Title: The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, October, 1913 - Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, October, 1913 - Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913" ***


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                          Transcriber’s Notes

    This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’
    from October, 1913. The table of contents, based on the index
    from the May issue, has been added by the transcriber.

    Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been retained, but
    punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Passages
    in English dialect and in languages other than English have
    not been altered. The footnote has been moved to the end of the
    corresponding article.

    _Underscores_ have been used to indicate italic text in the
    original; ~tilde characters~ have been applied to denote small
    capitals.

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[Illustration:

    Better is a dinner of herbs where love is
    than a stalled ox and hatred therewith

    Proverbs XV. 17

From the painting in water color by Edmund Dulac]



                        ~The Century Magazine~

             ~Vol. LXXXVI~      OCTOBER, 1913      ~No. 6~

      Copyright, 1913, by ~The Century Co.~ All rights reserved.



CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE

  ~Americans, New-Made.~ Drawings by      _W. T. Benda_ Facing page  894

  ~Auto-Comrade, The~                     _Robert Haven Schauffler_  850

  ~Cartoons.~
    Died: Rondeau Rymbel.                 _Oliver Herford_           955
    A Triumph for the Fresh Air Fund.     _F. R. Gruger_             957
    Newport Note.                         _Reginald Birch_           960

  ~Casus Belli.~                                                     955

  ~Devil, The, his Due~                   _Philip Curtiss_           895

  ~Dinner of Herbs,” “Better is a.~
      Picture by                          _Edmund Dulac_
                                                        Facing page  801

  ~Garage in the Sunshine, A~             _Joseph Ernest_            921
      Picture by Harry Raleigh.

  ~“Ghosts,” “Dey Ain’t No”~              _Ellis Parker Butler_      837
      Pictures by Charles Sarka.

  ~Home.~ I. An Anonymous Novel.                                     801
      Illustrations by Reginald Birch.

  ~Homer and Humbug.~                     _Stephen Leacock_          952

  ~Nemours: A Typical French Provincial
    Town.~                                _Roger Boutet de Monvel_   844
      Pictures by Bernard Boutet de
        Monvel.

  ~Paderewski at Home.~                   _Abbie H. C. Finck_        900
      Picture from a portrait by
        Emil Fuchs.

  ~Paris.~                                _Theodore Dreiser_         904
      Pictures by W. J. Glackens.

  ~Progressive Party, The~                _Theodore Roosevelt_       826
      Portrait of the author.

  ~Sculpture.~                            _Charles Keck_             917

  ~Senior Wrangler, The~                                             958
      Snobbery--America vs. England.
      Our Tender Literary Celebrities.

  ~Summer Hills,” the, In “The
    Circuit of~                           _John Burroughs_           878
      Portrait of the author by Alvin
        L. Coburn.

  ~Sunset on the Marshes.~ From the
    painting by                           _George Inness_
                                                        Facing page  824

  ~Trade of the World Papers, The~        _James Davenport Whelpley_
      XVIII. The Foreign Trade of the
        United States                                                886

  ~T. Tembarom.~                          _Frances Hodgson Burnett_  929
      Drawings by Charles S. Chapman.

  ~White Linen Nurse, The~                _Eleanor Hallowell Abbott_ 857
      Pictures, printed in tint, by
        Herman Pfeifer.

  ~Year, The Most Important~              _Editorial_                951


VERSE

  ~Beggar, The~                           _James W. Foley_           877

  ~Emergency.~                            _William Rose Benét_       916

  ~Husband Shop, The~                     _Oliver Herford_           956
      Picture by Oliver Herford.

  ~Mother, The~                           _Timothy Cole_             920
      Picture by Alpheus Cole.

  ~Myself,” “I Sing of~                   _Louis Untermeyer_         960

  ~Parents, Our~                          _Charles Irvin Junkin_     959
      Pictures by Harry Raleigh.

  ~Socratic Argument.~                    _John Carver Alden_        960



HOME

AN ANONYMOUS NOVEL

(TO BE COMPLETED IN FOUR LONG INSTALMENTS)


CHAPTER I

Red Hill drowses through the fleeting hours as though not only time,
but mills, machinery, and railways were made for slaves. Hemmed in
by the breathing silences of scattered woods, open fields, and the
far reaches of misty space, it seems to forget that the traveler,
studying New England at the opening of the nineteenth century through
the windows of a hurrying train, might sigh for a vanished ideal, and
concede the general triumph of a commercial age.

For such a one Red Hill held locked a message, and the key to the lock
was the message itself: “Turn your back on the paralleled rivers and
railroads, and plunge into the byways that lead into the eternal hills,
and you will find the world that was and still is.”

Let such a traveler but follow a lane that leads up through willow and
elderberry, sassafras, laurel, wild cherry, and twining clematis--a
lane alined with slender wood-maples, hickory, and mountain-ash, and
flanked, where it gains the open, with scattered juniper and oak, and
he will come out at last on the scenes of a country’s childhood.

At right angles to the lane, a broad way cuts the length of the hill,
and loses itself in a dip at each end toward the valleys and the new
world. The broad way is shaded by one of two trees, the domed maple or
the stately elm. At the summit of its rise stands an old church the
green shutters of which blend with the caressing foliage of primeval
trees. Its white walls and towering steeple dominate the scene. White,
too, are the houses that gleam from behind the verdure of unbroken
lawns and shrubbery--all but one, the time-stained brick of which glows
blood-red against the black green of clinging ivy.

Not all these homes are alive. Here a charred beam tells the story of
a fire, there a mound of trailing vines tenderly hides from view the
shame of a ruin, and there again stands a tribute to the power of the
new age--a house the shutters of which are closed and barred. White
now only in patches, its scaling walls have taken on the dull gray of
neglected pine.

For generations the houses of Red Hill have sent out men, for
generations they have taken them back. Their cupboards guard trophies
from the seven seas, paid for with the Yankee nutmeg, swords wrought
from plowshares and christened with the blood of the oppressor, a long
line of collegiate sheepskins, and last, but by no means least, recipes
the faded ink and brittle paper of which sum the essence of ages of
culinary wisdom.

Some of these clustered homes live the year round at full swing, but
the life of some is cut down to a minimum in the winter, only to spring
up afresh in summer, like the new stalk from a treasured bulb. Of such
was the little kingdom of Red Hill. Upon its long, level crest it bore
only three centers of life and a symbol: Maple House, the Firs, and Elm
House, half hidden from the road by their distinctive trees, but as
alive as the warm eyes of a veiled woman; and the church.

The supper call had sounded, and the children’s answering cries had
ceased. Along the ribbon of the single road scurried an overladen
donkey. Three lengths of legs bobbed at varying angles from her fat
sides. Behind her hurried a nurse, aghast for the hundredth time at the
donkey’s agility, never demonstrated except at the evening hour.

Half-way between Maple House and the Firs stood two bare-legged boys,
working their toes into the impalpable dust of the roadway and rubbing
the grit into their ankles in a final orgy of dirt before the evening
wash. They called derisively to the donkey-load of children, bound to
bed with the setting sun.


CHAPTER II

On a day in early spring Alan Wayne was summoned to Red Hill. Snow
still hung in the crevices of East Mountain. On the hill the ashes,
after the total eclipse of winter, were meekly donning pale green. The
elms of Elm House were faintly outlined in verdure, and stood like
empty sherry-glasses waiting for warm wine. Farther down the road the
maples stretched out bare, black limbs whose budding tufts of leaves
served only to emphasize the nakedness of the trees. Only the firs, in
a phalanx, scoffed at the general spring cleaning, and looked old and
sullen in consequence.

The colts, driven by Alan Wayne, flashed over the brim of Red Hill to
the level top. Coachman Joe’s jaw was hanging in awe, and so had hung
since Mr. Alan had taken the reins. For the first time in their five
years of equal life the colts had felt the cut of a whip, not in anger,
but as a reproof for breaking. Coachman Joe had braced himself for the
bolt, his hands itching to snatch the reins. But there had been no
bolting, only a sudden settling down to business.

“Couldn’t of got here quicker if he’d let ’em bolt,” said he in
subsequent description to the stable-hand and the cook. He snatched up
a pail of water and poured it steadily on the ground. “Jest like that.
He knew what was in the colts the minute he laid hands on ’em, and when
he pulls ’em up at the barn door there wasn’t a drop left in their
buckets, was there, Arthur?”

“Nary a drop,” said Arthur, stable-hand.

“And his face,” continued the coachman. “Most times Mr. Alan has no
eyes to speak of, but to-day and that time Miss Nance stuck him with
the hat-pin--’member, cook?--his eyes spread like a fire and eat up his
face. This is a black day for the Hill. Somethin’ ’s going to happen.
You mark me.”

In truth Mr. Alan Wayne had been summoned in no equivocal terms and,
for all his haste, it was with nervous step he approached the house.

There was no den, no sanctuary beyond a bedroom, for any one at Maple
House. No one brought work to Red Hill save such work as fitted into
swinging hammocks and leafy bowers. Library opened into living-room and
hall, hall into drawing-room, and drawing-room into the cool shadows
and high lights of half-hidden mahogany and china closets. And here
and there and everywhere doors opened out on to the Hill. It was a
place where summer breezes entered freely and played, sure of a way
out. Hence it was that Maple House as a whole became a tomb on that
memorable spring morning when the colts first felt a master hand--a
tomb where Wayne history was to be made and buried as it had been
before.

Maple House sheltered a mixed brood. J. Y. Wayne, seconded by Mrs. J.
Y., was the head of the family. Their daughter, Nance Sterling, and
her babies represented the direct line, but the orphans, Alan Wayne and
Clematis McAlpin, were on an equal footing as children of the house.
Alan was the only child of J. Y.’s dead brother. Clematis was also of
Wayne blood, but so intricately removed that her exact relation to the
rest of the tribe was never figured out twice to the same conclusion.
Old Captain Wayne, retired from the regular army, was an uncle in a
different degree to every generation of Waynes. He was the only man on
Red Hill who dared call for a whisky and soda when he wanted it.

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“ALONG THE RIBBON OF THE SINGLE ROAD SCURRIED AN OVERLADEN DONKEY”]

When Alan reached the house, Mrs. J. Y. was in her garden across the
road, surveying winter’s ruin, and Nance with her children had borne
the captain off to the farm to see that oft-repeated wonder and always
welcome forerunner of plenty, the quite new calf.

Clematis McAlpin, shy and long-limbed, just at the awkward age when
woman misses being either boy or girl, had disappeared. Where, nobody
knew. She might be bird’s-nesting in the swamp or crying over the
“Idylls of the King” in the barn loft. Certainly she was not in the
house. J. Y. Wayne had seen to that. Stern and rugged of face, he
sat in the library alone and waited for Alan. He heard a distant
screen-door open and slam. Steps echoed through the lonely house. Alan
came and stood before him.

Alan was a man. Without being tall, he looked tall. His shoulders did
not seem broad till you noticed the slimness of his hips. His neck
looked too thin till you saw the strong set of his small head. In a
word, he had the perfect proportion that looks frail and is strong.
As he stood before his uncle, his eyes grew dull. They were slightly
blood-shot in the corners, and with their dullness the clear-cut lines
of his face seemed to take on a perceptible blur.

J. Y. began to speak. He spoke for a long quarter of an hour, and then
summed up all he had said in a few words:

“I’ve been no uncle to you, Alan; I’ve been a father. I’ve tried to
win you, but you were not to be won. I’ve tried to hold you, but it
takes more than a Wayne to hold a Wayne. You have taken the bit with a
vengeance. You have left such a wreckage behind you that we can trace
your life back to the cradle by your failures, all the greater for your
many successes. You’re the first Wayne that ever missed his college
degree. I never asked what they expelled you for, and I don’t want to
know. It must have been bad, bad, for the old school is lenient, and
proud of men that stand as high as you stood in your classes and on the
field. Money--I won’t talk of money, for you thought it was your own.”

For the first time Alan spoke.

“What do you mean, sir?” With the words his slight form straightened,
his eyes blazed, there was a slight quivering of the thin nostrils, and
his features came out clear and strong.

J. Y. dropped his eyes.

“I may have been wrong, Alan,” he said slowly, “but I’ve been your
banker without telling you. Your father didn’t leave much. It saw you
through junior year.”

Alan placed his hands on the desk between them and leaned forward.

“How much have I spent since then--in the last three years?”

J. Y. kept his eyes down.

“You know more or less, Alan. We won’t talk about that. I was trying
to hold you, but to-day I give it up. I’ve got one more thing to tell
you, though, and there are mighty few people that know it. The Hill’s
battles have never entered the field of gossip. Seven years before you
were born, my father--your grandfather--turned me out. It was from this
room. He said I had started the name of Wayne on the road to shame and
that I could go with it. He gave me five hundred dollars. I took it and
went. I sank low with the name, but in the end I brought it back, and
to-day it stands high on both sides of the water. I’m not a happy man,
as you know, for all that. You see, though I brought the name back in
the end, I never saw your grandfather again, and he never knew.

“Here are five hundred dollars. It’s the last money you’ll ever have
from me; but whatever you do, whatever happens, remember this: Red Hill
does not belong to a Lansing or to a Wayne or to an Elton. It is the
eternal mother of us all. Broken or mended, Lansings and Waynes have
come back to the Hill through generations. City of refuge or harbor of
peace, it’s all one to the Hill. Remember that.”

He laid the crisp notes on the desk. Alan half turned toward the door,
but stepped back again. His eyes and face were dull once more. He
picked up the bills and slowly counted them.

“I shall return the money, sir,” he said and walked out.

He went to the stables and ordered the pony and cart for the afternoon
train. As he came out he saw Nance, the children, and the captain
coming slowly up Long Lane from the farm. He dodged back into the
barn through the orchard and across the lawn. Mrs. J. Y. stood in the
garden directing the relaying of flower-beds. Alan made a circuit. As
he stepped into the road, swift steps came toward him. He wheeled, and
faced Clem coming at full run. He turned his back on her and started
away. The swift steps stopped so suddenly that he looked around. Clem
was standing stock-still, one awkward, lanky leg half crooked as though
it were still running. Her skirts were absurdly short. Her little
fists, brown and scratched, pressed her sides. Her dark hair hung in a
tangled mat over a thin, pointed face. Her eyes were large and shadowy.
Two tears had started from them, and were crawling down soiled cheeks.
She was quivering all over like a woman struck.

Alan swung around, and strode up to her. He put one arm about her thin
form and drew her to him.

“Don’t cry, Clem,” he said, “don’t cry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

For one moment she clung to him and buried her face against his coat.
Then she looked up and smiled through wet eyes.

“Alan, I’m _so_ glad you’ve come!”

Alan caught her hand, and together they walked down the road to the
old church. The great door was locked. Alan loosened the fastening of
a shutter, sprang in through the window, and drew Clem after him. They
climbed to the belfry. From the belfry one saw the whole world, with
Red Hill as its center. Alan was disappointed. The Hill was still half
naked, almost bleak. Maple House and Elm House shone brazenly white
through budding trees. They looked as though they had crawled closer
to the road during the winter. The Firs, with its black border of last
year’s foliage, looked funereal. Alan turned from the scene, but Clem’s
little hand drew him back.

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“HER SKIRTS WERE ABSURDLY SHORT. HER LITTLE FISTS, BROWN AND SCRATCHED,
PRESSED HER SIDES”]

Clematis McAlpin had happened between generations. Alan, Nance, Gerry
Lansing, and their friends had been too old for her, and Nance’s
children were too young. There were Elton children of about her age,
but for years they had been abroad. Consequently, Clem had grown to
fifteen in a sort of loneliness not uncommon with single children who
can just remember the good times the half-generation before them used
to have by reason of their numbers. This loneliness had given her in
certain ways a precocious development while it left her subdued and shy
even when among her familiars. But she was shy without fear, and her
shyness itself had a flower-like sweetness that made a bold appeal.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Alan?” she said. “Yesterday it was cold and it
rained and the Hill was black--_black_, like the Firs. To-day all the
trees are fuzzy with green, and it’s warm. Yesterday was so lonely, and
to-day you are here.”

Alan looked down at the child with glowing eyes.

“And, do you know, this summer Gerry Lansing and Mrs. Gerry are coming.
I’ve never seen her since that day they were married. Do you think it’s
all right for me to call her Mrs. Gerry, like everybody does?”

Alan considered the point gravely.

“Yes, I think that’s the best thing you could call her.”

“Perhaps when I’m really grown up I can call her Alix. I think Alix is
such a _pretty_ name, don’t you?”

Clem flashed a look at Alan, and he nodded; then, with an impulsive
movement she drew close to him in the half-wheedling way of woman about
to ask a favor.

“Alan, they let me ride old Dubbs when he isn’t plowing. The old donkey
she’s so fat now she can hardly carry the babies. Some day when you’re
not in a _great_ hurry will you let me ride with you?”

Alan started down the ladder.

“Some day, perhaps, Clem,” he muttered. “Not this summer. Come on.”
When they had left the church, he drew out his watch and started. “Run
along and play, Clem.” He left her and hurried to the barn.

Joe was waiting.

“Have we time for the long road, Joe?” asked Alan as he climbed into
the cart.

“Oh, yes, sir, especially if you drive, Mr. Alan.”

“I don’t want to drive. Let him go and jump in.”

The coachman gave the pony his head, climbed in, and took the reins.
The cart swung out, and down the lane.

“Alan! Alan!”

Alan recognized Clem’s voice and turned. She was racing across a corner
of the pasture. Her short skirts flounced madly above her ungainly
legs. She tried to take the low stone wall in her stride. Her foot
caught in a vine, and she pitched headlong into the weeds and grass at
the roadside.

Alan leaped from the cart and picked her up, quivering, sobbing, and
breathless.

“Alan,” she gasped, “you’re not going away?”

Alan half shook her as he drew her thin body close to him.

“Clem,” he said, “you mustn’t. Do you hear? You mustn’t. Do you think I
_want_ to go away?”

Clem stifled her sobs and looked up at him with a sudden gravity in her
elfish face. She threw her bare arms around his neck.

“Good-by, Alan.”

He stooped and kissed her.


CHAPTER III

If Alix Deering had not barked her pretty shins against the
center-board in Gerry Lansing’s sailing-boat on West Lake, it is
possible that she would in the end have married Alan Wayne instead of
Gerry Lansing.

When two years before Alan’s dismissal Nance had brought Alix, an old
school friend, to Red Hill for a fortnight, everybody had thought what
a splendid match Alix and Alan would make. But it happened that Alan
was very much taken up at the time with memory and anticipation of a
certain soubrette, and before he awoke to Alix’s wealth of charms the
incident of the shins robbed him of opportunity.

Gerry, dressed only in a bathing-suit, his boat running free before a
brisk breeze, had swerved to graze the Point, where half of Red Hill
was encamped, when he caught sight of a figure lying on the outermost
flat rock. He took it to be Nance.

“Jump!” he yelled as the boat neared the rock.

The figure started, scrambled to its feet, and sprang. It was Alix,
still half asleep, who landed on the slightly canted floor of the boat.
Her shins brought up with a thwack against the center-board, and she
fell in a heap at Gerry’s feet. Her face grew white and strained; for a
second she bit her lip, and then, “I _must_ cry,” she gasped, and cried.

Gerry was big, strong, and placid. Action came slowly to him, but when
it came it was sure. He threw one knee over the tiller, and gathered
Alix into his arms. She lay like a hurt child, sobbing against his
shoulder.

“Poor little girl,” he said, “I know how it hurts. Cry now, because in
a minute it will all be over. It will, dear. Shins are like that.” And
then before she could master her sobs and take in the unconscious humor
of his comfort, the boat struck with a crash on Hidden Rock.

The nearest Gerry had ever come to drowning was when he had fallen
asleep lying on his back in the middle of West Lake. Even with a
frightened girl clinging to him, it gave him no shock to find himself
in the water a quarter of a mile from shore. But with Alix it was
different. She gasped, and in consequence gulped down a large mouthful
of the lake. Then she broke into hysterical laughter and swallowed
more. Gerry held her up, and deliberately slapped her across the mouth.
In a flash anger sobered her. Her eyes blazed.

“You coward,” she whispered.

Gerry’s face was white and stern.

“Put one hand on my shoulder and kick with your feet,” he said. “I’ll
tow you to shore.”

“Put me on Hidden Rock,” said Alix; “I prefer to wait for a boat.”

“It will take an hour for a boat to get here,” answered Gerry. “I’m
going to tow you in. If you say another word I shall slap you again.”

In a dead silence they plowed slowly to shore, and when Gerry found
bottom, he stood up, took Alix in his arms, and strode well up the bank
before he set her down.

During the long swim she had had time to think, but not to forgive.
She stamped her sodden feet, shook out her skirts, and then looked
Gerry up and down. With his crisp, light hair; blue eyes, wide apart
and well open; and six feet of well-proportioned bulk, Gerry was good
to look at, but Alix’s angry eyes did not admit it. They measured him
scornfully; but it was not the look that hurt him so much as the way
she turned from him with a little shrug of dismissal and started along
the shore for camp.

Gerry reached out and caught hold of her arm. She swung around, her
face quite white.

“I see,” she said in a low voice, “you want it now.”

Gerry held her with his eyes.

“Yes,” he answered, “I want it now.”

“Why did you yell at me to jump into your horrible boat?”

“I took you for Nance.”

“You took me for Nance,” repeated Alix with a mimicry and in a tone
that left no doubt as to the fact that she was in a nasty temper. “And
_why_,” she went on, her eyes blazing and her slight figure trembling,
“did you strike me--slap me across the face?”

“Because I love you,” replied Gerry, steadily.

“Oh!” gasped Alix. Her slate-gray eyes went wide open in unfeigned
amazement, and suddenly the tenseness that is the essence of attack
went out of her body. Instead of a self-possessed and very angry young
woman, she became her natural self--a girl fluttering before her first
really thrilling situation.

There was something so childlike in her sudden transition that Gerry
was moved out of himself. For once he was not slow. He caught hold of
her and drew her toward him.

But Alix was not to be plucked like a ripe plum. She freed herself
gently but firmly, and stood facing him. Then she smiled, and with the
smile she gained the upper hand. Gerry suddenly became awkward and
painfully aware of his bare arms and legs. He felt exceptionally naked.

“When did it begin?” murmured Alix.

“What?” said Gerry.

“It,” said Alix. “When--how long have you loved me?”

Gerry’s face turned a deep red, but he raised his eyes steadily to
hers. “It began,” he said simply, “when I took you in my arms and you
laid your face against my shoulder and cried like--like a little kid.”

“Oh!” said Alix again, and blushed in her turn. She had lost the upper
hand and knew it. Gerry’s arms went around her, and this time she
raised her face and let him kiss her.

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“‘CLEM,’ HE SAID, ‘DO YOU THINK I _WANT_ TO GO AWAY?’”]

“Now,” she said as they started for the camp, “I suppose I must call
you Gerry.”

“Yes,” said Gerry, solemnly. “And I shall call you Little Miss Oh!”

So casual an engagement might easily have come to a casual end, but
Gerry Lansing was quietly tenacious. Once moved, he stayed moved. No
woman had ever stirred him before; he did not imagine that any other
woman would stir him again.

To Alix, once the shock of finding herself engaged was passed, came
full realization and a certain amount of level-headed calculation. She
knew herself to be high-strung, nervous, and impulsive, a combination
that led people to consider her lightly. On the day of the wreck Gerry
had shown himself to be a man full grown. He had mastered her; she
thought he could hold her.

