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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/9888-8.txt b/9888-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a621aba --- /dev/null +++ b/9888-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8934 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Spread Eagle and Other Stories, by Gouverneur Morris + +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 Spread Eagle and Other Stories + +Author: Gouverneur Morris + +Posting Date: November 17, 2011 [EBook #9888] +Release Date: February, 2006 +First Posted: October 28, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + + THE + + SPREAD EAGLE + + AND OTHER STORIES + + BY + + GOUVERNEUR MORRIS + + AUTHOR OF "THE FOOTPRINT, AND OTHER STORIES," ETC. + + 1910 + + + +_TO ELSIE, PATSIE, AND KATE_ + + _I had thought to sit in the ruler's chair, + But three pretty girls are sitting there-- + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + I had thought to lord it with eyes of gray, + I had thought to be master, and have_ my _way; + But six blue eyes vote_: nay, nay, nay! + _Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + Of Petticoats three I am sore afraid, + (Though Kate's is more like a candle-shade), + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + And I must confess (with shame) to you + That time there was when Petticoats two + Were enough to govern me through and through, + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + Oh Patsie, third of a bullying crew, + And Elsie, and Kate, be it known to you-- + To Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, + That Elsie_ alone _was strong enough + To smother a motion, or call a bluff, + Or any small pitiful atom thereof-- + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + So, though I've renounced that ruler's part + To which I was born (as is writ in my heart), + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, + Though I do what I'm told (yes, you_ know _I do) + And am made to write stories (and sell them, too). + Still--I wish to God I had more like you, + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate_. + +BAR HARBOR, _August_, 1910. + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +Certain persons have told me (for nothing) that "White Muscats of +Alexandria" resembles a tale in the Arabian Nights. And so it does. +Most damningly. And this is printed in the hope of saving other +persons postage. + + + + +CONTENTS + +_The Spread Eagle +Targets +The Boot +The Despoiler +One More Martyr +"Ma'am?" +Mr. Holiday +White Muscats of Alexandria +Without a Lawyer +The "Monitor" and the "Merrimac" +The McTavish +The Parrot +On the Spot; or, The Idler's House-Party_ + + + + +THE SPREAD EAGLE + +In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact +was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation +that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he +was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own +subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his +mother wanted him to be a polite American, And to be polite, in her +mind, was to be at home in French and German, to speak English (or +American) with the accent of no particular locality, to know famous +pictures when you saw them, and, if little, to be bosom friends with +little dukes and duchesses and counts of the Empire, to play in the +gravel gardens of St. Germain, to know French history, and to have for +exercise the mild English variations of American games--cricket instead +of base-ball; instead of football, Rugby, or, in winter, lugeing above +Montreux. To luge upon a sled you sit like a timid, sheltered girl, and +hold the ropes in your hand as if you were playing horse, and descend +inclines; whereas, as Fitzhugh Williams well knew, in America rich boys +and poor take their hills head first, lying upon the democratic turn. + +It wasn't always Switzerland in winter. Now and again it was Nice or +Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball +cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while, +for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the +maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was +lawn tennis also, which you might play without losing caste "at home," +Fitzhugh Williams never used that term but with the one meaning. He +would say, for instance, to the little Duchess of Popinjay--or one just +as good--having kissed her to make up for having pushed her into her +ancestral pond, "Now I am going to the house," meaning Perth House, that +Mrs. Williams had taken for the season. But if he had said, "Now I am +going home," the little Duchess would have known that he was going to +sail away in a great ship to a strange, topsy-turvy land known in her +set as "the States," a kind of deep well from which people hoist gold in +buckets, surrounded by Indians. Home did not mean even his father's +house. Let Fitzhugh Williams but catch sight of the long, white shore of +Long Island, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the amazing Liberty, and the +word fluttered up from his heart even if he spoke it not. Ay, let him +but see the Fire Island light-ship alone upon the deep, and up leaped +the word, or the sensation, which was the same thing. + +One Fourth of July they were in Paris (you go to Paris for tea-gowns to +wear grouse-shooting in Scotland), and when his valet, scraping and +bowing, informed Fitzhugh Williams, aged nine, that it was time to get +up, and tub, and go forth in a white sailor suit, and be of the world +worldly, Fitzhugh declined. A greater personage was summoned--Aloys, +"the maid of madame," a ravishing creature--to whom you and I, good +Americans though we are, could have refused nothing. But Fitzhugh would +not come out of his feather-bed. And when madame herself came, looking +like a princess even at that early hour, he only pulled the bedclothes a +little higher with an air of finality. + +"Are you sick, Fitzhugh?" + +"No, mamma." + +"Why won't you get up?" + +His mother at least was entitled to an explanation. + +"I won't get up," said he, "because I'm an American." + +"But, my dear, it's the glorious Fourth. All good Americans are up." + +"All good Americans," said Fitzhugh, "are at home letting off +fire-crackers." + +"Still," said his mother, "I think I'd get up if I were you. It's lovely +out. Not hot." + +"I won't get up," said Fitzhugh, "because it's the Fourth, because I'm +an American, and because I have nothing but English clothes to put on." + +His mother, who was the best sort in the world, though obstinate about +bringing-up, and much the prettiest woman, sat down on the bed and +laughed till the tears came to her eyes. Fitzhugh laughed, too. His mind +being made up, it was pleasanter to laugh than to sulk. + +"But," said his mother, "what's the difference? Your pajamas are +English, too." + +Fitzhugh's beautiful brown eyes sparkled with mischief. + +"What!" exclaimed his mother. "You wretched boy, do you mean to tell me +that you haven't your pajamas on?" + +Fitzhugh giggled, having worsted his mother in argument, and pushed down +the bedclothes a few inches, disclosing the neck and shoulders of that +satiny American suit in which he had been born. + +Mrs. Williams surrendered at once. + +"My dear," she exclaimed, "if you feel so strongly about it I will send +your man out at once to buy you some French things. They were our +allies, you know." + +"Thank you, mamma," said Fitz, "and if you'll give me the pad and pencil +on the table I'll write to granny." + +Thus compromise was met with compromise, as is right. Fitz wrote a very +short letter to granny, and drew a very long picture of crossing the +Delaware, with Nathan Hale being hanged from a gallows on the bank; and +Mrs. Williams sent Benton for clothes, and wrote out a cable to her +husband, a daily cable being the one thing that he who loved others to +have a good time was wont to exact "Dear Jim," ran the cable, at I +forget what the rates were then per word, "I wish you were here. It's +bright and beautiful; not too hot. Fitz would not get up and put on +English clothes, being too patriotic. You will run over soon if you can, +won't you, if only for a minute," etc., etc. + +I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The +Williamses were rich. They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief. +Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not +have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported +Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring +frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where +money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James, +returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of +his right boot. + +Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for +him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she +would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed +in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next +few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history +through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be +absorbed, and that came out often, I am afraid, when people didn't +especially want it to. Neither could any amount of aristocratic training +and association turn the blood in his veins blue. If one had taken the +trouble to look at a specimen of it under a microscope I believe one +would have discovered a resemblance between the corpuscles thereof and +the eagles that are the tails of coins; and the color of it was +red--bright red. And this was proven, that time when little Lord Percy +Pumps ran at Fitz, head down like a Barbadoes nigger, and butted him in +the nose. The Honorable Fifi Grey, about whom the quarrel arose, was +witness to the color of that which flowed from the aforementioned nose; +and witness also to the fact that during the ensuing cataclysm no blood +whatever, neither blue nor red, came from Lord Percy Pumps--nothing but +howls. But, alas! we may not now call upon the Honorable Fifi Grey for +testimony. She is no longer the Honorable Fifi. Quite the reverse. I had +her pointed out to me last summer (she is Lady Khorset now), and my +informant wriggled with pleasure and said, "Now, there _is_ somebody." + +"You mean that slim hedge-fence in lavender?" I asked. + +"By jove, yes!" said he. "That's Lady Khorset, the wickedest woman in +London, with the possible exception of Lady Virginia Pure--the +Bicyclyste, you know." + +I did know. Had I not that very morning seen in a Piccadilly window a +photograph of almost all of her? + +Fortunately for Fitzhugh Williams's health and sanity, little children +are pretty much the same all the world over, dwelling in the noble +democracy of mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. Little newsboys, tiny +grandees, infinitesimal sons of coachmen, picayune archdukes, +honorableines, marquisettes, they are all pretty much alike under their +skins. And so are their sisters. Naturally your free-born American child +despises a nation that does not fight with its fists. But he changes his +mind when some lusty French child of his own size has given him a good +beating in fair fight. And the English games have their beauties (I dare +say), and we do know that they can fight--or can make the Irish and the +Scots fight for them, which is just as good. And it isn't race and blue +blood that keeps little Lady Clara Vere de Vere's stockings from coming +down. It's garters. And _they_ don't always do it. Point the finger of +scorn at little Archibald Jamison Purdue Fitzwilliams Updyke +Wrennfeather, who will be Duke of Chepstow one day; for only last night +his lordship's noble mother rubbed his hollow chest with goose grease +and tied a red flannel round his neck, and this morning his gerfalcon +nose is running, as the British would have run at Waterloo had not +"would-to-God-Blücher-would-come" come up. + +Peace, little bootblack; others bite their nails. See yonder night +garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a +plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the +back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come +through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel +with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next +crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears? +It's because she _will_ double them forward and lie on them, so that if +something isn't done about it they will stick straight out. + +So Fitzhugh Williams was brought up among and by children, fashionable +children, if you like. Snobs, many of them, but children all the same. +Some good, some bad, some rough, some gentle, some loving and faithful +with whom he is friends to this day, some loving and not faithful. +The dangers that he ran were not from the foreign children with whom +he played, fought, loved, and dreamed dreams; but from foreign +customs, foreign ways of doing things, foreign comfort, foreign +take-the-world-easiness, and all. For they _do_ live well abroad; they +do have amusing things to do. They eat well, drink well, smoke well, are +better waited on than we are and have more time. So Fitzhugh was in +danger of these things which have hurt the Americanism of more than one +American to the death, but he ran the dangerous gauntlet and came out at +the other end unscathed--into the open. + +He could rattle off French and German like a native; he could imitate an +Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with +his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not +in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the +moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his +family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly, +straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words +are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with +the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington +himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think +Adams said _bought_ and _caught_? He said _bot_ and _cot_. Did Lincoln +use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke +the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck +against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the +hearts of men, to rejoice God, and to thunder forever down the ages. + +It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody +knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and +intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But +honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great +American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively +great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk +Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that! + + + + +II + +We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the +French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in +cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the +feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain +of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water +in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded +the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it. + +He now had Benton in to rub his back dry, and to hand him his clothes in +sequence; it being his mother's notion that to be truly polite a man +must be helpless in these matters and dependent. And when he had on his +undershirt and his outer shirt and his stockings, he sat down to his +breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler +had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing, +and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria +at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with +Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother +came--one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris, +though common enough, I dare say, in paradise. + +They drove first of all to Gaston Rennette's gallery, where Fitz +celebrated the glorious Fourth with a real duelling pistol and real +bullets, aiming at a life-size sheet-iron man, who, like a correct, +courteous, and courageous opponent, never moved. And all the way to the +gallery and all the way back there was here and there an American flag, +as is customary in Paris on the Fourth. And to these Fitz, standing up +in the victoria, dipped and waved his hat. While he was shooting, his +mother took a "little turn" and then came back to fetch him; a stout man +in a blue blouse accompanying him to the curb, tossing his hands +heavenward, rolling up his eyes, and explaining to madame what a "genius +at the shoot was the little mister," and had averaged upon the "mister +of iron" one "fatal blow" in every five. Madame "invited" the stout man +to a five-franc piece for himself and she smiled, and he smiled, and +bowed off backward directly into a passing pedestrian, who cried out +upon the "sacred name of a rooster." And everybody laughed, including +Cunningham, whose face from much shaving looked as if a laugh must crack +it; and so the glorious Fourth was begun. + +But the next event upon the programme was less provocative of pure joy +in the heart of Fitz. + +"You don't remember the Burtons, do you, Fitz?" asked his mother. + +"No," said he. + +"Well," she said, "Mrs. Burton was a school-mate of mine, Elizabeth +Proctor, and I've just learned that she is at the d'Orient with her +daughter. The father died, you know--" + +"I know _now_" interrupted Fitz with a grin. + +He liked to correct his mother's English habit of "you-knowing" people +who didn't know. + +"And I really think I must call and try to do something for them." + +"The d'Orient," said Fitz, "is where they have the elevator that you +work yourself. Billy Molineux and I got caught in it between the third +and fourth floors." + +"Well," said his mother, "would you mind very much if we drove to the +d'Orient now and called on the Burtons?" + +Fitz said that he would mind _very_ much, but as he made no more +reasonable objection Mrs. Williams gave the order to Cunningham, and not +long after they stopped before the d'Orient in the Rue Daunou, and +Fontenoy flashed in with Mrs. and Master Williams's cards, and came out +after an interval and stationed himself stiffly near the step of the +victoria. This meant that Mrs. Burton was at home, as we say, or, "at +herself," as the French have it. If he had leaped nimbly to his seat +beside Cunningham on the box it would have meant that Mrs. Burton was +not "at herself." + +So once more Mrs. Williams became a lovely, trailing figure out of the +seventh heaven, and Fitz, stoical but bored, followed her into the +court-yard of the hotel. Here were little iron tables and chairs, four +symmetrical flower-beds containing white gravel, four palm-trees in +tubs, their leaves much speckled with coal smuts; a French family at +breakfast (the stout father had unbuttoned his white waistcoat); and in +a corner by herself an American child sitting upon one of the +puff-seated iron chairs, one leg under her, one leg, long, thin, and +black, swinging free, and across her lap a copy of a fashion paper. + +On perceiving Mrs. Williams the child at once came forward, and dropped +the most charming little courtesy imaginable. + +"How do you do?" she said. "Poor, dear mamma isn't a bit well. But I +said that she would see you, Mrs. Williams. She said yesterday that she +wanted so much to see you." + +In the event Mrs. Williams went up three flights in the elevator that +you worked yourself; only on this occasion the proprietor, hastily +slipping into his frock-coat and high hat (you could see him at it +through the office window), worked it for her. And Fitz remained with +the gloomy prospect of being entertained by little Miss Burton. + +She was younger than Fitz by two years and older by ten--a serene, +knowing, beautiful child. When Fitz proposed that they sit in the +victoria, as softer than the iron chairs, she called him a funny boy, +but she assented. And as they went she tossed aside her fashion paper, +remarking, "_You_ wouldn't care for that." + +When they had settled down into the soft, leather cushions of the +victoria she sighed luxuriously and said: + +"This _is_ nice! I wish--" and broke off short. + +"What?" asked Fitz. + +"Oh," she said, "that the horses would start, and take us all over Paris +and back, and everybody would see us go by, and envy us. But mamma and +I," she said, "are devoted to fiacres--not smart, are they?" + +"I don't mind," said Fitz, "if they go where I tell 'em to, and don't +set up a row over the _pourboire_." + +"Still," said she, "it must be nice to have carriages and things. We +used to have. Only I can hardly remember. Mamma says I have a dreadfully +short memory." + +"How long have you been abroad?" Fitz asked. + +"Dear me," she said, "ever so long. I don't remember." + +"Won't it be fun," said Fitz, "to go home?" + +"America?" She hesitated. "Mamma says it's all so crude and rude. I +forget." + +"Don't you remember America!" exclaimed Fitz, much horrified. + +"Not clearly," she admitted. + +"I guess you never saw Cleveland, Ohio, then," said Fitz, "'n' Euclid +Avenue, 'n' Wade Park, 'n' the cannons in the square, 'n' the +breakwater, 'n' never eat Silverthorn's potatoes at Rocky River, 'n' +never went to a picnic at Tinker's Creek, 'n' never saw Little Mountain +'n' the viaduct." + +"You are quite right," said little Miss Burton, "I never did." + +"When I grow up," said Fitz in a glow of enthusiasm, "I'm going to live +in America 'n' have a tower on my house with a flagpole, 'n' a cannon to +let off every sunset and sunrise." + +"I shouldn't like that," said she, "if I were sleeping in the house at +the time." + +"I shouldn't be sleeping," said Fitz; "I'd be up early every morning to +let the cannon off." + +"I remember Newport a little," she said. "I'd live there if I were you. +Newport is very smart for America, mamma says. We're going to Newport +when I grow up. I'm sure it will be nicer if you are there." + +Fitz thought this very likely, but was too modest to say so. + +"If I ever go to Newport," he said, "it will be as captain of a cup +defender." + +"I heard your mother call you Fitz," said little Miss Burton. "Is that +your name, or do you have them?" + +"F-i-t-z-h-u-g-h," said Fitz, "is my name." + +"Any middle name?" + +"No." + +"That's smarter," said she. "I haven't either." + +"What _is_ your name?" asked Fitz, trying to feign interest. + +"Evelyn," said she, "but my intimate friends call me Eve." + +"Huh!" said Fitz grossly, "Eve ate the apple first." + +"Yes," sighed Eve, "and gave Adam the core. Nowadays, I heard mamma say +to Count Grassi, it's the other way 'round." + +"My father says," said Fitz, "that Eve ought to of been spanked." + +Certain memories reddened Eve; but the natural curiosity to compare +experiences got the better of her maiden reticence upon so delicate a +subject. She lowered her voice. + +"Do you yell?" she asked. "I do. It frightens them if you yell." + +"I was never spanked" said Fitz. "When I'm naughty mamma writes to papa, +and he writes to me, and says he's sorry to hear that I haven't yet +learned to be a gentleman, and a man of the world, and an American. +That's worse than being spanked." + +"Oh, dear!" said Eve, "I don't mind what people say; that's just water +on a duck's back; but what they do is with slippers--" + +"And," cried Fitz, elated with his own humor, "it isn't on the +duck's--back." + +"Are you yourself to-day," asked Miss Eve, her eyes filling, "or are you +just unusually horrid?" + +"Here--I say--don't blub," said Fitz, in real alarm. And, knowing the +power of money to soothe, he pulled a twenty-franc gold piece from his +pocket and himself opened and closed one of her tiny hands upon it. + +The child's easy tears dried at once. + +"Really--truly?--ought I?" she exclaimed. + +"You bet!" said Fitz, all his beautiful foreign culture to the fore. +"You just keep that and surprise yourself with a present next time you +want one." + +"Maybe mamma won't like me to," she doubted. And then, with devilish +wisdom, "I think mamma will scold me first--and let me forget to give it +back afterward. Thank you, Fitz. I could kiss you!" + +"Fire away," said Fitz sullenly. He was used to little girls, and liked +to kiss them, but he did not like them to kiss him. She didn't, however. + +She caught his hand with the one of hers that was not clutching the gold +piece, and squeezed it quickly and let it go. Something in this must +have touched and made appeal to the manly heart. For Fitz said, averting +his beautiful eyes: + +"You're a funny little pill, aren't you?" + +The tiger sprang to the victoria step from loafing in front of a +jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. Madame +was coming. + +"Take Evelyn to the lift, Fitz," said she. But first she kissed Evelyn, +and said that she was going to send for her soon, for a spree with Fitz. + +They passed through the court-yard, Fitz carrying his hat like a +gentleman and a man of the world, and into the dark passage that led to +the famous elevator. + +"Your mother's smart," said Eve. + +"Can't you think of anything but how smart people are?" + +"When I'm grown up," she said, "and am smart myself I'll think of other +things, I dare say." + +"Can you work the lift yourself? Hadn't I better take you up?" + +"Oh, no," she said, and held out her hand. + +They shook, she firmly, he with the flabby, diffident clasp of childhood +and old age. + +"You're a funny kid," said Fitz. + +"You're rather a dear," said Eve. + +She entered the elevator, closed the door, and disappeared upward, at +the pace of a very footsore and weary snail. + +Mrs. Burton was much cheered by Mrs. Williams's visit, as who that +struggles is not by the notice of the rich and the mighty? + +"My dear," she said, when Eve entered, "she is so charming, so natural; +she has promised to give a tea for me, and to present me to some of her +friends. I hope you like the boy--Fitz--Fritz--whatever his name is. It +would be so nice if you were to be friends." + +"He _is_ nice," said Eve, "ever so nice--but _so_ dull." + +"What did you talk about?" asked Mrs. Burton, + +"Really," said Eve, aged seven, "I forget." + + + + +III + +Mrs. Burton had made a failure of her own life. + +She had married a man who subsequently had been so foolish as to lose +his money--or most of it. + +Eve, who had ever a short memory, does not remember the catastrophe. She +was three at the time of it. She was in the nursery when the blow fell, +and presently her mother came in looking very distracted and wild, and +caught the little girl's face between her hands, and looked into it, and +turned it this way and that, and passed the little girl's beautiful +brown hair through her fingers, and then began to speak violently. + +"You sha'n't be shabby," she said. "I will make a great beauty of you. +You've got the beauty. You shall ride in your carriage, even if I work +my hands to the bone. They've bowled me over. But I'm not dead yet. +Elizabeth Burton shall have her day. You wait. I'll make the world dance +for you." Then she went into violent hysterics. + +There was a little money left. Mrs. Burton took Evelyn to Europe, and +began to teach her the long litany of success: + + Money is God; + We praise thee, etc., + +a very long, somewhat truthful, and truly degraded litany. She taught +her that it isn't handsome is as handsome does, but the boots and +shoes, after all. She taught her that a girl must dress beautifully to +be beautiful, that she must learn all the world's ways and secrets, and +at the same time appear in speech and manner like a child of Nature, +like a newly opened rose. And she taught her to love her country +like this: + +"America, my dear, is the one place where a girl can marry enough money +to live somewhere else. Or, if her husband is tied to his affairs, it is +the one place where she can get the most for his money--not as we get +the most for ours, for we couldn't live two minutes on our income in +America--but where the most people will bow the lowest to her because +she is rich; where she will be the most courted and the most envied." + +The two mammas worked along similar lines, but for different reasons. +Mrs. Burton strove to make Eve ornamental so that she might acquire +millions; Mrs. Williams strove to Anglicize and Europeanize her son so +that he might ornament those which were already his. Those little spread +eagles, the corpuscles in his blood, folded their wings a trifle as he +grew older, and weren't always so ready to scream and boast; but they +remained eagles, and no amount of Eton and Oxford could turn them into +little unicorns or lions. You may wonder why Fitz's father, a strong, +sane man, permitted such attempts at denationalization upon his son and +heir. Fitz so wondered--once. So wrote. And was answered thus: + +... If you're any good it will all come out in the wash. If you aren't +any good it doesn't matter whether your mother makes an Englishman out +of you or a Mandarin. When you come of age you'll be your own man; +that's been the bargain between your mother and me. That will be the +time for you to decide whether to be governed or to help govern. I am +not afraid for you. I never have been. + +So Mrs. Williams was not successful on the whole in her attempts to make +a cosmopolitan of Fitz. And that was just enough, because the attempts +were those of an amateur. She had lived a furiously active life of +pleasure; she had made an unassailable place for herself in the best +European society, as at home. She had not even become estranged from her +husband. They were always crossing the ocean to see each other, "if only +for a minute or two," as she used to say, and when Fitz was at school +she spent much of her time in America; and Fitz's short vacations were +wild sprees with his father and mother, come over for the purpose. Mr. +Williams would take an immense country house for a few weeks, with +shooting and riding and all sorts of games thrown in, and have Fitz's +friends by the dozen. But, like as not, Mr. Williams would leave in the +middle of it, as fast as trains and steamers could carry him, home to +his affairs. And even the little English boys missed him sorely, since +he was much kinder to them, as a rule, than their own fathers were, and +had always too many sovereigns in his pocket for his own comfort. + +But Mrs. Burton's attempts to make a charming cosmopolitan of Eve met +with the greater success that they deserved. They were the efforts of a +professional, one who had staked life or death, so to speak, on the +result. Where Mrs. Williams amused herself and achieved small victories, +Mrs. Burton fought and achieved great conquests. She saved money out of +her thin income, money for the great days to come when Eve was to be +presented to society at Newport; and she slaved and toiled grimly and +with far-seeing genius. Eve's speaking voice was, perhaps, Mrs. Burton's +and her own greatest triumph. It was Ellen Terry's youngest, freshest +voice over again, but with the naïvest little ghost of a French accent; +and she didn't seem so much to project a phrase at you by the locutory +muscles as to smile it to you. + +Mrs. Burton had, of course, her moments of despair about Eve. But these +were mostly confined to that despairing period when most girls are +nothing but arms and wrists and gawkiness and shyness; when their clear, +bright complexions turn muddy, and they want to enter convents. Eve at +this period in her life was unusually trying and nondescript. She +announced that if she ever married it would be for love alone, but that +she did not intend to marry. She would train to be a cholera nurse or a +bubonic plague nurse--anything, in short, that was most calculated to +drive poor Mrs. Burton frantic. And she grew the longest, thinnest pair +of legs and arms in Europe; and her hair seemed to lose its wonderful +lustre; and her skin, upon which Mrs. Burton had banked so much, became +colorless and opaque and a little blotched around the chin. And she was +so nervous and overgrown that she would throw you a whole fit of +hysterics during piano lessons; and she prayed so long night and morning +that her bony knees developed callouses; and when she didn't have a cold +in her head she was getting over one or catching another. + +During this period in Eve's life the children met for the second time. +It was in Vienna. This time Mrs. Burton, as having been longer in +residence, called upon Mrs. Williams, taking Eve with her, after +hesitation. Poor Eve! The graceful, gracious courtesy of her babyhood +was now a performance of which a stork must have felt ashamed; she +pitched into a table (while trying to make herself small) and sent a +pitcher of lemonade crashing to the ground. And then burst into tears +that threatened to become laughter mixed with howls. + +At this moment Fitz, having been sent for to "do the polite," entered. +He shook hands at once with Mrs. Burton, whom he had never seen before, +and turned to see how Eve, whom he vaguely remembered, was coming on. +And there she was--nothing left of his vague memory but the immense +eyes. Even these were not clear and bright, but red in the whites and +disordered with tears. For the rest (Fitz made the mental comparison +himself) she reminded him of a silly baby camel that he had seen in the +zoo, that had six inches of body, six feet of legs, and the most bashful +expression imaginable. + +Mrs. Burton, you may be sure, did not lose the start that Fitz gave +before he went forward and shook hands with Eve. But she misinterpreted +it. She said to herself (all the while saying other things aloud to Mrs. +Williams): "If he had only seen her a year ago, even a boy of his age +would have been struck by her, and would have remembered her. But now! +Now, he'll never forget her. And I don't blame him. She's so ugly that +he was frightened." + +But that was not why Fitz had started. The poor, gawky, long-legged, +tearful, frightened, overgrown, wretched girl had not struck him as +ugly; she had struck him as the most pathetic and to-be-pitied object +that he had ever seen. I do not account for this. I state it. Had she +been pretty and self-possessed he would have left the room presently on +some excuse, but now he stayed--not attracted, but troubled and sorry +and eager to put her at her ease. So he would have turned aside to help +a gutter cat that had been run over and hurt, though he would have +passed the proudest, fluffiest Angora in Christendom with no more than a +glance. He began to talk to her in his plainest, straightest, honestest +Ohioan. It always came out strongest when he was most moved. His +mother's sharp ears heard the A's, how they narrowed in his mouth, and +smote every now and then with a homely tang against the base of his +nose. "Just like his father," she thought, "when some one's in trouble." +And she had a sudden twinge of nostalgia. + +Fitz lured Eve to a far corner and showed her a set of wonderful carved +chess-men that he had bought that morning; and photographs of his +friends at Eton, and of the school, and of some of the masters. He +talked very earnestly and elaborately about these dull matters, and +passed by the opportunities which her first embarrassed replies offered +for the repartee of youth. And he who was most impatient of restraint +and simple occupations talked and behaved like a dull, simple, kindly +old gentleman. His method may not have left Eve with a dazzling +impression of him; she could not know that he was not himself, but all +at once a deliberate artist seeking to soothe and to make easy. + +Eve did not enjoy that call; she enjoyed nothing in those days but +prayer and despair; but she got to the end of it without any more tears +and crashes. And she said to her mother afterward that young Williams +seemed a nice boy--but so dull. Well, they were quits. She had seemed +dull enough to Fitz. A sick cat may touch your heart, but does not +furnish you with lively companionship. Fitz was heartily glad when the +Burtons had gone. He had worked very hard to make things possible for +that absurd baby camel. + +"You may call her an absurd baby camel," said his mother, "but it's my +opinion that she is going to be a very great beauty." + +"_She!"_ exclaimed Fitz, thinking that the ugliness of Eve might have +unhinged his mother's beauty-loving mind. + +"Oh," said his mother, "she's at an age now--poor child! But don't you +remember how the bones of her face--" + +"I am trying to forget," said Fitz with a tremendous shudder for the +occasion. + + + + +IV + +Fitz did not take a degree at Oxford. He left in the middle of his last +term, leaving many friends behind. He stood well, and had been in no +especial difficulty of mischief, and why he left was a mystery. The +truth of the matter is that he had been planning for ten years to leave +Oxford in the very middle of his last term. For upon that date fell his +twenty-first birthday, when he was to be his own man. He spent a few +hours in his mother's house in London. And, of course, she tried to make +him go back and finish, and was very much upset, for her. But Fitz +was obdurate. + +"If it were Yale, or Princeton, or Harvard, or Berkeley, or Squedunk," +he said, "I would stick it out. But a degree from Oxford isn't worth six +weeks of home." + +"But aren't you going to wait till I can go with you?" + +"If you'll go with me to-night you shall have my state-room, and I'll +sleep on the coal. But if you can't go till to-morrow, mother mine, I +will not wait. I have cabled my father," said he, "to meet me at +quarantine." + +"Your poor, busy father," she said, "will hardly feel like running on +from Cleveland to meet a boy who is coming home without a degree." + +"My father," said Fitz, "will be at quarantine. He will come out in a +tug. And he will arrange to take me off and put me ashore before the +others. If the ship is anywhere near on schedule my father and I will be +in time to see a ball game at the Polo Grounds." + +Something in the young man's honest face and voice aroused an answering +enthusiasm in his mother's heart. + +"Oh, Fitz," she said, "if I could possibly manage it I would go with +you. Tell your father that I am sailing next week. I won't cable. +Perhaps he'll be surprised and pleased." + +"I _know_ he will," said Fitz, and he folded his mother in his arms and +rumpled her hair on one side and then on the other. + + * * * * * + +Those who beheld, and who, because of the wealth of the principal +personages, took notice of the meeting between Fitz and his father, say +that Fitz touched his father's cheek with his lips as naturally and +unaffectedly as if he had been three years old, that a handshake between +the two men accompanied this salute, and that Williams senior was heard +to remark that it had looked like rain early in the morning, but that +now it didn't, and that he had a couple of seats for the ball game. What +he really said was inside, neither audible nor visible upon his +smooth-shaven, care-wrinkled face. It was an outcry of the heart, so +joyous as to resemble grief. + +There was a young and pretty widow on that ship who had made much of +Fitz on the way out and had pretended that she understood him. She +thought that she had made an impression, and that, whatever happened, he +would not forget her. But when he rushed up, his face all joyous, to say +good-by, her heart sank. And she told her friends afterward that there +was a certain irresistible, orphan-like appeal about that young +Williams, and that she had felt like a mother toward him. But this was +not till very much later. At first she used to shut herself up in her +room and cry her eyes out. + +They lunched at an uptown hotel and afterward, smoking big cigars, they +drove to a hatter's and bought straw hats, being very critical of each +other's fit and choice. + +Then they hurried up to the Polo Grounds, and when it began to get +exciting in the fifth inning, Fitz felt his father pressing something +into his hand. Without taking his eyes from Wagsniff, who was at the +bat, Fitz put that something into his mouth and began to chew. The two +brothers--for that is the high relationship achieved sometimes in +America, and in America alone, between father and son--thrust their new +straw hats upon the backs of their round heads, humped themselves +forward, and rested with their elbows on their knees and watched--no, +that is your foreigner's attitude toward a contest--they _played_ +the game. + +I cannot leave them thus without telling the reader that they survived +the almost fatal ninth, when, with the score 3-2 against, two out and a +man on first, Wagsniff came once more to the bat and, swinging cunningly +at the very first ball pitched to him by the famous Mr. Blatherton, +lifted it over the centrefielder's head and trotted around the bases +and, grinning like a Hallowe'en pumpkin, came romping home. + +At dinner that night Williams senior said suddenly: + +"Fitz, what you do want to do?" + +A stranger would have thought that Fitz was being asked to choose +between a theatre and a roof-garden, but Fitz knew that an entirely +different question was involved in those casually spoken words. He was +being asked off-hand to state off-hand what he was going to do with his +young life. But he had his answer waiting. + +"I want to see the world," he said. + +Williams senior, as a rule, thought things out in his own mind and did +not press for explanations. But on the present occasion he asked: + +"As how?" + +Fitz smiled very youthfully and winningly. + +"I've seen some of it," he said, "right side up. Now I want to have a +look upside-down. If I go into something of yours--as myself--I don't +get a show. I'm marked. The other clerks would swipe to me, and the +heads would credit me with brains before I showed whether I had any or +not. I want you to get me a job in Wall Street--under any other name +than my own--except Percy"--they both laughed--"your first name and +mamma's maiden name would do--James Holden. And nobody here knows me by +sight, I've been abroad so much; and it seems to me I'd get an honest +point of view and find out if I was any good or not, and if I could get +myself liked for myself or not." + +"Well," said his father; "well, that's an idea, anyhow." + +"I've had valets and carriages and luxuries all my life," said Fitz. "I +think I like them. But I don't _know_--do I? I've never tried the other +thing. I'm sure I don't want to be an underpaid clerk always. But I am +sure I want to try it on for a while." + +"I was planning," said his father, "to take a car and run about the +country with you and show you all the different enterprises that I'm +interested in. I thought you'd make a choice, find something you liked, +and go into it for a starter. If you're any good you can go pretty far +with me pulling for you. You don't like that idea?" + +"Not for now," said Fitz. "I like mine better." + +"Do you want to live on what you earn?" + +"If I can stand it." + +"You'll be started with ten dollars a week, say. Can you do it?" + +"What did grandpa start on?" asked Fitz. + +"His board, two suits of clothes, and twenty-four dollars a year," said +William senior with a proud ring in his voice. + +"And you?" + +"I began at the bottom, too. That was the old-fashioned idea. Father +was rich then. But he wanted me to show that I was some good." + +"Did grandpa pull for you, or did you have to find yourself?" + +"Well," said the father diffidently, "I had a natural taste for +business. But," and he smiled at his son, "I shouldn't live on what you +earn, if I were you. You needn't spend much, but have a good time out of +hours. You'll find yourself working side by side with other sons of rich +men. And you can bet your bottom dollar _they_ don't live on what they +can earn. Unless you make a display of downright wealth you'll be judged +on your merits. That's what you're driving at, isn't it?" + +So they compromised on that point; and the next morning they went +downtown and called upon Mr. Merriman, the great banker. He and Williams +had been in many deals together, and on one historic occasion had +supported prices and loaned so much ready money on easy terms as to +avert a panic. + +"John," said Williams senior, "my son Fitz." + +"Well, sir," said Merriman, only his eyes smiling, "you don't look like +a foreigner." + +"I'm not," said Fitz stoutly. + +"In that case," said Merriman, "what can I do for you?" + +"I want to be called James Holden," said Fitz, "and to have a job in +your office." + +Merriman listened to the reasons with interest and amusement. Then he +turned to Williams senior. "May I drive him?" he asked grimly. + +"If you can," said Fitz's father. And he laughed. + +Finally, it was arranged that, in his own way, Fitz was to see the +world. + + + + +V + +Fitz's experiment in finding himself and getting himself liked for +himself alone was a great failure. He had not been in Mr. Merriman's +employ two hours before he found that he disliked long sums in addition, +and had made friends with Wilson Carrol, who worked next to him. Indeed, +Fitz made friends with everybody in the office inside of two weeks, and +was responsible for a great deal of whispering and hanging out of back +windows for a puff of smoke. Nobody but Mr. Merriman knew who he was, +where he came from, or what his prospects were. Everybody liked him--for +himself. Rich or poor, it must have been the same. His idea that +character, if he had it, would tell in the long run proved erroneous. It +told right away. + +Wilson Carrol and half a dozen other clerks in the office were the sons +of rich men, put to work because of the old-fashioned idea that +everybody ought to work, and at the same time pampered, according to the +modern idea, with comfortable allowances over and beyond their pay. +With one or other of these young men for companion, and presently for +friend, Fitz began to lead the agreeable summer life of New York's +well-to-do youth. He allowed himself enough money to keep his end up, +but did not allow himself any especial extravagances or luxuries. He +played his part well, appearing less well off than Carrol, and more so +than young Prout, with whom he got into much mischief in the office. +Whatever these young gentlemen had to spend they were always hard up. +Fitz did likewise. If you dined gloriously at Sherry's and had a box at +the play you made up for it the next night by a chop at Smith's and a +cooling ride in a ferry-boat, say to Staten Island and back. Saturday +you got off early and went to Long Island or Westchester for tennis and +a swim, and lived till Monday in a luxurious house belonging to a +fellow-clerk's father, or were put up at the nearest country club. + +Downtown that summer there was nothing exciting going on. The market +stood still upon very small transactions, and there was no real work for +any one but the book-keepers. The more Fitz saw of the science of +addition the less he thought of it, but he did what he had to do (no +more) and drew his pay every Saturday with pride. Once, there being a +convenient legal holiday to fatten the week-end, he went to Newport with +Carrol and got himself so much liked by all the Carrol family that he +received and accepted an invitation to spend his long holiday with them. +He and Carrol had arranged with the powers to take their two weeks off +at the same time--from the fifteenth to the end of August. And during +business hours they kept their heads pretty close together and did much +plotting and planning in whispers. + +But Mrs. Carrol herself was to have a finger in that vacation. The +presence in her house of two presentable young men was an excellent +excuse for paying off dinner debts and giving a lawn party and a ball. +Even at Newport there are never enough men to go round, and with two +whole ones for a basis much may be done. The very night of their arrival +they "ran into" a dinner-party, as Carrol expressed it. It was a large +dinner; and the young men, having got to skylarking over their dressing +(contrary to Mrs. Carrol's explicit orders) descended to a drawing-room +already full of people. Carrol knew them all, even the famous new +beauty; but Fitz--or James Holden, rather--had, except for the Carrols, +but a nodding acquaintance with one or two of the men. He felt shy, and +blushed very becomingly while trying to explain to Mrs. Carrol how he +and Wilson happened to be so unfortunate as to be late. + +"Well," she said, "I'm not going to punish you this time. You are to +take Miss Burton in." + +"Which is Miss Burton?" asked Fitz, on whose memory at the moment the +name made no impression. + +"Do you see seven or eight men in the corner," she said, "who look as if +they were surrounding a punch-bowl?" + +"Miss Burton is the punch-bowl?" he asked. + +"All those men want to take her in," said Mrs. Carrol, "and you're going +to make them all very jealous." + +Dinner was announced, and Mrs. Carrol, with Fitz in tow, swept down upon +the group of men. It parted reluctantly and disclosed, lolling happily +in a deep chair, the most beautiful girl in the world. She came to her +feet in the quickest, prettiest way imaginable, and spoke to Mrs. Carrol +in the young Ellen Terry voice, with its little ghost of a French +accent. Fitz did not hear what she said or what Mrs. Carrol answered. He +only knew that his heart was thumping against his ribs, and that a +moment later he was being introduced as Mr. Holden, and that Eve did not +know him from Adam. + +Presently she laid the tips of her fingers on his arm, and they were +going in to dinner. + +"I think Mrs. Carrol's a dear," said Fitz, "to give me you to take in +and to sit next to. I always wanted people to like me, but now all the +men hate me. I can feel it in the small of my back, and I like it. Do +you know how you feel in spring--the day the first crocuses come out? +That's the way it makes me feel." + +She turned her great, smiling eyes upon him and laughed. The laugh died +away. His young, merry face had a grim, resolved look. So his father +looked at critical times. + +"I thought you were joking--rather feebly," she said. + +"I don't know," said he, "that I shall ever joke again." + +"You make your mind up very quickly," she said. + +"The men of my family all do," he said. "But it isn't my mind that's +made up." + +Something of the girl's stately and exquisite poise forsook her. Her +eyes wore a hunted look for a moment. She even felt obliged to laugh to +cover her confusion. + +"It's my heart," said Fitz. "I saw you--and that is all there is to it." + +"Aren't you in something of a hurry?" she asked, her eyes twinkling. She +had felt for a moment like a soldier surprised without weapons. But now, +once more, she felt herself armed _cap à pie_. + +"I've got to be," said Fitz. "I'm a bank clerk on a two weeks' vacation, +of which the first day is gone." + +She was sorry that he was a bank clerk; it had a poor and meagre sound. +It was not for him that she had been trained. She had been made to slave +for herself, and was to make a "continental" marriage with the highest +bidder. Eve's heart had been pretty well schooled out of her, and yet, +before dinner came to an end, she found herself wishing that among the +high bidders might be one very young, like the man at her side, with +eyes as honest, and who, to express admiration, beat about no bushes. + +Later, when they said good-by, Fitz said: + +"It would be good for me to see you to-morrow." + +And she said: + +"Would it be good for _me_?" and laughed. + +"Yes," he said firmly, "it would." + +"Why?" she asked. + +"To-morrow at four," said Fitz, "I shall come for you and take you +around the Cliff Walk and tell you." + +She made no promise. But the next day, when Fitz called at the cottage +which Mrs. Burton, by scraping and saving these many years, had managed +to take for the season, Eve was at home--and she was alone. + + + + +VI + +Newport, as a whole, was busy preparing for the national lawn-tennis +championship. There was a prince to be pampered and entertained, and +every night, from the door of some great house or other, a strip of red +carpet protruded, covered by an awning, and the coming and going of +smart carriages on Bellevue Avenue seemed double that of the week +before. But the affair between James Holden--who was nobody knew who, +and came from nobody knew exactly where--and Newport's reigning beauty +held the real centre of the stage. + +Beautiful though Eve was, natural and unaffected though she seemed, +people had but to glance at Mrs. Burton's old, hard, humorless, at once +anxious and triumphant face to know that the girl, willing or not, was a +victim prepared for sacrifice. Confessedly poor, obviously extravagant +and luxury-loving, even the rich men who wanted to marry her knew that +Eve must consider purses more than hearts. And they held themselves +cynically off and allowed what was known as "Holden's pipe-dream" to run +its course. It amused those who wanted Eve, those who thought they did, +and all those who loved a spectacle. "He will go back to his desk +presently," said the cynics, "and that will be the end of that." The +hero of the pipe-dream thought this at times himself. Well, if it turned +out that way Eve was not worth having. He believed that she had a heart, +that if her heart were touched she would fling her interests to the +winds and obey its dictates. + +What Eve thought during the first few days of Holden's pipe-dream is not +clearly known. She must have been greatly taken with him, or she would +not have allowed him to interfere with her plans for personal +advancement and aggrandizement, to make a monopoly of her society, and +to run his head so violently into a stone wall. After the first few +days, when she realized that she liked to be with him better than with +any one she had ever known, she probably thought--or to that +effect--"I'll just pretend a little--and have it to remember." But she +found herself lying awake at night, wishing that he was rich; and later, +not even wishing, just lying awake and suffering. She had made up her +mind some time since to accept Darius O'Connell before the end of the +season. He had a prodigious fortune, good habits, and a kind Irish way +with him. And she still told herself that it must be O'Connell, and she +lay awake and thought about Fitz and suffered. + +Mrs. Burton alone hadn't a kind thought or word for him. Her face +hardened at the mere mention of his name, and sometimes, when she saw a +certain expression that came oftener and oftener into Eve's face, that +callous which served her for a heart turned harder than Nature had made +it, and she saw all her schemes and all her long labors demolished like +a house of cards. Even if Eve flung Fitz aside like an old glove, as +inevitably she must, still Mrs. Burton's schemes would wear a tinge of +failure. The girl had shown that the heart was not entirely educated +out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if things went no +further, here was partial failure. She had intended to make an +inevitably rising force of Eve, and here at the very outset were +lassitude and a glance aside at false gods. + +Fitz was stubbornly resolved to win Eve on his merits or not to win her +at all. He had but to tell her his real name, or his father's, to turn +the balance of the hesitation and doubt; but that, he told himself, +would never, never do. She must turn aside from her training, love him +for himself, and believe, if only for a few hours, that she had thrown +herself away upon poverty and mediocrity, and be happy in it; or else +she must pass him by, and sweep on up the broad, cold stairway of her +own and her mother's ambitions. + +But Fitz wanted her so much that he felt he must die if he lost her. And +sometimes he was tempted to tell her of his millions and take her for +better or worse. But he would never know then if she cared for him or +not; he would never know then if she had a real heart and was worth the +having. So he resisted, and his young face had, at times, a grim, +careworn look; and between hope and fear his spirits fell away and he +felt tired and old. People thought of him as an absurd boy in the most +desperate throes of puppy love, and certain ones felt grateful to Eve +Burton for showing them so pretty a bit of sport. Even those very +agreeable people, the Carrols, were disgusted with Fitz, as are all +good people when a guest of the house makes a solemn goose of himself. +But Fitz was not in the least ridiculous to himself, which was +important; and he was not ridiculous to Eve, which was more +important still. + +Then, one morning, the whole affair began to look serious even to a +scoffing and cynical world. Darius O'Connell was missed at the Casino +and in the Reading-room; the evening papers announced that he had sailed +for Europe. And Miss Burton, far from appearing anxious or unhappy about +this, had never looked so beautiful or so serene. Some said that +O'Connell had made up his mind that the game was not worth the candle; +others, that he had proposed and had been "sent packing." Among these +latter was Mrs. Burton herself, and it will never be known what words of +abuse she poured upon Eve. If Mrs. Burton deserved punishment she was +receiving all that she deserved. Sick-headaches, despair, a vain, empty +life with its last hopes melting away. Eve--her Eve--her beautiful +daughter had a heart! That was the sum of Mrs. Burton's punishment. For +a while she resisted her fate and fought against it, and then collapsed, +bitter, broken, and old. + +But what looked even more serious than O'Connell's removing himself was +the fact that during the match which was to decide the lawn-tennis +championship Eve and her bank clerk did not appear in the Casino +grounds. Here were met all the happy people, in society and all the +unhappy people--even Mrs. Burton's ashen face was noted among those +present--but the reigning belle and her young man were not in the seats +that they had occupied during the preceding days of the tournament; and +people pointed out those empty seats to each other, and smiled and +lifted their eyebrows; and young Tombs, who had been making furious love +to one of the Blackwell twins--for the third tournament in five +years--sighed and whispered to her: "Dolly, did you ever in your life +see two empty seats sitting so close to each other?" + +Meanwhile, Fitz and the beauty were strolling along the Cliff Walk in +the bright sunshine, with the cool Atlantic breeze in their faces, +between lawns and gardens on the one side and dancing blue waves upon +the other. Fitz looked pale and careworn. But Eve looked ecstatic. This +was because poor Fitz, on the one hand, was still in the misery of doubt +and uncertainty, and because Eve, on the other, had suddenly made up her +mind and knew almost exactly what was going to happen. + +The Cliff Walk belongs to the public, and here and there meanders +irritatingly over some very exclusive millionaire's front lawn. A few +such, unable to endure the sight of strangers, have caused this walk, +where it crosses their properties, to be sunk so that from the windows +of their houses neither the walk itself nor persons walking upon it +can be seen. + +Fitz and the beauty were approaching one of these "ha-ha's" into which +the path dipped steeply and from which it rose steeply upon the farther +side. On the left was a blank wall of granite blocks, on the right only +a few thousand miles of blind ocean. It may have been a distant view of +this particular "ha-ha" that had made up Eve's mind for her, for she had +a strong dramatic sense. Or it may have been that her heart alone had +made up her mind, and that the secluded depths of the "ha-ha" had +nothing to do with the matter. + +"Jim," she said as they began to descend into the place, "life's only a +moment out of eternity, isn't it?" + +"Only a moment, Eve," he said, "a little longer for some than for +others." + +"If it's only a moment," she said as they reached the bottom of the +decline, and could only be seen by the blind granite wall and the blind +ocean, "I think it ought to be complete." + +"Why, Eve!" he said, his voice breaking and choking. "Honestly?... My +Eve!... Mine!... Look at me.... Is it true?... Are you sure?... Why, +she's sure!... My darling's sure ... all sure." + + * * * * * + +Later he said: "And you don't care about money, and you've got the +biggest, sweetest heart in all the world. And it's mine, and +mine's yours." + +"I can't seem to see anything in any direction," she said, "beyond you." + + * * * * * + +Later they had to separate, only to meet again at a dinner. Before they +went in they had a word together in a corner. + +"I _told_ you," said Fitz, "that my father would understand, and you +said he wouldn't. But he did; his answer came while I was dressing. I +telegraphed: 'I have seen the world,' and the answer was: 'Put a fence +around it.'" + +She smiled with delight. + +"Eve," he said, "everybody knows that you've taken me. It's in our +faces, I suppose. And they are saying that you are a goose to throw +yourself away on a bank clerk." + +"Do you think I care?" she said. + +"I know you don't," he said, "but I can't help thanking you for holding +your head so high and looking so happy and so proud." + +"Wouldn't you be proud," she said, "to have been brought up to think +that you had no heart, and then to find that, in spite of everything, +you had one that could jump and thump, and love and long, and make +poverty look like paradise?" + +"I know what you mean, a little," he said. "Your mother tried to make +you into an Article; my mother tried to make an Englishman of me. And +instead, you turned into an angel, and I was never anything but a +spread eagle." + +"Do you know," she said, "I can't help feeling a little sorry for poor +mamma." + +"Then," said he, "put your left hand behind your back." She felt him +slide a heavy ring upon her engagement finger. "Show her that, and tell +her that it isn't glass." + +Eve couldn't keep from just one covert glance at her ring. The sight of +it almost took her breath away. + +Dinner was announced. + +"I am frightened," she said; "have I given myself to a djinn?" + +"My Eve doesn't know whom she's given herself to," he whispered. + +"I don't believe I do," she said. + +"You don't," said he. + +An immense pride in his father's wealth and his own suddenly surged in +Fitz. He could give her all those things that she had renounced for his +sake, and more, too. But he did not tell her at that time. + +The great ruby on the slim hand flashed its message about the festive +board. Some of the best-bred ladies in the land threatened to become +pop-eyed from looking at it. + +Mrs. Blackwell, mother of the twins, whispered to Montgomery Stairs: + +"That Holden boy seems to have more to him than I had fancied." + +But young Tombs whispered to Dolly Blackwell, to whom he had just become +engaged for the third (and last) time in five years: "She isn't thinking +about the ring.... Look at her.... She's listening to music." + + * * * * * + +Montgomery Stairs (who is not altogether reliable) claims to have seen +Mrs. Burton within five minutes of her learning who her son-in-law-to-be +really was. For, of course, this came out presently and made a profound +sensation. He claims to have seen--from a convenient eyrie--Mrs. Burton +rush out into the little garden behind her cottage; he claims that all +of a sudden she leaped into the air and turned a double somersault, and +that immediately after she ran up and down the paths on her hands; that +then she stood upon her head for nearly five minutes; and that finally +she flung herself down and rolled over and over in a bed of heliotrope. + +But then, as is well known, Montgomery Stairs, in the good American +phrase, was one of those who "also ran." + +Darius O'Connell sent a cable to Eve from Paris (from Maxim's, I am +afraid, late at night). He said: "Heartiest congratulations and best +wishes. You can fool some of the best people some of the time, but, +thank God, you can't fool all of the best people all of the time." Eve +and Fitz never knew just what he meant. + +They spent part of their honeymoon in Cleveland, and every afternoon Eve +sat between Fitz and his father, leaning forward, her elbows on her +knees, and was taught painstakingly, as the crowning gift of those two +simple hearts, to play the game. + +There must be one word more. There are people to this day who say that +Eve knew from the beginning who "James Holden" was, and that she played +her cards accordingly. In view of this I fling all caution to the wind, +and in spite of the cold fear that is upon me of being sued for libel, I +tell these ladies--_people_, I mean--that they lie in their teeth. + + + + +TARGETS + +"On the contrary," said Gardiner, "lightning very often strikes twice in +the same place, and often three times. The so-called all-wise Providence +is still in the experimental stage. My grandmother, for instance, +presented my grandfather with fifteen children: seven live sons and +eight dead daughters. That's when the lightning had fun with itself. And +when the epidemic of ophthalmia broke out in the Straits Settlements, +what class of people do you suppose developed the highest percentage of +total loss of sight in one or both eyes?--why the inmates of the big +asylum for the deaf and dumb in Singapore: twenty per cent of those poor +stricken souls went stone blind. Then what do you think the lightning +did? Set the blooming asylum on fire and burned it to the ground. And +then, I dare say, the elements retired to some region of waste, off in +space somewhere, and sat down and thundered with laughter. But it wasn't +through with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It +was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible +instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to +a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put +aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the _Nerissa_. She was +wrecked--" + +"Coast of Java--in '80, wasn't it?" said Pedder, who has read nothing +but dictionaries and books of black-and-white facts and statistics in +the course of a long life otherwise entirely devoted to misdirected +efforts to defeat Colonel Bogey at golf. + +"It was," said Gardiner, "and the lightning was very busy striking. It +drowned off every member of the crew who had any sense of decency; and +of the deaf and dumb passengers selected to be washed ashore a pair who +were also blind. Those saved came to land at a jungly stretch of coast, +dented by a slow-running creek. The crew called the place Quickstep +Inlet because of the panicky and inhuman haste in which they left it." + +"Why inhuman?" asked Ludlow. + +"Because," said Gardiner, "they only gave about one look at their two +comrades in misfortune who were deaf, and dumb, and blind, and decided +that it was impracticable to attempt to take them along. I suppose they +were right. I suppose it _would_ have been the devil's own job. The +really nasty part was that the crew made a secret of it, and when some +of them, having passed through the Scylla and Charybdis of fright and +fever, and foul water, and wild beasts, reached a settlement they didn't +say a word about the two unfortunates who had been deliberately +abandoned." + +"How was it found out then?" Pedder asked. + +"Years and years afterward by the ravings in liquor of one of the crew, +and by certain things that I'd like to tell you if you'd be interested." + +"Go on," said Ludlow. + +"The important thing," said Gardiner, "is that the pair were +deserted--not why they were deserted, or how it was found out that they +had been. And one thing--speaking of lightning and Providence--is very +important. If the pair hadn't been blind, if the asylum hadn't been +burned, if the _Nerissa_ hadn't been wrecked, and if the crew hadn't +deserted them--they would never in this world have had an opportunity to +lift to their lips the cup of human happiness and drink it off. + +"The man did not know that he had been deserted. He vaguely understood +that there had been a shipwreck and that he had been washed +ashore--alone, he thought. When he got hungry he began to crawl round +and round with his hands in front of his face feeling for something to +eat, trying and approving of one handful of leaves and spitting out +another. But thirst began to torment him, and then, all of a sudden, he +went souse into the creek that there emptied into the sea. That way of +life went on for several days. And all the while, the woman, just as she +had come ashore, was keeping life going similarly--crawling about, +always near the creek, crossing the beach at low tide to the mud flats +and rooting among the mollusks, and stuffing herself with any kind of +sea-growth that tasted good enough. The two were probably often within a +few feet of each other; and they might have lived out their lives that +way without either of them ever having the least idea that he or she was +not the only human being in that part of the world. But something--pure +accident or some subtle instinct--brought them together. The man was out +crawling with one hand before his face--so was the woman. Their hands +met, and clinched. They remained thus, and trembling, for a long time. +From that time until the day of their death, years and years later, they +never for so much as one moment lost contact with each other. + +"Daily they crawled or walked with infinite slowness, hand in hand, or +the arm of one about the waist of the other--neither knowing the look, +the age, the religion or even the color of the other. But I know, from +the only person fitted to judge, that they loved each other tremendously +and spotlessly--these two poor souls alone in that continuous, +soundless, sightless, expressionless night. I know because their baby, +when he grew up, and got away from that place, and learned white man's +talk--told me. + +"He left Quickstep Inlet when he was about fifteen years old, naked as +the day he was born; ignorant of everything--who he was or what he was, +or that the world contained anything similar to him. It was some +restless spirit of exploration that smoulders I suppose, in every human +heart, that compelled him to leave the few hundred acres of shore and +wood that were familiar to him. He carried with him upon his bold +journey a roll of bark, resembling birch-bark, upon which he had +scratched with a sharp shell the most meaningless-looking lines, curves, +spirals and gyrations that you can imagine. He will have that roll in +his possession now, I expect, for even when I knew him--when he was +twenty years old, and could talk English pretty nimbly, he could hardly +bear to be separated from it--or, if he let you take one of the sheets +in your hands, he would watch you as a dog watches the person that is +about to give him his dinner. But he ran very little risk of having it +stolen. Nobody wanted it. + +"He must have been a gentle savage, with all sorts of decent inherited +instincts, for when I knew him he had already taken kindly to +civilization. At first, of course, they had a bad time with him; they +couldn't talk to him, and when, quite naturally and nonchalantly he +would start in to do the most outrageous things, they had to teach him +better, literally by force. If Pedder weren't such an old stickler for +propriety, I could go more into detail. You needn't look offended, Ped, +you know you are very easily shocked, and that you make it unpleasant +for everybody. He was taken on by the English consul at Teerak, who was +a good fellow, and clothed, and taught to speak English, and, as a +beginning, to work in the garden. Indoor work seemed to have almost the +effect of nauseating him; and houses and closed doors threw him at first +into frenzies of fear, and always made him miserable. It was apparent in +his face, but more in his way of putting up his fists when in doubt, +that he wasn't Dutch nor German nor French. He was probably English, +they thought, but he might have been American, and so they had an +orthodox christening and named him Jonathan Bull. Of course, after he +got the trick of speech, they found out, by putting two and two +together, just about who and what he was; and that he was of English +parentage. But, of course, they had to let the name stand. + +"The first thing, he told me, that ever came to him in the way of a +thought was that he was different from his parents--that they couldn't +see, nor hear, nor make a noise as he could. He could remember sitting +comfortably in the mud at low tide and being convulsed with laughter at +his mother's efforts to find a fat mussel that was within a few inches +of her hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made +paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so +familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, hand in hand, +with considerable precision and alacrity. It was one of his earliest +mischievous instincts to place obstacles in those paths, and take a +humorous view of the consequent tumbles. + +"The only intercourse that he could have with his parents was, of +course, by sense of touch. And he told me that, whenever they could +catch him, they would kiss him and fondle him. But he didn't like to be +caressed, especially in the daytime. It was different at night when one +became nervous and afraid; then he used to let himself be caught; and he +said that he used to hold hands with his mother until he went to sleep +and that when he awoke it was to find that the clasp still held. It was +a long time before he realized that what to him were whimsical pranks, +were in the nature of tragedies to his parents. If he put a +stumbling-block in one of their paths, it upset the whole fabric of +their daily life, made them feel, I suppose, that they were losing such +faculties as they possessed: memory and the sense of touch--and they +would be obliged either to walk with infinite slowness, or actually to +crawl. And it was long before he realized that things which were +perfectly simple and easy for him, were frightfully difficult for them; +and he said that his first recollection of a tender and gentle feeling +was once when--heaven only knows how--his parents found a nest with eggs +in it--and brought these eggs to him. He realized then something of what +a prize these eggs must have seemed to them--for he had often scrambled +into trees and glutted himself with eggs, whereas, so far as he could +recollect, his parents had never had any at all. He began from that time +on to collect choice tidbits for _them_; and wondered why he had not +done so before. And they rewarded him with caresses and kisses; I +suppose his real reward was his own virtue. Anyway, though very +gradually at first, instinct taught him to be a good son to them. + +"The lessons that he learned of life were, first of all, from his +parents, who were always near at hand for study; second, from birds and +animals, there being a pool not far up the creek where even tigers +sometimes came to drink; from occasional monkeys; but mostly, of course, +by intuition and introspection. + +"He noticed that birds and animals all had the use of sight and hearing, +and were able to make sounds; and his own forest-trained senses soon +perceived different meanings, and even shades of meaning in certain of +these sounds. The larger animals were not, of course, constantly under +observation, and from tigers, for instance, he learned only the main +principles of tiger-talk--a kind of singsong snuffling purr that means +'get out of the way'; the cringing whine that means the tiger is very +sorry for himself; and two or three of the full-throated roars: the one +expressing rage, the one expressing fear, and the one expressing pained +astonishment. But into the vocabularies of birds he penetrated +very deeply. + +"One day, when I had got to know Jonathan rather well, he surprised me +by saying, 'the minute I got the idea, I talked all day long, but it was +years before I thought of writing down what I said, instead of plain +trying to remember. At first, when I'd say something that I wanted to +remember, I'd have to coax my head into remembering the place where I +had said it, near which tree, or which stone on the beach, what had +happened to make me think of saying it, and then, more often than not, I +could repeat it word for word,' Then he showed me the sheets of bark +with the scratches and scrawls and gyrations on them. 'It isn't spelled +writing,' he explained, 'or what they call picture writing. I don't +believe it has enough general principles for me to be able to explain it +as a system, though it has a sort of system to it. If it's like +anything, I think it must be like the way they write down music. It +would be, wouldn't it? Because beasts don't talk with words, they talk +with sounds, and I copycatted my language from beasts and birds,' + +"I asked him what the writing on the bark was all about. He said, and he +blushed, as every young author, and most old ones, should, that the +writing was just more or less nothing--all about different kinds of +things. So I pointed specifically to the top of one sheet, and said, +'begin there and tell me what that's about.' 'If I began there,' he +said, 'I'd have to go backward; that's the finish of--oh!' he literally +threw himself on my mercy with the most ingenuous blushing face. 'Oh,' +he said, 'I suppose _you'd_ call them poems.' I, of course, had my +doubts of that; but I kept countenance, and said, 'well, what's that one +about?' He looked puzzled for a moment, and then he smiled. 'Why,' he +said, 'I suppose it's about me, about the way I felt one day, I suppose; +but if I tried to say it into English it would just sound damn foolish; +but, perhaps, you'd sooner hear it in my own language. It's better, +because, after all, you can't turn sounds into words, can you?' 'Go +ahead,' I said. + +"His hands, holding the sheet of bark shook a little with embarrassment, +and he was very red in the face; and before he could begin--I suppose +you would call it _reading_--he had to wet his lips two or three times. +I expected, of course, to hear the usual grunts and minor guttural +sounds of the usual very primitive dialect. But Jonathan's own +particular patent language was not that sort of thing at all. He began +with the faintest, and most distinct rustling of leaves--I can't imagine +how he made the sound at all. It seemed to come from somewhere between +the back of his throat and his lips, and to have nothing to do with his +tongue or vocal cords. It lasted for, perhaps, half a minute; dying out, +fainter and fainter and finer and finer into complete silence. Then, +from the distant point where the rustling had last been heard, there +came the softest little throaty whistle, three times repeated; then, for +two good minutes without seeming to draw breath, the young man burst +into peal after peal of the sweetest, clearest, highest, swiftest +whistling that you can possibly imagine. I don't know how he did it--he +didn't even purse or move his lips--they were barely parted, in a kind +of plaintive, sad little smile--and the notes came out; that was all. Of +course I can't tell you what the thing meant word for word or sound for +sound; but, in general, it said youth, youth and spring: and I tell you +it had those compositions of Mendelssohn, and Grieg, and Sinding lashed +to the mast. Well, the leaves rustled again, a little lower in the +scale, I think, but wouldn't swear to it, and the first little soft +throaty whistle was twice repeated--and there was a little, tiny whisper +of a human moan. And that was the end of that poem. + +"I made him read to me from his bark sheets until he was tired out. And +the next day I was at him again early, and the next. Suppose you were +living in a jumping-off place, bored to death, and blowing yourself +every fifth or sixth day to a brand new crop of prickly heat; and wanted +to go away, and couldn't because you had to sit around until a fat +Dutchman made up his mind about a concession; and suppose the only book +in the place was on the uses of and manufacture and by-products of the +royal palm, written in a beastly language called Tamil, which you only +knew enough of to ask for tea and toast at four o'clock in the morning, +and were usually understood to mean soda biscuits and a dish of buffalo +milk. And suppose that then you came across the complete works of +Shakespeare--and that you had never read them--or the Odyssey and that +you had never read that--or, better, suppose that there was a Steinway +piano in your sitting-room, and that one day the boy who worked the +punka for you dropped the rope and sat down at the piano and played +Beethoven from beginning to end--as Rubenstein would have played +him--and suppose you had never heard a note of Beethoven before. It was +like that--listening to the works of Jonathan Bull." + +Gardiner paused, as if considering very carefully what he should say. + +"No!" he said presently, "I'm _not_ overdoing it. My judgment of +Jonathan Bull is no longer a sudden enthusiasm, as the natural effort of +a man to make his own discoveries seem more important to his friends +than they deserve. He _is_ one of the giants. Think of it: he had made, +on an impulse of out and out creation, the most expressive of all +languages, so far as mere sound goes; and as if that were not enough, he +had gone ahead and composed in that language incomparable lyrics. The +meanings were in the sounds. You couldn't mistake them. Have you ever +heard a tiger roar--full steam ahead? There was one piece that began +suddenly with a kind of terrible, obsessing, strong purring that shook +the walls of the room and that went into a series of the most terrible +tiger roars and ended with the nightmare screams of a child. I have +never been so frightened in my life. And there was a snake song, a soft, +wavy, piano, _pianissimo_ effect, all malignant stealth and horror, and +running through it were the guileless and insistently hungry twitterings +of baby birds in the nest. But there were comical pieces, too, in which +ludicrous adventures befell unsophisticated monkeys; and there was a +whole series of spring-fever songs--some of them just rotten and +nervous, and some of them sad and yearning--and some of them--I don't +know just how to put it--well, some of them you might say were not +exactly fit to print. One thing he read me--it was very +short--consisted of hoarse, inarticulate, broken groans--I couldn't make +out what it meant at all. And I was very curious to know, because it +seemed to move Jonathan himself much more than anything else of his. + +"'You know,' he explained to me, 'my father and mother couldn't make any +sound at all--oh, yes--they could clap their hands together and make a +sound that way--but I mean with their voices--they hadn't any +voices--sometimes their lips smacked and made a noise over eating, or +kissing; but they couldn't make sounds in their throats. Well, when my +mother died--just think, she couldn't make my father understand that she +was sick; and I couldn't. I tried every way. He didn't know that she was +leaving him--I'm glad you can't see that poor blind face of her's, +turned to father's blind face and trying to tell him good-by--I see it, +almost all the time,' he said. 'You know they were always touching--I +can't remember a single second in all those years when they weren't at +least holding hands. She went in the night. My father was asleep with +one arm over and about her. As she got colder and colder it waked him. +And he understood. Then he began to make those dumb, helpless groans, +like that piece I just read you--the nearest he got to speaking. He sat +on the ground and held her in his arms all the rest of the night, and +all the next day, and the next night--I couldn't make him let go, and +every little while he went into those dreadful, dumb groanings. You +don't get brought up in the jungle without knowing death when you see +it, and what dead things do. The second night, about midnight, the news +of my mother's death began to get about; and horrible, hunchbacked +beasts that I had never seen or dreamed of before began to slink about +among the trees, and peer out, and snuffle, and complain--and suddenly +laugh just like men. And I was so frightened of them, and of the night +anyway, that every now and then I'd go into a regular screaming fit, and +that would drive them away and keep them quiet for a time, but pretty +soon I'd hear their cautious steps, way off, drawing closer and closer, +and then the things would begin to snuffle, and complain, and laugh +again--they had disgusting, black dogfaces, and one came very close, and +I could see the water running out of its mouth. But when dawn began to +break they drew farther and farther away, until you could only hear +them--now and then. + +"'My father looked very white and ill, as was natural enough; but his +face now had a peaceful, contented expression. I didn't understand at +first that he, in his turn, was dying. But it wasn't of a broken heart, +as you might suppose, or anything like that; he had gnawed his left +wrist until he got the arteries open; and he was bleeding to death. + +"'Once a big dead fish was washed up on the beach--it was when I was +quite a little boy--but I remembered how, after a day or two, even my +parents had no trouble in finding it, and I remembered how my father had +scooped a hole in the sand and buried it. So I scooped a great deep hole +in the sand, very deep until water began to trickle into it. And I had +sense enough, when it came to filling up the hole, to put in lots of big +stones, the biggest I could roll in. And I'm strong. I stayed on--for +about six months, getting lonelier and lonelier--and then spring came. I +think that was really what started me. I still go almost crazy every +spring--anyway I got to this place, and found people.'" + + * * * * * + +"What's he doing now?" asked Pedder. + +"He's trying," said Gardiner, "to do it in English. Of course it seems +impossible that he should succeed. But then it was absolutely impossible +for Shakespeare to do what he did with the English language, wasn't it? +And yet he did it." + +"But--" said Pedder. + +"Ped," said Gardiner, "we don't control the lightnings; and you never +can tell where they are going to strike next--or when." + +Ludlow flushed a little, and did not look at his friends. + +"Wouldn't it be wonderful," he said, "to be loved and to be in love the +way his father and mother were. Maybe they were the ones that really +heard and saw, and--sang. We admire the lily, but we owe her to the +loves of the blind rain for the deaf and the dumb earth...." + +Nobody spoke for some moments. It had been the only allusion that Ludlow +had made in years and years to that which had left him a lonely and a +cynical man. + +"I wonder," Pedder mused, "how it ever occurred to a blind, deaf mute +that severing his wrist with his teeth would induce death?" + +Gardiner shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is always interesting," he said, "to know just which part of a +story--if any--is thought worthy of consideration by a given +individual." + + + + +THE BOOT + +Mary Rex was more particularly _my_ nurse, for my sister Ellen, a +thoughtful, dependable child of eight, was her own mistress in +most matters. + +This was in the days when we got our servants from neighborhood +families; before the Swedish and Irish invasion had made servants of us +in turn. Mary was the youngest of an ancestored county family. Her +great-grandfather had fought in the Revolution, as you might know by the +great flint-lock musket over the Rexes' fireplace. A brother of his had +formed part of a British square at Waterloo; and if Mary's own father +had not lost his right hand at Gettysburg he would never have let his +children go out to service. Poor soul, he bore the whole of his +afflictions, those to his body and those to his pride, with a dignity +not often seen in these degenerate days. He was by trade a blacksmith, +and it was for that reason, I suppose, that Providence, who loves a +little joke, elected for amputation his right hand rather than one or +both of his feet. Since, even in these degenerate days, many a footless +blacksmith makes an honest living. + +Mary was a smart, comely, upstanding young woman. Even my father, a +dismal sceptic anent human frailty, said that he would freely trust her +around the farthest corner in Christendom. And I gathered from the talk +of my elders and betters that Mary was very pretty. People said it was a +real joy to see a creature so young, so smiling, so pink and white, so +graciously happy--in those degenerate days. I myself can see now that +she must have been very pretty indeed. Her eyes, for instance, so blue +in the blue, so white in the white, can't have changed at all--unless, +perhaps, the shadows deep within the blue are deeper than they were when +she was a girl. But even to-day you would have to travel far to see +another middle-aged woman so smooth of forehead, so cleanly-cut of +feature, so generally comely. + +But if there was one thing in the world that I had formed no conclusions +upon at the age of six it was female loveliness. To cuddle against a +gentle mother when bogies were about had nothing whatsoever to do with +that gentle mother's personal appearance. To strike valiantly at Mary's +face when the hot water and the scrubbing-brush were going had nothing +to do with the prettiness thereof. Nor did I consider my sister the less +presentable by a black eye given and taken in the game of Little John +and Robin Hood upon a log in the Baychester woods. And indeed I have +been told, and believe it to be a fact, that the beauty before whom +swelled my very earliest tides of affection was a pug-nosed, +snaggle-toothed, freckled-faced tomboy, who if she had been but a jot +uglier might have been exhibited to advantage in a dime museum. Peace, +old agitations, peace! + +Everybody knew the Rexes, as in any part of the world, for many years +stable, everybody knows everybody else. In Westchester, before great +strips of woodland and water became Pelham Bay Park, before the Swedes +came, and the Irish, and the Italians, and the Germans--in other words, +before land boomed--there had always been an amiable and +uninjunctionable stability. Families had lived, for well or ill, in the +same houses for years and years. So long had the portraits hung in the +rich men's houses that if you moved them it was to disclose a +brightly-fresh rectangle upon the wall behind. The box in the poor man's +yard had been tended by the poor man's great-grand female relatives. +Ours was a vicinage of memory and proper pride. We would no more have +thought of inquiring into the morals of this public house or that than +of expunging the sun from the heavens. They had always been there. + +There was a man who left his wife and little children to fight against +King George. He could think of but one thing to protect them against +vagrant soldiers of either side, and that was to carve upon certain +boards (which he nailed to the trees here and there along the boundaries +of his farm): + + BEWARR OF THE BOOLE DOGGES + +When I was a child one of these signs still remained--at the left, just +beyond Pelham Bridge. And people used to laugh and point at the great +trees and say that because of the sign the British had never dared to +trespass and cut down the timber. Now the man had never owned a Boole +Dogge, nor had any of his descendants. I doubt if there was ever one on +the premises, unless latterly, perhaps, there has been a French bulldog +or so let out of a passing automobile to enjoy a few moments of +unconventional liberty. But the bluff had always held good. As my mother +used to say: "I know--but then there _may_ be a bulldog now." And that +farm was always out of bounds. I relate this for two reasons--to show +how stable and conservative a neighborhood was ours, and because on that +very farm, and chosen for the very reason which I have related, stood +the hollow oak which is to play its majestic part in this modest +narrative. + +The apple orchards of the Boole Dogge Farm ran southerly to a hickory +wood, the hickory wood to an oak wood, the oak wood to thick scrub of +all sorts, the scrub to the sedge, and the sedge to the salt mud at low +tide, and at high to the bassy waters themselves of inmost Pelham Bay. +On the right was the long, black trestle of the Harlem River Branch +Railroad, on the left the long-curved ironwork of Pelham Bridge. And the +farm, promontoried with its woods and thick cover between these +boundaries and more woods to the north, was an overgrown, run-down, +desolate, lonely, deserted old place. Had it not been for the old sign +that said "Bewarr," it must have been a great playground for +children--for their picnics, and their hide-and-seeks, and their games +at Indians. But the ferocious animals imagined by the old Revolutionary +were as efficacious against trespassers as a cordon of police. And I +remember to this day, I can feel still, the very-thrill of that wild +surmise with which I followed Mary and my sister over the stone wall and +into those forbidden and forbidding acres for the first time. But that +comes later. + +It was my sister who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I +had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to +accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with +her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her +face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of +being made more sedate by her responsible and settling prospects she +shed the half of her years, which were not many, and became the most +delightful romp, a furious runner of races, swiftest of pursuers at tag, +most subtle and sudden of hiders and poppers out, and full to the arch, +scarlet brim of loud, clear laughter. + +It was late spring now, lilacs in all the dooryards, all the houses +being cleaned inside out, and they were to be married in the fall. They +had picked the little house on the outskirts of Skinnertown not far from +the Tory oak, in which they were to live. And often we made it the end +of an excursion, and played at games devised by Mary to improve the +appearance of the little yard. We gathered up in emulation old, broken +china and bottles, and made them into a heap at the back; we cleared the +yard of brush and dead wood, and pulled up weeds by the hundred-weight, +and set out a wild rose or two and more valuable, if less lovely, plants +that people gave Mary out of real gardens. + +Will Braddish, a painter by trade, met us one day with brushes and a +great bucket of white paint, and, while he and Mary sat upon the +doorstep talking in low tones or directing in high, Ellen and I made +shift to paint the little picket-fence until it was white as new snow. +At odd times Braddish himself painted the little house (it was all of +old-fashioned, long shingles) inside and out, and a friend of his got up +on the roof with mortar and a trowel, and pointed-up the brick chimney; +and my father and Mr. Sturtevant contributed a load of beautiful, sleek, +rich pasture sod and the labor to lay it; so that by midsummer the +little domain was the spickest, spannest little dream of a home in the +whole county. The young couple bought furniture, and received gifts of +furniture, prints, an A1 range, a tiny, shiny, desirable thing; and the +whole world and all things in it smiled them in the face. Braddish, as +you will have guessed, was a prosperous young man. He was popular, too, +and of good habits. People said only against him that he was impulsive +and had sudden fits of the devil's own temper, but that he recovered +from these in a twinkling and before anything came of them. And even the +merest child could see that he thought the world of Mary. I have seen +him show her little attentions such as my sister retailed me of +personages in fairy stories and chivalric histories. Once when there was +a puddle to cross he made a causeway of his coat, like another Raleigh, +and Mary crossed upon it, like one in a trance of tender happiness, +oblivious of the fact that she might easily have gone around and saved +the coat. His skin and his eyes were almost as clear as Mary's own, and +he had a bold, dashing, independent way with him. + +But it wasn't often that Braddish could get free of his manifold +occupations: his painting contracts and his political engagements. He +was by way of growing very influential in local politics, and people +predicted an unstintedly successful life for him. He was considered +unusually clever and able. His manners were superior to his station, and +he had done a deal of heterogeneous reading. But, of course, whenever it +was possible he was with Mary and helped her out with looking after +Ellen and me. My mother, who was very timid about tramps, looked upon +these occasions as in the nature of real blessings. There was nowhere in +the countryside that we children might not safely venture with Will +Braddish strolling behind. He loved children--he really did, a rare, +rare thing--and he was big, and courageous, and strong, and quick. He +was very tactful, too, on these excursions and talked a good part of the +time for the three of us, instead of for Mary alone. Nice, honest talk +it was, too, with just enough robbers, and highwaymen, and lions, and +Indians to give it spice. But all the adventures through which he passed +us were open and honest. How the noble heroes _did_ get on in life, and +how the wicked villains did catch it! + +I remember once we were returning home past the Boole Dogge Farm, and +Braddish, wiping his brow, for it was cruelly hot, seated himself as +bold as could be on the boundary wall. The conversation had been upon +robbers, and how they always, always got caught. + +"It doesn't matter," Braddish said, "where they hide. Take this old +farm. It's the best hiding-place in this end of the county--woods, and +marshes, and old wells, and bushes, and hollows--" + +We asked him in much awe if he had ever actually set foot on the place. + +"Yes, indeed," he said; "when I was a boy I knew every inch of it; I was +always hunting and trapping, and looking for arrowheads. And that was +the best country. Once I spent a night in the woods yonder. The bridge +was open to let a tugboat through and got stuck so they couldn't shut +it, and there was no way back to Westchester except over the railroad +trestle, and my father had said that I could go anywhere I pleased +except on that trestle. And so here I was caught, and it came on to +blither and blow, and I found an oak tree, all hollow like a little +house, and I crept in and fell asleep and never woke till daylight. My +father said next time I could come home by the trestle, or he'd know the +reason why." + +"But," said I, "weren't you afraid the bulldogs would get you?" + +"Now, if they'd said bull-terriers," he said, "I might have had my +doubts, but a bulldog's no more dangerous than a toadfish. He's like my +old grandma. What teeth he has don't meet. And besides," he said, "there +weren't any bulldogs on that farm. And I don't believe there ever were. +Now, I'm not sure, sonny," he said, "but you climb up here--" + +I climbed upon the wall, and he held me so that I should not fall. + +"Do you see," said he, "way down yonder over the tops of the trees a +dead limb sticking up?" + +I saw it finally. + +"Well," he said, "I'd stake something that that's a part of the old +hollow oak. Shall we go and see?" + +But Mary told him that the farm was out of bounds. And he thought a +moment, and then swung his legs over the wall. + +"I won't be two minutes," he said. "I'd like to see if I'm right--it's +fifteen years ago--" And he strode off across the forbidden farm to the +woods. When he came back he said that he had been right, and that +nothing had changed much. He tossed me a flint arrowhead that he had +picked up--he was always finding things, and we went on again. + +When we got to the middle of Pelham Bridge we all stopped and leaned +against the railing and looked down into the swift, swirling current. +Braddish tore an old envelop into little pieces and dropped them +overboard by pairs, so that we might see which would beat the other to a +certain point. + +But the shadows began to grow long now and presently Braddish had to +leave us to attend a meeting in Westchester, and I remember how he +turned and waved, just before the Boulevard dips to the causeway, and +how Mary recollected something that she had meant to say and ran after +him a little way calling, and he did not hear. And she came back +laughing, and red in the face, and breathing quick. + +Two days later my father, who had started for the early train, came +driving back to the house as if he had missed it. But he said, no, and +his face was very grave--he had heard a piece of news that greatly +concerned Mary, and he had come back to tell her. He went into the study +with my mother, and presently they sent for Mary and she went in +to them. + +A few minutes later, through the closed door, Ellen and I heard a +sudden, wailing cry. + +Poor Braddish, it seems, in one of his ungovernable tempers had shot a +man to death, and fled away no one knew whither. + + + + +II + +The man killed was named Hagan. He was a red-faced, hard-drinking brute, +not without sharp wits and a following--or better, a heeling. There had +been bad blood between him and Braddish for some time over political +differences of opinion and advancement. But into these Hagan had carried +a circumstantial, if degenerate, imagination that had grown into and +worried Braddish's peace of mind like a cancer. Details of the actual +killing were kept from us children. But I gathered, since the only +witnesses of the shooting were heelers of Hagan's, that it could in no +wise be construed into an out-and-out act of self-defence, and so far as +the law lay things looked bad for Braddish. + +That he had not walked into the sheriff's office to give himself up made +it look as if he himself felt the unjustifiability of his act, and it +was predicted that when he was finally captured it would be to serve a +life sentence at the very least. The friends of the late Hagan would +hear of nothing less than hanging. It was a great pity (this was my +father's attitude): Hagan was a bad lot and a good riddance; Braddish +was an excellent young man, except for a bit of a temper, and here the +law proposed to revenge the bad man upon the other forever and ever. And +it was right and proper for the law so to do, more's the pity. But it +was not Braddish that would be hit hardest, said my father, and here +came in the inscrutable hand of Providence--it was Mary. + +After the first outburst of feeling she had accepted her fate with a +stanch reserve and went on with her duties much as usual. One ear was +always close to the ground, you might say, to hear the first rumor of +Braddish, either his capture or his whereabouts, that she might fly to +him and comfort him, but the rest of her faculties remained in devoted +attendance on my sister and me. Only there showed in them now and then a +kind of tigerish passionateness, as when I fell off the sea-wall among +the boulders and howled so dismally. She leaped down after and caught me +to her in the wildest distress, and even when I stopped howling could +not seem to put me down. Indeed, she held me so tight that if any of my +bones had been cracked by the tumble she must have finished by breaking +them. The pathos of her efforts to romp with us as in happier days was +lost upon me, I am happy to say. Nor did I, recalling to her what +Braddish had said of robbers being inevitably caught, realize that I was +stabbing her most cruelly. For she was, or tried to be, firm in the +belief that Braddish would succeed where all others had failed. She had +asked my father what would happen if Braddish got clean out of the +United States, and he, hoping, I suppose, to be of indirect use to the +young couple for whom he was heartily sorry, made her out a list of +countries, so far as he knew them, wherein there was no extradition. My +father hoped, I fondly believe, that she would get the list to Braddish +for his guidance, conjecturing rightly that if Braddish made his +whereabouts known to anybody it would be to Mary. But as to that, ten +days passed before Mary knew a jot more of it than another. And I must +believe that it came to her then entirely by inspiration. + +We were passing the Boole Dogge Farm, my sister and I, intent upon +seeing which of us could take the most hops without putting the held-up +foot to the ground, when suddenly Mary, who had been strolling along +laughing at us, stopped short in her tracks and turned, and stood +looking over the green treetops to where the gaunt, dead limb of the +hollow oak thrust sharply up from among them. But we had hopped on for +quite a piece before we noticed that she no longer went alongside. So we +stopped that game and ran back to her. What was it? Had she seen a +rabbit? She laughed and looked very wistful. She was just thinking, +children, that she would like to see the hollow tree where Will had +passed the night. She was not excited--I can swear to that. She guessed +nothing as yet. Her desire was really to the tree--as she might have +coveted one of Will's baby shoes, or anything that had been his. She had +already, poor girl, begun to draw, here and there, upon the past for +sustenance. + +First, she charged Ellen and me to wait for her in the road. But we +rebelled. We swore (most falsely) that we were afeard. Since the teeth +of bulldogs no longer met, we desired passionately to explore the +forbidden farm, and had, indeed, extracted a free commission from my +father so to do, but my mother had procrastinated and put us off. We +laid these facts before Mary, and she said, very well, if our father had +said we might go on the farm, go we might. He would, could and must make +it right with our mother. And so, Mary leading, we climbed the wall. + +Bulldogs' teeth or no bulldogs' teeth, my ancient fear of the place +descended upon me, and had a rabbit leaped or a cat scuttled among the +bushes I must have been palsied. The going across to the woods was waist +high with weeds and brambles, damp and rank under foot. Whole squadrons +of mosquitoes arose and hung about us in clouds, with a humming sound as +of sawmills far away. But this was long before you took your malaria of +mosquitoes, and we minded them no more than little children mind them +to-day. Indeed, I can keep peacefully still even now to watch a mosquito +batten and fatten upon my hand, to see his ravenous, pale abdomen swell +to a vast smug redness--that physiological, or psychological, moment for +which you wait ere you burst him. + +The forbidden farm had, of course, its thousand novelties. I saw prickly +pears in blossom upon a ledge of rock; a great lunar-moth resting +drowsily, almost drunkenly, in the parasol shade of a wild-carrot +blossom; here was the half of a wagon wheel, the wood rotted away, and +there in the tangle an ancient cistern mouth of brick, the cistern +filled to the brim with alluring rubbish. My sister sprang with a +gurgle of delight to catch a garter snake, which eluded her; and a last +year's brier, tough and humorously inclined, seized upon Mary by the +skirts and legs, so that it was a matter of five minutes and piercing +screams of merriment to cast her loose again. But soon we drew out of +the hot sunshine into the old orchard with its paltry display of +deformed, green, runt apples, and its magnificent columns and canopies +of poison ivy--that most beautiful and least amiable of our indigenous +plants; and then we got among scale-bark hickories, and there was one +that had been fluted from top to bottom by a stroke of lightning; and +here the little red squirrels were most unusually abundant and +indignant; and there was a catbird that miauled exactly like a cat; and +there was a spring among the roots of one great tree, and a broken +teacup half buried in the sand at the bottom. + +We left the hickories and entered among the oaks, and here was the +greatest to-do imaginable to find the one that was hollow. Ellen went to +the left, I to the right, and Mary down the middle. Whenever I came to +an unusually big tree I tiptoed around the trunk, goggle-eyed, expecting +the vasty hollow to open before me. And I am sure that Ellen, whom I had +presently lost sight of, behaved in the same way. Mary also had +disappeared, and feeling lonely all of a sudden I called to her. She +answered a moment later in a strange voice. I thought that she must have +fallen and hurt herself; but when I found her she was cheerful and +smiling. She was standing with her back to a snug hollow in the vast +stem of the very oak we had been looking for. + +"This is it," she said, and turned and pointed to the hollow. "Where's +Ellen?" + +"Here, Ellen," I called, "here--_we've_ found it!" + +Then Ellen came scampering through the wood; and first I climbed into +the hollow and curled up to see what sort of a night I might have of it, +and then I climbed out and Ellen climbed in--and then both in at once, +and we kept house for a while and gave a couple of dinners and tea +parties. And then quarreled about the probable size of Friar Tuck, and +Ellen drew the line at further imaginings and left me alone in +the hollow. + +This extended all the way up the main trunk and all but out through the +top. Here and there it pierced through the outer bark, so that slants of +pale light served to carry the eye up and up until it became lost in +inky blackness. Now and then dust and little showers of dry rot +descended softly upon the upturned face; and if you put your ear close +to the wood you could hear, as through the receiver of a telephone, +things that were going on among the upper branches; as when the breeze +puffed up and they sighed and creaked together. I could hear a squirrel +scampering and a woodpecker at work--or so I guessed, though it sounded +more like a watch ticking. I made several essays to climb up the hollow, +but the knotholes and crevices, and odds and ends of support, were too +far removed from each other for the length of my limbs, and, +furthermore, my efforts seemed to shake the whole tree and bring down +whole smarting showers of dust and dry rot and even good-sized +fragments. I got up a few feet, lost my hold, and fell into the soft, +punky nest at the bottom. + +"Can't you climb up?" said Ellen, who had recovered her temper by now. +"Because somebody has climbed up and stuck an ol' shoe out of a +knothole way up." + +I climbed out of the hollow and followed her point. Sure enough--thirty +feet or so from the ground the toe of a much-used leather boot stuck out +through a knothole. + +Mary refused to take an interest in the boot. It was high time we went +home. She herself had a headache. Our mother would be angry with her for +taking us on the forbidden farm. She was sorry she had done so. No, she +wasn't angry. We were good children; she loved us. Wouldn't we come? + +"I'll tell you," said she, and her face, which looked sick and pale, +colored, "if you'll come now, and hurry, we'll just have time to stop on +the bridge and have some races." + +And sure enough, when we got to the bridge Mary produced a stained sheet +of paper, and tore it quickly into little bits of pieces (we were +pressed for time) and launched pair after pair of sea-going racers upon +the swirling tide. + +When the last pair were gone upon their merry career she drew a long +breath, and seemed as one relieved of a weight. + +"Perhaps," she said, "you needn't tell your mother where you've +been--unless she asks you. Do you think that would be wrong?" + +I had never known Mary to suggest deceit of any kind. + +"If you think it would get you into trouble," said my sister, aged +eight, very stiffly, "why, of course, we won't say anything." + +Mary was troubled. Finally she drew a deep breath and flung out her +hands. + +"Of course, it would be wrong not to tell," she said. "You _must_ tell +her." + +But by good fortune we met my father first and told him. + +"And papa," said Ellen, she had been swung to his shoulder and there +rode like a princess upon a genii, "what do you think, way up the trunk +there was an old shoe sticking out of a knothole, and we all thought +that somebody must have climbed up inside and put it there. But brother +couldn't climb up because he's too little, and Mary wouldn't try, and we +thought maybe Sunday you'd go with us and see if you could climb up." + +I don't know why my father happened to take the line that he did; he may +have seen something in Mary's face that we children would not be likely +to see. He laughed first, and told us a story. + +It was about some children that he had once known, who had seen a boot +sticking out of a tree, just as we had done, and how a frightful old +witch had come along, and told them that if they went away for a year +and a day and didn't say a word about the boot to any one, and then went +back, they would by that time have grown sufficiently to climb up and +get the boot, and that they would find it full of gold pieces. But if, +during the year and the day, they so much as mentioned the boot to any +one but their father, they would find it full of the most dreadful black +and yellow spiders which would chase them all the way to Jericho, and +bite their fat calves every few steps. + +"This," said he, "may be that kind of a boot. Now promise not to talk +about it for a year and a day--not even to me--and at the end of that +time, why we'll all go and see what's in it. No," he said, "you mustn't +go to look at it every now and then--that would spoil the charm. Let me +see. This is the twenty-eighth--a year and a day--hum." And he made his +calculations. Then he said: "By the way, Mary, don't you and the +children ever get hungry between meals? If you were to take bread and +meat, and make up sandwiches to take on your excursions, they'd never be +missed. I'd see to it," he said, "that they weren't missed. Growing +children, you know." And he strode on, Ellen riding on his shoulder like +a princess on her genii. + + + + +III + +Ellen and I were very firm to have nothing to do with the boot in the +oak tree; and we had two picnics in the hollow and played for hours in +the adjoining woods without once looking up. Mary had become very strict +with us about scattering papers and eggshells at our out-of-door +spreads; and whatever fragments of food were left over she would make +into a neat package and hide away under a stone; but in other matters +she became less and less precise: as, for instance, she left Ellen's +best doll somewhere in the neighborhood of the hollow oak, and had to go +all the way back for it in the dusk; and another time (we had also been +to the store at Bartow for yeast) she left her purse that had two +months' wages in it and more, but wasn't lucky enough to find that. + +It was considered remarkable on all hands that Braddish had not yet been +caught. Hagan's heelers, who swung many votes, had grown very sharp with +the authorities, and no efforts were spared to locate the criminal (he +was usually referred to as the "murderer") and round him up. Almost +daily, for a time, we were constantly meeting parties of strange men, +strolling innocently about the country at large or private estates as if +they were looking things over with a view to purchase. And now and then +we met pairs of huntsmen, though there was no game in season, very +citified, with brand-new shotguns, and knickerbockers, and English +deer-stalker caps. And these were accompanied by dogs, neither well +suited nor broken to the business of finding birds and holding them. +There was one pair of sportsmen whose makeshift was a dropsical coach +dog, very much spotted. And, I must be forgiven for telling the truth, +one was followed, _ventre a terre_, by a dachshund. My father, a very +grave man with his jest, said that these were famous detectives, so +accoutred as not to excite comment. And their mere presence in it was +enough to assure the least rational that Braddish must by now have fled +the country. "Their business," he said, "is to close the stable door, +if they can find it, and meanwhile to spend the money of the many in the +roadhouses of the few." + +But I have sometimes thought that the pseudo-sportsmen were used to give +Braddish a foolhardy sense of security, so that other secret-service +men, less open in method and less comic in aspect, might work +unobserved. Indeed, it turned out that an under-gardener employed by +Mrs. Kirkbride, our neighbor, about this time, a shambling, peaceful, +half-witted goat of a man, was one such; and a perfect red-Indian upon a +trail. It was Mary who spotted him. He hung about our kitchen door a +good deal; and tried to make friends with her and sympathize with her. +But he showed himself a jot too eager, and then a jot too peppery when +she did not fall into his nets. Mary told my father, and my father told +Mrs. Kirkbride. Mrs. Kirkbride had had a very satisfactory job at +painting done for her by Braddish; and although a law-abiding woman, she +did not propose personally to assist the law--even by holding her +tongue. So she approached the under-gardener, at a time when the +head-gardener and the coachman were in hearing, and she said, plenty +loud enough to be heard: "Well, officer, have you found a clew yet? Have +you pumped my coachman? He was friends with Braddish," and so on, so +that she destroyed that man's utility for that place and time. But +others were more fortunate. And all of a sudden the country was +convulsed with excitement at hearing that Braddish had been seen on the +Bartow Road at night, and had been fired at, but had made good his +escape into the Boole Dogge Farm. + +Bloodhounds were at once sent for. I remember that my father stayed up +from town that thrilling morning, and walked up and down in front of the +house looking up at the sky. I now know that he was conjuring it to rain +with all his power of pity--prayer maybe--though I think, like most +commuters, he was weak on prayer. Anyhow, rain it did. The sky had been +overcast for two days, drawing slowly at the great beds of moisture in +the northeast, and that morning, accompanied by high winds, the first +drops fell and became presently a deluging northeaster, very cold for +midsummer. + +As chance would have it, there had been a false scent down on Throgg's +Neck, upon which the nearest accessible bloodhounds had been employed. +So that there was a delay in locating them, and fetching them to the +Boole Dogge Farm. We went over to the Boulevard--my father, Ellen, and +I--all under umbrellas, to see them go by. They were a sorry pair of +animals, and very weary with having been out all night, in all sorts of +country, upon feet more accustomed to the smooth asphalt of a kennel. +But there was a crowd of men with them, some in uniform, one I remember +in a great coat, who rode upon one of the old-fashioned, high bicycles, +and there was a show of clubs and bludgeons, and one man wore openly +upon his hip a rusty, blued revolver, and on the whole the little +procession had a look of determination and of power to injure that was +rather terrible. I have sometimes thought that if I had been my father I +would not have taken Ellen and me to see them go by. But why not? I +would not have missed it for kingdoms. + +By the time the pursuit had reached the Boole Dogge Farm so much rain +had fallen as to render the bloodhounds' noses of no account. Still the +police were not deterred from beating that neck of land with great +thoroughness and energy. But it proved to be the old story of the needle +in the haystack. Either they could not find the needle or there was no +needle to be found. Of course, they discovered the spring with the +broken cup, and the hollow oak, and made sure that it was here that +Braddish slept at night, and they found other traces of his recent +habitation--an ingenious snare with a catbird in it, still warm; the +deep, inadvertent track of a foot in a spot of bog; but of the man +himself neither sight nor sound. + +In the afternoon, the rain having held up for a while, nay father walked +over to the farm to see how the hunt was progressing. This, I think, +was for Mary's sake, who had been all the morning in so terrible a state +of agitation that it seemed as if she must have news for better or +worse, or die of suspense. My father was not away longer than necessary. +He returned as he had gone, wearing a cheerful, incisive look very +characteristic of him, and whistling short snatches of tunes. + +He said that the beaters were still at work; but that they were wet to +the skin and the heart was out of them. Yes. They would keep an eye on +the place, but they were pretty well convinced that the bird had flown. +If, however, the bird had not flown, said my father, he should be quick +about it. We were on the front porch to meet my father, and I remember +he paused and looked out over the bay for some time. It was roughish +with occasional white caps, and had a dreary, stormy look. Our rowboat, +moored to a landing stage or float, just off our place, was straining +and tugging at her rope. + +"That boat will blow loose," said my father, "if she isn't pulled up. +But I'm not going to do it. I'm wet enough as it is. + +"Would you like me to try, sir?" Mary called. + +"What's the use?" said my father. "You'll only spoil your clothes. And, +besides, the boat's old and rotten. She's not worth two dollars for +kindling wood. I rather hope she does blow away, so as to provide me +with a much-needed excuse to buy a better one. The oars, I see, are in +her. Never mind, they're too heavy. I never liked them." + +Then he put his arm around Ellen. + +"By the way, Teenchy," said he, "your old boot is still sticking out of +the oak tree." + +"Oh, papa," cried Ellen, "you said we mustn't talk about it--or it would +be full of spiders." + +"I said _you_ mustn't talk about it," said he. "So don't. Anyhow"--and +he included Mary in his playful smile--"it's still there--so make the +most of _that_." + +He turned to go into the house, and then: + +"Oh, by the way, Mary," said he, "you have not asked for your wages +recently, and I think you are owed for three months. If you will come to +the study in a little while I will give them to you." He was always +somewhat quizzical. "Would you rather have cash or a check?" + +Personally I didn't know the difference, and, at the time, I admired +Mary exceedingly for being able to make a choice. She chose cash. + +But till some years later I thought she must have repented this +decision, for not long after she went into a kind of mild hysterics, and +cried a good deal, and said something about "such kindness--this--side +Heaven." And was heard to make certain comparisons between the +thoughtfulness and pitifulness of a certain commuter and the Christ. + +But these recollections are a little vague in my head as to actual +number of tears shed, cries uttered and words spoken. But I do know for +an incontestable fact that during the night, just as my father had +prophesied, our rowboat was blown loose by the northeast gale, and has +not been seen from that day to this. And I know that when I woke up in +the morning and called to Mary she was not in her bed, and I found in +mine, under the pillow, a ridiculous old-fashioned brooch, that I had +ever loved to play with, and that had been Mary's mother's. + +My father was very angry about Mary's going. + +"Good Lord!" he said; "we can't pretend to conceal it!" But then he +looked out over Pelham Bay, and it had swollen and waxed wrathful during +the night, and was as a small ocean--with great waves and billows that +came roaring over docks and sea-walls. And then his temper abated and he +said: "Of course she would--any woman would--sense or no sense." + +And, indeed, the more I know of women, which is to say, and I thank God +for it, the less I know of them, the convinceder am I that my father +was right. + +In other words, if a woman's man has nine chances in ten of drowning by +himself she will go with him so as to make it ten chances, and a +certainty of her being there whatever happens. And so, naturally, man +cannot tolerate the thought of woman getting the right, based on +intelligence, to vote. + + + + +IV + +Twenty-five years later I paid Mary and Braddish a pleasant +Saturday-to-Monday visit in what foreign country it is not necessary to +state. The tiny Skinnertown house of their earlier ambition, with its +little yard, had now been succeeded by a great, roomy, rambling +habitation, surrounded by thousands of acres sprinkled with flocks of +fat, grazing sheep. It was a grand, rolling upland of a country that +they had fled to; cool, summer weather all the year round, and no +mosquitoes. Hospitable smoke curled from a dozen chimneys; shepherds +galloped up on wiry horses and away again; scarlet passion-vines poured +over roofs and verandas like cataracts of glory; and there was incessant +laughter and chatter of children at play. + +Of their final flight from the Boole Dogge Farm in my father's boat, +across the bay to Long Island in the teeth of the northeaster, I now +first heard the details; and of their subsequent hiding among swamps and +woods; and how, when it had seemed that they must be captured and +Braddish go to jail forever and ever, Mary thought that she could face +the separation more cheerfully if she was his wife. And so one rainy +night they knocked upon the door of a clergyman, and told him their +story. They were starving, it seems, and it was necessary to look about +for mercy. And, as luck would have it, the clergyman, an old man, had +officiated at the wedding of Mary's parents; and he had had some trouble +in his day with the law about a boundary fence, and was down on the law. +And he fed them and married them, and said that he would square matters +with his conscience--if he could. And he kept them in his attic for two +days, which was their honeymoon--and then--a night of dogs and lanterns +and shouting--he smuggled them off to the swamps again, and presided +over their hiding until an opportunity came to get them aboard a tramp +ship--and that was all there was to it, except that they had prospered +and been happy ever since. + +I asked Mary about my father's part in it. But she gave him a clean +bill. + +"He put two and two together," she said, "and he dropped a hint or +two--and he paid me all my back wages in American money, and he made me +a handsome present in English gold, but he never talked things over, +never mentioned Will's name even." + +"It was the toe of my boot," said Will, "sticking out of the tree that +made him guess where I was. You see, I'd climbed up in the hollow to +hide, and to keep there without moving I had to stick my foot out +through a knothole. I was up there all the day they tried to get the +bloodhounds after me, with my boot sticking out. And they were beating +around that tree for hours, but nobody looked up." + +"I've always wondered," said I, "why, they didn't send a man up inside +the tree." + +"I've always thought," said Will, "that nobody liked to propose it for +fear he'd be elected to do it himself. But maybe it didn't enter +anybody's head. Anyhow, all's well that ends well." + +"Mary," I said, "do you remember how my father told Ellen and me to go +back in a year and a day, and look in the boot?" + +She nodded. + +"Well," I said, "we went--hand in hand--and there was still a boot +sticking out. And I climbed up, after several failures, and got it. It +wasn't full of gold, but it did have two gold pieces in it. One each." + +"What a memory your father had," said Mary: "he never forgot anything." + +Later I was talking with Will alone, and I asked him why he had run away +in the first place. + +"Why," he said, "I had no chance with the law. The only outsiders +who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood +between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan +with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by +the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And +somehow--somehow--I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to +prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing +to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one +that knew me then--except Hagan's friends, and whatever they believed +they'd have sworn the opposite. Do you think your father thought I was a +bloody murderer? Look here," he said, "I don't know just how to put +it--it was twenty-five years ago, all that--Mary'll tell you, if you ask +her, that she's been absolutely happy every minute of all that +time--even when we were hiding in swamps and starving. Now that side of +it wouldn't have entered the law's head, would it?" He smiled very +peacefully. "Out here, of course," he said, "it's very different. Almost +everybody here has gotten away from something or other. And mostly we've +done well, and are happy and self-respecting. It's a big world," he +looked out affectionately over his rolling, upland acres, "and a funny +world. Did Mary tell you that I've just been re-elected sheriff?" + + + + +THE DESPOILER + +Forrest paused when his explorations had brought him to the edge of the +beechwood, all dappled with golden lights and umber shadows, and stood +for a time brooding upon those intimate lawns and flowery gardens that +seemed, as it were, but roofless extensions of the wide, open house. + +It is probable that his brooding had in it an estimate of the cost of +these things. It was thus that he had looked upon the blooded horses in +the river-fields and the belted cattle in the meadows. It was thus that +his grave eyes passed beyond the gardens and moved from corner to corner +of the house, from sill to cornice, relating the porticos and +interminable row of French windows to dollars and cents. He had, of +course, been of one mind, and now he was of two; but that octagonal slug +of California minting, by which he resolved his doubts, fell heads, and +he stepped with an acquiescent reluctance from the dappled shadows into +the full sunlight of the gardens and moved slowly, with a kind of +awkward and cadaverous grandeur, toward the house. He paused by the +sundial to break a yellow rose from the vine out of which its fluted +supporting column emerged. So standing, and regarding the rose slowly +twirled in his fingers, he made a dark contrast to the brightly-colored +gardens. His black cape hung in unbroken lines from his gaunt shoulders +to his knees, and his face had the modeling and the gentle gloom +of Dante's. + +The rose fell from his hand, and he moved onward through the garden and +entered the house as nonchalantly as if it had been his own. He found +himself in a cool dining-room, with a great chimney-piece and beaded +white paneling. The table was laid for seven, and Forrest's intuitive +good taste caused his eyes to rest with more than passing interest upon +the stately loving-cup, full of roses, that served for a centre-piece. +But from its rosy garlands caught up in the mouths of demon-heads he +turned suddenly to the portrait over the chimney-piece. It was darker +and more sedate than the pictures to which Forrest was accustomed, but +in effect no darker or more sedate than himself. The gentleman of the +portrait, a somewhat pouchy-cheeked, hook-nosed Revolutionary, in whose +wooden and chalky hand was a rolled document, seemed to return Forrest's +glance with a kind of bored courtesy. + +"That is probably the Signer," thought Forrest, and he went closer. "A +great buck in your time," he approved. + +The butler entered the dining-room from the pantry, and, though a man +accustomed to emergencies, was considerably nonplussed at the sight of +the stranger. That the stranger was a bona fide stranger, James, who had +served the Ballins for thirty years, knew; but what manner of stranger, +and whether a rogue or a man upon legitimate business, James could not +so much as guess. + +"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "were you looking for some one?" + +"Yes," said Forrest, perfectly at his ease, "and no." + +"Shall I tell Mr. Ballin that you are here, sir?" + +"I shall find him for myself, thank you," said Forrest, and he moved +toward an open door that seemed to lead into the hall. + +"By the way," he said, "there will be an extra at luncheon." + +Very stately in his long, black cape, and with his pensive Dantesque +face, Forrest continued on his slow progress to the open door and went +out of the dining-room. He crossed the hall with half an eye to its +quiet tones and bowls of roses, and entered a room of bright chintz with +a pattern of cornflowers, and full of sunlight. It was a very spacious +room, and lively--a proper link between the gardens and the house; and +here were many photographs in silver frames of smart men and women; and +the Sunday papers with their colored supplements were strewn in +disorder upon the floor. And it seemed to Forrest, so comfortable and +intimate did it look, as if that room had been a part of his own life. +Upon the blotter of a writing-table sprawled a check-book bound in +yellow leather. And when Forrest saw that, he smiled. It came as a +surprise that the teeth in that careworn face should be white and even. +And in those rare and charming moments of his smiling he looked like a +young man who has made many engagements with life which he proposes to +fulfil, instead of like a man for whom the curious years reserve but one +sensation more. + +But Forrest did not remain any appreciable time in the cheerful +living-room. A desire to explain and have it all over with was upon him; +and he passed, rapidly now, from room to room, until in a far corner of +the house he entered a writing-room furnished in severe simplicity with +dark and dully-shining rosewood. This room was of an older fashion than +any he had yet entered, and he guessed that it had been the Signer's +workshop and had been preserved by his descendants without change. A +pair of flintlock pistols, glinting silver, lay upon the desk; quill +pens stood in a silver cup full of shot; a cramped map, drawn and +colored by hand and yellow with age, hung above the mantel and +purported, in bold printing with flourishes, to be The Proposed Route +for the Erie Canal. Portraits of General Greene and Thomas Jefferson, +by Stuart, also hung upon the walls. And there stood upon an octagonal +table a bowl of roses. + +There was a gentleman in the embrasure of a window, smoking a cigar and +looking out. But at the sound of Forrest's step he turned an alert, +close-cropped, gray head and stepped out of the embrasure. + +"Mr. Ballin?" said Forrest. + +"I am Mr. Ballin." His eyes perused the stranger with astonishing speed +and deftness, without seeming to do so. + +"It was the toss of a coin that decided me to come," said Forrest. "I +have asked your butler to lay a place for me at luncheon." + +So much assumption on the part of a stranger has a cheeky look in the +printing. Yet Forrest's tone and manner far more resembled those of old +friendship and intimacy than impertinence. + +"Have I," said Ballin, smiling a little doubtfully, "ever had the +pleasure of meeting you before? I have a poor memory for faces. But it +seems to me that I should not have forgotten yours." + +"You never saw me but the one time," said Forrest. "That was many years +ago, and you would not remember. You were a--little wild that night. You +sat against me at a game of faro. But even if you had been yourself--I +have changed very much. I was at that time, as you were, little more +than a boy." + +"Good Lord!" said Ballin, "were you a part of that hectic flush that to +myself I only refer to as 'Sacramento'?" + +"You do not look as if it had turned you into a drinking man," said +Forrest. + +"It didn't," said Ballin, and without seeing any reason for confiding in +the stranger he proceeded to do so. "It was nip and tuck for a time," he +said, "and then money came to me, and this old place and +responsibilities, and I became, more from force of circumstances than +from any inner impulse, a decentish citizen." + +"The money made everything smooth, did it?" said Forrest. "I wonder." + +"You wonder--what?" said Ballin. + +"If it could--money alone. I have had it at times--not as you have had +it--but in large, ready sums. Yet I think it made very little +difference." + +"What have you been doing since--Sacramento?" asked Ballin. + +"Up to a month ago," said Forrest, "I kept on dealing--in different +parts of the world--in San Francisco, in London--Cairo--Calcutta. And +then the matter which brings me here was brought to my attention." + +"Yes?" said Ballin, a little more coolly. + +"When you were in Sacramento," Forrest went on quietly and evenly as if +stating an acknowledged fact, "you did not expect to come into all +this. Then your cousin, Ranger Ballin, and his son went down in the City +of Pittsburgh; and all this"--he made a sudden, sweeping gesture with +one of his long, well-kept hands--"came to you." + +"Yes?" Ballin's voice still interrogated coolly. + +Forrest broke into that naïve, boyish smile of his. + +"My dear sir," said he, "I saw a play last winter in which the question +is asked, 'Do you believe in Fairies?' I ask you, 'Do you believe in +Gypsies?'" + +"In what way?" Ballin asked, and he, too, smiled. + +"Ranger Ballin," said Forrest, "had another son who was spirited away in +childhood by the gypsies. That will explain this visit, which on the +face of it is an impertinence. It will explain why I have entered this +house without knocking, and have invited myself to luncheon. You see, +sir, all this"--and again he made the sudden, sweeping gesture--"is +mine." + +It speaks for Forrest's effect that, although reason told Ballin to +doubt this cataclysmic statement, instinct convinced him that it was +true. Yet what its truth might mean to him did not so convincingly +appear. That he might be ousted from all that he looked on as his own +did not yet occur to him, even vaguely. + +"Then we are cousins," he said simply, and held out his hand. But +Forrest did not take it at once. + +"Do you understand what cousinship with me means to you?" he said. + +"Why," said Ballin, "if you _are_ my cousin"--he tried to imply the +doubt that he by no means felt--"there is surely enough for us both." + +"Enough to make up for the years when there has been nothing?" Forrest +smiled. + +"It is a matter for lawyers to discuss, then," said Ballin quietly. +"Personally, I do not doubt that you believe yourself to be my cousin's +son. But there is room, surely, in others for many doubts." + +"Not in others," said Forrest, "who have been taught to know that two +and two are four." + +"Have you documentary proof of this astonishing statement?" said Ballin. + +"Surely," said Forrest. And he drew from an inner pocket a bundle of +documents bound with a tape. Ballin ran a perturbed but deft eye through +them, while Forrest stood motionless, more like a shadow than a man. +Then, presently, Ballin looked up with a stanch, honorable look. + +"I pick no flaws here cousin," he said. "I--I congratulate you." + +"Cousin," said Forrest, "it has been my business in life to see others +take their medicine. But I have never seen so great a pill swallowed so +calmly. Will you offer me your hand now?" + +Ballin offered his hand grimly. + +Then he tied the documents back into their tape and offered the bundle +to Forrest. + +"I am a careless man," said Forrest; "I might lose them. May I ask you +to look after them for me?" + +"Would you leave me alone with them?" asked Ballin. + +"Of course," said Forrest. + +Ballin opened an old-fashioned safe in the paneling and locked it upon +the despoiling documents. Yet his heart, in spite of its dread and +bitterness, was warmed by the trustfulness of the despoiler. + +"And now what?" he said. + +"And now," said Forrest, "remember for a little while only that I am, +let us say, an old friend of your youth. Forget for the present, if you +can, who else I am, and what my recrudescence must mean to you. It is +not a happiness"--he faltered with his winning smile--"to give pain." + + + + +II + +"Your father," said Forrest, "says that I may have his seat at the head +of the table. You see, Miss Dorothy, in the world in which I have lived +there were no families. And I have the strongest desire to experiment in +some of those things which I have missed.... Ballin," he exclaimed, +"how lovely your daughters are!" + +The young Earl of Moray glanced up mischievously. + +"Do you think, sir," he drawled, "that I have made the best selection +under the circumstances? Sometimes I think I ought to have made up to +Ellen instead of Dorothy." + +"What's the matter with _us_?" said Alice, and she laid her hand upon +Evelyn's. + +"Oh, you little rotters!" exclaimed the earl, whom they sometimes teased +to the point of agony. "No man in his senses would look at _you_." + +"Right-O!" said young Stephen Ballin, who made the eighth at table. +"They're like germs," he explained to Forrest--"very troublesome to +deal with." + +"It's because we're twins," said Evelyn. "Everybody who isn't twins is +down on them." + +"It's because they are always beautiful and good," said Alice. "Why +don't you stand up for us, father?" + +It was noticed that Mr. Ballin was not looking well; that the chicken +_mousse_ upon his plate was untouched, and that he fooled with his +bread, breaking it, crumbling it, and rolling it into pellets. He pulled +himself together and smiled upon his beloved twins. + +Forrest had turned to the Earl of Moray. + +"Was it your ancestor," he said, "who 'was a bra' gallant, and who raid +at the gluve'?" + +"I am confident of it," said the young Englishman. + +"By all accounts," said Forrest, "he would have been a good hand with a +derringer. Have you that gift for games?" + +"I'm a very good golfer." said the earl, "but I thought a derringer was +a kind of dish that babies ate gruel out of." He blushed becomingly. + +"As ever," said Alice, "insular and ignorant." + +"You prickly baby!" exclaimed the earl. "What is a derringer, Mr. +Forrest?" + +Forrest, having succeeded in drawing the attention of his immediate and +prospective family from the ill looks of Mr. Ballin, proposed to keep +his advantage. + +"I will show you," he said. "Are my hands empty?" + +"Quite so," said the earl. + +"Keep your eyes on them," said Forrest, "so. Now, we will suppose that +you have good reason to believe that I have stolen your horse. Call me a +horse thief." + +"Sir," said the earl, entering into the spirit of the game, "you are a +horse thief!" + +There appeared in Forrest's right hand, which had seemed empty, which +had seemed not to move or to perform in any celeritous and magic manner, +a very small, stubby, nickel pistol, with a caliber much too great for +it, and down whose rifled muzzle the earl found himself gazing. The earl +was startled. But he said, "I was mistaken, sir; you are not a horse +thief." As mysteriously as it had come, the wicked little derringer +disappeared. Forrest's hands remained innocently in plain view of all. + +"Oh," said Alice, "if you had only pulled the trigger!" + +Evelyn giggled. + +"Frankly, Mr. Forrest," said the earl, "aren't the twins loathsome? But +tell me, can you shoot that thing as magically as you play tricks +with it?" + +"It's not a target gun," said Forrest. "It's for instantaneous work at +close range. One could probably hit a tossed coin with it, but one must +have more weight and inches to the barrel and less explosion for fine +practice." + +"What would you call fine practice?" asked Stephen. + +"Oh," said Forrest, "a given leg of a fly at twenty paces, or to snip a +wart from a man's hand at twenty-five." + +Mr. Ballin rose. + +"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have +finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He +left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the +full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his +brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty--of too long +leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun +and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins +were silent. + +"He used to sing that song," said Forrest, "so that the cold chills went +galloping the length of a man's spine. He was as like you to look at," +he turned to the earl, "as one star is like another. I cannot tell you +how it has moved me to meet you. We were in a place called Grub Gulch, +placer-mining--half a dozen of us. I came down with the scarlet fever. +The others bolted, all but Charlie Stuart. He stayed. But by the time I +was up, thanks to him, he was down--thanks to me. He died of it." +Forrest finished very gravely. + +"Good Lord!" said the earl. + +"_He_ might ha' been a king," said Forrest. And he swallowed the lump +that rose in his throat, and turned away so that his face could not be +seen by them. + +But, presently, he flashed about with his winning smile. + +"What, would all you rich young people do if you hadn't a sou in the +world?" + +"Good Lord!" said Stephen, "everything I know how to do decently costs +money." + +"I feel sure," said Alice, her arm about Evelyn's waist, "that our +beauty and goodness would see _us_ through." + +"I," said Ellen, "would quietly curl up and die." + +"I," said Dorothy, "would sell my earl to the highest bidder." + +"I shouldn't bring tuppence," said the earl. + +"But you," said Forrest to the earl, "what would you do if you were +stone-broke?" + +"I would marry Dorothy to-morrow," said the earl, "instead of waiting +until September. Fortunately, I have a certain amount of assets that the +law won't allow me to get rid of." + +"I wish you could," said Forrest. + +"Why?" The earl wrinkled his eyebrows. + +"I would like to see what you would do." He laid his hand lightly upon +the young Englishman's shoulder. "You don't mind? I am an old man," he +said, "but I cannot tell you--what meeting you has meant to me. I want +you to come with me now, for a few minutes, to Mr. Ballin. Will you?" + + + + +III + +"Mr. Ballin," said Forrest, his hand still on the earl's shoulder, "I +want you to tell this young man what only you and I know." + +Ballin looked up from his chair with the look of a sick man. + +"It's this, Charlie," he said in a voice that came with difficulty. +"It's a mistake to suppose that I am a rich man. Everything in this +world that I honestly thought belonged to me belongs to Mr. Forrest." + +The earl read truth in the ashen, careworn face of his love's father. + +"But surely," he said anxiously, "Dorothy is still yours--to give." + +Forrest's dark and brooding countenance became as if suddenly brightly +lighted. + +"My boy--my boy!" he cried, and he folded the wriggling and embarrassed +Stuart in his long, gaunt arms. + +I think an angel bringing glad tidings might have looked as Forrest did +when, releasing the Earl of Moray, he turned upon the impulse and began +to pour out words to Ballin. + +"When I found out who I was," he said, "and realized for how long--oh, +my Lord! how long--others had been enjoying what was mine, and that I +had rubbed myself bare and bleeding against all the rough places of +life, will you understand what a rage and bitterness against you all +possessed me? And I came--oh, on wings--to trample, and to dispossess, +and to sneer, and to send you packing.... But first the peace of the +woods and the meadows, and the beech wood and the gardens, and the quiet +hills and the little brooks staggered me. And then you--the way you took +it, cousin!--all pale and wretched as you were; you were so calm, and +you admitted the claim at once--and bore up.... Then I began to repent +of the bitterness in which I had come.... And I left the papers in your +keeping.... I thought--for I have known mostly evil--that, perhaps, you +would destroy them.... It never entered your head.... Your are clean +white--and so are your girls and your boy.... I did not expect to find +white people in possession. Why should I?... But I said, 'Surely the +Englishman isn't white--he is after the money.' But right away I began +to have that feeling, too, smoothed out of me.... And now, when he finds +that instead of Dorothy being an heiress she is a pauper, he says, 'But +surely, Dorothy is still yours to give!' + +"I was a fool to come. Yet I am glad." + +Neither Ballin nor the earl spoke. + +"Could I have this room to myself for a little while?" asked Forrest. + +"Of course," said Ballin; "it is yours." + +Forrest bowed; the corners of his mouth turned a little upward. + +"Will you come back in an hour--you, alone, cousin?" + +Ballin nodded quietly. + +"Come along, Charlie," he said, and together they left the room. But +when Ballin returned alone, an hour later, the room was empty. Upon the +Signer's writing-desk was a package addressed collectively to "The +Ballins," and in one corner was written, "Blood will tell." + +The package, on being opened, proved to contain nothing more substantial +than ashes. And by the donor thereof there was never given any +further sign. + + + + +ONE MORE MARTYR + +A little one-act play, sufficiently dramatic, is revived from time to +time among the Latin races for long runs. The play is of simplified, +classic construction. But the principal part is variously interpreted by +different actors. The minor characters, a priest and an officer, have no +great latitude for individuality, while the work of the chorus comes as +near mathematics as anything human can. The play is a passion play. No +actor has ever played the principal part more than once. And the play +differs from other plays in this, also, that there are not even +traditional lines for the principal character to speak. He may say +whatever comes into his head. He may say nothing. He may play his part +with reticence or melodramatically. It does not matter. His is what +actors call a fat part; it cannot be spoiled. And at the climax and +curtain he may sink slowly to the ground or fall upon his back or upon +his face. It does not matter. Once, before falling, a man leaped so +violently upward and forward as to break the ropes with which his legs +and arms were bound. Those who saw this performance cannot speak of it +to this day without a shudder. + +Under the management of General Weyler in Cuba this little play enjoyed, +perhaps, its longest continuous run. Curiously enough, there were +absolutely no profits to be divided at the end. But, then, think of the +expense of production! Why, to enable the General to stage that play for +so many nights--I mean sunrises--required the employment of several +hundred thousand men and actually bankrupted a nation. In this world one +must pay like the devil for one's fancies. Think what Weyler paid: all +the money that his country could beg or borrow; then his own reputation +as a soldier, as a statesman, and as a man; ending with a series of +monstrous mortgages on his own soul. For which, when it is finally sold +at auction, there will not be bid so much as one breath of garlic. + +When Juan D'Acosta's mother heard that her younger son Manual had been +taken prisoner by the Spaniards and was to be shot the following morning +at sunrise she sat for an hour motionless, staring at the floor. Juan, +as is, or was, well known, had died gloriously, a cigarette between his +lips, after inestimable, if secret, services to Cuba. Nor had his +execution been entirely a martyrdom. He was shot for a spy. He was a +spy, and a very daring, clever, and self-effacing one. He had been +caught within the Spanish lines with incriminating papers upon his +person. And before they could secure him he had had the eternal +satisfaction of ripping open two Spaniards with his knife so that they +died. He was executed without a trial. His mother went out with others +of his relatives to see him die. The memory of his dying had remained +with her to comfort her for the fact of it. She had seen him, calm, and +in her eyes very beautiful, standing in strong relief with his back to a +white wall, a cigarette between his lips. There had not been the +slightest bravado in his perfect self-possession. It had been that of a +gentleman, which he was not by birth, and a man of the world; quiet, +retiring and attentive. He had looked so courteous, so kind-hearted, so +pure! He had spoken--on either side of his cigarette--for some moments +to the priest, apologizing through him to God for whatever spots there +may have been upon his soul. Then his eyes had sought his mother's among +the spectators and remained steadfastly upon them, smiling, until the +exactions of his part demanded that he face more to the front and look +into the muzzles of the Mausers. The fire of his cigarette having burned +too close to his lips for comfort, and his hands being tied, he spat the +butt out of his mouth and allowed the last taste of smoke which he was +to enjoy on earth to curl slowly off through his nostrils. Then, for it +was evident that the edge of the sun would show presently above the rim +of the world, he had drawn a breath or two of the fresh morning air and +had spoken his last words in a clear, controlled voice. + +"Whenever one of us dies," he had said, "it strengthens the cause of +liberty instead of weakening it. I am so sure of this that I would like +to come to life after being shot, so that I might be taken and shot +again and again and again. You, my friends, are about to fire _for_ +Cuba, not against her. Therefore, I thank you. I think that is all. +Christ receive me." + +The impact of the volley had flattened him backward against the wall +with shocking violence, but he had remained on his feet for an +appreciable interval of time and had then sunk slowly to his knees and +had fallen quietly forward upon his face. + +So her older boy had died, honoring himself and his country, after +serving his country only. The memory of his life, deeds and dying was a +comfort to her. And when she learned that Manuel, too, was to be shot, +and sat staring at the floor, it was not entirely of Manuel that she was +thinking. She did not love Manuel as she had loved Juan. He had not been +a comfort to her in any way. He had been a sneaking, cowardly child; he +had grown into a vicious and cowardly young man. He was a patriot +because he was afraid not to be; he had enlisted in the Cuban army +because he was afraid not to. He had even participated in skirmishes, +sweating with fear and discharging his rifle with his eyes closed. But +he had been clever enough to conceal his white feathers, and he could +talk in a modest, purposeful way, just like a genuine hero. He was to be +shot, not because he was himself, but because he was Juan's brother. The +Spaniards feared the whole family as a man fears a hornet's nest in the +eaves and, because one hornet has stung him, wages exterminating war +upon all hornets. In Manuel's case, however, there was a trial, short +and unpleasant. The man was on his knees half the time, blubbering, +abjuring, perspiring, and begging for mercy; swearing on his honor to +betray his country wherever and whenever possible; to fight against her, +to spy within her defenses and plans--anything, everything! + +His judges were not impressed. They believed him to be acting. He was +one of the D'Acostas; Juan's brother, Ferdinand's son--a hornet. Not the +same type of hornet, but for that very reason, perhaps, the more to be +feared. "When he finds," said the colonel who presided, "that he is to +be shot beyond peradventure he will turn stoic like the others, you'll +see. Even now he is probably laughing at us for being moved by his +blubberings and entreaties. He wants to get away from us at any price. +That's all. He wants a chance to sting us again. And that chance he +will not get." + +Oddly enough, the coward did turn stoic the moment he was formally +condemned. But it was physical exhaustion as much as anything else; a +sudden numbing of the senses, a kind of hideous hypnotism upon him by +the idea of death. It lasted the better part of an hour. Then, alone in +his cell, he hurled himself against the walls, screaming, or cowered +upon the stone floor, pooling it with tears, sobbing horribly with his +whole body, going now and again into convulsions of nausea. These +actions were attributed by his guard to demoniacal rage, but not to +fear. He thus fought blindly against the unfightable until about four in +the afternoon, when exhaustion once more put a quietus upon him. It was +then that his mother, having taken counsel at last with her patriot +soul, visited him. + +She had succeeded, not without difficulty, in gaining permission. It was +not every mother who could manage a last interview with a condemned son. +But she had bribed the colonel. She had given him in silver the savings +of a lifetime. + +The old woman sat down by her son and took his hand in hers. Then the +door of the cell was closed upon them and locked. Manuel turned and +collapsed against his mother's breast. + +"It's all right, Manuel," she said in her quiet, cheerful voice. "I've +seen the colonel." + +Manuel looked up quickly, a glint of hope in his rodent eyes. + +"What do you mean?" he said. His voice was hoarse. His mother bit her +lips, for the hoarseness told her that her son had been screaming with +fear. In that moment she almost hated him. But she controlled herself. +She looked at him sidewise. + +"The colonel tells me that you have offered to serve Spain if he will +give you your life?" + +This was a shrewd guess. She waited for Manuel's answer, not even hoping +that it would be in the negative. She knew him through and through. + +"Well," he choked, "it wouldn't do." + +"That's where you are wrong, my son," she said. "The colonel, on the +contrary, believes he can make use of you. He is going to let you +go free." + +Manuel could not believe his ears, it seemed. He kept croaking "What?" +in his hoarse voice, his face brightening with each reiteration. + +"But," she went on, "he does not wish this to be known to the Cubans. +You see, if they knew that you had been allowed to go free it would +counteract your usefulness, wouldn't it?" + +"Yes--but--" + +"Listen to me. Everything is to proceed as ordered and according to army +regulations except one thing. The rifles which are to be fired at you +will be loaded with blank cartridges. When the squad fires you must fall +as if--as if you were dead. Then you will be put in a coffin and +brought to me for burial. Then you will come to life. That is all." + +She smiled into her son's face with a great gladness and patted his +hands. + +"Afterward," she said, "you will grow a beard and generally disguise +yourself. It is thus that the colonel thinks he can best make use of +your knowledge and cleverness. And, of course, at the first opportunity +you will give the colonel the slip and once more take your place in the +patriot army." + +"Of course," said Manuel; "I never meant to do what I pretended I +would." + +"Of course not!" said his mother. + +"But--" + +"But what?" + +"I don't see the necessity of having a mock execution. It's not nice to +have a lot of blank cartridges go off in your face." + +"Nice!" The old woman sprang to her feet. She shook her finger in his +face. "Nice! Haven't you any shred of courage in your great, hulking +body? I don't believe you'll even face blank cartridges like a man--I +believe you'll scream and blubber and be a shame to us all. You disgust +me!" She spat on the floor. "Here I come to tell you that you are to be +spared, and you're afraid to death of the means by which you are to go +free. Why, I'd stand up to blank cartridges all day without turning a +hair--or to bullets, for that matter--at two hundred metres, where I +knew none of those Spanish idiots could hit me except by accident. I +wouldn't expect you to play the man at a real execution or at anything +real, but surely you can pull yourself together enough to play the man +at a mock execution. What a chance! You can leave a reputation as great +as your brother's--greater, even; you could crack jokes and burst out +laughing just when they go to fire--" + +Then, as suddenly as she had flown into a passion, she burst into tears +and flung her arms about her boy and clung to him and mothered him until +in the depths of his surly, craven heart he was touched and +strengthened. + +"Don't be afraid for me, mother," he said. "I do not like even the blank +cartridges, God forgive me; but I shall not shame you." + +She kissed him again and again and laughed and cried. And when the guard +opened the door and said that the time was up she patted her boy upon +the cheeks and shoulders and smiled bravely into his face. Then she +left him. + +The execution of Manuel D'Acosta was not less inspiring to the patriotic +heart than that of his brother Juan. And who knows but that it may have +been as difficult an act of control for the former to face the blank +cartridges as for the latter to stand up to those loaded with ball? Like +Juan, Manuel stood against the wall with a cigarette between his lips. +Like Juan, he sought out his mother's face among the spectators and +smiled at her bravely. He did not stand so modestly, so gentlemanly as +Juan had done, but with a touch of bravado, an occasional +half-swaggering swing from the hips, an upward tilt of the chin. + +"I told you he would turn stoic," the colonel whispered to one of the +officers who had taken part in the trial. "I know these Cubans." + +It was all very edifying. Like Juan, Manuel spat out his cigarette when +it had burned too short. But, unlike Juan, he made no dying speech. He +felt that he was still too hoarse to be effective. Instead, at the +command, "Aim!" he burst out laughing, as if in derision of the +well-known lack of markmanship which prevailed among the Spaniards. + +He was nearly torn in two. + +Those who lifted him into his coffin noticed that the expression upon +his face was one of blank astonishment, as if the beyond had contained +an immeasurable surprise for him. + +His mother took a certain comfort from the manner of his dying, but it +was the memory of her other boy that really enabled her to live out her +life without going mad. + + + + +"MA'AM?" + +In most affairs, except those which related to his matrimonial ventures, +Marcus Antonius Saterlee was a patient man. On three occasions "an +ardent temperament and the heart of a dove," as he himself had expressed +it, had corralled a wife in worship and tenderness within his house. The +first had been the love of his childhood; the wooing of the second had +lasted but six weeks; that of the third but three. He rejoiced in the +fact that he had been a good husband to three good women. He lamented +that all were dead. Now and then he squirmed his bull head around on his +bull body, and glanced across the aisle at the showy woman who was +daintily picking a chicken wing. He himself was not toying with +beefsteak, boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, lima, and string +beans. He was eating them. Each time he looked at the lady he muttered +something to his heart of a dove: + +"Flighty. Too slight. Stuck on herself. Pin-head," etc. + +With his food Saterlee was not patient. He dispensed with mastication. +Neither was he patient of other people's matrimonial ventures. And, in +particular, that contemplated and threatened by his son and heir was +moving him across three hundred miles of inundated country as fast as a +train could carry him. His son had written: + +"DEAREST DAD--I've found Dorothy again. She's at Carcasonne. They +thought her lungs were bad, but they aren't. We're going to be married a +week from to-day--next Friday--at nine A.M. This marriage is going to +take place, Daddy dear. You can't prevent it. I write this so's to be on +the square. I'm inviting you to the wedding. I'll be hurt if you don't +show up. What if Dorothy's mother _is_ an actress and has been divorced +twice? You've been a marrying man yourself, Dad. Dorothy is all darling +from head to foot. But I love you, too, Daddy, and if you can't see it +my way, why, God bless and keep you just the same." + +JIM. + +I can't deny that Marcus Antonius Saterlee was touched by his son's +epistle. But he was not moved out of reason. + +"The girl's mother," he said to himself, "is a painted, divorced jade." +And he thought with pleasure of the faith, patience, and rectitude of +the three gentle companions whom he had successively married and buried. +"There was never any divorce in the Saterlee blood," he had prided +himself. "Man or woman, we stick by our choice till he or she" (he was +usually precise) "turns up his or her toes. Not till then do we think of +anybody else. But then we do, because it is not good to live alone, +especially in a small community in Southern California." + +He glanced once more at the showy lady across the aisle. She had +finished her chicken wing, and was dipping her fingers in a finger-bowl, +thus displaying to sparkling advantage a number of handsome rings. + +"My boy's girl's mother a painted actress," he muttered as he looked. +"Not if I know it." And then he muttered: "_You'd_ look like an actress +if you was painted." + +Though the words can not have been distinguished, the sounds were +audible. + +"Sir?" said the lady, stiffly but courteously. + +"Nothing, Ma'am," muttered Mark Anthony, much abashed. "I'm surprised to +see so much water in this arid corner of the world, where I have often +suffered for want of it. I must have been talking to myself to that +effect. I hope you will excuse me." + +The lady looked out of the window--not hers, but Saterlee's. + +"It does look," she said, "as if the waters had divorced themselves from +the bed of ocean." + +She delivered this in a quick but telling voice. Saterlee was shocked at +the comparison. + +"I suppose," she continued, "we may attribute those constant and tedious +delays to which we have been subjected all day to the premature melting +of snow in the fastnesses of the Sierras?" + +This phrase did not shock Saterlee. He was amazed by the power of memory +which it proved. For three hours earlier he had read a close paraphrase +of it in a copy of the Tomb City _Picayune_ which he had bought at +that city. + +The train ran slower and slower, and out on to a shallow embankment. + +"Do you think we shall ever get anywhere?" queried the lady. + +"Not when we expect to, Ma'am," said Saterlee. He began to scrub his +strong mouth with his napkin, lest he should return to the smoker with +stains of boiled eggs upon him. + +The train gave a jolt. And then, very quietly, the dining-car rolled +over on its side down the embankment. There was a subdued smashing of +china and glass. A clergyman at one of the rear tables quietly remarked, +"Washout," and Saterlee, who had not forgotten the days when he had +learned to fall from a bucking bronco, relaxed his great muscles and +swore roundly, sonorously, and at great length. The car came to rest at +the bottom of the embankment, less on its side than on its top. For a +moment--or so it seemed--all was perfectly quiet. Then (at one and the +same moment) a lady in the extreme front of the diner was heard +exclaiming faintly: "You're pinching me," and out of the tail of his +eye Saterlee saw the showy lady across the aisle descending upon him +through the air. She was accompanied by the hook and leg table upon +which she had made her delicate meal, and all its appurtenances, +including ice-water and a wide open jar of very thin mustard. + +"Thank you," she murmured, as her impact drove most of the breath out of +Saterlee's bull body. "How strong you are!" + +"When you are rested, Ma'am," said he, with extreme punctiliousness, "I +think we may leave the car by climbing over the sides of the seats on +this side. Perhaps you can manage to let me pass you in case the door is +jammed. I could open it." + +He preceded her over and over the sides of the seats, opened the car +door, which was not jammed, and helped her to the ground. And then, his +heart of a parent having wakened to the situation, he forgot her and +forsook her. He pulled a time-table from his pocket; he consulted a +mile-post, which had had the good sense to stop opposite the end of the +car from which he had alighted. It was forty miles to Carcasonne--and +only two to Grub City--a lovely city of the plain, consisting of one +corrugated-iron saloon. He remembered to have seen it--with its great +misleading sign, upon which were emblazoned the noble words: +"Life-Saving Station." + +"Grub City--hire buggy--drive Carcasonne," he muttered, and without a +glance at the train which had betrayed him, or at the lady who had +fallen upon him, so to speak, out of the skies, he moved forward with +great strides, leaped a puddle, regained the embankment, and hastened +along the ties, skipping every other one. + + + + +II + +Progress is wonderful in the Far West. Since he had last seen it only a +year had passed, and yet the lovely city of Grub had doubled its size. +It now consisted of two saloons: the old "Life-Saving Station" and the +new "Like Father Used to Take." The proprietor of the new saloon was the +old saloon-keeper's son-in-law, and these, with their flourishing and, +no doubt, amiable families, were socially gathered on the shady side of +the Life-Saving Station. The shade was much the same sort that is +furnished by trees in more favored localities, and the population of +Grub City was enjoying itself. The rival wives, mother and daughter, +ample, rosy women, were busy stitching baby clothes. Children already +arrived were playing with a soap-box and choice pebbles and a tin mug at +keeping saloon. A sunburned-haired, flaming maiden of sixteen was at +work upon a dress of white muslin, and a young man of eighteen, brother +by his looks to the younger saloon-keeper, heartily feasted a pair of +honest blue eyes upon her plump hands as they came and went with the +needle. It looked as if another year might see a third saloon in +Grub City. + +Saterlee approached the group, some of whose elders had been watching +and discussing his approach. + +"Do any of you own a boat?" he asked. + +"Train D-railed?" queried the proprietor of the Life-Saving Station, "or +was you just out for a walk?" + +The family and family-in-law laughed appreciatively. + +"The train put to sea in a washout," said Saterlee, "and all the +passengers were drowned." + +"Where you want to git?" asked the proprietor. + +"Carcasonne," said Saterlee. "Not the junction--the resort." + +"Well," said the proprietor, "there's just one horse and just one trap +in Grub City, and they ain't for hire." + +Again the united families laughed appreciatively. It was evident that a +prophet is not always without honor in his own land. + +"We've no use for them," said the great man, with the noble abandoning +gesture of a Spanish grandee about to present a horse to a man +travelling by canoe. And he added: "So they're for sale. Now what do you +think they'd be worth to you?" + +All the honest blue eyes, and there were no other colors, widened upon +Saterlee. + +"Fifty dollars," he said, as one accustomed to business. + +It was then that a panting, female voice was raised behind him. "Sixty +dollars!" + +His showy acquaintance of the dining-car had followed him along the ties +as fast as she could, and was just come up. + +"I thought you two was a trust," commented the proprietor's wife, +pausing with her needle in the air. "But it seems you ain't even a +community of interests." + +"Seventy dollars," said Saterlee quietly. + +The lady advanced to his side, counting the change in her purse. + +"Seventy-six dollars and eighty-five cents," she said. + +"Eighty dollars," said Saterlee. + +"Oh!" cried the lady, "seventy-six eighty-five is every cent I've got +with me--and you're no gentleman to bid higher." + +"Eighty," repeated Saterlee. + +"Eighty dollars," said the son-in-law, "for a horse and buggy that a +man's never seen is too good to be true." + +"They are yours, sir," said the father-in-law, and he turned to his +daughter's husband. "Is that horse in your cellar or in mine?" he asked. +"I ain't set eyes on her since February." + +The son-in-law, sent to fetch the horse, first paused at the cellar +door of the Life-Saving Station, then, with a shake of the head and an +"I remember _now_" expression, he approached and entered the subterrene +of his own house and business, and disappeared, saying: "Whoa, there! +Steady you!" + +Saterlee turned quietly to the angry and tearful vision whom he had so +callously outbid. + +"Ma'am," he said, "if we come to my stop first or thereabouts, the buggy +is yours to go on with. If we reach yours first, it's mine." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, her face brightening, "how good you are. But you'll +let me go halves on the purchase money." + +"If I appeared rude just now," he said, "it was to save a lady's pocket. +Now then, you've wet them high-heeled shoes. Wherever you're going, it's +a long drive. Let's go inside and dry our feet while they're hitching +up. Which is your house?" + +The proprietor of the Life-Saving Station indicated that building with +his thumb, and told his daughter of the white muslin dress to kindle a +fire in the stove. She slid her future wedding finery into a large paper +bag, and entered the saloon by the "Family Entrance," ardently followed +by her future husband. + +The proprietor, Saterlee, and the showy lady followed more slowly, +discussing roads. + +"Now," said Saterlee, "if you're going further than Carcasonne +Junction, I'll get off there. And either I'll walk to the hotel or hire +another trap." + +"Why!" exclaimed the lady, "are you bound for Carcasonne House? So am +I." + +"In that case," said Saterlee elegantly, "we'll go the whole hog +together." + +"Quite so," said the lady primly. + +"You'd ought to make Carcasonne House by midnight," said the proprietor. +"Put your feet up on that there stove." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed the lady. "And if we don't make it by midnight?" + +"We will by one or two o'clock." + +The lady became very grave. + +"Of course," she said, "it can't be helped. But it would be ever so much +nicer if we could get in before midnight." + +"I take your point, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "Before midnight is +just a buggy ride--after midnight means being out all night +together. I feel for you, Ma'am, but I'm dinged if I see how +we can help ourselves. It's five now." He counted on his fingers: +"six--seven--eight--nine--ten--'leven--twelve--seven hours--seven into +forty--five and five-sevenths.... Ma'am," he said, "I can promise +nothing. It's all up to the horse." + +"Of course," said the lady, "it doesn't really matter. But," and she +spoke a little bitterly, "several times in my life my actions and my +motives have been open to misconstruction, and they have been +misconstrued. I have suffered, sir, much." + +"Well, Ma'am," said Saterlee, "my reputation as a married man and a +father of many children is mixed up in this, too. If we are in late--or +out late rather--and there's any talk--I guess I can quiet some of it. I +rather guess I can." + +He rose to his feet, a vast, round, deep man, glowing with health and +energy. + +"I once quieted a bull, Ma'am," said he, "by the horns. I would a held +him till help came if one of the horns hadn't come off, and he +ran away." + +The proprietor entered the conversation with an insinuating wedge of a +voice. + +"I don't like to mind other folks' business," he said, "but if the lady +is fretting about bein' out all night with a total stranger, I feel it +my dooty to remark that in Grub City there is a justice of the peace." +He bowed and made a gesture which either indicated his whole person, or +that smug and bulging portion of it to which the gesture was more +directly applied. + +Saterlee and the lady did not look at each other and laugh. They were +painfully embarrassed. + +"Nothing like a sound splice," suggested the Justice, still hopeful of +being helpful. "Failing that, you've a long row to hoe, and I suggest a +life saver for the gent and a nip o' the same for the lady. I'd like you +to see the bar," he added. "Mine is the show place of this here +city--mirrors--peacock feathers--Ariadne in the nood--cash register--and +everything hunky-dunk." + +"We'll go you," said Saterlee. "At any rate, I will." + +"Oh, I must see, too," said the lady, and both were relieved at the turn +which the conversation had taken. + +The proprietor removed the cheese-cloth fly protector from the +two-by-three mirror over the bar, slipped a white jacket over his blue +shirt, and rubbed his hands together invitingly, as if washing them. + +"What's your pleasure, gents?" said he. + +As the lady approached the bar she stumbled. Saterlee caught her by the +elbow. + +"That rail down there," he said, "ain't to trip over. It's to rest your +foot on. So." He showed her. With the first sign of humor that she had +shown, the lady suddenly and very capitally mimicked his attitude. And +in a tough voice (really an excellent piece of acting): "What's yours, +kid?" she said. And then blushed to the eyes, and was very much ashamed +of herself. But Saterlee and the bartender were delighted. They roared +with laughter. + +"Next thing," said the bartender, "she'll pull a gun and shoot up the +place." + +Saterlee said: "Rye." + +"I want to be in it," said the lady. "Can you make me something that +looks like a drink, and isn't?" + +"Scotch," said the proprietor without hesitation. + +"No--no," she said, "Water and coloring matter." + +She was fitted finally with a pony of water containing a few drops of +Spanish Red and an olive. + +The three touched glasses and wished each other luck all around. +Saterlee paid eighty dollars and some change across the bar. But the +proprietor pushed back the change. + +"The drinks," he said grandly, "was on the house." + + + + +III + +The united families bade them farewell, and Saterlee brought down the +whip sharply upon the bony flank of the old horse which he had bought. +But not for a whole minute did the sensation caused by the whip appear +to travel to the ancient mare's brain. Not till reaching a deep puddle +did she seem suddenly aware of the fact that she had been whipped. Then, +however, she rushed through the puddle, covering Saterlee and the lady +with mud, and having reached the other side, fell once more into a +halting walk. + +The lady was tightly wedged between Saterlee and the side of the buggy. +Every now and then Saterlee made a tremendous effort to make himself +narrower, but it was no use. + +"If you begin to get numb," he said, "tell me, and I'll get out and walk +a spell.... How clear the air is! Seems as if you could stretch out your +hand and touch the mountains. Do you see that shadow half way up--on the +left--about three feet off? Carcasonne House is somewhere in that +shadow. And it's forty miles away." + +Once more the road ran under a shallow of water. And once more the old +mare remembered that she had been whipped, and made a rush for it. Fresh +mud was added to that which had already dried upon them by the dry +miracle of the air. + +"She'd ought to have been a motor-boat," said Saterlee, the mud which +had entered his mouth gritting unpleasantly between his teeth. "Last +year there was _one_ spring hole _somewhere_ in these parts--this year +it's all lakes and rivers--never was such rains before in the memory of +man. Wonder what Gila River's doing?" + +"What is Gila River?" she asked. + +"It's a sand gully," he said, "that winds down from the mountains, and +out across the plain, like a sure enough river. Only there's no water in +it, only a damp spot here and there. But I was thinking that maybe it'll +be going some now. We ought to strike it before dark." + +The mare rushed through another puddle. + +The lady laughed. "Please don't bother to hold her," she said; "I don't +mind--now." + +"I guess your dress ain't really hurt," commented Saterlee. "I remember +my old woman--Anna--had a brown silk that got a mud bath, and came +through all right." + +"This is an old rag, anyway," said the showy lady, who was still showy +in spite of a wart-like knot of dried mud on the end of her nose. And +she glanced at her spattered but graceful and expensive white linen and +hand-embroidered dress. + +"Well, I can see one thing," said Saterlee, "that you've made up your +mind to go through this experience like a good sport. I wish I didn't +have to take up so much room." + +"Never mind," she said, "I like to think that I could go to sleep +without danger of falling out." + +"That's so--that's so," said Saterlee. "Maybe it's just as well we're +something of a tight fit." + +"I have always mistrusted thin men," said the lady, and she hastily +added: "Not that you're _fat_" + +"My bones are covered," said Saterlee; "I admit it." + +"Yes," she said, "but with big muscles and sinews." + +"I am not weak," said Saterlee; "I admit it." + +"What air this is," exclaimed the lady; "what delicious air. No wonder +it cures people with lung trouble. Still, I'm glad mine are sound." + +"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "When you said +you were bound for Carcasonne House, I thought to myself, 'Mebbe she's +got it,' and I felt mighty sorry." + +"Do I look like a consumptive?" she asked. + +"Bless me--no," said he. "But you're not stout, and, considering where +you said you was going, you mustn't blame me for putting two and two +together and getting the wrong answer." + +"I don't blame you at all," she said, but a little stiffly. "It was +perfectly natural. No," she said, "my daughter is at Carcasonne House. +She had a very heavy cold--and other troubles--and _two_ doctors agreed +that her lungs were threatened. Well, perhaps they were. I sent her to +Carcasonne House on the doctors' recommendation. And it seems that she's +just as sound as I am." + +"What a relief to you, Ma'am," said Saterlee hastily. + +"Yes," she said, but without enthusiasm, "a great relief." + +He screwed his massive head around on his massive neck, not without +difficulty, and looked at her. His voice sounded hurt. + +"You don't seem very glad, Ma'am," he said. + +Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him. + +"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood +will--_must_ tell?" + +"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand +dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's +because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made +a fortune out of it.... Cattle," he added in explanation. + +"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their +affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to +reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could +stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do +you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and +steady-minded--you don't seem like a stranger." + +"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for +hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!" + +"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a +young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know +this: that his father has buried three wives." + +The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the +lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands, +did not perceive this convulsion of nature. + +"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same +brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl--to suffer--to die--and +to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks +when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man. +No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow, +too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee, +the cattle man--do you know him?" + +"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton. + +"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother +to her. I have suffered for her. And she must--she shall--listen to me." + +"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can +count on me.... Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire +sympathy with your views, Ma'am.... Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee +had _divorced_ three wives...." + +The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of +blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and +was pleased. + +"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first +wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire +was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am. +But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is +a difference. Because God Almighty Himself says in one of His books that +man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a +faithful and tender companion is what sets a man--some men--to looking +for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is +he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who +can't cling together until death--and death alone part 'em--for such +people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding." + +"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the +applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her +composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he +dies--not the _death_--but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love +to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if +he had really died? He is dead to her--buried--men don't come back. +Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the +service read over him--that's divorce--and find another whom she can +trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem +identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man +who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself +marrying again--if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still +loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical. +And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible." + +"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and +vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of +it along those lines. See that furrow across the road--that's where a +snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have +buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I +don't seem a regular hell-hound." + +"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you +that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself +up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that +I act for my living--" + +"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew +more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at +Carcasonne House is the same as yours." + +She was silent for a moment. And then: + +"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem +to want the same thing--that is, to keep our children from marrying +each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it." + +"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But--" and he +fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to +her. She read it in the waning light. + +"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute +of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?" + +She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully +and minutely folded sheet of note-paper. + +"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound +like--" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it. + +"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing +brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears--when they were +in his own eyes. + +"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk." + +"No," said Saterlee, "let's think." + + + + +IV + +They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters. + +"That," said Saterlee dryly, "will be Gila River. Mebbe we'll have to +think about getting across that first. It's a river now, by the sound of +it, if it never was before." + +"Fortunately it's not dark yet," said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"The last time I had trouble with a river," said Saterlee, "was when my +first wife died. That was the American River in flood. I had to cross it +to get a doctor. We'd gone prospectin'--just the old woman and me--more +for a lark than profit." + +"Yes?" said Mrs. Kimbal sympathetically. + +"She took sick in an hour," he went on. "From what I've heard since, I +guess it was appendicitis. Anyway, I rode off for help, hell for +leather, and when I come to the river the whole thing was roaring and +foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make +it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, +he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, +but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt +this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be +scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that +didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, Mark,' he says, 'it's wanting to be +sure that I make the right choice.' I says: 'She was in terrible pain, +Jim. Many a time she's done you a good turn; some you know of, some you +don't.' That fetched him. He caught up his bridle and drove his spurs +into his horse, and was swept down-stream like a leaf. I rode along the +bank to help if I could. But he got across on a long diagonal--horse and +all. I waved to him to go on and not mind about me. And he rode off at +the gallop. But I was too heavy, I guess. I lost my second horse in that +flood, and had to foot it into camp. I was too late. Pain had made her +unconscious, and she was dead. But before givin' in she'd wrote me a +letter." He broke off short. "And there's Gila River," he said. + +"I hoped you were going to tell me what your poor wife said in her +letter," said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"Oh, Ma'am," he said, hesitated, cleared his throat, and became routed +and confused. + +"If you'd rather not--" said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"It isn't that," he said. "It would seem like bragging." + +"Surely not," she said. + +Saterlee, with his eyes on the broad, brown flood which they were +approaching, repeated like a lesson: + +"'Mark--I'm dying. I want it to do good, not harm. Jenny always thought +the world of you. You'll be lonely when I'm gone. I don't want you to be +lonely. You gave me peace on earth. And you can't be happy unless you've +got a woman to pet and pamper. That's your nature--'" + +He paused. + +"That was all," he said, and wiped his forehead with the palm of his +hand. "It just stopped there." + +"I'm glad you told me," said Mrs. Kimbal gently. "It will be a lesson +to me not to spring to conclusions, and not to make up my mind about +things I'm not familiar with." + +When they came to where the road disappeared under the swift unbroken +brown of Gila River, the old horse paused of her own accord, and, +turning her bony and scarred head a half revolution, stared almost +rudely at the occupants of the buggy. + +"It all depends," said Saterlee, "how deep the water runs over the road, +and whether we can keep to the road. You see, it comes out higher up +than it goes in. Can you swim, Ma'am?" + +Mrs. Kimbal admitted that, in clothes made to the purpose, and in very +shallow water, she was not without proficiency. + +"Would you rather we turned back?" he asked. + +"I feel sure you'll get me over," said she. + +"Then," said Saterlee, "let's put the hood down. In case we do capsize, +we don't want to get caught under it." + +Saterlee on his side, and Mrs. Kimbal, not without exclamations of +annoyance, on hers, broke the toggle-joints that held the dilapidated +hood in place, and thrust it backward and down. At once the air seemed +to circulate with greater freshness. + +For some moments Saterlee considered the river, up-stream, down-stream, +and across, knitting his brows to see better, for the light was failing +by leaps and bounds. Then, in an embarrassed voice: + +"I've _got_ to do it," he said. "It's only right." + +"What?" said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"I feel sure," he said, "that under the circumstances you'll make every +allowance, Ma'am." + +Without further hesitation--in fact, with almost desperate haste, as if +wishing to dispose of a disagreeable duty--he ripped open the buttons of +his waistcoat and removed it at the same time with his coat, as if the +two had been but one garment. He tossed them into the bottom of the +buggy in a disorderly heap. But Mrs. Kimbal rescued them, separated +them, folded them neatly, and stowed them under the seat. + +Saterlee made no comment. He was thinking of the state of a shirt that +he had had on since early morning, and was wondering how, with his +elbows pressed very tightly to his sides, he could possibly manage to +unlace his boots. He made one or two tentative efforts. But Mrs. Kimbal +seemed to divine the cause of his embarrassment. + +"_Please_," she said, "don't mind anything--on my account." + +He reached desperately, and regardlessly, for his boots, unlaced them, +and took them off. + +"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Kimbal, "_both_ your heels need darning!" + +Saterlee had tied his boots together, and was fastening them around his +neck by the remainder of the laces. + +"I haven't anybody to do my darning now," he said. "My girls are all at +school, except two that's married. So--" He finished his knot, took the +reins in his left hand and the whip in his right. + +At first the old mare would not budge. Switching was of no avail. +Saterlee brought down the whip upon her with a sound like that of small +cannon. She sighed and walked gingerly into the river. + +The water rose slowly (or the river bottom shelved very gradually), and +they were half-way across before it had reached the hubs of the wheels. +But the mare appeared to be in deeper. She refused to advance, and once +more turned and stared with a kind of wistful rudeness. Then she saw the +whip, before it fell, made a desperate plunge, and floundered forward +into deep water--but without the buggy. + +One rotten shaft had broken clean off, both rotten traces, and the +reins, upon which hitherto there had been no warning pull, were jerked +from Saterlee's loose fingers. The old mare reached the further shore +presently, swimming and scrambling upon a descending diagonal, stalked +sedately up the bank, and then stood still, only turning her head to +look at the buggy stranded in mid-stream. The sight appeared to arouse +whatever of youthful mischief remained in the feeble old heart. She +seemed to gather herself for a tremendous effort, then snorted once, and +kicked thrice--three feeble kicks of perhaps six inches in the +perpendicular. + +Mrs. Kimbal exploded into laughter. + +"Wouldn't you know she was a woman?" she said. + +But Saterlee was climbing out of the buggy. + +"Now," said he, "if you'll just tie my coat round your neck by the +sleeves--let the vest go hang--and then you'll have to let me +carry you." + +Mrs. Kimbal did as she was told. But the buggy, relieved at last of all +weight, slid off sidewise with the current, turned turtle, and was +carried swiftly down-stream. Saterlee staggering, for the footing was +uncertain, and holding Mrs. Kimbal high in his arms, started for shore. +The water rose above his waist, and kept rising. He halted, bracing +himself against the current. + +"Ma'am," he said in a discouraged voice, "it's no use. I've just got to +let you get wet. We've got to swim to make it." + +"All right," she said cheerfully. + +"Some folks," he said, "likes to go overboard sudden; some likes to go +in by degrees." + +"Between the two for me," said Mrs. Kimbal. "Not suddenly, but firmly +and without hesitation." + +She gave a little shivery gasp. + +"It's not really cold," she said. "How strong the current pulls. Will +you have to swim and tow me?" + +"Yes," he said. + +"Then wait," she said. "Don't let me be carried away." + +He steadied her while she drew the hat-pins from her hat and dropped it +as carelessly on the water as if that had been her dressing-table. Then +she took down her hair. It was in two great brown, shining braids. The +ends disappeared in the water, listing down-stream. + +Shorn of her hat and her elaborate hair-dressing, the lady was no longer +showy, and Saterlee, out of the tail of an admiring eye, began to see +real beauties about her that had hitherto eluded him. Whatever other +good qualities and virtues she may have tossed overboard during a stormy +and unhappy life, she had still her nerve with her. So Saterlee +told himself. + +"It will be easier, won't it," she said, "if you have my hair to hold +by? I think I can manage to keep on my back." + +"May I, Ma'am?" said Saterlee. + +She laughed at his embarrassment. And half-thrust the two great braids +into the keeping of his strong left hand. + +A moment later Saterlee could no longer keep his footing. + +"Now, Ma'am," he said, "just let yourself go." + +And he swam to shallow water, not without great labor, towing Mrs. +Kimbal by the hair. But here he picked her up in his arms, this time +with no word spoken, and carried her ashore. Some moments passed. + +"Well," she said, laughing, "aren't you going to put me down?" + +"Oh!" said he, terribly confused, "I forgot. I was just casting an eye +around for that horse. She's gone." + +"Never mind--we'll walk." + +"It'll be heavy going, wet as you are," said he. + +"I'll soon be dry in this air," she said. + +Saterlee managed to pull his boots on over his wet socks, and Mrs. +Kimbal, having given him his wet coat from her neck, stooped and wrung +as much water as she could from her clothes. + +It was now nearly dark, but they found the road and went on. + +"What time is it?" she asked. + +"My watch was in my vest," said Saterlee. + +"How far to Carcasonne House?" + +"'Bout thirty miles." + +She did not speak again for some time. + +"Well," she said, a little hardness in her voice, "you'll hardly be in +time to steer your boy away from my girl." + +"No," said he, "I won't. An' you'll hardly be in time to steer your +girl away from my boy." + +"Oh," she said, "you misconceive me entirely, Mr. Saterlee. As far as +I'm concerned, my only regret _now_ is that I shan't be in time to dance +at the wedding." + +"Ma'am?" he said, and there was something husky in his voice. + + + + +V + +About midnight they saw a light, and, forsaking what they believed in +hopeful moments to be the road, they made for it across country. Across +open spaces of sand, into gullies and out of gullies, through stinging +patches of yucca and prickly pear, through breast-high chaparral, +meshed, knotted, and matted, like a clumsy weaving together of very +tough ropes, some with thorns, and all with sharp points and elbows. + +They had long since dispensed with all conversation except what bore on +their situation. Earlier in the night the darkness and the stars had +wormed a story of divorce out of Mrs. Kimbal, and Saterlee had found +himself longing to have the man at hand and by the throat. + +And she had prattled of her many failures on the stage and, latterly, of +her more successful ventures, and of a baby boy that she had had, and +how that while she was off playing "on the road" her husband had come +in drunk and had given the baby the wrong medicine. And it was about +then that she had left off conversing. + +For in joy it is hard enough to find the way in the dark, while for +those in sorrow it is not often that it can be found at all. + +The light proved to be a lantern upon the little porch of a ramshackle +shanty. An old man with immense horn-rimmed spectacles was reading by it +out of a tattered magazine. When the couple came close, the old man +looked up from his reading, and blessed his soul several times. + +"It do beat the Dutch!" he exclaimed in whining nasal tones, "if here +ain't two more." + +"Two more what?" said Saterlee. + +"It's the floods, I reckon," whined the old man. "There's three on the +kitchen floor and there's two ladies in my bed. That's why I'm sittin' +up. There wa'n't no bed for a man in his own house. But I found this +here old copy of the _Medical Revoo_, 'n' I'm puttin' in the time with +erysipelis." + +"But," said Saterlee, "you must find some place for this lady to rest. +She is worn out with walking and hunger." + +"Stop!" whined the old man, smiting his thigh, "if there ain't that +there mattress in the loft! And I clean forgot, and told the boys that I +hadn't nothin' better than a rug or two 'n the kitchen floor." + +"A mattress!" exclaimed Saterlee. "Splendid! I guess you can sleep some +on anything near as good as a mattress. Can't you, ma'am?" + +"Indeed I could!" she said. "But you have been through as much as I +have--more. I won't take it." + +The old man's whine interrupted. + +"Ain't you two married?" he said. + +"Nop," said Saterlee shortly. + +"Now ain't that ridiculous?" meditated the old man; "I thought you was +all along." His eyes brightened behind the spectacles. "It ain't for me +to interfere _in_ course," he said, "but hereabouts I'm a Justice of the +Peace." Neither spoke. + +"I could rouse up the boys in the kitchen for witnesses," he insinuated. + +Saterlee turned suddenly to Mrs. Kimbal, but his voice was very humble. + +"Ma'am?" he suggested. + + + + +MR. HOLIDAY + +Mr. Holiday stepped upon the rear platform of his car, the Mishawaka, +exactly two seconds before the express, with a series of faint, +well-oiled jolts, began to crawl forward and issue from beneath the +glass roof of the Grand Central into the damp, pelting snow. Mr. Holiday +called the porter and told him for the good of his soul that fifty years +ago travelling had not been the easy matter that it was to-day. This off +his mind, he pulled an _Evening Post_ from his pocket and dismissed the +porter by beginning to read. He still wore his overcoat and high silk +hat. These he would not remove until time had proved that the +temperature of his car was properly regulated. + +He became restless after a while and hurried to the forward compartment +of the Mishawaka to see if all his trunks had been put on. He counted +them over several times, and each time he came to the black trunk he +sniffed and wrinkled up his nose indignantly. The black trunk was filled +with the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been +called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had +learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they +had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had +badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and +snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies +had looked such indignant, heart-broken daggers at him that, very +ungraciously, it is true, and with language that made their +sensibilities hop like peas in a pan, he had felt obliged to relent. He +had gathered up the lists and stuffed them into his pocket, and had +turned away with one bitter and awful phrase. + +"Waste not, want not!" he had said. + +He now glared and sniffed at the black trunk, and called for the porter. + +"Do you know what's in that trunk?" he said in a pettish, indignant +voice. "It's full of Christmas presents for my grandchildren. It's got +crocodiles in it and lions and Billy Possums and music-boxes and dolls +and yachts and steam-engines and spiders and monkeys and doll's +furniture and china. It cost me seven hundred and forty-two dollars and +nine cents to fill that trunk. Do you know where I wish it was?" + +The porter did not know. + +"I wish it was in Jericho!" said Mr. Holiday. + +He fingered the brass knob of the door that led forward to the regular +coaches, turned it presently, and closed it behind him. + +His progress through the train resembled that of a mongoose turned +loose in new quarters. Nothing escaped his prying scrutiny or love of +petty information. If he came to a smoking compartment, he would thrust +aside the curtain and peer in. If it contained not more than three +persons, he would then enter, seat himself, and proceed to ask them +personal questions. It was curious that people so seldom resented being +questioned by Mr. Holiday; perhaps his evident sincerity in seeking for +information accounted for this; perhaps the fact that he was famous, and +that nearly everybody in the country knew him by sight. Perhaps it is +impossible for a little gentleman of eighty, very smartly dressed, with +a carnation in his buttonhole, to be impertinent. And then he took such +immense and childish pleasure in the answers that he got, and sometimes +wrote them down in his note-book, with comments, as: + +"Got into conversation with a lady with a flat face. She gave me her age +as forty-two. I should have said nearer sixty. + +"Man of fifty tells me has had wart on nose for twenty-five years; has +had it removed by electrolysis twice, but it persists. Tell him that I +have never had a wart." + +Etc., etc. + +He asked people their ages, whence they came, where they were going; +what they did for a living; if they drank; if they smoked; if their +parents were alive; what their beefsteak cost them a pound; what kind of +underwear they wore; what church they attended; if they shaved +themselves; if married; if single; the number of their children; why +they did not have more children; how many trunks they had in the +baggage-car; whether they had seen to it that their trunks were put on +board, etc. Very young men sometimes gave him joking and sportive +answers; but it did not take him long to catch such drifts, and he +usually managed to crush their sponsors thoroughly. For he had the great +white dignity of years upon his head; and the dignity of two or three +hundred million dollars at his back. + +During his peregrinations he came to a closed door which tempted him +strangely. It was probably the door of a private state-room; it might be +the door of a dust closet. He meditated, with his finger upon the knob. +"I'll just open it slowly," he thought, "and if I make a mistake I'll +say I thought it was a smoking compartment." + +As the door opened a smell of roses came out. Huddled into the seat that +rides forward was a beautiful girl, very much dishevelled and weeping +bitterly, with her head upon one of those coarse white pillows which the +Pullman Company provides. Her roses lay upon the seat opposite. She was +so self-centred in her misery that she was not aware that the door had +been opened, a head thrust in and withdrawn, and the door closed. But +she was sure that a still, small voice had suddenly spoken in her mind, +and said: "Brace up." Presently she stopped crying, as became one who +had been made the subject of a manifestation, and began to put her hair +in order at the narrow mirror between the two windows. Meanwhile, though +Mr. Holiday was making himself scarce, as the saying is, he was consumed +with interest to know why the beautiful girl was weeping. _And he meant +to find out_. + +But in the meantime another case provoked his interest. A handsome woman +of thirty-five occupied Section 7 in Car 6. She was dressed in +close-fitting black, with a touch of white at her throat and wrists. + +Mr. Holiday had seen her from the extreme end of the car, and by the +time he was opposite to where she sat it became necessary for him to +have an answer to the questions that had presented themselves about her. +Without any awkward preliminaries, he bent over and said: + +"I've been wondering, ma'am, if you are dressed in black for your father +or your husband." + +She looked up, recognized the famous eccentric, and smiled. + +"Won't you sit down, Mr. Holiday?" she said, and made room for him. + +"I wear black," she said, when he had seated himself, "not because I am +in mourning for anybody, but because I think it's becoming to me. You +see, I have very light-colored hair." + +"Does all that hair grow on your head?" Mr. Holiday asked, simply and +without offence. + +"Every bit of it," she said. + +"I have a splendid head of hair, too," he commented. "But there's a +young man in the car back of this who'll be twenty-two years of age in +February, and he's got more dandruff than hair. Where are you going?" + +"Cleveland." + +"Is that your home?" + +"No. I'm a bird of passage." + +"What is your name?" + +"I am Miss Hampton," she said, and she hoped that he might have heard of +her. But he hadn't. And she explained herself. "I'm to play at the +Euclid Theatre Christmas night." + +"An actor?" he said. + +"Well," she admitted, "some say so, and some won't hear of it." + +"How much money do you earn?" + +"Two hundred dollars a week." + +Mr. Holiday wrote that in his note-book. + +"I've got some little nieces and nephews in New York," she volunteered. +"Don't you think it's hard to be a genuine aunt and to have to spend +Christmas alone in a strange place?" + +"Not for two hundred dollars a week," said Mr. Holiday +unsympathetically. "You ought to thank your stars and garters." + +Presently, after patting her on the back with two fingers, he rose, +bowed, and passed on down the aisle. On the right, in the end section, +was a very old couple, with snow-white hair, and a great deal of +old-fashioned luggage. Mr. Holiday greeted them cordially, and asked +their ages. The old gentleman was seventy-six and proud of it; the old +lady was seventy. Mr. Holiday informed them that he was eighty, but that +they were probably the next oldest people on the train. Anyway, he would +find out and let them know. They smiled good-naturedly, and the old lady +cuddled a little against the old gentleman, for it was cold in that car. +Mr. Holiday turned abruptly. + +"I forgot to ask you where you are going?" he said. + +They told him that they were going to spend Christmas with their +daughter and son-in-law and the new baby in Cleveland. It was a long +journey. But the season made them feel young and strong. Did Mr. Holiday +think there was any danger of being delayed by the snow? It was coming +down very fast. They could not remember ever to have been in a +sleeping-car when it was snowing so hard outside. Mr. Holiday said that +he would ask the conductor about the snow, and let them know. + +In the smoking compartment of the next car forward sat a very young man, +all alone. He looked at once sulky and frightened. He wasn't smoking, +but was drumming on the window sill with his finger nails. He had a +gardenia in his button-hole, and was dressed evidently in his very best +suit--a handsome dark gray, over a malaga-grape-colored waistcoat. In +his necktie was a diamond horseshoe pin. + +"Young man," said Mr. Holiday, seating himself, "what makes you look so +cross?" + +The young man started to say, "None of your business," but perceived in +time the eager face and snow-white hair of his questioner, and +checked himself. + +"Why," he said tolerantly, "do I look as savage as all that?" + +"It isn't money troubles," said Mr. Holiday, "or you would have pawned +that diamond pin." + +"Wouldn't you be cross," said the young man, "if you had to look forward +to sitting up all night in a cold smoking compartment?" + +"Can't you get a berth?" + +"I had a drawing-room," said the young man, "but at the last minute I +had to give it up to a lady." + +Mr. Holiday's eyes twinkled with benign interest. He had connected the +gardenia in the young man's coat with the roses of the girl who +was weeping. + +"I know," he said, "drawing-room, Car 5. She was crying, but I told her +to brace up, and I guess she's stopped." + +The young man jumped to his feet. + +"Oh!" he said. + +Mr. Holiday chuckled. + +"I was right," he said. "I've been right seven times out of the ten for +twenty-five years. I've kept a record." + +Upon an impulse the young man checked his headlong inclination to rush +to the girl who was weeping. + +"If you are right as often as that," he said, "for God's sake tell me +what to do." + +"Certainly," said Mr. Holiday, "and it won't cost you a cent. What's the +matter?" + +"_She_" said the young man with an accent, for there was but the one, +"came to the station to see me off. She gave me this." He touched the +gardenia gently. "I gave her some roses. Just as the train started to +pull out I dared her to come with me ... she came!" + +"Tut--tut!" said Mr. Holiday. + +"What are we to do?" cried the young man. + +"Go back and sit with her," said Mr. Holiday, "and leave the door wide +open. I'm going through the train now to see who's on board; so don't +worry. Leave it all to me." + +The last car forward before you came to the baggage-car and the express +car was a common day coach. It was draughty. It had been used as a +smoker in a period not so very remote. A dog must have passed an +uncomfortable night in it. + +Near the rear door sat a man in a new derby hat and a new black coat. +Further forward on the same side three children had stuffed themselves +into one seat. The middle child, a well-grown girl of thirteen or +fourteen, seemed by her superior height to shelter the little tots at +her side. Only the blue imitation sailor caps of these appeared above +the top of the seat; and the top of each cap, including that worn by the +older girl, had a centrepiece of white about the size of a gentleman's +visiting card. Mr. Holiday promised himself the pleasure of +investigating these later. In the meanwhile his interest was excited by +the ears of the man in the new derby. They were not large, but they had +an appearance of sticking out further than was necessary; and Mr. +Holiday was about to ask their owner the reason why, when he noticed for +himself that it was because the owner's hair had been cut so very, very +short. Indeed, he had little gray eighth-inch bristles instead of hair. +Mr. Holiday wondered why. He seated himself behind the man, and leaned +forward. The man stirred uneasily. + +"I should think you'd be afraid of catching cold in this draughty car +with your hair cut so short," said Mr. Holiday. + +"I am," said the man tersely. + +"Why did you let them cut it so short then?" + +"Let them!" grunted the man, with ineffable scorn. "Let them! You'd have +let them!" + +"I would not," retorted Mr. Holiday crisply. "My wife cuts my hair for +me, just the way I tell her to." + +The man turned a careworn, unhappy face. + +"My wife used to cut mine," he said. "But then I--I got into the habit +of having it done for me.... Ever been to Ohio Penitentiary, mister? ... +That's the finest tonsorial parlor in America--anything from a shave to +the electric treatment." + +"Ohio Penitentiary is a jail for felons," said Mr. Holiday severely. + +"Quite so," said the man, "as I was telling you." + +His voice had a plaintive, subdued note of defiance in it. It was that +of a person who is tired of lying and beating about the bush. + +"When did you get out?" asked Mr. Holiday simply. + +"Eight days ago," said the man, "and when I get good and sick of looking +for jobs and getting turned down--I guess I'll go back." + +"First they make you work," said Mr. Holiday with a pleased chuckle, +"and then they won't let you work. That's the law. But you take my +advice--you fool 'em!" + +"I never fooled anybody," said the man, and he ripped a holy name from +the depths of his downheartedness. + +Mr. Holiday had extracted his note-book, and under cover of the +seat-back was preparing to take notes and make comments. + +"What did you use to do for a living--before?" he asked. + +"I was teller in a bank." + +"And what happened?" + +"Then," said the man, "the missus had twins, followed by typhoid fever." +His admissions came with hopeless frankness. "And I couldn't pay for all +that luxury. So I stole." + +"What bank were you teller in?" + +"The Painsville Bank--Painsville. I'm going to them now to--to see if +they won't let up. The wife says that's the thing to do--go right to the +boil of trouble and prick it." + +"What did your wife do while you were away?" asked Mr. Holiday +delicately. + +"She did odd jobs, and brought the twins up healthy." + +"I remember the Painsville business," said Mr. Holiday, "because I own +stock in that bank. You only took about two hundred dollars." + +"That was all I needed," said the man. "It saved the missus and the +kids--so what's the odds?" + +"But don't you intend to pay it back?" + +"Not if the world won't let me earn any money. I tried for jobs all +to-day, and yesterday, and the day before. I told my story straight. The +missus wrote that was the thing to do. But I guess she's wrong for once. +What would you do if you were a banker and I came to you and said: 'I'm +just out of jail, where I went for stealing; but I mean to be honest. +Won't you give me work?'" + +Mr. Holiday wondered what he would do. He was beginning to like the +ex-convict's frankness. + +"Do you know who I am?" he asked. + +"Everybody knows you by sight, Mr. Holiday." + +"Then you know," said the little old gentleman, "that I've sent plenty +of people to jail in my time--plenty of them." + +"I've heard that said," said the man. + +"But," said Mr. Holiday sharply, "nobody ever tells stories about the +wrongdoers I have forgiven. Your case never came to me. I believe I +would have shown mercy." + +He closed his note-book and rose. + +"Keep telling your story straight, my man, and _asking_ for work." + +He paused, as if waiting a reply; but the man only grunted, and he +passed forward to the children. First he examined the visiting-card +effects on the tops of their hats, and noticed that these were paper +labels sewed down, and bearing the names and destinations of the little +passengers. Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia Caldwell, reading from left to +right, were consigned in the care of the conductor to Silas Caldwell, +Painsville, Ohio. + +Alice had her arms around Freddie and Euphemia, and her pretty head was +bent first to one and then to the other. Mr. Holiday seated himself +gently behind the trio, and listened for some time. He learned that +"mother" was in the hospital, and "father" had to be with her, and that +the children were going to "Uncle Silas" until sent for. And Uncle Silas +was a very "grouchy" man, and one must mind one's P's and Q's, and never +be naughty, or Uncle Silas would have the law of one. But she, Alice, +would take care of them. + +"Going to spend Christmas with Uncle, are you?" piped Mr. Holiday +suddenly; "that's right!" + +The little tots, very much interested and startled, faced about, but +Alice looked like a little reproving angel. + +"Oh!" she said, climbing out of the seat, "I must speak with you +first," + +Mr. Holiday was actually surprised; but he went aside with the child, +where the tots could not hear. + +Absolutely without consciousness of doing so, Alice patted and +rearranged the old gentleman's carnation, and talked to him in a gentle, +reproving tone. + +"I've done everything I could," she said, "to keep the idea of Christmas +away from them. They didn't know when it came until you spoke. But now +they know, and I don't know what I shall do ... our uncle," she +explained, "doesn't celebrate Christmas; he made father understand that +before he agreed to take us until mother got well. So father and I +agreed we'd keep putting Christmas off until mother was well and we were +all together again. But now they'll want their Christmas--and _I_ can't +give it to them." + +"Well, well," said Mr. Holiday cheerfully. "I _have_ put my foot in it. +And I suppose Freddie and Euphemia will carry on and raise Cain when +they find there's no Santy Claus in Painsville?" + +"Don't you fret, Alice," said Mr. Holiday. "When I get people in trouble +I get 'em out. Your Uncle Silas is a friend of mine--he has to be. I'm +going to send him a telegram." He smiled, and chucked her under the +chin. "I'm not much on Christmas myself," he said, "but an obligation's +an obligation." He shook hands with her, nodded in a friendly way to +the ex-convict, and passed out of the car on his return journey, +consulting his note-book as he went. + +First he revisited the old couple, and told them that next to himself +they were in fact the oldest persons on the train, and that they need +not worry about the snow because he had asked the conductor about it, +and the conductor had said that it was all right. Then he started to +revisit Miss Hampton, but was turned from his purpose by a new face in +the car. The new face rose, thin and white, on a long thin neck from a +clerical collar, and its owner was busy with a pad and a pencil. + +"Writing a sermon?" asked Mr. Holiday. + +The clergyman looked up and smiled. + +"No, sir," he said. "I'm doing a sum in addition, and making heavy work +of it." + +"I'll do it for you," said Mr. Holiday eagerly. He was a lightning +adder, and not in the least averse to showing off. The clergyman, still +smiling, yielded up the pad. + +"I'm trying to make it come to two thousand dollars," he said, "and I +can't." + +"That's because," said Mr. Holiday, returning the pad after one swift +glance up and down the columns, "it only comes to thirteen hundred and +twenty-five dollars. You had the answer correct." + +"It's for repairs to the church," said the clergyman dismally. "The +contractor calls for two thousand; and I'm just about ready to give up." + +"Well," said Mr. Holiday, "I'm going to get my dinner now, and maybe +later I can give you some idea how to raise the balance. I've raised a +good deal of money in my time." He chuckled. + +"I know that, Mr. Holiday," said the clergyman, "and I should be glad of +any--suggestion that you might care to make." + +Mr. Holiday seated himself facing Miss Hampton. She smiled, and nodded, +and laid aside the book she had been reading. Mr. Holiday's +eyes twinkled. + +"I'm going to turn you out of this section," he said. + +"Why?" She smiled. + +"Because there's a young friend of mine wants it," he said. + +"Now, _really!_" said Miss Hampton, still smiling. + +"You're going to carry your duds to the drawing-room, Car 5," he said. +Then, the twinkle in his eyes becoming exceedingly gossipy and sportive, +he told her about the young people who had eloped without exactly +meaning to. Miss Hampton was delighted. + +She and Mr. Holiday hurried to the drawing-room in Car 5, of which the +door had been left wide open, according to Mr. Holiday's orders. The +young people looked very happy and unhappy all at once, and as soon as +Mr. Holiday had begun to state their situation to them without mincing, +they assumed a tremendous pair of blushes, which they were not able to +efface for a long time. + +"And now," he finished, glaring at the uncomfortable young man, "you +bring your duds and put them in Miss Hampton's section. And then you +gather up Miss Hampton's duds and bring 'em in here." And he turned and +shook his finger at the girl. "Mind you," he said, "don't you ever run +away again without a chaperon. They don't grow on every bush." + +Somehow, Mr. Holiday had overlooked the other drawing-room (B) in Car 5. +Now he came suddenly upon it, and peered in, for the door was ajar. But +he drew back with a sharp jerk as if he had seen a rattlesnake. All the +kindness went out of the old gentleman's face, and between anger and +hatred he turned white. + +"Jolyff!" he muttered. And, all the elasticity gone from his gait, he +stumbled back to his own car, revolving and muttering unchristian +thoughts. For he and Jolyff had been meeting all their lives, it seemed, +in court and out; sometimes with the right on one side, sometimes on the +other. Each had cost the other a thousand wicked threats and a mint +of money. + +Mr. Holiday's wanderings through the train had aroused all the kindlier +feelings in his nature. He was going home to his wife and family: +expensive and foolish as it seemed, he had the trunk full of toys for +the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, and he was glad of it. He +had put things right for two prepossessing young people who had made a +wrong start; he had been gallant to an actress; he had determined to +help the clergyman out with his repair fund; to find work for a convict, +and to see to it that three children should have a pleasant visit with +an uncle who was really crotchety, disagreeable, and mean. + +But now he did not care about pleasant things any more. He could think +of nothing but Jolyff; of nothing but old sores that rankled; of great +deals that had gone wrong, through his enemy. And in that spirit he +picked at his Christmas Eve dinner, and went to bed. + +It seemed to Mr. Holiday every time he woke, which was often, that the +train had just started to move, after standing still for a long time, +and that the porter had never before allowed his car to grow so cold. He +turned the current into the reading light at the head of his bed and +consulted his watch. + +Two o'clock. He got to wondering at exactly what hour all those hundreds +of years ago Christ had been born. Had it been as cold as this in the +old barn? Whew! + +No, Bethlehem was in the semi-tropics or thereabout, but the common car +in which the three children were passing the night was not. This thought +came to Mr. Holiday without invitation, and, like all unwelcome guests, +made a long stay. So persistent, indeed, was the thought, meeting his +mind at every turn and dogging its footsteps, that he forgot all about +Jolyff and all about everything else. Finally he rang for the porter, +but had no answer. He rang again and again. Then the train jolted slowly +to a standstill, and Mr. Holiday got up and dressed, and went forward +once more through the narrow aisles of thick curtains to the common car. +But the passengers in that car had amalgamated. Alice and the convict, +blue with cold, were in the same seat, and Alice was hugging Freddie, +who slept fitfully, to her breast, and the convict was hugging Euphemia, +who cried gently and softly like a cold and hungry kitten, to his. The +convict had taken off his overcoat and wrapped it as well as he could +about all the children. + +Mr. Holiday tapped the convict on the shoulder. "Merry Christmas!" he +said cynically. The convict started and turned. "Bring these babies back +to my car," said Mr. Holiday, "and help me put 'em to bed." "That's a +good deed, Mr. Holiday," said the convict. He started to put on his +overcoat. The undressing and putting to bed had not waked Freddie. + +Euphemia had stopped crying. And Alice, when the two men had helped her +with her dress, which buttoned down the back, had suddenly flung her +arms first around one and then around the other, and given each a kiss +good night. + +The convict buttoned his coat and turned up his collar. + +"Good-night, sir," he said, "and thank you." + +Mr. Holiday waved the thanks aside and pointed to a door of shining +mahogany. + +"There's a bed for you, too," he said gently. + +The convict hesitated. + +Then--it may have been owing to the sudden starting of the train--he +lurched against the door, and with a sound that was mighty like a sob +thrust it open and slammed it shut behind him. + +Mr. Holiday smiled and went back to his own bed. This time he slept +soundly. + +At seven o'clock the porter called him, according to orders. The train +was standing still. + +"Merry Christmas, Mistah Holiday, sah!" grinned the porter. "Seven +o'clock, sah!" + +"Merry Christmas," said Mr. Holiday. "Why are we stopping?" + +"We's snowed in," grinned the porter. + +"Snowed in!" exclaimed Mr. Holiday. "Where?" + +"'Tween Albany and Buffalo, sah. Dey ain't any name to de place. Dey +ain't any place." + +"There are three children," said Mr. Holiday, "in the stateroom next to +this and a gentleman in the other stateroom. You call 'em in about an +hour and ask 'em what they'll take for breakfast. Bring me some coffee, +and ask the conductor how late we're going to be." + +With his coffee Mr. Holiday learned that the train might be twenty-four +hours late in getting to Cleveland. The conductor supposed that ploughs +were at work along the track; but the blizzard was still raging. + +That he would be separated from his wife on Christmas Day for the first +time in their married life did not amuse Mr. Holiday; and although too +much of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren bored him to +extinction, still he felt that any festive day on which they were not +all with him was a festive day gone very wrong indeed. But it was not as +a sop to his own feelings of disappointment that he decided to celebrate +Christmas in the train. It was a mixture of good-nature and, I am +afraid, of malice. He said to himself: + +"I shall invite all the passengers to one-o'clock dinner and a Christmas +tree afterward with games and punch. I shall invite the conductor and +the brakeman; the porters shall come to serve dinner. I shall invite the +engineer and the fireman and the express-man. I shall invite everybody +except Jolyff." + +The old gentleman sucked in his lips tightly and dwelt upon this +thought with satisfaction. Jolyff loved a party; Jolyff loved to drink +healths, and clap people on the back, and make little speeches, and +exert himself generally to amuse less gifted persons and make them feel +at home. And it was pleasant to think of him as sitting alone while a +fine celebration was banging and roaring in the very next car--a +celebration to which even an ex-convict had been invited. + +First, Mr. Holiday summoned Miss Hampton and the girl who had run away +to be his aides-de-camp. They decided that the party was really for the +benefit of Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia, so these were packed off at +once to the common car to be as far as possible from the scene of +preparations. Then, with Mr. Holiday's porter, and his cook, and the +ex-convict as men of all work, commenced the task of ordering the car +for a crowd and decorating it, and improvising a Christmas tree. Miss +Hampton set to work with a wooden bucket, sugar, rum, brandy, eggs, +milk, and heaven knows what not, to brew a punch. Every now and then Mr. +Holiday appeared, to see how she was getting on, and to taste the +concoction, and to pay her pretty, old-fashioned compliments. The girl +who had run away was helping the porter to lay the table and trying to +write invitations to the passengers at the same time, Mr. Holiday having +furnished her from his note-book with all of their names. Now and then +there were hurried consultations as to what would be a suitable gift for +a given person. The "next oldest" people in the train were to receive a +pair of the silver candlesticks from the table. The train hands were to +receive money, and suddenly Mr. Holiday discovered that he had only a +few dollars in cash with him. He sought out the clergyman. + +"Merry Christmas!" he said. + +"Merry Christmas!" said the clergyman. + +"Have you," said Mr. Holiday, "any of your rebuilding fund with you?" + +"Why, yes," said the clergyman, smiling, "some two hundred dollars, and +I cannot deny that it is agony to me to carry about so large a sum." + +Mr. Holiday simply held out his hand, palm up. + +"Why--what--" began the clergyman in embarrassment. + +"I will give you my check for that sum," said Mr. Holiday, "and +something over for your fund. I hope you will dine with me, in my car, +at one o'clock." + +He hurried away with the two hundred dollars. It was his intention to +sample Miss Hampton's punch again; but he turned from this on a sudden +impulse and sought out the young man who had been run away with. With +this attractive person he talked very earnestly for half an hour, and +asked him an infinite number of questions; just the kind of questions +that he had asked the young men who had aspired to the hands of his own +daughters. And these must have been satisfactorily answered, because at +the end of the interview Mr. Holiday patted the young man on the back +and said that he would see him later. + +Next he came face to face with Mr. Jolyff, and the two old gentlemen +stared at each other coldly, but without any sign of recognition. +Once--ever so many years ago--they had been intimate friends. Mr. +Holiday had never had any other friend of whom he had been so fond. He +tried now to recall what their first difference had been, and because he +could not he thought he must be growing infirm. And he began to think of +his approaching party with less pleasure. He had let himself in for a +good deal of bother, he thought. + +But this time Miss Hampton made him take a whole teaspoonful of punch, +and told him what a dear he was, and what a good time everybody was +going to have, and that she would do anything in the world for him; she +would even recite "The Night Before Christmas" for his company, if he +asked her. And then they did a great deal of whispering, and finally Mr. +Holiday said: + +"But suppose they balk?" + +"Nonsense," said Miss Hampton; "would you and I balk if we were in their +places?" + +The pretty actress and the old gentleman laughed and bowed to each +other, and exchanged the most arch looks imaginable. And then Miss +Hampton exclaimed: + +"Good Lord--it's twelve-thirty." + +Then there came to them a sudden dreadful smell of burning feathers. +They dashed into the observation end of the car and found the ex-convict +smothering an incipient conflagration of the Christmas tree, which was +made of dusters, with his hands. + +The girl who had run away was despatching the porter with the last batch +of invitations. The ex-convict showed them his burned hands. + +"You go and feel the champagne," said Mr. Holiday, "that'll cool'em." + +Mr. Holiday himself went to fetch the children. In his pockets were the +envelopes containing money for the train hands, the envelope containing +a check for the two hundred dollars that he had borrowed from the +clergyman, and enough over to complete the rebuilding fund which the +clergyman had tried so hard to collect. And there was an envelope for +the ex-convict--not with money in it, but with an I.O.U. + +"_I.O.U. A Good Job_," Mr. Holiday had written on a card and signed his +name. And he had taken out of his satchel and transferred to his +waistcoat pocket a pair of wonderful black pearls that he sometimes wore +at important dinners. And he was going to give one of these to Miss +Hampton and one to the girl who had run away. And then there were all +the wonderful toys and things for Alice, and Freddie, and Euphemia, and +he was going to present them with the black trunk, too, so that they +could take their gifts off the train when it eventually got to +Painsville. And Mr. Holiday had thought of everybody, and had prepared a +little speech to speak to his guests; and for two of his guests he had +arranged one of the greatest surprises that can be sprung on two guests; +and he ought to have been perfectly happy. But he wasn't. + +When he passed the door of Mr. Jolyff's drawing-room he noted that it +was tightly closed. And it ought to have pleased him to see how his +enemy had taken his exclusion from the party to heart, and had shut +himself away from any sign or sound of it. But, although he smiled +cynically, he wasn't altogether pleased. And presently he made a wry +mouth, as if he were taking something unpleasant; and he began to hustle +Freddie and Euphemia so as to get away from that closed door as quickly +as possible. + +The girl who had run away was talking with Mr. Holiday when suddenly she +began to grow conscious and uncomfortable. She gave one swift look about +her, and saw that all the passengers, and all the train hands, and +porters, and the express-man were looking at her and smiling, and she +saw that they had ranged themselves against the sides of the car and +were making themselves as small as possible. Then she saw the young man +looking at her with a wonderful, nervous, radiant look. And then she saw +that the clergyman was standing all by himself, in a space that the +crowd had just managed to leave open for him, and that he had on his +surplice, and that he was marking a place in his prayer-book with one +finger. Then she understood. + +Instinctively she caught Mr. Holiday's arm and clung to it, and Mr. +Holiday, smiling, patted her hand and began to draw her gently toward +the young man and the clergyman. It looked for a moment as if she were +going to hang back, and protest, and make a scene. But just when +everybody was beginning to fear the worst, and to look frightfully +nervous and uncomfortable, a wonderful and beautiful expression came +into her face, and her eyes lighted, and seemed to grow larger and +darker all at the same time. And if there were any present who had +regarded the impromptu wedding as something of a joke, these now had +their minds changed for them in the quickest kind of a jiffy. And if +there were any present who doubted of the beauty and dignity of love, +these had their minds changed for them, too. And they knew that they +were witnesses, not to a silly elopement, but to the great occasion in +the lives of two very young people who were absolutely sure of their +love for each other, and who would cherish each other in sickness and +peril, in good times and bad, in merry times and in heart-breaking +times, until death did them part. + +And then suddenly, just when the clergyman was about to begin, just when +Miss Hampton had succeeded in righting herself from smothering a sob, +Mr. Holiday, whose face, had you but noticed it, had been growing longer +and longer, and drearier and drearier, gave a half-strangled cry: + +"Wait!" + +Wholly oblivious to everything and everybody but what was in his mind at +the moment, he dropped the bride's hand as if it had been a red-hot +horseshoe and started to bolt from the car. But, strangely enough, the +old face that had grown so long and dreary was now wreathed in smiles, +and he was heard to mutter as he went: + +"Just a minute, while I get Jolyff!" + + * * * * * + +Mr. Jolyff and Mr. Holiday lifted their glasses. And Mr. Holiday said, +so that all could hear: + +"I drink to my old friends and to my new friends. And I drink to the +lesson of Christmas. For Christmas," said he, and he smiled in a +wonderful way, "teaches us that in all the world there is absolutely +nothing that we cannot forgive...." + +The two very old gentlemen clinked their glasses together, and, looking +each other affectionately in the eyes, might have been heard to mutter, +somewhat brokenly, each the other's Christian name. + + + + +WHITE MUSCATS OF ALEXANDRIA + +My wife, said the Pole, was a long time recovering from the birth of +our second child. She was a normal and healthy woman, but Nature has a +way in these matters of introducing the unnatural; science, too, mistook +the ABCs of the case for the XYZs; and our rooms were for many, many +weary weeks like a cage in which the bird has ceased to sing. I did what +I could. She was not without books, magazines, and delicacies; but I had +to attend to my business; so that time hung about her much like a +millstone, and she would say: "All's well with me, Michael, but I am +bored--bored--bored." + +Our baby was put out to nurse and our older boy, Casimir, who was seven, +began, for lack of his mother's care, to come and go as he pleased. The +assurance and cheek of street boys began to develop in him. He startled +me by his knowledge and his naïveté. But at the same time he was a +natural innocent--a little dreamer. In the matters of street life that +arise among children he had, as a rule, the worst of it. He was a born +believer of all that might be told him. Such children develop into +artists or ne'er-do-wells. It was too soon to worry about him. But I was +easiest in mind when I saw that he was fashioning anatomies with mud or +drawing with chalk upon the sidewalk. "Wait a little," I would say to my +wife, "and he will be old enough to go to school." + +The happiest times were when it was dark and I had closed the store and +could sit by my wife's bed with Casimir on my knee. Then we would talk +over pleasant experiences, or I would tell them, who were both +American-born, stories of Poland, of fairies, and sieges; or hum for +them the tunes to which I had danced in my early youth. But oftenest my +wife and I talked, for the child's benefit, of the wonderful city in +whose slums we lived--upper central New York with its sables and its +palaces. During our courtship and honeymoon we had made many excursions +into those quarters of the city and the memory of them was dear. But if +I remembered well and with happiness, my wife remembered +photographically and with a kind of hectic eagerness in which, I fear, +may have been bedded the roots of dissatisfaction. Details of wealth and +luxury, and manners that had escaped me, even at the time, were as +facile to her as terms of endearment to a lover. "And, oh--do you +remember," she would say, "the ruby that the Fifth Avenue bride had at +her throat, and how for many, many blocks we thought we could still +hear the organ going? That was fun, Michael, wasn't it, when we stood in +front of Sherry's and counted how many real sables went in and how many +fakes, and noticed that the fake sables were as proudly carried as +the real?" + +One night she would not eat her supper. "Oh, Michael," she said, "I'm so +bored with the same old soup--soup--soup, and the same old +porridge--porridge--porridge, and I hate oranges, and apples, and please +don't spend any more money on silly, silly, silly me." + +"But you must eat," I said. "What would you like? Think of something. +Think of something that tempts your appetite. You seem better +to-night--almost well. Your cheeks are like cherries and you keep +stirring restlessly as if you wanted to get up instead of lying +still--still like a woman that has been drowned, all but her great, dear +eyes.... Now, make some decision, and were it ambrosia I will get it for +you if it is to be had in the city.... Else what are savings-banks for, +and thrift, and a knowledge of furs?" + +She answered me indirectly. + +"Do you remember, Michael," she said, "the butcher shops uptown, the +groceries, and the fruit stores, where the commonest articles, the +chops, the preserved strawberries, the apples were perfect and +beautiful, like works of art? In one window there was a great olive +branch in a glass jar--do you remember? And in that fruit store near the +Grand Central--do you remember?--we stood in the damp snow and looked in +at great clean spaces flooded with white light--and there were baskets +of strawberries--right there in January--and wonderful golden and red +fruits that we did not know the names of, and many of the fruits peeped +out from the bright-green leaves among which they had actually grown--" + +"I remember the two prize bunches of grapes," I said. + +And my wife said: + +"I was coming to those ... they must have been eighteen inches long, +every grape great and perfect. I remember you said that such grapes +looked immortal. It was impossible to believe they could ever rot--there +was a kind of joyous frostiness--we went in and asked a little man what +kind of grapes they were, and he answered like a phonograph, without +looking or showing politeness: 'Black Hamburgs and White Muscats of +Alexandria'--your old Sienkiewicz never said anything as beautiful as +that, 'White Muscats of Alexandria--'" + +"Dear little heart," I said. "Childkin, is it the memory of those white +grapes that tempts your appetite?" + +"Oh, Michael," she exclaimed, clasping her hands over those +disappointed breasts into which the milk had not come in sufficiency. +"Oh, Michael--they were two dollars and a half a pound--" + +"Heart of my heart," I said, "Stag Eyes, it is now late, and there are +no such grapes to be had in our part of the city--only the tasteless +white grapes that are packed with sawdust into barrels--but in the +morning I will go uptown and you shall have your White Muscats of +Alexandria." + +She put her arms about my neck with a sudden spasm of fervor, and drew +my head, that was already gray, down to hers. I remember that in that +moment I thought not of passion but of old age, parting, and the grave. + + * * * * * + +But she would not eat the grapes in my presence. There was to be an +orgy, she said, a bacchanalian affair--she was going to place the grapes +where she could look at them, and look at them until she could stand the +sight no more, when she would fall on them like a wolf on the fold and +devour them. She talked morbidly of the grapes--almost neurotically. +But, though her fancies did not please my sense of fitness, I only +laughed at her, or smiled--for she had been ill a long time. + +"But, at least, eat one now," I said, "so that I may see you enjoy it." + +"Not even one," she said. "The bunch must be perfect for me to look at +until--until I can resist no more. Hang them there, on the foot of the +bed by the crook of the stem--is it strong enough to hold them? and +then--aren't you going to be very late to your business? And, Michael, I +feel better--I do. I shouldn't wonder if you found me up and dressed +when you come back." + +In your telling American phrase, "there was nothing doing" in my +business that morning. It was one of those peaceful, sunny days in +January, not cold and no wind stirring. The cheap furs displayed in the +window of my shop attracted no attention from the young women of the +neighborhood. The young are shallow-minded, especially the women. If a +warm day falls in winter they do not stop to think that the next may be +cold. Only hats interest them all the year round, and men. + +So I got out one of my Cicero books and, placing my chair in a pool of +sunshine in the front of the shop, I began to read, for the hundredth +time, his comfortable generalities upon old age. But it seemed to me, +for the first time, that he was all wrong--that old age is only +dreadful, only a shade better than death itself. And this, I suppose, +was because I, myself, during those long months of my wife's illness, +had turned the corner. The sudden passions of youth had retreated like +dragons into their dens. It took more, now, than the worse end of a +bargain or the touch of my wife's lips to bring them flaming forth. On +our wedding day we had been of an age. Now, after nine years, my heart +had changed from a lover's into a father's, while she remained, as it +were, a bride. There remained to me, perhaps, many useful years of +business, of managing and of saving--enjoyable years. But life--life as +I count life--I had lived out. One moment must pass as the next. There +could be no more halting--no more moments of bliss so exquisite as to +resemble pain. I had reached that point in life when it is the sun alone +that matters, and no more the moon. + +A shadow fell upon my pool of sunshine and, looking up, I perceived a +handsome, flashy young man of the clever, almost Satanic type that is so +common below Fourteenth Street; and he stood looking cynically over the +cheap furs in my window and working his thin jaws. Then I saw him take, +with his right hand, from a bunch that he carried in his left, a great +white grape and thrust it into his mouth. They were my grapes, those +which I had gone uptown to fetch for my wife. By the fact that there +were none such to be had in our neighborhood I might have known them. +But the sure proof was a peculiar crook in the stem which I had noticed +when I had hung them for my wife at the foot of her bed. + +I rose and went quietly out of the shop. + +"Happy to show you anything," I said, smiling. + +"Don't need anything in the fur line to-day," said he; "much obliged." + +"What fine grapes those are," I commented. + +"Um," said he, "they call 'em white muskets of Alexander"; and he +grimaced. + +"Where are such to be had?" I asked. + +"Well," he said, "I got these just round the corner; but _you'd_ have to +visit some uptown fruit emporium and pay the price." + +"So you bought the last bunch?" + +"Bought nothin'," he said, and he smiled in a knowing and leering way. + +"They were given to me," he said, "by a married woman. I happened to +drop in and she happened to have sent her husband uptown to fetch these +grapes for her because she's playing sick and works him in more ways +than one--but she said the grapes sickened her conscience, and she made +me take 'em away." + +"So she has a conscience?" I said. + +"They all have," said the young man. "Have one?" + +I took one of the grapes with a hand that shook, and ate it, and felt +the red blood in my veins turn into acid. + +There happened to be a man in the neighborhood who had been nibbling +after my business for some time. I went to him now and made him a cheap +sale for cash. This I deposited with my savings, keeping out a hundred +dollars for myself, and put the whole in trust for my wife and children. +Then I went away and, after many hardships, established myself in a new +place. And, as is often the case with men who have nothing whatsoever to +live for and who are sad, I prospered. God was ever presenting me with +opportunities and the better ends of bargains. + +When fifteen years had passed I returned once more to New York. I had +reached a time of life when the possibility of death must be as steadily +reckoned with as the processes of digestion. And I wished, before I lay +down in the narrow house, to revisit the scenes of my former happiness. +I took the same furnished lodging to which we had gone after our +wedding. I lay all night, but did not sleep, in our nuptial bed. Alone, +but rather in reverence and revery than sadness, I made all those little +excursions upon which we had been so happy during the days of our +honey-moon. I made a point of feeding the animals in the park, of dining +at Claremont--I even stood for a long time before the fruit shop that is +near the Grand Central. But I was too old to feel much. So it seemed. + +One day I sat on the steps of the lodging-house in the sun. I had been +for a long walk and I was very tired, very sick of my mortal coil, very +sure that I did not care if the end were to be sleep or life +everlasting. Then came, slowly around the corner of the shabby street +and toward me, a hansom cab. Its occupant, an alert, very young, eager +man, kept glancing here and there as if he were looking for something or +some one; for the old East Side street had still its old look, as if all +the inhabitants of its houses had rushed out to watch an eclipse of the +sun or the approach of a procession--and were patiently and idly +awaiting the event. + +The children, and even many of the older people, mocked at the young man +in the hansom and flung him good-natured insults. But he knew the +language of the East Side and returned better than he received. My old +heart warmed a little to his young, brightly colored face, his quick, +flashing eyes, and his ready repartees. And it seemed to me a pity that, +like all the pleasant moments I had known, he, too, must pass and +be over. + +But his great eyes flashed suddenly upon my face and rested; then he +signalled to the driver to stop and, springing out, a big sketch-book +under his arm, came toward me with long, frank strides. + +"I know it's cheeky as the devil," he began in a quick, cheerful voice, +while he had yet some distance to come, "but I can't help it. I've been +looking for you for weeks, and--" + +"What is it that I can do for you?" I asked pleasantly. + +"You can give me your head." He said it with an appealing and delighted +smile. "I'm a sort of artist--" he explained. + +"Show me," I said, and held out my hands for the sketch-book. + +"Nothing but notes in it," he said, but I looked, not swiftly, through +all the pages and--for we Poles have an instinct in such matters--saw +that the work was good. + +"Do you wish to draw me, _Master?_" I said. + +He perceived that I meant the term, and he looked troubled and pleased. + +"Will you sit for me?" he asked. "I will--" + +But I shook my head to keep him from mentioning money. + +"Very cheerfully," I said. "It is easy for the old to sit--especially +when, by the mere act of sitting, it is possible for them to become +immortal. I have a room two flights up--where you will not be +disturbed." + +"Splendid!" he said. "You are splendid! Everything's splendid!" + +When he had placed me as he wished, I asked him why my head suited him +more than another's. + +"How do I know?" he said. "Instinct--you seem a cheerful man and yet I +have never seen a head and face that stood so clearly for--for--please +take me as I am, I don't ever mean to offend--steadiness in sorrow.... I +am planning a picture in which there is to be an ol--a man of your age +who looks as--as late October would look if it had a face...." + +Then he began to sketch me, and, as he worked, he chattered about this +and that. + +"Funny thing," he said, "I had a knife when I started and it's +disappeared." + +"Things have that habit," I said. + +"Yes," said he, "things and people, and often people disappear as +suddenly and completely as things--chin quarter of an inch lower--just +so--thank you forever--" + +"And what experience have you had with people disappearing?" I asked. +"And you so young and masterful." + +"I?" he said. "Why, a very near and dear experience. When I was quite a +little boy my own father went to his place of business and was never +heard of again from that day to this. But he must have done it on +purpose, because it was found that he had put all his affairs into the +most regular and explicit order--" + +I felt a little shiver, as if I had taken cold. + +"And, do you know," here the young man dawdled with his pencil and +presently ceased working for the moment, "I've always felt as if I had +had a hand in it--though I was only seven. I'd done something so naughty +and wrong that I looked forward all day to my father's home-coming as a +sinner looks forward to going to hell. My father had never punished me. +But he would this time, I knew--and I was terribly afraid and--sometimes +I have thought that, perhaps, I prayed to God that my father might never +come home. I'm not sure I prayed that--but I have a sneaking suspicion +that I did. Anyway, he never came, and, Great Grief! what a time there +was. My mother nearly went insane--" + +"What had you done?" I asked, forcing a smile, "to merit such terrible +punishment?" + +The young man blushed. + +"Why," he said, "my mother had been quite sick for a long time, and, to +tempt her appetite, my father had journeyed 'way uptown and at vast +expense bought her a bunch of wonderful white hot-house grapes. I +remember she wouldn't eat them at first--just wanted to look at +them--and my father hung them for her over the foot of the bed. Well, +soon after he'd gone to business she fell asleep, leaving the grapes +untouched. They tempted me, and I fell. I wanted to show off, I suppose, +before my young friends in the street--there was a girl, Minnie +Hopflekoppf, I think her name was, who'd passed me up for an Italian +butcher's son. I wanted to show _her_. I'm sure I didn't mean to eat the +things. I'm sure I meant to return with them and hang them back at the +foot of the bed." + +"Please go on," I managed to say. "This is such a very human page--I'm +really excited to know what happened." + +"Well, one of those flashy Bowery dudes came loafing along and said: +'Hi, Johnny, let's have a look at the grapes,' I let him take them, in +my pride and innocence, and he wouldn't give them back. He only laughed +and began to eat them before my eyes. I begged for them, and wept, and +told him how my mother was sick and my father had gone 'way uptown to +get the grapes for her because there were none such to be had in our +neighborhood. And, please, he must give them back because they were +White Muscats of Alexandria, very precious, and my father would kill me. +But the young man only laughed until I began to make a real uproar. Then +he said sharply to shut up, called me a young thief, and said if I said +another word he'd turn me over to the police. Then he flung me a +fifty-cent piece and went away, munching the grapes. And," the young man +finished, "the fifty-cent piece was lead." + +Then he looked up from his sketch and, seeing the expression of my +face, gave a little cry of delight. + +"Great Grief, man!" he cried, "stay as you are--only hold that +expression for two minutes!" + +But I have held it from that day to this. + + + + +WITHOUT A LAWYER + +However bright the court's light may have appeared to the court, the +place in which it was shining smelt damnably of oil. It was three +o'clock in the afternoon, but already the Alaskan night had descended. +The court sat in a barn, warmed from without by the heavily drifted snow +and from within by the tiny flames of lanterns and the breathing of men, +horses, and cows. Here and there in the outskirts of the circle of light +could be seen the long face of a horse or the horned head of a cow. +There was a steady sound of munching. The scene was not unlike many +paintings of the stable in Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity. And +here, too, justice was being born in a dark age. There had been too many +sudden deaths, too many jumped claims, too much drinking, too much +shooting, too many strong men, too few weak men, until finally--for +time, during the long winter, hung upon the neck like a millstone--the +gorges of the more decent had risen. Hence the judge, hence the jury, +hence the prisoner, dragged from his outlying cabin on a charge of +murder. As there were no lawyers in the community, the prisoner held +his own brief. Though not a Frenchman, he had been sarcastically +nicknamed, because of his small size and shrinking expression, +Lou Garou. + +The judge rapped for order upon the head of a flour-barrel behind which +he sat. "Lou Garou," he said, "you are accused of having shot down Ruddy +Boyd in cold blood, after having called him to the door of his cabin for +that purpose on the twenty-ninth of last month. Guilty or not guilty?" + +"Sure," said Lou Garou timidly, and nodding his head. "I shot him." + +"Why?" asked the judge. + +For answer Lou Garou shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the chief +witness, a woman who had wound her head in a dark veil so that her face +could not be seen. "Make her take that veil off," said he in a shrill +voice, "and you'll see why I shot him." + +The woman rose without embarrassment and removed her veil. But, unless +in the prisoner's eyes, she was not beautiful. + +"Thank you, madam," said the judge, after an embarrassed pause. "Ahem!" +And he addressed the prisoner. "Your answer has its romantic value, Lou +Garou, but the court is unable to attach to it any ethical significance +whatsoever. Did you shoot Ruddy Boyd because of this lady's appearance +in general, or because of her left eye in particular, which I note has +been blackened as if by a blow?" + +"Oh, I did that," said Lou Garou naïvely. + +"Sit down!" thundered the judge. The foreman of the jury, a South +Carolinian by birth, had risen, revolver in hand, with the evident +intention of executing the prisoner on the spot. "You have sworn to +abide by the finding of the court," continued the judge angrily. "If you +don't put up that gun I'll blow your damned head off." + +The juror, who was not without a sense of the ridiculous, smiled and sat +down. + +"You have pleaded guilty," resumed the judge sternly, "to the charge of +murder. You have given a reason. You have either said too much or too +little. If you are unable further to justify your cold-blooded and +intemperate act, you shall hang." + +"What do you want me to say?" whined Lou Garou. + +"I want you to tell the court," said the judge, "why you shot Ruddy +Boyd. If it is possible for you to justify that act I want you to do it. +The court, representing, as it does, the justice of the land, has a +leaning, a bias, toward mercy. Stand up and tell us your story from the +beginning." + +The prisoner once more indicated the woman. "About then," he said, "I +had nothin' but Jenny--and twenty dollars gold that I had loaned to +Ruddy Boyd. Hans"--he pointed to a stout German sitting on the +Carolinian's left--"wouldn't give me any more credit at the store." He +whined and sniffled. "I'm not blaming you one mite, Hans," he said, "but +I had to have flour and bacon, and all I had was twenty dollars gold +that Ruddy owed me. So I says, 'Jenny, I'll step over to Ruddy's shack +and ask him for that money.' She says, 'Think you'd better?' and I says, +'Sure.' So she puts me up a snack of lunch, and I takes my rifle and +starts. Ruddy was in his ditch (having shovelled out the snow), and I +says, 'Ruddy, how about that twenty?' You all know what a nice hearty +way Ruddy had with him--outside. He slaps his thigh, and laughs, and +looks astonished, and then he says: 'My Gawd, Lou, if I hadn't clean +forgot! Now ain't that funny?' So I laughs, too, and says, 'It do seem +kind of funny, and how about it?' 'Now, Lou,' says he, 'you've come on +me sudden, and caught me awkward. I ain't got a dime's worth of change. +But tell you what: I'll give you a check.' + +"I says, 'On what bank?' + +"He says, 'Oh, Hans over at the store--_he_ knows me--'" + +All eyes were turned on the German. Lou Garou continued: + +"Ruddy says: 'Hans dassen't not cash it. He's scared of me, the +pot-bellied old fool." + +The stout German blinked behind his horn spectacles. He feared neither +God nor man, but he was very patient. He made no remark. + +"'If Hans won't,' says Ruddy, 'Stewart sure will!'" + +The foreman of the jury rose like a spring slowly uncoiling. He looked +like a snake ready to strike. "May I inquire," he drawled, "what reason +the late lamented gave for supposing that I would honor his +wuffless paper?" + +Lou Garou sniffled with embarrassment and looked appealingly at the +judge. + +"Tell him," ordered the latter. + +"Mind, then," said Lou Garou, "it was him said it, not me." + +"What was said?" glinted the foreman. + +"Something," said Lou Garou in a small still voice like that which is +said to appertain to conscience, "something about him having give you a +terrible lickin' once, that you'd never got over. He says, 'If Stewart +won't cash it, tell him I'll step over and kick the stuffin' out +of him.'" + +The juror on the left end of the front row stood up. + +"Did he say anything about me?" he asked. + +"Nothin' particular, Jimmy," said Lou Garou. "He only said somethin' +general, like 'them bally-washed hawgs over to the Central Store,' I +think it was." + +"The court," said the judge stiffly, "knows the deceased to have been a +worthless braggart. Proceed with your story." + +"Long and short of it was," said Lou Garou, "we arranged that Ruddy +himself was to get the check cashed and bring me the money the next +Thursday. He swears on his honor he won't keep me waitin' no longer. So +I steps off and eats my lunch, and goes home and tells Jenny how it was. + +"'Hope you get it,' says she. 'I know _him._' + +"It so happened," continued Lou Garou, "Thursday come, and no Ruddy. No +Ruddy, Friday. Saturday I see the weather was bankin' up black for snow, +so I says: 'Jenny, it's credit or bust. I'll step up to the store and +talk to Hans.' So Jenny puts me up a snack of lunch, and I goes to see +Hans. Hans," said Lou Garou, addressing that juror directly, "did I or +didn't I come to see you that Saturday?" + +Hans nodded. + +"Did you or didn't you let me have some flour and bacon on tick?" + +"I did nod," said Hans. + +Lou Garou turned once more to the judge. "So I goes home," he said, "and +finds my chairs broke, and my table upside down, and the dishes broke, +and Jenny gone." + +There was a mild sensation in the court. + +"I casts about for signs, and pretty soon I finds a wisp of red hair, +roots an' all, I says, 'Ruddy's hair,' I says. 'He's bin and gone.' + +"So I takes my gun and starts for Ruddy's, over the mountain. It's hours +shorter than by the valley, for them that has good legs. + +"I was goin' down the other side of the mountain when it seems to me I +hears voices. I bears to the left, and looks down the mountain, and +yonder I sees a man and a woman on the valley path to Ruddy's. The man +he wants the woman to go on. The woman she wants to go back. I can hear +their voices loud and mad, but not their words. Pretty soon Ruddy he +takes Jenny by the arm and twists it--very slow--tighter and tighter. +She sinks to the ground. He goes on twistin'. Pretty soon she indicates +that she has enough. He helps her up with a kick, and they goes on." + +The foreman of the jury rose. "Your honor," he said, "it is an obvious +case of _raptae puellae_. In my opinion the prisoner was more than +justified in shooting the man Ruddy Boyd like a dog." + +"Sit down," said the judge. + +Lou Garou, somewhat excited by painful recollections, went on in a +stronger voice. "I puts up my hind sight to three hundred yards and +draws a bead on Ruddy, between the shoulders. Then I lowers my piece and +uncocks her. 'Stop a bit,' I says. 'How about that twenty?' + +It's gettin' dark, and I follows them to Ruddy's. I hides my gun in a +bush and knocks on the door. Ruddy comes out showin' his big teeth and +laughin.' He closes the door behind him. + +'Come for that twenty, Lou?' says he. + +'Sure,' says I. + +He thinks a minute, then he laughs and turns and flings open the door. +'Come in,' he says. + +I goes in. + +'Hallo!' says he, like he was awful surprised. 'Here's a friend of +yours, Lou. Well, I never!' + +I sees Jenny sittin' in a corner, tied hand and foot. I says, 'Hallo, +Jenny'; she says, 'Hallo, Lou.' Then I turns to Ruddy. 'How about that +twenty?' I says. + +'Well, I'm damned!' he says. 'All he thinks about is his twenty. Well, +here you are.' + +He goes down into his pocket and fetches up a slug, and I pockets it. + +'There,' says he; 'you've got yours, and I've got mine.' + +I don't find nothin' much to say, so I says, 'Well, good-night all, I'll +be goin'.' + +Then Jenny speaks up. 'Ain't you goin' to do nothin'?' she says. + +"'Why, Jenny,' says I 'what can _I_ do?' + +"'All right for you,' she says. 'Turn me loose, Ruddy; no need to keep +me tied after that.' + +"So I says 'Good-night' again and goes. Ruddy comes to the door and +watches me. I looks back once and waves my hand, but he don't make no +sign. I says to myself, 'I can see him because of the light at his back, +but he can't see me.' So I makes for my gun, finds her, turns, and +there's Ruddy still standin' at the door lookin' after me into the dark. +It was a pot shot. Then I goes back, and steps over Ruddy into the shack +and unties Jenny. + +"'Lou,' she says, 'I thought I knowed you inside out. But you fooled +_me_!' + +"By reason of the late hour we stops that night in Ruddy's shack, and +that's all." + +The prisoner, after shuffling his feet uncertainly, sat down. + +"Madam," said the judge, "may I ask you to rise?" + +The woman stood up; not unhandsome in a hard, bold way, except for her +black eye. + +"Madam," said the judge, "is what the prisoner has told us, in so far as +it concerns you, true?" + +"Every word of it." + +"The man Ruddy Boyd used violence to make you go with him?" + +"He twisted my arm and cramped my little finger till I couldn't bear +the pain." + +"You are, I take it, the prisoner's wife?" + +The color mounted slowly into the woman's cheeks. She hesitated, choked +upon her words. The prisoner sprang to his feet. + +"Your honor," he cried, "in a question of life or death like this Jenny +and me we speaks the truth, and nothin' but the truth. She's _not_ my +wife. But I'm goin' to marry her, and make an honest woman of her--at +the foot of the gallows, if you decide that way. No, sir; she was Ruddy +Boyd's wife." + +There was a dead silence, broken by the sounds of the horses and cows +munching their fodder. The foreman of the jury uncoiled slowly. + +"Your honor," he drawled, "I can find it in my heart to pass over the +exact married status of the lady, but I cannot find it in my heart to +pass over without explanation the black eye which the prisoner confesses +to have given her." + +Lou Garou turned upon the foreman like a rat at bay. "That night in the +shack," he cried, "I dreams that Ruddy comes to life. Jenny she hears me +moanin' in my sleep, and she sits up and bends over to see what's the +matter. I think it's Ruddy bendin' over to choke me, and I hits out!" + +"That's true, every word of it!" cried the woman. "He hit me in his +sleep. And when he found out what he'd done he cried over me, and he +kissed the place and made it well!" Her voice broke and ran off into +a sob. + +The jury acquitted the prisoner without leaving their seats. One by one +they shook hands with him, and with the woman. + +"I propose," said the foreman, "that by a unanimous vote we change this +court-house into a house of worship. It will not be a legal marriage +precisely, but it will answer until we can get hold of a minister after +the spring break up." + +The motion was carried. + +The last man to congratulate the happy pair was the German Hans. +"Wheneffer," he said, "you need a parrel of flour or something, you +comes to me py my store." + + + + +THE MONITOR AND THE "MERRIMAC" + + +THE STORY OF A PANIC + +I + +Two long-faced young men and one old man with a long face sat upon the +veranda of the Country Club of Westchester, and looked, now into the +depths of pewter mugs containing mint and ice among other things, and +now across Pelham Bay to the narrow pass of water between Fort Schuyler +and Willets Point. Through this pass the evening fleet of Sound steamers +had already torn with freight and passengers for New Haven, Newport, +Fall River, and Portland; and had already disappeared behind City Island +Point, and in such close order that it had looked as if the _Peck_, +which led, had been towing the others. The first waves from the +paddle-wheels of the great ships had crossed the three miles of +intervening bay, and were slapping at the base of the seawall that +supported the country club pigeon grounds and lawn-tennis terraces, when +another vessel came slowly and haughtily into view from between the +forts. She was as black as the king of England's brougham, and as smart; +her two masts and her great single funnel were stepped with the most +insolent rake imaginable. Here and there where the light of the setting +sun smote upon polished brass she shone as with pools of fire. + +"There she is," said Powers. He had been sitting in his shirt sleeves, +but now he rose and put on his coat as if the sight of the huge and +proud yacht had chilled him. Brett, with a petulant slap, killed a +swollen mosquito against his black silk ankle bone. The old man, +Callender, put his hand to his forehead as if trying to remember +something; and the yacht, steaming slower and slower, and yet, as it +seemed, with more and more grandeur and pride of place--as if she knew +that she gave to the whole bayscape, and the pale Long Island shore +against which she moved in strong relief, an irrefutable note of +dignity--presently stopped and anchored, midway between the forts and +City Island Point; then she began to swing with the tide, until she +faced New York City, from which she had just come. + +Callender took his hand from his forehead. He had remembered. + +"Young gentlemen," he said, "that yacht of Merriman's has been reminding +me every afternoon for a month of something, and I've just thought what. +You remember one day the _Merrimac_ came down the James, very slowly, +and sunk the _Cumberland_, and damaged and frightened the Union fleet +into fits, just the way Merriman has been going down to Wall Street +every morning and frightening us into fits? Well, instead of finishing +the work then and there, she suddenly quit and steamed off up the river +in the same insolent, don't-give-a-hoot way that Merriman comes up from +Wall Street every afternoon. Of course, when the _Merrimac_ came down to +finish destroying the fleet the next day, the _Monitor_ had arrived +during the night and gave her fits, and they called the whole thing off. +Anyhow, it's that going-home-to-sleep-on-it expression of the +_Merrimac's_ that I've been seeing in the _Sappho_." + +"You were on the _Monitor_, weren't you?" asked Powers cheerfully. + +The old man did not answer, but he was quite willing that Powers and +Brett, and the whole world for that matter, should think that he had +been. Powers and Brett, though in no cheerful mood, exchanged winks. + +"I don't see why history shouldn't repeat itself," said Powers. + +"You don't!" said Brett. "Why, because there isn't any _Monitor_ waiting +for Merriman off Wall Street." + +"And just like the Civil War," said Callender, "this trouble in the +street is a rich man's quarrel and a poor man's war. Just because old +Merriman is gunning for Waters, you, and I, and the rest of us are about +to go up the spout." + +Callender was a jaunty old man, tall, of commanding presence and smart +clothes. His white mustache was the epitome of close-cropped neatness. +When he lost money at poker his brown eyes held exactly the same twinkle +as when he won, and it was current among the young men that he had +played greatly in his day--great games for great stakes. Sometimes he +had made heavy winnings, sometimes he had faced ruin; sometimes his +family went to Newport for the summer and entertained; sometimes they +went to a hotel somewhere in some mountains or other, where they didn't +even have a parlor to themselves. But this summer they were living on in +the town house, keeping just enough rooms open, and a few servants who +had weathered former panics, and who were willing to eat dry bread in +bad times for the sake of the plentiful golden butter that they knew was +to be expected when the country believed in its own prosperity and +future. Just now the country believed that it was going to the dogs. And +Mr. Merriman, the banker, had chosen the opportunity to go gunning for +Mr. Waters, the railroad man. The quarrel between the great men was +personal; and so because of a couple of nasty tempers people were being +ruined daily, honest stocks were selling far below their intrinsic +value, United States Steel had been obliged to cut wages, there was a +strike on in the Pennsylvania coal fields, and the Callenders, as I have +said, were not even going to the cheapest mountain top for the summer. +Brett alone was glad of this, because it meant that little Miss +Callender would occasionally come out to the country club for a game of +tennis and a swim, and, although she had refused to marry him on twenty +distinct occasions, he was not a young man to be easily put from his +purpose. Nor did little Miss Callender propose to be relinquished by him +just yet; and she threw into each refusal just the proper amount of +gentleness and startled-fawn expression to insure another proposal +within a month. + +Brett, looking upon Callender as his probable father-in-law, turned to +the old gentleman and said, with guileful innocence: + +"Isn't there anything you can do, sir, to hold Merriman off? Powers and +I are in the market a little, but our customers are in heavy, and the +way things are going we've got to break whether we like it or not." + +Ordinarily Callender would have pretended that he could have checkmated +Merriman if he had wanted to--for in some things he was a child, and it +humored him to pretend, and to intimate, and to look wise; but on the +present occasion, and much to Powers's and Brett's consternation, he +began to speak to them gravely, and confidentially, and a little +pitifully. They had never before seen him other than jaunty and +debonair, whether his family were at Newport or in the mountains. + +"It's all very well for you boys," he said; "you have youth and +resiliency on your side. No matter what happens to you now, in money or +in love, you can come again. But we old fellows, buying and selling with +one foot in the grave, with families accustomed to luxury dependent on +us"--he paused and tugged at his neatly ordered necktie as if to free +his throat for the passage of more air--"some of us old fellows," he +said, "if we go now can never come again--never." + +He rose abruptly and walked into the house without a word more; but +Brett, after hesitating a moment, followed him. Mr. Callender had +stopped in front of the "Delinquent List." Seeing Brett at his elbow, he +pointed with a well-groomed finger to his own name at the beginning +of the C's. + +"If I died to-night," he said, neither gravely nor jocosely, but as if +rather interested to know whether he would or would not, "the club would +have a hard time to collect that sixteen dollars." + +"Are you serious, sir?" Brett asked. + +"If to-morrow is a repetition of to-day," said Mr. Callender, "you will +see the name of Callender & Co. in the evening papers." His lips +trembled slightly under his close-cropped mustache. + +"Then," said Brett, "this is a good opportunity to ask you, sir, if you +have any objection to me as a candidate for your youngest daughter." + +Mr. Callender raised his eyebrows. So small a thing as contemplated +matrimony did not disturb him under the circumstances. + +"My boy," he said, "I take it you are in earnest. I don't object to you. +I am sure nobody does." + +"Oh, yes," said Brett; "_she_ does." + +He had succeeded in making Mr. Callender laugh. + +"But," Brett went on, "I'd like your permission to go on trying." + +"You have it," said her father. "Will you and Powers dine with me?" + +"No," said Brett. "Speaking as candidate to be your son-in-law, you +cannot afford to give us dinner; and in the same way I cannot afford to +buy dinner for you and Powers. So Powers will have to be host and pay +for everything. I shall explain it to him.... But look here, sir, are +you really up against it?" + +To Brett's consternation, Callender suddenly buried his face in his +hands and groaned aloud. + +"Don't," said Brett; "some one's coming." + +Callender recovered his usual poise with a great effort. But no one +came. + +"As far as my wishes go, sir," said Brett, "I'm your son. You never had +a son, did you? If you had a son, and if he were young and resilient, +you'd talk to him and explain to him, and in that way, perhaps, you'd +get to see things so clearly in your own mind that you'd be able to +think a way out. Why don't you talk to me as if I were your son? You see +I want to be so very much, and that's half the battle." + +Callender often joked about his affairs, but he never talked about them. +Now, however, he looked for a moment keenly into the young man's frank +and intelligent face, hesitated, and then, with a grave and courtly bow, +he waved his hand toward two deep chairs that stood in the corner of the +room half facing each other, as if they themselves were engaged in +conversation. + +Twenty minutes later Callender went upstairs to dress for dinner, but +Brett rejoined Powers on the piazza. He sat down without looking at +Powers or speaking to him, and his eyes, crossing the darkening bay, +rested once more on the lordly silhouette of the _Sappho_. In the +failing light she had lost something of her emphatic outline, and was +beginning to melt, as it were, into the shore. + +Brett and Powers were partners. Powers was the floor member of the firm +and Brett ran the office. But they were partners in more ways than the +one, and had been ever since they could remember. As little boys they +had owned things in common without dispute. At St. Marks Powers had +pitched for the nine, and Brett had caught. In their senior year at New +Haven they had played these positions to advantage, both against Harvard +and Princeton. After graduation they had given a year to going around +the world. In Bengal they had shot a tiger, each giving it a mortal +wound. In Siam they had won the doubles championship at lawn tennis. +When one rode on the water wagon the other sat beside him, and vice +versa. Powers's family loved Brett almost as much as they loved Powers, +and if Brett had had a family it would probably have felt about Powers +in the same way. + +As far as volume of business and legitimate commissions went, their firm +was a success. It could execute orders with precision, despatch, and +honesty. It could keep its mouth shut. But it had not yet learned to +keep out of the market on its own account. Regularly as a clock ticks +its profits were wiped out in speculation. The young men believed in the +future of the country, and wanted to get rich quick, not because they +were greedy, but because that desire is part of the average American's +nature and equipment. Gradually, however, they were "getting wise," as +the saying is. And they had taken a solemn oath and shaken hands upon +it, that if ever they got out of their present difficulties they would +never again tempt the goddess of fortune. + +"Old man's in bad, I guess," said Powers. + +"I shouldn't wonder," said Brett, and was ashamed to feel that he must +not be more frank with his partner. "We're all in bad." + +"The _Cumberland_ has been sunk," said Powers, "and the rest of us are +aground and helpless, waiting for the _Merrimac_ to come down the river +in the morning." He shook his fist at the distant _Sappho_. "Why," he +said, "even if we knew what he knows it's too late to do anything, +unless _he_ does it. And he won't. He won't quit firing until Waters +blows up." + +"I've a good notion," said Brett, "to get out my pigeon gun, take the +club launch, board the _Sappho_ about midnight, hold the gun to old +Merriman's head, and make him promise to save the country; or else make +him put to sea, and keep him there. If he were kidnapped and couldn't +unload any more securities, the market would pull up by itself." The +young men chuckled, for the idea amused them in spite of their troubles. + +By a common impulse they turned and looked at the club's thirty-foot +naphtha launch at anchor off the club's dock; and by a common impulse +they both pointed at her, and both exclaimed: + +"The _Monitor_!" + +Then, of course, they were very careful not to say anything more until +they had crooked together the little fingers of their right hands, and +in silence registered a wish each. Then each spoke the name of a famous +poet, and the spell was ended. + +"What did you wish?" said Brett idly. + +Powers could be very courtly and old fashioned. + +"My dear boy," he said, "I fancy that I wished for you just what you +wished for yourself." + +Before this they had never spoken about her to each other. + +"I didn't know that you knew," said Brett. "Thanks." + +They shook hands. Then Brett broke into his gay, happy laugh. + +"That," said he, "is why you have to pay for dinner for Mr. Callender +and me." + +"Are we to dine?" asked Powers, "before attacking the _Merrimac_?" + +"Always," assented Brett, "and we are to dress first." + +The two young men rose and went into the house, Powers resting his hand +affectionately on Brett's further shoulder. It was so that they had come +off the field after striking out Harvard's last chance to score. + +At dinner Mr. Callender, as became his age and experience, told the +young men many clean and amusing stories. Though the clouds were thick +about his head he had recovered his poise and his twinkling eye of the +good loser. Let his night be sleepless, let the morrow crush him, but +let his young friends remember that he had gone to his execution calm, +courteous, and amusing, his mustache trimmed, his face close-shaved, his +nails clean and polished. They had often, he knew, laughed at him for +his pretensions, and his affectation of mysterious knowledge, and all +his little vanities and superiorities, but they would remember him for +the very real nerve and courage that he was showing, and knew that he +was showing. The old gentleman took pleasure in thinking that although +he was about to fail in affairs, he was not going to fail in character. +He even began to make vague plans for trying again, and when, after a +long dinner, they pushed back their chairs and rose from the table, +there was a youthful resiliency in the voice with which he challenged +Powers to a game of piquet. + +"That seems to leave me out," said Brett. + +"Well," said Mr. Callender, with snapping eyes, "can you play well +enough to be an interesting opponent, or can't you?" + +"No, I can't," said Brett. "And anyway, I'm going out in the launch to +talk things over with Merriman." He shrugged his shoulders in a superior +way, and they laughed; but when they had left him for the card-room he +walked out on the veranda and stood looking through the darkness at the +_Sappho's_ distant lights, and he might have been heard muttering, as if +from the depths of very deep thought: + +"Why not?" + + + + +II + +At first Brett did not head the launch straight for the _Sappho_. He was +not sure in his own mind whether he intended to visit her, or just to +have a near-by look at her and then return to the club. He had ordered +the launch on an impulse which he could not explain to himself. If she +had been got ready for him promptly he might not have cared at the last +minute to go out in her at all. But there had been a long delay in +finding the engineer, and this had provoked him and made him very sure +that he wanted to use the launch very much. And it hadn't smoothed his +temper to learn that the engineer had been found in the kitchen eating a +Virginia ham in company with the kitchen maid. + +But the warmth and salt freshness that came into his face, and the +softness and great number of the stars soon pacified him. If she were +only with him, he thought, if her father were only not on the brink of +ruin, how pleasant the world would be. He pretended that she was with +him, just at his shoulder, where he could not see her, but there just +the same, and that he was steering the launch straight for the ends of +the world. He pretended that for such a voyage the launch would not need +an engineer. He wondered if under the circumstances it would be safe to +steer with only one hand. + +But the launch ran suddenly into an oyster stake that went rasping aft +along her side, and at the same moment the searchlight from Fort +Schuyler beamed with dazzling playfulness in his face, and then having +half blinded him wheeled heavenward, a narrow cornucopia of light that +petered out just short of the stars. He watched the searchlight. He +wondered how many pairs of lovers it had discovered along the shores of +Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk on the veranda of the +country club, how many kisses it had interrupted; and whether it would +rather pry into people's private affairs or look for torpedo-boats and +night attacks in time of war. But most of all he wondered why it spent +so much of its light on space, sweeping the heavens like a fiery broom +with indefatigable zeal. There were no lovers or torpedo-boats up there. +Even the birds were in bed, and the Wright brothers were known to be +at Pau. + +Once more the searchlight smote him full in the face and then, as if +making a pointed gesture, swept from him, and for a long second +illuminated the black hull and the yellow spars of the _Sappho_. Then, +as if its earthly business were over, the shaft of light, lengthening +and lengthening as it rose above intervening obstacles, the bay, the +Stepping Stone light, the Long Island shore, turned slowly upward until +it pointed at the zenith. Then it went out. + +"That," thought Brett, "was almost a hint. First it stirred me up; then +it pointed at the _Sappho_; then it indicated that there is One above, +and then it went out." + +He headed the launch straight for the _Sappho_, and began to wonder what +one had to do to get aboard of a magnate's yacht at night. He turned to +the engineer. + +"Gryce," he said, "what do you know about yachts?" + +"What about 'em?" Gryce answered sulkily. He was still thinking of the +kitchen-maid and the unfinished ham, or else of the ham and the +unfinished kitchen maid, I am not sure which. + +"What about 'em?" Brett echoed. "Do they take up their gangways at +night?" + +"Unless some one's expected," said Gryce. + +"Do they have a watchman?" + +"One forward and one aft on big yachts." + +"Making two," said Brett. "But aren't there usually two gangways--one +for the crew and one for the owner's guests?" + +"Crew's gangway is to starboard," Gryce vouchsafed. + +Brett wondered if there was anything else that he ought to know. Then, +in picturing himself as running the launch alongside the _Sappho_, and +hoping that he would not bump her, a question presented itself. + +"If I were going to visit the _Sappho_," he asked, "would I approach the +gangway from the stern or from the bow?" + +"I don't know," said Gryce. + +"Do you mean," said Brett, "that you don't know which is the correct +thing to do, or that you think I can't steer?" + +"I mean," said Gryce, "that I know it's one or the other, but I don't +know which." + +"In that case," said Brett, "we will approach from the rear. That is +always the better part of valor. But if the gangway has been taken up +for the night I don't know what I shall do." + +"The gangway was down when the light was on her," said Gryce. "I seen +it." + +And that it was still down Brett could presently see for himself. He +doubted his ability to make a neat landing, but they seemed to be +expecting him, for a sailor ran down to the gangway landing armed with +a long boat-hook, and made the matter easy for him. When he had reached +the _Sappho's_ deck an officer came forward in the darkness, and said: + +"This way, sir, if you please." + +"There's magic about," thought Brett, and he accompanied the officer +aft. + +"Mr. Merriman," said the latter, "told us to expect you half an hour ago +in a motor-boat. Did you have a breakdown?" + +"No," said Brett, and he added mentally, "but I'm liable to." + +They descended a companionway; the officer opened a sliding door of some +rich wood, and Brett stepped into the highly lighted main saloon of +the _Sappho_. + +In one corner of the room, with his back turned, the famous Mr. Merriman +sat at an upright piano, lugubriously drumming. Brett had often heard of +the great man's secret vice, and now the sight of him hard at it made +him, in spite of the very real trepidation under which he was laboring, +feel good-natured all over--the Colossus of finance was so earnest at +his music, so painstaking and interested in placing his thick, clumsy +fingers, and so frankly delighted with the effect of his performance +upon his own ear. It seemed to Brett homely and pleasant, the thought +that one of the most important people of eighty millions should find +his pleasure in an art for which he had neither gift nor training. + +Mr. Merriman finished his piece with a badly fumbled chord, and turned +from the piano with something like the show of reluctance with which a +man turns from a girl who has refused him. That Mr. Merriman did not +start or change expression on seeing a stranger in the very heart of his +privacy was also in keeping with his reputed character. It was also like +him to look steadily at the young man for quite a long while before +speaking. But finally to be addressed in courteous and pleasant tones +was not what Brett expected. For this he had his own good looks to +thank, as Mr. Merriman hated, with the exception of his own music, +everything that was ugly. + +"Good-evening, sir," said Mr. Merriman. "But I can't for the life of me +think what you are doing on my yacht. I was expecting a man, but +not you." + +"You couldn't guess," said Brett, "why I have been so impertinent as to +call upon you without an invitation." + +"Then," said Mr. Merriman, "perhaps you had better tell me. I think I +have seen you before." + +"My name is Brett," said Brett. "You may have seen me trying to play +tennis at Newport. I have often seen you there, looking on." + +"You didn't come to accuse me of being a looker-on?" Mr. Merriman asked. + +"No, sir," said Brett, "but I do wish that could have been the reason. +I've come, sir, as a matter of fact, because you are, on the contrary, +so very, very active in the game." + +"I don't understand," said Merriman rather coldly, + +"Oh," said Brett, "everybody I care for in the world is being ruined, +including myself, and I said, 'Mr. Merriman could save us all if he only +would.' So I came to ask you if you couldn't see your way to letting up +on us all." + +"'Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman, "you may have heard, since gossip +occasionally concerns herself with me, that in my youth I was a priest." + +Brett nodded. + +"Well," continued Mr. Merriman, "I have never before listened to so +naïve a confession as yours." + +Brett blushed to his eyes. + +"I knew when I came," he said, "that I shouldn't know how to go about +what I've come for." + +"But I think I have a better opinion of you," smiled Mr. Merriman, and +his smile was very engaging. "You have been frank without being fresh, +you have been bashful without showing fear. You meet the eye in a manly +way, and you seem a clean and worthy young man. As opposed to these +things, what you might have thought out to say to me would +hardly matter." + +"Oh," cried Brett impulsively, "if you would only let up!" + +"I suppose, Mr. Brett," the banker smiled, even more engagingly, "that +you mean you would like me to come to the personal rescue of all those +persons who have recently shown bad judgment in the conduct of their +affairs. But let me tell you that I have precisely your own objections +to seeing people go to smash. But they _will_ do it. They don't even +come to me for advice." + +"You wouldn't give it to them if they did," said Brett. + +"No," said Mr. Merriman, "I couldn't. But I should like to, and a piece +of my mind to boot. Now, sir, you have suggested something for me to do. +Will you go further and tell me how I am to do it?" + +"Why," said Brett, diffidently but unabashed, "you could start in early +to-morrow morning, couldn't you, and bull the market?" + +"Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman forcefully, "I have for the last month +been straining my resources to hold the market. But it is too heavy, +sir, for one pair of shoulders." + +A look of doubt must have crossed Brett's face, for the banker smote his +right fist into the palm of his left hand with considerable violence, +and rose to his feet, almost menacingly. + +"Have the courtesy not to doubt my statements, young sir," he said +sharply. "I have made light of your intrusion; see that you do not make +light of the courtesy and consideration thus shown you." + +"Of course, I believe you," said Brett, and he did. + +"You are one of those," said Mr. Merriman, "who listen to what the run +of people say, and make capital of it." + +"Of course, I can't help hearing what people say," said Brett. + +"Or believing it!" Mr. Merriman laughed savagely, "What are they saying +of me these days?" he asked. + +Brett hesitated. + +"Come, come," said the great man, in a mocking voice. "You are here +without an invitation. Entertain me! Entertain me! Make good!" + +Brett was nettled. + +"Well," said he, "they say that Mr. Waters was tremendously extended for +a rise in stocks, and that you found it out, and that you hate him, and +that you went for him to give him a lesson, and that you pulled all the +props out of the market, and smashed it all to pieces, just for a +private spite. That's what they say!" + +The banker was silent for quite a long time. + +"If there wasn't something awful about that," he said at last, "it would +be very funny." + +The officer who had ushered Brett into the saloon appeared at the door. + +"Well?" said Merriman curtly. + +"There's a gentleman," said the officer, "who wants to come aboard. He +says you are expecting him. But as you only mentioned one gentleman--" + +"Yes, yes," said Merriman, "I'm expecting this other gentleman, too." + +He turned to Brett. + +"I am going to ask you to remain," he said, "to assist at a conference +on the present state of the market between yourself, and myself, and my +_arch-enemy_--Mr. Waters." + + + + +III + +Even if Brett should live to be a distinguished financier himself--which +is not likely--he will never forget that midnight conference on board +the _Sappho_. He had supposed that famous men--unless they were dead +statesmen--thought only of themselves, and how they might best and most +easily increase their own power and wealth. He had believed with the +rest of the smaller Wall Street interests that the present difficulties +were the result of a private feud. Instead of this he now saw that the +supposed quarrellers had forgotten their differences, and were in the +closest kind of an alliance to save the situation. He discovered that +until prices had fallen fifty points neither of them had been in the +market to any significant extent; and that, to avert the appalling +calamities which seemed imminent, both were ready if necessary to +impoverish themselves or to take unusual risks of so doing. He learned +the real causes of the panic, so far as these were not hidden from +Merriman and Waters themselves, and when at last the two men decided +what should be attempted, to what strategic points they should send +re-enforcements, and just what assistance they should ask the Secretary +of the Treasury to furnish, Brett felt that he had seen history in +the making. + +Waters left the _Sappho_ at one in the morning, and Brett was for going, +too, but Merriman laid a hand on the young man's shoulder and asked him +to remain for a few moments. + +"Now, my son," he said, "you see how the panic has affected some of the +so-called big interests. It may be that Waters and I can't do very much. +But it will be good for you to remember that we tried; it will make you +perhaps see others in a more tolerant light. But for purposes of +conversation you will, of course, forget that you have been here. Now, +as to your own affairs--" + +Mr. Merriman looked old and tired, but very indulgent and kind. + +"Knowing what I know now," said Brett, "I would rather take my chances +with the other little fools who have made so much trouble for you and +Mr. Waters. If your schemes work out I'll be saved in spite of myself; +and if they don't--well, I hope I've learned not to be so great a +fool again." + +"In every honest young man," said Merriman, "there is something of the +early Christian--he is very noble and very silly. Write your name and +telephone number on that sheet of paper. At least, you won't refuse +orders from me in the morning. Waters and I will have to use many +brokers to-morrow, of whom I hope you will consent to be one." + +Brett hung his head in pleasure and shame. Then he looked Mr. Merriman +in the face with a bright smile. + +"If you've got to help some private individual, Mr. Merriman, I'd rather +you didn't make it me; I'd rather you made it old man Callender. If he +goes under now he'll never get to the top again." + +"Not Samuel B. Callender?" said Merriman, with a note of surprise and +very real interest in his voice. "Is he in trouble? I didn't know. Why, +that will never do--a fine old fighting character like that--and +besides ... why, wouldn't you have thought that he would have come to +me himself or that at least he would have confided in my son Jim?" + +Brett winced. + +Merriman wrote something upon a card and handed it to Brett. + +"Can you see that he gets that?" he asked. + +"Yes, sir," said Brett. + +"Tell him, then, to present it at my office the first thing in the +morning. It will get him straight to me. I can't stand idle and see the +father of the girl my boy is going to marry ruined." + +"I didn't know--" said Brett. He was very white, and his lips trembled +in spite of his best efforts to control them. "I congratulate you, sir. +She is very lovely," he added. + +Mr. Merriman regarded the miserable young man quizzically. + +"But," he said, "Mr. Callender has three daughters." + +"Oh, no," said Brett dismally, "there is only the one." + +"My boy," said Mr. Merriman, "I am afraid that you are an incorrigible +plunger--at stocks, at romance, and at conclusions. I don't know if I am +going to comfort you or give you pain, but the girl my son is going to +marry is _Mary_ Callender." + +The color returned to Brett's cheek and the sparkle to his eyes. He +grasped Mr. Merriman by both hands, and in a confidential voice he said: + +"Mr. Merriman, there is no such person." + + + + +THE McTAVISH + + +I + +By the look of her she might have been a queen, or a princess, or at the +very least a duchess. But she was no one of these. She was only a +commoner--a plain miss, though very far from plain. Which is +extraordinary when you consider that the blood of the Bruce flowed with +exceeding liveliness in her veins, together with the blood of many +another valiant Scot--Randolph, Douglas, Campbell--who bled with Bruce +or for him. + +With the fact that she was not at the very least a duchess, _most_ of +her temporal troubles came to an abrupt end. When she tired of her +castle at Beem-Tay she could hop into her motor-car and fly down the +Great North Road to her castle at Brig O'Dread. This was a fifty-mile +run, and from any part of the road she could see land that belonged to +her--forest, farm, and moor. If the air at Beem-Tay was too formal, or +the keep at Brig O'Dread too gloomy, she could put up at any of her +half-dozen shooting lodges, built in wild, inaccessible, wild-fowly +places, and shake the dust of the world from her feet, and tread, just +under heaven, upon the heather. + +But mixed up with all this fine estate was one other temporal trouble. +For, over and above the expenses of keeping the castles on a good +footing, and the shooting lodges clean and attractive, and the motor-car +full of petrol, and the horses full of oats, and the lawns empty of +weeds, and the glass houses full of fruit, she had no money whatsoever. +She could not sell any of her land because it was entailed--that is, it +really belonged to somebody who didn't exist; she couldn't sell her +diamonds, for the same reason; and she could not rent any of her +shootings, because her ancestors had not done so. I honestly believe +that a sixpence of real money looked big to her. + +Her first name was the same as that of the Lady of the Lake--Ellen. Her +last name was McTavish--if she had been a man she would have been The +McTavish (and many people did call her that)--and her middle names were +like the sands of the sea in number, and sounded like bugles blowing a +charge--Campbell and Cameron, Dundee and Douglas. She had a family +tartan--heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses--and +she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking +ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland +loch, her cheeks from the briar rose, some of the notes of her voice +from the upland plover, and some from the lark. And her laugh was like +an echo of the sounds that the River Tay makes when it goes among +the shallows. + +One day she was sitting all by herself in the Seventh Drawing Room +(forty feet by twenty-four) of Brig O'Dread Castle, looking from a +fourteen-foot-deep window embrasure, upon the brig itself, the river +rushing under it, and the clean, flowery town upon both banks. From most +of her houses she could see nothing but her own possessions, but from +Brig O'Dread Castle, standing, as it did, in one corner of her estates, +she could see past her entrance gate, with its flowery, embattled lodge, +a little into the outside world. There were tourists whirling by in +automobiles along the Great North Road, or parties of Scotch gypsies, +with their dark faces and ear-rings, with their wagons and folded tents, +passing from one good poaching neighborhood to the next. Sometimes it +amused her to see tourists turned from her gates by the proud porter who +lived in the lodge; and on the present occasion, when an automobile +stopped in front of the gate and the chauffeur hopped out and rang the +bell, she was prepared to be mildly amused once more in the same way. + +The proud porter emerged like a conquering hero from the lodge, the +pleated kilt of the McTavish tartan swinging against his great thighs, +his knees bare and glowing in the sun, and the jaunty Highland bonnet +low upon the side of his head. He approached the gate and began to +parley, but not with the chauffeur; a more important person (if +possible) had descended from the car--a person of unguessable age, owing +to automobile goggles, dressed in a London-made shooting suit of tweed, +and a cap to match. The parley ended, the stranger appeared to place +something in the proud porter's hand; and the latter swung upon his heel +and strode up the driveway to the castle. Meanwhile the stranger +remained without the gate. + +Presently word came to The McTavish, in the Seventh Drawing Room, that +an American gentleman named McTavish, who had come all the way from +America for the purpose, desired to read the inscriptions upon the +McTavish tombstones in the chapel of Brig O'Dread Castle. The porter, +who brought this word himself, being a privileged character, looked very +wistful when he had delivered it--as much as to say that the frightful +itching of his palm had not been as yet wholly assuaged. The +McTavish smiled. + +"Bring the gentleman to the Great Tower door, McDougall," she said, +"and--I will show him about, myself." + +The proud porter's face fell. His snow-white _mustachios_ took on a +fuller droop. + +"McDougall," said The McTavish--and this time she laughed aloud--"if +the gentleman from America crosses my hand with silver, it shall +be yours." + +"More like"--and McDougall became gloomier still--"more like he will +cross it with gold." (Only he said this in a kind of dialect that was +delightful to hear, difficult to understand, and would be insulting to +the reader to reproduce in print.) + +"If it's gold," said The McTavish sharply, "I'll not part wi' it, +McDougall, and you may lay to that." + +You might have thought that McDougall had been brought up in the Black +Hole of Calcutta--so sad he looked, and so hurt, so softly he left the +room, so loudly he closed the door. + +The McTavish burst into laughter, and promised herself, not without some +compunction, to hand over the gold to McDougall, if any should +materialize. Next she flew to her dressing-room and made herself look as +much like a gentlewoman's housekeeper as she could in the few minutes at +her disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and +whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of +the Great Tower in the sunlight. And when she heard the stranger's feet +upon the gravel she composed her face; and when he appeared round the +corner of a clipped yew she rattled the keys at her belt and bustled on +her feet, as becomes a housekeeper, and bobbed a courtesy. + +The stranger McTavish was no more than thirty. He had brown eyes, and +wore upon his face a steady, enigmatic smile. + + + + +II + +"Good-morning," said the American McTavish. "It is very kind of Miss +McTavish to let me go into her chapel. Are you the housekeeper?" + +"I am," said The McTavish. "Mrs. Nevis is my name." + +"What a pity!" murmured the gentleman. + +"This way, sir," said The McTavish. + +She stepped into the open, and, jangling her keys occasionally, led him +along an almost interminable path of green turf bordered by larkspur and +flowering sage, which ended at last at a somewhat battered lead statue +of Atlas, crowning a pudding-shaped mound of turf. + +"When the Red Currie sacked Brig O'Dread Castle," said The McTavish, "he +dug a pit here and flung the dead into it. There will be McTavishes +among them." + +"There are no inscriptions," said the gentleman. + +"Those are in the chapel," said The McTavish. "This way." And she swung +into another turf walk, long, wide, springy, and bordered by birches. + +"Tell me," said the American, "is it true that Miss McTavish is down on +strangers?" + +She looked at him over her shoulder. He still wore his enigmatic smile. + +"I don't know what got into her," she said, "to let you in." She halted +in her tracks and, looking cautiously this way and that, like a +conspirator in a play: "She's a hard woman to deal with," she said, +"between you and me." + +"I've heard something of the kind," said the American. "Indeed, I asked +the porter. I said, 'What manner of woman is Miss McTavish?' and he +said, in a kind of whisper, 'The McTavish, sir, is a roaring, ranting, +stingy, bony female.'" + +"He said that, did he?" asked the pseudo Mrs. Nevis, tightening her lips +and jangling her keys. + +"But I didn't believe him," said the American; "I wouldn't believe what +he said of any cousin of mine." + +"Is The McTavish your cousin?" + +"Why, yes," said he; "but just which one I don't know. That's what I +have come to find out. I have an idea--I and my lawyers have--that if +The McTavish died without a direct heir, I should be The McTavish; that +is, that this nice castle, and Red Curries Mound, and all and all, would +be mine. I could come every August for the shooting. It would be +very nice." + +"It wouldn't be very nice for The McTavish to die before you," said +Mrs. Nevis. "She's only twenty-two." + +"Great heavens!" said the American. "Between you, you made me think she +was a horrid old woman!" + +"Horrid," said Mrs. Nevis, "very. But not old." + +She led the way abruptly to a turf circle which ended the birch walk and +from which sprang, in turn, a walk of larch, a walk of Lebanon cedars, +and one of mountain ash. At the end of the cedar walk, far off, could be +seen the squat gray tower of the chapel, heavy with ivy. McTavish caught +up with Mrs. Nevis and walked at her side. Their feet made no sound upon +the pleasant, springy turf. Only the bunch of keys sounded occasionally. + +"How," said McTavish, not without insinuation, "could one get to know +one's cousin?" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "if you are troubled with spare cash and stay in +the neighborhood long enough, she'll manage that. She has little enough +to spend, poor woman. Why, sir, when she told me to show you the chapel, +she said, 'Catherine,' she said, 'there's one Carnegie come out of the +States--see if yon McTavish is not another.'" + +"She said that?" + +"She did so." + +"And how did you propose to go to work to find out, Mrs. Nevis?" + +"Oh," said she, "I've hinted broadly at the news that's required at +headquarters. I can do no more." + +McTavish reflected, "Tell her," he said presently, "when you see her, +that I'm not Carnegie, nor near it. But tell her that, as we Americans +say, 'I've enough for two.'" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "that would mean too much or too little to a +Scot." + +"Call it, then," said McTavish, "several million pounds." + +"Several," Mrs. Nevis reflected. + +"Say--three," said McTavish. + +Mrs. Nevis sighed. "And where did you gather it all?" she asked. + +"Oh, from my father," said McTavish. "And it was given to him by the +government." + +"Why?" she asked. + +"Not why," said he, "so much as how. You see, our government is +passionately fond of certain people and makes them very rich. But it's +perfectly fair, because at the same time it makes other people, of whom +it is not fond, desperately poor. We call it protection," he said. "For +instance, my government lets a man buy a Shetland wool sweater in +Scotland for two dollars, and lets him sell it on Broadway for twenty +dollars. The process makes that man rich in time, but it's perfectly +fair, because it makes the man who has to buy the sweater poor." + +"But the fool doesn't have to buy it," said Mrs. Nevis. + +"Oh yes, he does," said McTavish; "in America--if he likes the look of +it and the feel of it--he has to buy. It's the climate, I suppose." + +"Did your father make his money in Shetland sweaters?" she asked. + +"Nothing so nice," said McTavish; "rails." + +A covey of birds rose in the woods at their right with a loud whir of +wings. + +"Whew!" exclaimed McTavish. + +"Baby pheasants," explained Mrs. Nevis. "They shoot three thousand at +Brig O'Dread in the season." + +After certain difficulties, during which their hands touched, the +greatest key in Mrs. Nevis's bunch was made to open the chapel door, and +they went in. + +The place had no roof; the flagged floor had disappeared, and it had +been replaced by velvety turf, level between the graves and headstones. +Supporting columns reared themselves here and there, supporting nothing. +A sturdy thorn tree grew against the left-hand wall; but the sun shone +brightly into the ruin, and sparrows twittered pleasantly among the +in-growths of ivy. + +"Will you wish to read all the inscriptions?" asked Mrs. Nevis, +doubtfully, for there were hundreds of tombstones crowding the turf or +pegged to the walls. + +"No, no," said McTavish "I see what I came to see--already." + +For the first time the enigmatic smile left his face, and she watched +him with a kind of excited interest as he crossed the narrow houses of +the dead and halted before a small tablet of white marble. She followed +him, more slowly, and stood presently at his side as he read aloud: + + "SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF + COLLAND McTAVISH, + WHO DISAPPEARED, AGED FIVE YEARS, + JUNE 15TH, 1801." + +Immediately below the inscription a bar of music was engraved in the +marble. "I can't read that," said McTavish. + +Mrs. Nevis hummed a pathetic air very sweetly, almost under her breath. +He listened until she had finished and then: "What tune is that?" he +asked, excitedly. + +"'Wandering Willie,'" she answered. + +"Of course," said he, "it would be that." + +"Was this the stone you came to see?" she asked presently. + +"Yes," he said. "Colland McTavish, who disappeared, was my +great-grandfather. The old gentleman--I never saw him myself--used to +say that he remembered a long, long driveway, and a great iron gate, and +riding for ever and ever in a wagon with a tent over it, and sleeping at +night on the bare hills or in forests beside streams. And that was all +he remembered, except being on a ship on the sea for years and years. +But he had this--" + +McTavish extracted from a pocket into which it had been buttoned for +safety what appeared, at first sight, to be a linen handkerchief yellow +with age. But, on unfolding, it proved to be a child's shirt, cracked +and broken in places, and lacking all but one of its bone buttons. +Embroidered on the tiny shirt tail, in faint and faded blue, was the +name Colland McTavish. + +"He always thought," said McTavish, "that the gypsies stole him. It +looks as if they had, doesn't it? And, just think, he used to live in +this beautiful place, and play in it, and belong to it! Wasn't it +curious, my seeing that tablet the first thing when we came in? It +looked as big as a house and seemed to beckon me." + +"It looks more like the ghost of a little child," said Mrs. Nevis +quietly. "Perhaps that is why it drew you so." + +"Why," said he, "has this chapel been allowed to fall to pieces?" + +"Because," said Mrs. Nevis, "there's never been the money to mend it." + +"I wonder," he mused, "if The McTavish would let me do it? After all, +I'm not an utter stranger; I'm a distant cousin--after all." + +"Not so distant, sir," said Mrs. Nevis, "as may appear, if what you say +is true. Colland McTavish, your great-grandfather, and The McTavish's +great-grandfather, were brothers--and the poor bereft mother that put up +this tablet was your great-great-grandmother, and hers." + +"Surely then," said he, "The McTavish would let me put a roof on the +chapel. I'd _like_ to," he said, and the red came strongly into his +cheeks. "I'll ask her. Surely she wouldn't refuse to see me on such +a matter." + +"You can never tell," Mrs. Nevis said. "She's a woman that won't bear +forcing." + +He looked at her for the first time in some minutes. "Why," said he, +"you're ill; you're white as a sheet!" + +"It's the long walk uphill. It takes me in the heart, somehow." + +"I'm sorry," said McTavish simply. "I'm mighty sorry. It's all my +fault." + +"Why, so it is," said she, with the flicker of a smile. + +"You must take my arm going back. I _am_ sorry." + +When they had left the chapel and locked the door, she took his arm +without any further invitation. + +"I will, if you don't mind," she said. "I am shaken, and that's the +truth.... But what," and again the smile flickered--"what would The +McTavish say if she saw us--her cousin and her housekeeper--dawdling +along arm in arm?" + +McTavish laughed. "I don't mind, if you don't." + +They returned slowly by the long turf walk to the statue of Atlas. + +"Now," said he, "how should I go about getting an interview with The +McTavish?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Nevis, "it will not be for to-day. She is leaving +within the hour for Beem-Tay in her motor-car." + +"Oh, then I shall follow her to Beem-Tay." + +"If you can do that," said Mrs. Nevis, "I will give you a line to my +sister. Maybe she could help you. She's the housekeeper at +Beem-Tay--Miss MacNish is her name." And she added as if by an +after-thought. "We are twins." + +"Are there two of you?" exclaimed McTavish. + +"Why not?" she asked, with a guileless face. + +"Why," said he, "it's wonderful. Does she look like you?" + +"Exactly," said Mrs. Nevis. "Same red hair, same eyes, nose, and faint +spells--only," and there was a certain arch quality in her clear voice, +"_she's_ single." + +"And she looks exactly like you--and she's single! I don't believe it." + +Mrs. Nevis withdrew her hand from his arm. When they had reached the +door of the Great Tower she stopped. + +"If you care for a line to my sister," she said, "I'll write it. You can +wait here." + +"I wish it of all things, and if there are any stairs to climb, mind you +take your time. Remember you're not very good at hills." + +When she had gone, he smiled his enigmatic smile and began to walk +slowly up and down in front of the door, his hands clasped behind his +back. Once he made a remark. "Scotland," he said, "is the place for me." + +But when at length she returned with the letter, he did not offer her +money; instead he offered his hand. "You've been very kind," he said, +"and when I meet your mistress I will tell her how very courteous you +have been. Thank you." + +He placed the letter in the breast-pocket of his shooting-coat. "Any +messages for your sister?" he asked. + +"You may tell her I hope she is putting by something for a rainy day. +You may tell her The McTavish is verra hard up the noo"--she smiled +very charmingly in his face--"and will na' brook an extravagant table." + +"Do you think," said McTavish, "that your sister will get me a chance to +see _The_ McTavish?" + +"If any one can, she can." + +"Good-by," he said, and once more they shook hands. + +A few minutes later she heard the distant purring of his car, and a +thought struck her with dismay. "What if he goes straight to Beem-Tay +and presents the letter before I get there!" + +She flowered into swift action, flashed up the turret stairs, and, +having violently rung a bell, flew into her dressing-room, and began to +drag various automobiling coats, hats, and goggles out of their hiding +places. When the bell was answered: "The car," she cried, "at once!" + +A few moments later, veiled, goggled, and coated, she was dashing from +the castle to the stables. Halfway she met the car. "McDonald," she +cried, "can you make Beem-Tay in the hour?" + +"It's fifty miles," said the driver, doubtfully. + +"Can you make it?" + +"The road--" he began. + +"I know the road," she said impatiently; "it's all twisty-wisty. Can you +make it?" + +"I'm a married man," said he. + +"Ten pounds sterling if you make it." + +"And if we smash and are kilt?" + +"Why, there'll be a more generous master than I in Beem-Tay and in Brig +O'Dread--that's all." + +She leaped into the car, and a minute later they were flying along the +narrow, tortuous North Road like a nightmare. Once she leaned over the +driver's seat and spoke in his ear: "I hav'na the ten pounds noo," she +said, "but I'll beg them, McDonald, or borrow them--" The car began to +slow down, the driver's face grew gloomy. "Or steal them!" she cried. +McDonald's face brightened, for The McTavish's money difficulties were +no better known than the fact that she was a woman of her word. He +opened the throttle and the car once more shot dizzily forward. + +Twenty miles out of Brig O'Dread they came upon another car, bound in +the same direction and also running desperately fast. They passed it in +a roaring smother of dust. + +"McDonald," said The McTavish, "you needna run sae fast noo. Keep the +lead o' yon car to Beem-Tay gate--that is all." + +She sank back luxuriously, sighed, and began to wonder how she should +find McDonald his ten pounds sterling. + + + + +III + +She need not have hurried, nor thrown to the wind those ten pounds that +she had somehow to raise. On arriving at Beem-Tay she had given orders +that any note addressed to Miss MacNish, and presented at the gate, +should be brought at once to her. McTavish did not come that day, but +she learned indirectly that he had taken rooms at the McTavish Arms in +Beem-Tay village, and from Mr. Traquair, manager of the local branch of +the Bank of Scotland, that he was taking steps to hire for the season +the forest of Clackmanness, a splendid sporting estate that marched with +her own lands. Mr. Traquair, a gentleman as thin as a pipe stem, and as +kind as tobacco, had called upon her the second day, in answer to an +impetuous summons. He found her looking very anxious and very beautiful, +and told her so. + +"May the looks stand me in good stead, Mr. Traquair," said she, "for I'm +like to become Wandering Willie of the song--Wandering Wilhelmina, +rather. There's a man yont, named McTavish, will oost me frae hoose +and name." + +"That would be the young gentleman stopping at the McTavish Arms." + +"Ah," said The McTavish, "he might stop here if he but knew." + +"He's no intending it, then," said Mr. Traquair, "for he called upon me +this morning to hire the Duke's forest of Clackmanness." + +"Ah!" said The McTavish. + +"And now," said Mr. Traquair, stroking his white mustache, "tell me what +it all means." + +"It means that Colland McTavish, who was my great-grandfather's elder +brother, has returned in the person of the young gentleman at the Arms." + +"A fine hornpipe he'll have to prove it," said Mr. Traquair. + +"Fine fiddlesticks!" said The McTavish. "Man," she continued earnestly, +"you have looked in his face and you tell me it will be a dance to prove +him The McTavish?" + +"He is a McTavish," admitted Mr. Traquair; "so much I knew before he +told me his name." + +"He has in his pocket the bit shirt that wee Colland wore when the +gypsies snitched him and carried him over seas; it's all of a piece with +many another garment of wee Colland's. I've had out the trunk in which +his little duds have been stored these many years. The man is Colland's +great-grandson. I look at him, and I admit it without proof." + +"My dear," said Mr. Traquair, "you have no comprehension of the law. I +will fight this claim through every court of the land, or I'm ready to +meet him on Bannockburn field, my ancestral claymore against his. A +rare laugh we'll have when the pretender produces his bit shirtie in the +court, and says, 'Look, your honor, upon my patent o' nobilitee.'" + +"Mind this," said The McTavish, "I'll make no contests, nor have none +made. Only," she smiled faintly, "I hay'na told him who he rightly is. +He claims cousinship. But it has not dawned on him that Colland was to +have been The McTavish, that he _is_ The McTavish, that I am merely Miss +Ellen Alice Douglas Cameron Dundee Campbell McGregor Breadalbane Blair +McTavish, houseless, homeless spinster, wi' but a drap o' gude blood to +her heritage. I have not told him, Mr. Traquair. He does not know. +What's to be done? What would you do--_if you knew_ that he was he, and +that you were only you?" + +"It's your meeserable conscience of a Church-going Scot," commiserated +Traquair, not without indignation. "What would a Campbell have done? +He'd have had himself made a judge in the land, and he'd have condemned +the pretender to the gallows--out of hand, my dear--out of hand!" + +She shook her head at him as at a naughty child. "Where is your own +meeserable conscience, Traquair?" + +"My dear," cried the little man, "it is storming my reason." + +"There," said she, "I told you so. And now we are both of one mind, you +shall present these tidings to McTavish together with my compliments." + +"First," said Traquair cautiously, "I'll bide a bit on the thought." + +"I will leave the time to your meeserable conscience," said Miss +McTavish generously. "Meanwhile, my dear man, while the semblance of +prosperity abides over my head in the shape of a roof, there's a matter +o' ten pound--" + +Mr. Traquair rose briskly to his feet. "Ten pound!" he exclaimed. + +"Only ten pound," she wheedled. + +"My dear," he said, "I don't see where you're to raise another matter o' +saxpence this month." + +"But I've promised the ten pound on my honor," she said. "Would you have +me break my word to a servant?" + +"Well--well," temporized Mr. Traquair, "I'll have another look at the +books. Mind, I'm not saying it can be done--unless you'll sell a bit +timber here and yont--" + +"Dear man," she said, "full well ye know it's not mine to sell. Then +you're to let me have the ten pound?" + +"If I were to employ a wheedler," said Mr. Traquair, "I'd have no choice +'twixt you and Satan. Mind, I make no promises. Ten pound is a +prodeegious sum o' money, when ye hay'na got it." + +"Not later than to-morrow, then," said Miss McTavish, as though to cap a +promise that had been made to her. "I'm obliged to you, Traquair, +deeply obliged." + + + + +IV + +But it was not the matter of the ten pounds that worried Traquair as he +climbed into his pony cart and drove slowly through the castle policies +to the gate. Indeed, the lofty gates had not been closed behind him +before he had forgotten all about them. That The McTavish was not The +McTavish alone occupied his attention. And when he perceived the cause +of the trouble, strolling beside the lofty ring fence of stone that +shielded the castle policies from impertinent curiosity, it was in +anything but his usual cheerful voice that he hailed him. + +"Will you take a lift, Mr. McTavish?" he invited dismally. + +"Oh, no," said The McTavish, "I won't trouble you, thanks." + +Traquair's meeserable conscience got the better of him all at once. And +with that his cheerfulness returned. + +"Get in," he said. "You cannot help troubling me, Mr. McTavish. I've a +word for you, sir." + +McTavish, wondering, climbed into the car. + +"Fergus," said Traquair to the small boy who acted as groom, messenger, +and shoe polisher to the local branch of the Bank of Scotland, +"ye'll walk." + +When the two were thus isolated from prying ears, Mr. Traquair cleared +his throat and spoke. "Is there anything, Mr. McTavish," he said, "in +this world that a rich man like you may want?" + +"Oh, yes," said McTavish, "some things." + +"More wealth?" + +McTavish shook his head. + +"Houses--lands?" Traquair looked up shrewdly from the corner of his eye, +but McTavish shook his head again. + +"Power, then, Mr. McTavish?" + +"No--not power." + +"Glory?" + +"No," said McTavish; "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid not." + +"Then, sir," said Traquair, "it's a woman." + +"No," said McTavish, and he blushed handsomely. "It's _the_ woman." + +"I withdraw my insinuation," said Traquair gravely. + +"I thank you," said Mr. McTavish. + +"I am glad, sir," said Traquair presently, "to find you in so generous +a disposition, for we have need of your generosity. I have it from Miss +McTavish herself," he went on gravely, "that your ancestor, so far as +you know, was Colland McTavish." + +"So far as I know and believe," said McTavish, "he was." + +"Did you know that Colland McTavish should have been _The_ McTavish?" +asked Mr. Traquair. + +"It never entered my head. Was he the oldest son?" + +"He was," said Mr. Traquair solemnly, "until in the eyes of the _law_ he +ceased to exist." + +"Then," said McTavish, "in every eye save that of the law I am _The_ +McTavish." + +Mr. Traquair bowed. "Miss McTavish," he said, "was for telling you at +once; but she left the matter entirely to my discretion. I have thought +best to tell you." + +"Would the law," asked McTavish, "oust Miss McTavish and stand me in her +shoes?" + +"The law," said Traquair pointedly, "would not do the former, and," with +a glance at McTavish's feet, "the Auld Nick could not do the latter." + +McTavish laughed. "Then why have you told me?" he asked. + +"Because," said Traquair grandly, "it is Miss McTavish's resolution to +make no opposition to your claim." + +"I see; I am to become 'The' without a fight." + +"Precisely," said Traquair. + +"Well, discretionary powers as to informing me of this were given you, +as I understand, Mr. Traquair?" + +"They were," said Traquair. + +"Well," said McTavish again, "there's no use crying over spilt milk. But +is your conscience up to a heavy load?" + +"'Tis a meeserable vehicle at best," protested Traquair. + +"You must pretend," said McTavish, "that you have not yet told me." + +"Ah!" Traquair exclaimed. "You wish to think it over." + +"I do," said McTavish. + +Both were silent for some moments. Then Traquair said rather solemnly: +"You are young, Mr. McTavish, but I have hopes that your thinking will +be of a wise and courageous nature." + +"Do you read Tennyson?" asked McTavish, apropos of nothing. + +"No," said Traquair, slightly nettled. "Burns." + +"I am sorry," said McTavish simply; "then you don't know the lines: + + 'If you are not the heiress born, + And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir,' etc. + +do you?" + +"No," said Traquair, "I do not." + +"It is curious how often a lack of literary affinity comes between two +persons and a heart-to-heart talk." + +"Let me know," said Traquair, "when you have thought it over." + +"I will. And now if you will put me down--?" + +He leaped to the ground, lifted his hat to the older man, and, turning, +strode very swiftly, as if to make up for lost time, back toward the +castle gate. + + + + +V + +McTavish was kept waiting a long time while a servant took his letter of +introduction to Miss MacNish, and brought back an answer from +the castle. + +Finally, midway of a winding and shrubby short cut, into which he turned +as directed by the porter, he came suddenly upon her. + +"Miss MacNish--?" he said. + +"You're not Mr. McTavish!--" She seemed dumfounded, and glanced at a +letter which she carried open in her hand. "My sister writes--" + +"What does she write?" asked McTavish eagerly. + +"No--no!" Miss MacNish exclaimed hastily, "the letter was to me." She +tore it hastily into little pieces. + +"Miss MacNish," said McTavish, somewhat hurt, "it is evident that I give +diametrically opposed impressions to you and your sister. Either she +has said something nice about me, and you, seeing me, are astonished +that she should; or she has said something horrid about me--I do hope +it's that way--and you are even more surprised. It must be one thing or +the other. And before we shake hands I think it only proper for you to +tell me which." + +"Let bygones be bygones," said Miss MacNish, and she held out her hand. +McTavish took it, and smiled his enigmatic smile. + +"It is your special wish, I have gathered," said Miss MacNish, "to meet +The McTavish. Now she knows about your being in the neighborhood, knows +that you are a distant cousin, but she hasn't expressed any wish to meet +you--at least I haven't heard her. If she wishes to meet you, she will +ask you to call upon her. If she doesn't wish to, she won't. Of course, +if you came upon her suddenly--somewhere in the grounds, for +instance--she'd have to listen to what you had to say, and to answer +you, I suppose. But to-day--well I'd not try it to-day." + +"Why not?" asked McTavish. + +"Why," said Miss MacNish, "she caught cold in the car yesterday, and her +poor nose is much too red for company." + +"Why do you all try to make her out such a bad lot?" + +"Is it being a bad lot to have a red nose?" exclaimed Miss MacNish. + +"At twenty-two?" McTavish looked at her in surprise and horror. "I ask +_you_," he said. "There was the porter at Brig O'Dread, and your +sister--they gave her a pair of black eyes between them, and here you +give her a red nose. When the truth is probably the reverse." + +"I don't know the reverse of red," said Miss MacNish, "but that would +give her white eyes." + +"I am sure, Miss MacNish, that quibbling is not one of your +prerogatives. It belongs exclusively to the Speaker of the House of +Representatives. As for me--the less I see of The McTavish, the surer I +am that she is rather beautiful, and very amusing, and good." + +"Are these the matters on which you are so eager to meet her?" asked +Miss MacNish. She stood with her back to a clump of dark blue larkspur +taller than herself--a lovely picture, in her severe black housekeeper's +dress that by contrast made her face and dark red hair all the more +vivacious and flowery. Her eyes at the moment were just the color of +the larkspur. + +McTavish smiled his enigmatic smile. "They are," he said. + +"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss MacNish. + +"When I meet her--" McTavish began, and abruptly paused. + +"What?" Miss MacNish asked with some eagerness. + +"Oh, nothing; _I'm_ so full of it that I almost betrayed my own +confidence." + +"I hope that you aren't implying that I might prove indiscreet." + +"Oh, dear no!" said McTavish. + +"It had a look of it, then," said Miss MacNish tartly. + +"Oh," said McTavish, "if I've hurt your feelings--why, I'll go on with +what I began, and take the consequences, shall I?" + +"I think," said Miss MacNish primly, "that it would tend to restore +confidence between us." + +"When I meet her, then," said McTavish, "I shall first tell her that she +is beautiful, and amusing, and good. And then," it came from him in a +kind of eager, boyish outburst, "I shall ask her to marry me." + +Miss MacNish gasped and stepped backward into the fine and deep soil +that gave the larkspur its inches. The color left her cheeks and +returned upon the instant tenfold. And it was many moments before she +could find a word to speak. Then she said in an injured and astonished +tone: "_Why?_" + +"The Scotch Scot," said McTavish, "is shrewd, but cautious. The American +Scot is shrewd, but daring. Caution, you'll admit, is a pitiful measure +in an affair of the heart." + +Miss MacNish was by this time somewhat recovered from her +consternation. "Well," said she, "what then? When you have come upon The +McTavish unawares somewhere in the shrubbery, and asked her to marry +you, and she has boxed your ears for you--what then?" + +"Then," said McTavish with a kind of anticipatory expression of +pleasure, "I shall kiss her. Even if she hated it," he said ruefully, +"she couldn't help but be surprised and flattered." + +Miss MacNish took a step forward with a sudden hilarious brightening in +her eyes. "Are you quizzing me," she said, "or are you outlining your +honest and mad intentions? And if the latter, won't you tell me why? +Why, in heaven's name, should you ask The McTavish to marry you--at +first sight?" + +"I can't explain it," said McTavish. "But even if I never have seen +her--I love her." + +"I have heard of love at first sight--" began Miss MacNish. + +But he interrupted eagerly. "You haven't ever experienced it, have you?" + +"Of course, I haven't," she exclaimed indignantly. "I've heard of +it--_often_. But I have never heard of love without any sight at all." + +"Love is blind," said McTavish. + +"Now, who's quibbling?" + +"Just because," he said, "you've never heard of a thing, away off here +in your wild Highlands, is a mighty poor proof that it doesn't exist. I +suppose you don't believe in predestination. I've always known," he said +grandly, "that I should marry my cousin--even against her will and +better judgment. You don't more than half believe me, do you?" + +"Well, not more than half," Miss MacNish smiled. + +"It's the truth," he said; "I will bet you ten pounds it's the truth." + +Miss MacNish looked at him indignantly, and in the midst of the look she +sighed. "I don't bet," said she. + +McTavish lowered his glance until it rested upon his own highly polished +brown boots. + +"Why are you looking at your boots?" asked Miss MacNish. + +"Because," he said simply, "considering that I am in love with my +cousin, I don't think I ought to look at you any more. I'm afraid I got +the habit by looking at your sister; but then, as she has a husband, it +couldn't matter so much." + +Miss MacNish, I'm afraid, mantled with pleasure. "My sister said +something in her letter about your wishing to see the house of your +ancestors. Miss McTavish is out now--would you like to look about +a little?" + +"Dearly," said McTavish. + + + + +VI + +Miss McTavish sent for Mr. Traquair. He went to her with a heavy +conscience, for as yet he had done nothing toward raising the ten +pounds. At her first words his conscience became still more laden. + +"Traquair," she said, "you mustn't tell him yet." + +It was all Traquair could do to keep countenance. "Then it's fortunate I +haven't," said he, "for you gave me a free hand." + +"Consider it tied behind your back for the present, for a wonderful +thing is going to happen." + +"Indeed," said Traquair. + +"You wouldn't believe me when I tell you that the silly man is going to +fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him!" + +"Although you haven't offered me a chair, my dear," said Traquair, "I +will take one." + +All in a burst then, half laughing, half in a grave kind of excitement, +she told her old friend how she had played housekeeper first at Brig +O'Dread and later at Beem-Tay. And how, on the latter occasion, McTavish +had displayed his admiration so openly that there could be but the +one climax. + +"And after all," she concluded, "if he thinks I'm just a housekeeper, +and falls in love with me and asks me to marry him--I'd know the man +was sincere--wouldn't I, Traquair?" + +"It seems to me," said Traquair, "that I have never seen you so +thoroughly delighted with yourself." + +"That is unkind. It is a wonderful thing when a girl of position, and +hedged in as I have been, finds that she is loved for herself alone and +not for her houses and lands, and her almost royal debts." + +"Verra flattering," said Traquair, "na doot. And what answer will you +give?" + +"Traquair," she said, "I'm not a profane girl; but I'm hanged if I +know." + +"He is a very wealthy man, and I have no doubt a very kind and honest +man." + +"He is a very cheeky man," smiled Miss McTavish. + +"No doubt--no doubt," said Traquair; "and it would leave you to the +honest enjoyment of your houses and lands, which otherwise you propose +to hand over to him. Still, it is well for a Scot to be cautious." + +"For a Scotch Scot," said Miss McTavish. "I should be an American Scot +if I married him. He tells me they are noted for their daring." + +While they were thus animatedly conversing, word came that Mr. McTavish +had called in the hope of seeing Miss MacNish. + +"There," said Miss McTavish, "you see! Go down to him, Traquair, and be +pleasant, until I come. Then vanish." + +Traquair found McTavish smoking a thick London cigarette upon the steps +of the side entrance, and gazing happily into a little garden of dark +yew and vivid scarlet geraniums with daring edgings of brightest +blue lobelia. + +"Will you be making any changes," asked Traquair, "when you come into +your own?" + +McTavish looked up with a smile and handed his open cigarette case to +the older man. + +"Mr. Traquair," he said, "I'm young and a stranger. I wish you could +find it in your heart to be an uncle to me." + +Traquair accepted a cigarette and sat down, first assuring himself that +the stone steps were dry. + +"If I were your nephew," said McTavish, "and came to you all out of +breath, and told you that I wished to marry Miss McTavish's housekeeper, +what would you say?" + +"I would say," said Traquair, "that she was the daughter of a grand +family that had fallen from their high estate. I would say, 'Charge, +nephew, charge!'" + +"Do you mean it!" exclaimed McTavish. + +"There's no more lovely lass in the United Kingdom," said Traquair, +"than Miss--Miss--" + +"MacNish," McTavish helped him; "and she would be mistress where she +had been servant. That's a curious twist of fate." + +"You have made up your mind, then," said Traquair, "to claim your own?" + +"By no means--yet," said McTavish. "I was only speculating. It's all in +the air. Suppose uncle, that Miss MacNish throws me down!" + +"Throws you down!" Traquair was shocked. + +"Well," said McTavish humbly, "you told me to charge." + +"To charge," said Traquair testily, "but not to grapple." + +"In my country," said McTavish, "when a girl refuses to marry a man they +call it throwing him down, giving him the sack, or handing him a lemon." + +"Yours is an exceptional country," said Traquair. + +Miss MacNish appeared in the doorway behind them. "I'm sorry to have +been so long," she said; "I had to give out the linen for luncheon." + +McTavish flung away his cigarette, and sprang to his feet as if some one +had stuck a pin into him. Traquair, according to the schedule, vanished. + +"It seemed very, very long," said McTavish. + +"Miss McTavish," said Miss MacNish, "has consented to see you." + +"Good Heavens!--when?" + +"Now." + +"But I don't want to see her _now_." + +"But you told me"--Miss MacNish looked thoroughly puzzled--"you told me +just what you were going to say to her. You said it was all +predestined." + +"Miss MacNish, it was not Miss McTavish I was thinking of--I'm sure it +wasn't. It was you." + +"Are you proposing to me?" she asked. + +"Of course, I am. Come into the garden--I can't talk on these steps, +right on top of a gravel walk with a distant vista of three gardeners +and a cartful of sand." + +"I must say," said Miss MacNish, "that this is the suddenest thing that +ever happened to me." + +"But you said you believed in love at first sight," McTavish explained. +"You knew yesterday what had happened to me--don't say you didn't, +because I saw you smiling to yourself. You might come into the garden +and let me say my say." + +She didn't budge. + +"Very well then. I will make a scene--right here--a terrible scene." He +caught her two hands in his, and drew her toward him so that the keys at +her belt jangled and clashed. + +"This is preposterous!" she exclaimed. + +"Not so preposterous as you think. But what's your first name?" + +"I think I haven't any at the moment." + +"Don't be ridiculous. There--there--" + +She tore her hands from him and struck at him wildly. But he ducked +like a trained boxer. + +"With everybody looking!" she cried, crimson with mortification. + +"I had a cable," he said, "calling me back to America. That is why I +have to hurry over the preliminaries." + +"The preliminaries," she cried, almost in tears. "Do you know who I am +that you treat me like a barmaid?" + +"Ladies," said McTavish, "who masquerade as housekeepers ought to know +what to expect." + +Her face was a blank of astonishment. "Traquair told," she said +indignantly. "Wait till I--" + +"No," said McTavish; "the porter at Brig O'Dread told. He said that you +yourself would show me the chapel. He said not to be surprised if you +pretended to be some one else. He said you had done that kind of thing +before. He seemed nettled about something." + +In spite of herself Miss McTavish laughed. "I told him," she said, "that +if you crossed my hand with silver, I would give it to him; but if you +crossed my hand with gold, I would keep it for myself. That made him +furious, and he slammed the door when he left. So you knew all along?" + +"Yes--Mrs. Nevis MacNish McTavish, I did; and when you had the faint +spell in the chapel, I almost proposed then. I tell you, your voice and +your face, and the way you walked--oh, they did for this young man on +the spot! Do you know how much hunger and longing and loving can be +crowded into a few days? I do. You think I am in a hurry? It seems to me +as if there'd been millions of years of slow waiting." + +"I have certainly played the fool," said Miss McTavish, "and I suppose I +have let myself in for this." Her voice was gentler. "Do you know, too, +why I turned white in the chapel?" + +"Yes," he said, "I know that." + +"Traquair told you." + +"Yes." + +"And if you hadn't liked me this way, would you have turned me out of +house and home?" + +He drew her hand through his arm, and they crossed the gravel path into +the garden. "What do _you_ think?" he asked. + +"I think--no," said she. + +"Thank you," said he. "Do you read Tennyson?" + +"No," said she, "Burns." + +McTavish sighed helplessly. Then a light of mischief came into his eye. +"As _Burns_ says," said he: + + "'If you are not the heiress born, + And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir, + We two will wed to-morrow morn, + And you shall still be Lady Clare,'" + +"I love every word Burns wrote," she said enthusiastically, and +McTavish, though successful, was ashamed. + +"McTavish," she said, "the other day, when I felt that I had to get here +before you, I promised my driver ten pounds if he beat your car," + +"Yes," said McTavish, "I guessed what was up, and told my man to go +slower. It wasn't the psychological moment for either of us to break our +necks, was it?" + +"No; but I promised the man ten pound, McTavish--and I hay'na got it." + +"Ten pounds ought to have a certain purchasing power," said he. + +"Then shut your eyes," she commanded. + +"And after all," she said, "you'll be _The_ McTavish, won't you?" + +"I will not," he said. "Do you think I'm going to take you back to +America with me Saturday, and have all my friends in New York point +their fingers at me, and call me--_The_?" + + + + +THE PARROT + +He had been so buffeted by fortune, through various climates and various +applications of his many-sidedness, that when I first met Leslie it was +difficult to believe him a fellow countryman. His speech had been welded +by the influence of alien languages to a choice cosmopolitanism. His +skin, thick and brown from blazing sunshines, puckered monkey-like about +his blue, blinking eyes. He never hurried. He was going to Hong-Kong to +build part of a dry-dock for the English Government, he said, but his +ambitions had dwindled to owning a farm somewhere in New York State and +having a regular menagerie of birds and animals. + +His most enthusiastic moments of conversation were in arguing and +anecdotalizing the virtues and ratiocinations of animals and birds. The +monkey, he said, was next to man the most clever, but was inferior to +the elephant in that he had no sense of right or wrong. Furthermore, +monkeys were immodest. Next came certain breeds of dogs. Very low in the +scale he placed horses; very high, parrots. + +"Concerning parrots," he said, "people are under erroneous impressions, +but copying and imitation are not unreasonable processes. Your parrot, +under his bright cynical feathers, is a modest fowl that grasps at every +opportunity of education from the best source--man. In a native state +his intelligence remains closed: the desire to be like a woodpecker or a +humming-bird does not pick at the cover. Just as a boy born in an +Indiana village and observing the houses of his neighbors might not wish +to become an architect, but if he were transported to Paris or Vienna, +to a confrontation of what is excellent in proportion, it might be that +art would stir in his spirit and, after years of imitation, would come +forth in a stately and exquisite procession of buildings. So in his +native woods the parrot recognizes nothing but color that is worthy of +his imitation. But in the habitations of man, surrounded by taste, which +is the most precious of all gifts, his ambition begins to grow, his +ignorance becomes a shame. He places his foot on the first rung of the +educational ladder. His bright colors fade, perhaps; the eyes of his +mind are turned toward brighter and more ornamental things. What +creature but a parrot devotes such long hours to the acquirement of +perfection in each trivial stage of progress? What creature remembers so +faithfully and so well? We know not what we are, you and I and the rest +of us; but if we had had the application, patience, and ambition of the +average parrot, we should be greater men. But some people say that +parrots are mean, self-centred, and malignant. They have, I admit, a +crust of cynicism which might lead to that impression, and not unjustly, +but underneath the parrot's crotchets there beats a great and benevolent +heart. Let me give you an instance: + +"In '88 my luck was down, and as a first step to raising it I shipped +before the mast in an English bottom outward bound from Hong-Kong to +Java. Jaffray was the cook, a big negro who owned a savage gray +parrot--a mighty clever bird but to all intents and purposes of a most +unscrupulous and cruel nature. Many a time her cleverness at provoking a +laugh was all that saved her from sudden death. She bit whom she could; +she stole what she could. She treated us like dogs. Only Jaffray could +handle her without a weapon. Him she loved and made love to with a +sheepish and resolute abandon. From him she endured the rapid +alternations of whippings and caressings with the most stoical fortitude +and self-restraint. When he whipped her she would close her eyes and +say: 'I could bite him, but I won't. Polly's a bad girl. Hit her again,' +When the whipping was over she would say: 'Polly's sore. Poor Polly! How +I pity that poor girl!' Love-making usually succeeded a whipping in +short order, and then she was at her best. She would turn her head to +one side, cast the most laughably provoking glances, hold one claw +before her face, perhaps, like a skeleton fan, and say: 'Don't come +fooling round me. Go away, you bad man,' + +"I tried my best to be friends with her. But only to prove that the +knack that I am supposed to have with birds and beasts has its +limitations. With one long day following another and opportunity +constantly at hand, I failed utterly in obtaining her friendship. +Indeed, she was so lacking in breeding as to make public mockings of my +efforts. There was no man before the mast but stood higher in her graces +than I. My only success was in keeping my temper. But it was fated that +we should be friends and comrades, drawn together by the bonds of a +common suffering. + +"I will tell you the story of the wreck another time. In some ways it +was peculiar. I will only tell you now that I swam for a long time +(there was an opaque fog) and bumped my head against one of the ship's +boats. I seized the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb +in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her +davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely +attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's +graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and +sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with +a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the boat. And +presently I was aware that violence had succeeded where patience had +failed. Polly sat in the stern sheets timidly cooing and offering to +shake hands. At another time I should have burst laughing at her--she +was so coy, so anxious to please. But I had just arrived from seeing my +captain's head broken to pieces by a falling spar, and a good friend of +mine stabbed by another good friend of mine, and I was nearer to tears. + +"It was cold for that part of the world, and rain fell heavily from time +to time. Polly complained bitterly all night and said that she would +take her death o' cold, but in the morning (I had fallen asleep) she +waked me in her pleasantest and most satisfied voice, saying, 'Tumble up +for breakfast.' I pulled myself out of the rain-water into which I had +slipped, and sat up. The sky and sea were clear from one horizon to the +other and the sun was beginning to scorch. + +"'Bully and warm, ain't it?' said Polly. + +"'Right you are, old girl,' said I. + +"She perched on my shoulder and began to oil and arrange her draggled +feathers. + +"'What a hell of a wreck that was!' she said suddenly, and, after a +pause: 'Where's my nigger?' + +"'He's forsaken you, old girl,' said I, 'for Mother Carey's chickens.' + +"'Poor Polly,' said she; 'how I pity that poor girl!' + +"Now I don't advance for a moment the theory that she understood all +that she said, nor even a part of what I said. But her statements and +answers were often wonderfully apt. Have you ever known one of those +tremendously clever deaf people whom you may talk with for a long time +before discovering that they are deaf? Talking with poor Jaffray's +parrot was like that. It was only occasionally--not often, mind--that +her phrases argued an utter lack of reasoning power. She had been +educated to what I suppose to be a point very close to the limit of a +parrot's powers. At a fair count she had memorized a hundred and fifty +sentences, a dozen songs, and twenty or thirty tunes to whistle. Many +savages have not larger vocabularies; many highborn ladies have a less +gentle and cultivated enunciation. Let me tell you that had I been alone +in that boat, a young man, as I then was, who saw his ambitions and +energies doomed to a watery and abrupt finish, with a brief interval of +starvation to face, I might easily have gone mad. But I was saved from +that because I had somebody to talk to. And to receive confidence and +complaint the parrot was better fitted than a human being, better fitted +than a woman, for she placed no bar of reticence, and I could despair as +I pleased and on my own terms. + +"My clothes dried during the first day, and at night she would creep +under my coat to sleep. At first I was afraid that during +unconsciousness I should roll on her. But she was too wary for that. If +I showed a tendency to sprawl or turn over, she would wake and pierce my +ears with a sharp 'Take your time! Take your time!' + +"At sunrise every day she would wake me with a hearty 'Tumble up for +breakfast.' + +"Unfortunately there was never any breakfast to be had, but the +rain-water in the bottom of the boat, warm as it was and tasting of +rotting wood, saved us from more frightful trial. + +"Here is a curious fact: After the second night I realized and counted +every hour in all its misery of hunger and duration, yet I cannot, to +save my soul, remember how many days and nights passed between the wreck +and that singular argument for a parrot's power of reasoning that was to +be advanced to me. It suffices to know that many days and nights went by +before we began to die of hunger. + +"In what remained of the rain-water (with the slow oscillations of the +boat it swashed about and left deposits of slime on her boards) I caught +from time to time glimpses of my face as affected by starvation. And it +may interest you to know that it was not the leanness of my face that +appalled me but the wickedness of it. All the sins I had ever sinned, +all the lies I had told, all the meannesses I had done, the drunks I +had been on, the lusts I had sated, came back to me from the +bilge-water. And I knew that if I died then and there I should go +straight to hell if there was one. I made divers trials at repentance +but was not able to concentrate my mind upon them. I could see but one +hope of salvation--to die as I had not lived--like a gentleman. It was +not a voluminous duty, owing to the limits set upon conduct by the +situation, but it was obvious. Whatever pangs I should experience in the +stages of dissolution, I must spare Polly. + +"In view of what occurred it is sufficiently obvious that I read my duty +wrongly. For, when I was encouraging myself to spare the bird I should +rather have been planning to save her. She, too, must have been +suffering frightfully from the long-continued lack of her customary +diet, but it seems that while enduring it she was scheming to save me. + +"She had been sitting disconsolately on the gunwale when the means +struck suddenly into her tortuously working mind and acted upon her +demeanor like a sight of sunflower seeds, of which she was prodigiously +fond. If I follow her reasoning correctly it was this. The man who has +been so nice to me needs food. He can't find it for himself; therefore I +must find it for him. Thus far she reasoned. And then, unfortunately, +trusting too much to a generous instinct, and disregarding the most +obvious and simple calculation, she omitted the act of turning around, +and instead of laying the egg that was to save me in the boat, she laid +it in the ocean. It sank." + + * * * * * + +Long voyages make for dulness. I had listened to the above narrative +with so much interest as to lose for a moment my sense of what was +patent. In the same absurd way that one man says to another whom he +knows perfectly well, "What--is this you?" I said to Leslie very +eagerly, "Were you saved?" And he answered, "No; we were both drowned." + + + + +ON THE SPOT; OR, THE IDLER'S HOUSE-PARTY + + +I + +Last winter was socially the most disgusting that I remember ever having +known, because everybody lost money, except Sally's father and mine. We +didn't, of course, mind how much money our friends lost--they always had +plenty left; but we hated to have them talk about it, and complain all +the time, and say that it was the President's fault, or poor John +Rockefeller's, or Senator So-and-so's, or the life insurance people's. +When a man loses money it is, as a matter of fact, almost always his own +fault. I said so at the beginning of last winter, and I say so still. +And Sally, who is too lazy to think up original remarks, copied it from +me and made no bones about saying it to all the people she knew who she +thought needed that kind of comfort. But perhaps, now that I think of +it, Sally and I may have contributed to making the winter socially +disgusting. Be that as it may, we were the greatest sufferers. + +We moved to Idle Island in September. And we were so delighted with what +the architects, and landscape-gardeners, and mosquito doctors had done +to make it habitable; with the house itself, and the grape-house, and +greenhouses, and gardens, and pergolas, and marble columns from Athens, +and terraces, and in-and-out door tennis-courts, and swimming-pools, and +boat-houses, and golf links, and all the other country-place +necessities, and particularly with a line of the most comfortable +lounging-chairs and divans in the world, that we decided to spend the +winter there. Sally telephoned to my father's secretary and asked him to +spend the winter with us, and make out lists for week-end parties, and +to be generally civil and useful. The secretary said that he would be +delighted to come if he could persuade my father and mother to go abroad +for the winter; and later he called Sally up, and said that he had +persuaded them. + +Well, from the first our week-end parties were failures. On the first +Friday in October the President of the United States said that he hated +cheats and liars (only he mentioned names) and the stock-market went to +smash. Saturday it was still in a messy state, and the people who came +out Saturday afternoon couldn't or wouldn't talk about anything else. +They came by the 4:30 to Stepping-Stone, and were ferried over to the +island in the motor boat. Sally and I rode down to the pier in the +jinrikishas that my father's secretary had had imported for us for a +wedding present; and, I give you my word, the motor-boat as it slowed +into the pier looked like an excursion steamer out to view the beauties +of the Hudson. Everybody on board was hidden behind a newspaper. + +"Fong," said Sally to her jinrikisha man, "take me back to the house." + +He turned and trotted off with her, and they disappeared under the elms. + +"Just because your guests aren't interested in you," I called after her, +"is no reason why you shouldn't be interested in them." + +But she didn't answer, and I was afraid I'd hurt her feelings; so I said +to my man, or horse, or horse-man--it's hard to know what to call them: + +"Long Lee, you go back to the house, clip-step." + +Clip-step soon overtook Sally, and I asked her what she was mad about. + +"I'm mad," she said, "because none of those people have ever seen this +beautiful island before, and they wouldn't look up from their dirty old +newspapers. What's the matter with them?" + +"They're worried about the market," said I, "and each one wants the +others to think that he's more worried than they are. That's all." + +"But the women!" said Sally. "There we sat waving to them, and not so +much as a look for our pains. My arm is all numb from waving +hospitably." + +"Never mind," I said. "I'll--I'll--ask your maid to rub it for you. And +then we'll send the motor-boat for the very latest edition of the +papers, and we'll have Blenheim and Windermere fold them like ships and +cocked hats, the way they do the napkins, and put them at each person's +place at dinner. That will be the tactful way of showing them what _we_ +think about it." + +Sally, naturally enough, was delighted at this idea, and forgot all +about her poor, numb arm. But the scheme sounded better than it worked. +Because when we went in to dinner the guests, instead of being put to +shame by the sight of the newspapers, actually sputtered with pleasure, +and fell on them and unfolded them and opened them at the financial +pages. And then the men began to shout, and argue, and perspire, and +fling quotations about the table, and the women got very shrill, and +said they didn't know what they would do if the wretched market kept up, +or rather if it didn't keep up. And nobody admired the new furniture or +the pictures, or the old Fiffield plate, or Sally's gown, or said +anything pleasant and agreeable. + +"Sam," said Tony Marshall to me, "I'm glad that you can empty your new +swimming-pool in three-quarters of an hour, but if you don't watch out +you may be so poor before the winter's over that you won't be able to +buy water enough to fill it." + +"If you're not careful," I said, "I'll fill it with champagne and make +you people swim in it till you're more sprightly and agreeable. I never +saw such a lot of oafs. I--" + +"I tell you, Sam," bellowed Billoo, "that the financial status of this +country, owing to that infernal lunatic in the White House--" + +"If you must tell me again--" I began. + +"Oh," he said disgustedly, "_you_ can't be serious about anything. +You're so da--a--ah--urn--rich that you never give a thought to the +suffering of the consumer." + +"Don't I?" said I. "Did you happen to see me the morning after the +Clarion's ball last winter?--I thought about the consumer then, I can +tell you." + +Billoo turned his back on me very rudely. I looked across the table to +Sally. She smiled feebly. She had drawn back her chair so that Tombs and +Randall could fight it out across her plate without hitting her in the +nose. They were frantically shaking their fists at each other, and they +kept saying very loud, and both at once: + +"I tell _you!_" and they made that beginning over and over, and never +got any further. + +At two o'clock the next morning Mrs. Giddings turned to Sally and said: + +"And now, my dear, I can't wait another moment. You must show me all +over your lovely new house. I can think of nothing else." + +"Can't you?" said Sally. "I can. It's two o'clock. But I'll show you to +your own lovely room, if you like." + +In the morning I sent for Blenheim, and told him to take all the Sunday +papers as soon as they arrived and throw them overboard. All I meant to +be was tactful. But it wouldn't do. The first thing the men asked for +was the papers; and the second thing. And finally they made such a fuss +and threw out so many hints that I had to send the motor-boat over to +the main-land. This made me rather sore at the moment, and I wished that +the motor-boat was at the bottom of the Sound; but it wasn't, and had +to be sent. + +Later in the day I was struck with an idea. It was one of the few that +ever struck me without outside help, and I will keep it dark for the +present. But when I got Sally alone I said to her: + +"Now, Sally, answer prettily: do you or do you not know what plausible +weather is?" + +"I do not," she said promptly. + +"Of course, you do not," I said, "you miserable little ignoramus. It has +to do with an idea." + +"No, Sam!" cried Sally. + +"One of mine," I said. + +"Oh, Sam!" she said. "Can I help?" + +"You can." + +"How?" + +"You can pray for it." + +"For the idea?" she asked. + +"No, you silly little goat," I said. "For the plausible weather." + +"Must I?" she asked. + +"You must," I said. "If you have marrow-bones, prepare to use them now." + +Sally looked really shocked. + +"Knees," I explained. "They're the same thing. But now that I think of +it, you needn't use yours. If anybody were looking, it would be +different, of course. But nobody is, and you may use mine." + +So Sally used my knees for the moment, and I explained the idea to her +briefly, and some other things at greater length; and then we both +laughed and prayed aloud for plausible weather. + +But it was months coming. + + + + +II + +Think, if you can, of a whole winter passing in Westchester County +without its storming one or more times on any single solitary Saturday +or Sunday or holiday! Christmas Day, even, some of the men played tennis +out-of-doors. The balls were cold and didn't bounce very high, and all +the men who played wanted to sit in the bar and talk stocks, but +otherwise it made a pretty good game. Often, because our guests were so +disagreeable about the money they had lost or were losing, we decided +not to give any more parties, but when we thought that fresh air was +good for our friends, whether they liked it or not, of course we had to +keep on asking them. And, besides, we were very much set on the idea +that I have referred to, and there was always a chance of +plausible weather. + +It did not come till May. But then it "came good," as Sally said. It +"came good" and it came opportunely. Everything was right. We had the +right guests; we had the right situation in Wall Street, and the weather +was right. It came out of the north-east, darkly blowing (this was +Saturday, just after the usual motor-boat load and their afternoon +editions had been landed), and at first it made the Sound, and even the +sheltered narrows between the island and the main-land, look pancake-flat +and oily. Then it turned the Sound into a kind of incoming gray, striped +with white; and then into clean white, wonderfully bright and staring +under the dark clouds. I never saw a finer storm come up finer. But +nobody would go out to the point to see it come. The Stock Exchange had +closed on the verge of panic (that was its chronic Saturday closing last +winter) and you couldn't get the men or women away from the thought of +what _might_ happen Monday. "Good heavens," said Billoo, "think of poor +Sharply on his way home from Europe! Can't get to Wall Street before +Wednesday, and God knows what he'll find when he gets there." + +"What good would it do him to get there before?" I asked. "Wouldn't he +sail right in and do the wrong thing, just as everybody has done +all winter?" + +"You don't understand, Sam," said Billoo, very lugubriously; and then he +annihilated me by banging his fist on a table and saying, "_At least +he'd be on the spot, wouldn't he_?" + +"Oh," I said, "if you put it that way, I admit that that's just where he +would be. Will anybody come and have a look at the fine young storm that +I'm having served?" + +"Not now, Sam--not now," said Billoo, as if the storm would always stay +just where, and as, it was; and nobody else said anything. The men +wanted to shout and get angry and make dismal prophecies, and the women +wanted to stay and hear them, and egg them on, and decide what they +would buy or sell on Monday. + +"All right, Billoo-on-the-spot," I said. "Sally--?" + +Sally was glad to come. And first we went out on the point and had a +good look at the storm. The waves at our feet were breaking big and +wild, the wind was groaning and howling as if it had a mortal +stomach-ache, and about a mile out was a kind of thick curtain of +perpendicular lines, with dark, squally shadows at its base. + +"Sam!" cried Sally, "it's snow--snow," and she began to jump up and +down. + +In a minute or two flakes began to hit us wet slaps in the face, and we +took hands and danced, and then ran (there must have been something +intoxicating about that storm) all the way to the pier. And there was +the captain of the motor-boat just stepping ashore. + +"The man himself," said Sally. + +"Captain," said I, "how are we off for boats?" + +By good-luck there were in commission only the motor-boat, and the +row-boat that she towed behind, and a canoe in the loft of the +boat-house. + +"Captain," I said, "take the _Hobo_ (that was the name of the +motor-boat) and her tender to City Island, and don't come back till +Wednesday morning, in time for the Wall Street special." + +"When you get to City Island," said Sally, "try to look crippled." + +"Not you," I said, "but the _Hobo_." + +"Tell them," said Sally, "if they ask questions, that you were blown +from your moorings, and that you couldn't get back in the teeth of the +gale because--because--" + +"Because," said I, "your cylinders slipped, and your clutch missed +fire, and your carbureter was full of prunes." + +"In other words," said Sally, "if anybody ever asks you anything about +anything--lie." + +We gave him a lot more instructions, and some eloquent money, and he +said, "Very good, ma'am," to me, and "Very good, miss," to Sally, and +pretty soon he, and the _Hobo_, and the engineer, and the _Hobo's_ crew +of one, and the tender were neatly blown from their moorings, and +drifted helplessly toward City Island at the rate of twenty-two miles an +hour. Then Sally and I (it was snowing hard, now) climbed into the loft +of the boat-house, and _fixed_ the canoe. + +"There," said Sally, putting down her little hatchet, "I don't believe +the most God-fearing banker in this world would put to sea in that! +Well, Sam, we've done it now." + +"We have," said I. + +"Will Monday never come?" said Sally. + +"Stop," said I; "the telephone." + +Idle Island was moored to the mainland by a telephone cable. It took us +nearly an hour to find where this slipped into the water. And we were +tired and hungry and wet and cold, but we simply had to persevere. It +was frightful. At length we found the thing--it looked like a slimy +black snake--and we cut it, where the water was a foot deep--the water +bit my wrists and ankles as sharply as if it had been sharks--and went +back to the house through the storm. + +It was as black as night (the weather, not the house), snowing furiously +and howling. We crept into the house like a couple of sneak-thieves, and +heard Billoo at his very loudest shouting: + +"I had Morgan on the wire all right--and the fool operator cut me off!" + +Sally snipped her wet fingers in my face. + +"Hello, fool operator," she said. + +"Hello, yourself," said I. "But oh, Sally, listen to that wind, and tell +me how it sounds to you. A wet hug if you guess the answer." + +"To me," said Sally, "it sounds plausible." And she got herself hugged. + + + + +III + +I don't believe that anybody slept much Saturday night. You never heard +such a storm in your life. It seemed to Sally and me, who would have +been the chief sufferers if it _had_ blown down, that our comfortable, +brand-new marble house flapped like a flag. Every now and then there +came a tremendous crack from one part of the island or another; and +each time Sally would say, "There goes my favorite elm," or I would say, +"There goes that elm again." + +Most of the men came down to breakfast Sunday morning. What with the +storm and the worry about stocks keeping them awake most of the night, +they were without exception nervous and cross, particularly Billoo. He +looked like an owl that had been first stuffed and then boiled. Blenheim +told me later that at various times during the night he had carried four +several pints of champagne to Billoo's room; and at 7 A.M., bicarbonate +of soda and aromatic spirits of ammonia. + +"I tell you, Sam," said Billoo crossly, "I've been awake all night +thinking what it would mean to some of us--yes, me!--if this storm +should wreck that ferry-boat of yours." + +A lot of wet snow and wind hit the dining-room windows a series of +rattling slaps. + +"She's a good boat, Sam, but smallish to ride out such a storm as this." + +"What a goat you are, Sam," said Tombs, also crossly, "not to keep two +ferry-boats, so that if one breaks down you have the other." + +"When we made up our minds to spend the winter here," I said, "I ordered +another; in fact, two. But they're still building; and besides, what if +the _Hobo_ does break down? There's plenty to eat and drink, I hope. +Nobody would suffer much." + +"No," said Billoo, "it would be no suffering for a business man to be +storm-bound here during a probable panic in Wall Street! + +"I'm tired," I said, "of hearing you refer to yourself or any of these +gentlemen as business men. You always gamble; and when you're in +good-luck you gambol, and when you aren't, you don't. What makes me +sickest about you all is that you're so nauseatingly conceited and +self-important. You all think that your beastly old Stock Exchange is +the axle about which the wheel of the world revolves, and each of you +thinks, privately, that he's the particular grease that makes it revolve +smoothly." + +"Well," said Billoo, "you know that the presence on the floor of one +steady, conservative man may often avert a panic." + +"Show me the man," I said. "Has any one here ever caused a panic or +averted one? But you all lose money just as often because you're on the +spot, as make it. Wouldn't you all be the richer for an absence now +and then?" + +"Of course," said Randall, "there are times when it doesn't matter one +way or the other. But when--well, when the market's in the state it is +now, it's life or death, almost, to be on the spot." + +"I don't understand," I said. "When the market looks fussy, why not +sell out, and wait for better times?" + +"We _can't_ sell out," said Billoo. "We're loaded up to the muzzle." + +"You look as if you had been," I said courteously; but Billoo brushed +the remark aside as if it had been a fly. + +"If we _try_ to unload," he said, "the market begins to collapse. We +_can't_ unload, except a little at a time, and still prices get lower +and lower and margins thinner and thinner. Now, I happen to _know_"--he +looked about him importantly--"that to-morrow will hear the failure of a +_very well-known_ house, and after that's announced--God knows." + +"How true that is!" I said. "But tell me: suppose you gentlemen +deliberately absented yourselves for a few days--wouldn't it restore +confidence? Wouldn't the other brokers say: 'Billoo, Randall, Tombs, +Marshall, Bedlo, etc., don't seem to think there's much doing. None of +'em's here--what's the use of _me_ being scared?'" + +"It would have the contrary effect, Sam," said Tombs solemnly. "They +would think that we had decamped in a body for Canada." + +"I don't know," said I, "but it would be a better thing for the country +if you all did ship to Canada--I don't think there's much doing +out-doors to-day. Hear that wind!" + +"If I can get rid of all my holdings," said Billoo, "I'll sit tight. +We'll see lower prices before we see higher." + +"Well," said I, "I'll bet you we don't." + +"Young man," said Billoo, and he looked almost well and happy, "just +name your sum." + +"I'll bet you a thousand," I said. + +"Sammy," said Tombs very sweetly, "have you got another thousand up your +sleeve?" + +"Sure," I said. + +"Done with you," said Tombs. + +In about five minutes I had bet with everybody present. + +"But mind," I said, "there mustn't be any dirty work. You people mustn't +go to town to-morrow with the idea of forming a strong coalition and +_putting_ prices down." + +"It wouldn't be worth while," said Billoo. "As a matter of fact, we'd +like nothing better than to see you win your bet, but as you can't, +possibly--why, a thousand dollars is always a thousand dollars." + +"Just the same," said I, "_no_ coalitions." + +The wind went on howling till late in the afternoon and then it began to +peter out. We had spent the whole day in the house, and everybody was +tired and bored, and nervous about Monday, and bedtime came earlier +than usual. + +"Sam," said Sally, when we were alone, "it's just occurred to me that we +_may_ be causing some of these people to lose a lot of money." + +"Why, Sally," I said, "you look scared." + +"I am," she said. "Don't _you_ think it would be rather awful?" + +"No, I don't," I said; "I think it would be split-tingly funny. But they +won't lose. Their absence will steady the market." + +"Who told you that, Sam?" said Sally. + +"Sam!" said I. + + + + +IV + +Even before the leaves come, you can't see the pier from the house. It +runs out from the bottom of a high bank and is otherwise hidden by +trees. But it's only a short distance, and in good weather we have the +guests walk it, because it gives them a better chance to admire the +gardens and the Athenian columns and things. But Monday, which dawned +bright and still and warm, and was just as typical of May in Westchester +as was the snow-and-wind storm, we drove them down in a bus because the +roads and paths were horribly muddy. Of course, none of the women +wanted to take the early train, so there were only the men and Sally +and I in the bus. Sally said that there was going to be some fun when +the men got to the pier and didn't find the _Hobo_, and she wasn't going +to miss it. Just before we started she drew me aside and said: + +"Sam, when we get there, for Heaven's sake look blank." + +"I understand your fears, Sally," I said, "and I will look as blank as I +possibly can. But remember, child, how easy it is for _you_ to look +blank; and don't always be urging others to attempt the impossible." + +"Mrs. Sam," said Billoo, on the way down, "I can't tell you what a good +time I've had." + +"You nice man," said Sally, "I wish we could persuade you to stay a day +or two longer." + +"If it wasn't for the market, I could stay forever," said Billoo. + +"Not if I lived," said I. "Saturday to Monday is plenty long +enough--Hello--!" + +The pier and the empty stretch of water between the island and the +mainland were in sight, but there was no _Hobo_. + +"Hello what?" said Tombs. "Why, where's the ferry?" + +"I don't see her," I said, and, I hope, anxiously; "you don't suppose--" + +"Isn't the _Hobo_ there?" shrieked Billoo. He turned his head on his +fat neck, and at first he looked very angry, and then scared. + +We walked down to the pier, and then out on the float to get as big a +water view as possible, but there wasn't so much as a row-boat in sight. + +"What can have happened?" said Sally. + +"I'm worried to death," I said. "Suppose she _was_ blown from her +moorings, the captain could have run her into New Rochelle, and come +back yesterday afternoon when the wind went down. Something must have +happened." + +"Oh, Sam," cried Sally, "you don't think she may have been run down by +one of the Sound steamers and sunk?" + +"I dare not think of it," I said. "I dare not think of the poor chaps on +board." + +"I don't see how I'm to get to town," said Billoo dismally. He pulled +out his watch, and held it in his hand, and every moment or two looked +at it. "Haven't you a couple of row-boats? We couldn't get this train, +but we could get the next--" + +I shook my head. "I'm sorry," I said. "We're not much on the water, and +we've never been properly supplied with boats--" + +Billoo swallowed some hasty thought or other, and began to look across +at the mainland. My father owns all the land opposite the island, even +the pier and the short road to the village of Stepping-Stone; and +although there were several boats at the pier, there were no people, and +the rest of the shore is nothing but thick woods. + +"We must telephone somewhere," said Billoo. + +"You can't," I said. "You know you tried to telephone all yesterday and +couldn't, and the butler told me this morning that he had tried to put +in a call and got no answer." + +"What does it matter?" said Sally. "You've all got to stay now. I think +that's splendid." + +"Mrs. Sam," said Tombs hollowly, "do you realize that this accident may +mean _ruin_ for some of us?" + +"Oh, dear!" said Sally "how dreadful!" + +"Somehow of other," said Billoo, "_I'm_ going to get across." + +And the others said that somehow or other _they_ were going to get +across, too. + +"I've _got_ to!" said Billoo, and he looked about in a fat, challenging +way as if daring any one to say that he had not got to. + +"You poor things," said Sally, "I hope to Heaven you can; but how?" + +"Where there's a will, Mrs. Sam--" Billoo said. And he began to think +hard. All of a sudden his face brightened. + +"It's too easy," he said. "The wind's right; four or five of us have +umbrellas--Sam, you'll have to lend us this float. We've only to cut it +from its moorings, and sail it across--May we have it?" + +"Yes," I said, "but you're crazy to try it." + +"It's a case of sink or swim," said he. "Who's coming?" + +Without exception the men agreed to sail with him on the float. It was a +fine, big platform, floated on sheet-iron air-tanks, and moored at the +four corners by heavy ropes. + +Sally and I withdrew to the pier and watched Billoo and the others cut +slowly through the ropes with their pocket-knives. Presently the float +began to move, and a second or two later the float end of the gang-plank +slipped into the water with a heavy splash. Those who had umbrellas +opened them to catch the breeze, and the others lit cigars, and stood +about in graceful attitudes. Sally and I cheered as loud as we could. + +"I'll send you a tug or something," Billoo called back to us, "and try +to find out what's happened to the _Hobo_." + +"Thank _you_!" I called back. + +"Sam," said Sally, "I don't know what you think, but I call it good +sand." + +"So do I," said I, "but foolish." + +"Why foolish?" said Sally. "They're really going quite fast, and +they'll be across in no time, and they'll get the next train and +everything." + +"They will not," I said. + +"Why?" said Sally. + +"Because," said I, "they will run on to the middle ground, and stay +there." + +"Not at high tide!" exclaimed Sally. + +"At high tide," said I. "That float draws a good two feet, and it's so +heavy that once it runs on the mud it will stay on the mud--" And then I +shouted to Billoo: + +"Look out for the middle ground!" + +"What?" he answered. + +"Why do you warn him?" said Sally. + +"Because it won't help him," said I. + +"What?" called Billoo again, and Sally answered at the top of her lungs, +"Look--out--for--the--middle--ground!" + +"Right O!" Billoo answered; "where is it?" + +"Just ahead," Sally called. + +Billoo turned to look, and at that moment the float, which was +travelling at a good clip, ran into it. + +Billoo and Randall fell flat on their faces; everybody staggered; one +umbrella and two hats went overboard and drifted away, and Sally and I +sat down on the pier and laughed till we were helpless. + + + + +V + +The float had become a fixture in the landscape about two hundred and +fifty yards out. We could converse with our friends by shouting only, +and when we got tired of condoling with them and giving them assurances +of our sympathy, we told them that _we_ were going back to the house to +get some more breakfast and think out what was best to be done, + +"Sam," said Sally, "that's the maddest lot of men I ever saw." + +We looked back. Billoo was stamping up and down the float, waving his +arms and orating like Falstaff; Randall and Tombs had their heads +together, and were casting what appeared to be baleful glances at +Billoo. It was evident that he was not popular on the float. + +When we had had some more breakfast, and had sat around a little to +digest it, the women began to come down-stairs. Mrs. Randall was the +first to come down, and she was in great distress. + +"It's _too_ dreadful," she said. "I had something of the utmost +importance to tell Billy, something that I wanted him to do for me +down-town. And I overslept." + +"Well," said I, "let me tell you what a good fellow Billy is. He hasn't +gone yet." + +"Good Heavens!" she cried, "not gone yet? Why, what time is it? Why, he +won't get down-town in time for the opening!" + +"Probably not," I said. "He was just going, when suddenly he said, 'I +know there's something my wife wants to say to me.' I said, 'Wake her up +and find out what it is.' He said, 'No, she's getting so she can't do +without her beauty sleep; I'll just wait around till she wakes of +herself.'" + +"Sam," said Mrs. Randall, "what has happened to my husband?" + +"Nothing much," I said. "He's in the same boat with many others--only it +isn't a boat. Don't be alarmed." + +"_Where is my husband?