparently. He didn't want to write her +trivial letters. He just wanted to write that great book in her honour, +which would _make_ her understand, even against her will, and then to +die, if need be, as Geoffrey Rudel did. For that was the one thing +which counted--to make her understand--" I paused, and anyone could see +that I was greatly moved. In fact, I was believing every word of it by +this time. + +"Oh, but who wants a man to _die_ for her?" wailed Rosalind. + +"It is quite true that one infinitely prefers to see him make a fool of +himself. So the man discovered when he came again to bring his foolish +book to her,--the book that was to make her understand. And so he +burned it--in a certain June. For the girl had merely liked him, and +had been amused by him. So she had added him to her collection of men, +--quite a large one, by the way,--and was, I believe, a little proud of +him. It was, she said, rather a rare variety, and much prized by +collectors." + +"And how was _she_ to know?" said Rosalind; and then, remorsefully: +"Was it a very horrid girl?" + +"It was not exactly repulsive," said I, as dreamily, and looking up +into the sky. + +There was a pause. Then someone in the distance--a forester, probably, +--called "Fore!" and Rosalind awoke from her reverie. + +"Then--?" said she. + +"Then came the customary Orlando--oh, well! Alfred, if you like. The +name isn't altogether inappropriate, for he does encounter existence +with much the same abandon which I have previously noticed in a muffin. +For the rest, he was a nicely washed fellow, with a sufficiency of the +mediaeval equivalents for bonds and rubber-tired buggies and country +places. Oh, yes! I forgot to say that the man was poor,--also that the +girl had a great deal of common-sense and no less than three longheaded +aunts. And so the girl talked to the man in a common-sense fashion--and +after that she was never at home." + +"Never?" said Rosalind. + +"Only that time they talked about the weather," said I. "So the man +fell out of bed just about then, and woke up and came to his sober +senses." + +"He did it very easily," said Rosalind, almost as if in resentment. + +"The novelty of the process attracted him," I pleaded. "So he said--in +a perfectly sensible way--that he had known all along it was only a +game they were playing,--a game in which there were no stakes. That was +a lie. He had put his whole soul into the game, playing as he knew for +his life's happiness; and the verses, had they been worthy of the love +which caused them to be written, would have been among the great songs +of the world. But while the man knew at last that he had been a fool, +he was swayed by a man-like reluctance against admitting it. So he +laughed--and lied--and broke away, hurt, but still laughing." + +"You hadn't mentioned any verses before," said Rosalind. + +"I told you he was a fool," said I. "And, after all, that is the entire +story." + +Then I spent several minutes in wondering what would happen next. +During this time I lost none of my interest in the sky. I believed +everything I had said: my emotions would have done credit to a Romeo or +an Amadis. + +"The first time that the girl was not at home," Rosalind observed, +impersonally, "the man had on a tan coat and a brown derby. He put on +his gloves as he walked down the street. His shoulders were the most +indignant--and hurt things she had ever seen. Then the girl wrote to +him,--a strangely sincere letter,--and tore it up." + +"Historical research," I murmured, "surely affords no warrant for such +attire among the rural denizens of tranquil Arden." + +"You see," continued Rosalind, oblivious to interruption, "I know all +about the girl,--which is more than you do." + +"That," I conceded, "is disastrously probable." + +"When she realised that she was to see the man again--_Did_ you ever +feel as if something had lifted you suddenly hundreds of feet above +rainy days and cold mutton for luncheon, and the possibility of other +girls' wearing black evening dresses, when you wanted yours to be the +only one in the room? Well, that is the way she felt at first, when she +read his note. At first, she realised nothing beyond the fact that he +was nearing her, and that she would presently see him. She didn't even +plan what she would wear, or what she would say to him. In an +indefinite way, she was happier than she had ever been before--or has +been since--until the doubts and fears and knowledge that give children +and fools a wide berth came to her,--and _then_ she saw it all against +her will, and thought it all out, and came to a conclusion." + +I sat up. There was really nothing of interest occurring overhead. + +"They had played at loving--lightly, it is true, but they had gone so +far in their letter writing that they could not go backward,--only +forward, or not at all. She had known all along that the man was but +half in earnest--believe me, a girl always knows that, even though she +may not admit it to herself,--and she had known that a love affair +meant to him material for a sonnet or so, and a well-turned letter or +two, and nothing more. For he was the kind of man that never quite +grows up. He was coming to her, pleased, interested, and a little +eager--in love with the idea of loving her,--willing to meet her +half-way, and very willing to follow her the rest of the way--if she +could draw him. And what was she to do? Could she accept his gracefully +insulting semblance of a love she knew he did not feel? Could they see +each other a dozen times, swearing not to mention the possibility of +loving,--so that she might have a chance to reimpress him with her +blondined hair--it _is_ touched up, you know--and small talk? And--and +_besides_--" + +"It is the duty of every young woman to consider what she owes to her +family," said I, absentmindedly. Rosalind Jemmett's family consists of +three aunts, and the chief of these is Aunt Marcia, who lives in +Lichfield. Aunt Marcia is a portly, acidulous and discomposing person, +with eyes like shoe-buttons and a Savonarolan nose. She is also a +well-advertised philanthropist, speaks neatly from the platform, and +has wide experience as a patroness, and extreme views as to +ineligibles. + +Rosalind flushed somewhat. "And so," said she, "the girl exercised her +common-sense, and was nervous, and said foolish things about new plays, +and the probability of rain--to keep from saying still more foolish +things about herself; and refused to talk personalities; and let him +go, with the knowledge that he would not come back. Then she went to +her room, and had a good cry. Now," she added, after a pause, "you +understand." + +"I do not," I said, very firmly, "understand a lot of things." + +"Yet a woman would," she murmured. + +This being a statement I was not prepared to contest, I waved it aside. +"And so," said I, "they laughed; and agreed it was a boy-and-girl +affair; and were friends." + +"It was the best thing--" said she. + +"Yes," I assented,--"for Orlando." + +"--and it was the most sensible thing." + +"Oh, eminently!" + +This seemed to exhaust the subject, and I lay down once more among the +pine-needles. + +"And that," said Rosalind, "was the reason Jaques came to Arden?" + +"Yes," said I. + +"And found it--?" + +"Shall we say--Hades?" + +"Oh!" she murmured, scandalised. + +"It happened," I continued, "that he was cursed with a good memory. And +the zest was gone from his little successes and failures, now there was +no one to share them; and nothing seemed to matter very much. Oh, he +really was the sort of man that never grows up! And it was dreary to +live among memories of the past, and his life was now somewhat +perturbed by disapproval of his own folly and by hunger for a woman who +was out of his reach." + +"And Rosalind--I mean the girl--?" + +"She married Orlando--or Gamelyn, or Alfred, or Athelstane, or +Ethelred, or somebody,--and, whoever it was, they lived happily ever +afterward," I said, morosely. + +Rosalind pondered over this dénouement for a moment. + +"Do you know," said she, "I think--" + +"It's a rather dangerous practice," I warned her. + +Rosalind sighed, wearily; but in her cheek at about this time occurred +a dimple. + +"--I think that Rosalind must have thought the play +very badly named." + +"_As You Like It_?" I queried, obtusely. + +"Yes--since it wasn't, for her." + +It is unwholesome to lie on the ground after sunset. + + + 4 + +"I had rather a scene with Alfred yesterday morning. He said you drank, +and gambled, and were always running after--people, and weren't in +fine, a desirable person for me to know. He insinuated, in fact, that +you were a villain of the very deepest and non-crocking dye. He told me +of instances. His performance would have done credit to Ananias. I was +_mad_! So I gave him his old ring back, and told him things I can't +tell _you_,--no, not just yet, dear. He is rather like a muffin, isn't +he?" she said, with the lightest possible little laugh--"particularly +like one that isn't quite done." + +"Oh, Rosalind," I babbled, "I mean to prove that you were right. And I +_will_ prove it, too!" + +And indeed I meant all that I said--just then. + +Rosalind said: "Oh, Jaques, Jaques! what a child you are!" + + + + +19. + +_He Plays the Improvident Fool_ + + +Now was I come near to the summit of my desires, and advantageously +betrothed to a girl with whom I was, in any event, almost in love; but +I presently ascertained, to my dismay, that sophisticated, "proper" +little Rosalind was thoroughly in love with me, and always in the back +of my mind this knowledge worried me. + +Imprimis, she persisted in calling me Jaques, which was uncomfortably +reminiscent of that time wherein I was called Jack. Yet my objection to +this silly nickname was a mischancy matter to explain. There was no way +of telling her that I disliked anything which reminded me of Gillian +Hardress, without telling more about Gillian than would be pleasant to +tell. So Rosalind went on calling me Jaques; and I was compelled to put +up with a trivial and unpremeditated, but for all that a daily, +annoyance; and I fretted under it. + +Item, she insisted on presenting me with all sorts of expensive +knick-knacks, and being childishly grieved when I remonstrated. + +"But I have the money," Rosalind would say, "and you haven't. So why +shouldn't I? And besides, it's really only selfishness on my part, +because I like doing things for you, and _if_ you liked doing things +for me, Jaques, you'd understand." + +So I would eventually have to swear that I did like "doing things" for +her; and it followed--somehow--that in consequence she had a perfect +right to give me anything she wanted to. + +And this too fretted me, mildly, all the summer I spent at Birnam Beach +with Rosalind and with the opulent friends of Rosalind's aunt from St. +Louis.... They were a queer lot. They all looked so unspeakably new; +their clothes were spick and span, and as expensive as possible, but +that was not it; even in their bathing suits these middle-aged +people--they were mostly middle-aged--seemed to have been very recently +finished, like animated waxworks of middle-aged people just come from +the factory. And they spent money in a continuous careless way that +frightened me. + +But I was on my very best, most dignified behavior; and when Aunt Lora +presented me as "one of the Lichfield Townsends, you know," these +brewers and breweresses appeared to be properly impressed. One of +them--actually--"supposed that I had a coat-of-arms"; which in +Lichfield would be equivalent to "supposing" that a gentleman possessed +a pair of trousers. But they were really very thoughtful about never +letting me pay for anything; in this regard there seemed afoot a sort +of friendly conspiracy. + +So the summer passed pleasantly enough; and we bathed, and held hands +in the moonlight, and danced at the Casino, and rode the +merry-go-round, and played ping-pong, and read _Dorothy Vernon of +Haddon Hall_,--which was much better, I told everybody, than that +idiotic George Clock book, _The Imperial Votaress_. And we drank +interminable suissesses, and it was all very pleasant. + +Yet always in the rear of my mind was stirring restively the instinct +to get back to my writing; and these sedately frolicsome benevolent +people--even Rosalind--plainly thought that "writing things" was just +the unimportant foible of an otherwise fine young fellow. + + + 2 + +And in September Rosalind came to visit her Aunt Marcia in Lichfield, +to get clothes and all other matters ready for our wedding in November; +and Lichfield, as always, made much of Rosalind, and she had the honor +of "leading" the first Lichfield German with Colonel Rudolph Musgrave. +My partner at that dance was the Marquise d'Arlanges.... + +I was seeing a deal of the Marquise d'Arlanges. She was Stella's only +sister, as you may remember, and was that autumn paying a perfunctory +visit to her parents--the second since her marriage. + +I shall not expatiate, however, concerning Madame la Marquise. You have +doubtless heard of her. For Lizzie has not, even yet, found a time +wherein to be idle; she has been busied since the hour of her birth in +acquiring first, plain publicity, and then social power, and every +other amenity of life in turn. I had not the least doubt even then of +her ending where she is now.... + +She was at this time still well upon the preferable side o! thirty, and +had no weaknesses save a liking for gossip, cigarettes, and admiration. +Lizzie was never the woman to marry a Peter Blagden. Once Stella was +settled, Lizzie Musgrave had sailed for Europe, and eventually had +arrived at Monaco with an apologetic mother, several letters of +introduction, and a Scotch terrier; and had established herself at the +Hôtel de la Paix, to look over the "available" supply of noblemen in +reduced circumstances. Before the end of a month Miss Musgrave had +reached a decision, had purchased her Marquis, much as she would have +done any other trifle that took her fancy, and had shipped her mother +back to America. Lizzie retained the terrier, however, as she was +honestly attached to it. + +Her marriage had been happy, and she found her husband on further +acquaintance, as she told me, a mild-mannered and eminently suitable +person, who was unaccountably addicted to playing dominoes, and who +spent a great deal of money, and dined with her occasionally. In a +sentence, the marquise was handsome, "had a tongue in her head," and, +to utilise yet another ancient phrase, was as hard as nails. + +And yet there was a family resemblance. Indeed, in voice and feature +she was strangely like an older Stella; and always I was cheating +myself into a half-belief that this woman I was talking with was +Stella; and Lizzie would at least enable me to forget, for a whole +half-hour sometimes, that Stella was dead.... + + * * * * * + +"I must thank you," I said, one afternoon, when I arose to go, "for a +most pleasant dream of--what we'll call the Heart's Desire. I suppose I +have been rather stupid, Lizzie; and I apologise for it; but people are +never exceedingly hilarious in dreams, you know." + +She said, very gently: "I understand. For I loved Stella too. And that +is why the room is never really lighted when you come. Oh, you stupid +man, how could I have _helped_ knowing it--that all the love you have +made to me was because you have been playing I was Stella? That +knowledge has preserved me, more than once, my child, from succumbing +to your illicit advances in this dead Lichfield." + +And I was really astonished, for she was not by ordinary the sort of +woman who consents to be a makeshift. + +I said as much, "And it _has_ been a comfort, Lizzie, because she +doesn't come as often now, for some reason--" + +"Why--what do you mean?" + +The room was very dark, lit only by the steady, comfortable glow of a +soft-coal fire. For it was a little after sunset, and outside, +carriages were already rumbling down Regis Avenue, and people were +returning from the afternoon drive. I could not see anything +distinctly, excepting my own hands, which were like gold in the +firelight; and so I told her all about _The Indulgences of Ole-Luk-Ole_. + +"She came, that first time, over the crest of a tiny upland that lay in +some great forest,--Brocheliaunde, I think. I knew it must be autumn, +for the grass was brown and every leaf upon the trees was brown. And +she too was all in brown, and her big hat, too, was of brown felt, and +about it curled a long ostrich feather dyed brown; and my first +thought, as I now remember, was how in the dickens could any mediaeval +lady have come by such a garb, for I knew, somehow, that this was a +woman of the Middle Ages. + +"Only her features were those of Stella, and the eyes of this woman +were filled with an unutterable happiness and fear, as she came toward +me,--just as the haunting eyes of Stella were upon the night she +married Peter Blagden, and I babbled nonsense to the moon. + +"'Oh, I have wanted you,--I have wanted you!' she said; and afterward, +unarithmeticably dimpling, just as she used to do, you may remember: +_'Depardieux,_ messire! have you then forgotten that upon this forenoon +we hunt the great boar?" + +"'Stella!' I said, 'O dear, dear Stella! what does it mean?' + +"'You silly! it means, of course, that Ole-Luk-Oie is kind, and has put +us both into the glaze of the mustard-jar--only I wonder which one we +have gotten into?' Stella said. 'Don't you remember them, dear--the +blue mustard-jar and the red one your Mammy had that summer at the +Green Chalybeate, with men on them hunting a boar?' + +"'They stood, one on each corner of the mantelpiece,' I said; 'and in +the blue one she kept matches, and in the other--' + +"'She kept buttons in the red one,' said Stella,--'big, shiny white +buttons, with four holes in them, that had come off your underclothes, +and were to be sewed on again. One day you swallowed one of 'em, I +remember, because you _would_ keep it in your mouth while you swung in +the hammock. And you thought it would surely kill you, so you knelt +down in the dry leaves and prayed God He wouldn't let it kill you.' + +"'But you weren't there,' I protested; 'nobody was there. So nobody +ever knew anything about it, though may be you--' For I had just +remembered that Stella was dead, only I knew it was against some rule +to mention it. + +"'Well, at any rate I'm _here_,' said Stella, 'and Ole-Luk-Oie is kind; +and we had better go and hunt the great boar at once, I suppose, since +that is what the people on the mustard-jars always do.' + +"'But how did you come hither, O my dear--?' + +"'Why, through your wanting me so much,' she said. 'How else?' + +"And I understood.... + +"So we went and slew the great boar. I slew it personally, with a long +spear, and with Stella clasping her hands in the background. Only there +was a nicked place in the mustard-jar, where I had dropped it on the +hearth some fifteen years ago, and my horse kept stumbling over this +crevice, so that I knew it was the red jar and the buttons we were +riding around. And afterward I made a song in honour of my Stella,--a +song so perfect that I presently awoke, weeping with joy that I had +made a song so beautiful, and with the knowledge I could not now +recollect a single word of it; and I knew that neither I nor any other +man could ever make again a song one-half so beautiful.... + +"Since then Ole-Luk-Oie--or someone--has been very kind at times. He +always lets me into pictures, though, never into mouse-holes and +hen-houses and silly places like that, as he did little Hjalmar. I +don't know why.... + +"Once it was into the illustrations to the _Popular Tales of +Poictesme_, and we met my great grandfather Jurgen there. And once it +was into the picture on the cover of that unveracious pamphlet the +manager of the Green Chalybeate sends in the spring to everybody who +has once been there. That time was very odd. + +"It is a picture of the Royal Hotel, you may remember, as it used to be +a good ten years ago. Both fountains were playing in the sunlight, +--they were torn down when I was at college, and I had almost forgotten +their existence; and elegant and languid ladies were riding by, in +victorias, and under tiny parasols trimmed with fringe, and all these +ladies wore those preposterously big sleeves they used to wear then; +and men in little visored skull caps were passing on tall old-fashioned +bicycles, just as they do in the picture. Even the silk-hatted +gentleman in the corner, pointing out the beauties of the building with +his cane, was there. + +"And Stella and I walked past the margin of the picture, and so on down +the boardwalk to the other hotel, to look for our parents. And we +agreed not to tell anyone that we had ever grown up, but just to let it +be a secret between us two; and we were to stay in the picture forever, +and grow up all over again, only we would arrange everything +differently. And Stella was never to go driving on the twenty-seventh +of April, so that we would be quite safe, and would live together for a +long, long while. + +"She wouldn't promise, though, that when Peter Blagden asked to be +introduced, she would refuse to meet him. She just giggled and shook +her sunny head. She hadn't any hat on. She was wearing the +blue-and-white sailor-suit, of course.".... + + + 4 + +But a servant was lighting up the front-hall, and the glare of it came +through the open door, and now the room was just like any other room. + +"And you are Robert Townsend!" the marquise observed. "The one my +mother doesn't approve of as a visitor!" + +Madame d'Arlanges said, with a certain lack of sequence: "And yet you +are planning to do precisely what Peter Blagden did. He liked Stella, +she amused him, and he thought her money would come in very handy; and +so he, somehow, contrived to marry her in the end, because she was just +a child, and you were a child, and he wasn't. And he always lied to her +about--about those business-trips--even from the very first. I knew, +because I'm not a sentimental person. But, Bob, how can you stoop to +mimic Peter Blagden! For you are doing precisely what he did; and for +Rosalind, just as it was for Stella, it is almost irresistible, to have +the chance of reforming a man who has notoriously been 'talked about.' +Still, I see that for Stella's sake you won't lie as steadfastly to +Rosalind as Peter did to Stella. It is none of my business of course; +oh, I don't meddle. I merely prophesy that you won't." + +But those lights had made an astonishing difference. And so, "But why +not?" said I. "It is the immemorial method of dealing with savages; and +surely women can never expect to become quite civilised so long as +chivalry demands that a man say to a woman only what he believes she +wants to hear? Ah, no, my dear Lizzie; when a man tries to get into a +woman's favour, custom demands that he palliate the invasion with +flatteries and veiled truths--or, more explicitly, with lies,--just as +any sensible explorer must come prepared to leave a trail of +looking-glasses and valueless bright beads among the original owners of +any unknown country. For he doesn't know what obstacles he may +encounter, and he has been taught, from infancy, to regard any woman as +a baleful and unfathomable mystery--" + +"She is never so--heaven help her!