Then came calculation. Alix was out of the West. All that money could
do for her in the way of education and culture had been done, but
no one knew better than she that her culture was a mere veneer in
comparison with the ingrained flower of the Lansings’ family oak. Here
was a man she could love, and with him he brought her the old homestead
on Red Hill and an older brownstone front in New York the position of
which was as unassailable socially as it was inconvenient as regards
the present center of the city’s life. Alix reflected that if there was
a fool to the bargain it was not she.

All Red Hill and a few Deerings gathered for the wedding, and many were
the remarks passed on Gerry’s handsome bulk and Alix’s scintillating
beauty; but the only saying that went down in history came from Alan
Wayne when Nance, just a little troubled over the combination of Gerry
and Alix, asked him what he thought of it.

Alan’s eyes narrowed, and his thin lips curved into a smile as he gave
his verdict:

“Andromeda, consenting, chained to the rock.”


CHAPTER IV

To the surprise of his friends, Alan Wayne gave up debauch and found
himself employment by the time the spring that saw his dismissal from
Maple House had ripened into summer. He was full of preparation for his
departure for Africa when a summons from old Captain Wayne reached him.

With equal horror of putting up at hotels or relatives’ houses, the
captain, upon his arrival in town, had gone straight to his club, and
forthwith become the sensation of the club’s windows. Old members
felt young when they caught sight of him, as though they had come
suddenly on a vanished landmark restored. Passing gamins gazed on his
short-cropped gray hair, staring eyes, flaring collar, black string
tie, and flowing broadcloth, and remarked:

“Gee! look at de old spoit in de winder!”

Alan heard the remark as he entered the club, and smiled.

“How do you do, sir?”

“Huh!” grunted the captain. “Sit down.” He ordered a drink for his
guest and another for himself. He glared at the waiter. He glared at a
callow youth who had come up and was looking with speculative eye at a
neighboring chair. The waiter retired almost precipitously. The youth
followed.

“In my time,” remarked the captain, “a club was for privacy. Now it’s a
haven for bell-boys and a playground for whipper-snappers.”

“They’ve made me a member, sir.”

“Have, eh!” growled the captain, and glared at his nephew. Alan took
inspection coolly, a faint smile on his thin face. The captain turned
away his bulging eyes, crossed and uncrossed his legs, and finally
spoke. “I was just going to say when you interrupted,” he began, “that
engineering is a dirty job. Not, however,” he continued after a pause,
“dirtier than most. It’s a profession, but not a career.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Alan. “They’ve got a few in the army, and they
seem to be doing pretty well.”

“Huh, the army!” said the captain. He subsided, and made a new start.
“What’s your appointment?”

“It doesn’t amount to an appointment. Just a job as assistant to
Walton, the engineer the contractors are sending out. We’re going to
put up a bridge somewhere in Africa.”

“That’s it. I knew it,” said the captain. “Going away. Want any money?”

The question came like solid shot out of a four-pounder. Alan started,
colored, and smiled all at the same time.

“No, thanks, sir,” he replied; “I’ve got all I need.”

The captain hitched his chair forward, and glared out on the avenue.

“The Lansings,” he began, like a boy reciting a piece, “are devils for
drink, the Waynes for women. Don’t you ever let ’em worry you about
drink. Nowadays the doctors call us non-alcoholic. In my time it was
just plain strong heads for wine. I say, don’t worry about drink.
There’s a safety-valve in every Wayne’s gullet. But women, Alan!”
The captain slued around his bulging eyes. “You look out for them.
As your great-grandfather used to say, ‘To women, only perishable
goods--sweets, flowers, and kisses.’ And you take it from me, kisses
aren’t always the cheapest. They say God made everything down to little
apples and Jersey lightning, but when He made women the devil helped.”
The captain’s nervousness dropped from him as he deliberately drew out
his watch and fob. “Good thing he did, too,” he added as a pleasing
afterthought. He leaned back in his chair. A complacent look came over
his face.

Alan got up to say good-by. The captain rose, too, and clasped the hand
Alan held out.

“One more thing,” he said. “Don’t forget there’s always a Wayne to back
a Wayne for good or bad.” There was a suspicion of moisture in his eye
as he hurried his guest off.

Back in his rooms, Alan found letters awaiting him. He read them, and
tore all up except one. It was from Clem. She wrote:

    Dear Alan: Nance says you are going very far away. I am sorry. It
    has been raining here very much. In the hollows all the bridges are
    under water. I have invented a new game. It is called “steamboat.”
    I play it on old Dubbs. We go down into the valley, and I make
    him go through the water around the bridges. He puffs just like a
    steamboat, and when he gets out, he smokes all over. He is _too_
    fat. I hope you will come back very soon.

    ~Clem.~

That evening Clem was thrown into a transport by receiving her first
telegram. It read:

    You must not play steamboat again; it is dangerous.

    ~Alan.~

She tucked it in her bosom and rushed over to the Firs to show it to
Gerry.

Gerry and Alix were spending the summer at the Firs, where Mrs.
Lansing, Gerry’s widowed mother, was still nominally the hostess. They
had been married two years, but people still spoke of Alix as Gerry’s
bride, and, in so doing, stamped her with her own seal. To strangers
they carried the air of a couple about to be married at the rational
close of a long engagement. No children or thought of children had
come to turn the channel of life for Alix. On Gerry, marriage sat as
an added habit. It was beginning to look as though he and Alix drifted
together not because they were carried by the same currents, but
because they were tied.

Where duller minds would have dubbed Gerry the Ox, Alan had named him
the Rock, and Alan was right. Gerry had a dignity beyond mere bulk.
He had all the powers of resistance, none of articulation. Where a
pin-prick would start an ox, it took an upheaval to move Gerry. An
upheaval was on the way, but Gerry did not know it. It was yet afar off.

To the Lansings marriage had always been one of the regular functions
of a regulated life, part of the general scheme of things. Gerry was
slowly realizing that his marriage with Alix was far from a mere
function, had little to do with a regular life, and was foreign to
what he had always considered the general scheme of things. Alix had
developed quite naturally into a social butterfly. Gerry did not
picture her as chain-lightning playing on a rock, as Alan would have
done; but he did in a vague way feel that bits of his impassive self
were being chipped away.

Red Hill bored Alix, and she showed it. The first summer after the
marriage they had spent abroad. Now Alix’s thoughts and talk turned
constantly toward Europe. She even suggested a flying trip for the
autumn, but Gerry refused to be dragged so far from golf and his club.
He stuck doggedly to Red Hill till the leaves began to turn, and then
consented to move back to town.

On their last night at the Firs, Mrs. Lansing, who was complimentary
Aunt Jane to Waynes and Eltons, entertained Red Hill as a whole to
dinner. With the arrival of dessert, to Alix’s surprise, Nance said,
“Port all around, please, Aunt Jane.”

Lansings, Waynes, and Eltons were heavy drinkers in town, but it was a
tradition, as Alix knew, that on Red Hill they dropped it--all but the
old captain. It was as though, amid the scenes of their childhood, they
became children, and just as a Frenchman of the old school will not
light a cigarette in the presence of his father, so they would not take
a drink for drink’s sake on Red Hill.

So Alix looked on interestedly as the old butler set glasses and
started the port. When it had gone the round, Nance stood up, and with
her hands on the table’s edge leaned toward them all. For a Wayne, she
was very fair. As they looked at her, the color swept up over her bare
neck. Its wave reached her temples, and seemed to stir the clustering
tendrils of her hair. Her eyes were grave and bright with moisture. Her
lips were tremulous.

“We drink to Alan,” she said; “to-day is Alan’s birthday.”

She sat down. They all raised their glasses. Little Clem had no wine.
She put a thin hand on Gerry’s arm.

“Please, Gerry! Please!”

Gerry held down his glass. Clematis dipped in the tip of her little
finger, and, as they all drank, gravely carried the drop of wine to her
lips.


CHAPTER V

As Judge Healey, gray-haired, but erect, walked up the avenue his keen
glance fell on Gerry Lansing standing across the street before an art
dealer’s window. Gerry’s eyes were fastened on a picture that he had
long had in mind for a certain nook in the library of the town house.

It was the second anniversary of his wedding, and though it was already
late in the afternoon, Gerry had not yet chosen his gift for Alix. He
turned from the picture with a last long look and a shrug, and passed
on to a palatial jeweler’s farther up the street.

For many years Judge Healey had been foster-father to Red Hill in
general and to Gerry in particular. With almost womanly intuition
he read what was in Gerry’s mind before the picture, and acting on
impulse, the judge crossed the street and bought it.

While the judge was still in the picture shop, Gerry came out of the
jeweler’s and started briskly for home. He had purchased a pendant of
brilliants, extravagant for his purse, but yet saved to good taste by a
simple originality in design.

He waited until the dinner-hour, and then slipped his gift into Alix’s
hand as they walked down the stairs together. She stopped beneath the
hall light.

“I can’t wait, dear; I simply can’t,” she said, and snapped open the
case.

“Oh!” she gasped. “How dear! How perfectly dear! You old sweetheart!”

She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him twice; then she flew
away to the drawing-room in search of Mrs. Lansing and the judge, the
sole guests at the little anniversary dinner. Gerry straightened his
tie and followed.

Alix’s tongue was rippling, her whole body was rippling, with
excitement and pleasure. She dangled her treasure before their eyes.
She laid it against her warm neck and ran to a mirror. The light in her
eyes matched the light in the stones. The judge took the jewel and laid
it in the palm of his strong hand. It looked in danger of being crushed.

“A beautiful thing, Gerry,” he said, “and well chosen. Some poet
jeweler dreamed that twining design, and set the stones while the dew
was still on the grass.”

After dinner the four gathered in the library, but they were hardly
seated when Alix sprang up. Her glance had followed Gerry’s startled
gaze. He was staring at the coveted picture he had been looking at in
the gallery that afternoon. It hung in the niche in which his thoughts
had placed it. Alix took her stand before it. She glanced inquiringly
at the others. Mrs. Lansing nodded at the judge. Alix turned back to
the picture, and gravity stole into her face. Then she faced the judge
with a smile.

“We live,” she said, “in a Philistine age, don’t we? But I’ve never let
my Philistinism drive pictures from their right place in the heart.
Pictures in art galleries--” she shrugged her pretty shoulders--“I have
not been trained up to them. To me they are mounted butterflies in a
museum, cut flowers crowded at the florist’s. But this picture and that
nook--they have waited for each other. You see the picture nestling
down for a long rest, and it seems a small thing, and then it catches
your eye and holds it, and you see that it is a little door that opens
on a wide world. It has slipped into the room and become a part of
life.”

A strange stillness followed Alix’s words. To the judge and to Gerry
it was as though the picture had opened a window to her mind. Then she
closed the window.

“Come, Gerry,” she said, turning, “make your bow to the judge and bark.”

Gerry was excited, though he did not show it.

“You have dressed my thoughts in words I can’t equal,” he said, and
strolled out to the little veranda at the back of the house. He
wanted to be alone for a moment and think over this flash of light
that had followed a dark day. For the first time in a long while Alix
had revealed herself. He did not begrudge the judge his triumph. He
knew instinctively that coming from him instead of from the judge the
picture would not have struck that intimate spark.

The next day Gerry gave his consent to Alix’s plan for a flying trip
abroad, but with a reservation. The reservation was that she should
leave him behind.

Judge Healey heard of this arrangement only when it was on the point
of being put into effect. In fact, he was only just in time at the
steamer to wave good-by to Alix. Leaning over the rail, with her high
color, moist red lips, and excited big eyes making play under a golden
crown of hair and over a huge armful of roses, Alix presented a picture
not easily forgotten.

The judge turned to Gerry.

“She ought not to be going without you, my boy.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Gerry, lightly. “She’s well chaperoned. It’s
a big party, you know.”

But during the weeks that followed the judge saw it was not all right.
Gerry had less and less time for golf and more and more for whisky and
soda. The judge was troubled, and felt a sort of relief when from far
away Alan Wayne cropped into his affairs and gave him something else to
think about.

When Angus McDale of McDale & McDale called without appointment, the
judge knew at once that he was going to hear something about Alan.

“Lucky to find you in,” puffed McDale. “It isn’t business exactly or
I’d have ’phoned. I was just passing by.”

“Well, what is it?” asked the judge, offering his visitor a fresh cigar.

“It’s this. That boy, Alan Wayne--sort of protégé of yours, isn’t he?”

“Yes, in a way--yes,” said the judge, slowly, frowning. “What has Alan
done now?”

“It’s like this,” said McDale. “Six months ago we sent Mr. Wayne out
on contract as assistant to Walton. Walton no sooner got on the ground
than he fell sick. He put Wayne in charge, and then he died. Now, this
is the point. Mr. Wayne seems to have promoted himself to Walton’s pay.
He had the cheek to draw his own as well. He won’t be here for weeks,
but his accounts came in to-day. I want to know if you see any reason
why we shouldn’t have that money back, to say the least.”

The judge’s face cleared.

“Didn’t he tell you why he drew Walton’s pay?”

“Not a word. Said he’d explain accounts when he got here, but that sort
of thing takes a lot of explaining.”

“Well,” said the judge, “I can tell you. Walton’s pay went to his
widow, through me. I’ve been doing some puzzling on this case already.
Now will you tell me how Alan got the money without drawing on you?”

“Oh, there was plenty of money lying around. The job cost ten per cent.
less than Walton’s estimate. If he’d come back, we’d have hauled him
over the coals for that blunder. There was the usual reserve for work
in inaccessible regions, and then the people we did the job for paid
ten days’ bonus for finishing that much ahead of contract time.”

The judge mused.

“Was the job satisfactory to the people out there?” he asked.

“Yes, it was,” said McDale, bluntly; “most satisfactory. But there was
a funny thing there, too. They wrote that while they did not approve of
Mr. Wayne’s time-saving methods, the finished work had their absolute
acceptance.”

The judge was silent for a moment.

“You want my advice?” he asked.

“Yes; not for our own sake, but for Wayne’s.”

“Well,” said the judge, “I’m going to give it to you for your sake.
When you stumble across a boy that can cut ten per cent. off the
working and time estimates of an old hand like Walton, you bind him
to you with a long contract at any salary he wants. And just one
thing more: when Alan Wayne steals a cent from you, or fifty thousand
dollars, you come to me, and I’ll pay it.”

McDale’s eyes narrowed, and he puffed nervously at his cigar. He got up
to take his leave.

“Judge,” he said, “your head is on right, and your heart’s in the right
place, as well. I begin to see that widow business. Wayne sized us up
for a hard-headed firm when it comes to paying out what we don’t have
to, and we are. It wasn’t law, but he was right. Walton’s work was done
just as if he’d been alive. Even a Scotchman can see that. You needn’t
worry. A man that you’ll back for fifty thousand is good enough for
McDale & McDale.”


CHAPTER VI

It was Alix who discovered Alan as the _Elenic_ steamed slowly down the
Solent. He was already comfortably established in his chair, with a
small pile of fiction beside him.

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“‘IN MY TIME,’ REMARKED THE CAPTAIN, ‘A CLUB WAS FOR PRIVACY. NOW IT’S
A HAVEN FOR BELL-BOYS AND A PLAYGROUND FOR WHIPPER-SNAPPERS’”]

She paused before she approached him. Alan had always interested her.
Perhaps it was because he had kept himself at a distance; but, then,
he had a way of keeping his distance from almost everybody. Alix had
thought of him heretofore as a modern exquisite subject to atavic fits
that, in times past, had led him into more than one barbarous escapade.
It was the flare of daring in these shameful outbursts that had saved
him from a suspicion of effeminacy. Now, in London she had by chance
heard things of him that forced her to a readjustment of her estimate.
In six months Alan had turned himself into a mystery.

“Well,” she said, coming up behind him, “how are you?”

Alan turned his head slowly, and then threw off his rugs and sprang to
his feet.

“The sky is clear,” he said; “where did you drop from?” His eyes
measured her. She was ravishing in a fur toque and coat which had yet
to receive their baptism of import duty.

“Oh,” said Alix, “my presence is humdrum. Just the usual returning from
six weeks abroad. But you! You come from the haunts of wild beasts, and
from all accounts you have been one.”

“Been one! From all accounts!” exclaimed Alan, a puzzled frown on his
face. “Just what do you mean?”

They started walking.

“I mean that even in Africa one can’t hide from Piccadilly. In
Piccadilly you are already known not as Mr. Alan Wayne, a New York
social satellite, but as a whirlwind in shirt-sleeves. Ten Per Cent.
Wayne, in short.” She looked at him with teasing archness. She could
see that he was worried.

“Satellite is rather rough,” remarked Alan. “I never was that.”

“All bachelors are satellites in the nature of things--satellites to
other men’s wives.”

“Have you a vacancy?” said Alan.

The turn of the talk put Alix in her element. She had never been an
ingénue. She had been born with an intuitive defense. Finesse was her
motto, and artificiality was her foil. It had never been struck from
her hands. On the other hand, Alan knew that every woman who accepts
battle can be reached, even if not conquered. It is the approaches to
her heart that a woman must defend. Once those are passed, the citadel
turns traitor.

They both knew they were embarking upon a dangerous game, but Alix had
played it often. No pretty woman takes her European degree without
ample occasion for practice, and Alix had been through the European
mill. She threw out her daintily shod feet as she walked. She was full
of life. She felt like skipping. The light of battle danced merrily in
her eyes. She made no other reply.

“I met lots of people we both know,” she said at last.

“Which one of them passed on the news that I had taken to the ways of a
wild beast?”

“Oh, that was the Honorable Percy. I caught only a few words. He was
telling about a man known as Ten Per Cent. Wayne and the only time he’d
ever seen the shirt-sleeve policy work with natives. When I learned it
was Africa, I linked up with you at once and screamed, and he turned to
me and said, ‘You know Mr. Wayne?’ And I said I had thought I did, but
I found I only knew him _tiré à quatre épingles_, and wouldn’t he draw
his picture over again. But just then Lady Merle signaled the retreat,
and when the men came out, somebody else snaffled Collingeford before I
got a chance.”

“Oh, Collingeford,” said Alan. “I remember.” He frowned and was silent.

“Alan,” said Alix after a moment, “let me warn you. I see a new
tendency in you, but before it goes any further than a tendency, let
me tell you that a thoughtful man is a most awful bore. When I caught
sight of you I thought, ‘What a delightful little party!’ But if you’re
going to be pensive, there are others--”

Alan glanced at her.

“Alix,” he said, mimicking her tone, “I see in you the makings of
an altogether charming woman. I’m not speaking of the painstaking
veneer,--I suppose you need that in your walk of life,--but what’s
under it. There may be others, as you say,--pretty women have taken
to wearing men for bangles,--but don’t you make a mistake. I’m not a
bangle. I’ve just come from the unclothed world of real things. To me a
man is just a man, and, what’s more, a woman is just a woman.”

“How un-American!” said Alix.

“It’s more than that,” said Alan; “it’s pre-American.”

Alix was thoughtful in her turn. Alan caught her by the arm and
turned her toward the west. A yawl was just crossing the disk of the
disappearing sun. Alix felt a thrill at his touch.

“It’s a sweet little picture, isn’t it?” she said. “But you mustn’t
touch me, Alan. It can’t be good for us.”

“So you feel it, too,” said Alan, and took his hand from her arm.

During the voyage they were much together, not in dark corners, but
waging their battle in the open--two swimmers that fought each other,
forgetting to fight the tide that was bearing them out to sea. Alan
was not a philanderer to snatch an unrequited kiss. To him a kiss was
the seal on surrender. But to Alix the game was its own goal. As she
had always played it, nobody had ever really won anything. However, it
did not take her long to appreciate that in Alan she had an opponent
who was constantly getting under her guard and making her feel
things--things that were alarming in themselves, like the jump of one’s
heart into the throat or the intoxication that goes with hot, racing
blood.

Alan’s power over women was in voice and words. If he had been hideous,
it would have been the same. With his tongue he carried Alix away, and
gave her that sense of isolation which lulls a woman into laxity. One
night as they sat side by side, a single great rug across their knees,
Alan laid his hand under cover on hers. A quiver went through Alix’s
body. Her closed hand stirred nervously, but she did not really draw it
away.

“Alan,” she said, “I’ve told you not to. Please don’t! It’s
common--this sort of thing.”

Alan tightened his grip.

“You say it’s common,” he said, “because you’ve never thought it out.
Lightning was common till somebody thought it out. I sit beside you
without touching you, and we are in two worlds. I grip your hand like
this, and the abyss between us is closed. While I hold you, nothing can
come between.”

Alix’s hand opened and settled into his. Alan went on:

“Words talk to the mind, but through my hand my body talks to yours in
a language that was old before words were born. If I am full of dreams
of you and a desert island, I don’t have to tell you about it, because
you are with me. The things I want, you want. There are no other things
in life; for while I hold you, our world is one and it is all ours.
Nothing else can reach us.”

For a while they sat silent, then Alix recovered herself.

“After all,” she said, “we’re not on a desert island, but on a ship,
with eyes in every corner.”

Alan leaned toward her.

“But if we were, Alix! If we were on a desert island, you and I--”

For a moment Alix looked into his burning eyes. She felt that there was
fire in her own eyes too--a fire she could not altogether control. She
disengaged herself and sprang up. Alan rose slowly and stood beside
her. He did not look at her parted lips and hot cheeks; he had suddenly
become languid.

“That’s it,” he drawled--“eyes in every corner. I wonder how many
morals would stand without other people’s eyes to prop them up?”

Alix left him. She felt baffled, as though she had tried desperately
to get a grip on Alan, and her hand had slipped. She felt that it was
essential to get a grip on him. She had never played the losing side
before, and she was troubled.

Premonition does not come to a woman without cause. Toward the end of
the voyage Alix faced, wide-eyed, the revelation that the stakes of the
game she and Alan had played were body and soul.

“Alan,” she said one night, with drooping head, “I’ve had enough. I
don’t want to play any more. I want to quit.” She lifted tear-filled
eyes to him. The foil of artificiality had been knocked from her hand.
She was all woman, and defenseless.

Alan felt a trembling in all his limbs.

“I want to quit, too, Alix,” he said in his low, vibrating voice, “but
I’m afraid we can’t. You see, I’m beaten, too. While I was just in love
with your body, we were safe enough; but now I’m in love with you. It’s
the kind of love a man can pray for in vain. No head in it; nothing but
heart. Honor and dishonor become mere names. Nothing matters to me but
you.”

[Illustration: Drawn By Reginald Birch

“’HE’D SAIL FOR AFRICA TO-MORROW AND THINK FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE OF
HIS ESCAPE FROM YOU AS A CLOSE SHAVE’”]

Tears crawled slowly down Alix’s cheeks. She stood with her elbows
on the rail and faced the ocean, so no one might see. Her hands were
locked. In her mind her own thoughts were running. Somehow she could
understand Alan without listening. If only Gerry had done this thing to
her, she was thinking, the pitiless, wracking misery would have been
joy at white heat. She was unmasked at last; but Gerry had not unmasked
her. Not once since the day of the wreck and their engagement had Gerry
unmasked himself.

Alan was standing with his side to the rail, his eyes leaving her face
only to keep track of the promenaders, so that no officious friend
could take her by surprise. He went on talking.

“Our judgment is calling to us to quit, but it is calling from days
ago,” he said. “We wouldn’t listen then, and it’s only the echo we
hear now. We can try to quit if you like; but when I am alone, I shall
call for you, and when you are alone, you will call for me. We shall
always be alone except when we are near each other. We can’t break the
tension, Alix. It will break us in the end.”

The slow tears were still crawling down Alix’s cheeks. In all her life
she had never suffered so before. She felt that each tear paid the
price of all her levity.

“Alan,” she said with a quick glance at him, “did you know when we
began that it was going to be like this?”