_" said she. + +"If you are equal to a short, muddy walk," I said, "I will show him to +you--Morning, little Miss Tombs--want to see brother and young Fitch? +They said they wouldn't go to town till you'd seen them--Morning, Mrs. +Giddings--morning, Miss Marshall--I'm not much on breaking bad news, but +there's been an accident to all your husbands and brothers and fiancés. +They're all alive still, so far as I know--but they ought not to last +more than five or six days." + +"It's proposed," said Sally, "that we all go and see what can be done +for them." + +We refused to answer any questions. We led the way to the pier and +pointed out the float, and the men on it. "There," said Sally, "you can +see them quite plainly from here." + +"Yes," said I, "and the more plainly you see them, the plainer they +are." + +"Will you kindly tell me," said Mrs. Randall, "what my husband is doing +out there on that float?" + +"He is doing nothing," I said. "You can see for yourself. And it isn't a +float any more." + +"Better tell them what has happened," said Sally. + +"No, Sally," I said, "no." + +"Yes, Sam," she said. + +"Oh, all right," I said, "if you really think it's best. The fact is, +ladies, the whole thing is a piece of drunken folly. You know how men +are when they get drinking and arguing, and quarrelling. To make a long +story short, it came to Billoo's insulting Randall; Randall challenges +him; duelling is against the law; they take pistols and witnesses out on +the water beyond the jurisdiction of the United States; and they _were_ +going to murder each other. But it's all right now--don't be +frightened." + +Sally had turned her face away, and I'm sure I was serious as a judge. I +patted Mrs. Randall on the shoulder. + +"Even if your husband isn't brave," I said, "he's clever, clever and +deep." + +"My husband not brave!" she cried. "I like that; he's the bravest man I +ever saw." + +"Well, that may be," I said doubtfully, "but, considering that on the +way out to the duelling ground, or water, when nobody was looking but +Sally and me, he kicked the box of cartridges overboard. But, perhaps +they'll agree to use pocket-knives--" + +"Sam," said little Miss Tombs, "I'll give you a kiss good-morning if +you'll be serious." + +"Wait till Fitch is looking," I said. + +Then Sally explained what had happened, and edged herself so politely +between little Miss Tombs and me that the others laughed. + +"They'll float at high tide, won't they?" asked Mrs. Giddings. + +"No," I said. "It was high tide when they ran aground. It will take a +tugboat to get them off." + +The words weren't out of my mouth when a tugboat appeared round the +corner of the island, making up the channel. The men on the float began +to scream and yell, and jump up and down, and wave their arms. But the +tugboat paid no attention. It thought they were drunk. It passed within +three hundred yards of them, whistled a couple of times, and became +small in the distance. + +"Sam," said Sally, "in about an hour they'll be high and dry on the mud. +Then not even a boat can get to them. And by the time it's high tide +again it will be dark and nobody will see them, and they'll be dying of +hunger and thirst." + +"That's true," I said. "Sally, you explain that to them, and I'll have +the men fetch one of the stable doors, and we'll put a sail on it and +provision it and trust to its hitting the middle ground about where +they did." + +I never worked so hard in my life. I had a stable door taken off its +tracks and rigged with the canoe's sail; and we put a case of champagne +on board, and a tub of ice, and bread, and cold meat, and butter, and +jam, and cigars, and cigarettes, and liquors, and a cocktail shaker, and +a bottle of olives stuffed with red peppers, for Billoo, and two kinds +of bitters, and everything else to eat or drink that anybody could think +of, and some camp-chairs, and cards for bridge, and score-pads, and +pencils, and a folding table. Of course, most of the things got soaked +the minute we launched the door, but there wasn't time to do the thing +over again. So we gave the relief boat three cheers and let her go. + +The way the men on the float eyed the course of the door, you would have +thought them all nearly half dead with hunger and thirst. We were all +excited, too. + +At first the door made straight for the float. Then the breeze shifted a +little, and it made to the left of the float--then to the right of +it--and then straight at it again. + +Everybody cheered. The relief expedition looked like a success. The men +all came to the edge of the float to meet it--and then, just as all +seemed well, a dark patch of wind came scudding across the water, filled +the door's sail, and sent the door kiting off to the right again. The +game was up, The door was going to miss the float by sixty or +seventy feet. + +Then the men on the float began to toss coins; there was a shout of +delight; and Billoo, trumpeting his hands, called to me: + +"Make the ladies go behind the boat-house, quick!" And he began to +unbutton his coat. I herded the women behind the boat-house and ran back +to the pier. Billoo was stripping as fast as he could. + +"What's he doing?" Mrs. Giddings called to me. + +And I answered, "He seems to be overcome by the heat." + +A few moments later Billoo stood revealed, a fat white silhouette +against the opposite shore. He stepped from the float into the water; it +came to his ankles. Then he waded, gingerly but with determination, +toward the passing door. He went as if he expected the water to get +suddenly deep, but it didn't. At no time did it reach to his ankles, +until, just as he was reaching out his hand to catch hold of the door, +and just as the men on the float set up a cheer, he stepped off the +middle ground in to deep water. + +The splash that he made lifted the door half out of water, and shot it +away from him, the wind filled its sail, and when Billoo came to the +surface and looked for it, it was thirty feet off. But he set his teeth +(I think he set them) and swam after it. Just as he reached it, he +fetched an awful yell. He had been seized with cramps. Still, he had +sense enough to cling to the door, and, when the first spasm of the +cramp had passed, to sprawl himself upon it. There he lay for a while, +lapped by the water that came over the door, and writhing in his fat +nakedness. + +Meanwhile, the door was caught in the full strength of the ebbing tide, +and began to make for the open Sound. Poor Billoo was in a bad way--and +when he turned the ice-tub upside down for a seat, and wrapped himself +in the canoe sail, I invited the women to come out and see for +themselves how brave he was. + +He waved his hand to us, and just as he and his well-provisioned craft +rounded a corner of the island he selected a bottle of champagne and +deftly extracted the cork. + +I told some of my men to follow along the shore and to let me know what +became of him. I couldn't do anything more for Billoo; but I liked the +man, and took an affectionate interest in his ultimate fate--_whatever_ +it might be. And I call that true friendship. + +Pretty soon the middle ground on which the float was stuck began to show +above water, and as it was evident that we could do nothing further for +the relief of our shipwrecked friends, we decided to go back to the +house, change our muddy boots, play a rubber or so, and have lunch. But +first little Miss Tombs called to young Fitch, and told him if he found +himself starving to dig clams in the mud. + + + + +VI + +The only fault that I could find with the way things had gone so far was +that Sally had a disgusting headache that marred her pleasure and her +sense of humor. She hadn't said very much, and had laughed with only a +half-heart at things that had seemed to me excruciatingly funny. For +instance, when Billoo was seized with the cramps she had barely smiled, +and once or twice when I had been doing the talking she had looked +pityingly at me, instead of roaring with laughter, the way a wife +should do. + +And when we got to the house, she said that if we would excuse her she +would go to her room and lie down. + +"I've just got one of my usual headaches," she said. + +That remark worried me, because it was the first headache she had ever +complained of to _me_; and when, after she had gone upstairs, Miss +Randall said, "Maybe Sally ought to see the doctor," I had a sudden +awful, empty, gulpy feeling. Suppose she was going to be really sick! +Suppose she was going to have pneumonia or scarlet-fever or spinal +meningitis! Here we were, cut off from medical assistance till Wednesday +morning. And it was our own fault--mine; mine, for being _too_ funny. +Then I thought, "Maybe those men on the float are losing all the money +they've got in the world," and that made me feel pretty glum; and then I +thought, "Maybe poor Billoo is drowned by now," and I went cold +all over. + +"Why don't you make the trump, Sam?" said Mrs. Giddings. + +"Good Heavens!" I said. "Did I deal? Won't somebody play my hand? I'm +worried about Sally." + +Then I bolted upstairs, and there was Sally lying on her bed, with a +glass tube sticking out of her mouth. + +"How are you," I said, "and what are you doing?" + +"I feel rather sick, Sam," she said. And she looked so pale that I could +have screamed. "And I'm taking my temperature." + +"Do you think you've got fever?" I cried. + +"I don't know," she said. + +"Oh, Sally--Sally!" I cried. "Forgive me--it's all my fault--and I love +you so--My God! what shall I do? I know--" + +Then I kissed her, and ran out of the room, and all the way to the +boat-house. I found a bathing-suit, undressed, put it on, tore down to +the pier, and went overboard. I suppose the water was ghastly cold, but +I didn't feel it. I suppose I never should have gotten all the way +across to the main-land if I hadn't been boiling with fear and +excitement, and besides I walked and waded across the middle ground and +got a rest that way. The men on the float kept calling to me, and asking +me questions, but I hadn't enough breath nor reason to answer them; I +just swam and swam and swam. + +About fifty feet from the pier on the main-land I began to get horrible +pains up and down the muscles of my legs; and they wanted to stop +kicking, but I wouldn't let them. I had to sit on the pier for a while +to rest, but pretty soon I was able to stand, and somehow or other, +running and walking, I got to the doctor's house in Stepping-Stone. He +is very nice and an old friend, and the moment I told him Sally was +desperately sick he said she wasn't, and I felt better. He gave me some +brandy to drink, and we started for the island. I begged him to run, +but he wouldn't. He walked leisurely and pointed out this tree as a very +fine specimen and well grown, or that one as too much crowded by its +neighbors. He was daft on forestry. Patients didn't interest him a bit. +Finally, however, we got to the pier, and stole somebody's row-boat, and +I took the oars, and then we went faster. + +When we entered the house we found all the women except Sally +surrounding Billoo. He was very red in the face and dressed only in the +canoe sail; but he wasn't in the least embarrassed. He had a +self-satisfied smile; and he was talking as fast and as loud as +he could. + +We told him to go to bed and be ashamed of himself, and sleep it off. +And he said that nobody understood him, and denied having drunk the +whole case of champagne, and he said that he was in perfect control of +all his faculties, and that if the ladies wished him to, he could dance +a hornpipe for them that he had learned when he was a sailor.... + +The doctor and I went upstairs; and while he was with Sally I changed +into proper clothes; and then I waited outside the door for him to come +out and tell me the worst. After a long time he came. He looked very +solemn, and closed the door behind him. + +"What _is_ it?" I said, and I think my voice shook like a leaf. + +"Sam," he said gravely, "Sally is by way of cutting her first wisdom +tooth." + +"Good Lord!" I said, "is that all?" + +"It's enough," said the doctor, "because it isn't a _tooth_." + +"Oh!" I said, "oh! What ought I to do?" + +"Why," said he, "I'd go in, and tell her how glad you are, and maybe +laugh at her a little bit, and make much of her." + +But I couldn't laugh at Sally, because she was crying. + +I took her in my arms and made much of her, and asked her why she was +crying, and she said she was crying because she was glad. + +When the doctor had returned to Stepping-Stone, he got the _Hobo's_ +captain on the telephone and told him from me to bring the _Hobo_ back +to Idle Island at once. She came about six, just as the tide was getting +high, and she brought rescue to the men on the float, and, better than +rescue, she brought the evening papers. + +There had been a big day on Wall Street; one of the biggest in its +history. And the men whom we had kept from going to business had made, +among them, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just by sitting still. +But they were ungrateful, especially Billoo. He complained bitterly, and +said that he would have made three times as much money if he had been +_on the spot_. + + * * * * * + +When the men paid the bets that they had lost to me, I turned the money +over to my father's secretary and told him to deposit it as a +special account. + +"What shall I call the account?" he asked. + +"Call it," I said, "the account of W. Tooth." + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spread Eagle and Other Stories, by +Gouverneur Morris + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES *** + +***** This file should be named 9888-8.txt or 9888-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/8/8/9888/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and PG +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 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 Spread Eagle and Other Stories + +Author: Gouverneur Morris + +Posting Date: November 17, 2011 [EBook #9888] +Release Date: February, 2006 +First Posted: October 28, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + + THE + + SPREAD EAGLE + + AND OTHER STORIES + + BY + + GOUVERNEUR MORRIS + + AUTHOR OF "THE FOOTPRINT, AND OTHER STORIES," ETC. + + 1910 + + + +_TO ELSIE, PATSIE, AND KATE_ + + _I had thought to sit in the ruler's chair, + But three pretty girls are sitting there-- + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + I had thought to lord it with eyes of gray, + I had thought to be master, and have_ my _way; + But six blue eyes vote_: nay, nay, nay! + _Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + Of Petticoats three I am sore afraid, + (Though Kate's is more like a candle-shade), + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + And I must confess (with shame) to you + That time there was when Petticoats two + Were enough to govern me through and through, + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + Oh Patsie, third of a bullying crew, + And Elsie, and Kate, be it known to you-- + To Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, + That Elsie_ alone _was strong enough + To smother a motion, or call a bluff, + Or any small pitiful atom thereof-- + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + So, though I've renounced that ruler's part + To which I was born (as is writ in my heart), + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, + Though I do what I'm told (yes, you_ know _I do) + And am made to write stories (and sell them, too). + Still--I wish to God I had more like you, + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate_. + +BAR HARBOR, _August_, 1910. + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +Certain persons have told me (for nothing) that "White Muscats of +Alexandria" resembles a tale in the Arabian Nights. And so it does. +Most damningly. And this is printed in the hope of saving other +persons postage. + + + + +CONTENTS + +_The Spread Eagle +Targets +The Boot +The Despoiler +One More Martyr +"Ma'am?" +Mr. Holiday +White Muscats of Alexandria +Without a Lawyer +The "Monitor" and the "Merrimac" +The McTavish +The Parrot +On the Spot; or, The Idler's House-Party_ + + + + +THE SPREAD EAGLE + +In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact +was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation +that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he +was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own +subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his +mother wanted him to be a polite American, And to be polite, in her +mind, was to be at home in French and German, to speak English (or +American) with the accent of no particular locality, to know famous +pictures when you saw them, and, if little, to be bosom friends with +little dukes and duchesses and counts of the Empire, to play in the +gravel gardens of St. Germain, to know French history, and to have for +exercise the mild English variations of American games--cricket instead +of base-ball; instead of football, Rugby, or, in winter, lugeing above +Montreux. To luge upon a sled you sit like a timid, sheltered girl, and +hold the ropes in your hand as if you were playing horse, and descend +inclines; whereas, as Fitzhugh Williams well knew, in America rich boys +and poor take their hills head first, lying upon the democratic turn. + +It wasn't always Switzerland in winter. Now and again it was Nice or +Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball +cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while, +for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the +maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was +lawn tennis also, which you might play without losing caste "at home," +Fitzhugh Williams never used that term but with the one meaning. He +would say, for instance, to the little Duchess of Popinjay--or one just +as good--having kissed her to make up for having pushed her into her +ancestral pond, "Now I am going to the house," meaning Perth House, that +Mrs. Williams had taken for the season. But if he had said, "Now I am +going home," the little Duchess would have known that he was going to +sail away in a great ship to a strange, topsy-turvy land known in her +set as "the States," a kind of deep well from which people hoist gold in +buckets, surrounded by Indians. Home did not mean even his father's +house. Let Fitzhugh Williams but catch sight of the long, white shore of +Long Island, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the amazing Liberty, and the +word fluttered up from his heart even if he spoke it not. Ay, let him +but see the Fire Island light-ship alone upon the deep, and up leaped +the word, or the sensation, which was the same thing. + +One Fourth of July they were in Paris (you go to Paris for tea-gowns to +wear grouse-shooting in Scotland), and when his valet, scraping and +bowing, informed Fitzhugh Williams, aged nine, that it was time to get +up, and tub, and go forth in a white sailor suit, and be of the world +worldly, Fitzhugh declined. A greater personage was summoned--Aloys, +"the maid of madame," a ravishing creature--to whom you and I, good +Americans though we are, could have refused nothing. But Fitzhugh would +not come out of his feather-bed. And when madame herself came, looking +like a princess even at that early hour, he only pulled the bedclothes a +little higher with an air of finality. + +"Are you sick, Fitzhugh?" + +"No, mamma." + +"Why won't you get up?" + +His mother at least was entitled to an explanation. + +"I won't get up," said he, "because I'm an American." + +"But, my dear, it's the glorious Fourth. All good Americans are up." + +"All good Americans," said Fitzhugh, "are at home letting off +fire-crackers." + +"Still," said his mother, "I think I'd get up if I were you. It's lovely +out. Not hot." + +"I won't get up," said Fitzhugh, "because it's the Fourth, because I'm +an American, and because I have nothing but English clothes to put on." + +His mother, who was the best sort in the world, though obstinate about +bringing-up, and much the prettiest woman, sat down on the bed and +laughed till the tears came to her eyes. Fitzhugh laughed, too. His mind +being made up, it was pleasanter to laugh than to sulk. + +"But," said his mother, "what's the difference? Your pajamas are +English, too." + +Fitzhugh's beautiful brown eyes sparkled with mischief. + +"What!" exclaimed his mother. "You wretched boy, do you mean to tell me +that you haven't your pajamas on?" + +Fitzhugh giggled, having worsted his mother in argument, and pushed down +the bedclothes a few inches, disclosing the neck and shoulders of that +satiny American suit in which he had been born. + +Mrs. Williams surrendered at once. + +"My dear," she exclaimed, "if you feel so strongly about it I will send +your man out at once to buy you some French things. They were our +allies, you know." + +"Thank you, mamma," said Fitz, "and if you'll give me the pad and pencil +on the table I'll write to granny." + +Thus compromise was met with compromise, as is right. Fitz wrote a very +short letter to granny, and drew a very long picture of crossing the +Delaware, with Nathan Hale being hanged from a gallows on the bank; and +Mrs. Williams sent Benton for clothes, and wrote out a cable to her +husband, a daily cable being the one thing that he who loved others to +have a good time was wont to exact "Dear Jim," ran the cable, at I +forget what the rates were then per word, "I wish you were here. It's +bright and beautiful; not too hot. Fitz would not get up and put on +English clothes, being too patriotic. You will run over soon if you can, +won't you, if only for a minute," etc., etc. + +I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The +Williamses were rich. They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief. +Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not +have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported +Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring +frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where +money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James, +returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of +his right boot. + +Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for +him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she +would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed +in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next +few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history +through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be +absorbed, and that came out often, I am afraid, when people didn't +especially want it to. Neither could any amount of aristocratic training +and association turn the blood in his veins blue. If one had taken the +trouble to look at a specimen of it under a microscope I believe one +would have discovered a resemblance between the corpuscles thereof and +the eagles that are the tails of coins; and the color of it was +red--bright red. And this was proven, that time when little Lord Percy +Pumps ran at Fitz, head down like a Barbadoes nigger, and butted him in +the nose. The Honorable Fifi Grey, about whom the quarrel arose, was +witness to the color of that which flowed from the aforementioned nose; +and witness also to the fact that during the ensuing cataclysm no blood +whatever, neither blue nor red, came from Lord Percy Pumps--nothing but +howls. But, alas! we may not now call upon the Honorable Fifi Grey for +testimony. She is no longer the Honorable Fifi. Quite the reverse. I had +her pointed out to me last summer (she is Lady Khorset now), and my +informant wriggled with pleasure and said, "Now, there _is_ somebody." + +"You mean that slim hedge-fence in lavender?" I asked. + +"By jove, yes!" said he. "That's Lady Khorset, the wickedest woman in +London, with the possible exception of Lady Virginia Pure--the +Bicyclyste, you know." + +I did know. Had I not that very morning seen in a Piccadilly window a +photograph of almost all of her? + +Fortunately for Fitzhugh Williams's health and sanity, little children +are pretty much the same all the world over, dwelling in the noble +democracy of mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. Little newsboys, tiny +grandees, infinitesimal sons of coachmen, picayune archdukes, +honorableines, marquisettes, they are all pretty much alike under their +skins. And so are their sisters. Naturally your free-born American child +despises a nation that does not fight with its fists. But he changes his +mind when some lusty French child of his own size has given him a good +beating in fair fight. And the English games have their beauties (I dare +say), and we do know that they can fight--or can make the Irish and the +Scots fight for them, which is just as good. And it isn't race and blue +blood that keeps little Lady Clara Vere de Vere's stockings from coming +down. It's garters. And _they_ don't always do it. Point the finger of +scorn at little Archibald Jamison Purdue Fitzwilliams Updyke +Wrennfeather, who will be Duke of Chepstow one day; for only last night +his lordship's noble mother rubbed his hollow chest with goose grease +and tied a red flannel round his neck, and this morning his gerfalcon +nose is running, as the British would have run at Waterloo had not +"would-to-God-Bluecher-would-come" come up. + +Peace, little bootblack; others bite their nails. See yonder night +garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a +plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the +back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come +through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel +with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next +crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears? +It's because she _will_ double them forward and lie on them, so that if +something isn't done about it they will stick straight out. + +So Fitzhugh Williams was brought up among and by children, fashionable +children, if you like. Snobs, many of them, but children all the same. +Some good, some bad, some rough, some gentle, some loving and faithful +with whom he is friends to this day, some loving and not faithful. +The dangers that he ran were not from the foreign children with whom +he played, fought, loved, and dreamed dreams; but from foreign +customs, foreign ways of doing things, foreign comfort, foreign +take-the-world-easiness, and all. For they _do_ live well abroad; they +do have amusing things to do. They eat well, drink well, smoke well, are +better waited on than we are and have more time. So Fitzhugh was in +danger of these things which have hurt the Americanism of more than one +American to the death, but he ran the dangerous gauntlet and came out at +the other end unscathed--into the open. + +He could rattle off French and German like a native; he could imitate an +Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with +his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not +in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the +moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his +family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly, +straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words +are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with +the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington +himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think +Adams said _bought_ and _caught_? He said _bot_ and _cot_. Did Lincoln +use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke +the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck +against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the +hearts of men, to rejoice God, and to thunder forever down the ages. + +It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody +knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and +intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But +honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great +American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively +great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk +Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that! + + + + +II + +We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the +French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in +cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the +feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain +of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water +in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded +the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it. + +He now had Benton in to rub his back dry, and to hand him his clothes in +sequence; it being his mother's notion that to be truly polite a man +must be helpless in these matters and dependent. And when he had on his +undershirt and his outer shirt and his stockings, he sat down to his +breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler +had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing, +and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria +at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with +Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother +came--one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris, +though common enough, I dare say, in paradise. + +They drove first of all to Gaston Rennette's gallery, where Fitz +celebrated the glorious Fourth with a real duelling pistol and real +bullets, aiming at a life-size sheet-iron man, who, like a correct, +courteous, and courageous opponent, never moved. And all the way to the +gallery and all the way back there was here and there an American flag, +as is customary in Paris on the Fourth. And to these Fitz, standing up +in the victoria, dipped and waved his hat. While he was shooting, his +mother took a "little turn" and then came back to fetch him; a stout man +in a blue blouse accompanying him to the curb, tossing his hands +heavenward, rolling up his eyes, and explaining to madame what a "genius +at the shoot was the little mister," and had averaged upon the "mister +of iron" one "fatal blow" in every five. Madame "invited" the stout man +to a five-franc piece for himself and she smiled, and he smiled, and +bowed off backward directly into a passing pedestrian, who cried out +upon the "sacred name of a rooster." And everybody laughed, including +Cunningham, whose face from much shaving looked as if a laugh must crack +it; and so the glorious Fourth was begun. + +But the next event upon the programme was less provocative of pure joy +in the heart of Fitz. + +"You don't remember the Burtons, do you, Fitz?" asked his mother. + +"No," said he. + +"Well," she said, "Mrs. Burton was a school-mate of mine, Elizabeth +Proctor, and I've just learned that she is at the d'Orient with her +daughter. The father died, you know--" + +"I know _now_" interrupted Fitz with a grin. + +He liked to correct his mother's English habit of "you-knowing" people +who didn't know. + +"And I really think I must call and try to do something for them." + +"The d'Orient," said Fitz, "is where they have the elevator that you +work yourself. Billy Molineux and I got caught in it between the third +and fourth floors." + +"Well," said his mother, "would you mind very much if we drove to the +d'Orient now and called on the Burtons?" + +Fitz said that he would mind _very_ much, but as he made no more +reasonable objection Mrs. Williams gave the order to Cunningham, and not +long after they stopped before the d'Orient in the Rue Daunou, and +Fontenoy flashed in with Mrs. and Master Williams's cards, and came out +after an interval and stationed himself stiffly near the step of the +victoria. This meant that Mrs. Burton was at home, as we say, or, "at +herself," as the French have it. If he had leaped nimbly to his seat +beside Cunningham on the box it would have meant that Mrs. Burton was +not "at herself." + +So once more Mrs. Williams became a lovely, trailing figure out of the +seventh heaven, and Fitz, stoical but bored, followed her into the +court-yard of the hotel. Here were little iron tables and chairs, four +symmetrical flower-beds containing white gravel, four palm-trees in +tubs, their leaves much speckled with coal smuts; a French family at +breakfast (the stout father had unbuttoned his white waistcoat); and in +a corner by herself an American child sitting upon one of the +puff-seated iron chairs, one leg under her, one leg, long, thin, and +black, swinging free, and across her lap a copy of a fashion paper. + +On perceiving Mrs. Williams the child at once came forward, and dropped +the most charming little courtesy imaginable. + +"How do you do?" she said. "Poor, dear mamma isn't a bit well. But I +said that she would see you, Mrs. Williams. She said yesterday that she +wanted so much to see you." + +In the event Mrs. Williams went up three flights in the elevator that +you worked yourself; only on this occasion the proprietor, hastily +slipping into his frock-coat and high hat (you could see him at it +through the office window), worked it for her. And Fitz remained with +the gloomy prospect of being entertained by little Miss Burton. + +She was younger than Fitz by two years and older by ten--a serene, +knowing, beautiful child. When Fitz proposed that they sit in the +victoria, as softer than the iron chairs, she called him a funny boy, +but she assented. And as they went she tossed aside her fashion paper, +remarking, "_You_ wouldn't care for that." + +When they had settled down into the soft, leather cushions of the +victoria she sighed luxuriously and said: + +"This _is_ nice! I wish--" and broke off short. + +"What?" asked Fitz. + +"Oh," she said, "that the horses would start, and take us all over Paris +and back, and everybody would see us go by, and envy us. But mamma and +I," she said, "are devoted to fiacres--not smart, are they?" + +"I don't mind," said Fitz, "if they go where I tell 'em to, and don't +set up a row over the _pourboire_." + +"Still," said she, "it must be nice to have carriages and things. We +used to have. Only I can hardly remember. Mamma says I have a dreadfully +short memory." + +"How long have you been abroad?" Fitz asked. + +"Dear me," she said, "ever so long. I don't remember." + +"Won't it be fun," said Fitz, "to go home?" + +"America?" She hesitated. "Mamma says it's all so crude and rude. I +forget." + +"Don't you remember America!" exclaimed Fitz, much horrified. + +"Not clearly," she admitted. + +"I guess you never saw Cleveland, Ohio, then," said Fitz, "'n' Euclid +Avenue, 'n' Wade Park, 'n' the cannons in the square, 'n' the +breakwater, 'n' never eat Silverthorn's potatoes at Rocky River, 'n' +never went to a picnic at Tinker's Creek, 'n' never saw Little Mountain +'n' the viaduct." + +"You are quite right," said little Miss Burton, "I never did." + +"When I grow up," said Fitz in a glow of enthusiasm, "I'm going to live +in America 'n' have a tower on my house with a flagpole, 'n' a cannon to +let off every sunset and sunrise." + +"I shouldn't like that," said she, "if I were sleeping in the house at +the time." + +"I shouldn't be sleeping," said Fitz; "I'd be up early every morning to +let the cannon off." + +"I remember Newport a little," she said. "I'd live there if I were you. +Newport is very smart for America, mamma says. We're going to Newport +when I grow up. I'm sure it will be nicer if you are there." + +Fitz thought this very likely, but was too modest to say so. + +"If I ever go to Newport," he said, "it will be as captain of a cup +defender." + +"I heard your mother call you Fitz," said little Miss Burton. "Is that +your name, or do you have them?" + +"F-i-t-z-h-u-g-h," said Fitz, "is my name." + +"Any middle name?" + +"No." + +"That's smarter," said she. "I haven't either." + +"What _is_ your name?" asked Fitz, trying to feign interest. + +"Evelyn," said she, "but my intimate friends call me Eve." + +"Huh!" said Fitz grossly, "Eve ate the apple first." + +"Yes," sighed Eve, "and gave Adam the core. Nowadays, I heard mamma say +to Count Grassi, it's the other way 'round." + +"My father says," said Fitz, "that Eve ought to of been spanked." + +Certain memories reddened Eve; but the natural curiosity to compare +experiences got the better of her maiden reticence upon so delicate a +subject. She lowered her voice. + +"Do you yell?" she asked. "I do. It frightens them if you yell." + +"I was never spanked" said Fitz. "When I'm naughty mamma writes to papa, +and he writes to me, and says he's sorry to hear that I haven't yet +learned to be a gentleman, and a man of the world, and an American. +That's worse than being spanked." + +"Oh, dear!" said Eve, "I don't mind what people say; that's just water +on a duck's back; but what they do is with slippers--" + +"And," cried Fitz, elated with his own humor, "it isn't on the +duck's--back." + +"Are you yourself to-day," asked Miss Eve, her eyes filling, "or are you +just unusually horrid?" + +"Here--I say--don't blub," said Fitz, in real alarm. And, knowing the +power of money to soothe, he pulled a twenty-franc gold piece from his +pocket and himself opened and closed one of her tiny hands upon it. + +The child's easy tears dried at once. + +"Really--truly?--ought I?" she exclaimed. + +"You bet!" said Fitz, all his beautiful foreign culture to the fore. +"You just keep that and surprise yourself with a present next time you +want one." + +"Maybe mamma won't like me to," she doubted. And then, with devilish +wisdom, "I think mamma will scold me first--and let me forget to give it +back afterward. Thank you, Fitz. I could kiss you!" + +"Fire away," said Fitz sullenly. He was used to little girls, and liked +to kiss them, but he did not like them to kiss him. She didn't, however. + +She caught his hand with the one of hers that was not clutching the gold +piece, and squeezed it quickly and let it go. Something in this must +have touched and made appeal to the manly heart. For Fitz said, averting +his beautiful eyes: + +"You're a funny little pill, aren't you?" + +The tiger sprang to the victoria step from loafing in front of a +jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. Madame +was coming. + +"Take Evelyn to the lift, Fitz," said she. But first she kissed Evelyn, +and said that she was going to send for her soon, for a spree with Fitz. + +They passed through the court-yard, Fitz carrying his hat like a +gentleman and a man of the world, and into the dark passage that led to +the famous elevator. + +"Your mother's smart," said Eve. + +"Can't you think of anything but how smart people are?" + +"When I'm grown up," she said, "and am smart myself I'll think of other +things, I dare say." + +"Can you work the lift yourself? Hadn't I better take you up?" + +"Oh, no," she said, and held out her hand. + +They shook, she firmly, he with the flabby, diffident clasp of childhood +and old age. + +"You're a funny kid," said Fitz. + +"You're rather a dear," said Eve. + +She entered the elevator, closed the door, and disappeared upward, at +the pace of a very footsore and weary snail. + +Mrs. Burton was much cheered by Mrs. Williams's visit, as who that +struggles is not by the notice of the rich and the mighty? + +"My dear," she said, when Eve entered, "she is so charming, so natural; +she has promised to give a tea for me, and to present me to some of her +friends. I hope you like the boy--Fitz--Fritz--whatever his name is. It +would be so nice if you were to be friends." + +"He _is_ nice," said Eve, "ever so nice--but _so_ dull." + +"What did you talk about?" asked Mrs. Burton, + +"Really," said Eve, aged seven, "I forget." + + + + +III + +Mrs. Burton had made a failure of her own life. + +She had married a man who subsequently had been so foolish as to lose +his money--or most of it. + +Eve, who had ever a short memory, does not remember the catastrophe. She +was three at the time of it. She was in the nursery when the blow fell, +and presently her mother came in looking very distracted and wild, and +caught the little girl's face between her hands, and looked into it, and +turned it this way and that, and passed the little girl's beautiful +brown hair through her fingers, and then began to speak violently. + +"You sha'n't be shabby," she said. "I will make a great beauty of you. +You've got the beauty. You shall ride in your carriage, even if I work +my hands to the bone. They've bowled me over. But I'm not dead yet. +Elizabeth Burton shall have her day. You wait. I'll make the world dance +for you." Then she went into violent hysterics. + +There was a little money left. Mrs. Burton took Evelyn to Europe, and +began to teach her the long litany of success: + + Money is God; + We praise thee, etc., + +a very long, somewhat truthful, and truly degraded litany. She taught +her that it isn't handsome is as handsome does, but the boots and +shoes, after all. She taught her that a girl must dress beautifully to +be beautiful, that she must learn all the world's ways and secrets, and +at the same time appear in speech and manner like a child of Nature, +like a newly opened rose. And she taught her to love her country +like this: + +"America, my dear, is the one place where a girl can marry enough money +to live somewhere else. Or, if her husband is tied to his affairs, it is +the one place where she can get the most for his money--not as we get +the most for ours, for we couldn't live two minutes on our income in +America--but where the most people will bow the lowest to her because +she is rich; where she will be the most courted and the most envied." + +The two mammas worked along similar lines, but for different reasons. +Mrs. Burton strove to make Eve ornamental so that she might acquire +millions; Mrs. Williams strove to Anglicize and Europeanize her son so +that he might ornament those which were already his. Those little spread +eagles, the corpuscles in his blood, folded their wings a trifle as he +grew older, and weren't always so ready to scream and boast; but they +remained eagles, and no amount of Eton and Oxford could turn them into +little unicorns or lions. You may wonder why Fitz's father, a strong, +sane man, permitted such attempts at denationalization upon his son and +heir. Fitz so wondered--once. So wrote. And was answered thus: + +... If you're any good it will all come out in the wash. If you aren't +any good it doesn't matter whether your mother makes an Englishman out +of you or a Mandarin. When you come of age you'll be your own man; +that's been the bargain between your mother and me. That will be the +time for you to decide whether to be governed or to help govern. I am +not afraid for you. I never have been. + +So Mrs. Williams was not successful on the whole in her attempts to make +a cosmopolitan of Fitz. And that was just enough, because the attempts +were those of an amateur. She had lived a furiously active life of +pleasure; she had made an unassailable place for herself in the best +European society, as at home. She had not even become estranged from her +husband. They were always crossing the ocean to see each other, "if only +for a minute or two," as she used to say, and when Fitz was at school +she spent much of her time in America; and Fitz's short vacations were +wild sprees with his father and mother, come over for the purpose. Mr. +Williams would take an immense country house for a few weeks, with +shooting and riding and all sorts of games thrown in, and have Fitz's +friends by the dozen. But, like as not, Mr. Williams would leave in the +middle of it, as fast as trains and steamers could carry him, home to +his affairs. And even the little English boys missed him sorely, since +he was much kinder to them, as a rule, than their own fathers were, and +had always too many sovereigns in his pocket for his own comfort. + +But Mrs. Burton's attempts to make a charming cosmopolitan of Eve met +with the greater success that they deserved. They were the efforts of a +professional, one who had staked life or death, so to speak, on the +result. Where Mrs. Williams amused herself and achieved small victories, +Mrs. Burton fought and achieved great conquests. She saved money out of +her thin income, money for the great days to come when Eve was to be +presented to society at Newport; and she slaved and toiled grimly and +with far-seeing genius. Eve's speaking voice was, perhaps, Mrs. Burton's +and her own greatest triumph. It was Ellen Terry's youngest, freshest +voice over again, but with the naivest little ghost of a French accent; +and she didn't seem so much to project a phrase at you by the locutory +muscles as to smile it to you. + +Mrs. Burton had, of course, her moments of despair about Eve. But these +were mostly confined to that despairing period when most girls are +nothing but arms and wrists and gawkiness and shyness; when their clear, +bright complexions turn muddy, and they want to enter convents. Eve at +this period in her life was unusually trying and nondescript. She +announced that if she ever married it would be for love alone, but that +she did not intend to marry. She would train to be a cholera nurse or a +bubonic plague nurse--anything, in short, that was most calculated to +drive poor Mrs. Burton frantic. And she grew the longest, thinnest pair +of legs and arms in Europe; and her hair seemed to lose its wonderful +lustre; and her skin, upon which Mrs. Burton had banked so much, became +colorless and opaque and a little blotched around the chin. And she was +so nervous and overgrown that she would throw you a whole fit of +hysterics during piano lessons; and she prayed so long night and morning +that her bony knees developed callouses; and when she didn't have a cold +in her head she was getting over one or catching another. + +During this period in Eve's life the children met for the second time. +It was in Vienna. This time Mrs. Burton, as having been longer in +residence, called upon Mrs. Williams, taking Eve with her, after +hesitation. Poor Eve! The graceful, gracious courtesy of her babyhood +was now a performance of which a stork must have felt ashamed; she +pitched into a table (while trying to make herself small) and sent a +pitcher of lemonade crashing to the ground. And then burst into tears +that threatened to become laughter mixed with howls. + +At this moment Fitz, having been sent for to "do the polite," entered. +He shook hands at once with Mrs. Burton, whom he had never seen before, +and turned to see how Eve, whom he vaguely remembered, was coming on. +And there she was--nothing left of his vague memory but the immense +eyes. Even these were not clear and bright, but red in the whites and +disordered with tears. For the rest (Fitz made the mental comparison +himself) she reminded him of a silly baby camel that he had seen in the +zoo, that had six inches of body, six feet of legs, and the most bashful +expression imaginable. + +Mrs. Burton, you may be sure, did not lose the start that Fitz gave +before he went forward and shook hands with Eve. But she misinterpreted +it. She said to herself (all the while saying other things aloud to Mrs. +Williams): "If he had only seen her a year ago, even a boy of his age +would have been struck by her, and would have remembered her. But now! +Now, he'll never forget her. And I don't blame him. She's so ugly that +he was frightened." + +But that was not why Fitz had started. The poor, gawky, long-legged, +tearful, frightened, overgrown, wretched girl had not struck him as +ugly; she had struck him as the most pathetic and to-be-pitied object +that he had ever seen. I do not account for this. I state it. Had she +been pretty and self-possessed he would have left the room presently on +some excuse, but now he stayed--not attracted, but troubled and sorry +and eager to put her at her ease. So he would have turned aside to help +a gutter cat that had been run over and hurt, though he would have +passed the proudest, fluffiest Angora in Christendom with no more than a +glance. He began to talk to her in his plainest, straightest, honestest +Ohioan. It always came out strongest when he was most moved. His +mother's sharp ears heard the A's, how they narrowed in his mouth, and +smote every now and then with a homely tang against the base of his +nose. "Just like his father," she thought, "when some one's in trouble." +And she had a sudden twinge of nostalgia. + +Fitz lured Eve to a far corner and showed her a set of wonderful carved +chess-men that he had bought that morning; and photographs of his +friends at Eton, and of the school, and of some of the masters. He +talked very earnestly and elaborately about these dull matters, and +passed by the opportunities which her first embarrassed replies offered +for the repartee of youth. And he who was most impatient of restraint +and simple occupations talked and behaved like a dull, simple, kindly +old gentleman. His method may not have left Eve with a dazzling +impression of him; she could not know that he was not himself, but all +at once a deliberate artist seeking to soothe and to make easy. + +Eve did not enjoy that call; she enjoyed nothing in those days but +prayer and despair; but she got to the end of it without any more tears +and crashes. And she said to her mother afterward that young Williams +seemed a nice boy--but so dull. Well, they were quits. She had seemed +dull enough to Fitz. A sick cat may touch your heart, but does not +furnish you with lively companionship. Fitz was heartily glad when the +Burtons had gone. He had worked very hard to make things possible for +that absurd baby camel. + +"You may call her an absurd baby camel," said his mother, "but it's my +opinion that she is going to be a very great beauty." + +"_She!"_ exclaimed Fitz, thinking that the ugliness of Eve might have +unhinged his mother's beauty-loving mind. + +"Oh," said his mother, "she's at an age now--poor child! But don't you +remember how the bones of her face--" + +"I am trying to forget," said Fitz with a tremendous shudder for the +occasion. + + + + +IV + +Fitz did not take a degree at Oxford. He left in the middle of his last +term, leaving many friends behind. He stood well, and had been in no +especial difficulty of mischief, and why he left was a mystery. The +truth of the matter is that he had been planning for ten years to leave +Oxford in the very middle of his last term. For upon that date fell his +twenty-first birthday, when he was to be his own man. He spent a few +hours in his mother's house in London. And, of course, she tried to make +him go back and finish, and was very much upset, for her. But Fitz +was obdurate. + +"If it were Yale, or Princeton, or Harvard, or Berkeley, or Squedunk," +he said, "I would stick it out. But a degree from Oxford isn't worth six +weeks of home." + +"But aren't you going to wait till I can go with you?" + +"If you'll go with me to-night you shall have my state-room, and I'll +sleep on the coal. But if you can't go till to-morrow, mother mine, I +will not wait. I have cabled my father," said he, "to meet me at +quarantine." + +"Your poor, busy father," she said, "will hardly feel like running on +from Cleveland to meet a boy who is coming home without a degree." + +"My father," said Fitz, "will be at quarantine. He will come out in a +tug. And he will arrange to take me off and put me ashore before the +others. If the ship is anywhere near on schedule my father and I will be +in time to see a ball game at the Polo Grounds." + +Something in the young man's honest face and voice aroused an answering +enthusiasm in his mother's heart. + +"Oh, Fitz," she said, "if I could possibly manage it I would go with +you. Tell your father that I am sailing next week. I won't cable. +Perhaps he'll be surprised and pleased." + +"I _know_ he will," said Fitz, and he folded his mother in his arms and +rumpled her hair on one side and then on the other. + + * * * * * + +Those who beheld, and who, because of the wealth of the principal +personages, took notice of the meeting between Fitz and his father, say +that Fitz touched his father's cheek with his lips as naturally and +unaffectedly as if he had been three years old, that a handshake between +the two men accompanied this salute, and that Williams senior was heard +to remark that it had looked like rain early in the morning, but that +now it didn't, and that he had a couple of seats for the ball game. What +he really said was inside, neither audible nor visible upon his +smooth-shaven, care-wrinkled face. It was an outcry of the heart, so +joyous as to resemble grief. + +There was a young and pretty widow on that ship who had made much of +Fitz on the way out and had pretended that she understood him. She +thought that she had made an impression, and that, whatever happened, he +would not forget her. But when he rushed up, his face all joyous, to say +good-by, her heart sank. And she told her friends afterward that there +was a certain irresistible, orphan-like appeal about that young +Williams, and that she had felt like a mother toward him. But this was +not till very much later. At first she used to shut herself up in her +room and cry her eyes out. + +They lunched at an uptown hotel and afterward, smoking big cigars, they +drove to a hatter's and bought straw hats, being very critical of each +other's fit and choice. + +Then they hurried up to the Polo Grounds, and when it began to get +exciting in the fifth inning, Fitz felt his father pressing something +into his hand. Without taking his eyes from Wagsniff, who was at the +bat, Fitz put that something into his mouth and began to chew. The two +brothers--for that is the high relationship achieved sometimes in +America, and in America alone, between father and son--thrust their new +straw hats upon the backs of their round heads, humped themselves +forward, and rested with their elbows on their knees and watched--no, +that is your foreigner's attitude toward a contest--they _played_ +the game. + +I cannot leave them thus without telling the reader that they survived +the almost fatal ninth, when, with the score 3-2 against, two out and a +man on first, Wagsniff came once more to the bat and, swinging cunningly +at the very first ball pitched to him by the famous Mr. Blatherton, +lifted it over the centrefielder's head and trotted around the bases +and, grinning like a Hallowe'en pumpkin, came romping home. + +At dinner that night Williams senior said suddenly: + +"Fitz, what you do want to do?" + +A stranger would have thought that Fitz was being asked to choose +between a theatre and a roof-garden, but Fitz knew that an entirely +different question was involved in those casually spoken words. He was +being asked off-hand to state off-hand what he was going to do with his +young life. But he had his answer waiting. + +"I want to see the world," he said. + +Williams senior, as a rule, thought things out in his own mind and did +not press for explanations. But on the present occasion he asked: + +"As how?" + +Fitz smiled very youthfully and winningly. + +"I've seen some of it," he said, "right side up. Now I want to have a +look upside-down. If I go into something of yours--as myself--I don't +get a show. I'm marked. The other clerks would swipe to me, and the +heads would credit me with brains before I showed whether I had any or +not. I want you to get me a job in Wall Street--under any other name +than my own--except Percy"--they both laughed--"your first name and +mamma's maiden name would do--James Holden. And nobody here knows me by +sight, I've been abroad so much; and it seems to me I'd get an honest +point of view and find out if I was any good or not, and if I could get +myself liked for myself or not." + +"Well," said his father; "well, that's an idea, anyhow." + +"I've had valets and carriages and luxuries all my life," said Fitz. "I +think I like them. But I don't _know_--do I? I've never tried the other +thing. I'm sure I don't want to be an underpaid clerk always. But I am +sure I want to try it on for a while." + +"I was planning," said his father, "to take a car and run about the +country with you and show you all the different enterprises that I'm +interested in. I thought you'd make a choice, find something you liked, +and go into it for a starter. If you're any good you can go pretty far +with me pulling for you. You don't like that idea?" + +"Not for now," said Fitz. "I like mine better." + +"Do you want to live on what you earn?" + +"If I can stand it." + +"You'll be started with ten dollars a week, say. Can you do it?" + +"What did grandpa start on?" asked Fitz. + +"His board, two suits of clothes, and twenty-four dollars a year," said +William senior with a proud ring in his voice. + +"And you?" + +"I began at the bottom, too. That was the old-fashioned idea. Father +was rich then. But he wanted me to show that I was some good." + +"Did grandpa pull for you, or did you have to find yourself?" + +"Well," said the father diffidently, "I had a natural taste for +business. But," and he smiled at his son, "I shouldn't live on what you +earn, if I were you. You needn't spend much, but have a good time out of +hours. You'll find yourself working side by side with other sons of rich +men. And you can bet your bottom dollar _they_ don't live on what they +can earn. Unless you make a display of downright wealth you'll be judged +on your merits. That's what you're driving at, isn't it?" + +So they compromised on that point; and the next morning they went +downtown and called upon Mr. Merriman, the great banker. He and Williams +had been in many deals together, and on one historic occasion had +supported prices and loaned so much ready money on easy terms as to +avert a panic. + +"John," said Williams senior, "my son Fitz." + +"Well, sir," said Merriman, only his eyes smiling, "you don't look like +a foreigner." + +"I'm not," said Fitz stoutly. + +"In that case," said Merriman, "what can I do for you?" + +"I want to be called James Holden," said Fitz, "and to have a job in +your office." + +Merriman listened to the reasons with interest and amusement. Then he +turned to Williams senior. "May I drive him?" he asked grimly. + +"If you can," said Fitz's father. And he laughed. + +Finally, it was arranged that, in his own way, Fitz was to see the +world. + + + + +V + +Fitz's experiment in finding himself and getting himself liked for +himself alone was a great failure. He had not been in Mr. Merriman's +employ two hours before he found that he disliked long sums in addition, +and had made friends with Wilson Carrol, who worked next to him. Indeed, +Fitz made friends with everybody in the office inside of two weeks, and +was responsible for a great deal of whispering and hanging out of back +windows for a puff of smoke. Nobody but Mr. Merriman knew who he was, +where he came from, or what his prospects were. Everybody liked him--for +himself. Rich or poor, it must have been the same. His idea that +character, if he had it, would tell in the long run proved erroneous. It +told right away. + +Wilson Carrol and half a dozen other clerks in the office were the sons +of rich men, put to work because of the old-fashioned idea that +everybody ought to work, and at the same time pampered, according to the +modern idea, with comfortable allowances over and beyond their pay. +With one or other of these young men for companion, and presently for +friend, Fitz began to lead the agreeable summer life of New York's +well-to-do youth. He allowed himself enough money to keep his end up, +but did not allow himself any especial extravagances or luxuries. He +played his part well, appearing less well off than Carrol, and more so +than young Prout, with whom he got into much mischief in the office. +Whatever these young gentlemen had to spend they were always hard up. +Fitz did likewise. If you dined gloriously at Sherry's and had a box at +the play you made up for it the next night by a chop at Smith's and a +cooling ride in a ferry-boat, say to Staten Island and back. Saturday +you got off early and went to Long Island or Westchester for tennis and +a swim, and lived till Monday in a luxurious house belonging to a +fellow-clerk's father, or were put up at the nearest country club. + +Downtown that summer there was nothing exciting going on. The market +stood still upon very small transactions, and there was no real work for +any one but the book-keepers. The more Fitz saw of the science of +addition the less he thought of it, but he did what he had to do (no +more) and drew his pay every Saturday with pride. Once, there being a +convenient legal holiday to fatten the week-end, he went to Newport with +Carrol and got himself so much liked by all the Carrol family that he +received and accepted an invitation to spend his long holiday with them. +He and Carrol had arranged with the powers to take their two weeks off +at the same time--from the fifteenth to the end of August. And during +business hours they kept their heads pretty close together and did much +plotting and planning in whispers. + +But Mrs. Carrol herself was to have a finger in that vacation. The +presence in her house of two presentable young men was an excellent +excuse for paying off dinner debts and giving a lawn party and a ball. +Even at Newport there are never enough men to go round, and with two +whole ones for a basis much may be done. The very night of their arrival +they "ran into" a dinner-party, as Carrol expressed it. It was a large +dinner; and the young men, having got to skylarking over their dressing +(contrary to Mrs. Carrol's explicit orders) descended to a drawing-room +already full of people. Carrol knew them all, even the famous new +beauty; but Fitz--or James Holden, rather--had, except for the Carrols, +but a nodding acquaintance with one or two of the men. He felt shy, and +blushed very becomingly while trying to explain to Mrs. Carrol how he +and Wilson happened to be so unfortunate as to be late. + +"Well," she said, "I'm not going to punish you this time. You are to +take Miss Burton in." + +"Which is Miss Burton?" asked Fitz, on whose memory at the moment the +name made no impression. + +"Do you see seven or eight men in the corner," she said, "who look as if +they were surrounding a punch-bowl?" + +"Miss Burton is the punch-bowl?" he asked. + +"All those men want to take her in," said Mrs. Carrol, "and you're going +to make them all very jealous." + +Dinner was announced, and Mrs. Carrol, with Fitz in tow, swept down upon +the group of men. It parted reluctantly and disclosed, lolling happily +in a deep chair, the most beautiful girl in the world. She came to her +feet in the quickest, prettiest way imaginable, and spoke to Mrs. Carrol +in the young Ellen Terry voice, with its little ghost of a French +accent. Fitz did not hear what she said or what Mrs. Carrol answered. He +only knew that his heart was thumping against his ribs, and that a +moment later he was being introduced as Mr. Holden, and that Eve did not +know him from Adam. + +Presently she laid the tips of her fingers on his arm, and they were +going in to dinner. + +"I think Mrs. Carrol's a dear," said Fitz, "to give me you to take in +and to sit next to. I always wanted people to like me, but now all the +men hate me. I can feel it in the small of my back, and I like it. Do +you know how you feel in spring--the day the first crocuses come out? +That's the way it makes me feel." + +She turned her great, smiling eyes upon him and laughed. The laugh died +away. His young, merry face had a grim, resolved look. So his father +looked at critical times. + +"I thought you were joking--rather feebly," she said. + +"I don't know," said he, "that I shall ever joke again." + +"You make your mind up very quickly," she said. + +"The men of my family all do," he said. "But it isn't my mind that's +made up." + +Something of the girl's stately and exquisite poise forsook her. Her +eyes wore a hunted look for a moment. She even felt obliged to laugh to +cover her confusion. + +"It's my heart," said Fitz. "I saw you--and that is all there is to it." + +"Aren't you in something of a hurry?" she asked, her eyes twinkling. She +had felt for a moment like a soldier surprised without weapons. But now, +once more, she felt herself armed _cap a pie_. + +"I've got to be," said Fitz. "I'm a bank clerk on a two weeks' vacation, +of which the first day is gone." + +She was sorry that he was a bank clerk; it had a poor and meagre sound. +It was not for him that she had been trained. She had been made to slave +for herself, and was to make a "continental" marriage with the highest +bidder. Eve's heart had been pretty well schooled out of her, and yet, +before dinner came to an end, she found herself wishing that among the +high bidders might be one very young, like the man at her side, with +eyes as honest, and who, to express admiration, beat about no bushes. + +Later, when they said good-by, Fitz said: + +"It would be good for me to see you to-morrow." + +And she said: + +"Would it be good for _me_?" and laughed. + +"Yes," he said firmly, "it would." + +"Why?" she asked. + +"To-morrow at four," said Fitz, "I shall come for you and take you +around the Cliff Walk and tell you." + +She made no promise. But the next day, when Fitz called at the cottage +which Mrs. Burton, by scraping and saving these many years, had managed +to take for the season, Eve was at home--and she was alone. + + + + +VI + +Newport, as a whole, was busy preparing for the national lawn-tennis +championship. There was a prince to be pampered and entertained, and +every night, from the door of some great house or other, a strip of red +carpet protruded, covered by an awning, and the coming and going of +smart carriages on Bellevue Avenue seemed double that of the week +before. But the affair between James Holden--who was nobody knew who, +and came from nobody knew exactly where--and Newport's reigning beauty +held the real centre of the stage. + +Beautiful though Eve was, natural and unaffected though she seemed, +people had but to glance at Mrs. Burton's old, hard, humorless, at once +anxious and triumphant face to know that the girl, willing or not, was a +victim prepared for sacrifice. Confessedly poor, obviously extravagant +and luxury-loving, even the rich men who wanted to marry her knew that +Eve must consider purses more than hearts. And they held themselves +cynically off and allowed what was known as "Holden's pipe-dream" to run +its course. It amused those who wanted Eve, those who thought they did, +and all those who loved a spectacle. "He will go back to his desk +presently," said the cynics, "and that will be the end of that." The +hero of the pipe-dream thought this at times himself. Well, if it turned +out that way Eve was not worth having. He believed that she had a heart, +that if her heart were touched she would fling her interests to the +winds and obey its dictates. + +What Eve thought during the first few days of Holden's pipe-dream is not +clearly known. She must have been greatly taken with him, or she would +not have allowed him to interfere with her plans for personal +advancement and aggrandizement, to make a monopoly of her society, and +to run his head so violently into a stone wall. After the first few +days, when she realized that she liked to be with him better than with +any one she had ever known, she probably thought--or to that +effect--"I'll just pretend a little--and have it to remember." But she +found herself lying awake at night, wishing that he was rich; and later, +not even wishing, just lying awake and suffering. She had made up her +mind some time since to accept Darius O'Connell before the end of the +season. He had a prodigious fortune, good habits, and a kind Irish way +with him. And she still told herself that it must be O'Connell, and she +lay awake and thought about Fitz and suffered. + +Mrs. Burton alone hadn't a kind thought or word for him. Her face +hardened at the mere mention of his name, and sometimes, when she saw a +certain expression that came oftener and oftener into Eve's face, that +callous which served her for a heart turned harder than Nature had made +it, and she saw all her schemes and all her long labors demolished like +a house of cards. Even if Eve flung Fitz aside like an old glove, as +inevitably she must, still Mrs. Burton's schemes would wear a tinge of +failure. The girl had shown that the heart was not entirely educated +out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if things went no +further, here was partial failure. She had intended to make an +inevitably rising force of Eve, and here at the very outset were +lassitude and a glance aside at false gods. + +Fitz was stubbornly resolved to win Eve on his merits or not to win her +at all. He had but to tell her his real name, or his father's, to turn +the balance of the hesitation and doubt; but that, he told himself, +would never, never do. She must turn aside from her training, love him +for himself, and believe, if only for a few hours, that she had thrown +herself away upon poverty and mediocrity, and be happy in it; or else +she must pass him by, and sweep on up the broad, cold stairway of her +own and her mother's ambitions. + +But Fitz wanted her so much that he felt he must die if he lost her. And +sometimes he was tempted to tell her of his millions and take her for +better or worse. But he would never know then if she cared for him or +not; he would never know then if she had a real heart and was worth the +having. So he resisted, and his young face had, at times, a grim, +careworn look; and between hope and fear his spirits fell away and he +felt tired and old. People thought of him as an absurd boy in the most +desperate throes of puppy love, and certain ones felt grateful to Eve +Burton for showing them so pretty a bit of sport. Even those very +agreeable people, the Carrols, were disgusted with Fitz, as are all +good people when a guest of the house makes a solemn goose of himself. +But Fitz was not in the least ridiculous to himself, which was +important; and he was not ridiculous to Eve, which was more +important still. + +Then, one morning, the whole affair began to look serious even to a +scoffing and cynical world. Darius O'Connell was missed at the Casino +and in the Reading-room; the evening papers announced that he had sailed +for Europe. And Miss Burton, far from appearing anxious or unhappy about +this, had never looked so beautiful or so serene. Some said that +O'Connell had made up his mind that the game was not worth the candle; +others, that he had proposed and had been "sent packing." Among these +latter was Mrs. Burton herself, and it will never be known what words of +abuse she poured upon Eve. If Mrs. Burton deserved punishment she was +receiving all that she deserved. Sick-headaches, despair, a vain, empty +life with its last hopes melting away. Eve--her Eve--her beautiful +daughter had a heart! That was the sum of Mrs. Burton's punishment. For +a while she resisted her fate and fought against it, and then collapsed, +bitter, broken, and old. + +But what looked even more serious than O'Connell's removing himself was +the fact that during the match which was to decide the lawn-tennis +championship Eve and her bank clerk did not appear in the Casino +grounds. Here were met all the happy people, in society and all the +unhappy people--even Mrs. Burton's ashen face was noted among those +present--but the reigning belle and her young man were not in the seats +that they had occupied during the preceding days of the tournament; and +people pointed out those empty seats to each other, and smiled and +lifted their eyebrows; and young Tombs, who had been making furious love +to one of the Blackwell twins--for the third tournament in five +years--sighed and whispered to her: "Dolly, did you ever in your life +see two empty seats sitting so close to each other?" + +Meanwhile, Fitz and the beauty were strolling along the Cliff Walk in +the bright sunshine, with the cool Atlantic breeze in their faces, +between lawns and gardens on the one side and dancing blue waves upon +the other. Fitz looked pale and careworn. But Eve looked ecstatic. This +was because poor Fitz, on the one hand, was still in the misery of doubt +and uncertainty, and because Eve, on the other, had suddenly made up her +mind and knew almost exactly what was going to happen. + +The Cliff Walk belongs to the public, and here and there meanders +irritatingly over some very exclusive millionaire's front lawn. A few +such, unable to endure the sight of strangers, have caused this walk, +where it crosses their properties, to be sunk so that from the windows +of their houses neither the walk itself nor persons walking upon it +can be seen. + +Fitz and the beauty were approaching one of these "ha-ha's" into which +the path dipped steeply and from which it rose steeply upon the farther +side. On the left was a blank wall of granite blocks, on the right only +a few thousand miles of blind ocean. It may have been a distant view of +this particular "ha-ha" that had made up Eve's mind for her, for she had +a strong dramatic sense. Or it may have been that her heart alone had +made up her mind, and that the secluded depths of the "ha-ha" had +nothing to do with the matter. + +"Jim," she said as they began to descend into the place, "life's only a +moment out of eternity, isn't it?" + +"Only a moment, Eve," he said, "a little longer for some than for +others." + +"If it's only a moment," she said as they reached the bottom of the +decline, and could only be seen by the blind granite wall and the blind +ocean, "I think it ought to be complete." + +"Why, Eve!" he said, his voice breaking and choking. "Honestly?... My +Eve!... Mine!... Look at me.... Is it true?... Are you sure?... Why, +she's sure!... My darling's sure ... all sure." + + * * * * * + +Later he said: "And you don't care about money, and you've got the +biggest, sweetest heart in all the world. And it's mine, and +mine's yours." + +"I can't seem to see anything in any direction," she said, "beyond you." + + * * * * * + +Later they had to separate, only to meet again at a dinner. Before they +went in they had a word together in a corner. + +"I _told_ you," said Fitz, "that my father would understand, and you +said he wouldn't. But he did; his answer came while I was dressing. I +telegraphed: 'I have seen the world,' and the answer was: 'Put a fence +around it.'" + +She smiled with delight. + +"Eve," he said, "everybody knows that you've taken me. It's in our +faces, I suppose. And they are saying that you are a goose to throw +yourself away on a bank clerk." + +"Do you think I care?" she said. + +"I know you don't," he said, "but I can't help thanking you for holding +your head so high and looking so happy and so proud." + +"Wouldn't you be proud," she said, "to have been brought up to think +that you had no heart, and then to find that, in spite of everything, +you had one that could jump and thump, and love and long, and make +poverty look like paradise?" + +"I know what you mean, a little," he said. "Your mother tried to make +you into an Article; my mother tried to make an Englishman of me. And +instead, you turned into an angel, and I was never anything but a +spread eagle." + +"Do you know," she said, "I can't help feeling a little sorry for poor +mamma." + +"Then," said he, "put your left hand behind your back." She felt him +slide a heavy ring upon her engagement finger. "Show her that, and tell +her that it isn't glass." + +Eve couldn't keep from just one covert glance at her ring. The sight of +it almost took her breath away. + +Dinner was announced. + +"I am frightened," she said; "have I given myself to a djinn?" + +"My Eve doesn't know whom she's given herself to," he whispered. + +"I don't believe I do," she said. + +"You don't," said he. + +An immense pride in his father's wealth and his own suddenly surged in +Fitz. He could give her all those things that she had renounced for his +sake, and more, too. But he did not tell her at that time. + +The great ruby on the slim hand flashed its message about the festive +board. Some of the best-bred ladies in the land threatened to become +pop-eyed from looking at it. + +Mrs. Blackwell, mother of the twins, whispered to Montgomery Stairs: + +"That Holden boy seems to have more to him than I had fancied." + +But young Tombs whispered to Dolly Blackwell, to whom he had just become +engaged for the third (and last) time in five years: "She isn't thinking +about the ring.... Look at her.... She's listening to music." + + * * * * * + +Montgomery Stairs (who is not altogether reliable) claims to have seen +Mrs. Burton within five minutes of her learning who her son-in-law-to-be +really was. For, of course, this came out presently and made a profound +sensation. He claims to have seen--from a convenient eyrie--Mrs. Burton +rush out into the little garden behind her cottage; he claims that all +of a sudden she leaped into the air and turned a double somersault, and +that immediately after she ran up and down the paths on her hands; that +then she stood upon her head for nearly five minutes; and that finally +she flung herself down and rolled over and over in a bed of heliotrope. + +But then, as is well known, Montgomery Stairs, in the good American +phrase, was one of those who "also ran." + +Darius O'Connell sent a cable to Eve from Paris (from Maxim's, I am +afraid, late at night). He said: "Heartiest congratulations and best +wishes. You can fool some of the best people some of the time, but, +thank God, you can't fool all of the best people all of the time." Eve +and Fitz never knew just what he meant. + +They spent part of their honeymoon in Cleveland, and every afternoon Eve +sat between Fitz and his father, leaning forward, her elbows on her +knees, and was taught painstakingly, as the crowning gift of those two +simple hearts, to play the game. + +There must be one word more. There are people to this day who say that +Eve knew from the beginning who "James Holden" was, and that she played +her cards accordingly. In view of this I fling all caution to the wind, +and in spite of the cold fear that is upon me of being sued for libel, I +tell these ladies--_people_, I mean--that they lie in their teeth. + + + + +TARGETS + +"On the contrary," said Gardiner, "lightning very often strikes twice in +the same place, and often three times. The so-called all-wise Providence +is still in the experimental stage. My grandmother, for instance, +presented my grandfather with fifteen children: seven live sons and +eight dead daughters. That's when the lightning had fun with itself. And +when the epidemic of ophthalmia broke out in the Straits Settlements, +what class of people do you suppose developed the highest percentage of +total loss of sight in one or both eyes?--why the inmates of the big +asylum for the deaf and dumb in Singapore: twenty per cent of those poor +stricken souls went stone blind. Then what do you think the lightning +did? Set the blooming asylum on fire and burned it to the ground. And +then, I dare say, the elements retired to some region of waste, off in +space somewhere, and sat down and thundered with laughter. But it wasn't +through with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It +was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible +instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to +a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put +aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the _Nerissa_. She was +wrecked--" + +"Coast of Java--in '80, wasn't it?" said Pedder, who has read nothing +but dictionaries and books of black-and-white facts and statistics in +the course of a long life otherwise entirely devoted to misdirected +efforts to defeat Colonel Bogey at golf. + +"It was," said Gardiner, "and the lightning was very busy striking. It +drowned off every member of the crew who had any sense of decency; and +of the deaf and dumb passengers selected to be washed ashore a pair who +were also blind. Those saved came to land at a jungly stretch of coast, +dented by a slow-running creek. The crew called the place Quickstep +Inlet because of the panicky and inhuman haste in which they left it." + +"Why inhuman?" asked Ludlow. + +"Because," said Gardiner, "they only gave about one look at their two +comrades in misfortune who were deaf, and dumb, and blind, and decided +that it was impracticable to attempt to take them along. I suppose they +were right. I suppose it _would_ have been the devil's own job. The +really nasty part was that the crew made a secret of it, and when some +of them, having passed through the Scylla and Charybdis of fright and +fever, and foul water, and wild beasts, reached a settlement they didn't +say a word about the two unfortunates who had been deliberately +abandoned." + +"How was it found out then?" Pedder asked. + +"Years and years afterward by the ravings in liquor of one of the crew, +and by certain things that I'd like to tell you if you'd be interested." + +"Go on," said Ludlow. + +"The important thing," said Gardiner, "is that the pair were +deserted--not why they were deserted, or how it was found out that they +had been. And one thing--speaking of lightning and Providence--is very +important. If the pair hadn't been blind, if the asylum hadn't been +burned, if the _Nerissa_ hadn't been wrecked, and if the crew hadn't +deserted them--they would never in this world have had an opportunity to +lift to their lips the cup of human happiness and drink it off. + +"The man did not know that he had been deserted. He vaguely understood +that there had been a shipwreck and that he had been washed +ashore--alone, he thought. When he got hungry he began to crawl round +and round with his hands in front of his face feeling for something to +eat, trying and approving of one handful of leaves and spitting out +another. But thirst began to torment him, and then, all of a sudden, he +went souse into the creek that there emptied into the sea. That way of +life went on for several days. And all the while, the woman, just as she +had come ashore, was keeping life going similarly--crawling about, +always near the creek, crossing the beach at low tide to the mud flats +and rooting among the mollusks, and stuffing herself with any kind of +sea-growth that tasted good enough. The two were probably often within a +few feet of each other; and they might have lived out their lives that +way without either of them ever having the least idea that he or she was +not the only human being in that part of the world. But something--pure +accident or some subtle instinct--brought them together. The man was out +crawling with one hand before his face--so was the woman. Their hands +met, and clinched. They remained thus, and trembling, for a long time. +From that time until the day of their death, years and years later, they +never for so much as one moment lost contact with each other. + +"Daily they crawled or walked with infinite slowness, hand in hand, or +the arm of one about the waist of the other--neither knowing the look, +the age, the religion or even the color of the other. But I know, from +the only person fitted to judge, that they loved each other tremendously +and spotlessly--these two poor souls alone in that continuous, +soundless, sightless, expressionless night. I know because their baby, +when he grew up, and got away from that place, and learned white man's +talk--told me. + +"He left Quickstep Inlet when he was about fifteen years old, naked as +the day he was born; ignorant of everything--who he was or what he was, +or that the world contained anything similar to him. It was some +restless spirit of exploration that smoulders I suppose, in every human +heart, that compelled him to leave the few hundred acres of shore and +wood that were familiar to him. He carried with him upon his bold +journey a roll of bark, resembling birch-bark, upon which he had +scratched with a sharp shell the most meaningless-looking lines, curves, +spirals and gyrations that you can imagine. He will have that roll in +his possession now, I expect, for even when I knew him--when he was +twenty years old, and could talk English pretty nimbly, he could hardly +bear to be separated from it--or, if he let you take one of the sheets +in your hands, he would watch you as a dog watches the person that is +about to give him his dinner. But he ran very little risk of having it +stolen. Nobody wanted it. + +"He must have been a gentle savage, with all sorts of decent inherited +instincts, for when I knew him he had already taken kindly to +civilization. At first, of course, they had a bad time with him; they +couldn't talk to him, and when, quite naturally and nonchalantly he +would start in to do the most outrageous things, they had to teach him +better, literally by force. If Pedder weren't such an old stickler for +propriety, I could go more into detail. You needn't look offended, Ped, +you know you are very easily shocked, and that you make it unpleasant +for everybody. He was taken on by the English consul at Teerak, who was +a good fellow, and clothed, and taught to speak English, and, as a +beginning, to work in the garden. Indoor work seemed to have almost the +effect of nauseating him; and houses and closed doors threw him at first +into frenzies of fear, and always made him miserable. It was apparent in +his face, but more in his way of putting up his fists when in doubt, +that he wasn't Dutch nor German nor French. He was probably English, +they thought, but he might have been American, and so they had an +orthodox christening and named him Jonathan Bull. Of course, after he +got the trick of speech, they found out, by putting two and two +together, just about who and what he was; and that he was of English +parentage. But, of course, they had to let the name stand. + +"The first thing, he told me, that ever came to him in the way of a +thought was that he was different from his parents--that they couldn't +see, nor hear, nor make a noise as he could. He could remember sitting +comfortably in the mud at low tide and being convulsed with laughter at +his mother's efforts to find a fat mussel that was within a few inches +of her hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made +paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so +familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, hand in hand, +with considerable precision and alacrity. It was one of his earliest +mischievous instincts to place obstacles in those paths, and take a +humorous view of the consequent tumbles. + +"The only intercourse that he could have with his parents was, of +course, by sense of touch. And he told me that, whenever they could +catch him, they would kiss him and fondle him. But he didn't like to be +caressed, especially in the daytime. It was different at night when one +became nervous and afraid; then he used to let himself be caught; and he +said that he used to hold hands with his mother until he went to sleep +and that when he awoke it was to find that the clasp still held. It was +a long time before he realized that what to him were whimsical pranks, +were in the nature of tragedies to his parents. If he put a +stumbling-block in one of their paths, it upset the whole fabric of +their daily life, made them feel, I suppose, that they were losing such +faculties as they possessed: memory and the sense of touch--and they +would be obliged either to walk with infinite slowness, or actually to +crawl. And it was long before he realized that things which were +perfectly simple and easy for him, were frightfully difficult for them; +and he said that his first recollection of a tender and gentle feeling +was once when--heaven only knows how--his parents found a nest with eggs +in it--and brought these eggs to him. He realized then something of what +a prize these eggs must have seemed to them--for he had often scrambled +into trees and glutted himself with eggs, whereas, so far as he could +recollect, his parents had never had any at all. He began from that time +on to collect choice tidbits for _them_; and wondered why he had not +done so before. And they rewarded him with caresses and kisses; I +suppose his real reward was his own virtue. Anyway, though very +gradually at first, instinct taught him to be a good son to them. + +"The lessons that he learned of life were, first of all, from his +parents, who were always near at hand for study; second, from birds and +animals, there being a pool not far up the creek where even tigers +sometimes came to drink; from occasional monkeys; but mostly, of course, +by intuition and introspection. + +"He noticed that birds and animals all had the use of sight and hearing, +and were able to make sounds; and his own forest-trained senses soon +perceived different meanings, and even shades of meaning in certain of +these sounds. The larger animals were not, of course, constantly under +observation, and from tigers, for instance, he learned only the main +principles of tiger-talk--a kind of singsong snuffling purr that means +'get out of the way'; the cringing whine that means the tiger is very +sorry for himself; and two or three of the full-throated roars: the one +expressing rage, the one expressing fear, and the one expressing pained +astonishment. But into the vocabularies of birds he penetrated +very deeply. + +"One day, when I had got to know Jonathan rather well, he surprised me +by saying, 'the minute I got the idea, I talked all day long, but it was +years before I thought of writing down what I said, instead of plain +trying to remember. At first, when I'd say something that I wanted to +remember, I'd have to coax my head into remembering the place where I +had said it, near which tree, or which stone on the beach, what had +happened to make me think of saying it, and then, more often than not, I +could repeat it word for word,' Then he showed me the sheets of bark +with the scratches and scrawls and gyrations on them. 'It isn't spelled +writing,' he explained, 'or what they call picture writing. I don't +believe it has enough general principles for me to be able to explain it +as a system, though it has a sort of system to it. If it's like +anything, I think it must be like the way they write down music. It +would be, wouldn't it? Because beasts don't talk with words, they talk +with sounds, and I copycatted my language from beasts and birds,' + +"I asked him what the writing on the bark was all about. He said, and he +blushed, as every young author, and most old ones, should, that the +writing was just more or less nothing--all about different kinds of +things. So I pointed specifically to the top of one sheet, and said, +'begin there and tell me what that's about.' 'If I began there,' he +said, 'I'd have to go backward; that's the finish of--oh!' he literally +threw himself on my mercy with the most ingenuous blushing face. 'Oh,' +he said, 'I suppose _you'd_ call them poems.' I, of course, had my +doubts of that; but I kept countenance, and said, 'well, what's that one +about?' He looked puzzled for a moment, and then he smiled. 'Why,' he +said, 'I suppose it's about me, about the way I felt one day, I suppose; +but if I tried to say it into English it would just sound damn foolish; +but, perhaps, you'd sooner hear it in my own language. It's better, +because, after all, you can't turn sounds into words, can you?' 'Go +ahead,' I said. + +"His hands, holding the sheet of bark shook a little with embarrassment, +and he was very red in the face; and before he could begin--I suppose +you would call it _reading_--he had to wet his lips two or three times. +I expected, of course, to hear the usual grunts and minor guttural +sounds of the usual very primitive dialect. But Jonathan's own +particular patent language was not that sort of thing at all. He began +with the faintest, and most distinct rustling of leaves--I can't imagine +how he made the sound at all. It seemed to come from somewhere between +the back of his throat and his lips, and to have nothing to do with his +tongue or vocal cords. It lasted for, perhaps, half a minute; dying out, +fainter and fainter and finer and finer into complete silence. Then, +from the distant point where the rustling had last been heard, there +came the softest little throaty whistle, three times repeated; then, for +two good minutes without seeming to draw breath, the young man burst +into peal after peal of the sweetest, clearest, highest, swiftest +whistling that you can possibly imagine. I don't know how he did it--he +didn't even purse or move his lips--they were barely parted, in a kind +of plaintive, sad little smile--and the notes came out; that was all. Of +course I can't tell you what the thing meant word for word or sound for +sound; but, in general, it said youth, youth and spring: and I tell you +it had those compositions of Mendelssohn, and Grieg, and Sinding lashed +to the mast. Well, the leaves rustled again, a little lower in the +scale, I think, but wouldn't swear to it, and the first little soft +throaty whistle was twice repeated--and there was a little, tiny whisper +of a human moan. And that was the end of that poem. + +"I made him read to me from his bark sheets until he was tired out. And +the next day I was at him again early, and the next. Suppose you were +living in a jumping-off place, bored to death, and blowing yourself +every fifth or sixth day to a brand new crop of prickly heat; and wanted +to go away, and couldn't because you had to sit around until a fat +Dutchman made up his mind about a concession; and suppose the only book +in the place was on the uses of and manufacture and by-products of the +royal palm, written in a beastly language called Tamil, which you only +knew enough of to ask for tea and toast at four o'clock in the morning, +and were usually understood to mean soda biscuits and a dish of buffalo +milk. And suppose that then you came across the complete works of +Shakespeare--and that you had never read them--or the Odyssey and that +you had never read that--or, better, suppose that there was a Steinway +piano in your sitting-room, and that one day the boy who worked the +punka for you dropped the rope and sat down at the piano and played +Beethoven from beginning to end--as Rubenstein would have played +him--and suppose you had never heard a note of Beethoven before. It was +like that--listening to the works of Jonathan Bull." + +Gardiner paused, as if considering very carefully what he should say. + +"No!" he said presently, "I'm _not_ overdoing it. My judgment of +Jonathan Bull is no longer a sudden enthusiasm, as the natural effort of +a man to make his own discoveries seem more important to his friends +than they deserve. He _is_ one of the giants. Think of it: he had made, +on an impulse of out and out creation, the most expressive of all +languages, so far as mere sound goes; and as if that were not enough, he +had gone ahead and composed in that language incomparable lyrics. The +meanings were in the sounds. You couldn't mistake them. Have you ever +heard a tiger roar--full steam ahead? There was one piece that began +suddenly with a kind of terrible, obsessing, strong purring that shook +the walls of the room and that went into a series of the most terrible +tiger roars and ended with the nightmare screams of a child. I have +never been so frightened in my life. And there was a snake song, a soft, +wavy, piano, _pianissimo_ effect, all malignant stealth and horror, and +running through it were the guileless and insistently hungry twitterings +of baby birds in the nest. But there were comical pieces, too, in which +ludicrous adventures befell unsophisticated monkeys; and there was a +whole series of spring-fever songs--some of them just rotten and +nervous, and some of them sad and yearning--and some of them--I don't +know just how to put it--well, some of them you might say were not +exactly fit to print. One thing he read me--it was very +short--consisted of hoarse, inarticulate, broken groans--I couldn't make +out what it meant at all. And I was very curious to know, because it +seemed to move Jonathan himself much more than anything else of his. + +"'You know,' he explained to me, 'my father and mother couldn't make any +sound at all--oh, yes--they could clap their hands together and make a +sound that way--but I mean with their voices--they hadn't any +voices--sometimes their lips smacked and made a noise over eating, or +kissing; but they couldn't make sounds in their throats. Well, when my +mother died--just think, she couldn't make my father understand that she +was sick; and I couldn't. I tried every way. He didn't know that she was +leaving him--I'm glad you can't see that poor blind face of her's, +turned to father's blind face and trying to tell him good-by--I see it, +almost all the time,' he said. 'You know they were always touching--I +can't remember a single second in all those years when they weren't at +least holding hands. She went in the night. My father was asleep with +one arm over and about her. As she got colder and colder it waked him. +And he understood. Then he began to make those dumb, helpless groans, +like that piece I just read you--the nearest he got to speaking. He sat +on the ground and held her in his arms all the rest of the night, and +all the next day, and the next night--I couldn't make him let go, and +every little while he went into those dreadful, dumb groanings. You +don't get brought up in the jungle without knowing death when you see +it, and what dead things do. The second night, about midnight, the news +of my mother's death began to get about; and horrible, hunchbacked +beasts that I had never seen or dreamed of before began to slink about +among the trees, and peer out, and snuffle, and complain--and suddenly +laugh just like men. And I was so frightened of them, and of the night +anyway, that every now and then I'd go into a regular screaming fit, and +that would drive them away and keep them quiet for a time, but pretty +soon I'd hear their cautious steps, way off, drawing closer and closer, +and then the things would begin to snuffle, and complain, and laugh +again--they had disgusting, black dogfaces, and one came very close, and +I could see the water running out of its mouth. But when dawn began to +break they drew farther and farther away, until you could only hear +them--now and then. + +"'My father looked very white and ill, as was natural enough; but his +face now had a peaceful, contented expression. I didn't understand at +first that he, in his turn, was dying. But it wasn't of a broken heart, +as you might suppose, or anything like that; he had gnawed his left +wrist until he got the arteries open; and he was bleeding to death. + +"'Once a big dead fish was washed up on the beach--it was when I was +quite a little boy--but I remembered how, after a day or two, even my +parents had no trouble in finding it, and I remembered how my father had +scooped a hole in the sand and buried it. So I scooped a great deep hole +in the sand, very deep until water began to trickle into it. And I had +sense enough, when it came to filling up the hole, to put in lots of big +stones, the biggest I could roll in. And I'm strong. I stayed on--for +about six months, getting lonelier and lonelier--and then spring came. I +think that was really what started me. I still go almost crazy every +spring--anyway I got to this place, and found people.'" + + * * * * * + +"What's he doing now?" asked Pedder. + +"He's trying," said Gardiner, "to do it in English. Of course it seems +impossible that he should succeed. But then it was absolutely impossible +for Shakespeare to do what he did with the English language, wasn't it? +And yet he did it." + +"But--" said Pedder. + +"Ped," said Gardiner, "we don't control the lightnings; and you never +can tell where they are going to strike next--or when." + +Ludlow flushed a little, and did not look at his friends. + +"Wouldn't it be wonderful," he said, "to be loved and to be in love the +way his father and mother were. Maybe they were the ones that really +heard and saw, and--sang. We admire the lily, but we owe her to the +loves of the blind rain for the deaf and the dumb earth...." + +Nobody spoke for some moments. It had been the only allusion that Ludlow +had made in years and years to that which had left him a lonely and a +cynical man. + +"I wonder," Pedder mused, "how it ever occurred to a blind, deaf mute +that severing his wrist with his teeth would induce death?" + +Gardiner shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is always interesting," he said, "to know just which part of a +story--if any--is thought worthy of consideration by a given +individual." + + + + +THE BOOT + +Mary Rex was more particularly _my_ nurse, for my sister Ellen, a +thoughtful, dependable child of eight, was her own mistress in +most matters. + +This was in the days when we got our servants from neighborhood +families; before the Swedish and Irish invasion had made servants of us +in turn. Mary was the youngest of an ancestored county family. Her +great-grandfather had fought in the Revolution, as you might know by the +great flint-lock musket over the Rexes' fireplace. A brother of his had +formed part of a British square at Waterloo; and if Mary's own father +had not lost his right hand at Gettysburg he would never have let his +children go out to service. Poor soul, he bore the whole of his +afflictions, those to his body and those to his pride, with a dignity +not often seen in these degenerate days. He was by trade a blacksmith, +and it was for that reason, I suppose, that Providence, who loves a +little joke, elected for amputation his right hand rather than one or +both of his feet. Since, even in these degenerate days, many a footless +blacksmith makes an honest living. + +Mary was a smart, comely, upstanding young woman. Even my father, a +dismal sceptic anent human frailty, said that he would freely trust her +around the farthest corner in Christendom. And I gathered from the talk +of my elders and betters that Mary was very pretty. People said it was a +real joy to see a creature so young, so smiling, so pink and white, so +graciously happy--in those degenerate days. I myself can see now that +she must have been very pretty indeed. Her eyes, for instance, so blue +in the blue, so white in the white, can't have changed at all--unless, +perhaps, the shadows deep within the blue are deeper than they were when +she was a girl. But even to-day you would have to travel far to see +another middle-aged woman so smooth of forehead, so cleanly-cut of +feature, so generally comely. + +But if there was one thing in the world that I had formed no conclusions +upon at the age of six it was female loveliness. To cuddle against a +gentle mother when bogies were about had nothing whatsoever to do with +that gentle mother's personal appearance. To strike valiantly at Mary's +face when the hot water and the scrubbing-brush were going had nothing +to do with the prettiness thereof. Nor did I consider my sister the less +presentable by a black eye given and taken in the game of Little John +and Robin Hood upon a log in the Baychester woods. And indeed I have +been told, and believe it to be a fact, that the beauty before whom +swelled my very earliest tides of affection was a pug-nosed, +snaggle-toothed, freckled-faced tomboy, who if she had been but a jot +uglier might have been exhibited to advantage in a dime museum. Peace, +old agitations, peace! + +Everybody knew the Rexes, as in any part of the world, for many years +stable, everybody knows everybody else. In Westchester, before great +strips of woodland and water became Pelham Bay Park, before the Swedes +came, and the Irish, and the Italians, and the Germans--in other words, +before land boomed--there had always been an amiable and +uninjunctionable stability. Families had lived, for well or ill, in the +same houses for years and years. So long had the portraits hung in the +rich men's houses that if you moved them it was to disclose a +brightly-fresh rectangle upon the wall behind. The box in the poor man's +yard had been tended by the poor man's great-grand female relatives. +Ours was a vicinage of memory and proper pride. We would no more have +thought of inquiring into the morals of this public house or that than +of expunging the sun from the heavens. They had always been there. + +There was a man who left his wife and little children to fight against +King George. He could think of but one thing to protect them against +vagrant soldiers of either side, and that was to carve upon certain +boards (which he nailed to the trees here and there along the boundaries +of his farm): + + BEWARR OF THE BOOLE DOGGES + +When I was a child one of these signs still remained--at the left, just +beyond Pelham Bridge. And people used to laugh and point at the great +trees and say that because of the sign the British had never dared to +trespass and cut down the timber. Now the man had never owned a Boole +Dogge, nor had any of his descendants. I doubt if there was ever one on +the premises, unless latterly, perhaps, there has been a French bulldog +or so let out of a passing automobile to enjoy a few moments of +unconventional liberty. But the bluff had always held good. As my mother +used to say: "I know--but then there _may_ be a bulldog now." And that +farm was always out of bounds. I relate this for two reasons--to show +how stable and conservative a neighborhood was ours, and because on that +very farm, and chosen for the very reason which I have related, stood +the hollow oak which is to play its majestic part in this modest +narrative. + +The apple orchards of the Boole Dogge Farm ran southerly to a hickory +wood, the hickory wood to an oak wood, the oak wood to thick scrub of +all sorts, the scrub to the sedge, and the sedge to the salt mud at low +tide, and at high to the bassy waters themselves of inmost Pelham Bay. +On the right was the long, black trestle of the Harlem River Branch +Railroad, on the left the long-curved ironwork of Pelham Bridge. And the +farm, promontoried with its woods and thick cover between these +boundaries and more woods to the north, was an overgrown, run-down, +desolate, lonely, deserted old place. Had it not been for the old sign +that said "Bewarr," it must have been a great playground for +children--for their picnics, and their hide-and-seeks, and their games +at Indians. But the ferocious animals imagined by the old Revolutionary +were as efficacious against trespassers as a cordon of police. And I +remember to this day, I can feel still, the very-thrill of that wild +surmise with which I followed Mary and my sister over the stone wall and +into those forbidden and forbidding acres for the first time. But that +comes later. + +It was my sister who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I +had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to +accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with +her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her +face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of +being made more sedate by her responsible and settling prospects she +shed the half of her years, which were not many, and became the most +delightful romp, a furious runner of races, swiftest of pursuers at tag, +most subtle and sudden of hiders and poppers out, and full to the arch, +scarlet brim of loud, clear laughter. + +It was late spring now, lilacs in all the dooryards, all the houses +being cleaned inside out, and they were to be married in the fall. They +had picked the little house on the outskirts of Skinnertown not far from +the Tory oak, in which they were to live. And often we made it the end +of an excursion, and played at games devised by Mary to improve the +appearance of the little yard. We gathered up in emulation old, broken +china and bottles, and made them into a heap at the back; we cleared the +yard of brush and dead wood, and pulled up weeds by the hundred-weight, +and set out a wild rose or two and more valuable, if less lovely, plants +that people gave Mary out of real gardens. + +Will Braddish, a painter by trade, met us one day with brushes and a +great bucket of white paint, and, while he and Mary sat upon the +doorstep talking in low tones or directing in high, Ellen and I made +shift to paint the little picket-fence until it was white as new snow. +At odd times Braddish himself painted the little house (it was all of +old-fashioned, long shingles) inside and out, and a friend of his got up +on the roof with mortar and a trowel, and pointed-up the brick chimney; +and my father and Mr. Sturtevant contributed a load of beautiful, sleek, +rich pasture sod and the labor to lay it; so that by midsummer the +little domain was the spickest, spannest little dream of a home in the +whole county. The young couple bought furniture, and received gifts of +furniture, prints, an A1 range, a tiny, shiny, desirable thing; and the +whole world and all things in it smiled them in the face. Braddish, as +you will have guessed, was a prosperous young man. He was popular, too, +and of good habits. People said only against him that he was impulsive +and had sudden fits of the devil's own temper, but that he recovered +from these in a twinkling and before anything came of them. And even the +merest child could see that he thought the world of Mary. I have seen +him show her little attentions such as my sister retailed me of +personages in fairy stories and chivalric histories. Once when there was +a puddle to cross he made a causeway of his coat, like another Raleigh, +and Mary crossed upon it, like one in a trance of tender happiness, +oblivious of the fact that she might easily have gone around and saved +the coat. His skin and his eyes were almost as clear as Mary's own, and +he had a bold, dashing, independent way with him. + +But it wasn't often that Braddish could get free of his manifold +occupations: his painting contracts and his political engagements. He +was by way of growing very influential in local politics, and people +predicted an unstintedly successful life for him. He was considered +unusually clever and able. His manners were superior to his station, and +he had done a deal of heterogeneous reading. But, of course, whenever it +was possible he was with Mary and helped her out with looking after +Ellen and me. My mother, who was very timid about tramps, looked upon +these occasions as in the nature of real blessings. There was nowhere in +the countryside that we children might not safely venture with Will +Braddish strolling behind. He loved children--he really did, a rare, +rare thing--and he was big, and courageous, and strong, and quick. He +was very tactful, too, on these excursions and talked a good part of the +time for the three of us, instead of for Mary alone. Nice, honest talk +it was, too, with just enough robbers, and highwaymen, and lions, and +Indians to give it spice. But all the adventures through which he passed +us were open and honest. How the noble heroes _did_ get on in life, and +how the wicked villains did catch it! + +I remember once we were returning home past the Boole Dogge Farm, and +Braddish, wiping his brow, for it was cruelly hot, seated himself as +bold as could be on the boundary wall. The conversation had been upon +robbers, and how they always, always got caught. + +"It doesn't matter," Braddish said, "where they hide. Take this old +farm. It's the best hiding-place in this end of the county--woods, and +marshes, and old wells, and bushes, and hollows--" + +We asked him in much awe if he had ever actually set foot on the place. + +"Yes, indeed," he said; "when I was a boy I knew every inch of it; I was +always hunting and trapping, and looking for arrowheads. And that was +the best country. Once I spent a night in the woods yonder. The bridge +was open to let a tugboat through and got stuck so they couldn't shut +it, and there was no way back to Westchester except over the railroad +trestle, and my father had said that I could go anywhere I pleased +except on that trestle. And so here I was caught, and it came on to +blither and blow, and I found an oak tree, all hollow like a little +house, and I crept in and fell asleep and never woke till daylight. My +father said next time I could come home by the trestle, or he'd know the +reason why." + +"But," said I, "weren't you afraid the bulldogs would get you?" + +"Now, if they'd said bull-terriers," he said, "I might have had my +doubts, but a bulldog's no more dangerous than a toadfish. He's like my +old grandma. What teeth he has don't meet. And besides," he said, "there +weren't any bulldogs on that farm. And I don't believe there ever were. +Now, I'm not sure, sonny," he said, "but you climb up here--" + +I climbed upon the wall, and he held me so that I should not fall. + +"Do you see," said he, "way down yonder over the tops of the trees a +dead limb sticking up?" + +I saw it finally. + +"Well," he said, "I'd stake something that that's a part of the old +hollow oak. Shall we go and see?" + +But Mary told him that the farm was out of bounds. And he thought a +moment, and then swung his legs over the wall. + +"I won't be two minutes," he said. "I'd like to see if I'm right--it's +fifteen years ago--" And he strode off across the forbidden farm to the +woods. When he came back he said that he had been right, and that +nothing had changed much. He tossed me a flint arrowhead that he had +picked up--he was always finding things, and we went on again. + +When we got to the middle of Pelham Bridge we all stopped and leaned +against the railing and looked down into the swift, swirling current. +Braddish tore an old envelop into little pieces and dropped them +overboard by pairs, so that we might see which would beat the other to a +certain point. + +But the shadows began to grow long now and presently Braddish had to +leave us to attend a meeting in Westchester, and I remember how he +turned and waved, just before the Boulevard dips to the causeway, and +how Mary recollected something that she had meant to say and ran after +him a little way calling, and he did not hear. And she came back +laughing, and red in the face, and breathing quick. + +Two days later my father, who had started for the early train, came +driving back to the house as if he had missed it. But he said, no, and +his face was very grave--he had heard a piece of news that greatly +concerned Mary, and he had come back to tell her. He went into the study +with my mother, and presently they sent for Mary and she went in +to them. + +A few minutes later, through the closed door, Ellen and I heard a +sudden, wailing cry. + +Poor Braddish, it seems, in one of his ungovernable tempers had shot a +man to death, and fled away no one knew whither. + + + + +II + +The man killed was named Hagan. He was a red-faced, hard-drinking brute, +not without sharp wits and a following--or better, a heeling. There had +been bad blood between him and Braddish for some time over political +differences of opinion and advancement. But into these Hagan had carried +a circumstantial, if degenerate, imagination that had grown into and +worried Braddish's peace of mind like a cancer. Details of the actual +killing were kept from us children. But I gathered, since the only +witnesses of the shooting were heelers of Hagan's, that it could in no +wise be construed into an out-and-out act of self-defence, and so far as +the law lay things looked bad for Braddish. + +That he had not walked into the sheriff's office to give himself up made +it look as if he himself felt the unjustifiability of his act, and it +was predicted that when he was finally captured it would be to serve a +life sentence at the very least. The friends of the late Hagan would +hear of nothing less than hanging. It was a great pity (this was my +father's attitude): Hagan was a bad lot and a good riddance; Braddish +was an excellent young man, except for a bit of a temper, and here the +law proposed to revenge the bad man upon the other forever and ever. And +it was right and proper for the law so to do, more's the pity. But it +was not Braddish that would be hit hardest, said my father, and here +came in the inscrutable hand of Providence--it was Mary. + +After the first outburst of feeling she had accepted her fate with a +stanch reserve and went on with her duties much as usual. One ear was +always close to the ground, you might say, to hear the first rumor of +Braddish, either his capture or his whereabouts, that she might fly to +him and comfort him, but the rest of her faculties remained in devoted +attendance on my sister and me. Only there showed in them now and then a +kind of tigerish passionateness, as when I fell off the sea-wall among +the boulders and howled so dismally. She leaped down after and caught me +to her in the wildest distress, and even when I stopped howling could +not seem to put me down. Indeed, she held me so tight that if any of my +bones had been cracked by the tumble she must have finished by breaking +them. The pathos of her efforts to romp with us as in happier days was +lost upon me, I am happy to say. Nor did I, recalling to her what +Braddish had said of robbers being inevitably caught, realize that I was +stabbing her most cruelly. For she was, or tried to be, firm in the +belief that Braddish would succeed where all others had failed. She had +asked my father what would happen if Braddish got clean out of the +United States, and he, hoping, I suppose, to be of indirect use to the +young couple for whom he was heartily sorry, made her out a list of +countries, so far as he knew them, wherein there was no extradition. My +father hoped, I fondly believe, that she would get the list to Braddish +for his guidance, conjecturing rightly that if Braddish made his +whereabouts known to anybody it would be to Mary. But as to that, ten +days passed before Mary knew a jot more of it than another. And I must +believe that it came to her then entirely by inspiration. + +We were passing the Boole Dogge Farm, my sister and I, intent upon +seeing which of us could take the most hops without putting the held-up +foot to the ground, when suddenly Mary, who had been strolling along +laughing at us, stopped short in her tracks and turned, and stood +looking over the green treetops to where the gaunt, dead limb of the +hollow oak thrust sharply up from among them. But we had hopped on for +quite a piece before we noticed that she no longer went alongside. So we +stopped that game and ran back to her. What was it? Had she seen a +rabbit? She laughed and looked very wistful. She was just thinking, +children, that she would like to see the hollow tree where Will had +passed the night. She was not excited--I can swear to that. She guessed +nothing as yet. Her desire was really to the tree--as she might have +coveted one of Will's baby shoes, or anything that had been his. She had +already, poor girl, begun to draw, here and there, upon the past for +sustenance. + +First, she charged Ellen and me to wait for her in the road. But we +rebelled. We swore (most falsely) that we were afeard. Since the teeth +of bulldogs no longer met, we desired passionately to explore the +forbidden farm, and had, indeed, extracted a free commission from my +father so to do, but my mother had procrastinated and put us off. We +laid these facts before Mary, and she said, very well, if our father had +said we might go on the farm, go we might. He would, could and must make +it right with our mother. And so, Mary leading, we climbed the wall. + +Bulldogs' teeth or no bulldogs' teeth, my ancient fear of the place +descended upon me, and had a rabbit leaped or a cat scuttled among the +bushes I must have been palsied. The going across to the woods was waist +high with weeds and brambles, damp and rank under foot. Whole squadrons +of mosquitoes arose and hung about us in clouds, with a humming sound as +of sawmills far away. But this was long before you took your malaria of +mosquitoes, and we minded them no more than little children mind them +to-day. Indeed, I can keep peacefully still even now to watch a mosquito +batten and fatten upon my hand, to see his ravenous, pale abdomen swell +to a vast smug redness--that physiological, or psychological, moment for +which you wait ere you burst him. + +The forbidden farm had, of course, its thousand novelties. I saw prickly +pears in blossom upon a ledge of rock; a great lunar-moth resting +drowsily, almost drunkenly, in the parasol shade of a wild-carrot +blossom; here was the half of a wagon wheel, the wood rotted away, and +there in the tangle an ancient cistern mouth of brick, the cistern +filled to the brim with alluring rubbish. My sister sprang with a +gurgle of delight to catch a garter snake, which eluded her; and a last +year's brier, tough and humorously inclined, seized upon Mary by the +skirts and legs, so that it was a matter of five minutes and piercing +screams of merriment to cast her loose again. But soon we drew out of +the hot sunshine into the old orchard with its paltry display of +deformed, green, runt apples, and its magnificent columns and canopies +of poison ivy--that most beautiful and least amiable of our indigenous +plants; and then we got among scale-bark hickories, and there was one +that had been fluted from top to bottom by a stroke of lightning; and +here the little red squirrels were most unusually abundant and +indignant; and there was a catbird that miauled exactly like a cat; and +there was a spring among the roots of one great tree, and a broken +teacup half buried in the sand at the bottom. + +We left the hickories and entered among the oaks, and here was the +greatest to-do imaginable to find the one that was hollow. Ellen went to +the left, I to the right, and Mary down the middle. Whenever I came to +an unusually big tree I tiptoed around the trunk, goggle-eyed, expecting +the vasty hollow to open before me. And I am sure that Ellen, whom I had +presently lost sight of, behaved in the same way. Mary also had +disappeared, and feeling lonely all of a sudden I called to her. She +answered a moment later in a strange voice. I thought that she must have +fallen and hurt herself; but when I found her she was cheerful and +smiling. She was standing with her back to a snug hollow in the vast +stem of the very oak we had been looking for. + +"This is it," she said, and turned and pointed to the hollow. "Where's +Ellen?" + +"Here, Ellen," I called, "here--_we've_ found it!" + +Then Ellen came scampering through the wood; and first I climbed into +the hollow and curled up to see what sort of a night I might have of it, +and then I climbed out and Ellen climbed in--and then both in at once, +and we kept house for a while and gave a couple of dinners and tea +parties. And then quarreled about the probable size of Friar Tuck, and +Ellen drew the line at further imaginings and left me alone in +the hollow. + +This extended all the way up the main trunk and all but out through the +top. Here and there it pierced through the outer bark, so that slants of +pale light served to carry the eye up and up until it became lost in +inky blackness. Now and then dust and little showers of dry rot +descended softly upon the upturned face; and if you put your ear close +to the wood you could hear, as through the receiver of a telephone, +things that were going on among the upper branches; as when the breeze +puffed up and they sighed and creaked together. I could hear a squirrel +scampering and a woodpecker at work--or so I guessed, though it sounded +more like a watch ticking. I made several essays to climb up the hollow, +but the knotholes and crevices, and odds and ends of support, were too +far removed from each other for the length of my limbs, and, +furthermore, my efforts seemed to shake the whole tree and bring down +whole smarting showers of dust and dry rot and even good-sized +fragments. I got up a few feet, lost my hold, and fell into the soft, +punky nest at the bottom. + +"Can't you climb up?" said Ellen, who had recovered her temper by now. +"Because somebody has climbed up and stuck an ol' shoe out of a +knothole way up." + +I climbed out of the hollow and followed her point. Sure enough--thirty +feet or so from the ground the toe of a much-used leather boot stuck out +through a knothole. + +Mary refused to take an interest in the boot. It was high time we went +home. She herself had a headache. Our mother would be angry with her for +taking us on the forbidden farm. She was sorry she had done so. No, she +wasn't angry. We were good children; she loved us. Wouldn't we come? + +"I'll tell you," said she, and her face, which looked sick and pale, +colored, "if you'll come now, and hurry, we'll just have time to stop on +the bridge and have some races." + +And sure enough, when we got to the bridge Mary produced a stained sheet +of paper, and tore it quickly into little bits of pieces (we were +pressed for time) and launched pair after pair of sea-going racers upon +the swirling tide. + +When the last pair were gone upon their merry career she drew a long +breath, and seemed as one relieved of a weight. + +"Perhaps," she said, "you needn't tell your mother where you've +been--unless she asks you. Do you think that would be wrong?" + +I had never known Mary to suggest deceit of any kind. + +"If you think it would get you into trouble," said my sister, aged +eight, very stiffly, "why, of course, we won't say anything." + +Mary was troubled. Finally she drew a deep breath and flung out her +hands. + +"Of course, it would be wrong not to tell," she said. "You _must_ tell +her." + +But by good fortune we met my father first and told him. + +"And papa," said Ellen, she had been swung to his shoulder and there +rode like a princess upon a genii, "what do you think, way up the trunk +there was an old shoe sticking out of a knothole, and we all thought +that somebody must have climbed up inside and put it there. But brother +couldn't climb up because he's too little, and Mary wouldn't try, and we +thought maybe Sunday you'd go with us and see if you could climb up." + +I don't know why my father happened to take the line that he did; he may +have seen something in Mary's face that we children would not be likely +to see. He laughed first, and told us a story. + +It was about some children that he had once known, who had seen a boot +sticking out of a tree, just as we had done, and how a frightful old +witch had come along, and told them that if they went away for a year +and a day and didn't say a word about the boot to any one, and then went +back, they would by that time have grown sufficiently to climb up and +get the boot, and that they would find it full of gold pieces. But if, +during the year and the day, they so much as mentioned the boot to any +one but their father, they would find it full of the most dreadful black +and yellow spiders which would chase them all the way to Jericho, and +bite their fat calves every few steps. + +"This," said he, "may be that kind of a boot. Now promise not to talk +about it for a year and a day--not even to me--and at the end of that +time, why we'll all go and see what's in it. No," he said, "you mustn't +go to look at it every now and then--that would spoil the charm. Let me +see. This is the twenty-eighth--a year and a day--hum." And he made his +calculations. Then he said: "By the way, Mary, don't you and the +children ever get hungry between meals? If you were to take bread and +meat, and make up sandwiches to take on your excursions, they'd never be +missed. I'd see to it," he said, "that they weren't missed. Growing +children, you know." And he strode on, Ellen riding on his shoulder like +a princess on her genii. + + + + +III + +Ellen and I were very firm to have nothing to do with the boot in the +oak tree; and we had two picnics in the hollow and played for hours in +the adjoining woods without once looking up. Mary had become very strict +with us about scattering papers and eggshells at our out-of-door +spreads; and whatever fragments of food were left over she would make +into a neat package and hide away under a stone; but in other matters +she became less and less precise: as, for instance, she left Ellen's +best doll somewhere in the neighborhood of the hollow oak, and had to go +all the way back for it in the dusk; and another time (we had also been +to the store at Bartow for yeast) she left her purse that had two +months' wages in it and more, but wasn't lucky enough to find that. + +It was considered remarkable on all hands that Braddish had not yet been +caught. Hagan's heelers, who swung many votes, had grown very sharp with +the authorities, and no efforts were spared to locate the criminal (he +was usually referred to as the "murderer") and round him up. Almost +daily, for a time, we were constantly meeting parties of strange men, +strolling innocently about the country at large or private estates as if +they were looking things over with a view to purchase. And now and then +we met pairs of huntsmen, though there was no game in season, very +citified, with brand-new shotguns, and knickerbockers, and English +deer-stalker caps. And these were accompanied by dogs, neither well +suited nor broken to the business of finding birds and holding them. +There was one pair of sportsmen whose makeshift was a dropsical coach +dog, very much spotted. And, I must be forgiven for telling the truth, +one was followed, _ventre a terre_, by a dachshund. My father, a very +grave man with his jest, said that these were famous detectives, so +accoutred as not to excite comment. And their mere presence in it was +enough to assure the least rational that Braddish must by now have fled +the country. "Their business," he said, "is to close the stable door, +if they can find it, and meanwhile to spend the money of the many in the +roadhouses of the few." + +But I have sometimes thought that the pseudo-sportsmen were used to give +Braddish a foolhardy sense of security, so that other secret-service +men, less open in method and less comic in aspect, might work +unobserved. Indeed, it turned out that an under-gardener employed by +Mrs. Kirkbride, our neighbor, about this time, a shambling, peaceful, +half-witted goat of a man, was one such; and a perfect red-Indian upon a +trail. It was Mary who spotted him. He hung about our kitchen door a +good deal; and tried to make friends with her and sympathize with her. +But he showed himself a jot too eager, and then a jot too peppery when +she did not fall into his nets. Mary told my father, and my father told +Mrs. Kirkbride. Mrs. Kirkbride had had a very satisfactory job at +painting done for her by Braddish; and although a law-abiding woman, she +did not propose personally to assist the law--even by holding her +tongue. So she approached the under-gardener, at a time when the +head-gardener and the coachman were in hearing, and she said, plenty +loud enough to be heard: "Well, officer, have you found a clew yet? Have +you pumped my coachman? He was friends with Braddish," and so on, so +that she destroyed that man's utility for that place and time. But +others were more fortunate. And all of a sudden the country was +convulsed with excitement at hearing that Braddish had been seen on the +Bartow Road at night, and had been fired at, but had made good his +escape into the Boole Dogge Farm. + +Bloodhounds were at once sent for. I remember that my father stayed up +from town that thrilling morning, and walked up and down in front of the +house looking up at the sky. I now know that he was conjuring it to rain +with all his power of pity--prayer maybe--though I think, like most +commuters, he was weak on prayer. Anyhow, rain it did. The sky had been +overcast for two days, drawing slowly at the great beds of moisture in +the northeast, and that morning, accompanied by high winds, the first +drops fell and became presently a deluging northeaster, very cold for +midsummer. + +As chance would have it, there had been a false scent down on Throgg's +Neck, upon which the nearest accessible bloodhounds had been employed. +So that there was a delay in locating them, and fetching them to the +Boole Dogge Farm. We went over to the Boulevard--my father, Ellen, and +I--all under umbrellas, to see them go by. They were a sorry pair of +animals, and very weary with having been out all night, in all sorts of +country, upon feet more accustomed to the smooth asphalt of a kennel. +But there was a crowd of men with them, some in uniform, one I remember +in a great coat, who rode upon one of the old-fashioned, high bicycles, +and there was a show of clubs and bludgeons, and one man wore openly +upon his hip a rusty, blued revolver, and on the whole the little +procession had a look of determination and of power to injure that was +rather terrible. I have sometimes thought that if I had been my father I +would not have taken Ellen and me to see them go by. But why not? I +would not have missed it for kingdoms. + +By the time the pursuit had reached the Boole Dogge Farm so much rain +had fallen as to render the bloodhounds' noses of no account. Still the +police were not deterred from beating that neck of land with great +thoroughness and energy. But it proved to be the old story of the needle +in the haystack. Either they could not find the needle or there was no +needle to be found. Of course, they discovered the spring with the +broken cup, and the hollow oak, and made sure that it was here that +Braddish slept at night, and they found other traces of his recent +habitation--an ingenious snare with a catbird in it, still warm; the +deep, inadvertent track of a foot in a spot of bog; but of the man +himself neither sight nor sound. + +In the afternoon, the rain having held up for a while, nay father walked +over to the farm to see how the hunt was progressing. This, I think, +was for Mary's sake, who had been all the morning in so terrible a state +of agitation that it seemed as if she must have news for better or +worse, or die of suspense. My father was not away longer than necessary. +He returned as he had gone, wearing a cheerful, incisive look very +characteristic of him, and whistling short snatches of tunes. + +He said that the beaters were still at work; but that they were wet to +the skin and the heart was out of them. Yes. They would keep an eye on +the place, but they were pretty well convinced that the bird had flown. +If, however, the bird had not flown, said my father, he should be quick +about it. We were on the front porch to meet my father, and I remember +he paused and looked out over the bay for some time. It was roughish +with occasional white caps, and had a dreary, stormy look. Our rowboat, +moored to a landing stage or float, just off our place, was straining +and tugging at her rope. + +"That boat will blow loose," said my father, "if she isn't pulled up. +But I'm not going to do it. I'm wet enough as it is. + +"Would you like me to try, sir?" Mary called. + +"What's the use?" said my father. "You'll only spoil your clothes. And, +besides, the boat's old and rotten. She's not worth two dollars for +kindling wood. I rather hope she does blow away, so as to provide me +with a much-needed excuse to buy a better one. The oars, I see, are in +her. Never mind, they're too heavy. I never liked them." + +Then he put his arm around Ellen. + +"By the way, Teenchy," said he, "your old boot is still sticking out of +the oak tree." + +"Oh, papa," cried Ellen, "you said we mustn't talk about it--or it would +be full of spiders." + +"I said _you_ mustn't talk about it," said he. "So don't. Anyhow"--and +he included Mary in his playful smile--"it's still there--so make the +most of _that_." + +He turned to go into the house, and then: + +"Oh, by the way, Mary," said he, "you have not asked for your wages +recently, and I think you are owed for three months. If you will come to +the study in a little while I will give them to you." He was always +somewhat quizzical. "Would you rather have cash or a check?" + +Personally I didn't know the difference, and, at the time, I admired +Mary exceedingly for being able to make a choice. She chose cash. + +But till some years later I thought she must have repented this +decision, for not long after she went into a kind of mild hysterics, and +cried a good deal, and said something about "such kindness--this--side +Heaven." And was heard to make certain comparisons between the +thoughtfulness and pitifulness of a certain commuter and the Christ. + +But these recollections are a little vague in my head as to actual +number of tears shed, cries uttered and words spoken. But I do know for +an incontestable fact that during the night, just as my father had +prophesied, our rowboat was blown loose by the northeast gale, and has +not been seen from that day to this. And I know that when I woke up in +the morning and called to Mary she was not in her bed, and I found in +mine, under the pillow, a ridiculous old-fashioned brooch, that I had +ever loved to play with, and that had been Mary's mother's. + +My father was very angry about Mary's going. + +"Good Lord!" he said; "we can't pretend to conceal it!" But then he +looked out over Pelham Bay, and it had swollen and waxed wrathful during +the night, and was as a small ocean--with great waves and billows that +came roaring over docks and sea-walls. And then his temper abated and he +said: "Of course she would--any woman would--sense or no sense." + +And, indeed, the more I know of women, which is to say, and I thank God +for it, the less I know of them, the convinceder am I that my father +was right. + +In other words, if a woman's man has nine chances in ten of drowning by +himself she will go with him so as to make it ten chances, and a +certainty of her being there whatever happens. And so, naturally, man +cannot tolerate the thought of woman getting the right, based on +intelligence, to vote. + + + + +IV + +Twenty-five years later I paid Mary and Braddish a pleasant +Saturday-to-Monday visit in what foreign country it is not necessary to +state. The tiny Skinnertown house of their earlier ambition, with its +little yard, had now been succeeded by a great, roomy, rambling +habitation, surrounded by thousands of acres sprinkled with flocks of +fat, grazing sheep. It was a grand, rolling upland of a country that +they had fled to; cool, summer weather all the year round, and no +mosquitoes. Hospitable smoke curled from a dozen chimneys; shepherds +galloped up on wiry horses and away again; scarlet passion-vines poured +over roofs and verandas like cataracts of glory; and there was incessant +laughter and chatter of children at play. + +Of their final flight from the Boole Dogge Farm in my father's boat, +across the bay to Long Island in the teeth of the northeaster, I now +first heard the details; and of their subsequent hiding among swamps and +woods; and how, when it had seemed that they must be captured and +Braddish go to jail forever and ever, Mary thought that she could face +the separation more cheerfully if she was his wife. And so one rainy +night they knocked upon the door of a clergyman, and told him their +story. They were starving, it seems, and it was necessary to look about +for mercy. And, as luck would have it, the clergyman, an old man, had +officiated at the wedding of Mary's parents; and he had had some trouble +in his day with the law about a boundary fence, and was down on the law. +And he fed them and married them, and said that he would square matters +with his conscience--if he could. And he kept them in his attic for two +days, which was their honeymoon--and then--a night of dogs and lanterns +and shouting--he smuggled them off to the swamps again, and presided +over their hiding until an opportunity came to get them aboard a tramp +ship--and that was all there was to it, except that they had prospered +and been happy ever since. + +I asked Mary about my father's part in it. But she gave him a clean +bill. + +"He put two and two together," she said, "and he dropped a hint or +two--and he paid me all my back wages in American money, and he made me +a handsome present in English gold, but he never talked things over, +never mentioned Will's name even." + +"It was the toe of my boot," said Will, "sticking out of the tree that +made him guess where I was. You see, I'd climbed up in the hollow to +hide, and to keep there without moving I had to stick my foot out +through a knothole. I was up there all the day they tried to get the +bloodhounds after me, with my boot sticking out. And they were beating +around that tree for hours, but nobody looked up." + +"I've always wondered," said I, "why, they didn't send a man up inside +the tree." + +"I've always thought," said Will, "that nobody liked to propose it for +fear he'd be elected to do it himself. But maybe it didn't enter +anybody's head. Anyhow, all's well that ends well." + +"Mary," I said, "do you remember how my father told Ellen and me to go +back in a year and a day, and look in the boot?" + +She nodded. + +"Well," I said, "we went--hand in hand--and there was still a boot +sticking out. And I climbed up, after several failures, and got it. It +wasn't full of gold, but it did have two gold pieces in it. One each." + +"What a memory your father had," said Mary: "he never forgot anything." + +Later I was talking with Will alone, and I asked him why he had run away +in the first place. + +"Why," he said, "I had no chance with the law. The only outsiders +who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood +between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan +with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by +the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And +somehow--somehow--I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to +prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing +to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one +that knew me then--except Hagan's friends, and whatever they believed +they'd have sworn the opposite. Do you think your father thought I was a +bloody murderer? Look here," he said, "I don't know just how to put +it--it was twenty-five years ago, all that--Mary'll tell you, if you ask +her, that she's been absolutely happy every minute of all that +time--even when we were hiding in swamps and starving. Now that side of +it wouldn't have entered the law's head, would it?" He smiled very +peacefully. "Out here, of course," he said, "it's very different. Almost +everybody here has gotten away from something or other. And mostly we've +done well, and are happy and self-respecting. It's a big world," he +looked out affectionately over his rolling, upland acres, "and a funny +world. Did Mary tell you that I've just been re-elected sheriff?" + + + + +THE DESPOILER + +Forrest paused when his explorations had brought him to the edge of the +beechwood, all dappled with golden lights and umber shadows, and stood +for a time brooding upon those intimate lawns and flowery gardens that +seemed, as it were, but roofless extensions of the wide, open house. + +It is probable that his brooding had in it an estimate of the cost of +these things. It was thus that he had looked upon the blooded horses in +the river-fields and the belted cattle in the meadows. It was thus that +his grave eyes passed beyond the gardens and moved from corner to corner +of the house, from sill to cornice, relating the porticos and +interminable row of French windows to dollars and cents. He had, of +course, been of one mind, and now he was of two; but that octagonal slug +of California minting, by which he resolved his doubts, fell heads, and +he stepped with an acquiescent reluctance from the dappled shadows into +the full sunlight of the gardens and moved slowly, with a kind of +awkward and cadaverous grandeur, toward the house. He paused by the +sundial to break a yellow rose from the vine out of which its fluted +supporting column emerged. So standing, and regarding the rose slowly +twirled in his fingers, he made a dark contrast to the brightly-colored +gardens. His black cape hung in unbroken lines from his gaunt shoulders +to his knees, and his face had the modeling and the gentle gloom +of Dante's. + +The rose fell from his hand, and he moved onward through the garden and +entered the house as nonchalantly as if it had been his own. He found +himself in a cool dining-room, with a great chimney-piece and beaded +white paneling. The table was laid for seven, and Forrest's intuitive +good taste caused his eyes to rest with more than passing interest upon +the stately loving-cup, full of roses, that served for a centre-piece. +But from its rosy garlands caught up in the mouths of demon-heads he +turned suddenly to the portrait over the chimney-piece. It was darker +and more sedate than the pictures to which Forrest was accustomed, but +in effect no darker or more sedate than himself. The gentleman of the +portrait, a somewhat pouchy-cheeked, hook-nosed Revolutionary, in whose +wooden and chalky hand was a rolled document, seemed to return Forrest's +glance with a kind of bored courtesy. + +"That is probably the Signer," thought Forrest, and he went closer. "A +great buck in your time," he approved. + +The butler entered the dining-room from the pantry, and, though a man +accustomed to emergencies, was considerably nonplussed at the sight of +the stranger. That the stranger was a bona fide stranger, James, who had +served the Ballins for thirty years, knew; but what manner of stranger, +and whether a rogue or a man upon legitimate business, James could not +so much as guess. + +"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "were you looking for some one?" + +"Yes," said Forrest, perfectly at his ease, "and no." + +"Shall I tell Mr. Ballin that you are here, sir?" + +"I shall find him for myself, thank you," said Forrest, and he moved +toward an open door that seemed to lead into the hall. + +"By the way," he said, "there will be an extra at luncheon." + +Very stately in his long, black cape, and with his pensive Dantesque +face, Forrest continued on his slow progress to the open door and went +out of the dining-room. He crossed the hall with half an eye to its +quiet tones and bowls of roses, and entered a room of bright chintz with +a pattern of cornflowers, and full of sunlight. It was a very spacious +room, and lively--a proper link between the gardens and the house; and +here were many photographs in silver frames of smart men and women; and +the Sunday papers with their colored supplements were strewn in +disorder upon the floor. And it seemed to Forrest, so comfortable and +intimate did it look, as if that room had been a part of his own life. +Upon the blotter of a writing-table sprawled a check-book bound in +yellow leather. And when Forrest saw that, he smiled. It came as a +surprise that the teeth in that careworn face should be white and even. +And in those rare and charming moments of his smiling he looked like a +young man who has made many engagements with life which he proposes to +fulfil, instead of like a man for whom the curious years reserve but one +sensation more. + +But Forrest did not remain any appreciable time in the cheerful +living-room. A desire to explain and have it all over with was upon him; +and he passed, rapidly now, from room to room, until in a far corner of +the house he entered a writing-room furnished in severe simplicity with +dark and dully-shining rosewood. This room was of an older fashion than +any he had yet entered, and he guessed that it had been the Signer's +workshop and had been preserved by his descendants without change. A +pair of flintlock pistols, glinting silver, lay upon the desk; quill +pens stood in a silver cup full of shot; a cramped map, drawn and +colored by hand and yellow with age, hung above the mantel and +purported, in bold printing with flourishes, to be The Proposed Route +for the Erie Canal. Portraits of General Greene and Thomas Jefferson, +by Stuart, also hung upon the walls. And there stood upon an octagonal +table a bowl of roses. + +There was a gentleman in the embrasure of a window, smoking a cigar and +looking out. But at the sound of Forrest's step he turned an alert, +close-cropped, gray head and stepped out of the embrasure. + +"Mr. Ballin?" said Forrest. + +"I am Mr. Ballin." His eyes perused the stranger with astonishing speed +and deftness, without seeming to do so. + +"It was the toss of a coin that decided me to come," said Forrest. "I +have asked your butler to lay a place for me at luncheon." + +So much assumption on the part of a stranger has a cheeky look in the +printing. Yet Forrest's tone and manner far more resembled those of old +friendship and intimacy than impertinence. + +"Have I," said Ballin, smiling a little doubtfully, "ever had the +pleasure of meeting you before? I have a poor memory for faces. But it +seems to me that I should not have forgotten yours." + +"You never saw me but the one time," said Forrest. "That was many years +ago, and you would not remember. You were a--little wild that night. You +sat against me at a game of faro. But even if you had been yourself--I +have changed very much. I was at that time, as you were, little more +than a boy." + +"Good Lord!" said Ballin, "were you a part of that hectic flush that to +myself I only refer to as 'Sacramento'?" + +"You do not look as if it had turned you into a drinking man," said +Forrest. + +"It didn't," said Ballin, and without seeing any reason for confiding in +the stranger he proceeded to do so. "It was nip and tuck for a time," he +said, "and then money came to me, and this old place and +responsibilities, and I became, more from force of circumstances than +from any inner impulse, a decentish citizen." + +"The money made everything smooth, did it?" said Forrest. "I wonder." + +"You wonder--what?" said Ballin. + +"If it could--money alone. I have had it at times--not as you have had +it--but in large, ready sums. Yet I think it made very little +difference." + +"What have you been doing since--Sacramento?" asked Ballin. + +"Up to a month ago," said Forrest, "I kept on dealing--in different +parts of the world--in San Francisco, in London--Cairo--Calcutta. And +then the matter which brings me here was brought to my attention." + +"Yes?" said Ballin, a little more coolly. + +"When you were in Sacramento," Forrest went on quietly and evenly as if +stating an acknowledged fact, "you did not expect to come into all +this. Then your cousin, Ranger Ballin, and his son went down in the City +of Pittsburgh; and all this"--he made a sudden, sweeping gesture with +one of his long, well-kept hands--"came to you." + +"Yes?" Ballin's voice still interrogated coolly. + +Forrest broke into that naive, boyish smile of his. + +"My dear sir," said he, "I saw a play last winter in which the question +is asked, 'Do you believe in Fairies?' I ask you, 'Do you believe in +Gypsies?'" + +"In what way?" Ballin asked, and he, too, smiled. + +"Ranger Ballin," said Forrest, "had another son who was spirited away in +childhood by the gypsies. That will explain this visit, which on the +face of it is an impertinence. It will explain why I have entered this +house without knocking, and have invited myself to luncheon. You see, +sir, all this"--and again he made the sudden, sweeping gesture--"is +mine." + +It speaks for Forrest's effect that, although reason told Ballin to +doubt this cataclysmic statement, instinct convinced him that it was +true. Yet what its truth might mean to him did not so convincingly +appear. That he might be ousted from all that he looked on as his own +did not yet occur to him, even vaguely. + +"Then we are cousins," he said simply, and held out his hand. But +Forrest did not take it at once. + +"Do you understand what cousinship with me means to you?" he said. + +"Why," said Ballin, "if you _are_ my cousin"--he tried to imply the +doubt that he by no means felt--"there is surely enough for us both." + +"Enough to make up for the years when there has been nothing?" Forrest +smiled. + +"It is a matter for lawyers to discuss, then," said Ballin quietly. +"Personally, I do not doubt that you believe yourself to be my cousin's +son. But there is room, surely, in others for many doubts." + +"Not in others," said Forrest, "who have been taught to know that two +and two are four." + +"Have you documentary proof of this astonishing statement?" said Ballin. + +"Surely," said Forrest. And he drew from an inner pocket a bundle of +documents bound with a tape. Ballin ran a perturbed but deft eye through +them, while Forrest stood motionless, more like a shadow than a man. +Then, presently, Ballin looked up with a stanch, honorable look. + +"I pick no flaws here cousin," he said. "I--I congratulate you." + +"Cousin," said Forrest, "it has been my business in life to see others +take their medicine. But I have never seen so great a pill swallowed so +calmly. Will you offer me your hand now?" + +Ballin offered his hand grimly. + +Then he tied the documents back into their tape and offered the bundle +to Forrest. + +"I am a careless man," said Forrest; "I might lose them. May I ask you +to look after them for me?" + +"Would you leave me alone with them?" asked Ballin. + +"Of course," said Forrest. + +Ballin opened an old-fashioned safe in the paneling and locked it upon +the despoiling documents. Yet his heart, in spite of its dread and +bitterness, was warmed by the trustfulness of the despoiler. + +"And now what?" he said. + +"And now," said Forrest, "remember for a little while only that I am, +let us say, an old friend of your youth. Forget for the present, if you +can, who else I am, and what my recrudescence must mean to you. It is +not a happiness"--he faltered with his winning smile--"to give pain." + + + + +II + +"Your father," said Forrest, "says that I may have his seat at the head +of the table. You see, Miss Dorothy, in the world in which I have lived +there were no families. And I have the strongest desire to experiment in +some of those things which I have missed.... Ballin," he exclaimed, +"how lovely your daughters are!" + +The young Earl of Moray glanced up mischievously. + +"Do you think, sir," he drawled, "that I have made the best selection +under the circumstances? Sometimes I think I ought to have made up to +Ellen instead of Dorothy." + +"What's the matter with _us_?" said Alice, and she laid her hand upon +Evelyn's. + +"Oh, you little rotters!" exclaimed the earl, whom they sometimes teased +to the point of agony. "No man in his senses would look at _you_." + +"Right-O!" said young Stephen Ballin, who made the eighth at table. +"They're like germs," he explained to Forrest--"very troublesome to +deal with." + +"It's because we're twins," said Evelyn. "Everybody who isn't twins is +down on them." + +"It's because they are always beautiful and good," said Alice. "Why +don't you stand up for us, father?" + +It was noticed that Mr. Ballin was not looking well; that the chicken +_mousse_ upon his plate was untouched, and that he fooled with his +bread, breaking it, crumbling it, and rolling it into pellets. He pulled +himself together and smiled upon his beloved twins. + +Forrest had turned to the Earl of Moray. + +"Was it your ancestor," he said, "who 'was a bra' gallant, and who raid +at the gluve'?" + +"I am confident of it," said the young Englishman. + +"By all accounts," said Forrest, "he would have been a good hand with a +derringer. Have you that gift for games?" + +"I'm a very good golfer." said the earl, "but I thought a derringer was +a kind of dish that babies ate gruel out of." He blushed becomingly. + +"As ever," said Alice, "insular and ignorant." + +"You prickly baby!" exclaimed the earl. "What is a derringer, Mr. +Forrest?" + +Forrest, having succeeded in drawing the attention of his immediate and +prospective family from the ill looks of Mr. Ballin, proposed to keep +his advantage. + +"I will show you," he said. "Are my hands empty?" + +"Quite so," said the earl. + +"Keep your eyes on them," said Forrest, "so. Now, we will suppose that +you have good reason to believe that I have stolen your horse. Call me a +horse thief." + +"Sir," said the earl, entering into the spirit of the game, "you are a +horse thief!" + +There appeared in Forrest's right hand, which had seemed empty, which +had seemed not to move or to perform in any celeritous and magic manner, +a very small, stubby, nickel pistol, with a caliber much too great for +it, and down whose rifled muzzle the earl found himself gazing. The earl +was startled. But he said, "I was mistaken, sir; you are not a horse +thief." As mysteriously as it had come, the wicked little derringer +disappeared. Forrest's hands remained innocently in plain view of all. + +"Oh," said Alice, "if you had only pulled the trigger!" + +Evelyn giggled. + +"Frankly, Mr. Forrest," said the earl, "aren't the twins loathsome? But +tell me, can you shoot that thing as magically as you play tricks +with it?" + +"It's not a target gun," said Forrest. "It's for instantaneous work at +close range. One could probably hit a tossed coin with it, but one must +have more weight and inches to the barrel and less explosion for fine +practice." + +"What would you call fine practice?" asked Stephen. + +"Oh," said Forrest, "a given leg of a fly at twenty paces, or to snip a +wart from a man's hand at twenty-five." + +Mr. Ballin rose. + +"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have +finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He +left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the +full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his +brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty--of too long +leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun +and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins +were silent. + +"He used to sing that song," said Forrest, "so that the cold chills went +galloping the length of a man's spine. He was as like you to look at," +he turned to the earl, "as one star is like another. I cannot tell you +how it has moved me to meet you. We were in a place called Grub Gulch, +placer-mining--half a dozen of us. I came down with the scarlet fever. +The others bolted, all but Charlie Stuart. He stayed. But by the time I +was up, thanks to him, he was down--thanks to me. He died of it." +Forrest finished very gravely. + +"Good Lord!" said the earl. + +"_He_ might ha' been a king," said Forrest. And he swallowed the lump +that rose in his throat, and turned away so that his face could not be +seen by them. + +But, presently, he flashed about with his winning smile. + +"What, would all you rich young people do if you hadn't a sou in the +world?" + +"Good Lord!" said Stephen, "everything I know how to do decently costs +money." + +"I feel sure," said Alice, her arm about Evelyn's waist, "that our +beauty and goodness would see _us_ through." + +"I," said Ellen, "would quietly curl up and die." + +"I," said Dorothy, "would sell my earl to the highest bidder." + +"I shouldn't bring tuppence," said the earl. + +"But you," said Forrest to the earl, "what would you do if you were +stone-broke?" + +"I would marry Dorothy to-morrow," said the earl, "instead of waiting +until September. Fortunately, I have a certain amount of assets that the +law won't allow me to get rid of." + +"I wish you could," said Forrest. + +"Why?" The earl wrinkled his eyebrows. + +"I would like to see what you would do." He laid his hand lightly upon +the young Englishman's shoulder. "You don't mind? I am an old man," he +said, "but I cannot tell you--what meeting you has meant to me. I want +you to come with me now, for a few minutes, to Mr. Ballin. Will you?" + + + + +III + +"Mr. Ballin," said Forrest, his hand still on the earl's shoulder, "I +want you to tell this young man what only you and I know." + +Ballin looked up from his chair with the look of a sick man. + +"It's this, Charlie," he said in a voice that came with difficulty. +"It's a mistake to suppose that I am a rich man. Everything in this +world that I honestly thought belonged to me belongs to Mr. Forrest." + +The earl read truth in the ashen, careworn face of his love's father. + +"But surely," he said anxiously, "Dorothy is still yours--to give." + +Forrest's dark and brooding countenance became as if suddenly brightly +lighted. + +"My boy--my boy!" he cried, and he folded the wriggling and embarrassed +Stuart in his long, gaunt arms. + +I think an angel bringing glad tidings might have looked as Forrest did +when, releasing the Earl of Moray, he turned upon the impulse and began +to pour out words to Ballin. + +"When I found out who I was," he said, "and realized for how long--oh, +my Lord! how long--others had been enjoying what was mine, and that I +had rubbed myself bare and bleeding against all the rough places of +life, will you understand what a rage and bitterness against you all +possessed me? And I came--oh, on wings--to trample, and to dispossess, +and to sneer, and to send you packing.... But first the peace of the +woods and the meadows, and the beech wood and the gardens, and the quiet +hills and the little brooks staggered me. And then you--the way you took +it, cousin!--all pale and wretched as you were; you were so calm, and +you admitted the claim at once--and bore up.... Then I began to repent +of the bitterness in which I had come.... And I left the papers in your +keeping.... I thought--for I have known mostly evil--that, perhaps, you +would destroy them.... It never entered your head.... Your are clean +white--and so are your girls and your boy.... I did not expect to find +white people in possession. Why should I?... But I said, 'Surely the +Englishman isn't white--he is after the money.' But right away I began +to have that feeling, too, smoothed out of me.... And now, when he finds +that instead of Dorothy being an heiress she is a pauper, he says, 'But +surely, Dorothy is still yours to give!' + +"I was a fool to come. Yet I am glad." + +Neither Ballin nor the earl spoke. + +"Could I have this room to myself for a little while?" asked Forrest. + +"Of course," said Ballin; "it is yours." + +Forrest bowed; the corners of his mouth turned a little upward. + +"Will you come back in an hour--you, alone, cousin?" + +Ballin nodded quietly. + +"Come along, Charlie," he said, and together they left the room. But +when Ballin returned alone, an hour later, the room was empty. Upon the +Signer's writing-desk was a package addressed collectively to "The +Ballins," and in one corner was written, "Blood will tell." + +The package, on being opened, proved to contain nothing more substantial +than ashes. And by the donor thereof there was never given any +further sign. + + + + +ONE MORE MARTYR + +A little one-act play, sufficiently dramatic, is revived from time to +time among the Latin races for long runs. The play is of simplified, +classic construction. But the principal part is variously interpreted by +different actors. The minor characters, a priest and an officer, have no +great latitude for individuality, while the work of the chorus comes as +near mathematics as anything human can. The play is a passion play. No +actor has ever played the principal part more than once. And the play +differs from other plays in this, also, that there are not even +traditional lines for the principal character to speak. He may say +whatever comes into his head. He may say nothing. He may play his part +with reticence or melodramatically. It does not matter. His is what +actors call a fat part; it cannot be spoiled. And at the climax and +curtain he may sink slowly to the ground or fall upon his back or upon +his face. It does not matter. Once, before falling, a man leaped so +violently upward and forward as to break the ropes with which his legs +and arms were bound. Those who saw this performance cannot speak of it +to this day without a shudder. + +Under the management of General Weyler in Cuba this little play enjoyed, +perhaps, its longest continuous run. Curiously enough, there were +absolutely no profits to be divided at the end. But, then, think of the +expense of production! Why, to enable the General to stage that play for +so many nights--I mean sunrises--required the employment of several +hundred thousand men and actually bankrupted a nation. In this world one +must pay like the devil for one's fancies. Think what Weyler paid: all +the money that his country could beg or borrow; then his own reputation +as a soldier, as a statesman, and as a man; ending with a series of +monstrous mortgages on his own soul. For which, when it is finally sold +at auction, there will not be bid so much as one breath of garlic. + +When Juan D'Acosta's mother heard that her younger son Manual had been +taken prisoner by the Spaniards and was to be shot the following morning +at sunrise she sat for an hour motionless, staring at the floor. Juan, +as is, or was, well known, had died gloriously, a cigarette between his +lips, after inestimable, if secret, services to Cuba. Nor had his +execution been entirely a martyrdom. He was shot for a spy. He was a +spy, and a very daring, clever, and self-effacing one. He had been +caught within the Spanish lines with incriminating papers upon his +person. And before they could secure him he had had the eternal +satisfaction of ripping open two Spaniards with his knife so that they +died. He was executed without a trial. His mother went out with others +of his relatives to see him die. The memory of his dying had remained +with her to comfort her for the fact of it. She had seen him, calm, and +in her eyes very beautiful, standing in strong relief with his back to a +white wall, a cigarette between his lips. There had not been the +slightest bravado in his perfect self-possession. It had been that of a +gentleman, which he was not by birth, and a man of the world; quiet, +retiring and attentive. He had looked so courteous, so kind-hearted, so +pure! He had spoken--on either side of his cigarette--for some moments +to the priest, apologizing through him to God for whatever spots there +may have been upon his soul. Then his eyes had sought his mother's among +the spectators and remained steadfastly upon them, smiling, until the +exactions of his part demanded that he face more to the front and look +into the muzzles of the Mausers. The fire of his cigarette having burned +too close to his lips for comfort, and his hands being tied, he spat the +butt out of his mouth and allowed the last taste of smoke which he was +to enjoy on earth to curl slowly off through his nostrils. Then, for it +was evident that the edge of the sun would show presently above the rim +of the world, he had drawn a breath or two of the fresh morning air and +had spoken his last words in a clear, controlled voice. + +"Whenever one of us dies," he had said, "it strengthens the cause of +liberty instead of weakening it. I am so sure of this that I would like +to come to life after being shot, so that I might be taken and shot +again and again and again. You, my friends, are about to fire _for_ +Cuba, not against her. Therefore, I thank you. I think that is all. +Christ receive me." + +The impact of the volley had flattened him backward against the wall +with shocking violence, but he had remained on his feet for an +appreciable interval of time and had then sunk slowly to his knees and +had fallen quietly forward upon his face. + +So her older boy had died, honoring himself and his country, after +serving his country only. The memory of his life, deeds and dying was a +comfort to her. And when she learned that Manuel, too, was to be shot, +and sat staring at the floor, it was not entirely of Manuel that she was +thinking. She did not love Manuel as she had loved Juan. He had not been +a comfort to her in any way. He had been a sneaking, cowardly child; he +had grown into a vicious and cowardly young man. He was a patriot +because he was afraid not to be; he had enlisted in the Cuban army +because he was afraid not to. He had even participated in skirmishes, +sweating with fear and discharging his rifle with his eyes closed. But +he had been clever enough to conceal his white feathers, and he could +talk in a modest, purposeful way, just like a genuine hero. He was to be +shot, not because he was himself, but because he was Juan's brother. The +Spaniards feared the whole family as a man fears a hornet's nest in the +eaves and, because one hornet has stung him, wages exterminating war +upon all hornets. In Manuel's case, however, there was a trial, short +and unpleasant. The man was on his knees half the time, blubbering, +abjuring, perspiring, and begging for mercy; swearing on his honor to +betray his country wherever and whenever possible; to fight against her, +to spy within her defenses and plans--anything, everything! + +His judges were not impressed. They believed him to be acting. He was +one of the D'Acostas; Juan's brother, Ferdinand's son--a hornet. Not the +same type of hornet, but for that very reason, perhaps, the more to be +feared. "When he finds," said the colonel who presided, "that he is to +be shot beyond peradventure he will turn stoic like the others, you'll +see. Even now he is probably laughing at us for being moved by his +blubberings and entreaties. He wants to get away from us at any price. +That's all. He wants a chance to sting us again. And that chance he +will not get." + +Oddly enough, the coward did turn stoic the moment he was formally +condemned. But it was physical exhaustion as much as anything else; a +sudden numbing of the senses, a kind of hideous hypnotism upon him by +the idea of death. It lasted the better part of an hour. Then, alone in +his cell, he hurled himself against the walls, screaming, or cowered +upon the stone floor, pooling it with tears, sobbing horribly with his +whole body, going now and again into convulsions of nausea. These +actions were attributed by his guard to demoniacal rage, but not to +fear. He thus fought blindly against the unfightable until about four in +the afternoon, when exhaustion once more put a quietus upon him. It was +then that his mother, having taken counsel at last with her patriot +soul, visited him. + +She had succeeded, not without difficulty, in gaining permission. It was +not every mother who could manage a last interview with a condemned son. +But she had bribed the colonel. She had given him in silver the savings +of a lifetime. + +The old woman sat down by her son and took his hand in hers. Then the +door of the cell was closed upon them and locked. Manuel turned and +collapsed against his mother's breast. + +"It's all right, Manuel," she said in her quiet, cheerful voice. "I've +seen the colonel." + +Manuel looked up quickly, a glint of hope in his rodent eyes. + +"What do you mean?" he said. His voice was hoarse. His mother bit her +lips, for the hoarseness told her that her son had been screaming with +fear. In that moment she almost hated him. But she controlled herself. +She looked at him sidewise. + +"The colonel tells me that you have offered to serve Spain if he will +give you your life?" + +This was a shrewd guess. She waited for Manuel's answer, not even hoping +that it would be in the negative. She knew him through and through. + +"Well," he choked, "it wouldn't do." + +"That's where you are wrong, my son," she said. "The colonel, on the +contrary, believes he can make use of you. He is going to let you +go free." + +Manuel could not believe his ears, it seemed. He kept croaking "What?" +in his hoarse voice, his face brightening with each reiteration. + +"But," she went on, "he does not wish this to be known to the Cubans. +You see, if they knew that you had been allowed to go free it would +counteract your usefulness, wouldn't it?" + +"Yes--but--" + +"Listen to me. Everything is to proceed as ordered and according to army +regulations except one thing. The rifles which are to be fired at you +will be loaded with blank cartridges. When the squad fires you must fall +as if--as if you were dead. Then you will be put in a coffin and +brought to me for burial. Then you will come to life. That is all." + +She smiled into her son's face with a great gladness and patted his +hands. + +"Afterward," she said, "you will grow a beard and generally disguise +yourself. It is thus that the colonel thinks he can best make use of +your knowledge and cleverness. And, of course, at the first opportunity +you will give the colonel the slip and once more take your place in the +patriot army." + +"Of course," said Manuel; "I never meant to do what I pretended I +would." + +"Of course not!" said his mother. + +"But--" + +"But what?" + +"I don't see the necessity of having a mock execution. It's not nice to +have a lot of blank cartridges go off in your face." + +"Nice!" The old woman sprang to her feet. She shook her finger in his +face. "Nice! Haven't you any shred of courage in your great, hulking +body? I don't believe you'll even face blank cartridges like a man--I +believe you'll scream and blubber and be a shame to us all. You disgust +me!" She spat on the floor. "Here I come to tell you that you are to be +spared, and you're afraid to death of the means by which you are to go +free. Why, I'd stand up to blank cartridges all day without turning a +hair--or to bullets, for that matter--at two hundred metres, where I +knew none of those Spanish idiots could hit me except by accident. I +wouldn't expect you to play the man at a real execution or at anything +real, but surely you can pull yourself together enough to play the man +at a mock execution. What a chance! You can leave a reputation as great +as your brother's--greater, even; you could crack jokes and burst out +laughing just when they go to fire--" + +Then, as suddenly as she had flown into a passion, she burst into tears +and flung her arms about her boy and clung to him and mothered him until +in the depths of his surly, craven heart he was touched and +strengthened. + +"Don't be afraid for me, mother," he said. "I do not like even the blank +cartridges, God forgive me; but I shall not shame you." + +She kissed him again and again and laughed and cried. And when the guard +opened the door and said that the time was up she patted her boy upon +the cheeks and shoulders and smiled bravely into his face. Then she +left him. + +The execution of Manuel D'Acosta was not less inspiring to the patriotic +heart than that of his brother Juan. And who knows but that it may have +been as difficult an act of control for the former to face the blank +cartridges as for the latter to stand up to those loaded with ball? Like +Juan, Manuel stood against the wall with a cigarette between his lips. +Like Juan, he sought out his mother's face among the spectators and +smiled at her bravely. He did not stand so modestly, so gentlemanly as +Juan had done, but with a touch of bravado, an occasional +half-swaggering swing from the hips, an upward tilt of the chin. + +"I told you he would turn stoic," the colonel whispered to one of the +officers who had taken part in the trial. "I know these Cubans." + +It was all very edifying. Like Juan, Manuel spat out his cigarette when +it had burned too short. But, unlike Juan, he made no dying speech. He +felt that he was still too hoarse to be effective. Instead, at the +command, "Aim!" he burst out laughing, as if in derision of the +well-known lack of markmanship which prevailed among the Spaniards. + +He was nearly torn in two. + +Those who lifted him into his coffin noticed that the expression upon +his face was one of blank astonishment, as if the beyond had contained +an immeasurable surprise for him. + +His mother took a certain comfort from the manner of his dying, but it +was the memory of her other boy that really enabled her to live out her +life without going mad. + + + + +"MA'AM?" + +In most affairs, except those which related to his matrimonial ventures, +Marcus Antonius Saterlee was a patient man. On three occasions "an +ardent temperament and the heart of a dove," as he himself had expressed +it, had corralled a wife in worship and tenderness within his house. The +first had been the love of his childhood; the wooing of the second had +lasted but six weeks; that of the third but three. He rejoiced in the +fact that he had been a good husband to three good women. He lamented +that all were dead. Now and then he squirmed his bull head around on his +bull body, and glanced across the aisle at the showy woman who was +daintily picking a chicken wing. He himself was not toying with +beefsteak, boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, lima, and string +beans. He was eating them. Each time he looked at the lady he muttered +something to his heart of a dove: + +"Flighty. Too slight. Stuck on herself. Pin-head," etc. + +With his food Saterlee was not patient. He dispensed with mastication. +Neither was he patient of other people's matrimonial ventures. And, in +particular, that contemplated and threatened by his son and heir was +moving him across three hundred miles of inundated country as fast as a +train could carry him. His son had written: + +"DEAREST DAD--I've found Dorothy again. She's at Carcasonne. They +thought her lungs were bad, but they aren't. We're going to be married a +week from to-day--next Friday--at nine A.M. This marriage is going to +take place, Daddy dear. You can't prevent it. I write this so's to be on +the square. I'm inviting you to the wedding. I'll be hurt if you don't +show up. What if Dorothy's mother _is_ an actress and has been divorced +twice? You've been a marrying man yourself, Dad. Dorothy is all darling +from head to foot. But I love you, too, Daddy, and if you can't see it +my way, why, God bless and keep you just the same." + +JIM. + +I can't deny that Marcus Antonius Saterlee was touched by his son's +epistle. But he was not moved out of reason. + +"The girl's mother," he said to himself, "is a painted, divorced jade." +And he thought with pleasure of the faith, patience, and rectitude of +the three gentle companions whom he had successively married and buried. +"There was never any divorce in the Saterlee blood," he had prided +himself. "Man or woman, we stick by our choice till he or she" (he was +usually precise) "turns up his or her toes. Not till then do we think of +anybody else. But then we do, because it is not good to live alone, +especially in a small community in Southern California." + +He glanced once more at the showy lady across the aisle. She had +finished her chicken wing, and was dipping her fingers in a finger-bowl, +thus displaying to sparkling advantage a number of handsome rings. + +"My boy's girl's mother a painted actress," he muttered as he looked. +"Not if I know it." And then he muttered: "_You'd_ look like an actress +if you was painted." + +Though the words can not have been distinguished, the sounds were +audible. + +"Sir?" said the lady, stiffly but courteously. + +"Nothing, Ma'am," muttered Mark Anthony, much abashed. "I'm surprised to +see so much water in this arid corner of the world, where I have often +suffered for want of it. I must have been talking to myself to that +effect. I hope you will excuse me." + +The lady looked out of the window--not hers, but Saterlee's. + +"It does look," she said, "as if the waters had divorced themselves from +the bed of ocean." + +She delivered this in a quick but telling voice. Saterlee was shocked at +the comparison. + +"I suppose," she continued, "we may attribute those constant and tedious +delays to which we have been subjected all day to the premature melting +of snow in the fastnesses of the Sierras?" + +This phrase did not shock Saterlee. He was amazed by the power of memory +which it proved. For three hours earlier he had read a close paraphrase +of it in a copy of the Tomb City _Picayune_ which he had bought at +that city. + +The train ran slower and slower, and out on to a shallow embankment. + +"Do you think we shall ever get anywhere?" queried the lady. + +"Not when we expect to, Ma'am," said Saterlee. He began to scrub his +strong mouth with his napkin, lest he should return to the smoker with +stains of boiled eggs upon him. + +The train gave a jolt. And then, very quietly, the dining-car rolled +over on its side down the embankment. There was a subdued smashing of +china and glass. A clergyman at one of the rear tables quietly remarked, +"Washout," and Saterlee, who had not forgotten the days when he had +learned to fall from a bucking bronco, relaxed his great muscles and +swore roundly, sonorously, and at great length. The car came to rest at +the bottom of the embankment, less on its side than on its top. For a +moment--or so it seemed--all was perfectly quiet. Then (at one and the +same moment) a lady in the extreme front of the diner was heard +exclaiming faintly: "You're pinching me," and out of the tail of his +eye Saterlee saw the showy lady across the aisle descending upon him +through the air. She was accompanied by the hook and leg table upon +which she had made her delicate meal, and all its appurtenances, +including ice-water and a wide open jar of very thin mustard. + +"Thank you," she murmured, as her impact drove most of the breath out of +Saterlee's bull body. "How strong you are!" + +"When you are rested, Ma'am," said he, with extreme punctiliousness, "I +think we may leave the car by climbing over the sides of the seats on +this side. Perhaps you can manage to let me pass you in case the door is +jammed. I could open it." + +He preceded her over and over the sides of the seats, opened the car +door, which was not jammed, and helped her to the ground. And then, his +heart of a parent having wakened to the situation, he forgot her and +forsook her. He pulled a time-table from his pocket; he consulted a +mile-post, which had had the good sense to stop opposite the end of the +car from which he had alighted. It was forty miles to Carcasonne--and +only two to Grub City--a lovely city of the plain, consisting of one +corrugated-iron saloon. He remembered to have seen it--with its great +misleading sign, upon which were emblazoned the noble words: +"Life-Saving Station." + +"Grub City--hire buggy--drive Carcasonne," he muttered, and without a +glance at the train which had betrayed him, or at the lady who had +fallen upon him, so to speak, out of the skies, he moved forward with +great strides, leaped a puddle, regained the embankment, and hastened +along the ties, skipping every other one. + + + + +II + +Progress is wonderful in the Far West. Since he had last seen it only a +year had passed, and yet the lovely city of Grub had doubled its size. +It now consisted of two saloons: the old "Life-Saving Station" and the +new "Like Father Used to Take." The proprietor of the new saloon was the +old saloon-keeper's son-in-law, and these, with their flourishing and, +no doubt, amiable families, were socially gathered on the shady side of +the Life-Saving Station. The shade was much the same sort that is +furnished by trees in more favored localities, and the population of +Grub City was enjoying itself. The rival wives, mother and daughter, +ample, rosy women, were busy stitching baby clothes. Children already +arrived were playing with a soap-box and choice pebbles and a tin mug at +keeping saloon. A sunburned-haired, flaming maiden of sixteen was at +work upon a dress of white muslin, and a young man of eighteen, brother +by his looks to the younger saloon-keeper, heartily feasted a pair of +honest blue eyes upon her plump hands as they came and went with the +needle. It looked as if another year might see a third saloon in +Grub City. + +Saterlee approached the group, some of whose elders had been watching +and discussing his approach. + +"Do any of you own a boat?" he asked. + +"Train D-railed?" queried the proprietor of the Life-Saving Station, "or +was you just out for a walk?" + +The family and family-in-law laughed appreciatively. + +"The train put to sea in a washout," said Saterlee, "and all the +passengers were drowned." + +"Where you want to git?" asked the proprietor. + +"Carcasonne," said Saterlee. "Not the junction--the resort." + +"Well," said the proprietor, "there's just one horse and just one trap +in Grub City, and they ain't for hire." + +Again the united families laughed appreciatively. It was evident that a +prophet is not always without honor in his own land. + +"We've no use for them," said the great man, with the noble abandoning +gesture of a Spanish grandee about to present a horse to a man +travelling by canoe. And he added: "So they're for sale. Now what do you +think they'd be worth to you?" + +All the honest blue eyes, and there were no other colors, widened upon +Saterlee. + +"Fifty dollars," he said, as one accustomed to business. + +It was then that a panting, female voice was raised behind him. "Sixty +dollars!" + +His showy acquaintance of the dining-car had followed him along the ties +as fast as she could, and was just come up. + +"I thought you two was a trust," commented the proprietor's wife, +pausing with her needle in the air. "But it seems you ain't even a +community of interests." + +"Seventy dollars," said Saterlee quietly. + +The lady advanced to his side, counting the change in her purse. + +"Seventy-six dollars and eighty-five cents," she said. + +"Eighty dollars," said Saterlee. + +"Oh!" cried the lady, "seventy-six eighty-five is every cent I've got +with me--and you're no gentleman to bid higher." + +"Eighty," repeated Saterlee. + +"Eighty dollars," said the son-in-law, "for a horse and buggy that a +man's never seen is too good to be true." + +"They are yours, sir," said the father-in-law, and he turned to his +daughter's husband. "Is that horse in your cellar or in mine?" he asked. +"I ain't set eyes on her since February." + +The son-in-law, sent to fetch the horse, first paused at the cellar +door of the Life-Saving Station, then, with a shake of the head and an +"I remember _now_" expression, he approached and entered the subterrene +of his own house and business, and disappeared, saying: "Whoa, there! +Steady you!" + +Saterlee turned quietly to the angry and tearful vision whom he had so +callously outbid. + +"Ma'am," he said, "if we come to my stop first or thereabouts, the buggy +is yours to go on with. If we reach yours first, it's mine." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, her face brightening, "how good you are. But you'll +let me go halves on the purchase money." + +"If I appeared rude just now," he said, "it was to save a lady's pocket. +Now then, you've wet them high-heeled shoes. Wherever you're going, it's +a long drive. Let's go inside and dry our feet while they're hitching +up. Which is your house?" + +The proprietor of the Life-Saving Station indicated that building with +his thumb, and told his daughter of the white muslin dress to kindle a +fire in the stove. She slid her future wedding finery into a large paper +bag, and entered the saloon by the "Family Entrance," ardently followed +by her future husband. + +The proprietor, Saterlee, and the showy lady followed more slowly, +discussing roads. + +"Now," said Saterlee, "if you're going further than Carcasonne +Junction, I'll get off there. And either I'll walk to the hotel or hire +another trap." + +"Why!" exclaimed the lady, "are you bound for Carcasonne House? So am +I." + +"In that case," said Saterlee elegantly, "we'll go the whole hog +together." + +"Quite so," said the lady primly. + +"You'd ought to make Carcasonne House by midnight," said the proprietor. +"Put your feet up on that there stove." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed the lady. "And if we don't make it by midnight?" + +"We will by one or two o'clock." + +The lady became very grave. + +"Of course," she said, "it can't be helped. But it would be ever so much +nicer if we could get in before midnight." + +"I take your point, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "Before midnight is +just a buggy ride--after midnight means being out all night +together. I feel for you, Ma'am, but I'm dinged if I see how +we can help ourselves. It's five now." He counted on his fingers: +"six--seven--eight--nine--ten--'leven--twelve--seven hours--seven into +forty--five and five-sevenths.... Ma'am," he said, "I can promise +nothing. It's all up to the horse." + +"Of course," said the lady, "it doesn't really matter. But," and she +spoke a little bitterly, "several times in my life my actions and my +motives have been open to misconstruction, and they have been +misconstrued. I have suffered, sir, much." + +"Well, Ma'am," said Saterlee, "my reputation as a married man and a +father of many children is mixed up in this, too. If we are in late--or +out late rather--and there's any talk--I guess I can quiet some of it. I +rather guess I can." + +He rose to his feet, a vast, round, deep man, glowing with health and +energy. + +"I once quieted a bull, Ma'am," said he, "by the horns. I would a held +him till help came if one of the horns hadn't come off, and he +ran away." + +The proprietor entered the conversation with an insinuating wedge of a +voice. + +"I don't like to mind other folks' business," he said, "but if the lady +is fretting about bein' out all night with a total stranger, I feel it +my dooty to remark that in Grub City there is a justice of the peace." +He bowed and made a gesture which either indicated his whole person, or +that smug and bulging portion of it to which the gesture was more +directly applied. + +Saterlee and the lady did not look at each other and laugh. They were +painfully embarrassed. + +"Nothing like a sound splice," suggested the Justice, still hopeful of +being helpful. "Failing that, you've a long row to hoe, and I suggest a +life saver for the gent and a nip o' the same for the lady. I'd like you +to see the bar," he added. "Mine is the show place of this here +city--mirrors--peacock feathers--Ariadne in the nood--cash register--and +everything hunky-dunk." + +"We'll go you," said Saterlee. "At any rate, I will." + +"Oh, I must see, too," said the lady, and both were relieved at the turn +which the conversation had taken. + +The proprietor removed the cheese-cloth fly protector from the +two-by-three mirror over the bar, slipped a white jacket over his blue +shirt, and rubbed his hands together invitingly, as if washing them. + +"What's your pleasure, gents?" said he. + +As the lady approached the bar she stumbled. Saterlee caught her by the +elbow. + +"That rail down there," he said, "ain't to trip over. It's to rest your +foot on. So." He showed her. With the first sign of humor that she had +shown, the lady suddenly and very capitally mimicked his attitude. And +in a tough voice (really an excellent piece of acting): "What's yours, +kid?" she said. And then blushed to the eyes, and was very much ashamed +of herself. But Saterlee and the bartender were delighted. They roared +with laughter. + +"Next thing," said the bartender, "she'll pull a gun and shoot up the +place." + +Saterlee said: "Rye." + +"I want to be in it," said the lady. "Can you make me something that +looks like a drink, and isn't?" + +"Scotch," said the proprietor without hesitation. + +"No--no," she said, "Water and coloring matter." + +She was fitted finally with a pony of water containing a few drops of +Spanish Red and an olive. + +The three touched glasses and wished each other luck all around. +Saterlee paid eighty dollars and some change across the bar. But the +proprietor pushed back the change. + +"The drinks," he said grandly, "was on the house." + + + + +III + +The united families bade them farewell, and Saterlee brought down the +whip sharply upon the bony flank of the old horse which he had bought. +But not for a whole minute did the sensation caused by the whip appear +to travel to the ancient mare's brain. Not till reaching a deep puddle +did she seem suddenly aware of the fact that she had been whipped. Then, +however, she rushed through the puddle, covering Saterlee and the lady +with mud, and having reached the other side, fell once more into a +halting walk. + +The lady was tightly wedged between Saterlee and the side of the buggy. +Every now and then Saterlee made a tremendous effort to make himself +narrower, but it was no use. + +"If you begin to get numb," he said, "tell me, and I'll get out and walk +a spell.... How clear the air is! Seems as if you could stretch out your +hand and touch the mountains. Do you see that shadow half way up--on the +left--about three feet off? Carcasonne House is somewhere in that +shadow. And it's forty miles away." + +Once more the road ran under a shallow of water. And once more the old +mare remembered that she had been whipped, and made a rush for it. Fresh +mud was added to that which had already dried upon them by the dry +miracle of the air. + +"She'd ought to have been a motor-boat," said Saterlee, the mud which +had entered his mouth gritting unpleasantly between his teeth. "Last +year there was _one_ spring hole _somewhere_ in these parts--this year +it's all lakes and rivers--never was such rains before in the memory of +man. Wonder what Gila River's doing?" + +"What is Gila River?" she asked. + +"It's a sand gully," he said, "that winds down from the mountains, and +out across the plain, like a sure enough river. Only there's no water in +it, only a damp spot here and there. But I was thinking that maybe it'll +be going some now. We ought to strike it before dark." + +The mare rushed through another puddle. + +The lady laughed. "Please don't bother to hold her," she said; "I don't +mind--now." + +"I guess your dress ain't really hurt," commented Saterlee. "I remember +my old woman--Anna--had a brown silk that got a mud bath, and came +through all right." + +"This is an old rag, anyway," said the showy lady, who was still showy +in spite of a wart-like knot of dried mud on the end of her nose. And +she glanced at her spattered but graceful and expensive white linen and +hand-embroidered dress. + +"Well, I can see one thing," said Saterlee, "that you've made up your +mind to go through this experience like a good sport. I wish I didn't +have to take up so much room." + +"Never mind," she said, "I like to think that I could go to sleep +without danger of falling out." + +"That's so--that's so," said Saterlee. "Maybe it's just as well we're +something of a tight fit." + +"I have always mistrusted thin men," said the lady, and she hastily +added: "Not that you're _fat_" + +"My bones are covered," said Saterlee; "I admit it." + +"Yes," she said, "but with big muscles and sinews." + +"I am not weak," said Saterlee; "I admit it." + +"What air this is," exclaimed the lady; "what delicious air. No wonder +it cures people with lung trouble. Still, I'm glad mine are sound." + +"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "When you said +you were bound for Carcasonne House, I thought to myself, 'Mebbe she's +got it,' and I felt mighty sorry." + +"Do I look like a consumptive?" she asked. + +"Bless me--no," said he. "But you're not stout, and, considering where +you said you was going, you mustn't blame me for putting two and two +together and getting the wrong answer." + +"I don't blame you at all," she said, but a little stiffly. "It was +perfectly natural. No," she said, "my daughter is at Carcasonne House. +She had a very heavy cold--and other troubles--and _two_ doctors agreed +that her lungs were threatened. Well, perhaps they were. I sent her to +Carcasonne House on the doctors' recommendation. And it seems that she's +just as sound as I am." + +"What a relief to you, Ma'am," said Saterlee hastily. + +"Yes," she said, but without enthusiasm, "a great relief." + +He screwed his massive head around on his massive neck, not without +difficulty, and looked at her. His voice sounded hurt. + +"You don't seem very glad, Ma'am," he said. + +Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him. + +"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood +will--_must_ tell?" + +"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand +dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's +because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made +a fortune out of it.... Cattle," he added in explanation. + +"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their +affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to +reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could +stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do +you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and +steady-minded--you don't seem like a stranger." + +"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for +hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!" + +"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a +young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know +this: that his father has buried three wives." + +The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the +lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands, +did not perceive this convulsion of nature. + +"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same +brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl--to suffer--to die--and +to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks +when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man. +No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow, +too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee, +the cattle man--do you know him?" + +"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton. + +"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother +to her. I have suffered for her. And she must--she shall--listen to me." + +"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can +count on me.... Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire +sympathy with your views, Ma'am.... Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee +had _divorced_ three wives...." + +The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of +blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and +was pleased. + +"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first +wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire +was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am. +But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is +a difference. Because God Almighty Himself says in one of His books that +man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a +faithful and tender companion is what sets a man--some men--to looking +for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is +he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who +can't cling together until death--and death alone part 'em--for such +people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding." + +"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the +applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her +composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he +dies--not the _death_--but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love +to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if +he had really died? He is dead to her--buried--men don't come back. +Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the +service read over him--that's divorce--and find another whom she can +trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem +identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man +who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself +marrying again--if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still +loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical. +And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible." + +"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and +vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of +it along those lines. See that furrow across the road--that's where a +snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have +buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I +don't seem a regular hell-hound." + +"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you +that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself +up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that +I act for my living--" + +"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew +more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at +Carcasonne House is the same as yours." + +She was silent for a moment. And then: + +"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem +to want the same thing--that is, to keep our children from marrying +each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it." + +"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But--" and he +fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to +her. She read it in the waning light. + +"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute +of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?" + +She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully +and minutely folded sheet of note-paper. + +"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound +like--" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it. + +"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing +brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears--when they were +in his own eyes. + +"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk." + +"No," said Saterlee, "let's think." + + + + +IV + +They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters. + +"That," said Saterlee dryly, "will be Gila River. Mebbe we'll have to +think about getting across that first. It's a river now, by the sound of +it, if it never was before." + +"Fortunately it's not dark yet," said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"The last time I had trouble with a river," said Saterlee, "was when my +first wife died. That was the American River in flood. I had to cross it +to get a doctor. We'd gone prospectin'--just the old woman and me--more +for a lark than profit." + +"Yes?" said Mrs. Kimbal sympathetically. + +"She took sick in an hour," he went on. "From what I've heard since, I +guess it was appendicitis. Anyway, I rode off for help, hell for +leather, and when I come to the river the whole thing was roaring and +foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make +it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, +he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, +but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt +this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be +scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that +didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, Mark,' he says, 'it's wanting to be +sure that I make the right choice.' I says: 'She was in terrible pain, +Jim. Many a time she's done you a good turn; some you know of, some you +don't.' That fetched him. He caught up his bridle and drove his spurs +into his horse, and was swept down-stream like a leaf. I rode along the +bank to help if I could. But he got across on a long diagonal--horse and +all. I waved to him to go on and not mind about me. And he rode off at +the gallop. But I was too heavy, I guess. I lost my second horse in that +flood, and had to foot it into camp. I was too late. Pain had made her +unconscious, and she was dead. But before givin' in she'd wrote me a +letter." He broke off short. "And there's Gila River," he said. + +"I hoped you were going to tell me what your poor wife said in her +letter," said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"Oh, Ma'am," he said, hesitated, cleared his throat, and became routed +and confused. + +"If you'd rather not--" said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"It isn't that," he said. "It would seem like bragging." + +"Surely not," she said. + +Saterlee, with his eyes on the broad, brown flood which they were +approaching, repeated like a lesson: + +"'Mark--I'm dying. I want it to do good, not harm. Jenny always thought +the world of you. You'll be lonely when I'm gone. I don't want you to be +lonely. You gave me peace on earth. And you can't be happy unless you've +got a woman to pet and pamper. That's your nature--'" + +He paused. + +"That was all," he said, and wiped his forehead with the palm of his +hand. "It just stopped there." + +"I'm glad you told me," said Mrs. Kimbal gently. "It will be a lesson +to me not to spring to conclusions, and not to make up my mind about +things I'm not familiar with." + +When they came to where the road disappeared under the swift unbroken +brown of Gila River, the old horse paused of her own accord, and, +turning her bony and scarred head a half revolution, stared almost +rudely at the occupants of the buggy. + +"It all depends," said Saterlee, "how deep the water runs over the road, +and whether we can keep to the road. You see, it comes out higher up +than it goes in. Can you swim, Ma'am?" + +Mrs. Kimbal admitted that, in clothes made to the purpose, and in very +shallow water, she was not without proficiency. + +"Would you rather we turned back?" he asked. + +"I feel sure you'll get me over," said she. + +"Then," said Saterlee, "let's put the hood down. In case we do capsize, +we don't want to get caught under it." + +Saterlee on his side, and Mrs. Kimbal, not without exclamations of +annoyance, on hers, broke the toggle-joints that held the dilapidated +hood in place, and thrust it backward and down. At once the air seemed +to circulate with greater freshness. + +For some moments Saterlee considered the river, up-stream, down-stream, +and across, knitting his brows to see better, for the light was failing +by leaps and bounds. Then, in an embarrassed voice: + +"I've _got_ to do it," he said. "It's only right." + +"What?" said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"I feel sure," he said, "that under the circumstances you'll make every +allowance, Ma'am." + +Without further hesitation--in fact, with almost desperate haste, as if +wishing to dispose of a disagreeable duty--he ripped open the buttons of +his waistcoat and removed it at the same time with his coat, as if the +two had been but one garment. He tossed them into the bottom of the +buggy in a disorderly heap. But Mrs. Kimbal rescued them, separated +them, folded them neatly, and stowed them under the seat. + +Saterlee made no comment. He was thinking of the state of a shirt that +he had had on since early morning, and was wondering how, with his +elbows pressed very tightly to his sides, he could possibly manage to +unlace his boots. He made one or two tentative efforts. But Mrs. Kimbal +seemed to divine the cause of his embarrassment. + +"_Please_," she said, "don't mind anything--on my account." + +He reached desperately, and regardlessly, for his boots, unlaced them, +and took them off. + +"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Kimbal, "_both_ your heels need darning!" + +Saterlee had tied his boots together, and was fastening them around his +neck by the remainder of the laces. + +"I haven't anybody to do my darning now," he said. "My girls are all at +school, except two that's married. So--" He finished his knot, took the +reins in his left hand and the whip in his right. + +At first the old mare would not budge. Switching was of no avail. +Saterlee brought down the whip upon her with a sound like that of small +cannon. She sighed and walked gingerly into the river. + +The water rose slowly (or the river bottom shelved very gradually), and +they were half-way across before it had reached the hubs of the wheels. +But the mare appeared to be in deeper. She refused to advance, and once +more turned and stared with a kind of wistful rudeness. Then she saw the +whip, before it fell, made a desperate plunge, and floundered forward +into deep water--but without the buggy. + +One rotten shaft had broken clean off, both rotten traces, and the +reins, upon which hitherto there had been no warning pull, were jerked +from Saterlee's loose fingers. The old mare reached the further shore +presently, swimming and scrambling upon a descending diagonal, stalked +sedately up the bank, and then stood still, only turning her head to +look at the buggy stranded in mid-stream. The sight appeared to arouse +whatever of youthful mischief remained in the feeble old heart. She +seemed to gather herself for a tremendous effort, then snorted once, and +kicked thrice--three feeble kicks of perhaps six inches in the +perpendicular. + +Mrs. Kimbal exploded into laughter. + +"Wouldn't you know she was a woman?" she said. + +But Saterlee was climbing out of the buggy. + +"Now," said he, "if you'll just tie my coat round your neck by the +sleeves--let the vest go hang--and then you'll have to let me +carry you." + +Mrs. Kimbal did as she was told. But the buggy, relieved at last of all +weight, slid off sidewise with the current, turned turtle, and was +carried swiftly down-stream. Saterlee staggering, for the footing was +uncertain, and holding Mrs. Kimbal high in his arms, started for shore. +The water rose above his waist, and kept rising. He halted, bracing +himself against the current. + +"Ma'am," he said in a discouraged voice, "it's no use. I've just got to +let you get wet. We've got to swim to make it." + +"All right," she said cheerfully. + +"Some folks," he said, "likes to go overboard sudden; some likes to go +in by degrees." + +"Between the two for me," said Mrs. Kimbal. "Not suddenly, but firmly +and without hesitation." + +She gave a little shivery gasp. + +"It's not really cold," she said. "How strong the current pulls. Will +you have to swim and tow me?" + +"Yes," he said. + +"Then wait," she said. "Don't let me be carried away." + +He steadied her while she drew the hat-pins from her hat and dropped it +as carelessly on the water as if that had been her dressing-table. Then +she took down her hair. It was in two great brown, shining braids. The +ends disappeared in the water, listing down-stream. + +Shorn of her hat and her elaborate hair-dressing, the lady was no longer +showy, and Saterlee, out of the tail of an admiring eye, began to see +real beauties about her that had hitherto eluded him. Whatever other +good qualities and virtues she may have tossed overboard during a stormy +and unhappy life, she had still her nerve with her. So Saterlee +told himself. + +"It will be easier, won't it," she said, "if you have my hair to hold +by? I think I can manage to keep on my back." + +"May I, Ma'am?" said Saterlee. + +She laughed at his embarrassment. And half-thrust the two great braids +into the keeping of his strong left hand. + +A moment later Saterlee could no longer keep his footing. + +"Now, Ma'am," he said, "just let yourself go." + +And he swam to shallow water, not without great labor, towing Mrs. +Kimbal by the hair. But here he picked her up in his arms, this time +with no word spoken, and carried her ashore. Some moments passed. + +"Well," she said, laughing, "aren't you going to put me down?" + +"Oh!" said he, terribly confused, "I forgot. I was just casting an eye +around for that horse. She's gone." + +"Never mind--we'll walk." + +"It'll be heavy going, wet as you are," said he. + +"I'll soon be dry in this air," she said. + +Saterlee managed to pull his boots on over his wet socks, and Mrs. +Kimbal, having given him his wet coat from her neck, stooped and wrung +as much water as she could from her clothes. + +It was now nearly dark, but they found the road and went on. + +"What time is it?" she asked. + +"My watch was in my vest," said Saterlee. + +"How far to Carcasonne House?" + +"'Bout thirty miles." + +She did not speak again for some time. + +"Well," she said, a little hardness in her voice, "you'll hardly be in +time to steer your boy away from my girl." + +"No," said he, "I won't. An' you'll hardly be in time to steer your +girl away from my boy." + +"Oh," she said, "you misconceive me entirely, Mr. Saterlee. As far as +I'm concerned, my only regret _now_ is that I shan't be in time to dance +at the wedding." + +"Ma'am?" he said, and there was something husky in his voice. + + + + +V + +About midnight they saw a light, and, forsaking what they believed in +hopeful moments to be the road, they made for it across country. Across +open spaces of sand, into gullies and out of gullies, through stinging +patches of yucca and prickly pear, through breast-high chaparral, +meshed, knotted, and matted, like a clumsy weaving together of very +tough ropes, some with thorns, and all with sharp points and elbows. + +They had long since dispensed with all conversation except what bore on +their situation. Earlier in the night the darkness and the stars had +wormed a story of divorce out of Mrs. Kimbal, and Saterlee had found +himself longing to have the man at hand and by the throat. + +And she had prattled of her many failures on the stage and, latterly, of +her more successful ventures, and of a baby boy that she had had, and +how that while she was off playing "on the road" her husband had come +in drunk and had given the baby the wrong medicine. And it was about +then that she had left off conversing. + +For in joy it is hard enough to find the way in the dark, while for +those in sorrow it is not often that it can be found at all. + +The light proved to be a lantern upon the little porch of a ramshackle +shanty. An old man with immense horn-rimmed spectacles was reading by it +out of a tattered magazine. When the couple came close, the old man +looked up from his reading, and blessed his soul several times. + +"It do beat the Dutch!" he exclaimed in whining nasal tones, "if here +ain't two more." + +"Two more what?" said Saterlee. + +"It's the floods, I reckon," whined the old man. "There's three on the +kitchen floor and there's two ladies in my bed. That's why I'm sittin' +up. There wa'n't no bed for a man in his own house. But I found this +here old copy of the _Medical Revoo_, 'n' I'm puttin' in the time with +erysipelis." + +"But," said Saterlee, "you must find some place for this lady to rest. +She is worn out with walking and hunger." + +"Stop!" whined the old man, smiting his thigh, "if there ain't that +there mattress in the loft! And I clean forgot, and told the boys that I +hadn't nothin' better than a rug or two 'n the kitchen floor." + +"A mattress!" exclaimed Saterlee. "Splendid! I guess you can sleep some +on anything near as good as a mattress. Can't you, ma'am?" + +"Indeed I could!" she said. "But you have been through as much as I +have--more. I won't take it." + +The old man's whine interrupted. + +"Ain't you two married?" he said. + +"Nop," said Saterlee shortly. + +"Now ain't that ridiculous?" meditated the old man; "I thought you was +all along." His eyes brightened behind the spectacles. "It ain't for me +to interfere _in_ course," he said, "but hereabouts I'm a Justice of the +Peace." Neither spoke. + +"I could rouse up the boys in the kitchen for witnesses," he insinuated. + +Saterlee turned suddenly to Mrs. Kimbal, but his voice was very humble. + +"Ma'am?" he suggested. + + + + +MR. HOLIDAY + +Mr. Holiday stepped upon the rear platform of his car, the Mishawaka, +exactly two seconds before the express, with a series of faint, +well-oiled jolts, began to crawl forward and issue from beneath the +glass roof of the Grand Central into the damp, pelting snow. Mr. Holiday +called the porter and told him for the good of his soul that fifty years +ago travelling had not been the easy matter that it was to-day. This off +his mind, he pulled an _Evening Post_ from his pocket and dismissed the +porter by beginning to read. He still wore his overcoat and high silk +hat. These he would not remove until time had proved that the +temperature of his car was properly regulated. + +He became restless after a while and hurried to the forward compartment +of the Mishawaka to see if all his trunks had been put on. He counted +them over several times, and each time he came to the black trunk he +sniffed and wrinkled up his nose indignantly. The black trunk was filled +with the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been +called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had +learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they +had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had +badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and +snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies +had looked such indignant, heart-broken daggers at him that, very +ungraciously, it is true, and with language that made their +sensibilities hop like peas in a pan, he had felt obliged to relent. He +had gathered up the lists and stuffed them into his pocket, and had +turned away with one bitter and awful phrase. + +"Waste not, want not!" he had said. + +He now glared and sniffed at the black trunk, and called for the porter. + +"Do you know what's in that trunk?" he said in a pettish, indignant +voice. "It's full of Christmas presents for my grandchildren. It's got +crocodiles in it and lions and Billy Possums and music-boxes and dolls +and yachts and steam-engines and spiders and monkeys and doll's +furniture and china. It cost me seven hundred and forty-two dollars and +nine cents to fill that trunk. Do you know where I wish it was?" + +The porter did not know. + +"I wish it was in Jericho!" said Mr. Holiday. + +He fingered the brass knob of the door that led forward to the regular +coaches, turned it presently, and closed it behind him. + +His progress through the train resembled that of a mongoose turned +loose in new quarters. Nothing escaped his prying scrutiny or love of +petty information. If he came to a smoking compartment, he would thrust +aside the curtain and peer in. If it contained not more than three +persons, he would then enter, seat himself, and proceed to ask them +personal questions. It was curious that people so seldom resented being +questioned by Mr. Holiday; perhaps his evident sincerity in seeking for +information accounted for this; perhaps the fact that he was famous, and +that nearly everybody in the country knew him by sight. Perhaps it is +impossible for a little gentleman of eighty, very smartly dressed, with +a carnation in his buttonhole, to be impertinent. And then he took such +immense and childish pleasure in the answers that he got, and sometimes +wrote them down in his note-book, with comments, as: + +"Got into conversation with a lady with a flat face. She gave me her age +as forty-two. I should have said nearer sixty. + +"Man of fifty tells me has had wart on nose for twenty-five years; has +had it removed by electrolysis twice, but it persists. Tell him that I +have never had a wart." + +Etc., etc. + +He asked people their ages, whence they came, where they were going; +what they did for a living; if they drank; if they smoked; if their +parents were alive; what their beefsteak cost them a pound; what kind of +underwear they wore; what church they attended; if they shaved +themselves; if married; if single; the number of their children; why +they did not have more children; how many trunks they had in the +baggage-car; whether they had seen to it that their trunks were put on +board, etc. Very young men sometimes gave him joking and sportive +answers; but it did not take him long to catch such drifts, and he +usually managed to crush their sponsors thoroughly. For he had the great +white dignity of years upon his head; and the dignity of two or three +hundred million dollars at his back. + +During his peregrinations he came to a closed door which tempted him +strangely. It was probably the door of a private state-room; it might be +the door of a dust closet. He meditated, with his finger upon the knob. +"I'll just open it slowly," he thought, "and if I make a mistake I'll +say I thought it was a smoking compartment." + +As the door opened a smell of roses came out. Huddled into the seat that +rides forward was a beautiful girl, very much dishevelled and weeping +bitterly, with her head upon one of those coarse white pillows which the +Pullman Company provides. Her roses lay upon the seat opposite. She was +so self-centred in her misery that she was not aware that the door had +been opened, a head thrust in and withdrawn, and the door closed. But +she was sure that a still, small voice had suddenly spoken in her mind, +and said: "Brace up." Presently she stopped crying, as became one who +had been made the subject of a manifestation, and began to put her hair +in order at the narrow mirror between the two windows. Meanwhile, though +Mr. Holiday was making himself scarce, as the saying is, he was consumed +with interest to know why the beautiful girl was weeping. _And he meant +to find out_. + +But in the meantime another case provoked his interest. A handsome woman +of thirty-five occupied Section 7 in Car 6. She was dressed in +close-fitting black, with a touch of white at her throat and wrists. + +Mr. Holiday had seen her from the extreme end of the car, and by the +time he was opposite to where she sat it became necessary for him to +have an answer to the questions that had presented themselves about her. +Without any awkward preliminaries, he bent over and said: + +"I've been wondering, ma'am, if you are dressed in black for your father +or your husband." + +She looked up, recognized the famous eccentric, and smiled. + +"Won't you sit down, Mr. Holiday?" she said, and made room for him. + +"I wear black," she said, when he had seated himself, "not because I am +in mourning for anybody, but because I think it's becoming to me. You +see, I have very light-colored hair." + +"Does all that hair grow on your head?" Mr. Holiday asked, simply and +without offence. + +"Every bit of it," she said. + +"I have a splendid head of hair, too," he commented. "But there's a +young man in the car back of this who'll be twenty-two years of age in +February, and he's got more dandruff than hair. Where are you going?" + +"Cleveland." + +"Is that your home?" + +"No. I'm a bird of passage." + +"What is your name?" + +"I am Miss Hampton," she said, and she hoped that he might have heard of +her. But he hadn't. And she explained herself. "I'm to play at the +Euclid Theatre Christmas night." + +"An actor?" he said. + +"Well," she admitted, "some say so, and some won't hear of it." + +"How much money do you earn?" + +"Two hundred dollars a week." + +Mr. Holiday wrote that in his note-book. + +"I've got some little nieces and nephews in New York," she volunteered. +"Don't you think it's hard to be a genuine aunt and to have to spend +Christmas alone in a strange place?" + +"Not for two hundred dollars a week," said Mr. Holiday +unsympathetically. "You ought to thank your stars and garters." + +Presently, after patting her on the back with two fingers, he rose, +bowed, and passed on down the aisle. On the right, in the end section, +was a very old couple, with snow-white hair, and a great deal of +old-fashioned luggage. Mr. Holiday greeted them cordially, and asked +their ages. The old gentleman was seventy-six and proud of it; the old +lady was seventy. Mr. Holiday informed them that he was eighty, but that +they were probably the next oldest people on the train. Anyway, he would +find out and let them know. They smiled good-naturedly, and the old lady +cuddled a little against the old gentleman, for it was cold in that car. +Mr. Holiday turned abruptly. + +"I forgot to ask you where you are going?" he said. + +They told him that they were going to spend Christmas with their +daughter and son-in-law and the new baby in Cleveland. It was a long +journey. But the season made them feel young and strong. Did Mr. Holiday +think there was any danger of being delayed by the snow? It was coming +down very fast. They could not remember ever to have been in a +sleeping-car when it was snowing so hard outside. Mr. Holiday said that +he would ask the conductor about the snow, and let them know. + +In the smoking compartment of the next car forward sat a very young man, +all alone. He looked at once sulky and frightened. He wasn't smoking, +but was drumming on the window sill with his finger nails. He had a +gardenia in his button-hole, and was dressed evidently in his very best +suit--a handsome dark gray, over a malaga-grape-colored waistcoat. In +his necktie was a diamond horseshoe pin. + +"Young man," said Mr. Holiday, seating himself, "what makes you look so +cross?" + +The young man started to say, "None of your business," but perceived in +time the eager face and snow-white hair of his questioner, and +checked himself. + +"Why," he said tolerantly, "do I look as savage as all that?" + +"It isn't money troubles," said Mr. Holiday, "or you would have pawned +that diamond pin." + +"Wouldn't you be cross," said the young man, "if you had to look forward +to sitting up all night in a cold smoking compartment?" + +"Can't you get a berth?" + +"I had a drawing-room," said the young man, "but at the last minute I +had to give it up to a lady." + +Mr. Holiday's eyes twinkled with benign interest. He had connected the +gardenia in the young man's coat with the roses of the girl who +was weeping. + +"I know," he said, "drawing-room, Car 5. She was crying, but I told her +to brace up, and I guess she's stopped." + +The young man jumped to his feet. + +"Oh!" he said. + +Mr. Holiday chuckled. + +"I was right," he said. "I've been right seven times out of the ten for +twenty-five years. I've kept a record." + +Upon an impulse the young man checked his headlong inclination to rush +to the girl who was weeping. + +"If you are right as often as that," he said, "for God's sake tell me +what to do." + +"Certainly," said Mr. Holiday, "and it won't cost you a cent. What's the +matter?" + +"_She_" said the young man with an accent, for there was but the one, +"came to the station to see me off. She gave me this." He touched the +gardenia gently. "I gave her some roses. Just as the train started to +pull out I dared her to come with me ... she came!" + +"Tut--tut!" said Mr. Holiday. + +"What are we to do?" cried the young man. + +"Go back and sit with her," said Mr. Holiday, "and leave the door wide +open. I'm going through the train now to see who's on board; so don't +worry. Leave it all to me." + +The last car forward before you came to the baggage-car and the express +car was a common day coach. It was draughty. It had been used as a +smoker in a period not so very remote. A dog must have passed an +uncomfortable night in it. + +Near the rear door sat a man in a new derby hat and a new black coat. +Further forward on the same side three children had stuffed themselves +into one seat. The middle child, a well-grown girl of thirteen or +fourteen, seemed by her superior height to shelter the little tots at +her side. Only the blue imitation sailor caps of these appeared above +the top of the seat; and the top of each cap, including that worn by the +older girl, had a centrepiece of white about the size of a gentleman's +visiting card. Mr. Holiday promised himself the pleasure of +investigating these later. In the meanwhile his interest was excited by +the ears of the man in the new derby. They were not large, but they had +an appearance of sticking out further than was necessary; and Mr. +Holiday was about to ask their owner the reason why, when he noticed for +himself that it was because the owner's hair had been cut so very, very +short. Indeed, he had little gray eighth-inch bristles instead of hair. +Mr. Holiday wondered why. He seated himself behind the man, and leaned +forward. The man stirred uneasily. + +"I should think you'd be afraid of catching cold in this draughty car +with your hair cut so short," said Mr. Holiday. + +"I am," said the man tersely. + +"Why did you let them cut it so short then?" + +"Let them!" grunted the man, with ineffable scorn. "Let them! You'd have +let them!" + +"I would not," retorted Mr. Holiday crisply. "My wife cuts my hair for +me, just the way I tell her to." + +The man turned a careworn, unhappy face. + +"My wife used to cut mine," he said. "But then I--I got into the habit +of having it done for me.... Ever been to Ohio Penitentiary, mister? ... +That's the finest tonsorial parlor in America--anything from a shave to +the electric treatment." + +"Ohio Penitentiary is a jail for felons," said Mr. Holiday severely. + +"Quite so," said the man, "as I was telling you." + +His voice had a plaintive, subdued note of defiance in it. It was that +of a person who is tired of lying and beating about the bush. + +"When did you get out?" asked Mr. Holiday simply. + +"Eight days ago," said the man, "and when I get good and sick of looking +for jobs and getting turned down--I guess I'll go back." + +"First they make you work," said Mr. Holiday with a pleased chuckle, +"and then they won't let you work. That's the law. But you take my +advice--you fool 'em!" + +"I never fooled anybody," said the man, and he ripped a holy name from +the depths of his downheartedness. + +Mr. Holiday had extracted his note-book, and under cover of the +seat-back was preparing to take notes and make comments. + +"What did you use to do for a living--before?" he asked. + +"I was teller in a bank." + +"And what happened?" + +"Then," said the man, "the missus had twins, followed by typhoid fever." +His admissions came with hopeless frankness. "And I couldn't pay for all +that luxury. So I stole." + +"What bank were you teller in?" + +"The Painsville Bank--Painsville. I'm going to them now to--to see if +they won't let up. The wife says that's the thing to do--go right to the +boil of trouble and prick it." + +"What did your wife do while you were away?" asked Mr. Holiday +delicately. + +"She did odd jobs, and brought the twins up healthy." + +"I remember the Painsville business," said Mr. Holiday, "because I own +stock in that bank. You only took about two hundred dollars." + +"That was all I needed," said the man. "It saved the missus and the +kids--so what's the odds?" + +"But don't you intend to pay it back?" + +"Not if the world won't let me earn any money. I tried for jobs all +to-day, and yesterday, and the day before. I told my story straight. The +missus wrote that was the thing to do. But I guess she's wrong for once. +What would you do if you were a banker and I came to you and said: 'I'm +just out of jail, where I went for stealing; but I mean to be honest. +Won't you give me work?'" + +Mr. Holiday wondered what he would do. He was beginning to like the +ex-convict's frankness. + +"Do you know who I am?" he asked. + +"Everybody knows you by sight, Mr. Holiday." + +"Then you know," said the little old gentleman, "that I've sent plenty +of people to jail in my time--plenty of them." + +"I've heard that said," said the man. + +"But," said Mr. Holiday sharply, "nobody ever tells stories about the +wrongdoers I have forgiven. Your case never came to me. I believe I +would have shown mercy." + +He closed his note-book and rose. + +"Keep telling your story straight, my man, and _asking_ for work." + +He paused, as if waiting a reply; but the man only grunted, and he +passed forward to the children. First he examined the visiting-card +effects on the tops of their hats, and noticed that these were paper +labels sewed down, and bearing the names and destinations of the little +passengers. Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia Caldwell, reading from left to +right, were consigned in the care of the conductor to Silas Caldwell, +Painsville, Ohio. + +Alice had her arms around Freddie and Euphemia, and her pretty head was +bent first to one and then to the other. Mr. Holiday seated himself +gently behind the trio, and listened for some time. He learned that +"mother" was in the hospital, and "father" had to be with her, and that +the children were going to "Uncle Silas" until sent for. And Uncle Silas +was a very "grouchy" man, and one must mind one's P's and Q's, and never +be naughty, or Uncle Silas would have the law of one. But she, Alice, +would take care of them. + +"Going to spend Christmas with Uncle, are you?" piped Mr. Holiday +suddenly; "that's right!" + +The little tots, very much interested and startled, faced about, but +Alice looked like a little reproving angel. + +"Oh!" she said, climbing out of the seat, "I must speak with you +first," + +Mr. Holiday was actually surprised; but he went aside with the child, +where the tots could not hear. + +Absolutely without consciousness of doing so, Alice patted and +rearranged the old gentleman's carnation, and talked to him in a gentle, +reproving tone. + +"I've done everything I could," she said, "to keep the idea of Christmas +away from them. They didn't know when it came until you spoke. But now +they know, and I don't know what I shall do ... our uncle," she +explained, "doesn't celebrate Christmas; he made father understand that +before he agreed to take us until mother got well. So father and I +agreed we'd keep putting Christmas off until mother was well and we were +all together again. But now they'll want their Christmas--and _I_ can't +give it to them." + +"Well, well," said Mr. Holiday cheerfully. "I _have_ put my foot in it. +And I suppose Freddie and Euphemia will carry on and raise Cain when +they find there's no Santy Claus in Painsville?" + +"Don't you fret, Alice," said Mr. Holiday. "When I get people in trouble +I get 'em out. Your Uncle Silas is a friend of mine--he has to be. I'm +going to send him a telegram." He smiled, and chucked her under the +chin. "I'm not much on Christmas myself," he said, "but an obligation's +an obligation." He shook hands with her, nodded in a friendly way to +the ex-convict, and passed out of the car on his return journey, +consulting his note-book as he went. + +First he revisited the old couple, and told them that next to himself +they were in fact the oldest persons on the train, and that they need +not worry about the snow because he had asked the conductor about it, +and the conductor had said that it was all right. Then he started to +revisit Miss Hampton, but was turned from his purpose by a new face in +the car. The new face rose, thin and white, on a long thin neck from a +clerical collar, and its owner was busy with a pad and a pencil. + +"Writing a sermon?" asked Mr. Holiday. + +The clergyman looked up and smiled. + +"No, sir," he said. "I'm doing a sum in addition, and making heavy work +of it." + +"I'll do it for you," said Mr. Holiday eagerly. He was a lightning +adder, and not in the least averse to showing off. The clergyman, still +smiling, yielded up the pad. + +"I'm trying to make it come to two thousand dollars," he said, "and I +can't." + +"That's because," said Mr. Holiday, returning the pad after one swift +glance up and down the columns, "it only comes to thirteen hundred and +twenty-five dollars. You had the answer correct." + +"It's for repairs to the church," said the clergyman dismally. "The +contractor calls for two thousand; and I'm just about ready to give up." + +"Well," said Mr. Holiday, "I'm going to get my dinner now, and maybe +later I can give you some idea how to raise the balance. I've raised a +good deal of money in my time." He chuckled. + +"I know that, Mr. Holiday," said the clergyman, "and I should be glad of +any--suggestion that you might care to make." + +Mr. Holiday seated himself facing Miss Hampton. She smiled, and nodded, +and laid aside the book she had been reading. Mr. Holiday's +eyes twinkled. + +"I'm going to turn you out of this section," he said. + +"Why?" She smiled. + +"Because there's a young friend of mine wants it," he said. + +"Now, _really!_" said Miss Hampton, still smiling. + +"You're going to carry your duds to the drawing-room, Car 5," he said. +Then, the twinkle in his eyes becoming exceedingly gossipy and sportive, +he told her about the young people who had eloped without exactly +meaning to. Miss Hampton was delighted. + +She and Mr. Holiday hurried to the drawing-room in Car 5, of which the +door had been left wide open, according to Mr. Holiday's orders. The +young people looked very happy and unhappy all at once, and as soon as +Mr. Holiday had begun to state their situation to them without mincing, +they assumed a tremendous pair of blushes, which they were not able to +efface for a long time. + +"And now," he finished, glaring at the uncomfortable young man, "you +bring your duds and put them in Miss Hampton's section. And then you +gather up Miss Hampton's duds and bring 'em in here." And he turned and +shook his finger at the girl. "Mind you," he said, "don't you ever run +away again without a chaperon. They don't grow on every bush." + +Somehow, Mr. Holiday had overlooked the other drawing-room (B) in Car 5. +Now he came suddenly upon it, and peered in, for the door was ajar. But +he drew back with a sharp jerk as if he had seen a rattlesnake. All the +kindness went out of the old gentleman's face, and between anger and +hatred he turned white. + +"Jolyff!" he muttered. And, all the elasticity gone from his gait, he +stumbled back to his own car, revolving and muttering unchristian +thoughts. For he and Jolyff had been meeting all their lives, it seemed, +in court and out; sometimes with the right on one side, sometimes on the +other. Each had cost the other a thousand wicked threats and a mint +of money. + +Mr. Holiday's wanderings through the train had aroused all the kindlier +feelings in his nature. He was going home to his wife and family: +expensive and foolish as it seemed, he had the trunk full of toys for +the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, and he was glad of it. He +had put things right for two prepossessing young people who had made a +wrong start; he had been gallant to an actress; he had determined to +help the clergyman out with his repair fund; to find work for a convict, +and to see to it that three children should have a pleasant visit with +an uncle who was really crotchety, disagreeable, and mean. + +But now he did not care about pleasant things any more. He could think +of nothing but Jolyff; of nothing but old sores that rankled; of great +deals that had gone wrong, through his enemy. And in that spirit he +picked at his Christmas Eve dinner, and went to bed. + +It seemed to Mr. Holiday every time he woke, which was often, that the +train had just started to move, after standing still for a long time, +and that the porter had never before allowed his car to grow so cold. He +turned the current into the reading light at the head of his bed and +consulted his watch. + +Two o'clock. He got to wondering at exactly what hour all those hundreds +of years ago Christ had been born. Had it been as cold as this in the +old barn? Whew! + +No, Bethlehem was in the semi-tropics or thereabout, but the common car +in which the three children were passing the night was not. This thought +came to Mr. Holiday without invitation, and, like all unwelcome guests, +made a long stay. So persistent, indeed, was the thought, meeting his +mind at every turn and dogging its footsteps, that he forgot all about +Jolyff and all about everything else. Finally he rang for the porter, +but had no answer. He rang again and again. Then the train jolted slowly +to a standstill, and Mr. Holiday got up and dressed, and went forward +once more through the narrow aisles of thick curtains to the common car. +But the passengers in that car had amalgamated. Alice and the convict, +blue with cold, were in the same seat, and Alice was hugging Freddie, +who slept fitfully, to her breast, and the convict was hugging Euphemia, +who cried gently and softly like a cold and hungry kitten, to his. The +convict had taken off his overcoat and wrapped it as well as he could +about all the children. + +Mr. Holiday tapped the convict on the shoulder. "Merry Christmas!" he +said cynically. The convict started and turned. "Bring these babies back +to my car," said Mr. Holiday, "and help me put 'em to bed." "That's a +good deed, Mr. Holiday," said the convict. He started to put on his +overcoat. The undressing and putting to bed had not waked Freddie. + +Euphemia had stopped crying. And Alice, when the two men had helped her +with her dress, which buttoned down the back, had suddenly flung her +arms first around one and then around the other, and given each a kiss +good night. + +The convict buttoned his coat and turned up his collar. + +"Good-night, sir," he said, "and thank you." + +Mr. Holiday waved the thanks aside and pointed to a door of shining +mahogany. + +"There's a bed for you, too," he said gently. + +The convict hesitated. + +Then--it may have been owing to the sudden starting of the train--he +lurched against the door, and with a sound that was mighty like a sob +thrust it open and slammed it shut behind him. + +Mr. Holiday smiled and went back to his own bed. This time he slept +soundly. + +At seven o'clock the porter called him, according to orders. The train +was standing still. + +"Merry Christmas, Mistah Holiday, sah!" grinned the porter. "Seven +o'clock, sah!" + +"Merry Christmas," said Mr. Holiday. "Why are we stopping?" + +"We's snowed in," grinned the porter. + +"Snowed in!" exclaimed Mr. Holiday. "Where?" + +"'Tween Albany and Buffalo, sah. Dey ain't any name to de place. Dey +ain't any place." + +"There are three children," said Mr. Holiday, "in the stateroom next to +this and a gentleman in the other stateroom. You call 'em in about an +hour and ask 'em what they'll take for breakfast. Bring me some coffee, +and ask the conductor how late we're going to be." + +With his coffee Mr. Holiday learned that the train might be twenty-four +hours late in getting to Cleveland. The conductor supposed that ploughs +were at work along the track; but the blizzard was still raging. + +That he would be separated from his wife on Christmas Day for the first +time in their married life did not amuse Mr. Holiday; and although too +much of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren bored him to +extinction, still he felt that any festive day on which they were not +all with him was a festive day gone very wrong indeed. But it was not as +a sop to his own feelings of disappointment that he decided to celebrate +Christmas in the train. It was a mixture of good-nature and, I am +afraid, of malice. He said to himself: + +"I shall invite all the passengers to one-o'clock dinner and a Christmas +tree afterward with games and punch. I shall invite the conductor and +the brakeman; the porters shall come to serve dinner. I shall invite the +engineer and the fireman and the express-man. I shall invite everybody +except Jolyff." + +The old gentleman sucked in his lips tightly and dwelt upon this +thought with satisfaction. Jolyff loved a party; Jolyff loved to drink +healths, and clap people on the back, and make little speeches, and +exert himself generally to amuse less gifted persons and make them feel +at home. And it was pleasant to think of him as sitting alone while a +fine celebration was banging and roaring in the very next car--a +celebration to which even an ex-convict had been invited. + +First, Mr. Holiday summoned Miss Hampton and the girl who had run away +to be his aides-de-camp. They decided that the party was really for the +benefit of Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia, so these were packed off at +once to the common car to be as far as possible from the scene of +preparations. Then, with Mr. Holiday's porter, and his cook, and the +ex-convict as men of all work, commenced the task of ordering the car +for a crowd and decorating it, and improvising a Christmas tree. Miss +Hampton set to work with a wooden bucket, sugar, rum, brandy, eggs, +milk, and heaven knows what not, to brew a punch. Every now and then Mr. +Holiday appeared, to see how she was getting on, and to taste the +concoction, and to pay her pretty, old-fashioned compliments. The girl +who had run away was helping the porter to lay the table and trying to +write invitations to the passengers at the same time, Mr. Holiday having +furnished her from his note-book with all of their names. Now and then +there were hurried consultations as to what would be a suitable gift for +a given person. The "next oldest" people in the train were to receive a +pair of the silver candlesticks from the table. The train hands were to +receive money, and suddenly Mr. Holiday discovered that he had only a +few dollars in cash with him. He sought out the clergyman. + +"Merry Christmas!" he said. + +"Merry Christmas!" said the clergyman. + +"Have you," said Mr. Holiday, "any of your rebuilding fund with you?" + +"Why, yes," said the clergyman, smiling, "some two hundred dollars, and +I cannot deny that it is agony to me to carry about so large a sum." + +Mr. Holiday simply held out his hand, palm up. + +"Why--what--" began the clergyman in embarrassment. + +"I will give you my check for that sum," said Mr. Holiday, "and +something over for your fund. I hope you will dine with me, in my car, +at one o'clock." + +He hurried away with the two hundred dollars. It was his intention to +sample Miss Hampton's punch again; but he turned from this on a sudden +impulse and sought out the young man who had been run away with. With +this attractive person he talked very earnestly for half an hour, and +asked him an infinite number of questions; just the kind of questions +that he had asked the young men who had aspired to the hands of his own +daughters. And these must have been satisfactorily answered, because at +the end of the interview Mr. Holiday patted the young man on the back +and said that he would see him later. + +Next he came face to face with Mr. Jolyff, and the two old gentlemen +stared at each other coldly, but without any sign of recognition. +Once--ever so many years ago--they had been intimate friends. Mr. +Holiday had never had any other friend of whom he had been so fond. He +tried now to recall what their first difference had been, and because he +could not he thought he must be growing infirm. And he began to think of +his approaching party with less pleasure. He had let himself in for a +good deal of bother, he thought. + +But this time Miss Hampton made him take a whole teaspoonful of punch, +and told him what a dear he was, and what a good time everybody was +going to have, and that she would do anything in the world for him; she +would even recite "The Night Before Christmas" for his company, if he +asked her. And then they did a great deal of whispering, and finally Mr. +Holiday said: + +"But suppose they balk?" + +"Nonsense," said Miss Hampton; "would you and I balk if we were in their +places?" + +The pretty actress and the old gentleman laughed and bowed to each +other, and exchanged the most arch looks imaginable. And then Miss +Hampton exclaimed: + +"Good Lord--it's twelve-thirty." + +Then there came to them a sudden dreadful smell of burning feathers. +They dashed into the observation end of the car and found the ex-convict +smothering an incipient conflagration of the Christmas tree, which was +made of dusters, with his hands. + +The girl who had run away was despatching the porter with the last batch +of invitations. The ex-convict showed them his burned hands. + +"You go and feel the champagne," said Mr. Holiday, "that'll cool'em." + +Mr. Holiday himself went to fetch the children. In his pockets were the +envelopes containing money for the train hands, the envelope containing +a check for the two hundred dollars that he had borrowed from the +clergyman, and enough over to complete the rebuilding fund which the +clergyman had tried so hard to collect. And there was an envelope for +the ex-convict--not with money in it, but with an I.O.U. + +"_I.O.U. A Good Job_," Mr. Holiday had written on a card and signed his +name. And he had taken out of his satchel and transferred to his +waistcoat pocket a pair of wonderful black pearls that he sometimes wore +at important dinners. And he was going to give one of these to Miss +Hampton and one to the girl who had run away. And then there were all +the wonderful toys and things for Alice, and Freddie, and Euphemia, and +he was going to present them with the black trunk, too, so that they +could take their gifts off the train when it eventually got to +Painsville. And Mr. Holiday had thought of everybody, and had prepared a +little speech to speak to his guests; and for two of his guests he had +arranged one of the greatest surprises that can be sprung on two guests; +and he ought to have been perfectly happy. But he wasn't. + +When he passed the door of Mr. Jolyff's drawing-room he noted that it +was tightly closed. And it ought to have pleased him to see how his +enemy had taken his exclusion from the party to heart, and had shut +himself away from any sign or sound of it. But, although he smiled +cynically, he wasn't altogether pleased. And presently he made a wry +mouth, as if he were taking something unpleasant; and he began to hustle +Freddie and Euphemia so as to get away from that closed door as quickly +as possible. + +The girl who had run away was talking with Mr. Holiday when suddenly she +began to grow conscious and uncomfortable. She gave one swift look about +her, and saw that all the passengers, and all the train hands, and +porters, and the express-man were looking at her and smiling, and she +saw that they had ranged themselves against the sides of the car and +were making themselves as small as possible. Then she saw the young man +looking at her with a wonderful, nervous, radiant look. And then she saw +that the clergyman was standing all by himself, in a space that the +crowd had just managed to leave open for him, and that he had on his +surplice, and that he was marking a place in his prayer-book with one +finger. Then she understood. + +Instinctively she caught Mr. Holiday's arm and clung to it, and Mr. +Holiday, smiling, patted her hand and began to draw her gently toward +the young man and the clergyman. It looked for a moment as if she were +going to hang back, and protest, and make a scene. But just when +everybody was beginning to fear the worst, and to look frightfully +nervous and uncomfortable, a wonderful and beautiful expression came +into her face, and her eyes lighted, and seemed to grow larger and +darker all at the same time. And if there were any present who had +regarded the impromptu wedding as something of a joke, these now had +their minds changed for them in the quickest kind of a jiffy. And if +there were any present who doubted of the beauty and dignity of love, +these had their minds changed for them, too. And they knew that they +were witnesses, not to a silly elopement, but to the great occasion in +the lives of two very young people who were absolutely sure of their +love for each other, and who would cherish each other in sickness and +peril, in good times and bad, in merry times and in heart-breaking +times, until death did them part. + +And then suddenly, just when the clergyman was about to begin, just when +Miss Hampton had succeeded in righting herself from smothering a sob, +Mr. Holiday, whose face, had you but noticed it, had been growing longer +and longer, and drearier and drearier, gave a half-strangled cry: + +"Wait!" + +Wholly oblivious to everything and everybody but what was in his mind at +the moment, he dropped the bride's hand as if it had been a red-hot +horseshoe and started to bolt from the car. But, strangely enough, the +old face that had grown so long and dreary was now wreathed in smiles, +and he was heard to mutter as he went: + +"Just a minute, while I get Jolyff!" + + * * * * * + +Mr. Jolyff and Mr. Holiday lifted their glasses. And Mr. Holiday said, +so that all could hear: + +"I drink to my old friends and to my new friends. And I drink to the +lesson of Christmas. For Christmas," said he, and he smiled in a +wonderful way, "teaches us that in all the world there is absolutely +nothing that we cannot forgive...." + +The two very old gentlemen clinked their glasses together, and, looking +each other affectionately in the eyes, might have been heard to mutter, +somewhat brokenly, each the other's Christian name. + + + + +WHITE MUSCATS OF ALEXANDRIA + +My wife, said the Pole, was a long time recovering from the birth of +our second child. She was a normal and healthy woman, but Nature has a +way in these matters of introducing the unnatural; science, too, mistook +the ABCs of the case for the XYZs; and our rooms were for many, many +weary weeks like a cage in which the bird has ceased to sing. I did what +I could. She was not without books, magazines, and delicacies; but I had +to attend to my business; so that time hung about her much like a +millstone, and she would say: "All's well with me, Michael, but I am +bored--bored--bored." + +Our baby was put out to nurse and our older boy, Casimir, who was seven, +began, for lack of his mother's care, to come and go as he pleased. The +assurance and cheek of street boys began to develop in him. He startled +me by his knowledge and his naivete. But at the same time he was a +natural innocent--a little dreamer. In the matters of street life that +arise among children he had, as a rule, the worst of it. He was a born +believer of all that might be told him. Such children develop into +artists or ne'er-do-wells. It was too soon to worry about him. But I was +easiest in mind when I saw that he was fashioning anatomies with mud or +drawing with chalk upon the sidewalk. "Wait a little," I would say to my +wife, "and he will be old enough to go to school." + +The happiest times were when it was dark and I had closed the store and +could sit by my wife's bed with Casimir on my knee. Then we would talk +over pleasant experiences, or I would tell them, who were both +American-born, stories of Poland, of fairies, and sieges; or hum for +them the tunes to which I had danced in my early youth. But oftenest my +wife and I talked, for the child's benefit, of the wonderful city in +whose slums we lived--upper central New York with its sables and its +palaces. During our courtship and honeymoon we had made many excursions +into those quarters of the city and the memory of them was dear. But if +I remembered well and with happiness, my wife remembered +photographically and with a kind of hectic eagerness in which, I fear, +may have been bedded the roots of dissatisfaction. Details of wealth and +luxury, and manners that had escaped me, even at the time, were as +facile to her as terms of endearment to a lover. "And, oh--do you +remember," she would say, "the ruby that the Fifth Avenue bride had at +her throat, and how for many, many blocks we thought we could still +hear the organ going? That was fun, Michael, wasn't it, when we stood in +front of Sherry's and counted how many real sables went in and how many +fakes, and noticed that the fake sables were as proudly carried as +the real?" + +One night she would not eat her supper. "Oh, Michael," she said, "I'm so +bored with the same old soup--soup--soup, and the same old +porridge--porridge--porridge, and I hate oranges, and apples, and please +don't spend any more money on silly, silly, silly me." + +"But you must eat," I said. "What would you like? Think of something. +Think of something that tempts your appetite. You seem better +to-night--almost well. Your cheeks are like cherries and you keep +stirring restlessly as if you wanted to get up instead of lying +still--still like a woman that has been drowned, all but her great, dear +eyes.... Now, make some decision, and were it ambrosia I will get it for +you if it is to be had in the city.... Else what are savings-banks for, +and thrift, and a knowledge of furs?" + +She answered me indirectly. + +"Do you remember, Michael," she said, "the butcher shops uptown, the +groceries, and the fruit stores, where the commonest articles, the +chops, the preserved strawberries, the apples were perfect and +beautiful, like works of art? In one window there was a great olive +branch in a glass jar--do you remember? And in that fruit store near the +Grand Central--do you remember?--we stood in the damp snow and looked in +at great clean spaces flooded with white light--and there were baskets +of strawberries--right there in January--and wonderful golden and red +fruits that we did not know the names of, and many of the fruits peeped +out from the bright-green leaves among which they had actually grown--" + +"I remember the two prize bunches of grapes," I said. + +And my wife said: + +"I was coming to those ... they must have been eighteen inches long, +every grape great and perfect. I remember you said that such grapes +looked immortal. It was impossible to believe they could ever rot--there +was a kind of joyous frostiness--we went in and asked a little man what +kind of grapes they were, and he answered like a phonograph, without +looking or showing politeness: 'Black Hamburgs and White Muscats of +Alexandria'--your old Sienkiewicz never said anything as beautiful as +that, 'White Muscats of Alexandria--'" + +"Dear little heart," I said. "Childkin, is it the memory of those white +grapes that tempts your appetite?" + +"Oh, Michael," she exclaimed, clasping her hands over those +disappointed breasts into which the milk had not come in sufficiency. +"Oh, Michael--they were two dollars and a half a pound--" + +"Heart of my heart," I said, "Stag Eyes, it is now late, and there are +no such grapes to be had in our part of the city--only the tasteless +white grapes that are packed with sawdust into barrels--but in the +morning I will go uptown and you shall have your White Muscats of +Alexandria." + +She put her arms about my neck with a sudden spasm of fervor, and drew +my head, that was already gray, down to hers. I remember that in that +moment I thought not of passion but of old age, parting, and the grave. + + * * * * * + +But she would not eat the grapes in my presence. There was to be an +orgy, she said, a bacchanalian affair--she was going to place the grapes +where she could look at them, and look at them until she could stand the +sight no more, when she would fall on them like a wolf on the fold and +devour them. She talked morbidly of the grapes--almost neurotically. +But, though her fancies did not please my sense of fitness, I only +laughed at her, or smiled--for she had been ill a long time. + +"But, at least, eat one now," I said, "so that I may see you enjoy it." + +"Not even one," she said. "The bunch must be perfect for me to look at +until--until I can resist no more. Hang them there, on the foot of the +bed by the crook of the stem--is it strong enough to hold them? and +then--aren't you going to be very late to your business? And, Michael, I +feel better--I do. I shouldn't wonder if you found me up and dressed +when you come back." + +In your telling American phrase, "there was nothing doing" in my +business that morning. It was one of those peaceful, sunny days in +January, not cold and no wind stirring. The cheap furs displayed in the +window of my shop attracted no attention from the young women of the +neighborhood. The young are shallow-minded, especially the women. If a +warm day falls in winter they do not stop to think that the next may be +cold. Only hats interest them all the year round, and men. + +So I got out one of my Cicero books and, placing my chair in a pool of +sunshine in the front of the shop, I began to read, for the hundredth +time, his comfortable generalities upon old age. But it seemed to me, +for the first time, that he was all wrong--that old age is only +dreadful, only a shade better than death itself. And this, I suppose, +was because I, myself, during those long months of my wife's illness, +had turned the corner. The sudden passions of youth had retreated like +dragons into their dens. It took more, now, than the worse end of a +bargain or the touch of my wife's lips to bring them flaming forth. On +our wedding day we had been of an age. Now, after nine years, my heart +had changed from a lover's into a father's, while she remained, as it +were, a bride. There remained to me, perhaps, many useful years of +business, of managing and of saving--enjoyable years. But life--life as +I count life--I had lived out. One moment must pass as the next. There +could be no more halting--no more moments of bliss so exquisite as to +resemble pain. I had reached that point in life when it is the sun alone +that matters, and no more the moon. + +A shadow fell upon my pool of sunshine and, looking up, I perceived a +handsome, flashy young man of the clever, almost Satanic type that is so +common below Fourteenth Street; and he stood looking cynically over the +cheap furs in my window and working his thin jaws. Then I saw him take, +with his right hand, from a bunch that he carried in his left, a great +white grape and thrust it into his mouth. They were my grapes, those +which I had gone uptown to fetch for my wife. By the fact that there +were none such to be had in our neighborhood I might have known them. +But the sure proof was a peculiar crook in the stem which I had noticed +when I had hung them for my wife at the foot of her bed. + +I rose and went quietly out of the shop. + +"Happy to show you anything," I said, smiling. + +"Don't need anything in the fur line to-day," said he; "much obliged." + +"What fine grapes those are," I commented. + +"Um," said he, "they call 'em white muskets of Alexander"; and he +grimaced. + +"Where are such to be had?" I asked. + +"Well," he said, "I got these just round the corner; but _you'd_ have to +visit some uptown fruit emporium and pay the price." + +"So you bought the last bunch?" + +"Bought nothin'," he said, and he smiled in a knowing and leering way. + +"They were given to me," he said, "by a married woman. I happened to +drop in and she happened to have sent her husband uptown to fetch these +grapes for her because she's playing sick and works him in more ways +than one--but she said the grapes sickened her conscience, and she made +me take 'em away." + +"So she has a conscience?" I said. + +"They all have," said the young man. "Have one?" + +I took one of the grapes with a hand that shook, and ate it, and felt +the red blood in my veins turn into acid. + +There happened to be a man in the neighborhood who had been nibbling +after my business for some time. I went to him now and made him a cheap +sale for cash. This I deposited with my savings, keeping out a hundred +dollars for myself, and put the whole in trust for my wife and children. +Then I went away and, after many hardships, established myself in a new +place. And, as is often the case with men who have nothing whatsoever to +live for and who are sad, I prospered. God was ever presenting me with +opportunities and the better ends of bargains. + +When fifteen years had passed I returned once more to New York. I had +reached a time of life when the possibility of death must be as steadily +reckoned with as the processes of digestion. And I wished, before I lay +down in the narrow house, to revisit the scenes of my former happiness. +I took the same furnished lodging to which we had gone after our +wedding. I lay all night, but did not sleep, in our nuptial bed. Alone, +but rather in reverence and revery than sadness, I made all those little +excursions upon which we had been so happy during the days of our +honey-moon. I made a point of feeding the animals in the park, of dining +at Claremont--I even stood for a long time before the fruit shop that is +near the Grand Central. But I was too old to feel much. So it seemed. + +One day I sat on the steps of the lodging-house in the sun. I had been +for a long walk and I was very tired, very sick of my mortal coil, very +sure that I did not care if the end were to be sleep or life +everlasting. Then came, slowly around the corner of the shabby street +and toward me, a hansom cab. Its occupant, an alert, very young, eager +man, kept glancing here and there as if he were looking for something or +some one; for the old East Side street had still its old look, as if all +the inhabitants of its houses had rushed out to watch an eclipse of the +sun or the approach of a procession--and were patiently and idly +awaiting the event. + +The children, and even many of the older people, mocked at the young man +in the hansom and flung him good-natured insults. But he knew the +language of the East Side and returned better than he received. My old +heart warmed a little to his young, brightly colored face, his quick, +flashing eyes, and his ready repartees. And it seemed to me a pity that, +like all the pleasant moments I had known, he, too, must pass and +be over. + +But his great eyes flashed suddenly upon my face and rested; then he +signalled to the driver to stop and, springing out, a big sketch-book +under his arm, came toward me with long, frank strides. + +"I know it's cheeky as the devil," he began in a quick, cheerful voice, +while he had yet some distance to come, "but I can't help it. I've been +looking for you for weeks, and--" + +"What is it that I can do for you?" I asked pleasantly. + +"You can give me your head." He said it with an appealing and delighted +smile. "I'm a sort of artist--" he explained. + +"Show me," I said, and held out my hands for the sketch-book. + +"Nothing but notes in it," he said, but I looked, not swiftly, through +all the pages and--for we Poles have an instinct in such matters--saw +that the work was good. + +"Do you wish to draw me, _Master?_" I said. + +He perceived that I meant the term, and he looked troubled and pleased. + +"Will you sit for me?" he asked. "I will--" + +But I shook my head to keep him from mentioning money. + +"Very cheerfully," I said. "It is easy for the old to sit--especially +when, by the mere act of sitting, it is possible for them to become +immortal. I have a room two flights up--where you will not be +disturbed." + +"Splendid!" he said. "You are splendid! Everything's splendid!" + +When he had placed me as he wished, I asked him why my head suited him +more than another's. + +"How do I know?" he said. "Instinct--you seem a cheerful man and yet I +have never seen a head and face that stood so clearly for--for--please +take me as I am, I don't ever mean to offend--steadiness in sorrow.... I +am planning a picture in which there is to be an ol--a man of your age +who looks as--as late October would look if it had a face...." + +Then he began to sketch me, and, as he worked, he chattered about this +and that. + +"Funny thing," he said, "I had a knife when I started and it's +disappeared." + +"Things have that habit," I said. + +"Yes," said he, "things and people, and often people disappear as +suddenly and completely as things--chin quarter of an inch lower--just +so--thank you forever--" + +"And what experience have you had with people disappearing?" I asked. +"And you so young and masterful." + +"I?" he said. "Why, a very near and dear experience. When I was quite a +little boy my own father went to his place of business and was never +heard of again from that day to this. But he must have done it on +purpose, because it was found that he had put all his affairs into the +most regular and explicit order--" + +I felt a little shiver, as if I had taken cold. + +"And, do you know," here the young man dawdled with his pencil and +presently ceased working for the moment, "I've always felt as if I had +had a hand in it--though I was only seven. I'd done something so naughty +and wrong that I looked forward all day to my father's home-coming as a +sinner looks forward to going to hell. My father had never punished me. +But he would this time, I knew--and I was terribly afraid and--sometimes +I have thought that, perhaps, I prayed to God that my father might never +come home. I'm not sure I prayed that--but I have a sneaking suspicion +that I did. Anyway, he never came, and, Great Grief! what a time there +was. My mother nearly went insane--" + +"What had you done?" I asked, forcing a smile, "to merit such terrible +punishment?" + +The young man blushed. + +"Why," he said, "my mother had been quite sick for a long time, and, to +tempt her appetite, my father had journeyed 'way uptown and at vast +expense bought her a bunch of wonderful white hot-house grapes. I +remember she wouldn't eat them at first--just wanted to look at +them--and my father hung them for her over the foot of the bed. Well, +soon after he'd gone to business she fell asleep, leaving the grapes +untouched. They tempted me, and I fell. I wanted to show off, I suppose, +before my young friends in the street--there was a girl, Minnie +Hopflekoppf, I think her name was, who'd passed me up for an Italian +butcher's son. I wanted to show _her_. I'm sure I didn't mean to eat the +things. I'm sure I meant to return with them and hang them back at the +foot of the bed." + +"Please go on," I managed to say. "This is such a very human page--I'm +really excited to know what happened." + +"Well, one of those flashy Bowery dudes came loafing along and said: +'Hi, Johnny, let's have a look at the grapes,' I let him take them, in +my pride and innocence, and he wouldn't give them back. He only laughed +and began to eat them before my eyes. I begged for them, and wept, and +told him how my mother was sick and my father had gone 'way uptown to +get the grapes for her because there were none such to be had in our +neighborhood. And, please, he must give them back because they were +White Muscats of Alexandria, very precious, and my father would kill me. +But the young man only laughed until I began to make a real uproar. Then +he said sharply to shut up, called me a young thief, and said if I said +another word he'd turn me over to the police. Then he flung me a +fifty-cent piece and went away, munching the grapes. And," the young man +finished, "the fifty-cent piece was lead." + +Then he looked up from his sketch and, seeing the expression of my +face, gave a little cry of delight. + +"Great Grief, man!" he cried, "stay as you are--only hold that +expression for two minutes!" + +But I have held it from that day to this. + + + + +WITHOUT A LAWYER + +However bright the court's light may have appeared to the court, the +place in which it was shining smelt damnably of oil. It was three +o'clock in the afternoon, but already the Alaskan night had descended. +The court sat in a barn, warmed from without by the heavily drifted snow +and from within by the tiny flames of lanterns and the breathing of men, +horses, and cows. Here and there in the outskirts of the circle of light +could be seen the long face of a horse or the horned head of a cow. +There was a steady sound of munching. The scene was not unlike many +paintings of the stable in Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity. And +here, too, justice was being born in a dark age. There had been too many +sudden deaths, too many jumped claims, too much drinking, too much +shooting, too many strong men, too few weak men, until finally--for +time, during the long winter, hung upon the neck like a millstone--the +gorges of the more decent had risen. Hence the judge, hence the jury, +hence the prisoner, dragged from his outlying cabin on a charge of +murder. As there were no lawyers in the community, the prisoner held +his own brief. Though not a Frenchman, he had been sarcastically +nicknamed, because of his small size and shrinking expression, +Lou Garou. + +The judge rapped for order upon the head of a flour-barrel behind which +he sat. "Lou Garou," he said, "you are accused of having shot down Ruddy +Boyd in cold blood, after having called him to the door of his cabin for +that purpose on the twenty-ninth of last month. Guilty or not guilty?" + +"Sure," said Lou Garou timidly, and nodding his head. "I shot him." + +"Why?" asked the judge. + +For answer Lou Garou shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the chief +witness, a woman who had wound her head in a dark veil so that her face +could not be seen. "Make her take that veil off," said he in a shrill +voice, "and you'll see why I shot him." + +The woman rose without embarrassment and removed her veil. But, unless +in the prisoner's eyes, she was not beautiful. + +"Thank you, madam," said the judge, after an embarrassed pause. "Ahem!" +And he addressed the prisoner. "Your answer has its romantic value, Lou +Garou, but the court is unable to attach to it any ethical significance +whatsoever. Did you shoot Ruddy Boyd because of this lady's appearance +in general, or because of her left eye in particular, which I note has +been blackened as if by a blow?" + +"Oh, I did that," said Lou Garou naively. + +"Sit down!" thundered the judge. The foreman of the jury, a South +Carolinian by birth, had risen, revolver in hand, with the evident +intention of executing the prisoner on the spot. "You have sworn to +abide by the finding of the court," continued the judge angrily. "If you +don't put up that gun I'll blow your damned head off." + +The juror, who was not without a sense of the ridiculous, smiled and sat +down. + +"You have pleaded guilty," resumed the judge sternly, "to the charge of +murder. You have given a reason. You have either said too much or too +little. If you are unable further to justify your cold-blooded and +intemperate act, you shall hang." + +"What do you want me to say?" whined Lou Garou. + +"I want you to tell the court," said the judge, "why you shot Ruddy +Boyd. If it is possible for you to justify that act I want you to do it. +The court, representing, as it does, the justice of the land, has a +leaning, a bias, toward mercy. Stand up and tell us your story from the +beginning." + +The prisoner once more indicated the woman. "About then," he said, "I +had nothin' but Jenny--and twenty dollars gold that I had loaned to +Ruddy Boyd. Hans"--he pointed to a stout German sitting on the +Carolinian's left--"wouldn't give me any more credit at the store." He +whined and sniffled. "I'm not blaming you one mite, Hans," he said, "but +I had to have flour and bacon, and all I had was twenty dollars gold +that Ruddy owed me. So I says, 'Jenny, I'll step over to Ruddy's shack +and ask him for that money.' She says, 'Think you'd better?' and I says, +'Sure.' So she puts me up a snack of lunch, and I takes my rifle and +starts. Ruddy was in his ditch (having shovelled out the snow), and I +says, 'Ruddy, how about that twenty?' You all know what a nice hearty +way Ruddy had with him--outside. He slaps his thigh, and laughs, and +looks astonished, and then he says: 'My Gawd, Lou, if I hadn't clean +forgot! Now ain't that funny?' So I laughs, too, and says, 'It do seem +kind of funny, and how about it?' 'Now, Lou,' says he, 'you've come on +me sudden, and caught me awkward. I ain't got a dime's worth of change. +But tell you what: I'll give you a check.' + +"I says, 'On what bank?' + +"He says, 'Oh, Hans over at the store--_he_ knows me--'" + +All eyes were turned on the German. Lou Garou continued: + +"Ruddy says: 'Hans dassen't not cash it. He's scared of me, the +pot-bellied old fool." + +The stout German blinked behind his horn spectacles. He feared neither +God nor man, but he was very patient. He made no remark. + +"'If Hans won't,' says Ruddy, 'Stewart sure will!'" + +The foreman of the jury rose like a spring slowly uncoiling. He looked +like a snake ready to strike. "May I inquire," he drawled, "what reason +the late lamented gave for supposing that I would honor his +wuffless paper?" + +Lou Garou sniffled with embarrassment and looked appealingly at the +judge. + +"Tell him," ordered the latter. + +"Mind, then," said Lou Garou, "it was him said it, not me." + +"What was said?" glinted the foreman. + +"Something," said Lou Garou in a small still voice like that which is +said to appertain to conscience, "something about him having give you a +terrible lickin' once, that you'd never got over. He says, 'If Stewart +won't cash it, tell him I'll step over and kick the stuffin' out +of him.'" + +The juror on the left end of the front row stood up. + +"Did he say anything about me?" he asked. + +"Nothin' particular, Jimmy," said Lou Garou. "He only said somethin' +general, like 'them bally-washed hawgs over to the Central Store,' I +think it was." + +"The court," said the judge stiffly, "knows the deceased to have been a +worthless braggart. Proceed with your story." + +"Long and short of it was," said Lou Garou, "we arranged that Ruddy +himself was to get the check cashed and bring me the money the next +Thursday. He swears on his honor he won't keep me waitin' no longer. So +I steps off and eats my lunch, and goes home and tells Jenny how it was. + +"'Hope you get it,' says she. 'I know _him._' + +"It so happened," continued Lou Garou, "Thursday come, and no Ruddy. No +Ruddy, Friday. Saturday I see the weather was bankin' up black for snow, +so I says: 'Jenny, it's credit or bust. I'll step up to the store and +talk to Hans.' So Jenny puts me up a snack of lunch, and I goes to see +Hans. Hans," said Lou Garou, addressing that juror directly, "did I or +didn't I come to see you that Saturday?" + +Hans nodded. + +"Did you or didn't you let me have some flour and bacon on tick?" + +"I did nod," said Hans. + +Lou Garou turned once more to the judge. "So I goes home," he said, "and +finds my chairs broke, and my table upside down, and the dishes broke, +and Jenny gone." + +There was a mild sensation in the court. + +"I casts about for signs, and pretty soon I finds a wisp of red hair, +roots an' all, I says, 'Ruddy's hair,' I says. 'He's bin and gone.' + +"So I takes my gun and starts for Ruddy's, over the mountain. It's hours +shorter than by the valley, for them that has good legs. + +"I was goin' down the other side of the mountain when it seems to me I +hears voices. I bears to the left, and looks down the mountain, and +yonder I sees a man and a woman on the valley path to Ruddy's. The man +he wants the woman to go on. The woman she wants to go back. I can hear +their voices loud and mad, but not their words. Pretty soon Ruddy he +takes Jenny by the arm and twists it--very slow--tighter and tighter. +She sinks to the ground. He goes on twistin'. Pretty soon she indicates +that she has enough. He helps her up with a kick, and they goes on." + +The foreman of the jury rose. "Your honor," he said, "it is an obvious +case of _raptae puellae_. In my opinion the prisoner was more than +justified in shooting the man Ruddy Boyd like a dog." + +"Sit down," said the judge. + +Lou Garou, somewhat excited by painful recollections, went on in a +stronger voice. "I puts up my hind sight to three hundred yards and +draws a bead on Ruddy, between the shoulders. Then I lowers my piece and +uncocks her. 'Stop a bit,' I says. 'How about that twenty?' + +It's gettin' dark, and I follows them to Ruddy's. I hides my gun in a +bush and knocks on the door. Ruddy comes out showin' his big teeth and +laughin.' He closes the door behind him. + +'Come for that twenty, Lou?' says he. + +'Sure,' says I. + +He thinks a minute, then he laughs and turns and flings open the door. +'Come in,' he says. + +I goes in. + +'Hallo!' says he, like he was awful surprised. 'Here's a friend of +yours, Lou. Well, I never!' + +I sees Jenny sittin' in a corner, tied hand and foot. I says, 'Hallo, +Jenny'; she says, 'Hallo, Lou.' Then I turns to Ruddy. 'How about that +twenty?' I says. + +'Well, I'm damned!' he says. 'All he thinks about is his twenty. Well, +here you are.' + +He goes down into his pocket and fetches up a slug, and I pockets it. + +'There,' says he; 'you've got yours, and I've got mine.' + +I don't find nothin' much to say, so I says, 'Well, good-night all, I'll +be goin'.' + +Then Jenny speaks up. 'Ain't you goin' to do nothin'?' she says. + +"'Why, Jenny,' says I 'what can _I_ do?' + +"'All right for you,' she says. 'Turn me loose, Ruddy; no need to keep +me tied after that.' + +"So I says 'Good-night' again and goes. Ruddy comes to the door and +watches me. I looks back once and waves my hand, but he don't make no +sign. I says to myself, 'I can see him because of the light at his back, +but he can't see me.' So I makes for my gun, finds her, turns, and +there's Ruddy still standin' at the door lookin' after me into the dark. +It was a pot shot. Then I goes back, and steps over Ruddy into the shack +and unties Jenny. + +"'Lou,' she says, 'I thought I knowed you inside out. But you fooled +_me_!' + +"By reason of the late hour we stops that night in Ruddy's shack, and +that's all." + +The prisoner, after shuffling his feet uncertainly, sat down. + +"Madam," said the judge, "may I ask you to rise?" + +The woman stood up; not unhandsome in a hard, bold way, except for her +black eye. + +"Madam," said the judge, "is what the prisoner has told us, in so far as +it concerns you, true?" + +"Every word of it." + +"The man Ruddy Boyd used violence to make you go with him?" + +"He twisted my arm and cramped my little finger till I couldn't bear +the pain." + +"You are, I take it, the prisoner's wife?" + +The color mounted slowly into the woman's cheeks. She hesitated, choked +upon her words. The prisoner sprang to his feet. + +"Your honor," he cried, "in a question of life or death like this Jenny +and me we speaks the truth, and nothin' but the truth. She's _not_ my +wife. But I'm goin' to marry her, and make an honest woman of her--at +the foot of the gallows, if you decide that way. No, sir; she was Ruddy +Boyd's wife." + +There was a dead silence, broken by the sounds of the horses and cows +munching their fodder. The foreman of the jury uncoiled slowly. + +"Your honor," he drawled, "I can find it in my heart to pass over the +exact married status of the lady, but I cannot find it in my heart to +pass over without explanation the black eye which the prisoner confesses +to have given her." + +Lou Garou turned upon the foreman like a rat at bay. "That night in the +shack," he cried, "I dreams that Ruddy comes to life. Jenny she hears me +moanin' in my sleep, and she sits up and bends over to see what's the +matter. I think it's Ruddy bendin' over to choke me, and I hits out!" + +"That's true, every word of it!" cried the woman. "He hit me in his +sleep. And when he found out what he'd done he cried over me, and he +kissed the place and made it well!" Her voice broke and ran off into +a sob. + +The jury acquitted the prisoner without leaving their seats. One by one +they shook hands with him, and with the woman. + +"I propose," said the foreman, "that by a unanimous vote we change this +court-house into a house of worship. It will not be a legal marriage +precisely, but it will answer until we can get hold of a minister after +the spring break up." + +The motion was carried. + +The last man to congratulate the happy pair was the German Hans. +"Wheneffer," he said, "you need a parrel of flour or something, you +comes to me py my store." + + + + +THE MONITOR AND THE "MERRIMAC" + + +THE STORY OF A PANIC + +I + +Two long-faced young men and one old man with a long face sat upon the +veranda of the Country Club of Westchester, and looked, now into the +depths of pewter mugs containing mint and ice among other things, and +now across Pelham Bay to the narrow pass of water between Fort Schuyler +and Willets Point. Through this pass the evening fleet of Sound steamers +had already torn with freight and passengers for New Haven, Newport, +Fall River, and Portland; and had already disappeared behind City Island +Point, and in such close order that it had looked as if the _Peck_, +which led, had been towing the others. The first waves from the +paddle-wheels of the great ships had crossed the three miles of +intervening bay, and were slapping at the base of the seawall that +supported the country club pigeon grounds and lawn-tennis terraces, when +another vessel came slowly and haughtily into view from between the +forts. She was as black as the king of England's brougham, and as smart; +her two masts and her great single funnel were stepped with the most +insolent rake imaginable. Here and there where the light of the setting +sun smote upon polished brass she shone as with pools of fire. + +"There she is," said Powers. He had been sitting in his shirt sleeves, +but now he rose and put on his coat as if the sight of the huge and +proud yacht had chilled him. Brett, with a petulant slap, killed a +swollen mosquito against his black silk ankle bone. The old man, +Callender, put his hand to his forehead as if trying to remember +something; and the yacht, steaming slower and slower, and yet, as it +seemed, with more and more grandeur and pride of place--as if she knew +that she gave to the whole bayscape, and the pale Long Island shore +against which she moved in strong relief, an irrefutable note of +dignity--presently stopped and anchored, midway between the forts and +City Island Point; then she began to swing with the tide, until she +faced New York City, from which she had just come. + +Callender took his hand from his forehead. He had remembered. + +"Young gentlemen," he said, "that yacht of Merriman's has been reminding +me every afternoon for a month of something, and I've just thought what. +You remember one day the _Merrimac_ came down the James, very slowly, +and sunk the _Cumberland_, and damaged and frightened the Union fleet +into fits, just the way Merriman has been going down to Wall Street +every morning and frightening us into fits? Well, instead of finishing +the work then and there, she suddenly quit and steamed off up the river +in the same insolent, don't-give-a-hoot way that Merriman comes up from +Wall Street every afternoon. Of course, when the _Merrimac_ came down to +finish destroying the fleet the next day, the _Monitor_ had arrived +during the night and gave her fits, and they called the whole thing off. +Anyhow, it's that going-home-to-sleep-on-it expression of the +_Merrimac's_ that I've been seeing in the _Sappho_." + +"You were on the _Monitor_, weren't you?" asked Powers cheerfully. + +The old man did not answer, but he was quite willing that Powers and +Brett, and the whole world for that matter, should think that he had +been. Powers and Brett, though in no cheerful mood, exchanged winks. + +"I don't see why history shouldn't repeat itself," said Powers. + +"You don't!" said Brett. "Why, because there isn't any _Monitor_ waiting +for Merriman off Wall Street." + +"And just like the Civil War," said Callender, "this trouble in the +street is a rich man's quarrel and a poor man's war. Just because old +Merriman is gunning for Waters, you, and I, and the rest of us are about +to go up the spout." + +Callender was a jaunty old man, tall, of commanding presence and smart +clothes. His white mustache was the epitome of close-cropped neatness. +When he lost money at poker his brown eyes held exactly the same twinkle +as when he won, and it was current among the young men that he had +played greatly in his day--great games for great stakes. Sometimes he +had made heavy winnings, sometimes he had faced ruin; sometimes his +family went to Newport for the summer and entertained; sometimes they +went to a hotel somewhere in some mountains or other, where they didn't +even have a parlor to themselves. But this summer they were living on in +the town house, keeping just enough rooms open, and a few servants who +had weathered former panics, and who were willing to eat dry bread in +bad times for the sake of the plentiful golden butter that they knew was +to be expected when the country believed in its own prosperity and +future. Just now the country believed that it was going to the dogs. And +Mr. Merriman, the banker, had chosen the opportunity to go gunning for +Mr. Waters, the railroad man. The quarrel between the great men was +personal; and so because of a couple of nasty tempers people were being +ruined daily, honest stocks were selling far below their intrinsic +value, United States Steel had been obliged to cut wages, there was a +strike on in the Pennsylvania coal fields, and the Callenders, as I have +said, were not even going to the cheapest mountain top for the summer. +Brett alone was glad of this, because it meant that little Miss +Callender would occasionally come out to the country club for a game of +tennis and a swim, and, although she had refused to marry him on twenty +distinct occasions, he was not a young man to be easily put from his +purpose. Nor did little Miss Callender propose to be relinquished by him +just yet; and she threw into each refusal just the proper amount of +gentleness and startled-fawn expression to insure another proposal +within a month. + +Brett, looking upon Callender as his probable father-in-law, turned to +the old gentleman and said, with guileful innocence: + +"Isn't there anything you can do, sir, to hold Merriman off? Powers and +I are in the market a little, but our customers are in heavy, and the +way things are going we've got to break whether we like it or not." + +Ordinarily Callender would have pretended that he could have checkmated +Merriman if he had wanted to--for in some things he was a child, and it +humored him to pretend, and to intimate, and to look wise; but on the +present occasion, and much to Powers's and Brett's consternation, he +began to speak to them gravely, and confidentially, and a little +pitifully. They had never before seen him other than jaunty and +debonair, whether his family were at Newport or in the mountains. + +"It's all very well for you boys," he said; "you have youth and +resiliency on your side. No matter what happens to you now, in money or +in love, you can come again. But we old fellows, buying and selling with +one foot in the grave, with families accustomed to luxury dependent on +us"--he paused and tugged at his neatly ordered necktie as if to free +his throat for the passage of more air--"some of us old fellows," he +said, "if we go now can never come again--never." + +He rose abruptly and walked into the house without a word more; but +Brett, after hesitating a moment, followed him. Mr. Callender had +stopped in front of the "Delinquent List." Seeing Brett at his elbow, he +pointed with a well-groomed finger to his own name at the beginning +of the C's. + +"If I died to-night," he said, neither gravely nor jocosely, but as if +rather interested to know whether he would or would not, "the club would +have a hard time to collect that sixteen dollars." + +"Are you serious, sir?" Brett asked. + +"If to-morrow is a repetition of to-day," said Mr. Callender, "you will +see the name of Callender & Co. in the evening papers." His lips +trembled slightly under his close-cropped mustache. + +"Then," said Brett, "this is a good opportunity to ask you, sir, if you +have any objection to me as a candidate for your youngest daughter." + +Mr. Callender raised his eyebrows. So small a thing as contemplated +matrimony did not disturb him under the circumstances. + +"My boy," he said, "I take it you are in earnest. I don't object to you. +I am sure nobody does." + +"Oh, yes," said Brett; "_she_ does." + +He had succeeded in making Mr. Callender laugh. + +"But," Brett went on, "I'd like your permission to go on trying." + +"You have it," said her father. "Will you and Powers dine with me?" + +"No," said Brett. "Speaking as candidate to be your son-in-law, you +cannot afford to give us dinner; and in the same way I cannot afford to +buy dinner for you and Powers. So Powers will have to be host and pay +for everything. I shall explain it to him.... But look here, sir, are +you really up against it?" + +To Brett's consternation, Callender suddenly buried his face in his +hands and groaned aloud. + +"Don't," said Brett; "some one's coming." + +Callender recovered his usual poise with a great effort. But no one +came. + +"As far as my wishes go, sir," said Brett, "I'm your son. You never had +a son, did you? If you had a son, and if he were young and resilient, +you'd talk to him and explain to him, and in that way, perhaps, you'd +get to see things so clearly in your own mind that you'd be able to +think a way out. Why don't you talk to me as if I were your son? You see +I want to be so very much, and that's half the battle." + +Callender often joked about his affairs, but he never talked about them. +Now, however, he looked for a moment keenly into the young man's frank +and intelligent face, hesitated, and then, with a grave and courtly bow, +he waved his hand toward two deep chairs that stood in the corner of the +room half facing each other, as if they themselves were engaged in +conversation. + +Twenty minutes later Callender went upstairs to dress for dinner, but +Brett rejoined Powers on the piazza. He sat down without looking at +Powers or speaking to him, and his eyes, crossing the darkening bay, +rested once more on the lordly silhouette of the _Sappho_. In the +failing light she had lost something of her emphatic outline, and was +beginning to melt, as it were, into the shore. + +Brett and Powers were partners. Powers was the floor member of the firm +and Brett ran the office. But they were partners in more ways than the +one, and had been ever since they could remember. As little boys they +had owned things in common without dispute. At St. Marks Powers had +pitched for the nine, and Brett had caught. In their senior year at New +Haven they had played these positions to advantage, both against Harvard +and Princeton. After graduation they had given a year to going around +the world. In Bengal they had shot a tiger, each giving it a mortal +wound. In Siam they had won the doubles championship at lawn tennis. +When one rode on the water wagon the other sat beside him, and vice +versa. Powers's family loved Brett almost as much as they loved Powers, +and if Brett had had a family it would probably have felt about Powers +in the same way. + +As far as volume of business and legitimate commissions went, their firm +was a success. It could execute orders with precision, despatch, and +honesty. It could keep its mouth shut. But it had not yet learned to +keep out of the market on its own account. Regularly as a clock ticks +its profits were wiped out in speculation. The young men believed in the +future of the country, and wanted to get rich quick, not because they +were greedy, but because that desire is part of the average American's +nature and equipment. Gradually, however, they were "getting wise," as +the saying is. And they had taken a solemn oath and shaken hands upon +it, that if ever they got out of their present difficulties they would +never again tempt the goddess of fortune. + +"Old man's in bad, I guess," said Powers. + +"I shouldn't wonder," said Brett, and was ashamed to feel that he must +not be more frank with his partner. "We're all in bad." + +"The _Cumberland_ has been sunk," said Powers, "and the rest of us are +aground and helpless, waiting for the _Merrimac_ to come down the river +in the morning." He shook his fist at the distant _Sappho_. "Why," he +said, "even if we knew what he knows it's too late to do anything, +unless _he_ does it. And he won't. He won't quit firing until Waters +blows up." + +"I've a good notion," said Brett, "to get out my pigeon gun, take the +club launch, board the _Sappho_ about midnight, hold the gun to old +Merriman's head, and make him promise to save the country; or else make +him put to sea, and keep him there. If he were kidnapped and couldn't +unload any more securities, the market would pull up by itself." The +young men chuckled, for the idea amused them in spite of their troubles. + +By a common impulse they turned and looked at the club's thirty-foot +naphtha launch at anchor off the club's dock; and by a common impulse +they both pointed at her, and both exclaimed: + +"The _Monitor_!" + +Then, of course, they were very careful not to say anything more until +they had crooked together the little fingers of their right hands, and +in silence registered a wish each. Then each spoke the name of a famous +poet, and the spell was ended. + +"What did you wish?" said Brett idly. + +Powers could be very courtly and old fashioned. + +"My dear boy," he said, "I fancy that I wished for you just what you +wished for yourself." + +Before this they had never spoken about her to each other. + +"I didn't know that you knew," said Brett. "Thanks." + +They shook hands. Then Brett broke into his gay, happy laugh. + +"That," said he, "is why you have to pay for dinner for Mr. Callender +and me." + +"Are we to dine?" asked Powers, "before attacking the _Merrimac_?" + +"Always," assented Brett, "and we are to dress first." + +The two young men rose and went into the house, Powers resting his hand +affectionately on Brett's further shoulder. It was so that they had come +off the field after striking out Harvard's last chance to score. + +At dinner Mr. Callender, as became his age and experience, told the +young men many clean and amusing stories. Though the clouds were thick +about his head he had recovered his poise and his twinkling eye of the +good loser. Let his night be sleepless, let the morrow crush him, but +let his young friends remember that he had gone to his execution calm, +courteous, and amusing, his mustache trimmed, his face close-shaved, his +nails clean and polished. They had often, he knew, laughed at him for +his pretensions, and his affectation of mysterious knowledge, and all +his little vanities and superiorities, but they would remember him for +the very real nerve and courage that he was showing, and knew that he +was showing. The old gentleman took pleasure in thinking that although +he was about to fail in affairs, he was not going to fail in character. +He even began to make vague plans for trying again, and when, after a +long dinner, they pushed back their chairs and rose from the table, +there was a youthful resiliency in the voice with which he challenged +Powers to a game of piquet. + +"That seems to leave me out," said Brett. + +"Well," said Mr. Callender, with snapping eyes, "can you play well +enough to be an interesting opponent, or can't you?" + +"No, I can't," said Brett. "And anyway, I'm going out in the launch to +talk things over with Merriman." He shrugged his shoulders in a superior +way, and they laughed; but when they had left him for the card-room he +walked out on the veranda and stood looking through the darkness at the +_Sappho's_ distant lights, and he might have been heard muttering, as if +from the depths of very deep thought: + +"Why not?" + + + + +II + +At first Brett did not head the launch straight for the _Sappho_. He was +not sure in his own mind whether he intended to visit her, or just to +have a near-by look at her and then return to the club. He had ordered +the launch on an impulse which he could not explain to himself. If she +had been got ready for him promptly he might not have cared at the last +minute to go out in her at all. But there had been a long delay in +finding the engineer, and this had provoked him and made him very sure +that he wanted to use the launch very much. And it hadn't smoothed his +temper to learn that the engineer had been found in the kitchen eating a +Virginia ham in company with the kitchen maid. + +But the warmth and salt freshness that came into his face, and the +softness and great number of the stars soon pacified him. If she were +only with him, he thought, if her father were only not on the brink of +ruin, how pleasant the world would be. He pretended that she was with +him, just at his shoulder, where he could not see her, but there just +the same, and that he was steering the launch straight for the ends of +the world. He pretended that for such a voyage the launch would not need +an engineer. He wondered if under the circumstances it would be safe to +steer with only one hand. + +But the launch ran suddenly into an oyster stake that went rasping aft +along her side, and at the same moment the searchlight from Fort +Schuyler beamed with dazzling playfulness in his face, and then having +half blinded him wheeled heavenward, a narrow cornucopia of light that +petered out just short of the stars. He watched the searchlight. He +wondered how many pairs of lovers it had discovered along the shores of +Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk on the veranda of the +country club, how many kisses it had interrupted; and whether it would +rather pry into people's private affairs or look for torpedo-boats and +night attacks in time of war. But most of all he wondered why it spent +so much of its light on space, sweeping the heavens like a fiery broom +with indefatigable zeal. There were no lovers or torpedo-boats up there. +Even the birds were in bed, and the Wright brothers were known to be +at Pau. + +Once more the searchlight smote him full in the face and then, as if +making a pointed gesture, swept from him, and for a long second +illuminated the black hull and the yellow spars of the _Sappho_. Then, +as if its earthly business were over, the shaft of light, lengthening +and lengthening as it rose above intervening obstacles, the bay, the +Stepping Stone light, the Long Island shore, turned slowly upward until +it pointed at the zenith. Then it went out. + +"That," thought Brett, "was almost a hint. First it stirred me up; then +it pointed at the _Sappho_; then it indicated that there is One above, +and then it went out." + +He headed the launch straight for the _Sappho_, and began to wonder what +one had to do to get aboard of a magnate's yacht at night. He turned to +the engineer. + +"Gryce," he said, "what do you know about yachts?" + +"What about 'em?" Gryce answered sulkily. He was still thinking of the +kitchen-maid and the unfinished ham, or else of the ham and the +unfinished kitchen maid, I am not sure which. + +"What about 'em?" Brett echoed. "Do they take up their gangways at +night?" + +"Unless some one's expected," said Gryce. + +"Do they have a watchman?" + +"One forward and one aft on big yachts." + +"Making two," said Brett. "But aren't there usually two gangways--one +for the crew and one for the owner's guests?" + +"Crew's gangway is to starboard," Gryce vouchsafed. + +Brett wondered if there was anything else that he ought to know. Then, +in picturing himself as running the launch alongside the _Sappho_, and +hoping that he would not bump her, a question presented itself. + +"If I were going to visit the _Sappho_," he asked, "would I approach the +gangway from the stern or from the bow?" + +"I don't know," said Gryce. + +"Do you mean," said Brett, "that you don't know which is the correct +thing to do, or that you think I can't steer?" + +"I mean," said Gryce, "that I know it's one or the other, but I don't +know which." + +"In that case," said Brett, "we will approach from the rear. That is +always the better part of valor. But if the gangway has been taken up +for the night I don't know what I shall do." + +"The gangway was down when the light was on her," said Gryce. "I seen +it." + +And that it was still down Brett could presently see for himself. He +doubted his ability to make a neat landing, but they seemed to be +expecting him, for a sailor ran down to the gangway landing armed with +a long boat-hook, and made the matter easy for him. When he had reached +the _Sappho's_ deck an officer came forward in the darkness, and said: + +"This way, sir, if you please." + +"There's magic about," thought Brett, and he accompanied the officer +aft. + +"Mr. Merriman," said the latter, "told us to expect you half an hour ago +in a motor-boat. Did you have a breakdown?" + +"No," said Brett, and he added mentally, "but I'm liable to." + +They descended a companionway; the officer opened a sliding door of some +rich wood, and Brett stepped into the highly lighted main saloon of +the _Sappho_. + +In one corner of the room, with his back turned, the famous Mr. Merriman +sat at an upright piano, lugubriously drumming. Brett had often heard of +the great man's secret vice, and now the sight of him hard at it made +him, in spite of the very real trepidation under which he was laboring, +feel good-natured all over--the Colossus of finance was so earnest at +his music, so painstaking and interested in placing his thick, clumsy +fingers, and so frankly delighted with the effect of his performance +upon his own ear. It seemed to Brett homely and pleasant, the thought +that one of the most important people of eighty millions should find +his pleasure in an art for which he had neither gift nor training. + +Mr. Merriman finished his piece with a badly fumbled chord, and turned +from the piano with something like the show of reluctance with which a +man turns from a girl who has refused him. That Mr. Merriman did not +start or change expression on seeing a stranger in the very heart of his +privacy was also in keeping with his reputed character. It was also like +him to look steadily at the young man for quite a long while before +speaking. But finally to be addressed in courteous and pleasant tones +was not what Brett expected. For this he had his own good looks to +thank, as Mr. Merriman hated, with the exception of his own music, +everything that was ugly. + +"Good-evening, sir," said Mr. Merriman. "But I can't for the life of me +think what you are doing on my yacht. I was expecting a man, but +not you." + +"You couldn't guess," said Brett, "why I have been so impertinent as to +call upon you without an invitation." + +"Then," said Mr. Merriman, "perhaps you had better tell me. I think I +have seen you before." + +"My name is Brett," said Brett. "You may have seen me trying to play +tennis at Newport. I have often seen you there, looking on." + +"You didn't come to accuse me of being a looker-on?" Mr. Merriman asked. + +"No, sir," said Brett, "but I do wish that could have been the reason. +I've come, sir, as a matter of fact, because you are, on the contrary, +so very, very active in the game." + +"I don't understand," said Merriman rather coldly, + +"Oh," said Brett, "everybody I care for in the world is being ruined, +including myself, and I said, 'Mr. Merriman could save us all if he only +would.' So I came to ask you if you couldn't see your way to letting up +on us all." + +"'Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman, "you may have heard, since gossip +occasionally concerns herself with me, that in my youth I was a priest." + +Brett nodded. + +"Well," continued Mr. Merriman, "I have never before listened to so +naive a confession as yours." + +Brett blushed to his eyes. + +"I knew when I came," he said, "that I shouldn't know how to go about +what I've come for." + +"But I think I have a better opinion of you," smiled Mr. Merriman, and +his smile was very engaging. "You have been frank without being fresh, +you have been bashful without showing fear. You meet the eye in a manly +way, and you seem a clean and worthy young man. As opposed to these +things, what you might have thought out to say to me would +hardly matter." + +"Oh," cried Brett impulsively, "if you would only let up!" + +"I suppose, Mr. Brett," the banker smiled, even more engagingly, "that +you mean you would like me to come to the personal rescue of all those +persons who have recently shown bad judgment in the conduct of their +affairs. But let me tell you that I have precisely your own objections +to seeing people go to smash. But they _will_ do it. They don't even +come to me for advice." + +"You wouldn't give it to them if they did," said Brett. + +"No," said Mr. Merriman, "I couldn't. But I should like to, and a piece +of my mind to boot. Now, sir, you have suggested something for me to do. +Will you go further and tell me how I am to do it?" + +"Why," said Brett, diffidently but unabashed, "you could start in early +to-morrow morning, couldn't you, and bull the market?" + +"Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman forcefully, "I have for the last month +been straining my resources to hold the market. But it is too heavy, +sir, for one pair of shoulders." + +A look of doubt must have crossed Brett's face, for the banker smote his +right fist into the palm of his left hand with considerable violence, +and rose to his feet, almost menacingly. + +"Have the courtesy not to doubt my statements, young sir," he said +sharply. "I have made light of your intrusion; see that you do not make +light of the courtesy and consideration thus shown you." + +"Of course, I believe you," said Brett, and he did. + +"You are one of those," said Mr. Merriman, "who listen to what the run +of people say, and make capital of it." + +"Of course, I can't help hearing what people say," said Brett. + +"Or believing it!" Mr. Merriman laughed savagely, "What are they saying +of me these days?" he asked. + +Brett hesitated. + +"Come, come," said the great man, in a mocking voice. "You are here +without an invitation. Entertain me! Entertain me! Make good!" + +Brett was nettled. + +"Well," said he, "they say that Mr. Waters was tremendously extended for +a rise in stocks, and that you found it out, and that you hate him, and +that you went for him to give him a lesson, and that you pulled all the +props out of the market, and smashed it all to pieces, just for a +private spite. That's what they say!" + +The banker was silent for quite a long time. + +"If there wasn't something awful about that," he said at last, "it would +be very funny." + +The officer who had ushered Brett into the saloon appeared at the door. + +"Well?" said Merriman curtly. + +"There's a gentleman," said the officer, "who wants to come aboard. He +says you are expecting him. But as you only mentioned one gentleman--" + +"Yes, yes," said Merriman, "I'm expecting this other gentleman, too." + +He turned to Brett. + +"I am going to ask you to remain," he said, "to assist at a conference +on the present state of the market between yourself, and myself, and my +_arch-enemy_--Mr. Waters." + + + + +III + +Even if Brett should live to be a distinguished financier himself--which +is not likely--he will never forget that midnight conference on board +the _Sappho_. He had supposed that famous men--unless they were dead +statesmen--thought only of themselves, and how they might best and most +easily increase their own power and wealth. He had believed with the +rest of the smaller Wall Street interests that the present difficulties +were the result of a private feud. Instead of this he now saw that the +supposed quarrellers had forgotten their differences, and were in the +closest kind of an alliance to save the situation. He discovered that +until prices had fallen fifty points neither of them had been in the +market to any significant extent; and that, to avert the appalling +calamities which seemed imminent, both were ready if necessary to +impoverish themselves or to take unusual risks of so doing. He learned +the real causes of the panic, so far as these were not hidden from +Merriman and Waters themselves, and when at last the two men decided +what should be attempted, to what strategic points they should send +re-enforcements, and just what assistance they should ask the Secretary +of the Treasury to furnish, Brett felt that he had seen history in +the making. + +Waters left the _Sappho_ at one in the morning, and Brett was for going, +too, but Merriman laid a hand on the young man's shoulder and asked him +to remain for a few moments. + +"Now, my son," he said, "you see how the panic has affected some of the +so-called big interests. It may be that Waters and I can't do very much. +But it will be good for you to remember that we tried; it will make you +perhaps see others in a more tolerant light. But for purposes of +conversation you will, of course, forget that you have been here. Now, +as to your own affairs--" + +Mr. Merriman looked old and tired, but very indulgent and kind. + +"Knowing what I know now," said Brett, "I would rather take my chances +with the other little fools who have made so much trouble for you and +Mr. Waters. If your schemes work out I'll be saved in spite of myself; +and if they don't--well, I hope I've learned not to be so great a +fool again." + +"In every honest young man," said Merriman, "there is something of the +early Christian--he is very noble and very silly. Write your name and +telephone number on that sheet of paper. At least, you won't refuse +orders from me in the morning. Waters and I will have to use many +brokers to-morrow, of whom I hope you will consent to be one." + +Brett hung his head in pleasure and shame. Then he looked Mr. Merriman +in the face with a bright smile. + +"If you've got to help some private individual, Mr. Merriman, I'd rather +you didn't make it me; I'd rather you made it old man Callender. If he +goes under now he'll never get to the top again." + +"Not Samuel B. Callender?" said Merriman, with a note of surprise and +very real interest in his voice. "Is he in trouble? I didn't know. Why, +that will never do--a fine old fighting character like that--and +besides ... why, wouldn't you have thought that he would have come to +me himself or that at least he would have confided in my son Jim?" + +Brett winced. + +Merriman wrote something upon a card and handed it to Brett. + +"Can you see that he gets that?" he asked. + +"Yes, sir," said Brett. + +"Tell him, then, to present it at my office the first thing in the +morning. It will get him straight to me. I can't stand idle and see the +father of the girl my boy is going to marry ruined." + +"I didn't know--" said Brett. He was very white, and his lips trembled +in spite of his best efforts to control them. "I congratulate you, sir. +She is very lovely," he added. + +Mr. Merriman regarded the miserable young man quizzically. + +"But," he said, "Mr. Callender has three daughters." + +"Oh, no," said Brett dismally, "there is only the one." + +"My boy," said Mr. Merriman, "I am afraid that you are an incorrigible +plunger--at stocks, at romance, and at conclusions. I don't know if I am +going to comfort you or give you pain, but the girl my son is going to +marry is _Mary_ Callender." + +The color returned to Brett's cheek and the sparkle to his eyes. He +grasped Mr. Merriman by both hands, and in a confidential voice he said: + +"Mr. Merriman, there is no such person." + + + + +THE McTAVISH + + +I + +By the look of her she might have been a queen, or a princess, or at the +very least a duchess. But she was no one of these. She was only a +commoner--a plain miss, though very far from plain. Which is +extraordinary when you consider that the blood of the Bruce flowed with +exceeding liveliness in her veins, together with the blood of many +another valiant Scot--Randolph, Douglas, Campbell--who bled with Bruce +or for him. + +With the fact that she was not at the very least a duchess, _most_ of +her temporal troubles came to an abrupt end. When she tired of her +castle at Beem-Tay she could hop into her motor-car and fly down the +Great North Road to her castle at Brig O'Dread. This was a fifty-mile +run, and from any part of the road she could see land that belonged to +her--forest, farm, and moor. If the air at Beem-Tay was too formal, or +the keep at Brig O'Dread too gloomy, she could put up at any of her +half-dozen shooting lodges, built in wild, inaccessible, wild-fowly +places, and shake the dust of the world from her feet, and tread, just +under heaven, upon the heather. + +But mixed up with all this fine estate was one other temporal trouble. +For, over and above the expenses of keeping the castles on a good +footing, and the shooting lodges clean and attractive, and the motor-car +full of petrol, and the horses full of oats, and the lawns empty of +weeds, and the glass houses full of fruit, she had no money whatsoever. +She could not sell any of her land because it was entailed--that is, it +really belonged to somebody who didn't exist; she couldn't sell her +diamonds, for the same reason; and she could not rent any of her +shootings, because her ancestors had not done so. I honestly believe +that a sixpence of real money looked big to her. + +Her first name was the same as that of the Lady of the Lake--Ellen. Her +last name was McTavish--if she had been a man she would have been The +McTavish (and many people did call her that)--and her middle names were +like the sands of the sea in number, and sounded like bugles blowing a +charge--Campbell and Cameron, Dundee and Douglas. She had a family +tartan--heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses--and +she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking +ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland +loch, her cheeks from the briar rose, some of the notes of her voice +from the upland plover, and some from the lark. And her laugh was like +an echo of the sounds that the River Tay makes when it goes among +the shallows. + +One day she was sitting all by herself in the Seventh Drawing Room +(forty feet by twenty-four) of Brig O'Dread Castle, looking from a +fourteen-foot-deep window embrasure, upon the brig itself, the river +rushing under it, and the clean, flowery town upon both banks. From most +of her houses she could see nothing but her own possessions, but from +Brig O'Dread Castle, standing, as it did, in one corner of her estates, +she could see past her entrance gate, with its flowery, embattled lodge, +a little into the outside world. There were tourists whirling by in +automobiles along the Great North Road, or parties of Scotch gypsies, +with their dark faces and ear-rings, with their wagons and folded tents, +passing from one good poaching neighborhood to the next. Sometimes it +amused her to see tourists turned from her gates by the proud porter who +lived in the lodge; and on the present occasion, when an automobile +stopped in front of the gate and the chauffeur hopped out and rang the +bell, she was prepared to be mildly amused once more in the same way. + +The proud porter emerged like a conquering hero from the lodge, the +pleated kilt of the McTavish tartan swinging against his great thighs, +his knees bare and glowing in the sun, and the jaunty Highland bonnet +low upon the side of his head. He approached the gate and began to +parley, but not with the chauffeur; a more important person (if +possible) had descended from the car--a person of unguessable age, owing +to automobile goggles, dressed in a London-made shooting suit of tweed, +and a cap to match. The parley ended, the stranger appeared to place +something in the proud porter's hand; and the latter swung upon his heel +and strode up the driveway to the castle. Meanwhile the stranger +remained without the gate. + +Presently word came to The McTavish, in the Seventh Drawing Room, that +an American gentleman named McTavish, who had come all the way from +America for the purpose, desired to read the inscriptions upon the +McTavish tombstones in the chapel of Brig O'Dread Castle. The porter, +who brought this word himself, being a privileged character, looked very +wistful when he had delivered it--as much as to say that the frightful +itching of his palm had not been as yet wholly assuaged. The +McTavish smiled. + +"Bring the gentleman to the Great Tower door, McDougall," she said, +"and--I will show him about, myself." + +The proud porter's face fell. His snow-white _mustachios_ took on a +fuller droop. + +"McDougall," said The McTavish--and this time she laughed aloud--"if +the gentleman from America crosses my hand with silver, it shall +be yours." + +"More like"--and McDougall became gloomier still--"more like he will +cross it with gold." (Only he said this in a kind of dialect that was +delightful to hear, difficult to understand, and would be insulting to +the reader to reproduce in print.) + +"If it's gold," said The McTavish sharply, "I'll not part wi' it, +McDougall, and you may lay to that." + +You might have thought that McDougall had been brought up in the Black +Hole of Calcutta--so sad he looked, and so hurt, so softly he left the +room, so loudly he closed the door. + +The McTavish burst into laughter, and promised herself, not without some +compunction, to hand over the gold to McDougall, if any should +materialize. Next she flew to her dressing-room and made herself look as +much like a gentlewoman's housekeeper as she could in the few minutes at +her disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and +whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of +the Great Tower in the sunlight. And when she heard the stranger's feet +upon the gravel she composed her face; and when he appeared round the +corner of a clipped yew she rattled the keys at her belt and bustled on +her feet, as becomes a housekeeper, and bobbed a courtesy. + +The stranger McTavish was no more than thirty. He had brown eyes, and +wore upon his face a steady, enigmatic smile. + + + + +II + +"Good-morning," said the American McTavish. "It is very kind of Miss +McTavish to let me go into her chapel. Are you the housekeeper?" + +"I am," said The McTavish. "Mrs. Nevis is my name." + +"What a pity!" murmured the gentleman. + +"This way, sir," said The McTavish. + +She stepped into the open, and, jangling her keys occasionally, led him +along an almost interminable path of green turf bordered by larkspur and +flowering sage, which ended at last at a somewhat battered lead statue +of Atlas, crowning a pudding-shaped mound of turf. + +"When the Red Currie sacked Brig O'Dread Castle," said The McTavish, "he +dug a pit here and flung the dead into it. There will be McTavishes +among them." + +"There are no inscriptions," said the gentleman. + +"Those are in the chapel," said The McTavish. "This way." And she swung +into another turf walk, long, wide, springy, and bordered by birches. + +"Tell me," said the American, "is it true that Miss McTavish is down on +strangers?" + +She looked at him over her shoulder. He still wore his enigmatic smile. + +"I don't know what got into her," she said, "to let you in." She halted +in her tracks and, looking cautiously this way and that, like a +conspirator in a play: "She's a hard woman to deal with," she said, +"between you and me." + +"I've heard something of the kind," said the American. "Indeed, I asked +the porter. I said, 'What manner of woman is Miss McTavish?' and he +said, in a kind of whisper, 'The McTavish, sir, is a roaring, ranting, +stingy, bony female.'" + +"He said that, did he?" asked the pseudo Mrs. Nevis, tightening her lips +and jangling her keys. + +"But I didn't believe him," said the American; "I wouldn't believe what +he said of any cousin of mine." + +"Is The McTavish your cousin?" + +"Why, yes," said he; "but just which one I don't know. That's what I +have come to find out. I have an idea--I and my lawyers have--that if +The McTavish died without a direct heir, I should be The McTavish; that +is, that this nice castle, and Red Curries Mound, and all and all, would +be mine. I could come every August for the shooting. It would be +very nice." + +"It wouldn't be very nice for The McTavish to die before you," said +Mrs. Nevis. "She's only twenty-two." + +"Great heavens!" said the American. "Between you, you made me think she +was a horrid old woman!" + +"Horrid," said Mrs. Nevis, "very. But not old." + +She led the way abruptly to a turf circle which ended the birch walk and +from which sprang, in turn, a walk of larch, a walk of Lebanon cedars, +and one of mountain ash. At the end of the cedar walk, far off, could be +seen the squat gray tower of the chapel, heavy with ivy. McTavish caught +up with Mrs. Nevis and walked at her side. Their feet made no sound upon +the pleasant, springy turf. Only the bunch of keys sounded occasionally. + +"How," said McTavish, not without insinuation, "could one get to know +one's cousin?" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "if you are troubled with spare cash and stay in +the neighborhood long enough, she'll manage that. She has little enough +to spend, poor woman. Why, sir, when she told me to show you the chapel, +she said, 'Catherine,' she said, 'there's one Carnegie come out of the +States--see if yon McTavish is not another.'" + +"She said that?" + +"She did so." + +"And how did you propose to go to work to find out, Mrs. Nevis?" + +"Oh," said she, "I've hinted broadly at the news that's required at +headquarters. I can do no more." + +McTavish reflected, "Tell her," he said presently, "when you see her, +that I'm not Carnegie, nor near it. But tell her that, as we Americans +say, 'I've enough for two.'" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "that would mean too much or too little to a +Scot." + +"Call it, then," said McTavish, "several million pounds." + +"Several," Mrs. Nevis reflected. + +"Say--three," said McTavish. + +Mrs. Nevis sighed. "And where did you gather it all?" she asked. + +"Oh, from my father," said McTavish. "And it was given to him by the +government." + +"Why?" she asked. + +"Not why," said he, "so much as how. You see, our government is +passionately fond of certain people and makes them very rich. But it's +perfectly fair, because at the same time it makes other people, of whom +it is not fond, desperately poor. We call it protection," he said. "For +instance, my government lets a man buy a Shetland wool sweater in +Scotland for two dollars, and lets him sell it on Broadway for twenty +dollars. The process makes that man rich in time, but it's perfectly +fair, because it makes the man who has to buy the sweater poor." + +"But the fool doesn't have to buy it," said Mrs. Nevis. + +"Oh yes, he does," said McTavish; "in America--if he likes the look of +it and the feel of it--he has to buy. It's the climate, I suppose." + +"Did your father make his money in Shetland sweaters?" she asked. + +"Nothing so nice," said McTavish; "rails." + +A covey of birds rose in the woods at their right with a loud whir of +wings. + +"Whew!" exclaimed McTavish. + +"Baby pheasants," explained Mrs. Nevis. "They shoot three thousand at +Brig O'Dread in the season." + +After certain difficulties, during which their hands touched, the +greatest key in Mrs. Nevis's bunch was made to open the chapel door, and +they went in. + +The place had no roof; the flagged floor had disappeared, and it had +been replaced by velvety turf, level between the graves and headstones. +Supporting columns reared themselves here and there, supporting nothing. +A sturdy thorn tree grew against the left-hand wall; but the sun shone +brightly into the ruin, and sparrows twittered pleasantly among the +in-growths of ivy. + +"Will you wish to read all the inscriptions?" asked Mrs. Nevis, +doubtfully, for there were hundreds of tombstones crowding the turf or +pegged to the walls. + +"No, no," said McTavish "I see what I came to see--already." + +For the first time the enigmatic smile left his face, and she watched +him with a kind of excited interest as he crossed the narrow houses of +the dead and halted before a small tablet of white marble. She followed +him, more slowly, and stood presently at his side as he read aloud: + + "SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF + COLLAND McTAVISH, + WHO DISAPPEARED, AGED FIVE YEARS, + JUNE 15TH, 1801." + +Immediately below the inscription a bar of music was engraved in the +marble. "I can't read that," said McTavish. + +Mrs. Nevis hummed a pathetic air very sweetly, almost under her breath. +He listened until she had finished and then: "What tune is that?" he +asked, excitedly. + +"'Wandering Willie,'" she answered. + +"Of course," said he, "it would be that." + +"Was this the stone you came to see?" she asked presently. + +"Yes," he said. "Colland McTavish, who disappeared, was my +great-grandfather. The old gentleman--I never saw him myself--used to +say that he remembered a long, long driveway, and a great iron gate, and +riding for ever and ever in a wagon with a tent over it, and sleeping at +night on the bare hills or in forests beside streams. And that was all +he remembered, except being on a ship on the sea for years and years. +But he had this--" + +McTavish extracted from a pocket into which it had been buttoned for +safety what appeared, at first sight, to be a linen handkerchief yellow +with age. But, on unfolding, it proved to be a child's shirt, cracked +and broken in places, and lacking all but one of its bone buttons. +Embroidered on the tiny shirt tail, in faint and faded blue, was the +name Colland McTavish. + +"He always thought," said McTavish, "that the gypsies stole him. It +looks as if they had, doesn't it? And, just think, he used to live in +this beautiful place, and play in it, and belong to it! Wasn't it +curious, my seeing that tablet the first thing when we came in? It +looked as big as a house and seemed to beckon me." + +"It looks more like the ghost of a little child," said Mrs. Nevis +quietly. "Perhaps that is why it drew you so." + +"Why," said he, "has this chapel been allowed to fall to pieces?" + +"Because," said Mrs. Nevis, "there's never been the money to mend it." + +"I wonder," he mused, "if The McTavish would let me do it? After all, +I'm not an utter stranger; I'm a distant cousin--after all." + +"Not so distant, sir," said Mrs. Nevis, "as may appear, if what you say +is true. Colland McTavish, your great-grandfather, and The McTavish's +great-grandfather, were brothers--and the poor bereft mother that put up +this tablet was your great-great-grandmother, and hers." + +"Surely then," said he, "The McTavish would let me put a roof on the +chapel. I'd _like_ to," he said, and the red came strongly into his +cheeks. "I'll ask her. Surely she wouldn't refuse to see me on such +a matter." + +"You can never tell," Mrs. Nevis said. "She's a woman that won't bear +forcing." + +He looked at her for the first time in some minutes. "Why," said he, +"you're ill; you're white as a sheet!" + +"It's the long walk uphill. It takes me in the heart, somehow." + +"I'm sorry," said McTavish simply. "I'm mighty sorry. It's all my +fault." + +"Why, so it is," said she, with the flicker of a smile. + +"You must take my arm going back. I _am_ sorry." + +When they had left the chapel and locked the door, she took his arm +without any further invitation. + +"I will, if you don't mind," she said. "I am shaken, and that's the +truth.... But what," and again the smile flickered--"what would The +McTavish say if she saw us--her cousin and her housekeeper--dawdling +along arm in arm?" + +McTavish laughed. "I don't mind, if you don't." + +They returned slowly by the long turf walk to the statue of Atlas. + +"Now," said he, "how should I go about getting an interview with The +McTavish?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Nevis, "it will not be for to-day. She is leaving +within the hour for Beem-Tay in her motor-car." + +"Oh, then I shall follow her to Beem-Tay." + +"If you can do that," said Mrs. Nevis, "I will give you a line to my +sister. Maybe she could help you. She's the housekeeper at +Beem-Tay--Miss MacNish is her name." And she added as if by an +after-thought. "We are twins." + +"Are there two of you?" exclaimed McTavish. + +"Why not?" she asked, with a guileless face. + +"Why," said he, "it's wonderful. Does she look like you?" + +"Exactly," said Mrs. Nevis. "Same red hair, same eyes, nose, and faint +spells--only," and there was a certain arch quality in her clear voice, +"_she's_ single." + +"And she looks exactly like you--and she's single! I don't believe it." + +Mrs. Nevis withdrew her hand from his arm. When they had reached the +door of the Great Tower she stopped. + +"If you care for a line to my sister," she said, "I'll write it. You can +wait here." + +"I wish it of all things, and if there are any stairs to climb, mind you +take your time. Remember you're not very good at hills." + +When she had gone, he smiled his enigmatic smile and began to walk +slowly up and down in front of the door, his hands clasped behind his +back. Once he made a remark. "Scotland," he said, "is the place for me." + +But when at length she returned with the letter, he did not offer her +money; instead he offered his hand. "You've been very kind," he said, +"and when I meet your mistress I will tell her how very courteous you +have been. Thank you." + +He placed the letter in the breast-pocket of his shooting-coat. "Any +messages for your sister?" he asked. + +"You may tell her I hope she is putting by something for a rainy day. +You may tell her The McTavish is verra hard up the noo"--she smiled +very charmingly in his face--"and will na' brook an extravagant table." + +"Do you think," said McTavish, "that your sister will get me a chance to +see _The_ McTavish?" + +"If any one can, she can." + +"Good-by," he said, and once more they shook hands. + +A few minutes later she heard the distant purring of his car, and a +thought struck her with dismay. "What if he goes straight to Beem-Tay +and presents the letter before I get there!" + +She flowered into swift action, flashed up the turret stairs, and, +having violently rung a bell, flew into her dressing-room, and began to +drag various automobiling coats, hats, and goggles out of their hiding +places. When the bell was answered: "The car," she cried, "at once!" + +A few moments later, veiled, goggled, and coated, she was dashing from +the castle to the stables. Halfway she met the car. "McDonald," she +cried, "can you make Beem-Tay in the hour?" + +"It's fifty miles," said the driver, doubtfully. + +"Can you make it?" + +"The road--" he began. + +"I know the road," she said impatiently; "it's all twisty-wisty. Can you +make it?" + +"I'm a married man," said he. + +"Ten pounds sterling if you make it." + +"And if we smash and are kilt?" + +"Why, there'll be a more generous master than I in Beem-Tay and in Brig +O'Dread--that's all." + +She leaped into the car, and a minute later they were flying along the +narrow, tortuous North Road like a nightmare. Once she leaned over the +driver's seat and spoke in his ear: "I hav'na the ten pounds noo," she +said, "but I'll beg them, McDonald, or borrow them--" The car began to +slow down, the driver's face grew gloomy. "Or steal them!" she cried. +McDonald's face brightened, for The McTavish's money difficulties were +no better known than the fact that she was a woman of her word. He +opened the throttle and the car once more shot dizzily forward. + +Twenty miles out of Brig O'Dread they came upon another car, bound in +the same direction and also running desperately fast. They passed it in +a roaring smother of dust. + +"McDonald," said The McTavish, "you needna run sae fast noo. Keep the +lead o' yon car to Beem-Tay gate--that is all." + +She sank back luxuriously, sighed, and began to wonder how she should +find McDonald his ten pounds sterling. + + + + +III + +She need not have hurried, nor thrown to the wind those ten pounds that +she had somehow to raise. On arriving at Beem-Tay she had given orders +that any note addressed to Miss MacNish, and presented at the gate, +should be brought at once to her. McTavish did not come that day, but +she learned indirectly that he had taken rooms at the McTavish Arms in +Beem-Tay village, and from Mr. Traquair, manager of the local branch of +the Bank of Scotland, that he was taking steps to hire for the season +the forest of Clackmanness, a splendid sporting estate that marched with +her own lands. Mr. Traquair, a gentleman as thin as a pipe stem, and as +kind as tobacco, had called upon her the second day, in answer to an +impetuous summons. He found her looking very anxious and very beautiful, +and told her so. + +"May the looks stand me in good stead, Mr. Traquair," said she, "for I'm +like to become Wandering Willie of the song--Wandering Wilhelmina, +rather. There's a man yont, named McTavish, will oost me frae hoose +and name." + +"That would be the young gentleman stopping at the McTavish Arms." + +"Ah," said The McTavish, "he might stop here if he but knew." + +"He's no intending it, then," said Mr. Traquair, "for he called upon me +this morning to hire the Duke's forest of Clackmanness." + +"Ah!" said The McTavish. + +"And now," said Mr. Traquair, stroking his white mustache, "tell me what +it all means." + +"It means that Colland McTavish, who was my great-grandfather's elder +brother, has returned in the person of the young gentleman at the Arms." + +"A fine hornpipe he'll have to prove it," said Mr. Traquair. + +"Fine fiddlesticks!" said The McTavish. "Man," she continued earnestly, +"you have looked in his face and you tell me it will be a dance to prove +him The McTavish?" + +"He is a McTavish," admitted Mr. Traquair; "so much I knew before he +told me his name." + +"He has in his pocket the bit shirt that wee Colland wore when the +gypsies snitched him and carried him over seas; it's all of a piece with +many another garment of wee Colland's. I've had out the trunk in which +his little duds have been stored these many years. The man is Colland's +great-grandson. I look at him, and I admit it without proof." + +"My dear," said Mr. Traquair, "you have no comprehension of the law. I +will fight this claim through every court of the land, or I'm ready to +meet him on Bannockburn field, my ancestral claymore against his. A +rare laugh we'll have when the pretender produces his bit shirtie in the +court, and says, 'Look, your honor, upon my patent o' nobilitee.'" + +"Mind this," said The McTavish, "I'll make no contests, nor have none +made. Only," she smiled faintly, "I hay'na told him who he rightly is. +He claims cousinship. But it has not dawned on him that Colland was to +have been The McTavish, that he _is_ The McTavish, that I am merely Miss +Ellen Alice Douglas Cameron Dundee Campbell McGregor Breadalbane Blair +McTavish, houseless, homeless spinster, wi' but a drap o' gude blood to +her heritage. I have not told him, Mr. Traquair. He does not know. +What's to be done? What would you do--_if you knew_ that he was he, and +that you were only you?" + +"It's your meeserable conscience of a Church-going Scot," commiserated +Traquair, not without indignation. "What would a Campbell have done? +He'd have had himself made a judge in the land, and he'd have condemned +the pretender to the gallows--out of hand, my dear--out of hand!" + +She shook her head at him as at a naughty child. "Where is your own +meeserable conscience, Traquair?" + +"My dear," cried the little man, "it is storming my reason." + +"There," said she, "I told you so. And now we are both of one mind, you +shall present these tidings to McTavish together with my compliments." + +"First," said Traquair cautiously, "I'll bide a bit on the thought." + +"I will leave the time to your meeserable conscience," said Miss +McTavish generously. "Meanwhile, my dear man, while the semblance of +prosperity abides over my head in the shape of a roof, there's a matter +o' ten pound--" + +Mr. Traquair rose briskly to his feet. "Ten pound!" he exclaimed. + +"Only ten pound," she wheedled. + +"My dear," he said, "I don't see where you're to raise another matter o' +saxpence this month." + +"But I've promised the ten pound on my honor," she said. "Would you have +me break my word to a servant?" + +"Well--well," temporized Mr. Traquair, "I'll have another look at the +books. Mind, I'm not saying it can be done--unless you'll sell a bit +timber here and yont--" + +"Dear man," she said, "full well ye know it's not mine to sell. Then +you're to let me have the ten pound?" + +"If I were to employ a wheedler," said Mr. Traquair, "I'd have no choice +'twixt you and Satan. Mind, I make no promises. Ten pound is a +prodeegious sum o' money, when ye hay'na got it." + +"Not later than to-morrow, then," said Miss McTavish, as though to cap a +promise that had been made to her. "I'm obliged to you, Traquair, +deeply obliged." + + + + +IV + +But it was not the matter of the ten pounds that worried Traquair as he +climbed into his pony cart and drove slowly through the castle policies +to the gate. Indeed, the lofty gates had not been closed behind him +before he had forgotten all about them. That The McTavish was not The +McTavish alone occupied his attention. And when he perceived the cause +of the trouble, strolling beside the lofty ring fence of stone that +shielded the castle policies from impertinent curiosity, it was in +anything but his usual cheerful voice that he hailed him. + +"Will you take a lift, Mr. McTavish?" he invited dismally. + +"Oh, no," said The McTavish, "I won't trouble you, thanks." + +Traquair's meeserable conscience got the better of him all at once. And +with that his cheerfulness returned. + +"Get in," he said. "You cannot help troubling me, Mr. McTavish. I've a +word for you, sir." + +McTavish, wondering, climbed into the car. + +"Fergus," said Traquair to the small boy who acted as groom, messenger, +and shoe polisher to the local branch of the Bank of Scotland, +"ye'll walk." + +When the two were thus isolated from prying ears, Mr. Traquair cleared +his throat and spoke. "Is there anything, Mr. McTavish," he said, "in +this world that a rich man like you may want?" + +"Oh, yes," said McTavish, "some things." + +"More wealth?" + +McTavish shook his head. + +"Houses--lands?" Traquair looked up shrewdly from the corner of his eye, +but McTavish shook his head again. + +"Power, then, Mr. McTavish?" + +"No--not power." + +"Glory?" + +"No," said McTavish; "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid not." + +"Then, sir," said Traquair, "it's a woman." + +"No," said McTavish, and he blushed handsomely. "It's _the_ woman." + +"I withdraw my insinuation," said Traquair gravely. + +"I thank you," said Mr. McTavish. + +"I am glad, sir," said Traquair presently, "to find you in so generous +a disposition, for we have need of your generosity. I have it from Miss +McTavish herself," he went on gravely, "that your ancestor, so far as +you know, was Colland McTavish." + +"So far as I know and believe," said McTavish, "he was." + +"Did you know that Colland McTavish should have been _The_ McTavish?" +asked Mr. Traquair. + +"It never entered my head. Was he the oldest son?" + +"He was," said Mr. Traquair solemnly, "until in the eyes of the _law_ he +ceased to exist." + +"Then," said McTavish, "in every eye save that of the law I am _The_ +McTavish." + +Mr. Traquair bowed. "Miss McTavish," he said, "was for telling you at +once; but she left the matter entirely to my discretion. I have thought +best to tell you." + +"Would the law," asked McTavish, "oust Miss McTavish and stand me in her +shoes?" + +"The law," said Traquair pointedly, "would not do the former, and," with +a glance at McTavish's feet, "the Auld Nick could not do the latter." + +McTavish laughed. "Then why have you told me?" he asked. + +"Because," said Traquair grandly, "it is Miss McTavish's resolution to +make no opposition to your claim." + +"I see; I am to become 'The' without a fight." + +"Precisely," said Traquair. + +"Well, discretionary powers as to informing me of this were given you, +as I understand, Mr. Traquair?" + +"They were," said Traquair. + +"Well," said McTavish again, "there's no use crying over spilt milk. But +is your conscience up to a heavy load?" + +"'Tis a meeserable vehicle at best," protested Traquair. + +"You must pretend," said McTavish, "that you have not yet told me." + +"Ah!" Traquair exclaimed. "You wish to think it over." + +"I do," said McTavish. + +Both were silent for some moments. Then Traquair said rather solemnly: +"You are young, Mr. McTavish, but I have hopes that your thinking will +be of a wise and courageous nature." + +"Do you read Tennyson?" asked McTavish, apropos of nothing. + +"No," said Traquair, slightly nettled. "Burns." + +"I am sorry," said McTavish simply; "then you don't know the lines: + + 'If you are not the heiress born, + And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir,' etc. + +do you?" + +"No," said Traquair, "I do not." + +"It is curious how often a lack of literary affinity comes between two +persons and a heart-to-heart talk." + +"Let me know," said Traquair, "when you have thought it over." + +"I will. And now if you will put me down--?" + +He leaped to the ground, lifted his hat to the older man, and, turning, +strode very swiftly, as if to make up for lost time, back toward the +castle gate. + + + + +V + +McTavish was kept waiting a long time while a servant took his letter of +introduction to Miss MacNish, and brought back an answer from +the castle. + +Finally, midway of a winding and shrubby short cut, into which he turned +as directed by the porter, he came suddenly upon her. + +"Miss MacNish--?" he said. + +"You're not Mr. McTavish!--" She seemed dumfounded, and glanced at a +letter which she carried open in her hand. "My sister writes--" + +"What does she write?" asked McTavish eagerly. + +"No--no!" Miss MacNish exclaimed hastily, "the letter was to me." She +tore it hastily into little pieces. + +"Miss MacNish," said McTavish, somewhat hurt, "it is evident that I give +diametrically opposed impressions to you and your sister. Either she +has said something nice about me, and you, seeing me, are astonished +that she should; or she has said something horrid about me--I do hope +it's that way--and you are even more surprised. It must be one thing or +the other. And before we shake hands I think it only proper for you to +tell me which." + +"Let bygones be bygones," said Miss MacNish, and she held out her hand. +McTavish took it, and smiled his enigmatic smile. + +"It is your special wish, I have gathered," said Miss MacNish, "to meet +The McTavish. Now she knows about your being in the neighborhood, knows +that you are a distant cousin, but she hasn't expressed any wish to meet +you--at least I haven't heard her. If she wishes to meet you, she will +ask you to call upon her. If she doesn't wish to, she won't. Of course, +if you came upon her suddenly--somewhere in the grounds, for +instance--she'd have to listen to what you had to say, and to answer +you, I suppose. But to-day--well I'd not try it to-day." + +"Why not?" asked McTavish. + +"Why," said Miss MacNish, "she caught cold in the car yesterday, and her +poor nose is much too red for company." + +"Why do you all try to make her out such a bad lot?" + +"Is it being a bad lot to have a red nose?" exclaimed Miss MacNish. + +"At twenty-two?" McTavish looked at her in surprise and horror. "I ask +_you_," he said. "There was the porter at Brig O'Dread, and your +sister--they gave her a pair of black eyes between them, and here you +give her a red nose. When the truth is probably the reverse." + +"I don't know the reverse of red," said Miss MacNish, "but that would +give her white eyes." + +"I am sure, Miss MacNish, that quibbling is not one of your +prerogatives. It belongs exclusively to the Speaker of the House of +Representatives. As for me--the less I see of The McTavish, the surer I +am that she is rather beautiful, and very amusing, and good." + +"Are these the matters on which you are so eager to meet her?" asked +Miss MacNish. She stood with her back to a clump of dark blue larkspur +taller than herself--a lovely picture, in her severe black housekeeper's +dress that by contrast made her face and dark red hair all the more +vivacious and flowery. Her eyes at the moment were just the color of +the larkspur. + +McTavish smiled his enigmatic smile. "They are," he said. + +"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss MacNish. + +"When I meet her--" McTavish began, and abruptly paused. + +"What?" Miss MacNish asked with some eagerness. + +"Oh, nothing; _I'm_ so full of it that I almost betrayed my own +confidence." + +"I hope that you aren't implying that I might prove indiscreet." + +"Oh, dear no!" said McTavish. + +"It had a look of it, then," said Miss MacNish tartly. + +"Oh," said McTavish, "if I've hurt your feelings--why, I'll go on with +what I began, and take the consequences, shall I?" + +"I think," said Miss MacNish primly, "that it would tend to restore +confidence between us." + +"When I meet her, then," said McTavish, "I shall first tell her that she +is beautiful, and amusing, and good. And then," it came from him in a +kind of eager, boyish outburst, "I shall ask her to marry me." + +Miss MacNish gasped and stepped backward into the fine and deep soil +that gave the larkspur its inches. The color left her cheeks and +returned upon the instant tenfold. And it was many moments before she +could find a word to speak. Then she said in an injured and astonished +tone: "_Why?_" + +"The Scotch Scot," said McTavish, "is shrewd, but cautious. The American +Scot is shrewd, but daring. Caution, you'll admit, is a pitiful measure +in an affair of the heart." + +Miss MacNish was by this time somewhat recovered from her +consternation. "Well," said she, "what then? When you have come upon The +McTavish unawares somewhere in the shrubbery, and asked her to marry +you, and she has boxed your ears for you--what then?" + +"Then," said McTavish with a kind of anticipatory expression of +pleasure, "I shall kiss her. Even if she hated it," he said ruefully, +"she couldn't help but be surprised and flattered." + +Miss MacNish took a step forward with a sudden hilarious brightening in +her eyes. "Are you quizzing me," she said, "or are you outlining your +honest and mad intentions? And if the latter, won't you tell me why? +Why, in heaven's name, should you ask The McTavish to marry you--at +first sight?" + +"I can't explain it," said McTavish. "But even if I never have seen +her--I love her." + +"I have heard of love at first sight--" began Miss MacNish. + +But he interrupted eagerly. "You haven't ever experienced it, have you?" + +"Of course, I haven't," she exclaimed indignantly. "I've heard of +it--_often_. But I have never heard of love without any sight at all." + +"Love is blind," said McTavish. + +"Now, who's quibbling?" + +"Just because," he said, "you've never heard of a thing, away off here +in your wild Highlands, is a mighty poor proof that it doesn't exist. I +suppose you don't believe in predestination. I've always known," he said +grandly, "that I should marry my cousin--even against her will and +better judgment. You don't more than half believe me, do you?" + +"Well, not more than half," Miss MacNish smiled. + +"It's the truth," he said; "I will bet you ten pounds it's the truth." + +Miss MacNish looked at him indignantly, and in the midst of the look she +sighed. "I don't bet," said she. + +McTavish lowered his glance until it rested upon his own highly polished +brown boots. + +"Why are you looking at your boots?" asked Miss MacNish. + +"Because," he said simply, "considering that I am in love with my +cousin, I don't think I ought to look at you any more. I'm afraid I got +the habit by looking at your sister; but then, as she has a husband, it +couldn't matter so much." + +Miss MacNish, I'm afraid, mantled with pleasure. "My sister said +something in her letter about your wishing to see the house of your +ancestors. Miss McTavish is out now--would you like to look about +a little?" + +"Dearly," said McTavish. + + + + +VI + +Miss McTavish sent for Mr. Traquair. He went to her with a heavy +conscience, for as yet he had done nothing toward raising the ten +pounds. At her first words his conscience became still more laden. + +"Traquair," she said, "you mustn't tell him yet." + +It was all Traquair could do to keep countenance. "Then it's fortunate I +haven't," said he, "for you gave me a free hand." + +"Consider it tied behind your back for the present, for a wonderful +thing is going to happen." + +"Indeed," said Traquair. + +"You wouldn't believe me when I tell you that the silly man is going to +fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him!" + +"Although you haven't offered me a chair, my dear," said Traquair, "I +will take one." + +All in a burst then, half laughing, half in a grave kind of excitement, +she told her old friend how she had played housekeeper first at Brig +O'Dread and later at Beem-Tay. And how, on the latter occasion, McTavish +had displayed his admiration so openly that there could be but the +one climax. + +"And after all," she concluded, "if he thinks I'm just a housekeeper, +and falls in love with me and asks me to marry him--I'd know the man +was sincere--wouldn't I, Traquair?" + +"It seems to me," said Traquair, "that I have never seen you so +thoroughly delighted with yourself." + +"That is unkind. It is a wonderful thing when a girl of position, and +hedged in as I have been, finds that she is loved for herself alone and +not for her houses and lands, and her almost royal debts." + +"Verra flattering," said Traquair, "na doot. And what answer will you +give?" + +"Traquair," she said, "I'm not a profane girl; but I'm hanged if I +know." + +"He is a very wealthy man, and I have no doubt a very kind and honest +man." + +"He is a very cheeky man," smiled Miss McTavish. + +"No doubt--no doubt," said Traquair; "and it would leave you to the +honest enjoyment of your houses and lands, which otherwise you propose +to hand over to him. Still, it is well for a Scot to be cautious." + +"For a Scotch Scot," said Miss McTavish. "I should be an American Scot +if I married him. He tells me they are noted for their daring." + +While they were thus animatedly conversing, word came that Mr. McTavish +had called in the hope of seeing Miss MacNish. + +"There," said Miss McTavish, "you see! Go down to him, Traquair, and be +pleasant, until I come. Then vanish." + +Traquair found McTavish smoking a thick London cigarette upon the steps +of the side entrance, and gazing happily into a little garden of dark +yew and vivid scarlet geraniums with daring edgings of brightest +blue lobelia. + +"Will you be making any changes," asked Traquair, "when you come into +your own?" + +McTavish looked up with a smile and handed his open cigarette case to +the older man. + +"Mr. Traquair," he said, "I'm young and a stranger. I wish you could +find it in your heart to be an uncle to me." + +Traquair accepted a cigarette and sat down, first assuring himself that +the stone steps were dry. + +"If I were your nephew," said McTavish, "and came to you all out of +breath, and told you that I wished to marry Miss McTavish's housekeeper, +what would you say?" + +"I would say," said Traquair, "that she was the daughter of a grand +family that had fallen from their high estate. I would say, 'Charge, +nephew, charge!'" + +"Do you mean it!" exclaimed McTavish. + +"There's no more lovely lass in the United Kingdom," said Traquair, +"than Miss--Miss--" + +"MacNish," McTavish helped him; "and she would be mistress where she +had been servant. That's a curious twist of fate." + +"You have made up your mind, then," said Traquair, "to claim your own?" + +"By no means--yet," said McTavish. "I was only speculating. It's all in +the air. Suppose uncle, that Miss MacNish throws me down!" + +"Throws you down!" Traquair was shocked. + +"Well," said McTavish humbly, "you told me to charge." + +"To charge," said Traquair testily, "but not to grapple." + +"In my country," said McTavish, "when a girl refuses to marry a man they +call it throwing him down, giving him the sack, or handing him a lemon." + +"Yours is an exceptional country," said Traquair. + +Miss MacNish appeared in the doorway behind them. "I'm sorry to have +been so long," she said; "I had to give out the linen for luncheon." + +McTavish flung away his cigarette, and sprang to his feet as if some one +had stuck a pin into him. Traquair, according to the schedule, vanished. + +"It seemed very, very long," said McTavish. + +"Miss McTavish," said Miss MacNish, "has consented to see you." + +"Good Heavens!--when?" + +"Now." + +"But I don't want to see her _now_." + +"But you told me"--Miss MacNish looked thoroughly puzzled--"you told me +just what you were going to say to her. You said it was all +predestined." + +"Miss MacNish, it was not Miss McTavish I was thinking of--I'm sure it +wasn't. It was you." + +"Are you proposing to me?" she asked. + +"Of course, I am. Come into the garden--I can't talk on these steps, +right on top of a gravel walk with a distant vista of three gardeners +and a cartful of sand." + +"I must say," said Miss MacNish, "that this is the suddenest thing that +ever happened to me." + +"But you said you believed in love at first sight," McTavish explained. +"You knew yesterday what had happened to me--don't say you didn't, +because I saw you smiling to yourself. You might come into the garden +and let me say my say." + +She didn't budge. + +"Very well then. I will make a scene--right here--a terrible scene." He +caught her two hands in his, and drew her toward him so that the keys at +her belt jangled and clashed. + +"This is preposterous!" she exclaimed. + +"Not so preposterous as you think. But what's your first name?" + +"I think I haven't any at the moment." + +"Don't be ridiculous. There--there--" + +She tore her hands from him and struck at him wildly. But he ducked +like a trained boxer. + +"With everybody looking!" she cried, crimson with mortification. + +"I had a cable," he said, "calling me back to America. That is why I +have to hurry over the preliminaries." + +"The preliminaries," she cried, almost in tears. "Do you know who I am +that you treat me like a barmaid?" + +"Ladies," said McTavish, "who masquerade as housekeepers ought to know +what to expect." + +Her face was a blank of astonishment. "Traquair told," she said +indignantly. "Wait till I--" + +"No," said McTavish; "the porter at Brig O'Dread told. He said that you +yourself would show me the chapel. He said not to be surprised if you +pretended to be some one else. He said you had done that kind of thing +before. He seemed nettled about something." + +In spite of herself Miss McTavish laughed. "I told him," she said, "that +if you crossed my hand with silver, I would give it to him; but if you +crossed my hand with gold, I would keep it for myself. That made him +furious, and he slammed the door when he left. So you knew all along?" + +"Yes--Mrs. Nevis MacNish McTavish, I did; and when you had the faint +spell in the chapel, I almost proposed then. I tell you, your voice and +your face, and the way you walked--oh, they did for this young man on +the spot! Do you know how much hunger and longing and loving can be +crowded into a few days? I do. You think I am in a hurry? It seems to me +as if there'd been millions of years of slow waiting." + +"I have certainly played the fool," said Miss McTavish, "and I suppose I +have let myself in for this." Her voice was gentler. "Do you know, too, +why I turned white in the chapel?" + +"Yes," he said, "I know that." + +"Traquair told you." + +"Yes." + +"And if you hadn't liked me this way, would you have turned me out of +house and home?" + +He drew her hand through his arm, and they crossed the gravel path into +the garden. "What do _you_ think?" he asked. + +"I think--no," said she. + +"Thank you," said he. "Do you read Tennyson?" + +"No," said she, "Burns." + +McTavish sighed helplessly. Then a light of mischief came into his eye. +"As _Burns_ says," said he: + + "'If you are not the heiress born, + And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir, + We two will wed to-morrow morn, + And you shall still be Lady Clare,'" + +"I love every word Burns wrote," she said enthusiastically, and +McTavish, though successful, was ashamed. + +"McTavish," she said, "the other day, when I felt that I had to get here +before you, I promised my driver ten pounds if he beat your car," + +"Yes," said McTavish, "I guessed what was up, and told my man to go +slower. It wasn't the psychological moment for either of us to break our +necks, was it?" + +"No; but I promised the man ten pound, McTavish--and I hay'na got it." + +"Ten pounds ought to have a certain purchasing power," said he. + +"Then shut your eyes," she commanded. + +"And after all," she said, "you'll be _The_ McTavish, won't you?" + +"I will not," he said. "Do you think I'm going to take you back to +America with me Saturday, and have all my friends in New York point +their fingers at me, and call me--_The_?" + + + + +THE PARROT + +He had been so buffeted by fortune, through various climates and various +applications of his many-sidedness, that when I first met Leslie it was +difficult to believe him a fellow countryman. His speech had been welded +by the influence of alien languages to a choice cosmopolitanism. His +skin, thick and brown from blazing sunshines, puckered monkey-like about +his blue, blinking eyes. He never hurried. He was going to Hong-Kong to +build part of a dry-dock for the English Government, he said, but his +ambitions had dwindled to owning a farm somewhere in New York State and +having a regular menagerie of birds and animals. + +His most enthusiastic moments of conversation were in arguing and +anecdotalizing the virtues and ratiocinations of animals and birds. The +monkey, he said, was next to man the most clever, but was inferior to +the elephant in that he had no sense of right or wrong. Furthermore, +monkeys were immodest. Next came certain breeds of dogs. Very low in the +scale he placed horses; very high, parrots. + +"Concerning parrots," he said, "people are under erroneous impressions, +but copying and imitation are not unreasonable processes. Your parrot, +under his bright cynical feathers, is a modest fowl that grasps at every +opportunity of education from the best source--man. In a native state +his intelligence remains closed: the desire to be like a woodpecker or a +humming-bird does not pick at the cover. Just as a boy born in an +Indiana village and observing the houses of his neighbors might not wish +to become an architect, but if he were transported to Paris or Vienna, +to a confrontation of what is excellent in proportion, it might be that +art would stir in his spirit and, after years of imitation, would come +forth in a stately and exquisite procession of buildings. So in his +native woods the parrot recognizes nothing but color that is worthy of +his imitation. But in the habitations of man, surrounded by taste, which +is the most precious of all gifts, his ambition begins to grow, his +ignorance becomes a shame. He places his foot on the first rung of the +educational ladder. His bright colors fade, perhaps; the eyes of his +mind are turned toward brighter and more ornamental things. What +creature but a parrot devotes such long hours to the acquirement of +perfection in each trivial stage of progress? What creature remembers so +faithfully and so well? We know not what we are, you and I and the rest +of us; but if we had had the application, patience, and ambition of the +average parrot, we should be greater men. But some people say that +parrots are mean, self-centred, and malignant. They have, I admit, a +crust of cynicism which might lead to that impression, and not unjustly, +but underneath the parrot's crotchets there beats a great and benevolent +heart. Let me give you an instance: + +"In '88 my luck was down, and as a first step to raising it I shipped +before the mast in an English bottom outward bound from Hong-Kong to +Java. Jaffray was the cook, a big negro who owned a savage gray +parrot--a mighty clever bird but to all intents and purposes of a most +unscrupulous and cruel nature. Many a time her cleverness at provoking a +laugh was all that saved her from sudden death. She bit whom she could; +she stole what she could. She treated us like dogs. Only Jaffray could +handle her without a weapon. Him she loved and made love to with a +sheepish and resolute abandon. From him she endured the rapid +alternations of whippings and caressings with the most stoical fortitude +and self-restraint. When he whipped her she would close her eyes and +say: 'I could bite him, but I won't. Polly's a bad girl. Hit her again,' +When the whipping was over she would say: 'Polly's sore. Poor Polly! How +I pity that poor girl!' Love-making usually succeeded a whipping in +short order, and then she was at her best. She would turn her head to +one side, cast the most laughably provoking glances, hold one claw +before her face, perhaps, like a skeleton fan, and say: 'Don't come +fooling round me. Go away, you bad man,' + +"I tried my best to be friends with her. But only to prove that the +knack that I am supposed to have with birds and beasts has its +limitations. With one long day following another and opportunity +constantly at hand, I failed utterly in obtaining her friendship. +Indeed, she was so lacking in breeding as to make public mockings of my +efforts. There was no man before the mast but stood higher in her graces +than I. My only success was in keeping my temper. But it was fated that +we should be friends and comrades, drawn together by the bonds of a +common suffering. + +"I will tell you the story of the wreck another time. In some ways it +was peculiar. I will only tell you now that I swam for a long time +(there was an opaque fog) and bumped my head against one of the ship's +boats. I seized the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb +in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her +davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely +attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's +graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and +sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with +a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the boat. And +presently I was aware that violence had succeeded where patience had +failed. Polly sat in the stern sheets timidly cooing and offering to +shake hands. At another time I should have burst laughing at her--she +was so coy, so anxious to please. But I had just arrived from seeing my +captain's head broken to pieces by a falling spar, and a good friend of +mine stabbed by another good friend of mine, and I was nearer to tears. + +"It was cold for that part of the world, and rain fell heavily from time +to time. Polly complained bitterly all night and said that she would +take her death o' cold, but in the morning (I had fallen asleep) she +waked me in her pleasantest and most satisfied voice, saying, 'Tumble up +for breakfast.' I pulled myself out of the rain-water into which I had +slipped, and sat up. The sky and sea were clear from one horizon to the +other and the sun was beginning to scorch. + +"'Bully and warm, ain't it?' said Polly. + +"'Right you are, old girl,' said I. + +"She perched on my shoulder and began to oil and arrange her draggled +feathers. + +"'What a hell of a wreck that was!' she said suddenly, and, after a +pause: 'Where's my nigger?' + +"'He's forsaken you, old girl,' said I, 'for Mother Carey's chickens.' + +"'Poor Polly,' said she; 'how I pity that poor girl!' + +"Now I don't advance for a moment the theory that she understood all +that she said, nor even a part of what I said. But her statements and +answers were often wonderfully apt. Have you ever known one of those +tremendously clever deaf people whom you may talk with for a long time +before discovering that they are deaf? Talking with poor Jaffray's +parrot was like that. It was only occasionally--not often, mind--that +her phrases argued an utter lack of reasoning power. She had been +educated to what I suppose to be a point very close to the limit of a +parrot's powers. At a fair count she had memorized a hundred and fifty +sentences, a dozen songs, and twenty or thirty tunes to whistle. Many +savages have not larger vocabularies; many highborn ladies have a less +gentle and cultivated enunciation. Let me tell you that had I been alone +in that boat, a young man, as I then was, who saw his ambitions and +energies doomed to a watery and abrupt finish, with a brief interval of +starvation to face, I might easily have gone mad. But I was saved from +that because I had somebody to talk to. And to receive confidence and +complaint the parrot was better fitted than a human being, better fitted +than a woman, for she placed no bar of reticence, and I could despair as +I pleased and on my own terms. + +"My clothes dried during the first day, and at night she would creep +under my coat to sleep. At first I was afraid that during +unconsciousness I should roll on her. But she was too wary for that. If +I showed a tendency to sprawl or turn over, she would wake and pierce my +ears with a sharp 'Take your time! Take your time!' + +"At sunrise every day she would wake me with a hearty 'Tumble up for +breakfast.' + +"Unfortunately there was never any breakfast to be had, but the +rain-water in the bottom of the boat, warm as it was and tasting of +rotting wood, saved us from more frightful trial. + +"Here is a curious fact: After the second night I realized and counted +every hour in all its misery of hunger and duration, yet I cannot, to +save my soul, remember how many days and nights passed between the wreck +and that singular argument for a parrot's power of reasoning that was to +be advanced to me. It suffices to know that many days and nights went by +before we began to die of hunger. + +"In what remained of the rain-water (with the slow oscillations of the +boat it swashed about and left deposits of slime on her boards) I caught +from time to time glimpses of my face as affected by starvation. And it +may interest you to know that it was not the leanness of my face that +appalled me but the wickedness of it. All the sins I had ever sinned, +all the lies I had told, all the meannesses I had done, the drunks I +had been on, the lusts I had sated, came back to me from the +bilge-water. And I knew that if I died then and there I should go +straight to hell if there was one. I made divers trials at repentance +but was not able to concentrate my mind upon them. I could see but one +hope of salvation--to die as I had not lived--like a gentleman. It was +not a voluminous duty, owing to the limits set upon conduct by the +situation, but it was obvious. Whatever pangs I should experience in the +stages of dissolution, I must spare Polly. + +"In view of what occurred it is sufficiently obvious that I read my duty +wrongly. For, when I was encouraging myself to spare the bird I should +rather have been planning to save her. She, too, must have been +suffering frightfully from the long-continued lack of her customary +diet, but it seems that while enduring it she was scheming to save me. + +"She had been sitting disconsolately on the gunwale when the means +struck suddenly into her tortuously working mind and acted upon her +demeanor like a sight of sunflower seeds, of which she was prodigiously +fond. If I follow her reasoning correctly it was this. The man who has +been so nice to me needs food. He can't find it for himself; therefore I +must find it for him. Thus far she reasoned. And then, unfortunately, +trusting too much to a generous instinct, and disregarding the most +obvious and simple calculation, she omitted the act of turning around, +and instead of laying the egg that was to save me in the boat, she laid +it in the ocean. It sank." + + * * * * * + +Long voyages make for dulness. I had listened to the above narrative +with so much interest as to lose for a moment my sense of what was +patent. In the same absurd way that one man says to another whom he +knows perfectly well, "What--is this you?" I said to Leslie very +eagerly, "Were you saved?" And he answered, "No; we were both drowned." + + + + +ON THE SPOT; OR, THE IDLER'S HOUSE-PARTY + + +I + +Last winter was socially the most disgusting that I remember ever having +known, because everybody lost money, except Sally's father and mine. We +didn't, of course, mind how much money our friends lost--they always had +plenty left; but we hated to have them talk about it, and complain all +the time, and say that it was the President's fault, or poor John +Rockefeller's, or Senator So-and-so's, or the life insurance people's. +When a man loses money it is, as a matter of fact, almost always his own +fault. I said so at the beginning of last winter, and I say so still. +And Sally, who is too lazy to think up original remarks, copied it from +me and made no bones about saying it to all the people she knew who she +thought needed that kind of comfort. But perhaps, now that I think of +it, Sally and I may have contributed to making the winter socially +disgusting. Be that as it may, we were the greatest sufferers. + +We moved to Idle Island in September. And we were so delighted with what +the architects, and landscape-gardeners, and mosquito doctors had done +to make it habitable; with the house itself, and the grape-house, and +greenhouses, and gardens, and pergolas, and marble columns from Athens, +and terraces, and in-and-out door tennis-courts, and swimming-pools, and +boat-houses, and golf links, and all the other country-place +necessities, and particularly with a line of the most comfortable +lounging-chairs and divans in the world, that we decided to spend the +winter there. Sally telephoned to my father's secretary and asked him to +spend the winter with us, and make out lists for week-end parties, and +to be generally civil and useful. The secretary said that he would be +delighted to come if he could persuade my father and mother to go abroad +for the winter; and later he called Sally up, and said that he had +persuaded them. + +Well, from the first our week-end parties were failures. On the first +Friday in October the President of the United States said that he hated +cheats and liars (only he mentioned names) and the stock-market went to +smash. Saturday it was still in a messy state, and the people who came +out Saturday afternoon couldn't or wouldn't talk about anything else. +They came by the 4:30 to Stepping-Stone, and were ferried over to the +island in the motor boat. Sally and I rode down to the pier in the +jinrikishas that my father's secretary had had imported for us for a +wedding present; and, I give you my word, the motor-boat as it slowed +into the pier looked like an excursion steamer out to view the beauties +of the Hudson. Everybody on board was hidden behind a newspaper. + +"Fong," said Sally to her jinrikisha man, "take me back to the house." + +He turned and trotted off with her, and they disappeared under the elms. + +"Just because your guests aren't interested in you," I called after her, +"is no reason why you shouldn't be interested in them." + +But she didn't answer, and I was afraid I'd hurt her feelings; so I said +to my man, or horse, or horse-man--it's hard to know what to call them: + +"Long Lee, you go back to the house, clip-step." + +Clip-step soon overtook Sally, and I asked her what she was mad about. + +"I'm mad," she said, "because none of those people have ever seen this +beautiful island before, and they wouldn't look up from their dirty old +newspapers. What's the matter with them?" + +"They're worried about the market," said I, "and each one wants the +others to think that he's more worried than they are. That's all." + +"But the women!" said Sally. "There we sat waving to them, and not so +much as a look for our pains. My arm is all numb from waving +hospitably." + +"Never mind," I said. "I'll--I'll--ask your maid to rub it for you. And +then we'll send the motor-boat for the very latest edition of the +papers, and we'll have Blenheim and Windermere fold them like ships and +cocked hats, the way they do the napkins, and put them at each person's +place at dinner. That will be the tactful way of showing them what _we_ +think about it." + +Sally, naturally enough, was delighted at this idea, and forgot all +about her poor, numb arm. But the scheme sounded better than it worked. +Because when we went in to dinner the guests, instead of being put to +shame by the sight of the newspapers, actually sputtered with pleasure, +and fell on them and unfolded them and opened them at the financial +pages. And then the men began to shout, and argue, and perspire, and +fling quotations about the table, and the women got very shrill, and +said they didn't know what they would do if the wretched market kept up, +or rather if it didn't keep up. And nobody admired the new furniture or +the pictures, or the old Fiffield plate, or Sally's gown, or said +anything pleasant and agreeable. + +"Sam," said Tony Marshall to me, "I'm glad that you can empty your new +swimming-pool in three-quarters of an hour, but if you don't watch out +you may be so poor before the winter's over that you won't be able to +buy water enough to fill it." + +"If you're not careful," I said, "I'll fill it with champagne and make +you people swim in it till you're more sprightly and agreeable. I never +saw such a lot of oafs. I--" + +"I tell you, Sam," bellowed Billoo, "that the financial status of this +country, owing to that infernal lunatic in the White House--" + +"If you must tell me again--" I began. + +"Oh," he said disgustedly, "_you_ can't be serious about anything. +You're so da--a--ah--urn--rich that you never give a thought to the +suffering of the consumer." + +"Don't I?" said I. "Did you happen to see me the morning after the +Clarion's ball last winter?--I thought about the consumer then, I can +tell you." + +Billoo turned his back on me very rudely. I looked across the table to +Sally. She smiled feebly. She had drawn back her chair so that Tombs and +Randall could fight it out across her plate without hitting her in the +nose. They were frantically shaking their fists at each other, and they +kept saying very loud, and both at once: + +"I tell _you!_" and they made that beginning over and over, and never +got any further. + +At two o'clock the next morning Mrs. Giddings turned to Sally and said: + +"And now, my dear, I can't wait another moment. You must show me all +over your lovely new house. I can think of nothing else." + +"Can't you?" said Sally. "I can. It's two o'clock. But I'll show you to +your own lovely room, if you like." + +In the morning I sent for Blenheim, and told him to take all the Sunday +papers as soon as they arrived and throw them overboard. All I meant to +be was tactful. But it wouldn't do. The first thing the men asked for +was the papers; and the second thing. And finally they made such a fuss +and threw out so many hints that I had to send the motor-boat over to +the main-land. This made me rather sore at the moment, and I wished that +the motor-boat was at the bottom of the Sound; but it wasn't, and had +to be sent. + +Later in the day I was struck with an idea. It was one of the few that +ever struck me without outside help, and I will keep it dark for the +present. But when I got Sally alone I said to her: + +"Now, Sally, answer prettily: do you or do you not know what plausible +weather is?" + +"I do not," she said promptly. + +"Of course, you do not," I said, "you miserable little ignoramus. It has +to do with an idea." + +"No, Sam!" cried Sally. + +"One of mine," I said. + +"Oh, Sam!" she said. "Can I help?" + +"You can." + +"How?" + +"You can pray for it." + +"For the idea?" she asked. + +"No, you silly little goat," I said. "For the plausible weather." + +"Must I?" she asked. + +"You must," I said. "If you have marrow-bones, prepare to use them now." + +Sally looked really shocked. + +"Knees," I explained. "They're the same thing. But now that I think of +it, you needn't use yours. If anybody were looking, it would be +different, of course. But nobody is, and you may use mine." + +So Sally used my knees for the moment, and I explained the idea to her +briefly, and some other things at greater length; and then we both +laughed and prayed aloud for plausible weather. + +But it was months coming. + + + + +II + +Think, if you can, of a whole winter passing in Westchester County +without its storming one or more times on any single solitary Saturday +or Sunday or holiday! Christmas Day, even, some of the men played tennis +out-of-doors. The balls were cold and didn't bounce very high, and all +the men who played wanted to sit in the bar and talk stocks, but +otherwise it made a pretty good game. Often, because our guests were so +disagreeable about the money they had lost or were losing, we decided +not to give any more parties, but when we thought that fresh air was +good for our friends, whether they liked it or not, of course we had to +keep on asking them. And, besides, we were very much set on the idea +that I have referred to, and there was always a chance of +plausible weather. + +It did not come till May. But then it "came good," as Sally said. It +"came good" and it came opportunely. Everything was right. We had the +right guests; we had the right situation in Wall Street, and the weather +was right. It came out of the north-east, darkly blowing (this was +Saturday, just after the usual motor-boat load and their afternoon +editions had been landed), and at first it made the Sound, and even the +sheltered narrows between the island and the main-land, look pancake-flat +and oily. Then it turned the Sound into a kind of incoming gray, striped +with white; and then into clean white, wonderfully bright and staring +under the dark clouds. I never saw a finer storm come up finer. But +nobody would go out to the point to see it come. The Stock Exchange had +closed on the verge of panic (that was its chronic Saturday closing last +winter) and you couldn't get the men or women away from the thought of +what _might_ happen Monday. "Good heavens," said Billoo, "think of poor +Sharply on his way home from Europe! Can't get to Wall Street before +Wednesday, and God knows what he'll find when he gets there." + +"What good would it do him to get there before?" I asked. "Wouldn't he +sail right in and do the wrong thing, just as everybody has done +all winter?" + +"You don't understand, Sam," said Billoo, very lugubriously; and then he +annihilated me by banging his fist on a table and saying, "_At least +he'd be on the spot, wouldn't he_?" + +"Oh," I said, "if you put it that way, I admit that that's just where he +would be. Will anybody come and have a look at the fine young storm that +I'm having served?" + +"Not now, Sam--not now," said Billoo, as if the storm would always stay +just where, and as, it was; and nobody else said anything. The men +wanted to shout and get angry and make dismal prophecies, and the women +wanted to stay and hear them, and egg them on, and decide what they +would buy or sell on Monday. + +"All right, Billoo-on-the-spot," I said. "Sally--?" + +Sally was glad to come. And first we went out on the point and had a +good look at the storm. The waves at our feet were breaking big and +wild, the wind was groaning and howling as if it had a mortal +stomach-ache, and about a mile out was a kind of thick curtain of +perpendicular lines, with dark, squally shadows at its base. + +"Sam!" cried Sally, "it's snow--snow," and she began to jump up and +down. + +In a minute or two flakes began to hit us wet slaps in the face, and we +took hands and danced, and then ran (there must have been something +intoxicating about that storm) all the way to the pier. And there was +the captain of the motor-boat just stepping ashore. + +"The man himself," said Sally. + +"Captain," said I, "how are we off for boats?" + +By good-luck there were in commission only the motor-boat, and the +row-boat that she towed behind, and a canoe in the loft of the +boat-house. + +"Captain," I said, "take the _Hobo_ (that was the name of the +motor-boat) and her tender to City Island, and don't come back till +Wednesday morning, in time for the Wall Street special." + +"When you get to City Island," said Sally, "try to look crippled." + +"Not you," I said, "but the _Hobo_." + +"Tell them," said Sally, "if they ask questions, that you were blown +from your moorings, and that you couldn't get back in the teeth of the +gale because--because--" + +"Because," said I, "your cylinders slipped, and your clutch missed +fire, and your carbureter was full of prunes." + +"In other words," said Sally, "if anybody ever asks you anything about +anything--lie." + +We gave him a lot more instructions, and some eloquent money, and he +said, "Very good, ma'am," to me, and "Very good, miss," to Sally, and +pretty soon he, and the _Hobo_, and the engineer, and the _Hobo's_ crew +of one, and the tender were neatly blown from their moorings, and +drifted helplessly toward City Island at the rate of twenty-two miles an +hour. Then Sally and I (it was snowing hard, now) climbed into the loft +of the boat-house, and _fixed_ the canoe. + +"There," said Sally, putting down her little hatchet, "I don't believe +the most God-fearing banker in this world would put to sea in that! +Well, Sam, we've done it now." + +"We have," said I. + +"Will Monday never come?" said Sally. + +"Stop," said I; "the telephone." + +Idle Island was moored to the mainland by a telephone cable. It took us +nearly an hour to find where this slipped into the water. And we were +tired and hungry and wet and cold, but we simply had to persevere. It +was frightful. At length we found the thing--it looked like a slimy +black snake--and we cut it, where the water was a foot deep--the water +bit my wrists and ankles as sharply as if it had been sharks--and went +back to the house through the storm. + +It was as black as night (the weather, not the house), snowing furiously +and howling. We crept into the house like a couple of sneak-thieves, and +heard Billoo at his very loudest shouting: + +"I had Morgan on the wire all right--and the fool operator cut me off!" + +Sally snipped her wet fingers in my face. + +"Hello, fool operator," she said. + +"Hello, yourself," said I. "But oh, Sally, listen to that wind, and tell +me how it sounds to you. A wet hug if you guess the answer." + +"To me," said Sally, "it sounds plausible." And she got herself hugged. + + + + +III + +I don't believe that anybody slept much Saturday night. You never heard +such a storm in your life. It seemed to Sally and me, who would have +been the chief sufferers if it _had_ blown down, that our comfortable, +brand-new marble house flapped like a flag. Every now and then there +came a tremendous crack from one part of the island or another; and +each time Sally would say, "There goes my favorite elm," or I would say, +"There goes that elm again." + +Most of the men came down to breakfast Sunday morning. What with the +storm and the worry about stocks keeping them awake most of the night, +they were without exception nervous and cross, particularly Billoo. He +looked like an owl that had been first stuffed and then boiled. Blenheim +told me later that at various times during the night he had carried four +several pints of champagne to Billoo's room; and at 7 A.M., bicarbonate +of soda and aromatic spirits of ammonia. + +"I tell you, Sam," said Billoo crossly, "I've been awake all night +thinking what it would mean to some of us--yes, me!--if this storm +should wreck that ferry-boat of yours." + +A lot of wet snow and wind hit the dining-room windows a series of +rattling slaps. + +"She's a good boat, Sam, but smallish to ride out such a storm as this." + +"What a goat you are, Sam," said Tombs, also crossly, "not to keep two +ferry-boats, so that if one breaks down you have the other." + +"When we made up our minds to spend the winter here," I said, "I ordered +another; in fact, two. But they're still building; and besides, what if +the _Hobo_ does break down? There's plenty to eat and drink, I hope. +Nobody would suffer much." + +"No," said Billoo, "it would be no suffering for a business man to be +storm-bound here during a probable panic in Wall Street! + +"I'm tired," I said, "of hearing you refer to yourself or any of these +gentlemen as business men. You always gamble; and when you're in +good-luck you gambol, and when you aren't, you don't. What makes me +sickest about you all is that you're so nauseatingly conceited and +self-important. You all think that your beastly old Stock Exchange is +the axle about which the wheel of the world revolves, and each of you +thinks, privately, that he's the particular grease that makes it revolve +smoothly." + +"Well," said Billoo, "you know that the presence on the floor of one +steady, conservative man may often avert a panic." + +"Show me the man," I said. "Has any one here ever caused a panic or +averted one? But you all lose money just as often because you're on the +spot, as make it. Wouldn't you all be the richer for an absence now +and then?" + +"Of course," said Randall, "there are times when it doesn't matter one +way or the other. But when--well, when the market's in the state it is +now, it's life or death, almost, to be on the spot." + +"I don't understand," I said. "When the market looks fussy, why not +sell out, and wait for better times?" + +"We _can't_ sell out," said Billoo. "We're loaded up to the muzzle." + +"You look as if you had been," I said courteously; but Billoo brushed +the remark aside as if it had been a fly. + +"If we _try_ to unload," he said, "the market begins to collapse. We +_can't_ unload, except a little at a time, and still prices get lower +and lower and margins thinner and thinner. Now, I happen to _know_"--he +looked about him importantly--"that to-morrow will hear the failure of a +_very well-known_ house, and after that's announced--God knows." + +"How true that is!" I said. "But tell me: suppose you gentlemen +deliberately absented yourselves for a few days--wouldn't it restore +confidence? Wouldn't the other brokers say: 'Billoo, Randall, Tombs, +Marshall, Bedlo, etc., don't seem to think there's much doing. None of +'em's here--what's the use of _me_ being scared?'" + +"It would have the contrary effect, Sam," said Tombs solemnly. "They +would think that we had decamped in a body for Canada." + +"I don't know," said I, "but it would be a better thing for the country +if you all did ship to Canada--I don't think there's much doing +out-doors to-day. Hear that wind!" + +"If I can get rid of all my holdings," said Billoo, "I'll sit tight. +We'll see lower prices before we see higher." + +"Well," said I, "I'll bet you we don't." + +"Young man," said Billoo, and he looked almost well and happy, "just +name your sum." + +"I'll bet you a thousand," I said. + +"Sammy," said Tombs very sweetly, "have you got another thousand up your +sleeve?" + +"Sure," I said. + +"Done with you," said Tombs. + +In about five minutes I had bet with everybody present. + +"But mind," I said, "there mustn't be any dirty work. You people mustn't +go to town to-morrow with the idea of forming a strong coalition and +_putting_ prices down." + +"It wouldn't be worth while," said Billoo. "As a matter of fact, we'd +like nothing better than to see you win your bet, but as you can't, +possibly--why, a thousand dollars is always a thousand dollars." + +"Just the same," said I, "_no_ coalitions." + +The wind went on howling till late in the afternoon and then it began to +peter out. We had spent the whole day in the house, and everybody was +tired and bored, and nervous about Monday, and bedtime came earlier +than usual. + +"Sam," said Sally, when we were alone, "it's just occurred to me that we +_may_ be causing some of these people to lose a lot of money." + +"Why, Sally," I said, "you look scared." + +"I am," she said. "Don't _you_ think it would be rather awful?" + +"No, I don't," I said; "I think it would be split-tingly funny. But they +won't lose. Their absence will steady the market." + +"Who told you that, Sam?" said Sally. + +"Sam!" said I. + + + + +IV + +Even before the leaves come, you can't see the pier from the house. It +runs out from the bottom of a high bank and is otherwise hidden by +trees. But it's only a short distance, and in good weather we have the +guests walk it, because it gives them a better chance to admire the +gardens and the Athenian columns and things. But Monday, which dawned +bright and still and warm, and was just as typical of May in Westchester +as was the snow-and-wind storm, we drove them down in a bus because the +roads and paths were horribly muddy. Of course, none of the women +wanted to take the early train, so there were only the men and Sally +and I in the bus. Sally said that there was going to be some fun when +the men got to the pier and didn't find the _Hobo_, and she wasn't going +to miss it. Just before we started she drew me aside and said: + +"Sam, when we get there, for Heaven's sake look blank." + +"I understand your fears, Sally," I said, "and I will look as blank as I +possibly can. But remember, child, how easy it is for _you_ to look +blank; and don't always be urging others to attempt the impossible." + +"Mrs. Sam," said Billoo, on the way down, "I can't tell you what a good +time I've had." + +"You nice man," said Sally, "I wish we could persuade you to stay a day +or two longer." + +"If it wasn't for the market, I could stay forever," said Billoo. + +"Not if I lived," said I. "Saturday to Monday is plenty long +enough--Hello--!" + +The pier and the empty stretch of water between the island and the +mainland were in sight, but there was no _Hobo_. + +"Hello what?" said Tombs. "Why, where's the ferry?" + +"I don't see her," I said, and, I hope, anxiously; "you don't suppose--" + +"Isn't the _Hobo_ there?" shrieked Billoo. He turned his head on his +fat neck, and at first he looked very angry, and then scared. + +We walked down to the pier, and then out on the float to get as big a +water view as possible, but there wasn't so much as a row-boat in sight. + +"What can have happened?" said Sally. + +"I'm worried to death," I said. "Suppose she _was_ blown from her +moorings, the captain could have run her into New Rochelle, and come +back yesterday afternoon when the wind went down. Something must have +happened." + +"Oh, Sam," cried Sally, "you don't think she may have been run down by +one of the Sound steamers and sunk?" + +"I dare not think of it," I said. "I dare not think of the poor chaps on +board." + +"I don't see how I'm to get to town," said Billoo dismally. He pulled +out his watch, and held it in his hand, and every moment or two looked +at it. "Haven't you a couple of row-boats? We couldn't get this train, +but we could get the next--" + +I shook my head. "I'm sorry," I said. "We're not much on the water, and +we've never been properly supplied with boats--" + +Billoo swallowed some hasty thought or other, and began to look across +at the mainland. My father owns all the land opposite the island, even +the pier and the short road to the village of Stepping-Stone; and +although there were several boats at the pier, there were no people, and +the rest of the shore is nothing but thick woods. + +"We must telephone somewhere," said Billoo. + +"You can't," I said. "You know you tried to telephone all yesterday and +couldn't, and the butler told me this morning that he had tried to put +in a call and got no answer." + +"What does it matter?" said Sally. "You've all got to stay now. I think +that's splendid." + +"Mrs. Sam," said Tombs hollowly, "do you realize that this accident may +mean _ruin_ for some of us?" + +"Oh, dear!" said Sally "how dreadful!" + +"Somehow of other," said Billoo, "_I'm_ going to get across." + +And the others said that somehow or other _they_ were going to get +across, too. + +"I've _got_ to!" said Billoo, and he looked about in a fat, challenging +way as if daring any one to say that he had not got to. + +"You poor things," said Sally, "I hope to Heaven you can; but how?" + +"Where there's a will, Mrs. Sam--" Billoo said. And he began to think +hard. All of a sudden his face brightened. + +"It's too easy," he said. "The wind's right; four or five of us have +umbrellas--Sam, you'll have to lend us this float. We've only to cut it +from its moorings, and sail it across--May we have it?" + +"Yes," I said, "but you're crazy to try it." + +"It's a case of sink or swim," said he. "Who's coming?" + +Without exception the men agreed to sail with him on the float. It was a +fine, big platform, floated on sheet-iron air-tanks, and moored at the +four corners by heavy ropes. + +Sally and I withdrew to the pier and watched Billoo and the others cut +slowly through the ropes with their pocket-knives. Presently the float +began to move, and a second or two later the float end of the gang-plank +slipped into the water with a heavy splash. Those who had umbrellas +opened them to catch the breeze, and the others lit cigars, and stood +about in graceful attitudes. Sally and I cheered as loud as we could. + +"I'll send you a tug or something," Billoo called back to us, "and try +to find out what's happened to the _Hobo_." + +"Thank _you_!" I called back. + +"Sam," said Sally, "I don't know what you think, but I call it good +sand." + +"So do I," said I, "but foolish." + +"Why foolish?" said Sally. "They're really going quite fast, and +they'll be across in no time, and they'll get the next train and +everything." + +"They will not," I said. + +"Why?" said Sally. + +"Because," said I, "they will run on to the middle ground, and stay +there." + +"Not at high tide!" exclaimed Sally. + +"At high tide," said I. "That float draws a good two feet, and it's so +heavy that once it runs on the mud it will stay on the mud--" And then I +shouted to Billoo: + +"Look out for the middle ground!" + +"What?" he answered. + +"Why do you warn him?" said Sally. + +"Because it won't help him," said I. + +"What?" called Billoo again, and Sally answered at the top of her lungs, +"Look--out--for--the--middle--ground!" + +"Right O!" Billoo answered; "where is it?" + +"Just ahead," Sally called. + +Billoo turned to look, and at that moment the float, which was +travelling at a good clip, ran into it. + +Billoo and Randall fell flat on their faces; everybody staggered; one +umbrella and two hats went overboard and drifted away, and Sally and I +sat down on the pier and laughed till we were helpless. + + + + +V + +The float had become a fixture in the landscape about two hundred and +fifty yards out. We could converse with our friends by shouting only, +and when we got tired of condoling with them and giving them assurances +of our sympathy, we told them that _we_ were going back to the house to +get some more breakfast and think out what was best to be done, + +"Sam," said Sally, "that's the maddest lot of men I ever saw." + +We looked back. Billoo was stamping up and down the float, waving his +arms and orating like Falstaff; Randall and Tombs had their heads +together, and were casting what appeared to be baleful glances at +Billoo. It was evident that he was not popular on the float. + +When we had had some more breakfast, and had sat around a little to +digest it, the women began to come down-stairs. Mrs. Randall was the +first to come down, and she was in great distress. + +"It's _too_ dreadful," she said. "I had something of the utmost +importance to tell Billy, something that I wanted him to do for me +down-town. And I overslept." + +"Well," said I, "let me tell you what a good fellow Billy is. He hasn't +gone yet." + +"Good Heavens!" she cried, "not gone yet? Why, what time is it? Why, he +won't get down-town in time for the opening!" + +"Probably not," I said. "He was just going, when suddenly he said, 'I +know there's something my wife wants to say to me.' I said, 'Wake her up +and find out what it is.' He said, 'No, she's getting so she can't do +without her beauty sleep; I'll just wait around till she wakes of +herself.'" + +"Sam," said Mrs. Randall, "what has happened to my husband?" + +"Nothing much," I said. "He's in the same boat with many others--only it +isn't a boat. Don't be alarmed." + +"_Where is my husband?_" said she. + +"If you are equal to a short, muddy walk," I said, "I will show him to +you--Morning, little Miss Tombs--want to see brother and young Fitch? +They said they wouldn't go to town till you'd seen them--Morning, Mrs. +Giddings--morning, Miss Marshall--I'm not much on breaking bad news, but +there's been an accident to all your husbands and brothers and fiances. +They're all alive still, so far as I know--but they ought not to last +more than five or six days." + +"It's proposed," said Sally, "that we all go and see what can be done +for them." + +We refused to answer any questions. We led the way to the pier and +pointed out the float, and the men on it. "There," said Sally, "you can +see them quite plainly from here." + +"Yes," said I, "and the more plainly you see them, the plainer they +are." + +"Will you kindly tell me," said Mrs. Randall, "what my husband is doing +out there on that float?" + +"He is doing nothing," I said. "You can see for yourself. And it isn't a +float any more." + +"Better tell them what has happened," said Sally. + +"No, Sally," I said, "no." + +"Yes, Sam," she said. + +"Oh, all right," I said, "if you really think it's best. The fact is, +ladies, the whole thing is a piece of drunken folly. You know how men +are when they get drinking and arguing, and quarrelling. To make a long +story short, it came to Billoo's insulting Randall; Randall challenges +him; duelling is against the law; they take pistols and witnesses out on +the water beyond the jurisdiction of the United States; and they _were_ +going to murder each other. But it's all right now--don't be +frightened." + +Sally had turned her face away, and I'm sure I was serious as a judge. I +patted Mrs. Randall on the shoulder. + +"Even if your husband isn't brave," I said, "he's clever, clever and +deep." + +"My husband not brave!" she cried. "I like that; he's the bravest man I +ever saw." + +"Well, that may be," I said doubtfully, "but, considering that on the +way out to the duelling ground, or water, when nobody was looking but +Sally and me, he kicked the box of cartridges overboard. But, perhaps +they'll agree to use pocket-knives--" + +"Sam," said little Miss Tombs, "I'll give you a kiss good-morning if +you'll be serious." + +"Wait till Fitch is looking," I said. + +Then Sally explained what had happened, and edged herself so politely +between little Miss Tombs and me that the others laughed. + +"They'll float at high tide, won't they?" asked Mrs. Giddings. + +"No," I said. "It was high tide when they ran aground. It will take a +tugboat to get them off." + +The words weren't out of my mouth when a tugboat appeared round the +corner of the island, making up the channel. The men on the float began +to scream and yell, and jump up and down, and wave their arms. But the +tugboat paid no attention. It thought they were drunk. It passed within +three hundred yards of them, whistled a couple of times, and became +small in the distance. + +"Sam," said Sally, "in about an hour they'll be high and dry on the mud. +Then not even a boat can get to them. And by the time it's high tide +again it will be dark and nobody will see them, and they'll be dying of +hunger and thirst." + +"That's true," I said. "Sally, you explain that to them, and I'll have +the men fetch one of the stable doors, and we'll put a sail on it and +provision it and trust to its hitting the middle ground about where +they did." + +I never worked so hard in my life. I had a stable door taken off its +tracks and rigged with the canoe's sail; and we put a case of champagne +on board, and a tub of ice, and bread, and cold meat, and butter, and +jam, and cigars, and cigarettes, and liquors, and a cocktail shaker, and +a bottle of olives stuffed with red peppers, for Billoo, and two kinds +of bitters, and everything else to eat or drink that anybody could think +of, and some camp-chairs, and cards for bridge, and score-pads, and +pencils, and a folding table. Of course, most of the things got soaked +the minute we launched the door, but there wasn't time to do the thing +over again. So we gave the relief boat three cheers and let her go. + +The way the men on the float eyed the course of the door, you would have +thought them all nearly half dead with hunger and thirst. We were all +excited, too. + +At first the door made straight for the float. Then the breeze shifted a +little, and it made to the left of the float--then to the right of +it--and then straight at it again. + +Everybody cheered. The relief expedition looked like a success. The men +all came to the edge of the float to meet it--and then, just as all +seemed well, a dark patch of wind came scudding across the water, filled +the door's sail, and sent the door kiting off to the right again. The +game was up, The door was going to miss the float by sixty or +seventy feet. + +Then the men on the float began to toss coins; there was a shout of +delight; and Billoo, trumpeting his hands, called to me: + +"Make the ladies go behind the boat-house, quick!" And he began to +unbutton his coat. I herded the women behind the boat-house and ran back +to the pier. Billoo was stripping as fast as he could. + +"What's he doing?" Mrs. Giddings called to me. + +And I answered, "He seems to be overcome by the heat." + +A few moments later Billoo stood revealed, a fat white silhouette +against the opposite shore. He stepped from the float into the water; it +came to his ankles. Then he waded, gingerly but with determination, +toward the passing door. He went as if he expected the water to get +suddenly deep, but it didn't. At no time did it reach to his ankles, +until, just as he was reaching out his hand to catch hold of the door, +and just as the men on the float set up a cheer, he stepped off the +middle ground in to deep water. + +The splash that he made lifted the door half out of water, and shot it +away from him, the wind filled its sail, and when Billoo came to the +surface and looked for it, it was thirty feet off. But he set his teeth +(I think he set them) and swam after it. Just as he reached it, he +fetched an awful yell. He had been seized with cramps. Still, he had +sense enough to cling to the door, and, when the first spasm of the +cramp had passed, to sprawl himself upon it. There he lay for a while, +lapped by the water that came over the door, and writhing in his fat +nakedness. + +Meanwhile, the door was caught in the full strength of the ebbing tide, +and began to make for the open Sound. Poor Billoo was in a bad way--and +when he turned the ice-tub upside down for a seat, and wrapped himself +in the canoe sail, I invited the women to come out and see for +themselves how brave he was. + +He waved his hand to us, and just as he and his well-provisioned craft +rounded a corner of the island he selected a bottle of champagne and +deftly extracted the cork. + +I told some of my men to follow along the shore and to let me know what +became of him. I couldn't do anything more for Billoo; but I liked the +man, and took an affectionate interest in his ultimate fate--_whatever_ +it might be. And I call that true friendship. + +Pretty soon the middle ground on which the float was stuck began to show +above water, and as it was evident that we could do nothing further for +the relief of our shipwrecked friends, we decided to go back to the +house, change our muddy boots, play a rubber or so, and have lunch. But +first little Miss Tombs called to young Fitch, and told him if he found +himself starving to dig clams in the mud. + + + + +VI + +The only fault that I could find with the way things had gone so far was +that Sally had a disgusting headache that marred her pleasure and her +sense of humor. She hadn't said very much, and had laughed with only a +half-heart at things that had seemed to me excruciatingly funny. For +instance, when Billoo was seized with the cramps she had barely smiled, +and once or twice when I had been doing the talking she had looked +pityingly at me, instead of roaring with laughter, the way a wife +should do. + +And when we got to the house, she said that if we would excuse her she +would go to her room and lie down. + +"I've just got one of my usual headaches," she said. + +That remark worried me, because it was the first headache she had ever +complained of to _me_; and when, after she had gone upstairs, Miss +Randall said, "Maybe Sally ought to see the doctor," I had a sudden +awful, empty, gulpy feeling. Suppose she was going to be really sick! +Suppose she was going to have pneumonia or scarlet-fever or spinal +meningitis! Here we were, cut off from medical assistance till Wednesday +morning. And it was our own fault--mine; mine, for being _too_ funny. +Then I thought, "Maybe those men on the float are losing all the money +they've got in the world," and that made me feel pretty glum; and then I +thought, "Maybe poor Billoo is drowned by now," and I went cold +all over. + +"Why don't you make the trump, Sam?" said Mrs. Giddings. + +"Good Heavens!" I said. "Did I deal? Won't somebody play my hand? I'm +worried about Sally." + +Then I bolted upstairs, and there was Sally lying on her bed, with a +glass tube sticking out of her mouth. + +"How are you," I said, "and what are you doing?" + +"I feel rather sick, Sam," she said. And she looked so pale that I could +have screamed. "And I'm taking my temperature." + +"Do you think you've got fever?" I cried. + +"I don't know," she said. + +"Oh, Sally--Sally!" I cried. "Forgive me--it's all my fault--and I love +you so--My God! what shall I do? I know--" + +Then I kissed her, and ran out of the room, and all the way to the +boat-house. I found a bathing-suit, undressed, put it on, tore down to +the pier, and went overboard. I suppose the water was ghastly cold, but +I didn't feel it. I suppose I never should have gotten all the way +across to the main-land if I hadn't been boiling with fear and +excitement, and besides I walked and waded across the middle ground and +got a rest that way. The men on the float kept calling to me, and asking +me questions, but I hadn't enough breath nor reason to answer them; I +just swam and swam and swam. + +About fifty feet from the pier on the main-land I began to get horrible +pains up and down the muscles of my legs; and they wanted to stop +kicking, but I wouldn't let them. I had to sit on the pier for a while +to rest, but pretty soon I was able to stand, and somehow or other, +running and walking, I got to the doctor's house in Stepping-Stone. He +is very nice and an old friend, and the moment I told him Sally was +desperately sick he said she wasn't, and I felt better. He gave me some +brandy to drink, and we started for the island. I begged him to run, +but he wouldn't. He walked leisurely and pointed out this tree as a very +fine specimen and well grown, or that one as too much crowded by its +neighbors. He was daft on forestry. Patients didn't interest him a bit. +Finally, however, we got to the pier, and stole somebody's row-boat, and +I took the oars, and then we went faster. + +When we entered the house we found all the women except Sally +surrounding Billoo. He was very red in the face and dressed only in the +canoe sail; but he wasn't in the least embarrassed. He had a +self-satisfied smile; and he was talking as fast and as loud as +he could. + +We told him to go to bed and be ashamed of himself, and sleep it off. +And he said that nobody understood him, and denied having drunk the +whole case of champagne, and he said that he was in perfect control of +all his faculties, and that if the ladies wished him to, he could dance +a hornpipe for them that he had learned when he was a sailor.... + +The doctor and I went upstairs; and while he was with Sally I changed +into proper clothes; and then I waited outside the door for him to come +out and tell me the worst. After a long time he came. He looked very +solemn, and closed the door behind him. + +"What _is_ it?" I said, and I think my voice shook like a leaf. + +"Sam," he said gravely, "Sally is by way of cutting her first wisdom +tooth." + +"Good Lord!" I said, "is that all?" + +"It's enough," said the doctor, "because it isn't a _tooth_." + +"Oh!" I said, "oh! What ought I to do?" + +"Why," said he, "I'd go in, and tell her how glad you are, and maybe +laugh at her a little bit, and make much of her." + +But I couldn't laugh at Sally, because she was crying. + +I took her in my arms and made much of her, and asked her why she was +crying, and she said she was crying because she was glad. + +When the doctor had returned to Stepping-Stone, he got the _Hobo's_ +captain on the telephone and told him from me to bring the _Hobo_ back +to Idle Island at once. She came about six, just as the tide was getting +high, and she brought rescue to the men on the float, and, better than +rescue, she brought the evening papers. + +There had been a big day on Wall Street; one of the biggest in its +history. And the men whom we had kept from going to business had made, +among them, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just by sitting still. +But they were ungrateful, especially Billoo. He complained bitterly, and +said that he would have made three times as much money if he had been +_on the spot_. + + * * * * * + +When the men paid the bets that they had lost to me, I turned the money +over to my father's secretary and told him to deposit it as a +special account. + +"What shall I call the account?" he asked. + +"Call it," I said, "the account of W. Tooth." + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spread Eagle and Other Stories, by +Gouverneur Morris + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES *** + +***** This file should be named 9888.txt or 9888.