--if the man be sufficiently +worthless." + +"I rejoice that we are so thoroughly at one. For upon my word, I +believe this widespread belief in feminine inscrutability is the result +of a conspiracy on the part of the weaker sex; and that every mother is +somehow pledged to inculcate this belief into the immature masculine +mind. Apparently the practice originated in the Middle Ages, for it +never seemed to occur to anybody before then that a woman was +particularly complex. Though, to be sure, Catullus now--" "This is not +a time for pedantry. I don't in the least care what Catullus or anyone +else observed concerning anything--" "But I had not aspired, my dear +Lizzie, to be even remotely pedantic. I was simply about to remark that +Catullus, or Ariosto, or Coventry Patmore, or King Juba, or Posidonius, +or Sir John Vanbrugh, or perhaps, Agathocles of Chios, or else +Simonides the Younger, has conceded somewhere, that women are, in +certain respects, dissimilar, as it were, to men." "I am merely urging +you not to marry this silly little Rosalind, for the excellent reason +that you _did_ love my darling Stella even more than I, and that +Rosalind is in love with you." "Do you really think so?" said I. "Why, +then, actuated by the very finest considerations of decency and +prudence and generosity, I shall, of course, espouse her the very next +November that ever is." + +The marquise retorted: "No,--because you are at bottom too fond of +Rosalind Jemmett; and, besides, it isn't really a question of your +feeling toward _her_. In any event, I begin to like you too well, Bob, +to let you kiss me any more." + +I declared that I detested paradox. Then I went home to supper. + + + 5 + +But, for all this, I meditated for a long while upon what Lizzie had +said. It was true that I was really fond of "proper" little Rosalind +Jemmett; concerning myself I had no especial illusions; and, to my +credit, I faced what I considered the real issue, squarely. + +We were in Aunt Marcia's parlour. Rosalind was an orphan, and lived in +turn with her three aunts. She said the other two were less unendurable +than Aunt Marcia, and I believed her. I consider, to begin with, that a +person is not civilised who thumps upon the floor upstairs with a +poker, simply because it happens to be eleven o'clock; and moreover, +Aunt Marcia's parlour--oh, it really was a "parlour,"--was entirely too +like the first night of a charity bazaar, when nothing has been sold. + +The room was not a particularly large one; but it contained exactly +three hundred and seven articles of bijouterie, not estimating the +china pug-dog upon the hearth. I know, for I counted them. + +Besides, there were twenty-eight pictures upon the walls--one in oils +of the late Mr. Dumby (for Aunt Marcia was really Mrs. Clement Dumby), +painted, to all appearances, immediately after the misguided gentleman +who married Aunt Marcia had been drowned, and before he had been wiped +dry,--and for the rest, everywhere the eye was affronted by engravings +framed in gilt and red-plush of "Sanctuary," "Le Hamac," "Martyre +Chrétienne," "The Burial of Latané," and other Victorian outrages. + +Then on an easel there was a painting of a peacock, perched upon an +urn, against a gilded background; this painting irrelevantly deceived +your expectations, for it was framed in blue plush. Also there were +"gift-books" on the centre table, and a huge volume, again in red +plush, with its titular "Album" cut out of thin metal and nailed to the +cover. This album contained calumnious portraits of Aunt Marcia's +family, the most of them separately enthroned upon the same imitation +rock, in all the pride of a remote, full-legged and starchy youth, each +picture being painfully "coloured by hand." + + + 6 + +"Do you know why I want to marry you?" I demanded of Rosalind, in such +surroundings, apropos of a Mrs. Vokins who had taken a house in +Lichfield for the winter, and had been at school somewhere in the +backwoods with Aunt Marcia, and was "dying to meet me." + +She answered, in some surprise: "Why, because you have the good taste +to be heels over head in love with me, of course." + +I took possession of her hands. "If there is anything certain in this +world of uncertainties, it is that I am not the least bit in love with +you. Yet, only yesterday--do you remember, dear?" + +She answered, "I remember." + +"But I cannot, for the life of me, define what happened yesterday. I +merely recall that we were joking, as we always do when together, and +that on a wager I loosened your hair. Then as it tumbled in great +honey-coloured waves about you, you were silent, and there came into +your eyes a look I had never seen before. And even now I cannot define +what happened, Rosalind! I only know I caught your face between my +hands, and for a moment held it so, with fingers that have not yet +forgotten the feel of your soft, thick hair,--and that for a breathing +space your eyes looked straight into mine. Something changed in me +then, my lady. Something changed in you, too, I think." + +Then Rosalind said, "Don't, Jaques--!" She was horribly embarrassed. + +"For I knew you willed me to possess you, and that possession would +seem as trivial as a fiddle in a temple.... Yet, too, there was a +lustful beast, somewhere inside of me, which nudged me to--kiss you, +say! But nothing happened. I did not even kiss you, my beautiful and +wealthy Rosalind." + +"Don't keep on talking about the money," she wailed. "Why, you can't +believe I think you mercenary!" + +"I would estimate your intellect far more cheaply, my charming +Rosalind, if you thought anything else; for of course I am. I wanted to +settle myself, you conceive, and as an accomplice you were very +eligible. I now comprehend it is beyond the range of rationality, dear +stranger, that we should ever marry each other; and so we must not. We +must not, you comprehend, since though we lived together through ten +patriarchal lifetimes we would die strangers to each other. +For you, dear clean-souled girl that you are, were born that you might +be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy children. The +world was made for you and for your offspring; and in time your +children will occupy this world and make the laws for us irrelevant +folk that scribble and paint and design all useless and beautiful +things, and thus muddle away our precious lives. No, you may not wisely +mate with us, for you are a shade too terribly at ease in the universe, +you sensible people." + +"But I love Art," said Rosalind, bewildered. + +"Yes,--but by the tiniest syllable a thought too volubly, my dear. You +are the sort that quotes the Rubaiyat. Whereas I--was it yesterday or +the day before you told me, with a wise pucker of your beautiful low, +white brow, that I had absolutely no sense of the responsibilities of +life? Well, I really haven't, dear stranger, as you appraise them; and, +indeed, I fear we must postpone our agreement upon any possible +subject, until the coming of the Coquecigrues. We see the world so +differently, you and I,--and for that same reason I cannot but adore +you, Rosalind. For with you I can always speak my true thought and know +that you will never for a moment suspect it to be anything but irony. +Ah, yes, we can laugh and joke together, and be thorough friends; but +if there is anything certain in this world of uncertainties, it is that +I am not, and cannot be, in love with you. And yet--I wonder now?" said +I, and I rose and paced Aunt Marcia's parlour. + +"You wonder? Don't you understand even now?" the girl said shyly. "I am +not as clever as you, of course; I have known that for a long while, +Jaques; and to-night in particular I don't quite follow you, my dear, +but I love you, and--why, there is _nothing_ I could deny you!" + +"Then give me back my freedom," said I. "For, look you, Rosalind, +marriage is proverbially a slippery business. Always there are a +variety of excellent reasons for perpetrating matrimony; but the rub of +it is that not any one of them insures you against to-morrow. Love, for +example, we have all heard of; but I have known fine fellows to fling +away their chances in life, after the most approved romantic fashion, +on account of a pretty stenographer, and to beat her within the +twelvemonth. And upon my word, you know, nobody has a right to blame +the swindled lover for doing this--" + +I paused to inspect the china pug-dog which squatted on the pink-tiled +hearth and which glared inanely at the huge brass coal-box just +opposite. Then I turned from these two abominations and faced Rosalind +with a bantering flirt of my head. + +"--For put it that I marry some entrancing slip of girlhood, what am I +to say when, later, I discover myself irrevocably chained to a fat and +dowdy matron? I married no such person, I have indeed sworn eternal +fidelity to an entirely different person; and this unsolicited usurper +of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my +entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to justify the +ensuing action before an irrational audience, which faces common logic +in very much the attitude of Augustine's famed adder! Decidedly I think +that, on the whole, I would prefer my Freedom." + +It was as though I had struck her. She sat as if frozen. "Jaques, is +there another woman in this?" + +"Why, in a fashion, yes. Yet it is mainly because I am really fond of +you, Rosalind." + +She handed me that exceedingly expensive ring the jeweler had charged +to me. I thought her action damnably theatrical, but still, it was not +as though I could afford to waste money on rings, so I took the trinket +absent-mindedly. + +"You are unflatteringly prompt in closing out the account," I said, +with a grieved smile.... + +"Good-bye!" said Rosalind, and her voice broke. "Oh, and I had +thought--! Well, as it is, I pay for the luxury of thinking, just as +you forewarned me, don't I, Jaques? And you won't forget the +hall-light? Aunt Marcia, you know--but how glad _she_ will be! I feel +rather near to Aunt Marcia to-night," said Rosalind. + + + 7 + +She left Lichfield the next day but one, and spent the following winter +with the aunt that lived in Brooklyn. She was Rosalind Gelwix the next +time I saw her.... + +And Aunt Marcia, whose taste is upon a par with her physical +attractions, inserted a paragraph in the "Social Items" of the +Lichfield _Courier-Herald_ to announce the breaking-off of the +engagement. Aunt Marcia also took the trouble to explain, quite +confidentially, to some seven hundred and ninety-three people, just why +the engagement had been broken off: and these explanations were more +creditable to Mrs. Dumby's imagination than to me. + +And I remembered, then, that the last request my mother made of me was +to keep out of the newspapers--"except, of course, the social +items".... + + + + +20. + +_He Dines Out, Impeded by Superstitions_ + + +Within the week I had repented of what I termed my idiotic quixotism, +and for precisely nine days after that I cursed my folly. And then, at +the Provises, I comprehended that in breaking off my engagement to +Rosalind Jemmett I had acted with profound wisdom, and I unfolded my +napkin, and said: + +"Do you know I didn't catch your name--not even this time?" + +She took a liberal supply of lemon juice. "How delightful!" she +murmured, "for I heard yours quite distinctly, and these oysters are +delicious." + +I noted with approval that her gown was pink and fluffy; it had also the +advantage of displaying shoulders that were incredibly white, and a +throat which was little short of marvellous. "I am glad," I whispered, +confidentially, "that you are still wearing that faint vein about your +left temple. I thought it admirable for early morning wear upon the +house tops of Liege, but it seems equally effective for dinner parties." + +She raised her eyebrows slightly and selected a biscuit. + +"You see," said I, "I was horribly late. And when Kittie Provis said, +'Allow me,' and I saw--well, I didn't care," I concluded, lucidly, +"because to have every one of your dreams come true, all of a sudden, +leaves you past caring." + +"It really is funny," she confided to a spoonful of _consomme a la +Julienne_. + +"After almost two years!" sighed I, ever so happily. But I continued, +with reproach, "To go without a word--that very day--" + +"Mamma--" she began. + +I recalled the canary-bird, and the purple shawl. "I sought wildly," +said I; "you were evanished. The _proprietaire_ was tearing his hair--no +insurance--he knew nothing. So I too tore my hair; and I said things. +There was a row. For he also said things: 'Figure to yourselves, +messieurs! I lose the Continental--two ladies come and go, I know not +who--I am ruined, desolated, is it not?--and this pig of an American +blusters--ah, my new carpets, just down, what horror!' And then, you +know, he launched into a quite feeling peroration concerning our +notorious custom of tomahawking one another-- + +"Yes," I coldly concluded into Mrs. Clement Dumby's ear, "we all behaved +disgracefully. As you very justly observe, liquor has been the curse of +the South." It was of a piece with Kittie Provis to put me next to Aunt +Marcia, I reflected. + +And mentally I decided that even though a portion of my assertions had +not actually gone through the formality of occurring, it all might very +easily have happened, had I remained a while longer in Liege; and then +ensued a silent interval and an entree. + +"And so--?" + +"And so I knocked about the world, in various places, hoping against +hope that at last--" + +"Your voice carries frightfully--" + +I glanced toward Mrs. Clement Dumby, who, as a dining dowager of many +years' experience, was, to all appearances, engrossed by the contents of +her plate. "My elderly neighbour is as hard of hearing as a +telephone-girl," I announced. She was the exact contrary, which was why +I said it quite audibly. "And your neighbour--why, _his_ neighbour is +Nannie Allsotts. We might as well be on a desert island, Elena--" And +the given name slipped out so carelessly as to appear almost accidental. + +"Sir!" said she, with proper indignation; "after so short an +acquaintance--" + +"Centuries," I suggested, meekly. "You remember I explained about that." + +She frowned,--an untrustworthy frown that was tinged with laughter. "One +meets so many people! Yes, it really is frightfully warm, Colonel +Grimshaw; they ought to open some of the windows." + +"Er--haw--hum! Didn't see you at the Anchesters." + +"No; I am usually lucky enough to be in bed with a sick headache when +Mrs. Anchester entertains. Of two evils one should choose the lesser, +you know." + +In the manner of divers veterans Colonel Grimshaw evinced his mirth upon +a scale more proper to an elephant; and relapsed, with a reassuring air +of having done his duty once and for all. + +"I never," she suggested, tentatively, "heard any more of your poem, +about--?" + +"Oh, I finished it; every magazine in the country knows it. It is poor +stuff, of course, but then how could I write of Helen when Helen had +disappeared?" + +The lashes exhibited themselves at full length. "I looked her up," +confessed their owner, guiltily, "in the encyclopaedia. It was very +instructive--about sun-myths and bronzes and the growth of the epic, you +know, and tree-worship and moon-goddesses. Of course"--here ensued a +flush and a certain hiatus in logic,--"of course it is nonsense." + +"Nonsense?" My voice sank tenderly. "Is it nonsense, Elena, that for two +years I have remembered the woman whose soft body I held, for one +unforgettable moment, in my arms? and nonsense that I have fought all +this time against--against the temptations every man has,--that I might +ask her at last--some day when she at last returned, as always I knew +she would--to share a fairly decent life? and nonsense that I have +dreamed, waking and sleeping, of a wondrous face I knew in Ilium first, +and in old Rome, and later on in France, I think, when the Valois were +kings? Well!" I sighed, after vainly racking my brain for a tenderer +fragment of those two-year-old verses, "I suppose it is nonsense!" + +"The salt, please," quoth she. She flashed that unforgotten broadside at +me. "I believe you need it." + +"Why, dear me! of course not!" said I, to Mrs. Dumby; "immorality lost +the true _cachet_ about the same time that ping-pong did. Nowadays +divorces are going out, you know, and divorcees are not allowed to. +Quite modish women are seen in public with their husbands nowadays." + +"H'mph!" said Mrs. Dumby; "I've no doubt that you must find it a most +inconvenient fad!" + +I ate my portion of duck abstractedly. "Thus to dive into the +refuse-heap of last year's slang does not quite cover the requirements +of the case. For I wish--only I hardly dare to ask--" + +"If I were half of what you make out," meditatively said she, "I would +be a regular fairy, and couldn't refuse you the usual three wishes." + +"Two," I declared, "would be sufficient." + +"First?" + +"That you tell me your name." + +"I adore orange ices, don't you? And the second?" was her comment. + +"Well, then, you' re a pig," was mine. "You are simply a nomenclatural +Berkshire. But the second is that you let me measure your finger--oh, +any finger will do. Say, the third on the left hand." + +"You really talk to me as if--" But this non-existent state of affairs +proved indescribable, and the unreal condition lapsed into a pout. + +"Oh, very possibly!" I conceded; "since the way in which a man talks to +a woman--to _the_ woman--depends by ordinary upon the depth--" + +"The depth of his devotion?" she queried, helpfully. "Of course!" + +I faced the broadside, without flinching. "No," said I, critically; "the +depth of her dimples." + +"Nonsense!" Nevertheless, the dimples were, and by a deal, the more +conspicuous. We were getting on pretty well. + +I bent forward; there was a little catch in my voice. Aunt Marcia was +listening. I wanted her to listen. + +"You must know that I love you," I said, simply, "I have always loved +you, I think, since the moment my eyes first fell upon you in +that--other pink thing. Of course, I realize the absurdity of my talking +in this way to a woman whose name I don't know; but I realise more +strongly that I love you. Why, there is not a pulse in my body which +isn't throbbing and tingling and leaping riotously from pure joy of +being with you again, Elena! And in time, you will love me a little, +simply because I want you to,--isn't that always a woman's main reason +for caring for a man?" + +She considered this, dubious and flushed. + +"I will not insist," said I, with a hurried and contented laugh, "that +you were formerly an Argive queen. I mean I will not be obstinate about +it, because that, I confess, was a paraphrase of my verses. But Helen +has always been to me the symbol of perfect loveliness, and so it was +not unnatural that I should confuse you with her." + +"Thank you, sir," said she, demurely. + +"I half believe it is true, even now; and if not--well, Helen was +acceptable enough in her day, Elena, but I am willing to Italianise, for +I have seen you and loved you, and Helen is forgot. It is not exactly +the orthodox pace for falling in love," I added, with a boyish candour, +"but it is very real to me." + +"You--you couldn't have fallen in love--really--" + +"It was not in the least difficult," I protested. + +"And you don't even know my _name_--" + +"I know, however, what it is going to be," said I; "and Mrs. 'Enry +'Awkins, as we'll put it, has found favour in the judgment of +connoisseurs. So after dinner--in an hour--?" + +"Oh, very well! since you're an author and insist, I will be ready, in +an hour, to decline you, with thanks." + +"Rejection not implying any lack of merit," I suggested. "This is +damnable iteration; but I am accustomed to it." + +But by this, Mrs. Provis was gathering eyes around the table, and her +guests arose, with the usual outburst of conversation, and swishing of +dresses, and the not always unpremeditated dropping of handkerchiefs and +fans. Mrs. Clement Dumby bore down upon us now, a determined and +generously proportioned figure in her notorious black silk. + +"Really," said she, aggressively, "I never saw two people more +engrossed. My dear Mrs. Barry-Smith, you have been so taken up with Mr. +Townsend, all during dinner, that I haven't had a chance to welcome you +to Lichfield. Your mother and I were at school together, you know. And +your husband was quite a beau of mine. So I don't feel, now, at all as +if we were strangers--" + +And thus she bore Elena off, and I knew that within ten minutes Elena +would have been warned against me, as "not quite a desirable +acquaintance, you know, my dear, and it is only my duty to tell you that +as a young and attractive married woman--" + + + 2 + +"And so," I said in my soul, as the men redistributed themselves, "she +is married,--married while you were pottering with books and the turn of +phrases and immortality and such trifles--oh, you ass! And to a man +named Barry-Smith--damn him, I wonder whether he is the hungry scut that +hasn't had his hair cut this fall, or the blancmange-bellied one with +the mashed-strawberry nose? Yes, I know everybody else. And Jimmy Travis +is telling a funny story, so _laugh_! People will think you are grieving +over Rosalind.... But why in heaven's name isn't Jimmy at home this very +moment,--with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of +paregoric on his mantelpiece,--instead of here, grinning like a fool +over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to +marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron +that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren't _you_ married--married +years ago,--with a home of your own, and a victoria for Mrs. Townsend +and bills from the kindergarten every quarter? Oh, you bartender of +verbal cocktails! I believe your worst enemy flung your mind at you in a +moment of unbridled hatred." + +So I snapped the stem of my glass carefully, and scowled with morose +disapproval at the unconscious Mr. Travis, and his now-applauded and +very Fescennine jest.... + + + 3 + +I found her inspecting a bulky folio with remarkable interest. There was +a lamp, with a red shade, that cast a glow over her, such as one +sometimes sees reflected from a great fire. The people about us were +chattering idiotically, and something inside my throat prevented my +breathing properly, and I was miserable. + +"Mrs. Barry-Smith,"--thus I began,--"if you've the tiniest scrap of pity +in your heart for a very presumptuous, blundering and unhappy person, I +pray you to forgive and to forget, as people say, all that I have +blatted out to you. I spoke, as I thought, to a free woman, who had the +right to listen to my boyish talk, even though she might elect to laugh +at it. And now I hardly dare to ask forgiveness." + +Mrs. Barry-Smith inspected a view of the Matterhorn, with careful +deliberation. "Forgiveness?" said she. + +"Indeed," said I, "I _don't_ deserve it." And I smiled most resolutely. +"I had always known that somewhere, somehow, you would come into my life +again. It has been my dream all these two years; but I dream carelessly. +My visions had not included this--obstacle." + +She made wide eyes at me. "What?" said she. + +"Your husband," I suggested, delicately. + +The eyes flashed. And a view of Monaco, to all appearances, awoke some +pleasing recollection. "I confess," said Mrs. Barry-Smith, "that--for +the time--I had quite forgotten him. I--I reckon you must think me +very horrid?" + +But she was at pains to accompany this query with a broadside that +rendered such a supposition most unthinkable. And so-- + +"I think you--" My speech was hushed and breathless, and ended in a +click of the teeth. "Oh, don't let's go into the minor details," +I pleaded. + +Then Mrs. Barry-Smith descended to a truism. "It is usually better not +to," said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing +the facade of Notre Dame, "You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so much +older than I--" + +"I would prefer that. Of course, though, it is none of my business." + +"You see, you came and went so suddenly that--of course I never thought +to see you again--not that I ever thought about it, I reckon--" Her +candour would have been cruel had it not been reassuringly +over-emphasized. "And Mr. Barry-Smith was very pressing--" + +"He would be," I assented, after consideration. "It is, indeed, the +single point in his outrageous conduct I am willing to condone." + +"--and he was a great friend of my father's, and I _liked_ him--" + +"So you married him and lived together ever afterward, without ever +throwing the tureen at each other. That is the most modern version; but +there is usually a footnote concerning the bread-and-butter plates." + +She smiled, inscrutably, a sphinx in Dresden china. "And yet," she +murmured, plaintively, "I _would_ like to know what you think of me." + +"Why, prefacing with the announcement that I pray God I may never see +you after to-night, I think you the most adorable creature He ever made. +What does it matter now? I have lost you. I think--ah, desire o' the +world, what can I think of you? The notion of you dazzles me like +flame,--and I dare not think of you, for I love you." + +"Yes?" she queried, sweetly; "then I reckon Mrs. Dumby was right after +all. She said you were a most depraved person and that, as a young +and--well, _she_ said it, you know--attractive widow--" + +"H'm!" said I; and I sat down. "Elena Barry-Smith," I added, "you are an +unmitigated and unconscionable and unpardonable rascal. There is just +one punishment which would be adequate to meet your case; and I warn you +that I mean to inflict it. Why, how dare you be a widow! The court +decides it is unable to put up with any such nonsense, and that you've +got to stop it at once." + +"Really," said she, tossing her head and moving swiftly, "one would +think we _were_ on a desert island!" + +"Or a strange roof"--and I laughed, contentedly. "Meanwhile, about that +ring--it should be, I think, a heavy, Byzantine ring, with the stones +sunk deep in the dull gold. Yes, we'll have six stones in it; say, R, a +ruby; O, an opal; B, a beryl; E, an emerald; R, a ruby again, I suppose; +and T, a topaz. Elena, that's the very ring I mean to buy as soon as +I've had breakfast, tomorrow, as a token of my mortgage on the desire of +the world, and as the badge of your impendent slavery." And I reflected +that Rosalind had, after all, behaved commendably in humiliating me by +so promptly returning this ring. + +Very calmly Elena Barry-Smith regarded the Bay of Naples; very calmly +she turned to the Taj Mahal. "An obese young Lochinvar," she reflected +aloud, "who has seen me twice, unblushingly assumes he is about to marry +me! Of course," she sighed, quite tolerantly, "I know he is clean out of +his head, for otherwise--" "Yes,--otherwise?" I prompted. + +"--he would never ask me to wear an opal. Why," she cried in horror, "I +couldn't think of it!" "You mean--?" said I. + +She closed the album, with firmness. "Why, you are just a child," said +Mrs. Barry-Smith. "We are utter strangers to each other. Please remember +that, for all you know, I may have an unbridled temper, or an imported +complexion, or a liking for old man Ibsen. What you ask--only you don't, +you simply assume it,--is preposterous. And besides, opals +_are_ unlucky." + +"Desire o' the world," I said, in dolorous wise, "I have just remembered +the black-lace mitts and reticule you left upon the dinner-table. Oh, +truly, I had meant to bring 'em to you--Only _do_ you think it quite +good form to put on those cloth-sided shoes when you've been invited to +a real party?" + +For a moment Mrs. Barry-Smith regarded me critically. Then she shook her +head, and tried to frown, and reopened the album, and inspected the +crater of Vesuvius, and quite frankly laughed. And a tender, pink-tipped +hand rested upon my arm for an instant,--a brief instant, yet pulsing +with a sense of many lights and of music playing somewhere, and of a +man's heart keeping time to it. + +"If you were to make it an onyx--" said Mrs. Barry-Smith. + + + + +21. + +_He is Urged to Desert His Galley_ + + +She had been a widow even when I first encountered her in Liege. I may +have passed her dozens of times, only she was in mourning then, for +Barry-Smith, and so I never really saw her. + +It seems, though, that "in the second year" it is permissible to wear +pink garments in the privacy of your own apartments, and that if people +see you in them, accidentally, it is simply their own fault. + +And very often they are punished for it; as most certainly was I, for +Elena led me a devil's dance of jealousy, and rapture, and abject +misery, and suspicion, and supreme content, that next four months. She +and her