“No,” he answered. “I have trifled with many women, and I was ready to
trifle with you. No one had ever driven you, and I wanted to drive you.
I thought I had divorced passion and love. I thought perhaps you had,
too. But love is here. I am not driving you. We are being driven.”


CHAPTER VII

Alix and Alan were in the grip of a fever that is hard to break save
through satiety and ruin. They were still held apart by generations
of sound tradition, but against this bulwark the full flood of
modern life, as they lived it, was directed. In Alan there was a
counter-strain, a tradition of passion that predisposed him to accept
the easy tenets of the growing sensual cult. As he found it more and
more difficult to turn his thoughts away from Alix, he strove to regain
the clear-headedness that only a year before had held him back from
definite moral surrender.

With her things had not gone so far. From the security of the untempted
she had watched her chosen world play with fire, and only now, when
temptation assailed her, did she realize the weakness that lies in
every woman once her outposts have fallen and her bare heart becomes
engaged in the battle.

One early morning Nance sent for Alan. He found her alone. She had been
crying. He came to her where she stood by the fire, and she turned and
put her arms around his neck. She tried to smile, but her lips twitched.

“Alan,” she said, “I want you to go away.”

Alan was touched. He caught her wrists and took her arms from about his
neck.

“You mustn’t do that sort of thing to me, Nance. I’m not fit for it.”
He made her sit down on a great sofa before the fire and sat down
beside her. “You remind me to-day of the most beautiful thing I ever
heard said of you--by a spiteful friend.”

“What was it?” said Nance, turning her troubled eyes to him.

“She said, ‘She is only beautiful in her own home.’ I never understood
it before. It’s a great thing to be beautiful in one’s own home.”

“Oh, Alan,” said Nance, catching his hand and holding it against her
breast, “it _is_ a great thing. It’s the greatest thing in life. That’s
why I sent for you--because you are wrecking forever your chance of
being beautiful in your own home. And worse than that, you are wrecking
Alix’s chance. Of course you are blind. Of course you are mad. I
_understand_, Alan, but I want to hold you close to my heart until you
see--until the fever is cooled. You and Alix cannot do this thing. It
isn’t as though her people and ours were of the froth of the nation.
You and she started life with nothing but Puritan to build on. You
may have built just play-houses of sand, but deep down the old rock
foundation must endure. You must take your stand on that.”

Her eyes had been fixed in the fire, but now she turned them to his
face. Alan sat with head hanging forward, his gaze and thoughts far
beyond the confines of the room. Then he shook himself and got up to go.

“I wish we could, Nance,” he said gravely, and then added half to
himself, half to her, “I’ll try.”

For some days Alan had been prepared to go away and take Alix with
him, should she consent. Upon his arrival he had had an interview with
McDale & McDale, in the course of which that firm opened its eyes and
its pocket wider than it ever had before.

“You are out for money, Mr. Wayne,” had been the feeble remonstrance of
the senior member.

“Just money,” replied Alan. “If you owed as much as I do, you would be
out for it, too. Of course you’re not. What do you want? You’ve got my
guaranty--ten per cent. under office estimates for work and time.”

When Alan left McDale & McDale’s offices he had contracted more or less
on his own terms, and McDale, Jr., said to the senior:

“He’s only twenty-six--a boy. How did he beat us?”

“By beating Walton’s record first,” replied McDale, Sr. “And how he did
that, time will show.”

As he walked slowly back from Nance’s, Alan was thinking that, after
all, there was no reason why he should not cut and run--no reason
except Alix.

He reached his rooms. As he crossed the threshold a premonition seized
him. He felt as though some one were there. He glanced hurriedly about.
The rooms were still in the disorder in which he had left them, and
they were empty. Then he saw that he had stepped on a note that had
been dropped through the letter-slip. He picked it up. A thrill went
through him as he recognized Alix’s handwriting. There was no stamp.
It must have been delivered by hand. He tore it open and read: “You
said that a moment’s notice was all you asked. I will take the Montreal
express with you to-day.”

Alan’s blood turned to liquid fire. The note conjured before him a
vision of Alix. He crushed it, and held it to his lips and laughed, not
jeeringly, but in pure, uncontrolled excitement.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not a coincidence that Gerry had sought out Alix at the very
hour that Nance was summoning Alan. Gerry and Nance were driven by the
same forewarning of catastrophe. Gerry had felt it first, but he had
been slow to believe, slower to act. He had no precedent for this sort
of thing. His whole being was in revolt against the situation in which
he found himself. It was after a sleepless night, a most unheard of
thing with him, that he decided he could let things go no longer. He
went to Alix’s room, knocked, and entered.

Alix was up, though the hour was early for her. Fresh from her bath,
she sat in a sheen of blue dressing-gown before the mirror doing her
own hair. Gerry glanced about him and into the bath-room, looking for
the maid.

“Good morning,” said Alix. “She’s not here. Did you want to see her?”

Gerry winced at the levity. He wondered how Alix could play the game
she was playing and be gay. Alix finished doing her hair.

“There,” she said with a final pat, and turned to face Gerry.

He was standing beside an open window. He could feel the cold air on
his hands. He felt like putting his head out into it. His head was hot.

“Alix,” he said suddenly without looking at her, “I want you to drop
Alan.”

“But I don’t want to drop Alan,” replied Alix, lightly.

Gerry whirled around at her tone. His nostrils were quivering. To his
amazement, his hands fairly itched to clutch her beautiful throat. He
could hardly control his voice.

“Stop playing, Alix,” he gulped. “There’s never been a divorcée among
the Lansings nor a wife-beater, and one is as near this room as the
other right now.”

Gerry regretted the words as soon as he had said them, but Alix was not
angry. She looked at him through narrowed eyes. She speculated on the
sensation of being once again roughly handled by this rock of a man.
Only once before had she seen Gerry angry and the sight had fascinated
her then, as it did now. There was something tremendous and impressive
in his anger and struggle for control--a great torrent held back by a
great strong dam. She almost wished it would break through. She could
almost find it in her to throw herself on the flood and let it carry
her whither it would. She said nothing.

Gerry bit his lips and turned from her.

“And Alan, of all men!” he went on. At the words the current of her
thoughts was changed. She found herself suddenly on the defensive. “Do
you think you are the first woman he has played with and betrayed?”
Gerry’s lip was curved to a sneer. “A philanderer, a man who surrounds
himself with tarnished reputations.”

A dull glow came into Alix’s cheeks.

“Philanderers are of many breeds,” she said. “There are those who
have the wit to philander with woman, and those who can rise only
to a whisky or a golf-club. Whatever else Alan may be, he is not a
time-server.”

Once aroused, Alix had taken up the gantlet with no uncertain hand. Her
first words carried the war into the enemy’s camp, and they were barbed.

“What do you mean?” said Gerry, dully. He had not anticipated a defense.

“I mean what you might have deduced with an effort. What are you but a
philanderer in little things where Alan is in great? What have you ever
done to hold me or any other woman? I respected you once for what you
were going to be. That has died. Did you think I was going to make you
into a man?”

Gerry stood, breathing hard, a great despondency in his heart. Alix
went on pitilessly:

“What have you become? A monumental time-server on the world, and you
are surprised that a worker reaches the prize that you can not attain!
‘All things come to him who waits.’ That’s a trite saying; but how
about this? There are lots of things that come to him who only waits
that he could do without. The trouble with you is that you have built
your life altogether on traditions. It is a tradition that your women
are faithful; so you need not exert yourself to holding yours. It is a
tradition that you can do no wrong; so you need not exert yourself to
doing anything at all. You are playing with ghosts, Gerry. Your party
was over a generation ago.”

Alix had calmed down. There was still time for Gerry to choke her
to good effect. The hour could yet be his. But he did not know
it. Smarting under the lash of Alix’s tongue, he made a final and
disastrous false step.

“You try to humiliate me by placing me back to back with Alan?” he
said, with his new-born sneer. Alix appraised it with calm eyes, and
found it rather attractive. “Well, let me tell you that Alan is so
small a man that if I dropped out of the world to-day, he’d sail for
Africa to-morrow and think for the rest of his life of his escape from
you as a close shave.”

Alix sprang to her feet. She was trembling. Gerry felt a throb of
exultation. It was his turn to wound.

“What do you mean?” said Alix, very quietly; but it was the quiet of
suppressed passion at white heat.

“I mean that Alan is the kind of man who finds other men’s wives an
economy. He would take everything you have that’s worth taking, but not
you.”

Alix’s eyes blazed at him from her white face. “Please go away,” she
said. He started to speak. “Please go away,” she repeated. Her lips
were quivering, and her face twitched in a way that was terrifying to
Gerry. He hurried out, repeating to himself over and over: “You have
made Alix cry. You have made Alix cry.”

Alix toyed with the silver on her dressing-table until he had gone, and
then she swept across the room to her little writing-desk and wrote the
note that Alan had found half an hour later in his rooms.


CHAPTER VIII

Gerry stood in the hall outside Alix’s room for a moment, hoping to
hear a sob, a cry, anything for an excuse to go back. Instead he heard
the scratch of a pen; but he was too troubled to deduce anything from
that. He went slowly down the stairs and out into the street. The
biting winter air braced him. He started to walk rapidly. At the end of
an hour he found himself standing on a deserted pier. He took off his
hat and let the wind cool his head.

“I have been a brute,” he said to himself. “I have made a woman
cry--Alix!” He turned and walked slowly back to the avenue and into
his club, but he still felt uneasy. A waiter brought a whisky and soda
and put it at his elbow. Gerry turned on him.

“Who told you to bring that?” Then he felt ashamed of his petulance.
“It’s all right, George,” he said more genially than he had spoken for
many a day; “but I don’t want it. Take it away.”

He sat for a long time, and at last came to a resolution. Alix loved
roses. He would send her enough to bank her room, and he would follow
them home. He went up the avenue to his florist’s, and stood outside
trying to decide whether it should be one mass of blood red or a color
scheme. Suddenly the plate glass caught a reflection and threw it in
his face. Gerry turned. A four-wheeler was passing. He could not see
the occupant, but on top was a large, familiar trunk marked with a
yellow girdle. On the trunk was a familiar label. He stared at it, and
the label stared back at him, and finally danced before his mazed eyes
as the cab disappeared into the traffic.

Gerry stood for a long while, stunned. He saw a lady bow to him from
a carriage, and afterward he remembered that he had not bowed back.
Somebody ran into him. He looked back at the flowers massed in the
window, remembered that he did not need them now, and drew slowly
away. Two men hailed him from the other side of the street. Gerry
braced himself, nodded to them, and hailed a passing hansom. From the
direction Alix’s cab had taken he knew the station for which she was
bound. As he arrived on the platform they were giving the last call
for the Montreal express. He caught sight of Alix hurrying through
the gates, and followed. As she reached the first Pullman, somebody
rapped on the window of the drawing-room. Gerry saw Alan’s face pressed
against the pane. He watched Alix stop, turn, and climb the steps of
the car, and then he wheeled and hurried from the station.

Where could he go? Not to his club and Alan’s. His face would betray
the scandal with which the club would be buzzing to-morrow. Not to his
big, comfortable house. It would be too gloomy. Even in disaccord, Alix
had imparted to its somber oak and deep shadows the glow of buoyant
life. When she was there, one felt as though there were flowers in the
house. Gerry was seized with a great desire to hide from his world, his
mother, himself. He pictured the scare-heads in the papers. That the
name of Lansing should be found in that galley! It was too much. He
could not face it.

He bought a morning paper, full of shipping news, and, getting into a
taxi, gave the address of his bank. On the way he studied the sailings’
column. He found what he wanted--the _Gunter_, due to sail that
afternoon for Brazil, Pernambuco the first stop.

At the bank Gerry drew out the balance of his current account. It
amounted to something over two thousand dollars. He took most of it
in Bank of England notes. Then he started home to pack, but before he
reached the house a vision of the servants, flurried after helping
their mistress off, commiserating him to one another, pitying him
to his face perhaps, or, in the case of the old butler, suppressing
a great emotion, was too much for him. He drove instead to a big
department store, and in an hour had bought a complete outfit. He
lunched at one of the quiet restaurants that divide down-town from
up-town.

He had avoided buying a ticket. As the _Gunter_ warped out, the purser
came to him.

“I understand you have no ticket.”

“No,” said Gerry, drawing a roll of bills. “How much is the passage to
Pernambuco?”

The purser fidgeted.

“This is irregular, sir,” he said.

“Is it?” said Gerry, indifferently.

“I have no ticket-forms,” said the purser, weakening.

“I don’t want a ticket,” said Gerry. “I want a good room and three
square meals a day.”

Long, quiet days on a quiet sea are a master sedative to a troubled
mind. Gerry had a great deal to think through. He sat by the hour
with hands loosely clasped, his eyes far out on the ocean, tracing
the course of his married life, and measuring the grounds for Alix’s
arraignment. Gerry was just and generous to others’ faults, but not
to his own. He had forgotten the sting of Alix’s words, and, to his
growing amazement, saw in himself their justification. A time-server he
certainly had been.

The landfall of Pernambuco awoke him from reveries and introspection.
He did not look upon this palm-strewn coast as a land of new
beginnings; he sought merely a Lethean shore.

The ship crawled in from an oily sea to the long strip of harbor behind
the reef. Above, the sun blazed from a bowl of unbroken blue; on land,
the multicolored houses spread like a rainbow under a dark cloud of
brown-tiled roofs. Beyond the trees was a line of high, stuccoed
houses, each painted a different color, all weather-stained, and some
with rusted balconies that threatened to topple on to the passer-by.
One bore the legend, “Hôtel d’Europe.” There Gerry installed himself.


CHAPTER IX

Between the hour of writing her note to Alan and the moment when she
stepped on the train Alix had had no time to think. She was still
driven by the impulse of anger that Gerry’s words had aroused. She did
not reflect that the wound was only to her pride.

Alan held open the door of the drawing-room. She passed in, and he
closed it. She did not feel as though she were in a train. On the
little table stood a vase. It held a single perfect rose. Under the
vase was a curious doily, strayed from Alan’s collection of exotic
things. A cushion lay tossed on the green sofa, not a new cushion,
but one that had been broken in to comforting. Alix took in every
detail of the arrangement of the tiny room with her first breath. What
forethought, what a note of rest with which to meet a troubled and
hurried heart! But how insidious to frame an ignoble flight in such a
homelike setting! She felt a slight revolt at the travesty.

Alan was standing with blazing eyes and working face, like an eager
hound in leash. Alix threw back her veil and looked at him. With a
quick stride forward he caught her to him, and kissed her mouth until
she gasped for breath. With a flash she remembered his own words,
“If ever I kiss you, I shall bring your soul out between your lips.”
To Alix’s amazement, she did not feel an answering fire. Her body
was being lashed with a living flame, and her body was cold. In that
instant this seemed a terrible thing. She had sold her birthright for
a price, and the price was turning to dead leaves. She made an effort
to kiss Alan in return, but with the effort shame came over her. There
was so much in Alan’s kiss! The kiss had brought her soul out between
her lips. Her soul stood naked before her, and one’s naked soul is an
ugly thing. The kiss disrobed her, too, and from that last bourn of
shame Alix suddenly revolted.

Gasping, she pushed Alan from her. Their eyes met. His were burning,
hers were frightened. She moved slowly backward to the door, and with
her hand behind her opened the latch. Alan did not move. He knew
that if he could not hold her with his eyes, he could not hold her
at all. The train started. Alix passed through the door and rushed
to the platform. The porter was about to drop the trap on the steps.
Alix slipped by him. With all her force she pushed open the door and
jumped. The train was moving very slowly, but Alix reeled, and would
have fallen had it not been for a passing baggageman. He caught her,
and still in his arms, Alix looked back. Alan’s white face was at the
window. He looked steadily at her.

“Ye almost wint with him, miss,” said the baggageman, with a full
brogue and a twinkling eye.

Alix was tired and hungry when she got back home, but excitement kept
her up. She felt that she stood on the threshold of new effort and a
new life. After all, she thought, it was she who had made her dear old
Gerry into a time-server. She could have made him into anything else if
she had tried. She longed to tell him so. Perhaps he would catch her
and crush her in his arms as Alan had done. She laughed at herself for
wanting him to. She rang for the butler.

“Where’s your master, John?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. Mr. Gerry hasn’t come back since he went out this
morning.” To John, Mr. Lansing was a person who had been dead for some
time. His present overlords were Mr. and Mrs. Gerry and Mrs. Lansing
when she was in town.

“Telephone to the club, and if he is there, tell him I want to see
him,” said Alix, and turned to her welcome tea. The sandwiches seemed
unusually small to her ravenous appetite.

Gerry was not at the club. Alix dressed resplendently for dinner.
Never had she dressed for any other man with the care that she dressed
for Gerry that night. But Gerry did not come. At half-past nine Alix
ordered the table cleared.

“I’ll not dine to-night,” she said to John. “When your master comes,
show him in here.” She sat on in the library, listening for Gerry’s
step in the hall.

From time to time John came into the room to replenish the fire. On one
of these occasions Alix told him he might go to bed; but an hour later
he returned and stood in the door. Alix looked very small, curled up in
a great leathern chair by the fire.

“It’s after one o’clock, ma’am,” said John. “Mr. Gerry won’t be coming
in to-night.” Alix made no answer. John held his ground. “It’s time for
you to go to bed, ma’am. Shall I call the maid?”

It was a long time since John had taken any apparent interest in his
mistress. Alix had avoided him. She had felt that the old servant
disapproved of her. More than once she had thought of discharging him,
but he had never given her grounds that would justify her before Gerry.
Now he was ordering her to bed, and instead of being angry, she was
soothed. She wondered how she could ever have thought of discharging
him. He seemed strong and restful, more like part of the old house than
a servant. Alix got up.

“No, don’t call the maid. I won’t need her,” she said. Then she added,
“Good night, John,” as she passed out.

John held wide the door, and bowed with a deference that was a touch
more sincere than usual. “Good night,” he answered, as though he meant
it.

Alix was exhausted, but it was long before she fell asleep. She cried
softly. She wanted to be comforted. She had dressed so beautifully, she
had been so beautiful, and Gerry had not come home. As she cried, her
disappointment grew into a great trouble.

She awoke early from a feverish sleep. Immediately a sense of weight
assailed her. She rang, and learned that Gerry had not yet come home.
Then his words of yesterday suddenly came to her, “If I dropped out
of the world to-day--” Alix stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. Why had
she remembered those words? She lay for a long time, thinking. Her
breakfast was brought to her, but she did not touch it. It was almost
noon in the cloudy Sunday morning when she roused herself from apathy.
She sprang from the bed. She summoned Judge Healey with a note and Mrs.
Lansing with a telegram. The telegram was carefully worded:

    Please come and stay for a while. Gerry is away.

The judge found Alix radiating the freshness of a beautiful woman
careful of her person; but it was the freshness of a pale flower. Alix
was grave, and her gravity had a sweetness that made the judge’s heart
bound. He felt an awakening in her that he had long watched for. She
told him all the story of the day before in a steady monotone that
omitted nothing and gave the facts only their own weight.

When she had finished, the judge patted her hand. “You would make a
splendid witness, my dear,” he said. “Now, what you want is for me to
find Gerry and bring him back, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Alix, “if you can.”

“Nonsense! Of course I can. Men don’t drop out of the world so easily
nowadays. But I still want to know a thing or two. Are you sure Gerry
knew nothing of your--er--excursion to the station?”

Alix shook her head.

“From the time he left my room and the house he has not been back.”

“Has he been to the club?”

Alix colored faintly. “I see,” said the judge, quickly. “I’ll ask
there. I’ll go now.” He went off, and all that day he sought in vain
for a trace of Gerry. He went to all his haunts in the city; he had
telephoned to those outside. At night he returned to Alix, but it was
Mrs. Lansing who received him in the library.

The judge was tired, and his buoyancy had deserted him. He told her of
his failure. Mrs. Lansing was thoughtful, but not greatly troubled.

“Gerry,” she said, “has a level head. He may have gone away, but that
is all. He can take care of himself.” She went to tell Alix that there
was no news. When she came back, the judge turned to her.

“Well,” he asked, “What did she say?”

“Nothing, except that she wanted to know if you had tried the bank.”

The judge struck his fist into his left hand. “Never thought of it,”
he said. “That child has a head!” He went to the telephone. From the
president of the bank he traced the manager, from the manager, the
cashier. Yes, Gerry had been at the bank on Saturday. The cashier
remembered it because Mr. Lansing had drawn a certain account in full.
He would not say how much.

“There,” said the judge, with a sigh of relief, “that’s something. It
takes a steady nerve to draw a bank-account in full. You must take the
news up-stairs. I’m off. I’ll follow up the clue to-morrow.”

There was a new look of content mingled with the worry in Mrs.
Lansing’s face that made the judge say, as he held out his hand in
farewell, “Things better?”

Mrs. Lansing understood him.

“Yes,” she answered, and added, “we have been crying together.”

There had been strength in Mrs. Lansing’s calm. She had been waiting,
and now the waiting was over. Alix had given herself, tearful and
almost wordless, into arms that were more than ready, and had then
poured out her heart in a broken tale that would have confounded any
court of justice, but which between women was clearer than logic.

At the end Mrs. Lansing said nothing. Instead, she petted Alix, carried
her off to bed, and kept her there for three days. In her waking hours
Alix added spasmodic bits to her confession--sage reflections after
the event, dreamy “I wonders” that speculated in the past and in the
measure of her emotions.

On the fourth day Alix got up, but on the fifth she stayed in bed. Mrs.
Lansing found her pale and frightened. She had been crying.

“Alix,” she whispered, kneeling beside the bed, “what is it?”

Alix told her amid sobs.

“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Lansing, throwing her arms about her, “don’t
cry. Don’t worry. The strength will come with the need. In the end
you’ll be glad. So will Gerry. So will all of us.”

“It isn’t that,” said Alix, faintly. “Oh, it isn’t that! I’m just
thinking and thinking how terrible it would have been if I had run
away--really run away! I keep imagining how awful it would have been.
It is a nightmare.”

“Call it a nightmare if you like, sweetheart, but just remember that
you are awake.”

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“’I USED TO THINK I COULD GO HOME, THAT IT WAS JUST A QUESTION OF
BUYING A TICKET. BUT--’”]

“Yes,” said Alix, softly, “I am awake now. Mother, I want to go to Red
Hill. I know it’s early, but I want to go now. I want to watch the Hill
come to life and dress up for the summer. It will amuse me. It’s long
since I have watched for the first buds and the first swallows. I won’t
mind the melting snow and the mud. It’s so long since I’ve seen clean
country mud. I want to smell it.”

“You don’t know how bleak the Hill can be before spring,” objected Mrs.
Lansing.

“Will it be any bleaker with me there than when you were alone?” asked
Alix.

Mrs. Lansing came over to her and kissed her.

“No, dear,” she said.


CHAPTER X

In the squalid Hôtel d’Europe Gerry occupied a large room that
overlooked the quay. Even if there had been a better hotel in town, he
would not have moved. Here he looked out on a scene of never-ceasing
movement and color. The setting changed with the varying light. The
false rains of the midsummer season came up in black horses of cloud,
driven by a furious wind. They passed with a whirl and a veritable
clatter of heavy drops hurled against the earth in a splendid volley.
The long strip of the quay emptied at the first wet shot. The
tatterdemalion crowd invaded every doorway and nook of shelter with
screams and laughter. Then came the sun again, and back came the throng
to the fresh-washed quay.

Gerry missed his club, but for that he found a substitute. Cluny’s,
next door to the hotel, was a strange hall of convivial pleasure. A
massive square door, the masonry of which centuries had hardened and
blackened to stone, gave on to a long hallway that ended in a wider
dungeon. Here stood a bar and half a dozen teak tables. The floor was
of stone flags.