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/8/8/9888/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and PG +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 Spread Eagle and Other Stories + +Author: Gouverneur Morris + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9888] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 28, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + THE + + SPREAD EAGLE + + AND OTHER STORIES + + BY + + GOUVERNEUR MORRIS + + AUTHOR OF "THE FOOTPRINT, AND OTHER STORIES," ETC. + + 1910 + + + +_TO ELSIE, PATSIE, AND KATE_ + + _I had thought to sit in the ruler's chair, + But three pretty girls are sitting there-- + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + I had thought to lord it with eyes of gray, + I had thought to be master, and have_ my _way; + But six blue eyes vote_: nay, nay, nay! + _Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + Of Petticoats three I am sore afraid, + (Though Kate's is more like a candle-shade), + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + And I must confess (with shame) to you + That time there was when Petticoats two + Were enough to govern me through and through, + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + Oh Patsie, third of a bullying crew, + And Elsie, and Kate, be it known to you-- + To Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, + That Elsie_ alone _was strong enough + To smother a motion, or call a bluff, + Or any small pitiful atom thereof-- + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + So, though I've renounced that ruler's part + To which I was born (as is writ in my heart), + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, + Though I do what I'm told (yes, you_ know _I do) + And am made to write stories (and sell them, too). + Still--I wish to God I had more like you, + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate_. + +BAR HARBOR, _August_, 1910. + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +Certain persons have told me (for nothing) that "White Muscats of +Alexandria" resembles a tale in the Arabian Nights. And so it does. +Most damningly. And this is printed in the hope of saving other +persons postage. + + + + +CONTENTS + +_The Spread Eagle +Targets +The Boot +The Despoiler +One More Martyr +"Ma'am?" +Mr. Holiday +White Muscats of Alexandria +Without a Lawyer +The "Monitor" and the "Merrimac" +The McTavish +The Parrot +On the Spot; or, The Idler's House-Party_ + + + + +THE SPREAD EAGLE + +In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact +was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation +that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he +was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own +subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his +mother wanted him to be a polite American, And to be polite, in her +mind, was to be at home in French and German, to speak English (or +American) with the accent of no particular locality, to know famous +pictures when you saw them, and, if little, to be bosom friends with +little dukes and duchesses and counts of the Empire, to play in the +gravel gardens of St. Germain, to know French history, and to have for +exercise the mild English variations of American games--cricket instead +of base-ball; instead of football, Rugby, or, in winter, lugeing above +Montreux. To luge upon a sled you sit like a timid, sheltered girl, and +hold the ropes in your hand as if you were playing horse, and descend +inclines; whereas, as Fitzhugh Williams well knew, in America rich boys +and poor take their hills head first, lying upon the democratic turn. + +It wasn't always Switzerland in winter. Now and again it was Nice or +Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball +cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while, +for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the +maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was +lawn tennis also, which you might play without losing caste "at home," +Fitzhugh Williams never used that term but with the one meaning. He +would say, for instance, to the little Duchess of Popinjay--or one just +as good--having kissed her to make up for having pushed her into her +ancestral pond, "Now I am going to the house," meaning Perth House, that +Mrs. Williams had taken for the season. But if he had said, "Now I am +going home," the little Duchess would have known that he was going to +sail away in a great ship to a strange, topsy-turvy land known in her +set as "the States," a kind of deep well from which people hoist gold in +buckets, surrounded by Indians. Home did not mean even his father's +house. Let Fitzhugh Williams but catch sight of the long, white shore of +Long Island, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the amazing Liberty, and the +word fluttered up from his heart even if he spoke it not. Ay, let him +but see the Fire Island light-ship alone upon the deep, and up leaped +the word, or the sensation, which was the same thing. + +One Fourth of July they were in Paris (you go to Paris for tea-gowns to +wear grouse-shooting in Scotland), and when his valet, scraping and +bowing, informed Fitzhugh Williams, aged nine, that it was time to get +up, and tub, and go forth in a white sailor suit, and be of the world +worldly, Fitzhugh declined. A greater personage was summoned--Aloys, +"the maid of madame," a ravishing creature--to whom you and I, good +Americans though we are, could have refused nothing. But Fitzhugh would +not come out of his feather-bed. And when madame herself came, looking +like a princess even at that early hour, he only pulled the bedclothes a +little higher with an air of finality. + +"Are you sick, Fitzhugh?" + +"No, mamma." + +"Why won't you get up?" + +His mother at least was entitled to an explanation. + +"I won't get up," said he, "because I'm an American." + +"But, my dear, it's the glorious Fourth. All good Americans are up." + +"All good Americans," said Fitzhugh, "are at home letting off +fire-crackers." + +"Still," said his mother, "I think I'd get up if I were you. It's lovely +out. Not hot." + +"I won't get up," said Fitzhugh, "because it's the Fourth, because I'm +an American, and because I have nothing but English clothes to put on." + +His mother, who was the best sort in the world, though obstinate about +bringing-up, and much the prettiest woman, sat down on the bed and +laughed till the tears came to her eyes. Fitzhugh laughed, too. His mind +being made up, it was pleasanter to laugh than to sulk. + +"But," said his mother, "what's the difference? Your pajamas are +English, too." + +Fitzhugh's beautiful brown eyes sparkled with mischief. + +"What!" exclaimed his mother. "You wretched boy, do you mean to tell me +that you haven't your pajamas on?" + +Fitzhugh giggled, having worsted his mother in argument, and pushed down +the bedclothes a few inches, disclosing the neck and shoulders of that +satiny American suit in which he had been born. + +Mrs. Williams surrendered at once. + +"My dear," she exclaimed, "if you feel so strongly about it I will send +your man out at once to buy you some French things. They were our +allies, you know." + +"Thank you, mamma," said Fitz, "and if you'll give me the pad and pencil +on the table I'll write to granny." + +Thus compromise was met with compromise, as is right. Fitz wrote a very +short letter to granny, and drew a very long picture of crossing the +Delaware, with Nathan Hale being hanged from a gallows on the bank; and +Mrs. Williams sent Benton for clothes, and wrote out a cable to her +husband, a daily cable being the one thing that he who loved others to +have a good time was wont to exact "Dear Jim," ran the cable, at I +forget what the rates were then per word, "I wish you were here. It's +bright and beautiful; not too hot. Fitz would not get up and put on +English clothes, being too patriotic. You will run over soon if you can, +won't you, if only for a minute," etc., etc. + +I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The +Williamses were rich. They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief. +Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not +have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported +Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring +frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where +money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James, +returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of +his right boot. + +Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for +him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she +would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed +in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next +few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history +through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be +absorbed, and that came out often, I am afraid, when people didn't +especially want it to. Neither could any amount of aristocratic training +and association turn the blood in his veins blue. If one had taken the +trouble to look at a specimen of it under a microscope I believe one +would have discovered a resemblance between the corpuscles thereof and +the eagles that are the tails of coins; and the color of it was +red--bright red. And this was proven, that time when little Lord Percy +Pumps ran at Fitz, head down like a Barbadoes nigger, and butted him in +the nose. The Honorable Fifi Grey, about whom the quarrel arose, was +witness to the color of that which flowed from the aforementioned nose; +and witness also to the fact that during the ensuing cataclysm no blood +whatever, neither blue nor red, came from Lord Percy Pumps--nothing but +howls. But, alas! we may not now call upon the Honorable Fifi Grey for +testimony. She is no longer the Honorable Fifi. Quite the reverse. I had +her pointed out to me last summer (she is Lady Khorset now), and my +informant wriggled with pleasure and said, "Now, there _is_ somebody." + +"You mean that slim hedge-fence in lavender?" I asked. + +"By jove, yes!" said he. "That's Lady Khorset, the wickedest woman in +London, with the possible exception of Lady Virginia Pure--the +Bicyclyste, you know." + +I did know. Had I not that very morning seen in a Piccadilly window a +photograph of almost all of her? + +Fortunately for Fitzhugh Williams's health and sanity, little children +are pretty much the same all the world over, dwelling in the noble +democracy of mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. Little newsboys, tiny +grandees, infinitesimal sons of coachmen, picayune archdukes, +honorableines, marquisettes, they are all pretty much alike under their +skins. And so are their sisters. Naturally your free-born American child +despises a nation that does not fight with its fists. But he changes his +mind when some lusty French child of his own size has given him a good +beating in fair fight. And the English games have their beauties (I dare +say), and we do know that they can fight--or can make the Irish and the +Scots fight for them, which is just as good. And it isn't race and blue +blood that keeps little Lady Clara Vere de Vere's stockings from coming +down. It's garters. And _they_ don't always do it. Point the finger of +scorn at little Archibald Jamison Purdue Fitzwilliams Updyke +Wrennfeather, who will be Duke of Chepstow one day; for only last night +his lordship's noble mother rubbed his hollow chest with goose grease +and tied a red flannel round his neck, and this morning his gerfalcon +nose is running, as the British would have run at Waterloo had not +"would-to-God-Bluecher-would-come" come up. + +Peace, little bootblack; others bite their nails. See yonder night +garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a +plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the +back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come +through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel +with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next +crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears? +It's because she _will_ double them forward and lie on them, so that if +something isn't done about it they will stick straight out. + +So Fitzhugh Williams was brought up among and by children, fashionable +children, if you like. Snobs, many of them, but children all the same. +Some good, some bad, some rough, some gentle, some loving and faithful +with whom he is friends to this day, some loving and not faithful. +The dangers that he ran were not from the foreign children with whom +he played, fought, loved, and dreamed dreams; but from foreign +customs, foreign ways of doing things, foreign comfort, foreign +take-the-world-easiness, and all. For they _do_ live well abroad; they +do have amusing things to do. They eat well, drink well, smoke well, are +better waited on than we are and have more time. So Fitzhugh was in +danger of these things which have hurt the Americanism of more than one +American to the death, but he ran the dangerous gauntlet and came out at +the other end unscathed--into the open. + +He could rattle off French and German like a native; he could imitate an +Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with +his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not +in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the +moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his +family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly, +straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words +are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with +the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington +himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think +Adams said _bought_ and _caught_? He said _bot_ and _cot_. Did Lincoln +use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke +the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck +against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the +hearts of men, to rejoice God, and to thunder forever down the ages. + +It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody +knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and +intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But +honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great +American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively +great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk +Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that! + + + + +II + +We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the +French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in +cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the +feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain +of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water +in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded +the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it. + +He now had Benton in to rub his back dry, and to hand him his clothes in +sequence; it being his mother's notion that to be truly polite a man +must be helpless in these matters and dependent. And when he had on his +undershirt and his outer shirt and his stockings, he sat down to his +breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler +had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing, +and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria +at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with +Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother +came--one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris, +though common enough, I dare say, in paradise. + +They drove first of all to Gaston Rennette's gallery, where Fitz +celebrated the glorious Fourth with a real duelling pistol and real +bullets, aiming at a life-size sheet-iron man, who, like a correct, +courteous, and courageous opponent, never moved. And all the way to the +gallery and all the way back there was here and there an American flag, +as is customary in Paris on the Fourth. And to these Fitz, standing up +in the victoria, dipped and waved his hat. While he was shooting, his +mother took a "little turn" and then came back to fetch him; a stout man +in a blue blouse accompanying him to the curb, tossing his hands +heavenward, rolling up his eyes, and explaining to madame what a "genius +at the shoot was the little mister," and had averaged upon the "mister +of iron" one "fatal blow" in every five. Madame "invited" the stout man +to a five-franc piece for himself and she smiled, and he smiled, and +bowed off backward directly into a passing pedestrian, who cried out +upon the "sacred name of a rooster." And everybody laughed, including +Cunningham, whose face from much shaving looked as if a laugh must crack +it; and so the glorious Fourth was begun. + +But the next event upon the programme was less provocative of pure joy +in the heart of Fitz. + +"You don't remember the Burtons, do you, Fitz?" asked his mother. + +"No," said he. + +"Well," she said, "Mrs. Burton was a school-mate of mine, Elizabeth +Proctor, and I've just learned that she is at the d'Orient with her +daughter. The father died, you know--" + +"I know _now_" interrupted Fitz with a grin. + +He liked to correct his mother's English habit of "you-knowing" people +who didn't know. + +"And I really think I must call and try to do something for them." + +"The d'Orient," said Fitz, "is where they have the elevator that you +work yourself. Billy Molineux and I got caught in it between the third +and fourth floors." + +"Well," said his mother, "would you mind very much if we drove to the +d'Orient now and called on the Burtons?" + +Fitz said that he would mind _very_ much, but as he made no more +reasonable objection Mrs. Williams gave the order to Cunningham, and not +long after they stopped before the d'Orient in the Rue Daunou, and +Fontenoy flashed in with Mrs. and Master Williams's cards, and came out +after an interval and stationed himself stiffly near the step of the +victoria. This meant that Mrs. Burton was at home, as we say, or, "at +herself," as the French have it. If he had leaped nimbly to his seat +beside Cunningham on the box it would have meant that Mrs. Burton was +not "at herself." + +So once more Mrs. Williams became a lovely, trailing figure out of the +seventh heaven, and Fitz, stoical but bored, followed her into the +court-yard of the hotel. Here were little iron tables and chairs, four +symmetrical flower-beds containing white gravel, four palm-trees in +tubs, their leaves much speckled with coal smuts; a French family at +breakfast (the stout father had unbuttoned his white waistcoat); and in +a corner by herself an American child sitting upon one of the +puff-seated iron chairs, one leg under her, one leg, long, thin, and +black, swinging free, and across her lap a copy of a fashion paper. + +On perceiving Mrs. Williams the child at once came forward, and dropped +the most charming little courtesy imaginable. + +"How do you do?" she said. "Poor, dear mamma isn't a bit well. But I +said that she would see you, Mrs. Williams. She said yesterday that she +wanted so much to see you." + +In the event Mrs. Williams went up three flights in the elevator that +you worked yourself; only on this occasion the proprietor, hastily +slipping into his frock-coat and high hat (you could see him at it +through the office window), worked it for her. And Fitz remained with +the gloomy prospect of being entertained by little Miss Burton. + +She was younger than Fitz by two years and older by ten--a serene, +knowing, beautiful child. When Fitz proposed that they sit in the +victoria, as softer than the iron chairs, she called him a funny boy, +but she assented. And as they went she tossed aside her fashion paper, +remarking, "_You_ wouldn't care for that." + +When they had settled down into the soft, leather cushions of the +victoria she sighed luxuriously and said: + +"This _is_ nice! I wish--" and broke off short. + +"What?" asked Fitz. + +"Oh," she said, "that the horses would start, and take us all over Paris +and back, and everybody would see us go by, and envy us. But mamma and +I," she said, "are devoted to fiacres--not smart, are they?" + +"I don't mind," said Fitz, "if they go where I tell 'em to, and don't +set up a row over the _pourboire_." + +"Still," said she, "it must be nice to have carriages and things. We +used to have. Only I can hardly remember. Mamma says I have a dreadfully +short memory." + +"How long have you been abroad?" Fitz asked. + +"Dear me," she said, "ever so long. I don't remember." + +"Won't it be fun," said Fitz, "to go home?" + +"America?" She hesitated. "Mamma says it's all so crude and rude. I +forget." + +"Don't you remember America!" exclaimed Fitz, much horrified. + +"Not clearly," she admitted. + +"I guess you never saw Cleveland, Ohio, then," said Fitz, "'n' Euclid +Avenue, 'n' Wade Park, 'n' the cannons in the square, 'n' the +breakwater, 'n' never eat Silverthorn's potatoes at Rocky River, 'n' +never went to a picnic at Tinker's Creek, 'n' never saw Little Mountain +'n' the viaduct." + +"You are quite right," said little Miss Burton, "I never did." + +"When I grow up," said Fitz in a glow of enthusiasm, "I'm going to live +in America 'n' have a tower on my house with a flagpole, 'n' a cannon to +let off every sunset and sunrise." + +"I shouldn't like that," said she, "if I were sleeping in the house at +the time." + +"I shouldn't be sleeping," said Fitz; "I'd be up early every morning to +let the cannon off." + +"I remember Newport a little," she said. "I'd live there if I were you. +Newport is very smart for America, mamma says. We're going to Newport +when I grow up. I'm sure it will be nicer if you are there." + +Fitz thought this very likely, but was too modest to say so. + +"If I ever go to Newport," he said, "it will be as captain of a cup +defender." + +"I heard your mother call you Fitz," said little Miss Burton. "Is that +your name, or do you have them?" + +"F-i-t-z-h-u-g-h," said Fitz, "is my name." + +"Any middle name?" + +"No." + +"That's smarter," said she. "I haven't either." + +"What _is_ your name?" asked Fitz, trying to feign interest. + +"Evelyn," said she, "but my intimate friends call me Eve." + +"Huh!" said Fitz grossly, "Eve ate the apple first." + +"Yes," sighed Eve, "and gave Adam the core. Nowadays, I heard mamma say +to Count Grassi, it's the other way 'round." + +"My father says," said Fitz, "that Eve ought to of been spanked." + +Certain memories reddened Eve; but the natural curiosity to compare +experiences got the better of her maiden reticence upon so delicate a +subject. She lowered her voice. + +"Do you yell?" she asked. "I do. It frightens them if you yell." + +"I was never spanked" said Fitz. "When I'm naughty mamma writes to papa, +and he writes to me, and says he's sorry to hear that I haven't yet +learned to be a gentleman, and a man of the world, and an American. +That's worse than being spanked." + +"Oh, dear!" said Eve, "I don't mind what people say; that's just water +on a duck's back; but what they do is with slippers--" + +"And," cried Fitz, elated with his own humor, "it isn't on the +duck's--back." + +"Are you yourself to-day," asked Miss Eve, her eyes filling, "or are you +just unusually horrid?" + +"Here--I say--don't blub," said Fitz, in real alarm. And, knowing the +power of money to soothe, he pulled a twenty-franc gold piece from his +pocket and himself opened and closed one of her tiny hands upon it. + +The child's easy tears dried at once. + +"Really--truly?--ought I?" she exclaimed. + +"You bet!" said Fitz, all his beautiful foreign culture to the fore. +"You just keep that and surprise yourself with a present next time you +want one." + +"Maybe mamma won't like me to," she doubted. And then, with devilish +wisdom, "I think mamma will scold me first--and let me forget to give it +back afterward. Thank you, Fitz. I could kiss you!" + +"Fire away," said Fitz sullenly. He was used to little girls, and liked +to kiss them, but he did not like them to kiss him. She didn't, however. + +She caught his hand with the one of hers that was not clutching the gold +piece, and squeezed it quickly and let it go. Something in this must +have touched and made appeal to the manly heart. For Fitz said, averting +his beautiful eyes: + +"You're a funny little pill, aren't you?" + +The tiger sprang to the victoria step from loafing in front of a +jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. Madame +was coming. + +"Take Evelyn to the lift, Fitz," said she. But first she kissed Evelyn, +and said that she was going to send for her soon, for a spree with Fitz. + +They passed through the court-yard, Fitz carrying his hat like a +gentleman and a man of the world, and into the dark passage that led to +the famous elevator. + +"Your mother's smart," said Eve. + +"Can't you think of anything but how smart people are?" + +"When I'm grown up," she said, "and am smart myself I'll think of other +things, I dare say." + +"Can you work the lift yourself? Hadn't I better take you up?" + +"Oh, no," she said, and held out her hand. + +They shook, she firmly, he with the flabby, diffident clasp of childhood +and old age. + +"You're a funny kid," said Fitz. + +"You're rather a dear," said Eve. + +She entered the elevator, closed the door, and disappeared upward, at +the pace of a very footsore and weary snail. + +Mrs. Burton was much cheered by Mrs. Williams's visit, as who that +struggles is not by the notice of the rich and the mighty? + +"My dear," she said, when Eve entered, "she is so charming, so natural; +she has promised to give a tea for me, and to present me to some of her +friends. I hope you like the boy--Fitz--Fritz--whatever his name is. It +would be so nice if you were to be friends." + +"He _is_ nice," said Eve, "ever so nice--but _so_ dull." + +"What did you talk about?" asked Mrs. Burton, + +"Really," said Eve, aged seven, "I forget." + + + + +III + +Mrs. Burton had made a failure of her own life. + +She had married a man who subsequently had been so foolish as to lose +his money--or most of it. + +Eve, who had ever a short memory, does not remember the catastrophe. She +was three at the time of it. She was in the nursery when the blow fell, +and presently her mother came in looking very distracted and wild, and +caught the little girl's face between her hands, and looked into it, and +turned it this way and that, and passed the little girl's beautiful +brown hair through her fingers, and then began to speak violently. + +"You sha'n't be shabby," she said. "I will make a great beauty of you. +You've got the beauty. You shall ride in your carriage, even if I work +my hands to the bone. They've bowled me over. But I'm not dead yet. +Elizabeth Burton shall have her day. You wait. I'll make the world dance +for you." Then she went into violent hysterics. + +There was a little money left. Mrs. Burton took Evelyn to Europe, and +began to teach her the long litany of success: + + Money is God; + We praise thee, etc., + +a very long, somewhat truthful, and truly degraded litany. She taught +her that it isn't handsome is as handsome does, but the boots and +shoes, after all. She taught her that a girl must dress beautifully to +be beautiful, that she must learn all the world's ways and secrets, and +at the same time appear in speech and manner like a child of Nature, +like a newly opened rose. And she taught her to love her country +like this: + +"America, my dear, is the one place where a girl can marry enough money +to live somewhere else. Or, if her husband is tied to his affairs, it is +the one place where she can get the most for his money--not as we get +the most for ours, for we couldn't live two minutes on our income in +America--but where the most people will bow the lowest to her because +she is rich; where she will be the most courted and the most envied." + +The two mammas worked along similar lines, but for different reasons. +Mrs. Burton strove to make Eve ornamental so that she might acquire +millions; Mrs. Williams strove to Anglicize and Europeanize her son so +that he might ornament those which were already his. Those little spread +eagles, the corpuscles in his blood, folded their wings a trifle as he +grew older, and weren't always so ready to scream and boast; but they +remained eagles, and no amount of Eton and Oxford could turn them into +little unicorns or lions. You may wonder why Fitz's father, a strong, +sane man, permitted such attempts at denationalization upon his son and +heir. Fitz so wondered--once. So wrote. And was answered thus: + +... If you're any good it will all come out in the wash. If you aren't +any good it doesn't matter whether your mother makes an Englishman out +of you or a Mandarin. When you come of age you'll be your own man; +that's been the bargain between your mother and me. That will be the +time for you to decide whether to be governed or to help govern. I am +not afraid for you. I never have been. + +So Mrs. Williams was not successful on the whole in her attempts to make +a cosmopolitan of Fitz. And that was just enough, because the attempts +were those of an amateur. She had lived a furiously active life of +pleasure; she had made an unassailable place for herself in the best +European society, as at home. She had not even become estranged from her +husband. They were always crossing the ocean to see each other, "if only +for a minute or two," as she used to say, and when Fitz was at school +she spent much of her time in America; and Fitz's short vacations were +wild sprees with his father and mother, come over for the purpose. Mr. +Williams would take an immense country house for a few weeks, with +shooting and riding and all sorts of games thrown in, and have Fitz's +friends by the dozen. But, like as not, Mr. Williams would leave in the +middle of it, as fast as trains and steamers could carry him, home to +his affairs. And even the little English boys missed him sorely, since +he was much kinder to them, as a rule, than their own fathers were, and +had always too many sovereigns in his pocket for his own comfort. + +But Mrs. Burton's attempts to make a charming cosmopolitan of Eve met +with the greater success that they deserved. They were the efforts of a +professional, one who had staked life or death, so to speak, on the +result. Where Mrs. Williams amused herself and achieved small victories, +Mrs. Burton fought and achieved great conquests. She saved money out of +her thin income, money for the great days to come when Eve was to be +presented to society at Newport; and she slaved and toiled grimly and +with far-seeing genius. Eve's speaking voice was, perhaps, Mrs. Burton's +and her own greatest triumph. It was Ellen Terry's youngest, freshest +voice over again, but with the naivest little ghost of a French accent; +and she didn't seem so much to project a phrase at you by the locutory +muscles as to smile it to you. + +Mrs. Burton had, of course, her moments of despair about Eve. But these +were mostly confined to that despairing period when most girls are +nothing but arms and wrists and gawkiness and shyness; when their clear, +bright complexions turn muddy, and they want to enter convents. Eve at +this period in her life was unusually trying and nondescript. She +announced that if she ever married it would be for love alone, but that +she did not intend to marry. She would train to be a cholera nurse or a +bubonic plague nurse--anything, in short, that was most calculated to +drive poor Mrs. Burton frantic. And she grew the longest, thinnest pair +of legs and arms in Europe; and her hair seemed to lose its wonderful +lustre; and her skin, upon which Mrs. Burton had banked so much, became +colorless and opaque and a little blotched around the chin. And she was +so nervous and overgrown that she would throw you a whole fit of +hysterics during piano lessons; and she prayed so long night and morning +that her bony knees developed callouses; and when she didn't have a cold +in her head she was getting over one or catching another. + +During this period in Eve's life the children met for the second time. +It was in Vienna. This time Mrs. Burton, as having been longer in +residence, called upon Mrs. Williams, taking Eve with her, after +hesitation. Poor Eve! The graceful, gracious courtesy of her babyhood +was now a performance of which a stork must have felt ashamed; she +pitched into a table (while trying to make herself small) and sent a +pitcher of lemonade crashing to the ground. And then burst into tears +that threatened to become laughter mixed with howls. + +At this moment Fitz, having been sent for to "do the polite," entered. +He shook hands at once with Mrs. Burton, whom he had never seen before, +and turned to see how Eve, whom he vaguely remembered, was coming on. +And there she was--nothing left of his vague memory but the immense +eyes. Even these were not clear and bright, but red in the whites and +disordered with tears. For the rest (Fitz made the mental comparison +himself) she reminded him of a silly baby camel that he had seen in the +zoo, that had six inches of body, six feet of legs, and the most bashful +expression imaginable. + +Mrs. Burton, you may be sure, did not lose the start that Fitz gave +before he went forward and shook hands with Eve. But she misinterpreted +it. She said to herself (all the while saying other things aloud to Mrs. +Williams): "If he had only seen her a year ago, even a boy of his age +would have been struck by her, and would have remembered her. But now! +Now, he'll never forget her. And I don't blame him. She's so ugly that +he was frightened." + +But that was not why Fitz had started. The poor, gawky, long-legged, +tearful, frightened, overgrown, wretched girl had not struck him as +ugly; she had struck him as the most pathetic and to-be-pitied object +that he had ever seen. I do not account for this. I state it. Had she +been pretty and self-possessed he would have left the room presently on +some excuse, but now he stayed--not attracted, but troubled and sorry +and eager to put her at her ease. So he would have turned aside to help +a gutter cat that had been run over and hurt, though he would have +passed the proudest, fluffiest Angora in Christendom with no more than a +glance. He began to talk to her in his plainest, straightest, honestest +Ohioan. It always came out strongest when he was most moved. His +mother's sharp ears heard the A's, how they narrowed in his mouth, and +smote every now and then with a homely tang against the base of his +nose. "Just like his father," she thought, "when some one's in trouble." +And she had a sudden twinge of nostalgia. + +Fitz lured Eve to a far corner and showed her a set of wonderful carved +chess-men that he had bought that morning; and photographs of his +friends at Eton, and of the school, and of some of the masters. He +talked very earnestly and elaborately about these dull matters, and +passed by the opportunities which her first embarrassed replies offered +for the repartee of youth. And he who was most impatient of restraint +and simple occupations talked and behaved like a dull, simple, kindly +old gentleman. His method may not have left Eve with a dazzling +impression of him; she could not know that he was not himself, but all +at once a deliberate artist seeking to soothe and to make easy. + +Eve did not enjoy that call; she enjoyed nothing in those days but +prayer and despair; but she got to the end of it without any more tears +and crashes. And she said to her mother afterward that young Williams +seemed a nice boy--but so dull. Well, they were quits. She had seemed +dull enough to Fitz. A sick cat may touch your heart, but does not +furnish you with lively companionship. Fitz was heartily glad when the +Burtons had gone. He had worked very hard to make things possible for +that absurd baby camel. + +"You may call her an absurd baby camel," said his mother, "but it's my +opinion that she is going to be a very great beauty." + +"_She!"_ exclaimed Fitz, thinking that the ugliness of Eve might have +unhinged his mother's beauty-loving mind. + +"Oh," said his mother, "she's at an age now--poor child! But don't you +remember how the bones of her face--" + +"I am trying to forget," said Fitz with a tremendous shudder for the +occasion. + + + + +IV + +Fitz did not take a degree at Oxford. He left in the middle of his last +term, leaving many friends behind. He stood well, and had been in no +especial difficulty of mischief, and why he left was a mystery. The +truth of the matter is that he had been planning for ten years to leave +Oxford in the very middle of his last term. For upon that date fell his +twenty-first birthday, when he was to be his own man. He spent a few +hours in his mother's house in London. And, of course, she tried to make +him go back and finish, and was very much upset, for her. But Fitz +was obdurate. + +"If it were Yale, or Princeton, or Harvard, or Berkeley, or Squedunk," +he said, "I would stick it out. But a degree from Oxford isn't worth six +weeks of home." + +"But aren't you going to wait till I can go with you?" + +"If you'll go with me to-night you shall have my state-room, and I'll +sleep on the coal. But if you can't go till to-morrow, mother mine, I +will not wait. I have cabled my father," said he, "to meet me at +quarantine." + +"Your poor, busy father," she said, "will hardly feel like running on +from Cleveland to meet a boy who is coming home without a degree." + +"My father," said Fitz, "will be at quarantine. He will come out in a +tug. And he will arrange to take me off and put me ashore before the +others. If the ship is anywhere near on schedule my father and I will be +in time to see a ball game at the Polo Grounds." + +Something in the young man's honest face and voice aroused an answering +enthusiasm in his mother's heart. + +"Oh, Fitz," she said, "if I could possibly manage it I would go with +you. Tell your father that I am sailing next week. I won't cable. +Perhaps he'll be surprised and pleased." + +"I _know_ he will," said Fitz, and he folded his mother in his arms and +rumpled her hair on one side and then on the other. + + * * * * * + +Those who beheld, and who, because of the wealth of the principal +personages, took notice of the meeting between Fitz and his father, say +that Fitz touched his father's cheek with his lips as naturally and +unaffectedly as if he had been three years old, that a handshake between +the two men accompanied this salute, and that Williams senior was heard +to remark that it had looked like rain early in the morning, but that +now it didn't, and that he had a couple of seats for the ball game. What +he really said was inside, neither audible nor visible upon his +smooth-shaven, care-wrinkled face. It was an outcry of the heart, so +joyous as to resemble grief. + +There was a young and pretty widow on that ship who had made much of +Fitz on the way out and had pretended that she understood him. She +thought that she had made an impression, and that, whatever happened, he +would not forget her. But when he rushed up, his face all joyous, to say +good-by, her heart sank. And she told her friends afterward that there +was a certain irresistible, orphan-like appeal about that young +Williams, and that she had felt like a mother toward him. But this was +not till very much later. At first she used to shut herself up in her +room and cry her eyes out. + +They lunched at an uptown hotel and afterward, smoking big cigars, they +drove to a hatter's and bought straw hats, being very critical of each +other's fit and choice. + +Then they hurried up to the Polo Grounds, and when it began to get +exciting in the fifth inning, Fitz felt his father pressing something +into his hand. Without taking his eyes from Wagsniff, who was at the +bat, Fitz put that something into his mouth and began to chew. The two +brothers--for that is the high relationship achieved sometimes in +America, and in America alone, between father and son--thrust their new +straw hats upon the backs of their round heads, humped themselves +forward, and rested with their elbows on their knees and watched--no, +that is your foreigner's attitude toward a contest--they _played_ +the game. + +I cannot leave them thus without telling the reader that they survived +the almost fatal ninth, when, with the score 3-2 against, two out and a +man on first, Wagsniff came once more to the bat and, swinging cunningly +at the very first ball pitched to him by the famous Mr. Blatherton, +lifted it over the centrefielder's head and trotted around the bases +and, grinning like a Hallowe'en pumpkin, came romping home. + +At dinner that night Williams senior said suddenly: + +"Fitz, what you do want to do?" + +A stranger would have thought that Fitz was being asked to choose +between a theatre and a roof-garden, but Fitz knew that an entirely +different question was involved in those casually spoken words. He was +being asked off-hand to state off-hand what he was going to do with his +young life. But he had his answer waiting. + +"I want to see the world," he said. + +Williams senior, as a rule, thought things out in his own mind and did +not press for explanations. But on the present occasion he asked: + +"As how?" + +Fitz smiled very youthfully and winningly. + +"I've seen some of it," he said, "right side up. Now I want to have a +look upside-down. If I go into something of yours--as myself--I don't +get a show. I'm marked. The other clerks would swipe to me, and the +heads would credit me with brains before I showed whether I had any or +not. I want you to get me a job in Wall Street--under any other name +than my own--except Percy"--they both laughed--"your first name and +mamma's maiden name would do--James Holden. And nobody here knows me by +sight, I've been abroad so much; and it seems to me I'd get an honest +point of view and find out if I was any good or not, and if I could get +myself liked for myself or not." + +"Well," said his father; "well, that's an idea, anyhow." + +"I've had valets and carriages and luxuries all my life," said Fitz. "I +think I like them. But I don't _know_--do I? I've never tried the other +thing. I'm sure I don't want to be an underpaid clerk always. But I am +sure I want to try it on for a while." + +"I was planning," said his father, "to take a car and run about the +country with you and show you all the different enterprises that I'm +interested in. I thought you'd make a choice, find something you liked, +and go into it for a starter. If you're any good you can go pretty far +with me pulling for you. You don't like that idea?" + +"Not for now," said Fitz. "I like mine better." + +"Do you want to live on what you earn?" + +"If I can stand it." + +"You'll be started with ten dollars a week, say. Can you do it?" + +"What did grandpa start on?" asked Fitz. + +"His board, two suits of clothes, and twenty-four dollars a year," said +William senior with a proud ring in his voice. + +"And you?" + +"I began at the bottom, too. That was the old-fashioned idea. Father +was rich then. But he wanted me to show that I was some good." + +"Did grandpa pull for you, or did you have to find yourself?" + +"Well," said the father diffidently, "I had a natural taste for +business. But," and he smiled at his son, "I shouldn't live on what you +earn, if I were you. You needn't spend much, but have a good time out of +hours. You'll find yourself working side by side with other sons of rich +men. And you can bet your bottom dollar _they_ don't live on what they +can earn. Unless you make a display of downright wealth you'll be judged +on your merits. That's what you're driving at, isn't it?" + +So they compromised on that point; and the next morning they went +downtown and called upon Mr. Merriman, the great banker. He and Williams +had been in many deals together, and on one historic occasion had +supported prices and loaned so much ready money on easy terms as to +avert a panic. + +"John," said Williams senior, "my son Fitz." + +"Well, sir," said Merriman, only his eyes smiling, "you don't look like +a foreigner." + +"I'm not," said Fitz stoutly. + +"In that case," said Merriman, "what can I do for you?" + +"I want to be called James Holden," said Fitz, "and to have a job in +your office." + +Merriman listened to the reasons with interest and amusement. Then he +turned to Williams senior. "May I drive him?" he asked grimly. + +"If you can," said Fitz's father. And he laughed. + +Finally, it was arranged that, in his own way, Fitz was to see the +world. + + + + +V + +Fitz's experiment in finding himself and getting himself liked for +himself alone was a great failure. He had not been in Mr. Merriman's +employ two hours before he found that he disliked long sums in addition, +and had made friends with Wilson Carrol, who worked next to him. Indeed, +Fitz made friends with everybody in the office inside of two weeks, and +was responsible for a great deal of whispering and hanging out of back +windows for a puff of smoke. Nobody but Mr. Merriman knew who he was, +where he came from, or what his prospects were. Everybody liked him--for +himself. Rich or poor, it must have been the same. His idea that +character, if he had it, would tell in the long run proved erroneous. It +told right away. + +Wilson Carrol and half a dozen other clerks in the office were the sons +of rich men, put to work because of the old-fashioned idea that +everybody ought to work, and at the same time pampered, according to the +modern idea, with comfortable allowances over and beyond their pay. +With one or other of these young men for companion, and presently for +friend, Fitz began to lead the agreeable summer life of New York's +well-to-do youth. He allowed himself enough money to keep his end up, +but did not allow himself any especial extravagances or luxuries. He +played his part well, appearing less well off than Carrol, and more so +than young Prout, with whom he got into much mischief in the office. +Whatever these young gentlemen had to spend they were always hard up. +Fitz did likewise. If you dined gloriously at Sherry's and had a box at +the play you made up for it the next night by a chop at Smith's and a +cooling ride in a ferry-boat, say to Staten Island and back. Saturday +you got off early and went to Long Island or Westchester for tennis and +a swim, and lived till Monday in a luxurious house belonging to a +fellow-clerk's father, or were put up at the nearest country club. + +Downtown that summer there was nothing exciting going on. The market +stood still upon very small transactions, and there was no real work for +any one but the book-keepers. The more Fitz saw of the science of +addition the less he thought of it, but he did what he had to do (no +more) and drew his pay every Saturday with pride. Once, there being a +convenient legal holiday to fatten the week-end, he went to Newport with +Carrol and got himself so much liked by all the Carrol family that he +received and accepted an invitation to spend his long holiday with them. +He and Carrol had arranged with the powers to take their two weeks off +at the same time--from the fifteenth to the end of August. And during +business hours they kept their heads pretty close together and did much +plotting and planning in whispers. + +But Mrs. Carrol herself was to have a finger in that vacation. The +presence in her house of two presentable young men was an excellent +excuse for paying off dinner debts and giving a lawn party and a ball. +Even at Newport there are never enough men to go round, and with two +whole ones for a basis much may be done. The very night of their arrival +they "ran into" a dinner-party, as Carrol expressed it. It was a large +dinner; and the young men, having got to skylarking over their dressing +(contrary to Mrs. Carrol's explicit orders) descended to a drawing-room +already full of people. Carrol knew them all, even the famous new +beauty; but Fitz--or James Holden, rather--had, except for the Carrols, +but a nodding acquaintance with one or two of the men. He felt shy, and +blushed very becomingly while trying to explain to Mrs. Carrol how he +and Wilson happened to be so unfortunate as to be late. + +"Well," she said, "I'm not going to punish you this time. You are to +take Miss Burton in." + +"Which is Miss Burton?" asked Fitz, on whose memory at the moment the +name made no impression. + +"Do you see seven or eight men in the corner," she said, "who look as if +they were surrounding a punch-bowl?" + +"Miss Burton is the punch-bowl?" he asked. + +"All those men want to take her in," said Mrs. Carrol, "and you're going +to make them all very jealous." + +Dinner was announced, and Mrs. Carrol, with Fitz in tow, swept down upon +the group of men. It parted reluctantly and disclosed, lolling happily +in a deep chair, the most beautiful girl in the world. She came to her +feet in the quickest, prettiest way imaginable, and spoke to Mrs. Carrol +in the young Ellen Terry voice, with its little ghost of a French +accent. Fitz did not hear what she said or what Mrs. Carrol answered. He +only knew that his heart was thumping against his ribs, and that a +moment later he was being introduced as Mr. Holden, and that Eve did not +know him from Adam. + +Presently she laid the tips of her fingers on his arm, and they were +going in to dinner. + +"I think Mrs. Carrol's a dear," said Fitz, "to give me you to take in +and to sit next to. I always wanted people to like me, but now all the +men hate me. I can feel it in the small of my back, and I like it. Do +you know how you feel in spring--the day the first crocuses come out? +That's the way it makes me feel." + +She turned her great, smiling eyes upon him and laughed. The laugh died +away. His young, merry face had a grim, resolved look. So his father +looked at critical times. + +"I thought you were joking--rather feebly," she said. + +"I don't know," said he, "that I shall ever joke again." + +"You make your mind up very quickly," she said. + +"The men of my family all do," he said. "But it isn't my mind that's +made up." + +Something of the girl's stately and exquisite poise forsook her. Her +eyes wore a hunted look for a moment. She even felt obliged to laugh to +cover her confusion. + +"It's my heart," said Fitz. "I saw you--and that is all there is to it." + +"Aren't you in something of a hurry?" she asked, her eyes twinkling. She +had felt for a moment like a soldier surprised without weapons. But now, +once more, she felt herself armed _cap a pie_. + +"I've got to be," said Fitz. "I'm a bank clerk on a two weeks' vacation, +of which the first day is gone." + +She was sorry that he was a bank clerk; it had a poor and meagre sound. +It was not for him that she had been trained. She had been made to slave +for herself, and was to make a "continental" marriage with the highest +bidder. Eve's heart had been pretty well schooled out of her, and yet, +before dinner came to an end, she found herself wishing that among the +high bidders might be one very young, like the man at her side, with +eyes as honest, and who, to express admiration, beat about no bushes. + +Later, when they said good-by, Fitz said: + +"It would be good for me to see you to-morrow." + +And she said: + +"Would it be good for _me_?" and laughed. + +"Yes," he said firmly, "it would." + +"Why?" she asked. + +"To-morrow at four," said Fitz, "I shall come for you and take you +around the Cliff Walk and tell you." + +She made no promise. But the next day, when Fitz called at the cottage +which Mrs. Burton, by scraping and saving these many years, had managed +to take for the season, Eve was at home--and she was alone. + + + + +VI + +Newport, as a whole, was busy preparing for the national lawn-tennis +championship. There was a prince to be pampered and entertained, and +every night, from the door of some great house or other, a strip of red +carpet protruded, covered by an awning, and the coming and going of +smart carriages on Bellevue Avenue seemed double that of the week +before. But the affair between James Holden--who was nobody knew who, +and came from nobody knew exactly where--and Newport's reigning beauty +held the real centre of the stage. + +Beautiful though Eve was, natural and unaffected though she seemed, +people had but to glance at Mrs. Burton's old, hard, humorless, at once +anxious and triumphant face to know that the girl, willing or not, was a +victim prepared for sacrifice. Confessedly poor, obviously extravagant +and luxury-loving, even the rich men who wanted to marry her knew that +Eve must consider purses more than hearts. And they held themselves +cynically off and allowed what was known as "Holden's pipe-dream" to run +its course. It amused those who wanted Eve, those who thought they did, +and all those who loved a spectacle. "He will go back to his desk +presently," said the cynics, "and that will be the end of that." The +hero of the pipe-dream thought this at times himself. Well, if it turned +out that way Eve was not worth having. He believed that she had a heart, +that if her heart were touched she would fling her interests to the +winds and obey its dictates. + +What Eve thought during the first few days of Holden's pipe-dream is not +clearly known. She must have been greatly taken with him, or she would +not have allowed him to interfere with her plans for personal +advancement and aggrandizement, to make a monopoly of her society, and +to run his head so violently into a stone wall. After the first few +days, when she realized that she liked to be with him better than with +any one she had ever known, she probably thought--or to that +effect--"I'll just pretend a little--and have it to remember." But she +found herself lying awake at night, wishing that he was rich; and later, +not even wishing, just lying awake and suffering. She had made up her +mind some time since to accept Darius O'Connell before the end of the +season. He had a prodigious fortune, good habits, and a kind Irish way +with him. And she still told herself that it must be O'Connell, and she +lay awake and thought about Fitz and suffered. + +Mrs. Burton alone hadn't a kind thought or word for him. Her face +hardened at the mere mention of his name, and sometimes, when she saw a +certain expression that came oftener and oftener into Eve's face, that +callous which served her for a heart turned harder than Nature had made +it, and she saw all her schemes and all her long labors demolished like +a house of cards. Even if Eve flung Fitz aside like an old glove, as +inevitably she must, still Mrs. Burton's schemes would wear a tinge of +failure. The girl had shown that the heart was not entirely educated +out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if things went no +further, here was partial failure. She had intended to make an +inevitably rising force of Eve, and here at the very outset were +lassitude and a glance aside at false gods. + +Fitz was stubbornly resolved to win Eve on his merits or not to win her +at all. He had but to tell her his real name, or his father's, to turn +the balance of the hesitation and doubt; but that, he told himself, +would never, never do. She must turn aside from her training, love him +for himself, and believe, if only for a few hours, that she had thrown +herself away upon poverty and mediocrity, and be happy in it; or else +she must pass him by, and sweep on up the broad, cold stairway of her +own and her mother's ambitions. + +But Fitz wanted her so much that he felt he must die if he lost her. And +sometimes he was tempted to tell her of his millions and take her for +better or worse. But he would never know then if she cared for him or +not; he would never know then if she had a real heart and was worth the +having. So he resisted, and his young face had, at times, a grim, +careworn look; and between hope and fear his spirits fell away and he +felt tired and old. People thought of him as an absurd boy in the most +desperate throes of puppy love, and certain ones felt grateful to Eve +Burton for showing them so pretty a bit of sport. Even those very +agreeable people, the Carrols, were disgusted with Fitz, as are all +good people when a guest of the house makes a solemn goose of himself. +But Fitz was not in the least ridiculous to himself, which was +important; and he was not ridiculous to Eve, which was more +important still. + +Then, one morning, the whole affair began to look serious even to a +scoffing and cynical world. Darius O'Connell was missed at the Casino +and in the Reading-room; the evening papers announced that he had sailed +for Europe. And Miss Burton, far from appearing anxious or unhappy about +this, had never looked so beautiful or so serene. Some said that +O'Connell had made up his mind that the game was not worth the candle; +others, that he had proposed and had been "sent packing." Among these +latter was Mrs. Burton herself, and it will never be known what words of +abuse she poured upon Eve. If Mrs. Burton deserved punishment she was +receiving all that she deserved. Sick-headaches, despair, a vain, empty +life with its last hopes melting away. Eve--her Eve--her beautiful +daughter had a heart! That was the sum of Mrs. Burton's punishment. For +a while she resisted her fate and fought against it, and then collapsed, +bitter, broken, and old. + +But what looked even more serious than O'Connell's removing himself was +the fact that during the match which was to decide the lawn-tennis +championship Eve and her bank clerk did not appear in the Casino +grounds. Here were met all the happy people, in society and all the +unhappy people--even Mrs. Burton's ashen face was noted among those +present--but the reigning belle and her young man were not in the seats +that they had occupied during the preceding days of the tournament; and +people pointed out those empty seats to each other, and smiled and +lifted their eyebrows; and young Tombs, who had been making furious love +to one of the Blackwell twins--for the third tournament in five +years--sighed and whispered to her: "Dolly, did you ever in your life +see two empty seats sitting so close to each other?" + +Meanwhile, Fitz and the beauty were strolling along the Cliff Walk in +the bright sunshine, with the cool Atlantic breeze in their faces, +between lawns and gardens on the one side and dancing blue waves upon +the other. Fitz looked pale and careworn. But Eve looked ecstatic. This +was because poor Fitz, on the one hand, was still in the misery of doubt +and uncertainty, and because Eve, on the other, had suddenly made up her +mind and knew almost exactly what was going to happen. + +The Cliff Walk belongs to the public, and here and there meanders +irritatingly over some very exclusive millionaire's front lawn. A few +such, unable to endure the sight of strangers, have caused this walk, +where it crosses their properties, to be sunk so that from the windows +of their houses neither the walk itself nor persons walking upon it +can be seen. + +Fitz and the beauty were approaching one of these "ha-ha's" into which +the path dipped steeply and from which it rose steeply upon the farther +side. On the left was a blank wall of granite blocks, on the right only +a few thousand miles of blind ocean. It may have been a distant view of +this particular "ha-ha" that had made up Eve's mind for her, for she had +a strong dramatic sense. Or it may have been that her heart alone had +made up her mind, and that the secluded depths of the "ha-ha" had +nothing to do with the matter. + +"Jim," she said as they began to descend into the place, "life's only a +moment out of eternity, isn't it?" + +"Only a moment, Eve," he said, "a little longer for some than for +others." + +"If it's only a moment," she said as they reached the bottom of the +decline, and could only be seen by the blind granite wall and the blind +ocean, "I think it ought to be complete." + +"Why, Eve!" he said, his voice breaking and choking. "Honestly?... My +Eve!... Mine!... Look at me.... Is it true?... Are you sure?... Why, +she's sure!... My darling's sure ... all sure." + + * * * * * + +Later he said: "And you don't care about money, and you've got the +biggest, sweetest heart in all the world. And it's mine, and +mine's yours." + +"I can't seem to see anything in any direction," she said, "beyond you." + + * * * * * + +Later they had to separate, only to meet again at a dinner. Before they +went in they had a word together in a corner. + +"I _told_ you," said Fitz, "that my father would understand, and you +said he wouldn't. But he did; his answer came while I was dressing. I +telegraphed: 'I have seen the world,' and the answer was: 'Put a fence +around it.'" + +She smiled with delight. + +"Eve," he said, "everybody knows that you've taken me. It's in our +faces, I suppose. And they are saying that you are a goose to throw +yourself away on a bank clerk." + +"Do you think I care?" she said. + +"I know you don't," he said, "but I can't help thanking you for holding +your head so high and looking so happy and so proud." + +"Wouldn't you be proud," she said, "to have been brought up to think +that you had no heart, and then to find that, in spite of everything, +you had one that could jump and thump, and love and long, and make +poverty look like paradise?" + +"I know what you mean, a little," he said. "Your mother tried to make +you into an Article; my mother tried to make an Englishman of me. And +instead, you turned into an angel, and I was never anything but a +spread eagle." + +"Do you know," she said, "I can't help feeling a little sorry for poor +mamma." + +"Then," said he, "put your left hand behind your back." She felt him +slide a heavy ring upon her engagement finger. "Show her that, and tell +her that it isn't glass." + +Eve couldn't keep from just one covert glance at her ring. The sight of +it almost took her breath away. + +Dinner was announced. + +"I am frightened," she said; "have I given myself to a djinn?" + +"My Eve doesn't know whom she's given herself to," he whispered. + +"I don't believe I do," she said. + +"You don't," said he. + +An immense pride in his father's wealth and his own suddenly surged in +Fitz. He could give her all those things that she had renounced for his +sake, and more, too. But he did not tell her at that time. + +The great ruby on the slim hand flashed its message about the festive +board. Some of the best-bred ladies in the land threatened to become +pop-eyed from looking at it. + +Mrs. Blackwell, mother of the twins, whispered to Montgomery Stairs: + +"That Holden boy seems to have more to him than I had fancied." + +But young Tombs whispered to Dolly Blackwell, to whom he had just become +engaged for the third (and last) time in five years: "She isn't thinking +about the ring.... Look at her.... She's listening to music." + + * * * * * + +Montgomery Stairs (who is not altogether reliable) claims to have seen +Mrs. Burton within five minutes of her learning who her son-in-law-to-be +really was. For, of course, this came out presently and made a profound +sensation. He claims to have seen--from a convenient eyrie--Mrs. Burton +rush out into the little garden behind her cottage; he claims that all +of a sudden she leaped into the air and turned a double somersault, and +that immediately after she ran up and down the paths on her hands; that +then she stood upon her head for nearly five minutes; and that finally +she flung herself down and rolled over and over in a bed of heliotrope. + +But then, as is well known, Montgomery Stairs, in the good American +phrase, was one of those who "also ran." + +Darius O'Connell sent a cable to Eve from Paris (from Maxim's, I am +afraid, late at night). He said: "Heartiest congratulations and best +wishes. You can fool some of the best people some of the time, but, +thank God, you can't fool all of the best people all of the time." Eve +and Fitz never knew just what he meant. + +They spent part of their honeymoon in Cleveland, and every afternoon Eve +sat between Fitz and his father, leaning forward, her elbows on her +knees, and was taught painstakingly, as the crowning gift of those two +simple hearts, to play the game. + +There must be one word more. There are people to this day who say that +Eve knew from the beginning who "James Holden" was, and that she played +her cards accordingly. In view of this I fling all caution to the wind, +and in spite of the cold fear that is upon me of being sued for libel, I +tell these ladies--_people_, I mean--that they lie in their teeth. + + + + +TARGETS + +"On the contrary," said Gardiner, "lightning very often strikes twice in +the same place, and often three times. The so-called all-wise Providence +is still in the experimental stage. My grandmother, for instance, +presented my grandfather with fifteen children: seven live sons and +eight dead daughters. That's when the lightning had fun with itself. And +when the epidemic of ophthalmia broke out in the Straits Settlements, +what class of people do you suppose developed the highest percentage of +total loss of sight in one or both eyes?--why the inmates of the big +asylum for the deaf and dumb in Singapore: twenty per cent of those poor +stricken souls went stone blind. Then what do you think the lightning +did? Set the blooming asylum on fire and burned it to the ground. And +then, I dare say, the elements retired to some region of waste, off in +space somewhere, and sat down and thundered with laughter. But it wasn't +through with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It +was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible +instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to +a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put +aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the _Nerissa_. She was +wrecked--" + +"Coast of Java--in '80, wasn't it?" said Pedder, who has read nothing +but dictionaries and books of black-and-white facts and statistics in +the course of a long life otherwise entirely devoted to misdirected +efforts to defeat Colonel Bogey at golf. + +"It was," said Gardiner, "and the lightning was very busy striking. It +drowned off every member of the crew who had any sense of decency; and +of the deaf and dumb passengers selected to be washed ashore a pair who +were also blind. Those saved came to land at a jungly stretch of coast, +dented by a slow-running creek. The crew called the place Quickstep +Inlet because of the panicky and inhuman haste in which they left it." + +"Why inhuman?" asked Ludlow. + +"Because," said Gardiner, "they only gave about one look at their two +comrades in misfortune who were deaf, and dumb, and blind, and decided +that it was impracticable to attempt to take them along. I suppose they +were right. I suppose it _would_ have been the devil's own job. The +really nasty part was that the crew made a secret of it, and when some +of them, having passed through the Scylla and Charybdis of fright and +fever, and foul water, and wild beasts, reached a settlement they didn't +say a word about the two unfortunates who had been deliberately +abandoned." + +"How was it found out then?" Pedder asked. + +"Years and years afterward by the ravings in liquor of one of the crew, +and by certain things that I'd like to tell you if you'd be interested." + +"Go on," said Ludlow. + +"The important thing," said Gardiner, "is that the pair were +deserted--not why they were deserted, or how it was found out that they +had been. And one thing--speaking of lightning and Providence--is very +important. If the pair hadn't been blind, if the asylum hadn't been +burned, if the _Nerissa_ hadn't been wrecked, and if the crew hadn't +deserted them--they would never in this world have had an opportunity to +lift to their lips the cup of human happiness and drink it off. + +"The man did not know that he had been deserted. He vaguely understood +that there had been a shipwreck and that he had been washed +ashore--alone, he thought. When he got hungry he began to crawl round +and round with his hands in front of his face feeling for something to +eat, trying and approving of one handful of leaves and spitting out +another. But thirst began to torment him, and then, all of a sudden, he +went souse into the creek that there emptied into the sea. That way of +life went on for several days. And all the while, the woman, just as she +had come ashore, was keeping life going similarly--crawling about, +always near the creek, crossing the beach at low tide to the mud flats +and rooting among the mollusks, and stuffing herself with any kind of +sea-growth that tasted good enough. The two were probably often within a +few feet of each other; and they might have lived out their lives that +way without either of them ever having the least idea that he or she was +not the only human being in that part of the world. But something--pure +accident or some subtle instinct--brought them together. The man was out +crawling with one hand before his face--so was the woman. Their hands +met, and clinched. They remained thus, and trembling, for a long time. +From that time until the day of their death, years and years later, they +never for so much as one moment lost contact with each other. + +"Daily they crawled or walked with infinite slowness, hand in hand, or +the arm of one about the waist of the other--neither knowing the look, +the age, the religion or even the color of the other. But I know, from +the only person fitted to judge, that they loved each other tremendously +and spotlessly--these two poor souls alone in that continuous, +soundless, sightless, expressionless night. I know because their baby, +when he grew up, and got away from that place, and learned white man's +talk--told me. + +"He left Quickstep Inlet when he was about fifteen years old, naked as +the day he was born; ignorant of everything--who he was or what he was, +or that the world contained anything similar to him. It was some +restless spirit of exploration that smoulders I suppose, in every human +heart, that compelled him to leave the few hundred acres of shore and +wood that were familiar to him. He carried with him upon his bold +journey a roll of bark, resembling birch-bark, upon which he had +scratched with a sharp shell the most meaningless-looking lines, curves, +spirals and gyrations that you can imagine. He will have that roll in +his possession now, I expect, for even when I knew him--when he was +twenty years old, and could talk English pretty nimbly, he could hardly +bear to be separated from it--or, if he let you take one of the sheets +in your hands, he would watch you as a dog watches the person that is +about to give him his dinner. But he ran very little risk of having it +stolen. Nobody wanted it. + +"He must have been a gentle savage, with all sorts of decent inherited +instincts, for when I knew him he had already taken kindly to +civilization. At first, of course, they had a bad time with him; they +couldn't talk to him, and when, quite naturally and nonchalantly he +would start in to do the most outrageous things, they had to teach him +better, literally by force. If Pedder weren't such an old stickler for +propriety, I could go more into detail. You needn't look offended, Ped, +you know you are very easily shocked, and that you make it unpleasant +for everybody. He was taken on by the English consul at Teerak, who was +a good fellow, and clothed, and taught to speak English, and, as a +beginning, to work in the garden. Indoor work seemed to have almost the +effect of nauseating him; and houses and closed doors threw him at first +into frenzies of fear, and always made him miserable. It was apparent in +his face, but more in his way of putting up his fists when in doubt, +that he wasn't Dutch nor German nor French. He was probably English, +they thought, but he might have been American, and so they had an +orthodox christening and named him Jonathan Bull. Of course, after he +got the trick of speech, they found out, by putting two and two +together, just about who and what he was; and that he was of English +parentage. But, of course, they had to let the name stand. + +"The first thing, he told me, that ever came to him in the way of a +thought was that he was different from his parents--that they couldn't +see, nor hear, nor make a noise as he could. He could remember sitting +comfortably in the mud at low tide and being convulsed with laughter at +his mother's efforts to find a fat mussel that was within a few inches +of her hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made +paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so +familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, hand in hand, +with considerable precision and alacrity. It was one of his earliest +mischievous instincts to place obstacles in those paths, and take a +humorous view of the consequent tumbles. + +"The only intercourse that he could have with his parents was, of +course, by sense of touch. And he told me that, whenever they could +catch him, they would kiss him and fondle him. But he didn't like to be +caressed, especially in the daytime. It was different at night when one +became nervous and afraid; then he used to let himself be caught; and he +said that he used to hold hands with his mother until he went to sleep +and that when he awoke it was to find that the clasp still held. It was +a long time before he realized that what to him were whimsical pranks, +were in the nature of tragedies to his parents. If he put a +stumbling-block in one of their paths, it upset the whole fabric of +their daily life, made them feel, I suppose, that they were losing such +faculties as they possessed: memory and the sense of touch--and they +would be obliged either to walk with infinite slowness, or actually to +crawl. And it was long before he realized that things which were +perfectly simple and easy for him, were frightfully difficult for them; +and he said that his first recollection of a tender and gentle feeling +was once when--heaven only knows how--his parents found a nest with eggs +in it--and brought these eggs to him. He realized then something of what +a prize these eggs must have seemed to them--for he had often scrambled +into trees and glutted himself with eggs, whereas, so far as he could +recollect, his parents had never had any at all. He began from that time +on to collect choice tidbits for _them_; and wondered why he had not +done so before. And they rewarded him with caresses and kisses; I +suppose his real reward was his own virtue. Anyway, though very +gradually at first, instinct taught him to be a good son to them. + +"The lessons that he learned of life were, first of all, from his +parents, who were always near at hand for study; second, from birds and +animals, there being a pool not far up the creek where even tigers +sometimes came to drink; from occasional monkeys; but mostly, of course, +by intuition and introspection. + +"He noticed that birds and animals all had the use of sight and hearing, +and were able to make sounds; and his own forest-trained senses soon +perceived different meanings, and even shades of meaning in certain of +these sounds. The larger animals were not, of course, constantly under +observation, and from tigers, for instance, he learned only the main +principles of tiger-talk--a kind of singsong snuffling purr that means +'get out of the way'; the cringing whine that means the tiger is very +sorry for himself; and two or three of the full-throated roars: the one +expressing rage, the one expressing fear, and the one expressing pained +astonishment. But into the vocabularies of birds he penetrated +very deeply. + +"One day, when I had got to know Jonathan rather well, he surprised me +by saying, 'the minute I got the idea, I talked all day long, but it was +years before I thought of writing down what I said, instead of plain +trying to remember. At first, when I'd say something that I wanted to +remember, I'd have to coax my head into remembering the place where I +had said it, near which tree, or which stone on the beach, what had +happened to make me think of saying it, and then, more often than not, I +could repeat it word for word,' Then he showed me the sheets of bark +with the scratches and scrawls and gyrations on them. 'It isn't spelled +writing,' he explained, 'or what they call picture writing. I don't +believe it has enough general principles for me to be able to explain it +as a system, though it has a sort of system to it. If it's like +anything, I think it must be like the way they write down music. It +would be, wouldn't it? Because beasts don't talk with words, they talk +with sounds, and I copycatted my language from beasts and birds,' + +"I asked him what the writing on the bark was all about. He said, and he +blushed, as every young author, and most old ones, should, that the +writing was just more or less nothing--all about different kinds of +things. So I pointed specifically to the top of one sheet, and said, +'begin there and tell me what that's about.' 'If I began there,' he +said, 'I'd have to go backward; that's the finish of--oh!' he literally +threw himself on my mercy with the most ingenuous blushing face. 'Oh,' +he said, 'I suppose _you'd_ call them poems.' I, of course, had my +doubts of that; but I kept countenance, and said, 'well, what's that one +about?' He looked puzzled for a moment, and then he smiled. 'Why,' he +said, 'I suppose it's about me, about the way I felt one day, I suppose; +but if I tried to say it into English it would just sound damn foolish; +but, perhaps, you'd sooner hear it in my own language. It's better, +because, after all, you can't turn sounds into words, can you?' 'Go +ahead,' I said. + +"His hands, holding the sheet of bark shook a little with embarrassment, +and he was very red in the face; and before he could begin--I suppose +you would call it _reading_--he had to wet his lips two or three times. +I expected, of course, to hear the usual grunts and minor guttural +sounds of the usual very primitive dialect. But Jonathan's own +particular patent language was not that sort of thing at all. He began +with the faintest, and most distinct rustling of leaves--I can't imagine +how he made the sound at all. It seemed to come from somewhere between +the back of his throat and his lips, and to have nothing to do with his +tongue or vocal cords. It lasted for, perhaps, half a minute; dying out, +fainter and fainter and finer and finer into complete silence. Then, +from the distant point where the rustling had last been heard, there +came the softest little throaty whistle, three times repeated; then, for +two good minutes without seeming to draw breath, the young man burst +into peal after peal of the sweetest, clearest, highest, swiftest +whistling that you can possibly imagine. I don't know how he did it--he +didn't even purse or move his lips--they were barely parted, in a kind +of plaintive, sad little smile--and the notes came out; that was all. Of +course I can't tell you what the thing meant word for word or sound for +sound; but, in general, it said youth, youth and spring: and I tell you +it had those compositions of Mendelssohn, and Grieg, and Sinding lashed +to the mast. Well, the leaves rustled again, a little lower in the +scale, I think, but wouldn't swear to it, and the first little soft +throaty whistle was twice repeated--and there was a little, tiny whisper +of a human moan. And that was the end of that poem. + +"I made him read to me from his bark sheets until he was tired out. And +the next day I was at him again early, and the next. Suppose you were +living in a jumping-off place, bored to death, and blowing yourself +every fifth or sixth day to a brand new crop of prickly heat; and wanted +to go away, and couldn't because you had to sit around until a fat +Dutchman made up his mind about a concession; and suppose the only book +in the place was on the uses of and manufacture and by-products of the +royal palm, written in a beastly language called Tamil, which you only +knew enough of to ask for tea and toast at four o'clock in the morning, +and were usually understood to mean soda biscuits and a dish of buffalo +milk. And suppose that then you came across the complete works of +Shakespeare--and that you had never read them--or the Odyssey and that +you had never read that--or, better, suppose that there was a Steinway +piano in your sitting-room, and that one day the boy who worked the +punka for you dropped the rope and sat down at the piano and played +Beethoven from beginning to end--as Rubenstein would have played +him--and suppose you had never heard a note of Beethoven before. It was +like that--listening to the works of Jonathan Bull." + +Gardiner paused, as if considering very carefully what he should say. + +"No!" he said presently, "I'm _not_ overdoing it. My judgment of +Jonathan Bull is no longer a sudden enthusiasm, as the natural effort of +a man to make his own discoveries seem more important to his friends +than they deserve. He _is_ one of the giants. Think of it: he had made, +on an impulse of out and out creation, the most expressive of all +languages, so far as mere sound goes; and as if that were not enough, he +had gone ahead and composed in that language incomparable lyrics. The +meanings were in the sounds. You couldn't mistake them. Have you ever +heard a tiger roar--full steam ahead? There was one piece that began +suddenly with a kind of terrible, obsessing, strong purring that shook +the walls of the room and that went into a series of the most terrible +tiger roars and ended with the nightmare screams of a child. I have +never been so frightened in my life. And there was a snake song, a soft, +wavy, piano, _pianissimo_ effect, all malignant stealth and horror, and +running through it were the guileless and insistently hungry twitterings +of baby birds in the nest. But there were comical pieces, too, in which +ludicrous adventures befell unsophisticated monkeys; and there was a +whole series of spring-fever songs--some of them just rotten and +nervous, and some of them sad and yearning--and some of them--I don't +know just how to put it--well, some of them you might say were not +exactly fit to print. One thing he read me--it was very +short--consisted of hoarse, inarticulate, broken groans--I couldn't make +out what it meant at all. And I was very curious to know, because it +seemed to move Jonathan himself much more than anything else of his. + +"'You know,' he explained to me, 'my father and mother couldn't make any +sound at all--oh, yes--they could clap their hands together and make a +sound that way--but I mean with their voices--they hadn't any +voices--sometimes their lips smacked and made a noise over eating, or +kissing; but they couldn't make sounds in their throats. Well, when my +mother died--just think, she couldn't make my father understand that she +was sick; and I couldn't. I tried every way. He didn't know that she was +leaving him--I'm glad you can't see that poor blind face of her's, +turned to father's blind face and trying to tell him good-by--I see it, +almost all the time,' he said. 'You know they were always touching--I +can't remember a single second in all those years when they weren't at +least holding hands. She went in the night. My father was asleep with +one arm over and about her. As she got colder and colder it waked him. +And he understood. Then he began to make those dumb, helpless groans, +like that piece I just read you--the nearest he got to speaking. He sat +on the ground and held her in his arms all the rest of the night, and +all the next day, and the next night--I couldn't make him let go, and +every little while he went into those dreadful, dumb groanings. You +don't get brought up in the jungle without knowing death when you see +it, and what dead things do. The second night, about midnight, the news +of my mother's death began to get about; and horrible, hunchbacked +beasts that I had never seen or dreamed of before began to slink about +among the trees, and peer out, and snuffle, and complain--and suddenly +laugh just like men. And I was so frightened of them, and of the night +anyway, that every now and then I'd go into a regular screaming fit, and +that would drive them away and keep them quiet for a time, but pretty +soon I'd hear their cautious steps, way off, drawing closer and closer, +and then the things would begin to snuffle, and complain, and laugh +again--they had disgusting, black dogfaces, and one came very close, and +I could see the water running out of its mouth. But when dawn began to +break they drew farther and farther away, until you could only hear +them--now and then. + +"'My father looked very white and ill, as was natural enough; but his +face now had a peaceful, contented expression. I didn't understand at +first that he, in his turn, was dying. But it wasn't of a broken heart, +as you might suppose, or anything like that; he had gnawed his left +wrist until he got the arteries open; and he was bleeding to death. + +"'Once a big dead fish was washed up on the beach--it was when I was +quite a little boy--but I remembered how, after a day or two, even my +parents had no trouble in finding it, and I remembered how my father had +scooped a hole in the sand and buried it. So I scooped a great deep hole +in the sand, very deep until water began to trickle into it. And I had +sense enough, when it came to filling up the hole, to put in lots of big +stones, the biggest I could roll in. And I'm strong. I stayed on--for +about six months, getting lonelier and lonelier--and then spring came. I +think that was really what started me. I still go almost crazy every +spring--anyway I got to this place, and found people.'" + + * * * * * + +"What's he doing now?" asked Pedder. + +"He's trying," said Gardiner, "to do it in English. Of course it seems +impossible that he should succeed. But then it was absolutely impossible +for Shakespeare to do what he did with the English language, wasn't it? +And yet he did it." + +"But--" said Pedder. + +"Ped," said Gardiner, "we don't control the lightnings; and you never +can tell where they are going to strike next--or when." + +Ludlow flushed a little, and did not look at his friends. + +"Wouldn't it be wonderful," he said, "to be loved and to be in love the +way his father and mother were. Maybe they were the ones that really +heard and saw, and--sang. We admire the lily, but we owe her to the +loves of the blind rain for the deaf and the dumb earth...." + +Nobody spoke for some moments. It had been the only allusion that Ludlow +had made in years and years to that which had left him a lonely and a +cynical man. + +"I wonder," Pedder mused, "how it ever occurred to a blind, deaf mute +that severing his wrist with his teeth would induce death?" + +Gardiner shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is always interesting," he said, "to know just which part of a +story--if any--is thought worthy of consideration by a given +individual." + + + + +THE BOOT + +Mary Rex was more particularly _my_ nurse, for my sister Ellen, a +thoughtful, dependable child of eight, was her own mistress in +most matters. + +This was in the days when we got our servants from neighborhood +families; before the Swedish and Irish invasion had made servants of us +in turn. Mary was the youngest of an ancestored county family. Her +great-grandfather had fought in the Revolution, as you might know by the +great flint-lock musket over the Rexes' fireplace. A brother of his had +formed part of a British square at Waterloo; and if Mary's own father +had not lost his right hand at Gettysburg he would never have let his +children go out to service. Poor soul, he bore the whole of his +afflictions, those to his body and those to his pride, with a dignity +not often seen in these degenerate days. He was by trade a blacksmith, +and it was for that reason, I suppose, that Providence, who loves a +little joke, elected for amputation his right hand rather than one or +both of his feet. Since, even in these degenerate days, many a footless +blacksmith makes an honest living. + +Mary was a smart, comely, upstanding young woman. Even my father, a +dismal sceptic anent human frailty, said that he would freely trust her +around the farthest corner in Christendom. And I gathered from the talk +of my elders and betters that Mary was very pretty. People said it was a +real joy to see a creature so young, so smiling, so pink and white, so +graciously happy--in those degenerate days. I myself can see now that +she must have been very pretty indeed. Her eyes, for instance, so blue +in the blue, so white in the white, can't have changed at all--unless, +perhaps, the shadows deep within the blue are deeper than they were when +she was a girl. But even to-day you would have to travel far to see +another middle-aged woman so smooth of forehead, so cleanly-cut of +feature, so generally comely. + +But if there was one thing in the world that I had formed no conclusions +upon at the age of six it was female loveliness. To cuddle against a +gentle mother when bogies were about had nothing whatsoever to do with +that gentle mother's personal appearance. To strike valiantly at Mary's +face when the hot water and the scrubbing-brush were going had nothing +to do with the prettiness thereof. Nor did I consider my sister the less +presentable by a black eye given and taken in the game of Little John +and Robin Hood upon a log in the Baychester woods. And indeed I have +been told, and believe it to be a fact, that the beauty before whom +swelled my very earliest tides of affection was a pug-nosed, +snaggle-toothed, freckled-faced tomboy, who if she had been but a jot +uglier might have been exhibited to advantage in a dime museum. Peace, +old agitations, peace! + +Everybody knew the Rexes, as in any part of the world, for many years +stable, everybody knows everybody else. In Westchester, before great +strips of woodland and water became Pelham Bay Park, before the Swedes +came, and the Irish, and the Italians, and the Germans--in other words, +before land boomed--there had always been an amiable and +uninjunctionable stability. Families had lived, for well or ill, in the +same houses for years and years. So long had the portraits hung in the +rich men's houses that if you moved them it was to disclose a +brightly-fresh rectangle upon the wall behind. The box in the poor man's +yard had been tended by the poor man's great-grand female relatives. +Ours was a vicinage of memory and proper pride. We would no more have +thought of inquiring into the morals of this public house or that than +of expunging the sun from the heavens. They had always been there. + +There was a man who left his wife and little children to fight against +King George. He could think of but one thing to protect them against +vagrant soldiers of either side, and that was to carve upon certain +boards (which he nailed to the trees here and there along the boundaries +of his farm): + + BEWARR OF THE BOOLE DOGGES + +When I was a child one of these signs still remained--at the left, just +beyond Pelham Bridge. And people used to laugh and point at the great +trees and say that because of the sign the British had never dared to +trespass and cut down the timber. Now the man had never owned a Boole +Dogge, nor had any of his descendants. I doubt if there was ever one on +the premises, unless latterly, perhaps, there has been a French bulldog +or so let out of a passing automobile to enjoy a few moments of +unconventional liberty. But the bluff had always held good. As my mother +used to say: "I know--but then there _may_ be a bulldog now." And that +farm was always out of bounds. I relate this for two reasons--to show +how stable and conservative a neighborhood was ours, and because on that +very farm, and chosen for the very reason which I have related, stood +the hollow oak which is to play its majestic part in this modest +narrative. + +The apple orchards of the Boole Dogge Farm ran southerly to a hickory +wood, the hickory wood to an oak wood, the oak wood to thick scrub of +all sorts, the scrub to the sedge, and the sedge to the salt mud at low +tide, and at high to the bassy waters themselves of inmost Pelham Bay. +On the right was the long, black trestle of the Harlem River Branch +Railroad, on the left the long-curved ironwork of Pelham Bridge. And the +farm, promontoried with its woods and thick cover between these +boundaries and more woods to the north, was an overgrown, run-down, +desolate, lonely, deserted old place. Had it not been for the old sign +that said "Bewarr," it must have been a great playground for +children--for their picnics, and their hide-and-seeks, and their games +at Indians. But the ferocious animals imagined by the old Revolutionary +were as efficacious against trespassers as a cordon of police. And I +remember to this day, I can feel still, the very-thrill of that wild +surmise with which I followed Mary and my sister over the stone wall and +into those forbidden and forbidding acres for the first time. But that +comes later. + +It was my sister who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I +had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to +accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with +her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her +face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of +being made more sedate by her responsible and settling prospects she +shed the half of her years, which were not many, and became the most +delightful romp, a furious runner of races, swiftest of pursuers at tag, +most subtle and sudden of hiders and poppers out, and full to the arch, +scarlet brim of loud, clear laughter. + +It was late spring now, lilacs in all the dooryards, all the houses +being cleaned inside out, and they were to be married in the fall. They +had picked the little house on the outskirts of Skinnertown not far from +the Tory oak, in which they were to live. And often we made it the end +of an excursion, and played at games devised by Mary to improve the +appearance of the little yard. We gathered up in emulation old, broken +china and bottles, and made them into a heap at the back; we cleared the +yard of brush and dead wood, and pulled up weeds by the hundred-weight, +and set out a wild rose or two and more valuable, if less lovely, plants +that people gave Mary out of real gardens. + +Will Braddish, a painter by trade, met us one day with brushes and a +great bucket of white paint, and, while he and Mary sat upon the +doorstep talking in low tones or directing in high, Ellen and I made +shift to paint the little picket-fence until it was white as new snow. +At odd times Braddish himself painted the little house (it was all of +old-fashioned, long shingles) inside and out, and a friend of his got up +on the roof with mortar and a trowel, and pointed-up the brick chimney; +and my father and Mr. Sturtevant contributed a load of beautiful, sleek, +rich pasture sod and the labor to lay it; so that by midsummer the +little domain was the spickest, spannest little dream of a home in the +whole county. The young couple bought furniture, and received gifts of +furniture, prints, an A1 range, a tiny, shiny, desirable thing; and the +whole world and all things in it smiled them in the face. Braddish, as +you will have guessed, was a prosperous young man. He was popular, too, +and of good habits. People said only against him that he was impulsive +and had sudden fits of the devil's own temper, but that he recovered +from these in a twinkling and before anything came of them. And even the +merest child could see that he thought the world of Mary. I have seen +him show her little attentions such as my sister retailed me of +personages in fairy stories and chivalric histories. Once when there was +a puddle to cross he made a causeway of his coat, like another Raleigh, +and Mary crossed upon it, like one in a trance of tender happiness, +oblivious of the fact that she might easily have gone around and saved +the coat. His skin and his eyes were almost as clear as Mary's own, and +he had a bold, dashing, independent way with him. + +But it wasn't often that Braddish could get free of his manifold +occupations: his painting contracts and his political engagements. He +was by way of growing very influential in local politics, and people +predicted an unstintedly successful life for him. He was considered +unusually clever and able. His manners were superior to his station, and +he had done a deal of heterogeneous reading. But, of course, whenever it +was possible he was with Mary and helped her out with looking after +Ellen and me. My mother, who was very timid about tramps, looked upon +these occasions as in the nature of real blessings. There was nowhere in +the countryside that we children might not safely venture with Will +Braddish strolling behind. He loved children--he really did, a rare, +rare thing--and he was big, and courageous, and strong, and quick. He +was very tactful, too, on these excursions and talked a good part of the +time for the three of us, instead of for Mary alone. Nice, honest talk +it was, too, with just enough robbers, and highwaymen, and lions, and +Indians to give it spice. But all the adventures through which he passed +us were open and honest. How the noble heroes _did_ get on in life, and +how the wicked villains did catch it! + +I remember once we were returning home past the Boole Dogge Farm, and +Braddish, wiping his brow, for it was cruelly hot, seated himself as +bold as could be on the boundary wall. The conversation had been upon +robbers, and how they always, always got caught. + +"It doesn't matter," Braddish said, "where they hide. Take this old +farm. It's the best hiding-place in this end of the county--woods, and +marshes, and old wells, and bushes, and hollows--" + +We asked him in much awe if he had ever actually set foot on the place. + +"Yes, indeed," he said; "when I was a boy I knew every inch of it; I was +always hunting and trapping, and looking for arrowheads. And that was +the best country. Once I spent a night in the woods yonder. The bridge +was open to let a tugboat through and got stuck so they couldn't shut +it, and there was no way back to Westchester except over the railroad +trestle, and my father had said that I could go anywhere I pleased +except on that trestle. And so here I was caught, and it came on to +blither and blow, and I found an oak tree, all hollow like a little +house, and I crept in and fell asleep and never woke till daylight. My +father said next time I could come home by the trestle, or he'd know the +reason why." + +"But," said I, "weren't you afraid the bulldogs would get you?" + +"Now, if they'd said bull-terriers," he said, "I might have had my +doubts, but a bulldog's no more dangerous than a toadfish. He's like my +old grandma. What teeth he has don't meet. And besides," he said, "there +weren't any bulldogs on that farm. And I don't believe there ever were. +Now, I'm not sure, sonny," he said, "but you climb up here--" + +I climbed upon the wall, and he held me so that I should not fall. + +"Do you see," said he, "way down yonder over the tops of the trees a +dead limb sticking up?" + +I saw it finally. + +"Well," he said, "I'd stake something that that's a part of the old +hollow oak. Shall we go and see?" + +But Mary told him that the farm was out of bounds. And he thought a +moment, and then swung his legs over the wall. + +"I won't be two minutes," he said. "I'd like to see if I'm right--it's +fifteen years ago--" And he strode off across the forbidden farm to the +woods. When he came back he said that he had been right, and that +nothing had changed much. He tossed me a flint arrowhead that he had +picked up--he was always finding things, and we went on again. + +When we got to the middle of Pelham Bridge we all stopped and leaned +against the railing and looked down into the swift, swirling current. +Braddish tore an old envelop into little pieces and dropped them +overboard by pairs, so that we might see which would beat the other to a +certain point. + +But the shadows began to grow long now and presently Braddish had to +leave us to attend a meeting in Westchester, and I remember how he +turned and waved, just before the Boulevard dips to the causeway, and +how Mary recollected something that she had meant to say and ran after +him a little way calling, and he did not hear. And she came back +laughing, and red in the face, and breathing quick. + +Two days later my father, who had started for the early train, came +driving back to the house as if he had missed it. But he said, no, and +his face was very grave--he had heard a piece of news that greatly +concerned Mary, and he had come back to tell her. He went into the study +with my mother, and presently they sent for Mary and she went in +to them. + +A few minutes later, through the closed door, Ellen and I heard a +sudden, wailing cry. + +Poor Braddish, it seems, in one of his ungovernable tempers had shot a +man to death, and fled away no one knew whither. + + + + +II + +The man killed was named Hagan. He was a red-faced, hard-drinking brute, +not without sharp wits and a following--or better, a heeling. There had +been bad blood between him and Braddish for some time over political +differences of opinion and advancement. But into these Hagan had carried +a circumstantial, if degenerate, imagination that had grown into and +worried Braddish's peace of mind like a cancer. Details of the actual +killing were kept from us children. But I gathered, since the only +witnesses of the shooting were heelers of Hagan's, that it could in no +wise be construed into an out-and-out act of self-defence, and so far as +the law lay things looked bad for Braddish. + +That he had not walked into the sheriff's office to give himself up made +it look as if he himself felt the unjustifiability of his act, and it +was predicted that when he was finally captured it would be to serve a +life sentence at the very least. The friends of the late Hagan would +hear of nothing less than hanging. It was a great pity (this was my +father's attitude): Hagan was a bad lot and a good riddance; Braddish +was an excellent young man, except for a bit of a temper, and here the +law proposed to revenge the bad man upon the other forever and ever. And +it was right and proper for the law so to do, more's the pity. But it +was not Braddish that would be hit hardest, said my father, and here +came in the inscrutable hand of Providence--it was Mary. + +After the first outburst of feeling she had accepted her fate with a +stanch reserve and went on with her duties much as usual. One ear was +always close to the ground, you might say, to hear the first rumor of +Braddish, either his capture or his whereabouts, that she might fly to +him and comfort him, but the rest of her faculties remained in devoted +attendance on my sister and me. Only there showed in them now and then a +kind of tigerish passionateness, as when I fell off the sea-wall among +the boulders and howled so dismally. She leaped down after and caught me +to her in the wildest distress, and even when I stopped howling could +not seem to put me down. Indeed, she held me so tight that if any of my +bones had been cracked by the tumble she must have finished by breaking +them. The pathos of her efforts to romp with us as in happier days was +lost upon me, I am happy to say. Nor did I, recalling to her what +Braddish had said of robbers being inevitably caught, realize that I was +stabbing her most cruelly. For she was, or tried to be, firm in the +belief that Braddish would succeed where all others had failed. She had +asked my father what would happen if Braddish got clean out of the +United States, and he, hoping, I suppose, to be of indirect use to the +young couple for whom he was heartily sorry, made her out a list of +countries, so far as he knew them, wherein there was no extradition. My +father hoped, I fondly believe, that she would get the list to Braddish +for his guidance, conjecturing rightly that if Braddish made his +whereabouts known to anybody it would be to Mary. But as to that, ten +days passed before Mary knew a jot more of it than another. And I must +believe that it came to her then entirely by inspiration. + +We were passing the Boole Dogge Farm, my sister and I, intent upon +seeing which of us could take the most hops without putting the held-up +foot to the ground, when suddenly Mary, who had been strolling along +laughing at us, stopped short in her tracks and turned, and stood +looking over the green treetops to where the gaunt, dead limb of the +hollow oak thrust sharply up from among them. But we had hopped on for +quite a piece before we noticed that she no longer went alongside. So we +stopped that game and ran back to her. What was it? Had she seen a +rabbit? She laughed and looked very wistful. She was just thinking, +children, that she would like to see the hollow tree where Will had +passed the night. She was not excited--I can swear to that. She guessed +nothing as yet. Her desire was really to the tree--as she might have +coveted one of Will's baby shoes, or anything that had been his. She had +already, poor girl, begun to draw, here and there, upon the past for +sustenance. + +First, she charged Ellen and me to wait for her in the road. But we +rebelled. We swore (most falsely) that we were afeard. Since the teeth +of bulldogs no longer met, we desired passionately to explore the +forbidden farm, and had, indeed, extracted a free commission from my +father so to do, but my mother had procrastinated and put us off. We +laid these facts before Mary, and she said, very well, if our father had +said we might go on the farm, go we might. He would, could and must make +it right with our mother. And so, Mary leading, we climbed the wall. + +Bulldogs' teeth or no bulldogs' teeth, my ancient fear of the place +descended upon me, and had a rabbit leaped or a cat scuttled among the +bushes I must have been palsied. The going across to the woods was waist +high with weeds and brambles, damp and rank under foot. Whole squadrons +of mosquitoes arose and hung about us in clouds, with a humming sound as +of sawmills far away. But this was long before you took your malaria of +mosquitoes, and we minded them no more than little children mind them +to-day. Indeed, I can keep peacefully still even now to watch a mosquito +batten and fatten upon my hand, to see his ravenous, pale abdomen swell +to a vast smug redness--that physiological, or psychological, moment for +which you wait ere you burst him. + +The forbidden farm had, of course, its thousand novelties. I saw prickly +pears in blossom upon a ledge of rock; a great lunar-moth resting +drowsily, almost drunkenly, in the parasol shade of a wild-carrot +blossom; here was the half of a wagon wheel, the wood rotted away, and +there in the tangle an ancient cistern mouth of brick, the cistern +filled to the brim with alluring rubbish. My sister sprang with a +gurgle of delight to catch a garter snake, which eluded her; and a last +year's brier, tough and humorously inclined, seized upon Mary by the +skirts and legs, so that it was a matter of five minutes and piercing +screams of merriment to cast her loose again. But soon we drew out of +the hot sunshine into the old orchard with its paltry display of +deformed, green, runt apples, and its magnificent columns and canopies +of poison ivy--that most beautiful and least amiable of our indigenous +plants; and then we got among scale-bark hickories, and there was one +that had been fluted from top to bottom by a stroke of lightning; and +here the little red squirrels were most unusually abundant and +indignant; and there was a catbird that miauled exactly like a cat; and +there was a spring among the roots of one great tree, and a broken +teacup half buried in the sand at the bottom. + +We left the hickories and entered among the oaks, and here was the +greatest to-do imaginable to find the one that was hollow. Ellen went to +the left, I to the right, and Mary down the middle. Whenever I came to +an unusually big tree I tiptoed around the trunk, goggle-eyed, expecting +the vasty hollow to open before me. And I am sure that Ellen, whom I had +presently lost sight of, behaved in the same way. Mary also had +disappeared, and feeling lonely all of a sudden I called to her. She +answered a moment later in a strange voice. I thought that she must have +fallen and hurt herself; but when I found her she was cheerful and +smiling. She was standing with her back to a snug hollow in the vast +stem of the very oak we had been looking for. + +"This is it," she said, and turned and pointed to the hollow. "Where's +Ellen?" + +"Here, Ellen," I called, "here--_we've_ found it!" + +Then Ellen came scampering through the wood; and first I climbed into +the hollow and curled up to see what sort of a night I might have of it, +and then I climbed out and Ellen climbed in--and then both in at once, +and we kept house for a while and gave a couple of dinners and tea +parties. And then quarreled about the probable size of Friar Tuck, and +Ellen drew the line at further imaginings and left me alone in +the hollow. + +This extended all the way up the main trunk and all but out through the +top. Here and there it pierced through the outer bark, so that slants of +pale light served to carry the eye up and up until it became lost in +inky blackness. Now and then dust and little showers of dry rot +descended softly upon the upturned face; and if you put your ear close +to the wood you could hear, as through the receiver of a telephone, +things that were going on among the upper branches; as when the breeze +puffed up and they sighed and creaked together. I could hear a squirrel +scampering and a woodpecker at work--or so I guessed, though it sounded +more like a watch ticking. I made several essays to climb up the hollow, +but the knotholes and crevices, and odds and ends of support, were too +far removed from each other for the length of my limbs, and, +furthermore, my efforts seemed to shake the whole tree and bring down +whole smarting showers of dust and dry rot and even good-sized +fragments. I got up a few feet, lost my hold, and fell into the soft, +punky nest at the bottom. + +"Can't you climb up?" said Ellen, who had recovered her temper by now. +"Because somebody has climbed up and stuck an ol' shoe out of a +knothole way up." + +I climbed out of the hollow and followed her point. Sure enough--thirty +feet or so from the ground the toe of a much-used leather boot stuck out +through a knothole. + +Mary refused to take an interest in the boot. It was high time we went +home. She herself had a headache. Our mother would be angry with her for +taking us on the forbidden farm. She was sorry she had done so. No, she +wasn't angry. We were good children; she loved us. Wouldn't we come? + +"I'll tell you," said she, and her face, which looked sick and pale, +colored, "if you'll come now, and hurry, we'll just have time to stop on +the bridge and have some races." + +And sure enough, when we got to the bridge Mary produced a stained sheet +of paper, and tore it quickly into little bits of pieces (we were +pressed for time) and launched pair after pair of sea-going racers upon +the swirling tide. + +When the last pair were gone upon their merry career she drew a long +breath, and seemed as one relieved of a weight. + +"Perhaps," she said, "you needn't tell your mother where you've +been--unless she asks you. Do you think that would be wrong?" + +I had never known Mary to suggest deceit of any kind. + +"If you think it would get you into trouble," said my sister, aged +eight, very stiffly, "why, of course, we won't say anything." + +Mary was troubled. Finally she drew a deep breath and flung out her +hands. + +"Of course, it would be wrong not to tell," she said. "You _must_ tell +her." + +But by good fortune we met my father first and told him. + +"And papa," said Ellen, she had been swung to his shoulder and there +rode like a princess upon a genii, "what do you think, way up the trunk +there was an old shoe sticking out of a knothole, and we all thought +that somebody must have climbed up inside and put it there. But brother +couldn't climb up because he's too little, and Mary wouldn't try, and we +thought maybe Sunday you'd go with us and see if you could climb up." + +I don't know why my father happened to take the line that he did; he may +have seen something in Mary's face that we children would not be likely +to see. He laughed first, and told us a story. + +It was about some children that he had once known, who had seen a boot +sticking out of a tree, just as we had done, and how a frightful old +witch had come along, and told them that if they went away for a year +and a day and didn't say a word about the boot to any one, and then went +back, they would by that time have grown sufficiently to climb up and +get the boot, and that they would find it full of gold pieces. But if, +during the year and the day, they so much as mentioned the boot to any +one but their father, they would find it full of the most dreadful black +and yellow spiders which would chase them all the way to Jericho, and +bite their fat calves every few steps. + +"This," said he, "may be that kind of a boot. Now promise not to talk +about it for a year and a day--not even to me--and at the end of that +time, why we'll all go and see what's in it. No," he said, "you mustn't +go to look at it every now and then--that would spoil the charm. Let me +see. This is the twenty-eighth--a year and a day--hum." And he made his +calculations. Then he said: "By the way, Mary, don't you and the +children ever get hungry between meals? If you were to take bread and +meat, and make up sandwiches to take on your excursions, they'd never be +missed. I'd see to it," he said, "that they weren't missed. Growing +children, you know." And he strode on, Ellen riding on his shoulder like +a princess on her genii. + + + + +III + +Ellen and I were very firm to have nothing to do with the boot in the +oak tree; and we had two picnics in the hollow and played for hours in +the adjoining woods without once looking up. Mary had become very strict +with us about scattering papers and eggshells at our out-of-door +spreads; and whatever fragments of food were left over she would make +into a neat package and hide away under a stone; but in other matters +she became less and less precise: as, for instance, she left Ellen's +best doll somewhere in the neighborhood of the hollow oak, and had to go +all the way back for it in the dusk; and another time (we had also been +to the store at Bartow for yeast) she left her purse that had two +months' wages in it and more, but wasn't lucky enough to find that. + +It was considered remarkable on all hands that Braddish had not yet been +caught. Hagan's heelers, who swung many votes, had grown very sharp with +the authorities, and no efforts were spared to locate the criminal (he +was usually referred to as the "murderer") and round him up. Almost +daily, for a time, we were constantly meeting parties of strange men, +strolling innocently about the country at large or private estates as if +they were looking things over with a view to purchase. And now and then +we met pairs of huntsmen, though there was no game in season, very +citified, with brand-new shotguns, and knickerbockers, and English +deer-stalker caps. And these were accompanied by dogs, neither well +suited nor broken to the business of finding birds and holding them. +There was one pair of sportsmen whose makeshift was a dropsical coach +dog, very much spotted. And, I must be forgiven for telling the truth, +one was followed, _ventre a terre_, by a dachshund. My father, a very +grave man with his jest, said that these were famous detectives, so +accoutred as not to excite comment. And their mere presence in it was +enough to assure the least rational that Braddish must by now have fled +the country. "Their business," he said, "is to close the stable door, +if they can find it, and meanwhile to spend the money of the many in the +roadhouses of the few." + +But I have sometimes thought that the pseudo-sportsmen were used to give +Braddish a foolhardy sense of security, so that other secret-service +men, less open in method and less comic in aspect, might work +unobserved. Indeed, it turned out that an under-gardener employed by +Mrs. Kirkbride, our neighbor, about this time, a shambling, peaceful, +half-witted goat of a man, was one such; and a perfect red-Indian upon a +trail. It was Mary who spotted him. He hung about our kitchen door a +good deal; and tried to make friends with her and sympathize with her. +But he showed himself a jot too eager, and then a jot too peppery when +she did not fall into his nets. Mary told my father, and my father told +Mrs. Kirkbride. Mrs. Kirkbride had had a very satisfactory job at +painting done for her by Braddish; and although a law-abiding woman, she +did not propose personally to assist the law--even by holding her +tongue. So she approached the under-gardener, at a time when the +head-gardener and the coachman were in hearing, and she said, plenty +loud enough to be heard: "Well, officer, have you found a clew yet? Have +you pumped my coachman? He was friends with Braddish," and so on, so +that she destroyed that man's utility for that place and time. But +others were more fortunate. And all of a sudden the country was +convulsed with excitement at hearing that Braddish had been seen on the +Bartow Road at night, and had been fired at, but had made good his +escape into the Boole Dogge Farm. + +Bloodhounds were at once sent for. I remember that my father stayed up +from town that thrilling morning, and walked up and down in front of the +house looking up at the sky. I now know that he was conjuring it to rain +with all his power of pity--prayer maybe--though I think, like most +commuters, he was weak on prayer. Anyhow, rain it did. The sky had been +overcast for two days, drawing slowly at the great beds of moisture in +the northeast, and that morning, accompanied by high winds, the first +drops fell and became presently a deluging northeaster, very cold for +midsummer. + +As chance would have it, there had been a false scent down on Throgg's +Neck, upon which the nearest accessible bloodhounds had been employed. +So that there was a delay in locating them, and fetching them to the +Boole Dogge Farm. We went over to the Boulevard--my father, Ellen, and +I--all under umbrellas, to see them go by. They were a sorry pair of +animals, and very weary with having been out all night, in all sorts of +country, upon feet more accustomed to the smooth asphalt of a kennel. +But there was a crowd of men with them, some in uniform, one I remember +in a great coat, who rode upon one of the old-fashioned, high bicycles, +and there was a show of clubs and bludgeons, and one man wore openly +upon his hip a rusty, blued revolver, and on the whole the little +procession had a look of determination and of power to injure that was +rather terrible. I have sometimes thought that if I had been my father I +would not have taken Ellen and me to see them go by. But why not? I +would not have missed it for kingdoms. + +By the time the pursuit had reached the Boole Dogge Farm so much rain +had fallen as to render the bloodhounds' noses of no account. Still the +police were not deterred from beating that neck of land with great +thoroughness and energy. But it proved to be the old story of the needle +in the haystack. Either they could not find the needle or there was no +needle to be found. Of course, they discovered the spring with the +broken cup, and the hollow oak, and made sure that it was here that +Braddish slept at night, and they found other traces of his recent +habitation--an ingenious snare with a catbird in it, still warm; the +deep, inadvertent track of a foot in a spot of bog; but of the man +himself neither sight nor sound. + +In the afternoon, the rain having held up for a while, nay father walked +over to the farm to see how the hunt was progressing. This, I think, +was for Mary's sake, who had been all the morning in so terrible a state +of agitation that it seemed as if she must have news for better or +worse, or die of suspense. My father was not away longer than necessary. +He returned as he had gone, wearing a cheerful, incisive look very +characteristic of him, and whistling short snatches of tunes. + +He said that the beaters were still at work; but that they were wet to +the skin and the heart was out of them. Yes. They would keep an eye on +the place, but they were pretty well convinced that the bird had flown. +If, however, the bird had not flown, said my father, he should be quick +about it. We were on the front porch to meet my father, and I remember +he paused and looked out over the bay for some time. It was roughish +with occasional white caps, and had a dreary, stormy look. Our rowboat, +moored to a landing stage or float, just off our place, was straining +and tugging at her rope. + +"That boat will blow loose," said my father, "if she isn't pulled up. +But I'm not going to do it. I'm wet enough as it is. + +"Would you like me to try, sir?" Mary called. + +"What's the use?" said my father. "You'll only spoil your clothes. And, +besides, the boat's old and rotten. She's not worth two dollars for +kindling wood. I rather hope she does blow away, so as to provide me +with a much-needed excuse to buy a better one. The oars, I see, are in +her. Never mind, they're too heavy. I never liked them." + +Then he put his arm around Ellen. + +"By the way, Teenchy," said he, "your old boot is still sticking out of +the oak tree." + +"Oh, papa," cried Ellen, "you said we mustn't talk about it--or it would +be full of spiders." + +"I said _you_ mustn't talk about it," said he. "So don't. Anyhow"--and +he included Mary in his playful smile--"it's still there--so make the +most of _that_." + +He turned to go into the house, and then: + +"Oh, by the way, Mary," said he, "you have not asked for your wages +recently, and I think you are owed for three months. If you will come to +the study in a little while I will give them to you." He was always +somewhat quizzical. "Would you rather have cash or a check?" + +Personally I didn't know the difference, and, at the time, I admired +Mary exceedingly for being able to make a choice. She chose cash. + +But till some years later I thought she must have repented this +decision, for not long after she went into a kind of mild hysterics, and +cried a good deal, and said something about "such kindness--this--side +Heaven." And was heard to make certain comparisons between the +thoughtfulness and pitifulness of a certain commuter and the Christ. + +But these recollections are a little vague in my head as to actual +number of tears shed, cries uttered and words spoken. But I do know for +an incontestable fact that during the night, just as my father had +prophesied, our rowboat was blown loose by the northeast gale, and has +not been seen from that day to this. And I know that when I woke up in +the morning and called to Mary she was not in her bed, and I found in +mine, under the pillow, a ridiculous old-fashioned brooch, that I had +ever loved to play with, and that had been Mary's mother's. + +My father was very angry about Mary's going. + +"Good Lord!" he said; "we can't pretend to conceal it!" But then he +looked out over Pelham Bay, and it had swollen and waxed wrathful during +the night, and was as a small ocean--with great waves and billows that +came roaring over docks and sea-walls. And then his temper abated and he +said: "Of course she would--any woman would--sense or no sense." + +And, indeed, the more I know of women, which is to say, and I thank God +for it, the less I know of them, the convinceder am I that my father +was right. + +In other words, if a woman's man has nine chances in ten of drowning by +himself she will go with him so as to make it ten chances, and a +certainty of her being there whatever happens. And so, naturally, man +cannot tolerate the thought of woman getting the right, based on +intelligence, to vote. + + + + +IV + +Twenty-five years later I paid Mary and Braddish a pleasant +Saturday-to-Monday visit in what foreign country it is not necessary to +state. The tiny Skinnertown house of their earlier ambition, with its +little yard, had now been succeeded by a great, roomy, rambling +habitation, surrounded by thousands of acres sprinkled with flocks of +fat, grazing sheep. It was a grand, rolling upland of a country that +they had fled to; cool, summer weather all the year round, and no +mosquitoes. Hospitable smoke curled from a dozen chimneys; shepherds +galloped up on wiry horses and away again; scarlet passion-vines poured +over roofs and verandas like cataracts of glory; and there was incessant +laughter and chatter of children at play. + +Of their final flight from the Boole Dogge Farm in my father's boat, +across the bay to Long Island in the teeth of the northeaster, I now +first heard the details; and of their subsequent hiding among swamps and +woods; and how, when it had seemed that they must be captured and +Braddish go to jail forever and ever, Mary thought that she could face +the separation more cheerfully if she was his wife. And so one rainy +night they knocked upon the door of a clergyman, and told him their +story. They were starving, it seems, and it was necessary to look about +for mercy. And, as luck would have it, the clergyman, an old man, had +officiated at the wedding of Mary's parents; and he had had some trouble +in his day with the law about a boundary fence, and was down on the law. +And he fed them and married them, and said that he would square matters +with his conscience--if he could. And he kept them in his attic for two +days, which was their honeymoon--and then--a night of dogs and lanterns +and shouting--he smuggled them off to the swamps again, and presided +over their hiding until an opportunity came to get them aboard a tramp +ship--and that was all there was to it, except that they had prospered +and been happy ever since. + +I asked Mary about my father's part in it. But she gave him a clean +bill. + +"He put two and two together," she said, "and he dropped a hint or +two--and he paid me all my back wages in American money, and he made me +a handsome present in English gold, but he never talked things over, +never mentioned Will's name even." + +"It was the toe of my boot," said Will, "sticking out of the tree that +made him guess where I was. You see, I'd climbed up in the hollow to +hide, and to keep there without moving I had to stick my foot out +through a knothole. I was up there all the day they tried to get the +bloodhounds after me, with my boot sticking out. And they were beating +around that tree for hours, but nobody looked up." + +"I've always wondered," said I, "why, they didn't send a man up inside +the tree." + +"I've always thought," said Will, "that nobody liked to propose it for +fear he'd be elected to do it himself. But maybe it didn't enter +anybody's head. Anyhow, all's well that ends well." + +"Mary," I said, "do you remember how my father told Ellen and me to go +back in a year and a day, and look in the boot?" + +She nodded. + +"Well," I said, "we went--hand in hand--and there was still a boot +sticking out. And I climbed up, after several failures, and got it. It +wasn't full of gold, but it did have two gold pieces in it. One each." + +"What a memory your father had," said Mary: "he never forgot anything." + +Later I was talking with Will alone, and I asked him why he had run away +in the first place. + +"Why," he said, "I had no chance with the law. The only outsiders +who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood +between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan +with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by +the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And +somehow--somehow--I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to +prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing +to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one +that knew me then--except Hagan's friends, and whatever they believed +they'd have sworn the opposite. Do you think your father thought I was a +bloody murderer? Look here," he said, "I don't know just how to put +it--it was twenty-five years ago, all that--Mary'll tell you, if you ask +her, that she's been absolutely happy every minute of all that +time--even when we were hiding in swamps and starving. Now that side of +it wouldn't have entered the law's head, would it?" He smiled very +peacefully. "Out here, of course," he said, "it's very different. Almost +everybody here has gotten away from something or other. And mostly we've +done well, and are happy and self-respecting. It's a big world," he +looked out affectionately over his rolling, upland acres, "and a funny +world. Did Mary tell you that I've just been re-elected sheriff?" + + + + +THE DESPOILER + +Forrest paused when his explorations had brought him to the edge of the +beechwood, all dappled with golden lights and umber shadows, and stood +for a time brooding upon those intimate lawns and flowery gardens that +seemed, as it were, but roofless extensions of the wide, open house. + +It is probable that his brooding had in it an estimate of the cost of +these things. It was thus that he had looked upon the blooded horses in +the river-fields and the belted cattle in the meadows. It was thus that +his grave eyes passed beyond the gardens and moved from corner to corner +of the house, from sill to cornice, relating the porticos and +interminable row of French windows to dollars and cents. He had, of +course, been of one mind, and now he was of two; but that octagonal slug +of California minting, by which he resolved his doubts, fell heads, and +he stepped with an acquiescent reluctance from the dappled shadows into +the full sunlight of the gardens and moved slowly, with a kind of +awkward and cadaverous grandeur, toward the house. He paused by the +sundial to break a yellow rose from the vine out of which its fluted +supporting column emerged. So standing, and regarding the rose slowly +twirled in his fingers, he made a dark contrast to the brightly-colored +gardens. His black cape hung in unbroken lines from his gaunt shoulders +to his knees, and his face had the modeling and the gentle gloom +of Dante's. + +The rose fell from his hand, and he moved onward through the garden and +entered the house as nonchalantly as if it had been his own. He found +himself in a cool dining-room, with a great chimney-piece and beaded +white paneling. The table was laid for seven, and Forrest's intuitive +good taste caused his eyes to rest with more than passing interest upon +the stately loving-cup, full of roses, that served for a centre-piece. +But from its rosy garlands caught up in the mouths of demon-heads he +turned suddenly to the portrait over the chimney-piece. It was darker +and more sedate than the pictures to which Forrest was accustomed, but +in effect no darker or more sedate than himself. The gentleman of the +portrait, a somewhat pouchy-cheeked, hook-nosed Revolutionary, in whose +wooden and chalky hand was a rolled document, seemed to return Forrest's +glance with a kind of bored courtesy. + +"That is probably the Signer," thought Forrest, and he went closer. "A +great buck in your time," he approved. + +The butler entered the dining-room from the pantry, and, though a man +accustomed to emergencies, was considerably nonplussed at the sight of +the stranger. That the stranger was a bona fide stranger, James, who had +served the Ballins for thirty years, knew; but what manner of stranger, +and whether a rogue or a man upon legitimate business, James could not +so much as guess. + +"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "were you looking for some one?" + +"Yes," said Forrest, perfectly at his ease, "and no." + +"Shall I tell Mr. Ballin that you are here, sir?" + +"I shall find him for myself, thank you," said Forrest, and he moved +toward an open door that seemed to lead into the hall. + +"By the way," he said, "there will be an extra at luncheon." + +Very stately in his long, black cape, and with his pensive Dantesque +face, Forrest continued on his slow progress to the open door and went +out of the dining-room. He crossed the hall with half an eye to its +quiet tones and bowls of roses, and entered a room of bright chintz with +a pattern of cornflowers, and full of sunlight. It was a very spacious +room, and lively--a proper link between the gardens and the house; and +here were many photographs in silver frames of smart men and women; and +the Sunday papers with their colored supplements were strewn in +disorder upon the floor. And it seemed to Forrest, so comfortable and +intimate did it look, as if that room had been a part of his own life. +Upon the blotter of a writing-table sprawled a check-book bound in +yellow leather. And when Forrest saw that, he smiled. It came as a +surprise that the teeth in that careworn face should be white and even. +And in those rare and charming moments of his smiling he looked like a +young man who has made many engagements with life which he proposes to +fulfil, instead of like a man for whom the curious years reserve but one +sensation more. + +But Forrest did not remain any appreciable time in the cheerful +living-room. A desire to explain and have it all over with was upon him; +and he passed, rapidly now, from room to room, until in a far corner of +the house he entered a writing-room furnished in severe simplicity with +dark and dully-shining rosewood. This room was of an older fashion than +any he had yet entered, and he guessed that it had been the Signer's +workshop and had been preserved by his descendants without change. A +pair of flintlock pistols, glinting silver, lay upon the desk; quill +pens stood in a silver cup full of shot; a cramped map, drawn and +colored by hand and yellow with age, hung above the mantel and +purported, in bold printing with flourishes, to be The Proposed Route +for the Erie Canal. Portraits of General Greene and Thomas Jefferson, +by Stuart, also hung upon the walls. And there stood upon an octagonal +table a bowl of roses. + +There was a gentleman in the embrasure of a window, smoking a cigar and +looking out. But at the sound of Forrest's step he turned an alert, +close-cropped, gray head and stepped out of the embrasure. + +"Mr. Ballin?" said Forrest. + +"I am Mr. Ballin." His eyes perused the stranger with astonishing speed +and deftness, without seeming to do so. + +"It was the toss of a coin that decided me to come," said Forrest. "I +have asked your butler to lay a place for me at luncheon." + +So much assumption on the part of a stranger has a cheeky look in the +printing. Yet Forrest's tone and manner far more resembled those of old +friendship and intimacy than impertinence. + +"Have I," said Ballin, smiling a little doubtfully, "ever had the +pleasure of meeting you before? I have a poor memory for faces. But it +seems to me that I should not have forgotten yours." + +"You never saw me but the one time," said Forrest. "That was many years +ago, and you would not remember. You were a--little wild that night. You +sat against me at a game of faro. But even if you had been yourself--I +have changed very much. I was at that time, as you were, little more +than a boy." + +"Good Lord!" said Ballin, "were you a part of that hectic flush that to +myself I only refer to as 'Sacramento'?" + +"You do not look as if it had turned you into a drinking man," said +Forrest. + +"It didn't," said Ballin, and without seeing any reason for confiding in +the stranger he proceeded to do so. "It was nip and tuck for a time," he +said, "and then money came to me, and this old place and +responsibilities, and I became, more from force of circumstances than +from any inner impulse, a decentish citizen." + +"The money made everything smooth, did it?" said Forrest. "I wonder." + +"You wonder--what?" said Ballin. + +"If it could--money alone. I have had it at times--not as you have had +it--but in large, ready sums. Yet I think it made very little +difference." + +"What have you been doing since--Sacramento?" asked Ballin. + +"Up to a month ago," said Forrest, "I kept on dealing--in different +parts of the world--in San Francisco, in London--Cairo--Calcutta. And +then the matter which brings me here was brought to my attention." + +"Yes?" said Ballin, a little more coolly. + +"When you were in Sacramento," Forrest went on quietly and evenly as if +stating an acknowledged fact, "you did not expect to come into all +this. Then your cousin, Ranger Ballin, and his son went down in the City +of Pittsburgh; and all this"--he made a sudden, sweeping gesture with +one of his long, well-kept hands--"came to you." + +"Yes?" Ballin's voice still interrogated coolly. + +Forrest broke into that naive, boyish smile of his. + +"My dear sir," said he, "I saw a play last winter in which the question +is asked, 'Do you believe in Fairies?' I ask you, 'Do you believe in +Gypsies?'" + +"In what way?" Ballin asked, and he, too, smiled. + +"Ranger Ballin," said Forrest, "had another son who was spirited away in +childhood by the gypsies. That will explain this visit, which on the +face of it is an impertinence. It will explain why I have entered this +house without knocking, and have invited myself to luncheon. You see, +sir, all this"--and again he made the sudden, sweeping gesture--"is +mine." + +It speaks for Forrest's effect that, although reason told Ballin to +doubt this cataclysmic statement, instinct convinced him that it was +true. Yet what its truth might mean to him did not so convincingly +appear. That he might be ousted from all that he looked on as his own +did not yet occur to him, even vaguely. + +"Then we are cousins," he said simply, and held out his hand. But +Forrest did not take it at once. + +"Do you understand what cousinship with me means to you?" he said. + +"Why," said Ballin, "if you _are_ my cousin"--he tried to imply the +doubt that he by no means felt--"there is surely enough for us both." + +"Enough to make up for the years when there has been nothing?" Forrest +smiled. + +"It is a matter for lawyers to discuss, then," said Ballin quietly. +"Personally, I do not doubt that you believe yourself to be my cousin's +son. But there is room, surely, in others for many doubts." + +"Not in others," said Forrest, "who have been taught to know that two +and two are four." + +"Have you documentary proof of this astonishing statement?" said Ballin. + +"Surely," said Forrest. And he drew from an inner pocket a bundle of +documents bound with a tape. Ballin ran a perturbed but deft eye through +them, while Forrest stood motionless, more like a shadow than a man. +Then, presently, Ballin looked up with a stanch, honorable look. + +"I pick no flaws here cousin," he said. "I--I congratulate you." + +"Cousin," said Forrest, "it has been my business in life to see others +take their medicine. But I have never seen so great a pill swallowed so +calmly. Will you offer me your hand now?" + +Ballin offered his hand grimly. + +Then he tied the documents back into their tape and offered the bundle +to Forrest. + +"I am a careless man," said Forrest; "I might lose them. May I ask you +to look after them for me?" + +"Would you leave me alone with them?" asked Ballin. + +"Of course," said Forrest. + +Ballin opened an old-fashioned safe in the paneling and locked it upon +the despoiling documents. Yet his heart, in spite of its dread and +bitterness, was warmed by the trustfulness of the despoiler. + +"And now what?" he said. + +"And now," said Forrest, "remember for a little while only that I am, +let us say, an old friend of your youth. Forget for the present, if you +can, who else I am, and what my recrudescence must mean to you. It is +not a happiness"--he faltered with his winning smile--"to give pain." + + + + +II + +"Your father," said Forrest, "says that I may have his seat at the head +of the table. You see, Miss Dorothy, in the world in which I have lived +there were no families. And I have the strongest desire to experiment in +some of those things which I have missed.... Ballin," he exclaimed, +"how lovely your daughters are!" + +The young Earl of Moray glanced up mischievously. + +"Do you think, sir," he drawled, "that I have made the best selection +under the circumstances? Sometimes I think I ought to have made up to +Ellen instead of Dorothy." + +"What's the matter with _us_?" said Alice, and she laid her hand upon +Evelyn's. + +"Oh, you little rotters!" exclaimed the earl, whom they sometimes teased +to the point of agony. "No man in his senses would look at _you_." + +"Right-O!" said young Stephen Ballin, who made the eighth at table. +"They're like germs," he explained to Forrest--"very troublesome to +deal with." + +"It's because we're twins," said Evelyn. "Everybody who isn't twins is +down on them." + +"It's because they are always beautiful and good," said Alice. "Why +don't you stand up for us, father?" + +It was noticed that Mr. Ballin was not looking well; that the chicken +_mousse_ upon his plate was untouched, and that he fooled with his +bread, breaking it, crumbling it, and rolling it into pellets. He pulled +himself together and smiled upon his beloved twins. + +Forrest had turned to the Earl of Moray. + +"Was it your ancestor," he said, "who 'was a bra' gallant, and who raid +at the gluve'?" + +"I am confident of it," said the young Englishman. + +"By all accounts," said Forrest, "he would have been a good hand with a +derringer. Have you that gift for games?" + +"I'm a very good golfer." said the earl, "but I thought a derringer was +a kind of dish that babies ate gruel out of." He blushed becomingly. + +"As ever," said Alice, "insular and ignorant." + +"You prickly baby!" exclaimed the earl. "What is a derringer, Mr. +Forrest?" + +Forrest, having succeeded in drawing the attention of his immediate and +prospective family from the ill looks of Mr. Ballin, proposed to keep +his advantage. + +"I will show you," he said. "Are my hands empty?" + +"Quite so," said the earl. + +"Keep your eyes on them," said Forrest, "so. Now, we will suppose that +you have good reason to believe that I have stolen your horse. Call me a +horse thief." + +"Sir," said the earl, entering into the spirit of the game, "you are a +horse thief!" + +There appeared in Forrest's right hand, which had seemed empty, which +had seemed not to move or to perform in any celeritous and magic manner, +a very small, stubby, nickel pistol, with a caliber much too great for +it, and down whose rifled muzzle the earl found himself gazing. The earl +was startled. But he said, "I was mistaken, sir; you are not a horse +thief." As mysteriously as it had come, the wicked little derringer +disappeared. Forrest's hands remained innocently in plain view of all. + +"Oh," said Alice, "if you had only pulled the trigger!" + +Evelyn giggled. + +"Frankly, Mr. Forrest," said the earl, "aren't the twins loathsome? But +tell me, can you shoot that thing as magically as you play tricks +with it?" + +"It's not a target gun," said Forrest. "It's for instantaneous work at +close range. One could probably hit a tossed coin with it, but one must +have more weight and inches to the barrel and less explosion for fine +practice." + +"What would you call fine practice?" asked Stephen. + +"Oh," said Forrest, "a given leg of a fly at twenty paces, or to snip a +wart from a man's hand at twenty-five." + +Mr. Ballin rose. + +"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have +finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He +left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the +full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his +brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty--of too long +leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun +and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins +were silent. + +"He used to sing that song," said Forrest, "so that the cold chills went +galloping the length of a man's spine. He was as like you to look at," +he turned to the earl, "as one star is like another. I cannot tell you +how it has moved me to meet you. We were in a place called Grub Gulch, +placer-mining--half a dozen of us. I came down with the scarlet fever. +The others bolted, all but Charlie Stuart. He stayed. But by the time I +was up, thanks to him, he was down--thanks to me. He died of it." +Forrest finished very gravely. + +"Good Lord!" said the earl. + +"_He_ might ha' been a king," said Forrest. And he swallowed the lump +that rose in his throat, and turned away so that his face could not be +seen by them. + +But, presently, he flashed about with his winning smile. + +"What, would all you rich young people do if you hadn't a sou in the +world?" + +"Good Lord!" said Stephen, "everything I know how to do decently costs +money." + +"I feel sure," said Alice, her arm about Evelyn's waist, "that our +beauty and goodness would see _us_ through." + +"I," said Ellen, "would quietly curl up and die." + +"I," said Dorothy, "would sell my earl to the highest bidder." + +"I shouldn't bring tuppence," said the earl. + +"But you," said Forrest to the earl, "what would you do if you were +stone-broke?" + +"I would marry Dorothy to-morrow," said the earl, "instead of waiting +until September. Fortunately, I have a certain amount of assets that the +law won't allow me to get rid of." + +"I wish you could," said Forrest. + +"Why?" The earl wrinkled his eyebrows. + +"I would like to see what you would do." He laid his hand lightly upon +the young Englishman's shoulder. "You don't mind? I am an old man," he +said, "but I cannot tell you--what meeting you has meant to me. I want +you to come with me now, for a few minutes, to Mr. Ballin. Will you?" + + + + +III + +"Mr. Ballin," said Forrest, his hand still on the earl's shoulder, "I +want you to tell this young man what only you and I know." + +Ballin looked up from his chair with the look of a sick man. + +"It's this, Charlie," he said in a voice that came with difficulty. +"It's a mistake to suppose that I am a rich man. Everything in this +world that I honestly thought belonged to me belongs to Mr. Forrest." + +The earl read truth in the ashen, careworn face of his love's father. + +"But surely," he said anxiously, "Dorothy is still yours--to give." + +Forrest's dark and brooding countenance became as if suddenly brightly +lighted. + +"My boy--my boy!" he cried, and he folded the wriggling and embarrassed +Stuart in his long, gaunt arms. + +I think an angel bringing glad tidings might have looked as Forrest did +when, releasing the Earl of Moray, he turned upon the impulse and began +to pour out words to Ballin. + +"When I found out who I was," he said, "and realized for how long--oh, +my Lord! how long--others had been enjoying what was mine, and that I +had rubbed myself bare and bleeding against all the rough places of +life, will you understand what a rage and bitterness against you all +possessed me? And I came--oh, on wings--to trample, and to dispossess, +and to sneer, and to send you packing.... But first the peace of the +woods and the meadows, and the beech wood and the gardens, and the quiet +hills and the little brooks staggered me. And then you--the way you took +it, cousin!--all pale and wretched as you were; you were so calm, and +you admitted the claim at once--and bore up.... Then I began to repent +of the bitterness in which I had come.... And I left the papers in your +keeping.... I thought--for I have known mostly evil--that, perhaps, you +would destroy them.... It never entered your head.... Your are clean +white--and so are your girls and your boy.... I did not expect to find +white people in possession. Why should I?... But I said, 'Surely the +Englishman isn't white--he is after the money.' But right away I began +to have that feeling, too, smoothed out of me.... And now, when he finds +that instead of Dorothy being an heiress she is a pauper, he says, 'But +surely, Dorothy is still yours to give!' + +"I was a fool to come. Yet I am glad." + +Neither Ballin nor the earl spoke. + +"Could I have this room to myself for a little while?" asked Forrest. + +"Of course," said Ballin; "it is yours." + +Forrest bowed; the corners of his mouth turned a little upward. + +"Will you come back in an hour--you, alone, cousin?" + +Ballin nodded quietly. + +"Come along, Charlie," he said, and together they left the room. But +when Ballin returned alone, an hour later, the room was empty. Upon the +Signer's writing-desk was a package addressed collectively to "The +Ballins," and in one corner was written, "Blood will tell." + +The package, on being opened, proved to contain nothing more substantial +than ashes. And by the donor thereof there was never given any +further sign. + + + + +ONE MORE MARTYR + +A little one-act play, sufficiently dramatic, is revived from time to +time among the Latin races for long runs. The play is of simplified, +classic construction. But the principal part is variously interpreted by +different actors. The minor characters, a priest and an officer, have no +great latitude for individuality, while the work of the chorus comes as +near mathematics as anything human can. The play is a passion play. No +actor has ever played the principal part more than once. And the play +differs from other plays in this, also, that there are not even +traditional lines for the principal character to speak. He may say +whatever comes into his head. He may say nothing. He may play his part +with reticence or melodramatically. It does not matter. His is what +actors call a fat part; it cannot be spoiled. And at the climax and +curtain he may sink slowly to the ground or fall upon his back or upon +his face. It does not matter. Once, before falling, a man leaped so +violently upward and forward as to break the ropes with which his legs +and arms were bound. Those who saw this performance cannot speak of it +to this day without a shudder. + +Under the management of General Weyler in Cuba this little play enjoyed, +perhaps, its longest continuous run. Curiously enough, there were +absolutely no profits to be divided at the end. But, then, think of the +expense of production! Why, to enable the General to stage that play for +so many nights--I mean sunrises--required the employment of several +hundred thousand men and actually bankrupted a nation. In this world one +must pay like the devil for one's fancies. Think what Weyler paid: all +the money that his country could beg or borrow; then his own reputation +as a soldier, as a statesman, and as a man; ending with a series of +monstrous mortgages on his own soul. For which, when it is finally sold +at auction, there will not be bid so much as one breath of garlic. + +When Juan D'Acosta's mother heard that her younger son Manual had been +taken prisoner by the Spaniards and was to be shot the following morning +at sunrise she sat for an hour motionless, staring at the floor. Juan, +as is, or was, well known, had died gloriously, a cigarette between his +lips, after inestimable, if secret, services to Cuba. Nor had his +execution been entirely a martyrdom. He was shot for a spy. He was a +spy, and a very daring, clever, and self-effacing one. He had been +caught within the Spanish lines with incriminating papers upon his +person. And before they could secure him he had had the eternal +satisfaction of ripping open two Spaniards with his knife so that they +died. He was executed without a trial. His mother went out with others +of his relatives to see him die. The memory of his dying had remained +with her to comfort her for the fact of it. She had seen him, calm, and +in her eyes very beautiful, standing in strong relief with his back to a +white wall, a cigarette between his lips. There had not been the +slightest bravado in his perfect self-possession. It had been that of a +gentleman, which he was not by birth, and a man of the world; quiet, +retiring and attentive. He had looked so courteous, so kind-hearted, so +pure! He had spoken--on either side of his cigarette--for some moments +to the priest, apologizing through him to God for whatever spots there +may have been upon his soul. Then his eyes had sought his mother's among +the spectators and remained steadfastly upon them, smiling, until the +exactions of his part demanded that he face more to the front and look +into the muzzles of the Mausers. The fire of his cigarette having burned +too close to his lips for comfort, and his hands being tied, he spat the +butt out of his mouth and allowed the last taste of smoke which he was +to enjoy on earth to curl slowly off through his nostrils. Then, for it +was evident that the edge of the sun would show presently above the rim +of the world, he had drawn a breath or two of the fresh morning air and +had spoken his last words in a clear, controlled voice. + +"Whenever one of us dies," he had said, "it strengthens the cause of +liberty instead of weakening it. I am so sure of this that I would like +to come to life after being shot, so that I might be taken and shot +again and again and again. You, my friends, are about to fire _for_ +Cuba, not against her. Therefore, I thank you. I think that is all. +Christ receive me." + +The impact of the volley had flattened him backward against the wall +with shocking violence, but he had remained on his feet for an +appreciable interval of time and had then sunk slowly to his knees and +had fallen quietly forward upon his face. + +So her older boy had died, honoring himself and his country, after +serving his country only. The memory of his life, deeds and dying was a +comfort to her. And when she learned that Manuel, too, was to be shot, +and sat staring at the floor, it was not entirely of Manuel that she was +thinking. She did not love Manuel as she had loved Juan. He had not been +a comfort to her in any way. He had been a sneaking, cowardly child; he +had grown into a vicious and cowardly young man. He was a patriot +because he was afraid not to be; he had enlisted in the Cuban army +because he was afraid not to. He had even participated in skirmishes, +sweating with fear and discharging his rifle with his eyes closed. But +he had been clever enough to conceal his white feathers, and he could +talk in a modest, purposeful way, just like a genuine hero. He was to be +shot, not because he was himself, but because he was Juan's brother. The +Spaniards feared the whole family as a man fears a hornet's nest in the +eaves and, because one hornet has stung him, wages exterminating war +upon all hornets. In Manuel's case, however, there was a trial, short +and unpleasant. The man was on his knees half the time, blubbering, +abjuring, perspiring, and begging for mercy; swearing on his honor to +betray his country wherever and whenever possible; to fight against her, +to spy within her defenses and plans--anything, everything! + +His judges were not impressed. They believed him to be acting. He was +one of the D'Acostas; Juan's brother, Ferdinand's son--a hornet. Not the +same type of hornet, but for that very reason, perhaps, the more to be +feared. "When he finds," said the colonel who presided, "that he is to +be shot beyond peradventure he will turn stoic like the others, you'll +see. Even now he is probably laughing at us for being moved by his +blubberings and entreaties. He wants to get away from us at any price. +That's all. He wants a chance to sting us again. And that chance he +will not get." + +Oddly enough, the coward did turn stoic the moment he was formally +condemned. But it was physical exhaustion as much as anything else; a +sudden numbing of the senses, a kind of hideous hypnotism upon him by +the idea of death. It lasted the better part of an hour. Then, alone in +his cell, he hurled himself against the walls, screaming, or cowered +upon the stone floor, pooling it with tears, sobbing horribly with his +whole body, going now and again into convulsions of nausea. These +actions were attributed by his guard to demoniacal rage, but not to +fear. He thus fought blindly against the unfightable until about four in +the afternoon, when exhaustion once more put a quietus upon him. It was +then that his mother, having taken counsel at last with her patriot +soul, visited him. + +She had succeeded, not without difficulty, in gaining permission. It was +not every mother who could manage a last interview with a condemned son. +But she had bribed the colonel. She had given him in silver the savings +of a lifetime. + +The old woman sat down by her son and took his hand in hers. Then the +door of the cell was closed upon them and locked. Manuel turned and +collapsed against his mother's breast. + +"It's all right, Manuel," she said in her quiet, cheerful voice. "I've +seen the colonel." + +Manuel looked up quickly, a glint of hope in his rodent eyes. + +"What do you mean?" he said. His voice was hoarse. His mother bit her +lips, for the hoarseness told her that her son had been screaming with +fear. In that moment she almost hated him. But she controlled herself. +She looked at him sidewise. + +"The colonel tells me that you have offered to serve Spain if he will +give you your life?" + +This was a shrewd guess. She waited for Manuel's answer, not even hoping +that it would be in the negative. She knew him through and through. + +"Well," he choked, "it wouldn't do." + +"That's where you are wrong, my son," she said. "The colonel, on the +contrary, believes he can make use of you. He is going to let you +go free." + +Manuel could not believe his ears, it seemed. He kept croaking "What?" +in his hoarse voice, his face brightening with each reiteration. + +"But," she went on, "he does not wish this to be known to the Cubans. +You see, if they knew that you had been allowed to go free it would +counteract your usefulness, wouldn't it?" + +"Yes--but--" + +"Listen to me. Everything is to proceed as ordered and according to army +regulations except one thing. The rifles which are to be fired at you +will be loaded with blank cartridges. When the squad fires you must fall +as if--as if you were dead. Then you will be put in a coffin and +brought to me for burial. Then you will come to life. That is all." + +She smiled into her son's face with a great gladness and patted his +hands. + +"Afterward," she said, "you will grow a beard and generally disguise +yourself. It is thus that the colonel thinks he can best make use of +your knowledge and cleverness. And, of course, at the first opportunity +you will give the colonel the slip and once more take your place in the +patriot army." + +"Of course," said Manuel; "I never meant to do what I pretended I +would." + +"Of course not!" said his mother. + +"But--" + +"But what?" + +"I don't see the necessity of having a mock execution. It's not nice to +have a lot of blank cartridges go off in your face." + +"Nice!" The old woman sprang to her feet. She shook her finger in his +face. "Nice! Haven't you any shred of courage in your great, hulking +body? I don't believe you'll even face blank cartridges like a man--I +believe you'll scream and blubber and be a shame to us all. You disgust +me!" She spat on the floor. "Here I come to tell you that you are to be +spared, and you're afraid to death of the means by which you are to go +free. Why, I'd stand up to blank cartridges all day without turning a +hair--or to bullets, for that matter--at two hundred metres, where I +knew none of those Spanish idiots could hit me except by accident. I +wouldn't expect you to play the man at a real execution or at anything +real, but surely you can pull yourself together enough to play the man +at a mock execution. What a chance! You can leave a reputation as great +as your brother's--greater, even; you could crack jokes and burst out +laughing just when they go to fire--" + +Then, as suddenly as she had flown into a passion, she burst into tears +and flung her arms about her boy and clung to him and mothered him until +in the depths of his surly, craven heart he was touched and +strengthened. + +"Don't be afraid for me, mother," he said. "I do not like even the blank +cartridges, God forgive me; but I shall not shame you." + +She kissed him again and again and laughed and cried. And when the guard +opened the door and said that the time was up she patted her boy upon +the cheeks and shoulders and smiled bravely into his face. Then she +left him. + +The execution of Manuel D'Acosta was not less inspiring to the patriotic +heart than that of his brother Juan. And who knows but that it may have +been as difficult an act of control for the former to face the blank +cartridges as for the latter to stand up to those loaded with ball? Like +Juan, Manuel stood against the wall with a cigarette between his lips. +Like Juan, he sought out his mother's face among the spectators and +smiled at her bravely. He did not stand so modestly, so gentlemanly as +Juan had done, but with a touch of bravado, an occasional +half-swaggering swing from the hips, an upward tilt of the chin. + +"I told you he would turn stoic," the colonel whispered to one of the +officers who had taken part in the trial. "I know these Cubans." + +It was all very edifying. Like Juan, Manuel spat out his cigarette when +it had burned too short. But, unlike Juan, he made no dying speech. He +felt that he was still too hoarse to be effective. Instead, at the +command, "Aim!" he burst out laughing, as if in derision of the +well-known lack of markmanship which prevailed among the Spaniards. + +He was nearly torn in two. + +Those who lifted him into his coffin noticed that the expression upon +his face was one of blank astonishment, as if the beyond had contained +an immeasurable surprise for him. + +His mother took a certain comfort from the manner of his dying, but it +was the memory of her other boy that really enabled her to live out her +life without going mad. + + + + +"MA'AM?" + +In most affairs, except those which related to his matrimonial ventures, +Marcus Antonius Saterlee was a patient man. On three occasions "an +ardent temperament and the heart of a dove," as he himself had expressed +it, had corralled a wife in worship and tenderness within his house. The +first had been the love of his childhood; the wooing of the second had +lasted but six weeks; that of the third but three. He rejoiced in the +fact that he had been a good husband to three good women. He lamented +that all were dead. Now and then he squirmed his bull head around on his +bull body, and glanced across the aisle at the showy woman who was +daintily picking a chicken wing. He himself was not toying with +beefsteak, boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, lima, and string +beans. He was eating them. Each time he looked at the lady he muttered +something to his heart of a dove: + +"Flighty. Too slight. Stuck on herself. Pin-head," etc. + +With his food Saterlee was not patient. He dispensed with mastication. +Neither was he patient of other people's matrimonial ventures. And, in +particular, that contemplated and threatened by his son and heir was +moving him across three hundred miles of inundated country as fast as a +train could carry him. His son had written: + +"DEAREST DAD--I've found Dorothy again. She's at Carcasonne. They +thought her lungs were bad, but they aren't. We're going to be married a +week from to-day--next Friday--at nine A.M. This marriage is going to +take place, Daddy dear. You can't prevent it. I write this so's to be on +the square. I'm inviting you to the wedding. I'll be hurt if you don't +show up. What if Dorothy's mother _is_ an actress and has been divorced +twice? You've been a marrying man yourself, Dad. Dorothy is all darling +from head to foot. But I love you, too, Daddy, and if you can't see it +my way, why, God bless and keep you just the same." + +JIM. + +I can't deny that Marcus Antonius Saterlee was touched by his son's +epistle. But he was not moved out of reason. + +"The girl's mother," he said to himself, "is a painted, divorced jade." +And he thought with pleasure of the faith, patience, and rectitude of +the three gentle companions whom he had successively married and buried. +"There was never any divorce in the Saterlee blood," he had prided +himself. "Man or woman, we stick by our choice till he or she" (he was +usually precise) "turns up his or her toes. Not till then do we think of +anybody else. But then we do, because it is not good to live alone, +especially in a small community in Southern California." + +He glanced once more at the showy lady across the aisle. She had +finished her chicken wing, and was dipping her fingers in a finger-bowl, +thus displaying to sparkling advantage a number of handsome rings. + +"My boy's girl's mother a painted actress," he muttered as he looked. +"Not if I know it." And then he muttered: "_You'd_ look like an actress +if you was painted." + +Though the words can not have been distinguished, the sounds were +audible. + +"Sir?" said the lady, stiffly but courteously. + +"Nothing, Ma'am," muttered Mark Anthony, much abashed. "I'm surprised to +see so much water in this arid corner of the world, where I have often +suffered for want of it. I must have been talking to myself to that +effect. I hope you will excuse me." + +The lady looked out of the window--not hers, but Saterlee's. + +"It does look," she said, "as if the waters had divorced themselves from +the bed of ocean." + +She delivered this in a quick but telling voice. Saterlee was shocked at +the comparison. + +"I suppose," she continued, "we may attribute those constant and tedious +delays to which we have been subjected all day to the premature melting +of snow in the fastnesses of the Sierras?" + +This phrase did not shock Saterlee. He was amazed by the power of memory +which it proved. For three hours earlier he had read a close paraphrase +of it in a copy of the Tomb City _Picayune_ which he had bought at +that city. + +The train ran slower and slower, and out on to a shallow embankment. + +"Do you think we shall ever get anywhere?" queried the lady. + +"Not when we expect to, Ma'am," said Saterlee. He began to scrub his +strong mouth with his napkin, lest he should return to the smoker with +stains of boiled eggs upon him. + +The train gave a jolt. And then, very quietly, the dining-car rolled +over on its side down the embankment. There was a subdued smashing of +china and glass. A clergyman at one of the rear tables quietly remarked, +"Washout," and Saterlee, who had not forgotten the days when he had +learned to fall from a bucking bronco, relaxed his great muscles and +swore roundly, sonorously, and at great length. The car came to rest at +the bottom of the embankment, less on its side than on its top. For a +moment--or so it seemed--all was perfectly quiet. Then (at one and the +same moment) a lady in the extreme front of the diner was heard +exclaiming faintly: "You're pinching me," and out of the tail of his +eye Saterlee saw the showy lady across the aisle descending upon him +through the air. She was accompanied by the hook and leg table upon +which she had made her delicate meal, and all its appurtenances, +including ice-water and a wide open jar of very thin mustard. + +"Thank you," she murmured, as her impact drove most of the breath out of +Saterlee's bull body. "How strong you are!" + +"When you are rested, Ma'am," said he, with extreme punctiliousness, "I +think we may leave the car by climbing over the sides of the seats on +this side. Perhaps you can manage to let me pass you in case the door is +jammed. I could open it." + +He preceded her over and over the sides of the seats, opened the car +door, which was not jammed, and helped her to the ground. And then, his +heart of a parent having wakened to the situation, he forgot her and +forsook her. He pulled a time-table from his pocket; he consulted a +mile-post, which had had the good sense to stop opposite the end of the +car from which he had alighted. It was forty miles to Carcasonne--and +only two to Grub City--a lovely city of the plain, consisting of one +corrugated-iron saloon. He remembered to have seen it--with its great +misleading sign, upon which were emblazoned the noble words: +"Life-Saving Station." + +"Grub City--hire buggy--drive Carcasonne," he muttered, and without a +glance at the train which had betrayed him, or at the lady who had +fallen upon him, so to speak, out of the skies, he moved forward with +great strides, leaped a puddle, regained the embankment, and hastened +along the ties, skipping every other one. + + + + +II + +Progress is wonderful in the Far West. Since he had last seen it only a +year had passed, and yet the lovely city of Grub had doubled its size. +It now consisted of two saloons: the old "Life-Saving Station" and the +new "Like Father Used to Take." The proprietor of the new saloon was the +old saloon-keeper's son-in-law, and these, with their flourishing and, +no doubt, amiable families, were socially gathered on the shady side of +the Life-Saving Station. The shade was much the same sort that is +furnished by trees in more favored localities, and the population of +Grub City was enjoying itself. The rival wives, mother and daughter, +ample, rosy women, were busy stitching baby clothes. Children already +arrived were playing with a soap-box and choice pebbles and a tin mug at +keeping saloon. A sunburned-haired, flaming maiden of sixteen was at +work upon a dress of white muslin, and a young man of eighteen, brother +by his looks to the younger saloon-keeper, heartily feasted a pair of +honest blue eyes upon her plump hands as they came and went with the +needle. It looked as if another year might see a third saloon in +Grub City. + +Saterlee approached the group, some of whose elders had been watching +and discussing his approach. + +"Do any of you own a boat?" he asked. + +"Train D-railed?" queried the proprietor of the Life-Saving Station, "or +was you just out for a walk?" + +The family and family-in-law laughed appreciatively. + +"The train put to sea in a washout," said Saterlee, "and all the +passengers were drowned." + +"Where you want to git?" asked the proprietor. + +"Carcasonne," said Saterlee. "Not the junction--the resort." + +"Well," said the proprietor, "there's just one horse and just one trap +in Grub City, and they ain't for hire." + +Again the united families laughed appreciatively. It was evident that a +prophet is not always without honor in his own land. + +"We've no use for them," said the great man, with the noble abandoning +gesture of a Spanish grandee about to present a horse to a man +travelling by canoe. And he added: "So they're for sale. Now what do you +think they'd be worth to you?" + +All the honest blue eyes, and there were no other colors, widened upon +Saterlee. + +"Fifty dollars," he said, as one accustomed to business. + +It was then that a panting, female voice was raised behind him. "Sixty +dollars!" + +His showy acquaintance of the dining-car had followed him along the ties +as fast as she could, and was just come up. + +"I thought you two was a trust," commented the proprietor's wife, +pausing with her needle in the air. "But it seems you ain't even a +community of interests." + +"Seventy dollars," said Saterlee quietly. + +The lady advanced to his side, counting the change in her purse. + +"Seventy-six dollars and eighty-five cents," she said. + +"Eighty dollars," said Saterlee. + +"Oh!" cried the lady, "seventy-six eighty-five is every cent I've got +with me--and you're no gentleman to bid higher." + +"Eighty," repeated Saterlee. + +"Eighty dollars," said the son-in-law, "for a horse and buggy that a +man's never seen is too good to be true." + +"They are yours, sir," said the father-in-law, and he turned to his +daughter's husband. "Is that horse in your cellar or in mine?" he asked. +"I ain't set eyes on her since February." + +The son-in-law, sent to fetch the horse, first paused at the cellar +door of the Life-Saving Station, then, with a shake of the head and an +"I remember _now_" expression, he approached and entered the subterrene +of his own house and business, and disappeared, saying: "Whoa, there! +Steady you!" + +Saterlee turned quietly to the angry and tearful vision whom he had so +callously outbid. + +"Ma'am," he said, "if we come to my stop first or thereabouts, the buggy +is yours to go on with. If we reach yours first, it's mine." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, her face brightening, "how good you are. But you'll +let me go halves on the purchase money." + +"If I appeared rude just now," he said, "it was to save a lady's pocket. +Now then, you've wet them high-heeled shoes. Wherever you're going, it's +a long drive. Let's go inside and dry our feet while they're hitching +up. Which is your house?" + +The proprietor of the Life-Saving Station indicated that building with +his thumb, and told his daughter of the white muslin dress to kindle a +fire in the stove. She slid her future wedding finery into a large paper +bag, and entered the saloon by the "Family Entrance," ardently followed +by her future husband. + +The proprietor, Saterlee, and the showy lady followed more slowly, +discussing roads. + +"Now," said Saterlee, "if you're going further than Carcasonne +Junction, I'll get off there. And either I'll walk to the hotel or hire +another trap." + +"Why!" exclaimed the lady, "are you bound for Carcasonne House? So am +I." + +"In that case," said Saterlee elegantly, "we'll go the whole hog +together." + +"Quite so," said the lady primly. + +"You'd ought to make Carcasonne House by midnight," said the proprietor. +"Put your feet up on that there stove." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed the lady. "And if we don't make it by midnight?" + +"We will by one or two o'clock." + +The lady became very grave. + +"Of course," she said, "it can't be helped. But it would be ever so much +nicer if we could get in before midnight." + +"I take your point, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "Before midnight is +just a buggy ride--after midnight means being out all night +together. I feel for you, Ma'am, but I'm dinged if I see how +we can help ourselves. It's five now." He counted on his fingers: +"six--seven--eight--nine--ten--'leven--twelve--seven hours--seven into +forty--five and five-sevenths.... Ma'am," he said, "I can promise +nothing. It's all up to the horse." + +"Of course," said the lady, "it doesn't really matter. But," and she +spoke a little bitterly, "several times in my life my actions and my +motives have been open to misconstruction, and they have been +misconstrued. I have suffered, sir, much." + +"Well, Ma'am," said Saterlee, "my reputation as a married man and a +father of many children is mixed up in this, too. If we are in late--or +out late rather--and there's any talk--I guess I can quiet some of it. I +rather guess I can." + +He rose to his feet, a vast, round, deep man, glowing with health and +energy. + +"I once quieted a bull, Ma'am," said he, "by the horns. I would a held +him till help came if one of the horns hadn't come off, and he +ran away." + +The proprietor entered the conversation with an insinuating wedge of a +voice. + +"I don't like to mind other folks' business," he said, "but if the lady +is fretting about bein' out all night with a total stranger, I feel it +my dooty to remark that in Grub City there is a justice of the peace." +He bowed and made a gesture which either indicated his whole person, or +that smug and bulging portion of it to which the gesture was more +directly applied. + +Saterlee and the lady did not look at each other and laugh. They were +painfully embarrassed. + +"Nothing like a sound splice," suggested the Justice, still hopeful of +being helpful. "Failing that, you've a long row to hoe, and I suggest a +life saver for the gent and a nip o' the same for the lady. I'd like you +to see the bar," he added. "Mine is the show place of this here +city--mirrors--peacock feathers--Ariadne in the nood--cash register--and +everything hunky-dunk." + +"We'll go you," said Saterlee. "At any rate, I will." + +"Oh, I must see, too," said the lady, and both were relieved at the turn +which the conversation had taken. + +The proprietor removed the cheese-cloth fly protector from the +two-by-three mirror over the bar, slipped a white jacket over his blue +shirt, and rubbed his hands together invitingly, as if washing them. + +"What's your pleasure, gents?" said he. + +As the lady approached the bar she stumbled. Saterlee caught her by the +elbow. + +"That rail down there," he said, "ain't to trip over. It's to rest your +foot on. So." He showed her. With the first sign of humor that she had +shown, the lady suddenly and very capitally mimicked his attitude. And +in a tough voice (really an excellent piece of acting): "What's yours, +kid?" she said. And then blushed to the eyes, and was very much ashamed +of herself. But Saterlee and the bartender were delighted. They roared +with laughter. + +"Next thing," said the bartender, "she'll pull a gun and shoot up the +place." + +Saterlee said: "Rye." + +"I want to be in it," said the lady. "Can you make me something that +looks like a drink, and isn't?" + +"Scotch," said the proprietor without hesitation. + +"No--no," she said, "Water and coloring matter." + +She was fitted finally with a pony of water containing a few drops of +Spanish Red and an olive. + +The three touched glasses and wished each other luck all around. +Saterlee paid eighty dollars and some change across the bar. But the +proprietor pushed back the change. + +"The drinks," he said grandly, "was on the house." + + + + +III + +The united families bade them farewell, and Saterlee brought down the +whip sharply upon the bony flank of the old horse which he had bought. +But not for a whole minute did the sensation caused by the whip appear +to travel to the ancient mare's brain. Not till reaching a deep puddle +did she seem suddenly aware of the fact that she had been whipped. Then, +however, she rushed through the puddle, covering Saterlee and the lady +with mud, and having reached the other side, fell once more into a +halting walk. + +The lady was tightly wedged between Saterlee and the side of the buggy. +Every now and then Saterlee made a tremendous effort to make himself +narrower, but it was no use. + +"If you begin to get numb," he said, "tell me, and I'll get out and walk +a spell.... How clear the air is! Seems as if you could stretch out your +hand and touch the mountains. Do you see that shadow half way up--on the +left--about three feet off? Carcasonne House is somewhere in that +shadow. And it's forty miles away." + +Once more the road ran under a shallow of water. And once more the old +mare remembered that she had been whipped, and made a rush for it. Fresh +mud was added to that which had already dried upon them by the dry +miracle of the air. + +"She'd ought to have been a motor-boat," said Saterlee, the mud which +had entered his mouth gritting unpleasantly between his teeth. "Last +year there was _one_ spring hole _somewhere_ in these parts--this year +it's all lakes and rivers--never was such rains before in the memory of +man. Wonder what Gila River's doing?" + +"What is Gila River?" she asked. + +"It's a sand gully," he said, "that winds down from the mountains, and +out across the plain, like a sure enough river. Only there's no water in +it, only a damp spot here and there. But I was thinking that maybe it'll +be going some now. We ought to strike it before dark." + +The mare rushed through another puddle. + +The lady laughed. "Please don't bother to hold her," she said; "I don't +mind--now." + +"I guess your dress ain't really hurt," commented Saterlee. "I remember +my old woman--Anna--had a brown silk that got a mud bath, and came +through all right." + +"This is an old rag, anyway," said the showy lady, who was still showy +in spite of a wart-like knot of dried mud on the end of her nose. And +she glanced at her spattered but graceful and expensive white linen and +hand-embroidered dress. + +"Well, I can see one thing," said Saterlee, "that you've made up your +mind to go through this experience like a good sport. I wish I didn't +have to take up so much room." + +"Never mind," she said, "I like to think that I could go to sleep +without danger of falling out." + +"That's so--that's so," said Saterlee. "Maybe it's just as well we're +something of a tight fit." + +"I have always mistrusted thin men," said the lady, and she hastily +added: "Not that you're _fat_" + +"My bones are covered," said Saterlee; "I admit it." + +"Yes," she said, "but with big muscles and sinews." + +"I am not weak," said Saterlee; "I admit it." + +"What air this is," exclaimed the lady; "what delicious air. No wonder +it cures people with lung trouble. Still, I'm glad mine are sound." + +"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "When you said +you were bound for Carcasonne House, I thought to myself, 'Mebbe she's +got it,' and I felt mighty sorry." + +"Do I look like a consumptive?" she asked. + +"Bless me--no," said he. "But you're not stout, and, considering where +you said you was going, you mustn't blame me for putting two and two +together and getting the wrong answer." + +"I don't blame you at all," she said, but a little stiffly. "It was +perfectly natural. No," she said, "my daughter is at Carcasonne House. +She had a very heavy cold--and other troubles--and _two_ doctors agreed +that her lungs were threatened. Well, perhaps they were. I sent her to +Carcasonne House on the doctors' recommendation. And it seems that she's +just as sound as I am." + +"What a relief to you, Ma'am," said Saterlee hastily. + +"Yes," she said, but without enthusiasm, "a great relief." + +He screwed his massive head around on his massive neck, not without +difficulty, and looked at her. His voice sounded hurt. + +"You don't seem very glad, Ma'am," he said. + +Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him. + +"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood +will--_must_ tell?" + +"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand +dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's +because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made +a fortune out of it.... Cattle," he added in explanation. + +"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their +affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to +reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could +stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do +you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and +steady-minded--you don't seem like a stranger." + +"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for +hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!" + +"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a +young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know +this: that his father has buried three wives." + +The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the +lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands, +did not perceive this convulsion of nature. + +"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same +brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl--to suffer--to die--and +to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks +when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man. +No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow, +too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee, +the cattle man--do you know him?" + +"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton. + +"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother +to her. I have suffered for her. And she must--she shall--listen to me." + +"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can +count on me.... Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire +sympathy with your views, Ma'am.... Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee +had _divorced_ three wives...." + +The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of +blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and +was pleased. + +"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first +wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire +was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am. +But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is +a difference. Because God Almighty Himself says in one of His books that +man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a +faithful and tender companion is what sets a man--some men--to looking +for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is +he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who +can't cling together until death--and death alone part 'em--for such +people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding." + +"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the +applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her +composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he +dies--not the _death_--but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love +to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if +he had really died? He is dead to her--buried--men don't come back. +Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the +service read over him--that's divorce--and find another whom she can +trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem +identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man +who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself +marrying again--if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still +loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical. +And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible." + +"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and +vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of +it along those lines. See that furrow across the road--that's where a +snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have +buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I +don't seem a regular hell-hound." + +"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you +that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself +up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that +I act for my living--" + +"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew +more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at +Carcasonne House is the same as yours." + +She was silent for a moment. And then: + +"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem +to want the same thing--that is, to keep our children from marrying +each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it." + +"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But--" and he +fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to +her. She read it in the waning light. + +"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute +of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?" + +She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully +and minutely folded sheet of note-paper. + +"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound +like--" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it. + +"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing +brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears--when they were +in his own eyes. + +"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk." + +"No," said Saterlee, "let's think." + + + + +IV + +They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters. + +"That," said Saterlee dryly, "will be Gila River. Mebbe we'll have to +think about getting across that first. It's a river now, by the sound of +it, if it never was before." + +"Fortunately it's not dark yet," said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"The last time I had trouble with a river," said Saterlee, "was when my +first wife died. That was the American River in flood. I had to cross it +to get a doctor. We'd gone prospectin'--just the old woman and me--more +for a lark than profit." + +"Yes?" said Mrs. Kimbal sympathetically. + +"She took sick in an hour," he went on. "From what I've heard since, I +guess it was appendicitis. Anyway, I rode off for help, hell for +leather, and when I come to the river the whole thing was roaring and +foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make +it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, +he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, +but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt +this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be +scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that +didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, Mark,' he says, 'it's wanting to be +sure that I make the right choice.' I says: 'She was in terrible pain, +Jim. Many a time she's done you a good turn; some you know of, some you +don't.' That fetched him. He caught up his bridle and drove his spurs +into his horse, and was swept down-stream like a leaf. I rode along the +bank to help if I could. But he got across on a long diagonal--horse and +all. I waved to him to go on and not mind about me. And he rode off at +the gallop. But I was too heavy, I guess. I lost my second horse in that +flood, and had to foot it into camp. I was too late. Pain had made her +unconscious, and she was dead. But before givin' in she'd wrote me a +letter." He broke off short. "And there's Gila River," he said. + +"I hoped you were going to tell me what your poor wife said in her +letter," said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"Oh, Ma'am," he said, hesitated, cleared his throat, and became routed +and confused. + +"If you'd rather not--" said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"It isn't that," he said. "It would seem like bragging." + +"Surely not," she said. + +Saterlee, with his eyes on the broad, brown flood which they were +approaching, repeated like a lesson: + +"'Mark--I'm dying. I want it to do good, not harm. Jenny always thought +the world of you. You'll be lonely when I'm gone. I don't want you to be +lonely. You gave me peace on earth. And you can't be happy unless you've +got a woman to pet and pamper. That's your nature--'" + +He paused. + +"That was all," he said, and wiped his forehead with the palm of his +hand. "It just stopped there." + +"I'm glad you told me," said Mrs. Kimbal gently. "It will be a lesson +to me not to spring to conclusions, and not to make up my mind about +things I'm not familiar with." + +When they came to where the road disappeared under the swift unbroken +brown of Gila River, the old horse paused of her own accord, and, +turning her bony and scarred head a half revolution, stared almost +rudely at the occupants of the buggy. + +"It all depends," said Saterlee, "how deep the water runs over the road, +and whether we can keep to the road. You see, it comes out higher up +than it goes in. Can you swim, Ma'am?" + +Mrs. Kimbal admitted that, in clothes made to the purpose, and in very +shallow water, she was not without proficiency. + +"Would you rather we turned back?" he asked. + +"I feel sure you'll get me over," said she. + +"Then," said Saterlee, "let's put the hood down. In case we do capsize, +we don't want to get caught under it." + +Saterlee on his side, and Mrs. Kimbal, not without exclamations of +annoyance, on hers, broke the toggle-joints that held the dilapidated +hood in place, and thrust it backward and down. At once the air seemed +to circulate with greater freshness. + +For some moments Saterlee considered the river, up-stream, down-stream, +and across, knitting his brows to see better, for the light was failing +by leaps and bounds. Then, in an embarrassed voice: + +"I've _got_ to do it," he said. "It's only right." + +"What?" said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"I feel sure," he said, "that under the circumstances you'll make every +allowance, Ma'am." + +Without further hesitation--in fact, with almost desperate haste, as if +wishing to dispose of a disagreeable duty--he ripped open the buttons of +his waistcoat and removed it at the same time with his coat, as if the +two had been but one garment. He tossed them into the bottom of the +buggy in a disorderly heap. But Mrs. Kimbal rescued them, separated +them, folded them neatly, and stowed them under the seat. + +Saterlee made no comment. He was thinking of the state of a shirt that +he had had on since early morning, and was wondering how, with his +elbows pressed very tightly to his sides, he could possibly manage to +unlace his boots. He made one or two tentative efforts. But Mrs. Kimbal +seemed to divine the cause of his embarrassment. + +"_Please_," she said, "don't mind anything--on my account." + +He reached desperately, and regardlessly, for his boots, unlaced them, +and took them off. + +"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Kimbal, "_both_ your heels need darning!" + +Saterlee had tied his boots together, and was fastening them around his +neck by the remainder of the laces. + +"I haven't anybody to do my darning now," he said. "My girls are all at +school, except two that's married. So--" He finished his knot, took the +reins in his left hand and the whip in his right. + +At first the old mare would not budge. Switching was of no avail. +Saterlee brought down the whip upon her with a sound like that of small +cannon. She sighed and walked gingerly into the river. + +The water rose slowly (or the river bottom shelved very gradually), and +they were half-way across before it had reached the hubs of the wheels. +But the mare appeared to be in deeper. She refused to advance, and once +more turned and stared with a kind of wistful rudeness. Then she saw the +whip, before it fell, made a desperate plunge, and floundered forward +into deep water--but without the buggy. + +One rotten shaft had broken clean off, both rotten traces, and the +reins, upon which hitherto there had been no warning pull, were jerked +from Saterlee's loose fingers. The old mare reached the further shore +presently, swimming and scrambling upon a descending diagonal, stalked +sedately up the bank, and then stood still, only turning her head to +look at the buggy stranded in mid-stream. The sight appeared to arouse +whatever of youthful mischief remained in the feeble old heart. She +seemed to gather herself for a tremendous effort, then snorted once, and +kicked thrice--three feeble kicks of perhaps six inches in the +perpendicular. + +Mrs. Kimbal exploded into laughter. + +"Wouldn't you know she was a woman?" she said. + +But Saterlee was climbing out of the buggy. + +"Now," said he, "if you'll just tie my coat round your neck by the +sleeves--let the vest go hang--and then you'll have to let me +carry you." + +Mrs. Kimbal did as she was told. But the buggy, relieved at last of all +weight, slid off sidewise with the current, turned turtle, and was +carried swiftly down-stream. Saterlee staggering, for the footing was +uncertain, and holding Mrs. Kimbal high in his arms, started for shore. +The water rose above his waist, and kept rising. He halted, bracing +himself against the current. + +"Ma'am," he said in a discouraged voice, "it's no use. I've just got to +let you get wet. We've got to swim to make it." + +"All right," she said cheerfully. + +"Some folks," he said, "likes to go overboard sudden; some likes to go +in by degrees." + +"Between the two for me," said Mrs. Kimbal. "Not suddenly, but firmly +and without hesitation." + +She gave a little shivery gasp. + +"It's not really cold," she said. "How strong the current pulls. Will +you have to swim and tow me?" + +"Yes," he said. + +"Then wait," she said. "Don't let me be carried away." + +He steadied her while she drew the hat-pins from her hat and dropped it +as carelessly on the water as if that had been her dressing-table. Then +she took down her hair. It was in two great brown, shining braids. The +ends disappeared in the water, listing down-stream. + +Shorn of her hat and her elaborate hair-dressing, the lady was no longer +showy, and Saterlee, out of the tail of an admiring eye, began to see +real beauties about her that had hitherto eluded him. Whatever other +good qualities and virtues she may have tossed overboard during a stormy +and unhappy life, she had still her nerve with her. So Saterlee +told himself. + +"It will be easier, won't it," she said, "if you have my hair to hold +by? I think I can manage to keep on my back." + +"May I, Ma'am?" said Saterlee. + +She laughed at his embarrassment. And half-thrust the two great braids +into the keeping of his strong left hand. + +A moment later Saterlee could no longer keep his footing. + +"Now, Ma'am," he said, "just let yourself go." + +And he swam to shallow water, not without great labor, towing Mrs. +Kimbal by the hair. But here he picked her up in his arms, this time +with no word spoken, and carried her ashore. Some moments passed. + +"Well," she said, laughing, "aren't you going to put me down?" + +"Oh!" said he, terribly confused, "I forgot. I was just casting an eye +around for that horse. She's gone." + +"Never mind--we'll walk." + +"It'll be heavy going, wet as you are," said he. + +"I'll soon be dry in this air," she said. + +Saterlee managed to pull his boots on over his wet socks, and Mrs. +Kimbal, having given him his wet coat from her neck, stooped and wrung +as much water as she could from her clothes. + +It was now nearly dark, but they found the road and went on. + +"What time is it?" she asked. + +"My watch was in my vest," said Saterlee. + +"How far to Carcasonne House?" + +"'Bout thirty miles." + +She did not speak again for some time. + +"Well," she said, a little hardness in her voice, "you'll hardly be in +time to steer your boy away from my girl." + +"No," said he, "I won't. An' you'll hardly be in time to steer your +girl away from my boy." + +"Oh," she said, "you misconceive me entirely, Mr. Saterlee. As far as +I'm concerned, my only regret _now_ is that I shan't be in time to dance +at the wedding." + +"Ma'am?" he said, and there was something husky in his voice. + + + + +V + +About midnight they saw a light, and, forsaking what they believed in +hopeful moments to be the road, they made for it across country. Across +open spaces of sand, into gullies and out of gullies, through stinging +patches of yucca and prickly pear, through breast-high chaparral, +meshed, knotted, and matted, like a clumsy weaving together of very +tough ropes, some with thorns, and all with sharp points and elbows. + +They had long since dispensed with all conversation except what bore on +their situation. Earlier in the night the darkness and the stars had +wormed a story of divorce out of Mrs. Kimbal, and Saterlee had found +himself longing to have the man at hand and by the throat. + +And she had prattled of her many failures on the stage and, latterly, of +her more successful ventures, and of a baby boy that she had had, and +how that while she was off playing "on the road" her husband had come +in drunk and had given the baby the wrong medicine. And it was about +then that she had left off conversing. + +For in joy it is hard enough to find the way in the dark, while for +those in sorrow it is not often that it can be found at all. + +The light proved to be a lantern upon the little porch of a ramshackle +shanty. An old man with immense horn-rimmed spectacles was reading by it +out of a tattered magazine. When the couple came close, the old man +looked up from his reading, and blessed his soul several times. + +"It do beat the Dutch!" he exclaimed in whining nasal tones, "if here +ain't two more." + +"Two more what?" said Saterlee. + +"It's the floods, I reckon," whined the old man. "There's three on the +kitchen floor and there's two ladies in my bed. That's why I'm sittin' +up. There wa'n't no bed for a man in his own house. But I found this +here old copy of the _Medical Revoo_, 'n' I'm puttin' in the time with +erysipelis." + +"But," said Saterlee, "you must find some place for this lady to rest. +She is worn out with walking and hunger." + +"Stop!" whined the old man, smiting his thigh, "if there ain't that +there mattress in the loft! And I clean forgot, and told the boys that I +hadn't nothin' better than a rug or two 'n the kitchen floor." + +"A mattress!" exclaimed Saterlee. "Splendid! I guess you can sleep some +on anything near as good as a mattress. Can't you, ma'am?" + +"Indeed I could!" she said. "But you have been through as much as I +have--more. I won't take it." + +The old man's whine interrupted. + +"Ain't you two married?" he said. + +"Nop," said Saterlee shortly. + +"Now ain't that ridiculous?" meditated the old man; "I thought you was +all along." His eyes brightened behind the spectacles. "It ain't for me +to interfere _in_ course," he said, "but hereabouts I'm a Justice of the +Peace." Neither spoke. + +"I could rouse up the boys in the kitchen for witnesses," he insinuated. + +Saterlee turned suddenly to Mrs. Kimbal, but his voice was very humble. + +"Ma'am?" he suggested. + + + + +MR. HOLIDAY + +Mr. Holiday stepped upon the rear platform of his car, the Mishawaka, +exactly two seconds before the express, with a series of faint, +well-oiled jolts, began to crawl forward and issue from beneath the +glass roof of the Grand Central into the damp, pelting snow. Mr. Holiday +called the porter and told him for the good of his soul that fifty years +ago travelling had not been the easy matter that it was to-day. This off +his mind, he pulled an _Evening Post_ from his pocket and dismissed the +porter by beginning to read. He still wore his overcoat and high silk +hat. These he would not remove until time had proved that the +temperature of his car was properly regulated. + +He became restless after a while and hurried to the forward compartment +of the Mishawaka to see if all his trunks had been put on. He counted +them over several times, and each time he came to the black trunk he +sniffed and wrinkled up his nose indignantly. The black trunk was filled +with the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been +called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had +learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they +had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had +badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and +snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies +had looked such indignant, heart-broken daggers at him that, very +ungraciously, it is true, and with language that made their +sensibilities hop like peas in a pan, he had felt obliged to relent. He +had gathered up the lists and stuffed them into his pocket, and had +turned away with one bitter and awful phrase. + +"Waste not, want not!" he had said. + +He now glared and sniffed at the black trunk, and called for the porter. + +"Do you know what's in that trunk?" he said in a pettish, indignant +voice. "It's full of Christmas presents for my grandchildren. It's got +crocodiles in it and lions and Billy Possums and music-boxes and dolls +and yachts and steam-engines and spiders and monkeys and doll's +furniture and china. It cost me seven hundred and forty-two dollars and +nine cents to fill that trunk. Do you know where I wish it was?" + +The porter did not know. + +"I wish it was in Jericho!" said Mr. Holiday. + +He fingered the brass knob of the door that led forward to the regular +coaches, turned it presently, and closed it behind him. + +His progress through the train resembled that of a mongoose turned +loose in new quarters. Nothing escaped his prying scrutiny or love of +petty information. If he came to a smoking compartment, he would thrust +aside the curtain and peer in. If it contained not more than three +persons, he would then enter, seat himself, and proceed to ask them +personal questions. It was curious that people so seldom resented being +questioned by Mr. Holiday; perhaps his evident sincerity in seeking for +information accounted for this; perhaps the fact that he was famous, and +that nearly everybody in the country knew him by sight. Perhaps it is +impossible for a little gentleman of eighty, very smartly dressed, with +a carnation in his buttonhole, to be impertinent. And then he took such +immense and childish pleasure in the answers that he got, and sometimes +wrote them down in his note-book, with comments, as: + +"Got into conversation with a lady with a flat face. She gave me her age +as forty-two. I should have said nearer sixty. + +"Man of fifty tells me has had wart on nose for twenty-five years; has +had it removed by electrolysis twice, but it persists. Tell him that I +have never had a wart." + +Etc., etc. + +He asked people their ages, whence they came, where they were going; +what they did for a living; if they drank; if they smoked; if their +parents were alive; what their beefsteak cost them a pound; what kind of +underwear they wore; what church they attended; if they shaved +themselves; if married; if single; the number of their children; why +they did not have more children; how many trunks they had in the +baggage-car; whether they had seen to it that their trunks were put on +board, etc. Very young men sometimes gave him joking and sportive +answers; but it did not take him long to catch such drifts, and he +usually managed to crush their sponsors thoroughly. For he had the great +white dignity of years upon his head; and the dignity of two or three +hundred million dollars at his back. + +During his peregrinations he came to a closed door which tempted him +strangely. It was probably the door of a private state-room; it might be +the door of a dust closet. He meditated, with his finger upon the knob. +"I'll just open it slowly," he thought, "and if I make a mistake I'll +say I thought it was a smoking compartment." + +As the door opened a smell of roses came out. Huddled into the seat that +rides forward was a beautiful girl, very much dishevelled and weeping +bitterly, with her head upon one of those coarse white pillows which the +Pullman Company provides. Her roses lay upon the seat opposite. She was +so self-centred in her misery that she was not aware that the door had +been opened, a head thrust in and withdrawn, and the door closed. But +she was sure that a still, small voice had suddenly spoken in her mind, +and said: "Brace up." Presently she stopped crying, as became one who +had been made the subject of a manifestation, and began to put her hair +in order at the narrow mirror between the two windows. Meanwhile, though +Mr. Holiday was making himself scarce, as the saying is, he was consumed +with interest to know why the beautiful girl was weeping. _And he meant +to find out_. + +But in the meantime another case provoked his interest. A handsome woman +of thirty-five occupied Section 7 in Car 6. She was dressed in +close-fitting black, with a touch of white at her throat and wrists. + +Mr. Holiday had seen her from the extreme end of the car, and by the +time he was opposite to where she sat it became necessary for him to +have an answer to the questions that had presented themselves about her. +Without any awkward preliminaries, he bent over and said: + +"I've been wondering, ma'am, if you are dressed in black for your father +or your husband." + +She looked up, recognized the famous eccentric, and smiled. + +"Won't you sit down, Mr. Holiday?" she said, and made room for him. + +"I wear black," she said, when he had seated himself, "not because I am +in mourning for anybody, but because I think it's becoming to me. You +see, I have very light-colored hair." + +"Does all that hair grow on your head?" Mr. Holiday asked, simply and +without offence. + +"Every bit of it," she said. + +"I have a splendid head of hair, too," he commented. "But there's a +young man in the car back of this who'll be twenty-two years of age in +February, and he's got more dandruff than hair. Where are you going?" + +"Cleveland." + +"Is that your home?" + +"No. I'm a bird of passage." + +"What is your name?" + +"I am Miss Hampton," she said, and she hoped that he might have heard of +her. But he hadn't. And she explained herself. "I'm to play at the +Euclid Theatre Christmas night." + +"An actor?" he said. + +"Well," she admitted, "some say so, and some won't hear of it." + +"How much money do you earn?" + +"Two hundred dollars a week." + +Mr. Holiday wrote that in his note-book. + +"I've got some little nieces and nephews in New York," she volunteered. +"Don't you think it's hard to be a genuine aunt and to have to spend +Christmas alone in a strange place?" + +"Not for two hundred dollars a week," said Mr. Holiday +unsympathetically. "You ought to thank your stars and garters." + +Presently, after patting her on the back with two fingers, he rose, +bowed, and passed on down the aisle. On the right, in the end section, +was a very old couple, with snow-white hair, and a great deal of +old-fashioned luggage. Mr. Holiday greeted them cordially, and asked +their ages. The old gentleman was seventy-six and proud of it; the old +lady was seventy. Mr. Holiday informed them that he was eighty, but that +they were probably the next oldest people on the train. Anyway, he would +find out and let them know. They smiled good-naturedly, and the old lady +cuddled a little against the old gentleman, for it was cold in that car. +Mr. Holiday turned abruptly. + +"I forgot to ask you where you are going?" he said. + +They told him that they were going to spend Christmas with their +daughter and son-in-law and the new baby in Cleveland. It was a long +journey. But the season made them feel young and strong. Did Mr. Holiday +think there was any danger of being delayed by the snow? It was coming +down very fast. They could not remember ever to have been in a +sleeping-car when it was snowing so hard outside. Mr. Holiday said that +he would ask the conductor about the snow, and let them know. + +In the smoking compartment of the next car forward sat a very young man, +all alone. He looked at once sulky and frightened. He wasn't smoking, +but was drumming on the window sill with his finger nails. He had a +gardenia in his button-hole, and was dressed evidently in his very best +suit--a handsome dark gray, over a malaga-grape-colored waistcoat. In +his necktie was a diamond horseshoe pin. + +"Young man," said Mr. Holiday, seating himself, "what makes you look so +cross?" + +The young man started to say, "None of your business," but perceived in +time the eager face and snow-white hair of his questioner, and +checked himself. + +"Why," he said tolerantly, "do I look as savage as all that?" + +"It isn't money troubles," said Mr. Holiday, "or you would have pawned +that diamond pin." + +"Wouldn't you be cross," said the young man, "if you had to look forward +to sitting up all night in a cold smoking compartment?" + +"Can't you get a berth?" + +"I had a drawing-room," said the young man, "but at the last minute I +had to give it up to a lady." + +Mr. Holiday's eyes twinkled with benign interest. He had connected the +gardenia in the young man's coat with the roses of the girl who +was weeping. + +"I know," he said, "drawing-room, Car 5. She was crying, but I told her +to brace up, and I guess she's stopped." + +The young man jumped to his feet. + +"Oh!" he said. + +Mr. Holiday chuckled. + +"I was right," he said. "I've been right seven times out of the ten for +twenty-five years. I've kept a record." + +Upon an impulse the young man checked his headlong inclination to rush +to the girl who was weeping. + +"If you are right as often as that," he said, "for God's sake tell me +what to do." + +"Certainly," said Mr. Holiday, "and it won't cost you a cent. What's the +matter?" + +"_She_" said the young man with an accent, for there was but the one, +"came to the station to see me off. She gave me this." He touched the +gardenia gently. "I gave her some roses. Just as the train started to +pull out I dared her to come with me ... she came!" + +"Tut--tut!" said Mr. Holiday. + +"What are we to do?" cried the young man. + +"Go back and sit with her," said Mr. Holiday, "and leave the door wide +open. I'm going through the train now to see who's on board; so don't +worry. Leave it all to me." + +The last car forward before you came to the baggage-car and the express +car was a common day coach. It was draughty. It had been used as a +smoker in a period not so very remote. A dog must have passed an +uncomfortable night in it. + +Near the rear door sat a man in a new derby hat and a new black coat. +Further forward on the same side three children had stuffed themselves +into one seat. The middle child, a well-grown girl of thirteen or +fourteen, seemed by her superior height to shelter the little tots at +her side. Only the blue imitation sailor caps of these appeared above +the top of the seat; and the top of each cap, including that worn by the +older girl, had a centrepiece of white about the size of a gentleman's +visiting card. Mr. Holiday promised himself the pleasure of +investigating these later. In the meanwhile his interest was excited by +the ears of the man in the new derby. They were not large, but they had +an appearance of sticking out further than was necessary; and Mr. +Holiday was about to ask their owner the reason why, when he noticed for +himself that it was because the owner's hair had been cut so very, very +short. Indeed, he had little gray eighth-inch bristles instead of hair. +Mr. Holiday wondered why. He seated himself behind the man, and leaned +forward. The man stirred uneasily. + +"I should think you'd be afraid of catching cold in this draughty car +with your hair cut so short," said Mr. Holiday. + +"I am," said the man tersely. + +"Why did you let them cut it so short then?" + +"Let them!" grunted the man, with ineffable scorn. "Let them! You'd have +let them!" + +"I would not," retorted Mr. Holiday crisply. "My wife cuts my hair for +me, just the way I tell her to." + +The man turned a careworn, unhappy face. + +"My wife used to cut mine," he said. "But then I--I got into the habit +of having it done for me.... Ever been to Ohio Penitentiary, mister? ... +That's the finest tonsorial parlor in America--anything from a shave to +the electric treatment." + +"Ohio Penitentiary is a jail for felons," said Mr. Holiday severely. + +"Quite so," said the man, "as I was telling you." + +His voice had a plaintive, subdued note of defiance in it. It was that +of a person who is tired of lying and beating about the bush. + +"When did you get out?" asked Mr. Holiday simply. + +"Eight days ago," said the man, "and when I get good and sick of looking +for jobs and getting turned down--I guess I'll go back." + +"First they make you work," said Mr. Holiday with a pleased chuckle, +"and then they won't let you work. That's the law. But you take my +advice--you fool 'em!" + +"I never fooled anybody," said the man, and he ripped a holy name from +the depths of his downheartedness. + +Mr. Holiday had extracted his note-book, and under cover of the +seat-back was preparing to take notes and make comments. + +"What did you use to do for a living--before?" he asked. + +"I was teller in a bank." + +"And what happened?" + +"Then," said the man, "the missus had twins, followed by typhoid fever." +His admissions came with hopeless frankness. "And I couldn't pay for all +that luxury. So I stole." + +"What bank were you teller in?" + +"The Painsville Bank--Painsville. I'm going to them now to--to see if +they won't let up. The wife says that's the thing to do--go right to the +boil of trouble and prick it." + +"What did your wife do while you were away?" asked Mr. Holiday +delicately. + +"She did odd jobs, and brought the twins up healthy." + +"I remember the Painsville business," said Mr. Holiday, "because I own +stock in that bank. You only took about two hundred dollars." + +"That was all I needed," said the man. "It saved the missus and the +kids--so what's the odds?" + +"But don't you intend to pay it back?" + +"Not if the world won't let me earn any money. I tried for jobs all +to-day, and yesterday, and the day before. I told my story straight. The +missus wrote that was the thing to do. But I guess she's wrong for once. +What would you do if you were a banker and I came to you and said: 'I'm +just out of jail, where I went for stealing; but I mean to be honest. +Won't you give me work?'" + +Mr. Holiday wondered what he would do. He was beginning to like the +ex-convict's frankness. + +"Do you know who I am?" he asked. + +"Everybody knows you by sight, Mr. Holiday." + +"Then you know," said the little old gentleman, "that I've sent plenty +of people to jail in my time--plenty of them." + +"I've heard that said," said the man. + +"But," said Mr. Holiday sharply, "nobody ever tells stories about the +wrongdoers I have forgiven. Your case never came to me. I believe I +would have shown mercy." + +He closed his note-book and rose. + +"Keep telling your story straight, my man, and _asking_ for work." + +He paused, as if waiting a reply; but the man only grunted, and he +passed forward to the children. First he examined the visiting-card +effects on the tops of their hats, and noticed that these were paper +labels sewed down, and bearing the names and destinations of the little +passengers. Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia Caldwell, reading from left to +right, were consigned in the care of the conductor to Silas Caldwell, +Painsville, Ohio. + +Alice had her arms around Freddie and Euphemia, and her pretty head was +bent first to one and then to the other. Mr. Holiday seated himself +gently behind the trio, and listened for some time. He learned that +"mother" was in the hospital, and "father" had to be with her, and that +the children were going to "Uncle Silas" until sent for. And Uncle Silas +was a very "grouchy" man, and one must mind one's P's and Q's, and never +be naughty, or Uncle Silas would have the law of one. But she, Alice, +would take care of them. + +"Going to spend Christmas with Uncle, are you?" piped Mr. Holiday +suddenly; "that's right!" + +The little tots, very much interested and startled, faced about, but +Alice looked like a little reproving angel. + +"Oh!" she said, climbing out of the seat, "I must speak with you +first," + +Mr. Holiday was actually surprised; but he went aside with the child, +where the tots could not hear. + +Absolutely without consciousness of doing so, Alice patted and +rearranged the old gentleman's carnation, and talked to him in a gentle, +reproving tone. + +"I've done everything I could," she said, "to keep the idea of Christmas +away from them. They didn't know when it came until you spoke. But now +they know, and I don't know what I shall do ... our uncle," she +explained, "doesn't celebrate Christmas; he made father understand that +before he agreed to take us until mother got well. So father and I +agreed we'd keep putting Christmas off until mother was well and we were +all together again. But now they'll want their Christmas--and _I_ can't +give it to them." + +"Well, well," said Mr. Holiday cheerfully. "I _have_ put my foot in it. +And I suppose Freddie and Euphemia will carry on and raise Cain when +they find there's no Santy Claus in Painsville?" + +"Don't you fret, Alice," said Mr. Holiday. "When I get people in trouble +I get 'em out. Your Uncle Silas is a friend of mine--he has to be. I'm +going to send him a telegram." He smiled, and chucked her under the +chin. "I'm not much on Christmas myself," he said, "but an obligation's +an obligation." He shook hands with her, nodded in a friendly way to +the ex-convict, and passed out of the car on his return journey, +consulting his note-book as he went. + +First he revisited the old couple, and told them that next to himself +they were in fact the oldest persons on the train, and that they need +not worry about the snow because he had asked the conductor about it, +and the conductor had said that it was all right. Then he started to +revisit Miss Hampton, but was turned from his purpose by a new face in +the car. The new face rose, thin and white, on a long thin neck from a +clerical collar, and its owner was busy with a pad and a pencil. + +"Writing a sermon?" asked Mr. Holiday. + +The clergyman looked up and smiled. + +"No, sir," he said. "I'm doing a sum in addition, and making heavy work +of it." + +"I'll do it for you," said Mr. Holiday eagerly. He was a lightning +adder, and not in the least averse to showing off. The clergyman, still +smiling, yielded up the pad. + +"I'm trying to make it come to two thousand dollars," he said, "and I +can't." + +"That's because," said Mr. Holiday, returning the pad after one swift +glance up and down the columns, "it only comes to thirteen hundred and +twenty-five dollars. You had the answer correct." + +"It's for repairs to the church," said the clergyman dismally. "The +contractor calls for two thousand; and I'm just about ready to give up." + +"Well," said Mr. Holiday, "I'm going to get my dinner now, and maybe +later I can give you some idea how to raise the balance. I've raised a +good deal of money in my time." He chuckled. + +"I know that, Mr. Holiday," said the clergyman, "and I should be glad of +any--suggestion that you might care to make." + +Mr. Holiday seated himself facing Miss Hampton. She smiled, and nodded, +and laid aside the book she had been reading. Mr. Holiday's +eyes twinkled. + +"I'm going to turn you out of this section," he said. + +"Why?" She smiled. + +"Because there's a young friend of mine wants it," he said. + +"Now, _really!_" said Miss Hampton, still smiling. + +"You're going to carry your duds to the drawing-room, Car 5," he said. +Then, the twinkle in his eyes becoming exceedingly gossipy and sportive, +he told her about the young people who had eloped without exactly +meaning to. Miss Hampton was delighted. + +She and Mr. Holiday hurried to the drawing-room in Car 5, of which the +door had been left wide open, according to Mr. Holiday's orders. The +young people looked very happy and unhappy all at once, and as soon as +Mr. Holiday had begun to state their situation to them without mincing, +they assumed a tremendous pair of blushes, which they were not able to +efface for a long time. + +"And now," he finished, glaring at the uncomfortable young man, "you +bring your duds and put them in Miss Hampton's section. And then you +gather up Miss Hampton's duds and bring 'em in here." And he turned and +shook his finger at the girl. "Mind you," he said, "don't you ever run +away again without a chaperon. They don't grow on every bush." + +Somehow, Mr. Holiday had overlooked the other drawing-room (B) in Car 5. +Now he came suddenly upon it, and peered in, for the door was ajar. But +he drew back with a sharp jerk as if he had seen a rattlesnake. All the +kindness went out of the old gentleman's face, and between anger and +hatred he turned white. + +"Jolyff!" he muttered. And, all the elasticity gone from his gait, he +stumbled back to his own car, revolving and muttering unchristian +thoughts. For he and Jolyff had been meeting all their lives, it seemed, +in court and out; sometimes with the right on one side, sometimes on the +other. Each had cost the other a thousand wicked threats and a mint +of money. + +Mr. Holiday's wanderings through the train had aroused all the kindlier +feelings in his nature. He was going home to his wife and family: +expensive and foolish as it seemed, he had the trunk full of toys for +the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, and he was glad of it. He +had put things right for two prepossessing young people who had made a +wrong start; he had been gallant to an actress; he had determined to +help the clergyman out with his repair fund; to find work for a convict, +and to see to it that three children should have a pleasant visit with +an uncle who was really crotchety, disagreeable, and mean. + +But now he did not care about pleasant things any more. He could think +of nothing but Jolyff; of nothing but old sores that rankled; of great +deals that had gone wrong, through his enemy. And in that spirit he +picked at his Christmas Eve dinner, and went to bed. + +It seemed to Mr. Holiday every time he woke, which was often, that the +train had just started to move, after standing still for a long time, +and that the porter had never before allowed his car to grow so cold. He +turned the current into the reading light at the head of his bed and +consulted his watch. + +Two o'clock. He got to wondering at exactly what hour all those hundreds +of years ago Christ had been born. Had it been as cold as this in the +old barn? Whew! + +No, Bethlehem was in the semi-tropics or thereabout, but the common car +in which the three children were passing the night was not. This thought +came to Mr. Holiday without invitation, and, like all unwelcome guests, +made a long stay. So persistent, indeed, was the thought, meeting his +mind at every turn and dogging its footsteps, that he forgot all about +Jolyff and all about everything else. Finally he rang for the porter, +but had no answer. He rang again and again. Then the train jolted slowly +to a standstill, and Mr. Holiday got up and dressed, and went forward +once more through the narrow aisles of thick curtains to the common car. +But the passengers in that car had amalgamated. Alice and the convict, +blue with cold, were in the same seat, and Alice was hugging Freddie, +who slept fitfully, to her breast, and the convict was hugging Euphemia, +who cried gently and softly like a cold and hungry kitten, to his. The +convict had taken off his overcoat and wrapped it as well as he could +about all the children. + +Mr. Holiday tapped the convict on the shoulder. "Merry Christmas!" he +said cynically. The convict started and turned. "Bring these babies back +to my car," said Mr. Holiday, "and help me put 'em to bed." "That's a +good deed, Mr. Holiday," said the convict. He started to put on his +overcoat. The undressing and putting to bed had not waked Freddie. + +Euphemia had stopped crying. And Alice, when the two men had helped her +with her dress, which buttoned down the back, had suddenly flung her +arms first around one and then around the other, and given each a kiss +good night. + +The convict buttoned his coat and turned up his collar. + +"Good-night, sir," he said, "and thank you." + +Mr. Holiday waved the thanks aside and pointed to a door of shining +mahogany. + +"There's a bed for you, too," he said gently. + +The convict hesitated. + +Then--it may have been owing to the sudden starting of the train--he +lurched against the door, and with a sound that was mighty like a sob +thrust it open and slammed it shut behind him. + +Mr. Holiday smiled and went back to his own bed. This time he slept +soundly. + +At seven o'clock the porter called him, according to orders. The train +was standing still. + +"Merry Christmas, Mistah Holiday, sah!" grinned the porter. "Seven +o'clock, sah!" + +"Merry Christmas," said Mr. Holiday. "Why are we stopping?" + +"We's snowed in," grinned the porter. + +"Snowed in!" exclaimed Mr. Holiday. "Where?" + +"'Tween Albany and Buffalo, sah. Dey ain't any name to de place. Dey +ain't any place." + +"There are three children," said Mr. Holiday, "in the stateroom next to +this and a gentleman in the other stateroom. You call 'em in about an +hour and ask 'em what they'll take for breakfast. Bring me some coffee, +and ask the conductor how late we're going to be." + +With his coffee Mr. Holiday learned that the train might be twenty-four +hours late in getting to Cleveland. The conductor supposed that ploughs +were at work along the track; but the blizzard was still raging. + +That he would be separated from his wife on Christmas Day for the first +time in their married life did not amuse Mr. Holiday; and although too +much of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren bored him to +extinction, still he felt that any festive day on which they were not +all with him was a festive day gone very wrong indeed. But it was not as +a sop to his own feelings of disappointment that he decided to celebrate +Christmas in the train. It was a mixture of good-nature and, I am +afraid, of malice. He said to himself: + +"I shall invite all the passengers to one-o'clock dinner and a Christmas +tree afterward with games and punch. I shall invite the conductor and +the brakeman; the porters shall come to serve dinner. I shall invite the +engineer and the fireman and the express-man. I shall invite everybody +except Jolyff." + +The old gentleman sucked in his lips tightly and dwelt upon this +thought with satisfaction. Jolyff loved a party; Jolyff loved to drink +healths, and clap people on the back, and make little speeches, and +exert himself generally to amuse less gifted persons and make them feel +at home. And it was pleasant to think of him as sitting alone while a +fine celebration was banging and roaring in the very next car--a +celebration to which even an ex-convict had been invited. + +First, Mr. Holiday summoned Miss Hampton and the girl who had run away +to be his aides-de-camp. They decided that the party was really for the +benefit of Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia, so these were packed off at +once to the common car to be as far as possible from the scene of +preparations. Then, with Mr. Holiday's porter, and his cook, and the +ex-convict as men of all work, commenced the task of ordering the car +for a crowd and decorating it, and improvising a Christmas tree. Miss +Hampton set to work with a wooden bucket, sugar, rum, brandy, eggs, +milk, and heaven knows what not, to brew a punch. Every now and then Mr. +Holiday appeared, to see how she was getting on, and to taste the +concoction, and to pay her pretty, old-fashioned compliments. The girl +who had run away was helping the porter to lay the table and trying to +write invitations to the passengers at the same time, Mr. Holiday having +furnished her from his note-book with all of their names. Now and then +there were hurried consultations as to what would be a suitable gift for +a given person. The "next oldest" people in the train were to receive a +pair of the silver candlesticks from the table. The train hands were to +receive money, and suddenly Mr. Holiday discovered that he had only a +few dollars in cash with him. He sought out the clergyman. + +"Merry Christmas!" he said. + +"Merry Christmas!" said the clergyman. + +"Have you," said Mr. Holiday, "any of your rebuilding fund with you?" + +"Why, yes," said the clergyman, smiling, "some two hundred dollars, and +I cannot deny that it is agony to me to carry about so large a sum." + +Mr. Holiday simply held out his hand, palm up. + +"Why--what--" began the clergyman in embarrassment. + +"I will give you my check for that sum," said Mr. Holiday, "and +something over for your fund. I hope you will dine with me, in my car, +at one o'clock." + +He hurried away with the two hundred dollars. It was his intention to +sample Miss Hampton's punch again; but he turned from this on a sudden +impulse and sought out the young man who had been run away with. With +this attractive person he talked very earnestly for half an hour, and +asked him an infinite number of questions; just the kind of questions +that he had asked the young men who had aspired to the hands of his own +daughters. And these must have been satisfactorily answered, because at +the end of the interview Mr. Holiday patted the young man on the back +and said that he would see him later. + +Next he came face to face with Mr. Jolyff, and the two old gentlemen +stared at each other coldly, but without any sign of recognition. +Once--ever so many years ago--they had been intimate friends. Mr. +Holiday had never had any other friend of whom he had been so fond. He +tried now to recall what their first difference had been, and because he +could not he thought he must be growing infirm. And he began to think of +his approaching party with less pleasure. He had let himself in for a +good deal of bother, he thought. + +But this time Miss Hampton made him take a whole teaspoonful of punch, +and told him what a dear he was, and what a good time everybody was +going to have, and that she would do anything in the world for him; she +would even recite "The Night Before Christmas" for his company, if he +asked her. And then they did a great deal of whispering, and finally Mr. +Holiday said: + +"But suppose they balk?" + +"Nonsense," said Miss Hampton; "would you and I balk if we were in their +places?" + +The pretty actress and the old gentleman laughed and bowed to each +other, and exchanged the most arch looks imaginable. And then Miss +Hampton exclaimed: + +"Good Lord--it's twelve-thirty." + +Then there came to them a sudden dreadful smell of burning feathers. +They dashed into the observation end of the car and found the ex-convict +smothering an incipient conflagration of the Christmas tree, which was +made of dusters, with his hands. + +The girl who had run away was despatching the porter with the last batch +of invitations. The ex-convict showed them his burned hands. + +"You go and feel the champagne," said Mr. Holiday, "that'll cool'em." + +Mr. Holiday himself went to fetch the children. In his pockets were the +envelopes containing money for the train hands, the envelope containing +a check for the two hundred dollars that he had borrowed from the +clergyman, and enough over to complete the rebuilding fund which the +clergyman had tried so hard to collect. And there was an envelope for +the ex-convict--not with money in it, but with an I.O.U. + +"_I.O.U. A Good Job_," Mr. Holiday had written on a card and signed his +name. And he had taken out of his satchel and transferred to his +waistcoat pocket a pair of wonderful black pearls that he sometimes wore +at important dinners. And he was going to give one of these to Miss +Hampton and one to the girl who had run away. And then there were all +the wonderful toys and things for Alice, and Freddie, and Euphemia, and +he was going to present them with the black trunk, too, so that they +could take their gifts off the train when it eventually got to +Painsville. And Mr. Holiday had thought of everybody, and had prepared a +little speech to speak to his guests; and for two of his guests he had +arranged one of the greatest surprises that can be sprung on two guests; +and he ought to have been perfectly happy. But he wasn't. + +When he passed the door of Mr. Jolyff's drawing-room he noted that it +was tightly closed. And it ought to have pleased him to see how his +enemy had taken his exclusion from the party to heart, and had shut +himself away from any sign or sound of it. But, although he smiled +cynically, he wasn't altogether pleased. And presently he made a wry +mouth, as if he were taking something unpleasant; and he began to hustle +Freddie and Euphemia so as to get away from that closed door as quickly +as possible. + +The girl who had run away was talking with Mr. Holiday when suddenly she +began to grow conscious and uncomfortable. She gave one swift look about +her, and saw that all the passengers, and all the train hands, and +porters, and the express-man were looking at her and smiling, and she +saw that they had ranged themselves against the sides of the car and +were making themselves as small as possible. Then she saw the young man +looking at her with a wonderful, nervous, radiant look. And then she saw +that the clergyman was standing all by himself, in a space that the +crowd had just managed to leave open for him, and that he had on his +surplice, and that he was marking a place in his prayer-book with one +finger. Then she understood. + +Instinctively she caught Mr. Holiday's arm and clung to it, and Mr. +Holiday, smiling, patted her hand and began to draw her gently toward +the young man and the clergyman. It looked for a moment as if she were +going to hang back, and protest, and make a scene. But just when +everybody was beginning to fear the worst, and to look frightfully +nervous and uncomfortable, a wonderful and beautiful expression came +into her face, and her eyes lighted, and seemed to grow larger and +darker all at the same time. And if there were any present who had +regarded the impromptu wedding as something of a joke, these now had +their minds changed for them in the quickest kind of a jiffy. And if +there were any present who doubted of the beauty and dignity of love, +these had their minds changed for them, too. And they knew that they +were witnesses, not to a silly elopement, but to the great occasion in +the lives of two very young people who were absolutely sure of their +love for each other, and who would cherish each other in sickness and +peril, in good times and bad, in merry times and in heart-breaking +times, until death did them part. + +And then suddenly, just when the clergyman was about to begin, just when +Miss Hampton had succeeded in righting herself from smothering a sob, +Mr. Holiday, whose face, had you but noticed it, had been growing longer +and longer, and drearier and drearier, gave a half-strangled cry: + +"Wait!" + +Wholly oblivious to everything and everybody but what was in his mind at +the moment, he dropped the bride's hand as if it had been a red-hot +horseshoe and started to bolt from the car. But, strangely enough, the +old face that had grown so long and dreary was now wreathed in smiles, +and he was heard to mutter as he went: + +"Just a minute, while I get Jolyff!" + + * * * * * + +Mr. Jolyff and Mr. Holiday lifted their glasses. And Mr. Holiday said, +so that all could hear: + +"I drink to my old friends and to my new friends. And I drink to the +lesson of Christmas. For Christmas," said he, and he smiled in a +wonderful way, "teaches us that in all the world there is absolutely +nothing that we cannot forgive...." + +The two very old gentlemen clinked their glasses together, and, looking +each other affectionately in the eyes, might have been heard to mutter, +somewhat brokenly, each the other's Christian name. + + + + +WHITE MUSCATS OF ALEXANDRIA + +My wife, said the Pole, was a long time recovering from the birth of +our second child. She was a normal and healthy woman, but Nature has a +way in these matters of introducing the unnatural; science, too, mistook +the ABCs of the case for the XYZs; and our rooms were for many, many +weary weeks like a cage in which the bird has ceased to sing. I did what +I could. She was not without books, magazines, and delicacies; but I had +to attend to my business; so that time hung about her much like a +millstone, and she would say: "All's well with me, Michael, but I am +bored--bored--bored." + +Our baby was put out to nurse and our older boy, Casimir, who was seven, +began, for lack of his mother's care, to come and go as he pleased. The +assurance and cheek of street boys began to develop in him. He startled +me by his knowledge and his naivete. But at the same time he was a +natural innocent--a little dreamer. In the matters of street life that +arise among children he had, as a rule, the worst of it. He was a born +believer of all that might be told him. Such children develop into +artists or ne'er-do-wells. It was too soon to worry about him. But I was +easiest in mind when I saw that he was fashioning anatomies with mud or +drawing with chalk upon the sidewalk. "Wait a little," I would say to my +wife, "and he will be old enough to go to school." + +The happiest times were when it was dark and I had closed the store and +could sit by my wife's bed with Casimir on my knee. Then we would talk +over pleasant experiences, or I would tell them, who were both +American-born, stories of Poland, of fairies, and sieges; or hum for +them the tunes to which I had danced in my early youth. But oftenest my +wife and I talked, for the child's benefit, of the wonderful city in +whose slums we lived--upper central New York with its sables and its +palaces. During our courtship and honeymoon we had made many excursions +into those quarters of the city and the memory of them was dear. But if +I remembered well and with happiness, my wife remembered +photographically and with a kind of hectic eagerness in which, I fear, +may have been bedded the roots of dissatisfaction. Details of wealth and +luxury, and manners that had escaped me, even at the time, were as +facile to her as terms of endearment to a lover. "And, oh--do you +remember," she would say, "the ruby that the Fifth Avenue bride had at +her throat, and how for many, many blocks we thought we could still +hear the organ going? That was fun, Michael, wasn't it, when we stood in +front of Sherry's and counted how many real sables went in and how many +fakes, and noticed that the fake sables were as proudly carried as +the real?" + +One night she would not eat her supper. "Oh, Michael," she said, "I'm so +bored with the same old soup--soup--soup, and the same old +porridge--porridge--porridge, and I hate oranges, and apples, and please +don't spend any more money on silly, silly, silly me." + +"But you must eat," I said. "What would you like? Think of something. +Think of something that tempts your appetite. You seem better +to-night--almost well. Your cheeks are like cherries and you keep +stirring restlessly as if you wanted to get up instead of lying +still--still like a woman that has been drowned, all but her great, dear +eyes.... Now, make some decision, and were it ambrosia I will get it for +you if it is to be had in the city.... Else what are savings-banks for, +and thrift, and a knowledge of furs?" + +She answered me indirectly. + +"Do you remember, Michael," she said, "the butcher shops uptown, the +groceries, and the fruit stores, where the commonest articles, the +chops, the preserved strawberries, the apples were perfect and +beautiful, like works of art? In one window there was a great olive +branch in a glass jar--do you remember? And in that fruit store near the +Grand Central--do you remember?--we stood in the damp snow and looked in +at great clean spaces flooded with white light--and there were baskets +of strawberries--right there in January--and wonderful golden and red +fruits that we did not know the names of, and many of the fruits peeped +out from the bright-green leaves among which they had actually grown--" + +"I remember the two prize bunches of grapes," I said. + +And my wife said: + +"I was coming to those ... they must have been eighteen inches long, +every grape great and perfect. I remember you said that such grapes +looked immortal. It was impossible to believe they could ever rot--there +was a kind of joyous frostiness--we went in and asked a little man what +kind of grapes they were, and he answered like a phonograph, without +looking or showing politeness: 'Black Hamburgs and White Muscats of +Alexandria'--your old Sienkiewicz never said anything as beautiful as +that, 'White Muscats of Alexandria--'" + +"Dear little heart," I said. "Childkin, is it the memory of those white +grapes that tempts your appetite?" + +"Oh, Michael," she exclaimed, clasping her hands over those +disappointed breasts into which the milk had not come in sufficiency. +"Oh, Michael--they were two dollars and a half a pound--" + +"Heart of my heart," I said, "Stag Eyes, it is now late, and there are +no such grapes to be had in our part of the city--only the tasteless +white grapes that are packed with sawdust into barrels--but in the +morning I will go uptown and you shall have your White Muscats of +Alexandria." + +She put her arms about my neck with a sudden spasm of fervor, and drew +my head, that was already gray, down to hers. I remember that in that +moment I thought not of passion but of old age, parting, and the grave. + + * * * * * + +But she would not eat the grapes in my presence. There was to be an +orgy, she said, a bacchanalian affair--she was going to place the grapes +where she could look at them, and look at them until she could stand the +sight no more, when she would fall on them like a wolf on the fold and +devour them. She talked morbidly of the grapes--almost neurotically. +But, though her fancies did not please my sense of fitness, I only +laughed at her, or smiled--for she had been ill a long time. + +"But, at least, eat one now," I said, "so that I may see you enjoy it." + +"Not even one," she said. "The bunch must be perfect for me to look at +until--until I can resist no more. Hang them there, on the foot of the +bed by the crook of the stem--is it strong enough to hold them? and +then--aren't you going to be very late to your business? And, Michael, I +feel better--I do. I shouldn't wonder if you found me up and dressed +when you come back." + +In your telling American phrase, "there was nothing doing" in my +business that morning. It was one of those peaceful, sunny days in +January, not cold and no wind stirring. The cheap furs displayed in the +window of my shop attracted no attention from the young women of the +neighborhood. The young are shallow-minded, especially the women. If a +warm day falls in winter they do not stop to think that the next may be +cold. Only hats interest them all the year round, and men. + +So I got out one of my Cicero books and, placing my chair in a pool of +sunshine in the front of the shop, I began to read, for the hundredth +time, his comfortable generalities upon old age. But it seemed to me, +for the first time, that he was all wrong--that old age is only +dreadful, only a shade better than death itself. And this, I suppose, +was because I, myself, during those long months of my wife's illness, +had turned the corner. The sudden passions of youth had retreated like +dragons into their dens. It took more, now, than the worse end of a +bargain or the touch of my wife's lips to bring them flaming forth. On +our wedding day we had been of an age. Now, after nine years, my heart +had changed from a lover's into a father's, while she remained, as it +were, a bride. There remained to me, perhaps, many useful years of +business, of managing and of saving--enjoyable years. But life--life as +I count life--I had lived out. One moment must pass as the next. There +could be no more halting--no more moments of bliss so exquisite as to +resemble pain. I had reached that point in life when it is the sun alone +that matters, and no more the moon. + +A shadow fell upon my pool of sunshine and, looking up, I perceived a +handsome, flashy young man of the clever, almost Satanic type that is so +common below Fourteenth Street; and he stood looking cynically over the +cheap furs in my window and working his thin jaws. Then I saw him take, +with his right hand, from a bunch that he carried in his left, a great +white grape and thrust it into his mouth. They were my grapes, those +which I had gone uptown to fetch for my wife. By the fact that there +were none such to be had in our neighborhood I might have known them. +But the sure proof was a peculiar crook in the stem which I had noticed +when I had hung them for my wife at the foot of her bed. + +I rose and went quietly out of the shop. + +"Happy to show you anything," I said, smiling. + +"Don't need anything in the fur line to-day," said he; "much obliged." + +"What fine grapes those are," I commented. + +"Um," said he, "they call 'em white muskets of Alexander"; and he +grimaced. + +"Where are such to be had?" I asked. + +"Well," he said, "I got these just round the corner; but _you'd_ have to +visit some uptown fruit emporium and pay the price." + +"So you bought the last bunch?" + +"Bought nothin'," he said, and he smiled in a knowing and leering way. + +"They were given to me," he said, "by a married woman. I happened to +drop in and she happened to have sent her husband uptown to fetch these +grapes for her because she's playing sick and works him in more ways +than one--but she said the grapes sickened her conscience, and she made +me take 'em away." + +"So she has a conscience?" I said. + +"They all have," said the young man. "Have one?" + +I took one of the grapes with a hand that shook, and ate it, and felt +the red blood in my veins turn into acid. + +There happened to be a man in the neighborhood who had been nibbling +after my business for some time. I went to him now and made him a cheap +sale for cash. This I deposited with my savings, keeping out a hundred +dollars for myself, and put the whole in trust for my wife and children. +Then I went away and, after many hardships, established myself in a new +place. And, as is often the case with men who have nothing whatsoever to +live for and who are sad, I prospered. God was ever presenting me with +opportunities and the better ends of bargains. + +When fifteen years had passed I returned once more to New York. I had +reached a time of life when the possibility of death must be as steadily +reckoned with as the processes of digestion. And I wished, before I lay +down in the narrow house, to revisit the scenes of my former happiness. +I took the same furnished lodging to which we had gone after our +wedding. I lay all night, but did not sleep, in our nuptial bed. Alone, +but rather in reverence and revery than sadness, I made all those little +excursions upon which we had been so happy during the days of our +honey-moon. I made a point of feeding the animals in the park, of dining +at Claremont--I even stood for a long time before the fruit shop that is +near the Grand Central. But I was too old to feel much. So it seemed. + +One day I sat on the steps of the lodging-house in the sun. I had been +for a long walk and I was very tired, very sick of my mortal coil, very +sure that I did not care if the end were to be sleep or life +everlasting. Then came, slowly around the corner of the shabby street +and toward me, a hansom cab. Its occupant, an alert, very young, eager +man, kept glancing here and there as if he were looking for something or +some one; for the old East Side street had still its old look, as if all +the inhabitants of its houses had rushed out to watch an eclipse of the +sun or the approach of a procession--and were patiently and idly +awaiting the event. + +The children, and even many of the older people, mocked at the young man +in the hansom and flung him good-natured insults. But he knew the +language of the East Side and returned better than he received. My old +heart warmed a little to his young, brightly colored face, his quick, +flashing eyes, and his ready repartees. And it seemed to me a pity that, +like all the pleasant moments I had known, he, too, must pass and +be over. + +But his great eyes flashed suddenly upon my face and rested; then he +signalled to the driver to stop and, springing out, a big sketch-book +under his arm, came toward me with long, frank strides. + +"I know it's cheeky as the devil," he began in a quick, cheerful voice, +while he had yet some distance to come, "but I can't help it. I've been +looking for you for weeks, and--" + +"What is it that I can do for you?" I asked pleasantly. + +"You can give me your head." He said it with an appealing and delighted +smile. "I'm a sort of artist--" he explained. + +"Show me," I said, and held out my hands for the sketch-book. + +"Nothing but notes in it," he said, but I looked, not swiftly, through +all the pages and--for we Poles have an instinct in such matters--saw +that the work was good. + +"Do you wish to draw me, _Master?_" I said. + +He perceived that I meant the term, and he looked troubled and pleased. + +"Will you sit for me?" he asked. "I will--" + +But I shook my head to keep him from mentioning money. + +"Very cheerfully," I said. "It is easy for the old to sit--especially +when, by the mere act of sitting, it is possible for them to become +immortal. I have a room two flights up--where you will not be +disturbed." + +"Splendid!" he said. "You are splendid! Everything's splendid!" + +When he had placed me as he wished, I asked him why my head suited him +more than another's. + +"How do I know?" he said. "Instinct--you seem a cheerful man and yet I +have never seen a head and face that stood so clearly for--for--please +take me as I am, I don't ever mean to offend--steadiness in sorrow.... I +am planning a picture in which there is to be an ol--a man of your age +who looks as--as late October would look if it had a face...." + +Then he began to sketch me, and, as he worked, he chattered about this +and that. + +"Funny thing," he said, "I had a knife when I started and it's +disappeared." + +"Things have that habit," I said. + +"Yes," said he, "things and people, and often people disappear as +suddenly and completely as things--chin quarter of an inch lower--just +so--thank you forever--" + +"And what experience have you had with people disappearing?" I asked. +"And you so young and masterful." + +"I?" he said. "Why, a very near and dear experience. When I was quite a +little boy my own father went to his place of business and was never +heard of again from that day to this. But he must have done it on +purpose, because it was found that he had put all his affairs into the +most regular and explicit order--" + +I felt a little shiver, as if I had taken cold. + +"And, do you know," here the young man dawdled with his pencil and +presently ceased working for the moment, "I've always felt as if I had +had a hand in it--though I was only seven. I'd done something so naughty +and wrong that I looked forward all day to my father's home-coming as a +sinner looks forward to going to hell. My father had never punished me. +But he would this time, I knew--and I was terribly afraid and--sometimes +I have thought that, perhaps, I prayed to God that my father might never +come home. I'm not sure I prayed that--but I have a sneaking suspicion +that I did. Anyway, he never came, and, Great Grief! what a time there +was. My mother nearly went insane--" + +"What had you done?" I asked, forcing a smile, "to merit such terrible +punishment?" + +The young man blushed. + +"Why," he said, "my mother had been quite sick for a long time, and, to +tempt her appetite, my father had journeyed 'way uptown and at vast +expense bought her a bunch of wonderful white hot-house grapes. I +remember she wouldn't eat them at first--just wanted to look at +them--and my father hung them for her over the foot of the bed. Well, +soon after he'd gone to business she fell asleep, leaving the grapes +untouched. They tempted me, and I fell. I wanted to show off, I suppose, +before my young friends in the street--there was a girl, Minnie +Hopflekoppf, I think her name was, who'd passed me up for an Italian +butcher's son. I wanted to show _her_. I'm sure I didn't mean to eat the +things. I'm sure I meant to return with them and hang them back at the +foot of the bed." + +"Please go on," I managed to say. "This is such a very human page--I'm +really excited to know what happened." + +"Well, one of those flashy Bowery dudes came loafing along and said: +'Hi, Johnny, let's have a look at the grapes,' I let him take them, in +my pride and innocence, and he wouldn't give them back. He only laughed +and began to eat them before my eyes. I begged for them, and wept, and +told him how my mother was sick and my father had gone 'way uptown to +get the grapes for her because there were none such to be had in our +neighborhood. And, please, he must give them back because they were +White Muscats of Alexandria, very precious, and my father would kill me. +But the young man only laughed until I began to make a real uproar. Then +he said sharply to shut up, called me a young thief, and said if I said +another word he'd turn me over to the police. Then he flung me a +fifty-cent piece and went away, munching the grapes. And," the young man +finished, "the fifty-cent piece was lead." + +Then he looked up from his sketch and, seeing the expression of my +face, gave a little cry of delight. + +"Great Grief, man!" he cried, "stay as you are--only hold that +expression for two minutes!" + +But I have held it from that day to this. + + + + +WITHOUT A LAWYER + +However bright the court's light may have appeared to the court, the +place in which it was shining smelt damnably of oil. It was three +o'clock in the afternoon, but already the Alaskan night had descended. +The court sat in a barn, warmed from without by the heavily drifted snow +and from within by the tiny flames of lanterns and the breathing of men, +horses, and cows. Here and there in the outskirts of the circle of light +could be seen the long face of a horse or the horned head of a cow. +There was a steady sound of munching. The scene was not unlike many +paintings of the stable in Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity. And +here, too, justice was being born in a dark age. There had been too many +sudden deaths, too many jumped claims, too much drinking, too much +shooting, too many strong men, too few weak men, until finally--for +time, during the long winter, hung upon the neck like a millstone--the +gorges of the more decent had risen. Hence the judge, hence the jury, +hence the prisoner, dragged from his outlying cabin on a charge of +murder. As there were no lawyers in the community, the prisoner held +his own brief. Though not a Frenchman, he had been sarcastically +nicknamed, because of his small size and shrinking expression, +Lou Garou. + +The judge rapped for order upon the head of a flour-barrel behind which +he sat. "Lou Garou," he said, "you are accused of having shot down Ruddy +Boyd in cold blood, after having called him to the door of his cabin for +that purpose on the twenty-ninth of last month. Guilty or not guilty?" + +"Sure," said Lou Garou timidly, and nodding his head. "I shot him." + +"Why?" asked the judge. + +For answer Lou Garou shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the chief +witness, a woman who had wound her head in a dark veil so that her face +could not be seen. "Make her take that veil off," said he in a shrill +voice, "and you'll see why I shot him." + +The woman rose without embarrassment and removed her veil. But, unless +in the prisoner's eyes, she was not beautiful. + +"Thank you, madam," said the judge, after an embarrassed pause. "Ahem!" +And he addressed the prisoner. "Your answer has its romantic value, Lou +Garou, but the court is unable to attach to it any ethical significance +whatsoever. Did you shoot Ruddy Boyd because of this lady's appearance +in general, or because of her left eye in particular, which I note has +been blackened as if by a blow?" + +"Oh, I did that," said Lou Garou naively. + +"Sit down!" thundered the judge. The foreman of the jury, a South +Carolinian by birth, had risen, revolver in hand, with the evident +intention of executing the prisoner on the spot. "You have sworn to +abide by the finding of the court," continued the judge angrily. "If you +don't put up that gun I'll blow your damned head off." + +The juror, who was not without a sense of the ridiculous, smiled and sat +down. + +"You have pleaded guilty," resumed the judge sternly, "to the charge of +murder. You have given a reason. You have either said too much or too +little. If you are unable further to justify your cold-blooded and +intemperate act, you shall hang." + +"What do you want me to say?" whined Lou Garou. + +"I want you to tell the court," said the judge, "why you shot Ruddy +Boyd. If it is possible for you to justify that act I want you to do it. +The court, representing, as it does, the justice of the land, has a +leaning, a bias, toward mercy. Stand up and tell us your story from the +beginning." + +The prisoner once more indicated the woman. "About then," he said, "I +had nothin' but Jenny--and twenty dollars gold that I had loaned to +Ruddy Boyd. Hans"--he pointed to a stout German sitting on the +Carolinian's left--"wouldn't give me any more credit at the store." He +whined and sniffled. "I'm not blaming you one mite, Hans," he said, "but +I had to have flour and bacon, and all I had was twenty dollars gold +that Ruddy owed me. So I says, 'Jenny, I'll step over to Ruddy's shack +and ask him for that money.' She says, 'Think you'd better?' and I says, +'Sure.' So she puts me up a snack of lunch, and I takes my rifle and +starts. Ruddy was in his ditch (having shovelled out the snow), and I +says, 'Ruddy, how about that twenty?' You all know what a nice hearty +way Ruddy had with him--outside. He slaps his thigh, and laughs, and +looks astonished, and then he says: 'My Gawd, Lou, if I hadn't clean +forgot! Now ain't that funny?' So I laughs, too, and says, 'It do seem +kind of funny, and how about it?' 'Now, Lou,' says he, 'you've come on +me sudden, and caught me awkward. I ain't got a dime's worth of change. +But tell you what: I'll give you a check.' + +"I says, 'On what bank?' + +"He says, 'Oh, Hans over at the store--_he_ knows me--'" + +All eyes were turned on the German. Lou Garou continued: + +"Ruddy says: 'Hans dassen't not cash it. He's scared of me, the +pot-bellied old fool." + +The stout German blinked behind his horn spectacles. He feared neither +God nor man, but he was very patient. He made no remark. + +"'If Hans won't,' says Ruddy, 'Stewart sure will!'" + +The foreman of the jury rose like a spring slowly uncoiling. He looked +like a snake ready to strike. "May I inquire," he drawled, "what reason +the late lamented gave for supposing that I would honor his +wuffless paper?" + +Lou Garou sniffled with embarrassment and looked appealingly at the +judge. + +"Tell him," ordered the latter. + +"Mind, then," said Lou Garou, "it was him said it, not me." + +"What was said?" glinted the foreman. + +"Something," said Lou Garou in a small still voice like that which is +said to appertain to conscience, "something about him having give you a +terrible lickin' once, that you'd never got over. He says, 'If Stewart +won't cash it, tell him I'll step over and kick the stuffin' out +of him.'" + +The juror on the left end of the front row stood up. + +"Did he say anything about me?" he asked. + +"Nothin' particular, Jimmy," said Lou Garou. "He only said somethin' +general, like 'them bally-washed hawgs over to the Central Store,' I +think it was." + +"The court," said the judge stiffly, "knows the deceased to have been a +worthless braggart. Proceed with your story." + +"Long and short of it was," said Lou Garou, "we arranged that Ruddy +himself was to get the check cashed and bring me the money the next +Thursday. He swears on his honor he won't keep me waitin' no longer. So +I steps off and eats my lunch, and goes home and tells Jenny how it was. + +"'Hope you get it,' says she. 'I know _him._' + +"It so happened," continued Lou Garou, "Thursday come, and no Ruddy. No +Ruddy, Friday. Saturday I see the weather was bankin' up black for snow, +so I says: 'Jenny, it's credit or bust. I'll step up to the store and +talk to Hans.' So Jenny puts me up a snack of lunch, and I goes to see +Hans. Hans," said Lou Garou, addressing that juror directly, "did I or +didn't I come to see you that Saturday?" + +Hans nodded. + +"Did you or didn't you let me have some flour and bacon on tick?" + +"I did nod," said Hans. + +Lou Garou turned once more to the judge. "So I goes home," he said, "and +finds my chairs broke, and my table upside down, and the dishes broke, +and Jenny gone." + +There was a mild sensation in the court. + +"I casts about for signs, and pretty soon I finds a wisp of red hair, +roots an' all, I says, 'Ruddy's hair,' I says. 'He's bin and gone.' + +"So I takes my gun and starts for Ruddy's, over the mountain. It's hours +shorter than by the valley, for them that has good legs. + +"I was goin' down the other side of the mountain when it seems to me I +hears voices. I bears to the left, and looks down the mountain, and +yonder I sees a man and a woman on the valley path to Ruddy's. The man +he wants the woman to go on. The woman she wants to go back. I can hear +their voices loud and mad, but not their words. Pretty soon Ruddy he +takes Jenny by the arm and twists it--very slow--tighter and tighter. +She sinks to the ground. He goes on twistin'. Pretty soon she indicates +that she has enough. He helps her up with a kick, and they goes on." + +The foreman of the jury rose. "Your honor," he said, "it is an obvious +case of _raptae puellae_. In my opinion the prisoner was more than +justified in shooting the man Ruddy Boyd like a dog." + +"Sit down," said the judge. + +Lou Garou, somewhat excited by painful recollections, went on in a +stronger voice. "I puts up my hind sight to three hundred yards and +draws a bead on Ruddy, between the shoulders. Then I lowers my piece and +uncocks her. 'Stop a bit,' I says. 'How about that twenty?' + +It's gettin' dark, and I follows them to Ruddy's. I hides my gun in a +bush and knocks on the door. Ruddy comes out showin' his big teeth and +laughin.' He closes the door behind him. + +'Come for that twenty, Lou?' says he. + +'Sure,' says I. + +He thinks a minute, then he laughs and turns and flings open the door. +'Come in,' he says. + +I goes in. + +'Hallo!' says he, like he was awful surprised. 'Here's a friend of +yours, Lou. Well, I never!' + +I sees Jenny sittin' in a corner, tied hand and foot. I says, 'Hallo, +Jenny'; she says, 'Hallo, Lou.' Then I turns to Ruddy. 'How about that +twenty?' I says. + +'Well, I'm damned!' he says. 'All he thinks about is his twenty. Well, +here you are.' + +He goes down into his pocket and fetches up a slug, and I pockets it. + +'There,' says he; 'you've got yours, and I've got mine.' + +I don't find nothin' much to say, so I says, 'Well, good-night all, I'll +be goin'.' + +Then Jenny speaks up. 'Ain't you goin' to do nothin'?' she says. + +"'Why, Jenny,' says I 'what can _I_ do?' + +"'All right for you,' she says. 'Turn me loose, Ruddy; no need to keep +me tied after that.' + +"So I says 'Good-night' again and goes. Ruddy comes to the door and +watches me. I looks back once and waves my hand, but he don't make no +sign. I says to myself, 'I can see him because of the light at his back, +but he can't see me.' So I makes for my gun, finds her, turns, and +there's Ruddy still standin' at the door lookin' after me into the dark. +It was a pot shot. Then I goes back, and steps over Ruddy into the shack +and unties Jenny. + +"'Lou,' she says, 'I thought I knowed you inside out. But you fooled +_me_!' + +"By reason of the late hour we stops that night in Ruddy's shack, and +that's all." + +The prisoner, after shuffling his feet uncertainly, sat down. + +"Madam," said the judge, "may I ask you to rise?" + +The woman stood up; not unhandsome in a hard, bold way, except for her +black eye. + +"Madam," said the judge, "is what the prisoner has told us, in so far as +it concerns you, true?" + +"Every word of it." + +"The man Ruddy Boyd used violence to make you go with him?" + +"He twisted my arm and cramped my little finger till I couldn't bear +the pain." + +"You are, I take it, the prisoner's wife?" + +The color mounted slowly into the woman's cheeks. She hesitated, choked +upon her words. The prisoner sprang to his feet. + +"Your honor," he cried, "in a question of life or death like this Jenny +and me we speaks the truth, and nothin' but the truth. She's _not_ my +wife. But I'm goin' to marry her, and make an honest woman of her--at +the foot of the gallows, if you decide that way. No, sir; she was Ruddy +Boyd's wife." + +There was a dead silence, broken by the sounds of the horses and cows +munching their fodder. The foreman of the jury uncoiled slowly. + +"Your honor," he drawled, "I can find it in my heart to pass over the +exact married status of the lady, but I cannot find it in my heart to +pass over without explanation the black eye which the prisoner confesses +to have given her." + +Lou Garou turned upon the foreman like a rat at bay. "That night in the +shack," he cried, "I dreams that Ruddy comes to life. Jenny she hears me +moanin' in my sleep, and she sits up and bends over to see what's the +matter. I think it's Ruddy bendin' over to choke me, and I hits out!" + +"That's true, every word of it!" cried the woman. "He hit me in his +sleep. And when he found out what he'd done he cried over me, and he +kissed the place and made it well!" Her voice broke and ran off into +a sob. + +The jury acquitted the prisoner without leaving their seats. One by one +they shook hands with him, and with the woman. + +"I propose," said the foreman, "that by a unanimous vote we change this +court-house into a house of worship. It will not be a legal marriage +precisely, but it will answer until we can get hold of a minister after +the spring break up." + +The motion was carried. + +The last man to congratulate the happy pair was the German Hans. +"Wheneffer," he said, "you need a parrel of flour or something, you +comes to me py my store." + + + + +THE MONITOR AND THE "MERRIMAC" + + +THE STORY OF A PANIC + +I + +Two long-faced young men and one old man with a long face sat upon the +veranda of the Country Club of Westchester, and looked, now into the +depths of pewter mugs containing mint and ice among other things, and +now across Pelham Bay to the narrow pass of water between Fort Schuyler +and Willets Point. Through this pass the evening fleet of Sound steamers +had already torn with freight and passengers for New Haven, Newport, +Fall River, and Portland; and had already disappeared behind City Island +Point, and in such close order that it had looked as if the _Peck_, +which led, had been towing the others. The first waves from the +paddle-wheels of the great ships had crossed the three miles of +intervening bay, and were slapping at the base of the seawall that +supported the country club pigeon grounds and lawn-tennis terraces, when +another vessel came slowly and haughtily into view from between the +forts. She was as black as the king of England's brougham, and as smart; +her two masts and her great single funnel were stepped with the most +insolent rake imaginable. Here and there where the light of the setting +sun smote upon polished brass she shone as with pools of fire. + +"There she is," said Powers. He had been sitting in his shirt sleeves, +but now he rose and put on his coat as if the sight of the huge and +proud yacht had chilled him. Brett, with a petulant slap, killed a +swollen mosquito against his black silk ankle bone. The old man, +Callender, put his hand to his forehead as if trying to remember +something; and the yacht, steaming slower and slower, and yet, as it +seemed, with more and more grandeur and pride of place--as if she knew +that she gave to the whole bayscape, and the pale Long Island shore +against which she moved in strong relief, an irrefutable note of +dignity--presently stopped and anchored, midway between the forts and +City Island Point; then she began to swing with the tide, until she +faced New York City, from which she had just come. + +Callender took his hand from his forehead. He had remembered. + +"Young gentlemen," he said, "that yacht of Merriman's has been reminding +me every afternoon for a month of something, and I've just thought what. +You remember one day the _Merrimac_ came down the James, very slowly, +and sunk the _Cumberland_, and damaged and frightened the Union fleet +into fits, just the way Merriman has been going down to Wall Street +every morning and frightening us into fits? Well, instead of finishing +the work then and there, she suddenly quit and steamed off up the river +in the same insolent, don't-give-a-hoot way that Merriman comes up from +Wall Street every afternoon. Of course, when the _Merrimac_ came down to +finish destroying the fleet the next day, the _Monitor_ had arrived +during the night and gave her fits, and they called the whole thing off. +Anyhow, it's that going-home-to-sleep-on-it expression of the +_Merrimac's_ that I've been seeing in the _Sappho_." + +"You were on the _Monitor_, weren't you?" asked Powers cheerfully. + +The old man did not answer, but he was quite willing that Powers and +Brett, and the whole world for that matter, should think that he had +been. Powers and Brett, though in no cheerful mood, exchanged winks. + +"I don't see why history shouldn't repeat itself," said Powers. + +"You don't!" said Brett. "Why, because there isn't any _Monitor_ waiting +for Merriman off Wall Street." + +"And just like the Civil War," said Callender, "this trouble in the +street is a rich man's quarrel and a poor man's war. Just because old +Merriman is gunning for Waters, you, and I, and the rest of us are about +to go up the spout." + +Callender was a jaunty old man, tall, of commanding presence and smart +clothes. His white mustache was the epitome of close-cropped neatness. +When he lost money at poker his brown eyes held exactly the same twinkle +as when he won, and it was current among the young men that he had +played greatly in his day--great games for great stakes. Sometimes he +had made heavy winnings, sometimes he had faced ruin; sometimes his +family went to Newport for the summer and entertained; sometimes they +went to a hotel somewhere in some mountains or other, where they didn't +even have a parlor to themselves. But this summer they were living on in +the town house, keeping just enough rooms open, and a few servants who +had weathered former panics, and who were willing to eat dry bread in +bad times for the sake of the plentiful golden butter that they knew was +to be expected when the country believed in its own prosperity and +future. Just now the country believed that it was going to the dogs. And +Mr. Merriman, the banker, had chosen the opportunity to go gunning for +Mr. Waters, the railroad man. The quarrel between the great men was +personal; and so because of a couple of nasty tempers people were being +ruined daily, honest stocks were selling far below their intrinsic +value, United States Steel had been obliged to cut wages, there was a +strike on in the Pennsylvania coal fields, and the Callenders, as I have +said, were not even going to the cheapest mountain top for the summer. +Brett alone was glad of this, because it meant that little Miss +Callender would occasionally come out to the country club for a game of +tennis and a swim, and, although she had refused to marry him on twenty +distinct occasions, he was not a young man to be easily put from his +purpose. Nor did little Miss Callender propose to be relinquished by him +just yet; and she threw into each refusal just the proper amount of +gentleness and startled-fawn expression to insure another proposal +within a month. + +Brett, looking upon Callender as his probable father-in-law, turned to +the old gentleman and said, with guileful innocence: + +"Isn't there anything you can do, sir, to hold Merriman off? Powers and +I are in the market a little, but our customers are in heavy, and the +way things are going we've got to break whether we like it or not." + +Ordinarily Callender would have pretended that he could have checkmated +Merriman if he had wanted to--for in some things he was a child, and it +humored him to pretend, and to intimate, and to look wise; but on the +present occasion, and much to Powers's and Brett's consternation, he +began to speak to them gravely, and confidentially, and a little +pitifully. They had never before seen him other than jaunty and +debonair, whether his family were at Newport or in the mountains. + +"It's all very well for you boys," he said; "you have youth and +resiliency on your side. No matter what happens to you now, in money or +in love, you can come again. But we old fellows, buying and selling with +one foot in the grave, with families accustomed to luxury dependent on +us"--he paused and tugged at his neatly ordered necktie as if to free +his throat for the passage of more air--"some of us old fellows," he +said, "if we go now can never come again--never." + +He rose abruptly and walked into the house without a word more; but +Brett, after hesitating a moment, followed him. Mr. Callender had +stopped in front of the "Delinquent List." Seeing Brett at his elbow, he +pointed with a well-groomed finger to his own name at the beginning +of the C's. + +"If I died to-night," he said, neither gravely nor jocosely, but as if +rather interested to know whether he would or would not, "the club would +have a hard time to collect that sixteen dollars." + +"Are you serious, sir?" Brett asked. + +"If to-morrow is a repetition of to-day," said Mr. Callender, "you will +see the name of Callender & Co. in the evening papers." His lips +trembled slightly under his close-cropped mustache. + +"Then," said Brett, "this is a good opportunity to ask you, sir, if you +have any objection to me as a candidate for your youngest daughter." + +Mr. Callender raised his eyebrows. So small a thing as contemplated +matrimony did not disturb him under the circumstances. + +"My boy," he said, "I take it you are in earnest. I don't object to you. +I am sure nobody does." + +"Oh, yes," said Brett; "_she_ does." + +He had succeeded in making Mr. Callender laugh. + +"But," Brett went on, "I'd like your permission to go on trying." + +"You have it," said her father. "Will you and Powers dine with me?" + +"No," said Brett. "Speaking as candidate to be your son-in-law, you +cannot afford to give us dinner; and in the same way I cannot afford to +buy dinner for you and Powers. So Powers will have to be host and pay +for everything. I shall explain it to him.... But look here, sir, are +you really up against it?" + +To Brett's consternation, Callender suddenly buried his face in his +hands and groaned aloud. + +"Don't," said Brett; "some one's coming." + +Callender recovered his usual poise with a great effort. But no one +came. + +"As far as my wishes go, sir," said Brett, "I'm your son. You never had +a son, did you? If you had a son, and if he were young and resilient, +you'd talk to him and explain to him, and in that way, perhaps, you'd +get to see things so clearly in your own mind that you'd be able to +think a way out. Why don't you talk to me as if I were your son? You see +I want to be so very much, and that's half the battle." + +Callender often joked about his affairs, but he never talked about them. +Now, however, he looked for a moment keenly into the young man's frank +and intelligent face, hesitated, and then, with a grave and courtly bow, +he waved his hand toward two deep chairs that stood in the corner of the +room half facing each other, as if they themselves were engaged in +conversation. + +Twenty minutes later Callender went upstairs to dress for dinner, but +Brett rejoined Powers on the piazza. He sat down without looking at +Powers or speaking to him, and his eyes, crossing the darkening bay, +rested once more on the lordly silhouette of the _Sappho_. In the +failing light she had lost something of her emphatic outline, and was +beginning to melt, as it were, into the shore. + +Brett and Powers were partners. Powers was the floor member of the firm +and Brett ran the office. But they were partners in more ways than the +one, and had been ever since they could remember. As little boys they +had owned things in common without dispute. At St. Marks Powers had +pitched for the nine, and Brett had caught. In their senior year at New +Haven they had played these positions to advantage, both against Harvard +and Princeton. After graduation they had given a year to going around +the world. In Bengal they had shot a tiger, each giving it a mortal +wound. In Siam they had won the doubles championship at lawn tennis. +When one rode on the water wagon the other sat beside him, and vice +versa. Powers's family loved Brett almost as much as they loved Powers, +and if Brett had had a family it would probably have felt about Powers +in the same way. + +As far as volume of business and legitimate commissions went, their firm +was a success. It could execute orders with precision, despatch, and +honesty. It could keep its mouth shut. But it had not yet learned to +keep out of the market on its own account. Regularly as a clock ticks +its profits were wiped out in speculation. The young men believed in the +future of the country, and wanted to get rich quick, not because they +were greedy, but because that desire is part of the average American's +nature and equipment. Gradually, however, they were "getting wise," as +the saying is. And they had taken a solemn oath and shaken hands upon +it, that if ever they got out of their present difficulties they would +never again tempt the goddess of fortune. + +"Old man's in bad, I guess," said Powers. + +"I shouldn't wonder," said Brett, and was ashamed to feel that he must +not be more frank with his partner. "We're all in bad." + +"The _Cumberland_ has been sunk," said Powers, "and the rest of us are +aground and helpless, waiting for the _Merrimac_ to come down the river +in the morning." He shook his fist at the distant _Sappho_. "Why," he +said, "even if we knew what he knows it's too late to do anything, +unless _he_ does it. And he won't. He won't quit firing until Waters +blows up." + +"I've a good notion," said Brett, "to get out my pigeon gun, take the +club launch, board the _Sappho_ about midnight, hold the gun to old +Merriman's head, and make him promise to save the country; or else make +him put to sea, and keep him there. If he were kidnapped and couldn't +unload any more securities, the market would pull up by itself." The +young men chuckled, for the idea amused them in spite of their troubles. + +By a common impulse they turned and looked at the club's thirty-foot +naphtha launch at anchor off the club's dock; and by a common impulse +they both pointed at her, and both exclaimed: + +"The _Monitor_!" + +Then, of course, they were very careful not to say anything more until +they had crooked together the little fingers of their right hands, and +in silence registered a wish each. Then each spoke the name of a famous +poet, and the spell was ended. + +"What did you wish?" said Brett idly. + +Powers could be very courtly and old fashioned. + +"My dear boy," he said, "I fancy that I wished for you just what you +wished for yourself." + +Before this they had never spoken about her to each other. + +"I didn't know that you knew," said Brett. "Thanks." + +They shook hands. Then Brett broke into his gay, happy laugh. + +"That," said he, "is why you have to pay for dinner for Mr. Callender +and me." + +"Are we to dine?" asked Powers, "before attacking the _Merrimac_?" + +"Always," assented Brett, "and we are to dress first." + +The two young men rose and went into the house, Powers resting his hand +affectionately on Brett's further shoulder. It was so that they had come +off the field after striking out Harvard's last chance to score. + +At dinner Mr. Callender, as became his age and experience, told the +young men many clean and amusing stories. Though the clouds were thick +about his head he had recovered his poise and his twinkling eye of the +good loser. Let his night be sleepless, let the morrow crush him, but +let his young friends remember that he had gone to his execution calm, +courteous, and amusing, his mustache trimmed, his face close-shaved, his +nails clean and polished. They had often, he knew, laughed at him for +his pretensions, and his affectation of mysterious knowledge, and all +his little vanities and superiorities, but they would remember him for +the very real nerve and courage that he was showing, and knew that he +was showing. The old gentleman took pleasure in thinking that although +he was about to fail in affairs, he was not going to fail in character. +He even began to make vague plans for trying again, and when, after a +long dinner, they pushed back their chairs and rose from the table, +there was a youthful resiliency in the voice with which he challenged +Powers to a game of piquet. + +"That seems to leave me out," said Brett. + +"Well," said Mr. Callender, with snapping eyes, "can you play well +enough to be an interesting opponent, or can't you?" + +"No, I can't," said Brett. "And anyway, I'm going out in the launch to +talk things over with Merriman." He shrugged his shoulders in a superior +way, and they laughed; but when they had left him for the card-room he +walked out on the veranda and stood looking through the darkness at the +_Sappho's_ distant lights, and he might have been heard muttering, as if +from the depths of very deep thought: + +"Why not?" + + + + +II + +At first Brett did not head the launch straight for the _Sappho_. He was +not sure in his own mind whether he intended to visit her, or just to +have a near-by look at her and then return to the club. He had ordered +the launch on an impulse which he could not explain to himself. If she +had been got ready for him promptly he might not have cared at the last +minute to go out in her at all. But there had been a long delay in +finding the engineer, and this had provoked him and made him very sure +that he wanted to use the launch very much. And it hadn't smoothed his +temper to learn that the engineer had been found in the kitchen eating a +Virginia ham in company with the kitchen maid. + +But the warmth and salt freshness that came into his face, and the +softness and great number of the stars soon pacified him. If she were +only with him, he thought, if her father were only not on the brink of +ruin, how pleasant the world would be. He pretended that she was with +him, just at his shoulder, where he could not see her, but there just +the same, and that he was steering the launch straight for the ends of +the world. He pretended that for such a voyage the launch would not need +an engineer. He wondered if under the circumstances it would be safe to +steer with only one hand. + +But the launch ran suddenly into an oyster stake that went rasping aft +along her side, and at the same moment the searchlight from Fort +Schuyler beamed with dazzling playfulness in his face, and then having +half blinded him wheeled heavenward, a narrow cornucopia of light that +petered out just short of the stars. He watched the searchlight. He +wondered how many pairs of lovers it had discovered along the shores of +Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk on the veranda of the +country club, how many kisses it had interrupted; and whether it would +rather pry into people's private affairs or look for torpedo-boats and +night attacks in time of war. But most of all he wondered why it spent +so much of its light on space, sweeping the heavens like a fiery broom +with indefatigable zeal. There were no lovers or torpedo-boats up there. +Even the birds were in bed, and the Wright brothers were known to be +at Pau. + +Once more the searchlight smote him full in the face and then, as if +making a pointed gesture, swept from him, and for a long second +illuminated the black hull and the yellow spars of the _Sappho_. Then, +as if its earthly business were over, the shaft of light, lengthening +and lengthening as it rose above intervening obstacles, the bay, the +Stepping Stone light, the Long Island shore, turned slowly upward until +it pointed at the zenith. Then it went out. + +"That," thought Brett, "was almost a hint. First it stirred me up; then +it pointed at the _Sappho_; then it indicated that there is One above, +and then it went out." + +He headed the launch straight for the _Sappho_, and began to wonder what +one had to do to get aboard of a magnate's yacht at night. He turned to +the engineer. + +"Gryce," he said, "what do you know about yachts?" + +"What about 'em?" Gryce answered sulkily. He was still thinking of the +kitchen-maid and the unfinished ham, or else of the ham and the +unfinished kitchen maid, I am not sure which. + +"What about 'em?" Brett echoed. "Do they take up their gangways at +night?" + +"Unless some one's expected," said Gryce. + +"Do they have a watchman?" + +"One forward and one aft on big yachts." + +"Making two," said Brett. "But aren't there usually two gangways--one +for the crew and one for the owner's guests?" + +"Crew's gangway is to starboard," Gryce vouchsafed. + +Brett wondered if there was anything else that he ought to know. Then, +in picturing himself as running the launch alongside the _Sappho_, and +hoping that he would not bump her, a question presented itself. + +"If I were going to visit the _Sappho_," he asked, "would I approach the +gangway from the stern or from the bow?" + +"I don't know," said Gryce. + +"Do you mean," said Brett, "that you don't know which is the correct +thing to do, or that you think I can't steer?" + +"I mean," said Gryce, "that I know it's one or the other, but I don't +know which." + +"In that case," said Brett, "we will approach from the rear. That is +always the better part of valor. But if the gangway has been taken up +for the night I don't know what I shall do." + +"The gangway was down when the light was on her," said Gryce. "I seen +it." + +And that it was still down Brett could presently see for himself. He +doubted his ability to make a neat landing, but they seemed to be +expecting him, for a sailor ran down to the gangway landing armed with +a long boat-hook, and made the matter easy for him. When he had reached +the _Sappho's_ deck an officer came forward in the darkness, and said: + +"This way, sir, if you please." + +"There's magic about," thought Brett, and he accompanied the officer +aft. + +"Mr. Merriman," said the latter, "told us to expect you half an hour ago +in a motor-boat. Did you have a breakdown?" + +"No," said Brett, and he added mentally, "but I'm liable to." + +They descended a companionway; the officer opened a sliding door of some +rich wood, and Brett stepped into the highly lighted main saloon of +the _Sappho_. + +In one corner of the room, with his back turned, the famous Mr. Merriman +sat at an upright piano, lugubriously drumming. Brett had often heard of +the great man's secret vice, and now the sight of him hard at it made +him, in spite of the very real trepidation under which he was laboring, +feel good-natured all over--the Colossus of finance was so earnest at +his music, so painstaking and interested in placing his thick, clumsy +fingers, and so frankly delighted with the effect of his performance +upon his own ear. It seemed to Brett homely and pleasant, the thought +that one of the most important people of eighty millions should find +his pleasure in an art for which he had neither gift nor training. + +Mr. Merriman finished his piece with a badly fumbled chord, and turned +from the piano with something like the show of reluctance with which a +man turns from a girl who has refused him. That Mr. Merriman did not +start or change expression on seeing a stranger in the very heart of his +privacy was also in keeping with his reputed character. It was also like +him to look steadily at the young man for quite a long while before +speaking. But finally to be addressed in courteous and pleasant tones +was not what Brett expected. For this he had his own good looks to +thank, as Mr. Merriman hated, with the exception of his own music, +everything that was ugly. + +"Good-evening, sir," said Mr. Merriman. "But I can't for the life of me +think what you are doing on my yacht. I was expecting a man, but +not you." + +"You couldn't guess," said Brett, "why I have been so impertinent as to +call upon you without an invitation." + +"Then," said Mr. Merriman, "perhaps you had better tell me. I think I +have seen you before." + +"My name is Brett," said Brett. "You may have seen me trying to play +tennis at Newport. I have often seen you there, looking on." + +"You didn't come to accuse me of being a looker-on?" Mr. Merriman asked. + +"No, sir," said Brett, "but I do wish that could have been the reason. +I've come, sir, as a matter of fact, because you are, on the contrary, +so very, very active in the game." + +"I don't understand," said Merriman rather coldly, + +"Oh," said Brett, "everybody I care for in the world is being ruined, +including myself, and I said, 'Mr. Merriman could save us all if he only +would.' So I came to ask you if you couldn't see your way to letting up +on us all." + +"'Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman, "you may have heard, since gossip +occasionally concerns herself with me, that in my youth I was a priest." + +Brett nodded. + +"Well," continued Mr. Merriman, "I have never before listened to so +naive a confession as yours." + +Brett blushed to his eyes. + +"I knew when I came," he said, "that I shouldn't know how to go about +what I've come for." + +"But I think I have a better opinion of you," smiled Mr. Merriman, and +his smile was very engaging. "You have been frank without being fresh, +you have been bashful without showing fear. You meet the eye in a manly +way, and you seem a clean and worthy young man. As opposed to these +things, what you might have thought out to say to me would +hardly matter." + +"Oh," cried Brett impulsively, "if you would only let up!" + +"I suppose, Mr. Brett," the banker smiled, even more engagingly, "that +you mean you would like me to come to the personal rescue of all those +persons who have recently shown bad judgment in the conduct of their +affairs. But let me tell you that I have precisely your own objections +to seeing people go to smash. But they _will_ do it. They don't even +come to me for advice." + +"You wouldn't give it to them if they did," said Brett. + +"No," said Mr. Merriman, "I couldn't. But I should like to, and a piece +of my mind to boot. Now, sir, you have suggested something for me to do. +Will you go further and tell me how I am to do it?" + +"Why," said Brett, diffidently but unabashed, "you could start in early +to-morrow morning, couldn't you, and bull the market?" + +"Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman forcefully, "I have for the last month +been straining my resources to hold the market. But it is too heavy, +sir, for one pair of shoulders." + +A look of doubt must have crossed Brett's face, for the banker smote his +right fist into the palm of his left hand with considerable violence, +and rose to his feet, almost menacingly. + +"Have the courtesy not to doubt my statements, young sir," he said +sharply. "I have made light of your intrusion; see that you do not make +light of the courtesy and consideration thus shown you." + +"Of course, I believe you," said Brett, and he did. + +"You are one of those," said Mr. Merriman, "who listen to what the run +of people say, and make capital of it." + +"Of course, I can't help hearing what people say," said Brett. + +"Or believing it!" Mr. Merriman laughed savagely, "What are they saying +of me these days?" he asked. + +Brett hesitated. + +"Come, come," said the great man, in a mocking voice. "You are here +without an invitation. Entertain me! Entertain me! Make good!" + +Brett was nettled. + +"Well," said he, "they say that Mr. Waters was tremendously extended for +a rise in stocks, and that you found it out, and that you hate him, and +that you went for him to give him a lesson, and that you pulled all the +props out of the market, and smashed it all to pieces, just for a +private spite. That's what they say!" + +The banker was silent for quite a long time. + +"If there wasn't something awful about that," he said at last, "it would +be very funny." + +The officer who had ushered Brett into the saloon appeared at the door. + +"Well?" said Merriman curtly. + +"There's a gentleman," said the officer, "who wants to come aboard. He +says you are expecting him. But as you only mentioned one gentleman--" + +"Yes, yes," said Merriman, "I'm expecting this other gentleman, too." + +He turned to Brett. + +"I am going to ask you to remain," he said, "to assist at a conference +on the present state of the market between yourself, and myself, and my +_arch-enemy_--Mr. Waters." + + + + +III + +Even if Brett should live to be a distinguished financier himself--which +is not likely--he will never forget that midnight conference on board +the _Sappho_. He had supposed that famous men--unless they were dead +statesmen--thought only of themselves, and how they might best and most +easily increase their own power and wealth. He had believed with the +rest of the smaller Wall Street interests that the present difficulties +were the result of a private feud. Instead of this he now saw that the +supposed quarrellers had forgotten their differences, and were in the +closest kind of an alliance to save the situation. He discovered that +until prices had fallen fifty points neither of them had been in the +market to any significant extent; and that, to avert the appalling +calamities which seemed imminent, both were ready if necessary to +impoverish themselves or to take unusual risks of so doing. He learned +the real causes of the panic, so far as these were not hidden from +Merriman and Waters themselves, and when at last the two men decided +what should be attempted, to what strategic points they should send +re-enforcements, and just what assistance they should ask the Secretary +of the Treasury to furnish, Brett felt that he had seen history in +the making. + +Waters left the _Sappho_ at one in the morning, and Brett was for going, +too, but Merriman laid a hand on the young man's shoulder and asked him +to remain for a few moments. + +"Now, my son," he said, "you see how the panic has affected some of the +so-called big interests. It may be that Waters and I can't do very much. +But it will be good for you to remember that we tried; it will make you +perhaps see others in a more tolerant light. But for purposes of +conversation you will, of course, forget that you have been here. Now, +as to your own affairs--" + +Mr. Merriman looked old and tired, but very indulgent and kind. + +"Knowing what I know now," said Brett, "I would rather take my chances +with the other little fools who have made so much trouble for you and +Mr. Waters. If your schemes work out I'll be saved in spite of myself; +and if they don't--well, I hope I've learned not to be so great a +fool again." + +"In every honest young man," said Merriman, "there is something of the +early Christian--he is very noble and very silly. Write your name and +telephone number on that sheet of paper. At least, you won't refuse +orders from me in the morning. Waters and I will have to use many +brokers to-morrow, of whom I hope you will consent to be one." + +Brett hung his head in pleasure and shame. Then he looked Mr. Merriman +in the face with a bright smile. + +"If you've got to help some private individual, Mr. Merriman, I'd rather +you didn't make it me; I'd rather you made it old man Callender. If he +goes under now he'll never get to the top again." + +"Not Samuel B. Callender?" said Merriman, with a note of surprise and +very real interest in his voice. "Is he in trouble? I didn't know. Why, +that will never do--a fine old fighting character like that--and +besides ... why, wouldn't you have thought that he would have come to +me himself or that at least he would have confided in my son Jim?" + +Brett winced. + +Merriman wrote something upon a card and handed it to Brett. + +"Can you see that he gets that?" he asked. + +"Yes, sir," said Brett. + +"Tell him, then, to present it at my office the first thing in the +morning. It will get him straight to me. I can't stand idle and see the +father of the girl my boy is going to marry ruined." + +"I didn't know--" said Brett. He was very white, and his lips trembled +in spite of his best efforts to control them. "I congratulate you, sir. +She is very lovely," he added. + +Mr. Merriman regarded the miserable young man quizzically. + +"But," he said, "Mr. Callender has three daughters." + +"Oh, no," said Brett dismally, "there is only the one." + +"My boy," said Mr. Merriman, "I am afraid that you are an incorrigible +plunger--at stocks, at romance, and at conclusions. I don't know if I am +going to comfort you or give you pain, but the girl my son is going to +marry is _Mary_ Callender." + +The color returned to Brett's cheek and the sparkle to his eyes. He +grasped Mr. Merriman by both hands, and in a confidential voice he said: + +"Mr. Merriman, there is no such person." + + + + +THE McTAVISH + + +I + +By the look of her she might have been a queen, or a princess, or at the +very least a duchess. But she was no one of these. She was only a +commoner--a plain miss, though very far from plain. Which is +extraordinary when you consider that the blood of the Bruce flowed with +exceeding liveliness in her veins, together with the blood of many +another valiant Scot--Randolph, Douglas, Campbell--who bled with Bruce +or for him. + +With the fact that she was not at the very least a duchess, _most_ of +her temporal troubles came to an abrupt end. When she tired of her +castle at Beem-Tay she could hop into her motor-car and fly down the +Great North Road to her castle at Brig O'Dread. This was a fifty-mile +run, and from any part of the road she could see land that belonged to +her--forest, farm, and moor. If the air at Beem-Tay was too formal, or +the keep at Brig O'Dread too gloomy, she could put up at any of her +half-dozen shooting lodges, built in wild, inaccessible, wild-fowly +places, and shake the dust of the world from her feet, and tread, just +under heaven, upon the heather. + +But mixed up with all this fine estate was one other temporal trouble. +For, over and above the expenses of keeping the castles on a good +footing, and the shooting lodges clean and attractive, and the motor-car +full of petrol, and the horses full of oats, and the lawns empty of +weeds, and the glass houses full of fruit, she had no money whatsoever. +She could not sell any of her land because it was entailed--that is, it +really belonged to somebody who didn't exist; she couldn't sell her +diamonds, for the same reason; and she could not rent any of her +shootings, because her ancestors had not done so. I honestly believe +that a sixpence of real money looked big to her. + +Her first name was the same as that of the Lady of the Lake--Ellen. Her +last name was McTavish--if she had been a man she would have been The +McTavish (and many people did call her that)--and her middle names were +like the sands of the sea in number, and sounded like bugles blowing a +charge--Campbell and Cameron, Dundee and Douglas. She had a family +tartan--heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses--and +she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking +ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland +loch, her cheeks from the briar rose, some of the notes of her voice +from the upland plover, and some from the lark. And her laugh was like +an echo of the sounds that the River Tay makes when it goes among +the shallows. + +One day she was sitting all by herself in the Seventh Drawing Room +(forty feet by twenty-four) of Brig O'Dread Castle, looking from a +fourteen-foot-deep window embrasure, upon the brig itself, the river +rushing under it, and the clean, flowery town upon both banks. From most +of her houses she could see nothing but her own possessions, but from +Brig O'Dread Castle, standing, as it did, in one corner of her estates, +she could see past her entrance gate, with its flowery, embattled lodge, +a little into the outside world. There were tourists whirling by in +automobiles along the Great North Road, or parties of Scotch gypsies, +with their dark faces and ear-rings, with their wagons and folded tents, +passing from one good poaching neighborhood to the next. Sometimes it +amused her to see tourists turned from her gates by the proud porter who +lived in the lodge; and on the present occasion, when an automobile +stopped in front of the gate and the chauffeur hopped out and rang the +bell, she was prepared to be mildly amused once more in the same way. + +The proud porter emerged like a conquering hero from the lodge, the +pleated kilt of the McTavish tartan swinging against his great thighs, +his knees bare and glowing in the sun, and the jaunty Highland bonnet +low upon the side of his head. He approached the gate and began to +parley, but not with the chauffeur; a more important person (if +possible) had descended from the car--a person of unguessable age, owing +to automobile goggles, dressed in a London-made shooting suit of tweed, +and a cap to match. The parley ended, the stranger appeared to place +something in the proud porter's hand; and the latter swung upon his heel +and strode up the driveway to the castle. Meanwhile the stranger +remained without the gate. + +Presently word came to The McTavish, in the Seventh Drawing Room, that +an American gentleman named McTavish, who had come all the way from +America for the purpose, desired to read the inscriptions upon the +McTavish tombstones in the chapel of Brig O'Dread Castle. The porter, +who brought this word himself, being a privileged character, looked very +wistful when he had delivered it--as much as to say that the frightful +itching of his palm had not been as yet wholly assuaged. The +McTavish smiled. + +"Bring the gentleman to the Great Tower door, McDougall," she said, +"and--I will show him about, myself." + +The proud porter's face fell. His snow-white _mustachios_ took on a +fuller droop. + +"McDougall," said The McTavish--and this time she laughed aloud--"if +the gentleman from America crosses my hand with silver, it shall +be yours." + +"More like"--and McDougall became gloomier still--"more like he will +cross it with gold." (Only he said this in a kind of dialect that was +delightful to hear, difficult to understand, and would be insulting to +the reader to reproduce in print.) + +"If it's gold," said The McTavish sharply, "I'll not part wi' it, +McDougall, and you may lay to that." + +You might have thought that McDougall had been brought up in the Black +Hole of Calcutta--so sad he looked, and so hurt, so softly he left the +room, so loudly he closed the door. + +The McTavish burst into laughter, and promised herself, not without some +compunction, to hand over the gold to McDougall, if any should +materialize. Next she flew to her dressing-room and made herself look as +much like a gentlewoman's housekeeper as she could in the few minutes at +her disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and +whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of +the Great Tower in the sunlight. And when she heard the stranger's feet +upon the gravel she composed her face; and when he appeared round the +corner of a clipped yew she rattled the keys at her belt and bustled on +her feet, as becomes a housekeeper, and bobbed a courtesy. + +The stranger McTavish was no more than thirty. He had brown eyes, and +wore upon his face a steady, enigmatic smile. + + + + +II + +"Good-morning," said the American McTavish. "It is very kind of Miss +McTavish to let me go into her chapel. Are you the housekeeper?" + +"I am," said The McTavish. "Mrs. Nevis is my name." + +"What a pity!" murmured the gentleman. + +"This way, sir," said The McTavish. + +She stepped into the open, and, jangling her keys occasionally, led him +along an almost interminable path of green turf bordered by larkspur and +flowering sage, which ended at last at a somewhat battered lead statue +of Atlas, crowning a pudding-shaped mound of turf. + +"When the Red Currie sacked Brig O'Dread Castle," said The McTavish, "he +dug a pit here and flung the dead into it. There will be McTavishes +among them." + +"There are no inscriptions," said the gentleman. + +"Those are in the chapel," said The McTavish. "This way." And she swung +into another turf walk, long, wide, springy, and bordered by birches. + +"Tell me," said the American, "is it true that Miss McTavish is down on +strangers?" + +She looked at him over her shoulder. He still wore his enigmatic smile. + +"I don't know what got into her," she said, "to let you in." She halted +in her tracks and, looking cautiously this way and that, like a +conspirator in a play: "She's a hard woman to deal with," she said, +"between you and me." + +"I've heard something of the kind," said the American. "Indeed, I asked +the porter. I said, 'What manner of woman is Miss McTavish?' and he +said, in a kind of whisper, 'The McTavish, sir, is a roaring, ranting, +stingy, bony female.'" + +"He said that, did he?" asked the pseudo Mrs. Nevis, tightening her lips +and jangling her keys. + +"But I didn't believe him," said the American; "I wouldn't believe what +he said of any cousin of mine." + +"Is The McTavish your cousin?" + +"Why, yes," said he; "but just which one I don't know. That's what I +have come to find out. I have an idea--I and my lawyers have--that if +The McTavish died without a direct heir, I should be The McTavish; that +is, that this nice castle, and Red Curries Mound, and all and all, would +be mine. I could come every August for the shooting. It would be +very nice." + +"It wouldn't be very nice for The McTavish to die before you," said +Mrs. Nevis. "She's only twenty-two." + +"Great heavens!" said the American. "Between you, you made me think she +was a horrid old woman!" + +"Horrid," said Mrs. Nevis, "very. But not old." + +She led the way abruptly to a turf circle which ended the birch walk and +from which sprang, in turn, a walk of larch, a walk of Lebanon cedars, +and one of mountain ash. At the end of the cedar walk, far off, could be +seen the squat gray tower of the chapel, heavy with ivy. McTavish caught +up with Mrs. Nevis and walked at her side. Their feet made no sound upon +the pleasant, springy turf. Only the bunch of keys sounded occasionally. + +"How," said McTavish, not without insinuation, "could one get to know +one's cousin?" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "if you are troubled with spare cash and stay in +the neighborhood long enough, she'll manage that. She has little enough +to spend, poor woman. Why, sir, when she told me to show you the chapel, +she said, 'Catherine,' she said, 'there's one Carnegie come out of the +States--see if yon McTavish is not another.'" + +"She said that?" + +"She did so." + +"And how did you propose to go to work to find out, Mrs. Nevis?" + +"Oh," said she, "I've hinted broadly at the news that's required at +headquarters. I can do no more." + +McTavish reflected, "Tell her," he said presently, "when you see her, +that I'm not Carnegie, nor near it. But tell her that, as we Americans +say, 'I've enough for two.'" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "that would mean too much or too little to a +Scot." + +"Call it, then," said McTavish, "several million pounds." + +"Several," Mrs. Nevis reflected. + +"Say--three," said McTavish. + +Mrs. Nevis sighed. "And where did you gather it all?" she asked. + +"Oh, from my father," said McTavish. "And it was given to him by the +government." + +"Why?" she asked. + +"Not why," said he, "so much as how. You see, our government is +passionately fond of certain people and makes them very rich. But it's +perfectly fair, because at the same time it makes other people, of whom +it is not fond, desperately poor. We call it protection," he said. "For +instance, my government lets a man buy a Shetland wool sweater in +Scotland for two dollars, and lets him sell it on Broadway for twenty +dollars. The process makes that man rich in time, but it's perfectly +fair, because it makes the man who has to buy the sweater poor." + +"But the fool doesn't have to buy it," said Mrs. Nevis. + +"Oh yes, he does," said McTavish; "in America--if he likes the look of +it and the feel of it--he has to buy. It's the climate, I suppose." + +"Did your father make his money in Shetland sweaters?" she asked. + +"Nothing so nice," said McTavish; "rails." + +A covey of birds rose in the woods at their right with a loud whir of +wings. + +"Whew!" exclaimed McTavish. + +"Baby pheasants," explained Mrs. Nevis. "They shoot three thousand at +Brig O'Dread in the season." + +After certain difficulties, during which their hands touched, the +greatest key in Mrs. Nevis's bunch was made to open the chapel door, and +they went in. + +The place had no roof; the flagged floor had disappeared, and it had +been replaced by velvety turf, level between the graves and headstones. +Supporting columns reared themselves here and there, supporting nothing. +A sturdy thorn tree grew against the left-hand wall; but the sun shone +brightly into the ruin, and sparrows twittered pleasantly among the +in-growths of ivy. + +"Will you wish to read all the inscriptions?" asked Mrs. Nevis, +doubtfully, for there were hundreds of tombstones crowding the turf or +pegged to the walls. + +"No, no," said McTavish "I see what I came to see--already." + +For the first time the enigmatic smile left his face, and she watched +him with a kind of excited interest as he crossed the narrow houses of +the dead and halted before a small tablet of white marble. She followed +him, more slowly, and stood presently at his side as he read aloud: + + "SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF + COLLAND McTAVISH, + WHO DISAPPEARED, AGED FIVE YEARS, + JUNE 15TH, 1801." + +Immediately below the inscription a bar of music was engraved in the +marble. "I can't read that," said McTavish. + +Mrs. Nevis hummed a pathetic air very sweetly, almost under her breath. +He listened until she had finished and then: "What tune is that?" he +asked, excitedly. + +"'Wandering Willie,'" she answered. + +"Of course," said he, "it would be that." + +"Was this the stone you came to see?" she asked presently. + +"Yes," he said. "Colland McTavish, who disappeared, was my +great-grandfather. The old gentleman--I never saw him myself--used to +say that he remembered a long, long driveway, and a great iron gate, and +riding for ever and ever in a wagon with a tent over it, and sleeping at +night on the bare hills or in forests beside streams. And that was all +he remembered, except being on a ship on the sea for years and years. +But he had this--" + +McTavish extracted from a pocket into which it had been buttoned for +safety what appeared, at first sight, to be a linen handkerchief yellow +with age. But, on unfolding, it proved to be a child's shirt, cracked +and broken in places, and lacking all but one of its bone buttons. +Embroidered on the tiny shirt tail, in faint and faded blue, was the +name Colland McTavish. + +"He always thought," said McTavish, "that the gypsies stole him. It +looks as if they had, doesn't it? And, just think, he used to live in +this beautiful place, and play in it, and belong to it! Wasn't it +curious, my seeing that tablet the first thing when we came in? It +looked as big as a house and seemed to beckon me." + +"It looks more like the ghost of a little child," said Mrs. Nevis +quietly. "Perhaps that is why it drew you so." + +"Why," said he, "has this chapel been allowed to fall to pieces?" + +"Because," said Mrs. Nevis, "there's never been the money to mend it." + +"I wonder," he mused, "if The McTavish would let me do it? After all, +I'm not an utter stranger; I'm a distant cousin--after all." + +"Not so distant, sir," said Mrs. Nevis, "as may appear, if what you say +is true. Colland McTavish, your great-grandfather, and The McTavish's +great-grandfather, were brothers--and the poor bereft mother that put up +this tablet was your great-great-grandmother, and hers." + +"Surely then," said he, "The McTavish would let me put a roof on the +chapel. I'd _like_ to," he said, and the red came strongly into his +cheeks. "I'll ask her. Surely she wouldn't refuse to see me on such +a matter." + +"You can never tell," Mrs. Nevis said. "She's a woman that won't bear +forcing." + +He looked at her for the first time in some minutes. "Why," said he, +"you're ill; you're white as a sheet!" + +"It's the long walk uphill. It takes me in the heart, somehow." + +"I'm sorry," said McTavish simply. "I'm mighty sorry. It's all my +fault." + +"Why, so it is," said she, with the flicker of a smile. + +"You must take my arm going back. I _am_ sorry." + +When they had left the chapel and locked the door, she took his arm +without any further invitation. + +"I will, if you don't mind," she said. "I am shaken, and that's the +truth.... But what," and again the smile flickered--"what would The +McTavish say if she saw us--her cousin and her housekeeper--dawdling +along arm in arm?" + +McTavish laughed. "I don't mind, if you don't." + +They returned slowly by the long turf walk to the statue of Atlas. + +"Now," said he, "how should I go about getting an interview with The +McTavish?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Nevis, "it will not be for to-day. She is leaving +within the hour for Beem-Tay in her motor-car." + +"Oh, then I shall follow her to Beem-Tay." + +"If you can do that," said Mrs. Nevis, "I will give you a line to my +sister. Maybe she could help you. She's the housekeeper at +Beem-Tay--Miss MacNish is her name." And she added as if by an +after-thought. "We are twins." + +"Are there two of you?" exclaimed McTavish. + +"Why not?" she asked, with a guileless face. + +"Why," said he, "it's wonderful. Does she look like you?" + +"Exactly," said Mrs. Nevis. "Same red hair, same eyes, nose, and faint +spells--only," and there was a certain arch quality in her clear voice, +"_she's_ single." + +"And she looks exactly like you--and she's single! I don't believe it." + +Mrs. Nevis withdrew her hand from his arm. When they had reached the +door of the Great Tower she stopped. + +"If you care for a line to my sister," she said, "I'll write it. You can +wait here." + +"I wish it of all things, and if there are any stairs to climb, mind you +take your time. Remember you're not very good at hills." + +When she had gone, he smiled his enigmatic smile and began to walk +slowly up and down in front of the door, his hands clasped behind his +back. Once he made a remark. "Scotland," he said, "is the place for me." + +But when at length she returned with the letter, he did not offer her +money; instead he offered his hand. "You've been very kind," he said, +"and when I meet your mistress I will tell her how very courteous you +have been. Thank you." + +He placed the letter in the breast-pocket of his shooting-coat. "Any +messages for your sister?" he asked. + +"You may tell her I hope she is putting by something for a rainy day. +You may tell her The McTavish is verra hard up the noo"--she smiled +very charmingly in his face--"and will na' brook an extravagant table." + +"Do you think," said McTavish, "that your sister will get me a chance to +see _The_ McTavish?" + +"If any one can, she can." + +"Good-by," he said, and once more they shook hands. + +A few minutes later she heard the distant purring of his car, and a +thought struck her with dismay. "What if he goes straight to Beem-Tay +and presents the letter before I get there!" + +She flowered into swift action, flashed up the turret stairs, and, +having violently rung a bell, flew into her dressing-room, and began to +drag various automobiling coats, hats, and goggles out of their hiding +places. When the bell was answered: "The car," she cried, "at once!" + +A few moments later, veiled, goggled, and coated, she was dashing from +the castle to the stables. Halfway she met the car. "McDonald," she +cried, "can you make Beem-Tay in the hour?" + +"It's fifty miles," said the driver, doubtfully. + +"Can you make it?" + +"The road--" he began. + +"I know the road," she said impatiently; "it's all twisty-wisty. Can you +make it?" + +"I'm a married man," said he. + +"Ten pounds sterling if you make it." + +"And if we smash and are kilt?" + +"Why, there'll be a more generous master than I in Beem-Tay and in Brig +O'Dread--that's all." + +She leaped into the car, and a minute later they were flying along the +narrow, tortuous North Road like a nightmare. Once she leaned over the +driver's seat and spoke in his ear: "I hav'na the ten pounds noo," she +said, "but I'll beg them, McDonald, or borrow them--" The car began to +slow down, the driver's face grew gloomy. "Or steal them!" she cried. +McDonald's face brightened, for The McTavish's money difficulties were +no better known than the fact that she was a woman of her word. He +opened the throttle and the car once more shot dizzily forward. + +Twenty miles out of Brig O'Dread they came upon another car, bound in +the same direction and also running desperately fast. They passed it in +a roaring smother of dust. + +"McDonald," said The McTavish, "you needna run sae fast noo. Keep the +lead o' yon car to Beem-Tay gate--that is all." + +She sank back luxuriously, sighed, and began to wonder how she should +find McDonald his ten pounds sterling. + + + + +III + +She need not have hurried, nor thrown to the wind those ten pounds that +she had somehow to raise. On arriving at Beem-Tay she had given orders +that any note addressed to Miss MacNish, and presented at the gate, +should be brought at once to her. McTavish did not come that day, but +she learned indirectly that he had taken rooms at the McTavish Arms in +Beem-Tay village, and from Mr. Traquair, manager of the local branch of +the Bank of Scotland, that he was taking steps to hire for the season +the forest of Clackmanness, a splendid sporting estate that marched with +her own lands. Mr. Traquair, a gentleman as thin as a pipe stem, and as +kind as tobacco, had called upon her the second day, in answer to an +impetuous summons. He found her looking very anxious and very beautiful, +and told her so. + +"May the looks stand me in good stead, Mr. Traquair," said she, "for I'm +like to become Wandering Willie of the song--Wandering Wilhelmina, +rather. There's a man yont, named McTavish, will oost me frae hoose +and name." + +"That would be the young gentleman stopping at the McTavish Arms." + +"Ah," said The McTavish, "he might stop here if he but knew." + +"He's no intending it, then," said Mr. Traquair, "for he called upon me +this morning to hire the Duke's forest of Clackmanness." + +"Ah!" said The McTavish. + +"And now," said Mr. Traquair, stroking his white mustache, "tell me what +it all means." + +"It means that Colland McTavish, who was my great-grandfather's elder +brother, has returned in the person of the young gentleman at the Arms." + +"A fine hornpipe he'll have to prove it," said Mr. Traquair. + +"Fine fiddlesticks!" said The McTavish. "Man," she continued earnestly, +"you have looked in his face and you tell me it will be a dance to prove +him The McTavish?" + +"He is a McTavish," admitted Mr. Traquair; "so much I knew before he +told me his name." + +"He has in his pocket the bit shirt that wee Colland wore when the +gypsies snitched him and carried him over seas; it's all of a piece with +many another garment of wee Colland's. I've had out the trunk in which +his little duds have been stored these many years. The man is Colland's +great-grandson. I look at him, and I admit it without proof." + +"My dear," said Mr. Traquair, "you have no comprehension of the law. I +will fight this claim through every court of the land, or I'm ready to +meet him on Bannockburn field, my ancestral claymore against his. A +rare laugh we'll have when the pretender produces his bit shirtie in the +court, and says, 'Look, your honor, upon my patent o' nobilitee.'" + +"Mind this," said The McTavish, "I'll make no contests, nor have none +made. Only," she smiled faintly, "I hay'na told him who he rightly is. +He claims cousinship. But it has not dawned on him that Colland was to +have been The McTavish, that he _is_ The McTavish, that I am merely Miss +Ellen Alice Douglas Cameron Dundee Campbell McGregor Breadalbane Blair +McTavish, houseless, homeless spinster, wi' but a drap o' gude blood to +her heritage. I have not told him, Mr. Traquair. He does not know. +What's to be done? What would you do--_if you knew_ that he was he, and +that you were only you?" + +"It's your meeserable conscience of a Church-going Scot," commiserated +Traquair, not without indignation. "What would a Campbell have done? +He'd have had himself made a judge in the land, and he'd have condemned +the pretender to the gallows--out of hand, my dear--out of hand!" + +She shook her head at him as at a naughty child. "Where is your own +meeserable conscience, Traquair?" + +"My dear," cried the little man, "it is storming my reason." + +"There," said she, "I told you so. And now we are both of one mind, you +shall present these tidings to McTavish together with my compliments." + +"First," said Traquair cautiously, "I'll bide a bit on the thought." + +"I will leave the time to your meeserable conscience," said Miss +McTavish generously. "Meanwhile, my dear man, while the semblance of +prosperity abides over my head in the shape of a roof, there's a matter +o' ten pound--" + +Mr. Traquair rose briskly to his feet. "Ten pound!" he exclaimed. + +"Only ten pound," she wheedled. + +"My dear," he said, "I don't see where you're to raise another matter o' +saxpence this month." + +"But I've promised the ten pound on my honor," she said. "Would you have +me break my word to a servant?" + +"Well--well," temporized Mr. Traquair, "I'll have another look at the +books. Mind, I'm not saying it can be done--unless you'll sell a bit +timber here and yont--" + +"Dear man," she said, "full well ye know it's not mine to sell. Then +you're to let me have the ten pound?" + +"If I were to employ a wheedler," said Mr. Traquair, "I'd have no choice +'twixt you and Satan. Mind, I make no promises. Ten pound is a +prodeegious sum o' money, when ye hay'na got it." + +"Not later than to-morrow, then," said Miss McTavish, as though to cap a +promise that had been made to her. "I'm obliged to you, Traquair, +deeply obliged." + + + + +IV + +But it was not the matter of the ten pounds that worried Traquair as he +climbed into his pony cart and drove slowly through the castle policies +to the gate. Indeed, the lofty gates had not been closed behind him +before he had forgotten all about them. That The McTavish was not The +McTavish alone occupied his attention. And when he perceived the cause +of the trouble, strolling beside the lofty ring fence of stone that +shielded the castle policies from impertinent curiosity, it was in +anything but his usual cheerful voice that he hailed him. + +"Will you take a lift, Mr. McTavish?" he invited dismally. + +"Oh, no," said The McTavish, "I won't trouble you, thanks." + +Traquair's meeserable conscience got the better of him all at once. And +with that his cheerfulness returned. + +"Get in," he said. "You cannot help troubling me, Mr. McTavish. I've a +word for you, sir." + +McTavish, wondering, climbed into the car. + +"Fergus," said Traquair to the small boy who acted as groom, messenger, +and shoe polisher to the local branch of the Bank of Scotland, +"ye'll walk." + +When the two were thus isolated from prying ears, Mr. Traquair cleared +his throat and spoke. "Is there anything, Mr. McTavish," he said, "in +this world that a rich man like you may want?" + +"Oh, yes," said McTavish, "some things." + +"More wealth?" + +McTavish shook his head. + +"Houses--lands?" Traquair looked up shrewdly from the corner of his eye, +but McTavish shook his head again. + +"Power, then, Mr. McTavish?" + +"No--not power." + +"Glory?" + +"No," said McTavish; "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid not." + +"Then, sir," said Traquair, "it's a woman." + +"No," said McTavish, and he blushed handsomely. "It's _the_ woman." + +"I withdraw my insinuation," said Traquair gravely. + +"I thank you," said Mr. McTavish. + +"I am glad, sir," said Traquair presently, "to find you in so generous +a disposition, for we have need of your generosity. I have it from Miss +McTavish herself," he went on gravely, "that your ancestor, so far as +you know, was Colland McTavish." + +"So far as I know and believe," said McTavish, "he was." + +"Did you know that Colland McTavish should have been _The_ McTavish?" +asked Mr. Traquair. + +"It never entered my head. Was he the oldest son?" + +"He was," said Mr. Traquair solemnly, "until in the eyes of the _law_ he +ceased to exist." + +"Then," said McTavish, "in every eye save that of the law I am _The_ +McTavish." + +Mr. Traquair bowed. "Miss McTavish," he said, "was for telling you at +once; but she left the matter entirely to my discretion. I have thought +best to tell you." + +"Would the law," asked McTavish, "oust Miss McTavish and stand me in her +shoes?" + +"The law," said Traquair pointedly, "would not do the former, and," with +a glance at McTavish's feet, "the Auld Nick could not do the latter." + +McTavish laughed. "Then why have you told me?" he asked. + +"Because," said Traquair grandly, "it is Miss McTavish's resolution to +make no opposition to your claim." + +"I see; I am to become 'The' without a fight." + +"Precisely," said Traquair. + +"Well, discretionary powers as to informing me of this were given you, +as I understand, Mr. Traquair?" + +"They were," said Traquair. + +"Well," said McTavish again, "there's no use crying over spilt milk. But +is your conscience up to a heavy load?" + +"'Tis a meeserable vehicle at best," protested Traquair. + +"You must pretend," said McTavish, "that you have not yet told me." + +"Ah!" Traquair exclaimed. "You wish to think it over." + +"I do," said McTavish. + +Both were silent for some moments. Then Traquair said rather solemnly: +"You are young, Mr. McTavish, but I have hopes that your thinking will +be of a wise and courageous nature." + +"Do you read Tennyson?" asked McTavish, apropos of nothing. + +"No," said Traquair, slightly nettled. "Burns." + +"I am sorry," said McTavish simply; "then you don't know the lines: + + 'If you are not the heiress born, + And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir,' etc. + +do you?" + +"No," said Traquair, "I do not." + +"It is curious how often a lack of literary affinity comes between two +persons and a heart-to-heart talk." + +"Let me know," said Traquair, "when you have thought it over." + +"I will. And now if you will put me down--?" + +He leaped to the ground, lifted his hat to the older man, and, turning, +strode very swiftly, as if to make up for lost time, back toward the +castle gate. + + + + +V + +McTavish was kept waiting a long time while a servant took his letter of +introduction to Miss MacNish, and brought back an answer from +the castle. + +Finally, midway of a winding and shrubby short cut, into which he turned +as directed by the porter, he came suddenly upon her. + +"Miss MacNish--?" he said. + +"You're not Mr. McTavish!--" She seemed dumfounded, and glanced at a +letter which she carried open in her hand. "My sister writes--" + +"What does she write?" asked McTavish eagerly. + +"No--no!" Miss MacNish exclaimed hastily, "the letter was to me." She +tore it hastily into little pieces. + +"Miss MacNish," said McTavish, somewhat hurt, "it is evident that I give +diametrically opposed impressions to you and your sister. Either she +has said something nice about me, and you, seeing me, are astonished +that she should; or she has said something horrid about me--I do hope +it's that way--and you are even more surprised. It must be one thing or +the other. And before we shake hands I think it only proper for you to +tell me which." + +"Let bygones be bygones," said Miss MacNish, and she held out her hand. +McTavish took it, and smiled his enigmatic smile. + +"It is your special wish, I have gathered," said Miss MacNish, "to meet +The McTavish. Now she knows about your being in the neighborhood, knows +that you are a distant cousin, but she hasn't expressed any wish to meet +you--at least I haven't heard her. If she wishes to meet you, she will +ask you to call upon her. If she doesn't wish to, she won't. Of course, +if you came upon her suddenly--somewhere in the grounds, for +instance--she'd have to listen to what you had to say, and to answer +you, I suppose. But to-day--well I'd not try it to-day." + +"Why not?" asked McTavish. + +"Why," said Miss MacNish, "she caught cold in the car yesterday, and her +poor nose is much too red for company." + +"Why do you all try to make her out such a bad lot?" + +"Is it being a bad lot to have a red nose?" exclaimed Miss MacNish. + +"At twenty-two?" McTavish looked at her in surprise and horror. "I ask +_you_," he said. "There was the porter at Brig O'Dread, and your +sister--they gave her a pair of black eyes between them, and here you +give her a red nose. When the truth is probably the reverse." + +"I don't know the reverse of red," said Miss MacNish, "but that would +give her white eyes." + +"I am sure, Miss MacNish, that quibbling is not one of your +prerogatives. It belongs exclusively to the Speaker of the House of +Representatives. As for me--the less I see of The McTavish, the surer I +am that she is rather beautiful, and very amusing, and good." + +"Are these the matters on which you are so eager to meet her?" asked +Miss MacNish. She stood with her back to a clump of dark blue larkspur +taller than herself--a lovely picture, in her severe black housekeeper's +dress that by contrast made her face and dark red hair all the more +vivacious and flowery. Her eyes at the moment were just the color of +the larkspur. + +McTavish smiled his enigmatic smile. "They are," he said. + +"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss MacNish. + +"When I meet her--" McTavish began, and abruptly paused. + +"What?" Miss MacNish asked with some eagerness. + +"Oh, nothing; _I'm_ so full of it that I almost betrayed my own +confidence." + +"I hope that you aren't implying that I might prove indiscreet." + +"Oh, dear no!" said McTavish. + +"It had a look of it, then," said Miss MacNish tartly. + +"Oh," said McTavish, "if I've hurt your feelings--why, I'll go on with +what I began, and take the consequences, shall I?" + +"I think," said Miss MacNish primly, "that it would tend to restore +confidence between us." + +"When I meet her, then," said McTavish, "I shall first tell her that she +is beautiful, and amusing, and good. And then," it came from him in a +kind of eager, boyish outburst, "I shall ask her to marry me." + +Miss MacNish gasped and stepped backward into the fine and deep soil +that gave the larkspur its inches. The color left her cheeks and +returned upon the instant tenfold. And it was many moments before she +could find a word to speak. Then she said in an injured and astonished +tone: "_Why?_" + +"The Scotch Scot," said McTavish, "is shrewd, but cautious. The American +Scot is shrewd, but daring. Caution, you'll admit, is a pitiful measure +in an affair of the heart." + +Miss MacNish was by this time somewhat recovered from her +consternation. "Well," said she, "what then? When you have come upon The +McTavish unawares somewhere in the shrubbery, and asked her to marry +you, and she has boxed your ears for you--what then?" + +"Then," said McTavish with a kind of anticipatory expression of +pleasure, "I shall kiss her. Even if she hated it," he said ruefully, +"she couldn't help but be surprised and flattered." + +Miss MacNish took a step forward with a sudden hilarious brightening in +her eyes. "Are you quizzing me," she said, "or are you outlining your +honest and mad intentions? And if the latter, won't you tell me why? +Why, in heaven's name, should you ask The McTavish to marry you--at +first sight?" + +"I can't explain it," said McTavish. "But even if I never have seen +her--I love her." + +"I have heard of love at first sight--" began Miss MacNish. + +But he interrupted eagerly. "You haven't ever experienced it, have you?" + +"Of course, I haven't," she exclaimed indignantly. "I've heard of +it--_often_. But I have never heard of love without any sight at all." + +"Love is blind," said McTavish. + +"Now, who's quibbling?" + +"Just because," he said, "you've never heard of a thing, away off here +in your wild Highlands, is a mighty poor proof that it doesn't exist. I +suppose you don't believe in predestination. I've always known," he said +grandly, "that I should marry my cousin--even against her will and +better judgment. You don't more than half believe me, do you?" + +"Well, not more than half," Miss MacNish smiled. + +"It's the truth," he said; "I will bet you ten pounds it's the truth." + +Miss MacNish looked at him indignantly, and in the midst of the look she +sighed. "I don't bet," said she. + +McTavish lowered his glance until it rested upon his own highly polished +brown boots. + +"Why are you looking at your boots?" asked Miss MacNish. + +"Because," he said simply, "considering that I am in love with my +cousin, I don't think I ought to look at you any more. I'm afraid I got +the habit by looking at your sister; but then, as she has a husband, it +couldn't matter so much." + +Miss MacNish, I'm afraid, mantled with pleasure. "My sister said +something in her letter about your wishing to see the house of your +ancestors. Miss McTavish is out now--would you like to look about +a little?" + +"Dearly," said McTavish. + + + + +VI + +Miss McTavish sent for Mr. Traquair. He went to her with a heavy +conscience, for as yet he had done nothing toward raising the ten +pounds. At her first words his conscience became still more laden. + +"Traquair," she said, "you mustn't tell him yet." + +It was all Traquair could do to keep countenance. "Then it's fortunate I +haven't," said he, "for you gave me a free hand." + +"Consider it tied behind your back for the present, for a wonderful +thing is going to happen." + +"Indeed," said Traquair. + +"You wouldn't believe me when I tell you that the silly man is going to +fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him!" + +"Although you haven't offered me a chair, my dear," said Traquair, "I +will take one." + +All in a burst then, half laughing, half in a grave kind of excitement, +she told her old friend how she had played housekeeper first at Brig +O'Dread and later at Beem-Tay. And how, on the latter occasion, McTavish +had displayed his admiration so openly that there could be but the +one climax. + +"And after all," she concluded, "if he thinks I'm just a housekeeper, +and falls in love with me and asks me to marry him--I'd know the man +was sincere--wouldn't I, Traquair?" + +"It seems to me," said Traquair, "that I have never seen you so +thoroughly delighted with yourself." + +"That is unkind. It is a wonderful thing when a girl of position, and +hedged in as I have been, finds that she is loved for herself alone and +not for her houses and lands, and her almost royal debts." + +"Verra flattering," said Traquair, "na doot. And what answer will you +give?" + +"Traquair," she said, "I'm not a profane girl; but I'm hanged if I +know." + +"He is a very wealthy man, and I have no doubt a very kind and honest +man." + +"He is a very cheeky man," smiled Miss McTavish. + +"No doubt--no doubt," said Traquair; "and it would leave you to the +honest enjoyment of your houses and lands, which otherwise you propose +to hand over to him. Still, it is well for a Scot to be cautious." + +"For a Scotch Scot," said Miss McTavish. "I should be an American Scot +if I married him. He tells me they are noted for their daring." + +While they were thus animatedly conversing, word came that Mr. McTavish +had called in the hope of seeing Miss MacNish. + +"There," said Miss McTavish, "you see! Go down to him, Traquair, and be +pleasant, until I come. Then vanish." + +Traquair found McTavish smoking a thick London cigarette upon the steps +of the side entrance, and gazing happily into a little garden of dark +yew and vivid scarlet geraniums with daring edgings of brightest +blue lobelia. + +"Will you be making any changes," asked Traquair, "when you come into +your own?" + +McTavish looked up with a smile and handed his open cigarette case to +the older man. + +"Mr. Traquair," he said, "I'm young and a stranger. I wish you could +find it in your heart to be an uncle to me." + +Traquair accepted a cigarette and sat down, first assuring himself that +the stone steps were dry. + +"If I were your nephew," said McTavish, "and came to you all out of +breath, and told you that I wished to marry Miss McTavish's housekeeper, +what would you say?" + +"I would say," said Traquair, "that she was the daughter of a grand +family that had fallen from their high estate. I would say, 'Charge, +nephew, charge!'" + +"Do you mean it!" exclaimed McTavish. + +"There's no more lovely lass in the United Kingdom," said Traquair, +"than Miss--Miss--" + +"MacNish," McTavish helped him; "and she would be mistress where she +had been servant. That's a curious twist of fate." + +"You have made up your mind, then," said Traquair, "to claim your own?" + +"By no means--yet," said McTavish. "I was only speculating. It's all in +the air. Suppose uncle, that Miss MacNish throws me down!" + +"Throws you down!" Traquair was shocked. + +"Well," said McTavish humbly, "you told me to charge." + +"To charge," said Traquair testily, "but not to grapple." + +"In my country," said McTavish, "when a girl refuses to marry a man they +call it throwing him down, giving him the sack, or handing him a lemon." + +"Yours is an exceptional country," said Traquair. + +Miss MacNish appeared in the doorway behind them. "I'm sorry to have +been so long," she said; "I had to give out the linen for luncheon." + +McTavish flung away his cigarette, and sprang to his feet as if some one +had stuck a pin into him. Traquair, according to the schedule, vanished. + +"It seemed very, very long," said McTavish. + +"Miss McTavish," said Miss MacNish, "has consented to see you." + +"Good Heavens!--when?" + +"Now." + +"But I don't want to see her _now_." + +"But you told me"--Miss MacNish looked thoroughly puzzled--"you told me +just what you were going to say to her. You said it was all +predestined." + +"Miss MacNish, it was not Miss McTavish I was thinking of--I'm sure it +wasn't. It was you." + +"Are you proposing to me?" she asked. + +"Of course, I am. Come into the garden--I can't talk on these steps, +right on top of a gravel walk with a distant vista of three gardeners +and a cartful of sand." + +"I must say," said Miss MacNish, "that this is the suddenest thing that +ever happened to me." + +"But you said you believed in love at first sight," McTavish explained. +"You knew yesterday what had happened to me--don't say you didn't, +because I saw you smiling to yourself. You might come into the garden +and let me say my say." + +She didn't budge. + +"Very well then. I will make a scene--right here--a terrible scene." He +caught her two hands in his, and drew her toward him so that the keys at +her belt jangled and clashed. + +"This is preposterous!" she exclaimed. + +"Not so preposterous as you think. But what's your first name?" + +"I think I haven't any at the moment." + +"Don't be ridiculous. There--there--" + +She tore her hands from him and struck at him wildly. But he ducked +like a trained boxer. + +"With everybody looking!" she cried, crimson with mortification. + +"I had a cable," he said, "calling me back to America. That is why I +have to hurry over the preliminaries." + +"The preliminaries," she cried, almost in tears. "Do you know who I am +that you treat me like a barmaid?" + +"Ladies," said McTavish, "who masquerade as housekeepers ought to know +what to expect." + +Her face was a blank of astonishment. "Traquair told," she said +indignantly. "Wait till I--" + +"No," said McTavish; "the porter at Brig O'Dread told. He said that you +yourself would show me the chapel. He said not to be surprised if you +pretended to be some one else. He said you had done that kind of thing +before. He seemed nettled about something." + +In spite of herself Miss McTavish laughed. "I told him," she said, "that +if you crossed my hand with silver, I would give it to him; but if you +crossed my hand with gold, I would keep it for myself. That made him +furious, and he slammed the door when he left. So you knew all along?" + +"Yes--Mrs. Nevis MacNish McTavish, I did; and when you had the faint +spell in the chapel, I almost proposed then. I tell you, your voice and +your face, and the way you walked--oh, they did for this young man on +the spot! Do you know how much hunger and longing and loving can be +crowded into a few days? I do. You think I am in a hurry? It seems to me +as if there'd been millions of years of slow waiting." + +"I have certainly played the fool," said Miss McTavish, "and I suppose I +have let myself in for this." Her voice was gentler. "Do you know, too, +why I turned white in the chapel?" + +"Yes," he said, "I know that." + +"Traquair told you." + +"Yes." + +"And if you hadn't liked me this way, would you have turned me out of +house and home?" + +He drew her hand through his arm, and they crossed the gravel path into +the garden. "What do _you_ think?" he asked. + +"I think--no," said she. + +"Thank you," said he. "Do you read Tennyson?" + +"No," said she, "Burns." + +McTavish sighed helplessly. Then a light of mischief came into his eye. +"As _Burns_ says," said he: + + "'If you are not the heiress born, + And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir, + We two will wed to-morrow morn, + And you shall still be Lady Clare,'" + +"I love every word Burns wrote," she said enthusiastically, and +McTavish, though successful, was ashamed. + +"McTavish," she said, "the other day, when I felt that I had to get here +before you, I promised my driver ten pounds if he beat your car," + +"Yes," said McTavish, "I guessed what was up, and told my man to go +slower. It wasn't the psychological moment for either of us to break our +necks, was it?" + +"No; but I promised the man ten pound, McTavish--and I hay'na got it." + +"Ten pounds ought to have a certain purchasing power," said he. + +"Then shut your eyes," she commanded. + +"And after all," she said, "you'll be _The_ McTavish, won't you?" + +"I will not," he said. "Do you think I'm going to take you back to +America with me Saturday, and have all my friends in New York point +their fingers at me, and call me--_The_?" + + + + +THE PARROT + +He had been so buffeted by fortune, through various climates and various +applications of his many-sidedness, that when I first met Leslie it was +difficult to believe him a fellow countryman. His speech had been welded +by the influence of alien languages to a choice cosmopolitanism. His +skin, thick and brown from blazing sunshines, puckered monkey-like about +his blue, blinking eyes. He never hurried. He was going to Hong-Kong to +build part of a dry-dock for the English Government, he said, but his +ambitions had dwindled to owning a farm somewhere in New York State and +having a regular menagerie of birds and animals. + +His most enthusiastic moments of conversation were in arguing and +anecdotalizing the virtues and ratiocinations of animals and birds. The +monkey, he said, was next to man the most clever, but was inferior to +the elephant in that he had no sense of right or wrong. Furthermore, +monkeys were immodest. Next came certain breeds of dogs. Very low in the +scale he placed horses; very high, parrots. + +"Concerning parrots," he said, "people are under erroneous impressions, +but copying and imitation are not unreasonable processes. Your parrot, +under his bright cynical feathers, is a modest fowl that grasps at every +opportunity of education from the best source--man. In a native state +his intelligence remains closed: the desire to be like a woodpecker or a +humming-bird does not pick at the cover. Just as a boy born in an +Indiana village and observing the houses of his neighbors might not wish +to become an architect, but if he were transported to Paris or Vienna, +to a confrontation of what is excellent in proportion, it might be that +art would stir in his spirit and, after years of imitation, would come +forth in a stately and exquisite procession of buildings. So in his +native woods the parrot recognizes nothing but color that is worthy of +his imitation. But in the habitations of man, surrounded by taste, which +is the most precious of all gifts, his ambition begins to grow, his +ignorance becomes a shame. He places his foot on the first rung of the +educational ladder. His bright colors fade, perhaps; the eyes of his +mind are turned toward brighter and more ornamental things. What +creature but a parrot devotes such long hours to the acquirement of +perfection in each trivial stage of progress? What creature remembers so +faithfully and so well? We know not what we are, you and I and the rest +of us; but if we had had the application, patience, and ambition of the +average parrot, we should be greater men. But some people say that +parrots are mean, self-centred, and malignant. They have, I admit, a +crust of cynicism which might lead to that impression, and not unjustly, +but underneath the parrot's crotchets there beats a great and benevolent +heart. Let me give you an instance: + +"In '88 my luck was down, and as a first step to raising it I shipped +before the mast in an English bottom outward bound from Hong-Kong to +Java. Jaffray was the cook, a big negro who owned a savage gray +parrot--a mighty clever bird but to all intents and purposes of a most +unscrupulous and cruel nature. Many a time her cleverness at provoking a +laugh was all that saved her from sudden death. She bit whom she could; +she stole what she could. She treated us like dogs. Only Jaffray could +handle her without a weapon. Him she loved and made love to with a +sheepish and resolute abandon. From him she endured the rapid +alternations of whippings and caressings with the most stoical fortitude +and self-restraint. When he whipped her she would close her eyes and +say: 'I could bite him, but I won't. Polly's a bad girl. Hit her again,' +When the whipping was over she would say: 'Polly's sore. Poor Polly! How +I pity that poor girl!' Love-making usually succeeded a whipping in +short order, and then she was at her best. She would turn her head to +one side, cast the most laughably provoking glances, hold one claw +before her face, perhaps, like a skeleton fan, and say: 'Don't come +fooling round me. Go away, you bad man,' + +"I tried my best to be friends with her. But only to prove that the +knack that I am supposed to have with birds and beasts has its +limitations. With one long day following another and opportunity +constantly at hand, I failed utterly in obtaining her friendship. +Indeed, she was so lacking in breeding as to make public mockings of my +efforts. There was no man before the mast but stood higher in her graces +than I. My only success was in keeping my temper. But it was fated that +we should be friends and comrades, drawn together by the bonds of a +common suffering. + +"I will tell you the story of the wreck another time. In some ways it +was peculiar. I will only tell you now that I swam for a long time +(there was an opaque fog) and bumped my head against one of the ship's +boats. I seized the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb +in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her +davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely +attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's +graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and +sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with +a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the boat. And +presently I was aware that violence had succeeded where patience had +failed. Polly sat in the stern sheets timidly cooing and offering to +shake hands. At another time I should have burst laughing at her--she +was so coy, so anxious to please. But I had just arrived from seeing my +captain's head broken to pieces by a falling spar, and a good friend of +mine stabbed by another good friend of mine, and I was nearer to tears. + +"It was cold for that part of the world, and rain fell heavily from time +to time. Polly complained bitterly all night and said that she would +take her death o' cold, but in the morning (I had fallen asleep) she +waked me in her pleasantest and most satisfied voice, saying, 'Tumble up +for breakfast.' I pulled myself out of the rain-water into which I had +slipped, and sat up. The sky and sea were clear from one horizon to the +other and the sun was beginning to scorch. + +"'Bully and warm, ain't it?' said Polly. + +"'Right you are, old girl,' said I. + +"She perched on my shoulder and began to oil and arrange her draggled +feathers. + +"'What a hell of a wreck that was!' she said suddenly, and, after a +pause: 'Where's my nigger?' + +"'He's forsaken you, old girl,' said I, 'for Mother Carey's chickens.' + +"'Poor Polly,' said she; 'how I pity that poor girl!' + +"Now I don't advance for a moment the theory that she understood all +that she said, nor even a part of what I said. But her statements and +answers were often wonderfully apt. Have you ever known one of those +tremendously clever deaf people whom you may talk with for a long time +before discovering that they are deaf? Talking with poor Jaffray's +parrot was like that. It was only occasionally--not often, mind--that +her phrases argued an utter lack of reasoning power. She had been +educated to what I suppose to be a point very close to the limit of a +parrot's powers. At a fair count she had memorized a hundred and fifty +sentences, a dozen songs, and twenty or thirty tunes to whistle. Many +savages have not larger vocabularies; many highborn ladies have a less +gentle and cultivated enunciation. Let me tell you that had I been alone +in that boat, a young man, as I then was, who saw his ambitions and +energies doomed to a watery and abrupt finish, with a brief interval of +starvation to face, I might easily have gone mad. But I was saved from +that because I had somebody to talk to. And to receive confidence and +complaint the parrot was better fitted than a human being, better fitted +than a woman, for she placed no bar of reticence, and I could despair as +I pleased and on my own terms. + +"My clothes dried during the first day, and at night she would creep +under my coat to sleep. At first I was afraid that during +unconsciousness I should roll on her. But she was too wary for that. If +I showed a tendency to sprawl or turn over, she would wake and pierce my +ears with a sharp 'Take your time! Take your time!' + +"At sunrise every day she would wake me with a hearty 'Tumble up for +breakfast.' + +"Unfortunately there was never any breakfast to be had, but the +rain-water in the bottom of the boat, warm as it was and tasting of +rotting wood, saved us from more frightful trial. + +"Here is a curious fact: After the second night I realized and counted +every hour in all its misery of hunger and duration, yet I cannot, to +save my soul, remember how many days and nights passed between the wreck +and that singular argument for a parrot's power of reasoning that was to +be advanced to me. It suffices to know that many days and nights went by +before we began to die of hunger. + +"In what remained of the rain-water (with the slow oscillations of the +boat it swashed about and left deposits of slime on her boards) I caught +from time to time glimpses of my face as affected by starvation. And it +may interest you to know that it was not the leanness of my face that +appalled me but the wickedness of it. All the sins I had ever sinned, +all the lies I had told, all the meannesses I had done, the drunks I +had been on, the lusts I had sated, came back to me from the +bilge-water. And I knew that if I died then and there I should go +straight to hell if there was one. I made divers trials at repentance +but was not able to concentrate my mind upon them. I could see but one +hope of salvation--to die as I had not lived--like a gentleman. It was +not a voluminous duty, owing to the limits set upon conduct by the +situation, but it was obvious. Whatever pangs I should experience in the +stages of dissolution, I must spare Polly. + +"In view of what occurred it is sufficiently obvious that I read my duty +wrongly. For, when I was encouraging myself to spare the bird I should +rather have been planning to save her. She, too, must have been +suffering frightfully from the long-continued lack of her customary +diet, but it seems that while enduring it she was scheming to save me. + +"She had been sitting disconsolately on the gunwale when the means +struck suddenly into her tortuously working mind and acted upon her +demeanor like a sight of sunflower seeds, of which she was prodigiously +fond. If I follow her reasoning correctly it was this. The man who has +been so nice to me needs food. He can't find it for himself; therefore I +must find it for him. Thus far she reasoned. And then, unfortunately, +trusting too much to a generous instinct, and disregarding the most +obvious and simple calculation, she omitted the act of turning around, +and instead of laying the egg that was to save me in the boat, she laid +it in the ocean. It sank." + + * * * * * + +Long voyages make for dulness. I had listened to the above narrative +with so much interest as to lose for a moment my sense of what was +patent. In the same absurd way that one man says to another whom he +knows perfectly well, "What--is this you?" I said to Leslie very +eagerly, "Were you saved?" And he answered, "No; we were both drowned." + + + + +ON THE SPOT; OR, THE IDLER'S HOUSE-PARTY + + +I + +Last winter was socially the most disgusting that I remember ever having +known, because everybody lost money, except Sally's father and mine. We +didn't, of course, mind how much money our friends lost--they always had +plenty left; but we hated to have them talk about it, and complain all +the time, and say that it was the President's fault, or poor John +Rockefeller's, or Senator So-and-so's, or the life insurance people's. +When a man loses money it is, as a matter of fact, almost always his own +fault. I said so at the beginning of last winter, and I say so still. +And Sally, who is too lazy to think up original remarks, copied it from +me and made no bones about saying it to all the people she knew who she +thought needed that kind of comfort. But perhaps, now that I think of +it, Sally and I may have contributed to making the winter socially +disgusting. Be that as it may, we were the greatest sufferers. + +We moved to Idle Island in September. And we were so delighted with what +the architects, and landscape-gardeners, and mosquito doctors had done +to make it habitable; with the house itself, and the grape-house, and +greenhouses, and gardens, and pergolas, and marble columns from Athens, +and terraces, and in-and-out door tennis-courts, and swimming-pools, and +boat-houses, and golf links, and all the other country-place +necessities, and particularly with a line of the most comfortable +lounging-chairs and divans in the world, that we decided to spend the +winter there. Sally telephoned to my father's secretary and asked him to +spend the winter with us, and make out lists for week-end parties, and +to be generally civil and useful. The secretary said that he would be +delighted to come if he could persuade my father and mother to go abroad +for the winter; and later he called Sally up, and said that he had +persuaded them. + +Well, from the first our week-end parties were failures. On the first +Friday in October the President of the United States said that he hated +cheats and liars (only he mentioned names) and the stock-market went to +smash. Saturday it was still in a messy state, and the people who came +out Saturday afternoon couldn't or wouldn't talk about anything else. +They came by the 4:30 to Stepping-Stone, and were ferried over to the +island in the motor boat. Sally and I rode down to the pier in the +jinrikishas that my father's secretary had had imported for us for a +wedding present; and, I give you my word, the motor-boat as it slowed +into the pier looked like an excursion steamer out to view the beauties +of the Hudson. Everybody on board was hidden behind a newspaper. + +"Fong," said Sally to her jinrikisha man, "take me back to the house." + +He turned and trotted off with her, and they disappeared under the elms. + +"Just because your guests aren't interested in you," I called after her, +"is no reason why you shouldn't be interested in them." + +But she didn't answer, and I was afraid I'd hurt her feelings; so I said +to my man, or horse, or horse-man--it's hard to know what to call them: + +"Long Lee, you go back to the house, clip-step." + +Clip-step soon overtook Sally, and I asked her what she was mad about. + +"I'm mad," she said, "because none of those people have ever seen this +beautiful island before, and they wouldn't look up from their dirty old +newspapers. What's the matter with them?" + +"They're worried about the market," said I, "and each one wants the +others to think that he's more worried than they are. That's all." + +"But the women!" said Sally. "There we sat waving to them, and not so +much as a look for our pains. My arm is all numb from waving +hospitably." + +"Never mind," I said. "I'll--I'll--ask your maid to rub it for you. And +then we'll send the motor-boat for the very latest edition of the +papers, and we'll have Blenheim and Windermere fold them like ships and +cocked hats, the way they do the napkins, and put them at each person's +place at dinner. That will be the tactful way of showing them what _we_ +think about it." + +Sally, naturally enough, was delighted at this idea, and forgot all +about her poor, numb arm. But the scheme sounded better than it worked. +Because when we went in to dinner the guests, instead of being put to +shame by the sight of the newspapers, actually sputtered with pleasure, +and fell on them and unfolded them and opened them at the financial +pages. And then the men began to shout, and argue, and perspire, and +fling quotations about the table, and the women got very shrill, and +said they didn't know what they would do if the wretched market kept up, +or rather if it didn't keep up. And nobody admired the new furniture or +the pictures, or the old Fiffield plate, or Sally's gown, or said +anything pleasant and agreeable. + +"Sam," said Tony Marshall to me, "I'm glad that you can empty your new +swimming-pool in three-quarters of an hour, but if you don't watch out +you may be so poor before the winter's over that you won't be able to +buy water enough to fill it." + +"If you're not careful," I said, "I'll fill it with champagne and make +you people swim in it till you're more sprightly and agreeable. I never +saw such a lot of oafs. I--" + +"I tell you, Sam," bellowed Billoo, "that the financial status of this +country, owing to that infernal lunatic in the White House--" + +"If you must tell me again--" I began. + +"Oh," he said disgustedly, "_you_ can't be serious about anything. +You're so da--a--ah--urn--rich that you never give a thought to the +suffering of the consumer." + +"Don't I?" said I. "Did you happen to see me the morning after the +Clarion's ball last winter?--I thought about the consumer then, I can +tell you." + +Billoo turned his back on me very rudely. I looked across the table to +Sally. She smiled feebly. She had drawn back her chair so that Tombs and +Randall could fight it out across her plate without hitting her in the +nose. They were frantically shaking their fists at each other, and they +kept saying very loud, and both at once: + +"I tell _you!_" and they made that beginning over and over, and never +got any further. + +At two o'clock the next morning Mrs. Giddings turned to Sally and said: + +"And now, my dear, I can't wait another moment. You must show me all +over your lovely new house. I can think of nothing else." + +"Can't you?" said Sally. "I can. It's two o'clock. But I'll show you to +your own lovely room, if you like." + +In the morning I sent for Blenheim, and told him to take all the Sunday +papers as soon as they arrived and throw them overboard. All I meant to +be was tactful. But it wouldn't do. The first thing the men asked for +was the papers; and the second thing. And finally they made such a fuss +and threw out so many hints that I had to send the motor-boat over to +the main-land. This made me rather sore at the moment, and I wished that +the motor-boat was at the bottom of the Sound; but it wasn't, and had +to be sent. + +Later in the day I was struck with an idea. It was one of the few that +ever struck me without outside help, and I will keep it dark for the +present. But when I got Sally alone I said to her: + +"Now, Sally, answer prettily: do you or do you not know what plausible +weather is?" + +"I do not," she said promptly. + +"Of course, you do not," I said, "you miserable little ignoramus. It has +to do with an idea." + +"No, Sam!" cried Sally. + +"One of mine," I said. + +"Oh, Sam!" she said. "Can I help?" + +"You can." + +"How?" + +"You can pray for it." + +"For the idea?" she asked. + +"No, you silly little goat," I said. "For the plausible weather." + +"Must I?" she asked. + +"You must," I said. "If you have marrow-bones, prepare to use them now." + +Sally looked really shocked. + +"Knees," I explained. "They're the same thing. But now that I think of +it, you needn't use yours. If anybody were looking, it would be +different, of course. But nobody is, and you may use mine." + +So Sally used my knees for the moment, and I explained the idea to her +briefly, and some other things at greater length; and then we both +laughed and prayed aloud for plausible weather. + +But it was months coming. + + + + +II + +Think, if you can, of a whole winter passing in Westchester County +without its storming one or more times on any single solitary Saturday +or Sunday or holiday! Christmas Day, even, some of the men played tennis +out-of-doors. The balls were cold and didn't bounce very high, and all +the men who played wanted to sit in the bar and talk stocks, but +otherwise it made a pretty good game. Often, because our guests were so +disagreeable about the money they had lost or were losing, we decided +not to give any more parties, but when we thought that fresh air was +good for our friends, whether they liked it or not, of course we had to +keep on asking them. And, besides, we were very much set on the idea +that I have referred to, and there was always a chance of +plausible weather. + +It did not come till May. But then it "came good," as Sally said. It +"came good" and it came opportunely. Everything was right. We had the +right guests; we had the right situation in Wall Street, and the weather +was right. It came out of the north-east, darkly blowing (this was +Saturday, just after the usual motor-boat load and their afternoon +editions had been landed), and at first it made the Sound, and even the +sheltered narrows between the island and the main-land, look pancake-flat +and oily. Then it turned the Sound into a kind of incoming gray, striped +with white; and then into clean white, wonderfully bright and staring +under the dark clouds. I never saw a finer storm come up finer. But +nobody would go out to the point to see it come. The Stock Exchange had +closed on the verge of panic (that was its chronic Saturday closing last +winter) and you couldn't get the men or women away from the thought of +what _might_ happen Monday. "Good heavens," said Billoo, "think of poor +Sharply on his way home from Europe! Can't get to Wall Street before +Wednesday, and God knows what he'll find when he gets there." + +"What good would it do him to get there before?" I asked. "Wouldn't he +sail right in and do the wrong thing, just as everybody has done +all winter?" + +"You don't understand, Sam," said Billoo, very lugubriously; and then he +annihilated me by banging his fist on a table and saying, "_At least +he'd be on the spot, wouldn't he_?" + +"Oh," I said, "if you put it that way, I admit that that's just where he +would be. Will anybody come and have a look at the fine young storm that +I'm having served?" + +"Not now, Sam--not now," said Billoo, as if the storm would always stay +just where, and as, it was; and nobody else said anything. The men +wanted to shout and get angry and make dismal prophecies, and the women +wanted to stay and hear them, and egg them on, and decide what they +would buy or sell on Monday. + +"All right, Billoo-on-the-spot," I said. "Sally--?" + +Sally was glad to come. And first we went out on the point and had a +good look at the storm. The waves at our feet were breaking big and +wild, the wind was groaning and howling as if it had a mortal +stomach-ache, and about a mile out was a kind of thick curtain of +perpendicular lines, with dark, squally shadows at its base. + +"Sam!" cried Sally, "it's snow--snow," and she began to jump up and +down. + +In a minute or two flakes began to hit us wet slaps in the face, and we +took hands and danced, and then ran (there must have been something +intoxicating about that storm) all the way to the pier. And there was +the captain of the motor-boat just stepping ashore. + +"The man himself," said Sally. + +"Captain," said I, "how are we off for boats?" + +By good-luck there were in commission only the motor-boat, and the +row-boat that she towed behind, and a canoe in the loft of the +boat-house. + +"Captain," I said, "take the _Hobo_ (that was the name of the +motor-boat) and her tender to City Island, and don't come back till +Wednesday morning, in time for the Wall Street special." + +"When you get to City Island," said Sally, "try to look crippled." + +"Not you," I said, "but the _Hobo_." + +"Tell them," said Sally, "if they ask questions, that you were blown +from your moorings, and that you couldn't get back in the teeth of the +gale because--because--" + +"Because," said I, "your cylinders slipped, and your clutch missed +fire, and your carbureter was full of prunes." + +"In other words," said Sally, "if anybody ever asks you anything about +anything--lie." + +We gave him a lot more instructions, and some eloquent money, and he +said, "Very good, ma'am," to me, and "Very good, miss," to Sally, and +pretty soon he, and the _Hobo_, and the engineer, and the _Hobo's_ crew +of one, and the tender were neatly blown from their moorings, and +drifted helplessly toward City Island at the rate of twenty-two miles an +hour. Then Sally and I (it was snowing hard, now) climbed into the loft +of the boat-house, and _fixed_ the canoe. + +"There," said Sally, putting down her little hatchet, "I don't believe +the most God-fearing banker in this world would put to sea in that! +Well, Sam, we've done it now." + +"We have," said I. + +"Will Monday never come?" said Sally. + +"Stop," said I; "the telephone." + +Idle Island was moored to the mainland by a telephone cable. It took us +nearly an hour to find where this slipped into the water. And we were +tired and hungry and wet and cold, but we simply had to persevere. It +was frightful. At length we found the thing--it looked like a slimy +black snake--and we cut it, where the water was a foot deep--the water +bit my wrists and ankles as sharply as if it had been sharks--and went +back to the house through the storm. + +It was as black as night (the weather, not the house), snowing furiously +and howling. We crept into the house like a couple of sneak-thieves, and +heard Billoo at his very loudest shouting: + +"I had Morgan on the wire all right--and the fool operator cut me off!" + +Sally snipped her wet fingers in my face. + +"Hello, fool operator," she said. + +"Hello, yourself," said I. "But oh, Sally, listen to that wind, and tell +me how it sounds to you. A wet hug if you guess the answer." + +"To me," said Sally, "it sounds plausible." And she got herself hugged. + + + + +III + +I don't believe that anybody slept much Saturday night. You never heard +such a storm in your life. It seemed to Sally and me, who would have +been the chief sufferers if it _had_ blown down, that our comfortable, +brand-new marble house flapped like a flag. Every now and then there +came a tremendous crack from one part of the island or another; and +each time Sally would say, "There goes my favorite elm," or I would say, +"There goes that elm again." + +Most of the men came down to breakfast Sunday morning. What with the +storm and the worry about stocks keeping them awake most of the night, +they were without exception nervous and cross, particularly Billoo. He +looked like an owl that had been first stuffed and then boiled. Blenheim +told me later that at various times during the night he had carried four +several pints of champagne to Billoo's room; and at 7 A.M., bicarbonate +of soda and aromatic spirits of ammonia. + +"I tell you, Sam," said Billoo crossly, "I've been awake all night +thinking what it would mean to some of us--yes, me!--if this storm +should wreck that ferry-boat of yours." + +A lot of wet snow and wind hit the dining-room windows a series of +rattling slaps. + +"She's a good boat, Sam, but smallish to ride out such a storm as this." + +"What a goat you are, Sam," said Tombs, also crossly, "not to keep two +ferry-boats, so that if one breaks down you have the other." + +"When we made up our minds to spend the winter here," I said, "I ordered +another; in fact, two. But they're still building; and besides, what if +the _Hobo_ does break down? There's plenty to eat and drink, I hope. +Nobody would suffer much." + +"No," said Billoo, "it would be no suffering for a business man to be +storm-bound here during a probable panic in Wall Street! + +"I'm tired," I said, "of hearing you refer to yourself or any of these +gentlemen as business men. You always gamble; and when you're in +good-luck you gambol, and when you aren't, you don't. What makes me +sickest about you all is that you're so nauseatingly conceited and +self-important. You all think that your beastly old Stock Exchange is +the axle about which the wheel of the world revolves, and each of you +thinks, privately, that he's the particular grease that makes it revolve +smoothly." + +"Well," said Billoo, "you know that the presence on the floor of one +steady, conservative man may often avert a panic." + +"Show me the man," I said. "Has any one here ever caused a panic or +averted one? But you all lose money just as often because you're on the +spot, as make it. Wouldn't you all be the richer for an absence now +and then?" + +"Of course," said Randall, "there are times when it doesn't matter one +way or the other. But when--well, when the market's in the state it is +now, it's life or death, almost, to be on the spot." + +"I don't understand," I said. "When the market looks fussy, why not +sell out, and wait for better times?" + +"We _can't_ sell out," said Billoo. "We're loaded up to the muzzle." + +"You look as if you had been," I said courteously; but Billoo brushed +the remark aside as if it had been a fly. + +"If we _try_ to unload," he said, "the market begins to collapse. We +_can't_ unload, except a little at a time, and still prices get lower +and lower and margins thinner and thinner. Now, I happen to _know_"--he +looked about him importantly--"that to-morrow will hear the failure of a +_very well-known_ house, and after that's announced--God knows." + +"How true that is!" I said. "But tell me: suppose you gentlemen +deliberately absented yourselves for a few days--wouldn't it restore +confidence? Wouldn't the other brokers say: 'Billoo, Randall, Tombs, +Marshall, Bedlo, etc., don't seem to think there's much doing. None of +'em's here--what's the use of _me_ being scared?'" + +"It would have the contrary effect, Sam," said Tombs solemnly. "They +would think that we had decamped in a body for Canada." + +"I don't know," said I, "but it would be a better thing for the country +if you all did ship to Canada--I don't think there's much doing +out-doors to-day. Hear that wind!" + +"If I can get rid of all my holdings," said Billoo, "I'll sit tight. +We'll see lower prices before we see higher." + +"Well," said I, "I'll bet you we don't." + +"Young man," said Billoo, and he looked almost well and happy, "just +name your sum." + +"I'll bet you a thousand," I said. + +"Sammy," said Tombs very sweetly, "have you got another thousand up your +sleeve?" + +"Sure," I said. + +"Done with you," said Tombs. + +In about five minutes I had bet with everybody present. + +"But mind," I said, "there mustn't be any dirty work. You people mustn't +go to town to-morrow with the idea of forming a strong coalition and +_putting_ prices down." + +"It wouldn't be worth while," said Billoo. "As a matter of fact, we'd +like nothing better than to see you win your bet, but as you can't, +possibly--why, a thousand dollars is always a thousand dollars." + +"Just the same," said I, "_no_ coalitions." + +The wind went on howling till late in the afternoon and then it began to +peter out. We had spent the whole day in the house, and everybody was +tired and bored, and nervous about Monday, and bedtime came earlier +than usual. + +"Sam," said Sally, when we were alone, "it's just occurred to me that we +_may_ be causing some of these people to lose a lot of money." + +"Why, Sally," I said, "you look scared." + +"I am," she said. "Don't _you_ think it would be rather awful?" + +"No, I don't," I said; "I think it would be split-tingly funny. But they +won't lose. Their absence will steady the market." + +"Who told you that, Sam?" said Sally. + +"Sam!" said I. + + + + +IV + +Even before the leaves come, you can't see the pier from the house. It +runs out from the bottom of a high bank and is otherwise hidden by +trees. But it's only a short distance, and in good weather we have the +guests walk it, because it gives them a better chance to admire the +gardens and the Athenian columns and things. But Monday, which dawned +bright and still and warm, and was just as typical of May in Westchester +as was the snow-and-wind storm, we drove them down in a bus because the +roads and paths were horribly muddy. Of course, none of the women +wanted to take the early train, so there were only the men and Sally +and I in the bus. Sally said that there was going to be some fun when +the men got to the pier and didn't find the _Hobo_, and she wasn't going +to miss it. Just before we started she drew me aside and said: + +"Sam, when we get there, for Heaven's sake look blank." + +"I understand your fears, Sally," I said, "and I will look as blank as I +possibly can. But remember, child, how easy it is for _you_ to look +blank; and don't always be urging others to attempt the impossible." + +"Mrs. Sam," said Billoo, on the way down, "I can't tell you what a good +time I've had." + +"You nice man," said Sally, "I wish we could persuade you to stay a day +or two longer." + +"If it wasn't for the market, I could stay forever," said Billoo. + +"Not if I lived," said I. "Saturday to Monday is plenty long +enough--Hello--!" + +The pier and the empty stretch of water between the island and the +mainland were in sight, but there was no _Hobo_. + +"Hello what?" said Tombs. "Why, where's the ferry?" + +"I don't see her," I said, and, I hope, anxiously; "you don't suppose--" + +"Isn't the _Hobo_ there?" shrieked Billoo. He turned his head on his +fat neck, and at first he looked very angry, and then scared. + +We walked down to the pier, and then out on the float to get as big a +water view as possible, but there wasn't so much as a row-boat in sight. + +"What can have happened?" said Sally. + +"I'm worried to death," I said. "Suppose she _was_ blown from her +moorings, the captain could have run her into New Rochelle, and come +back yesterday afternoon when the wind went down. Something must have +happened." + +"Oh, Sam," cried Sally, "you don't think she may have been run down by +one of the Sound steamers and sunk?" + +"I dare not think of it," I said. "I dare not think of the poor chaps on +board." + +"I don't see how I'm to get to town," said Billoo dismally. He pulled +out his watch, and held it in his hand, and every moment or two looked +at it. "Haven't you a couple of row-boats? We couldn't get this train, +but we could get the next--" + +I shook my head. "I'm sorry," I said. "We're not much on the water, and +we've never been properly supplied with boats--" + +Billoo swallowed some hasty thought or other, and began to look across +at the mainland. My father owns all the land opposite the island, even +the pier and the short road to the village of Stepping-Stone; and +although there were several boats at the pier, there were no people, and +the rest of the shore is nothing but thick woods. + +"We must telephone somewhere," said Billoo. + +"You can't," I said. "You know you tried to telephone all yesterday and +couldn't, and the butler told me this morning that he had tried to put +in a call and got no answer." + +"What does it matter?" said Sally. "You've all got to stay now. I think +that's splendid." + +"Mrs. Sam," said Tombs hollowly, "do you realize that this accident may +mean _ruin_ for some of us?" + +"Oh, dear!" said Sally "how dreadful!" + +"Somehow of other," said Billoo, "_I'm_ going to get across." + +And the others said that somehow or other _they_ were going to get +across, too. + +"I've _got_ to!" said Billoo, and he looked about in a fat, challenging +way as if daring any one to say that he had not got to. + +"You poor things," said Sally, "I hope to Heaven you can; but how?" + +"Where there's a will, Mrs. Sam--" Billoo said. And he began to think +hard. All of a sudden his face brightened. + +"It's too easy," he said. "The wind's right; four or five of us have +umbrellas--Sam, you'll have to lend us this float. We've only to cut it +from its moorings, and sail it across--May we have it?" + +"Yes," I said, "but you're crazy to try it." + +"It's a case of sink or swim," said he. "Who's coming?" + +Without exception the men agreed to sail with him on the float. It was a +fine, big platform, floated on sheet-iron air-tanks, and moored at the +four corners by heavy ropes. + +Sally and I withdrew to the pier and watched Billoo and the others cut +slowly through the ropes with their pocket-knives. Presently the float +began to move, and a second or two later the float end of the gang-plank +slipped into the water with a heavy splash. Those who had umbrellas +opened them to catch the breeze, and the others lit cigars, and stood +about in graceful attitudes. Sally and I cheered as loud as we could. + +"I'll send you a tug or something," Billoo called back to us, "and try +to find out what's happened to the _Hobo_." + +"Thank _you_!" I called back. + +"Sam," said Sally, "I don't know what you think, but I call it good +sand." + +"So do I," said I, "but foolish." + +"Why foolish?" said Sally. "They're really going quite fast, and +they'll be across in no time, and they'll get the next train and +everything." + +"They will not," I said. + +"Why?" said Sally. + +"Because," said I, "they will run on to the middle ground, and stay +there." + +"Not at high tide!" exclaimed Sally. + +"At high tide," said I. "That float draws a good two feet, and it's so +heavy that once it runs on the mud it will stay on the mud--" And then I +shouted to Billoo: + +"Look out for the middle ground!" + +"What?" he answered. + +"Why do you warn him?" said Sally. + +"Because it won't help him," said I. + +"What?" called Billoo again, and Sally answered at the top of her lungs, +"Look--out--for--the--middle--ground!" + +"Right O!" Billoo answered; "where is it?" + +"Just ahead," Sally called. + +Billoo turned to look, and at that moment the float, which was +travelling at a good clip, ran into it. + +Billoo and Randall fell flat on their faces; everybody staggered; one +umbrella and two hats went overboard and drifted away, and Sally and I +sat down on the pier and laughed till we were helpless. + + + + +V + +The float had become a fixture in the landscape about two hundred and +fifty yards out. We could converse with our friends by shouting only, +and when we got tired of condoling with them and giving them assurances +of our sympathy, we told them that _we_ were going back to the house to +get some more breakfast and think out what was best to be done, + +"Sam," said Sally, "that's the maddest lot of men I ever saw." + +We looked back. Billoo was stamping up and down the float, waving his +arms and orating like Falstaff; Randall and Tombs had their heads +together, and were casting what appeared to be baleful glances at +Billoo. It was evident that he was not popular on the float. + +When we had had some more breakfast, and had sat around a little to +digest it, the women began to come down-stairs. Mrs. Randall was the +first to come down, and she was in great distress. + +"It's _too_ dreadful," she said. "I had something of the utmost +importance to tell Billy, something that I wanted him to do for me +down-town. And I overslept." + +"Well," said I, "let me tell you what a good fellow Billy is. He hasn't +gone yet." + +"Good Heavens!" she cried, "not gone yet? Why, what time is it? Why, he +won't get down-town in time for the opening!" + +"Probably not," I said. "He was just going, when suddenly he said, 'I +know there's something my wife wants to say to me.' I said, 'Wake her up +and find out what it is.' He said, 'No, she's getting so she can't do +without her beauty sleep; I'll just wait around till she wakes of +herself.'" + +"Sam," said Mrs. Randall, "what has happened to my husband?" + +"Nothing much," I said. "He's in the same boat with many others--only it +isn't a boat. Don't be alarmed." + +"_Where is my husband?_" said she. + +"If you are equal to a short, muddy walk," I said, "I will show him to +you--Morning, little Miss Tombs--want to see brother and young Fitch? +They said they wouldn't go to town till you'd seen them--Morning, Mrs. +Giddings--morning, Miss Marshall--I'm not much on breaking bad news, but +there's been an accident to all your husbands and brothers and fiances. +They're all alive still, so far as I know--but they ought not to last +more than five or six days." + +"It's proposed," said Sally, "that we all go and see what can be done +for them." + +We refused to answer any questions. We led the way to the pier and +pointed out the float, and the men on it. "There," said Sally, "you can +see them quite plainly from here." + +"Yes," said I, "and the more plainly you see them, the plainer they +are." + +"Will you kindly tell me," said Mrs. Randall, "what my husband is doing +out there on that float?" + +"He is doing nothing," I said. "You can see for yourself. And it isn't a +float any more." + +"Better tell them what has happened," said Sally. + +"No, Sally," I said, "no." + +"Yes, Sam," she said. + +"Oh, all right," I said, "if you really think it's best. The fact is, +ladies, the whole thing is a piece of drunken folly. You know how men +are when they get drinking and arguing, and quarrelling. To make a long +story short, it came to Billoo's insulting Randall; Randall challenges +him; duelling is against the law; they take pistols and witnesses out on +the water beyond the jurisdiction of the United States; and they _were_ +going to murder each other. But it's all right now--don't be +frightened." + +Sally had turned her face away, and I'm sure I was serious as a judge. I +patted Mrs. Randall on the shoulder. + +"Even if your husband isn't brave," I said, "he's clever, clever and +deep." + +"My husband not brave!" she cried. "I like that; he's the bravest man I +ever saw." + +"Well, that may be," I said doubtfully, "but, considering that on the +way out to the duelling ground, or water, when nobody was looking but +Sally and me, he kicked the box of cartridges overboard. But, perhaps +they'll agree to use pocket-knives--" + +"Sam," said little Miss Tombs, "I'll give you a kiss good-morning if +you'll be serious." + +"Wait till Fitch is looking," I said. + +Then Sally explained what had happened, and edged herself so politely +between little Miss Tombs and me that the others laughed. + +"They'll float at high tide, won't they?" asked Mrs. Giddings. + +"No," I said. "It was high tide when they ran aground. It will take a +tugboat to get them off." + +The words weren't out of my mouth when a tugboat appeared round the +corner of the island, making up the channel. The men on the float began +to scream and yell, and jump up and down, and wave their arms. But the +tugboat paid no attention. It thought they were drunk. It passed within +three hundred yards of them, whistled a couple of times, and became +small in the distance. + +"Sam," said Sally, "in about an hour they'll be high and dry on the mud. +Then not even a boat can get to them. And by the time it's high tide +again it will be dark and nobody will see them, and they'll be dying of +hunger and thirst." + +"That's true," I said. "Sally, you explain that to them, and I'll have +the men fetch one of the stable doors, and we'll put a sail on it and +provision it and trust to its hitting the middle ground about where +they did." + +I never worked so hard in my life. I had a stable door taken off its +tracks and rigged with the canoe's sail; and we put a case of champagne +on board, and a tub of ice, and bread, and cold meat, and butter, and +jam, and cigars, and cigarettes, and liquors, and a cocktail shaker, and +a bottle of olives stuffed with red peppers, for Billoo, and two kinds +of bitters, and everything else to eat or drink that anybody could think +of, and some camp-chairs, and cards for bridge, and score-pads, and +pencils, and a folding table. Of course, most of the things got soaked +the minute we launched the door, but there wasn't time to do the thing +over again. So we gave the relief boat three cheers and let her go. + +The way the men on the float eyed the course of the door, you would have +thought them all nearly half dead with hunger and thirst. We were all +excited, too. + +At first the door made straight for the float. Then the breeze shifted a +little, and it made to the left of the float--then to the right of +it--and then straight at it again. + +Everybody cheered. The relief expedition looked like a success. The men +all came to the edge of the float to meet it--and then, just as all +seemed well, a dark patch of wind came scudding across the water, filled +the door's sail, and sent the door kiting off to the right again. The +game was up, The door was going to miss the float by sixty or +seventy feet. + +Then the men on the float began to toss coins; there was a shout of +delight; and Billoo, trumpeting his hands, called to me: + +"Make the ladies go behind the boat-house, quick!" And he began to +unbutton his coat. I herded the women behind the boat-house and ran back +to the pier. Billoo was stripping as fast as he could. + +"What's he doing?" Mrs. Giddings called to me. + +And I answered, "He seems to be overcome by the heat." + +A few moments later Billoo stood revealed, a fat white silhouette +against the opposite shore. He stepped from the float into the water; it +came to his ankles. Then he waded, gingerly but with determination, +toward the passing door. He went as if he expected the water to get +suddenly deep, but it didn't. At no time did it reach to his ankles, +until, just as he was reaching out his hand to catch hold of the door, +and just as the men on the float set up a cheer, he stepped off the +middle ground in to deep water. + +The splash that he made lifted the door half out of water, and shot it +away from him, the wind filled its sail, and when Billoo came to the +surface and looked for it, it was thirty feet off. But he set his teeth +(I think he set them) and swam after it. Just as he reached it, he +fetched an awful yell. He had been seized with cramps. Still, he had +sense enough to cling to the door, and, when the first spasm of the +cramp had passed, to sprawl himself upon it. There he lay for a while, +lapped by the water that came over the door, and writhing in his fat +nakedness. + +Meanwhile, the door was caught in the full strength of the ebbing tide, +and began to make for the open Sound. Poor Billoo was in a bad way--and +when he turned the ice-tub upside down for a seat, and wrapped himself +in the canoe sail, I invited the women to come out and see for +themselves how brave he was. + +He waved his hand to us, and just as he and his well-provisioned craft +rounded a corner of the island he selected a bottle of champagne and +deftly extracted the cork. + +I told some of my men to follow along the shore and to let me know what +became of him. I couldn't do anything more for Billoo; but I liked the +man, and took an affectionate interest in his ultimate fate--_whatever_ +it might be. And I call that true friendship. + +Pretty soon the middle ground on which the float was stuck began to show +above water, and as it was evident that we could do nothing further for +the relief of our shipwrecked friends, we decided to go back to the +house, change our muddy boots, play a rubber or so, and have lunch. But +first little Miss Tombs called to young Fitch, and told him if he found +himself starving to dig clams in the mud. + + + + +VI + +The only fault that I could find with the way things had gone so far was +that Sally had a disgusting headache that marred her pleasure and her +sense of humor. She hadn't said very much, and had laughed with only a +half-heart at things that had seemed to me excruciatingly funny. For +instance, when Billoo was seized with the cramps she had barely smiled, +and once or twice when I had been doing the talking she had looked +pityingly at me, instead of roaring with laughter, the way a wife +should do. + +And when we got to the house, she said that if we would excuse her she +would go to her room and lie down. + +"I've just got one of my usual headaches," she said. + +That remark worried me, because it was the first headache she had ever +complained of to _me_; and when, after she had gone upstairs, Miss +Randall said, "Maybe Sally ought to see the doctor," I had a sudden +awful, empty, gulpy feeling. Suppose she was going to be really sick! +Suppose she was going to have pneumonia or scarlet-fever or spinal +meningitis! Here we were, cut off from medical assistance till Wednesday +morning. And it was our own fault--mine; mine, for being _too_ funny. +Then I thought, "Maybe those men on the float are losing all the money +they've got in the world," and that made me feel pretty glum; and then I +thought, "Maybe poor Billoo is drowned by now," and I went cold +all over. + +"Why don't you make the trump, Sam?" said Mrs. Giddings. + +"Good Heavens!" I said. "Did I deal? Won't somebody play my hand? I'm +worried about Sally." + +Then I bolted upstairs, and there was Sally lying on her bed, with a +glass tube sticking out of her mouth. + +"How are you," I said, "and what are you doing?" + +"I feel rather sick, Sam," she said. And she looked so pale that I could +have screamed. "And I'm taking my temperature." + +"Do you think you've got fever?" I cried. + +"I don't know," she said. + +"Oh, Sally--Sally!" I cried. "Forgive me--it's all my fault--and I love +you so--My God! what shall I do? I know--" + +Then I kissed her, and ran out of the room, and all the way to the +boat-house. I found a bathing-suit, undressed, put it on, tore down to +the pier, and went overboard. I suppose the water was ghastly cold, but +I didn't feel it. I suppose I never should have gotten all the way +across to the main-land if I hadn't been boiling with fear and +excitement, and besides I walked and waded across the middle ground and +got a rest that way. The men on the float kept calling to me, and asking +me questions, but I hadn't enough breath nor reason to answer them; I +just swam and swam and swam. + +About fifty feet from the pier on the main-land I began to get horrible +pains up and down the muscles of my legs; and they wanted to stop +kicking, but I wouldn't let them. I had to sit on the pier for a while +to rest, but pretty soon I was able to stand, and somehow or other, +running and walking, I got to the doctor's house in Stepping-Stone. He +is very nice and an old friend, and the moment I told him Sally was +desperately sick he said she wasn't, and I felt better. He gave me some +brandy to drink, and we started for the island. I begged him to run, +but he wouldn't. He walked leisurely and pointed out this tree as a very +fine specimen and well grown, or that one as too much crowded by its +neighbors. He was daft on forestry. Patients didn't interest him a bit. +Finally, however, we got to the pier, and stole somebody's row-boat, and +I took the oars, and then we went faster. + +When we entered the house we found all the women except Sally +surrounding Billoo. He was very red in the face and dressed only in the +canoe sail; but he wasn't in the least embarrassed. He had a +self-satisfied smile; and he was talking as fast and as loud as +he could. + +We told him to go to bed and be ashamed of himself, and sleep it off. +And he said that nobody understood him, and denied having drunk the +whole case of champagne, and he said that he was in perfect control of +all his faculties, and that if the ladies wished him to, he could dance +a hornpipe for them that he had learned when he was a sailor.... + +The doctor and I went upstairs; and while he was with Sally I changed +into proper clothes; and then I waited outside the door for him to come +out and tell me the worst. After a long time he came. He looked very +solemn, and closed the door behind him. + +"What _is_ it?" I said, and I think my voice shook like a leaf. + +"Sam," he said gravely, "Sally is by way of cutting her first wisdom +tooth." + +"Good Lord!" I said, "is that all?" + +"It's enough," said the doctor, "because it isn't a _tooth_." + +"Oh!" I said, "oh! What ought I to do?" + +"Why," said he, "I'd go in, and tell her how glad you are, and maybe +laugh at her a little bit, and make much of her." + +But I couldn't laugh at Sally, because she was crying. + +I took her in my arms and made much of her, and asked her why she was +crying, and she said she was crying because she was glad. + +When the doctor had returned to Stepping-Stone, he got the _Hobo's_ +captain on the telephone and told him from me to bring the _Hobo_ back +to Idle Island at once. She came about six, just as the tide was getting +high, and she brought rescue to the men on the float, and, better than +rescue, she brought the evening papers. + +There had been a big day on Wall Street; one of the biggest in its +history. And the men whom we had kept from going to business had made, +among them, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just by sitting still. +But they were ungrateful, especially Billoo. He complained bitterly, and +said that he would have made three times as much money if he had been +_on the spot_. + + * * * * * + +When the men paid the bets that they had lost to me, I turned the money +over to my father's secretary and told him to deposit it as a +special account. + +"What shall I call the account?" he asked. + +"Call it," I said, "the account of W. Tooth." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spread Eagle and Other Stories +by Gouverneur Morris + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES *** + +This file should be named 7gmeg10.txt or 7gmeg10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7gmeg11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7gmeg10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +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 Spread Eagle and Other Stories + +Author: Gouverneur Morris + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9888] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 28, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + THE + + SPREAD EAGLE + + AND OTHER STORIES + + BY + + GOUVERNEUR MORRIS + + AUTHOR OF "THE FOOTPRINT, AND OTHER STORIES," ETC. + + 1910 + + + +_TO ELSIE, PATSIE, AND KATE_ + + _I had thought to sit in the ruler's chair, + But three pretty girls are sitting there-- + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + I had thought to lord it with eyes of gray, + I had thought to be master, and have_ my _way; + But six blue eyes vote_: nay, nay, nay! + _Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + Of Petticoats three I am sore afraid, + (Though Kate's is more like a candle-shade), + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + And I must confess (with shame) to you + That time there was when Petticoats two + Were enough to govern me through and through, + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + Oh Patsie, third of a bullying crew, + And Elsie, and Kate, be it known to you-- + To Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, + That Elsie_ alone _was strong enough + To smother a motion, or call a bluff, + Or any small pitiful atom thereof-- + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate. + + So, though I've renounced that ruler's part + To which I was born (as is writ in my heart), + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate, + Though I do what I'm told (yes, you_ know _I do) + And am made to write stories (and sell them, too). + Still--I wish to God I had more like you, + Elsie, Patsie, and Kate_. + +BAR HARBOR, _August_, 1910. + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +Certain persons have told me (for nothing) that "White Muscats of +Alexandria" resembles a tale in the Arabian Nights. And so it does. +Most damningly. And this is printed in the hope of saving other +persons postage. + + + + +CONTENTS + +_The Spread Eagle +Targets +The Boot +The Despoiler +One More Martyr +"Ma'am?" +Mr. Holiday +White Muscats of Alexandria +Without a Lawyer +The "Monitor" and the "Merrimac" +The McTavish +The Parrot +On the Spot; or, The Idler's House-Party_ + + + + +THE SPREAD EAGLE + +In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact +was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation +that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he +was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own +subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his +mother wanted him to be a polite American, And to be polite, in her +mind, was to be at home in French and German, to speak English (or +American) with the accent of no particular locality, to know famous +pictures when you saw them, and, if little, to be bosom friends with +little dukes and duchesses and counts of the Empire, to play in the +gravel gardens of St. Germain, to know French history, and to have for +exercise the mild English variations of American games--cricket instead +of base-ball; instead of football, Rugby, or, in winter, lugeing above +Montreux. To luge upon a sled you sit like a timid, sheltered girl, and +hold the ropes in your hand as if you were playing horse, and descend +inclines; whereas, as Fitzhugh Williams well knew, in America rich boys +and poor take their hills head first, lying upon the democratic turn. + +It wasn't always Switzerland in winter. Now and again it was Nice or +Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball +cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while, +for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the +maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was +lawn tennis also, which you might play without losing caste "at home," +Fitzhugh Williams never used that term but with the one meaning. He +would say, for instance, to the little Duchess of Popinjay--or one just +as good--having kissed her to make up for having pushed her into her +ancestral pond, "Now I am going to the house," meaning Perth House, that +Mrs. Williams had taken for the season. But if he had said, "Now I am +going home," the little Duchess would have known that he was going to +sail away in a great ship to a strange, topsy-turvy land known in her +set as "the States," a kind of deep well from which people hoist gold in +buckets, surrounded by Indians. Home did not mean even his father's +house. Let Fitzhugh Williams but catch sight of the long, white shore of +Long Island, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the amazing Liberty, and the +word fluttered up from his heart even if he spoke it not. Ay, let him +but see the Fire Island light-ship alone upon the deep, and up leaped +the word, or the sensation, which was the same thing. + +One Fourth of July they were in Paris (you go to Paris for tea-gowns to +wear grouse-shooting in Scotland), and when his valet, scraping and +bowing, informed Fitzhugh Williams, aged nine, that it was time to get +up, and tub, and go forth in a white sailor suit, and be of the world +worldly, Fitzhugh declined. A greater personage was summoned--Aloys, +"the maid of madame," a ravishing creature--to whom you and I, good +Americans though we are, could have refused nothing. But Fitzhugh would +not come out of his feather-bed. And when madame herself came, looking +like a princess even at that early hour, he only pulled the bedclothes a +little higher with an air of finality. + +"Are you sick, Fitzhugh?" + +"No, mamma." + +"Why won't you get up?" + +His mother at least was entitled to an explanation. + +"I won't get up," said he, "because I'm an American." + +"But, my dear, it's the glorious Fourth. All good Americans are up." + +"All good Americans," said Fitzhugh, "are at home letting off +fire-crackers." + +"Still," said his mother, "I think I'd get up if I were you. It's lovely +out. Not hot." + +"I won't get up," said Fitzhugh, "because it's the Fourth, because I'm +an American, and because I have nothing but English clothes to put on." + +His mother, who was the best sort in the world, though obstinate about +bringing-up, and much the prettiest woman, sat down on the bed and +laughed till the tears came to her eyes. Fitzhugh laughed, too. His mind +being made up, it was pleasanter to laugh than to sulk. + +"But," said his mother, "what's the difference? Your pajamas are +English, too." + +Fitzhugh's beautiful brown eyes sparkled with mischief. + +"What!" exclaimed his mother. "You wretched boy, do you mean to tell me +that you haven't your pajamas on?" + +Fitzhugh giggled, having worsted his mother in argument, and pushed down +the bedclothes a few inches, disclosing the neck and shoulders of that +satiny American suit in which he had been born. + +Mrs. Williams surrendered at once. + +"My dear," she exclaimed, "if you feel so strongly about it I will send +your man out at once to buy you some French things. They were our +allies, you know." + +"Thank you, mamma," said Fitz, "and if you'll give me the pad and pencil +on the table I'll write to granny." + +Thus compromise was met with compromise, as is right. Fitz wrote a very +short letter to granny, and drew a very long picture of crossing the +Delaware, with Nathan Hale being hanged from a gallows on the bank; and +Mrs. Williams sent Benton for clothes, and wrote out a cable to her +husband, a daily cable being the one thing that he who loved others to +have a good time was wont to exact "Dear Jim," ran the cable, at I +forget what the rates were then per word, "I wish you were here. It's +bright and beautiful; not too hot. Fitz would not get up and put on +English clothes, being too patriotic. You will run over soon if you can, +won't you, if only for a minute," etc., etc. + +I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The +Williamses were rich. They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief. +Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not +have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported +Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring +frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where +money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James, +returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of +his right boot. + +Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for +him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she +would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed +in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next +few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history +through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be +absorbed, and that came out often, I am afraid, when people didn't +especially want it to. Neither could any amount of aristocratic training +and association turn the blood in his veins blue. If one had taken the +trouble to look at a specimen of it under a microscope I believe one +would have discovered a resemblance between the corpuscles thereof and +the eagles that are the tails of coins; and the color of it was +red--bright red. And this was proven, that time when little Lord Percy +Pumps ran at Fitz, head down like a Barbadoes nigger, and butted him in +the nose. The Honorable Fifi Grey, about whom the quarrel arose, was +witness to the color of that which flowed from the aforementioned nose; +and witness also to the fact that during the ensuing cataclysm no blood +whatever, neither blue nor red, came from Lord Percy Pumps--nothing but +howls. But, alas! we may not now call upon the Honorable Fifi Grey for +testimony. She is no longer the Honorable Fifi. Quite the reverse. I had +her pointed out to me last summer (she is Lady Khorset now), and my +informant wriggled with pleasure and said, "Now, there _is_ somebody." + +"You mean that slim hedge-fence in lavender?" I asked. + +"By jove, yes!" said he. "That's Lady Khorset, the wickedest woman in +London, with the possible exception of Lady Virginia Pure--the +Bicyclyste, you know." + +I did know. Had I not that very morning seen in a Piccadilly window a +photograph of almost all of her? + +Fortunately for Fitzhugh Williams's health and sanity, little children +are pretty much the same all the world over, dwelling in the noble +democracy of mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. Little newsboys, tiny +grandees, infinitesimal sons of coachmen, picayune archdukes, +honorableines, marquisettes, they are all pretty much alike under their +skins. And so are their sisters. Naturally your free-born American child +despises a nation that does not fight with its fists. But he changes his +mind when some lusty French child of his own size has given him a good +beating in fair fight. And the English games have their beauties (I dare +say), and we do know that they can fight--or can make the Irish and the +Scots fight for them, which is just as good. And it isn't race and blue +blood that keeps little Lady Clara Vere de Vere's stockings from coming +down. It's garters. And _they_ don't always do it. Point the finger of +scorn at little Archibald Jamison Purdue Fitzwilliams Updyke +Wrennfeather, who will be Duke of Chepstow one day; for only last night +his lordship's noble mother rubbed his hollow chest with goose grease +and tied a red flannel round his neck, and this morning his gerfalcon +nose is running, as the British would have run at Waterloo had not +"would-to-God-Blücher-would-come" come up. + +Peace, little bootblack; others bite their nails. See yonder night +garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a +plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the +back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come +through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel +with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next +crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears? +It's because she _will_ double them forward and lie on them, so that if +something isn't done about it they will stick straight out. + +So Fitzhugh Williams was brought up among and by children, fashionable +children, if you like. Snobs, many of them, but children all the same. +Some good, some bad, some rough, some gentle, some loving and faithful +with whom he is friends to this day, some loving and not faithful. +The dangers that he ran were not from the foreign children with whom +he played, fought, loved, and dreamed dreams; but from foreign +customs, foreign ways of doing things, foreign comfort, foreign +take-the-world-easiness, and all. For they _do_ live well abroad; they +do have amusing things to do. They eat well, drink well, smoke well, are +better waited on than we are and have more time. So Fitzhugh was in +danger of these things which have hurt the Americanism of more than one +American to the death, but he ran the dangerous gauntlet and came out at +the other end unscathed--into the open. + +He could rattle off French and German like a native; he could imitate an +Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with +his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not +in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the +moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his +family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly, +straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words +are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with +the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington +himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think +Adams said _bought_ and _caught_? He said _bot_ and _cot_. Did Lincoln +use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke +the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck +against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the +hearts of men, to rejoice God, and to thunder forever down the ages. + +It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody +knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and +intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But +honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great +American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively +great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk +Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that! + + + + +II + +We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the +French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in +cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the +feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain +of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water +in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded +the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it. + +He now had Benton in to rub his back dry, and to hand him his clothes in +sequence; it being his mother's notion that to be truly polite a man +must be helpless in these matters and dependent. And when he had on his +undershirt and his outer shirt and his stockings, he sat down to his +breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler +had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing, +and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria +at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with +Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother +came--one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris, +though common enough, I dare say, in paradise. + +They drove first of all to Gaston Rennette's gallery, where Fitz +celebrated the glorious Fourth with a real duelling pistol and real +bullets, aiming at a life-size sheet-iron man, who, like a correct, +courteous, and courageous opponent, never moved. And all the way to the +gallery and all the way back there was here and there an American flag, +as is customary in Paris on the Fourth. And to these Fitz, standing up +in the victoria, dipped and waved his hat. While he was shooting, his +mother took a "little turn" and then came back to fetch him; a stout man +in a blue blouse accompanying him to the curb, tossing his hands +heavenward, rolling up his eyes, and explaining to madame what a "genius +at the shoot was the little mister," and had averaged upon the "mister +of iron" one "fatal blow" in every five. Madame "invited" the stout man +to a five-franc piece for himself and she smiled, and he smiled, and +bowed off backward directly into a passing pedestrian, who cried out +upon the "sacred name of a rooster." And everybody laughed, including +Cunningham, whose face from much shaving looked as if a laugh must crack +it; and so the glorious Fourth was begun. + +But the next event upon the programme was less provocative of pure joy +in the heart of Fitz. + +"You don't remember the Burtons, do you, Fitz?" asked his mother. + +"No," said he. + +"Well," she said, "Mrs. Burton was a school-mate of mine, Elizabeth +Proctor, and I've just learned that she is at the d'Orient with her +daughter. The father died, you know--" + +"I know _now_" interrupted Fitz with a grin. + +He liked to correct his mother's English habit of "you-knowing" people +who didn't know. + +"And I really think I must call and try to do something for them." + +"The d'Orient," said Fitz, "is where they have the elevator that you +work yourself. Billy Molineux and I got caught in it between the third +and fourth floors." + +"Well," said his mother, "would you mind very much if we drove to the +d'Orient now and called on the Burtons?" + +Fitz said that he would mind _very_ much, but as he made no more +reasonable objection Mrs. Williams gave the order to Cunningham, and not +long after they stopped before the d'Orient in the Rue Daunou, and +Fontenoy flashed in with Mrs. and Master Williams's cards, and came out +after an interval and stationed himself stiffly near the step of the +victoria. This meant that Mrs. Burton was at home, as we say, or, "at +herself," as the French have it. If he had leaped nimbly to his seat +beside Cunningham on the box it would have meant that Mrs. Burton was +not "at herself." + +So once more Mrs. Williams became a lovely, trailing figure out of the +seventh heaven, and Fitz, stoical but bored, followed her into the +court-yard of the hotel. Here were little iron tables and chairs, four +symmetrical flower-beds containing white gravel, four palm-trees in +tubs, their leaves much speckled with coal smuts; a French family at +breakfast (the stout father had unbuttoned his white waistcoat); and in +a corner by herself an American child sitting upon one of the +puff-seated iron chairs, one leg under her, one leg, long, thin, and +black, swinging free, and across her lap a copy of a fashion paper. + +On perceiving Mrs. Williams the child at once came forward, and dropped +the most charming little courtesy imaginable. + +"How do you do?" she said. "Poor, dear mamma isn't a bit well. But I +said that she would see you, Mrs. Williams. She said yesterday that she +wanted so much to see you." + +In the event Mrs. Williams went up three flights in the elevator that +you worked yourself; only on this occasion the proprietor, hastily +slipping into his frock-coat and high hat (you could see him at it +through the office window), worked it for her. And Fitz remained with +the gloomy prospect of being entertained by little Miss Burton. + +She was younger than Fitz by two years and older by ten--a serene, +knowing, beautiful child. When Fitz proposed that they sit in the +victoria, as softer than the iron chairs, she called him a funny boy, +but she assented. And as they went she tossed aside her fashion paper, +remarking, "_You_ wouldn't care for that." + +When they had settled down into the soft, leather cushions of the +victoria she sighed luxuriously and said: + +"This _is_ nice! I wish--" and broke off short. + +"What?" asked Fitz. + +"Oh," she said, "that the horses would start, and take us all over Paris +and back, and everybody would see us go by, and envy us. But mamma and +I," she said, "are devoted to fiacres--not smart, are they?" + +"I don't mind," said Fitz, "if they go where I tell 'em to, and don't +set up a row over the _pourboire_." + +"Still," said she, "it must be nice to have carriages and things. We +used to have. Only I can hardly remember. Mamma says I have a dreadfully +short memory." + +"How long have you been abroad?" Fitz asked. + +"Dear me," she said, "ever so long. I don't remember." + +"Won't it be fun," said Fitz, "to go home?" + +"America?" She hesitated. "Mamma says it's all so crude and rude. I +forget." + +"Don't you remember America!" exclaimed Fitz, much horrified. + +"Not clearly," she admitted. + +"I guess you never saw Cleveland, Ohio, then," said Fitz, "'n' Euclid +Avenue, 'n' Wade Park, 'n' the cannons in the square, 'n' the +breakwater, 'n' never eat Silverthorn's potatoes at Rocky River, 'n' +never went to a picnic at Tinker's Creek, 'n' never saw Little Mountain +'n' the viaduct." + +"You are quite right," said little Miss Burton, "I never did." + +"When I grow up," said Fitz in a glow of enthusiasm, "I'm going to live +in America 'n' have a tower on my house with a flagpole, 'n' a cannon to +let off every sunset and sunrise." + +"I shouldn't like that," said she, "if I were sleeping in the house at +the time." + +"I shouldn't be sleeping," said Fitz; "I'd be up early every morning to +let the cannon off." + +"I remember Newport a little," she said. "I'd live there if I were you. +Newport is very smart for America, mamma says. We're going to Newport +when I grow up. I'm sure it will be nicer if you are there." + +Fitz thought this very likely, but was too modest to say so. + +"If I ever go to Newport," he said, "it will be as captain of a cup +defender." + +"I heard your mother call you Fitz," said little Miss Burton. "Is that +your name, or do you have them?" + +"F-i-t-z-h-u-g-h," said Fitz, "is my name." + +"Any middle name?" + +"No." + +"That's smarter," said she. "I haven't either." + +"What _is_ your name?" asked Fitz, trying to feign interest. + +"Evelyn," said she, "but my intimate friends call me Eve." + +"Huh!" said Fitz grossly, "Eve ate the apple first." + +"Yes," sighed Eve, "and gave Adam the core. Nowadays, I heard mamma say +to Count Grassi, it's the other way 'round." + +"My father says," said Fitz, "that Eve ought to of been spanked." + +Certain memories reddened Eve; but the natural curiosity to compare +experiences got the better of her maiden reticence upon so delicate a +subject. She lowered her voice. + +"Do you yell?" she asked. "I do. It frightens them if you yell." + +"I was never spanked" said Fitz. "When I'm naughty mamma writes to papa, +and he writes to me, and says he's sorry to hear that I haven't yet +learned to be a gentleman, and a man of the world, and an American. +That's worse than being spanked." + +"Oh, dear!" said Eve, "I don't mind what people say; that's just water +on a duck's back; but what they do is with slippers--" + +"And," cried Fitz, elated with his own humor, "it isn't on the +duck's--back." + +"Are you yourself to-day," asked Miss Eve, her eyes filling, "or are you +just unusually horrid?" + +"Here--I say--don't blub," said Fitz, in real alarm. And, knowing the +power of money to soothe, he pulled a twenty-franc gold piece from his +pocket and himself opened and closed one of her tiny hands upon it. + +The child's easy tears dried at once. + +"Really--truly?--ought I?" she exclaimed. + +"You bet!" said Fitz, all his beautiful foreign culture to the fore. +"You just keep that and surprise yourself with a present next time you +want one." + +"Maybe mamma won't like me to," she doubted. And then, with devilish +wisdom, "I think mamma will scold me first--and let me forget to give it +back afterward. Thank you, Fitz. I could kiss you!" + +"Fire away," said Fitz sullenly. He was used to little girls, and liked +to kiss them, but he did not like them to kiss him. She didn't, however. + +She caught his hand with the one of hers that was not clutching the gold +piece, and squeezed it quickly and let it go. Something in this must +have touched and made appeal to the manly heart. For Fitz said, averting +his beautiful eyes: + +"You're a funny little pill, aren't you?" + +The tiger sprang to the victoria step from loafing in front of a +jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. Madame +was coming. + +"Take Evelyn to the lift, Fitz," said she. But first she kissed Evelyn, +and said that she was going to send for her soon, for a spree with Fitz. + +They passed through the court-yard, Fitz carrying his hat like a +gentleman and a man of the world, and into the dark passage that led to +the famous elevator. + +"Your mother's smart," said Eve. + +"Can't you think of anything but how smart people are?" + +"When I'm grown up," she said, "and am smart myself I'll think of other +things, I dare say." + +"Can you work the lift yourself? Hadn't I better take you up?" + +"Oh, no," she said, and held out her hand. + +They shook, she firmly, he with the flabby, diffident clasp of childhood +and old age. + +"You're a funny kid," said Fitz. + +"You're rather a dear," said Eve. + +She entered the elevator, closed the door, and disappeared upward, at +the pace of a very footsore and weary snail. + +Mrs. Burton was much cheered by Mrs. Williams's visit, as who that +struggles is not by the notice of the rich and the mighty? + +"My dear," she said, when Eve entered, "she is so charming, so natural; +she has promised to give a tea for me, and to present me to some of her +friends. I hope you like the boy--Fitz--Fritz--whatever his name is. It +would be so nice if you were to be friends." + +"He _is_ nice," said Eve, "ever so nice--but _so_ dull." + +"What did you talk about?" asked Mrs. Burton, + +"Really," said Eve, aged seven, "I forget." + + + + +III + +Mrs. Burton had made a failure of her own life. + +She had married a man who subsequently had been so foolish as to lose +his money--or most of it. + +Eve, who had ever a short memory, does not remember the catastrophe. She +was three at the time of it. She was in the nursery when the blow fell, +and presently her mother came in looking very distracted and wild, and +caught the little girl's face between her hands, and looked into it, and +turned it this way and that, and passed the little girl's beautiful +brown hair through her fingers, and then began to speak violently. + +"You sha'n't be shabby," she said. "I will make a great beauty of you. +You've got the beauty. You shall ride in your carriage, even if I work +my hands to the bone. They've bowled me over. But I'm not dead yet. +Elizabeth Burton shall have her day. You wait. I'll make the world dance +for you." Then she went into violent hysterics. + +There was a little money left. Mrs. Burton took Evelyn to Europe, and +began to teach her the long litany of success: + + Money is God; + We praise thee, etc., + +a very long, somewhat truthful, and truly degraded litany. She taught +her that it isn't handsome is as handsome does, but the boots and +shoes, after all. She taught her that a girl must dress beautifully to +be beautiful, that she must learn all the world's ways and secrets, and +at the same time appear in speech and manner like a child of Nature, +like a newly opened rose. And she taught her to love her country +like this: + +"America, my dear, is the one place where a girl can marry enough money +to live somewhere else. Or, if her husband is tied to his affairs, it is +the one place where she can get the most for his money--not as we get +the most for ours, for we couldn't live two minutes on our income in +America--but where the most people will bow the lowest to her because +she is rich; where she will be the most courted and the most envied." + +The two mammas worked along similar lines, but for different reasons. +Mrs. Burton strove to make Eve ornamental so that she might acquire +millions; Mrs. Williams strove to Anglicize and Europeanize her son so +that he might ornament those which were already his. Those little spread +eagles, the corpuscles in his blood, folded their wings a trifle as he +grew older, and weren't always so ready to scream and boast; but they +remained eagles, and no amount of Eton and Oxford could turn them into +little unicorns or lions. You may wonder why Fitz's father, a strong, +sane man, permitted such attempts at denationalization upon his son and +heir. Fitz so wondered--once. So wrote. And was answered thus: + +... If you're any good it will all come out in the wash. If you aren't +any good it doesn't matter whether your mother makes an Englishman out +of you or a Mandarin. When you come of age you'll be your own man; +that's been the bargain between your mother and me. That will be the +time for you to decide whether to be governed or to help govern. I am +not afraid for you. I never have been. + +So Mrs. Williams was not successful on the whole in her attempts to make +a cosmopolitan of Fitz. And that was just enough, because the attempts +were those of an amateur. She had lived a furiously active life of +pleasure; she had made an unassailable place for herself in the best +European society, as at home. She had not even become estranged from her +husband. They were always crossing the ocean to see each other, "if only +for a minute or two," as she used to say, and when Fitz was at school +she spent much of her time in America; and Fitz's short vacations were +wild sprees with his father and mother, come over for the purpose. Mr. +Williams would take an immense country house for a few weeks, with +shooting and riding and all sorts of games thrown in, and have Fitz's +friends by the dozen. But, like as not, Mr. Williams would leave in the +middle of it, as fast as trains and steamers could carry him, home to +his affairs. And even the little English boys missed him sorely, since +he was much kinder to them, as a rule, than their own fathers were, and +had always too many sovereigns in his pocket for his own comfort. + +But Mrs. Burton's attempts to make a charming cosmopolitan of Eve met +with the greater success that they deserved. They were the efforts of a +professional, one who had staked life or death, so to speak, on the +result. Where Mrs. Williams amused herself and achieved small victories, +Mrs. Burton fought and achieved great conquests. She saved money out of +her thin income, money for the great days to come when Eve was to be +presented to society at Newport; and she slaved and toiled grimly and +with far-seeing genius. Eve's speaking voice was, perhaps, Mrs. Burton's +and her own greatest triumph. It was Ellen Terry's youngest, freshest +voice over again, but with the naïvest little ghost of a French accent; +and she didn't seem so much to project a phrase at you by the locutory +muscles as to smile it to you. + +Mrs. Burton had, of course, her moments of despair about Eve. But these +were mostly confined to that despairing period when most girls are +nothing but arms and wrists and gawkiness and shyness; when their clear, +bright complexions turn muddy, and they want to enter convents. Eve at +this period in her life was unusually trying and nondescript. She +announced that if she ever married it would be for love alone, but that +she did not intend to marry. She would train to be a cholera nurse or a +bubonic plague nurse--anything, in short, that was most calculated to +drive poor Mrs. Burton frantic. And she grew the longest, thinnest pair +of legs and arms in Europe; and her hair seemed to lose its wonderful +lustre; and her skin, upon which Mrs. Burton had banked so much, became +colorless and opaque and a little blotched around the chin. And she was +so nervous and overgrown that she would throw you a whole fit of +hysterics during piano lessons; and she prayed so long night and morning +that her bony knees developed callouses; and when she didn't have a cold +in her head she was getting over one or catching another. + +During this period in Eve's life the children met for the second time. +It was in Vienna. This time Mrs. Burton, as having been longer in +residence, called upon Mrs. Williams, taking Eve with her, after +hesitation. Poor Eve! The graceful, gracious courtesy of her babyhood +was now a performance of which a stork must have felt ashamed; she +pitched into a table (while trying to make herself small) and sent a +pitcher of lemonade crashing to the ground. And then burst into tears +that threatened to become laughter mixed with howls. + +At this moment Fitz, having been sent for to "do the polite," entered. +He shook hands at once with Mrs. Burton, whom he had never seen before, +and turned to see how Eve, whom he vaguely remembered, was coming on. +And there she was--nothing left of his vague memory but the immense +eyes. Even these were not clear and bright, but red in the whites and +disordered with tears. For the rest (Fitz made the mental comparison +himself) she reminded him of a silly baby camel that he had seen in the +zoo, that had six inches of body, six feet of legs, and the most bashful +expression imaginable. + +Mrs. Burton, you may be sure, did not lose the start that Fitz gave +before he went forward and shook hands with Eve. But she misinterpreted +it. She said to herself (all the while saying other things aloud to Mrs. +Williams): "If he had only seen her a year ago, even a boy of his age +would have been struck by her, and would have remembered her. But now! +Now, he'll never forget her. And I don't blame him. She's so ugly that +he was frightened." + +But that was not why Fitz had started. The poor, gawky, long-legged, +tearful, frightened, overgrown, wretched girl had not struck him as +ugly; she had struck him as the most pathetic and to-be-pitied object +that he had ever seen. I do not account for this. I state it. Had she +been pretty and self-possessed he would have left the room presently on +some excuse, but now he stayed--not attracted, but troubled and sorry +and eager to put her at her ease. So he would have turned aside to help +a gutter cat that had been run over and hurt, though he would have +passed the proudest, fluffiest Angora in Christendom with no more than a +glance. He began to talk to her in his plainest, straightest, honestest +Ohioan. It always came out strongest when he was most moved. His +mother's sharp ears heard the A's, how they narrowed in his mouth, and +smote every now and then with a homely tang against the base of his +nose. "Just like his father," she thought, "when some one's in trouble." +And she had a sudden twinge of nostalgia. + +Fitz lured Eve to a far corner and showed her a set of wonderful carved +chess-men that he had bought that morning; and photographs of his +friends at Eton, and of the school, and of some of the masters. He +talked very earnestly and elaborately about these dull matters, and +passed by the opportunities which her first embarrassed replies offered +for the repartee of youth. And he who was most impatient of restraint +and simple occupations talked and behaved like a dull, simple, kindly +old gentleman. His method may not have left Eve with a dazzling +impression of him; she could not know that he was not himself, but all +at once a deliberate artist seeking to soothe and to make easy. + +Eve did not enjoy that call; she enjoyed nothing in those days but +prayer and despair; but she got to the end of it without any more tears +and crashes. And she said to her mother afterward that young Williams +seemed a nice boy--but so dull. Well, they were quits. She had seemed +dull enough to Fitz. A sick cat may touch your heart, but does not +furnish you with lively companionship. Fitz was heartily glad when the +Burtons had gone. He had worked very hard to make things possible for +that absurd baby camel. + +"You may call her an absurd baby camel," said his mother, "but it's my +opinion that she is going to be a very great beauty." + +"_She!"_ exclaimed Fitz, thinking that the ugliness of Eve might have +unhinged his mother's beauty-loving mind. + +"Oh," said his mother, "she's at an age now--poor child! But don't you +remember how the bones of her face--" + +"I am trying to forget," said Fitz with a tremendous shudder for the +occasion. + + + + +IV + +Fitz did not take a degree at Oxford. He left in the middle of his last +term, leaving many friends behind. He stood well, and had been in no +especial difficulty of mischief, and why he left was a mystery. The +truth of the matter is that he had been planning for ten years to leave +Oxford in the very middle of his last term. For upon that date fell his +twenty-first birthday, when he was to be his own man. He spent a few +hours in his mother's house in London. And, of course, she tried to make +him go back and finish, and was very much upset, for her. But Fitz +was obdurate. + +"If it were Yale, or Princeton, or Harvard, or Berkeley, or Squedunk," +he said, "I would stick it out. But a degree from Oxford isn't worth six +weeks of home." + +"But aren't you going to wait till I can go with you?" + +"If you'll go with me to-night you shall have my state-room, and I'll +sleep on the coal. But if you can't go till to-morrow, mother mine, I +will not wait. I have cabled my father," said he, "to meet me at +quarantine." + +"Your poor, busy father," she said, "will hardly feel like running on +from Cleveland to meet a boy who is coming home without a degree." + +"My father," said Fitz, "will be at quarantine. He will come out in a +tug. And he will arrange to take me off and put me ashore before the +others. If the ship is anywhere near on schedule my father and I will be +in time to see a ball game at the Polo Grounds." + +Something in the young man's honest face and voice aroused an answering +enthusiasm in his mother's heart. + +"Oh, Fitz," she said, "if I could possibly manage it I would go with +you. Tell your father that I am sailing next week. I won't cable. +Perhaps he'll be surprised and pleased." + +"I _know_ he will," said Fitz, and he folded his mother in his arms and +rumpled her hair on one side and then on the other. + + * * * * * + +Those who beheld, and who, because of the wealth of the principal +personages, took notice of the meeting between Fitz and his father, say +that Fitz touched his father's cheek with his lips as naturally and +unaffectedly as if he had been three years old, that a handshake between +the two men accompanied this salute, and that Williams senior was heard +to remark that it had looked like rain early in the morning, but that +now it didn't, and that he had a couple of seats for the ball game. What +he really said was inside, neither audible nor visible upon his +smooth-shaven, care-wrinkled face. It was an outcry of the heart, so +joyous as to resemble grief. + +There was a young and pretty widow on that ship who had made much of +Fitz on the way out and had pretended that she understood him. She +thought that she had made an impression, and that, whatever happened, he +would not forget her. But when he rushed up, his face all joyous, to say +good-by, her heart sank. And she told her friends afterward that there +was a certain irresistible, orphan-like appeal about that young +Williams, and that she had felt like a mother toward him. But this was +not till very much later. At first she used to shut herself up in her +room and cry her eyes out. + +They lunched at an uptown hotel and afterward, smoking big cigars, they +drove to a hatter's and bought straw hats, being very critical of each +other's fit and choice. + +Then they hurried up to the Polo Grounds, and when it began to get +exciting in the fifth inning, Fitz felt his father pressing something +into his hand. Without taking his eyes from Wagsniff, who was at the +bat, Fitz put that something into his mouth and began to chew. The two +brothers--for that is the high relationship achieved sometimes in +America, and in America alone, between father and son--thrust their new +straw hats upon the backs of their round heads, humped themselves +forward, and rested with their elbows on their knees and watched--no, +that is your foreigner's attitude toward a contest--they _played_ +the game. + +I cannot leave them thus without telling the reader that they survived +the almost fatal ninth, when, with the score 3-2 against, two out and a +man on first, Wagsniff came once more to the bat and, swinging cunningly +at the very first ball pitched to him by the famous Mr. Blatherton, +lifted it over the centrefielder's head and trotted around the bases +and, grinning like a Hallowe'en pumpkin, came romping home. + +At dinner that night Williams senior said suddenly: + +"Fitz, what you do want to do?" + +A stranger would have thought that Fitz was being asked to choose +between a theatre and a roof-garden, but Fitz knew that an entirely +different question was involved in those casually spoken words. He was +being asked off-hand to state off-hand what he was going to do with his +young life. But he had his answer waiting. + +"I want to see the world," he said. + +Williams senior, as a rule, thought things out in his own mind and did +not press for explanations. But on the present occasion he asked: + +"As how?" + +Fitz smiled very youthfully and winningly. + +"I've seen some of it," he said, "right side up. Now I want to have a +look upside-down. If I go into something of yours--as myself--I don't +get a show. I'm marked. The other clerks would swipe to me, and the +heads would credit me with brains before I showed whether I had any or +not. I want you to get me a job in Wall Street--under any other name +than my own--except Percy"--they both laughed--"your first name and +mamma's maiden name would do--James Holden. And nobody here knows me by +sight, I've been abroad so much; and it seems to me I'd get an honest +point of view and find out if I was any good or not, and if I could get +myself liked for myself or not." + +"Well," said his father; "well, that's an idea, anyhow." + +"I've had valets and carriages and luxuries all my life," said Fitz. "I +think I like them. But I don't _know_--do I? I've never tried the other +thing. I'm sure I don't want to be an underpaid clerk always. But I am +sure I want to try it on for a while." + +"I was planning," said his father, "to take a car and run about the +country with you and show you all the different enterprises that I'm +interested in. I thought you'd make a choice, find something you liked, +and go into it for a starter. If you're any good you can go pretty far +with me pulling for you. You don't like that idea?" + +"Not for now," said Fitz. "I like mine better." + +"Do you want to live on what you earn?" + +"If I can stand it." + +"You'll be started with ten dollars a week, say. Can you do it?" + +"What did grandpa start on?" asked Fitz. + +"His board, two suits of clothes, and twenty-four dollars a year," said +William senior with a proud ring in his voice. + +"And you?" + +"I began at the bottom, too. That was the old-fashioned idea. Father +was rich then. But he wanted me to show that I was some good." + +"Did grandpa pull for you, or did you have to find yourself?" + +"Well," said the father diffidently, "I had a natural taste for +business. But," and he smiled at his son, "I shouldn't live on what you +earn, if I were you. You needn't spend much, but have a good time out of +hours. You'll find yourself working side by side with other sons of rich +men. And you can bet your bottom dollar _they_ don't live on what they +can earn. Unless you make a display of downright wealth you'll be judged +on your merits. That's what you're driving at, isn't it?" + +So they compromised on that point; and the next morning they went +downtown and called upon Mr. Merriman, the great banker. He and Williams +had been in many deals together, and on one historic occasion had +supported prices and loaned so much ready money on easy terms as to +avert a panic. + +"John," said Williams senior, "my son Fitz." + +"Well, sir," said Merriman, only his eyes smiling, "you don't look like +a foreigner." + +"I'm not," said Fitz stoutly. + +"In that case," said Merriman, "what can I do for you?" + +"I want to be called James Holden," said Fitz, "and to have a job in +your office." + +Merriman listened to the reasons with interest and amusement. Then he +turned to Williams senior. "May I drive him?" he asked grimly. + +"If you can," said Fitz's father. And he laughed. + +Finally, it was arranged that, in his own way, Fitz was to see the +world. + + + + +V + +Fitz's experiment in finding himself and getting himself liked for +himself alone was a great failure. He had not been in Mr. Merriman's +employ two hours before he found that he disliked long sums in addition, +and had made friends with Wilson Carrol, who worked next to him. Indeed, +Fitz made friends with everybody in the office inside of two weeks, and +was responsible for a great deal of whispering and hanging out of back +windows for a puff of smoke. Nobody but Mr. Merriman knew who he was, +where he came from, or what his prospects were. Everybody liked him--for +himself. Rich or poor, it must have been the same. His idea that +character, if he had it, would tell in the long run proved erroneous. It +told right away. + +Wilson Carrol and half a dozen other clerks in the office were the sons +of rich men, put to work because of the old-fashioned idea that +everybody ought to work, and at the same time pampered, according to the +modern idea, with comfortable allowances over and beyond their pay. +With one or other of these young men for companion, and presently for +friend, Fitz began to lead the agreeable summer life of New York's +well-to-do youth. He allowed himself enough money to keep his end up, +but did not allow himself any especial extravagances or luxuries. He +played his part well, appearing less well off than Carrol, and more so +than young Prout, with whom he got into much mischief in the office. +Whatever these young gentlemen had to spend they were always hard up. +Fitz did likewise. If you dined gloriously at Sherry's and had a box at +the play you made up for it the next night by a chop at Smith's and a +cooling ride in a ferry-boat, say to Staten Island and back. Saturday +you got off early and went to Long Island or Westchester for tennis and +a swim, and lived till Monday in a luxurious house belonging to a +fellow-clerk's father, or were put up at the nearest country club. + +Downtown that summer there was nothing exciting going on. The market +stood still upon very small transactions, and there was no real work for +any one but the book-keepers. The more Fitz saw of the science of +addition the less he thought of it, but he did what he had to do (no +more) and drew his pay every Saturday with pride. Once, there being a +convenient legal holiday to fatten the week-end, he went to Newport with +Carrol and got himself so much liked by all the Carrol family that he +received and accepted an invitation to spend his long holiday with them. +He and Carrol had arranged with the powers to take their two weeks off +at the same time--from the fifteenth to the end of August. And during +business hours they kept their heads pretty close together and did much +plotting and planning in whispers. + +But Mrs. Carrol herself was to have a finger in that vacation. The +presence in her house of two presentable young men was an excellent +excuse for paying off dinner debts and giving a lawn party and a ball. +Even at Newport there are never enough men to go round, and with two +whole ones for a basis much may be done. The very night of their arrival +they "ran into" a dinner-party, as Carrol expressed it. It was a large +dinner; and the young men, having got to skylarking over their dressing +(contrary to Mrs. Carrol's explicit orders) descended to a drawing-room +already full of people. Carrol knew them all, even the famous new +beauty; but Fitz--or James Holden, rather--had, except for the Carrols, +but a nodding acquaintance with one or two of the men. He felt shy, and +blushed very becomingly while trying to explain to Mrs. Carrol how he +and Wilson happened to be so unfortunate as to be late. + +"Well," she said, "I'm not going to punish you this time. You are to +take Miss Burton in." + +"Which is Miss Burton?" asked Fitz, on whose memory at the moment the +name made no impression. + +"Do you see seven or eight men in the corner," she said, "who look as if +they were surrounding a punch-bowl?" + +"Miss Burton is the punch-bowl?" he asked. + +"All those men want to take her in," said Mrs. Carrol, "and you're going +to make them all very jealous." + +Dinner was announced, and Mrs. Carrol, with Fitz in tow, swept down upon +the group of men. It parted reluctantly and disclosed, lolling happily +in a deep chair, the most beautiful girl in the world. She came to her +feet in the quickest, prettiest way imaginable, and spoke to Mrs. Carrol +in the young Ellen Terry voice, with its little ghost of a French +accent. Fitz did not hear what she said or what Mrs. Carrol answered. He +only knew that his heart was thumping against his ribs, and that a +moment later he was being introduced as Mr. Holden, and that Eve did not +know him from Adam. + +Presently she laid the tips of her fingers on his arm, and they were +going in to dinner. + +"I think Mrs. Carrol's a dear," said Fitz, "to give me you to take in +and to sit next to. I always wanted people to like me, but now all the +men hate me. I can feel it in the small of my back, and I like it. Do +you know how you feel in spring--the day the first crocuses come out? +That's the way it makes me feel." + +She turned her great, smiling eyes upon him and laughed. The laugh died +away. His young, merry face had a grim, resolved look. So his father +looked at critical times. + +"I thought you were joking--rather feebly," she said. + +"I don't know," said he, "that I shall ever joke again." + +"You make your mind up very quickly," she said. + +"The men of my family all do," he said. "But it isn't my mind that's +made up." + +Something of the girl's stately and exquisite poise forsook her. Her +eyes wore a hunted look for a moment. She even felt obliged to laugh to +cover her confusion. + +"It's my heart," said Fitz. "I saw you--and that is all there is to it." + +"Aren't you in something of a hurry?" she asked, her eyes twinkling. She +had felt for a moment like a soldier surprised without weapons. But now, +once more, she felt herself armed _cap à pie_. + +"I've got to be," said Fitz. "I'm a bank clerk on a two weeks' vacation, +of which the first day is gone." + +She was sorry that he was a bank clerk; it had a poor and meagre sound. +It was not for him that she had been trained. She had been made to slave +for herself, and was to make a "continental" marriage with the highest +bidder. Eve's heart had been pretty well schooled out of her, and yet, +before dinner came to an end, she found herself wishing that among the +high bidders might be one very young, like the man at her side, with +eyes as honest, and who, to express admiration, beat about no bushes. + +Later, when they said good-by, Fitz said: + +"It would be good for me to see you to-morrow." + +And she said: + +"Would it be good for _me_?" and laughed. + +"Yes," he said firmly, "it would." + +"Why?" she asked. + +"To-morrow at four," said Fitz, "I shall come for you and take you +around the Cliff Walk and tell you." + +She made no promise. But the next day, when Fitz called at the cottage +which Mrs. Burton, by scraping and saving these many years, had managed +to take for the season, Eve was at home--and she was alone. + + + + +VI + +Newport, as a whole, was busy preparing for the national lawn-tennis +championship. There was a prince to be pampered and entertained, and +every night, from the door of some great house or other, a strip of red +carpet protruded, covered by an awning, and the coming and going of +smart carriages on Bellevue Avenue seemed double that of the week +before. But the affair between James Holden--who was nobody knew who, +and came from nobody knew exactly where--and Newport's reigning beauty +held the real centre of the stage. + +Beautiful though Eve was, natural and unaffected though she seemed, +people had but to glance at Mrs. Burton's old, hard, humorless, at once +anxious and triumphant face to know that the girl, willing or not, was a +victim prepared for sacrifice. Confessedly poor, obviously extravagant +and luxury-loving, even the rich men who wanted to marry her knew that +Eve must consider purses more than hearts. And they held themselves +cynically off and allowed what was known as "Holden's pipe-dream" to run +its course. It amused those who wanted Eve, those who thought they did, +and all those who loved a spectacle. "He will go back to his desk +presently," said the cynics, "and that will be the end of that." The +hero of the pipe-dream thought this at times himself. Well, if it turned +out that way Eve was not worth having. He believed that she had a heart, +that if her heart were touched she would fling her interests to the +winds and obey its dictates. + +What Eve thought during the first few days of Holden's pipe-dream is not +clearly known. She must have been greatly taken with him, or she would +not have allowed him to interfere with her plans for personal +advancement and aggrandizement, to make a monopoly of her society, and +to run his head so violently into a stone wall. After the first few +days, when she realized that she liked to be with him better than with +any one she had ever known, she probably thought--or to that +effect--"I'll just pretend a little--and have it to remember." But she +found herself lying awake at night, wishing that he was rich; and later, +not even wishing, just lying awake and suffering. She had made up her +mind some time since to accept Darius O'Connell before the end of the +season. He had a prodigious fortune, good habits, and a kind Irish way +with him. And she still told herself that it must be O'Connell, and she +lay awake and thought about Fitz and suffered. + +Mrs. Burton alone hadn't a kind thought or word for him. Her face +hardened at the mere mention of his name, and sometimes, when she saw a +certain expression that came oftener and oftener into Eve's face, that +callous which served her for a heart turned harder than Nature had made +it, and she saw all her schemes and all her long labors demolished like +a house of cards. Even if Eve flung Fitz aside like an old glove, as +inevitably she must, still Mrs. Burton's schemes would wear a tinge of +failure. The girl had shown that the heart was not entirely educated +out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if things went no +further, here was partial failure. She had intended to make an +inevitably rising force of Eve, and here at the very outset were +lassitude and a glance aside at false gods. + +Fitz was stubbornly resolved to win Eve on his merits or not to win her +at all. He had but to tell her his real name, or his father's, to turn +the balance of the hesitation and doubt; but that, he told himself, +would never, never do. She must turn aside from her training, love him +for himself, and believe, if only for a few hours, that she had thrown +herself away upon poverty and mediocrity, and be happy in it; or else +she must pass him by, and sweep on up the broad, cold stairway of her +own and her mother's ambitions. + +But Fitz wanted her so much that he felt he must die if he lost her. And +sometimes he was tempted to tell her of his millions and take her for +better or worse. But he would never know then if she cared for him or +not; he would never know then if she had a real heart and was worth the +having. So he resisted, and his young face had, at times, a grim, +careworn look; and between hope and fear his spirits fell away and he +felt tired and old. People thought of him as an absurd boy in the most +desperate throes of puppy love, and certain ones felt grateful to Eve +Burton for showing them so pretty a bit of sport. Even those very +agreeable people, the Carrols, were disgusted with Fitz, as are all +good people when a guest of the house makes a solemn goose of himself. +But Fitz was not in the least ridiculous to himself, which was +important; and he was not ridiculous to Eve, which was more +important still. + +Then, one morning, the whole affair began to look serious even to a +scoffing and cynical world. Darius O'Connell was missed at the Casino +and in the Reading-room; the evening papers announced that he had sailed +for Europe. And Miss Burton, far from appearing anxious or unhappy about +this, had never looked so beautiful or so serene. Some said that +O'Connell had made up his mind that the game was not worth the candle; +others, that he had proposed and had been "sent packing." Among these +latter was Mrs. Burton herself, and it will never be known what words of +abuse she poured upon Eve. If Mrs. Burton deserved punishment she was +receiving all that she deserved. Sick-headaches, despair, a vain, empty +life with its last hopes melting away. Eve--her Eve--her beautiful +daughter had a heart! That was the sum of Mrs. Burton's punishment. For +a while she resisted her fate and fought against it, and then collapsed, +bitter, broken, and old. + +But what looked even more serious than O'Connell's removing himself was +the fact that during the match which was to decide the lawn-tennis +championship Eve and her bank clerk did not appear in the Casino +grounds. Here were met all the happy people, in society and all the +unhappy people--even Mrs. Burton's ashen face was noted among those +present--but the reigning belle and her young man were not in the seats +that they had occupied during the preceding days of the tournament; and +people pointed out those empty seats to each other, and smiled and +lifted their eyebrows; and young Tombs, who had been making furious love +to one of the Blackwell twins--for the third tournament in five +years--sighed and whispered to her: "Dolly, did you ever in your life +see two empty seats sitting so close to each other?" + +Meanwhile, Fitz and the beauty were strolling along the Cliff Walk in +the bright sunshine, with the cool Atlantic breeze in their faces, +between lawns and gardens on the one side and dancing blue waves upon +the other. Fitz looked pale and careworn. But Eve looked ecstatic. This +was because poor Fitz, on the one hand, was still in the misery of doubt +and uncertainty, and because Eve, on the other, had suddenly made up her +mind and knew almost exactly what was going to happen. + +The Cliff Walk belongs to the public, and here and there meanders +irritatingly over some very exclusive millionaire's front lawn. A few +such, unable to endure the sight of strangers, have caused this walk, +where it crosses their properties, to be sunk so that from the windows +of their houses neither the walk itself nor persons walking upon it +can be seen. + +Fitz and the beauty were approaching one of these "ha-ha's" into which +the path dipped steeply and from which it rose steeply upon the farther +side. On the left was a blank wall of granite blocks, on the right only +a few thousand miles of blind ocean. It may have been a distant view of +this particular "ha-ha" that had made up Eve's mind for her, for she had +a strong dramatic sense. Or it may have been that her heart alone had +made up her mind, and that the secluded depths of the "ha-ha" had +nothing to do with the matter. + +"Jim," she said as they began to descend into the place, "life's only a +moment out of eternity, isn't it?" + +"Only a moment, Eve," he said, "a little longer for some than for +others." + +"If it's only a moment," she said as they reached the bottom of the +decline, and could only be seen by the blind granite wall and the blind +ocean, "I think it ought to be complete." + +"Why, Eve!" he said, his voice breaking and choking. "Honestly?... My +Eve!... Mine!... Look at me.... Is it true?... Are you sure?... Why, +she's sure!... My darling's sure ... all sure." + + * * * * * + +Later he said: "And you don't care about money, and you've got the +biggest, sweetest heart in all the world. And it's mine, and +mine's yours." + +"I can't seem to see anything in any direction," she said, "beyond you." + + * * * * * + +Later they had to separate, only to meet again at a dinner. Before they +went in they had a word together in a corner. + +"I _told_ you," said Fitz, "that my father would understand, and you +said he wouldn't. But he did; his answer came while I was dressing. I +telegraphed: 'I have seen the world,' and the answer was: 'Put a fence +around it.'" + +She smiled with delight. + +"Eve," he said, "everybody knows that you've taken me. It's in our +faces, I suppose. And they are saying that you are a goose to throw +yourself away on a bank clerk." + +"Do you think I care?" she said. + +"I know you don't," he said, "but I can't help thanking you for holding +your head so high and looking so happy and so proud." + +"Wouldn't you be proud," she said, "to have been brought up to think +that you had no heart, and then to find that, in spite of everything, +you had one that could jump and thump, and love and long, and make +poverty look like paradise?" + +"I know what you mean, a little," he said. "Your mother tried to make +you into an Article; my mother tried to make an Englishman of me. And +instead, you turned into an angel, and I was never anything but a +spread eagle." + +"Do you know," she said, "I can't help feeling a little sorry for poor +mamma." + +"Then," said he, "put your left hand behind your back." She felt him +slide a heavy ring upon her engagement finger. "Show her that, and tell +her that it isn't glass." + +Eve couldn't keep from just one covert glance at her ring. The sight of +it almost took her breath away. + +Dinner was announced. + +"I am frightened," she said; "have I given myself to a djinn?" + +"My Eve doesn't know whom she's given herself to," he whispered. + +"I don't believe I do," she said. + +"You don't," said he. + +An immense pride in his father's wealth and his own suddenly surged in +Fitz. He could give her all those things that she had renounced for his +sake, and more, too. But he did not tell her at that time. + +The great ruby on the slim hand flashed its message about the festive +board. Some of the best-bred ladies in the land threatened to become +pop-eyed from looking at it. + +Mrs. Blackwell, mother of the twins, whispered to Montgomery Stairs: + +"That Holden boy seems to have more to him than I had fancied." + +But young Tombs whispered to Dolly Blackwell, to whom he had just become +engaged for the third (and last) time in five years: "She isn't thinking +about the ring.... Look at her.... She's listening to music." + + * * * * * + +Montgomery Stairs (who is not altogether reliable) claims to have seen +Mrs. Burton within five minutes of her learning who her son-in-law-to-be +really was. For, of course, this came out presently and made a profound +sensation. He claims to have seen--from a convenient eyrie--Mrs. Burton +rush out into the little garden behind her cottage; he claims that all +of a sudden she leaped into the air and turned a double somersault, and +that immediately after she ran up and down the paths on her hands; that +then she stood upon her head for nearly five minutes; and that finally +she flung herself down and rolled over and over in a bed of heliotrope. + +But then, as is well known, Montgomery Stairs, in the good American +phrase, was one of those who "also ran." + +Darius O'Connell sent a cable to Eve from Paris (from Maxim's, I am +afraid, late at night). He said: "Heartiest congratulations and best +wishes. You can fool some of the best people some of the time, but, +thank God, you can't fool all of the best people all of the time." Eve +and Fitz never knew just what he meant. + +They spent part of their honeymoon in Cleveland, and every afternoon Eve +sat between Fitz and his father, leaning forward, her elbows on her +knees, and was taught painstakingly, as the crowning gift of those two +simple hearts, to play the game. + +There must be one word more. There are people to this day who say that +Eve knew from the beginning who "James Holden" was, and that she played +her cards accordingly. In view of this I fling all caution to the wind, +and in spite of the cold fear that is upon me of being sued for libel, I +tell these ladies--_people_, I mean--that they lie in their teeth. + + + + +TARGETS + +"On the contrary," said Gardiner, "lightning very often strikes twice in +the same place, and often three times. The so-called all-wise Providence +is still in the experimental stage. My grandmother, for instance, +presented my grandfather with fifteen children: seven live sons and +eight dead daughters. That's when the lightning had fun with itself. And +when the epidemic of ophthalmia broke out in the Straits Settlements, +what class of people do you suppose developed the highest percentage of +total loss of sight in one or both eyes?--why the inmates of the big +asylum for the deaf and dumb in Singapore: twenty per cent of those poor +stricken souls went stone blind. Then what do you think the lightning +did? Set the blooming asylum on fire and burned it to the ground. And +then, I dare say, the elements retired to some region of waste, off in +space somewhere, and sat down and thundered with laughter. But it wasn't +through with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It +was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible +instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to +a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put +aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the _Nerissa_. She was +wrecked--" + +"Coast of Java--in '80, wasn't it?" said Pedder, who has read nothing +but dictionaries and books of black-and-white facts and statistics in +the course of a long life otherwise entirely devoted to misdirected +efforts to defeat Colonel Bogey at golf. + +"It was," said Gardiner, "and the lightning was very busy striking. It +drowned off every member of the crew who had any sense of decency; and +of the deaf and dumb passengers selected to be washed ashore a pair who +were also blind. Those saved came to land at a jungly stretch of coast, +dented by a slow-running creek. The crew called the place Quickstep +Inlet because of the panicky and inhuman haste in which they left it." + +"Why inhuman?" asked Ludlow. + +"Because," said Gardiner, "they only gave about one look at their two +comrades in misfortune who were deaf, and dumb, and blind, and decided +that it was impracticable to attempt to take them along. I suppose they +were right. I suppose it _would_ have been the devil's own job. The +really nasty part was that the crew made a secret of it, and when some +of them, having passed through the Scylla and Charybdis of fright and +fever, and foul water, and wild beasts, reached a settlement they didn't +say a word about the two unfortunates who had been deliberately +abandoned." + +"How was it found out then?" Pedder asked. + +"Years and years afterward by the ravings in liquor of one of the crew, +and by certain things that I'd like to tell you if you'd be interested." + +"Go on," said Ludlow. + +"The important thing," said Gardiner, "is that the pair were +deserted--not why they were deserted, or how it was found out that they +had been. And one thing--speaking of lightning and Providence--is very +important. If the pair hadn't been blind, if the asylum hadn't been +burned, if the _Nerissa_ hadn't been wrecked, and if the crew hadn't +deserted them--they would never in this world have had an opportunity to +lift to their lips the cup of human happiness and drink it off. + +"The man did not know that he had been deserted. He vaguely understood +that there had been a shipwreck and that he had been washed +ashore--alone, he thought. When he got hungry he began to crawl round +and round with his hands in front of his face feeling for something to +eat, trying and approving of one handful of leaves and spitting out +another. But thirst began to torment him, and then, all of a sudden, he +went souse into the creek that there emptied into the sea. That way of +life went on for several days. And all the while, the woman, just as she +had come ashore, was keeping life going similarly--crawling about, +always near the creek, crossing the beach at low tide to the mud flats +and rooting among the mollusks, and stuffing herself with any kind of +sea-growth that tasted good enough. The two were probably often within a +few feet of each other; and they might have lived out their lives that +way without either of them ever having the least idea that he or she was +not the only human being in that part of the world. But something--pure +accident or some subtle instinct--brought them together. The man was out +crawling with one hand before his face--so was the woman. Their hands +met, and clinched. They remained thus, and trembling, for a long time. +From that time until the day of their death, years and years later, they +never for so much as one moment lost contact with each other. + +"Daily they crawled or walked with infinite slowness, hand in hand, or +the arm of one about the waist of the other--neither knowing the look, +the age, the religion or even the color of the other. But I know, from +the only person fitted to judge, that they loved each other tremendously +and spotlessly--these two poor souls alone in that continuous, +soundless, sightless, expressionless night. I know because their baby, +when he grew up, and got away from that place, and learned white man's +talk--told me. + +"He left Quickstep Inlet when he was about fifteen years old, naked as +the day he was born; ignorant of everything--who he was or what he was, +or that the world contained anything similar to him. It was some +restless spirit of exploration that smoulders I suppose, in every human +heart, that compelled him to leave the few hundred acres of shore and +wood that were familiar to him. He carried with him upon his bold +journey a roll of bark, resembling birch-bark, upon which he had +scratched with a sharp shell the most meaningless-looking lines, curves, +spirals and gyrations that you can imagine. He will have that roll in +his possession now, I expect, for even when I knew him--when he was +twenty years old, and could talk English pretty nimbly, he could hardly +bear to be separated from it--or, if he let you take one of the sheets +in your hands, he would watch you as a dog watches the person that is +about to give him his dinner. But he ran very little risk of having it +stolen. Nobody wanted it. + +"He must have been a gentle savage, with all sorts of decent inherited +instincts, for when I knew him he had already taken kindly to +civilization. At first, of course, they had a bad time with him; they +couldn't talk to him, and when, quite naturally and nonchalantly he +would start in to do the most outrageous things, they had to teach him +better, literally by force. If Pedder weren't such an old stickler for +propriety, I could go more into detail. You needn't look offended, Ped, +you know you are very easily shocked, and that you make it unpleasant +for everybody. He was taken on by the English consul at Teerak, who was +a good fellow, and clothed, and taught to speak English, and, as a +beginning, to work in the garden. Indoor work seemed to have almost the +effect of nauseating him; and houses and closed doors threw him at first +into frenzies of fear, and always made him miserable. It was apparent in +his face, but more in his way of putting up his fists when in doubt, +that he wasn't Dutch nor German nor French. He was probably English, +they thought, but he might have been American, and so they had an +orthodox christening and named him Jonathan Bull. Of course, after he +got the trick of speech, they found out, by putting two and two +together, just about who and what he was; and that he was of English +parentage. But, of course, they had to let the name stand. + +"The first thing, he told me, that ever came to him in the way of a +thought was that he was different from his parents--that they couldn't +see, nor hear, nor make a noise as he could. He could remember sitting +comfortably in the mud at low tide and being convulsed with laughter at +his mother's efforts to find a fat mussel that was within a few inches +of her hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made +paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so +familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, hand in hand, +with considerable precision and alacrity. It was one of his earliest +mischievous instincts to place obstacles in those paths, and take a +humorous view of the consequent tumbles. + +"The only intercourse that he could have with his parents was, of +course, by sense of touch. And he told me that, whenever they could +catch him, they would kiss him and fondle him. But he didn't like to be +caressed, especially in the daytime. It was different at night when one +became nervous and afraid; then he used to let himself be caught; and he +said that he used to hold hands with his mother until he went to sleep +and that when he awoke it was to find that the clasp still held. It was +a long time before he realized that what to him were whimsical pranks, +were in the nature of tragedies to his parents. If he put a +stumbling-block in one of their paths, it upset the whole fabric of +their daily life, made them feel, I suppose, that they were losing such +faculties as they possessed: memory and the sense of touch--and they +would be obliged either to walk with infinite slowness, or actually to +crawl. And it was long before he realized that things which were +perfectly simple and easy for him, were frightfully difficult for them; +and he said that his first recollection of a tender and gentle feeling +was once when--heaven only knows how--his parents found a nest with eggs +in it--and brought these eggs to him. He realized then something of what +a prize these eggs must have seemed to them--for he had often scrambled +into trees and glutted himself with eggs, whereas, so far as he could +recollect, his parents had never had any at all. He began from that time +on to collect choice tidbits for _them_; and wondered why he had not +done so before. And they rewarded him with caresses and kisses; I +suppose his real reward was his own virtue. Anyway, though very +gradually at first, instinct taught him to be a good son to them. + +"The lessons that he learned of life were, first of all, from his +parents, who were always near at hand for study; second, from birds and +animals, there being a pool not far up the creek where even tigers +sometimes came to drink; from occasional monkeys; but mostly, of course, +by intuition and introspection. + +"He noticed that birds and animals all had the use of sight and hearing, +and were able to make sounds; and his own forest-trained senses soon +perceived different meanings, and even shades of meaning in certain of +these sounds. The larger animals were not, of course, constantly under +observation, and from tigers, for instance, he learned only the main +principles of tiger-talk--a kind of singsong snuffling purr that means +'get out of the way'; the cringing whine that means the tiger is very +sorry for himself; and two or three of the full-throated roars: the one +expressing rage, the one expressing fear, and the one expressing pained +astonishment. But into the vocabularies of birds he penetrated +very deeply. + +"One day, when I had got to know Jonathan rather well, he surprised me +by saying, 'the minute I got the idea, I talked all day long, but it was +years before I thought of writing down what I said, instead of plain +trying to remember. At first, when I'd say something that I wanted to +remember, I'd have to coax my head into remembering the place where I +had said it, near which tree, or which stone on the beach, what had +happened to make me think of saying it, and then, more often than not, I +could repeat it word for word,' Then he showed me the sheets of bark +with the scratches and scrawls and gyrations on them. 'It isn't spelled +writing,' he explained, 'or what they call picture writing. I don't +believe it has enough general principles for me to be able to explain it +as a system, though it has a sort of system to it. If it's like +anything, I think it must be like the way they write down music. It +would be, wouldn't it? Because beasts don't talk with words, they talk +with sounds, and I copycatted my language from beasts and birds,' + +"I asked him what the writing on the bark was all about. He said, and he +blushed, as every young author, and most old ones, should, that the +writing was just more or less nothing--all about different kinds of +things. So I pointed specifically to the top of one sheet, and said, +'begin there and tell me what that's about.' 'If I began there,' he +said, 'I'd have to go backward; that's the finish of--oh!' he literally +threw himself on my mercy with the most ingenuous blushing face. 'Oh,' +he said, 'I suppose _you'd_ call them poems.' I, of course, had my +doubts of that; but I kept countenance, and said, 'well, what's that one +about?' He looked puzzled for a moment, and then he smiled. 'Why,' he +said, 'I suppose it's about me, about the way I felt one day, I suppose; +but if I tried to say it into English it would just sound damn foolish; +but, perhaps, you'd sooner hear it in my own language. It's better, +because, after all, you can't turn sounds into words, can you?' 'Go +ahead,' I said. + +"His hands, holding the sheet of bark shook a little with embarrassment, +and he was very red in the face; and before he could begin--I suppose +you would call it _reading_--he had to wet his lips two or three times. +I expected, of course, to hear the usual grunts and minor guttural +sounds of the usual very primitive dialect. But Jonathan's own +particular patent language was not that sort of thing at all. He began +with the faintest, and most distinct rustling of leaves--I can't imagine +how he made the sound at all. It seemed to come from somewhere between +the back of his throat and his lips, and to have nothing to do with his +tongue or vocal cords. It lasted for, perhaps, half a minute; dying out, +fainter and fainter and finer and finer into complete silence. Then, +from the distant point where the rustling had last been heard, there +came the softest little throaty whistle, three times repeated; then, for +two good minutes without seeming to draw breath, the young man burst +into peal after peal of the sweetest, clearest, highest, swiftest +whistling that you can possibly imagine. I don't know how he did it--he +didn't even purse or move his lips--they were barely parted, in a kind +of plaintive, sad little smile--and the notes came out; that was all. Of +course I can't tell you what the thing meant word for word or sound for +sound; but, in general, it said youth, youth and spring: and I tell you +it had those compositions of Mendelssohn, and Grieg, and Sinding lashed +to the mast. Well, the leaves rustled again, a little lower in the +scale, I think, but wouldn't swear to it, and the first little soft +throaty whistle was twice repeated--and there was a little, tiny whisper +of a human moan. And that was the end of that poem. + +"I made him read to me from his bark sheets until he was tired out. And +the next day I was at him again early, and the next. Suppose you were +living in a jumping-off place, bored to death, and blowing yourself +every fifth or sixth day to a brand new crop of prickly heat; and wanted +to go away, and couldn't because you had to sit around until a fat +Dutchman made up his mind about a concession; and suppose the only book +in the place was on the uses of and manufacture and by-products of the +royal palm, written in a beastly language called Tamil, which you only +knew enough of to ask for tea and toast at four o'clock in the morning, +and were usually understood to mean soda biscuits and a dish of buffalo +milk. And suppose that then you came across the complete works of +Shakespeare--and that you had never read them--or the Odyssey and that +you had never read that--or, better, suppose that there was a Steinway +piano in your sitting-room, and that one day the boy who worked the +punka for you dropped the rope and sat down at the piano and played +Beethoven from beginning to end--as Rubenstein would have played +him--and suppose you had never heard a note of Beethoven before. It was +like that--listening to the works of Jonathan Bull." + +Gardiner paused, as if considering very carefully what he should say. + +"No!" he said presently, "I'm _not_ overdoing it. My judgment of +Jonathan Bull is no longer a sudden enthusiasm, as the natural effort of +a man to make his own discoveries seem more important to his friends +than they deserve. He _is_ one of the giants. Think of it: he had made, +on an impulse of out and out creation, the most expressive of all +languages, so far as mere sound goes; and as if that were not enough, he +had gone ahead and composed in that language incomparable lyrics. The +meanings were in the sounds. You couldn't mistake them. Have you ever +heard a tiger roar--full steam ahead? There was one piece that began +suddenly with a kind of terrible, obsessing, strong purring that shook +the walls of the room and that went into a series of the most terrible +tiger roars and ended with the nightmare screams of a child. I have +never been so frightened in my life. And there was a snake song, a soft, +wavy, piano, _pianissimo_ effect, all malignant stealth and horror, and +running through it were the guileless and insistently hungry twitterings +of baby birds in the nest. But there were comical pieces, too, in which +ludicrous adventures befell unsophisticated monkeys; and there was a +whole series of spring-fever songs--some of them just rotten and +nervous, and some of them sad and yearning--and some of them--I don't +know just how to put it--well, some of them you might say were not +exactly fit to print. One thing he read me--it was very +short--consisted of hoarse, inarticulate, broken groans--I couldn't make +out what it meant at all. And I was very curious to know, because it +seemed to move Jonathan himself much more than anything else of his. + +"'You know,' he explained to me, 'my father and mother couldn't make any +sound at all--oh, yes--they could clap their hands together and make a +sound that way--but I mean with their voices--they hadn't any +voices--sometimes their lips smacked and made a noise over eating, or +kissing; but they couldn't make sounds in their throats. Well, when my +mother died--just think, she couldn't make my father understand that she +was sick; and I couldn't. I tried every way. He didn't know that she was +leaving him--I'm glad you can't see that poor blind face of her's, +turned to father's blind face and trying to tell him good-by--I see it, +almost all the time,' he said. 'You know they were always touching--I +can't remember a single second in all those years when they weren't at +least holding hands. She went in the night. My father was asleep with +one arm over and about her. As she got colder and colder it waked him. +And he understood. Then he began to make those dumb, helpless groans, +like that piece I just read you--the nearest he got to speaking. He sat +on the ground and held her in his arms all the rest of the night, and +all the next day, and the next night--I couldn't make him let go, and +every little while he went into those dreadful, dumb groanings. You +don't get brought up in the jungle without knowing death when you see +it, and what dead things do. The second night, about midnight, the news +of my mother's death began to get about; and horrible, hunchbacked +beasts that I had never seen or dreamed of before began to slink about +among the trees, and peer out, and snuffle, and complain--and suddenly +laugh just like men. And I was so frightened of them, and of the night +anyway, that every now and then I'd go into a regular screaming fit, and +that would drive them away and keep them quiet for a time, but pretty +soon I'd hear their cautious steps, way off, drawing closer and closer, +and then the things would begin to snuffle, and complain, and laugh +again--they had disgusting, black dogfaces, and one came very close, and +I could see the water running out of its mouth. But when dawn began to +break they drew farther and farther away, until you could only hear +them--now and then. + +"'My father looked very white and ill, as was natural enough; but his +face now had a peaceful, contented expression. I didn't understand at +first that he, in his turn, was dying. But it wasn't of a broken heart, +as you might suppose, or anything like that; he had gnawed his left +wrist until he got the arteries open; and he was bleeding to death. + +"'Once a big dead fish was washed up on the beach--it was when I was +quite a little boy--but I remembered how, after a day or two, even my +parents had no trouble in finding it, and I remembered how my father had +scooped a hole in the sand and buried it. So I scooped a great deep hole +in the sand, very deep until water began to trickle into it. And I had +sense enough, when it came to filling up the hole, to put in lots of big +stones, the biggest I could roll in. And I'm strong. I stayed on--for +about six months, getting lonelier and lonelier--and then spring came. I +think that was really what started me. I still go almost crazy every +spring--anyway I got to this place, and found people.'" + + * * * * * + +"What's he doing now?" asked Pedder. + +"He's trying," said Gardiner, "to do it in English. Of course it seems +impossible that he should succeed. But then it was absolutely impossible +for Shakespeare to do what he did with the English language, wasn't it? +And yet he did it." + +"But--" said Pedder. + +"Ped," said Gardiner, "we don't control the lightnings; and you never +can tell where they are going to strike next--or when." + +Ludlow flushed a little, and did not look at his friends. + +"Wouldn't it be wonderful," he said, "to be loved and to be in love the +way his father and mother were. Maybe they were the ones that really +heard and saw, and--sang. We admire the lily, but we owe her to the +loves of the blind rain for the deaf and the dumb earth...." + +Nobody spoke for some moments. It had been the only allusion that Ludlow +had made in years and years to that which had left him a lonely and a +cynical man. + +"I wonder," Pedder mused, "how it ever occurred to a blind, deaf mute +that severing his wrist with his teeth would induce death?" + +Gardiner shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is always interesting," he said, "to know just which part of a +story--if any--is thought worthy of consideration by a given +individual." + + + + +THE BOOT + +Mary Rex was more particularly _my_ nurse, for my sister Ellen, a +thoughtful, dependable child of eight, was her own mistress in +most matters. + +This was in the days when we got our servants from neighborhood +families; before the Swedish and Irish invasion had made servants of us +in turn. Mary was the youngest of an ancestored county family. Her +great-grandfather had fought in the Revolution, as you might know by the +great flint-lock musket over the Rexes' fireplace. A brother of his had +formed part of a British square at Waterloo; and if Mary's own father +had not lost his right hand at Gettysburg he would never have let his +children go out to service. Poor soul, he bore the whole of his +afflictions, those to his body and those to his pride, with a dignity +not often seen in these degenerate days. He was by trade a blacksmith, +and it was for that reason, I suppose, that Providence, who loves a +little joke, elected for amputation his right hand rather than one or +both of his feet. Since, even in these degenerate days, many a footless +blacksmith makes an honest living. + +Mary was a smart, comely, upstanding young woman. Even my father, a +dismal sceptic anent human frailty, said that he would freely trust her +around the farthest corner in Christendom. And I gathered from the talk +of my elders and betters that Mary was very pretty. People said it was a +real joy to see a creature so young, so smiling, so pink and white, so +graciously happy--in those degenerate days. I myself can see now that +she must have been very pretty indeed. Her eyes, for instance, so blue +in the blue, so white in the white, can't have changed at all--unless, +perhaps, the shadows deep within the blue are deeper than they were when +she was a girl. But even to-day you would have to travel far to see +another middle-aged woman so smooth of forehead, so cleanly-cut of +feature, so generally comely. + +But if there was one thing in the world that I had formed no conclusions +upon at the age of six it was female loveliness. To cuddle against a +gentle mother when bogies were about had nothing whatsoever to do with +that gentle mother's personal appearance. To strike valiantly at Mary's +face when the hot water and the scrubbing-brush were going had nothing +to do with the prettiness thereof. Nor did I consider my sister the less +presentable by a black eye given and taken in the game of Little John +and Robin Hood upon a log in the Baychester woods. And indeed I have +been told, and believe it to be a fact, that the beauty before whom +swelled my very earliest tides of affection was a pug-nosed, +snaggle-toothed, freckled-faced tomboy, who if she had been but a jot +uglier might have been exhibited to advantage in a dime museum. Peace, +old agitations, peace! + +Everybody knew the Rexes, as in any part of the world, for many years +stable, everybody knows everybody else. In Westchester, before great +strips of woodland and water became Pelham Bay Park, before the Swedes +came, and the Irish, and the Italians, and the Germans--in other words, +before land boomed--there had always been an amiable and +uninjunctionable stability. Families had lived, for well or ill, in the +same houses for years and years. So long had the portraits hung in the +rich men's houses that if you moved them it was to disclose a +brightly-fresh rectangle upon the wall behind. The box in the poor man's +yard had been tended by the poor man's great-grand female relatives. +Ours was a vicinage of memory and proper pride. We would no more have +thought of inquiring into the morals of this public house or that than +of expunging the sun from the heavens. They had always been there. + +There was a man who left his wife and little children to fight against +King George. He could think of but one thing to protect them against +vagrant soldiers of either side, and that was to carve upon certain +boards (which he nailed to the trees here and there along the boundaries +of his farm): + + BEWARR OF THE BOOLE DOGGES + +When I was a child one of these signs still remained--at the left, just +beyond Pelham Bridge. And people used to laugh and point at the great +trees and say that because of the sign the British had never dared to +trespass and cut down the timber. Now the man had never owned a Boole +Dogge, nor had any of his descendants. I doubt if there was ever one on +the premises, unless latterly, perhaps, there has been a French bulldog +or so let out of a passing automobile to enjoy a few moments of +unconventional liberty. But the bluff had always held good. As my mother +used to say: "I know--but then there _may_ be a bulldog now." And that +farm was always out of bounds. I relate this for two reasons--to show +how stable and conservative a neighborhood was ours, and because on that +very farm, and chosen for the very reason which I have related, stood +the hollow oak which is to play its majestic part in this modest +narrative. + +The apple orchards of the Boole Dogge Farm ran southerly to a hickory +wood, the hickory wood to an oak wood, the oak wood to thick scrub of +all sorts, the scrub to the sedge, and the sedge to the salt mud at low +tide, and at high to the bassy waters themselves of inmost Pelham Bay. +On the right was the long, black trestle of the Harlem River Branch +Railroad, on the left the long-curved ironwork of Pelham Bridge. And the +farm, promontoried with its woods and thick cover between these +boundaries and more woods to the north, was an overgrown, run-down, +desolate, lonely, deserted old place. Had it not been for the old sign +that said "Bewarr," it must have been a great playground for +children--for their picnics, and their hide-and-seeks, and their games +at Indians. But the ferocious animals imagined by the old Revolutionary +were as efficacious against trespassers as a cordon of police. And I +remember to this day, I can feel still, the very-thrill of that wild +surmise with which I followed Mary and my sister over the stone wall and +into those forbidden and forbidding acres for the first time. But that +comes later. + +It was my sister who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I +had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to +accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with +her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her +face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of +being made more sedate by her responsible and settling prospects she +shed the half of her years, which were not many, and became the most +delightful romp, a furious runner of races, swiftest of pursuers at tag, +most subtle and sudden of hiders and poppers out, and full to the arch, +scarlet brim of loud, clear laughter. + +It was late spring now, lilacs in all the dooryards, all the houses +being cleaned inside out, and they were to be married in the fall. They +had picked the little house on the outskirts of Skinnertown not far from +the Tory oak, in which they were to live. And often we made it the end +of an excursion, and played at games devised by Mary to improve the +appearance of the little yard. We gathered up in emulation old, broken +china and bottles, and made them into a heap at the back; we cleared the +yard of brush and dead wood, and pulled up weeds by the hundred-weight, +and set out a wild rose or two and more valuable, if less lovely, plants +that people gave Mary out of real gardens. + +Will Braddish, a painter by trade, met us one day with brushes and a +great bucket of white paint, and, while he and Mary sat upon the +doorstep talking in low tones or directing in high, Ellen and I made +shift to paint the little picket-fence until it was white as new snow. +At odd times Braddish himself painted the little house (it was all of +old-fashioned, long shingles) inside and out, and a friend of his got up +on the roof with mortar and a trowel, and pointed-up the brick chimney; +and my father and Mr. Sturtevant contributed a load of beautiful, sleek, +rich pasture sod and the labor to lay it; so that by midsummer the +little domain was the spickest, spannest little dream of a home in the +whole county. The young couple bought furniture, and received gifts of +furniture, prints, an A1 range, a tiny, shiny, desirable thing; and the +whole world and all things in it smiled them in the face. Braddish, as +you will have guessed, was a prosperous young man. He was popular, too, +and of good habits. People said only against him that he was impulsive +and had sudden fits of the devil's own temper, but that he recovered +from these in a twinkling and before anything came of them. And even the +merest child could see that he thought the world of Mary. I have seen +him show her little attentions such as my sister retailed me of +personages in fairy stories and chivalric histories. Once when there was +a puddle to cross he made a causeway of his coat, like another Raleigh, +and Mary crossed upon it, like one in a trance of tender happiness, +oblivious of the fact that she might easily have gone around and saved +the coat. His skin and his eyes were almost as clear as Mary's own, and +he had a bold, dashing, independent way with him. + +But it wasn't often that Braddish could get free of his manifold +occupations: his painting contracts and his political engagements. He +was by way of growing very influential in local politics, and people +predicted an unstintedly successful life for him. He was considered +unusually clever and able. His manners were superior to his station, and +he had done a deal of heterogeneous reading. But, of course, whenever it +was possible he was with Mary and helped her out with looking after +Ellen and me. My mother, who was very timid about tramps, looked upon +these occasions as in the nature of real blessings. There was nowhere in +the countryside that we children might not safely venture with Will +Braddish strolling behind. He loved children--he really did, a rare, +rare thing--and he was big, and courageous, and strong, and quick. He +was very tactful, too, on these excursions and talked a good part of the +time for the three of us, instead of for Mary alone. Nice, honest talk +it was, too, with just enough robbers, and highwaymen, and lions, and +Indians to give it spice. But all the adventures through which he passed +us were open and honest. How the noble heroes _did_ get on in life, and +how the wicked villains did catch it! + +I remember once we were returning home past the Boole Dogge Farm, and +Braddish, wiping his brow, for it was cruelly hot, seated himself as +bold as could be on the boundary wall. The conversation had been upon +robbers, and how they always, always got caught. + +"It doesn't matter," Braddish said, "where they hide. Take this old +farm. It's the best hiding-place in this end of the county--woods, and +marshes, and old wells, and bushes, and hollows--" + +We asked him in much awe if he had ever actually set foot on the place. + +"Yes, indeed," he said; "when I was a boy I knew every inch of it; I was +always hunting and trapping, and looking for arrowheads. And that was +the best country. Once I spent a night in the woods yonder. The bridge +was open to let a tugboat through and got stuck so they couldn't shut +it, and there was no way back to Westchester except over the railroad +trestle, and my father had said that I could go anywhere I pleased +except on that trestle. And so here I was caught, and it came on to +blither and blow, and I found an oak tree, all hollow like a little +house, and I crept in and fell asleep and never woke till daylight. My +father said next time I could come home by the trestle, or he'd know the +reason why." + +"But," said I, "weren't you afraid the bulldogs would get you?" + +"Now, if they'd said bull-terriers," he said, "I might have had my +doubts, but a bulldog's no more dangerous than a toadfish. He's like my +old grandma. What teeth he has don't meet. And besides," he said, "there +weren't any bulldogs on that farm. And I don't believe there ever were. +Now, I'm not sure, sonny," he said, "but you climb up here--" + +I climbed upon the wall, and he held me so that I should not fall. + +"Do you see," said he, "way down yonder over the tops of the trees a +dead limb sticking up?" + +I saw it finally. + +"Well," he said, "I'd stake something that that's a part of the old +hollow oak. Shall we go and see?" + +But Mary told him that the farm was out of bounds. And he thought a +moment, and then swung his legs over the wall. + +"I won't be two minutes," he said. "I'd like to see if I'm right--it's +fifteen years ago--" And he strode off across the forbidden farm to the +woods. When he came back he said that he had been right, and that +nothing had changed much. He tossed me a flint arrowhead that he had +picked up--he was always finding things, and we went on again. + +When we got to the middle of Pelham Bridge we all stopped and leaned +against the railing and looked down into the swift, swirling current. +Braddish tore an old envelop into little pieces and dropped them +overboard by pairs, so that we might see which would beat the other to a +certain point. + +But the shadows began to grow long now and presently Braddish had to +leave us to attend a meeting in Westchester, and I remember how he +turned and waved, just before the Boulevard dips to the causeway, and +how Mary recollected something that she had meant to say and ran after +him a little way calling, and he did not hear. And she came back +laughing, and red in the face, and breathing quick. + +Two days later my father, who had started for the early train, came +driving back to the house as if he had missed it. But he said, no, and +his face was very grave--he had heard a piece of news that greatly +concerned Mary, and he had come back to tell her. He went into the study +with my mother, and presently they sent for Mary and she went in +to them. + +A few minutes later, through the closed door, Ellen and I heard a +sudden, wailing cry. + +Poor Braddish, it seems, in one of his ungovernable tempers had shot a +man to death, and fled away no one knew whither. + + + + +II + +The man killed was named Hagan. He was a red-faced, hard-drinking brute, +not without sharp wits and a following--or better, a heeling. There had +been bad blood between him and Braddish for some time over political +differences of opinion and advancement. But into these Hagan had carried +a circumstantial, if degenerate, imagination that had grown into and +worried Braddish's peace of mind like a cancer. Details of the actual +killing were kept from us children. But I gathered, since the only +witnesses of the shooting were heelers of Hagan's, that it could in no +wise be construed into an out-and-out act of self-defence, and so far as +the law lay things looked bad for Braddish. + +That he had not walked into the sheriff's office to give himself up made +it look as if he himself felt the unjustifiability of his act, and it +was predicted that when he was finally captured it would be to serve a +life sentence at the very least. The friends of the late Hagan would +hear of nothing less than hanging. It was a great pity (this was my +father's attitude): Hagan was a bad lot and a good riddance; Braddish +was an excellent young man, except for a bit of a temper, and here the +law proposed to revenge the bad man upon the other forever and ever. And +it was right and proper for the law so to do, more's the pity. But it +was not Braddish that would be hit hardest, said my father, and here +came in the inscrutable hand of Providence--it was Mary. + +After the first outburst of feeling she had accepted her fate with a +stanch reserve and went on with her duties much as usual. One ear was +always close to the ground, you might say, to hear the first rumor of +Braddish, either his capture or his whereabouts, that she might fly to +him and comfort him, but the rest of her faculties remained in devoted +attendance on my sister and me. Only there showed in them now and then a +kind of tigerish passionateness, as when I fell off the sea-wall among +the boulders and howled so dismally. She leaped down after and caught me +to her in the wildest distress, and even when I stopped howling could +not seem to put me down. Indeed, she held me so tight that if any of my +bones had been cracked by the tumble she must have finished by breaking +them. The pathos of her efforts to romp with us as in happier days was +lost upon me, I am happy to say. Nor did I, recalling to her what +Braddish had said of robbers being inevitably caught, realize that I was +stabbing her most cruelly. For she was, or tried to be, firm in the +belief that Braddish would succeed where all others had failed. She had +asked my father what would happen if Braddish got clean out of the +United States, and he, hoping, I suppose, to be of indirect use to the +young couple for whom he was heartily sorry, made her out a list of +countries, so far as he knew them, wherein there was no extradition. My +father hoped, I fondly believe, that she would get the list to Braddish +for his guidance, conjecturing rightly that if Braddish made his +whereabouts known to anybody it would be to Mary. But as to that, ten +days passed before Mary knew a jot more of it than another. And I must +believe that it came to her then entirely by inspiration. + +We were passing the Boole Dogge Farm, my sister and I, intent upon +seeing which of us could take the most hops without putting the held-up +foot to the ground, when suddenly Mary, who had been strolling along +laughing at us, stopped short in her tracks and turned, and stood +looking over the green treetops to where the gaunt, dead limb of the +hollow oak thrust sharply up from among them. But we had hopped on for +quite a piece before we noticed that she no longer went alongside. So we +stopped that game and ran back to her. What was it? Had she seen a +rabbit? She laughed and looked very wistful. She was just thinking, +children, that she would like to see the hollow tree where Will had +passed the night. She was not excited--I can swear to that. She guessed +nothing as yet. Her desire was really to the tree--as she might have +coveted one of Will's baby shoes, or anything that had been his. She had +already, poor girl, begun to draw, here and there, upon the past for +sustenance. + +First, she charged Ellen and me to wait for her in the road. But we +rebelled. We swore (most falsely) that we were afeard. Since the teeth +of bulldogs no longer met, we desired passionately to explore the +forbidden farm, and had, indeed, extracted a free commission from my +father so to do, but my mother had procrastinated and put us off. We +laid these facts before Mary, and she said, very well, if our father had +said we might go on the farm, go we might. He would, could and must make +it right with our mother. And so, Mary leading, we climbed the wall. + +Bulldogs' teeth or no bulldogs' teeth, my ancient fear of the place +descended upon me, and had a rabbit leaped or a cat scuttled among the +bushes I must have been palsied. The going across to the woods was waist +high with weeds and brambles, damp and rank under foot. Whole squadrons +of mosquitoes arose and hung about us in clouds, with a humming sound as +of sawmills far away. But this was long before you took your malaria of +mosquitoes, and we minded them no more than little children mind them +to-day. Indeed, I can keep peacefully still even now to watch a mosquito +batten and fatten upon my hand, to see his ravenous, pale abdomen swell +to a vast smug redness--that physiological, or psychological, moment for +which you wait ere you burst him. + +The forbidden farm had, of course, its thousand novelties. I saw prickly +pears in blossom upon a ledge of rock; a great lunar-moth resting +drowsily, almost drunkenly, in the parasol shade of a wild-carrot +blossom; here was the half of a wagon wheel, the wood rotted away, and +there in the tangle an ancient cistern mouth of brick, the cistern +filled to the brim with alluring rubbish. My sister sprang with a +gurgle of delight to catch a garter snake, which eluded her; and a last +year's brier, tough and humorously inclined, seized upon Mary by the +skirts and legs, so that it was a matter of five minutes and piercing +screams of merriment to cast her loose again. But soon we drew out of +the hot sunshine into the old orchard with its paltry display of +deformed, green, runt apples, and its magnificent columns and canopies +of poison ivy--that most beautiful and least amiable of our indigenous +plants; and then we got among scale-bark hickories, and there was one +that had been fluted from top to bottom by a stroke of lightning; and +here the little red squirrels were most unusually abundant and +indignant; and there was a catbird that miauled exactly like a cat; and +there was a spring among the roots of one great tree, and a broken +teacup half buried in the sand at the bottom. + +We left the hickories and entered among the oaks, and here was the +greatest to-do imaginable to find the one that was hollow. Ellen went to +the left, I to the right, and Mary down the middle. Whenever I came to +an unusually big tree I tiptoed around the trunk, goggle-eyed, expecting +the vasty hollow to open before me. And I am sure that Ellen, whom I had +presently lost sight of, behaved in the same way. Mary also had +disappeared, and feeling lonely all of a sudden I called to her. She +answered a moment later in a strange voice. I thought that she must have +fallen and hurt herself; but when I found her she was cheerful and +smiling. She was standing with her back to a snug hollow in the vast +stem of the very oak we had been looking for. + +"This is it," she said, and turned and pointed to the hollow. "Where's +Ellen?" + +"Here, Ellen," I called, "here--_we've_ found it!" + +Then Ellen came scampering through the wood; and first I climbed into +the hollow and curled up to see what sort of a night I might have of it, +and then I climbed out and Ellen climbed in--and then both in at once, +and we kept house for a while and gave a couple of dinners and tea +parties. And then quarreled about the probable size of Friar Tuck, and +Ellen drew the line at further imaginings and left me alone in +the hollow. + +This extended all the way up the main trunk and all but out through the +top. Here and there it pierced through the outer bark, so that slants of +pale light served to carry the eye up and up until it became lost in +inky blackness. Now and then dust and little showers of dry rot +descended softly upon the upturned face; and if you put your ear close +to the wood you could hear, as through the receiver of a telephone, +things that were going on among the upper branches; as when the breeze +puffed up and they sighed and creaked together. I could hear a squirrel +scampering and a woodpecker at work--or so I guessed, though it sounded +more like a watch ticking. I made several essays to climb up the hollow, +but the knotholes and crevices, and odds and ends of support, were too +far removed from each other for the length of my limbs, and, +furthermore, my efforts seemed to shake the whole tree and bring down +whole smarting showers of dust and dry rot and even good-sized +fragments. I got up a few feet, lost my hold, and fell into the soft, +punky nest at the bottom. + +"Can't you climb up?" said Ellen, who had recovered her temper by now. +"Because somebody has climbed up and stuck an ol' shoe out of a +knothole way up." + +I climbed out of the hollow and followed her point. Sure enough--thirty +feet or so from the ground the toe of a much-used leather boot stuck out +through a knothole. + +Mary refused to take an interest in the boot. It was high time we went +home. She herself had a headache. Our mother would be angry with her for +taking us on the forbidden farm. She was sorry she had done so. No, she +wasn't angry. We were good children; she loved us. Wouldn't we come? + +"I'll tell you," said she, and her face, which looked sick and pale, +colored, "if you'll come now, and hurry, we'll just have time to stop on +the bridge and have some races." + +And sure enough, when we got to the bridge Mary produced a stained sheet +of paper, and tore it quickly into little bits of pieces (we were +pressed for time) and launched pair after pair of sea-going racers upon +the swirling tide. + +When the last pair were gone upon their merry career she drew a long +breath, and seemed as one relieved of a weight. + +"Perhaps," she said, "you needn't tell your mother where you've +been--unless she asks you. Do you think that would be wrong?" + +I had never known Mary to suggest deceit of any kind. + +"If you think it would get you into trouble," said my sister, aged +eight, very stiffly, "why, of course, we won't say anything." + +Mary was troubled. Finally she drew a deep breath and flung out her +hands. + +"Of course, it would be wrong not to tell," she said. "You _must_ tell +her." + +But by good fortune we met my father first and told him. + +"And papa," said Ellen, she had been swung to his shoulder and there +rode like a princess upon a genii, "what do you think, way up the trunk +there was an old shoe sticking out of a knothole, and we all thought +that somebody must have climbed up inside and put it there. But brother +couldn't climb up because he's too little, and Mary wouldn't try, and we +thought maybe Sunday you'd go with us and see if you could climb up." + +I don't know why my father happened to take the line that he did; he may +have seen something in Mary's face that we children would not be likely +to see. He laughed first, and told us a story. + +It was about some children that he had once known, who had seen a boot +sticking out of a tree, just as we had done, and how a frightful old +witch had come along, and told them that if they went away for a year +and a day and didn't say a word about the boot to any one, and then went +back, they would by that time have grown sufficiently to climb up and +get the boot, and that they would find it full of gold pieces. But if, +during the year and the day, they so much as mentioned the boot to any +one but their father, they would find it full of the most dreadful black +and yellow spiders which would chase them all the way to Jericho, and +bite their fat calves every few steps. + +"This," said he, "may be that kind of a boot. Now promise not to talk +about it for a year and a day--not even to me--and at the end of that +time, why we'll all go and see what's in it. No," he said, "you mustn't +go to look at it every now and then--that would spoil the charm. Let me +see. This is the twenty-eighth--a year and a day--hum." And he made his +calculations. Then he said: "By the way, Mary, don't you and the +children ever get hungry between meals? If you were to take bread and +meat, and make up sandwiches to take on your excursions, they'd never be +missed. I'd see to it," he said, "that they weren't missed. Growing +children, you know." And he strode on, Ellen riding on his shoulder like +a princess on her genii. + + + + +III + +Ellen and I were very firm to have nothing to do with the boot in the +oak tree; and we had two picnics in the hollow and played for hours in +the adjoining woods without once looking up. Mary had become very strict +with us about scattering papers and eggshells at our out-of-door +spreads; and whatever fragments of food were left over she would make +into a neat package and hide away under a stone; but in other matters +she became less and less precise: as, for instance, she left Ellen's +best doll somewhere in the neighborhood of the hollow oak, and had to go +all the way back for it in the dusk; and another time (we had also been +to the store at Bartow for yeast) she left her purse that had two +months' wages in it and more, but wasn't lucky enough to find that. + +It was considered remarkable on all hands that Braddish had not yet been +caught. Hagan's heelers, who swung many votes, had grown very sharp with +the authorities, and no efforts were spared to locate the criminal (he +was usually referred to as the "murderer") and round him up. Almost +daily, for a time, we were constantly meeting parties of strange men, +strolling innocently about the country at large or private estates as if +they were looking things over with a view to purchase. And now and then +we met pairs of huntsmen, though there was no game in season, very +citified, with brand-new shotguns, and knickerbockers, and English +deer-stalker caps. And these were accompanied by dogs, neither well +suited nor broken to the business of finding birds and holding them. +There was one pair of sportsmen whose makeshift was a dropsical coach +dog, very much spotted. And, I must be forgiven for telling the truth, +one was followed, _ventre a terre_, by a dachshund. My father, a very +grave man with his jest, said that these were famous detectives, so +accoutred as not to excite comment. And their mere presence in it was +enough to assure the least rational that Braddish must by now have fled +the country. "Their business," he said, "is to close the stable door, +if they can find it, and meanwhile to spend the money of the many in the +roadhouses of the few." + +But I have sometimes thought that the pseudo-sportsmen were used to give +Braddish a foolhardy sense of security, so that other secret-service +men, less open in method and less comic in aspect, might work +unobserved. Indeed, it turned out that an under-gardener employed by +Mrs. Kirkbride, our neighbor, about this time, a shambling, peaceful, +half-witted goat of a man, was one such; and a perfect red-Indian upon a +trail. It was Mary who spotted him. He hung about our kitchen door a +good deal; and tried to make friends with her and sympathize with her. +But he showed himself a jot too eager, and then a jot too peppery when +she did not fall into his nets. Mary told my father, and my father told +Mrs. Kirkbride. Mrs. Kirkbride had had a very satisfactory job at +painting done for her by Braddish; and although a law-abiding woman, she +did not propose personally to assist the law--even by holding her +tongue. So she approached the under-gardener, at a time when the +head-gardener and the coachman were in hearing, and she said, plenty +loud enough to be heard: "Well, officer, have you found a clew yet? Have +you pumped my coachman? He was friends with Braddish," and so on, so +that she destroyed that man's utility for that place and time. But +others were more fortunate. And all of a sudden the country was +convulsed with excitement at hearing that Braddish had been seen on the +Bartow Road at night, and had been fired at, but had made good his +escape into the Boole Dogge Farm. + +Bloodhounds were at once sent for. I remember that my father stayed up +from town that thrilling morning, and walked up and down in front of the +house looking up at the sky. I now know that he was conjuring it to rain +with all his power of pity--prayer maybe--though I think, like most +commuters, he was weak on prayer. Anyhow, rain it did. The sky had been +overcast for two days, drawing slowly at the great beds of moisture in +the northeast, and that morning, accompanied by high winds, the first +drops fell and became presently a deluging northeaster, very cold for +midsummer. + +As chance would have it, there had been a false scent down on Throgg's +Neck, upon which the nearest accessible bloodhounds had been employed. +So that there was a delay in locating them, and fetching them to the +Boole Dogge Farm. We went over to the Boulevard--my father, Ellen, and +I--all under umbrellas, to see them go by. They were a sorry pair of +animals, and very weary with having been out all night, in all sorts of +country, upon feet more accustomed to the smooth asphalt of a kennel. +But there was a crowd of men with them, some in uniform, one I remember +in a great coat, who rode upon one of the old-fashioned, high bicycles, +and there was a show of clubs and bludgeons, and one man wore openly +upon his hip a rusty, blued revolver, and on the whole the little +procession had a look of determination and of power to injure that was +rather terrible. I have sometimes thought that if I had been my father I +would not have taken Ellen and me to see them go by. But why not? I +would not have missed it for kingdoms. + +By the time the pursuit had reached the Boole Dogge Farm so much rain +had fallen as to render the bloodhounds' noses of no account. Still the +police were not deterred from beating that neck of land with great +thoroughness and energy. But it proved to be the old story of the needle +in the haystack. Either they could not find the needle or there was no +needle to be found. Of course, they discovered the spring with the +broken cup, and the hollow oak, and made sure that it was here that +Braddish slept at night, and they found other traces of his recent +habitation--an ingenious snare with a catbird in it, still warm; the +deep, inadvertent track of a foot in a spot of bog; but of the man +himself neither sight nor sound. + +In the afternoon, the rain having held up for a while, nay father walked +over to the farm to see how the hunt was progressing. This, I think, +was for Mary's sake, who had been all the morning in so terrible a state +of agitation that it seemed as if she must have news for better or +worse, or die of suspense. My father was not away longer than necessary. +He returned as he had gone, wearing a cheerful, incisive look very +characteristic of him, and whistling short snatches of tunes. + +He said that the beaters were still at work; but that they were wet to +the skin and the heart was out of them. Yes. They would keep an eye on +the place, but they were pretty well convinced that the bird had flown. +If, however, the bird had not flown, said my father, he should be quick +about it. We were on the front porch to meet my father, and I remember +he paused and looked out over the bay for some time. It was roughish +with occasional white caps, and had a dreary, stormy look. Our rowboat, +moored to a landing stage or float, just off our place, was straining +and tugging at her rope. + +"That boat will blow loose," said my father, "if she isn't pulled up. +But I'm not going to do it. I'm wet enough as it is. + +"Would you like me to try, sir?" Mary called. + +"What's the use?" said my father. "You'll only spoil your clothes. And, +besides, the boat's old and rotten. She's not worth two dollars for +kindling wood. I rather hope she does blow away, so as to provide me +with a much-needed excuse to buy a better one. The oars, I see, are in +her. Never mind, they're too heavy. I never liked them." + +Then he put his arm around Ellen. + +"By the way, Teenchy," said he, "your old boot is still sticking out of +the oak tree." + +"Oh, papa," cried Ellen, "you said we mustn't talk about it--or it would +be full of spiders." + +"I said _you_ mustn't talk about it," said he. "So don't. Anyhow"--and +he included Mary in his playful smile--"it's still there--so make the +most of _that_." + +He turned to go into the house, and then: + +"Oh, by the way, Mary," said he, "you have not asked for your wages +recently, and I think you are owed for three months. If you will come to +the study in a little while I will give them to you." He was always +somewhat quizzical. "Would you rather have cash or a check?" + +Personally I didn't know the difference, and, at the time, I admired +Mary exceedingly for being able to make a choice. She chose cash. + +But till some years later I thought she must have repented this +decision, for not long after she went into a kind of mild hysterics, and +cried a good deal, and said something about "such kindness--this--side +Heaven." And was heard to make certain comparisons between the +thoughtfulness and pitifulness of a certain commuter and the Christ. + +But these recollections are a little vague in my head as to actual +number of tears shed, cries uttered and words spoken. But I do know for +an incontestable fact that during the night, just as my father had +prophesied, our rowboat was blown loose by the northeast gale, and has +not been seen from that day to this. And I know that when I woke up in +the morning and called to Mary she was not in her bed, and I found in +mine, under the pillow, a ridiculous old-fashioned brooch, that I had +ever loved to play with, and that had been Mary's mother's. + +My father was very angry about Mary's going. + +"Good Lord!" he said; "we can't pretend to conceal it!" But then he +looked out over Pelham Bay, and it had swollen and waxed wrathful during +the night, and was as a small ocean--with great waves and billows that +came roaring over docks and sea-walls. And then his temper abated and he +said: "Of course she would--any woman would--sense or no sense." + +And, indeed, the more I know of women, which is to say, and I thank God +for it, the less I know of them, the convinceder am I that my father +was right. + +In other words, if a woman's man has nine chances in ten of drowning by +himself she will go with him so as to make it ten chances, and a +certainty of her being there whatever happens. And so, naturally, man +cannot tolerate the thought of woman getting the right, based on +intelligence, to vote. + + + + +IV + +Twenty-five years later I paid Mary and Braddish a pleasant +Saturday-to-Monday visit in what foreign country it is not necessary to +state. The tiny Skinnertown house of their earlier ambition, with its +little yard, had now been succeeded by a great, roomy, rambling +habitation, surrounded by thousands of acres sprinkled with flocks of +fat, grazing sheep. It was a grand, rolling upland of a country that +they had fled to; cool, summer weather all the year round, and no +mosquitoes. Hospitable smoke curled from a dozen chimneys; shepherds +galloped up on wiry horses and away again; scarlet passion-vines poured +over roofs and verandas like cataracts of glory; and there was incessant +laughter and chatter of children at play. + +Of their final flight from the Boole Dogge Farm in my father's boat, +across the bay to Long Island in the teeth of the northeaster, I now +first heard the details; and of their subsequent hiding among swamps and +woods; and how, when it had seemed that they must be captured and +Braddish go to jail forever and ever, Mary thought that she could face +the separation more cheerfully if she was his wife. And so one rainy +night they knocked upon the door of a clergyman, and told him their +story. They were starving, it seems, and it was necessary to look about +for mercy. And, as luck would have it, the clergyman, an old man, had +officiated at the wedding of Mary's parents; and he had had some trouble +in his day with the law about a boundary fence, and was down on the law. +And he fed them and married them, and said that he would square matters +with his conscience--if he could. And he kept them in his attic for two +days, which was their honeymoon--and then--a night of dogs and lanterns +and shouting--he smuggled them off to the swamps again, and presided +over their hiding until an opportunity came to get them aboard a tramp +ship--and that was all there was to it, except that they had prospered +and been happy ever since. + +I asked Mary about my father's part in it. But she gave him a clean +bill. + +"He put two and two together," she said, "and he dropped a hint or +two--and he paid me all my back wages in American money, and he made me +a handsome present in English gold, but he never talked things over, +never mentioned Will's name even." + +"It was the toe of my boot," said Will, "sticking out of the tree that +made him guess where I was. You see, I'd climbed up in the hollow to +hide, and to keep there without moving I had to stick my foot out +through a knothole. I was up there all the day they tried to get the +bloodhounds after me, with my boot sticking out. And they were beating +around that tree for hours, but nobody looked up." + +"I've always wondered," said I, "why, they didn't send a man up inside +the tree." + +"I've always thought," said Will, "that nobody liked to propose it for +fear he'd be elected to do it himself. But maybe it didn't enter +anybody's head. Anyhow, all's well that ends well." + +"Mary," I said, "do you remember how my father told Ellen and me to go +back in a year and a day, and look in the boot?" + +She nodded. + +"Well," I said, "we went--hand in hand--and there was still a boot +sticking out. And I climbed up, after several failures, and got it. It +wasn't full of gold, but it did have two gold pieces in it. One each." + +"What a memory your father had," said Mary: "he never forgot anything." + +Later I was talking with Will alone, and I asked him why he had run away +in the first place. + +"Why," he said, "I had no chance with the law. The only outsiders +who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood +between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan +with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by +the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And +somehow--somehow--I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to +prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing +to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one +that knew me then--except Hagan's friends, and whatever they believed +they'd have sworn the opposite. Do you think your father thought I was a +bloody murderer? Look here," he said, "I don't know just how to put +it--it was twenty-five years ago, all that--Mary'll tell you, if you ask +her, that she's been absolutely happy every minute of all that +time--even when we were hiding in swamps and starving. Now that side of +it wouldn't have entered the law's head, would it?" He smiled very +peacefully. "Out here, of course," he said, "it's very different. Almost +everybody here has gotten away from something or other. And mostly we've +done well, and are happy and self-respecting. It's a big world," he +looked out affectionately over his rolling, upland acres, "and a funny +world. Did Mary tell you that I've just been re-elected sheriff?" + + + + +THE DESPOILER + +Forrest paused when his explorations had brought him to the edge of the +beechwood, all dappled with golden lights and umber shadows, and stood +for a time brooding upon those intimate lawns and flowery gardens that +seemed, as it were, but roofless extensions of the wide, open house. + +It is probable that his brooding had in it an estimate of the cost of +these things. It was thus that he had looked upon the blooded horses in +the river-fields and the belted cattle in the meadows. It was thus that +his grave eyes passed beyond the gardens and moved from corner to corner +of the house, from sill to cornice, relating the porticos and +interminable row of French windows to dollars and cents. He had, of +course, been of one mind, and now he was of two; but that octagonal slug +of California minting, by which he resolved his doubts, fell heads, and +he stepped with an acquiescent reluctance from the dappled shadows into +the full sunlight of the gardens and moved slowly, with a kind of +awkward and cadaverous grandeur, toward the house. He paused by the +sundial to break a yellow rose from the vine out of which its fluted +supporting column emerged. So standing, and regarding the rose slowly +twirled in his fingers, he made a dark contrast to the brightly-colored +gardens. His black cape hung in unbroken lines from his gaunt shoulders +to his knees, and his face had the modeling and the gentle gloom +of Dante's. + +The rose fell from his hand, and he moved onward through the garden and +entered the house as nonchalantly as if it had been his own. He found +himself in a cool dining-room, with a great chimney-piece and beaded +white paneling. The table was laid for seven, and Forrest's intuitive +good taste caused his eyes to rest with more than passing interest upon +the stately loving-cup, full of roses, that served for a centre-piece. +But from its rosy garlands caught up in the mouths of demon-heads he +turned suddenly to the portrait over the chimney-piece. It was darker +and more sedate than the pictures to which Forrest was accustomed, but +in effect no darker or more sedate than himself. The gentleman of the +portrait, a somewhat pouchy-cheeked, hook-nosed Revolutionary, in whose +wooden and chalky hand was a rolled document, seemed to return Forrest's +glance with a kind of bored courtesy. + +"That is probably the Signer," thought Forrest, and he went closer. "A +great buck in your time," he approved. + +The butler entered the dining-room from the pantry, and, though a man +accustomed to emergencies, was considerably nonplussed at the sight of +the stranger. That the stranger was a bona fide stranger, James, who had +served the Ballins for thirty years, knew; but what manner of stranger, +and whether a rogue or a man upon legitimate business, James could not +so much as guess. + +"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "were you looking for some one?" + +"Yes," said Forrest, perfectly at his ease, "and no." + +"Shall I tell Mr. Ballin that you are here, sir?" + +"I shall find him for myself, thank you," said Forrest, and he moved +toward an open door that seemed to lead into the hall. + +"By the way," he said, "there will be an extra at luncheon." + +Very stately in his long, black cape, and with his pensive Dantesque +face, Forrest continued on his slow progress to the open door and went +out of the dining-room. He crossed the hall with half an eye to its +quiet tones and bowls of roses, and entered a room of bright chintz with +a pattern of cornflowers, and full of sunlight. It was a very spacious +room, and lively--a proper link between the gardens and the house; and +here were many photographs in silver frames of smart men and women; and +the Sunday papers with their colored supplements were strewn in +disorder upon the floor. And it seemed to Forrest, so comfortable and +intimate did it look, as if that room had been a part of his own life. +Upon the blotter of a writing-table sprawled a check-book bound in +yellow leather. And when Forrest saw that, he smiled. It came as a +surprise that the teeth in that careworn face should be white and even. +And in those rare and charming moments of his smiling he looked like a +young man who has made many engagements with life which he proposes to +fulfil, instead of like a man for whom the curious years reserve but one +sensation more. + +But Forrest did not remain any appreciable time in the cheerful +living-room. A desire to explain and have it all over with was upon him; +and he passed, rapidly now, from room to room, until in a far corner of +the house he entered a writing-room furnished in severe simplicity with +dark and dully-shining rosewood. This room was of an older fashion than +any he had yet entered, and he guessed that it had been the Signer's +workshop and had been preserved by his descendants without change. A +pair of flintlock pistols, glinting silver, lay upon the desk; quill +pens stood in a silver cup full of shot; a cramped map, drawn and +colored by hand and yellow with age, hung above the mantel and +purported, in bold printing with flourishes, to be The Proposed Route +for the Erie Canal. Portraits of General Greene and Thomas Jefferson, +by Stuart, also hung upon the walls. And there stood upon an octagonal +table a bowl of roses. + +There was a gentleman in the embrasure of a window, smoking a cigar and +looking out. But at the sound of Forrest's step he turned an alert, +close-cropped, gray head and stepped out of the embrasure. + +"Mr. Ballin?" said Forrest. + +"I am Mr. Ballin." His eyes perused the stranger with astonishing speed +and deftness, without seeming to do so. + +"It was the toss of a coin that decided me to come," said Forrest. "I +have asked your butler to lay a place for me at luncheon." + +So much assumption on the part of a stranger has a cheeky look in the +printing. Yet Forrest's tone and manner far more resembled those of old +friendship and intimacy than impertinence. + +"Have I," said Ballin, smiling a little doubtfully, "ever had the +pleasure of meeting you before? I have a poor memory for faces. But it +seems to me that I should not have forgotten yours." + +"You never saw me but the one time," said Forrest. "That was many years +ago, and you would not remember. You were a--little wild that night. You +sat against me at a game of faro. But even if you had been yourself--I +have changed very much. I was at that time, as you were, little more +than a boy." + +"Good Lord!" said Ballin, "were you a part of that hectic flush that to +myself I only refer to as 'Sacramento'?" + +"You do not look as if it had turned you into a drinking man," said +Forrest. + +"It didn't," said Ballin, and without seeing any reason for confiding in +the stranger he proceeded to do so. "It was nip and tuck for a time," he +said, "and then money came to me, and this old place and +responsibilities, and I became, more from force of circumstances than +from any inner impulse, a decentish citizen." + +"The money made everything smooth, did it?" said Forrest. "I wonder." + +"You wonder--what?" said Ballin. + +"If it could--money alone. I have had it at times--not as you have had +it--but in large, ready sums. Yet I think it made very little +difference." + +"What have you been doing since--Sacramento?" asked Ballin. + +"Up to a month ago," said Forrest, "I kept on dealing--in different +parts of the world--in San Francisco, in London--Cairo--Calcutta. And +then the matter which brings me here was brought to my attention." + +"Yes?" said Ballin, a little more coolly. + +"When you were in Sacramento," Forrest went on quietly and evenly as if +stating an acknowledged fact, "you did not expect to come into all +this. Then your cousin, Ranger Ballin, and his son went down in the City +of Pittsburgh; and all this"--he made a sudden, sweeping gesture with +one of his long, well-kept hands--"came to you." + +"Yes?" Ballin's voice still interrogated coolly. + +Forrest broke into that naïve, boyish smile of his. + +"My dear sir," said he, "I saw a play last winter in which the question +is asked, 'Do you believe in Fairies?' I ask you, 'Do you believe in +Gypsies?'" + +"In what way?" Ballin asked, and he, too, smiled. + +"Ranger Ballin," said Forrest, "had another son who was spirited away in +childhood by the gypsies. That will explain this visit, which on the +face of it is an impertinence. It will explain why I have entered this +house without knocking, and have invited myself to luncheon. You see, +sir, all this"--and again he made the sudden, sweeping gesture--"is +mine." + +It speaks for Forrest's effect that, although reason told Ballin to +doubt this cataclysmic statement, instinct convinced him that it was +true. Yet what its truth might mean to him did not so convincingly +appear. That he might be ousted from all that he looked on as his own +did not yet occur to him, even vaguely. + +"Then we are cousins," he said simply, and held out his hand. But +Forrest did not take it at once. + +"Do you understand what cousinship with me means to you?" he said. + +"Why," said Ballin, "if you _are_ my cousin"--he tried to imply the +doubt that he by no means felt--"there is surely enough for us both." + +"Enough to make up for the years when there has been nothing?" Forrest +smiled. + +"It is a matter for lawyers to discuss, then," said Ballin quietly. +"Personally, I do not doubt that you believe yourself to be my cousin's +son. But there is room, surely, in others for many doubts." + +"Not in others," said Forrest, "who have been taught to know that two +and two are four." + +"Have you documentary proof of this astonishing statement?" said Ballin. + +"Surely," said Forrest. And he drew from an inner pocket a bundle of +documents bound with a tape. Ballin ran a perturbed but deft eye through +them, while Forrest stood motionless, more like a shadow than a man. +Then, presently, Ballin looked up with a stanch, honorable look. + +"I pick no flaws here cousin," he said. "I--I congratulate you." + +"Cousin," said Forrest, "it has been my business in life to see others +take their medicine. But I have never seen so great a pill swallowed so +calmly. Will you offer me your hand now?" + +Ballin offered his hand grimly. + +Then he tied the documents back into their tape and offered the bundle +to Forrest. + +"I am a careless man," said Forrest; "I might lose them. May I ask you +to look after them for me?" + +"Would you leave me alone with them?" asked Ballin. + +"Of course," said Forrest. + +Ballin opened an old-fashioned safe in the paneling and locked it upon +the despoiling documents. Yet his heart, in spite of its dread and +bitterness, was warmed by the trustfulness of the despoiler. + +"And now what?" he said. + +"And now," said Forrest, "remember for a little while only that I am, +let us say, an old friend of your youth. Forget for the present, if you +can, who else I am, and what my recrudescence must mean to you. It is +not a happiness"--he faltered with his winning smile--"to give pain." + + + + +II + +"Your father," said Forrest, "says that I may have his seat at the head +of the table. You see, Miss Dorothy, in the world in which I have lived +there were no families. And I have the strongest desire to experiment in +some of those things which I have missed.... Ballin," he exclaimed, +"how lovely your daughters are!" + +The young Earl of Moray glanced up mischievously. + +"Do you think, sir," he drawled, "that I have made the best selection +under the circumstances? Sometimes I think I ought to have made up to +Ellen instead of Dorothy." + +"What's the matter with _us_?" said Alice, and she laid her hand upon +Evelyn's. + +"Oh, you little rotters!" exclaimed the earl, whom they sometimes teased +to the point of agony. "No man in his senses would look at _you_." + +"Right-O!" said young Stephen Ballin, who made the eighth at table. +"They're like germs," he explained to Forrest--"very troublesome to +deal with." + +"It's because we're twins," said Evelyn. "Everybody who isn't twins is +down on them." + +"It's because they are always beautiful and good," said Alice. "Why +don't you stand up for us, father?" + +It was noticed that Mr. Ballin was not looking well; that the chicken +_mousse_ upon his plate was untouched, and that he fooled with his +bread, breaking it, crumbling it, and rolling it into pellets. He pulled +himself together and smiled upon his beloved twins. + +Forrest had turned to the Earl of Moray. + +"Was it your ancestor," he said, "who 'was a bra' gallant, and who raid +at the gluve'?" + +"I am confident of it," said the young Englishman. + +"By all accounts," said Forrest, "he would have been a good hand with a +derringer. Have you that gift for games?" + +"I'm a very good golfer." said the earl, "but I thought a derringer was +a kind of dish that babies ate gruel out of." He blushed becomingly. + +"As ever," said Alice, "insular and ignorant." + +"You prickly baby!" exclaimed the earl. "What is a derringer, Mr. +Forrest?" + +Forrest, having succeeded in drawing the attention of his immediate and +prospective family from the ill looks of Mr. Ballin, proposed to keep +his advantage. + +"I will show you," he said. "Are my hands empty?" + +"Quite so," said the earl. + +"Keep your eyes on them," said Forrest, "so. Now, we will suppose that +you have good reason to believe that I have stolen your horse. Call me a +horse thief." + +"Sir," said the earl, entering into the spirit of the game, "you are a +horse thief!" + +There appeared in Forrest's right hand, which had seemed empty, which +had seemed not to move or to perform in any celeritous and magic manner, +a very small, stubby, nickel pistol, with a caliber much too great for +it, and down whose rifled muzzle the earl found himself gazing. The earl +was startled. But he said, "I was mistaken, sir; you are not a horse +thief." As mysteriously as it had come, the wicked little derringer +disappeared. Forrest's hands remained innocently in plain view of all. + +"Oh," said Alice, "if you had only pulled the trigger!" + +Evelyn giggled. + +"Frankly, Mr. Forrest," said the earl, "aren't the twins loathsome? But +tell me, can you shoot that thing as magically as you play tricks +with it?" + +"It's not a target gun," said Forrest. "It's for instantaneous work at +close range. One could probably hit a tossed coin with it, but one must +have more weight and inches to the barrel and less explosion for fine +practice." + +"What would you call fine practice?" asked Stephen. + +"Oh," said Forrest, "a given leg of a fly at twenty paces, or to snip a +wart from a man's hand at twenty-five." + +Mr. Ballin rose. + +"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have +finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He +left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the +full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his +brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty--of too long +leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun +and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins +were silent. + +"He used to sing that song," said Forrest, "so that the cold chills went +galloping the length of a man's spine. He was as like you to look at," +he turned to the earl, "as one star is like another. I cannot tell you +how it has moved me to meet you. We were in a place called Grub Gulch, +placer-mining--half a dozen of us. I came down with the scarlet fever. +The others bolted, all but Charlie Stuart. He stayed. But by the time I +was up, thanks to him, he was down--thanks to me. He died of it." +Forrest finished very gravely. + +"Good Lord!" said the earl. + +"_He_ might ha' been a king," said Forrest. And he swallowed the lump +that rose in his throat, and turned away so that his face could not be +seen by them. + +But, presently, he flashed about with his winning smile. + +"What, would all you rich young people do if you hadn't a sou in the +world?" + +"Good Lord!" said Stephen, "everything I know how to do decently costs +money." + +"I feel sure," said Alice, her arm about Evelyn's waist, "that our +beauty and goodness would see _us_ through." + +"I," said Ellen, "would quietly curl up and die." + +"I," said Dorothy, "would sell my earl to the highest bidder." + +"I shouldn't bring tuppence," said the earl. + +"But you," said Forrest to the earl, "what would you do if you were +stone-broke?" + +"I would marry Dorothy to-morrow," said the earl, "instead of waiting +until September. Fortunately, I have a certain amount of assets that the +law won't allow me to get rid of." + +"I wish you could," said Forrest. + +"Why?" The earl wrinkled his eyebrows. + +"I would like to see what you would do." He laid his hand lightly upon +the young Englishman's shoulder. "You don't mind? I am an old man," he +said, "but I cannot tell you--what meeting you has meant to me. I want +you to come with me now, for a few minutes, to Mr. Ballin. Will you?" + + + + +III + +"Mr. Ballin," said Forrest, his hand still on the earl's shoulder, "I +want you to tell this young man what only you and I know." + +Ballin looked up from his chair with the look of a sick man. + +"It's this, Charlie," he said in a voice that came with difficulty. +"It's a mistake to suppose that I am a rich man. Everything in this +world that I honestly thought belonged to me belongs to Mr. Forrest." + +The earl read truth in the ashen, careworn face of his love's father. + +"But surely," he said anxiously, "Dorothy is still yours--to give." + +Forrest's dark and brooding countenance became as if suddenly brightly +lighted. + +"My boy--my boy!" he cried, and he folded the wriggling and embarrassed +Stuart in his long, gaunt arms. + +I think an angel bringing glad tidings might have looked as Forrest did +when, releasing the Earl of Moray, he turned upon the impulse and began +to pour out words to Ballin. + +"When I found out who I was," he said, "and realized for how long--oh, +my Lord! how long--others had been enjoying what was mine, and that I +had rubbed myself bare and bleeding against all the rough places of +life, will you understand what a rage and bitterness against you all +possessed me? And I came--oh, on wings--to trample, and to dispossess, +and to sneer, and to send you packing.... But first the peace of the +woods and the meadows, and the beech wood and the gardens, and the quiet +hills and the little brooks staggered me. And then you--the way you took +it, cousin!--all pale and wretched as you were; you were so calm, and +you admitted the claim at once--and bore up.... Then I began to repent +of the bitterness in which I had come.... And I left the papers in your +keeping.... I thought--for I have known mostly evil--that, perhaps, you +would destroy them.... It never entered your head.... Your are clean +white--and so are your girls and your boy.... I did not expect to find +white people in possession. Why should I?... But I said, 'Surely the +Englishman isn't white--he is after the money.' But right away I began +to have that feeling, too, smoothed out of me.... And now, when he finds +that instead of Dorothy being an heiress she is a pauper, he says, 'But +surely, Dorothy is still yours to give!' + +"I was a fool to come. Yet I am glad." + +Neither Ballin nor the earl spoke. + +"Could I have this room to myself for a little while?" asked Forrest. + +"Of course," said Ballin; "it is yours." + +Forrest bowed; the corners of his mouth turned a little upward. + +"Will you come back in an hour--you, alone, cousin?" + +Ballin nodded quietly. + +"Come along, Charlie," he said, and together they left the room. But +when Ballin returned alone, an hour later, the room was empty. Upon the +Signer's writing-desk was a package addressed collectively to "The +Ballins," and in one corner was written, "Blood will tell." + +The package, on being opened, proved to contain nothing more substantial +than ashes. And by the donor thereof there was never given any +further sign. + + + + +ONE MORE MARTYR + +A little one-act play, sufficiently dramatic, is revived from time to +time among the Latin races for long runs. The play is of simplified, +classic construction. But the principal part is variously interpreted by +different actors. The minor characters, a priest and an officer, have no +great latitude for individuality, while the work of the chorus comes as +near mathematics as anything human can. The play is a passion play. No +actor has ever played the principal part more than once. And the play +differs from other plays in this, also, that there are not even +traditional lines for the principal character to speak. He may say +whatever comes into his head. He may say nothing. He may play his part +with reticence or melodramatically. It does not matter. His is what +actors call a fat part; it cannot be spoiled. And at the climax and +curtain he may sink slowly to the ground or fall upon his back or upon +his face. It does not matter. Once, before falling, a man leaped so +violently upward and forward as to break the ropes with which his legs +and arms were bound. Those who saw this performance cannot speak of it +to this day without a shudder. + +Under the management of General Weyler in Cuba this little play enjoyed, +perhaps, its longest continuous run. Curiously enough, there were +absolutely no profits to be divided at the end. But, then, think of the +expense of production! Why, to enable the General to stage that play for +so many nights--I mean sunrises--required the employment of several +hundred thousand men and actually bankrupted a nation. In this world one +must pay like the devil for one's fancies. Think what Weyler paid: all +the money that his country could beg or borrow; then his own reputation +as a soldier, as a statesman, and as a man; ending with a series of +monstrous mortgages on his own soul. For which, when it is finally sold +at auction, there will not be bid so much as one breath of garlic. + +When Juan D'Acosta's mother heard that her younger son Manual had been +taken prisoner by the Spaniards and was to be shot the following morning +at sunrise she sat for an hour motionless, staring at the floor. Juan, +as is, or was, well known, had died gloriously, a cigarette between his +lips, after inestimable, if secret, services to Cuba. Nor had his +execution been entirely a martyrdom. He was shot for a spy. He was a +spy, and a very daring, clever, and self-effacing one. He had been +caught within the Spanish lines with incriminating papers upon his +person. And before they could secure him he had had the eternal +satisfaction of ripping open two Spaniards with his knife so that they +died. He was executed without a trial. His mother went out with others +of his relatives to see him die. The memory of his dying had remained +with her to comfort her for the fact of it. She had seen him, calm, and +in her eyes very beautiful, standing in strong relief with his back to a +white wall, a cigarette between his lips. There had not been the +slightest bravado in his perfect self-possession. It had been that of a +gentleman, which he was not by birth, and a man of the world; quiet, +retiring and attentive. He had looked so courteous, so kind-hearted, so +pure! He had spoken--on either side of his cigarette--for some moments +to the priest, apologizing through him to God for whatever spots there +may have been upon his soul. Then his eyes had sought his mother's among +the spectators and remained steadfastly upon them, smiling, until the +exactions of his part demanded that he face more to the front and look +into the muzzles of the Mausers. The fire of his cigarette having burned +too close to his lips for comfort, and his hands being tied, he spat the +butt out of his mouth and allowed the last taste of smoke which he was +to enjoy on earth to curl slowly off through his nostrils. Then, for it +was evident that the edge of the sun would show presently above the rim +of the world, he had drawn a breath or two of the fresh morning air and +had spoken his last words in a clear, controlled voice. + +"Whenever one of us dies," he had said, "it strengthens the cause of +liberty instead of weakening it. I am so sure of this that I would like +to come to life after being shot, so that I might be taken and shot +again and again and again. You, my friends, are about to fire _for_ +Cuba, not against her. Therefore, I thank you. I think that is all. +Christ receive me." + +The impact of the volley had flattened him backward against the wall +with shocking violence, but he had remained on his feet for an +appreciable interval of time and had then sunk slowly to his knees and +had fallen quietly forward upon his face. + +So her older boy had died, honoring himself and his country, after +serving his country only. The memory of his life, deeds and dying was a +comfort to her. And when she learned that Manuel, too, was to be shot, +and sat staring at the floor, it was not entirely of Manuel that she was +thinking. She did not love Manuel as she had loved Juan. He had not been +a comfort to her in any way. He had been a sneaking, cowardly child; he +had grown into a vicious and cowardly young man. He was a patriot +because he was afraid not to be; he had enlisted in the Cuban army +because he was afraid not to. He had even participated in skirmishes, +sweating with fear and discharging his rifle with his eyes closed. But +he had been clever enough to conceal his white feathers, and he could +talk in a modest, purposeful way, just like a genuine hero. He was to be +shot, not because he was himself, but because he was Juan's brother. The +Spaniards feared the whole family as a man fears a hornet's nest in the +eaves and, because one hornet has stung him, wages exterminating war +upon all hornets. In Manuel's case, however, there was a trial, short +and unpleasant. The man was on his knees half the time, blubbering, +abjuring, perspiring, and begging for mercy; swearing on his honor to +betray his country wherever and whenever possible; to fight against her, +to spy within her defenses and plans--anything, everything! + +His judges were not impressed. They believed him to be acting. He was +one of the D'Acostas; Juan's brother, Ferdinand's son--a hornet. Not the +same type of hornet, but for that very reason, perhaps, the more to be +feared. "When he finds," said the colonel who presided, "that he is to +be shot beyond peradventure he will turn stoic like the others, you'll +see. Even now he is probably laughing at us for being moved by his +blubberings and entreaties. He wants to get away from us at any price. +That's all. He wants a chance to sting us again. And that chance he +will not get." + +Oddly enough, the coward did turn stoic the moment he was formally +condemned. But it was physical exhaustion as much as anything else; a +sudden numbing of the senses, a kind of hideous hypnotism upon him by +the idea of death. It lasted the better part of an hour. Then, alone in +his cell, he hurled himself against the walls, screaming, or cowered +upon the stone floor, pooling it with tears, sobbing horribly with his +whole body, going now and again into convulsions of nausea. These +actions were attributed by his guard to demoniacal rage, but not to +fear. He thus fought blindly against the unfightable until about four in +the afternoon, when exhaustion once more put a quietus upon him. It was +then that his mother, having taken counsel at last with her patriot +soul, visited him. + +She had succeeded, not without difficulty, in gaining permission. It was +not every mother who could manage a last interview with a condemned son. +But she had bribed the colonel. She had given him in silver the savings +of a lifetime. + +The old woman sat down by her son and took his hand in hers. Then the +door of the cell was closed upon them and locked. Manuel turned and +collapsed against his mother's breast. + +"It's all right, Manuel," she said in her quiet, cheerful voice. "I've +seen the colonel." + +Manuel looked up quickly, a glint of hope in his rodent eyes. + +"What do you mean?" he said. His voice was hoarse. His mother bit her +lips, for the hoarseness told her that her son had been screaming with +fear. In that moment she almost hated him. But she controlled herself. +She looked at him sidewise. + +"The colonel tells me that you have offered to serve Spain if he will +give you your life?" + +This was a shrewd guess. She waited for Manuel's answer, not even hoping +that it would be in the negative. She knew him through and through. + +"Well," he choked, "it wouldn't do." + +"That's where you are wrong, my son," she said. "The colonel, on the +contrary, believes he can make use of you. He is going to let you +go free." + +Manuel could not believe his ears, it seemed. He kept croaking "What?" +in his hoarse voice, his face brightening with each reiteration. + +"But," she went on, "he does not wish this to be known to the Cubans. +You see, if they knew that you had been allowed to go free it would +counteract your usefulness, wouldn't it?" + +"Yes--but--" + +"Listen to me. Everything is to proceed as ordered and according to army +regulations except one thing. The rifles which are to be fired at you +will be loaded with blank cartridges. When the squad fires you must fall +as if--as if you were dead. Then you will be put in a coffin and +brought to me for burial. Then you will come to life. That is all." + +She smiled into her son's face with a great gladness and patted his +hands. + +"Afterward," she said, "you will grow a beard and generally disguise +yourself. It is thus that the colonel thinks he can best make use of +your knowledge and cleverness. And, of course, at the first opportunity +you will give the colonel the slip and once more take your place in the +patriot army." + +"Of course," said Manuel; "I never meant to do what I pretended I +would." + +"Of course not!" said his mother. + +"But--" + +"But what?" + +"I don't see the necessity of having a mock execution. It's not nice to +have a lot of blank cartridges go off in your face." + +"Nice!" The old woman sprang to her feet. She shook her finger in his +face. "Nice! Haven't you any shred of courage in your great, hulking +body? I don't believe you'll even face blank cartridges like a man--I +believe you'll scream and blubber and be a shame to us all. You disgust +me!" She spat on the floor. "Here I come to tell you that you are to be +spared, and you're afraid to death of the means by which you are to go +free. Why, I'd stand up to blank cartridges all day without turning a +hair--or to bullets, for that matter--at two hundred metres, where I +knew none of those Spanish idiots could hit me except by accident. I +wouldn't expect you to play the man at a real execution or at anything +real, but surely you can pull yourself together enough to play the man +at a mock execution. What a chance! You can leave a reputation as great +as your brother's--greater, even; you could crack jokes and burst out +laughing just when they go to fire--" + +Then, as suddenly as she had flown into a passion, she burst into tears +and flung her arms about her boy and clung to him and mothered him until +in the depths of his surly, craven heart he was touched and +strengthened. + +"Don't be afraid for me, mother," he said. "I do not like even the blank +cartridges, God forgive me; but I shall not shame you." + +She kissed him again and again and laughed and cried. And when the guard +opened the door and said that the time was up she patted her boy upon +the cheeks and shoulders and smiled bravely into his face. Then she +left him. + +The execution of Manuel D'Acosta was not less inspiring to the patriotic +heart than that of his brother Juan. And who knows but that it may have +been as difficult an act of control for the former to face the blank +cartridges as for the latter to stand up to those loaded with ball? Like +Juan, Manuel stood against the wall with a cigarette between his lips. +Like Juan, he sought out his mother's face among the spectators and +smiled at her bravely. He did not stand so modestly, so gentlemanly as +Juan had done, but with a touch of bravado, an occasional +half-swaggering swing from the hips, an upward tilt of the chin. + +"I told you he would turn stoic," the colonel whispered to one of the +officers who had taken part in the trial. "I know these Cubans." + +It was all very edifying. Like Juan, Manuel spat out his cigarette when +it had burned too short. But, unlike Juan, he made no dying speech. He +felt that he was still too hoarse to be effective. Instead, at the +command, "Aim!" he burst out laughing, as if in derision of the +well-known lack of markmanship which prevailed among the Spaniards. + +He was nearly torn in two. + +Those who lifted him into his coffin noticed that the expression upon +his face was one of blank astonishment, as if the beyond had contained +an immeasurable surprise for him. + +His mother took a certain comfort from the manner of his dying, but it +was the memory of her other boy that really enabled her to live out her +life without going mad. + + + + +"MA'AM?" + +In most affairs, except those which related to his matrimonial ventures, +Marcus Antonius Saterlee was a patient man. On three occasions "an +ardent temperament and the heart of a dove," as he himself had expressed +it, had corralled a wife in worship and tenderness within his house. The +first had been the love of his childhood; the wooing of the second had +lasted but six weeks; that of the third but three. He rejoiced in the +fact that he had been a good husband to three good women. He lamented +that all were dead. Now and then he squirmed his bull head around on his +bull body, and glanced across the aisle at the showy woman who was +daintily picking a chicken wing. He himself was not toying with +beefsteak, boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, lima, and string +beans. He was eating them. Each time he looked at the lady he muttered +something to his heart of a dove: + +"Flighty. Too slight. Stuck on herself. Pin-head," etc. + +With his food Saterlee was not patient. He dispensed with mastication. +Neither was he patient of other people's matrimonial ventures. And, in +particular, that contemplated and threatened by his son and heir was +moving him across three hundred miles of inundated country as fast as a +train could carry him. His son had written: + +"DEAREST DAD--I've found Dorothy again. She's at Carcasonne. They +thought her lungs were bad, but they aren't. We're going to be married a +week from to-day--next Friday--at nine A.M. This marriage is going to +take place, Daddy dear. You can't prevent it. I write this so's to be on +the square. I'm inviting you to the wedding. I'll be hurt if you don't +show up. What if Dorothy's mother _is_ an actress and has been divorced +twice? You've been a marrying man yourself, Dad. Dorothy is all darling +from head to foot. But I love you, too, Daddy, and if you can't see it +my way, why, God bless and keep you just the same." + +JIM. + +I can't deny that Marcus Antonius Saterlee was touched by his son's +epistle. But he was not moved out of reason. + +"The girl's mother," he said to himself, "is a painted, divorced jade." +And he thought with pleasure of the faith, patience, and rectitude of +the three gentle companions whom he had successively married and buried. +"There was never any divorce in the Saterlee blood," he had prided +himself. "Man or woman, we stick by our choice till he or she" (he was +usually precise) "turns up his or her toes. Not till then do we think of +anybody else. But then we do, because it is not good to live alone, +especially in a small community in Southern California." + +He glanced once more at the showy lady across the aisle. She had +finished her chicken wing, and was dipping her fingers in a finger-bowl, +thus displaying to sparkling advantage a number of handsome rings. + +"My boy's girl's mother a painted actress," he muttered as he looked. +"Not if I know it." And then he muttered: "_You'd_ look like an actress +if you was painted." + +Though the words can not have been distinguished, the sounds were +audible. + +"Sir?" said the lady, stiffly but courteously. + +"Nothing, Ma'am," muttered Mark Anthony, much abashed. "I'm surprised to +see so much water in this arid corner of the world, where I have often +suffered for want of it. I must have been talking to myself to that +effect. I hope you will excuse me." + +The lady looked out of the window--not hers, but Saterlee's. + +"It does look," she said, "as if the waters had divorced themselves from +the bed of ocean." + +She delivered this in a quick but telling voice. Saterlee was shocked at +the comparison. + +"I suppose," she continued, "we may attribute those constant and tedious +delays to which we have been subjected all day to the premature melting +of snow in the fastnesses of the Sierras?" + +This phrase did not shock Saterlee. He was amazed by the power of memory +which it proved. For three hours earlier he had read a close paraphrase +of it in a copy of the Tomb City _Picayune_ which he had bought at +that city. + +The train ran slower and slower, and out on to a shallow embankment. + +"Do you think we shall ever get anywhere?" queried the lady. + +"Not when we expect to, Ma'am," said Saterlee. He began to scrub his +strong mouth with his napkin, lest he should return to the smoker with +stains of boiled eggs upon him. + +The train gave a jolt. And then, very quietly, the dining-car rolled +over on its side down the embankment. There was a subdued smashing of +china and glass. A clergyman at one of the rear tables quietly remarked, +"Washout," and Saterlee, who had not forgotten the days when he had +learned to fall from a bucking bronco, relaxed his great muscles and +swore roundly, sonorously, and at great length. The car came to rest at +the bottom of the embankment, less on its side than on its top. For a +moment--or so it seemed--all was perfectly quiet. Then (at one and the +same moment) a lady in the extreme front of the diner was heard +exclaiming faintly: "You're pinching me," and out of the tail of his +eye Saterlee saw the showy lady across the aisle descending upon him +through the air. She was accompanied by the hook and leg table upon +which she had made her delicate meal, and all its appurtenances, +including ice-water and a wide open jar of very thin mustard. + +"Thank you," she murmured, as her impact drove most of the breath out of +Saterlee's bull body. "How strong you are!" + +"When you are rested, Ma'am," said he, with extreme punctiliousness, "I +think we may leave the car by climbing over the sides of the seats on +this side. Perhaps you can manage to let me pass you in case the door is +jammed. I could open it." + +He preceded her over and over the sides of the seats, opened the car +door, which was not jammed, and helped her to the ground. And then, his +heart of a parent having wakened to the situation, he forgot her and +forsook her. He pulled a time-table from his pocket; he consulted a +mile-post, which had had the good sense to stop opposite the end of the +car from which he had alighted. It was forty miles to Carcasonne--and +only two to Grub City--a lovely city of the plain, consisting of one +corrugated-iron saloon. He remembered to have seen it--with its great +misleading sign, upon which were emblazoned the noble words: +"Life-Saving Station." + +"Grub City--hire buggy--drive Carcasonne," he muttered, and without a +glance at the train which had betrayed him, or at the lady who had +fallen upon him, so to speak, out of the skies, he moved forward with +great strides, leaped a puddle, regained the embankment, and hastened +along the ties, skipping every other one. + + + + +II + +Progress is wonderful in the Far West. Since he had last seen it only a +year had passed, and yet the lovely city of Grub had doubled its size. +It now consisted of two saloons: the old "Life-Saving Station" and the +new "Like Father Used to Take." The proprietor of the new saloon was the +old saloon-keeper's son-in-law, and these, with their flourishing and, +no doubt, amiable families, were socially gathered on the shady side of +the Life-Saving Station. The shade was much the same sort that is +furnished by trees in more favored localities, and the population of +Grub City was enjoying itself. The rival wives, mother and daughter, +ample, rosy women, were busy stitching baby clothes. Children already +arrived were playing with a soap-box and choice pebbles and a tin mug at +keeping saloon. A sunburned-haired, flaming maiden of sixteen was at +work upon a dress of white muslin, and a young man of eighteen, brother +by his looks to the younger saloon-keeper, heartily feasted a pair of +honest blue eyes upon her plump hands as they came and went with the +needle. It looked as if another year might see a third saloon in +Grub City. + +Saterlee approached the group, some of whose elders had been watching +and discussing his approach. + +"Do any of you own a boat?" he asked. + +"Train D-railed?" queried the proprietor of the Life-Saving Station, "or +was you just out for a walk?" + +The family and family-in-law laughed appreciatively. + +"The train put to sea in a washout," said Saterlee, "and all the +passengers were drowned." + +"Where you want to git?" asked the proprietor. + +"Carcasonne," said Saterlee. "Not the junction--the resort." + +"Well," said the proprietor, "there's just one horse and just one trap +in Grub City, and they ain't for hire." + +Again the united families laughed appreciatively. It was evident that a +prophet is not always without honor in his own land. + +"We've no use for them," said the great man, with the noble abandoning +gesture of a Spanish grandee about to present a horse to a man +travelling by canoe. And he added: "So they're for sale. Now what do you +think they'd be worth to you?" + +All the honest blue eyes, and there were no other colors, widened upon +Saterlee. + +"Fifty dollars," he said, as one accustomed to business. + +It was then that a panting, female voice was raised behind him. "Sixty +dollars!" + +His showy acquaintance of the dining-car had followed him along the ties +as fast as she could, and was just come up. + +"I thought you two was a trust," commented the proprietor's wife, +pausing with her needle in the air. "But it seems you ain't even a +community of interests." + +"Seventy dollars," said Saterlee quietly. + +The lady advanced to his side, counting the change in her purse. + +"Seventy-six dollars and eighty-five cents," she said. + +"Eighty dollars," said Saterlee. + +"Oh!" cried the lady, "seventy-six eighty-five is every cent I've got +with me--and you're no gentleman to bid higher." + +"Eighty," repeated Saterlee. + +"Eighty dollars," said the son-in-law, "for a horse and buggy that a +man's never seen is too good to be true." + +"They are yours, sir," said the father-in-law, and he turned to his +daughter's husband. "Is that horse in your cellar or in mine?" he asked. +"I ain't set eyes on her since February." + +The son-in-law, sent to fetch the horse, first paused at the cellar +door of the Life-Saving Station, then, with a shake of the head and an +"I remember _now_" expression, he approached and entered the subterrene +of his own house and business, and disappeared, saying: "Whoa, there! +Steady you!" + +Saterlee turned quietly to the angry and tearful vision whom he had so +callously outbid. + +"Ma'am," he said, "if we come to my stop first or thereabouts, the buggy +is yours to go on with. If we reach yours first, it's mine." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, her face brightening, "how good you are. But you'll +let me go halves on the purchase money." + +"If I appeared rude just now," he said, "it was to save a lady's pocket. +Now then, you've wet them high-heeled shoes. Wherever you're going, it's +a long drive. Let's go inside and dry our feet while they're hitching +up. Which is your house?" + +The proprietor of the Life-Saving Station indicated that building with +his thumb, and told his daughter of the white muslin dress to kindle a +fire in the stove. She slid her future wedding finery into a large paper +bag, and entered the saloon by the "Family Entrance," ardently followed +by her future husband. + +The proprietor, Saterlee, and the showy lady followed more slowly, +discussing roads. + +"Now," said Saterlee, "if you're going further than Carcasonne +Junction, I'll get off there. And either I'll walk to the hotel or hire +another trap." + +"Why!" exclaimed the lady, "are you bound for Carcasonne House? So am +I." + +"In that case," said Saterlee elegantly, "we'll go the whole hog +together." + +"Quite so," said the lady primly. + +"You'd ought to make Carcasonne House by midnight," said the proprietor. +"Put your feet up on that there stove." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed the lady. "And if we don't make it by midnight?" + +"We will by one or two o'clock." + +The lady became very grave. + +"Of course," she said, "it can't be helped. But it would be ever so much +nicer if we could get in before midnight." + +"I take your point, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "Before midnight is +just a buggy ride--after midnight means being out all night +together. I feel for you, Ma'am, but I'm dinged if I see how +we can help ourselves. It's five now." He counted on his fingers: +"six--seven--eight--nine--ten--'leven--twelve--seven hours--seven into +forty--five and five-sevenths.... Ma'am," he said, "I can promise +nothing. It's all up to the horse." + +"Of course," said the lady, "it doesn't really matter. But," and she +spoke a little bitterly, "several times in my life my actions and my +motives have been open to misconstruction, and they have been +misconstrued. I have suffered, sir, much." + +"Well, Ma'am," said Saterlee, "my reputation as a married man and a +father of many children is mixed up in this, too. If we are in late--or +out late rather--and there's any talk--I guess I can quiet some of it. I +rather guess I can." + +He rose to his feet, a vast, round, deep man, glowing with health and +energy. + +"I once quieted a bull, Ma'am," said he, "by the horns. I would a held +him till help came if one of the horns hadn't come off, and he +ran away." + +The proprietor entered the conversation with an insinuating wedge of a +voice. + +"I don't like to mind other folks' business," he said, "but if the lady +is fretting about bein' out all night with a total stranger, I feel it +my dooty to remark that in Grub City there is a justice of the peace." +He bowed and made a gesture which either indicated his whole person, or +that smug and bulging portion of it to which the gesture was more +directly applied. + +Saterlee and the lady did not look at each other and laugh. They were +painfully embarrassed. + +"Nothing like a sound splice," suggested the Justice, still hopeful of +being helpful. "Failing that, you've a long row to hoe, and I suggest a +life saver for the gent and a nip o' the same for the lady. I'd like you +to see the bar," he added. "Mine is the show place of this here +city--mirrors--peacock feathers--Ariadne in the nood--cash register--and +everything hunky-dunk." + +"We'll go you," said Saterlee. "At any rate, I will." + +"Oh, I must see, too," said the lady, and both were relieved at the turn +which the conversation had taken. + +The proprietor removed the cheese-cloth fly protector from the +two-by-three mirror over the bar, slipped a white jacket over his blue +shirt, and rubbed his hands together invitingly, as if washing them. + +"What's your pleasure, gents?" said he. + +As the lady approached the bar she stumbled. Saterlee caught her by the +elbow. + +"That rail down there," he said, "ain't to trip over. It's to rest your +foot on. So." He showed her. With the first sign of humor that she had +shown, the lady suddenly and very capitally mimicked his attitude. And +in a tough voice (really an excellent piece of acting): "What's yours, +kid?" she said. And then blushed to the eyes, and was very much ashamed +of herself. But Saterlee and the bartender were delighted. They roared +with laughter. + +"Next thing," said the bartender, "she'll pull a gun and shoot up the +place." + +Saterlee said: "Rye." + +"I want to be in it," said the lady. "Can you make me something that +looks like a drink, and isn't?" + +"Scotch," said the proprietor without hesitation. + +"No--no," she said, "Water and coloring matter." + +She was fitted finally with a pony of water containing a few drops of +Spanish Red and an olive. + +The three touched glasses and wished each other luck all around. +Saterlee paid eighty dollars and some change across the bar. But the +proprietor pushed back the change. + +"The drinks," he said grandly, "was on the house." + + + + +III + +The united families bade them farewell, and Saterlee brought down the +whip sharply upon the bony flank of the old horse which he had bought. +But not for a whole minute did the sensation caused by the whip appear +to travel to the ancient mare's brain. Not till reaching a deep puddle +did she seem suddenly aware of the fact that she had been whipped. Then, +however, she rushed through the puddle, covering Saterlee and the lady +with mud, and having reached the other side, fell once more into a +halting walk. + +The lady was tightly wedged between Saterlee and the side of the buggy. +Every now and then Saterlee made a tremendous effort to make himself +narrower, but it was no use. + +"If you begin to get numb," he said, "tell me, and I'll get out and walk +a spell.... How clear the air is! Seems as if you could stretch out your +hand and touch the mountains. Do you see that shadow half way up--on the +left--about three feet off? Carcasonne House is somewhere in that +shadow. And it's forty miles away." + +Once more the road ran under a shallow of water. And once more the old +mare remembered that she had been whipped, and made a rush for it. Fresh +mud was added to that which had already dried upon them by the dry +miracle of the air. + +"She'd ought to have been a motor-boat," said Saterlee, the mud which +had entered his mouth gritting unpleasantly between his teeth. "Last +year there was _one_ spring hole _somewhere_ in these parts--this year +it's all lakes and rivers--never was such rains before in the memory of +man. Wonder what Gila River's doing?" + +"What is Gila River?" she asked. + +"It's a sand gully," he said, "that winds down from the mountains, and +out across the plain, like a sure enough river. Only there's no water in +it, only a damp spot here and there. But I was thinking that maybe it'll +be going some now. We ought to strike it before dark." + +The mare rushed through another puddle. + +The lady laughed. "Please don't bother to hold her," she said; "I don't +mind--now." + +"I guess your dress ain't really hurt," commented Saterlee. "I remember +my old woman--Anna--had a brown silk that got a mud bath, and came +through all right." + +"This is an old rag, anyway," said the showy lady, who was still showy +in spite of a wart-like knot of dried mud on the end of her nose. And +she glanced at her spattered but graceful and expensive white linen and +hand-embroidered dress. + +"Well, I can see one thing," said Saterlee, "that you've made up your +mind to go through this experience like a good sport. I wish I didn't +have to take up so much room." + +"Never mind," she said, "I like to think that I could go to sleep +without danger of falling out." + +"That's so--that's so," said Saterlee. "Maybe it's just as well we're +something of a tight fit." + +"I have always mistrusted thin men," said the lady, and she hastily +added: "Not that you're _fat_" + +"My bones are covered," said Saterlee; "I admit it." + +"Yes," she said, "but with big muscles and sinews." + +"I am not weak," said Saterlee; "I admit it." + +"What air this is," exclaimed the lady; "what delicious air. No wonder +it cures people with lung trouble. Still, I'm glad mine are sound." + +"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "When you said +you were bound for Carcasonne House, I thought to myself, 'Mebbe she's +got it,' and I felt mighty sorry." + +"Do I look like a consumptive?" she asked. + +"Bless me--no," said he. "But you're not stout, and, considering where +you said you was going, you mustn't blame me for putting two and two +together and getting the wrong answer." + +"I don't blame you at all," she said, but a little stiffly. "It was +perfectly natural. No," she said, "my daughter is at Carcasonne House. +She had a very heavy cold--and other troubles--and _two_ doctors agreed +that her lungs were threatened. Well, perhaps they were. I sent her to +Carcasonne House on the doctors' recommendation. And it seems that she's +just as sound as I am." + +"What a relief to you, Ma'am," said Saterlee hastily. + +"Yes," she said, but without enthusiasm, "a great relief." + +He screwed his massive head around on his massive neck, not without +difficulty, and looked at her. His voice sounded hurt. + +"You don't seem very glad, Ma'am," he said. + +Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him. + +"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood +will--_must_ tell?" + +"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand +dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's +because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made +a fortune out of it.... Cattle," he added in explanation. + +"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their +affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to +reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could +stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do +you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and +steady-minded--you don't seem like a stranger." + +"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for +hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!" + +"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a +young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know +this: that his father has buried three wives." + +The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the +lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands, +did not perceive this convulsion of nature. + +"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same +brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl--to suffer--to die--and +to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks +when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man. +No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow, +too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee, +the cattle man--do you know him?" + +"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton. + +"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother +to her. I have suffered for her. And she must--she shall--listen to me." + +"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can +count on me.... Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire +sympathy with your views, Ma'am.... Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee +had _divorced_ three wives...." + +The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of +blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and +was pleased. + +"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first +wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire +was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am. +But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is +a difference. Because God Almighty Himself says in one of His books that +man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a +faithful and tender companion is what sets a man--some men--to looking +for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is +he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who +can't cling together until death--and death alone part 'em--for such +people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding." + +"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the +applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her +composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he +dies--not the _death_--but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love +to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if +he had really died? He is dead to her--buried--men don't come back. +Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the +service read over him--that's divorce--and find another whom she can +trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem +identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man +who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself +marrying again--if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still +loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical. +And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible." + +"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and +vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of +it along those lines. See that furrow across the road--that's where a +snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have +buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I +don't seem a regular hell-hound." + +"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you +that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself +up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that +I act for my living--" + +"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew +more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at +Carcasonne House is the same as yours." + +She was silent for a moment. And then: + +"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem +to want the same thing--that is, to keep our children from marrying +each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it." + +"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But--" and he +fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to +her. She read it in the waning light. + +"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute +of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?" + +She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully +and minutely folded sheet of note-paper. + +"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound +like--" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it. + +"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing +brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears--when they were +in his own eyes. + +"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk." + +"No," said Saterlee, "let's think." + + + + +IV + +They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters. + +"That," said Saterlee dryly, "will be Gila River. Mebbe we'll have to +think about getting across that first. It's a river now, by the sound of +it, if it never was before." + +"Fortunately it's not dark yet," said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"The last time I had trouble with a river," said Saterlee, "was when my +first wife died. That was the American River in flood. I had to cross it +to get a doctor. We'd gone prospectin'--just the old woman and me--more +for a lark than profit." + +"Yes?" said Mrs. Kimbal sympathetically. + +"She took sick in an hour," he went on. "From what I've heard since, I +guess it was appendicitis. Anyway, I rode off for help, hell for +leather, and when I come to the river the whole thing was roaring and +foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make +it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, +he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, +but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt +this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be +scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that +didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, Mark,' he says, 'it's wanting to be +sure that I make the right choice.' I says: 'She was in terrible pain, +Jim. Many a time she's done you a good turn; some you know of, some you +don't.' That fetched him. He caught up his bridle and drove his spurs +into his horse, and was swept down-stream like a leaf. I rode along the +bank to help if I could. But he got across on a long diagonal--horse and +all. I waved to him to go on and not mind about me. And he rode off at +the gallop. But I was too heavy, I guess. I lost my second horse in that +flood, and had to foot it into camp. I was too late. Pain had made her +unconscious, and she was dead. But before givin' in she'd wrote me a +letter." He broke off short. "And there's Gila River," he said. + +"I hoped you were going to tell me what your poor wife said in her +letter," said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"Oh, Ma'am," he said, hesitated, cleared his throat, and became routed +and confused. + +"If you'd rather not--" said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"It isn't that," he said. "It would seem like bragging." + +"Surely not," she said. + +Saterlee, with his eyes on the broad, brown flood which they were +approaching, repeated like a lesson: + +"'Mark--I'm dying. I want it to do good, not harm. Jenny always thought +the world of you. You'll be lonely when I'm gone. I don't want you to be +lonely. You gave me peace on earth. And you can't be happy unless you've +got a woman to pet and pamper. That's your nature--'" + +He paused. + +"That was all," he said, and wiped his forehead with the palm of his +hand. "It just stopped there." + +"I'm glad you told me," said Mrs. Kimbal gently. "It will be a lesson +to me not to spring to conclusions, and not to make up my mind about +things I'm not familiar with." + +When they came to where the road disappeared under the swift unbroken +brown of Gila River, the old horse paused of her own accord, and, +turning her bony and scarred head a half revolution, stared almost +rudely at the occupants of the buggy. + +"It all depends," said Saterlee, "how deep the water runs over the road, +and whether we can keep to the road. You see, it comes out higher up +than it goes in. Can you swim, Ma'am?" + +Mrs. Kimbal admitted that, in clothes made to the purpose, and in very +shallow water, she was not without proficiency. + +"Would you rather we turned back?" he asked. + +"I feel sure you'll get me over," said she. + +"Then," said Saterlee, "let's put the hood down. In case we do capsize, +we don't want to get caught under it." + +Saterlee on his side, and Mrs. Kimbal, not without exclamations of +annoyance, on hers, broke the toggle-joints that held the dilapidated +hood in place, and thrust it backward and down. At once the air seemed +to circulate with greater freshness. + +For some moments Saterlee considered the river, up-stream, down-stream, +and across, knitting his brows to see better, for the light was failing +by leaps and bounds. Then, in an embarrassed voice: + +"I've _got_ to do it," he said. "It's only right." + +"What?" said Mrs. Kimbal. + +"I feel sure," he said, "that under the circumstances you'll make every +allowance, Ma'am." + +Without further hesitation--in fact, with almost desperate haste, as if +wishing to dispose of a disagreeable duty--he ripped open the buttons of +his waistcoat and removed it at the same time with his coat, as if the +two had been but one garment. He tossed them into the bottom of the +buggy in a disorderly heap. But Mrs. Kimbal rescued them, separated +them, folded them neatly, and stowed them under the seat. + +Saterlee made no comment. He was thinking of the state of a shirt that +he had had on since early morning, and was wondering how, with his +elbows pressed very tightly to his sides, he could possibly manage to +unlace his boots. He made one or two tentative efforts. But Mrs. Kimbal +seemed to divine the cause of his embarrassment. + +"_Please_," she said, "don't mind anything--on my account." + +He reached desperately, and regardlessly, for his boots, unlaced them, +and took them off. + +"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Kimbal, "_both_ your heels need darning!" + +Saterlee had tied his boots together, and was fastening them around his +neck by the remainder of the laces. + +"I haven't anybody to do my darning now," he said. "My girls are all at +school, except two that's married. So--" He finished his knot, took the +reins in his left hand and the whip in his right. + +At first the old mare would not budge. Switching was of no avail. +Saterlee brought down the whip upon her with a sound like that of small +cannon. She sighed and walked gingerly into the river. + +The water rose slowly (or the river bottom shelved very gradually), and +they were half-way across before it had reached the hubs of the wheels. +But the mare appeared to be in deeper. She refused to advance, and once +more turned and stared with a kind of wistful rudeness. Then she saw the +whip, before it fell, made a desperate plunge, and floundered forward +into deep water--but without the buggy. + +One rotten shaft had broken clean off, both rotten traces, and the +reins, upon which hitherto there had been no warning pull, were jerked +from Saterlee's loose fingers. The old mare reached the further shore +presently, swimming and scrambling upon a descending diagonal, stalked +sedately up the bank, and then stood still, only turning her head to +look at the buggy stranded in mid-stream. The sight appeared to arouse +whatever of youthful mischief remained in the feeble old heart. She +seemed to gather herself for a tremendous effort, then snorted once, and +kicked thrice--three feeble kicks of perhaps six inches in the +perpendicular. + +Mrs. Kimbal exploded into laughter. + +"Wouldn't you know she was a woman?" she said. + +But Saterlee was climbing out of the buggy. + +"Now," said he, "if you'll just tie my coat round your neck by the +sleeves--let the vest go hang--and then you'll have to let me +carry you." + +Mrs. Kimbal did as she was told. But the buggy, relieved at last of all +weight, slid off sidewise with the current, turned turtle, and was +carried swiftly down-stream. Saterlee staggering, for the footing was +uncertain, and holding Mrs. Kimbal high in his arms, started for shore. +The water rose above his waist, and kept rising. He halted, bracing +himself against the current. + +"Ma'am," he said in a discouraged voice, "it's no use. I've just got to +let you get wet. We've got to swim to make it." + +"All right," she said cheerfully. + +"Some folks," he said, "likes to go overboard sudden; some likes to go +in by degrees." + +"Between the two for me," said Mrs. Kimbal. "Not suddenly, but firmly +and without hesitation." + +She gave a little shivery gasp. + +"It's not really cold," she said. "How strong the current pulls. Will +you have to swim and tow me?" + +"Yes," he said. + +"Then wait," she said. "Don't let me be carried away." + +He steadied her while she drew the hat-pins from her hat and dropped it +as carelessly on the water as if that had been her dressing-table. Then +she took down her hair. It was in two great brown, shining braids. The +ends disappeared in the water, listing down-stream. + +Shorn of her hat and her elaborate hair-dressing, the lady was no longer +showy, and Saterlee, out of the tail of an admiring eye, began to see +real beauties about her that had hitherto eluded him. Whatever other +good qualities and virtues she may have tossed overboard during a stormy +and unhappy life, she had still her nerve with her. So Saterlee +told himself. + +"It will be easier, won't it," she said, "if you have my hair to hold +by? I think I can manage to keep on my back." + +"May I, Ma'am?" said Saterlee. + +She laughed at his embarrassment. And half-thrust the two great braids +into the keeping of his strong left hand. + +A moment later Saterlee could no longer keep his footing. + +"Now, Ma'am," he said, "just let yourself go." + +And he swam to shallow water, not without great labor, towing Mrs. +Kimbal by the hair. But here he picked her up in his arms, this time +with no word spoken, and carried her ashore. Some moments passed. + +"Well," she said, laughing, "aren't you going to put me down?" + +"Oh!" said he, terribly confused, "I forgot. I was just casting an eye +around for that horse. She's gone." + +"Never mind--we'll walk." + +"It'll be heavy going, wet as you are," said he. + +"I'll soon be dry in this air," she said. + +Saterlee managed to pull his boots on over his wet socks, and Mrs. +Kimbal, having given him his wet coat from her neck, stooped and wrung +as much water as she could from her clothes. + +It was now nearly dark, but they found the road and went on. + +"What time is it?" she asked. + +"My watch was in my vest," said Saterlee. + +"How far to Carcasonne House?" + +"'Bout thirty miles." + +She did not speak again for some time. + +"Well," she said, a little hardness in her voice, "you'll hardly be in +time to steer your boy away from my girl." + +"No," said he, "I won't. An' you'll hardly be in time to steer your +girl away from my boy." + +"Oh," she said, "you misconceive me entirely, Mr. Saterlee. As far as +I'm concerned, my only regret _now_ is that I shan't be in time to dance +at the wedding." + +"Ma'am?" he said, and there was something husky in his voice. + + + + +V + +About midnight they saw a light, and, forsaking what they believed in +hopeful moments to be the road, they made for it across country. Across +open spaces of sand, into gullies and out of gullies, through stinging +patches of yucca and prickly pear, through breast-high chaparral, +meshed, knotted, and matted, like a clumsy weaving together of very +tough ropes, some with thorns, and all with sharp points and elbows. + +They had long since dispensed with all conversation except what bore on +their situation. Earlier in the night the darkness and the stars had +wormed a story of divorce out of Mrs. Kimbal, and Saterlee had found +himself longing to have the man at hand and by the throat. + +And she had prattled of her many failures on the stage and, latterly, of +her more successful ventures, and of a baby boy that she had had, and +how that while she was off playing "on the road" her husband had come +in drunk and had given the baby the wrong medicine. And it was about +then that she had left off conversing. + +For in joy it is hard enough to find the way in the dark, while for +those in sorrow it is not often that it can be found at all. + +The light proved to be a lantern upon the little porch of a ramshackle +shanty. An old man with immense horn-rimmed spectacles was reading by it +out of a tattered magazine. When the couple came close, the old man +looked up from his reading, and blessed his soul several times. + +"It do beat the Dutch!" he exclaimed in whining nasal tones, "if here +ain't two more." + +"Two more what?" said Saterlee. + +"It's the floods, I reckon," whined the old man. "There's three on the +kitchen floor and there's two ladies in my bed. That's why I'm sittin' +up. There wa'n't no bed for a man in his own house. But I found this +here old copy of the _Medical Revoo_, 'n' I'm puttin' in the time with +erysipelis." + +"But," said Saterlee, "you must find some place for this lady to rest. +She is worn out with walking and hunger." + +"Stop!" whined the old man, smiting his thigh, "if there ain't that +there mattress in the loft! And I clean forgot, and told the boys that I +hadn't nothin' better than a rug or two 'n the kitchen floor." + +"A mattress!" exclaimed Saterlee. "Splendid! I guess you can sleep some +on anything near as good as a mattress. Can't you, ma'am?" + +"Indeed I could!" she said. "But you have been through as much as I +have--more. I won't take it." + +The old man's whine interrupted. + +"Ain't you two married?" he said. + +"Nop," said Saterlee shortly. + +"Now ain't that ridiculous?" meditated the old man; "I thought you was +all along." His eyes brightened behind the spectacles. "It ain't for me +to interfere _in_ course," he said, "but hereabouts I'm a Justice of the +Peace." Neither spoke. + +"I could rouse up the boys in the kitchen for witnesses," he insinuated. + +Saterlee turned suddenly to Mrs. Kimbal, but his voice was very humble. + +"Ma'am?" he suggested. + + + + +MR. HOLIDAY + +Mr. Holiday stepped upon the rear platform of his car, the Mishawaka, +exactly two seconds before the express, with a series of faint, +well-oiled jolts, began to crawl forward and issue from beneath the +glass roof of the Grand Central into the damp, pelting snow. Mr. Holiday +called the porter and told him for the good of his soul that fifty years +ago travelling had not been the easy matter that it was to-day. This off +his mind, he pulled an _Evening Post_ from his pocket and dismissed the +porter by beginning to read. He still wore his overcoat and high silk +hat. These he would not remove until time had proved that the +temperature of his car was properly regulated. + +He became restless after a while and hurried to the forward compartment +of the Mishawaka to see if all his trunks had been put on. He counted +them over several times, and each time he came to the black trunk he +sniffed and wrinkled up his nose indignantly. The black trunk was filled +with the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been +called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had +learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they +had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had +badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and +snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies +had looked such indignant, heart-broken daggers at him that, very +ungraciously, it is true, and with language that made their +sensibilities hop like peas in a pan, he had felt obliged to relent. He +had gathered up the lists and stuffed them into his pocket, and had +turned away with one bitter and awful phrase. + +"Waste not, want not!" he had said. + +He now glared and sniffed at the black trunk, and called for the porter. + +"Do you know what's in that trunk?" he said in a pettish, indignant +voice. "It's full of Christmas presents for my grandchildren. It's got +crocodiles in it and lions and Billy Possums and music-boxes and dolls +and yachts and steam-engines and spiders and monkeys and doll's +furniture and china. It cost me seven hundred and forty-two dollars and +nine cents to fill that trunk. Do you know where I wish it was?" + +The porter did not know. + +"I wish it was in Jericho!" said Mr. Holiday. + +He fingered the brass knob of the door that led forward to the regular +coaches, turned it presently, and closed it behind him. + +His progress through the train resembled that of a mongoose turned +loose in new quarters. Nothing escaped his prying scrutiny or love of +petty information. If he came to a smoking compartment, he would thrust +aside the curtain and peer in. If it contained not more than three +persons, he would then enter, seat himself, and proceed to ask them +personal questions. It was curious that people so seldom resented being +questioned by Mr. Holiday; perhaps his evident sincerity in seeking for +information accounted for this; perhaps the fact that he was famous, and +that nearly everybody in the country knew him by sight. Perhaps it is +impossible for a little gentleman of eighty, very smartly dressed, with +a carnation in his buttonhole, to be impertinent. And then he took such +immense and childish pleasure in the answers that he got, and sometimes +wrote them down in his note-book, with comments, as: + +"Got into conversation with a lady with a flat face. She gave me her age +as forty-two. I should have said nearer sixty. + +"Man of fifty tells me has had wart on nose for twenty-five years; has +had it removed by electrolysis twice, but it persists. Tell him that I +have never had a wart." + +Etc., etc. + +He asked people their ages, whence they came, where they were going; +what they did for a living; if they drank; if they smoked; if their +parents were alive; what their beefsteak cost them a pound; what kind of +underwear they wore; what church they attended; if they shaved +themselves; if married; if single; the number of their children; why +they did not have more children; how many trunks they had in the +baggage-car; whether they had seen to it that their trunks were put on +board, etc. Very young men sometimes gave him joking and sportive +answers; but it did not take him long to catch such drifts, and he +usually managed to crush their sponsors thoroughly. For he had the great +white dignity of years upon his head; and the dignity of two or three +hundred million dollars at his back. + +During his peregrinations he came to a closed door which tempted him +strangely. It was probably the door of a private state-room; it might be +the door of a dust closet. He meditated, with his finger upon the knob. +"I'll just open it slowly," he thought, "and if I make a mistake I'll +say I thought it was a smoking compartment." + +As the door opened a smell of roses came out. Huddled into the seat that +rides forward was a beautiful girl, very much dishevelled and weeping +bitterly, with her head upon one of those coarse white pillows which the +Pullman Company provides. Her roses lay upon the seat opposite. She was +so self-centred in her misery that she was not aware that the door had +been opened, a head thrust in and withdrawn, and the door closed. But +she was sure that a still, small voice had suddenly spoken in her mind, +and said: "Brace up." Presently she stopped crying, as became one who +had been made the subject of a manifestation, and began to put her hair +in order at the narrow mirror between the two windows. Meanwhile, though +Mr. Holiday was making himself scarce, as the saying is, he was consumed +with interest to know why the beautiful girl was weeping. _And he meant +to find out_. + +But in the meantime another case provoked his interest. A handsome woman +of thirty-five occupied Section 7 in Car 6. She was dressed in +close-fitting black, with a touch of white at her throat and wrists. + +Mr. Holiday had seen her from the extreme end of the car, and by the +time he was opposite to where she sat it became necessary for him to +have an answer to the questions that had presented themselves about her. +Without any awkward preliminaries, he bent over and said: + +"I've been wondering, ma'am, if you are dressed in black for your father +or your husband." + +She looked up, recognized the famous eccentric, and smiled. + +"Won't you sit down, Mr. Holiday?" she said, and made room for him. + +"I wear black," she said, when he had seated himself, "not because I am +in mourning for anybody, but because I think it's becoming to me. You +see, I have very light-colored hair." + +"Does all that hair grow on your head?" Mr. Holiday asked, simply and +without offence. + +"Every bit of it," she said. + +"I have a splendid head of hair, too," he commented. "But there's a +young man in the car back of this who'll be twenty-two years of age in +February, and he's got more dandruff than hair. Where are you going?" + +"Cleveland." + +"Is that your home?" + +"No. I'm a bird of passage." + +"What is your name?" + +"I am Miss Hampton," she said, and she hoped that he might have heard of +her. But he hadn't. And she explained herself. "I'm to play at the +Euclid Theatre Christmas night." + +"An actor?" he said. + +"Well," she admitted, "some say so, and some won't hear of it." + +"How much money do you earn?" + +"Two hundred dollars a week." + +Mr. Holiday wrote that in his note-book. + +"I've got some little nieces and nephews in New York," she volunteered. +"Don't you think it's hard to be a genuine aunt and to have to spend +Christmas alone in a strange place?" + +"Not for two hundred dollars a week," said Mr. Holiday +unsympathetically. "You ought to thank your stars and garters." + +Presently, after patting her on the back with two fingers, he rose, +bowed, and passed on down the aisle. On the right, in the end section, +was a very old couple, with snow-white hair, and a great deal of +old-fashioned luggage. Mr. Holiday greeted them cordially, and asked +their ages. The old gentleman was seventy-six and proud of it; the old +lady was seventy. Mr. Holiday informed them that he was eighty, but that +they were probably the next oldest people on the train. Anyway, he would +find out and let them know. They smiled good-naturedly, and the old lady +cuddled a little against the old gentleman, for it was cold in that car. +Mr. Holiday turned abruptly. + +"I forgot to ask you where you are going?" he said. + +They told him that they were going to spend Christmas with their +daughter and son-in-law and the new baby in Cleveland. It was a long +journey. But the season made them feel young and strong. Did Mr. Holiday +think there was any danger of being delayed by the snow? It was coming +down very fast. They could not remember ever to have been in a +sleeping-car when it was snowing so hard outside. Mr. Holiday said that +he would ask the conductor about the snow, and let them know. + +In the smoking compartment of the next car forward sat a very young man, +all alone. He looked at once sulky and frightened. He wasn't smoking, +but was drumming on the window sill with his finger nails. He had a +gardenia in his button-hole, and was dressed evidently in his very best +suit--a handsome dark gray, over a malaga-grape-colored waistcoat. In +his necktie was a diamond horseshoe pin. + +"Young man," said Mr. Holiday, seating himself, "what makes you look so +cross?" + +The young man started to say, "None of your business," but perceived in +time the eager face and snow-white hair of his questioner, and +checked himself. + +"Why," he said tolerantly, "do I look as savage as all that?" + +"It isn't money troubles," said Mr. Holiday, "or you would have pawned +that diamond pin." + +"Wouldn't you be cross," said the young man, "if you had to look forward +to sitting up all night in a cold smoking compartment?" + +"Can't you get a berth?" + +"I had a drawing-room," said the young man, "but at the last minute I +had to give it up to a lady." + +Mr. Holiday's eyes twinkled with benign interest. He had connected the +gardenia in the young man's coat with the roses of the girl who +was weeping. + +"I know," he said, "drawing-room, Car 5. She was crying, but I told her +to brace up, and I guess she's stopped." + +The young man jumped to his feet. + +"Oh!" he said. + +Mr. Holiday chuckled. + +"I was right," he said. "I've been right seven times out of the ten for +twenty-five years. I've kept a record." + +Upon an impulse the young man checked his headlong inclination to rush +to the girl who was weeping. + +"If you are right as often as that," he said, "for God's sake tell me +what to do." + +"Certainly," said Mr. Holiday, "and it won't cost you a cent. What's the +matter?" + +"_She_" said the young man with an accent, for there was but the one, +"came to the station to see me off. She gave me this." He touched the +gardenia gently. "I gave her some roses. Just as the train started to +pull out I dared her to come with me ... she came!" + +"Tut--tut!" said Mr. Holiday. + +"What are we to do?" cried the young man. + +"Go back and sit with her," said Mr. Holiday, "and leave the door wide +open. I'm going through the train now to see who's on board; so don't +worry. Leave it all to me." + +The last car forward before you came to the baggage-car and the express +car was a common day coach. It was draughty. It had been used as a +smoker in a period not so very remote. A dog must have passed an +uncomfortable night in it. + +Near the rear door sat a man in a new derby hat and a new black coat. +Further forward on the same side three children had stuffed themselves +into one seat. The middle child, a well-grown girl of thirteen or +fourteen, seemed by her superior height to shelter the little tots at +her side. Only the blue imitation sailor caps of these appeared above +the top of the seat; and the top of each cap, including that worn by the +older girl, had a centrepiece of white about the size of a gentleman's +visiting card. Mr. Holiday promised himself the pleasure of +investigating these later. In the meanwhile his interest was excited by +the ears of the man in the new derby. They were not large, but they had +an appearance of sticking out further than was necessary; and Mr. +Holiday was about to ask their owner the reason why, when he noticed for +himself that it was because the owner's hair had been cut so very, very +short. Indeed, he had little gray eighth-inch bristles instead of hair. +Mr. Holiday wondered why. He seated himself behind the man, and leaned +forward. The man stirred uneasily. + +"I should think you'd be afraid of catching cold in this draughty car +with your hair cut so short," said Mr. Holiday. + +"I am," said the man tersely. + +"Why did you let them cut it so short then?" + +"Let them!" grunted the man, with ineffable scorn. "Let them! You'd have +let them!" + +"I would not," retorted Mr. Holiday crisply. "My wife cuts my hair for +me, just the way I tell her to." + +The man turned a careworn, unhappy face. + +"My wife used to cut mine," he said. "But then I--I got into the habit +of having it done for me.... Ever been to Ohio Penitentiary, mister? ... +That's the finest tonsorial parlor in America--anything from a shave to +the electric treatment." + +"Ohio Penitentiary is a jail for felons," said Mr. Holiday severely. + +"Quite so," said the man, "as I was telling you." + +His voice had a plaintive, subdued note of defiance in it. It was that +of a person who is tired of lying and beating about the bush. + +"When did you get out?" asked Mr. Holiday simply. + +"Eight days ago," said the man, "and when I get good and sick of looking +for jobs and getting turned down--I guess I'll go back." + +"First they make you work," said Mr. Holiday with a pleased chuckle, +"and then they won't let you work. That's the law. But you take my +advice--you fool 'em!" + +"I never fooled anybody," said the man, and he ripped a holy name from +the depths of his downheartedness. + +Mr. Holiday had extracted his note-book, and under cover of the +seat-back was preparing to take notes and make comments. + +"What did you use to do for a living--before?" he asked. + +"I was teller in a bank." + +"And what happened?" + +"Then," said the man, "the missus had twins, followed by typhoid fever." +His admissions came with hopeless frankness. "And I couldn't pay for all +that luxury. So I stole." + +"What bank were you teller in?" + +"The Painsville Bank--Painsville. I'm going to them now to--to see if +they won't let up. The wife says that's the thing to do--go right to the +boil of trouble and prick it." + +"What did your wife do while you were away?" asked Mr. Holiday +delicately. + +"She did odd jobs, and brought the twins up healthy." + +"I remember the Painsville business," said Mr. Holiday, "because I own +stock in that bank. You only took about two hundred dollars." + +"That was all I needed," said the man. "It saved the missus and the +kids--so what's the odds?" + +"But don't you intend to pay it back?" + +"Not if the world won't let me earn any money. I tried for jobs all +to-day, and yesterday, and the day before. I told my story straight. The +missus wrote that was the thing to do. But I guess she's wrong for once. +What would you do if you were a banker and I came to you and said: 'I'm +just out of jail, where I went for stealing; but I mean to be honest. +Won't you give me work?'" + +Mr. Holiday wondered what he would do. He was beginning to like the +ex-convict's frankness. + +"Do you know who I am?" he asked. + +"Everybody knows you by sight, Mr. Holiday." + +"Then you know," said the little old gentleman, "that I've sent plenty +of people to jail in my time--plenty of them." + +"I've heard that said," said the man. + +"But," said Mr. Holiday sharply, "nobody ever tells stories about the +wrongdoers I have forgiven. Your case never came to me. I believe I +would have shown mercy." + +He closed his note-book and rose. + +"Keep telling your story straight, my man, and _asking_ for work." + +He paused, as if waiting a reply; but the man only grunted, and he +passed forward to the children. First he examined the visiting-card +effects on the tops of their hats, and noticed that these were paper +labels sewed down, and bearing the names and destinations of the little +passengers. Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia Caldwell, reading from left to +right, were consigned in the care of the conductor to Silas Caldwell, +Painsville, Ohio. + +Alice had her arms around Freddie and Euphemia, and her pretty head was +bent first to one and then to the other. Mr. Holiday seated himself +gently behind the trio, and listened for some time. He learned that +"mother" was in the hospital, and "father" had to be with her, and that +the children were going to "Uncle Silas" until sent for. And Uncle Silas +was a very "grouchy" man, and one must mind one's P's and Q's, and never +be naughty, or Uncle Silas would have the law of one. But she, Alice, +would take care of them. + +"Going to spend Christmas with Uncle, are you?" piped Mr. Holiday +suddenly; "that's right!" + +The little tots, very much interested and startled, faced about, but +Alice looked like a little reproving angel. + +"Oh!" she said, climbing out of the seat, "I must speak with you +first," + +Mr. Holiday was actually surprised; but he went aside with the child, +where the tots could not hear. + +Absolutely without consciousness of doing so, Alice patted and +rearranged the old gentleman's carnation, and talked to him in a gentle, +reproving tone. + +"I've done everything I could," she said, "to keep the idea of Christmas +away from them. They didn't know when it came until you spoke. But now +they know, and I don't know what I shall do ... our uncle," she +explained, "doesn't celebrate Christmas; he made father understand that +before he agreed to take us until mother got well. So father and I +agreed we'd keep putting Christmas off until mother was well and we were +all together again. But now they'll want their Christmas--and _I_ can't +give it to them." + +"Well, well," said Mr. Holiday cheerfully. "I _have_ put my foot in it. +And I suppose Freddie and Euphemia will carry on and raise Cain when +they find there's no Santy Claus in Painsville?" + +"Don't you fret, Alice," said Mr. Holiday. "When I get people in trouble +I get 'em out. Your Uncle Silas is a friend of mine--he has to be. I'm +going to send him a telegram." He smiled, and chucked her under the +chin. "I'm not much on Christmas myself," he said, "but an obligation's +an obligation." He shook hands with her, nodded in a friendly way to +the ex-convict, and passed out of the car on his return journey, +consulting his note-book as he went. + +First he revisited the old couple, and told them that next to himself +they were in fact the oldest persons on the train, and that they need +not worry about the snow because he had asked the conductor about it, +and the conductor had said that it was all right. Then he started to +revisit Miss Hampton, but was turned from his purpose by a new face in +the car. The new face rose, thin and white, on a long thin neck from a +clerical collar, and its owner was busy with a pad and a pencil. + +"Writing a sermon?" asked Mr. Holiday. + +The clergyman looked up and smiled. + +"No, sir," he said. "I'm doing a sum in addition, and making heavy work +of it." + +"I'll do it for you," said Mr. Holiday eagerly. He was a lightning +adder, and not in the least averse to showing off. The clergyman, still +smiling, yielded up the pad. + +"I'm trying to make it come to two thousand dollars," he said, "and I +can't." + +"That's because," said Mr. Holiday, returning the pad after one swift +glance up and down the columns, "it only comes to thirteen hundred and +twenty-five dollars. You had the answer correct." + +"It's for repairs to the church," said the clergyman dismally. "The +contractor calls for two thousand; and I'm just about ready to give up." + +"Well," said Mr. Holiday, "I'm going to get my dinner now, and maybe +later I can give you some idea how to raise the balance. I've raised a +good deal of money in my time." He chuckled. + +"I know that, Mr. Holiday," said the clergyman, "and I should be glad of +any--suggestion that you might care to make." + +Mr. Holiday seated himself facing Miss Hampton. She smiled, and nodded, +and laid aside the book she had been reading. Mr. Holiday's +eyes twinkled. + +"I'm going to turn you out of this section," he said. + +"Why?" She smiled. + +"Because there's a young friend of mine wants it," he said. + +"Now, _really!_" said Miss Hampton, still smiling. + +"You're going to carry your duds to the drawing-room, Car 5," he said. +Then, the twinkle in his eyes becoming exceedingly gossipy and sportive, +he told her about the young people who had eloped without exactly +meaning to. Miss Hampton was delighted. + +She and Mr. Holiday hurried to the drawing-room in Car 5, of which the +door had been left wide open, according to Mr. Holiday's orders. The +young people looked very happy and unhappy all at once, and as soon as +Mr. Holiday had begun to state their situation to them without mincing, +they assumed a tremendous pair of blushes, which they were not able to +efface for a long time. + +"And now," he finished, glaring at the uncomfortable young man, "you +bring your duds and put them in Miss Hampton's section. And then you +gather up Miss Hampton's duds and bring 'em in here." And he turned and +shook his finger at the girl. "Mind you," he said, "don't you ever run +away again without a chaperon. They don't grow on every bush." + +Somehow, Mr. Holiday had overlooked the other drawing-room (B) in Car 5. +Now he came suddenly upon it, and peered in, for the door was ajar. But +he drew back with a sharp jerk as if he had seen a rattlesnake. All the +kindness went out of the old gentleman's face, and between anger and +hatred he turned white. + +"Jolyff!" he muttered. And, all the elasticity gone from his gait, he +stumbled back to his own car, revolving and muttering unchristian +thoughts. For he and Jolyff had been meeting all their lives, it seemed, +in court and out; sometimes with the right on one side, sometimes on the +other. Each had cost the other a thousand wicked threats and a mint +of money. + +Mr. Holiday's wanderings through the train had aroused all the kindlier +feelings in his nature. He was going home to his wife and family: +expensive and foolish as it seemed, he had the trunk full of toys for +the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, and he was glad of it. He +had put things right for two prepossessing young people who had made a +wrong start; he had been gallant to an actress; he had determined to +help the clergyman out with his repair fund; to find work for a convict, +and to see to it that three children should have a pleasant visit with +an uncle who was really crotchety, disagreeable, and mean. + +But now he did not care about pleasant things any more. He could think +of nothing but Jolyff; of nothing but old sores that rankled; of great +deals that had gone wrong, through his enemy. And in that spirit he +picked at his Christmas Eve dinner, and went to bed. + +It seemed to Mr. Holiday every time he woke, which was often, that the +train had just started to move, after standing still for a long time, +and that the porter had never before allowed his car to grow so cold. He +turned the current into the reading light at the head of his bed and +consulted his watch. + +Two o'clock. He got to wondering at exactly what hour all those hundreds +of years ago Christ had been born. Had it been as cold as this in the +old barn? Whew! + +No, Bethlehem was in the semi-tropics or thereabout, but the common car +in which the three children were passing the night was not. This thought +came to Mr. Holiday without invitation, and, like all unwelcome guests, +made a long stay. So persistent, indeed, was the thought, meeting his +mind at every turn and dogging its footsteps, that he forgot all about +Jolyff and all about everything else. Finally he rang for the porter, +but had no answer. He rang again and again. Then the train jolted slowly +to a standstill, and Mr. Holiday got up and dressed, and went forward +once more through the narrow aisles of thick curtains to the common car. +But the passengers in that car had amalgamated. Alice and the convict, +blue with cold, were in the same seat, and Alice was hugging Freddie, +who slept fitfully, to her breast, and the convict was hugging Euphemia, +who cried gently and softly like a cold and hungry kitten, to his. The +convict had taken off his overcoat and wrapped it as well as he could +about all the children. + +Mr. Holiday tapped the convict on the shoulder. "Merry Christmas!" he +said cynically. The convict started and turned. "Bring these babies back +to my car," said Mr. Holiday, "and help me put 'em to bed." "That's a +good deed, Mr. Holiday," said the convict. He started to put on his +overcoat. The undressing and putting to bed had not waked Freddie. + +Euphemia had stopped crying. And Alice, when the two men had helped her +with her dress, which buttoned down the back, had suddenly flung her +arms first around one and then around the other, and given each a kiss +good night. + +The convict buttoned his coat and turned up his collar. + +"Good-night, sir," he said, "and thank you." + +Mr. Holiday waved the thanks aside and pointed to a door of shining +mahogany. + +"There's a bed for you, too," he said gently. + +The convict hesitated. + +Then--it may have been owing to the sudden starting of the train--he +lurched against the door, and with a sound that was mighty like a sob +thrust it open and slammed it shut behind him. + +Mr. Holiday smiled and went back to his own bed. This time he slept +soundly. + +At seven o'clock the porter called him, according to orders. The train +was standing still. + +"Merry Christmas, Mistah Holiday, sah!" grinned the porter. "Seven +o'clock, sah!" + +"Merry Christmas," said Mr. Holiday. "Why are we stopping?" + +"We's snowed in," grinned the porter. + +"Snowed in!" exclaimed Mr. Holiday. "Where?" + +"'Tween Albany and Buffalo, sah. Dey ain't any name to de place. Dey +ain't any place." + +"There are three children," said Mr. Holiday, "in the stateroom next to +this and a gentleman in the other stateroom. You call 'em in about an +hour and ask 'em what they'll take for breakfast. Bring me some coffee, +and ask the conductor how late we're going to be." + +With his coffee Mr. Holiday learned that the train might be twenty-four +hours late in getting to Cleveland. The conductor supposed that ploughs +were at work along the track; but the blizzard was still raging. + +That he would be separated from his wife on Christmas Day for the first +time in their married life did not amuse Mr. Holiday; and although too +much of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren bored him to +extinction, still he felt that any festive day on which they were not +all with him was a festive day gone very wrong indeed. But it was not as +a sop to his own feelings of disappointment that he decided to celebrate +Christmas in the train. It was a mixture of good-nature and, I am +afraid, of malice. He said to himself: + +"I shall invite all the passengers to one-o'clock dinner and a Christmas +tree afterward with games and punch. I shall invite the conductor and +the brakeman; the porters shall come to serve dinner. I shall invite the +engineer and the fireman and the express-man. I shall invite everybody +except Jolyff." + +The old gentleman sucked in his lips tightly and dwelt upon this +thought with satisfaction. Jolyff loved a party; Jolyff loved to drink +healths, and clap people on the back, and make little speeches, and +exert himself generally to amuse less gifted persons and make them feel +at home. And it was pleasant to think of him as sitting alone while a +fine celebration was banging and roaring in the very next car--a +celebration to which even an ex-convict had been invited. + +First, Mr. Holiday summoned Miss Hampton and the girl who had run away +to be his aides-de-camp. They decided that the party was really for the +benefit of Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia, so these were packed off at +once to the common car to be as far as possible from the scene of +preparations. Then, with Mr. Holiday's porter, and his cook, and the +ex-convict as men of all work, commenced the task of ordering the car +for a crowd and decorating it, and improvising a Christmas tree. Miss +Hampton set to work with a wooden bucket, sugar, rum, brandy, eggs, +milk, and heaven knows what not, to brew a punch. Every now and then Mr. +Holiday appeared, to see how she was getting on, and to taste the +concoction, and to pay her pretty, old-fashioned compliments. The girl +who had run away was helping the porter to lay the table and trying to +write invitations to the passengers at the same time, Mr. Holiday having +furnished her from his note-book with all of their names. Now and then +there were hurried consultations as to what would be a suitable gift for +a given person. The "next oldest" people in the train were to receive a +pair of the silver candlesticks from the table. The train hands were to +receive money, and suddenly Mr. Holiday discovered that he had only a +few dollars in cash with him. He sought out the clergyman. + +"Merry Christmas!" he said. + +"Merry Christmas!" said the clergyman. + +"Have you," said Mr. Holiday, "any of your rebuilding fund with you?" + +"Why, yes," said the clergyman, smiling, "some two hundred dollars, and +I cannot deny that it is agony to me to carry about so large a sum." + +Mr. Holiday simply held out his hand, palm up. + +"Why--what--" began the clergyman in embarrassment. + +"I will give you my check for that sum," said Mr. Holiday, "and +something over for your fund. I hope you will dine with me, in my car, +at one o'clock." + +He hurried away with the two hundred dollars. It was his intention to +sample Miss Hampton's punch again; but he turned from this on a sudden +impulse and sought out the young man who had been run away with. With +this attractive person he talked very earnestly for half an hour, and +asked him an infinite number of questions; just the kind of questions +that he had asked the young men who had aspired to the hands of his own +daughters. And these must have been satisfactorily answered, because at +the end of the interview Mr. Holiday patted the young man on the back +and said that he would see him later. + +Next he came face to face with Mr. Jolyff, and the two old gentlemen +stared at each other coldly, but without any sign of recognition. +Once--ever so many years ago--they had been intimate friends. Mr. +Holiday had never had any other friend of whom he had been so fond. He +tried now to recall what their first difference had been, and because he +could not he thought he must be growing infirm. And he began to think of +his approaching party with less pleasure. He had let himself in for a +good deal of bother, he thought. + +But this time Miss Hampton made him take a whole teaspoonful of punch, +and told him what a dear he was, and what a good time everybody was +going to have, and that she would do anything in the world for him; she +would even recite "The Night Before Christmas" for his company, if he +asked her. And then they did a great deal of whispering, and finally Mr. +Holiday said: + +"But suppose they balk?" + +"Nonsense," said Miss Hampton; "would you and I balk if we were in their +places?" + +The pretty actress and the old gentleman laughed and bowed to each +other, and exchanged the most arch looks imaginable. And then Miss +Hampton exclaimed: + +"Good Lord--it's twelve-thirty." + +Then there came to them a sudden dreadful smell of burning feathers. +They dashed into the observation end of the car and found the ex-convict +smothering an incipient conflagration of the Christmas tree, which was +made of dusters, with his hands. + +The girl who had run away was despatching the porter with the last batch +of invitations. The ex-convict showed them his burned hands. + +"You go and feel the champagne," said Mr. Holiday, "that'll cool'em." + +Mr. Holiday himself went to fetch the children. In his pockets were the +envelopes containing money for the train hands, the envelope containing +a check for the two hundred dollars that he had borrowed from the +clergyman, and enough over to complete the rebuilding fund which the +clergyman had tried so hard to collect. And there was an envelope for +the ex-convict--not with money in it, but with an I.O.U. + +"_I.O.U. A Good Job_," Mr. Holiday had written on a card and signed his +name. And he had taken out of his satchel and transferred to his +waistcoat pocket a pair of wonderful black pearls that he sometimes wore +at important dinners. And he was going to give one of these to Miss +Hampton and one to the girl who had run away. And then there were all +the wonderful toys and things for Alice, and Freddie, and Euphemia, and +he was going to present them with the black trunk, too, so that they +could take their gifts off the train when it eventually got to +Painsville. And Mr. Holiday had thought of everybody, and had prepared a +little speech to speak to his guests; and for two of his guests he had +arranged one of the greatest surprises that can be sprung on two guests; +and he ought to have been perfectly happy. But he wasn't. + +When he passed the door of Mr. Jolyff's drawing-room he noted that it +was tightly closed. And it ought to have pleased him to see how his +enemy had taken his exclusion from the party to heart, and had shut +himself away from any sign or sound of it. But, although he smiled +cynically, he wasn't altogether pleased. And presently he made a wry +mouth, as if he were taking something unpleasant; and he began to hustle +Freddie and Euphemia so as to get away from that closed door as quickly +as possible. + +The girl who had run away was talking with Mr. Holiday when suddenly she +began to grow conscious and uncomfortable. She gave one swift look about +her, and saw that all the passengers, and all the train hands, and +porters, and the express-man were looking at her and smiling, and she +saw that they had ranged themselves against the sides of the car and +were making themselves as small as possible. Then she saw the young man +looking at her with a wonderful, nervous, radiant look. And then she saw +that the clergyman was standing all by himself, in a space that the +crowd had just managed to leave open for him, and that he had on his +surplice, and that he was marking a place in his prayer-book with one +finger. Then she understood. + +Instinctively she caught Mr. Holiday's arm and clung to it, and Mr. +Holiday, smiling, patted her hand and began to draw her gently toward +the young man and the clergyman. It looked for a moment as if she were +going to hang back, and protest, and make a scene. But just when +everybody was beginning to fear the worst, and to look frightfully +nervous and uncomfortable, a wonderful and beautiful expression came +into her face, and her eyes lighted, and seemed to grow larger and +darker all at the same time. And if there were any present who had +regarded the impromptu wedding as something of a joke, these now had +their minds changed for them in the quickest kind of a jiffy. And if +there were any present who doubted of the beauty and dignity of love, +these had their minds changed for them, too. And they knew that they +were witnesses, not to a silly elopement, but to the great occasion in +the lives of two very young people who were absolutely sure of their +love for each other, and who would cherish each other in sickness and +peril, in good times and bad, in merry times and in heart-breaking +times, until death did them part. + +And then suddenly, just when the clergyman was about to begin, just when +Miss Hampton had succeeded in righting herself from smothering a sob, +Mr. Holiday, whose face, had you but noticed it, had been growing longer +and longer, and drearier and drearier, gave a half-strangled cry: + +"Wait!" + +Wholly oblivious to everything and everybody but what was in his mind at +the moment, he dropped the bride's hand as if it had been a red-hot +horseshoe and started to bolt from the car. But, strangely enough, the +old face that had grown so long and dreary was now wreathed in smiles, +and he was heard to mutter as he went: + +"Just a minute, while I get Jolyff!" + + * * * * * + +Mr. Jolyff and Mr. Holiday lifted their glasses. And Mr. Holiday said, +so that all could hear: + +"I drink to my old friends and to my new friends. And I drink to the +lesson of Christmas. For Christmas," said he, and he smiled in a +wonderful way, "teaches us that in all the world there is absolutely +nothing that we cannot forgive...." + +The two very old gentlemen clinked their glasses together, and, looking +each other affectionately in the eyes, might have been heard to mutter, +somewhat brokenly, each the other's Christian name. + + + + +WHITE MUSCATS OF ALEXANDRIA + +My wife, said the Pole, was a long time recovering from the birth of +our second child. She was a normal and healthy woman, but Nature has a +way in these matters of introducing the unnatural; science, too, mistook +the ABCs of the case for the XYZs; and our rooms were for many, many +weary weeks like a cage in which the bird has ceased to sing. I did what +I could. She was not without books, magazines, and delicacies; but I had +to attend to my business; so that time hung about her much like a +millstone, and she would say: "All's well with me, Michael, but I am +bored--bored--bored." + +Our baby was put out to nurse and our older boy, Casimir, who was seven, +began, for lack of his mother's care, to come and go as he pleased. The +assurance and cheek of street boys began to develop in him. He startled +me by his knowledge and his naïveté. But at the same time he was a +natural innocent--a little dreamer. In the matters of street life that +arise among children he had, as a rule, the worst of it. He was a born +believer of all that might be told him. Such children develop into +artists or ne'er-do-wells. It was too soon to worry about him. But I was +easiest in mind when I saw that he was fashioning anatomies with mud or +drawing with chalk upon the sidewalk. "Wait a little," I would say to my +wife, "and he will be old enough to go to school." + +The happiest times were when it was dark and I had closed the store and +could sit by my wife's bed with Casimir on my knee. Then we would talk +over pleasant experiences, or I would tell them, who were both +American-born, stories of Poland, of fairies, and sieges; or hum for +them the tunes to which I had danced in my early youth. But oftenest my +wife and I talked, for the child's benefit, of the wonderful city in +whose slums we lived--upper central New York with its sables and its +palaces. During our courtship and honeymoon we had made many excursions +into those quarters of the city and the memory of them was dear. But if +I remembered well and with happiness, my wife remembered +photographically and with a kind of hectic eagerness in which, I fear, +may have been bedded the roots of dissatisfaction. Details of wealth and +luxury, and manners that had escaped me, even at the time, were as +facile to her as terms of endearment to a lover. "And, oh--do you +remember," she would say, "the ruby that the Fifth Avenue bride had at +her throat, and how for many, many blocks we thought we could still +hear the organ going? That was fun, Michael, wasn't it, when we stood in +front of Sherry's and counted how many real sables went in and how many +fakes, and noticed that the fake sables were as proudly carried as +the real?" + +One night she would not eat her supper. "Oh, Michael," she said, "I'm so +bored with the same old soup--soup--soup, and the same old +porridge--porridge--porridge, and I hate oranges, and apples, and please +don't spend any more money on silly, silly, silly me." + +"But you must eat," I said. "What would you like? Think of something. +Think of something that tempts your appetite. You seem better +to-night--almost well. Your cheeks are like cherries and you keep +stirring restlessly as if you wanted to get up instead of lying +still--still like a woman that has been drowned, all but her great, dear +eyes.... Now, make some decision, and were it ambrosia I will get it for +you if it is to be had in the city.... Else what are savings-banks for, +and thrift, and a knowledge of furs?" + +She answered me indirectly. + +"Do you remember, Michael," she said, "the butcher shops uptown, the +groceries, and the fruit stores, where the commonest articles, the +chops, the preserved strawberries, the apples were perfect and +beautiful, like works of art? In one window there was a great olive +branch in a glass jar--do you remember? And in that fruit store near the +Grand Central--do you remember?--we stood in the damp snow and looked in +at great clean spaces flooded with white light--and there were baskets +of strawberries--right there in January--and wonderful golden and red +fruits that we did not know the names of, and many of the fruits peeped +out from the bright-green leaves among which they had actually grown--" + +"I remember the two prize bunches of grapes," I said. + +And my wife said: + +"I was coming to those ... they must have been eighteen inches long, +every grape great and perfect. I remember you said that such grapes +looked immortal. It was impossible to believe they could ever rot--there +was a kind of joyous frostiness--we went in and asked a little man what +kind of grapes they were, and he answered like a phonograph, without +looking or showing politeness: 'Black Hamburgs and White Muscats of +Alexandria'--your old Sienkiewicz never said anything as beautiful as +that, 'White Muscats of Alexandria--'" + +"Dear little heart," I said. "Childkin, is it the memory of those white +grapes that tempts your appetite?" + +"Oh, Michael," she exclaimed, clasping her hands over those +disappointed breasts into which the milk had not come in sufficiency. +"Oh, Michael--they were two dollars and a half a pound--" + +"Heart of my heart," I said, "Stag Eyes, it is now late, and there are +no such grapes to be had in our part of the city--only the tasteless +white grapes that are packed with sawdust into barrels--but in the +morning I will go uptown and you shall have your White Muscats of +Alexandria." + +She put her arms about my neck with a sudden spasm of fervor, and drew +my head, that was already gray, down to hers. I remember that in that +moment I thought not of passion but of old age, parting, and the grave. + + * * * * * + +But she would not eat the grapes in my presence. There was to be an +orgy, she said, a bacchanalian affair--she was going to place the grapes +where she could look at them, and look at them until she could stand the +sight no more, when she would fall on them like a wolf on the fold and +devour them. She talked morbidly of the grapes--almost neurotically. +But, though her fancies did not please my sense of fitness, I only +laughed at her, or smiled--for she had been ill a long time. + +"But, at least, eat one now," I said, "so that I may see you enjoy it." + +"Not even one," she said. "The bunch must be perfect for me to look at +until--until I can resist no more. Hang them there, on the foot of the +bed by the crook of the stem--is it strong enough to hold them? and +then--aren't you going to be very late to your business? And, Michael, I +feel better--I do. I shouldn't wonder if you found me up and dressed +when you come back." + +In your telling American phrase, "there was nothing doing" in my +business that morning. It was one of those peaceful, sunny days in +January, not cold and no wind stirring. The cheap furs displayed in the +window of my shop attracted no attention from the young women of the +neighborhood. The young are shallow-minded, especially the women. If a +warm day falls in winter they do not stop to think that the next may be +cold. Only hats interest them all the year round, and men. + +So I got out one of my Cicero books and, placing my chair in a pool of +sunshine in the front of the shop, I began to read, for the hundredth +time, his comfortable generalities upon old age. But it seemed to me, +for the first time, that he was all wrong--that old age is only +dreadful, only a shade better than death itself. And this, I suppose, +was because I, myself, during those long months of my wife's illness, +had turned the corner. The sudden passions of youth had retreated like +dragons into their dens. It took more, now, than the worse end of a +bargain or the touch of my wife's lips to bring them flaming forth. On +our wedding day we had been of an age. Now, after nine years, my heart +had changed from a lover's into a father's, while she remained, as it +were, a bride. There remained to me, perhaps, many useful years of +business, of managing and of saving--enjoyable years. But life--life as +I count life--I had lived out. One moment must pass as the next. There +could be no more halting--no more moments of bliss so exquisite as to +resemble pain. I had reached that point in life when it is the sun alone +that matters, and no more the moon. + +A shadow fell upon my pool of sunshine and, looking up, I perceived a +handsome, flashy young man of the clever, almost Satanic type that is so +common below Fourteenth Street; and he stood looking cynically over the +cheap furs in my window and working his thin jaws. Then I saw him take, +with his right hand, from a bunch that he carried in his left, a great +white grape and thrust it into his mouth. They were my grapes, those +which I had gone uptown to fetch for my wife. By the fact that there +were none such to be had in our neighborhood I might have known them. +But the sure proof was a peculiar crook in the stem which I had noticed +when I had hung them for my wife at the foot of her bed. + +I rose and went quietly out of the shop. + +"Happy to show you anything," I said, smiling. + +"Don't need anything in the fur line to-day," said he; "much obliged." + +"What fine grapes those are," I commented. + +"Um," said he, "they call 'em white muskets of Alexander"; and he +grimaced. + +"Where are such to be had?" I asked. + +"Well," he said, "I got these just round the corner; but _you'd_ have to +visit some uptown fruit emporium and pay the price." + +"So you bought the last bunch?" + +"Bought nothin'," he said, and he smiled in a knowing and leering way. + +"They were given to me," he said, "by a married woman. I happened to +drop in and she happened to have sent her husband uptown to fetch these +grapes for her because she's playing sick and works him in more ways +than one--but she said the grapes sickened her conscience, and she made +me take 'em away." + +"So she has a conscience?" I said. + +"They all have," said the young man. "Have one?" + +I took one of the grapes with a hand that shook, and ate it, and felt +the red blood in my veins turn into acid. + +There happened to be a man in the neighborhood who had been nibbling +after my business for some time. I went to him now and made him a cheap +sale for cash. This I deposited with my savings, keeping out a hundred +dollars for myself, and put the whole in trust for my wife and children. +Then I went away and, after many hardships, established myself in a new +place. And, as is often the case with men who have nothing whatsoever to +live for and who are sad, I prospered. God was ever presenting me with +opportunities and the better ends of bargains. + +When fifteen years had passed I returned once more to New York. I had +reached a time of life when the possibility of death must be as steadily +reckoned with as the processes of digestion. And I wished, before I lay +down in the narrow house, to revisit the scenes of my former happiness. +I took the same furnished lodging to which we had gone after our +wedding. I lay all night, but did not sleep, in our nuptial bed. Alone, +but rather in reverence and revery than sadness, I made all those little +excursions upon which we had been so happy during the days of our +honey-moon. I made a point of feeding the animals in the park, of dining +at Claremont--I even stood for a long time before the fruit shop that is +near the Grand Central. But I was too old to feel much. So it seemed. + +One day I sat on the steps of the lodging-house in the sun. I had been +for a long walk and I was very tired, very sick of my mortal coil, very +sure that I did not care if the end were to be sleep or life +everlasting. Then came, slowly around the corner of the shabby street +and toward me, a hansom cab. Its occupant, an alert, very young, eager +man, kept glancing here and there as if he were looking for something or +some one; for the old East Side street had still its old look, as if all +the inhabitants of its houses had rushed out to watch an eclipse of the +sun or the approach of a procession--and were patiently and idly +awaiting the event. + +The children, and even many of the older people, mocked at the young man +in the hansom and flung him good-natured insults. But he knew the +language of the East Side and returned better than he received. My old +heart warmed a little to his young, brightly colored face, his quick, +flashing eyes, and his ready repartees. And it seemed to me a pity that, +like all the pleasant moments I had known, he, too, must pass and +be over. + +But his great eyes flashed suddenly upon my face and rested; then he +signalled to the driver to stop and, springing out, a big sketch-book +under his arm, came toward me with long, frank strides. + +"I know it's cheeky as the devil," he began in a quick, cheerful voice, +while he had yet some distance to come, "but I can't help it. I've been +looking for you for weeks, and--" + +"What is it that I can do for you?" I asked pleasantly. + +"You can give me your head." He said it with an appealing and delighted +smile. "I'm a sort of artist--" he explained. + +"Show me," I said, and held out my hands for the sketch-book. + +"Nothing but notes in it," he said, but I looked, not swiftly, through +all the pages and--for we Poles have an instinct in such matters--saw +that the work was good. + +"Do you wish to draw me, _Master?_" I said. + +He perceived that I meant the term, and he looked troubled and pleased. + +"Will you sit for me?" he asked. "I will--" + +But I shook my head to keep him from mentioning money. + +"Very cheerfully," I said. "It is easy for the old to sit--especially +when, by the mere act of sitting, it is possible for them to become +immortal. I have a room two flights up--where you will not be +disturbed." + +"Splendid!" he said. "You are splendid! Everything's splendid!" + +When he had placed me as he wished, I asked him why my head suited him +more than another's. + +"How do I know?" he said. "Instinct--you seem a cheerful man and yet I +have never seen a head and face that stood so clearly for--for--please +take me as I am, I don't ever mean to offend--steadiness in sorrow.... I +am planning a picture in which there is to be an ol--a man of your age +who looks as--as late October would look if it had a face...." + +Then he began to sketch me, and, as he worked, he chattered about this +and that. + +"Funny thing," he said, "I had a knife when I started and it's +disappeared." + +"Things have that habit," I said. + +"Yes," said he, "things and people, and often people disappear as +suddenly and completely as things--chin quarter of an inch lower--just +so--thank you forever--" + +"And what experience have you had with people disappearing?" I asked. +"And you so young and masterful." + +"I?" he said. "Why, a very near and dear experience. When I was quite a +little boy my own father went to his place of business and was never +heard of again from that day to this. But he must have done it on +purpose, because it was found that he had put all his affairs into the +most regular and explicit order--" + +I felt a little shiver, as if I had taken cold. + +"And, do you know," here the young man dawdled with his pencil and +presently ceased working for the moment, "I've always felt as if I had +had a hand in it--though I was only seven. I'd done something so naughty +and wrong that I looked forward all day to my father's home-coming as a +sinner looks forward to going to hell. My father had never punished me. +But he would this time, I knew--and I was terribly afraid and--sometimes +I have thought that, perhaps, I prayed to God that my father might never +come home. I'm not sure I prayed that--but I have a sneaking suspicion +that I did. Anyway, he never came, and, Great Grief! what a time there +was. My mother nearly went insane--" + +"What had you done?" I asked, forcing a smile, "to merit such terrible +punishment?" + +The young man blushed. + +"Why," he said, "my mother had been quite sick for a long time, and, to +tempt her appetite, my father had journeyed 'way uptown and at vast +expense bought her a bunch of wonderful white hot-house grapes. I +remember she wouldn't eat them at first--just wanted to look at +them--and my father hung them for her over the foot of the bed. Well, +soon after he'd gone to business she fell asleep, leaving the grapes +untouched. They tempted me, and I fell. I wanted to show off, I suppose, +before my young friends in the street--there was a girl, Minnie +Hopflekoppf, I think her name was, who'd passed me up for an Italian +butcher's son. I wanted to show _her_. I'm sure I didn't mean to eat the +things. I'm sure I meant to return with them and hang them back at the +foot of the bed." + +"Please go on," I managed to say. "This is such a very human page--I'm +really excited to know what happened." + +"Well, one of those flashy Bowery dudes came loafing along and said: +'Hi, Johnny, let's have a look at the grapes,' I let him take them, in +my pride and innocence, and he wouldn't give them back. He only laughed +and began to eat them before my eyes. I begged for them, and wept, and +told him how my mother was sick and my father had gone 'way uptown to +get the grapes for her because there were none such to be had in our +neighborhood. And, please, he must give them back because they were +White Muscats of Alexandria, very precious, and my father would kill me. +But the young man only laughed until I began to make a real uproar. Then +he said sharply to shut up, called me a young thief, and said if I said +another word he'd turn me over to the police. Then he flung me a +fifty-cent piece and went away, munching the grapes. And," the young man +finished, "the fifty-cent piece was lead." + +Then he looked up from his sketch and, seeing the expression of my +face, gave a little cry of delight. + +"Great Grief, man!" he cried, "stay as you are--only hold that +expression for two minutes!" + +But I have held it from that day to this. + + + + +WITHOUT A LAWYER + +However bright the court's light may have appeared to the court, the +place in which it was shining smelt damnably of oil. It was three +o'clock in the afternoon, but already the Alaskan night had descended. +The court sat in a barn, warmed from without by the heavily drifted snow +and from within by the tiny flames of lanterns and the breathing of men, +horses, and cows. Here and there in the outskirts of the circle of light +could be seen the long face of a horse or the horned head of a cow. +There was a steady sound of munching. The scene was not unlike many +paintings of the stable in Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity. And +here, too, justice was being born in a dark age. There had been too many +sudden deaths, too many jumped claims, too much drinking, too much +shooting, too many strong men, too few weak men, until finally--for +time, during the long winter, hung upon the neck like a millstone--the +gorges of the more decent had risen. Hence the judge, hence the jury, +hence the prisoner, dragged from his outlying cabin on a charge of +murder. As there were no lawyers in the community, the prisoner held +his own brief. Though not a Frenchman, he had been sarcastically +nicknamed, because of his small size and shrinking expression, +Lou Garou. + +The judge rapped for order upon the head of a flour-barrel behind which +he sat. "Lou Garou," he said, "you are accused of having shot down Ruddy +Boyd in cold blood, after having called him to the door of his cabin for +that purpose on the twenty-ninth of last month. Guilty or not guilty?" + +"Sure," said Lou Garou timidly, and nodding his head. "I shot him." + +"Why?" asked the judge. + +For answer Lou Garou shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the chief +witness, a woman who had wound her head in a dark veil so that her face +could not be seen. "Make her take that veil off," said he in a shrill +voice, "and you'll see why I shot him." + +The woman rose without embarrassment and removed her veil. But, unless +in the prisoner's eyes, she was not beautiful. + +"Thank you, madam," said the judge, after an embarrassed pause. "Ahem!" +And he addressed the prisoner. "Your answer has its romantic value, Lou +Garou, but the court is unable to attach to it any ethical significance +whatsoever. Did you shoot Ruddy Boyd because of this lady's appearance +in general, or because of her left eye in particular, which I note has +been blackened as if by a blow?" + +"Oh, I did that," said Lou Garou naïvely. + +"Sit down!" thundered the judge. The foreman of the jury, a South +Carolinian by birth, had risen, revolver in hand, with the evident +intention of executing the prisoner on the spot. "You have sworn to +abide by the finding of the court," continued the judge angrily. "If you +don't put up that gun I'll blow your damned head off." + +The juror, who was not without a sense of the ridiculous, smiled and sat +down. + +"You have pleaded guilty," resumed the judge sternly, "to the charge of +murder. You have given a reason. You have either said too much or too +little. If you are unable further to justify your cold-blooded and +intemperate act, you shall hang." + +"What do you want me to say?" whined Lou Garou. + +"I want you to tell the court," said the judge, "why you shot Ruddy +Boyd. If it is possible for you to justify that act I want you to do it. +The court, representing, as it does, the justice of the land, has a +leaning, a bias, toward mercy. Stand up and tell us your story from the +beginning." + +The prisoner once more indicated the woman. "About then," he said, "I +had nothin' but Jenny--and twenty dollars gold that I had loaned to +Ruddy Boyd. Hans"--he pointed to a stout German sitting on the +Carolinian's left--"wouldn't give me any more credit at the store." He +whined and sniffled. "I'm not blaming you one mite, Hans," he said, "but +I had to have flour and bacon, and all I had was twenty dollars gold +that Ruddy owed me. So I says, 'Jenny, I'll step over to Ruddy's shack +and ask him for that money.' She says, 'Think you'd better?' and I says, +'Sure.' So she puts me up a snack of lunch, and I takes my rifle and +starts. Ruddy was in his ditch (having shovelled out the snow), and I +says, 'Ruddy, how about that twenty?' You all know what a nice hearty +way Ruddy had with him--outside. He slaps his thigh, and laughs, and +looks astonished, and then he says: 'My Gawd, Lou, if I hadn't clean +forgot! Now ain't that funny?' So I laughs, too, and says, 'It do seem +kind of funny, and how about it?' 'Now, Lou,' says he, 'you've come on +me sudden, and caught me awkward. I ain't got a dime's worth of change. +But tell you what: I'll give you a check.' + +"I says, 'On what bank?' + +"He says, 'Oh, Hans over at the store--_he_ knows me--'" + +All eyes were turned on the German. Lou Garou continued: + +"Ruddy says: 'Hans dassen't not cash it. He's scared of me, the +pot-bellied old fool." + +The stout German blinked behind his horn spectacles. He feared neither +God nor man, but he was very patient. He made no remark. + +"'If Hans won't,' says Ruddy, 'Stewart sure will!'" + +The foreman of the jury rose like a spring slowly uncoiling. He looked +like a snake ready to strike. "May I inquire," he drawled, "what reason +the late lamented gave for supposing that I would honor his +wuffless paper?" + +Lou Garou sniffled with embarrassment and looked appealingly at the +judge. + +"Tell him," ordered the latter. + +"Mind, then," said Lou Garou, "it was him said it, not me." + +"What was said?" glinted the foreman. + +"Something," said Lou Garou in a small still voice like that which is +said to appertain to conscience, "something about him having give you a +terrible lickin' once, that you'd never got over. He says, 'If Stewart +won't cash it, tell him I'll step over and kick the stuffin' out +of him.'" + +The juror on the left end of the front row stood up. + +"Did he say anything about me?" he asked. + +"Nothin' particular, Jimmy," said Lou Garou. "He only said somethin' +general, like 'them bally-washed hawgs over to the Central Store,' I +think it was." + +"The court," said the judge stiffly, "knows the deceased to have been a +worthless braggart. Proceed with your story." + +"Long and short of it was," said Lou Garou, "we arranged that Ruddy +himself was to get the check cashed and bring me the money the next +Thursday. He swears on his honor he won't keep me waitin' no longer. So +I steps off and eats my lunch, and goes home and tells Jenny how it was. + +"'Hope you get it,' says she. 'I know _him._' + +"It so happened," continued Lou Garou, "Thursday come, and no Ruddy. No +Ruddy, Friday. Saturday I see the weather was bankin' up black for snow, +so I says: 'Jenny, it's credit or bust. I'll step up to the store and +talk to Hans.' So Jenny puts me up a snack of lunch, and I goes to see +Hans. Hans," said Lou Garou, addressing that juror directly, "did I or +didn't I come to see you that Saturday?" + +Hans nodded. + +"Did you or didn't you let me have some flour and bacon on tick?" + +"I did nod," said Hans. + +Lou Garou turned once more to the judge. "So I goes home," he said, "and +finds my chairs broke, and my table upside down, and the dishes broke, +and Jenny gone." + +There was a mild sensation in the court. + +"I casts about for signs, and pretty soon I finds a wisp of red hair, +roots an' all, I says, 'Ruddy's hair,' I says. 'He's bin and gone.' + +"So I takes my gun and starts for Ruddy's, over the mountain. It's hours +shorter than by the valley, for them that has good legs. + +"I was goin' down the other side of the mountain when it seems to me I +hears voices. I bears to the left, and looks down the mountain, and +yonder I sees a man and a woman on the valley path to Ruddy's. The man +he wants the woman to go on. The woman she wants to go back. I can hear +their voices loud and mad, but not their words. Pretty soon Ruddy he +takes Jenny by the arm and twists it--very slow--tighter and tighter. +She sinks to the ground. He goes on twistin'. Pretty soon she indicates +that she has enough. He helps her up with a kick, and they goes on." + +The foreman of the jury rose. "Your honor," he said, "it is an obvious +case of _raptae puellae_. In my opinion the prisoner was more than +justified in shooting the man Ruddy Boyd like a dog." + +"Sit down," said the judge. + +Lou Garou, somewhat excited by painful recollections, went on in a +stronger voice. "I puts up my hind sight to three hundred yards and +draws a bead on Ruddy, between the shoulders. Then I lowers my piece and +uncocks her. 'Stop a bit,' I says. 'How about that twenty?' + +It's gettin' dark, and I follows them to Ruddy's. I hides my gun in a +bush and knocks on the door. Ruddy comes out showin' his big teeth and +laughin.' He closes the door behind him. + +'Come for that twenty, Lou?' says he. + +'Sure,' says I. + +He thinks a minute, then he laughs and turns and flings open the door. +'Come in,' he says. + +I goes in. + +'Hallo!' says he, like he was awful surprised. 'Here's a friend of +yours, Lou. Well, I never!' + +I sees Jenny sittin' in a corner, tied hand and foot. I says, 'Hallo, +Jenny'; she says, 'Hallo, Lou.' Then I turns to Ruddy. 'How about that +twenty?' I says. + +'Well, I'm damned!' he says. 'All he thinks about is his twenty. Well, +here you are.' + +He goes down into his pocket and fetches up a slug, and I pockets it. + +'There,' says he; 'you've got yours, and I've got mine.' + +I don't find nothin' much to say, so I says, 'Well, good-night all, I'll +be goin'.' + +Then Jenny speaks up. 'Ain't you goin' to do nothin'?' she says. + +"'Why, Jenny,' says I 'what can _I_ do?' + +"'All right for you,' she says. 'Turn me loose, Ruddy; no need to keep +me tied after that.' + +"So I says 'Good-night' again and goes. Ruddy comes to the door and +watches me. I looks back once and waves my hand, but he don't make no +sign. I says to myself, 'I can see him because of the light at his back, +but he can't see me.' So I makes for my gun, finds her, turns, and +there's Ruddy still standin' at the door lookin' after me into the dark. +It was a pot shot. Then I goes back, and steps over Ruddy into the shack +and unties Jenny. + +"'Lou,' she says, 'I thought I knowed you inside out. But you fooled +_me_!' + +"By reason of the late hour we stops that night in Ruddy's shack, and +that's all." + +The prisoner, after shuffling his feet uncertainly, sat down. + +"Madam," said the judge, "may I ask you to rise?" + +The woman stood up; not unhandsome in a hard, bold way, except for her +black eye. + +"Madam," said the judge, "is what the prisoner has told us, in so far as +it concerns you, true?" + +"Every word of it." + +"The man Ruddy Boyd used violence to make you go with him?" + +"He twisted my arm and cramped my little finger till I couldn't bear +the pain." + +"You are, I take it, the prisoner's wife?" + +The color mounted slowly into the woman's cheeks. She hesitated, choked +upon her words. The prisoner sprang to his feet. + +"Your honor," he cried, "in a question of life or death like this Jenny +and me we speaks the truth, and nothin' but the truth. She's _not_ my +wife. But I'm goin' to marry her, and make an honest woman of her--at +the foot of the gallows, if you decide that way. No, sir; she was Ruddy +Boyd's wife." + +There was a dead silence, broken by the sounds of the horses and cows +munching their fodder. The foreman of the jury uncoiled slowly. + +"Your honor," he drawled, "I can find it in my heart to pass over the +exact married status of the lady, but I cannot find it in my heart to +pass over without explanation the black eye which the prisoner confesses +to have given her." + +Lou Garou turned upon the foreman like a rat at bay. "That night in the +shack," he cried, "I dreams that Ruddy comes to life. Jenny she hears me +moanin' in my sleep, and she sits up and bends over to see what's the +matter. I think it's Ruddy bendin' over to choke me, and I hits out!" + +"That's true, every word of it!" cried the woman. "He hit me in his +sleep. And when he found out what he'd done he cried over me, and he +kissed the place and made it well!" Her voice broke and ran off into +a sob. + +The jury acquitted the prisoner without leaving their seats. One by one +they shook hands with him, and with the woman. + +"I propose," said the foreman, "that by a unanimous vote we change this +court-house into a house of worship. It will not be a legal marriage +precisely, but it will answer until we can get hold of a minister after +the spring break up." + +The motion was carried. + +The last man to congratulate the happy pair was the German Hans. +"Wheneffer," he said, "you need a parrel of flour or something, you +comes to me py my store." + + + + +THE MONITOR AND THE "MERRIMAC" + + +THE STORY OF A PANIC + +I + +Two long-faced young men and one old man with a long face sat upon the +veranda of the Country Club of Westchester, and looked, now into the +depths of pewter mugs containing mint and ice among other things, and +now across Pelham Bay to the narrow pass of water between Fort Schuyler +and Willets Point. Through this pass the evening fleet of Sound steamers +had already torn with freight and passengers for New Haven, Newport, +Fall River, and Portland; and had already disappeared behind City Island +Point, and in such close order that it had looked as if the _Peck_, +which led, had been towing the others. The first waves from the +paddle-wheels of the great ships had crossed the three miles of +intervening bay, and were slapping at the base of the seawall that +supported the country club pigeon grounds and lawn-tennis terraces, when +another vessel came slowly and haughtily into view from between the +forts. She was as black as the king of England's brougham, and as smart; +her two masts and her great single funnel were stepped with the most +insolent rake imaginable. Here and there where the light of the setting +sun smote upon polished brass she shone as with pools of fire. + +"There she is," said Powers. He had been sitting in his shirt sleeves, +but now he rose and put on his coat as if the sight of the huge and +proud yacht had chilled him. Brett, with a petulant slap, killed a +swollen mosquito against his black silk ankle bone. The old man, +Callender, put his hand to his forehead as if trying to remember +something; and the yacht, steaming slower and slower, and yet, as it +seemed, with more and more grandeur and pride of place--as if she knew +that she gave to the whole bayscape, and the pale Long Island shore +against which she moved in strong relief, an irrefutable note of +dignity--presently stopped and anchored, midway between the forts and +City Island Point; then she began to swing with the tide, until she +faced New York City, from which she had just come. + +Callender took his hand from his forehead. He had remembered. + +"Young gentlemen," he said, "that yacht of Merriman's has been reminding +me every afternoon for a month of something, and I've just thought what. +You remember one day the _Merrimac_ came down the James, very slowly, +and sunk the _Cumberland_, and damaged and frightened the Union fleet +into fits, just the way Merriman has been going down to Wall Street +every morning and frightening us into fits? Well, instead of finishing +the work then and there, she suddenly quit and steamed off up the river +in the same insolent, don't-give-a-hoot way that Merriman comes up from +Wall Street every afternoon. Of course, when the _Merrimac_ came down to +finish destroying the fleet the next day, the _Monitor_ had arrived +during the night and gave her fits, and they called the whole thing off. +Anyhow, it's that going-home-to-sleep-on-it expression of the +_Merrimac's_ that I've been seeing in the _Sappho_." + +"You were on the _Monitor_, weren't you?" asked Powers cheerfully. + +The old man did not answer, but he was quite willing that Powers and +Brett, and the whole world for that matter, should think that he had +been. Powers and Brett, though in no cheerful mood, exchanged winks. + +"I don't see why history shouldn't repeat itself," said Powers. + +"You don't!" said Brett. "Why, because there isn't any _Monitor_ waiting +for Merriman off Wall Street." + +"And just like the Civil War," said Callender, "this trouble in the +street is a rich man's quarrel and a poor man's war. Just because old +Merriman is gunning for Waters, you, and I, and the rest of us are about +to go up the spout." + +Callender was a jaunty old man, tall, of commanding presence and smart +clothes. His white mustache was the epitome of close-cropped neatness. +When he lost money at poker his brown eyes held exactly the same twinkle +as when he won, and it was current among the young men that he had +played greatly in his day--great games for great stakes. Sometimes he +had made heavy winnings, sometimes he had faced ruin; sometimes his +family went to Newport for the summer and entertained; sometimes they +went to a hotel somewhere in some mountains or other, where they didn't +even have a parlor to themselves. But this summer they were living on in +the town house, keeping just enough rooms open, and a few servants who +had weathered former panics, and who were willing to eat dry bread in +bad times for the sake of the plentiful golden butter that they knew was +to be expected when the country believed in its own prosperity and +future. Just now the country believed that it was going to the dogs. And +Mr. Merriman, the banker, had chosen the opportunity to go gunning for +Mr. Waters, the railroad man. The quarrel between the great men was +personal; and so because of a couple of nasty tempers people were being +ruined daily, honest stocks were selling far below their intrinsic +value, United States Steel had been obliged to cut wages, there was a +strike on in the Pennsylvania coal fields, and the Callenders, as I have +said, were not even going to the cheapest mountain top for the summer. +Brett alone was glad of this, because it meant that little Miss +Callender would occasionally come out to the country club for a game of +tennis and a swim, and, although she had refused to marry him on twenty +distinct occasions, he was not a young man to be easily put from his +purpose. Nor did little Miss Callender propose to be relinquished by him +just yet; and she threw into each refusal just the proper amount of +gentleness and startled-fawn expression to insure another proposal +within a month. + +Brett, looking upon Callender as his probable father-in-law, turned to +the old gentleman and said, with guileful innocence: + +"Isn't there anything you can do, sir, to hold Merriman off? Powers and +I are in the market a little, but our customers are in heavy, and the +way things are going we've got to break whether we like it or not." + +Ordinarily Callender would have pretended that he could have checkmated +Merriman if he had wanted to--for in some things he was a child, and it +humored him to pretend, and to intimate, and to look wise; but on the +present occasion, and much to Powers's and Brett's consternation, he +began to speak to them gravely, and confidentially, and a little +pitifully. They had never before seen him other than jaunty and +debonair, whether his family were at Newport or in the mountains. + +"It's all very well for you boys," he said; "you have youth and +resiliency on your side. No matter what happens to you now, in money or +in love, you can come again. But we old fellows, buying and selling with +one foot in the grave, with families accustomed to luxury dependent on +us"--he paused and tugged at his neatly ordered necktie as if to free +his throat for the passage of more air--"some of us old fellows," he +said, "if we go now can never come again--never." + +He rose abruptly and walked into the house without a word more; but +Brett, after hesitating a moment, followed him. Mr. Callender had +stopped in front of the "Delinquent List." Seeing Brett at his elbow, he +pointed with a well-groomed finger to his own name at the beginning +of the C's. + +"If I died to-night," he said, neither gravely nor jocosely, but as if +rather interested to know whether he would or would not, "the club would +have a hard time to collect that sixteen dollars." + +"Are you serious, sir?" Brett asked. + +"If to-morrow is a repetition of to-day," said Mr. Callender, "you will +see the name of Callender & Co. in the evening papers." His lips +trembled slightly under his close-cropped mustache. + +"Then," said Brett, "this is a good opportunity to ask you, sir, if you +have any objection to me as a candidate for your youngest daughter." + +Mr. Callender raised his eyebrows. So small a thing as contemplated +matrimony did not disturb him under the circumstances. + +"My boy," he said, "I take it you are in earnest. I don't object to you. +I am sure nobody does." + +"Oh, yes," said Brett; "_she_ does." + +He had succeeded in making Mr. Callender laugh. + +"But," Brett went on, "I'd like your permission to go on trying." + +"You have it," said her father. "Will you and Powers dine with me?" + +"No," said Brett. "Speaking as candidate to be your son-in-law, you +cannot afford to give us dinner; and in the same way I cannot afford to +buy dinner for you and Powers. So Powers will have to be host and pay +for everything. I shall explain it to him.... But look here, sir, are +you really up against it?" + +To Brett's consternation, Callender suddenly buried his face in his +hands and groaned aloud. + +"Don't," said Brett; "some one's coming." + +Callender recovered his usual poise with a great effort. But no one +came. + +"As far as my wishes go, sir," said Brett, "I'm your son. You never had +a son, did you? If you had a son, and if he were young and resilient, +you'd talk to him and explain to him, and in that way, perhaps, you'd +get to see things so clearly in your own mind that you'd be able to +think a way out. Why don't you talk to me as if I were your son? You see +I want to be so very much, and that's half the battle." + +Callender often joked about his affairs, but he never talked about them. +Now, however, he looked for a moment keenly into the young man's frank +and intelligent face, hesitated, and then, with a grave and courtly bow, +he waved his hand toward two deep chairs that stood in the corner of the +room half facing each other, as if they themselves were engaged in +conversation. + +Twenty minutes later Callender went upstairs to dress for dinner, but +Brett rejoined Powers on the piazza. He sat down without looking at +Powers or speaking to him, and his eyes, crossing the darkening bay, +rested once more on the lordly silhouette of the _Sappho_. In the +failing light she had lost something of her emphatic outline, and was +beginning to melt, as it were, into the shore. + +Brett and Powers were partners. Powers was the floor member of the firm +and Brett ran the office. But they were partners in more ways than the +one, and had been ever since they could remember. As little boys they +had owned things in common without dispute. At St. Marks Powers had +pitched for the nine, and Brett had caught. In their senior year at New +Haven they had played these positions to advantage, both against Harvard +and Princeton. After graduation they had given a year to going around +the world. In Bengal they had shot a tiger, each giving it a mortal +wound. In Siam they had won the doubles championship at lawn tennis. +When one rode on the water wagon the other sat beside him, and vice +versa. Powers's family loved Brett almost as much as they loved Powers, +and if Brett had had a family it would probably have felt about Powers +in the same way. + +As far as volume of business and legitimate commissions went, their firm +was a success. It could execute orders with precision, despatch, and +honesty. It could keep its mouth shut. But it had not yet learned to +keep out of the market on its own account. Regularly as a clock ticks +its profits were wiped out in speculation. The young men believed in the +future of the country, and wanted to get rich quick, not because they +were greedy, but because that desire is part of the average American's +nature and equipment. Gradually, however, they were "getting wise," as +the saying is. And they had taken a solemn oath and shaken hands upon +it, that if ever they got out of their present difficulties they would +never again tempt the goddess of fortune. + +"Old man's in bad, I guess," said Powers. + +"I shouldn't wonder," said Brett, and was ashamed to feel that he must +not be more frank with his partner. "We're all in bad." + +"The _Cumberland_ has been sunk," said Powers, "and the rest of us are +aground and helpless, waiting for the _Merrimac_ to come down the river +in the morning." He shook his fist at the distant _Sappho_. "Why," he +said, "even if we knew what he knows it's too late to do anything, +unless _he_ does it. And he won't. He won't quit firing until Waters +blows up." + +"I've a good notion," said Brett, "to get out my pigeon gun, take the +club launch, board the _Sappho_ about midnight, hold the gun to old +Merriman's head, and make him promise to save the country; or else make +him put to sea, and keep him there. If he were kidnapped and couldn't +unload any more securities, the market would pull up by itself." The +young men chuckled, for the idea amused them in spite of their troubles. + +By a common impulse they turned and looked at the club's thirty-foot +naphtha launch at anchor off the club's dock; and by a common impulse +they both pointed at her, and both exclaimed: + +"The _Monitor_!" + +Then, of course, they were very careful not to say anything more until +they had crooked together the little fingers of their right hands, and +in silence registered a wish each. Then each spoke the name of a famous +poet, and the spell was ended. + +"What did you wish?" said Brett idly. + +Powers could be very courtly and old fashioned. + +"My dear boy," he said, "I fancy that I wished for you just what you +wished for yourself." + +Before this they had never spoken about her to each other. + +"I didn't know that you knew," said Brett. "Thanks." + +They shook hands. Then Brett broke into his gay, happy laugh. + +"That," said he, "is why you have to pay for dinner for Mr. Callender +and me." + +"Are we to dine?" asked Powers, "before attacking the _Merrimac_?" + +"Always," assented Brett, "and we are to dress first." + +The two young men rose and went into the house, Powers resting his hand +affectionately on Brett's further shoulder. It was so that they had come +off the field after striking out Harvard's last chance to score. + +At dinner Mr. Callender, as became his age and experience, told the +young men many clean and amusing stories. Though the clouds were thick +about his head he had recovered his poise and his twinkling eye of the +good loser. Let his night be sleepless, let the morrow crush him, but +let his young friends remember that he had gone to his execution calm, +courteous, and amusing, his mustache trimmed, his face close-shaved, his +nails clean and polished. They had often, he knew, laughed at him for +his pretensions, and his affectation of mysterious knowledge, and all +his little vanities and superiorities, but they would remember him for +the very real nerve and courage that he was showing, and knew that he +was showing. The old gentleman took pleasure in thinking that although +he was about to fail in affairs, he was not going to fail in character. +He even began to make vague plans for trying again, and when, after a +long dinner, they pushed back their chairs and rose from the table, +there was a youthful resiliency in the voice with which he challenged +Powers to a game of piquet. + +"That seems to leave me out," said Brett. + +"Well," said Mr. Callender, with snapping eyes, "can you play well +enough to be an interesting opponent, or can't you?" + +"No, I can't," said Brett. "And anyway, I'm going out in the launch to +talk things over with Merriman." He shrugged his shoulders in a superior +way, and they laughed; but when they had left him for the card-room he +walked out on the veranda and stood looking through the darkness at the +_Sappho's_ distant lights, and he might have been heard muttering, as if +from the depths of very deep thought: + +"Why not?" + + + + +II + +At first Brett did not head the launch straight for the _Sappho_. He was +not sure in his own mind whether he intended to visit her, or just to +have a near-by look at her and then return to the club. He had ordered +the launch on an impulse which he could not explain to himself. If she +had been got ready for him promptly he might not have cared at the last +minute to go out in her at all. But there had been a long delay in +finding the engineer, and this had provoked him and made him very sure +that he wanted to use the launch very much. And it hadn't smoothed his +temper to learn that the engineer had been found in the kitchen eating a +Virginia ham in company with the kitchen maid. + +But the warmth and salt freshness that came into his face, and the +softness and great number of the stars soon pacified him. If she were +only with him, he thought, if her father were only not on the brink of +ruin, how pleasant the world would be. He pretended that she was with +him, just at his shoulder, where he could not see her, but there just +the same, and that he was steering the launch straight for the ends of +the world. He pretended that for such a voyage the launch would not need +an engineer. He wondered if under the circumstances it would be safe to +steer with only one hand. + +But the launch ran suddenly into an oyster stake that went rasping aft +along her side, and at the same moment the searchlight from Fort +Schuyler beamed with dazzling playfulness in his face, and then having +half blinded him wheeled heavenward, a narrow cornucopia of light that +petered out just short of the stars. He watched the searchlight. He +wondered how many pairs of lovers it had discovered along the shores of +Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk on the veranda of the +country club, how many kisses it had interrupted; and whether it would +rather pry into people's private affairs or look for torpedo-boats and +night attacks in time of war. But most of all he wondered why it spent +so much of its light on space, sweeping the heavens like a fiery broom +with indefatigable zeal. There were no lovers or torpedo-boats up there. +Even the birds were in bed, and the Wright brothers were known to be +at Pau. + +Once more the searchlight smote him full in the face and then, as if +making a pointed gesture, swept from him, and for a long second +illuminated the black hull and the yellow spars of the _Sappho_. Then, +as if its earthly business were over, the shaft of light, lengthening +and lengthening as it rose above intervening obstacles, the bay, the +Stepping Stone light, the Long Island shore, turned slowly upward until +it pointed at the zenith. Then it went out. + +"That," thought Brett, "was almost a hint. First it stirred me up; then +it pointed at the _Sappho_; then it indicated that there is One above, +and then it went out." + +He headed the launch straight for the _Sappho_, and began to wonder what +one had to do to get aboard of a magnate's yacht at night. He turned to +the engineer. + +"Gryce," he said, "what do you know about yachts?" + +"What about 'em?" Gryce answered sulkily. He was still thinking of the +kitchen-maid and the unfinished ham, or else of the ham and the +unfinished kitchen maid, I am not sure which. + +"What about 'em?" Brett echoed. "Do they take up their gangways at +night?" + +"Unless some one's expected," said Gryce. + +"Do they have a watchman?" + +"One forward and one aft on big yachts." + +"Making two," said Brett. "But aren't there usually two gangways--one +for the crew and one for the owner's guests?" + +"Crew's gangway is to starboard," Gryce vouchsafed. + +Brett wondered if there was anything else that he ought to know. Then, +in picturing himself as running the launch alongside the _Sappho_, and +hoping that he would not bump her, a question presented itself. + +"If I were going to visit the _Sappho_," he asked, "would I approach the +gangway from the stern or from the bow?" + +"I don't know," said Gryce. + +"Do you mean," said Brett, "that you don't know which is the correct +thing to do, or that you think I can't steer?" + +"I mean," said Gryce, "that I know it's one or the other, but I don't +know which." + +"In that case," said Brett, "we will approach from the rear. That is +always the better part of valor. But if the gangway has been taken up +for the night I don't know what I shall do." + +"The gangway was down when the light was on her," said Gryce. "I seen +it." + +And that it was still down Brett could presently see for himself. He +doubted his ability to make a neat landing, but they seemed to be +expecting him, for a sailor ran down to the gangway landing armed with +a long boat-hook, and made the matter easy for him. When he had reached +the _Sappho's_ deck an officer came forward in the darkness, and said: + +"This way, sir, if you please." + +"There's magic about," thought Brett, and he accompanied the officer +aft. + +"Mr. Merriman," said the latter, "told us to expect you half an hour ago +in a motor-boat. Did you have a breakdown?" + +"No," said Brett, and he added mentally, "but I'm liable to." + +They descended a companionway; the officer opened a sliding door of some +rich wood, and Brett stepped into the highly lighted main saloon of +the _Sappho_. + +In one corner of the room, with his back turned, the famous Mr. Merriman +sat at an upright piano, lugubriously drumming. Brett had often heard of +the great man's secret vice, and now the sight of him hard at it made +him, in spite of the very real trepidation under which he was laboring, +feel good-natured all over--the Colossus of finance was so earnest at +his music, so painstaking and interested in placing his thick, clumsy +fingers, and so frankly delighted with the effect of his performance +upon his own ear. It seemed to Brett homely and pleasant, the thought +that one of the most important people of eighty millions should find +his pleasure in an art for which he had neither gift nor training. + +Mr. Merriman finished his piece with a badly fumbled chord, and turned +from the piano with something like the show of reluctance with which a +man turns from a girl who has refused him. That Mr. Merriman did not +start or change expression on seeing a stranger in the very heart of his +privacy was also in keeping with his reputed character. It was also like +him to look steadily at the young man for quite a long while before +speaking. But finally to be addressed in courteous and pleasant tones +was not what Brett expected. For this he had his own good looks to +thank, as Mr. Merriman hated, with the exception of his own music, +everything that was ugly. + +"Good-evening, sir," said Mr. Merriman. "But I can't for the life of me +think what you are doing on my yacht. I was expecting a man, but +not you." + +"You couldn't guess," said Brett, "why I have been so impertinent as to +call upon you without an invitation." + +"Then," said Mr. Merriman, "perhaps you had better tell me. I think I +have seen you before." + +"My name is Brett," said Brett. "You may have seen me trying to play +tennis at Newport. I have often seen you there, looking on." + +"You didn't come to accuse me of being a looker-on?" Mr. Merriman asked. + +"No, sir," said Brett, "but I do wish that could have been the reason. +I've come, sir, as a matter of fact, because you are, on the contrary, +so very, very active in the game." + +"I don't understand," said Merriman rather coldly, + +"Oh," said Brett, "everybody I care for in the world is being ruined, +including myself, and I said, 'Mr. Merriman could save us all if he only +would.' So I came to ask you if you couldn't see your way to letting up +on us all." + +"'Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman, "you may have heard, since gossip +occasionally concerns herself with me, that in my youth I was a priest." + +Brett nodded. + +"Well," continued Mr. Merriman, "I have never before listened to so +naïve a confession as yours." + +Brett blushed to his eyes. + +"I knew when I came," he said, "that I shouldn't know how to go about +what I've come for." + +"But I think I have a better opinion of you," smiled Mr. Merriman, and +his smile was very engaging. "You have been frank without being fresh, +you have been bashful without showing fear. You meet the eye in a manly +way, and you seem a clean and worthy young man. As opposed to these +things, what you might have thought out to say to me would +hardly matter." + +"Oh," cried Brett impulsively, "if you would only let up!" + +"I suppose, Mr. Brett," the banker smiled, even more engagingly, "that +you mean you would like me to come to the personal rescue of all those +persons who have recently shown bad judgment in the conduct of their +affairs. But let me tell you that I have precisely your own objections +to seeing people go to smash. But they _will_ do it. They don't even +come to me for advice." + +"You wouldn't give it to them if they did," said Brett. + +"No," said Mr. Merriman, "I couldn't. But I should like to, and a piece +of my mind to boot. Now, sir, you have suggested something for me to do. +Will you go further and tell me how I am to do it?" + +"Why," said Brett, diffidently but unabashed, "you could start in early +to-morrow morning, couldn't you, and bull the market?" + +"Mr. Brett," said Mr. Merriman forcefully, "I have for the last month +been straining my resources to hold the market. But it is too heavy, +sir, for one pair of shoulders." + +A look of doubt must have crossed Brett's face, for the banker smote his +right fist into the palm of his left hand with considerable violence, +and rose to his feet, almost menacingly. + +"Have the courtesy not to doubt my statements, young sir," he said +sharply. "I have made light of your intrusion; see that you do not make +light of the courtesy and consideration thus shown you." + +"Of course, I believe you," said Brett, and he did. + +"You are one of those," said Mr. Merriman, "who listen to what the run +of people say, and make capital of it." + +"Of course, I can't help hearing what people say," said Brett. + +"Or believing it!" Mr. Merriman laughed savagely, "What are they saying +of me these days?" he asked. + +Brett hesitated. + +"Come, come," said the great man, in a mocking voice. "You are here +without an invitation. Entertain me! Entertain me! Make good!" + +Brett was nettled. + +"Well," said he, "they say that Mr. Waters was tremendously extended for +a rise in stocks, and that you found it out, and that you hate him, and +that you went for him to give him a lesson, and that you pulled all the +props out of the market, and smashed it all to pieces, just for a +private spite. That's what they say!" + +The banker was silent for quite a long time. + +"If there wasn't something awful about that," he said at last, "it would +be very funny." + +The officer who had ushered Brett into the saloon appeared at the door. + +"Well?" said Merriman curtly. + +"There's a gentleman," said the officer, "who wants to come aboard. He +says you are expecting him. But as you only mentioned one gentleman--" + +"Yes, yes," said Merriman, "I'm expecting this other gentleman, too." + +He turned to Brett. + +"I am going to ask you to remain," he said, "to assist at a conference +on the present state of the market between yourself, and myself, and my +_arch-enemy_--Mr. Waters." + + + + +III + +Even if Brett should live to be a distinguished financier himself--which +is not likely--he will never forget that midnight conference on board +the _Sappho_. He had supposed that famous men--unless they were dead +statesmen--thought only of themselves, and how they might best and most +easily increase their own power and wealth. He had believed with the +rest of the smaller Wall Street interests that the present difficulties +were the result of a private feud. Instead of this he now saw that the +supposed quarrellers had forgotten their differences, and were in the +closest kind of an alliance to save the situation. He discovered that +until prices had fallen fifty points neither of them had been in the +market to any significant extent; and that, to avert the appalling +calamities which seemed imminent, both were ready if necessary to +impoverish themselves or to take unusual risks of so doing. He learned +the real causes of the panic, so far as these were not hidden from +Merriman and Waters themselves, and when at last the two men decided +what should be attempted, to what strategic points they should send +re-enforcements, and just what assistance they should ask the Secretary +of the Treasury to furnish, Brett felt that he had seen history in +the making. + +Waters left the _Sappho_ at one in the morning, and Brett was for going, +too, but Merriman laid a hand on the young man's shoulder and asked him +to remain for a few moments. + +"Now, my son," he said, "you see how the panic has affected some of the +so-called big interests. It may be that Waters and I can't do very much. +But it will be good for you to remember that we tried; it will make you +perhaps see others in a more tolerant light. But for purposes of +conversation you will, of course, forget that you have been here. Now, +as to your own affairs--" + +Mr. Merriman looked old and tired, but very indulgent and kind. + +"Knowing what I know now," said Brett, "I would rather take my chances +with the other little fools who have made so much trouble for you and +Mr. Waters. If your schemes work out I'll be saved in spite of myself; +and if they don't--well, I hope I've learned not to be so great a +fool again." + +"In every honest young man," said Merriman, "there is something of the +early Christian--he is very noble and very silly. Write your name and +telephone number on that sheet of paper. At least, you won't refuse +orders from me in the morning. Waters and I will have to use many +brokers to-morrow, of whom I hope you will consent to be one." + +Brett hung his head in pleasure and shame. Then he looked Mr. Merriman +in the face with a bright smile. + +"If you've got to help some private individual, Mr. Merriman, I'd rather +you didn't make it me; I'd rather you made it old man Callender. If he +goes under now he'll never get to the top again." + +"Not Samuel B. Callender?" said Merriman, with a note of surprise and +very real interest in his voice. "Is he in trouble? I didn't know. Why, +that will never do--a fine old fighting character like that--and +besides ... why, wouldn't you have thought that he would have come to +me himself or that at least he would have confided in my son Jim?" + +Brett winced. + +Merriman wrote something upon a card and handed it to Brett. + +"Can you see that he gets that?" he asked. + +"Yes, sir," said Brett. + +"Tell him, then, to present it at my office the first thing in the +morning. It will get him straight to me. I can't stand idle and see the +father of the girl my boy is going to marry ruined." + +"I didn't know--" said Brett. He was very white, and his lips trembled +in spite of his best efforts to control them. "I congratulate you, sir. +She is very lovely," he added. + +Mr. Merriman regarded the miserable young man quizzically. + +"But," he said, "Mr. Callender has three daughters." + +"Oh, no," said Brett dismally, "there is only the one." + +"My boy," said Mr. Merriman, "I am afraid that you are an incorrigible +plunger--at stocks, at romance, and at conclusions. I don't know if I am +going to comfort you or give you pain, but the girl my son is going to +marry is _Mary_ Callender." + +The color returned to Brett's cheek and the sparkle to his eyes. He +grasped Mr. Merriman by both hands, and in a confidential voice he said: + +"Mr. Merriman, there is no such person." + + + + +THE McTAVISH + + +I + +By the look of her she might have been a queen, or a princess, or at the +very least a duchess. But she was no one of these. She was only a +commoner--a plain miss, though very far from plain. Which is +extraordinary when you consider that the blood of the Bruce flowed with +exceeding liveliness in her veins, together with the blood of many +another valiant Scot--Randolph, Douglas, Campbell--who bled with Bruce +or for him. + +With the fact that she was not at the very least a duchess, _most_ of +her temporal troubles came to an abrupt end. When she tired of her +castle at Beem-Tay she could hop into her motor-car and fly down the +Great North Road to her castle at Brig O'Dread. This was a fifty-mile +run, and from any part of the road she could see land that belonged to +her--forest, farm, and moor. If the air at Beem-Tay was too formal, or +the keep at Brig O'Dread too gloomy, she could put up at any of her +half-dozen shooting lodges, built in wild, inaccessible, wild-fowly +places, and shake the dust of the world from her feet, and tread, just +under heaven, upon the heather. + +But mixed up with all this fine estate was one other temporal trouble. +For, over and above the expenses of keeping the castles on a good +footing, and the shooting lodges clean and attractive, and the motor-car +full of petrol, and the horses full of oats, and the lawns empty of +weeds, and the glass houses full of fruit, she had no money whatsoever. +She could not sell any of her land because it was entailed--that is, it +really belonged to somebody who didn't exist; she couldn't sell her +diamonds, for the same reason; and she could not rent any of her +shootings, because her ancestors had not done so. I honestly believe +that a sixpence of real money looked big to her. + +Her first name was the same as that of the Lady of the Lake--Ellen. Her +last name was McTavish--if she had been a man she would have been The +McTavish (and many people did call her that)--and her middle names were +like the sands of the sea in number, and sounded like bugles blowing a +charge--Campbell and Cameron, Dundee and Douglas. She had a family +tartan--heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses--and +she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking +ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland +loch, her cheeks from the briar rose, some of the notes of her voice +from the upland plover, and some from the lark. And her laugh was like +an echo of the sounds that the River Tay makes when it goes among +the shallows. + +One day she was sitting all by herself in the Seventh Drawing Room +(forty feet by twenty-four) of Brig O'Dread Castle, looking from a +fourteen-foot-deep window embrasure, upon the brig itself, the river +rushing under it, and the clean, flowery town upon both banks. From most +of her houses she could see nothing but her own possessions, but from +Brig O'Dread Castle, standing, as it did, in one corner of her estates, +she could see past her entrance gate, with its flowery, embattled lodge, +a little into the outside world. There were tourists whirling by in +automobiles along the Great North Road, or parties of Scotch gypsies, +with their dark faces and ear-rings, with their wagons and folded tents, +passing from one good poaching neighborhood to the next. Sometimes it +amused her to see tourists turned from her gates by the proud porter who +lived in the lodge; and on the present occasion, when an automobile +stopped in front of the gate and the chauffeur hopped out and rang the +bell, she was prepared to be mildly amused once more in the same way. + +The proud porter emerged like a conquering hero from the lodge, the +pleated kilt of the McTavish tartan swinging against his great thighs, +his knees bare and glowing in the sun, and the jaunty Highland bonnet +low upon the side of his head. He approached the gate and began to +parley, but not with the chauffeur; a more important person (if +possible) had descended from the car--a person of unguessable age, owing +to automobile goggles, dressed in a London-made shooting suit of tweed, +and a cap to match. The parley ended, the stranger appeared to place +something in the proud porter's hand; and the latter swung upon his heel +and strode up the driveway to the castle. Meanwhile the stranger +remained without the gate. + +Presently word came to The McTavish, in the Seventh Drawing Room, that +an American gentleman named McTavish, who had come all the way from +America for the purpose, desired to read the inscriptions upon the +McTavish tombstones in the chapel of Brig O'Dread Castle. The porter, +who brought this word himself, being a privileged character, looked very +wistful when he had delivered it--as much as to say that the frightful +itching of his palm had not been as yet wholly assuaged. The +McTavish smiled. + +"Bring the gentleman to the Great Tower door, McDougall," she said, +"and--I will show him about, myself." + +The proud porter's face fell. His snow-white _mustachios_ took on a +fuller droop. + +"McDougall," said The McTavish--and this time she laughed aloud--"if +the gentleman from America crosses my hand with silver, it shall +be yours." + +"More like"--and McDougall became gloomier still--"more like he will +cross it with gold." (Only he said this in a kind of dialect that was +delightful to hear, difficult to understand, and would be insulting to +the reader to reproduce in print.) + +"If it's gold," said The McTavish sharply, "I'll not part wi' it, +McDougall, and you may lay to that." + +You might have thought that McDougall had been brought up in the Black +Hole of Calcutta--so sad he looked, and so hurt, so softly he left the +room, so loudly he closed the door. + +The McTavish burst into laughter, and promised herself, not without some +compunction, to hand over the gold to McDougall, if any should +materialize. Next she flew to her dressing-room and made herself look as +much like a gentlewoman's housekeeper as she could in the few minutes at +her disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and +whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of +the Great Tower in the sunlight. And when she heard the stranger's feet +upon the gravel she composed her face; and when he appeared round the +corner of a clipped yew she rattled the keys at her belt and bustled on +her feet, as becomes a housekeeper, and bobbed a courtesy. + +The stranger McTavish was no more than thirty. He had brown eyes, and +wore upon his face a steady, enigmatic smile. + + + + +II + +"Good-morning," said the American McTavish. "It is very kind of Miss +McTavish to let me go into her chapel. Are you the housekeeper?" + +"I am," said The McTavish. "Mrs. Nevis is my name." + +"What a pity!" murmured the gentleman. + +"This way, sir," said The McTavish. + +She stepped into the open, and, jangling her keys occasionally, led him +along an almost interminable path of green turf bordered by larkspur and +flowering sage, which ended at last at a somewhat battered lead statue +of Atlas, crowning a pudding-shaped mound of turf. + +"When the Red Currie sacked Brig O'Dread Castle," said The McTavish, "he +dug a pit here and flung the dead into it. There will be McTavishes +among them." + +"There are no inscriptions," said the gentleman. + +"Those are in the chapel," said The McTavish. "This way." And she swung +into another turf walk, long, wide, springy, and bordered by birches. + +"Tell me," said the American, "is it true that Miss McTavish is down on +strangers?" + +She looked at him over her shoulder. He still wore his enigmatic smile. + +"I don't know what got into her," she said, "to let you in." She halted +in her tracks and, looking cautiously this way and that, like a +conspirator in a play: "She's a hard woman to deal with," she said, +"between you and me." + +"I've heard something of the kind," said the American. "Indeed, I asked +the porter. I said, 'What manner of woman is Miss McTavish?' and he +said, in a kind of whisper, 'The McTavish, sir, is a roaring, ranting, +stingy, bony female.'" + +"He said that, did he?" asked the pseudo Mrs. Nevis, tightening her lips +and jangling her keys. + +"But I didn't believe him," said the American; "I wouldn't believe what +he said of any cousin of mine." + +"Is The McTavish your cousin?" + +"Why, yes," said he; "but just which one I don't know. That's what I +have come to find out. I have an idea--I and my lawyers have--that if +The McTavish died without a direct heir, I should be The McTavish; that +is, that this nice castle, and Red Curries Mound, and all and all, would +be mine. I could come every August for the shooting. It would be +very nice." + +"It wouldn't be very nice for The McTavish to die before you," said +Mrs. Nevis. "She's only twenty-two." + +"Great heavens!" said the American. "Between you, you made me think she +was a horrid old woman!" + +"Horrid," said Mrs. Nevis, "very. But not old." + +She led the way abruptly to a turf circle which ended the birch walk and +from which sprang, in turn, a walk of larch, a walk of Lebanon cedars, +and one of mountain ash. At the end of the cedar walk, far off, could be +seen the squat gray tower of the chapel, heavy with ivy. McTavish caught +up with Mrs. Nevis and walked at her side. Their feet made no sound upon +the pleasant, springy turf. Only the bunch of keys sounded occasionally. + +"How," said McTavish, not without insinuation, "could one get to know +one's cousin?" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "if you are troubled with spare cash and stay in +the neighborhood long enough, she'll manage that. She has little enough +to spend, poor woman. Why, sir, when she told me to show you the chapel, +she said, 'Catherine,' she said, 'there's one Carnegie come out of the +States--see if yon McTavish is not another.'" + +"She said that?" + +"She did so." + +"And how did you propose to go to work to find out, Mrs. Nevis?" + +"Oh," said she, "I've hinted broadly at the news that's required at +headquarters. I can do no more." + +McTavish reflected, "Tell her," he said presently, "when you see her, +that I'm not Carnegie, nor near it. But tell her that, as we Americans +say, 'I've enough for two.'" + +"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "that would mean too much or too little to a +Scot." + +"Call it, then," said McTavish, "several million pounds." + +"Several," Mrs. Nevis reflected. + +"Say--three," said McTavish. + +Mrs. Nevis sighed. "And where did you gather it all?" she asked. + +"Oh, from my father," said McTavish. "And it was given to him by the +government." + +"Why?" she asked. + +"Not why," said he, "so much as how. You see, our government is +passionately fond of certain people and makes them very rich. But it's +perfectly fair, because at the same time it makes other people, of whom +it is not fond, desperately poor. We call it protection," he said. "For +instance, my government lets a man buy a Shetland wool sweater in +Scotland for two dollars, and lets him sell it on Broadway for twenty +dollars. The process makes that man rich in time, but it's perfectly +fair, because it makes the man who has to buy the sweater poor." + +"But the fool doesn't have to buy it," said Mrs. Nevis. + +"Oh yes, he does," said McTavish; "in America--if he likes the look of +it and the feel of it--he has to buy. It's the climate, I suppose." + +"Did your father make his money in Shetland sweaters?" she asked. + +"Nothing so nice," said McTavish; "rails." + +A covey of birds rose in the woods at their right with a loud whir of +wings. + +"Whew!" exclaimed McTavish. + +"Baby pheasants," explained Mrs. Nevis. "They shoot three thousand at +Brig O'Dread in the season." + +After certain difficulties, during which their hands touched, the +greatest key in Mrs. Nevis's bunch was made to open the chapel door, and +they went in. + +The place had no roof; the flagged floor had disappeared, and it had +been replaced by velvety turf, level between the graves and headstones. +Supporting columns reared themselves here and there, supporting nothing. +A sturdy thorn tree grew against the left-hand wall; but the sun shone +brightly into the ruin, and sparrows twittered pleasantly among the +in-growths of ivy. + +"Will you wish to read all the inscriptions?" asked Mrs. Nevis, +doubtfully, for there were hundreds of tombstones crowding the turf or +pegged to the walls. + +"No, no," said McTavish "I see what I came to see--already." + +For the first time the enigmatic smile left his face, and she watched +him with a kind of excited interest as he crossed the narrow houses of +the dead and halted before a small tablet of white marble. She followed +him, more slowly, and stood presently at his side as he read aloud: + + "SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF + COLLAND McTAVISH, + WHO DISAPPEARED, AGED FIVE YEARS, + JUNE 15TH, 1801." + +Immediately below the inscription a bar of music was engraved in the +marble. "I can't read that," said McTavish. + +Mrs. Nevis hummed a pathetic air very sweetly, almost under her breath. +He listened until she had finished and then: "What tune is that?" he +asked, excitedly. + +"'Wandering Willie,'" she answered. + +"Of course," said he, "it would be that." + +"Was this the stone you came to see?" she asked presently. + +"Yes," he said. "Colland McTavish, who disappeared, was my +great-grandfather. The old gentleman--I never saw him myself--used to +say that he remembered a long, long driveway, and a great iron gate, and +riding for ever and ever in a wagon with a tent over it, and sleeping at +night on the bare hills or in forests beside streams. And that was all +he remembered, except being on a ship on the sea for years and years. +But he had this--" + +McTavish extracted from a pocket into which it had been buttoned for +safety what appeared, at first sight, to be a linen handkerchief yellow +with age. But, on unfolding, it proved to be a child's shirt, cracked +and broken in places, and lacking all but one of its bone buttons. +Embroidered on the tiny shirt tail, in faint and faded blue, was the +name Colland McTavish. + +"He always thought," said McTavish, "that the gypsies stole him. It +looks as if they had, doesn't it? And, just think, he used to live in +this beautiful place, and play in it, and belong to it! Wasn't it +curious, my seeing that tablet the first thing when we came in? It +looked as big as a house and seemed to beckon me." + +"It looks more like the ghost of a little child," said Mrs. Nevis +quietly. "Perhaps that is why it drew you so." + +"Why," said he, "has this chapel been allowed to fall to pieces?" + +"Because," said Mrs. Nevis, "there's never been the money to mend it." + +"I wonder," he mused, "if The McTavish would let me do it? After all, +I'm not an utter stranger; I'm a distant cousin--after all." + +"Not so distant, sir," said Mrs. Nevis, "as may appear, if what you say +is true. Colland McTavish, your great-grandfather, and The McTavish's +great-grandfather, were brothers--and the poor bereft mother that put up +this tablet was your great-great-grandmother, and hers." + +"Surely then," said he, "The McTavish would let me put a roof on the +chapel. I'd _like_ to," he said, and the red came strongly into his +cheeks. "I'll ask her. Surely she wouldn't refuse to see me on such +a matter." + +"You can never tell," Mrs. Nevis said. "She's a woman that won't bear +forcing." + +He looked at her for the first time in some minutes. "Why," said he, +"you're ill; you're white as a sheet!" + +"It's the long walk uphill. It takes me in the heart, somehow." + +"I'm sorry," said McTavish simply. "I'm mighty sorry. It's all my +fault." + +"Why, so it is," said she, with the flicker of a smile. + +"You must take my arm going back. I _am_ sorry." + +When they had left the chapel and locked the door, she took his arm +without any further invitation. + +"I will, if you don't mind," she said. "I am shaken, and that's the +truth.... But what," and again the smile flickered--"what would The +McTavish say if she saw us--her cousin and her housekeeper--dawdling +along arm in arm?" + +McTavish laughed. "I don't mind, if you don't." + +They returned slowly by the long turf walk to the statue of Atlas. + +"Now," said he, "how should I go about getting an interview with The +McTavish?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Nevis, "it will not be for to-day. She is leaving +within the hour for Beem-Tay in her motor-car." + +"Oh, then I shall follow her to Beem-Tay." + +"If you can do that," said Mrs. Nevis, "I will give you a line to my +sister. Maybe she could help you. She's the housekeeper at +Beem-Tay--Miss MacNish is her name." And she added as if by an +after-thought. "We are twins." + +"Are there two of you?" exclaimed McTavish. + +"Why not?" she asked, with a guileless face. + +"Why," said he, "it's wonderful. Does she look like you?" + +"Exactly," said Mrs. Nevis. "Same red hair, same eyes, nose, and faint +spells--only," and there was a certain arch quality in her clear voice, +"_she's_ single." + +"And she looks exactly like you--and she's single! I don't believe it." + +Mrs. Nevis withdrew her hand from his arm. When they had reached the +door of the Great Tower she stopped. + +"If you care for a line to my sister," she said, "I'll write it. You can +wait here." + +"I wish it of all things, and if there are any stairs to climb, mind you +take your time. Remember you're not very good at hills." + +When she had gone, he smiled his enigmatic smile and began to walk +slowly up and down in front of the door, his hands clasped behind his +back. Once he made a remark. "Scotland," he said, "is the place for me." + +But when at length she returned with the letter, he did not offer her +money; instead he offered his hand. "You've been very kind," he said, +"and when I meet your mistress I will tell her how very courteous you +have been. Thank you." + +He placed the letter in the breast-pocket of his shooting-coat. "Any +messages for your sister?" he asked. + +"You may tell her I hope she is putting by something for a rainy day. +You may tell her The McTavish is verra hard up the noo"--she smiled +very charmingly in his face--"and will na' brook an extravagant table." + +"Do you think," said McTavish, "that your sister will get me a chance to +see _The_ McTavish?" + +"If any one can, she can." + +"Good-by," he said, and once more they shook hands. + +A few minutes later she heard the distant purring of his car, and a +thought struck her with dismay. "What if he goes straight to Beem-Tay +and presents the letter before I get there!" + +She flowered into swift action, flashed up the turret stairs, and, +having violently rung a bell, flew into her dressing-room, and began to +drag various automobiling coats, hats, and goggles out of their hiding +places. When the bell was answered: "The car," she cried, "at once!" + +A few moments later, veiled, goggled, and coated, she was dashing from +the castle to the stables. Halfway she met the car. "McDonald," she +cried, "can you make Beem-Tay in the hour?" + +"It's fifty miles," said the driver, doubtfully. + +"Can you make it?" + +"The road--" he began. + +"I know the road," she said impatiently; "it's all twisty-wisty. Can you +make it?" + +"I'm a married man," said he. + +"Ten pounds sterling if you make it." + +"And if we smash and are kilt?" + +"Why, there'll be a more generous master than I in Beem-Tay and in Brig +O'Dread--that's all." + +She leaped into the car, and a minute later they were flying along the +narrow, tortuous North Road like a nightmare. Once she leaned over the +driver's seat and spoke in his ear: "I hav'na the ten pounds noo," she +said, "but I'll beg them, McDonald, or borrow them--" The car began to +slow down, the driver's face grew gloomy. "Or steal them!" she cried. +McDonald's face brightened, for The McTavish's money difficulties were +no better known than the fact that she was a woman of her word. He +opened the throttle and the car once more shot dizzily forward. + +Twenty miles out of Brig O'Dread they came upon another car, bound in +the same direction and also running desperately fast. They passed it in +a roaring smother of dust. + +"McDonald," said The McTavish, "you needna run sae fast noo. Keep the +lead o' yon car to Beem-Tay gate--that is all." + +She sank back luxuriously, sighed, and began to wonder how she should +find McDonald his ten pounds sterling. + + + + +III + +She need not have hurried, nor thrown to the wind those ten pounds that +she had somehow to raise. On arriving at Beem-Tay she had given orders +that any note addressed to Miss MacNish, and presented at the gate, +should be brought at once to her. McTavish did not come that day, but +she learned indirectly that he had taken rooms at the McTavish Arms in +Beem-Tay village, and from Mr. Traquair, manager of the local branch of +the Bank of Scotland, that he was taking steps to hire for the season +the forest of Clackmanness, a splendid sporting estate that marched with +her own lands. Mr. Traquair, a gentleman as thin as a pipe stem, and as +kind as tobacco, had called upon her the second day, in answer to an +impetuous summons. He found her looking very anxious and very beautiful, +and told her so. + +"May the looks stand me in good stead, Mr. Traquair," said she, "for I'm +like to become Wandering Willie of the song--Wandering Wilhelmina, +rather. There's a man yont, named McTavish, will oost me frae hoose +and name." + +"That would be the young gentleman stopping at the McTavish Arms." + +"Ah," said The McTavish, "he might stop here if he but knew." + +"He's no intending it, then," said Mr. Traquair, "for he called upon me +this morning to hire the Duke's forest of Clackmanness." + +"Ah!" said The McTavish. + +"And now," said Mr. Traquair, stroking his white mustache, "tell me what +it all means." + +"It means that Colland McTavish, who was my great-grandfather's elder +brother, has returned in the person of the young gentleman at the Arms." + +"A fine hornpipe he'll have to prove it," said Mr. Traquair. + +"Fine fiddlesticks!" said The McTavish. "Man," she continued earnestly, +"you have looked in his face and you tell me it will be a dance to prove +him The McTavish?" + +"He is a McTavish," admitted Mr. Traquair; "so much I knew before he +told me his name." + +"He has in his pocket the bit shirt that wee Colland wore when the +gypsies snitched him and carried him over seas; it's all of a piece with +many another garment of wee Colland's. I've had out the trunk in which +his little duds have been stored these many years. The man is Colland's +great-grandson. I look at him, and I admit it without proof." + +"My dear," said Mr. Traquair, "you have no comprehension of the law. I +will fight this claim through every court of the land, or I'm ready to +meet him on Bannockburn field, my ancestral claymore against his. A +rare laugh we'll have when the pretender produces his bit shirtie in the +court, and says, 'Look, your honor, upon my patent o' nobilitee.'" + +"Mind this," said The McTavish, "I'll make no contests, nor have none +made. Only," she smiled faintly, "I hay'na told him who he rightly is. +He claims cousinship. But it has not dawned on him that Colland was to +have been The McTavish, that he _is_ The McTavish, that I am merely Miss +Ellen Alice Douglas Cameron Dundee Campbell McGregor Breadalbane Blair +McTavish, houseless, homeless spinster, wi' but a drap o' gude blood to +her heritage. I have not told him, Mr. Traquair. He does not know. +What's to be done? What would you do--_if you knew_ that he was he, and +that you were only you?" + +"It's your meeserable conscience of a Church-going Scot," commiserated +Traquair, not without indignation. "What would a Campbell have done? +He'd have had himself made a judge in the land, and he'd have condemned +the pretender to the gallows--out of hand, my dear--out of hand!" + +She shook her head at him as at a naughty child. "Where is your own +meeserable conscience, Traquair?" + +"My dear," cried the little man, "it is storming my reason." + +"There," said she, "I told you so. And now we are both of one mind, you +shall present these tidings to McTavish together with my compliments." + +"First," said Traquair cautiously, "I'll bide a bit on the thought." + +"I will leave the time to your meeserable conscience," said Miss +McTavish generously. "Meanwhile, my dear man, while the semblance of +prosperity abides over my head in the shape of a roof, there's a matter +o' ten pound--" + +Mr. Traquair rose briskly to his feet. "Ten pound!" he exclaimed. + +"Only ten pound," she wheedled. + +"My dear," he said, "I don't see where you're to raise another matter o' +saxpence this month." + +"But I've promised the ten pound on my honor," she said. "Would you have +me break my word to a servant?" + +"Well--well," temporized Mr. Traquair, "I'll have another look at the +books. Mind, I'm not saying it can be done--unless you'll sell a bit +timber here and yont--" + +"Dear man," she said, "full well ye know it's not mine to sell. Then +you're to let me have the ten pound?" + +"If I were to employ a wheedler," said Mr. Traquair, "I'd have no choice +'twixt you and Satan. Mind, I make no promises. Ten pound is a +prodeegious sum o' money, when ye hay'na got it." + +"Not later than to-morrow, then," said Miss McTavish, as though to cap a +promise that had been made to her. "I'm obliged to you, Traquair, +deeply obliged." + + + + +IV + +But it was not the matter of the ten pounds that worried Traquair as he +climbed into his pony cart and drove slowly through the castle policies +to the gate. Indeed, the lofty gates had not been closed behind him +before he had forgotten all about them. That The McTavish was not The +McTavish alone occupied his attention. And when he perceived the cause +of the trouble, strolling beside the lofty ring fence of stone that +shielded the castle policies from impertinent curiosity, it was in +anything but his usual cheerful voice that he hailed him. + +"Will you take a lift, Mr. McTavish?" he invited dismally. + +"Oh, no," said The McTavish, "I won't trouble you, thanks." + +Traquair's meeserable conscience got the better of him all at once. And +with that his cheerfulness returned. + +"Get in," he said. "You cannot help troubling me, Mr. McTavish. I've a +word for you, sir." + +McTavish, wondering, climbed into the car. + +"Fergus," said Traquair to the small boy who acted as groom, messenger, +and shoe polisher to the local branch of the Bank of Scotland, +"ye'll walk." + +When the two were thus isolated from prying ears, Mr. Traquair cleared +his throat and spoke. "Is there anything, Mr. McTavish," he said, "in +this world that a rich man like you may want?" + +"Oh, yes," said McTavish, "some things." + +"More wealth?" + +McTavish shook his head. + +"Houses--lands?" Traquair looked up shrewdly from the corner of his eye, +but McTavish shook his head again. + +"Power, then, Mr. McTavish?" + +"No--not power." + +"Glory?" + +"No," said McTavish; "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid not." + +"Then, sir," said Traquair, "it's a woman." + +"No," said McTavish, and he blushed handsomely. "It's _the_ woman." + +"I withdraw my insinuation," said Traquair gravely. + +"I thank you," said Mr. McTavish. + +"I am glad, sir," said Traquair presently, "to find you in so generous +a disposition, for we have need of your generosity. I have it from Miss +McTavish herself," he went on gravely, "that your ancestor, so far as +you know, was Colland McTavish." + +"So far as I know and believe," said McTavish, "he was." + +"Did you know that Colland McTavish should have been _The_ McTavish?" +asked Mr. Traquair. + +"It never entered my head. Was he the oldest son?" + +"He was," said Mr. Traquair solemnly, "until in the eyes of the _law_ he +ceased to exist." + +"Then," said McTavish, "in every eye save that of the law I am _The_ +McTavish." + +Mr. Traquair bowed. "Miss McTavish," he said, "was for telling you at +once; but she left the matter entirely to my discretion. I have thought +best to tell you." + +"Would the law," asked McTavish, "oust Miss McTavish and stand me in her +shoes?" + +"The law," said Traquair pointedly, "would not do the former, and," with +a glance at McTavish's feet, "the Auld Nick could not do the latter." + +McTavish laughed. "Then why have you told me?" he asked. + +"Because," said Traquair grandly, "it is Miss McTavish's resolution to +make no opposition to your claim." + +"I see; I am to become 'The' without a fight." + +"Precisely," said Traquair. + +"Well, discretionary powers as to informing me of this were given you, +as I understand, Mr. Traquair?" + +"They were," said Traquair. + +"Well," said McTavish again, "there's no use crying over spilt milk. But +is your conscience up to a heavy load?" + +"'Tis a meeserable vehicle at best," protested Traquair. + +"You must pretend," said McTavish, "that you have not yet told me." + +"Ah!" Traquair exclaimed. "You wish to think it over." + +"I do," said McTavish. + +Both were silent for some moments. Then Traquair said rather solemnly: +"You are young, Mr. McTavish, but I have hopes that your thinking will +be of a wise and courageous nature." + +"Do you read Tennyson?" asked McTavish, apropos of nothing. + +"No," said Traquair, slightly nettled. "Burns." + +"I am sorry," said McTavish simply; "then you don't know the lines: + + 'If you are not the heiress born, + And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir,' etc. + +do you?" + +"No," said Traquair, "I do not." + +"It is curious how often a lack of literary affinity comes between two +persons and a heart-to-heart talk." + +"Let me know," said Traquair, "when you have thought it over." + +"I will. And now if you will put me down--?" + +He leaped to the ground, lifted his hat to the older man, and, turning, +strode very swiftly, as if to make up for lost time, back toward the +castle gate. + + + + +V + +McTavish was kept waiting a long time while a servant took his letter of +introduction to Miss MacNish, and brought back an answer from +the castle. + +Finally, midway of a winding and shrubby short cut, into which he turned +as directed by the porter, he came suddenly upon her. + +"Miss MacNish--?" he said. + +"You're not Mr. McTavish!--" She seemed dumfounded, and glanced at a +letter which she carried open in her hand. "My sister writes--" + +"What does she write?" asked McTavish eagerly. + +"No--no!" Miss MacNish exclaimed hastily, "the letter was to me." She +tore it hastily into little pieces. + +"Miss MacNish," said McTavish, somewhat hurt, "it is evident that I give +diametrically opposed impressions to you and your sister. Either she +has said something nice about me, and you, seeing me, are astonished +that she should; or she has said something horrid about me--I do hope +it's that way--and you are even more surprised. It must be one thing or +the other. And before we shake hands I think it only proper for you to +tell me which." + +"Let bygones be bygones," said Miss MacNish, and she held out her hand. +McTavish took it, and smiled his enigmatic smile. + +"It is your special wish, I have gathered," said Miss MacNish, "to meet +The McTavish. Now she knows about your being in the neighborhood, knows +that you are a distant cousin, but she hasn't expressed any wish to meet +you--at least I haven't heard her. If she wishes to meet you, she will +ask you to call upon her. If she doesn't wish to, she won't. Of course, +if you came upon her suddenly--somewhere in the grounds, for +instance--she'd have to listen to what you had to say, and to answer +you, I suppose. But to-day--well I'd not try it to-day." + +"Why not?" asked McTavish. + +"Why," said Miss MacNish, "she caught cold in the car yesterday, and her +poor nose is much too red for company." + +"Why do you all try to make her out such a bad lot?" + +"Is it being a bad lot to have a red nose?" exclaimed Miss MacNish. + +"At twenty-two?" McTavish looked at her in surprise and horror. "I ask +_you_," he said. "There was the porter at Brig O'Dread, and your +sister--they gave her a pair of black eyes between them, and here you +give her a red nose. When the truth is probably the reverse." + +"I don't know the reverse of red," said Miss MacNish, "but that would +give her white eyes." + +"I am sure, Miss MacNish, that quibbling is not one of your +prerogatives. It belongs exclusively to the Speaker of the House of +Representatives. As for me--the less I see of The McTavish, the surer I +am that she is rather beautiful, and very amusing, and good." + +"Are these the matters on which you are so eager to meet her?" asked +Miss MacNish. She stood with her back to a clump of dark blue larkspur +taller than herself--a lovely picture, in her severe black housekeeper's +dress that by contrast made her face and dark red hair all the more +vivacious and flowery. Her eyes at the moment were just the color of +the larkspur. + +McTavish smiled his enigmatic smile. "They are," he said. + +"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss MacNish. + +"When I meet her--" McTavish began, and abruptly paused. + +"What?" Miss MacNish asked with some eagerness. + +"Oh, nothing; _I'm_ so full of it that I almost betrayed my own +confidence." + +"I hope that you aren't implying that I might prove indiscreet." + +"Oh, dear no!" said McTavish. + +"It had a look of it, then," said Miss MacNish tartly. + +"Oh," said McTavish, "if I've hurt your feelings--why, I'll go on with +what I began, and take the consequences, shall I?" + +"I think," said Miss MacNish primly, "that it would tend to restore +confidence between us." + +"When I meet her, then," said McTavish, "I shall first tell her that she +is beautiful, and amusing, and good. And then," it came from him in a +kind of eager, boyish outburst, "I shall ask her to marry me." + +Miss MacNish gasped and stepped backward into the fine and deep soil +that gave the larkspur its inches. The color left her cheeks and +returned upon the instant tenfold. And it was many moments before she +could find a word to speak. Then she said in an injured and astonished +tone: "_Why?_" + +"The Scotch Scot," said McTavish, "is shrewd, but cautious. The American +Scot is shrewd, but daring. Caution, you'll admit, is a pitiful measure +in an affair of the heart." + +Miss MacNish was by this time somewhat recovered from her +consternation. "Well," said she, "what then? When you have come upon The +McTavish unawares somewhere in the shrubbery, and asked her to marry +you, and she has boxed your ears for you--what then?" + +"Then," said McTavish with a kind of anticipatory expression of +pleasure, "I shall kiss her. Even if she hated it," he said ruefully, +"she couldn't help but be surprised and flattered." + +Miss MacNish took a step forward with a sudden hilarious brightening in +her eyes. "Are you quizzing me," she said, "or are you outlining your +honest and mad intentions? And if the latter, won't you tell me why? +Why, in heaven's name, should you ask The McTavish to marry you--at +first sight?" + +"I can't explain it," said McTavish. "But even if I never have seen +her--I love her." + +"I have heard of love at first sight--" began Miss MacNish. + +But he interrupted eagerly. "You haven't ever experienced it, have you?" + +"Of course, I haven't," she exclaimed indignantly. "I've heard of +it--_often_. But I have never heard of love without any sight at all." + +"Love is blind," said McTavish. + +"Now, who's quibbling?" + +"Just because," he said, "you've never heard of a thing, away off here +in your wild Highlands, is a mighty poor proof that it doesn't exist. I +suppose you don't believe in predestination. I've always known," he said +grandly, "that I should marry my cousin--even against her will and +better judgment. You don't more than half believe me, do you?" + +"Well, not more than half," Miss MacNish smiled. + +"It's the truth," he said; "I will bet you ten pounds it's the truth." + +Miss MacNish looked at him indignantly, and in the midst of the look she +sighed. "I don't bet," said she. + +McTavish lowered his glance until it rested upon his own highly polished +brown boots. + +"Why are you looking at your boots?" asked Miss MacNish. + +"Because," he said simply, "considering that I am in love with my +cousin, I don't think I ought to look at you any more. I'm afraid I got +the habit by looking at your sister; but then, as she has a husband, it +couldn't matter so much." + +Miss MacNish, I'm afraid, mantled with pleasure. "My sister said +something in her letter about your wishing to see the house of your +ancestors. Miss McTavish is out now--would you like to look about +a little?" + +"Dearly," said McTavish. + + + + +VI + +Miss McTavish sent for Mr. Traquair. He went to her with a heavy +conscience, for as yet he had done nothing toward raising the ten +pounds. At her first words his conscience became still more laden. + +"Traquair," she said, "you mustn't tell him yet." + +It was all Traquair could do to keep countenance. "Then it's fortunate I +haven't," said he, "for you gave me a free hand." + +"Consider it tied behind your back for the present, for a wonderful +thing is going to happen." + +"Indeed," said Traquair. + +"You wouldn't believe me when I tell you that the silly man is going to +fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him!" + +"Although you haven't offered me a chair, my dear," said Traquair, "I +will take one." + +All in a burst then, half laughing, half in a grave kind of excitement, +she told her old friend how she had played housekeeper first at Brig +O'Dread and later at Beem-Tay. And how, on the latter occasion, McTavish +had displayed his admiration so openly that there could be but the +one climax. + +"And after all," she concluded, "if he thinks I'm just a housekeeper, +and falls in love with me and asks me to marry him--I'd know the man +was sincere--wouldn't I, Traquair?" + +"It seems to me," said Traquair, "that I have never seen you so +thoroughly delighted with yourself." + +"That is unkind. It is a wonderful thing when a girl of position, and +hedged in as I have been, finds that she is loved for herself alone and +not for her houses and lands, and her almost royal debts." + +"Verra flattering," said Traquair, "na doot. And what answer will you +give?" + +"Traquair," she said, "I'm not a profane girl; but I'm hanged if I +know." + +"He is a very wealthy man, and I have no doubt a very kind and honest +man." + +"He is a very cheeky man," smiled Miss McTavish. + +"No doubt--no doubt," said Traquair; "and it would leave you to the +honest enjoyment of your houses and lands, which otherwise you propose +to hand over to him. Still, it is well for a Scot to be cautious." + +"For a Scotch Scot," said Miss McTavish. "I should be an American Scot +if I married him. He tells me they are noted for their daring." + +While they were thus animatedly conversing, word came that Mr. McTavish +had called in the hope of seeing Miss MacNish. + +"There," said Miss McTavish, "you see! Go down to him, Traquair, and be +pleasant, until I come. Then vanish." + +Traquair found McTavish smoking a thick London cigarette upon the steps +of the side entrance, and gazing happily into a little garden of dark +yew and vivid scarlet geraniums with daring edgings of brightest +blue lobelia. + +"Will you be making any changes," asked Traquair, "when you come into +your own?" + +McTavish looked up with a smile and handed his open cigarette case to +the older man. + +"Mr. Traquair," he said, "I'm young and a stranger. I wish you could +find it in your heart to be an uncle to me." + +Traquair accepted a cigarette and sat down, first assuring himself that +the stone steps were dry. + +"If I were your nephew," said McTavish, "and came to you all out of +breath, and told you that I wished to marry Miss McTavish's housekeeper, +what would you say?" + +"I would say," said Traquair, "that she was the daughter of a grand +family that had fallen from their high estate. I would say, 'Charge, +nephew, charge!'" + +"Do you mean it!" exclaimed McTavish. + +"There's no more lovely lass in the United Kingdom," said Traquair, +"than Miss--Miss--" + +"MacNish," McTavish helped him; "and she would be mistress where she +had been servant. That's a curious twist of fate." + +"You have made up your mind, then," said Traquair, "to claim your own?" + +"By no means--yet," said McTavish. "I was only speculating. It's all in +the air. Suppose uncle, that Miss MacNish throws me down!" + +"Throws you down!" Traquair was shocked. + +"Well," said McTavish humbly, "you told me to charge." + +"To charge," said Traquair testily, "but not to grapple." + +"In my country," said McTavish, "when a girl refuses to marry a man they +call it throwing him down, giving him the sack, or handing him a lemon." + +"Yours is an exceptional country," said Traquair. + +Miss MacNish appeared in the doorway behind them. "I'm sorry to have +been so long," she said; "I had to give out the linen for luncheon." + +McTavish flung away his cigarette, and sprang to his feet as if some one +had stuck a pin into him. Traquair, according to the schedule, vanished. + +"It seemed very, very long," said McTavish. + +"Miss McTavish," said Miss MacNish, "has consented to see you." + +"Good Heavens!--when?" + +"Now." + +"But I don't want to see her _now_." + +"But you told me"--Miss MacNish looked thoroughly puzzled--"you told me +just what you were going to say to her. You said it was all +predestined." + +"Miss MacNish, it was not Miss McTavish I was thinking of--I'm sure it +wasn't. It was you." + +"Are you proposing to me?" she asked. + +"Of course, I am. Come into the garden--I can't talk on these steps, +right on top of a gravel walk with a distant vista of three gardeners +and a cartful of sand." + +"I must say," said Miss MacNish, "that this is the suddenest thing that +ever happened to me." + +"But you said you believed in love at first sight," McTavish explained. +"You knew yesterday what had happened to me--don't say you didn't, +because I saw you smiling to yourself. You might come into the garden +and let me say my say." + +She didn't budge. + +"Very well then. I will make a scene--right here--a terrible scene." He +caught her two hands in his, and drew her toward him so that the keys at +her belt jangled and clashed. + +"This is preposterous!" she exclaimed. + +"Not so preposterous as you think. But what's your first name?" + +"I think I haven't any at the moment." + +"Don't be ridiculous. There--there--" + +She tore her hands from him and struck at him wildly. But he ducked +like a trained boxer. + +"With everybody looking!" she cried, crimson with mortification. + +"I had a cable," he said, "calling me back to America. That is why I +have to hurry over the preliminaries." + +"The preliminaries," she cried, almost in tears. "Do you know who I am +that you treat me like a barmaid?" + +"Ladies," said McTavish, "who masquerade as housekeepers ought to know +what to expect." + +Her face was a blank of astonishment. "Traquair told," she said +indignantly. "Wait till I--" + +"No," said McTavish; "the porter at Brig O'Dread told. He said that you +yourself would show me the chapel. He said not to be surprised if you +pretended to be some one else. He said you had done that kind of thing +before. He seemed nettled about something." + +In spite of herself Miss McTavish laughed. "I told him," she said, "that +if you crossed my hand with silver, I would give it to him; but if you +crossed my hand with gold, I would keep it for myself. That made him +furious, and he slammed the door when he left. So you knew all along?" + +"Yes--Mrs. Nevis MacNish McTavish, I did; and when you had the faint +spell in the chapel, I almost proposed then. I tell you, your voice and +your face, and the way you walked--oh, they did for this young man on +the spot! Do you know how much hunger and longing and loving can be +crowded into a few days? I do. You think I am in a hurry? It seems to me +as if there'd been millions of years of slow waiting." + +"I have certainly played the fool," said Miss McTavish, "and I suppose I +have let myself in for this." Her voice was gentler. "Do you know, too, +why I turned white in the chapel?" + +"Yes," he said, "I know that." + +"Traquair told you." + +"Yes." + +"And if you hadn't liked me this way, would you have turned me out of +house and home?" + +He drew her hand through his arm, and they crossed the gravel path into +the garden. "What do _you_ think?" he asked. + +"I think--no," said she. + +"Thank you," said he. "Do you read Tennyson?" + +"No," said she, "Burns." + +McTavish sighed helplessly. Then a light of mischief came into his eye. +"As _Burns_ says," said he: + + "'If you are not the heiress born, + And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir, + We two will wed to-morrow morn, + And you shall still be Lady Clare,'" + +"I love every word Burns wrote," she said enthusiastically, and +McTavish, though successful, was ashamed. + +"McTavish," she said, "the other day, when I felt that I had to get here +before you, I promised my driver ten pounds if he beat your car," + +"Yes," said McTavish, "I guessed what was up, and told my man to go +slower. It wasn't the psychological moment for either of us to break our +necks, was it?" + +"No; but I promised the man ten pound, McTavish--and I hay'na got it." + +"Ten pounds ought to have a certain purchasing power," said he. + +"Then shut your eyes," she commanded. + +"And after all," she said, "you'll be _The_ McTavish, won't you?" + +"I will not," he said. "Do you think I'm going to take you back to +America with me Saturday, and have all my friends in New York point +their fingers at me, and call me--_The_?" + + + + +THE PARROT + +He had been so buffeted by fortune, through various climates and various +applications of his many-sidedness, that when I first met Leslie it was +difficult to believe him a fellow countryman. His speech had been welded +by the influence of alien languages to a choice cosmopolitanism. His +skin, thick and brown from blazing sunshines, puckered monkey-like about +his blue, blinking eyes. He never hurried. He was going to Hong-Kong to +build part of a dry-dock for the English Government, he said, but his +ambitions had dwindled to owning a farm somewhere in New York State and +having a regular menagerie of birds and animals. + +His most enthusiastic moments of conversation were in arguing and +anecdotalizing the virtues and ratiocinations of animals and birds. The +monkey, he said, was next to man the most clever, but was inferior to +the elephant in that he had no sense of right or wrong. Furthermore, +monkeys were immodest. Next came certain breeds of dogs. Very low in the +scale he placed horses; very high, parrots. + +"Concerning parrots," he said, "people are under erroneous impressions, +but copying and imitation are not unreasonable processes. Your parrot, +under his bright cynical feathers, is a modest fowl that grasps at every +opportunity of education from the best source--man. In a native state +his intelligence remains closed: the desire to be like a woodpecker or a +humming-bird does not pick at the cover. Just as a boy born in an +Indiana village and observing the houses of his neighbors might not wish +to become an architect, but if he were transported to Paris or Vienna, +to a confrontation of what is excellent in proportion, it might be that +art would stir in his spirit and, after years of imitation, would come +forth in a stately and exquisite procession of buildings. So in his +native woods the parrot recognizes nothing but color that is worthy of +his imitation. But in the habitations of man, surrounded by taste, which +is the most precious of all gifts, his ambition begins to grow, his +ignorance becomes a shame. He places his foot on the first rung of the +educational ladder. His bright colors fade, perhaps; the eyes of his +mind are turned toward brighter and more ornamental things. What +creature but a parrot devotes such long hours to the acquirement of +perfection in each trivial stage of progress? What creature remembers so +faithfully and so well? We know not what we are, you and I and the rest +of us; but if we had had the application, patience, and ambition of the +average parrot, we should be greater men. But some people say that +parrots are mean, self-centred, and malignant. They have, I admit, a +crust of cynicism which might lead to that impression, and not unjustly, +but underneath the parrot's crotchets there beats a great and benevolent +heart. Let me give you an instance: + +"In '88 my luck was down, and as a first step to raising it I shipped +before the mast in an English bottom outward bound from Hong-Kong to +Java. Jaffray was the cook, a big negro who owned a savage gray +parrot--a mighty clever bird but to all intents and purposes of a most +unscrupulous and cruel nature. Many a time her cleverness at provoking a +laugh was all that saved her from sudden death. She bit whom she could; +she stole what she could. She treated us like dogs. Only Jaffray could +handle her without a weapon. Him she loved and made love to with a +sheepish and resolute abandon. From him she endured the rapid +alternations of whippings and caressings with the most stoical fortitude +and self-restraint. When he whipped her she would close her eyes and +say: 'I could bite him, but I won't. Polly's a bad girl. Hit her again,' +When the whipping was over she would say: 'Polly's sore. Poor Polly! How +I pity that poor girl!' Love-making usually succeeded a whipping in +short order, and then she was at her best. She would turn her head to +one side, cast the most laughably provoking glances, hold one claw +before her face, perhaps, like a skeleton fan, and say: 'Don't come +fooling round me. Go away, you bad man,' + +"I tried my best to be friends with her. But only to prove that the +knack that I am supposed to have with birds and beasts has its +limitations. With one long day following another and opportunity +constantly at hand, I failed utterly in obtaining her friendship. +Indeed, she was so lacking in breeding as to make public mockings of my +efforts. There was no man before the mast but stood higher in her graces +than I. My only success was in keeping my temper. But it was fated that +we should be friends and comrades, drawn together by the bonds of a +common suffering. + +"I will tell you the story of the wreck another time. In some ways it +was peculiar. I will only tell you now that I swam for a long time +(there was an opaque fog) and bumped my head against one of the ship's +boats. I seized the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb +in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her +davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely +attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's +graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and +sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with +a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the boat. And +presently I was aware that violence had succeeded where patience had +failed. Polly sat in the stern sheets timidly cooing and offering to +shake hands. At another time I should have burst laughing at her--she +was so coy, so anxious to please. But I had just arrived from seeing my +captain's head broken to pieces by a falling spar, and a good friend of +mine stabbed by another good friend of mine, and I was nearer to tears. + +"It was cold for that part of the world, and rain fell heavily from time +to time. Polly complained bitterly all night and said that she would +take her death o' cold, but in the morning (I had fallen asleep) she +waked me in her pleasantest and most satisfied voice, saying, 'Tumble up +for breakfast.' I pulled myself out of the rain-water into which I had +slipped, and sat up. The sky and sea were clear from one horizon to the +other and the sun was beginning to scorch. + +"'Bully and warm, ain't it?' said Polly. + +"'Right you are, old girl,' said I. + +"She perched on my shoulder and began to oil and arrange her draggled +feathers. + +"'What a hell of a wreck that was!' she said suddenly, and, after a +pause: 'Where's my nigger?' + +"'He's forsaken you, old girl,' said I, 'for Mother Carey's chickens.' + +"'Poor Polly,' said she; 'how I pity that poor girl!' + +"Now I don't advance for a moment the theory that she understood all +that she said, nor even a part of what I said. But her statements and +answers were often wonderfully apt. Have you ever known one of those +tremendously clever deaf people whom you may talk with for a long time +before discovering that they are deaf? Talking with poor Jaffray's +parrot was like that. It was only occasionally--not often, mind--that +her phrases argued an utter lack of reasoning power. She had been +educated to what I suppose to be a point very close to the limit of a +parrot's powers. At a fair count she had memorized a hundred and fifty +sentences, a dozen songs, and twenty or thirty tunes to whistle. Many +savages have not larger vocabularies; many highborn ladies have a less +gentle and cultivated enunciation. Let me tell you that had I been alone +in that boat, a young man, as I then was, who saw his ambitions and +energies doomed to a watery and abrupt finish, with a brief interval of +starvation to face, I might easily have gone mad. But I was saved from +that because I had somebody to talk to. And to receive confidence and +complaint the parrot was better fitted than a human being, better fitted +than a woman, for she placed no bar of reticence, and I could despair as +I pleased and on my own terms. + +"My clothes dried during the first day, and at night she would creep +under my coat to sleep. At first I was afraid that during +unconsciousness I should roll on her. But she was too wary for that. If +I showed a tendency to sprawl or turn over, she would wake and pierce my +ears with a sharp 'Take your time! Take your time!' + +"At sunrise every day she would wake me with a hearty 'Tumble up for +breakfast.' + +"Unfortunately there was never any breakfast to be had, but the +rain-water in the bottom of the boat, warm as it was and tasting of +rotting wood, saved us from more frightful trial. + +"Here is a curious fact: After the second night I realized and counted +every hour in all its misery of hunger and duration, yet I cannot, to +save my soul, remember how many days and nights passed between the wreck +and that singular argument for a parrot's power of reasoning that was to +be advanced to me. It suffices to know that many days and nights went by +before we began to die of hunger. + +"In what remained of the rain-water (with the slow oscillations of the +boat it swashed about and left deposits of slime on her boards) I caught +from time to time glimpses of my face as affected by starvation. And it +may interest you to know that it was not the leanness of my face that +appalled me but the wickedness of it. All the sins I had ever sinned, +all the lies I had told, all the meannesses I had done, the drunks I +had been on, the lusts I had sated, came back to me from the +bilge-water. And I knew that if I died then and there I should go +straight to hell if there was one. I made divers trials at repentance +but was not able to concentrate my mind upon them. I could see but one +hope of salvation--to die as I had not lived--like a gentleman. It was +not a voluminous duty, owing to the limits set upon conduct by the +situation, but it was obvious. Whatever pangs I should experience in the +stages of dissolution, I must spare Polly. + +"In view of what occurred it is sufficiently obvious that I read my duty +wrongly. For, when I was encouraging myself to spare the bird I should +rather have been planning to save her. She, too, must have been +suffering frightfully from the long-continued lack of her customary +diet, but it seems that while enduring it she was scheming to save me. + +"She had been sitting disconsolately on the gunwale when the means +struck suddenly into her tortuously working mind and acted upon her +demeanor like a sight of sunflower seeds, of which she was prodigiously +fond. If I follow her reasoning correctly it was this. The man who has +been so nice to me needs food. He can't find it for himself; therefore I +must find it for him. Thus far she reasoned. And then, unfortunately, +trusting too much to a generous instinct, and disregarding the most +obvious and simple calculation, she omitted the act of turning around, +and instead of laying the egg that was to save me in the boat, she laid +it in the ocean. It sank." + + * * * * * + +Long voyages make for dulness. I had listened to the above narrative +with so much interest as to lose for a moment my sense of what was +patent. In the same absurd way that one man says to another whom he +knows perfectly well, "What--is this you?" I said to Leslie very +eagerly, "Were you saved?" And he answered, "No; we were both drowned." + + + + +ON THE SPOT; OR, THE IDLER'S HOUSE-PARTY + + +I + +Last winter was socially the most disgusting that I remember ever having +known, because everybody lost money, except Sally's father and mine. We +didn't, of course, mind how much money our friends lost--they always had +plenty left; but we hated to have them talk about it, and complain all +the time, and say that it was the President's fault, or poor John +Rockefeller's, or Senator So-and-so's, or the life insurance people's. +When a man loses money it is, as a matter of fact, almost always his own +fault. I said so at the beginning of last winter, and I say so still. +And Sally, who is too lazy to think up original remarks, copied it from +me and made no bones about saying it to all the people she knew who she +thought needed that kind of comfort. But perhaps, now that I think of +it, Sally and I may have contributed to making the winter socially +disgusting. Be that as it may, we were the greatest sufferers. + +We moved to Idle Island in September. And we were so delighted with what +the architects, and landscape-gardeners, and mosquito doctors had done +to make it habitable; with the house itself, and the grape-house, and +greenhouses, and gardens, and pergolas, and marble columns from Athens, +and terraces, and in-and-out door tennis-courts, and swimming-pools, and +boat-houses, and golf links, and all the other country-place +necessities, and particularly with a line of the most comfortable +lounging-chairs and divans in the world, that we decided to spend the +winter there. Sally telephoned to my father's secretary and asked him to +spend the winter with us, and make out lists for week-end parties, and +to be generally civil and useful. The secretary said that he would be +delighted to come if he could persuade my father and mother to go abroad +for the winter; and later he called Sally up, and said that he had +persuaded them. + +Well, from the first our week-end parties were failures. On the first +Friday in October the President of the United States said that he hated +cheats and liars (only he mentioned names) and the stock-market went to +smash. Saturday it was still in a messy state, and the people who came +out Saturday afternoon couldn't or wouldn't talk about anything else. +They came by the 4:30 to Stepping-Stone, and were ferried over to the +island in the motor boat. Sally and I rode down to the pier in the +jinrikishas that my father's secretary had had imported for us for a +wedding present; and, I give you my word, the motor-boat as it slowed +into the pier looked like an excursion steamer out to view the beauties +of the Hudson. Everybody on board was hidden behind a newspaper. + +"Fong," said Sally to her jinrikisha man, "take me back to the house." + +He turned and trotted off with her, and they disappeared under the elms. + +"Just because your guests aren't interested in you," I called after her, +"is no reason why you shouldn't be interested in them." + +But she didn't answer, and I was afraid I'd hurt her feelings; so I said +to my man, or horse, or horse-man--it's hard to know what to call them: + +"Long Lee, you go back to the house, clip-step." + +Clip-step soon overtook Sally, and I asked her what she was mad about. + +"I'm mad," she said, "because none of those people have ever seen this +beautiful island before, and they wouldn't look up from their dirty old +newspapers. What's the matter with them?" + +"They're worried about the market," said I, "and each one wants the +others to think that he's more worried than they are. That's all." + +"But the women!" said Sally. "There we sat waving to them, and not so +much as a look for our pains. My arm is all numb from waving +hospitably." + +"Never mind," I said. "I'll--I'll--ask your maid to rub it for you. And +then we'll send the motor-boat for the very latest edition of the +papers, and we'll have Blenheim and Windermere fold them like ships and +cocked hats, the way they do the napkins, and put them at each person's +place at dinner. That will be the tactful way of showing them what _we_ +think about it." + +Sally, naturally enough, was delighted at this idea, and forgot all +about her poor, numb arm. But the scheme sounded better than it worked. +Because when we went in to dinner the guests, instead of being put to +shame by the sight of the newspapers, actually sputtered with pleasure, +and fell on them and unfolded them and opened them at the financial +pages. And then the men began to shout, and argue, and perspire, and +fling quotations about the table, and the women got very shrill, and +said they didn't know what they would do if the wretched market kept up, +or rather if it didn't keep up. And nobody admired the new furniture or +the pictures, or the old Fiffield plate, or Sally's gown, or said +anything pleasant and agreeable. + +"Sam," said Tony Marshall to me, "I'm glad that you can empty your new +swimming-pool in three-quarters of an hour, but if you don't watch out +you may be so poor before the winter's over that you won't be able to +buy water enough to fill it." + +"If you're not careful," I said, "I'll fill it with champagne and make +you people swim in it till you're more sprightly and agreeable. I never +saw such a lot of oafs. I--" + +"I tell you, Sam," bellowed Billoo, "that the financial status of this +country, owing to that infernal lunatic in the White House--" + +"If you must tell me again--" I began. + +"Oh," he said disgustedly, "_you_ can't be serious about anything. +You're so da--a--ah--urn--rich that you never give a thought to the +suffering of the consumer." + +"Don't I?" said I. "Did you happen to see me the morning after the +Clarion's ball last winter?--I thought about the consumer then, I can +tell you." + +Billoo turned his back on me very rudely. I looked across the table to +Sally. She smiled feebly. She had drawn back her chair so that Tombs and +Randall could fight it out across her plate without hitting her in the +nose. They were frantically shaking their fists at each other, and they +kept saying very loud, and both at once: + +"I tell _you!_" and they made that beginning over and over, and never +got any further. + +At two o'clock the next morning Mrs. Giddings turned to Sally and said: + +"And now, my dear, I can't wait another moment. You must show me all +over your lovely new house. I can think of nothing else." + +"Can't you?" said Sally. "I can. It's two o'clock. But I'll show you to +your own lovely room, if you like." + +In the morning I sent for Blenheim, and told him to take all the Sunday +papers as soon as they arrived and throw them overboard. All I meant to +be was tactful. But it wouldn't do. The first thing the men asked for +was the papers; and the second thing. And finally they made such a fuss +and threw out so many hints that I had to send the motor-boat over to +the main-land. This made me rather sore at the moment, and I wished that +the motor-boat was at the bottom of the Sound; but it wasn't, and had +to be sent. + +Later in the day I was struck with an idea. It was one of the few that +ever struck me without outside help, and I will keep it dark for the +present. But when I got Sally alone I said to her: + +"Now, Sally, answer prettily: do you or do you not know what plausible +weather is?" + +"I do not," she said promptly. + +"Of course, you do not," I said, "you miserable little ignoramus. It has +to do with an idea." + +"No, Sam!" cried Sally. + +"One of mine," I said. + +"Oh, Sam!" she said. "Can I help?" + +"You can." + +"How?" + +"You can pray for it." + +"For the idea?" she asked. + +"No, you silly little goat," I said. "For the plausible weather." + +"Must I?" she asked. + +"You must," I said. "If you have marrow-bones, prepare to use them now." + +Sally looked really shocked. + +"Knees," I explained. "They're the same thing. But now that I think of +it, you needn't use yours. If anybody were looking, it would be +different, of course. But nobody is, and you may use mine." + +So Sally used my knees for the moment, and I explained the idea to her +briefly, and some other things at greater length; and then we both +laughed and prayed aloud for plausible weather. + +But it was months coming. + + + + +II + +Think, if you can, of a whole winter passing in Westchester County +without its storming one or more times on any single solitary Saturday +or Sunday or holiday! Christmas Day, even, some of the men played tennis +out-of-doors. The balls were cold and didn't bounce very high, and all +the men who played wanted to sit in the bar and talk stocks, but +otherwise it made a pretty good game. Often, because our guests were so +disagreeable about the money they had lost or were losing, we decided +not to give any more parties, but when we thought that fresh air was +good for our friends, whether they liked it or not, of course we had to +keep on asking them. And, besides, we were very much set on the idea +that I have referred to, and there was always a chance of +plausible weather. + +It did not come till May. But then it "came good," as Sally said. It +"came good" and it came opportunely. Everything was right. We had the +right guests; we had the right situation in Wall Street, and the weather +was right. It came out of the north-east, darkly blowing (this was +Saturday, just after the usual motor-boat load and their afternoon +editions had been landed), and at first it made the Sound, and even the +sheltered narrows between the island and the main-land, look pancake-flat +and oily. Then it turned the Sound into a kind of incoming gray, striped +with white; and then into clean white, wonderfully bright and staring +under the dark clouds. I never saw a finer storm come up finer. But +nobody would go out to the point to see it come. The Stock Exchange had +closed on the verge of panic (that was its chronic Saturday closing last +winter) and you couldn't get the men or women away from the thought of +what _might_ happen Monday. "Good heavens," said Billoo, "think of poor +Sharply on his way home from Europe! Can't get to Wall Street before +Wednesday, and God knows what he'll find when he gets there." + +"What good would it do him to get there before?" I asked. "Wouldn't he +sail right in and do the wrong thing, just as everybody has done +all winter?" + +"You don't understand, Sam," said Billoo, very lugubriously; and then he +annihilated me by banging his fist on a table and saying, "_At least +he'd be on the spot, wouldn't he_?" + +"Oh," I said, "if you put it that way, I admit that that's just where he +would be. Will anybody come and have a look at the fine young storm that +I'm having served?" + +"Not now, Sam--not now," said Billoo, as if the storm would always stay +just where, and as, it was; and nobody else said anything. The men +wanted to shout and get angry and make dismal prophecies, and the women +wanted to stay and hear them, and egg them on, and decide what they +would buy or sell on Monday. + +"All right, Billoo-on-the-spot," I said. "Sally--?" + +Sally was glad to come. And first we went out on the point and had a +good look at the storm. The waves at our feet were breaking big and +wild, the wind was groaning and howling as if it had a mortal +stomach-ache, and about a mile out was a kind of thick curtain of +perpendicular lines, with dark, squally shadows at its base. + +"Sam!" cried Sally, "it's snow--snow," and she began to jump up and +down. + +In a minute or two flakes began to hit us wet slaps in the face, and we +took hands and danced, and then ran (there must have been something +intoxicating about that storm) all the way to the pier. And there was +the captain of the motor-boat just stepping ashore. + +"The man himself," said Sally. + +"Captain," said I, "how are we off for boats?" + +By good-luck there were in commission only the motor-boat, and the +row-boat that she towed behind, and a canoe in the loft of the +boat-house. + +"Captain," I said, "take the _Hobo_ (that was the name of the +motor-boat) and her tender to City Island, and don't come back till +Wednesday morning, in time for the Wall Street special." + +"When you get to City Island," said Sally, "try to look crippled." + +"Not you," I said, "but the _Hobo_." + +"Tell them," said Sally, "if they ask questions, that you were blown +from your moorings, and that you couldn't get back in the teeth of the +gale because--because--" + +"Because," said I, "your cylinders slipped, and your clutch missed +fire, and your carbureter was full of prunes." + +"In other words," said Sally, "if anybody ever asks you anything about +anything--lie." + +We gave him a lot more instructions, and some eloquent money, and he +said, "Very good, ma'am," to me, and "Very good, miss," to Sally, and +pretty soon he, and the _Hobo_, and the engineer, and the _Hobo's_ crew +of one, and the tender were neatly blown from their moorings, and +drifted helplessly toward City Island at the rate of twenty-two miles an +hour. Then Sally and I (it was snowing hard, now) climbed into the loft +of the boat-house, and _fixed_ the canoe. + +"There," said Sally, putting down her little hatchet, "I don't believe +the most God-fearing banker in this world would put to sea in that! +Well, Sam, we've done it now." + +"We have," said I. + +"Will Monday never come?" said Sally. + +"Stop," said I; "the telephone." + +Idle Island was moored to the mainland by a telephone cable. It took us +nearly an hour to find where this slipped into the water. And we were +tired and hungry and wet and cold, but we simply had to persevere. It +was frightful. At length we found the thing--it looked like a slimy +black snake--and we cut it, where the water was a foot deep--the water +bit my wrists and ankles as sharply as if it had been sharks--and went +back to the house through the storm. + +It was as black as night (the weather, not the house), snowing furiously +and howling. We crept into the house like a couple of sneak-thieves, and +heard Billoo at his very loudest shouting: + +"I had Morgan on the wire all right--and the fool operator cut me off!" + +Sally snipped her wet fingers in my face. + +"Hello, fool operator," she said. + +"Hello, yourself," said I. "But oh, Sally, listen to that wind, and tell +me how it sounds to you. A wet hug if you guess the answer." + +"To me," said Sally, "it sounds plausible." And she got herself hugged. + + + + +III + +I don't believe that anybody slept much Saturday night. You never heard +such a storm in your life. It seemed to Sally and me, who would have +been the chief sufferers if it _had_ blown down, that our comfortable, +brand-new marble house flapped like a flag. Every now and then there +came a tremendous crack from one part of the island or another; and +each time Sally would say, "There goes my favorite elm," or I would say, +"There goes that elm again." + +Most of the men came down to breakfast Sunday morning. What with the +storm and the worry about stocks keeping them awake most of the night, +they were without exception nervous and cross, particularly Billoo. He +looked like an owl that had been first stuffed and then boiled. Blenheim +told me later that at various times during the night he had carried four +several pints of champagne to Billoo's room; and at 7 A.M., bicarbonate +of soda and aromatic spirits of ammonia. + +"I tell you, Sam," said Billoo crossly, "I've been awake all night +thinking what it would mean to some of us--yes, me!--if this storm +should wreck that ferry-boat of yours." + +A lot of wet snow and wind hit the dining-room windows a series of +rattling slaps. + +"She's a good boat, Sam, but smallish to ride out such a storm as this." + +"What a goat you are, Sam," said Tombs, also crossly, "not to keep two +ferry-boats, so that if one breaks down you have the other." + +"When we made up our minds to spend the winter here," I said, "I ordered +another; in fact, two. But they're still building; and besides, what if +the _Hobo_ does break down? There's plenty to eat and drink, I hope. +Nobody would suffer much." + +"No," said Billoo, "it would be no suffering for a business man to be +storm-bound here during a probable panic in Wall Street! + +"I'm tired," I said, "of hearing you refer to yourself or any of these +gentlemen as business men. You always gamble; and when you're in +good-luck you gambol, and when you aren't, you don't. What makes me +sickest about you all is that you're so nauseatingly conceited and +self-important. You all think that your beastly old Stock Exchange is +the axle about which the wheel of the world revolves, and each of you +thinks, privately, that he's the particular grease that makes it revolve +smoothly." + +"Well," said Billoo, "you know that the presence on the floor of one +steady, conservative man may often avert a panic." + +"Show me the man," I said. "Has any one here ever caused a panic or +averted one? But you all lose money just as often because you're on the +spot, as make it. Wouldn't you all be the richer for an absence now +and then?" + +"Of course," said Randall, "there are times when it doesn't matter one +way or the other. But when--well, when the market's in the state it is +now, it's life or death, almost, to be on the spot." + +"I don't understand," I said. "When the market looks fussy, why not +sell out, and wait for better times?" + +"We _can't_ sell out," said Billoo. "We're loaded up to the muzzle." + +"You look as if you had been," I said courteously; but Billoo brushed +the remark aside as if it had been a fly. + +"If we _try_ to unload," he said, "the market begins to collapse. We +_can't_ unload, except a little at a time, and still prices get lower +and lower and margins thinner and thinner. Now, I happen to _know_"--he +looked about him importantly--"that to-morrow will hear the failure of a +_very well-known_ house, and after that's announced--God knows." + +"How true that is!" I said. "But tell me: suppose you gentlemen +deliberately absented yourselves for a few days--wouldn't it restore +confidence? Wouldn't the other brokers say: 'Billoo, Randall, Tombs, +Marshall, Bedlo, etc., don't seem to think there's much doing. None of +'em's here--what's the use of _me_ being scared?'" + +"It would have the contrary effect, Sam," said Tombs solemnly. "They +would think that we had decamped in a body for Canada." + +"I don't know," said I, "but it would be a better thing for the country +if you all did ship to Canada--I don't think there's much doing +out-doors to-day. Hear that wind!" + +"If I can get rid of all my holdings," said Billoo, "I'll sit tight. +We'll see lower prices before we see higher." + +"Well," said I, "I'll bet you we don't." + +"Young man," said Billoo, and he looked almost well and happy, "just +name your sum." + +"I'll bet you a thousand," I said. + +"Sammy," said Tombs very sweetly, "have you got another thousand up your +sleeve?" + +"Sure," I said. + +"Done with you," said Tombs. + +In about five minutes I had bet with everybody present. + +"But mind," I said, "there mustn't be any dirty work. You people mustn't +go to town to-morrow with the idea of forming a strong coalition and +_putting_ prices down." + +"It wouldn't be worth while," said Billoo. "As a matter of fact, we'd +like nothing better than to see you win your bet, but as you can't, +possibly--why, a thousand dollars is always a thousand dollars." + +"Just the same," said I, "_no_ coalitions." + +The wind went on howling till late in the afternoon and then it began to +peter out. We had spent the whole day in the house, and everybody was +tired and bored, and nervous about Monday, and bedtime came earlier +than usual. + +"Sam," said Sally, when we were alone, "it's just occurred to me that we +_may_ be causing some of these people to lose a lot of money." + +"Why, Sally," I said, "you look scared." + +"I am," she said. "Don't _you_ think it would be rather awful?" + +"No, I don't," I said; "I think it would be split-tingly funny. But they +won't lose. Their absence will steady the market." + +"Who told you that, Sam?" said Sally. + +"Sam!" said I. + + + + +IV + +Even before the leaves come, you can't see the pier from the house. It +runs out from the bottom of a high bank and is otherwise hidden by +trees. But it's only a short distance, and in good weather we have the +guests walk it, because it gives them a better chance to admire the +gardens and the Athenian columns and things. But Monday, which dawned +bright and still and warm, and was just as typical of May in Westchester +as was the snow-and-wind storm, we drove them down in a bus because the +roads and paths were horribly muddy. Of course, none of the women +wanted to take the early train, so there were only the men and Sally +and I in the bus. Sally said that there was going to be some fun when +the men got to the pier and didn't find the _Hobo_, and she wasn't going +to miss it. Just before we started she drew me aside and said: + +"Sam, when we get there, for Heaven's sake look blank." + +"I understand your fears, Sally," I said, "and I will look as blank as I +possibly can. But remember, child, how easy it is for _you_ to look +blank; and don't always be urging others to attempt the impossible." + +"Mrs. Sam," said Billoo, on the way down, "I can't tell you what a good +time I've had." + +"You nice man," said Sally, "I wish we could persuade you to stay a day +or two longer." + +"If it wasn't for the market, I could stay forever," said Billoo. + +"Not if I lived," said I. "Saturday to Monday is plenty long +enough--Hello--!" + +The pier and the empty stretch of water between the island and the +mainland were in sight, but there was no _Hobo_. + +"Hello what?" said Tombs. "Why, where's the ferry?" + +"I don't see her," I said, and, I hope, anxiously; "you don't suppose--" + +"Isn't the _Hobo_ there?" shrieked Billoo. He turned his head on his +fat neck, and at first he looked very angry, and then scared. + +We walked down to the pier, and then out on the float to get as big a +water view as possible, but there wasn't so much as a row-boat in sight. + +"What can have happened?" said Sally. + +"I'm worried to death," I said. "Suppose she _was_ blown from her +moorings, the captain could have run her into New Rochelle, and come +back yesterday afternoon when the wind went down. Something must have +happened." + +"Oh, Sam," cried Sally, "you don't think she may have been run down by +one of the Sound steamers and sunk?" + +"I dare not think of it," I said. "I dare not think of the poor chaps on +board." + +"I don't see how I'm to get to town," said Billoo dismally. He pulled +out his watch, and held it in his hand, and every moment or two looked +at it. "Haven't you a couple of row-boats? We couldn't get this train, +but we could get the next--" + +I shook my head. "I'm sorry," I said. "We're not much on the water, and +we've never been properly supplied with boats--" + +Billoo swallowed some hasty thought or other, and began to look across +at the mainland. My father owns all the land opposite the island, even +the pier and the short road to the village of Stepping-Stone; and +although there were several boats at the pier, there were no people, and +the rest of the shore is nothing but thick woods. + +"We must telephone somewhere," said Billoo. + +"You can't," I said. "You know you tried to telephone all yesterday and +couldn't, and the butler told me this morning that he had tried to put +in a call and got no answer." + +"What does it matter?" said Sally. "You've all got to stay now. I think +that's splendid." + +"Mrs. Sam," said Tombs hollowly, "do you realize that this accident may +mean _ruin_ for some of us?" + +"Oh, dear!" said Sally "how dreadful!" + +"Somehow of other," said Billoo, "_I'm_ going to get across." + +And the others said that somehow or other _they_ were going to get +across, too. + +"I've _got_ to!" said Billoo, and he looked about in a fat, challenging +way as if daring any one to say that he had not got to. + +"You poor things," said Sally, "I hope to Heaven you can; but how?" + +"Where there's a will, Mrs. Sam--" Billoo said. And he began to think +hard. All of a sudden his face brightened. + +"It's too easy," he said. "The wind's right; four or five of us have +umbrellas--Sam, you'll have to lend us this float. We've only to cut it +from its moorings, and sail it across--May we have it?" + +"Yes," I said, "but you're crazy to try it." + +"It's a case of sink or swim," said he. "Who's coming?" + +Without exception the men agreed to sail with him on the float. It was a +fine, big platform, floated on sheet-iron air-tanks, and moored at the +four corners by heavy ropes. + +Sally and I withdrew to the pier and watched Billoo and the others cut +slowly through the ropes with their pocket-knives. Presently the float +began to move, and a second or two later the float end of the gang-plank +slipped into the water with a heavy splash. Those who had umbrellas +opened them to catch the breeze, and the others lit cigars, and stood +about in graceful attitudes. Sally and I cheered as loud as we could. + +"I'll send you a tug or something," Billoo called back to us, "and try +to find out what's happened to the _Hobo_." + +"Thank _you_!" I called back. + +"Sam," said Sally, "I don't know what you think, but I call it good +sand." + +"So do I," said I, "but foolish." + +"Why foolish?" said Sally. "They're really going quite fast, and +they'll be across in no time, and they'll get the next train and +everything." + +"They will not," I said. + +"Why?" said Sally. + +"Because," said I, "they will run on to the middle ground, and stay +there." + +"Not at high tide!" exclaimed Sally. + +"At high tide," said I. "That float draws a good two feet, and it's so +heavy that once it runs on the mud it will stay on the mud--" And then I +shouted to Billoo: + +"Look out for the middle ground!" + +"What?" he answered. + +"Why do you warn him?" said Sally. + +"Because it won't help him," said I. + +"What?" called Billoo again, and Sally answered at the top of her lungs, +"Look--out--for--the--middle--ground!" + +"Right O!" Billoo answered; "where is it?" + +"Just ahead," Sally called. + +Billoo turned to look, and at that moment the float, which was +travelling at a good clip, ran into it. + +Billoo and Randall fell flat on their faces; everybody staggered; one +umbrella and two hats went overboard and drifted away, and Sally and I +sat down on the pier and laughed till we were helpless. + + + + +V + +The float had become a fixture in the landscape about two hundred and +fifty yards out. We could converse with our friends by shouting only, +and when we got tired of condoling with them and giving them assurances +of our sympathy, we told them that _we_ were going back to the house to +get some more breakfast and think out what was best to be done, + +"Sam," said Sally, "that's the maddest lot of men I ever saw." + +We looked back. Billoo was stamping up and down the float, waving his +arms and orating like Falstaff; Randall and Tombs had their heads +together, and were casting what appeared to be baleful glances at +Billoo. It was evident that he was not popular on the float. + +When we had had some more breakfast, and had sat around a little to +digest it, the women began to come down-stairs. Mrs. Randall was the +first to come down, and she was in great distress. + +"It's _too_ dreadful," she said. "I had something of the utmost +importance to tell Billy, something that I wanted him to do for me +down-town. And I overslept." + +"Well," said I, "let me tell you what a good fellow Billy is. He hasn't +gone yet." + +"Good Heavens!" she cried, "not gone yet? Why, what time is it? Why, he +won't get down-town in time for the opening!" + +"Probably not," I said. "He was just going, when suddenly he said, 'I +know there's something my wife wants to say to me.' I said, 'Wake her up +and find out what it is.' He said, 'No, she's getting so she can't do +without her beauty sleep; I'll just wait around till she wakes of +herself.'" + +"Sam," said Mrs. Randall, "what has happened to my husband?" + +"Nothing much," I said. "He's in the same boat with many others--only it +isn't a boat. Don't be alarmed." + +"_Where is my husband?_" said she. + +"If you are equal to a short, muddy walk," I said, "I will show him to +you--Morning, little Miss Tombs--want to see brother and young Fitch? +They said they wouldn't go to town till you'd seen them--Morning, Mrs. +Giddings--morning, Miss Marshall--I'm not much on breaking bad news, but +there's been an accident to all your husbands and brothers and fiancés. +They're all alive still, so far as I know--but they ought not to last +more than five or six days." + +"It's proposed," said Sally, "that we all go and see what can be done +for them." + +We refused to answer any questions. We led the way to the pier and +pointed out the float, and the men on it. "There," said Sally, "you can +see them quite plainly from here." + +"Yes," said I, "and the more plainly you see them, the plainer they +are." + +"Will you kindly tell me," said Mrs. Randall, "what my husband is doing +out there on that float?" + +"He is doing nothing," I said. "You can see for yourself. And it isn't a +float any more." + +"Better tell them what has happened," said Sally. + +"No, Sally," I said, "no." + +"Yes, Sam," she said. + +"Oh, all right," I said, "if you really think it's best. The fact is, +ladies, the whole thing is a piece of drunken folly. You know how men +are when they get drinking and arguing, and quarrelling. To make a long +story short, it came to Billoo's insulting Randall; Randall challenges +him; duelling is against the law; they take pistols and witnesses out on +the water beyond the jurisdiction of the United States; and they _were_ +going to murder each other. But it's all right now--don't be +frightened." + +Sally had turned her face away, and I'm sure I was serious as a judge. I +patted Mrs. Randall on the shoulder. + +"Even if your husband isn't brave," I said, "he's clever, clever and +deep." + +"My husband not brave!" she cried. "I like that; he's the bravest man I +ever saw." + +"Well, that may be," I said doubtfully, "but, considering that on the +way out to the duelling ground, or water, when nobody was looking but +Sally and me, he kicked the box of cartridges overboard. But, perhaps +they'll agree to use pocket-knives--" + +"Sam," said little Miss Tombs, "I'll give you a kiss good-morning if +you'll be serious." + +"Wait till Fitch is looking," I said. + +Then Sally explained what had happened, and edged herself so politely +between little Miss Tombs and me that the others laughed. + +"They'll float at high tide, won't they?" asked Mrs. Giddings. + +"No," I said. "It was high tide when they ran aground. It will take a +tugboat to get them off." + +The words weren't out of my mouth when a tugboat appeared round the +corner of the island, making up the channel. The men on the float began +to scream and yell, and jump up and down, and wave their arms. But the +tugboat paid no attention. It thought they were drunk. It passed within +three hundred yards of them, whistled a couple of times, and became +small in the distance. + +"Sam," said Sally, "in about an hour they'll be high and dry on the mud. +Then not even a boat can get to them. And by the time it's high tide +again it will be dark and nobody will see them, and they'll be dying of +hunger and thirst." + +"That's true," I said. "Sally, you explain that to them, and I'll have +the men fetch one of the stable doors, and we'll put a sail on it and +provision it and trust to its hitting the middle ground about where +they did." + +I never worked so hard in my life. I had a stable door taken off its +tracks and rigged with the canoe's sail; and we put a case of champagne +on board, and a tub of ice, and bread, and cold meat, and butter, and +jam, and cigars, and cigarettes, and liquors, and a cocktail shaker, and +a bottle of olives stuffed with red peppers, for Billoo, and two kinds +of bitters, and everything else to eat or drink that anybody could think +of, and some camp-chairs, and cards for bridge, and score-pads, and +pencils, and a folding table. Of course, most of the things got soaked +the minute we launched the door, but there wasn't time to do the thing +over again. So we gave the relief boat three cheers and let her go. + +The way the men on the float eyed the course of the door, you would have +thought them all nearly half dead with hunger and thirst. We were all +excited, too. + +At first the door made straight for the float. Then the breeze shifted a +little, and it made to the left of the float--then to the right of +it--and then straight at it again. + +Everybody cheered. The relief expedition looked like a success. The men +all came to the edge of the float to meet it--and then, just as all +seemed well, a dark patch of wind came scudding across the water, filled +the door's sail, and sent the door kiting off to the right again. The +game was up, The door was going to miss the float by sixty or +seventy feet. + +Then the men on the float began to toss coins; there was a shout of +delight; and Billoo, trumpeting his hands, called to me: + +"Make the ladies go behind the boat-house, quick!" And he began to +unbutton his coat. I herded the women behind the boat-house and ran back +to the pier. Billoo was stripping as fast as he could. + +"What's he doing?" Mrs. Giddings called to me. + +And I answered, "He seems to be overcome by the heat." + +A few moments later Billoo stood revealed, a fat white silhouette +against the opposite shore. He stepped from the float into the water; it +came to his ankles. Then he waded, gingerly but with determination, +toward the passing door. He went as if he expected the water to get +suddenly deep, but it didn't. At no time did it reach to his ankles, +until, just as he was reaching out his hand to catch hold of the door, +and just as the men on the float set up a cheer, he stepped off the +middle ground in to deep water. + +The splash that he made lifted the door half out of water, and shot it +away from him, the wind filled its sail, and when Billoo came to the +surface and looked for it, it was thirty feet off. But he set his teeth +(I think he set them) and swam after it. Just as he reached it, he +fetched an awful yell. He had been seized with cramps. Still, he had +sense enough to cling to the door, and, when the first spasm of the +cramp had passed, to sprawl himself upon it. There he lay for a while, +lapped by the water that came over the door, and writhing in his fat +nakedness. + +Meanwhile, the door was caught in the full strength of the ebbing tide, +and began to make for the open Sound. Poor Billoo was in a bad way--and +when he turned the ice-tub upside down for a seat, and wrapped himself +in the canoe sail, I invited the women to come out and see for +themselves how brave he was. + +He waved his hand to us, and just as he and his well-provisioned craft +rounded a corner of the island he selected a bottle of champagne and +deftly extracted the cork. + +I told some of my men to follow along the shore and to let me know what +became of him. I couldn't do anything more for Billoo; but I liked the +man, and took an affectionate interest in his ultimate fate--_whatever_ +it might be. And I call that true friendship. + +Pretty soon the middle ground on which the float was stuck began to show +above water, and as it was evident that we could do nothing further for +the relief of our shipwrecked friends, we decided to go back to the +house, change our muddy boots, play a rubber or so, and have lunch. But +first little Miss Tombs called to young Fitch, and told him if he found +himself starving to dig clams in the mud. + + + + +VI + +The only fault that I could find with the way things had gone so far was +that Sally had a disgusting headache that marred her pleasure and her +sense of humor. She hadn't said very much, and had laughed with only a +half-heart at things that had seemed to me excruciatingly funny. For +instance, when Billoo was seized with the cramps she had barely smiled, +and once or twice when I had been doing the talking she had looked +pityingly at me, instead of roaring with laughter, the way a wife +should do. + +And when we got to the house, she said that if we would excuse her she +would go to her room and lie down. + +"I've just got one of my usual headaches," she said. + +That remark worried me, because it was the first headache she had ever +complained of to _me_; and when, after she had gone upstairs, Miss +Randall said, "Maybe Sally ought to see the doctor," I had a sudden +awful, empty, gulpy feeling. Suppose she was going to be really sick! +Suppose she was going to have pneumonia or scarlet-fever or spinal +meningitis! Here we were, cut off from medical assistance till Wednesday +morning. And it was our own fault--mine; mine, for being _too_ funny. +Then I thought, "Maybe those men on the float are losing all the money +they've got in the world," and that made me feel pretty glum; and then I +thought, "Maybe poor Billoo is drowned by now," and I went cold +all over. + +"Why don't you make the trump, Sam?" said Mrs. Giddings. + +"Good Heavens!" I said. "Did I deal? Won't somebody play my hand? I'm +worried about Sally." + +Then I bolted upstairs, and there was Sally lying on her bed, with a +glass tube sticking out of her mouth. + +"How are you," I said, "and what are you doing?" + +"I feel rather sick, Sam," she said. And she looked so pale that I could +have screamed. "And I'm taking my temperature." + +"Do you think you've got fever?" I cried. + +"I don't know," she said. + +"Oh, Sally--Sally!" I cried. "Forgive me--it's all my fault--and I love +you so--My God! what shall I do? I know--" + +Then I kissed her, and ran out of the room, and all the way to the +boat-house. I found a bathing-suit, undressed, put it on, tore down to +the pier, and went overboard. I suppose the water was ghastly cold, but +I didn't feel it. I suppose I never should have gotten all the way +across to the main-land if I hadn't been boiling with fear and +excitement, and besides I walked and waded across the middle ground and +got a rest that way. The men on the float kept calling to me, and asking +me questions, but I hadn't enough breath nor reason to answer them; I +just swam and swam and swam. + +About fifty feet from the pier on the main-land I began to get horrible +pains up and down the muscles of my legs; and they wanted to stop +kicking, but I wouldn't let them. I had to sit on the pier for a while +to rest, but pretty soon I was able to stand, and somehow or other, +running and walking, I got to the doctor's house in Stepping-Stone. He +is very nice and an old friend, and the moment I told him Sally was +desperately sick he said she wasn't, and I felt better. He gave me some +brandy to drink, and we started for the island. I begged him to run, +but he wouldn't. He walked leisurely and pointed out this tree as a very +fine specimen and well grown, or that one as too much crowded by its +neighbors. He was daft on forestry. Patients didn't interest him a bit. +Finally, however, we got to the pier, and stole somebody's row-boat, and +I took the oars, and then we went faster. + +When we entered the house we found all the women except Sally +surrounding Billoo. He was very red in the face and dressed only in the +canoe sail; but he wasn't in the least embarrassed. He had a +self-satisfied smile; and he was talking as fast and as loud as +he could. + +We told him to go to bed and be ashamed of himself, and sleep it off. +And he said that nobody understood him, and denied having drunk the +whole case of champagne, and he said that he was in perfect control of +all his faculties, and that if the ladies wished him to, he could dance +a hornpipe for them that he had learned when he was a sailor.... + +The doctor and I went upstairs; and while he was with Sally I changed +into proper clothes; and then I waited outside the door for him to come +out and tell me the worst. After a long time he came. He looked very +solemn, and closed the door behind him. + +"What _is_ it?" I said, and I think my voice shook like a leaf. + +"Sam," he said gravely, "Sally is by way of cutting her first wisdom +tooth." + +"Good Lord!" I said, "is that all?" + +"It's enough," said the doctor, "because it isn't a _tooth_." + +"Oh!" I said, "oh! What ought I to do?" + +"Why," said he, "I'd go in, and tell her how glad you are, and maybe +laugh at her a little bit, and make much of her." + +But I couldn't laugh at Sally, because she was crying. + +I took her in my arms and made much of her, and asked her why she was +crying, and she said she was crying because she was glad. + +When the doctor had returned to Stepping-Stone, he got the _Hobo's_ +captain on the telephone and told him from me to bring the _Hobo_ back +to Idle Island at once. She came about six, just as the tide was getting +high, and she brought rescue to the men on the float, and, better than +rescue, she brought the evening papers. + +There had been a big day on Wall Street; one of the biggest in its +history. And the men whom we had kept from going to business had made, +among them, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just by sitting still. +But they were ungrateful, especially Billoo. He complained bitterly, and +said that he would have made three times as much money if he had been +_on the spot_. + + * * * * * + +When the men paid the bets that they had lost to me, I turned the money +over to my father's secretary and told him to deposit it as a +special account. + +"What shall I call the account?" he asked. + +"Call it," I said, "the account of W. Tooth." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spread Eagle and Other Stories +by Gouverneur Morris + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPREAD EAGLE AND OTHER STORIES *** + +This file should be named 8gmeg10.txt or 8gmeg10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8gmeg11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8gmeg10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +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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