mother had rented a house on Regis Avenue for the winter; and I +frequented it with zeal. Mrs. Vokins said I "came reg'lar as +the milkman." + + + 2 + +Now of Mrs. Vokins I desire to speak with the greatest respect, if only +for the reason that she was Elena Barry-Smith's mother. Mrs. Vokins had, +no doubt, the kindest heart in the world; but she had spent the first +thirty years of her life in a mountain-girdled village, and after her +husband's wonderful luck--if you will permit me her vernacular,--in +being "let in on the groundfloor" when the Amalgamated Tobacco Company +was organised, I believe that Mrs. Vokins was never again quite at ease. + +I am abysmally sure she never grew accustomed to being waited on by any +servant other than a girl who "came in by the day"; though, oddly +enough, she was incessantly harassed by the suspicion that one or +another "good-for-nothing nigger was getting ready to quit." Her time +was about equally devoted to tending her canary, Bill Bryan, and to +furthering an apparently diurnal desire to have supper served a quarter +of an hour earlier to-night, "so that the servants can get off." + +Finally Mrs. Vokins considered that "a good woman's place was right in +her own home, with a nice clean kitchen," and was used to declare that +the fummadiddles of Mrs. Carrie Nation--who was in New York that winter, +you may remember, advocating Prohibition,--would never have been stood +for where Mrs. Vokins was riz. Them Yankee huzzies, she estimated, did +beat her time. + + + 3 + +It was, and is, the oddest thing I ever knew of that Elena could have +been her daughter. Though, mind you, even to-day, I cannot commit myself +to any statement whatever as concerns Elena Barry-Smith, beyond +asserting that she was beautiful. I am willing to concede that since the +world's creation there may have lived, say, six or seven women who were +equally good to look upon; but at the bottom of my heart I know the +concession is simply verbal. For she was not pretty; she was not +handsome; she was beautiful. Indeed, I sometimes thought her beauty +overshadowed any serious consideration of the woman who wore it, just as +in admiration of a picture you rarely think to wonder what sort of +canvas it is painted on. + +Yes, I am quite sure, upon reflection, that to Elena Barry-Smith her +beauty was a sort of tyrant. She devoted her life, I think, to the +retention of her charms; and what with the fixed seven hours for +sleep--no more and not a moment less,--the rigid limits of her diet, the +walking of exactly five miles a day, and her mathematical adherence to a +predetermined programme of massage and hair-treatment and manicuring and +face-creams and so on, Elena had hardly two hours in a day at her +own disposal. + +She would as soon have thought of sacrificing her afternoon walk to the +Musgrave Monument and back, as of having a front-tooth unnecessarily +removed; and would as willingly have partaken of prussic acid as of +candy or potatoes. She was, in fine, an artist of the truest type, in +that she immolated her body, and her own preferences, in the cause +of beauty. + +Nor was she vain, or stupid either, though what I have written vaguely +sounds as though she were both. She was just Elena Barry-Smith, of whom +your memory was always how beautiful she had been at this or that +particular moment, rather than what she said or did. And I believe that +every man in Lichfield was in love with her. + +But, in recollection of any person with whom you have had intimate and +tender intercourse, the pre-eminent feature is the big host of questions +which you cannot answer, or not, at least, with certainty.... + + + 4 + +For instance: the night of the Allardyce dance, after seeing Elena home, +I stepped in for a moment to get warm and have her mix me a highball. We +sat for a considerable while on the long sofa in the dimly-lighted +dining room, talking in whispers so as not to disturb the rest of the +house: and Elena was unusually beautiful that night, and I was more than +usually in love, more thanks to three of the five drinks she mixed.... + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she stated, sighing. + +I did not say anything. + +"Oh, well, then--! If you will just promise me," she stipulated, "that +you will never in any way refer to it afterwards--" + +So I promised.... And the next day she met me, cool as the proverbial +cucumber, and never once did she "refer to it afterwards," nor did I +think it wise to do so either. But the incident, however delightful, +puzzled me. It puzzles me even now.... + + + 5 + +In any event, she was not only beautiful but exceedingly well-to-do +likewise, since her dead father and her husband also had provided for +her amply; and Lichfield sniggered in consequence, and as a matter of +course assumed my devotion to be of astute and mercenary origin. But I +had, in this period, a variety of reasons to know that Lichfield was for +once entirely in the wrong; and that what Lichfield mistook to be the +begetter of, was in reality--so we will phrase it--the almost +unnecessary augmenter of my infatuation. Of course I did not exactly +object to her having money.... + +Meantime Elena was profoundly various. I told her once that being +married to her would be the very next thing to owning a harem. And in +consequence of this same mutability, it was as late as March before +Elena Barry-Smith made up her mind to marry me; and I was so deliciously +perturbed that the same night I wrote to tell Bettie Hamlyn all about +it. I had accepted Rosalind more calmly somehow. Now I was dithyrambic; +and you would never have suspected I had lived within fifty miles of +Bettie for an entire two years without attempting to communicate with +her, for very certainly my letter did not touch upon the fact. I was, in +fine, supremely happy, and I wanted Bettie, first of all, to know of +this circumstance, because my happiness had always made her happy too. + +The act was natural enough; only Elena telephoned, at nine the following +morning, that she had altered her intention. + +"My regret is beyond expression," said I, politely, "I shall come for my +tea at five, however." + +She entered upon a blurred protest. "You have already broken my heart," +I said, with some severity, "and now it would appear you contemplate +swindling the remainder of my anatomy out of its deserts. You are a +curmudgeon." And I hung up the receiver. + +And my first thought was, "Oh, how gladly I would give the gold of Ormus +and of Alaska just to have my letter back!" But I had mailed it, +shuffling to the corner in my slippers, and without any collar on, in +the hushed middle of the night, because my letter had seemed so +important then. + + + 6 + +"Will you not have me, lady?" I began that afternoon. + +"No, my lord," she demurely responded, "for I've decided it would be too +much like living in my Sunday-clothes." + +And "I give it up. So what's the answer?" was my annotation. + +"Oh, I'm not making jokes to-day. Why are you so--Oh, as we used to say +at school," she re-began, _"Que diable allais-tu faire dans +cette galere?"_ + +"I was born in a vale of tears, Elena, and must take the consequences of +being found in such a situation." + +She came to me, and her finger-tips touched my hand ever so lightly. +"That is another quotation, I suppose. And it is one other reason why I +mean not to marry you. Frankly, you bore me to death with your +erudition; you are three-quarters in love with me, but you pay heaps +less attention to what I say about anything than to what Aristotle or +some other old fellow said about it. Oh, that I should have lived to be +jealous of Aristotle! Indeed I am, for I have the misfortune to be +hideously in love with you. You are so exactly the sort of infant I +would like to adopt." + +"Love," I suggested, "while no longer an excuse for marriage, is at +least a palliation." + +"Listen, dear. From the first I have liked you, but that was not very +strange, because I like almost everybody; but it was strange I should +have remembered you and have liked the idea of you ever since you went +away that first time." + +"Oh, well, this once I will excuse you--" + +"But it happened in this way: I had found everybody--very nice, you +know--particularly the men,--and the things which cannot be laughed at I +had always put aside as not worth thinking about. You like to laugh, +too, but I have always known--and sometimes it gets me real mad to think +about it, I can tell you--that you could be in earnest if you chose, and +I can't. And that makes me a little sorry and tremendously glad, +because, quite frankly, I _am_ head over heels in love with you. That is +why I don't intend to marry you." + +And I was not a little at sea. "Oh, very well!" I pleasantly announced, +"I shall become a prominent citizen at once, if that's all that is +necessary. I will join every one of the patriotic societies, and sit +perpetually on platforms with a perspiring water-pitcher, and unveil +things every week, with felicitous allusions to the glorious past of our +grand old State; and have columns of applause in brackets on the front +page of the _Courier-Herald_. I will even go into civic politics, if you +insist upon it, and leave round-cornered cards at all the drugstores, so +that everybody who buys a cigar will know I am subject to the Democratic +primary. I wonder, by the way, if people ever survive that malady? It +sounds to me a deal more dangerous that epilepsy, say, yet lots of +persons seem to have it--" + +But Elena was not listening. "You know," she re-began, "I could get out +of it all very gracefully by telling you you drink too much. You +couldn't argue it, you know--particularly after your behavior +last Tuesday." + +"Oh, now and then one must be sociable. You aren't a prude, Elena--" + +"However, I am not really afraid of that, somehow. I even confess I +don't actually _mind_ your being rather good for nothing. No woman ever +really does, though she has her preference, and pretends, of course, to +mind a great deal. What I mean, then, is this: You don't marry just me. +I--I have very few relations, just two brothers and my mother; yet, in a +sense, you know, you marry them as well. But I don't believe you would +like being married to them. They are so different from you, dear. Your +whole view-point of life is different--" + +I had begun to speak when she broke in: "No, don't say anything, please, +until I'm quite, quite through. My brothers are the most admirable men I +ever knew. I love them more than I can say. I trust them more than I do +you. But they are just _good_. They don't fail in the really important +things of life, but they are remiss in little ways, they--they don't +_care_ for the little elegantnesses, if that's a word. Even Arthur chews +tobacco when he feels inclined. And he thinks no _man_ would smoke a +cigarette. Oh, I can't explain just what I mean--" + +"I think I understand, Elena. Suppose we let it pass as said." + +"And Mamma is not--we'll say, particularly highly educated. Oh, you've +been very nice to her. She adores you. You won _her_ over completely +when you took so much trouble to get her the out-of-print paper +novels--about the village maidens and the wicked dukes--in that idiotic +Carnation Series she is always reading. The whole affair was just like +both of you, I think." + +"But, oh, my dear--!" I laughed. + +"No, not one man in a thousand would have remembered it after she had +said she did think the titles 'were real tasty'; and I don't believe any +other man in the world would have spent a week in rummaging the +second-hand bookstores, until he found them. Only I don't know, even +yet, whether it was really kindness, or just cleverness that put you up +to it--on account of me. And I do know that you are nice to her in +pretty much the same way you were nice to the negro cook yesterday. And +I have had more advantages than she's had. But at bottom I'm really just +like her. You'd find it out some day. And--and that is what I mean, +I think." + +I spoke at some length. It was atrocious nonsense which I spoke; in any +event, it looked like atrocious nonsense when I wrote it down just now, +and so I tore it up. But I was quite sincere throughout that moment; it +is the Townsend handicap, I suspect, always to be perfectly sincere for +the moment. + +"Oh, well!" she said; "I'll think about it." + + + 7 + +That night Elena and I played bridge against Nannie Allsotts and Warwick +Risby. I was very much in love with Elena, but I hold it against her, +even now, that she insisted on discarding from strength. However, there +was to be a little supper afterward, and you may depend upon it that +Mrs. Vokins was seeing to its preparation. + +She came into the room about eleven o'clock, beaming with kindliness and +flushed--I am sure,--by some slight previous commerce with the +kitchen-fire. + +"Well, well!" said Mrs. Vokins, comfortably; "and who's a-beating?" + +I looked up. I must protest, until my final day, I could not help it. +"Why, we is," I said. + +And Nannie Allsotts giggled, ever so slightly, and Warwick Risby had +half risen, with a quite infuriate face, and I knew that by to-morrow +the affair would be public property, and promptly lost the game and +rubber. Afterward we had our supper. + +When the others had gone--for my footing in the house was such that I, +by ordinary, stayed a moment or two after the others had gone,--Elena +Barry-Smith came to me and soundly boxed my jaws. + +"That," she said, "is one way to deal with you." + +A minute ago I had been ashamed of myself. I had not room to be that +now; I was too full of anger. "I did make rather a mess of it," I +equably remarked, "but, you see, Nannie had shown strength in diamonds, +and I simply couldn't resist the finesse. So they made every one of +their clubs. And I hadn't any business to take the chance of course at +that stage, with the ace right in my hand--" + +"Arthur would have said, before he'd thought of it, 'You damn fool--!' +And then he would have apologised for forgetting himself in the presence +of a lady," she said, in a sorry little voice. "Yes, you--you _have_ +hurt me," she presently continued,--"just as you meant to do, if that's +a comfort to you. I feel as though I'd smacked a marble statue. You are +the sort that used to take snuff just before they had their heads cut +off, and when _they_ were in the wrong. And I'm not. That's always been +the trouble." + +"Elena!" I began,--"wait, just a moment! I'm in anger now--!" It was not +much to stammer out, but for me, who have the Townsend temper, it was +very hard to say. + +"You talk about loving me! and I believe you do love me, in at any rate +a sort of way. But you'll never forget, you never _have_ forgotten, +those ancestors of yours who were in the House of Burgesses when I +hadn't any ancestors at all. It isn't fair, because we haven't got the +chance to pick our parents, and it's absurd, and--it's true. The woman +is my mother, and I'll be like her some day, very probably. Yes, she +_is_ ignorant and tacky, and at times she is ridiculous. She hadn't even +the smartness to notice it when you made a fool of her; and if anybody +were to explain it to her she would just laugh and say, 'Law, I don't +mind, because young people always have to have their fun, I reckon.' And +she would forgive you! Why, she adores you! she's been telling me for +months that you're 'a heap the nicest young man that visits with me.'" + +Afterward Elena paused for an instant. "I think that is all," she said. +"It's a difference that isn't curable. Yes, I simply wanted to tell you +that much, and then ask you to go, I believe--" + +"So you don't wish me, Elena, in the venerable phrase, to make an honest +woman of you?" + +She had half turned, standing, in pink and silver fripperies, with one +bared arm resting on the chair back, in one of her loveliest attitudes. +"What do you mean?" + +"I was referring to what happened the other night, after the Allardyce +dance." + +And Elena smiled rather strangely. "You baby! how much would it shock +you if I told you no woman really minds about that either? Any way, you +have broken your solemn promise," she said, with indignation. + +"Ah, but perfidy seemed, somehow, in tone with an establishment wherein +one concludes the evening's entertainment by physical assault upon the +guests. Frankly, my dear"--I observed, with my most patronizing languor, +--"your breeding is not quite that to which I have been accustomed, and +I have had a rather startling glimpse of Lena Vokins, with all the +laboriously acquired veneering peeling off. Still, in view of +everything, I suppose I do owe it to you to marry you, if you insist--" + +"Insist! I wouldn't wipe my feet on you!" + +"That especial demonstration of affection was not, as I recall, +requested of you. So it is all off? along with the veneering, eh? Well, +perhaps I did attach too much importance to that diverting epilogue to +the Allardyce dance. And as you say, Elena--and I take your word for it, +gladly,--once one has become used to granting these little favors +indiscriminately--" + +"Get out of my house!" Elena said, quite splendid in her fury, "or I +will have you horsewhipped. I was fond of you. You would not let me be +in peace. And I didn't know you until to-night for the sneering, +stuck-up dirty beast you are at heart--" She came nearer, and her +glittering eyes narrowed. "And you have no hold on me, no letters to +blackmail me with, and nobody anywhere would take your word for anything +against mine. You would only be whipped by some real man, and probably +shot. So do you remember to keep a watch upon that lying, sneering mouth +of yours! And do you get out of my house!" + +"It is only rented," I submitted: "yet, after all, to boast +vaingloriously of their possessions is pardonable in those who have +risen in the world, and aren't quite accustomed to it...." There were a +pair of us when it came to tempers. + + + 8 + +And I went homeward almost physically sick with rage. I knew, even then, +that, while Elena would forgive me in the outcome, if I set about the +matter properly, I could never bring myself to ask forgiveness. If only +she had been in the wrong, I could have eagerly gone back and have +submitted to the extremest and the most outrageous tyranny she +could devise. + +But--although I would never have blackmailed her, I think,--she had been +mainly in the right. She had humiliated me, with a certain lack of +decorum, to be sure, but with some justice: and to pardon plain +retaliation is beyond the compass of humanity. At least, it ranks among +achievements which have always baffled me. + + + + +22. + +_He Cleans the Slate_ + + +It was within a month of this other disaster that Jasper Hardress came +to America, accompanied by his wife. They planned a tour of the States, +which they had not visited in seven years, and more particularly, as his +forerunning letter said, they meant to investigate certain mining +properties which Hardress had acquired in Montana. So, not unstirred by +trepidations, I met them at the pier. + +For I was already in New York, in part to see a volume of my short +stories through the press--which you may or may not have read, in its +elaborate "gift-book" form, under the title of _The Aspirants_,--and in +part about less edifying employments. I was trying to forget Elena, and +in Lichfield it was not possible to induce such forgetfulness without +affording unmerited pleasure for gabbling busybodies.... It was not in +me to apologise, except in a letter, where the wording and interminable +tinkering with phraseology would enable me to forget it was I who was +apologising, until a bit of nearly perfect prose was safely mailed; and +I knew she would not read any letter from me, because Elena comprehended +that I always persuaded her to do what I prompted, if only she +listened to me. + +As it was, I talked that morning for an hour or more with fat Jasper +Hardress.... Even now I find the two errands which brought him to +America of not unlaughable incongruity. + + + 2 + +For, first, he came as an agent of the Philomatheans, who were +endeavouring to secure official recognition by the churches of America +and England of a revised translation of, in any event, the New +Testament. + +He told me of a variety of buttressing reasons,--which I suppose are +well-founded, though I must confess I never investigated the matter. He +told me how the Authorised Version was a paraphrase, abounding in +confusions and in mistranslations from the Greek of Erasmus's New +Testament, which, as the author confessed, "was rather tumbled headlong +into the world than edited." And he told me how the edition of Erasmus +itself was hastily prepared from careless copies of inaccurate +transcriptions of yet further copies of divers manuscripts of which the +oldest dates no further back than the fourth century, and is in turn, +most probably, just a liberal paraphrase, as all the others are, of +still another manuscript. + +So that the English version, as I gathered, may be very fine English, +but has scarcely a leg left, when you consider it as a safe foundation +for superiority, or pillorying, or as a guide in conduct. + +I suspect, however, that Jasper Hardress somewhat overstated the case, +since on this subject he was a fanatic. To me it seemed rather quaint +that Hardress or anybody else should be bothering about such things. + +And as he feelingly declaimed concerning the great Uncials, and +explained why in this particular verse the Ephraem manuscript was in the +right, whereas to probe the meaning of the following verse we clearly +must regard the Syriac version as of supreme authority, I could well +understand how at one period or another his young wife must inevitably +have considered him in the light of a rather tedious person. + +And I told him that it hardly mattered, because the true test of a +church-member was the ability to believe that when the Bible said +anything inconvenient it really meant something else. + +But actually I was not feeling over-cheerful, because Jasper's second +object in coming to America was to leave his wife in Sioux City, so that +she could secure a divorce from him, on quite un-Scriptural grounds. +Hardress told me of this at least without any excitement. He did not +blame her. He was too old for her, too stolid, too dissimilar in every +respect, he said. Their marriage had been a mistake, that was all,--a +mismating, as many marriages were. She wanted to marry someone else, he +rather thought. + +And "Oh, Lord! yes!" I inwardly groaned. "She probably does." + +Aloud I said: "But the Bible--Yes, I _am_ provincial at bottom. It's +because I always think in nigger-English and translate it when I talk. +It was my Mammy, you see, who taught me how to think,--and in our +nigger-English, what the Bible says is true. Why, Jasper, even this +Revised Version of yours says flatly that a man--" + +"Child, child!" said Jasper Hardress, and he patted my hair, and I +really think it crinkled under his touch, "when you grow up--if indeed +you ever do,--you will find that a man's feeling for his wife and the +mother of his children, is not altogether limited by what he has read in +a book. He wants--well, just her happiness." + +I looked up without thinking; and the aspect of that gross and +unattractive man humiliated me. He had reached a height denied to such +as I; and inwardly I cursed and envied this fat Jasper Hardress.... I +would have told him everything, had not the waiter come just then. + + + 3 + +And the same afternoon I was alone with Gillian Hardress, for the first +time in somewhat more than two years. We had never written each other; I +had been too cautious for that; and now when the lean, handsome woman +came toward me, murmuring "Jack--" very tenderly,--for she had always +called me Jack, you may remember,--I raised a hand in protest. + +"No,--that is done with, Jill. That is dead and buried now, my dear." + +She remained motionless; only her eyes, which were like chrysoberyls, +seemed to grow larger and yet more large. There was no anger in them, +only an augmenting wonder. + +"Ah, yes," she said at last, and seemed again to breathe; "so that is +dead and buried--in two years." Gillian Hardress spoke with laborious +precision, like a person struggling with a foreign language, and +articulating each word to its least sound before laying tongue to its +successor. + +"Yes! we have done with each other, once for all," said I, half angrily. +"I wash my hands of the affair, I clean the slate today. I am not polite +about it, and--I am sorry, dear. But I talked with your husband this +morning, and I will deceive Jasper Hardress no longer. The man loves you +as I never dreamed of loving any woman, as I am incapable of loving any +woman. He dwarfs us. Oh, go and tell him, so that he may kill us both! I +wish to God he would!" + +Mrs. Hardress said: "You have planned to marry. It is time the prodigal +marry and settle down, is it not? So long as we were in England it did +not matter, except to that Faroy girl you seduced and flung out into the +streets--" + +"I naturally let her go when I found out--" + +"As if I cared about the creature! She's done with. But now we are in +America, and Mr. Townsend desires no entanglements just now that might +prevent an advantageous marriage. So he is smitten--very +conveniently--with remorse." Gillian began to laugh. "And he discovers +that Jasper Hardress is a better man than he. Have I not always known +that, Jack?" + +Now came a silence. "I cannot argue with you as to my motives. Let us +have no scene, my dear--" + +"God keep us respectable!" the woman said; and then: "No; I can afford +to make no scene. I can only long to be omnipotent for just one instant +that I might deal with you, Robert Townsend, as I desire--and even then, +heaven help me, I would not do it!" Mrs. Hardress sat down upon the +divan and laughed, but this time naturally. "So! it is done with? I have +had my dismissal, and, in common justice, you ought to admit that I have +received it not all ungracefully." + +"From the first," I said, "you have been the most wonderful woman I have +ever known." And I knew that I was sincerely fond of Gillian Hardress. + +"But please go now," she said, "and have a telegram this evening that +will call you home, or to Kamchatka, or to Ecuador, or anywhere, on +unavoidable business. No, it is not because I loathe the sight of you or +for any melodramatic reason of that sort. It is because, I think, I had +fancied you to be not completely self-centred, after all, and I cannot +bear to face my own idiocy. Why, don't you realize it was only yesterday +you borrowed money from Jasper Hardress--some more money!" + +"Well, but he insisted on it: and I owed it to you to do nothing to +arouse his suspicions--" + +"And I don't hate you even now! I wish God would explain to me why He +made women so." + +"You accuse me of selfishness," I cried. "Ah, let us distinguish, for +there is at times a deal of virtue in this vice. A man who devotes +himself to any particular art or pursuit, for instance, becomes more and +more enamoured of it as time wears on, because he comes to identify it +with himself; and a husband is fonder of his wife than of any other +woman,--at least, he ought to be,--not because he considers her the most +beautiful and attractive person of his acquaintance, but because she is +the one in whom he is most interested and concerned. He has a +proprietary interest in her welfare, and she is in a manner part of +himself. Thus the arts flourish and the home-circle is maintained, and +all through selfishness." + +I snapped my fingers airily; I was trying, of course, to disgust her by +my callousness. And it appeared I had almost succeeded. + +"Please go!" she said. + +"But surely not while we are as yet involved in a question of plain +logic? You think selfishness a vice. None the less you must concede that +the world has invariably progressed because, upon the whole, we find +civilisation to be more comfortable than barbarism; and that a wholesome +apprehension of the penitentiary enables many of us to rise to +deaconships. Why, deuce take it, Jill! I may endow a hospital because I +want to see my name over the main entrance, I may give a beggar a penny +because his gratitude puts me in a glow of benevolence that is cheap at +the price. So let us not rashly declare that selfishness is a vice, +and--let us part friends, my dear." + +And I assumed possession of the thin hands that seemed to push me from +her in a species of terror, and I gallantly lifted them to my lips. + +The ensuing event was singular. Gillian Hardress turned to the door of +her bedroom and brutally, as with two bludgeons, struck again and again +upon its panels with clenched hand. She extended her hands to me, and +everywhere their knuckles oozed blood. "You kissed them," she said, "and +even today they liked it, and so they are not clean. They will never +again be clean, my dear. But they were clean before you came." + +Then Gillian Hardress left me, and where she had touched it, the brass +door knob of her bedroom door was smeared with blood.... + + + 4 + +When I had come again to Lichfield I found that in the brief interim of +my absence Elena Barry-Smith, without announcement, had taken the train +for Washington, and had in that city married Warwick Risby. This was, I +knew, because she comprehended that, if I so elected, it was always in +my power to stop her halfway up the aisle and to dissuade her from +advancing one step farther.... "I don't know _how_ it is!