The clientele had the cleavage of oil and water. One part stood to
their drink at the bar, had it, and went out. The other sat to their
glasses at the tables, and sat late. Among these was a pale, thin man
of about Gerry’s age, with a mouth slightly twisted to humor until
toward evening drink loosened it to mere weakness. One afternoon he
nodded to Gerry, and Gerry left the bar for the tables. After that they
sat together. The man was an American--the American consul. Gerry liked
him, pitied him, and forgot to pity himself. One night he invited the
consul to his room. They sat in the balcony, a bottle of whisky and a
siphon between them. Gerry started to put his glass on the rail.

“Don’t do it,” said the consul, with his twisted smile; “it might carry
away.” He went on more seriously. “It’s rotten. The whole place is
rotten. There’s a blight on the men and the women and on the children.
God!”

Gerry put down his glass untouched. “Why don’t you go home?”

The consul took a long drink, eyed the empty glass, and spoke into it.

“I used to think just like that. ’Why don’t you go home?’ I used to
think I could go home, that it was just a question of buying a ticket
and climbing aboard a liner. But--” he broke off, and glanced at Gerry
as he refilled his glass.

“But what?” said Gerry.

“Well,” said the consul, “I’m just drunk enough to tell you. I’m only
proud in the mornings before I’m thoroughly waked up. I used to drive a
pen for a Western daily at twenty-five dollars a week. It was good pay,
and I married on it. I and the girl lived like the corn-fed hogs of our
native State. Life was one sunshine, and when the baby came, we joined
hands, and said good-by to sorrow forever. Then her people got busy
and landed me this job. The pay was three thousand, and if you want to
see how big three thousand dollars a year can look, just go and stand
behind any old kind of plow in Kansas. I jumped at it. We sold out our
little outfit and raked up just enough to see me out here. The girl and
the kid went to visit her people. I was to save up out of the first
quarter’s pay and send for them. That was three years ago.”

“Do you see that steamer out there?” said Gerry. “Well, she’s bound for
home. I want to give you the chance that comes after the last chance. I
want you to let me send you home.”

The consul looked around. His pendulous lip twisted into a smile.

“So you took all that talk for the preamble to a touch!” he said.

“No, I didn’t,” said Gerry, indignantly.

“Well, well, never mind,” said the consul. “There’s nothing left to go
back to, and there’s nothing left to go back. That little account in
the bank, and what it may do for some poor devil, is the only monument
I’ll ever build.”

The whisky-bottle was almost empty, but Gerry’s glass was still
untouched. The consul pointed at it.

“You can still leave it alone? I don’t know where you come from, or
what you’re loafing in this haven of time-servers for, but I’m going to
give you a bit of advice: you take that steamer yourself.”

Gerry colored.

“I can’t,” he stammered. “There’s nothing left for me either to go home
to.” He said nothing more. The consul had suddenly turned drowsy.


CHAPTER XI

Almost a month had passed since Gerry landed on his Lethean shore, and
it had served him well. But that night on the balcony woke him up.
The world seemed to have time-servers in small regard. First Alix and
now this consul chap. Gerry began to think of his mother. He strolled
over to the cable station. The offices were undergoing repairs. The
ground floor was unfurnished save for a table and one chair. In the
chair sat a chocolate-colored employee with a long bamboo on the floor
beside him. Gerry’s curiosity was aroused. He went in and wrote his
message to his mother, just a few words telling her he was all right.
The chocolate gentleman folded the message, slipped it into the split
end of the bamboo, and stuck it up through a hole in the ceiling to the
floor above.

[Illustration: Loaned by George Inness, Jr. Color-Tone, engraved for
~The Century~ by H. Davidson

SUNSET ON THE MARSHES

FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE INNES]

Gerry went out and rambled over the city. Night came on. He was
restless. He wished he had not sent the message. It was forming itself
into a link. He dined badly at a restaurant, and then wandered back to
the quay. Arriving steamers were posted on a blackboard under a street
lamp. The mail from New York was due to-morrow. The consul’s papers
would be full of the latest New York society scandal--his scandal.

A long, raking craft was taking on its meager provisions. Gerry engaged
its captain in a pantomime parley. The boat was bound for Penedo to
take on cotton. Gerry decided to go to Penedo. Two of the crew went
back with him to get his baggage. The hotel was closed. Gerry was the
only guest, and he had his key. He had paid his weekly bill that day,
so there was no need to wake any one up. In half an hour he and his
belongings were stowed on the deck of the _Josephina_, and she was
drifting slowly down to the bar.

Four days later they were off the mouth of the San Francisco. They
doubled in, and tacked their way up to Penedo. There was no life in
Penedo. It was desolate and lonely compared with the Hôtel d’Europe and
the lively quay; so when a funny little stern-wheeler started up the
river on its weekly trip to Piranhas, Gerry went with it.

Gerry chartered a ponderous canoe. At first he had a man to paddle
him up and down and sometimes across the wide half-mile of water; but
before long he learned to handle the thing himself. The heavy work
soon trimmed his splendid muscles into shape. He supplied the hostelry
with a variety of fish.

One morning he woke earlier than usual. The wave of life was running
high in his veins. He sprang up and, still in his pajamas, hurried out
for his morning swim. The break of day was gloriously chilly. A cool
breeze, hurrying up from sea, was steadily banking up the mist that
hung over the river. Gerry sprang into his canoe and pushed off. He
drove its heavy length up-stream, not in the teeth of the current, for
no man could do that, but skirting the shore, seizing on the help of
every eddy, and keeping an eye out for the green, swirling mound that
meant a pinnacle of rock just short of the surface. He went farther up
the river than ever before. His muscles were keyed to the struggle.
He passed the last jutting bend that the best boatmen on the river
could master, and found himself in a bay protected by a spit of sand,
rock-tipped and foam-tossed where it reached the river’s channel.

Gerry ran the canoe upon the shore and stepped on to the spit of sand.
In that moment just to live was enough. Then the sun broke out, and
helped the wind clear the last bank of mist from the river. As he
looked, a sharp cry broke on his astonished ears.

Almost at the end of the tongue of sand stood a girl. Her hair was
blowing about her slim shoulders. Over one of them she gazed, startled,
at Gerry. He drew back, mumbling apologies that she could not have
understood even if she could have heard them. Then she plunged with a
clean, long dive into the river. But before she plunged she laughed.
Gerry heard the laugh. With an answering call he threw himself into the
water, and swam as he never swam before.

    (To be continued)

[Illustration]



[Illustration]



THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY[1]

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

    The National Progressive Party was born in Chicago, August 5, 1912,
    at a convention which nominated Roosevelt for the presidency.
    Since that time, though defeated in the national election, it has
    figured more and more in the legislative and political activities
    of State and Nation. In fact progressivism is the one altogether
    incalculable element in the political situation of this country
    at a time when all men are peering, puzzled and anxious, into
    the mists of the future. At ~The Century’s~ request Mr.
    Roosevelt prepared the following paper for the thoughtful attention
    of the people of this land. It is crowded with suggestion.--~The
    Editor.~


Fundamentally the reason for the existence of the Progressive party is
found in two facts: first, the absence of real distinctions between
the old parties which correspond to those parties and, second, the
determined refusal of the men in control of both parties to use the
party organizations and their control of the Government for the purpose
of dealing with the problems really vital to our people.

As to the first fact, it is hardly necessary to point out that the
two old parties to-day no longer deal in any real sense with the
issues of fifty and sixty years ago. At that time there was a very
genuine division-line between the Republicans and the Democrats. The
Republicans of those years stood for a combination of all that was
best in the political philosophies of both Jefferson and Hamilton; and
under Lincoln they represented the extreme democratic movement which
was headed by Jefferson and also that insistence upon national union
and governmental efficiency which were Hamilton’s great contributions
to our political life in the formative period of the republic. The
Republicanism of that day was something real and vital, and the
Republican party under Lincoln was the radical party of the country,
abhorred and distrusted by the reactionaries and ultraconservatives,
especially in the great financial centers, precisely as is now true of
the Progressives. The Democratic party of that day, on the contrary,
was no longer the party either of Jefferson or of Jackson, whose points
of unlikeness were at least as striking as their points of likeness,
and in the world of politics stood for slavery and for such development
of the extreme particularistic doctrine euphoniously known as “States’
rights,” as to mean, when carried to its logical extreme, total
paralysis of governmental functions and ultimately disunion.

The outbreak of the Civil War and its successful conclusion forced the
majority of the conservative class of the North into the Republican
ranks; for when national dissolution is an issue, or even when any
serious disaster is threatened, all other issues sink out of sight when
compared with the vital need of sustaining the National Government.
There is no possibility of even approximating to social and industrial
justice if the National Government shows itself impotent to deal with
malice domestic and foreign levy.

On the other hand, after the Civil War, the Democratic party found its
position one of mere negation or mere antagonism to the Republican
party. The Democrats in the Northern States had very different
principles in the East and the West, and both in the East and the West
alike they had nothing in common with the Democrats of the South save
the bond of hatred to Republicanism.


OLD PARTIES AND NEW ISSUES

Under such conditions it was inevitable that after the issues raised by
the war were settled, and as year by year they tended more and more to
become nebulous memories, the new issues which arose should divide the
parties each within itself rather than serve as a basis for true party
division. The bonds were those of name, custom, and tradition rather
than of principle. Each party could pride itself on fervent fixity of
opinion as regards the issues that were dead, but each party showed
complete indecision of purpose in dealing with the problems that were
living. A party which alternately nominated Mr. Bryan and Mr. Parker
for President, and a party wherein Messrs. Penrose, La Follette, and
Smoot stand as the three brothers of leadership, can by no possibility
supply the need of this country for efficient and coherent governmental
action as regards the really vital questions of the day. Each party
contains within its leadership and membership men who are hopelessly
sundered by whatever convictions they really hold and who act together
simply for reasons of personal or party expediency. It is impossible to
secure the highest service for the people from any party which, like
the Democracy, is wedded to States’ rights, as against those peoples’
rights which can be obtained only by the exercise of the full power of
the National Government. On the other hand it is utterly hopeless to
expect any sincerity of devotion to any principle of concern to the
people as a whole from a party the machinery of which is usurped and
held by the powers that prey, in the political and business world; and
this has been the case with the Republican party since the bosses in
June, 1912, at Chicago stole from the rank and file their right to make
their own platform and nominate their own candidates.

So much for the incongruous jumble of conflicting principles and
policies within each party and the lack of real points of difference
between them. Their showing on this point is so bad that by sheer force
of habit our people have grown to accept as a matter of course and
without surprise the situations to which it gives rise. For instance,
in New York State there was very little genuine surprise among the
people as a whole when in the legislature the Republican adherents of
the Republican boss and the Democratic adherents of the Democratic
boss, after deliberate caucus and conference, repudiated their
preëlection pledges as to primary legislation, and joined with hearty
good will to defeat the measure which both had promised to support. It
would be difficult to imagine a better instance of the way in which
our present party conditions insure the absolute powerlessness of the
people when faced by a bipartizan combine of the two boss-ridden party
machines, whose hostility each to the other is only nominal compared to
the hostility of both to the people at large.


SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES

The second fundamental fact of the situation partly depends upon this
first fact. Where neither party ventures to have any real convictions
upon the vital issues of the day it is normally impossible to use
either as an instrument for meeting these vital issues. Most of these
issues, at least in their present form, have become such during the
lifetime of the present generation. There are, of course, issues of
which this is not true. The need of fortifying the Panama Canal and of
building and maintaining a thoroughly efficient navy of adequate size,
find their justification in the policy of Washington, for instance,
and neither policy can be antagonized save by those who are the
heirs of Washington’s bitterest and most insidious opponents. Again,
the questions arising in connection with our international relations
must to-day, as always, be settled exactly along the lines of general
policy laid down by Washington, under penalty of risking grave national
discredit and disgrace.

But most of the issues which nine times out of ten most concern the
average man and average woman of our republic have reached their
present form only within the lifetime of the men who are now of
middle age. They are due to the profound social and economic changes
of the last half-century, to the exhaustion of the soil and of our
natural resources, to the rapid growth of manufacturing towns and
great trading cities, and to the relative lowering of the level of
life in many country districts, both from the standpoint of interest
and the standpoint of profit. Whether we approach the problem having
in view only the interests of the wage-worker or of the farmer or of
the small business man, or having in view the interests of the public
as a whole, we are obliged to face certain new facts. One is that in
their actual workings the old doctrines of extreme individualism and
of a purely competitive industrial system have completely broken down.
Another is that if we are to grapple efficiently with the evils of
to-day, it will be necessary to invoke the use of governmental power
to a degree hitherto unknown in this country, and, in the interest of
the democracy, to apply principles which the purely individualistic
democracy of a century ago would not have recognized as democratic.

It is utterly useless to try to meet our needs by recreating the
vanished conditions which rendered it possible for this vanished
individualistic democracy to preach and practise what it did, and
which preaching and practising of an extreme individualism, be it
remembered, laid the corner of the very conditions against which we
are in revolt to-day. The present-day need of our people is to achieve
the purpose our predecessors in the democratic movement had at heart,
even though it be necessary to abandon or reverse the methods by which
they in their day sought to realize, and indeed often did realize, that
purpose. The Progressive party is the only political instrumentality
in existence to-day which recognizes the need of achieving this purpose
by the new methods which under the changed industrial and social
conditions are alone effective.


COLLECTIVE ACTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL

This means increased efficiency of governmental action. It does not
mean in the slightest degree any impairment or weakening of individual
character. The combination of efficient collective action and of
individual ability and initiative is essential to the success of the
modern state. It is in civil life as it is in military life. No amount
of personal prowess will make soldiers collectively formidable unless
they possess also the trained ability to act in common for a common
end. On the other hand, no perfection of military organization will
atone for the lack of the fighting edge in the man in the ranks. The
same principle applies in civil life. We not merely recognize but
insist upon the fact that in the life career of any man or any woman
the prime factor as regards success or failure must be his or her
possession of that bundle of qualities and attributes which in their
aggregate we denominate as character; and yet that, in addition, there
must be proper social conditions surrounding him or her.

Recognition of and insistence upon either fact must never be permitted
to mean failure to recognize the other and complementary fact. The
character of the individual is vital, and yet, in order to give it fair
expression, it must be supplemented by collective action through the
agencies of government. Our critics speak as if we were striving to
weaken the strength of individual initiative. Yet these critics, who
for the most part are either men of wealth who do not think deeply on
subjects unconnected with the acquisition of wealth, or else men of a
cloistered intellectualism, are themselves in practice the very men
who are most ready to demand the exercise of collective power in its
broadest manifestation; that is, through the police force, when there
is danger of disorder or violence.

[Illustration: ROOSEVELT

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH COPYRIGHT BY PACH BROS.

COLOR-TONE ENGRAVED FOR THE CENTURY BY H. DAVIDSON]

The growth in the complexity of community life means the partial
substitution of collectivism for individualism, not to destroy, but
to save individualism. A very primitive country community hardly
needs a constable at all. As it changes into a village and then into
a city, it becomes necessary to organize a police force, and this not
because the average man has deteriorated in individual initiative and
prowess, but because social conditions have so changed as to make
collective action necessary. When New York was a little village, a
watchman with a lantern and a stave was able to grapple with the only
type of law-breaker that had yet been developed. Nowadays, in place of
this baggy-breeched, stave-and-lantern carrier, we have the complex
machinery of our police department, with a personnel ranging from
a plain-clothes detective to a khaki-clad mounted officer with an
automatic-repeating pistol. As the complexity of life has grown, as
criminals have become more efficient and possessed of a greater power
of combined action, it has been necessary for the government to keep
the peace by the development of the efficient use of its own police
powers. It is just the same with many matters wholly unconnected with
criminality. The government has been forced to take the place of the
individual in a hundred different ways; in, for instance, such matters
as the prevention of fires, the construction of drainage systems, the
supply of water, light, and transportation. In a primitive community
every man or family looks after his or its interest in all these
matters. In a city it would be an absurdity either to expect every
man to continue to do this, or to say that he had lost the power of
individual initiative because he relegated any or all of these matters
to the province of those public officers whose usefulness consists in
expressing the collective activities of all the people.


THE SOCIAL GOAL

In other words, the multiplication of activities in a highly civilized
and complex community is such that the enormous increase in collective
activity is really obtained not as a substitute for, but as an
addition to, an almost similar increase in the sphere of individual
initiative and activity. There are, of course, cases of substitution;
but, speaking roughly and on the whole, the statement as above made
is accurate. The increase of collective activity for social and
industrial purposes does not mean in any shape or way a deadening
of individual character and initiative such as would follow on the
effort virtually to apply the doctrines of the Marxian socialists;
for “socialist” is a term so vague, and includes so many men working
wisely for justice, that it is necessary to qualify it in order to
define it. We are striving in good faith to produce conditions in
which there shall be a more general division of material well-being,
to produce conditions under which it shall be difficult for the
very rich to become so very rich, and easier for the men without
capital, but with the right type of character, to lead a life of
self-respecting and hard-working well-being. The goal is a long way
off, but we are striving toward it; and the goal is not socialism, but
so much of socialism as will best permit the building thereon of a
sanely altruistic individualism, an individualism where self-respect
is combined with a lively sense of consideration for and duty toward
others, and where full recognition of the increased need of collective
action goes hand in hand with a developed instead of an atrophied power
of individual action.

Now, it is fairly easy to gain a more or less half-hearted acceptance
of these views as right in the abstract. All that the Progressive party
is endeavoring to do is to apply them in the concrete.


THE REPUBLICAN DIFFERENCE

We are sundered from the men who now control and manage the Republican
party by the gulf of their actual practices and of the openly avowed
or secretly held principles which rendered it necessary for them to
resort to these practices. The rank and file of the Republicans, as
was shown in the spring primaries of 1912, are with us; but they have
no real power against the bosses, and the channels of information are
so choked that they are kept in ignorance of what is really happening.
The doctrines laid down by Mr. Taft as law professor at Yale give the
theoretical justification for the practical action of Mr. Penrose and
Mr. Smoot. The doctrines promulgated by Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler,
when he writes Mr. Barnes’s platform, serve to salve the consciences
of those who, although they object to bossism on esthetic grounds,
yet sincerely feel that governmental corruption is preferable to the
genuine exercise of popular power. This acquiescence in wrong-doing
as the necessary means of preventing popular action is not a new
position. It was the position of many upright and well-meaning Tories
who antagonized the Declaration of Independence and the movement which
made us a nation. It was the position of a portion of the very useful
Federalist party, which at the close of the eighteenth century insisted
upon the vital need of national union and governmental efficiency, but
which was exceedingly anxious to devise methods for making believe to
give the people full power while really putting them under the control
of a propertied political oligarchy.

The control of the Republican National Convention in June, 1912, in
the interest of Mr. Taft was achieved by methods full of as corrupt
menace to popular government as ballot-box stuffing or any species of
fraud or violence at the polls. Yet it was condoned by multitudes of
respectable men of wealth and respectable men of cultivation because
in their hearts they regarded genuine control by what they called “the
mob”--that is, the people--as an evil so great that compared with
it corruption and fraud became meritorious. The Republican party of
to-day has given absolute control of its destinies into the hands of
a National Committee composed of fifty-three irresponsible and on the
whole obscure politicians. It has specifically provided that these men,
who have no responsibility whatever to the public, can override the
lawfully expressed will of the majority in any state primary. It has
perpetuated a system of representation at national conventions which
gives a third of the delegates to communities where there is no real
Republican vote, where no delegation for or against any man really
represents anything, and where, in consequence, the National Committee
can plausibly seat any delegates it chooses without exciting popular
indignation. In sum, these fifty-three politicians have the absolute
and unchallenged control of the National Convention. They do not have
to allow the rank and file of the party any representation in that
convention whatever, and, as has been shown in actual practice, they
surrender to them any control whatever, on the occasion when they deem
it imperatively necessary, merely as a matter of expediency and favor,
and not as a matter of right or principle.

It is difficult to understand how under these conditions
self-respecting men who in good faith uphold popular government can
continue in the party. But it is entirely obvious why those in control
of the party and its main supporters in the political, financial,
and newspaper worlds advocate the system. They do it from precisely
the same motives that actuate them in opposing direct primaries, in
opposing the initiative and the referendum, in opposing the right of
the people to control their own officials, in opposing the right of
the people as against the right of the judges to determine what the
Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, shall permit in the
way of legislation for social and industrial justice. All persons who
sincerely disbelieve in the right and the capacity of the people for
self-rule naturally, and from their point of view properly, uphold a
system of party government like that which obtains under the Republican
National Committee. For precisely similar reasons they antagonize
every proposal to give the people command of their own governmental
machinery. For precisely similar reasons they uphold the divine right
of the judiciary to determine what the people shall be permitted to
do with their own government in the way of helping the multitudes of
hard-working men and women of whose vital needs these well-meaning
judges are entirely ignorant.


THE DEMOCRATIC DIFFERENCE

From the Democratic party as at present constituted we are radically
divided both because of the utter incoherence within that party
itself, and because the doctrines to which it is at present committed
are either fundamentally false or else set forth with a rhetorical
vagueness which makes it utterly futile to attempt to reduce them to
practice. The Democratic party can accomplish nothing of good unless it
deliberately repudiates its campaign pledges--unless it deliberately
breaks the promises it solemnly made in order to acquire power. Such
repudiation necessarily means an intellectual dishonesty so great
that no skill in rhetorical dialectics can cover or atone for it.
To win power by definite promises, and then seek to retain it by the
repudiation of those promises, would show a moral unfitness such as
not to warrant further trust of any kind. Therefore we must proceed
upon the assumption that the leaders of the Democracy meant what they
said when they were seeking to obtain office. Their only performance so
far, at the time that this article is written, is in connection with
the tariff and with a discreditable impotence in foreign affairs. As
a means of helping to solve great industrial and social problems, the
tariff is merely a red herring dragged across the trail to divert our
people from the real issues. The present tariff bill has been handled
by precisely the same improper methods by which the Payne-Aldrich
law was enacted. The only safe way of treating the tariff, that of
a permanent non-partizan, expert tariff commission, providing for
a schedule by schedule reunion, was deliberately repudiated. The
Payne-Aldrich tariff was a thoroughly bad bill; and therefore I am all
the more sorry to see the principles of evil tariff-making which it
crystallized repeated in the Underwood-Wilson bill.

The Democratic party specifically asserted that by correcting the
evils of the tariff they would reduce the cost of living, help the
wage-worker and farmer, and take the most important step necessary
to the solution of the trust problem. So far, there has not been the
smallest evidence that these results will follow their action; and
unless such results do follow from it, the Democratic tariff policy
will be proved an empty sham.

I have read with care Mr. Wilson’s chapter in the “New Freedom”
in which he professes to set forth his attitude as regards the
trusts. The chapter does not contain, as far as I can find, one
specific proposal for affirmative action. It does contain repeated,
detailed, and specific misrepresentations of the Progressive
position--misrepresentations so gross that all that is necessary in
order to refute them is to challenge Mr. Wilson to produce a single
line from the Progressive National platform, or from the speeches of
the men who stood on that platform, which will bear out his assertions.
Aside from these specific misrepresentations, there are various
well-phrased general statements implying, approval of morality in
the abstract, but no concrete proposal for affirmative action. A
patient and sincere effort to find out what Mr. Wilson means by the
“New Freedom” leaves me in some doubt whether it has any meaning at
all. But if there is any meaning, the phrase means and can mean only
freedom for the big man to prey unchecked on the little man, freedom
for unscrupulous exploiters of the public and of labor to continue
unchecked in a career of cutthroat commercialism, wringing their
profits out of the laborers whom they oppress and the business rivals
and the public whom they outwit. This is the only possible meaning that
the phrase can have if reduced to action. It is, however, not probable
that it has any meaning at all. It certainly can have no meaning of
practical value if its coiner will not translate it out of the realm of
magniloquent rhetoric into specific propositions affecting the intimate
concerns of our social and industrial life to-day. To discriminate
against a very few big men because of their efficiency, without regard
to whether their efficiency is used in a social or anti-social manner,
may perhaps be included in Mr. Wilson’s meaning; but this would be
absolutely useless from every aspect, and harmful from many aspects,
while all the other big unscrupulous men were left free to work their
wicked will. The line should be drawn on conduct, not on size. The
man who behaves badly should be brought to book, whether he is big or
little; but there should be no discrimination against efficiency, if
the results of the efficiency are beneficial to the wage-earners and
the public.


THE PEOPLE’S RIGHTS

We have waited for a year to see such propositions made, and until
they are made and put into actual practice, and until we see how they
work, the phrase “New Freedom” must stand as any empty flourish of
rhetoric, having no greater and no smaller value than all the similar
flourishes invented by clever phrase-makers whose concern is with
diction and not action. The problems connected with the trusts, the
problems connected with child labor, and all similar matters, can be
solved only by affirmative national action. No party is progressive
which does not set the authority of the National Government as supreme
in these matters. No party is progressive which does not give to the
people the right to determine for themselves, after due opportunity
for deliberation, but without endless difficulty and delay, what the
standards of social and industrial justice shall be; and, furthermore,
the right to insist upon the servants of the people, legislative and
judicial alike, paying heed to the wishes of the people as to what the
law of the land shall be. The Progressive party believes with Thomas
Jefferson, with Andrew Jackson, with Abraham Lincoln, that this is a
government of the people, to be used for the people so as to better the
condition of the average man and average woman of the nation in the
intimate and homely concerns of their daily lives; and thus to use the
government means that it must be used after the manner of Hamilton and
Lincoln to serve the purposes of Jefferson and Lincoln.

We are for the people’s rights. Where these rights can best be obtained
by exercise of the powers of the State, there we are for States’
rights. Where they can best be obtained by the exercise of the powers
of the National Government, there we are for national rights. We are
not interested in this as an abstract doctrine; we are interested in
it concretely. Wisconsin possesses advanced laws in the interest of
labor. There are other States in this respect more backward, where
wage-workers, and especially women and child wage-workers, are left
at the mercy of greedy and unscrupulous capitalists. Wherever this
operates unjustly to favor the capitalists of other less advanced
States at the expense of Wisconsin, and therefore for business reasons
to make state legislatures fearful of passing laws for the proper
safeguarding of the life, health, and liberty of the wage-workers, then
we believe that the National Government should step in and by national
action secure in the interest of the wage-workers uniform conditions
throughout the Union. We hold it to be the duty of the National
Government to put all the governmental resources of our people,
national and state, behind the movement for the wise and sane uplifting
of the men and women whose lives are hardest.

We believe in the principle of a living wage. We hold that it is
ruinous for all our people, if some of our people are forced to subsist
on a wage such that body and soul alike are stunted. We believe in
safeguarding the body of the wage-worker, and in providing for his
widow and children if he falls a victim to industrial accident. We
believe in shortening the labor day to the point that will tell most
for the laborer’s efficiency both as wage-worker and as citizen. In the
Progressive National platform we inserted the following plank:


    SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE

    The supreme duty of the nation is the conservation of human
    resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial
    justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in state and
    nation for:--

    Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial
    accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary
    unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern
    industry;

    The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various
    occupations, and the exercise of the public authority of state and
    nation, including the federal control over interstate commerce and
    the taxing power, to maintain such standards;

    The prohibition of child labor;

    Minimum wage standards for working women, to provide a living scale
    in all industrial occupations;

    The prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of an
    eight-hour day for women and young persons;

    One day’s rest in seven for all wage workers;

    The eight-hour day in continuous twenty-four-hour industries;

    The abolition of the convict contract labor system; substituting
    a system of prison production for governmental consumption only;
    and the application of prisoners’ earnings to the support of their
    dependent families;

    Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions of labor; full reports
    upon industrial accidents and diseases, and the opening to public
    inspection of all tallies, weights, measures and check systems on
    labor products;

    Standards of compensation for death by industrial accident and
    injury and trade diseases which will transfer the burden of lost
    earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and
    thus to the community;

    The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness,
    irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system
    of social insurance adapted to American use;

    The development of the creative labor power of America by lifting
    the last load of illiteracy from American youth and establishing
    continuation schools for industrial education under public control
    and encouraging agricultural education and demonstration in rural
    schools;

    The establishment of industrial research laboratories to put the
    methods and discoveries of science at the service of American
    producers.

    We favor the organization of the workers, men and women, as a means
    of protecting their interests and of promoting their progress.

These propositions are definite and concrete. They represent for the
first time in our political history the specific and reasoned purpose
of a great party to use the resources of the government in sane fashion
for industrial betterment.


COUNTRY PROBLEMS

We do not believe in confining governmental activity to the city. We
believe that the problem of life in the open country is well nigh the
gravest problem before this nation. The eyes and thoughts of those
working for social and industrial reform have been turned almost
exclusively toward the great cities, and toward the solution of the
questions presented by their teeming myriads of people and by the
immense complexity of their life. Yet nothing is more certain than
that there can be no permanent prosperity unless the men and women who
live in the open country prosper. The problems of the farm, of the
village, of the country church, and the country school, the problems of
getting most value out of and keeping most value in the soil, and of
securing healthy and happy and well-rounded lives for those who live
upon it, are fundamental to our national welfare. The first step ever
taken toward the solution of these problems was taken by the Country
Life Commission appointed by me, opposed with venomous hostility by
the foolish reactionaries in Congress, and abandoned by my successor.
Congress would not even print the report of this commission, and it
was the public-spirited, far-sighted action of the Spokane Chamber of
Commerce which alone secured the publication of the report. The farmers
must organize as business men and wage-workers have organized, and the
Government must help them organize.


THE BUSINESS WORLD

In dealing with business, the Progressive party is the only party which
has put forth a rational and comprehensive plan. We believe that the
business world must change from a competitive to a coöperate basis. We
absolutely repudiate the theory that any good whatever can come from
confining ourselves solely to the effort to reproduce the dead-and-gone
conditions of sixty years ago--conditions of uncontrolled competition
between competitors most of whom were small and weak. The reason that
the trusts have grown to such enormous size is to be found primarily in
the fact that we relied upon the competitive principle and the absence
of governmental interference to solve the problems of industry. Their
growth is specifically and precisely due to the practice of the archaic
doctrines advocated by President Wilson under the pleasingly delusive
title of the “New Freedom.”

We hold that all such efforts to reproduce dead-and-gone conditions
are bound to result in failure or worse than failure. The breaking-up
of the Standard Oil Trust, for example, has not produced the very
smallest benefit. It has merely resulted in enormously increasing
the already excessive profits of a small number of persons. Not the
smallest benefit would accrue--on the contrary, harm would result--if
in dealing with the Steel Corporation we merely substituted for one
such big corporation four or five smaller corporations of the stamp of
the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. The “Survey” published a study of the
conditions of life and labor among the wage-workers of this company
which it is not too much to describe as appalling. The effort to
remedy conditions in connection with the trusts by the establishment,
instead of one big company, of four such companies engaged in cutthroat
competition, cannot work the smallest betterment, and would probably
work appreciable harm. That kind of “new” freedom is nothing whatever
but the old, old license for the powerful to prey on the feeble.


COMPETITION AND CORPORATIONS

There is a very real need of governmental action, but it should be
action along a totally different line. The result of the unlimited
action of the competition system is seen at this moment in the
bituminous coal-mines of West Virginia, where the independent
operators, in the ferocity of their unregulated competition, and partly
because they are forbidden to combine even for useful purposes, seek
their profit in the merciless exploitation of the wage-workers who
toil for them. The law, in the strict spirit of the “new freedom,”
forbids them to combine for a useful purpose, and yet offers no check
upon their dealing with their employees in a spirit of brutal greed.
What is needed is thoroughgoing, efficient, and, if necessary, drastic
supervision and control of the great corporations doing an interstate
business, by means of a Federal administrative body akin in its
functions to the Interstate Commerce Commission. This body should have
power not only to enforce publicity, but to secure justice and fair
treatment to investors, wage-workers, business rivals, consumers, and
the general public alike.

Such an industrial commission should do as the Interstate Commerce
Commission should do, that is, remember always its dual duty, the
duty to the corporation and individual controlled no less than to the
public. It is an absolute necessity that the investors, the owners, of
an honest, useful, and decently managed concern, should have reasonable
profit. It is impossible to run business unless this is done. Unless
the business man prospers, there will be no prosperity for the rest of
the community to share. He must have certainty of law and opportunity
for honest and reasonable profit under the law.

Experience has proved that we cannot afford to leave the great
corporations to determine for themselves without governmental
supervision how they shall treat their employees, their rivals, their
customers, and the general public. But experience has no less shown
that it is as fatal for the agents of government to be unjust to the
corporation as to fail to secure justice from them. In dealing with
railways, for example, it is just as important that rates should not
be too low as that they should not be too high. The living wage and
the living rate are interdependent. In dealing with useful, honestly
organized, and honestly managed railways, rates must be kept high
enough to permit of proper wages and proper hours of labor for the men
on the railroad, and to permit the company to pay compensation for the
lives and limbs of those employees who suffer in doing its business;
and at the same time to secure a reasonable reward to the investors--a
reward sufficient to make them desirous to continue in this type
of investment. Precisely the same course of action which should be
followed in dealing with the railroads should also be followed by the
Interstate Industrial Commission in dealing with the great industrial
corporations engaged in interstate business.


TAXATION

We believe that great fortunes, even when accumulated by the man
himself, are of limited benefit to the country, and that they are
detrimental rather than beneficial when secured through inheritance.
We therefore believe in a heavily progressive inheritance tax--a tax
which shall bear very lightly on small or ordinary inheritances, but
which shall bear very heavily upon all inheritances of colossal size.
We believe in a heavily graded income tax, along the same lines, but
discriminating sharply in favor of earned, as compared with unearned,
incomes.

It would be needless and burdensome to set forth in detail all the
matters, national, state, and municipal, to which we would apply
our principles. We believe that municipalities should have complete
self-government as regards all the affairs that are exclusively their
own, including the important matter of taxation, and that the burden
of municipal taxation should be so shifted as to put the weight of
land taxation upon the unearned rise in value of the land itself
rather than upon the improvements, the buildings; the effort being to
prevent the undue rise of rent. We regard it as peculiarly the province
of the government to supervise tenement-houses, to secure proper
living conditions, and to erect parks and playgrounds in the congested
districts, and to use the schools as social centers.


THE PEOPLE AND THE LAWS

We hold that all the agencies of government belong to the people, that
the Constitution is theirs, and that the courts are theirs. The people
should exercise their power, not to overthrow either the Constitution
or the courts, but to overthrow those who would pervert them into
agents against the popular welfare. We believe that where a public
servant misrepresents the people, the people should have the right
to remove him from office, and that where the legislature enacts a
law which it should not enact or fails to enact a law which it should
enact, the people should have the right on their own initiative to
supply the omission. We do not believe that either power should be
loosely or wantonly used, and we would provide for its exercise in a
way which would make its exercise safe; but the power is necessary, and
it should be provided.

We hold, moreover, with the utmost emphasis, that the people themselves
should have the right to decide for themselves after due deliberation
what laws are to be placed upon the statute-books and what construction
is to be placed upon the constitutions, national and state, by the
courts, so far as concerns all laws for social and industrial justice.
This proposal has nothing whatever to do with any ordinary case at
law. It has nothing to do with the exercise by the judge of judicial
functions, or with his decision in any issue merely between man and
man. It has to do only with the exercise by the court of political
and legislative functions. We believe that it is wise to continue the
American practice of using the courts as a check upon the legislature
in this manner, but only so long as it is possible, in the event of
conflict between the legislature and the court, to call in as arbiter
the people who are the masters of both legislature and court, and whose
own vital interests are at issue. The court and the legislature alike
are the servants of the people, and they are dealing with the interests
of the people; and the people, the masters of both, have the right to
decide between them when their own most intimate concerns are at stake.

The present process of constitutional amendment is too long, too
cumbrous, and too uncertain to afford an adequate remedy, and,
moreover, after the amendment has been carried, the law must once more
be submitted to the same court which was, perhaps, originally at fault,
in order to decide whether the new law comes within the amendment.
Provision should be made by which, after due deliberation, the people
should be given the right themselves to decide whether or not a
given law passed in the exercise of the police power for social or
industrial betterment and declared by the court to be unconstitutional,
shall, notwithstanding this, become part of the law of the land. This
proposal has caused genuine alarm and been treated as revolutionary;
but opposition to it can proceed only from complete misunderstanding
both of the proposal and of the needs of the situation. Of course,
however, the selfish opposition of the great corporation lawyers and
of their clients is entirely intelligent; for these men alone are the
beneficiaries of the present reign of hidden, of invisible, government,
and they rely primarily on well-meaning but reactionary courts to
thwart the forward movement.


NO DIVINE RIGHT OF JUDGES

Concretely to illustrate just what we mean, our assertion is that the
people have the right to decide for themselves whether or not they
desire a workmen’s compensation law, or a law limiting the number of
hours of women in industry, or deciding whether in unhealthy bakeshops
wage-workers shall be employed more than a certain length of time per
day, or providing for the safeguarding of dangerous machinery, or
insisting upon the payment of wages in cash, or assuming and exercising
full power over the conduct of corporations--the power denied by the
court in connection with the Knight Sugar Case, but finally secured to
the people by the decision in the Northern securities case. Every one
of these laws has been denied to the people, again and again, both by
national and by state judges in various parts of the Union.

We hold emphatically that these matters are not properly matters for
final judicial decision. The judges have no special opportunity and no
special ability to determine the justice or injustice, the desirability
or undesirability, of legislation of such a character. Indeed, in most
cases, although not in all, the judges in the higher courts are so out
of touch with the conditions of life affected by social and industrial
legislation on behalf of the humble that they are peculiarly unfit to
say whether the legislation is wise or the reverse. Moreover, whether
they are fit or unfit, it is not their province to decide what the
people ought or ought not to desire in matters of this kind. They are
not law-makers; they were not elected or appointed for such purpose.
They are not censors of the public in this matter. We do not purpose to
exalt the legislature at their expense. We do not accept the view so
common in other countries that the legislature should be the supreme
source of power. On the contrary, our experience has been that the
legislature is quite as apt to act unwisely as any other governmental
body; and it is because of this fact that the experiment of so-called
commission government in cities is being so widely tried. We respect
the judges, we think that they are more apt on the whole to be good
public servants than any other men in office; but we as emphatically
refuse to subscribe to the doctrine of the divine right of judges as
to the doctrine of the divine right of kings. We are not specially
concerned with the question as to which of two public servants, the
court or the legislature, shall have the upper hand of the other; but
we are vitally concerned in seeing that the people have the upper hand
over both. Any argument against our position on this point is merely
an argument against democracy.


THE KEYSTONE OF PROGRESSIVISM

Moreover, any professed adherence to our other doctrines, while at the
same time this doctrine is repudiated, means nothing. During the last
forty years the beneficiaries of reaction have found in the courts
their main allies; and this condition, so unfortunate for the courts,
no less than for the people, has been due to our governmental failure
to furnish methods by which an appeal can be taken directly to the
people when, in any such case as the cases I have above enumerated,
there is an issue between the court and the legislature. It is idle to
profess devotion to our Progressive proposals for social and industrial
betterment if at the same time there is opposition to the one
additional proposal by which they can be made effective. It is useless
to advocate the passing of laws for social justice if we permit these
laws to be annulled with impunity by the courts, or by any one else,
after they have been passed. This proposition is a vital point in the
Progressive program.

To sum up, then, our position is, after all, simple. We believe that
the government should concern itself chiefly with the matters that are
of most importance to the average man and average woman, and that it
should be its special province to aid in making the conditions of life
easier for these ordinary men and ordinary women, who compose the great
bulk of our people. To this end we believe that the people should have
direct control over their own governmental agencies; and that when this
control has been secured, it should be used with resolution, but with
sanity and self-restraint, in the effort to make conditions of life and
labor a little easier, a little fairer and better for the men and women
of the nation.


  [1] Copyright, 1913, by The Century Co. All rights reserved. The
      republication of this article, either in whole or in part, is
      expressly prohibited, except through special arrangement with The
      Century Co.



[Illustration: Half-tone plate engraved by C. W. Chadwick

ALPHONSE DAUDET

A PORTRAIT SKETCH, DRAWN FROM THE LIFE, BY JOHN ALEXANDER]



“DEY AIN’T NO GHOSTS”

BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

Author of “Pigs is Pigs,” “Long Sam ’Takes Out,’” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY CHARLES SARKA


Once ’pon a time dey was a li’l’ black boy whut he name was Mose.
An’ whin he come erlong to be ’bout knee-high to a mewel, he ’gin to
git powerful ’fraid ob ghosts, ’ca’se dat am sure a mighty ghostly
location whut he lib’ in, ’ca’se dey’s a grabeyard in de hollow, an’ a
buryin’-ground on de hill, an’ a cemuntary in betwixt an’ between, an’
dey ain’t nuffin’ but trees nowhar excipt in de clearin’ by de shanty
an’ down de hollow whar de pumpkin-patch am.

An’ whin de night come’ erlong, dey ain’t no sounds _at_ all whut
kin be heard in dat locality but de rain-doves, whut mourn out,
“Oo-_oo_-o-o-o!” jes dat trembulous _an’_ scary, an’ de owls, whut
mourn out, “Whut-_whoo_-o-o-o!” more trembulous an’ scary dan dat, an’
de wind, whut mourn out, “You-_you_-o-o-o!” mos’ scandalous’ trembulous
an’ scary ob all. Dat a powerful onpleasant locality for a li’l’ black
boy whut he name was Mose.

’Ca’se dat li’l’ black boy he so specially black he can’t be seen in de
dark _at_ all ’cept by de whites ob he eyes. So whin he go’ outen de
house _at_ night, he ain’t dast shut he eyes, ’ca’se den ain’t nobody
can see him in de least. He jes as invidsible as nuffin’. An’ who
know’ but whut a great, big ghost bump right into him ’ca’se it can’t
see him? An’ dat shore w’u’d scare dat li’l’ black boy powerful’ bad,
’ca’se yever’body knows whut a cold, damp pussonality a ghost is.

So whin dat li’l’ black Mose go’ outen de shanty at night, he keep’
he eyes wide open, you may be shore. By day he eyes ’bout de size ob
butter-pats, an’ come sundown he eyes ’bout de size ob saucers; but
whin he go’ outen de shanty at night, he eyes am de size ob de white
chiny plate whut set on de mantel; an’ it powerful’ hard to keep eyes
whut am de size oh dat from a-winkin’ an’ a-blinkin’.

So whin Hallowe’en come’ erlong, dat li’l’ black Mose he jes mek’
up he mind he ain’t gwine outen he shack _at_ all. He cogitate’ he
gwine stay right snug in de shack wid he pa an’ he ma, ’ca’se de
rain-doves tek notice dat de ghosts are philanderin’ roun’ de country,
’ca’se dey mourn out, “Oo-_oo_-o-o-o!” an’ de owls dey mourn out,
“Whut-_whoo_-o-o-o!” an’ de wind mourn out, “You-_you_-o-o-o!” De eyes
ob dat li’l’ black Mose dey as big as de white chiny plate whut set on
de mantel by side de clock, an’ de sun jes a-settin’.

So dat all right. Li’l’ black Mose he scrooge’ back in de corner by
de fireplace, an’ he ’low’ he gwine stay dere till he gwine _to_ bed.
But byme-by Sally Ann, whut live’ up de road, draps in, an’ Mistah
Sally Ann, whut is her husban’, he draps in, an’ Zack Badget an’ de
school-teacher whut board’ at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house drap in, an’ a
powerful lot ob folks drap in. An’ li’l’ black Mose he seen dat gwine
be one s’prise-party, an’ he right down cheerful ’bout dat.

So all dem folks shake dere hands an’ ’low “Howdy,” an’ some ob dem
say: “Why, dere’s li’l’ Mose! Howdy, li’l’ Mose!” An’ he so please’
he jes grin’ an’ grin’, ’ca’se he ain’t reckon whut gwine happen. So
byme-by Sally Ann, whut live up de road, she say’, “Ain’t no sort o’
Hallowe’en lest we got a jack-o’-lantern.” An’ de school-teacher,
whut board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, she ’low’, “Hallowe’en jes no
Hallowe’en _at_ all ’thout we got a jack-o’-lantern.” An’ li’l’ black
Mose he stop’ a-grinnin’, an’ he scrooge’ so far back in de corner he
’mos’ scrooge frough de wall. But dat ain’t no use, ’ca’se he ma say’,
“Mose, go on down to de pumpkin-patch an’ fotch a pumpkin.”

“I ain’t want to go,” say’ li’l’ black Mose.

“Go on erlong wid yo’,” say’ he ma, right commandin’.

“I ain’t want to go,” say’ Mose ag’in.

“Why ain’t yo’ want to go?” he ma ask’.

[Illustration: Drawn by Charles Sarka

“‘WHUT YO’ WANT TO SAY UNTO ME?’ _IN_QUIRE’ LI’L’ BLACK MOSE”]

“’Ca’se I’s afraid ob de ghosts,” say’ li’l’ black Mose, an’ dat de
particular truth an’ no mistake.

“Dey ain’t no ghosts,” say’ de school-teacher, whut board at Unc’ Silas
Diggs’s house, right peart.

“’Ca’se dey ain’t no ghosts,” say’ Zack Badget, whut dat ’fear’d
ob ghosts he ain’t dar’ come to li’l’ black Mose’s house ef de
school-teacher ain’t ercompany him.

“Go ’long wid your ghosts!” say’ li’l’ black Mose’s ma.

“Wha’ yo’ pick up dat nomsense?” say’ he pa. “Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ dat whut all dat s’prise-party ’low: dey ain’t no ghosts. An’ dey
’low dey mus’ hab a jack-o’-lantern or de fun all sp’iled. So dat li’l’
black boy whut he name is Mose he done got to fotch a pumpkin from de
pumpkin-patch down de hollow. So he step’ outen de shanty an’ he stan’
on de door-step twell he get’ he eyes pried open as big as de bottom ob
he ma’s wash-tub, mostly, an’ he say’, “Dey ain’t no ghosts.” An’ he
put’ one foot on de ground, an’ dat was de fust step.

An’ de rain-dove say’, “Oo-_oo_-o-o-o!”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he tuck anudder step.

An’ de owl mourn’ out, “Whut-_whoo_-o-o-o!”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he tuck anudder step.

An’ de wind sob’ out, “You-_you_-o-o-o!”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he tuck one look ober he shoulder, an’ he shut he
eyes so tight dey hurt round de aidges, an’ he pick’ up he foots an’
run. Yas, sah, he run’ right peart fast. An’ he say’: “Dey ain’t no
ghosts. Dey ain’t no ghosts.” An’ he run’ erlong de paff whut lead’
by de buryin’-ground on de hill, ’ca’se dey ain’t no fince eround dat
buryin’-ground _at_ all.