--" she would +have said, in that dear quasi-petulance I knew so well.... + +But as it was, I met the two one evening at the Provises', and with +exuberant congratulation. Then straddling as a young Colossus on the +hearth-rug, and with an admonitory forefinger, I proclaimed to the +universe at large that Mrs. Risby had blighted my existence and +beseeched for Warwick some immediate and fatal and particularly +excruciating malady. In fine, I was abjectly miserable the while that I +disarmed all comment by being quite delightfully boyish for a whole +two hours. + +I must record it, though, that Mrs. Vokins patted my hand when nobody +else was looking, and said: "Oh, my dear Mr. Bob, I wish it had been +you! You was always the one I liked the best." For that, in view of +every circumstance, was humorous, and hurt as only humour can. + +So in requital, on the following morning, I mailed to Mrs. Risby some +verses. This sounds a trifle like burlesque; but Elena had always a sort +of superstitious reverence for the fact that I "wrote things." It would +not matter at all that the verses were abominable; indeed, Elena would +never discover this; she would simply set about devising an excellent +reason for not showing them to anybody, and would consider Warwick +Risby, if only for a moment, in the light of a person who, whatever his +undeniable merits, had neither the desire nor the ability to write +"poetry." And, though it was hideously petty, this was precisely what I +desired her to do. + +So I dispatched to her a sonnet-sequence which I had originally +plagiarized from the French of Theodore Passerat in honour of Stella. I +loathed sending Stella's verses to anyone else, somehow; but, after all, +my one deterrent was merely a romantic notion; and there was not time to +compose a new set. Moreover, "your eyes are blue, your speech is +gracious, but you are not she; and I am older,--and changed how +utterly!--I am no longer I, you are not you," and so on, was absolutely +appropriate. And Elena most undoubtedly knew nothing of Theodore +Passerat. And Stella, being dead, could never know what I had done. + +So I sent the verses, with a few necessitated alterations, to the +address of Mrs. Warwick Risby. + + + 5 + +I had within the week, an unsigned communication which, for a long while +afterward, I did not comprehend. It was the photograph of an infant, +with the photographer's address scratched from the cardboard and without +of course any decipherable postmark; and upon the back of the thing was +written: "His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the +flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been +upon him. Let others eat his honey that please, so that he has had his +morsel and his song." + +I thought it was a joke of some sort. + +Then it occurred to me that this might be--somehow--Elena's answer. It +was an interpretation which probably appealed to the Supernal +Aristophanes. + + + + +23. + +_He Reviles Destiny and Climbs a Wall_ + + +But now the spring was come again, and, as always at this season, I was +pricked with vague longings to have done with roofs and paven places. I +wanted to be in the open. I think I wanted to fall in love with +somebody, and thereby somewhat to prolong the daily half-minute, +immediately after awakening in the morning, during which I did not think +about Elena Risby. + +I was bored in Lichfield. For nothing of much consequence seemed, as I +yawned over the morning paper, to be happening anywhere. The Illinois +Legislature had broken up in a free fight, a British square had been +broken in Somaliland, and at the Aqueduct track Alado had broken his +jockey's neck. A mob had chased a negro up Broadway: Russia had demanded +that China cede the sovereignty of Manchuria; and Dr. Lyman Abbott was +explaining why the notion of equal suffrage had been abandoned finally +by thinking people. + +Such negligible matters contributed not at all to the comfort or the +discomfort of Robert Etheridge Townsend; and I was pricked with vague +sweet longings to have done with roofs and paven places. If only I +possessed a country estate, a really handsome Manor or a Grange, I was +reflecting as I looked over the "Social Items," and saw that Miss +Hugonin and Colonel Hugonin had re-opened Selwoode for the summer +months.... + +So I decided I would go to Gridlington, whither Peter Blagden had +forgotten to invite me. He was extremely glad to see me, though, to do +him justice. For Peter--by this time the inheritor of his unlamented +uncle's estate,--had, very properly, developed gout, which is, I take +it, the time-honoured appendage of affluence and, so to speak, its +trade-mark; and was, for all his wealth, unable to get up and down the +stairs of his fine house without, as we will delicately word it, the +display and, at times, the overtaxing of a copious vocabulary. + + + 2 + +I was at Gridlington entirely comfortable. It was spring, to begin with, +and out of doors in spring you always know, at twenty-five, that +something extremely pleasant is about to happen, and that She is quite +probably around the very next turn of the lane. + +Moreover, there was at Gridlington a tiny private garden which had once +been the recreation of Peter Blagden's aunt (dead now twelve years ago), +and which had remained untended since her cosseting; and I in nature +took charge of it. + +There was in the place a wilding peach-tree, which I artistically sawed +into shape and pruned and grafted, and painted all those profitable +wounds with tar; and I grew to love it, just as most people do their +children, because it was mine. And Peter, who is a person of no +sensibility, wanted to ring for a servant one night, when there was a +hint of frost and I had started out to put a bucket of water under my +tree to protect it. I informed him that he was irrevocably dead to all +the nobler sentiments, and went to the laundry and got a wash-tub. + +Peter was not infrequently obtuse. He would contend, for instance, that +it was absurd for any person to get so gloriously hot and dirty while +setting out plants, when that person objected to having a flower in the +same room. For Peter could not understand that a cut flower is a dead +or, at best, a dying thing, and therefore to considerate people is just +so much abhorrent carrion; and denied it would be really quite as +rational to decorate your person or your dinner table with the severed +heads of chickens as with those of daffodils. + +"But that is only because you are not particularly bright," I told him. +"Oh, I suppose you can't help it. But why make _all_ the actions of your +life so foolish? What good do you get out of having the gout, for +instance?" + +Whereupon Mr. Blagden desired to be informed if I considered those +with-various-adjectives-accompanied twinges in that qualified foot to be +a source of personal pleasure to the owner of the very-extensively-hiatused +foot. In which case, Mr. Blagden felt at liberty to express his opinion of +my intellectual attainments, which was of an uncomplimentary nature. + +"Because, you know," I pursued, equably, "you wouldn't have the gout if +you did not habitually overeat yourself and drink more than is good for +you. In consequence, here you are at thirty-two with a foot the same +general size and shape as a hayrick, only rather less symmetrical, and +quite unable to attend to the really serious business of life, which is +to present me to the heiress. It is a case of vicarious punishment which +strikes me as extremely unfair. You have made of your stomach a god, +Peter, and I am the one to suffer for it. You have made of your +stomach," I continued, venturing aspiringly into metaphor, "a brazen +Moloch, before which you are now calmly preparing to immolate my +prospects in life. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Peter!" + +Mr. Blagden's next observation was describable as impolite. + +"Fate, too," I lamented, in a tragic voice, "appears to have entered +into this nefarious conspiracy. Here, not two miles away, is one of the +greatest heiresses in America,--clever, I am told, beautiful, I am sure, +for I have yet to discover a woman who sees anything in the least +attractive about her,--and, above all, with the Woods millions at her +disposal. Why, Peter, Margaret Hugonin is the woman I have been looking +for these last three years. She is, to a hair, the sort of woman I have +always intended to make unhappy. And I can't even get a sight of her! +Here are you, laid up with the gout, and unable to help me; and yonder +is the heiress, making a foolish pretence at mourning for the old +curmudgeon who left her all that money, and declining to meet people. +Oh, but she is a shiftless woman, Peter! At this very moment she might +be getting better acquainted with me; at this very moment, Peter, I +might be explaining to her in what points she is utterly and entirely +different from all the other women I have ever known. And she prefers to +immure herself in Selwoode, with no better company than her father, that +ungodly old retired colonel, and a she-cousin, somewhere on the +undiscussable side of forty--when she might be engaging me in amorous +dalliance! That Miss Hugonin is a shiftless woman, I tell you! And +Fate--oh, but Fate, too, is a vixenish jade!" I cried, and shook my fist +under the nose of an imaginary Lachesis. + +"You appear," said Peter, drily, "to be unusually well-informed as to +what is going on at Selwoode." + +"You flatter me," I answered, as with proper modesty. "You must remember +that there are maids at Selwoode. You must remember that my man Byam, +is--and will be until that inevitable day when he will attempt to +blackmail me, and I shall kill him in the most lingering fashion I can +think of,--that Byam is, I say, something of a diplomatist." + +Mr. Blagden regarded me with disapproval. + +"So you've been sending your nigger cousin over to Selwoode to spy for +you! You're a damn cad, you know, Bob," he pensively observed. "Now most +people think that when you carry on like a lunatic you're simply acting +on impulse. I don't. I believe you plan it out a week ahead. I sometimes +think you are the most adroit and unblushing looker-out for number one I +ever knew; and I can't for the life of me understand why I don't turn +you out of doors." + +"I don't know where you picked up your manners," said I, reflectively, +"but it must have been in devilish low company. I would cut your +acquaintance, Peter, if I could afford it." Then I fell to pacing up and +down the floor. "I incline, as you have somewhat grossly suggested, to a +certain favouritism among the digits. And why the deuce shouldn't I? A +fortune is the only thing I need. I have good looks, you know, of a +sort; ah, I'm not vain, but both my glass and a number of women have +been kind enough to reassure me on this particular point. And that I +have a fair amount of wits my creditors will attest, who have lived +promise-crammed for the last year or two, feeding upon air like +chameleons. Then I have birth,--not that good birth ensures anything but +bad habits though, for you will observe that, by some curious freak of +nature, an old family-tree very seldom produces anything but wild oats. +And, finally, I have position. I can introduce my wife into the best +society; ah, yes, you may depend upon it, Peter, she will have the +privilege of meeting the very worst and stupidest and silliest people in +the country on perfectly equal terms. You will perceive, then, that the +one desirable thing I lack is wealth. And this I shall naturally expect +my wife to furnish. So, the point is settled, and you may give me a +cigarette." + +Peter handed me the case, with a snort. "You are a hopelessly conceited +ass," Mr. Blagden was pleased to observe, "for otherwise you would have +learned, by this, that you'll, most likely, never have the luck of +Charteris, and land a woman who will take it as a favour that you let +her pay your bills. God knows you've angled for enough of 'em!" + +"You are painfully coarse, Peter," I pointed out, with a sigh. "Indeed, +your general lack of refinement might easily lead one to think you owed +your millions to your own thrifty industry, or some equally unpleasant +attribute, rather than to your uncle's very commendable and lucrative +innovation in the line of--well, I remember it was something extremely +indigestible, but, for the moment, I forget whether it was steam-reapers +or a new sort of pickle. Yes, in a great many respects, you are +hopelessly parvenuish. This cigarette-case, for instance--studded with +diamonds and engraved with a monogram big enough for a coach-door! Why, +Peter, it simply reeks with the ostentation of honestly acquired +wealth,--and with very good tobacco, too, by the way. I shall take it, +for I am going for a walk, and I haven't any of my own. And some day I +shall pawn this jewelled abortion, Peter,--pawn it for much fine gold; +and upon the proceeds I shall make merriment for myself and for my +friends." And I pocketed the case. + +"That's all very well," Peter growled, "but you needn't try to change +the subject. You know you _have_ angled after any number of rich women +who have had sense enough, thank God, to refuse you. You didn't use to +be--but now you're quite notoriously good-for-nothing." + +"It is the one blemish," said I, sweetly, "upon an otherwise perfect +character. And it is true," I continued, after an interval of +meditation, "that I have, in my time, encountered some very foolish +women. There was, for instance, Elena Barry-Smith, who threw me over for +Warwick Risby; and Celia Reindan, who had the bad taste to prefer Teddy +Anstruther; and Rosalind Jemmett, who is, very inconsiderately, going to +marry Tom Gelwix, instead of me. These were staggeringly foolish women, +Peter, but while their taste is bad, their dinners are good, so I have +remained upon the best of terms with them. They have trodden me under +their feet, but I am the long worm that has no turning. Moreover, you +are doubtless aware of the axiomatic equality between the fish in the +sea and those out of it. I hope before long to better my position in +life. I hope--Ah, well, that would scarcely interest you. Good morning, +Peter. And I trust, when I return," I added, with chastening dignity, +"that you will evince a somewhat more Christian spirit toward the world +in general, and that your language will be rather less reminiscent of +the blood-stained buccaneer of historical fiction." + +"You're a grinning buffoon," said Peter. "You're a fat Jack-pudding. +You're an ass. Where are you going, anyway?" + +"I am going," said I, "to the extreme end of Gridlington. Afterward I am +going to climb the wall that stands between Gridlington and Selwoode." + +"And after that?" said Peter. + +I gave a gesture. "Why, after that," said I, "fortune will favour the +brave. And I, Peter, am very, very brave." + +Then I departed, whistling. In view of all my memories it had been +strangely droll to worry Peter Blagden into an abuse of marrying for +money. For this was on the twenty-eighth of April, the anniversary of +the day that Stella had died, you may remember.... + + + 3 + +And a half-hour subsequently, true to my word, I was scaling a ten-foot +stone wall, thickly overgrown with ivy. At the top of it I paused, and +sat down to take breath and to meditate, my legs meanwhile bedangling +over an as flourishing Italian garden as you would wish to see. + +"Now, I wonder," I queried, of my soul, "what will be next? There is a +very cheerful uncertainty about what will be next. It may be a +spring-gun, and it may be a bull-dog, and it may be a susceptible +heiress. But it is apt to be--No, it isn't," I amended, promptly; "it is +going to be an angel. Or perhaps it is going to be a dream. She can't be +real, you know--I am probably just dreaming her. I would be quite +certain I was just dreaming her, if this wall were not so humpy and +uncomfortable. For it stands to reason, I would not be fool enough to +dream of such unsympathetic iron spikes as I am sitting on." + +"Perhaps you are not aware," hazarded a soprano voice, "that this is +private property?" + +"Why, no," said I, very placidly; "on the contrary I was just thinking +it must be heaven. And I am tolerably certain," I commented further, in +my soul, "that you are one of the more influential seraphim." + +The girl had lifted her brows. She sat upon a semi-circular stone bench, +some twenty feet from the wall, and had apparently been reading, for a +book lay open in her lap. She now inspected me, with a sort of languid +wonder in her eyes, and I returned the scrutiny with unqualified +approval in mine. + +And in this I had reason. The heiress of Selwoode was eminently good to +look upon. + + + + +24. + +_He Reconciles Sentiment and Reason_ + + +So I regarded her for a rather lengthy interval, considering meanwhile, +with an immeasurable content how utterly and entirely impossible it +would always be to describe her. + +Clearly, it would be out of the question to trust to words, however +choicely picked, for, upon inspection, there was a delightful ambiguity +about every one of this girl's features that defied such idiotic +makeshifts. Her eyes, for example, I noted with a faint thrill of +surprise, just escaped being brown by virtue of an amber glow they had; +what colour, then, was I conscientiously to call them? + +And her hair I found a bewildering, though pleasing, mesh of shadow and +sunlight, all made up of multitudinous graduations of some anonymous +colour that seemed to vary with the light you chanced to see it in, +through the whole gamut of bronze and chestnut and gold; and where, +pray, in the bulkiest lexicon, in the very weightiest thesaurus, was I +to find the adjective which could, if but in desperation, be applied to +hair like that without trenching on sacrilege? ... For it was spring, +you must remember, and I was twenty-five. + +So that in my appraisal, you may depend upon it, her lips were quickly +passed over as a dangerous topic, and were dismissed with the mental +statement that they were red and not altogether unattractive. Whereas +her cheeks baffled me for a time,--but always with a haunting sense of +familiarity--till I had, at last, discovered they reminded me of those +little tatters of cloud that sometimes float about the setting +sun,--those irresolute wisps which cannot quite decide whether to be +pink or white, and waver through their tiny lives between the +two colours. + + + 2 + +To this effect, then, I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon +the wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. By +and by, though, the girl sighed. + +"You are placing me in an extremely unpleasant position," she +complained, as if wearily. "Would you mind returning to your sanatorium +and allowing me to go on reading? For I am interested in my book, and I +can't possibly go on in any comfort so long as you elect to perch up +there like Humpty-Dumpty, and grin like seven dozen Cheshire cats." + +"Now, that," I spoke, in absent wise, "is but another instance of the +widely prevalent desire to have me serve as scapegoat for the sins of +all humanity. I am being blamed now for sitting on top of this wall. One +would think I wanted to sit here. One would actually think," I cried, +and raised my eyes to heaven, "that sitting on the very humpiest kind of +iron spikes was my favorite form of recreation! No,--in the interests of +justice," I continued, and fell into a milder tone, "I must ask you to +place the blame where it more rightfully belongs. The injuries which are +within the moment being inflicted on my sensitive nature, and, +incidentally, upon my not overstocked wardrobe, I am willing to pass +over. But the claims of justice are everywhere paramount. Miss Hugonin, +and Miss Hugonin alone, is responsible for my present emulation of +Mohammed's coffin, and upon that responsibility I am compelled +to insist." + +"May one suggest," she queried gently, "that you are +probably--mistaken?" + +I sketched a bow. "Recognising your present point of view," said I, +gallantly, "I thank you for the kindly euphemism. But may one allowably +demonstrate the fallacy of this same point of view? I thank you: for +silence, I am told, is proverbially equal to assent. I am, then, one +Robert Townsend, by birth a gentleman, by courtesy an author, by +inclination an idler, and by lucky chance a guest of Mr. Peter Blagden, +whose flourishing estate extends indefinitely yonder to the rear of my +coat-tails. My hobby chances to be gardening. I am a connoisseur, an +admirer, a devotee of gardens. It is, indeed, hereditary among the +Townsends; a love for gardens runs in our family just as a love for gin +runs in less favoured races. It is with us an irresistible passion. The +very founder of our family--one Adam, whom you may have heard of,--was a +gardener. Owing to the unfortunate loss of his position, the family +since then has sunken somewhat in the world; but time and poverty alike +have proven powerless against our horticultural tastes and botanical +inclinations. And then," cried I, with a flourish, "and then, what +follows logically?" + +"Why, if you are not more careful," she languidly made answer, "I am +afraid that, owing to the laws of gravitation, a broken neck is what +follows logically." + +"You are a rogue," I commented, in my soul, "and I like you all the +better for it." + +Aloud, I stated: "What follows is that we can no more keep away from a +creditable sort of garden than a moth can from a lighted candle. +Consider, then, my position. Here am I on one side of the wall, and with +my peach-tree, to be sure--but on the other side is one of the most +famous masterpieces of formal gardening in the whole country. Am I to +blame if I succumb to the temptation? Surely not," I argued; "for surely +to any fair-minded person it will be at once apparent that I am brought +to my present very uncomfortable position upon the points of these very +humpy iron spikes by a simple combination of atavism and +injustice,--atavism because hereditary inclination draws me irresistibly +to the top of the wall, and injustice because Miss Hugonin's perfectly +unreasonable refusal to admit visitors prevents my coming any farther. +Surely, that is at once apparent?" + +But now the girl yielded to my grave face, and broke into a clear, +rippling carol of mirth. She laughed from the chest, this woman. And +perched in insecure discomfort on my wall, I found time to rejoice that +I had finally discovered that rarity of rarities, a woman who neither +giggles nor cackles, but has found the happy mean between these two +abominations, and knows how to