No fince; jes de big trees whut de owls an’ de rain-doves sot in an’
mourn an’ sob, an’ whut de wind sigh an’ cry frough. An’ byme-by
somefin’ jes _brush’_ li’l’ Mose on de arm, which mek’ him run jes
a bit more faster. An’ byme-by somefin’ jes _brush’_ li’l’ Mose on
de cheek, which mek’ him run erbout as fast as he can. An’ byme-by
somefin’ _grab’_ li’l’ Mose by de aidge of he coat, an’ he fight’ an’
struggle’ an’ cry’ out: “Dey ain’t no ghosts. Dey ain’t no ghosts.”
An’ dat ain’t nuffin’ but de wild brier whut grab’ him, an’ dat ain’t
nuffin’ but de leaf ob a tree whut brush’ he cheek, an’ dat ain’t
nuffin’ but de branch ob a hazel-bush whut brush’ he arm. But he
downright scared jes de same, an’ he ain’t lose no time, ’ca’se de wind
an’ de owls an’ de rain-doves dey signerfy whut ain’t no good. So he
scoot’ past dat buryin’-ground whut on de hill, an’ dat cemuntary whut
betwixt an’ between, an’ dat grabeyard in de hollow, twell he come’
to de pumpkin-patch, an’ he rotch’ down an’ tek’ erhold ob de bestest
pumpkin whut in de patch. An’ he right smart scared. He jes de mostest
scared li’l’ black boy whut yever was. He ain’t gwine open he eyes
fo’ nuffin’, ’ca’se de wind go, “You-_you_-o-o-o!” an’ de owls go,
“Whut-_whoo_-o-o-o!” an’ de rain-doves go, “Oo-_oo_-o-o-o!”

He jes speculate’, “Dey ain’t no ghosts,” an’ wish’ he hair don’t stand
on ind dat way. An’ he jes cogitate’, “Dey ain’t no ghosts,” an’ wish’
he goose-pimples don’t rise up dat way. An’ he jes ’low’, “Dey ain’t no
ghosts,” an’ wish’ he backbone ain’t all trembulous wid chills dat way.
So he rotch’ down, an’ he rotch’ down, twell he git’ a good hold on dat
pricklesome stem of dat bestest pumpkin whut in de patch, an’ he jes
yank’ dat stem wid all he might.

“_Let loosen my head!_” say’ a big voice all on a suddent.

Dat li’l’ black boy whut he name is Mose he jump’ ’most outen he skin.
He open’ he eyes, an’ he ’gin’ to shake like de aspen-tree, ’ca’se whut
dat a-standin’ right dar behint him but a ’mendjous big ghost! Yas,
sah, dat de bigges’, whites’ ghost whut yever was. An’ it ain’t got no
head. Ain’t got no head _at_ all! Li’l’ black Mose he jes drap’ on he
knees an’ he beg’ an’ pray’:

“Oh, ’scuse me! ’Scuse me, Mistah Ghost!” he beg’. “Ah ain’t mean no
harm _at_ all.”

“Whut for you try to take my head?” ask’ de ghost in dat fearsome voice
whut like de damp wind outen de cellar.

“’Scuse me! ’Scuse me!” beg’ li’l’ Mose. “Ah ain’t know dat was yo’
head, an’ I ain’t know you was dar _at_ all. ’Scuse me!”

“Ah ’scuse you ef you do me dis favor,” say’ de ghost. “Ah got
somefin’ powerful _im_portant to say unto you, an’ Ah can’t say hit
’ca’se Ah ain’t got no head; an’ whin Ah ain’t got no head, Ah ain’t
got no mouf, an’ whin Ah ain’t got no mouf, Ah can’t talk _at_ all.”

An’ dat right logical fo’ shore. Can’t nobody talk whin he ain’t got no
mouf, an’ can’t nobody have no mouf whin he ain’t got no head, an’ whin
li’l’ black Mose he look’, he see’ dat ghost ain’t got no head _at_
all. Nary head.

So de ghost say’:

“Ah come on down yere fo’ to git a pumpkin fo’ a head, an’ Ah pick’ dat
_ix_act pumpkin whut yo’ gwine tek, an’ Ah don’t like dat one bit. No,
sah. Ah feel like Ah pick yo’ up an’ carry yo’ away, an’ nobody see you
no more for yever. But Ah got somefin’ powerful _im_portant to say unto
yo’, an’ if yo’ pick up dat pumpkin an’ sot it on de place whar my head
ought to be, Ah let you off dis time, ’ca’se Ah ain’t been able to talk
fo’ so long Ah right hongry to say somefin’.”

So li’l’ black Mose he heft up dat pumpkin, an’ de ghost he bend’ down,
an’ li’l’ black Mose he sot dat pumpkin on dat ghostses neck. An’ right
off dat pumpkin head ’gin’ to wink an’ blink like a jack-o’-lantern,
an’ right off dat pumpkin head ’gin’ to glimmer an’ glow frough de mouf
like a jack-o’-lantern, an’ right off dat ghost start’ to speak. Yas,
sah, dass so.

“Whut yo’ want to say unto me?” _in_quire’ li’l’ black Mose.

“Ah want to tell yo’,” say’ de ghost, “dat yo’ ain’t need yever be
skeered of ghosts, ’ca’se dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ whin he say dat, de ghost jes vanish’ away like de smoke in July.
He ain’t even linger round dat locality like de smoke in Yoctober. He
jes dissipate’ outen de air, an’ he gone _in_tirely.

So li’l’ Mose he grab’ up de nex’ bestest pumpkin an’ he scoot’. An’
whin he come’ to de grabeyard in de hollow, he goin’ erlong same as
yever, on’y faster, whin he reckon’ he’ll pick up a club _in_ case he
gwine have trouble. An’ he rotch’ down an rotch’ down an’ tek’ hold of
a likely appearin’ hunk o’ wood what right dar. An’ whin he grab’ dat
hunk of wood--

“_Let loosen my leg!_” say’ a big voice all on a suddent.

Dat li’l’ black boy ’most jump’ outen he skin, ’ca’se right dar in de
paff is six ’mendjus big ghostes, an’ de bigges’ ain’t got but one
leg. So li’l’ black Mose jes natchully handed dat hunk of wood to dat
bigges’ ghost, an’ he say’:

“’Scuse me, Mistah Ghost; Ah ain’t know dis your leg.”

An’ whut dem six ghostes do but stand round an’ confabulate? Yas, sah,
dass so. An’ whin dey do so, one say’:

“’Pears like dis a mighty likely li’l’ black boy. Whut we gwine do fo’
to _re_ward him fo’ politeness?”

An’ anudder say’:

“Tell him whut de truth is ’bout ghostes.”

So de bigges’ ghost he say’:

“Ah gwine tell yo’ somefin’ _im_portant whut yever’body don’t know: Dey
_ain’t_ no ghosts.”

An’ whin he say’ dat, de ghostes jes natchully vanish away, an’ li’l’
black Mose he proceed’ up de paff. He so scared he hair jes yank’
at de roots, an’ whin de wind go’, “Oo-_oo_-o-o-o!” an de owl go’,
“Whut-_whoo_-o-o-o!” an’ de rain-doves go, “You-_you_-o-o-o!” he jes
tremble’ an’ shake’. An’ byme-by he come’ to de cemuntary whut betwixt
an’ between, an’ he shore is mighty skeered, ’ca’se dey is a whole
comp’ny of ghostes lined up along de road, an’ he ’low’ he ain’t gwine
spind no more time palaverin’ wid ghostes. So he step’ offen de road
fo’ to go round erbout, an’ he step’ on a pine-stump whut lay right dar.

“_Git offen my chest!_” say’ a big voice all on a suddent, ’ca’se dat
stump am been selected by de captain ob de ghostes for to be he chest,
’ca’se he ain’t got no chest betwixt he shoulders an’ he legs. An’
li’l’ black Mose he hop’ offen dat stump right peart. Yes, _sah_; right
peart.

“’Scuse me! ’Scuse me!” dat li’l’ black Mose beg’ an’ plead’, an’ de
ghostes ain’t know whuther to eat him all up or not, ’ca’se he step’
on de boss ghostes’s chest dat a-way. But byme-by they ’low they let
him go ’ca’se dat was an accident, an’ de captain ghost he say’, “Mose,
you Mose, Ah gwine let you off dis time, ’ca’se you ain’t nuffin’ but a
misabul li’l’ tremblin’ nigger; but Ah want you should _re_mimber one
thing mos’ particular’.”

“Ya-yas, sah,” say’ dat li’l’ black boy; “Ah, ’ll remimber. Whut is dat
Ah got to remimber?”

De captain ghost he swell’ up, an’ he swell’ up, twell he as big as a
house, an’ he say’ in a voice whut shake’ de ground:

“Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

So li’l’ black Mose he bound to remimber dat, an’ he rise’ up an’ mek’
a bow, an’ he proceed’ toward home right libely. He do, indeed.

An’ he gwine along jes as fast as he kin, whin he come’ to de aidge
ob de buryin’-ground whut on de hill, an’ right dar he bound to
stop, ’ca’se de kentry round about am so populate’ he ain’t able to
go frough. Yas, sah, seem’ like all de ghostes in de world habin’ a
conferince right dar. Seem’ like all de ghosteses whut yever was am
havin’ a convintion on dat spot. An’ dat li’l’ black Mose so skeered he
jes fall’ down on a’ old log whut dar an’ screech’ an’ moan’. An’ all
on a suddent de log up and spoke:

“_Get offen me! Get offen me!_” yell’ dat log.

So li’l’ black Mose he git’ offen dat log, an’ no mistake.

An’ soon as he git’ offen de log, de log uprise, an’ li’l’ black Mose
he see’ dat dat log am de king ob all de ghostes. An’ whin de king
uprise, all de congergation crowd round li’l’ black Mose, an’ dey am
about leben millium an’ a few lift over. Yas, sah; dat de reg’lar
annyul Hallowe’en convintion whut li’l’ black Mose interrup’. Right dar
am all de sperits in de world, an’ all de ha’nts in de world, an’ all
de hobgoblins in de world, an’ all de ghouls in de world, an’ all de
spicters in de world, an’ all de ghostes in de world. An’ whin dey see
li’l’ black Mose, dey all gnash dey teef an’ grin’ ’ca’se it gettin’
erlong toward dey-all’s lunch-time. So de king, whut he name old
Skull-an’-Bones, he step’ on top ob li’l’ Mose’s head, an’ he say’:

“Gin’l’min, de convintion will come to order. De sicretary please note
who is prisint. De firs’ business whut come’ before de convintion am:
whut we gwine do to a li’l’ black boy whut stip’ on de king an’ maul’
all ober de king an’ treat’ de king dat disrespictful’.”

An’ li’l’ black Mose jes moan’ an’ sob’:

“’Scuse me! ’Scuse me, Mistah King! Ah ain’t mean no harm _at_ all.”

But nobody ain’t pay no _at_tintion to him _at_ all, ’ca’se yevery one
lookin’ at a monstrous big ha’nt whut name Bloody Bones, whut rose up
an’ spoke.

[Illustration: Drawn by Charles Sarka

“’YERE’S DE PUMPKIN’”]

“Your Honor, Mistah King, an’ gin’l’min _an’_ ladies,” he say’, “dis am
a right bad case ob _lazy majesty_, ’ca’se de king been step on. Whin
yivery li’l’ black boy whut choose’ gwine wander round _at_ night an’
stip on de king ob ghostes, it ain’t no time for to palaver, it ain’t
no time for to prevaricate, it ain’t no time for to cogitate, it ain’t
no time do nuffin’ but tell de truth, an’ de whole truth, an’ nuffin’
but de truth.”

An’ all dem ghostes sicond de motion, an’ dey confabulate out
loud erbout dat, an’ de noise soun’ like de rain-doves goin’,
“Oo-_oo_-o-o-o!” an’ de owls goin’, “Whut-_whoo_-o-o-o!” an’ de wind
goin’, “You-_you_-o-o-o!” So dat risolution am passed unanermous, an’
no mistake.

So de king ob de ghostes, whut name old Skull-an’-Bones, he place’ he
hand on de head ob li’l’ black Mose, an’ he hand feel like a wet rag,
an’ he say’:

“Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ one ob de hairs whut on de head ob li’l’ black Mose turn’ white.

An’ de monstrous big ha’nt whut he name Bloody Bones he lay he hand on
de head ob li’l’ black Mose, an’ he hand feel like a toadstool in de
cool ob de day, an’ he say’:

“Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ anudder ob de hairs whut on de head ob li’l’ black Mose turn’ white.

An’ a heejus sperit whut he name Moldy Pa’m place’ he hand on de head
ob li’l’ black Mose, an’ he hand feel like de yunner side ob a lizard,
an’ he say’:

“Dey ain’t no ghosts.”

An’ anudder ob de hairs whut on de head ob li’l’ black Mose turn’ white
_as_ snow.

An’ a perticklar bend-up hobgoblin he put’ he hand on de head ob li’l’
black Mose, an’ he mek’ dat same _re_mark, an’ dat whole convintion ob
ghostes an’ spicters an’ ha’nts an’ yiver’thing, which am more ’n a
millium, pass by so quick dey-all’s hands feel lak de wind whut blow
outen de cellar whin de day am hot, an’ dey-all say, “Dey ain’t no
ghosts.” Yas, sah, dey-all say dem wo’ds so fas’ it soun’ like de wind
whin it moan frough de turkentine-trees whut behind de cider-priss.
An’ yivery hair whut on li’l’ black Mose’s head turn’ white. Dat whut
happen’ whin a li’l’ black boy gwine meet a ghost convintion dat-a-way.
Dat’s so he ain’ gwine forgit to remimber dey ain’t no ghostes. ’Ca’se
ef a li’l’ black boy gwine imaginate dey _is_ ghostes, he gwine be
skeered in de dark. An’ dat a foolish thing for to imaginate.

So prisintly all de ghostes am whiff away, like de fog outen de holler
whin de wind blow’ on it, an’ li’l’ black Mose he ain’ see no ’ca’se
for to remain in dat locality no longer. He rotch’ down, an’ he raise’
up de pumpkin, an’ he perambulate’ right quick to he ma’s shack, an’ he
lift’ up de latch, an’ he open’ de do’, an’ he yenter’ in. An’ he say’:

“Yere’s de pumpkin.”

An’ he ma an’ he pa, an’ Sally Ann, whut live up de road, an’ Mistah
Sally Ann, whut her husban’, an’ Zack Badget, an’ de school-teacher
whut board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, an’ all de powerful lot of
folks whut come to de doin’s, dey all scrooged back in de cornder
ob de shack, ’ca’se Zack Badget he been done tell a ghost-tale,
an’ de rain-doves gwine, “Oo-_oo_-o-o-o!” an’ de owls am gwine,
“Whut-_whoo_-o-o-o!” and de wind it gwine, “You-_you_-o-o-o!” an’
yiver’body powerful skeered. ’Ca’se li’l’ black Mose he come’
a-fumblin’ an’ a-rattlin’ at de do’ jes whin dat ghost-tale mos’
skeery, an’ yiver’body gwine imaginate dat he a ghost a-fumblin’ an’
a-rattlin’ at de do’. Yas, sah. So li’l’ black Mose he turn’ he white
head, an’ he look’ roun’ an’ peer’ roun’, an’ he say’:

“Whut you all skeered fo’?”

’Ca’se ef anybody skeered, he want’ to be skeered, too. Dat’s natural.
But de school-teacher, whut live at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, she say’:

“Fo’ de lan’s sake, we fought you was a ghost!”

So li’l’ black Mose he sort ob sniff an’ he sort ob sneer, an’ he ’low’:

“Huh! dey ain’t no ghosts.”

Den he ma she powerful took back dat li’l’ black Mose he gwine be so
uppetish an’ contrydict folks whut know ’rifmeticks an’ algebricks an’
gin’ral countin’ widout fingers, like de school-teacher whut board at
Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house knows, an’ she say’:

“Huh! whut you know ’bout ghosts, anner ways?”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he jes kinder stan’ on one foot, an’ he jes kinder
suck’ he thumb, an’ he jes kinder ’low’:

“I don’ know nuffin’ erbout ghosts, ’ca’se dey ain’t no ghosts.”

So he pa gwine whop him fo’ tellin’ a fib ’bout dey ain’ no ghosts whin
yiver’body know’ dey is ghosts; but de school-teacher, whut board at
Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, she tek’ note de hair ob li’l’ black Mose’s
head am plumb white, an’ she tek’ note li’l’ black Mose’s face am de
color ob wood-ash, so she jes retch’ one arm round dat li’l’ black boy,
an’ she jes snuggle’ him up, an’ she say’:

“Honey lamb, don’t you be skeered; ain’ nobody gwine hurt you. How you
know dey ain’t no ghosts?”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he kinder lean’ up ’g’inst de school-teacher whut
board at Unc’ Silas Diggs’s house, an’ he ’low’:

“’Ca’se--’ca’se--’ca’se I met de cap’n ghost, an’ I met de gin’ral
ghost, an’ I met de king ghost, an’ I met all de ghostes whut yiver was
in de whole worl’, an’ yivery ghost say’ de same thing: ’Dey ain’t no
ghosts.’ An’ if de cap’n ghost an’ de gin’ral ghost an’ de king ghost
an’ all de ghostes in de whole worl’ don’ know ef dar am ghostes, who
does?”

“Das right; das right, honey lamb,” say’ de school-teacher. And she
say’: “I been s’picious dey ain’ no ghostes dis long whiles, an’ now I
know. Ef all de ghostes say dey ain’ no ghosts, dey _ain’_ no ghosts.”

So yiver’body ’low’ dat so ’cep’ Zack Badget, whut been tellin’ de
ghost-tale, an’ he ain’ gwine say “Yis” an’ he ain’ gwine say “No,”
’ca’se he right sweet on de school-teacher; but he know right well he
done seen plinty ghostes in he day. So he boun’ to be sure fust. So he
say’ to li’l’ black Mose:

“’T ain’ likely you met up wid a monstrous big ha’nt what live’ down de
lane whut he name Bloody Bones?”

“Yas,” say’ li’l’ black Mose; “I done met up wid him.”

“An’ did old Bloody Bones done tol’ you dey ain’ no ghosts?” say Zack
Badget.

“Yas,” say’ li’l’ black Mose, “he done tell me perzackly dat.”

“Well, if _he_ tol’ you dey ain’t no ghosts,” say’ Zack Badget, “I got
to ’low dey ain’t no ghosts, ’ca’se he ain’ gwine tell no lie erbout
it. I know dat Bloody Bones ghost sence I was a piccaninny, an’ I done
met up wif him a powerful lot o’ times, an’ he ain’ gwine tell no
lie erbout it. Ef dat perticklar ghost say’ dey ain’t no ghosts, dey
_ain’t_ no ghosts.”

So yiver’body say’:

“Das right; dey ain’ no ghosts.”

An’ dat mek’ li’l’ black Mose feel mighty good, ’ca’se he ain’ lak
ghostes. He reckon’ he gwine be a heap mo’ comfortable in he mind sence
he know’ dey ain’ no ghosts, an’ he reckon’ he ain’ gwine be skeered of
nuffin’ never no more. He ain’ gwine min’ de dark, an’ he ain’ gwine
min’ de rain-doves whut go’, “Oo-_oo_-o-o-o!” an’ he ain’ gwine min’
de owls whut go’, “Who-_whoo_-o-o-o!” an’ he ain’ gwine min’ de wind
whut go’, “You-_you_-o-o-o!” nor nuffin’, nohow. He gwine be brave as
a lion, sence he know’ fo’ sure dey ain’ no ghosts. So prisintly he ma
say’:

“Well, time fo’ a li’l’ black boy whut he name is Mose to be gwine up
de ladder to de loft to bed.”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he ’low’ he gwine wait a bit. He ’low’ he gwine
jes wait a li’l’ bit. He ’low’ he gwine be no trouble _at_ all ef he
jes been let wait twell he ma she gwine up de ladder to de loft to bed,
too. So he ma she say’:

“Git erlong wid yo’! Whut yo’ skeered ob whin dey ain’t no ghosts?”

An’ li’l’ black Mose he scrooge’, and he twist’, an’ he pucker’ up de
mouf, an’ he rub’ he eyes, an’ prisintly he say’ right low:

“I ain’ skeered ob ghosts whut am, ’ca’se dey ain’ no ghosts.”

“Den whut _am_ yo’ skeered ob?” ask he ma.

“Nuffin’,” say’ de li’l’ black boy whut he name is Mose; “but I jes
feel kinder oneasy ’bout de ghosts whut ain’t.”

Jes lak white folks! Jes lak white folks!

[Illustration]



[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF THE GABLED HOUSETOPS OF NEMOURS]



NEMOURS: A TYPICAL FRENCH PROVINCIAL TOWN

BY ROGER BOUTET DE MONVEL

WITH PICTURES BY BERNARD B. DE MONVEL


It is only a little provincial town, like many others in France. It has
no famous monument, and the immediate neighborhood is neither imposing
nor celebrated. And yet this little town, with its quiet streets, its
modest houses, its limpid river, and its Champs de Mars, where in
fine weather the prominent citizens come to discuss the events of the
day, has a tranquil and intimate charm of its own, and the country
thereabouts is so rich in smiling, changing views,--moist fields along
the water’s-edge, wild heaths, and villages bathed in sunlight,--that
the whole makes a picture that wins one’s heart at first sight.

Nemours lies in the department of Seine-et-Marne, that old part of
France which used to be called La Brie, on the road leading from
Fontainebleau to Montargis. As you approach the outlying houses,
you come upon the first bridge that crosses the canal, on the
sluggish waters of which glide unwieldy boats, heavily laden with
wood, blocks of stone, or fine sand, and towed by mules or donkeys.
Once over the bridge, to the right lies the main street, the Rue de
Paris--naturally, for what town of the provinces is without its Rue
de Paris? And what Rue de Paris has not, on one side, a window with
a tempting display of delicacies, and on the other, the shops of the
haberdasher, the grain-seller, the ironmonger, the harness-maker, and
the barber, who, in his shirt-sleeves, stands at his door waiting for
customers; and last, the Café du Progrès, where, gathered about little
tables, the men drink, and hold forth on the future of France. Then you
cross a second stream, bordered with old lime-trees and overshadowed
by the high walls of the convent. Here is the Hôtel de l’Ecu, which
still has the royal arms on its worn façade, and in front of which the
mail-coaches used to stop; here is the market-place; the church, which
dates from the thirteenth century; and, before the church, the statue
of the great man of the neighborhood, Etienne Bezout, the distinguished
mathematician.

If the truth must be told, Etienne Bezout’s fame is hardly world-wide;
but since, in the matter of celebrities, one takes what one can get,
for many long years the townspeople have been glad to have this old
worthy--with his eighteenth-century wig, and his finger pointing
heavenward in an attitude of wisdom and abstraction--preside over their
weekly markets and the meetings of their fire-company, as well as at
their outpourings from mass, from funerals, weddings, and christenings.

Beyond the market-place there is yet a third bridge, the great bridge
overlooking the river Loing. A few steps farther, and you are amused
by the droll sight of the washerwomen as they beat out their linen,
gossiping and shrieking on the bank, like so many frogs at the edge of
a marsh. Over there is the old pond, where the cows linger, and farther
still stands the feudal castle, with its square tower. Beyond this we
look down on the garden of M. le Curé, the tanneries, the convent, the
town mill, and, last of all, on the river, which, though choked with
weeds, is charmingly picturesque by reason of its tiny islands, its
bubbling waterfalls, and its Normandy poplars. Just across the bridge
lie the suburbs of the little town, with its working-men’s houses,
quaint roofs, and farm-yards; and then again the open country and the
green fields.