laugh. + +"I have heard of you, Mr. Townsend," she said at last. "Oh, yes, I have +heard a deal of you. And I remember now that I never heard you were +suspected of sanity." + +"Common-sense," I informed her, from my pedestal, "is confined to that +decorous class of people who never lose either their tempers or their +umbrellas. Now, I haven't any temper to speak of--or not at least in the +presence of ladies,--and, so far, I have managed to avoid laying aside +anything whatever for a rainy day; so that it stands to reason I must +possess uncommon sense." + +"If that is the case," said the girl "you will kindly come down from +that wall and attempt to behave like a rational being." + +I was down--as the phrase runs,--in the twinkling of a bed-post. On +which side of the wall, I leave you to imagine. + +"--For I am sure," the girl continued, "that I--that Margaret, I should +say,--would not object in the least to your seeing the gardens, since +they interest you so tremendously. I'm Avis Beechinor, you know,--Miss +Hugonin's cousin. So, if you like, we will consider that a proper +introduction, Mr. Townsend, and I will show you the gardens, if--if you +really care to see them." + +My face, I must confess, had fallen slightly. Up to this moment, I had +not a suspicion but that it was Miss Hugonin I was talking to: and I now +reconsidered, with celerity, the information Byam had brought me +from Selwoode. + +"For, when I come to think of it," I reflected, "he simply said she was +older than Miss Hugonin. I embroidered the tale so glibly for Peter's +benefit that I was deceived by my own ornamentations. I had looked for +corkscrew ringlets and false teeth a-gleam like a new bath-tub in Miss +Hugonin's cousin,--not an absolutely, supremely, inexpressibly +unthinkable beauty like this!" I cried, in my soul. "Older! Why, good +Lord, Miss Hugonin must be an infant in arms!" + +But my audible discourse was prefaced with an eloquent gesture. "If I'd +care!" I said. "Haven't I already told you I was a connoisseur in +gardens? Why, simply look, Miss Beechinor!" I exhorted her, and threw +out my hands in a large pose of admiration. "Simply regard those +yew-hedges, and parterres, and grassy amphitheatres, and palisades, and +statues, and cascades, and everything--_everything_ that goes to make a +formal garden the most delectable sight in the world! Simply feast your +eyes upon those orderly clipped trees and the fantastic patterns those +flowers are laid out in! Why, upon my word, it looks as if all four +books of Euclid had suddenly burst into blossom! And you ask me if I +would _care_! Ah, it is evident _you_ are not a connoisseur in gardens, +Miss Beechinor!" + +And I had started on my way into this one, when the girl stopped me. + +"This must be yours," she said. "You must have spilled it coming over +the wall, Mr. Townsend." + +It was Peter's cigarette-case. + +"Why, dear me, yes!" I assented, affably. "Do you know, now, I would +have been tremendously sorry to lose that? It is a sort of present--an +unbirthday present from a quite old friend." + +She turned it over in her hand. + +"It's very handsome," she marvelled. "Such a pretty monogram! Does it +stand for Poor Idiot Boy?" + +"Eh?" said I. "P.I.B., you mean? No, that stands for Perfectly +Immaculate Behaviour. My friend gave it to me because, he said, I was so +good. And--oh, well, he added a few things to that,--partial sort of a +friend, you know,--and, really--Why, really, Miss Beechinor, it would +embarrass me to tell you what he added," I protested, and modestly waved +the subject aside. + +"Now that," my meditations ran, "is the absolute truth. Peter did tell +me I was good. And it really would embarrass me to tell her he added +'for-nothing.' So, this far, I have been a model of veracity." + +Then I took the case,--gaining thereby the bliss of momentary contact +with a velvet-soft trifle that seemed, somehow, to set my own grosser +hand a-tingle--and I cried: "Now, Miss Beechinor, you must show me the +pergola. I am excessively partial to pergolas." + +And in my soul, I wondered what a pergola looked like, and why on earth +I had been fool enough to waste the last three days in bedeviling Peter, +and how under the broad canopy of heaven I could ever have suffered from +the delusion that I had seen a really adorable woman before to-day. + + + 3 + +But, "She is entirely too adorable," I reasoned with myself, some +three-quarters of an hour later. "In fact, I regard it as positively +inconsiderate in any impecunious young person to venture to upset me in +the way she has done. Why, my heart is pounding away inside me like a +trip-hammer, and I am absolutely light-headed with good-will and charity +and benevolent intentions toward the entire universe! Oh, Avis, Avis, +you know you hadn't any right to put me in this insane state of mind!" + +I was, at this moment, retracing my steps toward the spot where I had +climbed the wall between Gridlington and Selwoode, but I paused now to +outline a reproachful gesture in the direction from which I came. + +"What do you mean by having such a name?" I queried, sadly. "Avis! Why, +it is the very soul of music, clear, and sweet and as insistent as a +bird-call, an unforgettable lyric in four letters! It is just the sort +of name a fellow cannot possibly forget. Why couldn't you have been +named Polly or Lena or Margaret, or something commonplace like that, +Avis--dear?" + +And the juxtaposition of these words appealing to my sense of euphony, I +repeated it, again and again, each time with a more relishing gusto. +"Avis dear! dear Avis! dear, _dear_ Avis!" I experimented. "Why, each +one is more hopelessly unforgettable than the other! Oh, Avis dear, why +are you so absolutely and entirely unforgettable all around? Why do you +ripple all your words together in that quaint fashion till it sounds +like a brook discoursing? Why did you crinkle up your eyes when I told +you that as yet unbotanised flower was a _Calycanthus arithmelicus_? And +why did you pout at me, Avis dear? A fellow finds it entirely too hard +to forget things like that. And, oh, dear Avis, if you only knew what +nearly happened when you pouted!" + +I had come to the wall by this, but again I paused to lament. + +"It is very inconsiderate of her, very thoughtless indeed. She might at +least have asked my permission, before upsetting my plans in life. I had +firmly intended to marry a rich woman, and now I am forming all sorts of +preposterous notions--" + +Then, on the bench where I had first seen her, I perceived a book. It +was the iron-gray book she had been reading when I interrupted her, and +I now picked it up with a sort of reverence. I regarded it as an +extremely lucky book. + +Subsequently, "Good Lord!" said I, aloud, "what luck!" + +For between the pages of Justus Miles Forman's _Journey's End_--serving +as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine +fashion,--lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle, +fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters +M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of +flourishes and irrelevant tendrils. + +"Now M. E. A. H. does not stand by any stretch of the imagination for +Avis Beechinor. Whereas it fits Margaret Elizabeth Anstruther Hugonin +uncommonly well. I wonder now--?" + +I wondered for a rather lengthy interval. + +"So Byam was right, after all. And Peter was right, too. Oh, Robert +Etheridge Townsend, your reputation must truly be malodorous, when at +your approach timid heiresses seek shelter under an alias! 'I have heard +a deal of you, Mr. Townsend'--ah, yes, she had heard. She thought I +would make love to her out of hand, I suppose, because she was +wealthy--" + +I presently flung back my head and laughed. + +"Eh, well! I will let no sordid considerations stand in the way of my +true interests. I will marry this Margaret Hugonin even though she is +rich. You have begun the comedy, my lady, and I will play it to the end. +Yes, I fell honestly in love with you when I thought you were nobody in +particular. So I am going to marry this Margaret Hugonin if she will +have me; and if she won't, I am going to commit suicide on her +door-step, with a pathetic little note in my vest-pocket forgiving her +in the most noble and wholesale manner for irrevocably blighting a +future so rich in promise. Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do if +she does not appreciate her wonderful good fortune. And if she'll have +me--why, I wouldn't change places with the Pope of Rome or the Czar of +all the Russias! Ah, no, not I! for I prefer, upon the whole, to be +immeasurably, and insanely, and unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. +Why, but just to think of an adorable girl like that having so +much money!" + +All in all, my meditations were incoherent but very pleasurable. + + + + +25. + +_He Advances in the Attack on Selwoode_ + + +"Well?" said Peter. + +"Well?" said I. + +"What's the latest quotation on heiresses?" Mr. Blagden demanded. "Was +she cruel, my boy, or was she kind? Did she set the dog on you or have +you thrashed by her father? I fancy both, for your present hilarity is +suggestive of a gentleman in the act of attendance on his own funeral." +And Peter laughed, unctuously, for his gout slumbered. + +"His attempts at wit," I reflectively confided to my wine-glass, "while +doubtless amiably intended, are, to his well-wishers, painful. I +daresay, though, he doesn't know it. We must, then, smile indulgently +upon the elephantine gambols of what he is pleased to describe as his +intellect." + +"Now, that," Peter pointed out, "is not what I would term a courteous +method of discussing a man at his own table. You are damn disagreeable +this morning, Bob. So I know, of course, that you have come another +cropper in your fortune-hunting." + +"Peter," said I, in admiration, "your sagacity at times is almost human! +I have spent a most enjoyable day, though," I continued, idly. "I have +been communing with Nature, Peter. She is about her spring-cleaning in +the woods yonder, and everywhere I have seen traces of her getting +things fixed for the summer. I have seen the sky, which was washed +overnight, and the sun, which has evidently been freshly enamelled. I +have seen the new leaves as they swayed and whispered over your +extensive domains, with the fret of spring alert in every sap cell. I +have seen the little birds as they hopped among said leaves and +commented upon the scarcity of worms. I have seen the buxom flowers as +they curtsied and danced above your flower-beds like a miniature +comic-opera chorus. And besides that--" + +"Yes?" said Peter, with a grin, "and besides that?" + +"And besides that," said I, firmly, "I have seen nothing." + +And internally I appraised this bloated Peter Blagden, and reflected +that this was the man whom Stella had loved; and I appraised myself, and +remembered that this had been the boy who once loved Stella. For, as I +have said, it was the twenty-eighth of April, the day that Stella had +died, two years ago. + + + 2 + +The next morning I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon the +wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. + +"For, in spite of appearances," I debated with myself, "it is barely +possible that the handkerchief was not hers. She may have borrowed it or +have got it by mistake, somehow. In which case, it is only reasonable to +suppose that she will miss it, and ask me if I saw it; on the contrary, +if the handkerchief is hers, she will naturally understand, when I +return the book without it, that I have feloniously detained this airy +gewgaw as a souvenir, as, so to speak, a _gage d'amour_. And, in that +event, she ought to be very much pleased and a bit embarrassed; and she +will preserve upon the topic of handkerchiefs a maidenly silence. Do you +know, Robert Etheridge Townsend, there is about you the making of a very +fine logician?" + +Then I consulted my watch, and subsequently grimaced. "It is also barely +possible," said I, "that Margaret may not come at all. In which +case--Margaret! Now, isn't that a sweet name? Isn't it the very sweetest +name in the world? Now, really, you know, it is queer her being named +Margaret--extraordinarily queer,--because Margaret has always been my +favourite woman's name. I daresay, unbeknownst to myself, I am a bit of +a prophet." + + + 3 + +But she did come. She was very much surprised to see me. + +"You!" she said, with a gesture which was practically tantamount to +disbelief. "Why, how extraordinary!" + +"You rogue!" I commented, internally: "you know it is the most natural +thing in the world." Aloud I stated: "Why, yes, I happened to notice you +forgot your book yesterday, so I dropped in--or, to be more accurate, +climbed up,--to return it." + +She reached for it. Our hands touched, with the usual result to my +pulses. Also, there were the customary manual tinglings. + +"You are very kind," was her observation, "for I am wondering which one +of the two he will marry." + +"Forman tells me he has no notion, himself." + +"Oh, then you know Justus Miles Forman! How nice! I think his stories +are just splendid, especially the way his heroes talk to photographs and +handkerchiefs and dead flowers--" + +Afterward she opened the book, and turned over its pages expectantly, +and flushed a proper shade of pink, and said nothing. + +And then, and not till then, my heart consented to resume its normal +functions. And then, also, "These iron spikes--" said its owner. + +"Yes?" she queried, innocently. + +"--so humpy," I complained. + +"Are they?" said she. "Why, then, how silly of you to continue to sit on +them!" + +The result of this comment was that we were both late for luncheon. + + + 4 + +By a peculiar coincidence, at twelve o'clock the following day, I +happened to be sitting on the same wall at the same spot. Peter said at +luncheon it was a queer thing that some people never could manage to be +on time for their meals. + +I fancy we can all form a tolerably accurate idea of what took place +during the next day or so. + +It is scarcely necessary to retail our conversations. We gossiped of +simple things. We talked very little; and, when we did talk, the most +ambitiously preambled sentences were apt to result in nothing more +prodigious than a wave of the hand, and a pause, and, not infrequently, +a heightened complexion. Altogether, then, it was not oppressively wise +or witty talk, but it was eminently satisfactory to its makers. + +As when, on the third morning, I wished to sit by Margaret on the bench, +and she declined to invite me to descend from the wall. + +"On the whole," said she, "I prefer you where you are; like all +picturesque ruins, you are most admirable at a little distance." + +"Ruins!"--and, indeed, I was not yet twenty-six,--"I am a comparatively +young man." + +As a concession, "In consideration of your past, you are tolerably well +preserved." + +"--and I am not a new brand of marmalade, either." + +"No, for that comes in glass jars; whereas, Mr. Townsend, I have heard, +is more apt to figure in family ones." + +"A pun, Miss Beechinor, is the base coinage of conversation tendered +only by the mentally dishonest." + +"--Besides, one can never have enough of marmalade." + +"I trust they give you a sufficiency of it in the nursery?" + +"Dear me, you have no idea how admirably that paternal tone sits upon +you! You would make an excellent father, Mr. Townsend. You really ought +to adopt someone. I wish you would adopt _me_, Mr. Townsend." + +I said I had other plans for her. Discreetly, she forbore to ask what +they were. + + + 5 + +"Avis--" + +"You must not call me that." + +"Why not? It's your name, isn't it" + +"Yes,--to my friends." + +"Aren't we friends--Avis?" + +"We! We have not known each other long enough, Mr. Townsend." + +"Oh, what's the difference? We are going to be friends, aren't +we--Avis?" + +"Why--why, I am sure I don't know." + +"Gracious gravy, what an admirable colour you have, Avis! Well,--I know. +And I can inform you, quite confidentially, Avis, that we are not going +to be--. friends. We are going to be--" + +"We are going to be late for luncheon," said she, in haste. +"Good-morning, Mr. Townsend." + + + 6 + +Yet, the very next day, paradoxically enough, she told me: + +"I shall always think of you as a very, very dear friend. But it is +quite impossible we should ever be anything else." + +"And why, Avis?" + +"Because--" + +"That"--after an interval--"strikes me as rather a poor reason. So, +suppose we say this June?" + +Another interval. + +"Well, Avis?" + +"Dear me, aren't those roses pretty? I wish you would get me one, Mr. +Townsend." + +"Avis, we are not discussing roses." + +"Well, they _are_ pretty." + +"Avis!"--reproachfully. + +Still another interval. + +"I--I hardly know." + +"Avis!"--with disappointment. + +"I--I believe--" + +"Avis!"--very tenderly. + +"I--I almost think so,--and the horrid man looks as if he thought so, +too!" + +There was a fourth interval, during which the girl made a complete and +careful survey of her shoes. + +Then, all in a breath, "It could not possibly be June, of course, and +you must give me until to-morrow to think about November," and a sudden +flutter of skirts. + +I returned to Gridlington treading on air. + + + 7 + +For I was, by this time, as thoroughly in love as Amadis of Gaul or +Aucassin of Beaucaire or any other hero of romance you may elect +to mention. + +Some two weeks earlier I would have scoffed at the notion of such a +thing coming to pass; and I could have demonstrated, logically enough, +that it was impossible for Robert Etheridge Townsend, with his keen +knowledge of the world and of the innumerable vanities and whims of +womankind, ever again to go the way of all flesh. But the problem, like +the puzzle of the Eleatic philosophers, had solved itself. "Achilles +cannot catch the tortoise," but he does. It was impossible for me to +fall uncomfortably deep in love--but I had done so. + +And it pricked my conscience, too, that Margaret should not know I was +aware of her identity. But she had chosen to play the comedy to the end, +and in common with the greater part of trousered humanity, I had, after +all, no insuperable objection to a rich wife; though, to do me justice, +I rarely thought of her, now, as Margaret Hugonin the heiress, but +considered her, in a more comprehensive fashion, as the one woman in the +universe whose perfections triumphantly overpeered the skyiest heights +of preciosity. + + + + +26. + + +_He Assists in the Diversion of Birds_ + +We met, then, in the clear May morning, with what occult trepidations I +cannot say. You may depend upon it, though, we had our emotions. + +And about us, spring was marshaling her pageant, and from divers nooks, +the weather-stained nymphs and fauns regarded us in candid, if +preoccupied, appraisement; and above us, the clipped ilex trees were +about a knowing conference. As for the birds, they were discussing us +without any reticence whatever, for, more favoured of chance than +imperial Solomon, they have been the confidants in any number of such +affairs, and regard the way of a man with a maid as one of the most +matter-of-fact occurrences in the world. + +"Here is he! here is she!" they shrilled. "See how they meet, see how +they greet! Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring!" And that we +two would immediately set to nest-building, they considered a foregone +conclusion. + + + 2 + +I had taken both her firm, warm hands in salutation, and held them, for +a breathing-space, between my own. And my own hands seemed to me two +very gross, and hulking, and raw, and red monstrosities, in contrast +with their dimpled captives, and my hands appeared, also, to shake +unnecessarily. + +"Now, in a moment," said I, "I am going to ask you something very +important. But, first, I have a confession to make." + +And her glad, shamed eyes bemocked me. "My lord of Burleigh!" she softly +breathed. "My liege Cophetua! _My_ king Cophetua! And did you think, +then, I was blind?" + +"Eh?" said I. + +"As if I hadn't known from the first!" the girl pouted; "as if I hadn't +known from the very first day when you dropped your cigarette case! Ah, +I had heard of you before, Peter!--of Peter, the misogynist, who was +ashamed to go a-wooing in his proper guise! Was it because you were +afraid I'd marry you for your money, Peter?--poor, timid Peter! But, oh, +Peter, Peter, what possessed you to take the name of that notorious +Robert Townsend?" she demanded, with uplifted forefinger. "Couldn't you +think of a better one, Peter?--of a more respectable one, Peter? It +really is a great relief to call you Peter at last. I've had to try so +hard to keep from doing it before, Peter." + +And in answer, I made an inarticulate sound. + +"But you were so grave about it," the girl went on, happily, "that I +almost thought you were telling the truth, Peter. Then my maid told +me--I mean, she happened to mention casually that Mr. Townsend's valet +had described his master to her as an extraordinarily handsome man. So, +then, of course, I knew you were Peter Blagden." + +"I perceive," said I, reflectively, "that Byam has been somewhat too +zealous. I begin to suspect, also, that kitchen-gossip is a mischancy +petard, and rather more than apt to hoist the engineer who employs it. +So, you thought I was Peter Blagden,--the rich Peter Blagden? Ah, yes!" + +Now the birds were caroling on a wager. "Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" +they sang. "Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring." + +But the girl gave a wordless cry at sight of the change in my face. "Oh, +how dear of you to care so much! I didn't mean that you were _ugly_, +Peter. I just meant you are so big and--and so like the baby that they +probably have on the talcum-powder boxes in Brobdingnag--" + +"Because I happen to be really Robert Townsend--the notorious Robert +Etheridge Townsend," I continued, with a smile. "I am sorry you were +deceived by the cigarette-case. I remember now; I borrowed it from +Peter. What I meant to confess was that I have known all along you were +Margaret Hugonin." + +"But I'm not," the girl said, in bewilderment. "Why--Why I _told_ you I +was Avis Beechinor." + +"This handkerchief?" I queried, and took it from my pocket. I had been +absurd enough to carry it next to my heart. + +"Oh--!" And now the tension broke, and her voice leapt to high, shrill, +half-hysterical speaking. + +"I am Avis Beechinor. I am a poor relation, a penniless cousin, a +dependent, a hanger-on, do you understand? And you--Ah, how--how funny! +Why, Margaret _always_ gives me her cast-off finery, the scraps, the +remnants, the clothes she is tired of, the misfit things,--so that she +won't be ashamed of me, so that I may be fairly presentable. She gave me +eight of those handkerchiefs. I meant to pick the monograms out with a +needle, you understand, because I haven't any money to buy such +handkerchiefs for myself. I remember now,--she gave them to me on that +day--that first day, and I missed one of them a little later on. Ah, +how--how funny!" she cried, again; "ah, how very, very funny! No, Mr. +Townsend, I am not an heiress,--I'm a pauper, a poor relation. No, you +have failed again, just as you did with Mrs. Barry-Smith and with Miss +Jemmett, Mr. Townsend. I--I wish you better luck the next time." + +I must have raised one hand as though in warding off a physical blow. +"Don't!" I said. + +And all the woman in her leapt to defend me. "Ah no, ah no!" she +pleaded, and her hands fell caressingly upon my shoulder; and she raised +a penitent, tear-stained face toward mine; "ah no, forgive me! I didn't +mean that altogether. It is different with a man. Of course, you must +marry sensibly,--of course you must, Mr. Townsend. It is I who am to +blame--why, of _course_ it's only I who am to blame. I have encouraged +you, I know--" + +"You haven't! you haven't" I barked. + +"But, yes,--for I came back that second day because I thought you were +the rich Mr. Blagden. I was so tired of being poor, so tired of being +dependent, that it simply seemed to me I could not stand it for a moment +longer. Ah, I tell you, I was tired, tired, tired! I was tired and sick +and worn out with it all!" + +I did not interrupt her. I was nobly moved; but even then at the back of +my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to this girl, so +young and desirable, and now so like a plaintive child who has been +punished and does not understand exactly why. + +"Mr. Townsend, you don't know what it means to a girl to be poor!--you +can't ever know, because you are only a man. My mother--ah, you don't +know the life I have led! You don't know how I have been hawked about, +and set up for inspection by the men who could afford to pay my price, +and made to show off my little accomplishments for them, and put through +my paces before them like any horse in the market! For we are poor, Mr. +Townsend,--we are bleakly, hopelessly poor. We are only hangers-on, you +see. And ever since I can remember, she has been telling me I must make +a rich marriage--_must_ make a rich marriage--" + +And the girl's voice trailed off into silence, and her eyes closed for a +moment, and she swayed a little on her feet, so that I caught her by +both arms. + +But, presently, she opened her eyes, with a wearied sigh, and presently +the two fortune-hunters stared each other in the face. + +"Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" sang the birds. "Can you see, can you see, +can you see? It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" They were extremely gay over +it, were the birds. + +After a little, though, I opened my lips, and moistened them two or +three times before I spoke. "Yes," said I, "I think I understand. We +have both been hangers-on. But that seems, somehow, a long while ago. +Yes, it was a knave who scaled that wall the first time,--one who needed +and had earned a kicking from here to Aldebaran. But I think that I +loved you from the very moment I saw you. Will you marry me, Avis?" + +And in her face there was a wonderful and tender change. "You care for +me--just me?" she breathed. + +"Just you," I answered, gravely. + +And I saw the start, and the merest ghost of a shiver which shook her +body, as she leaned toward me a little, almost in surrender; but, +quickly, she laughed. + +"That was very gentlemanly in you," she said; "but, of course, I +understand. Let us part friends, then,--Robert. Even if--if you really +cared, we couldn't marry. We are too poor." + +"Too poor!" I scoffed,--and my voice was joyous, for I knew now that it +was I she loved and not just Peter Blagden's money; "too _poor_, Avis! I +am to the contrary, an inordinately rich man, I tell you, for I have +your love. Oh you needn't try to deny it. You are heels over head in +love with me. And we have made, no doubt, an unsavoury mess of the past; +but the future remains to us. We are the earthen pots, you and I, who +wanted to swim with the brazen ones. Well! they haven't quite smashed +us, these big, stupid, brazen pots, but they have shown us that they +have the power to do it. And so we are going back where we belong--to +the poor man's country, Avis,--or, in any event, to the country of those +God-fearing, sober and honest folk who earn their bread and, just +occasionally, a pat of butter to season it." + +The world was very beautiful. I knew that I was excellent throughout and +unconquerable. So I moved more near to her. + +"For you will come with me, won't you, dear? Oh, you won't have quite so +many gowns in this new country, Avis, and, may be, not even a horse and +surrey of your own; but you will have love, and you will have happiness, +and, best of all, Avis, you will give a certain very undeserving man his +chance--his one sole chance--to lead a real man's life. Are you going +to deny him that chance, Avis?" + +Her gaze read me through and through; and I bore myself a bit proudly +under it; and it seemed to me that my heart was filled with love of her, +and that some sort of new-born manhood in Robert Etheridge Townsend was +enabling me to meet her big brown eyes unflinchingly. + +"It wouldn't be sensible," she wavered. + +I laughed at that. "Sensible! If there is one thing more absurd than +another in this very absurd world, it is common-sense. Be sensible and +you will be miserable, Avis, not to mention being disliked. Sensible! +Why, of course, it is not sensible. It is stark, rank, staring idiocy +for us two not to make a profitable investment of, we will say, our +natural endowments, when we come to marry. For what will Mrs. Grundy say +if we don't? Ah, what will she say, indeed? Avis, just between you and +me, I do not care a double-blank domino what Mrs. Grundy says. You will +obligingly remember that the car for the Hesperides is in the rear, and +that this is the third and last call. And in consequence--will you +marry me, Avis?" + +She gave me her hand frankly, as a man might have done. "Yes, Robert," +said Miss Beechinor, "and God helping us, we will make something better +of the future than we have of the past." + +In the silence that fell, one might hear the birds. "Sweet, sweet, +sweet!" they twittered. "Can you see, can you see, can you see? Their +lips meet. It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" + + + 3 + +But, by and by, she questioned me. "Are you sure--quite sure," she +queried, wistfully, "that you wouldn't rather have me Margaret Hugonin, +the heiress?" + +I raised a deprecatory hand. "Avis!" I reproached her; "Avis, Avis, how +little you know me! That was the solitary fly in the amber,--that I +thought I was to marry a woman named Margaret. For I am something of a +connoisseur in nomenclature, and Margaret has always--_always_--been my +pet detestation in the way of names." + +"Oh, what a child you are!" she said. + + + + +27. + +_He Calls, and Counsels, and Considers_ + + +"I am now" said I, in my soul, "quite immeasurably, and insanely, and +unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. Why, of course I am." + +This statement was advanced just two weeks later than the events +previously recorded. And the origin of it was the fact that I was now +engaged to Avis Beechinor though it was not as yet to be "announced"; +just this concession alone had Mrs. Beechinor wrested from an indignant +and, latterly, a tearful interview.... For I had called at Selwoode, in +due form; and after leaving Mrs. Beechinor had been pounced upon by an +excited and comely little person in black. + +"Don't you mind a word she said," this lady had exhorted, "because she +is _the_ Gadarene swine, and Avis has told me everything! Of course you +are to be married at once, and I only wish _I_ could find the only man +in the world who can keep me interested for four hours on a stretch and +send my pulse up to a hundred and make me feel those thrilly thrills +I've always longed for." + +"But surely--" said I. + +"No, I'm beginning to be afraid not, beautiful, though of course I used +to be crazy about Billy Woods; and then once I was engaged to another +man for a long time, and I was perfectly devoted to him, but he _never_ +made me feel a single thrilly thrill. And would you believe it, Mr. +Townsend?--after a while he came back, precisely as though he had been a +bad penny or a cat. He had been in the Boer War and came home just a +night before I left, wounded and promoted several times and completely +covered with glory and brass buttons. He came seven miles to see me, and +I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him, for I had on my best dress and was +feeling rather talkative. Well! at ten I was quite struck on him. At +eleven perfectly willing to part friends, and at twelve _crazy_ for him +to go. He stayed till half-past, and I didn't want to think of him for +days. And, by the way, I am Miss Hugonin, and I hope you and Avis will +be very happy. _Good-bye!_" + +"Good-bye!" said I. + + + 2 + +And that, oddly enough, was the one private talk I ever had with the +Margaret Hugonin whom, for some two weeks, I had believed myself to be +upon the verge of marrying; for the next time I conversed with her alone +she was Mrs. William Woods. + +"Oh, go away, Billy!" she then said, impatiently "How often will I have +to tell you it isn't decent to be always hanging around your wife? Oh, +you dear little crooked-necktied darling!"--and she remedied the fault +on tiptoe,--"_please_ run away and make love to somebody else, and be +sure to get her name right, so that I shan't assassinate the wrong +person,--because I want to tell this very attractive child all about +Avis, and not be bothered." And subsequently she did. + +But I must not forestall her confidences, lest I get my cart even +further in advance of my nominal Pegasus than the loosely-made +conveyance is at present lumbering. + + + 3 + +And meanwhile Peter Blagden and I had called at Selwoode once or twice +in unison and due estate. And Peter considered "Miss Beechinor a damn +fine girl, and Miss Hugonin too, only--" + +"Only," I prompted, between puffs, "Miss Hugonin keeps everybody, as my +old Mammy used to say, 'in a perpetual swivet.' I never understood what +the phrase meant, precisely, but I somehow always knew that it was +eloquent." + +"Just so," said Peter. "You prefer--ah--a certain amount of +tranquillity. I haven't been abroad for a long while," said Mr. Blagden; +and then, after another meditative pause: "Now Stella--well, Stella was +a damn sight too good for me, of course--" + +"She was," I affably assented. + +"--and I'd be the very last man in the world to deny it. But still you +_do_ prefer--" Then Peter broke off short and said: "My God, Bob! what's +the matter?" + +So I think I must have had the ill-taste to have laughed a little over +Mr. Blagden's magnanimity in regard to Stella's foibles. But I only +said: "Oh, nothing, Peter! I was just going to tell you that travelling +_does_ broaden the mind, and that you will find an overcoat +indispensable in Switzerland, and that during the voyage you ought to +keep in the open air as much as possible, and that you should give the +steward who waits on you at table at least ten shillings,--I was just +going to tell you, in fine, that you would be a fool to squander any +money on a guide-book, when I am here to give you all the necessary +pointers." + +"But I didn't mean to go to Europe exactly," said Mr. Blagden; "--I just +meant to go abroad in a general sense. Any place would be abroad, you +know, where people weren't always remembering how rich you were, and +weren't scrambling to marry you out of hand, but really cared, you know, +like she does. Oh, may be it _is_ bad form to mention it, but I couldn't +help seeing how she looked at you, Bob. And it waked something--Oh, I +don't know what I mean," said Peter--"it's just damn foolishness, +I suppose." + +"It's very far from that," I said; and I was honestly moved, just as I +always am when pathos, preferably grotesque, has caught me unprepared. +This millionaire was lonely, because of his millions, and Stella was +dead; and somehow I understood, and laid one hand upon his shoulder. + +"Oh, _you_ can't help it, I suppose, if all women love by ordinary +because he is so like another person, where as men love because she is +so different. My poor caliph, I would sincerely advise you to play the +fool just as you plan to do,--oh, anywhere,--and without even a Mesrour. +In fine go Bunburying at once. For very frankly, First Cousin of the +Moon, it is the one thing worth while in life." + +"I half believe I will," said Peter.... So he was packing in the interim +during which I pretended to be writing, and was in reality fretting to +think that, whilst Avis was in England by this, I could not decently +leave America until those last five chapters were finished. So, in part +as an excuse for not scrawling the dullest of nonsense and subsequently +tearing it up, I fell to considering the unquestionable fact that I was +in love with Avis, and upon the verge of marrying her, and was in +consequence, as a matter of plain logic, deliriously happy. + +"For when you are in love with a woman you, of course, want to marry her +more than you want anything else. In nature, it is a serious and--well, +an almost irretrievable business. And I shall have to cultivate the +domestic virtues and smoke cheaper cigarettes and all that, but I shall +be glad to do every one of these things, for her sake--after a while. I +shall probably enjoy doing them." + +And I read Bettie Hamlyn's letter for the seventeenth time.... + + + 4 + +For Bettie had answered the wild rhapsody which I wrote to tell her how +much in love I was with Elena Barry-Smith. And in the nature of things I +had not written Bettie again to tell her I was, and by a deal the more, +in love with Avis Beechinor. The task was delicate, the reasons for my +not unnatural change were such as you must transmit in a personal +interview during which you are particularly boyish and talk very fast. + +Besides, I do not like writing letters; and moreover, there was no real +need to write. I was going to Gridlington; what more natural than to +ride over to Fairhaven some clear morning and tell Bettie everything? I +pictured her surprise and her delight at seeing me, and reflected it +would be unfair to her to render an inaccurate account of matters, such +as any letter must necessarily give. + +Only, first, there was the garden of Peter's aunt,--which sounds like +an introductory French exercise,--and then Avis came. And, somehow, I +had not, in consequence, traversed the scant nine miles that lay as yet +between me and Bettie Hamlyn. I kept on meaning to do it the next day. + +And the next day after this I really did. + +"For I ought to tell Bettie about everything," I reflected. "No matter +if the engagement is a secret, I ought to tell Bettie about it." + + + 5 + +When I had done so, Bettie shook her head. "Oh, Robin, Robin!" she said, +"how did I ever come to raise a child that doesn't know his own mind for +as much as two minutes? And how dared that Barry-Smith person to slap +you, I would like to know." + +"Now you're jealous, Bettie. You are thinking she infringed upon an +entirely personal privilege, and you resent it." + +"Well,--but I've the right to, you see, and she hadn't. I consider her +to be a bold-faced jig. And I don't approve of this Avis person either, +you understand; but we poor mothers are always being annoyed by slushy, +mushy Avises. I suppose there's a reason for it. She'll throw you over, +you know, as soon as _her_ mother has had an inning or two. That's why +she took her to Europe," Bettie explained, with a fine confusion of +personalities. "Only she just wanted any quiet place where she could +take aromatic spirits of ammonia and point out between doses that she +has given up her entire life to her child and has never made any demands +on her and hasn't the strength to argue with her, because her heart is +simply broken. We mothers always say that; and the funny part is that if +you say it often enough it invariably works far better than any possible +argument." + +I told her she was talking nonsense, and she said, irrelevantly enough: +"Setebos, and Setebos, and Setebos! I don't think very highly of Setebos +sometimes, because He muddles things so. Oh, well, I shan't cry Willow. +Besides there _aren't_ any sycamore-trees in the garden. So let's go +into the garden, dear. That sounds as if I ate in the back pantry, +doesn't it? Of course you aren't of any account any more, and you never +will be, but at least you don't look at people as though they were a new +sort of bug whenever they have just thought a sentence or two and then +gone on, without bothering to say it." + +So we went into Bettie's garden. It had not changed.... + + + 6 + +Nothing had changed. It was as though I had somehow managed, after all, +to push back the hands of the clock. Fairhaven accepted me incuriously. +I was only "an old student." In addition, I was vaguely rumoured to +write "pieces" for the magazines. Probably I did; "old students" were +often prone to vagaries after leaving King's College; for instance, they +told me, Ralph Means was a professional gambler, and Ox Selwyn had +lately gone to Shanghai and had settled there,--and Shanghai, in common +with most other places, Fairhaven accorded the negative tribute of just +not absolutely disbelieving in its existence. + +Nothing had changed. The Finals were over; and with the noisy exodus of +the college-boys, Fairhaven had sunk contentedly into an even deeper +stupor, as Fairhaven always does in summer. And, for the rest, the +unpaved sidewalks were just as dusty, the same deep ruts and the puddles +which never dry, not even in mid-August, adorned Fairhaven's single +street; the comfortable moss upon Fairhaven's roofs had not varied by a +shade; and George Washington or Benjamin Franklin might have stepped out +of any one of those brass-knockered doorways without incongruity and +without finding any noticeable innovation to marvel at. + +Nothing had changed. In the precise middle of the campus Lord Penniston, +our Governor in Colonial days, still posed, in dingy marble; and the +fracture of the finger I had inadvertently broken off, the night that +Billy Woods and I painted the statue all over, in six colours, was white +and new-looking. Kathleen Eppes had married her Spaniard and had left +Fairhaven; otherwise the same girls were already planning their toilets +for the Y.M.C.A. reception in October, which formally presents the "new +students" to society at large; and presently these girls would be going +to the germans or the Opera House with the younger brother of the boy +who used to take them thither.... + +Nothing had changed; not even I was changed. For I had soon discovered +that Bettie Hamlyn did not care a pin for me in myself. She was simply +very fond of me because, at times, I reminded her of a boy who had gone +to King's College; and her reception of me, for the first two days, was +unmistakably provisional. + +"Very well!" I said. + +And I did it. For I knew how difficult it was to deceive Bettie, and in +consequence all my faculties rose to the challenge. I did not merely +mimic my former self, I was compelled, almost, to believe I was indeed +that former self, because not otherwise could I get Bettie Hamlyn's +toleration. Had I paused even momentarily to reflect upon the excellence +of my acting, she would have known. So I resolutely believed I was being +perfectly candid; and with constant use those older tricks of speech and +gesture and almost of thought, at first laborious mimicry, became +well-nigh involuntary. + +In fine, we could not wipe away five years, but with practice we found +that you would very often forget them, and for quite a while.... + +I had explained to Bettie's father I was going to board with them that +summer. Had I not been so haphazard in the progress of this narrative, I +would have earlier announced that Bettie's father was the Latin +professor at King's College. He was very old and vague, and his general +attitude toward the universe was that of remote recollection of having +noticed something of the sort before. Professor Hamlyn, therefore, told +me he was glad to hear of my intended stay beneath his roof; hazarded +the speculation that I had written a book which he meant to read upon +the very first opportunity; blinked once or twice; and forthwith lapsed +into consideration of some Pliocene occurrence which, if you were to +judge by the expression of his mild old countenance, he did not find +entirely satisfactory.... + +So I spent three months in Fairhaven; and Bettie and I read all the old +books over again, and were perfectly happy. + + + 7 + +And what I wrote in those last five chapters of my book was so good that +in common decency I was compelled to alter the preceding twenty-nine and +bring them a bit nearer to Bettie's standard. For I was utilising +Bettie's ideas. She did not have the knack of putting them on paper; +that was my trivial part, as I now recognised with a sort of scared +reverence. + +"Of course, though, you had to meddle," I would scold at her. "I had +meant the infernal thing to be a salable book. To-day it is just a +stenographic report of how these people elected to behave. I haven't +anything to do with it. I wash my hands of it. I consider you, in fine, +a cormorant, a conscienceless marauder, a meddlesome Mattie, _and_ a +born dramatist." + +"But, it's _much_ better than anything you've ever done, Robin--" + +"That is what I'm grumbling about. I consider it very unfeeling of you +to write better novels than I do," I retorted. "But, oh, how good that +scene is!" I said, a little later. + +"Let's see--'For you, dear clean-souled girl, were born to be the wife +of a strong man, and the mother of his dirty children'--no, it's +'sturdy', but then you hardly ever cross your T's. And where he goes on +to tell her he can't marry her, because he is artistic, and she is too +practical for them to be real mates, and all that other +feeble-mindedness? Dear me, did I forget to tell you we were going to +cut that out?" + +"But I particularly like that part--" + +"Do you?" said Bettie, as her pen scrunched vicious lines through it. +Then she said: "I only hope she had the civility and self-control not to +laugh until you had gone away. And 'We irrelevant folk that design all +useless and beautiful things,' indeed! No, I couldn't have blamed her if +she laughed right out. I wonder if you will never understand that what +you take to be your love for beautiful things is really just a dislike +of ugly ones? Oh, I've no patience with you! And wanting to print it in +a book, too, instead of being content to make yourself ridiculous in +tete-a-tetes with minxes that don't especially matter!" + +"Well--! Anyhow, I agree with you that, thanks to your editing and +carping and general scurrility, this book is going to be," I meekly +stated, "a little better than _The Apostates_ and not just 'pretty much +like any other book'." + +"Do you know that's just what I was thinking," said Bettie, dolefully. +She clasped both hands behind her crinkly small black head, and in that +queer habitual pose appraised me, from between her elbows, in that way +which always made me feel I had better be careful. "Damn you!" was +her verdict. + +"Whence this unmaidenliness?" I queried, with due horror. + +"You are trying to prove to me that it has been worth while. This nasty +book is coming alive, here in our own eight-cornered room, with a horrid +crawly life of its own that it would never have had if you hadn't been +learning things my boy knew nothing about. That's what you are crowing +in my face, when you keep quiet and smirk. Oh, but I know you!" + +"You do think, then, that, between you and me, it is really coming +alive?" + +"Yes,--if that greatly matters to the fat literary gent that I don't +care for greatly. Yes, the infernal thing will be a Book, with quite a +sizable B. I am feeding its maw with more important things than a few +ideas, though. The thing is a monster that isn't worth its keep. For my +boy was worth more than a Book," she said, forlornly,--"oh, +oceans more!" + + + 8 + +All in all, we were a deal more than happy during these three very hot +months. It was a sort of Lotus Eaters' existence, shared by just us two, +with Josiah Clarriker intruding occasionally, and with echoes from the +outer world, when heard at all, resounding very dimly and unimportantly. +I began almost to assume, as Fairhaven tacitly assumed, that there was +really no outer world, or none at least to be considered seriously.... + +For instance: Marian Winwood had come to Lichfield, and wrote me from +there, "hoping that we would renew an acquaintance which she remembered +so pleasurably." It did not seem worth while, of course, to answer the +minx; I decided, at a pinch, to say that the Fairhaven mail-service was +abominable, and that her letter had never reached me. But the young +fellow who two years ago had wandered about the Green Chalybeate with +her had become, now, as unreal as she. I glimpsed the couple, with +immeasurable aloofness, as phantoms flickering about the mirage of a +brook, throwing ghostly bread crumbs to Lethean minnows. + +And then, too, when the police caught Ned Lethbury that summer, it +hardly seemed worth while to wonder about his wife. For she was, +inexplicably, with him, all through the trial at Chiswick, you may +remember, though you were probably more interested at the time by the +Humbert trial in Paris. In any event, no rumor came to me in Fairhaven +to connect Amelia Lethbury with Nadine Neroni, but, instead, a deal of +journalistic pity and sympathy for her, the faithful, much-enduring +wife. Still quite a handsome woman, they said, for all her suffering and +poverty.... And when he went to the penitentiary, Amelia Lethbury +disappeared, nobody knew whither, except that I suspected Anton von +Anspach knew. I could not explain the mystery. I did not greatly care +to, for to me it did not seem important, now.... + + + 9 + +Meantime, I meditated. + +"I am in love with Avis--oh, granted! I am not the least bit in love +with--we will euphemistically say 'anyone else.' But confound it! I am +coming to the conclusion that marrying a woman because you happen to be +in love with her is about as logical a proceeding as throwing the cat +out of the window because the rhododendrons are in bloom. Why, if I +marry Avis I shall probably have to live with her the rest of my life! + +"What if that obsolete notion of Schopenhauer's were true after +all,--that love is a blind instinct which looks no whit toward the +welfare of the man and woman it dominates, but only to the equipment a +child born of them would inherit? What if, after all, love tends, +without variation, to yoke the most incompatible in order that the +average type of humanity may be preserved? Then the one passion we +esteem as sacred would be simply the deranged condition of any other +beast in rutting-time. Then we, with the pigs and sparrows, would be +just so many pieces on the chess-board, and our evolutions would be just +a friendly trial of skill between what we call life and death. + +"I love Avis Beechinor. But I have loved, in all sincerity, many other +women, and I rejoice to-day, unfeignedly, that I never married any of +them. For marriage means a life-long companionship, a long, long journey +wherein must be adjusted, one by one, each tiniest discrepancy between +the fellow-wayfarers; and always a pebble if near enough to the eye will +obscure a mountain. + +"Why, Avis cannot attempt a word of four syllables without coming at +least once to grief! It is a trifle of course, but in a life-long +companionship there are exactly fourteen thousand trifles to one event +of importance. And deuce take it! the world is populated by men and +women, not demi-gods; the poets are specious and abandoned rhetoricians; +for it never was, and never will be, possible to love anybody 'to the +level of every-day's Most quiet need by sun or candlelight.' + +"Or not to me at least. + +"In a sentence, when it comes to a life-long companionship, I prefer not +the woman who would make me absolutely happy for a twelvemonth, but +rather the woman with whom I could chat contentedly for twenty years, +and who would keep me to the mark. I am rather tired of being futile; +and not for any moral reason, but because it is not worthy of _me_. In +fine, I do not want to die entirely. I want to leave behind some not +inadequate expression of Robert Etheridge Townsend, and I do not care at +all what people say of it, so that it is here when I am gone. Oh, Stella +understood! 