[Illustration: THE CANAL AT NEMOURS WITH ITS BORDER OF NORMANDY
POPLARS]

[Illustration: “AFTER ALL, EACH MAN ENJOYS LIFE IN HIS OWN WAY”]

But to see Nemours as it should be seen, to catch the peculiar charm
of this little corner of the provinces which Balzac has made famous
in his “Ursule Mirouet,” we must retrace our steps. We must wander
through certain fascinating old streets, with rough cobblestones and
irregular sidewalks; the Rue du Prieuré, for instance, where the
booths of the sabot-makers stand side by side with the tiny shops of
the chair-caners; the Rue de l’Hospice, where old women in caps sit in
their doorways knitting, and where the little orphan children march,
two by two, under the guidance of the sisters of charity. We must
glance at the gabled houses in the Place au Blé and the Place St.-Jean,
or follow the Quai des Fosses, with its rows of flower-beds, where the
trees make green arches along the edge of the river. Now we will steal
into the courtyard of the old castle, which during the crusades was the
fortress of the “great and mighty lords” of that part of the country,
afterward the dwelling-place of the dukes of Nemours. Later, it was
the bailiff’s court down to the time of the Revolution; since when it
has gradually been transformed into a theater and dancing-hall, where
nowadays traveling companies of actors stop to play “The Two Orphans”
or “A Woman’s Punishment.” To-day the castle has a museum, for, just
as any self-respecting town must have a “great man,” it must also have
a museum, whether there is anything to put in it or not. Hence, it was
an important day when the mayor of Nemours, adorned with his tricolored
scarf, surrounded by the town councilors, and preceded by a flourish of
trumpets, instituted this indispensable glory.

As we said before, the little town of Nemours has not been the scene of
any startling event, but, like most of our provincial towns, it belongs
to our past and is a part of our history. Its old walls have looked on
some imposing ceremonies and have witnessed the arrival and departure
of some celebrated personages. Did not Louis XIV himself condescend to
enter Nemours in November, 1696? Later, in 1773, did not the Comtesse
d’Artois choose it as a meeting-place with her sister, the Comtesse de
Provence? One can imagine the militia of Nemours forming in line in
the streets, the windows ablaze with lights, the thundering of cannon,
the waving of flags, the sheriffs in their uniforms of state, and the
townspeople, on bended knees, offering to these great personages their
homage and the freedom of the city.

Indeed, this meeting between the sisters must still stand as the most
memorable incident in the annals or Nemours, for although in our day
politics play a more important part than formerly, we must yet admit
that official ceremonies have lost much of their old-time grandeur.

[Illustration: A FRENCH COUNTRY CART RETURNING HOME ON MARKET-DAY FROM
MARKET]

If we wish to understand the charm of the tranquil life of the
provinces, we must visit some of the townspeople of Nemours, and see
them at their daily tasks in the privacy of their own homes. In common
with the most important world capitals, this tiny town has its own
manner of living, its own customs and traditions. We should follow
yonder stout gentleman as, umbrella in hand, he takes his daily walk
with deliberate steps along the quay; we should say “Good afternoon” to
M. le Curé, whose cassock we see among the trees of his quiet garden;
we should also have a chat with the shoemaker at the corner; and, above
all, we should not fail to have our beard trimmed by the barber in the
Rue Neuve. He is such a kindly fellow, this barber.

[Illustration: “THE ONE NOISY TIME IN THE WEEK IS MARKET-DAY”]

Just beyond the barber’s shop is the hatter’s, and he too seems well
content with his lot. Not that his shop is spacious or his customers
abundant. One wonders how many hats he sells in a week, for, in the
memory of man, no one has ever seen two customers at the same time
in his shop. Nevertheless, whenever you go into the Chappellerie des
Elégants, you are certain to find M. Baudoin at his post behind the
counter, alert and smiling, eager to show you all the novelties of
the season. Above all things, do not venture to hint that his hats
are not the very latest creations as to shape and style, as you would
only surprise him, and inflict pain without standing a chance of
convincing him. M. Baudoin is confident that he can compete with the
most fashionable hatters in Paris, for has he not the best hats that
are made? Besides, can Paris compare with Nemours? You would never make
him believe it. He is proud of his native town, and despite his varied
experience with men and things, he has never seen a finer city. This is
the true provincial spirit.

M. Baudoin is no longer young. A few years more, and he will sell out
his business, and with the proceeds of that sale, combined with his
savings (for, like all good Frenchmen, he has been thrifty), will be
able to end his peaceful life in ease and comfort. A little house in
the suburbs, very new and very white; a tiny garden, with three or
four fruit-trees, flower-beds with trim borders, and the inevitable
fountain--this is M. Baudoin’s dream of an ideal old age.

This is, likewise, the dream of M. Robichon, the clock-maker; of M.
Troufleau, the tailor; and of M. Camus, the grain-merchant, all of whom
have spent their lives quietly in their little shops, selling from time
to time a hat, a watch, or a bag of grain. For the most part, they
have been happy. Their sons will have a modest inheritance, and will
carry on the trade of their fathers, unless one, fired with unusual
ambition, should some day become a country doctor or lawyer’s clerk.

[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H.
Davidson

“THE LITTLE ORPHAN CHILDREN MARCH TWO BY TWO”

DRAWN BY BERNARD B. DE MONVEL]

Such are the people, born in the little town or its immediate vicinity.
In addition to this native population, there is a colony of residents
who have come from Paris or elsewhere and, attracted by the charm of
the place, have bought country houses in the neighborhood.

Although only two hours’ distance by rail from Paris, Nemours is a
typical corner of the provinces, where members of the lower middle
class, and even persons of independent means, come in search of rest
and quiet; merchants who have retired from business, army officers on
half-pay, professors grown gray in service, and, oddly enough, a large
number of artists, painters, sculptors, and actors. Some come for the
summer only; others live in or near Nemours all the year round.

It is not every French provincial town that can rival Nemours in one
respect: beside one of the new and dreadful houses its owner has seen
fit to erect a kind of ruin, an imitation in miniature of an old
fortified castle, with simulated remains of battlements, sham doors of
the middle ages, barred windows, etc. He has even taken the trouble
to have a real bullet embedded in the wall of his precious ruin--a
bullet fired, it is said, by the Prussians during their campaign in
France! Above the bullet, the date of the memorable event is placed in
large letters--1814! The bullet looks not unlike a tennis-ball; the
ruin itself seems to be made of papier-mâché; and, with the new house
by the side of the sham ruin, the _tout ensemble_ of this delightful
little property is a triumph of the grotesque. It is certain that it is
not this new and expensive quarter which lends to Nemours its strange
charm, any more than in other French towns, or in Paris itself, where
the modern attempts at architecture are veritable eyesores.

After all, each man enjoys life in his own way; and so M. Chevillard,
a retired lawyer, who does not own any ruins, and who, strange to say,
does not desire any, has a passion of an entirely different kind.
M. Chevillard’s passion is fishing. He has chosen Nemours as his
abiding-place simply because its three watercourses abound in pike and
roach; but that fact does not imply that M. Chevillard catches many
of them. Nevertheless, every day we may see him seated placidly on
his camp-stool, on the bank of the river, near the bridge, wearing an
enormous straw hat, which the suns of many summers have tanned a rich
golden-brown, the shade of well-toasted bread. He holds a fishing-rod
in his hand; the line falls into the water, and its tiny red cork
moves gently to and fro with the current. When this red cork drifts
toward the dark shadows under the bridge, M. Chevillard jerks his rod
up quickly, and we hear the line whistle in the air; then, in the
twinkling of an eye, the cork falls back on the surface of the water,
and the game begins again; and so it goes on all day and every day.

The strange thing is, however, that nearly every one in Nemours has
this same passion for fishing. All along the river, the canal, and the
smaller stream, we see rows of yellow hats, and, under them, any number
of kindly men and women of all ages, who sit calmly from morning till
night, watching their lines.

In addition to this large body of fishermen, there are sportsmen;
but do not imagine that they are any more successful. Formerly, this
part of the country abounded in game; but of late years, owing to
the increasing number of these sportsmen, the pheasants have rapidly
diminished. As the cost of a hunting license in France is moderate, the
humblest grocer may have the privilege of stringing a cartridge-case
across his chest, and, attired in brown linen, with his grandfather’s
old gun on his shoulder, may revel in the joys of the chase. It is not
the humble grocer alone, however, who is responsible for the terrible
slaughter of birds. All the other grocers, his friends and neighbors,
would feel themselves disgraced if they did not follow his example; so,
along with the grocers come the ironmongers, the harness-makers, and
the innkeepers, in such overwhelming numbers that within a week after
the opening of the shooting season not a hair or a feather is left to
tell the tale.

Greatly disturbed by this state of affairs, the sportsmen of Nemours
decided to found a society for the protection of game. Alas! within a
few months serious differences arose in the society, which was promptly
divided into two rival factions. Each faction had its own territory;
and from that moment bird-shooting was forgotten by both parties in
their eagerness to chase each other. The chief idea of each faction
was to guard jealously its own territory; and fierce injunctions were
sent to those imprudent sportsmen who ventured to trespass on forbidden
ground. As the respective shooting territories grow smaller each year,
and the two societies show no signs of being reconciled, there is grave
reason to fear that some fine day, not knowing how else to utilize
their powder and shot, the sportsmen of Nemours may be forced to fire
at one another!

For my own part, I do not imagine that these gentlemen have as yet any
idea of resorting to such extreme measures; but, peaceful and serene
as the little town is, it has its own private quarrels. Just as there
are two sportsmen’s societies, so there are two clubs--two rival clubs,
known, quite properly, as the Union Club and the Peace Club, where
every evening, before dinner, the half-pay captains and the retired
merchants come to play whist at a penny a point. The members are
kindly men, honest and peaceful; but there is not one of them who is
not firmly convinced that any other club but his own is the resort of
ill-bred fellows, not fit associates for himself or his friends. There
is an abundance of gossip in this little town, and gossip travels fast
at card-tables as well as tea-tables. However, only a certain set among
the residents care to lend an ear to the local small-talk.

During the summer, many artists come in quest of rest or an industrious
solitude. They are the ones who really enjoy and appreciate more
than any one else the strange, sweet charm of this little provincial
town, where every house has its garden, and every garden its flowers;
where the peaceful days go by with a slow and regular rhythm, and the
silence is broken only by the sound of the angelus or the ring of the
blacksmith’s anvil.

The one noisy time in the week is market-day, when the throngs of
covered wagons, drawn by strong cart-horses, the peasant women in
their white caps and the men in their blue blouses bringing in cattle,
poultry, fruit, and vegetables, make a lively and attractive scene;
when the air is full of the crack of whips and the tinkle of bells,
and gay with songs, cries, and laughter. But it may not be long before
the country carts will give way to automobiles, the white caps to
beflowered hats, and the blouses to jackets of the latest cut.



THE AUTO-COMRADE

BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

Author of “Romantic Germany,” “Romantic America,” etc.


Human nature abhors a vacuum, especially a vacuum inside itself. Offer
the ordinary man a week’s vacation all alone, and he will look as
though you were offering him a cell in Sing Sing.

“There are a great many people,” says that wise and popular oracle,
Ruth Cameron, “to whom there is no prospect more terrifying than that
of a few hours with only their own selves for company. To escape that
terrible catastrophe, they will make friends with the most fearful bore
or read the most stupid story.... If such people are marooned a few
hours, not only without human companionship, but even without a book or
magazine with which to screen their own stupidity from themselves, they
are fairly frantic.”

If any one hates to be alone with himself, the chances are that he has
not much of any self to be alone with. He is in as desolate a condition
as a certain Mr. Pease of Oberlin, who, having lost his wife and
children, set up his own tombstone and chiseled upon it this epitaph:

          “Here lies the pod.
    The Pease are shelled and gone to God.”

Now, pod-like people are always solitary wherever other people are
not; and there is, of course, nothing much more distressing than
solitariness. These people, however, through sheer ignorance, fall into
a confusion of thought. They suppose that solitude and solitariness
are the same thing. To the artist in life there is just one difference
between these two: it is the difference between heaven and its
antipodes. For, to the artist in life, solitude is solitariness plus
the Auto-comrade.

As it is the Auto-comrade who makes all the difference, I shall try to
describe his appearance. His eyes are the most arresting part of him.
They never peer stupidly through great, thick spectacles of others’
making. They are scarcely ever closed in sleep, and sometimes make
their happiest discoveries during the small hours. Indeed, these hours
are probably called small because the Auto-comrade often turns his eyes
into the lenses of a moving-picture machine that is so entertaining
that it compresses the hours to seconds. These eyes, through constant,
alert use, have become sharp. They can pierce through the rinds of the
toughest personalities, and even penetrate on occasion into the future.
They can also take in whole panoramas of the past in one sweeping
look. For they are of that “inner” variety through which Wordsworth,
winter after winter, used to survey his daffodil-fields. “The bliss of
solitude,” he called them.

The Auto-comrade has an adjustable brow. It can be raised high enough
to hold and reverberate and add rich overtones to the grandest chords
of thought ever struck by a Plato, a Buddha, or a Kant. The next
instant it may easily be lowered to the point where Hy Mayer’s latest
cartoon or the tiny cachinnation of a machine-made Chesterton paradox
will not ring entirely hollow. As for his voice, it can at times be
more musical than Melba’s or Caruso’s. Without being raised above a
whisper, it can girdle the globe. It can barely breathe some delicious
new melody; yet the thing will float forth not only undiminished, but
gathering beauty, significance, and incisiveness in every land it
passes through.

The Auto-comrade is an erect, wiry young figure of an athlete. As he
trades at the Seven-League Boot and Shoe Concern, it never bothers him
to accompany you on the longest tramps. His feet simply cannot be tired
out. As for his hands, they are always alert to give you a lift up the
rough places on the mountain-side. He has remarkable presence of body.
In any emergency he is usually the best man on the spot.

A popular saw asserts that “looks do not count.” But in this case
they do count. For the Auto-comrade looks exactly like himself. He
is at once seer, creator, accomplisher, and present help in time of
trouble. But his every-day occupation is that of entertainer. He is the
joy-bringer--the Prometheus of pleasure. In his vicinity there is no
such thing as ennui or lonesomeness. Emerson wrote:

    “When I would spend a lonely day
    Sun and moon are in my way.”

But for pals of the Auto-comrade, not only sun, moon, etc., are in the
way, but all of his own unlimited resources. For every time and season
he has a fittingly varied repertory of entertainment.

Now and again he startles you with the legerdemain feat of snatching
brand-new ideas out of the blue, like rabbits out of a hat. While you
stand at the port-hole of your cabin and watch the rollers rushing
back to the beloved home-land you are quitting, he marshals your
friends and acquaintances into a long line for a word of greeting or
a rapid-fire chat, just as though you were some idol of the people,
and were steaming past the Statue of Liberty on your way home from
lion-slaughter in Africa, and the Auto-comrade were the factotum at
your elbow who asks, “What name, please?”

After the friends and acquaintances, he even brings up your _bêtes
noires_ and dearest enemies for inspection and comment. Strangely
enough, viewed in this way, these persons no longer seem so
contemptible or pernicious or devilish as they once did. At this point
your factotum rubs your eye-glasses bright with the handkerchief he
always carries about for slate-cleaning purposes, and, lo! you even
begin to discover hitherto unsuspected good points about the chaps.

Then there are always your million and one favorite melodies which
nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-comrade, can so
exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also
a universeful of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest
sort of fellow-musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with
him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal
stimulation of the duet the godlike autocracy of the solo, with its
opportunity for uninterrupted, uncoerced, wide self-expression.
Sometimes, however, in the first flush of escape with him to the wilds,
you are fain to clap your hand over his mouth in order the better
to taste the essentially folkless savor of solitude. For music is a
curiously social art, and Browning was right when he said, “Who hears
music, feels his solitude peopled at once.”

Perhaps you can find your entertainer a small lump of clay or
modeling-wax to thumb into bad caricatures of those you love and
good ones of those you hate, until increasing facility impels him to
try and model not a Tanagra figurine, for that would be unlike his
original fancy, but a Hoboken figurine, say, or a sketch for some Elgin
(Illinois) marbles.

If you care anything for poetry and can find him a stub of pencil and
an unoccupied cuff, he will be most completely in his element; for
if there is any one occupation more closely identified with him than
another, it is that of poet. And though all Auto-comrades are not
poets, all poets are Auto-comrades. Every poem which has ever thrilled
this world or another has been written by the Auto-comrade of some
so-called poet. This is one reason why the so-called poets think so
much of their great companions. “Allons! after the great companions!”
cried old Walt to his fellow-poets. If he had not overtaken, and
held fast to, his, we should never have heard the “Leaves of Grass”
whispering “one or two indicative words for the future.” The bards
have always obeyed this call. And they have known how to value their
Auto-comrades, too. See, for example, what Keats thought of his:

    Though the most beautiful Creature were waiting for me at the
    end of a Journey or a Walk; though the Carpet were of Silk, the
    Curtains of the morning Clouds; the chairs and Sofa stuffed with
    Cygnet’s down; the food Manna, the Wine beyond Claret, the Window
    opening on Winander mere, I should not feel--or rather my Happiness
    would not be so fine, as my Solitude is sublime. Then instead of
    what I have described, there is a sublimity to welcome me home--The
    roaring of the wind is my wife and the Stars through the window
    pane are my Children.... I feel more and more every day, as my
    imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone
    but in a thousand worlds--No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic
    greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office
    which is equivalent to a King’s body-guard.... I live more out of
    England than in it. The Mountains of Tartary are a favorite lounge,
    if I happen to miss the Alleghany ridge, or have no whim for Savoy.

This last sentence not only reveals the fact that the Auto-comrade,
equipped as he is with a wishing-mat, is the very best cicerone in the
world, but also that he is the ideal tramping companion. Suppose you
are mountain-climbing. As you start up into “nature’s observatory,” he
kneels in the dust and fastens wings upon your feet. He conveniently
adjusts a microscope to your hat-brim, and hangs about your neck an
excellent telescope. He has enough sense, as well, to keep his mouth
shut. For, like Hazlitt, he “can see no wit in walking and talking.”
The joy of existence, you find, rarely tastes more cool and sweet and
sparkling than when you and your Auto-comrade make a picnic thus,
swinging in a basket between you a real, live thought for lunch. On
such an occasion you come to believe that Keats, on another occasion,
must have had his Auto-comrade in mind when he remarked to his friend
Solitude that

                “... it sure must be
    Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
    When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.”

The Auto-comrade can sit down with you in thick weather on a barren
lighthouse rock and give you a breathless day by hanging upon the walls
of fog the mellow screeds of old philosophies, and causing to march
and countermarch over against them the scarlet and purple pageants of
history. Hour by hour, too, he will linger with you in the metropolis,
that breeder of the densest solitudes,--in market or morgue, subway,
library, or lobby,--and hour by hour unlock you those chained books of
the soul to which the human countenance offers the master key.

Something of a sportsman, too, is the Auto-comrade. He it is who makes
the fabulously low score at golf--the kind of score, by the way, that
is almost invariably born to blush unseen. And he will uncomplainingly,
even zestfully, fish from dawn to dusk in a solitude so complete that
there is not even a fin to break it. But if there are fish, he finds
them. He knows how to make the flies float indefinitely forward through
yonder narrow opening, and drop, as light as thistledown, in the center
of the temptingly inaccessible pool. He knows without looking exactly
how thick and prehensile are the bushes and branches that lie in wait
for the back cast, and he can calculate to a grain how much urging the
sulky four-pounder and the blest tie that binds him to the four-ounce
rod will stand.

He is one of the handiest possible persons to have along in the woods.
When you take him on a canoe-trip with others, and the party comes to
“white water,” he turns out to be a dead shot at rapid-shooting. He
is sure to know what to do at the supreme moment when you jam your
setting-pole immutably between two rocks and, with the alternative
of making a hole in the water, are forced to let it go and grab your
paddle. And before you have time to reflect that the pale-face in the
bow can be depended upon to do just one thing at such a time, and
that is the exact opposite of what you are urging him to do, you are
hung up on a slightly submerged rock at the head of the chief rapid
just in time to see the rest of the party disappear around the lower
bend. At such a time, simply look to the Auto-comrade. He will carry
you through. Also there is no one like him at the moment when, having
felled your moose, leaned your rifle against a tree, and bent down the
better to examine him, the creature suddenly comes back to life.

In tennis, when you wake up to find that your racket has just smashed
a lob on the bounce from behind the court, making a clean ace between
your paralyzed opponents, you ought to know that the racket was guided
by that superior sportsman; and if you are truly modest, you will
admit that the miraculous triple play wherewith your team whisked the
base-ball championship out of the fire in the fourteenth inning was
pulled off by the unaided efforts of a certain Young Men’s Christian
Association of Auto-comrades.

There are other games about which he is not so keen: solitaire, for
instance. For solitaire is a social game that soon loses its zest if
there be not some devoted friend or relative sitting by and simulating
that pleasurable absorption in the performance which you yourself only
wish that you could feel.

This great companion can keep you from being lonely even in a crowd.
But there is a certain kind of crowd that he cannot abide. Beware how
you try to keep him in a crowd of unadulterated human porcupines! You
know how the philosopher Schopenhauer once likened average humanity to
a herd of porcupines on a cold day, who crowd stupidly together for
warmth, prick one another with their quills, are mutually repelled,
forget the incident, grow cold again, and repeat the whole thing ad
infinitum.

In other words, the human porcupine is the person considered at the
beginning of this one-sided discussion who, to escape the terrible
catastrophe of confronting his own inner vacuum, will make friends with
the most hideous bore. This creature, however, is much more rare than
the misanthropic Schopenhauer imagined. It takes a long time to find
one among such folk as lumbermen, Gipsies, shirt-waist operatives,
fishermen, masons, trappers, sailors, tramps, and teamsters. If the
philosopher had only had the pleasure of knowing those teamsters who
sent him into paroxysms of rage by cracking their whips in the alley,
I am sure that he would never have spoken so harshly of their minds
as he did. The fact is that porcupines are not extremely common among
the very “common” people. It may be that there is something stupefying
about the airs which the upper classes, the best people, breathe and
put on, but the social climber is apt to find the human porcupine in
increasing herds as he scales the heights. This curious fact would
seem incidentally to show that our misanthropic philosopher must have
moved exclusively in some of the best circles.

Now, if there is one thing above all others that the Auto-comrade
cannot away with, it is the flaccid, indolent, stodgy brain of
the porcupine. If people have let their minds slump down into
porcupinishness, or have never taken the trouble to rescue them from
that ignominious condition--well, the Auto-comrade is no snob; when
all’s said, he is a rather democratic sort of chap, though he has to
draw the line somewhere, you know, and he really must beg to be excused
from rubbing shoulders with such intellectual rabble, for instance,
as blocks upper Fifth Avenue on Sunday noons. He prefers instead the
rabble which, on all other noons of the week, blocks the lower end of
that variegated thoroughfare.

Such exclusiveness lays the Auto-comrade open, of course, to the charge
of inhospitality. But “is not he hospitable,” asks Thoreau, “who
entertains good thoughts?” Personally, I think he is. And I believe
that this sort of hospitality does more to make the world worth living
in than much conventional hugging to your bosom of porcupines whose
language you do not speak, yet with whom it is embarrassing to keep
silence.