'I want my life to count, I want to leave something in the +world that wasn't there before I came.' + +"Now Bettie--" + +I arose resolutely. "I had much better go for a long, and tedious, and +jolting, and universally damnable walk. Bettie would make something +vital of me--if I could afford her the material--" + +And I grinned a little. "'Go, therefore, now, and work; for there shall +no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks.' Yes, +you would certainly have need of a miracle, dear Bettie--" + + + 10 + +I started for that walk I was to take. But Dr. Jeal and Colonel Snawley +were seated in armchairs in front of Clarriker's Emporium, just as they +had been used to sit there in my college days, enjoying, as the Colonel +mentioned, "the cool of the evening," although to the casual observer +the real provider of their pleasure would have appeared to be an +unlimited supply of chewing-tobacco. + +So I lingered here, and garnered, to an accompaniment of leisurely +expectorations, much knowledge as to the fall crops and the carryings-on +of the wife of a celebrated general, upon whose staff the Colonel had +served during the War,--and there has never been in the world's history +but one war, so far as Fairhaven is concerned,--and how the Colonel +walked right in on them, and how it was hushed up. + +Then we discussed the illness of Pope Leo and what everybody knew about +those derned cardinals, and the riots in Evansville, and the Panama +Canal business, and the squally look of things at Port Arthur, and +attributed all these imbroglios, I think, to the Republican +administration. Even at our bitterest, though, we conceded that +"Teddy's" mother was a Bulloch, and that his uncle fired the last shot +before the Alabama went down. And that inclined us to forgive him +everything, except of course, the Booker Washington luncheon. + +Then half a block farther on, Mrs. Rabbet wanted to know if I had ever +seen such weather, and to tell me exactly what Adrian, Junior--no longer +little Adey, no indeed, sir, but ready to start right in at the College +session after next, and as she often said to Mr. Rabbet you could hardly +believe it,--had observed the other day, and quick as a flash too, +because it would make such a funny story. Only she could never quite +decide whether it happened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, so that, after +precisely seven digressions on this delicate point, the denouement of +the tale, I must confess, fell rather flat. + +And then Mab Spessifer demanded that I come up on the porch and draw +some pictures for her. The child was waiting with three sheets of paper +and a chewed pencil all ready, just on the chance that I might pass; and +you cannot very well refuse a cripple who adores you and is not able to +play with the other brats. You get instead into a kind of habit of +calling every day and trying to make her laugh, because she is such a +helpless little nuisance. + +And tousled mothers weep over you in passageways and tell you how good +you are, and altogether the entire affair is tedious; but having started +it, you keep it up, somehow. + + + 11 + +In fine, it is a symbol that I never took the walk which was to dust the +cobwebs from my brain and make me just like all the other persons, thick +about me, who grow up, and mate, and beget, and die, in the incurious +fashion of oxen, without ever wondering if there is any plausible reason +for doing it; and my brief progress was upon the surface very like that +of the bedeviled fellow in _Les Facheux_. Yet I enjoyed it somehow. +Never to be hurried, and always to stop and talk with every person whom +you meet, upon topics in which no conceivable human being could possibly +be interested, may not sound attractive, but in Fairhaven it is the +rule; and, oddly enough, it breeds, in practice, a sort of family +feeling,--if only by entitling everybody to the condoned and +matter-of-course stupidity of aunts and uncles,--which is not really all +unpleasant. + +So I went home at half-past seven, to supper and to Bettie, in a quite +contented frame of mind. It did not seem conceivable that any world so +beautiful and stupid and well-meaning could have either the heart or the +wit to thwart my getting anything I really wanted; and the thought +elated me. + +Only I did not know, precisely, what I wanted. + + + + +28. + +_He Participates in Sundry Confidences_ + + +I was in the act of writing to Avis when the letter came; and I put it +aside unopened, until after supper, for I had never found the letters of +Avis particularly interesting reading. + +"It will be what they call a newsy letter, of course. I do wish that +Avis would not write to me as if she were under oath to tell the entire +truth. She communicates so many things which actually happened that it +reads like a 'special correspondent' in some country town writing for a +Sunday morning's paper,--and with, to a moral certainty, the word +'separate' lurking somewhere spelt with three E's, and an 'always' with +two L's, and at least one 'alright.' No, my dear, I am at present too +busy expressing my adoration for you to be exposed to such +inharmonious jars." + +Then I wrote my dithyrambs and sealed them. Subsequently I poised the +unopened letter between my fingers. + +"But remember that if she were here to _say_ all this to you, your +pulses would be pounding like the pistons of an excited locomotive! +Nature, you are a jade! I console myself with the reflection that it is +frequently the gift of facile writing which makes the co-respondent, +--but I _do_ wish you were not such a hazardous matchmaker. Oh, well! +there was no pleasant way of getting out of it, and that particular +Rubicon is miles behind." + +I slit the envelope. + +I read the letter through again, with redoubling interest, and presently +began to laugh. "So she begins to fear we have been somewhat hasty, asks +a little time for reconsideration of her precise sentiment toward me, +and feels meanwhile in honour bound to release me from our engagement! +Yet if upon mature deliberation--eh, oh, yes! twaddle! _and_ +commonplace! and dashed, of course, with a jigger of Scriptural +quotation!" + +I paused to whistle. "There is strange milk in this cocoanut, could I +but discern its nature." + +I did, some four weeks later, when with a deal of mail I received the +last letter I was ever to receive from Avis Beechinor. + +Wrote Avis: + +DEAR ROBERT: + +Thank you very much for returning my letters and for the beautiful +letter you wrote me. No I believe it better you should not come on to +see me now and talk the matter over as you suggest because it would +probably only make you unhappy. And then too I am sure some day you will +be friends with me and a very good and true one. I return the last +letter you sent me in a seperate envelope, and I hope it will reach you +alright, but as I destroy all my mail as soon as I have read it I cannot +send you the others. I have promised to marry Mr. Blagden and we are +going to be married on the fifteenth of this month very quietly with no +outsiders. So good bye Robert. I wish you every success and happiness +that you may desire and with all my heart I pray you to be true to your +better self. God bless you allways. Your sincere friend, + +AVIS M. BEECHINOR + +I indulged in a low and melodious whistle. "The little slut!" + +Then I said: "Peter Blagden again! I _do_ wish that life would try to be +a trifle more plausible. Why, but, of course! Peter meant to go chasing +after her the minute my back was turned, and that was why he salved his +conscience by presenting me with that thousand 'to get married on,' Even +at the time it seemed peculiarly un-Petrine. Well, anyhow, in simple +decency, he cannot combine the part of Shylock with that of Judas, and +expect to have back his sordid lucre, so I am that much to the good, +apart from everything else. Yes, I can see how it all happened,--and I +can foresee what is going to happen, too, thank heaven!" + +For, as drowning men are said to recollect the unrecallable, I had +vividly seen in that instant the two months' action just overpast, and +its three participants,--the thin-lipped mother, the besotted +millionaire, and the girl shakily hesitant between ideals and the habits +of a life-time. + +"But I might have known the mother would win," I reflected: "Why, didn't +Bettie say she would?" + +I refolded the letter I had just read, to keep it as a salutary relic; +and then: + +"Dear Avis!" said I; "now heaven bless your common-sense! and I don't +especially mind if heaven blesses your horrific painted hag of a mother, +also, if they've a divine favor or two to spare." + +And I saw there was a letter from Peter Blagden, too. It said, in part: + +I am everything that you think me, Bob. My one defence is that I could +not help it. I loved her from the moment I saw her ... You did not +appreciate her, you know. You take, if you will forgive my saying it, +too light a view of life to value the love of a good woman properly, and +Avis noticed it of course. Now I do understand what the unselfish love +of woman means, because my first wife was an angel, as you know ... It +is a comfort to think that my dear saint in heaven knows I am not quite +so lonely now, and is gladdened by that knowledge. I know she would have +wished it-- + +I read no further. "Oh, Stella! they have all forgotten. They all insist +to-day that you were an angel, and they have come almost to believe that +you habitually flew about the world in a night-gown, with an Easter lily +in your hand--But I remember, dear. I know you'd scratch her eyes out. I +know you'd do it now, if only you were able, because you loved this +Peter Blagden." + +Thereafter I must have wasted a full quarter of an hour in recalling all +sorts of bygone unimportant happenings, and I was not bothering one way +or the other about Avis ... + + + 3 + +In the moonlighted garden I found Bettie. But with her was Josiah +Clarriker, Fairhaven's leading business-man. He shook hands, and +whatever delight he may have felt at seeing me was admirably controlled. + +"Now don't let me interfere with your eloquence," I urged, "but go right +on with the declamation." + +"I make no pretension to eloquence, Mr. Townsend. I was merely recalling +to Miss Hamlyn's attention the beautiful lines of our immortal poet, +Owen Meredith, which run, as I remember them: + + "'I thought of the dress she wore that time + That we stood under the cypress-tree together, + In that land, in that clime, + And I turned and looked, and she was sitting there + In the box next to the stage, and dressed + In that muslin dress, with that full soft hair + And that jessamine blossom at her breast.'" + +"But I am not permitted to wear flowers when Mr. Townsend is about," +said Bettie. "Did you know, Jo, that he is crazy about that too?" + +"Well--! Anyhow, Meredith is full of very beautiful sentiments," said +Mr. Clarriker, "and I have always been particularly fond of that piece. +It is called _'Ox Italians.'_" + +"Yes, I have been previously affected by it," said I, "and very deeply +moved." + +"And so--as I was about to observe, Miss Hamlyn,--you will notice that +the poet Meredith gowned one of the most beautiful characters he ever +created in white, and laid great stress upon the fact that her beauty +was immeasurably enhanced by the dainty simplicity of her muslin dress. +This fabric, indeed, suits all types of faces and figures, and is +Economical too, especially the present popular mercerised waistings and +vestings that are fast invading the realm of silks. We show at our +Emporium an immense quantity of these beautiful goods, in more than a +hundred styles, elaborate enough for the most formal occasions, at fifty +and seventy-five cents a yard; and--as I was about to observe, Miss +Hamlyn,--I would indeed esteem it a favour should you permit me to send +up a few samples to-morrow, from which to make a selection at, I need +not add, my personal expense. + +"You see, Mr. Townsend," he continued, more inclusively, "we have no +florists in Fairhaven, and I have heard that candy--" He talked on, +hygienically now.... + + + 4 + +"And that," said I, when Mr. Clarriker had gone, "is what you are +actually considering! I have always believed Dickens invented that man +to go into one of the latter chapters of _Edwin Drood_. It is the +solitary way of explaining certain people,--that they were invented by +some fagged novelist who unfortunately died before he finished the book +they were to be locked up in. As it was, they got loose, to annoy you by +their incredibility. No actual human being, you know, would suggest a +white shirtwaist as a substitute for a box of candy." + +"Oh, I have seen worse," said Bettie, as in meditation. "It's just Jo's +way of expressing the fact that I am stupendously beautiful in white. +Poor dear, my loveliness went to his head, I suppose, and got tangled +with next week's advertisement for the _Gazette_. Anyhow, he is a deal +more considerate than you. For instance, I was crazy to go to the show +on Tuesday night, and Josiah Clarriker was the only person who thought +to ask me, even though he is one of those little fireside companions who +always get so syrupy whenever they take you anywhere that you simply +can't stand it. The combination both prevented my acceptance and +accentuated his devotion; and quite frankly, Robin, I am thinking of +him, for at bottom Jo is a dear." + +I laid one hand on each of Bettie's shoulders; and it was in my mind at +the time that this was the gesture of a comrade, and had not any sexual +tinge at all. I wished that Bettie had better teeth, of course, but that +could not be helped. + +"You are to marry me as soon as may be possible," said I, "and +preferably to-morrow afternoon. Avis has thrown me over, God bless her, +and I am free,--until of course you take charge of me. There was a +clever woman once who told me I was not fit to be the captain of my +soul, though I would make an admirable lieutenant. She was right. It is +understood you are to henpeck me to your heart's content and to my +ultimate salvation." + +"I shall assuredly not marry you," observed Miss Hamlyn, "until you have +at least asked me to do so. And besides, how dared she throw +you over--!" + +"But I don't intend to ask you, for I have not a single bribe to offer. +I merely intend to marry you. I am a ne'er-do-well, a debauchee, a +tippler, a compendium of all the vices you care to mention. I am not a +bit in love with you, and as any woman will forewarn you, I am sure to +make you a vile husband. Your solitary chance is to bully me into +temperance and propriety and common-sense, with precisely seven million +probabilities against you, because I am a seasoned and accomplished +liar. Can you do that bullying, Bettie,--and keep it up, I mean?" + +And she was silent for a while. "Robin," she said, at last, "you'll +never understand why women like you. You will always think it is because +they admire you for some quality or another. It is really because they +pity you. You are such a baby, riding for a fall--No, I don't mean the +boyishness you trade upon. I have known for a long while all that was +just put on. And, oh, how hard you've tried to be a boy of late!" + +"And I thought I had fooled you, Bettie! Well, I never could. I am +sorry, though, if I have been annoyingly clumsy--" + +"But you were doing it for me," she said. "You were doing it because you +thought I'd like it. Oh, can't you understand that I _know_ you are +worthless, and that you have never loved any human being in all your +life except that flibbertigibbet Stella Blagden, and that I know, too, +you have so rarely failed me! If you were an admirable person, or a +person with commendable instincts, or an unselfish person, or if you +were even in love with me, it wouldn't count of course. It is because +you are none of these things that it counts for so much to see you +honest with me--sometimes,--and even to see you scheming and +play-acting--and so transparently!--just to bring about a little +pleasure for me. Oh, Robin, I am afraid that nowadays I love you +_because_ of your vices!" + +"And I you because of your virtues," said I; "so that there is no +possible apprehension of either affection ever going into bankruptcy. +Therefore the affair is settled; and we will be married in November." + +"Well," Bettie said, "I suppose that somebody has to break you of this +habit of getting married next November--" + +Then, and only then, my hands were lifted from her shoulders. And we +began to talk composedly of more impersonal matters. + + + 5 + +It was two days later that John Charteris came to Fairhaven; and I met +him the same afternoon upon Cambridge street. The little man stopped +short and in full view of the public achieved what, had he been a child, +were most properly describable as making a face at me. + +"That," he explained, "expresses the involuntary confusion of Belial on +re-encountering the anchorite who escaped his diabolical machinations. +But, oh, dear me! haven't you been translated yet? Why, I thought the +carriage would have called long ago, just as it did for Elijah." + +"Now, don't be an ass, John. I _was_ rather idiotic, I suppose--" + +"Of course you were," he said, as we shook hands. "It is your unfailing +charm. You silly boy, I came from the pleasantest sort of house-party at +Matocton because I heard you were here, and I have been foolish enough +to miss you. Anne and the others don't arrive until October. Oh, you +adorable child, I have read the last book, and every one of the short +stories as well, and I want to tell you that in their own peculiar line +the two volumes are masterpieces. Anne wept and chuckled over them, and +so did I, with an equal lack of restraint; only it was over the noble +and self-sacrificing portions that Anne wept, and she laughed at the +places where you were droll intentionally. Whereas I--!! Well, we will +let the aposiopesis stand." + +"Of course," I sulkily observed, "if you have simply come to Fairhaven +to make fun of me, I can only pity your limitations." + +He spoke in quite another voice. "You silly boy, it was not at all for +that. I think you must know I have read what you have published thus far +with something more than interest; but I wanted to tell you this in so +many words. _Afield_ is not perhaps an impeccable masterwork, if one may +be thus brutally frank; but the woman--modeled after discretion will not +inquire whom,--is distinctly good. And what, with you only twenty-five, +does _A field_ not promise! Child, you have found your metier. Now I +shall look forward to the accomplishment of what I have always felt sure +that you could do. I am very, very glad. More so than I can say. And I +had thought you must know this without my saying it." + +The man was sincere. And I was very much pleased, and remembered what +invaluable help he could give me on my unfinished book, and what fun it +would be to go over the manuscript with him. And, in fine, we became +again, upon the spot as it were, the very best of friends. + + + 6 + +It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against. The little man had +many tales to tell me of those dissolute gay people we had known and +frolicked with; indeed, I think that he was trying to allure me back to +the old circles, for he preoccupied his life by scheming to bring about +by underhand methods some perfectly unimportant consummation, which very +often a plain word would have secured at once. But now he swore he was +not "making tea." + +That had always been a byword between us, by the way, since I applied to +him the phrase first used of Alexander Pope--"that he could not make tea +without a conspiracy." And it may be that in this case Charteris spoke +the truth, and had come to Fairhaven just for the pleasure of seeing me, +for certainly he must have had some reason for leaving the Musgraves' +house-party so abruptly. + +"You are very well rid of the Hardresses," he adjudged. "Did I tell you +of the male one's exhibition of jealousy last year! I can assure you +that the fellow now entertains for me precisely the same affection I +have always borne toward cold lamb. It is the real tragedy of my life +that Anne is ethically incapable of letting a week pass without +partaking of a leg of mutton. She is not particularly fond of it, and +indeed I never encountered anybody who was; she has simply been reared +with the notion that 'people' always have mutton once a week. What, have +you never noticed that with 'people,' to eat mutton once a week is a +sort of guarantee of respectability? I do not refer to chops of course, +which are not wholly inconsistent with depravity. But the ability to eat +mutton in its roasted form, by some odd law of nature, connotes the +habit of paying your pew-rent regularly and of changing your flannels on +the proper date. However, I was telling you about Jasper Hardress--" And +Charteris repeated the story of their imbroglio in such a fashion that +it sounded farcical. + +"But, after all, John, you _did_ make love to her." + +"I have forgotten what was exactly the last observation of the lamented +Julius Caesar," Mr. Charteris leisurely observed,--"though I remember +that at the time it impressed me as being uncommonly appropriate--But to +get back: do you not see that this clause ought to come here, at the end +of the sentence? And, child, on all my ancient bended knees, I implore +you to remember that 'genuine' does not mean the same thing as +'real'...." + + + 7 + +Meanwhile he and Bettie got on together a deal better than I had ever +anticipated. + +Charteris, though, received my confidence far too lightly. "You are +going to marry her! Why, naturally! Ever since I encountered you, you +have been 'going to marry' somebody or other. It is odd I should have +written about the Foolish Prince so long before I knew you. But then, +_I_ helped to mould you--a little--" + +And resolutely Bettie said the most complimentary things about him. But +I trapped her once. + +"Still," I observed, when he had gone, and she had finished telling me +how delightful Mr. Charteris was, "still he shan't ever come to _our_ +house, shall he?" + +"Why, of course not!" said Bettie, who was meditating upon some cosmic +question which required immediate attention. And then she grew very +angry and said, "Oh, you _dog!_" and threw a sofa-cushion at me. + +"I hate that wizened man," she presently volunteered, "more bitterly +than I do any person on earth. For it was he who taught you to adopt +infancy as a profession. He robbed me. And Setebos permitted it. And now +you are just a man I am going to marry--Oh, well!" said Bettie, more +sprightlily, "I was getting on, and you are rather a dear even in that +capacity. Only I wonder what _becomes_ of all the first choices?" + +"They must keep them for us somewhere, Bettie dear. And that is probably +the explanation of everything." + +And a hand had snuggled into mine. "You do understand without having to +have it all spelt out for you. And that's a comfort, too. But, oh," said +Bettie, "what a wasteful Setebos it is!" + + + + +29. + +_He Allows the Merits of Imperfection_ + + +I was quite contented now and assured as to the future. I foreknew the +future would be tranquil and lacking in any particular excitement, and I +had already ceded, in anticipation, the last tittle of mastery over my +own actions; but Bettie would keep me to the mark, would wring--not +painlessly perhaps--from Robert Townsend the very best there was in him; +and it would be this best which, unalloyed, would endure, in what I +wrote. I had never imagined that, for the ore, smelting was an agreeable +process; so I shrugged, and faced my future contentedly. + +One day I said, "To-morrow I must have holiday. There are certain things +that need burying, Bettie dear, and--it is just the funeral of my youth +I want to go to." + +"So it is to-morrow that we go for an admiring walk around our +emotions!" Bettie said. She knew well enough of what event to-morrow was +the anniversary, and it is to her credit she added: "Well, for this +once--!" For of all the women whom I had loved, there was but one that +Bettie Hamlyn had ever bothered about. And to-morrow was Stella's +birthday, as I had very unconcernedly mentioned a few moments earlier, +when I was looking for the Austin Dobson book, and had my back turned +to Bettie. + + + 2 + +Next day, in Cedarwood, a woman in mourning--in mourning fluffed and +jetted and furbelowed in such pleasing fashion that it seemed +flamboyantly to demand immediate consolation of all marriageable +males,--viewed me with a roving eye as I heaped daffodils on Stella's +grave. They had cost me a pretty penny, too, for this was in September. +But then I must have daffodils, much as I loathe the wet, limp feel o. +them, because she would have chosen daffodils.... Well! I fancied this +woman thought me sanctioned by both church and law in what I did,--and +viewed me in my supposedly recent bereavement and gauged my +potentialities,--viewed me, in short, with the glance of adventurous +widowhood. + +My faith (I meditated) if she knew!--if I could but speak my thought to +her! + +"Madam,"--let us imagine me, my hat raised, my voice grave,--"the woman +who lies here was a stranger to me. I did not know her. I knew that her +eyes were blue, that her hair was sunlight, that her voice had pleasing +modulations; but I did not know the woman. And she cared nothing for me. +That is why my voice shakes as I tell you of it. And I have brought her +daffodils, because of all flowers she loved them chiefly, and because +there is no one else who remembers this. It is the flower of spring, and +Stella--for that was her name, madam,--died in the spring of the year, +in the spring of her life; and Stella would have been just twenty-six +to-day. Oh, and daffodils, madam, are all white and gold, even as that +handful of dust beneath us was all white and gold when we buried it with +a flourish of crepe and lamentation, some two years and five months ago. +Yet the dust there was tender flesh at one time, and it clad a brave +heart; but we thought of it--and I among the rest,--as a plaything with +which some lucky man might while away his leisure hours. I believe now +that it was something more. I believe--ah, well, my _credo_ is of little +consequence. But whatever this woman may have been, I did not know her. +And she cared nothing for me." + +I reflected I would like to do it. I could imagine the stare, the +squawk, the rustling furbelows, as madam fled from this grave madman. +She would probably have me arrested. + +You see I had come to think differently of Stella. At times I remembered +her childish vanity, her childish, morbid views, her childish gusts of +petulance and anger and mirth; and I smiled,--oh, very tenderly, yet +I smiled. + +Then would awake the memory of Stella and myself in that ancient +moonlight and of our first talk of death--two infants peering into +infinity, somewhat afraid, and puzzled; of Stella making tea in the +firelight, and prattling of her heart's secrets, half-seriously, half in +fun; and of Stella striving to lift a very worthless man to a higher +level and succeeding--yes, for the time, succeeding; and of Stella dying +with a light heart, elate with dreams of Peter Blagden's future and of +"a life that counted"; and of what she told me at the very last. And, +irrationally perhaps, there would seem to be a sequence in it all, and I +could not smile over it, not even tenderly. + +And I would depicture her, a foiled and wistful little wraith, very +lonely in eternity, and a bit regretful of the world she loved and of +its blundering men, and unhappy,--for she could never be entirely happy +without Peter,--and I feared, indignant. For Stella desired very +heartily to be remembered--she was vain, you know,--and they have all +forgotten. Yes, I am sure that even as a wraith, Stella would be +indignant, for she had a fine sense of her own merits. + +"But I am just a little butterfly-woman," she would say, sadly; then, +with a quick smile, "Aren't I?" And her eyes would be like stars--like +big, blue stars,--and afterward her teeth would glint of a sudden, and +innumerable dimples would come into being, and I would know she was +never meant to be taken seriously.... + +But we must avoid all sickly sentiment. + +You see the world had advanced since Stella died,--twice around the sun, +from solstice to solstice, from spring to winter and back again, +travelling through I forget how many millions of miles; and there had +been wars and scandals and a host of debutantes and any number of +dinners; and, after all, the world is for the living. + +So we of Lichfield agreed unanimously that it was very sad, and spoke of +her for a while, punctiliously, as "poor dear Stella"; and the next week +Emily Van Orden ran away with Tom Whately; and a few days later Alicia +Wade's husband died, and we debated whether Teddy Anstrother would do +the proper thing or sensibly marry Celia Reindan: and so, a little by a +little, we forgot our poor, dear Stella in precisely the decorous +graduations of regret with which our poor dear Stella would have +forgotten any one of us. + +Yes, even those who loved her most deeply have forgotten Stella. They +remember only an imaginary being who was entirely perfect, and of whom +they were not worthy. It is this fictitious woman who has usurped the +real Stella's place in the heart of the real Stella's own mother, and +whom even Lizzie d'Arlanges believes to have been once her sister, and +over whom Peter Blagden is always ready to grow maudlin; and it is this +immaculate woman--who never existed,--that will be until the end of +Avis' matrimonial existence the standard by which Avis is measured and +found wanting. And thus again the whirligig of time, by an odd turn, +brings in his revenges. + +And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. And the woman they speak of +to-day, in that hushed, hateful, sanctimonious voice, I must confess I +never knew. And of all persons I chiefly rage against that faultless +angel, that "poor dear Stella," who has pilfered even the paltry tribute +of being remembered from the Stella that to-day is mine alone. For it is +to this fictitious person that the people whom my Stella loved, as she +did not love me, now bring their flowers; and it was to this person they +erected their pompous monument,--nay, more, it was for this atrocious +woman they ordered the very coffin in which my Stella lay when I last +saw her. And it is not fair. + +And I? Well, I was very fond of Stella. It would be good to have her +back,--to have her back to jeer at me, to make me feel red and +uncomfortable and ridiculous, to say rude things about my waist, and +indeed to fluster me just by being there. Yes, it would be good. But, +upon the whole, I am not sorry that Stella is gone. + +For there is Peter Blagden to be considered. We can all agree to-day +that Peter is a good fellow, that he is making the most of his Uncle +Larry's money, and that he is nobody's enemy but his own; and we have +smugly forgotten the time when we expected him to become a great lawyer. +We do not expect that of Peter now; instead, we are content +enough--particularly since Peter has so admirably dressed his part by +taking to longish hair and gruffness and a cane,--to point him out to +strangers in Lichfield as "one of our wealthiest men," and to elect him +to all civic committees, and to discuss his semi-annual sprees and his +monetary relations with various women whom one does not "know." And the +present Mrs. Blagden, too, appears content enough. + +And as Stella loved him-- + +Well, as it was, Peter was then off on his honeymoon, and there was only +I to bring the daffodils to Stella. She was always vain, was Stella; it +would have grieved her had no one remembered. + + + 3 + +Then I caught the afternoon train for Fairhaven, and went back to my +capable fiancee. + +But I walked over to Willoughby Hall that night and found Charteris +alone in his queer library, among the serried queer books and the +portraits of his "literary creditors." When I came into the apartment he +was mending a broken tea-cup, for he peculiarly delighted in such +infinitesimal task-work; but the vexed countenance at once took on the +fond young look my coming would invariably provoke, and he shoved aside +the fragments.... + +We talked of trifles; apropos of nothing, Charteris said, "Yes,--but, +then, I devoted the morning to drawing up my will." And I laughed over +such forethought. + +The man rose and with clenched fist struck upon the littered table. "It +is in the air. I swear to you that, somehow, _I_ have been warned. But +always I have been favoured--Why, man, I protest that never in my life +have I encountered any person in associating with whom I did not +condescend, with reason to back me! Yet today Death stands within arm's +reach, and I have accomplished--some three or four little books! And +yet--why, _Ashtaroth's Lackey_, now--Yes, by God! it is perfected speech +such as few other men have ever written. I know it, and I do not care at +all even though you piteous dullards should always lack the wit to +recognise and revere perfected speech when it confronts you. But +presently I die! and there is nothing left of me save the inefficient +testimony of those three or four little books!" + +I patted his shoulder and protested he had over-worked himself. + +"Eh, well," he said, and with that easy laugh I knew of old; "in any +event, I have been thinking for a whole two hours of my wife, and of how +from the very beginning I have utilised her, and of how good and +credulous she is, and of how happy I have made her--! For I have made +her happy. That is the preposterous part of it--" + +"Why, yes; Anne loves you very dearly. Oh, I think that everybody is +irrationally fond of you, John. No, that is not a compliment, it is +rather the reverse. It is simply an instance of what I have been +brooding over all this afternoon,--that we like people on account of +their good qualities and love them on account of their defects. I +honestly believe that the cornerstone of affection is the agreeable +perception of our superiority in some one point, at least, to the +beloved. And that is why so many people are fond of you, I think." + +He laughed a little. "And _de te fabula_--Yet I would distinguish. You +think me a futile person and not, as we will put it, a disastrously +truthful person, and so on through the entire list of all those +so-called vices which are really just a habit of not doing this or that +particular thing. Well! it is no longer _a la mode_ to talk about +God,--yet I must confess to an old-fashioned faith in our Author's +existence and even in His amiability. I believe He placed me in this +colourful world, and that He is not displeased because I have spent +therein some forty-odd years pleasurably. Then too I have not wasted +that pleasure, I have philanthropically passed it on. I have bequeathed +posterity the chance to spend an enjoyable half-hour or so over one or +two little books. That is not much to claim, but it is something." + +John Charteris was talking to himself now. + +"Had I instead the daily prayers of seven orphans, or the proud +consciousness of having always been afraid to do what I wanted +to,--which I take to be the universally accredited insurance of a +blissful eternity,--or even a whole half-column with portrait in the New +York papers to indicate what a loss my premature demise had been to +America,--or actually all three together, say, to exhibit as the +increment of this period, I honestly cannot imagine any of the more +intelligent archangels lining up to cheer my entry into Paradise. I +believe, however, that to be contented, to partake of the world's +amenities with moderation as a sauce, and to aggrieve no fellow-being, +except in self-protection, and to make other people happy as often as +you find it possible, is a recipe for living that will pass muster even +in heaven. There you have my creed; and it may not be impeccable, but I +believe in it." + +"You have forgotten something," I said, with a grin. "'One must not +think too despondently nor too often of the grim Sheriff who arrives +anon to dispossess you, no less than all the others, nor of any +subsequent and unpredictable legal adjustments.' See, here it is, your +own words printed in the book." + +"Dear me, did I say that? How nicely phrased it is! Well! you and I have +defiantly preserved the gallant attitude in an era not very favorable +thereto. And we seem to prosper--as yet--" + +"But certainly! We are the highly exceptional round pegs that flourish +like green bay-trees in a square hole," I summed it up. "Presently of +course our place knoweth us not. But in the mean while--well, as it +happens, I was recalling to-day how adroitly I scaled the summit of +human wisdom when I was only fourteen. For I said then, 'You can have a +right good time first, any way, if you keep away from ugly things and +fussy people.' And at twenty-five I stick to it." + +"I wonder now if it is not at a price?" said Charteris, rather +mirthlessly. "Either way, you have as yet the courage of the +unconvicted. And you have managed, out of it all, to get together the +makings of an honest book. I do not generally believe in heaping +flattery upon young authors, but if I had written that last book of +yours it would not grieve me. Even so, I wonder--? But it is dreary +here, in this old house, with all my wife's high-minded ancestors +chilling the air. Come, let us concoct some curious sort of drink." + +I looked at him compassionately. "And have Bettie staying up to let me +in and smelling it on me! You must be out of your head." + +And then Charteris laughed and derided me, and afterward we chatted for +a good two hours,--quite at random, and disposing of the most important +subjects, as was our usage when in argument, in a half-sentence. + +It was excellent to have Charteris to talk against, and I enjoyed it. +Taking him by and large, I loved the little fellow as I have loved no +other man. + + + + +30. + +_He Gilds the Weather-Vane_ + + +But I would not go along with Charteris the next morning when he came by +the Hamlyns' on his way to King's College. I could not, because I was +labouring over a batch of proof-sheets; and as I laboured my admiration +for the very clever young man who had concocted this new book augmented +comfortably; so that I told Charteris he was a public nuisance, and +please to go to Tillietudlem. + +He had procured the key to the Library,--for the College had not opened +as yet,--and meant to borrow an odd volume or so of Lucian. Charteris +had evolved the fantastic notion of treating Lucian's Zeus as a tragic +figure. He sketched a sympathetic picture of the fallen despot, and of +the smokeless altars, girdled by a jeering rabble of so-called +philosophers, and of how irritating it must be to anybody to have your +actual existence denied. Did I not see the pathos of poor Zeus's +situation with the god business practically "cornered," and the Jews +getting all the trade? + +I informed him that the only pathos in life just at present was my +inability to disprove, in default of abolishing, the existence of people +who bothered me when I was busy. So Charteris went away, just as Byam +brought the mail from the post-office. + + + 2 + +There were two cheques from magazines. Life was very pleasant, in a +quiet uneventful world. The _Fairhaven Gazette_ for the week had come, +too, to indicate that, as usual, nothing of grave import was happening +in an agreeably monotonous world. True, the Bulgarians were issuing an +appeal to civilization on the ground that they objected to being +massacred, and cyclones were wrecking towns and killing quite a number +of persons in Florida, and the strikes in Colorado were leading to +divers homicides; but in Fairhaven these things did not seem to matter. +And so the front page of the _Gazette_ was, rightfully, reserved for +Plans of the College for the Session of 1903-4.... + +I looked again. The President was explaining that he had intended no +discourtesy to Sir Thomas Lipton by declining to attend the +Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht Club dinner; Major Delmar had failed to beat +Lou Dillon's time, on the same track; the National Dressmakers' +Association had declared that the kangaroo walk and Gibson shoulders +would shortly be eschewed by all really fashionable women; and these +matters were more interesting, of course, but certainly no cause for +excitement. Well, I reflected, no news was good news proverbially; and I +was content to let the axiom pass. + +In fine, there was nothing to worry over anywhere. And the book was +going to be good, quite astonishingly good.... + +And yonder Bettie waited for me, and I could hear the piano that +proclaimed she was not idle. I was ineffably content; and at ease within +a rather kindly universe, taking it by and large.... + +"Quite a nice Setebos, after all! a big, fine generous-hearted fellow, +who doesn't bother to keep accounts to the last penny. I heartily +approve of Setebos, and Bettie ought not to rag Him so. She would think +it tremendously nice and boyish of me if I were to go impulsively and +tell her something like that--" + +So I decided I had worked quite long enough. + + + 3 + +But as I reached out toward the portieres, a man came into the room, +entering from the hall-way. And I gave a little whistling sound of +astonishment and hastened to him with extended hand. + +"My dear fellow," I began; "why, have you dropped from the moon?" + +"They--they told me you were here," said Jasper Hardress, and paused to +moisten his lips. "My wife died, yonder in Montana, ten days ago last +Thursday,--yes, it was on a Tuesday she died, I think." + +And I was silent for a breathing-space. "Yes?" I said, at last; for I +had seen the shining thing in Jasper Hardress's hand, and I was +wondering now why he had pocketed the toy, and for how long. + +"It was of a fever she died. She was delirious,--oh, quite three days. +And she talked in her delirium." + +I began to smile; it was like witnessing a play. "Yonder is Bettie and +my one chance of manhood; and blind chance, just the machination of a +tiny microbe, entraps me as I tread toward all this. I was wrong about +Setebos. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven." + +I said, aloud: "Well, Hardress, you wouldn't have me dispute the +veracity of a lady?" + +But the man did not appear to hear me. "Oh, it was very horrible," he +said. "Oh, I would like you, first of all, to comprehend how horrible it +was. She was always calling--no, not calling exactly, but just moaning +one name, and over and over again. He had been so cruel, she said. He +didn't really care for anything, she said, except to write his hateful +books. And I had loved her, you understand. And for three whole days I +must sit there and hear her tell of what another man had meant to her! I +have not been wholly sane, I think, since then, for I had loved her for +a long time. And her throat was so little that I often thought how easy +it would be to stop the moaning and talking, but somehow I did not like +to do it. And it isn't my honour that I mean to avenge. It is Gillian +that I must avenge,--Gillian who died because a coward had robbed her of +the will to live. For it was that in chief. Why, even you must +understand that," he said, as though he pleaded with me. + +And yonder Bettie played,--with lithe fingers which caressed the keys +rather than struck them, I remembered. And always at the back of my mind +some being that was not I was taking notes as to how unruffled the man +was; and I smiled a little, in recognition of the air, as Bettie began +_The Funeral March of a Marionette_.... + +"Yes," I said; "I think I understand. There is something to be advanced +upon the other side perhaps; but that scarcely matters. You act within +your rights; and, besides, you have a pistol, and I haven't. I am +getting afraid, though, Jasper. I can't stand this much longer. So for +God's sake, make an end of this!" + +Jasper Hardress said: "I mean to. But they told me he was here? Yes, I +am sure that someone told me he was here." + +I think I must have reeled a little. I know my brain was working +automatically. Gillian Hardress had always called me Jack; and Jasper +Hardress was past reason; and yonder was Bettie, who had made life too +fine and dear a thing to be relinquished.... + +"Jasper," someone was saying, and that someone seemed to laugh, "we +aren't living in the Middle Ages, remember. No, just as I said, I cannot +stand this nonsense any longer, and you must make an end of this +foolishness. Just on a bare suspicion--just on the ravings of a +delirious woman--! Why, she used to call _me_ Jack,--and I write +books--Why, you might just as logically murder _me_!" + +"I thought at first it was you. Oh, only for a moment, boy. I was not +quite sane, I think, for at first I suspected you of such treachery as +in my sober senses I know you never dreamed of. And I had forgotten you +were just a child--But she was conscious at the end," said Jasper +Hardress, "and when I--talked with her about what she had said in +delirium, she told me it was Charteris whose son we christened Jasper +Hardress some two years ago--" + +I said: "I never knew there was a child." But I was thinking of a +hitherto unaccounted-for photograph. + +"He only lived three months. I had always wanted a son. You cannot fancy +how proud I was of him." Hardress laughed here. + +"And she told you it was Charteris! in the moment of death when--when +you were threatening me, she told you it was Charteris!" + +"It is different when you are dying. You see--Gillian knew that eternity +depended on what she said to me then--" He spoke as with difficulty, and +he kept licking at restless lips. + +"Yes,--she did believe that. And she told you--!" I comprehended how +Gillian Hardress had loved me, and my shame was such that now it was the +mere brute will to live which held me. But it held me, none the less. +Besides, I saw the least unpleasant solution. + +"I suppose I can't blame you," I said,--"for if she told you, why, of +course--" Then I barked out: "He was here a moment ago. You must have +come around one corner, in fact, just as he turned the other. You will +find him at Willoughby Hall, I suppose. He said he was going +straight home." + +For I knew that Charteris was at King's College, a mile away from +Willoughby Hall; and, I assured myself, there would be ample time to +warn him. Only how much must now depend upon the diverting qualities of +Lucian! For should the Samosatan flag in interest, John would be leaving +the College presently; and there is but one street in Fairhaven. + + + 4 + +I had my hand upon the garden-gate, and Hardress had just turned the +corner below, going toward Cambridge Street, when Bettie came upon +the porch. + +"Well," she said, "and who's your fat friend, Mr. Sheridan?" + +"I can't stop now, dear. I forgot to tell John about something which is +rather important--" + +"Gracious!" Bettie Hamlyn said; "that sounds like shooting. Why, it is +shooting, isn't it?" + +"Yes," said I. + +"--Quite as though the Monnachins and the Massawomeks and all the other +jaw-breakers were attacking Fairhaven as they used to do on alternate +Thursdays, and affording both of us an excellent opportunity to get +nicely scalped in time for dinner. So I don't mind confessing that it +was against precisely such an emergency I declined to turn out an +elaborate suite of hair; and now I expect the world at large to +acknowledge that I acted very sensibly." + +"It is much more likely to be some drunken country-man on his monthly +spree--" I was reflecting while Bettie talked nonsense that there had +been no less than four shots. I was wondering whom the last was for. It +would be much pleasanter, all around, if Hardress had sent it into his +own disordered brain. Yes, certainly, three bullets ought amply to +account for an unprepared and unarmed and puny Charteris.... + +So I said: "Well, I suppose my business with John must wait for a while. +Besides, Bettie, you are such a dear in that get-up. And if you will +come down into the garden at once, I will explain a few of my reasons +for advancing the assertion." + +Standing upon the porch, she patted me ever so lightly upon the head. +"What a child it is!" she said. "I don't think that, after all, I shall +put twenty-six candles on your cake next week. The fat and lazy literary +gent is not really old enough, not really more than ten." + +"--And besides, apart from the proposed discussion of your physical +charms, I have something else quite equally important to tell +you about." + +"Oh, drat the pertinacious infant, then I'll come for half an hour. Just +wait until I get a hat. Still, what a worthless child it is! to be +quitting work before noon." + +And she would have gone, but I detained her. "Yes, what a worthless +child it is,--or rather, what an unproverbial sort of busy bee it has +been, Bettie dear. For his has been the summer air, and the sunshine, +and the flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes +have been upon him. Now it is autumn. And he has let others eat his +honey-which I take to include all that he actually made, all that wasn't +in the world before he came, as Stella used to say,--so that he might +have his morsel and his song. And sometimes it has been Sardinian honey, +very bitter in the mouth,--and even then he has let others eat it--" + +"You are a most irrelevant infant," said Miss Hamlyn, "with these +insectean divagations--Dear me, what lovely words! And of course if you +really want to drag me into that baking-hot garden, and have the only +fiancee you just at present possess laid up by a sunstroke--" + + + + +_The Epilogue: Which Suggests that Second Thoughts--_ + + +So I waited there alone. Whatever the four shots implied, I must tell +Bettie everything, because she was Bettie, and it was not fair I should +have any secrets from her. "Oh, just be honest with me," she had said, +in this same garden, "and I don't care what you do!" And I had never +lied to Bettie: at worst, I simply had not told her anything concerning +matters about which I was glad she had not happened to ask any +questions. But this was different.... + +Dimly I knew that everything must pivot on my telling Bettie. John was +done for, the Hardress woman was done for, and whether or no Jasper had +done for himself, there was no danger, now, that anyone would ever know +how that infernal Gillian had badgered me into, probably, three +homicides. There might be some sort of supernal bookkeeping, somewhere, +but very certainly it was not conformable to any human mathematics.... +And therefore I must tell Bettie. + +I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. She had pardoned much. It +might be she would pardon even this, "because I had been honest with her +when I didn't want to be." And in any event--even in her loathing,-- +Bettie would understand, and know I had at least kept faith with her.... + +I must tell Bettie, and abide what followed. For living seemed somehow +to have raised barriers about me a little by a little, so that I must +view and talk with all my fellows more and more remotely, and could not, +as it were, quite touch anybody save Bettie. At all other persons I was +but grimacing falsely across an impalpable barrier. And now just such a +barrier was arising between Bettie and me, as I perceived in a sort of +panic. Yes, it was rising resistlessly, like an augmenting mist not ever +to be put aside, except by plunging forthwith into hours, or days, or +even into months perhaps, of ugliness and discomfort.... + +It was the season of harvest. The leaves were not yet turned, and upon +my face the heatless, sun-steeped air was like a caress. The whole world +was at full-tide, ineffably sweet and just a little languorous: and bees +were audible, as in a humorous pretence of vexation.... + +The world was very beautiful. I must tell Bettie presently, of course; +only the world was such a comfortable place precisely as it was; and I +began to wonder if I need tell Bettie after all? + +For, after all, to tell the truth could resurrect nobody; and to know +the truth would certainly make Bettie very unhappy; and never in my life +have I been able to endure the contact of unhappiness. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CORDS OF VANITY *** + +This file should be named 8cvan10.txt or 8cvan10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8cvan11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8cvan10a.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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