If the Auto-comrade mislikes the porcupine, however, the feeling
is returned with exorbitant interest. The alleged failings of
auto-comradeship have always drawn grins, fleers, nudges, and jokes
from the auto-comradeless. It is time the latter should know that the
joke is really on him; for he is the most forlorn of mankind. The other
is never at a loss. He is invulnerable, being one whom “destiny may not
surprise nor death dismay.” But the porcupine is liable at any moment
to be deserted by associates who are bored by his sharp, hollow quills.
He finds himself the victim of a paradox which decrees that the hermit
shall “find his crowds in solitude” and never be alone; but that the
flocker shall every now and then be cast into inner darkness, where
“there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The laugh is on the porcupine; but the laugh turns almost into a tear
when one stops to realize the nature of his plight. Why, the poor
wretch is actually obliged to be near some one else in order to enjoy
a sense of vitality! In other words, he needs somebody else to do his
living for him. He is a vicarious citizen of the world, holding his
franchise only by courtesy of Tom, Dick, and Harry.

All the same, it is rather hard to pity him very profoundly while he
continues to feel quite so contemptuously superior as he usually does.
Why, the contempt of the average porcupine for pals of the Auto-comrade
is akin to the contempt which the knights of chivalry felt for those
paltry beings who were called clerks because they possessed the queer,
unfashionable accomplishment of being able to read and write.

I remember that the loudest laugh achieved by a certain class-day
orator at college came when he related how the literary guy and the
tennis-player were walking one day in the woods, and the literary guy
suddenly exclaimed: “Ah, leave me, Louis! I would be alone.” Even apart
from the stilted language in which the orator clothed the thought of
the literary guy, there is, to the porcupine, something irresistibly
comic in such a situation. It is to him as though the literary guy had
stepped up to the nearest policeman and begged for the room at Sing
Sing already referred to.

Indeed, the modern porcupine is as suspicious of pals of the
Auto-comrade as the porcupines of the past were of sorcerers and
witches--folk, by the way, who probably consorted with spirits no more
malign than Auto-comrades. “What,” asked the porcupines of one another,
“can they be up to, all alone there in those solitary huts? What honest
man would live like that? Ah, they must be up to no good. They must be
consorting with the Evil One. Well, then, away with them to the stake
and the river!”

As a matter of fact, it probably was not the Evil One that these poor
folk were consorting with, but the Good One. For what is a man’s
Auto-comrade, anyway, but his own soul, or the same thing by what other
name soever he likes to call it with which he divides the practical,
conscious part of his brain, turn and turn about, share and share
alike? And what is a man’s own soul but a small stream of the infinite,
eternal water of life? And what is heaven but a vast harbor where
myriad streams of soul flow down, returning at last to their Source
in the bliss of perfect reunion? I believe that many a Salem witch was
dragged to her death from sanctuary; for church is not exclusively
connected with stained glass and collection-baskets. Church is also
wherever you and your Auto-comrade can elude the starched throng and
fall together, if only for a moment, on your knees.

Like the girl you left behind you, your Auto-comrade has much to gain
by contrast with your flesh-and-blood associates, especially if this
contrast is suddenly brought home to you after a too long separation
from him. I shall never forget the thrill that was mine early one
morning after two months of close, uninterrupted communion with one
of my best and dearest friends. At the very instant when the turn of
the road cut off that friend’s departing hand-wave, I was aware of
a welcoming, almost boisterous shout from the hills of dream, and,
turning quickly, beheld my long-lost Auto-comrade rushing eagerly down
the slopes toward me.

Few joys may compare with the joy of such a sudden, unexpected reunion.
It is like “the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land.” No, this
simile is too disloyal to my friend. Well, then, it is like a beaker
full of the warm South when you are leaving a good beer country and are
trying to reconcile yourself to ditch-water for the next few weeks. At
any rate, similes or not, there were we two together again at last.
What a week of weeks we spent, pacing back and forth on the veranda
of our log cabin, where we overlooked the pleasant sinuosities of the
Sebois and gazed out together over golden beech and ghostly birch and
blood-red maple banners to the purple mountains of the Aroostook. And
how we did take stock of the immediate past, chuckling to find that
it had not been a quarter so bad as I had stupidly supposed. What
gilded forest trails were those which we blazed into the glamourous
land of to-morrow! And every other moment these recreative labors
would be interrupted while I pressed between the pages of a note-book
some butterfly or sunset leaf or quadruply fortunate clover which my
Auto-comrade found and turned over to me. Between two of those pages,
by the way, I afterward found the argument of this paper.

Then, when the first effervescence of our meeting had lost a little of
its first, fine, carbonated sting, what Elysian hours we spent over
the correspondence of those other two friends, Goethe and Schiller!
Passage after passage we would turn back to re-read and muse over.
These we would discuss without any of the rancor or dogmatic insistence
or one-eyed stubbornness that usually accompany the clash of mental
steel on mental steel from a different mill. And without making any one
else lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately
of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher
Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would
underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little
paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its
foot-notes, to our hearts’ content.

Such experiences, though, are all too rare with me. Why? Because my
Auto-comrade is a rather particular person and will not associate with
me unless I toe his mark.

“Come,” I propose to him, “let us go on a journey.”

“Hold hard,” says he, and looks me over appraisingly. “You know the
rule of the Auto-comrades’ Union. We are supposed to associate with
none but fairly able persons. Are you a fairly able person?”

If it turns out that I am not, he goes on a rampage, and begins to
talk like an athletic trainer. The first thing he demands is that his
would-be associate shall keep on hand a jolly good store of surplus
vitality. You are expected to supply him exuberance somewhat as you
supply gasolene to your motor.

Now, of course, there are in the world not a few invalids and other
persons of low physical vitality whose Auto-comrades happen to have
sufficient gasolene to keep them both running, if only on short
rations. Most of these cases, however, are pathological. They have hot
boxes at both ends of the machine, and their progress is destined all
too soon to cease and determine. The rest of these cases are the rare
exceptions which prove the rule. For unexuberant yet unpathological
pals of the Auto-comrade are as rare as harmonious households in which
the efforts of a devoted and blissful wife support an able-bodied
husband.

The rule is that you have got to earn exuberance for two. “Learn to
eat balanced rations right,” thunders the Auto-comrade, laying down
the law; “exercise, perspire, breathe, bathe, sleep out of doors, and
sleep enough, rule your liver with a rod of iron, don’t take drugs or
nervines, cure sickness beforehand, do an adult’s work in the world,
have at least as much fun as you ought to have.”

“That,” he goes on, “is the way to develop enough physical exuberance
so that you will be enabled to overcome your present sad addiction to
mob intoxication. And, provided your mind is not in as bad condition as
your body, this physical over-plus will transmute some of itself into a
spiritual exuberance. This will enable you to have more fun with your
mind than an enthusiastic kitten has with its tail. It will enable you
to look before and after, and purr over what is, as well as to discern,
with pleasurable longing, what is not, and set forth confidently to
capture it.”

But if, by any chance, you have allowed your mind to get into the sort
of condition which the old-fashioned German scholar used to allow his
body to get into, it develops that the Auto-comrade hates a flabby
brain almost as much as he hates a flabby body. He soon makes it
clear that he will not have much to do with any one who has not yet
mastered the vigorous and highly complex art of not worrying. Also,
he demands of his companion the knack of calm, consecutive thought.
This is one reason why so many more Auto-comrades are to be found in
crow’s-nests, Gipsy-vans, and shirt-waist factories than on upper
Fifth Avenue. For, watching the stars and the sea from a swaying
masthead, taking light-heartedly to the open road, or even operating
a rather unwholesome sewing-machine all day in silence, is better for
consecutiveness of mind than a never-ending round of offices, clubs,
servants, committee meetings, teas, dinners, and receptions, to each of
which one is a little late.

No matter what the ignorant or the envious may say, there is
nothing really unsocial in a moderate indulgence in the art of
auto-comradeship. A few weeks of it bring you back a fresher, keener
appreciator of your other friends and of humanity in general than you
were before setting forth. In the continuous performance of the psalm
of life such contrasts as this of solos and choruses have a reciprocal
advantage.

But auto-comradeship must not be overdone, as it was overdone by the
medieval monks. Its delights are too delicious, its particular vintage
of the wine of experience too rich, for long-continued consumption.
Consecutive thought, though it is one of man’s greatest pleasures, is
at the same time almost the most arduous labor that he can perform.
And after a long spell of it, both the Auto-comrade and his companion
become exhausted and, perforce, less comradely.

Besides the incidental exhaustion, there is another reason why this
beatific association must have its time-limit; for, unfortunately,
one’s Auto-comrade is always of the same sex as oneself, and in youth,
at least, if the presence of the complementary part of creation is long
denied, there comes a time when this denial surges higher and higher
in subconsciousness, then breaks into consciousness, and keeps on
surging until it deluges all the tranquillities, zests, surprises, and
excitements of auto-comradeship, and makes them of no effect.

This is, perhaps, a wise provision for the salvation of the human
digestion. For, otherwise, many a man, having tasted of the fruit of
the tree of the knowledge of auto-comradeship, might thereupon be
tempted to retire to his hermit’s den hard by and endeavor to sustain
himself for life on apple-sauce.

Most of us, however, long before such extremes have been reached,
are sure to rush back to our kind for the simple reason that we are
enjoying auto-comradeship so much that we want some one else to enjoy
it with.



THE WHITE LINEN NURSE

HOW RAE MALGREGOR UNDERTOOK GENERAL HEARTWORK FOR A FAMILY OF TWO

BY ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT

Author of “Molly Make-Believe,” etc.

IN THREE PARTS: PART THREE

WITH PICTURES BY HERMAN PFEIFER


SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING INSTALMENTS

    On the day of her graduation from the training-school, the White
    Linen Nurse was overcome by hysteria. For weeks she had been
    working too hard, and two or three cases with which she had been
    connected having gone wrong, she had racked herself with an absurd
    sense of responsibility. Now, in her distracted state, the visible
    sign of her self-contempt was the perfectly controlled expression
    of her trained-nurse face.

    From a scene in her room with her two room-mates, in which
    confidences are exchanged, she rushed to the office of the
    Superintendent of Nurses, and hysterically demanded her own face.
    The Senior Surgeon was sent for, and after tartly telling the girl
    she was a fool, finally took her with him and his little crippled
    daughter for a thirty-mile trip into the country, where he had been
    summoned on a difficult case.

    On their return, the Senior Surgeon lost control of the machine on
    a steep hill, and the three were thrown out.

    On recovering consciousness, the White Linen Nurse and the Child
    find the Senior Surgeon pinned under their motor-car, and after
    receiving instructions as to its management, the Nurse runs the car
    into a brook, and the Senior Surgeon becomes aware for the first
    time that the car is afire. Momentarily unnerved by the thought of
    the peril in which he has been, the Senior Surgeon clings to the
    White Linen Nurse, and finally proposes that, since she has decided
    to give up professional nursing, she take up General Heartwork
    for him and his daughter. The proposal is in fact a proposal of
    marriage, and after a frank discussion of the situation (which is
    one of the most significant and powerful pieces of work of the
    author), the White Linen Nurse accepts.

    In the course of the discussion the Senior Surgeon confesses an
    inherited tendency for drink, and adds that he leaves liquor alone
    for eleven months in the year, but always goes off to Canada every
    June for a hunting-trip, on which he drinks heavily. She insists
    that he go this year and that they marry before his departure, and
    not on his return, as he wishes. She wins her way, and the Senior
    Surgeon goes alone. Disquieting letters from her recall him before
    the end of the month.

Nobody looks very well in the dawn. Certainly the Senior Surgeon
didn’t. Heavily, as a man wading through a bog of dreams, he stumbled
out of his cabin into the morning. Under his drowsy, brooding eyes
appalling shadows circled. Behind his sunburn, deeper than his tan,
something sinister and uncanny lurked wanly like the pallor of a soul.
Yet the Senior Surgeon had been most blamelessly abed and asleep since
griddle-cake-time the previous evening.

Only the mountains and the forest and the lake had been out all night.
For seventy miles of Canadian wilderness only the mountains and the
forest and the lake stood actually convicted of having been out all
night. Dank and white with its vaporous vigil, the listless lake
kindled wanly to the new day’s breeze. Blue with cold, a precipitous
mountain peak lurched craggedly home through a rift in the fog.
Drenched with mist, bedraggled with dew, a green-feathered pine-tree
lay guzzling insatiably at a leaf-brown pool. As monotonous as a sob,
the waiting birch canoe _slosh-sloshed_ against the beach.

There was no romantic smell of red roses in this June landscape; just
tobacco smoke, and the faint reminiscent fragrance of fried trout, and
the mournful, sizzling, pungent consciousness of a camp-fire quenched
for a whole year with a tinful of wet coffee-grounds.

Gliding out cautiously into the lake as though the mere splash of
a paddle might shatter the whole glassy surface, the Indian guide
propounded the question that was uppermost in his mind.

“Cutting your trip a bit short this year, ain’t you, Boss?” he quizzed
tersely.

Out from his muffling Mackinaw collar the Senior Surgeon parried the
question with an amazingly novel sense of embarrassment.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered with studied lightness. “There are one
or two things at home that are bothering me a little.”

“A woman, eh?” said the Indian guide, laconically.

“A _woman_?” thundered the Senior Surgeon. “A--woman? Oh, ye gods, no!
It’s wall-paper.”

Then suddenly and unexpectedly in the midst of his passionate
refutation the Senior Surgeon burst out laughing, boisterously,
hilariously, like a crazy school-boy. Bluntly from an overhanging ledge
of rock the echo of his laugh came mocking back at him. Down from some
unvisioned mountain fastness the echo of that echo came wafting faintly
to him.

The Senior Surgeon’s laugh was made of teeth and tongue and palate
and a purely convulsive physical impulse; but the echo’s laugh was
a fantasy of mist and dawn and inestimable balsam-scented spaces,
where little green ferns and little brown beasties and soft-breasted
birdlings frolicked eternally in pristine sweetness.

Seven miles farther down the lake, at the beginning of the rapids,
the Indian guide spoke again. Racking the canoe between two rocks,
paddling, panting, pushing, sweating, the Indian guide lifted his voice
high, piercing, above the swirling roar of waters.

“Eh, Boss,” he shouted, “I ain’t never heard you laugh before!”

Neither man spoke again more than once or twice during the long,
strenuous hours that were left to them. The Indian guide was very busy
in his stolid mind trying to figure out just how many rows of potatoes
could be planted fruitfully between his front door and his cowshed. I
don’t know what the Senior Surgeon was trying to figure out.

It was just four days later, from a rolling, musty-cushioned hack, that
the Senior Surgeon disembarked at his own front gate.

Even though a man likes home no better than he likes--tea, few men
would deny the soothing effect of home at the end of a long, fussy
railroad journey. Five o’clock, also, of a late June afternoon is a
peculiarly wonderful time to be arriving home, especially if that home
has a garden about it, so that you are thereby not rushed precipitously
upon the house itself, as upon a cup without a saucer, but can toy
visually with the whole effect before you quench your thirst with the
actual draft.

Very, very deliberately, with his clumsy rod-case in one hand, and
his heavy grip in the other, the Senior Surgeon started up the long,
broad gravel path to the house. For a man walking as slow as he was,
his heart was beating most extraordinarily fast. He was not accustomed
to heart-palpitation. The symptom worried him a trifle. Incidentally,
also, his lungs felt strangely stifled with the scent of June. Close
at his right, an effulgent white-and-gold syringa-bush flaunted its
cloying sweetness into his senses. Close at his left, a riotous bloom
of phlox clamored red-blue-purple-lavender-pink into his dazzled
vision. Multicolored pansies tiptoed velvet-footed across the grass. In
soft, murky mystery a flame-tinted smoke-tree loomed up here and there
like a faintly rouged ghost. Over everything, under everything, through
everything, lurked a certain strange, novel, vibrating consciousness of
occupancy--bees in the rose-bushes, bobolinks in the trees, a woman’s
work-basket in the curve of the hammock, a doll’s tea-set sprawling
cheerfully in the middle of the broad gravel path.

It was not until the Senior Surgeon had actually stepped into the tiny
cream-pitcher that he noticed the presence of the doll’s tea-set. It
was what the Senior Surgeon said as he stepped out of the cream-pitcher
that summoned the amazing apparition from a ragged, green hole in the
privet hedge. Startlingly white, startlingly professional,--dress,
cap, apron, and all,--a miniature white linen nurse sprang suddenly
out at him like a tricky dwarf in a moving-picture show. Just at that
particular moment the Senior Surgeon’s nerves were in no condition
to wrestle with apparitions. Simultaneously, as the clumsy rod-case
dropped from his hand, the expression of enthusiasm dropped from the
face of the miniature white linen nurse.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! have _you_ come home!” wailed the
familiar, shrill little voice.

Sheepishly the Senior Surgeon picked up his rod-case. The noises in his
head were crashing like cracked bells. Desperately, with a boisterous
irritability, he sought to cover also the lurching _pound, pound,
pound_ of his heart.

“What in hell are you rigged out like that for?” he demanded stormily.

With equal storminess the Little Girl protested the question.

“Peach said I could,” she attested passionately. “Peach said I could,
she did! She did! I tell you, I didn’t want her to marry us that day.
I was afraid, I was. I cried, I did. I had a convulsion; they thought
it was stockings. So Peach said, if it would make me feel any gooderer,
I could be the cruel new stepmother, and _she’d_ be the unloved
offspring, with her hair braided all yellow fluffikins down her back.”

“Where _is_--Miss Malgregor?” asked the Senior Surgeon, sharply.

Irrelevantly the Little Girl sank down on the gravel walk and began to
gather up her scattered dishes.

“And it’s fun to go to bed now,” she confided amiably, “’cause every
night I put Peach to bed at eight o’clock, and she’s so naughty always
I have to stay with her. And then all of a sudden it’s morning--like
going through a black room without knowing it.”

“I said, where _is_ Miss Malgregor?” repeated the Senior Surgeon, with
increasing sharpness.

Thriftily the Little Girl bent down to lap a bubble of cream from the
broken pitcher.

“Oh, she’s out in the summer-house with the Wall-Paper Man,” she
mumbled indifferently.

Altogether jerkily the Senior Surgeon started up the walk for his own
perfectly formal and respectable brownstone mansion. Deep down in
his lurching heart he felt a sudden most inordinate desire to reach
that brownstone mansion just as quickly as possible, but abruptly even
to himself he swerved off instead at the yellow sassafras-tree and
plunged quite wildly through a mass of broken sods toward the rickety,
no-account, cedar summer-house.

Startled by the crackle and thud of his approach, the two young figures
in the summer-house jumped precipitously to their feet, and, limply
untwining their arms from each other’s necks, stood surveying the
Senior Surgeon in unspeakable consternation,--the White Linen Nurse and
a blue-overalled lad most unconscionably mated in radiant youth and
agonized confusion.

“Oh, my Lord, sir!” gasped the White Linen Nurse--“oh, my Lord, sir! I
wasn’t looking for _you_ for another week!”

“Evidently not,” said the Senior Surgeon, incisively. “This is
the second time this evening that I’ve been led to infer that my
home-coming was distinctly inopportune.”

Very slowly, very methodically, he put down first his precious rod-case
and then his grip. His brain seemed fairly foaming with blood and
confusion. Along the swelling veins of his arms a dozen primitive
instincts went surging to his fists.

Then quite brazenly before his eyes the White Linen Nurse reached out
and took the lad’s hand again.

“Oh, forgive me, Dr. Faber!” she faltered. “This is my brother.”

“Your _brother_? What? Eh?” choked the Senior Surgeon. Bluntly he
reached out and crushed the young fellow’s fingers in his own. “Glad to
see you, son,” he muttered, with a sickish sort of grin, and, turning
abruptly, picked up his baggage again and started for the big house.

Half a step behind him his bride followed softly.

At the edge of the piazza he turned for an instant and eyed her a
bit quizzically. With her big, credulous blue eyes, and her great
mop of yellow hair braided childishly down her back, she looked
inestimably more juvenile and innocent than his own little shrewd-faced
six-year-old, whom he had just left domestically ensconced in the
middle of the broad gravel path.

“For Heaven’s sake, Miss Malgregor,” he asked--“for Heaven’s sake, why
didn’t you tell me that the Wall-Paper Man was your brother?”

Very contritely the White Linen Nurse’s chin went burrowing down into
the soft collar of her dress, and as bashfully as a child one finger
came stealing up to the edge of her red, red lips.

“I was afraid you’d think I was--cheeky, having any of my family come
and live with us so soon,” she murmured almost inaudibly.

“Well, what did you think I’d think you were if he wasn’t your
brother?” asked the Senior Surgeon, sardonically.

“Very economical, I hoped,” beamed the White Linen Nurse.

“All the same,” snapped the Senior Surgeon, with an irrelevance
surprising even to himself--“all the same, do you think it sounds quite
right and proper for a child to call her stepmother ’Peach’?”

Again the White Linen Nurse’s chin went burrowing down into the soft
collar of her dress.

“I don’t suppose it _is_ usual,” she admitted reluctantly. “The
children next door, I notice, call theirs ’Crosspatch.’”

With a gesture of impatience, the Senior Surgeon proceeded on up the
steps, yanked open the old-fashioned shuttered door, and burst quite
breathlessly and unprepared upon his most amazingly reconstructed
house. All in one single second chintzes, muslins, pale blond maples,
riotous canary-birds stormed revolutionarily upon his outraged eyes.
Reeling back utterly aghast before the sight, he stood there staring
dumbly for an instant at what he considered, and rightly too, the
absolute wreck of his black-walnut home.

“It looks like--hell!” he muttered feebly.

“Yes, _isn’t_ it sweet?” conceded the White Linen Nurse, with
unmistakable joyousness. “And your library--” Triumphantly she threw
back the door to his grim workshop.

“Good God!” stammered the Senior Surgeon, “you’ve made it pink!”

Rapturously the White Linen Nurse began to clasp and unclasp her hands.

“I knew you’d love it,” she said.

Half dazed with bewilderment, the Senior Surgeon started to brush an
imaginary haze from his eyes, but paused midway in the gesture, and
pointed back instead to a dapper little hall-table that seemed to be
exhausting its entire blond strength in holding up a slender green
vase with a single pink rose in it. Like a caged animal buffeting for
escape against each successive bar that incased it, the man’s frenzied
irritation hurled itself hopefully against this one more chance for
explosive exit.

“What--have--you--done--with the big--black--escritoire that
stood--_there_?” he demanded accusingly.

“Escritoire? Escritoire?” worried the White Linen Nurse. “Why--why, I’m
afraid I must have mislaid it.”

“Mislaid it?” thundered the Senior Surgeon. “Mislaid it? It weighed
three hundred pounds!”

“Oh, it did?” questioned the White Linen Nurse, with great blue-eyed
interest. Still mulling apparently over the fascinating weight of the
escritoire, she climbed up suddenly into a chair, and with the fluffy,
broom-shaped end of her extraordinarily long braid of hair went angling
wildly off into space after an illusive cobweb.

Faster and faster the Senior Surgeon’s temper began to search for a new
point of exit.

“What do you suppose the servants think of you?” he stormed, “running
round like that, with your hair in a pigtail, like a kid?”

“Servants?” cooed the White Linen Nurse. “Servants?” Very quietly she
jumped down from the chair and came and stood looking up into the
Senior Surgeon’s hectic face. “Why, there aren’t any servants,” she
explained patiently. “I’ve dismissed every one of them. We’re doing our
own work now.”

“Doing ’our own work?’” gasped the Senior Surgeon.

Worriedly the White Linen Nurse stepped back a little.

“Why, wasn’t that right?” she pleaded. “Wasn’t it _right_? Why, I
thought people always did their own work when they were first married.”
With sudden apprehensiveness she glanced round over her shoulder at
the hall clock, and, darting out through a side door, returned almost
instantly with a fierce-looking knife.

[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. C.
Merrill and H. Davidson

“‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?’ HE FAIRLY SCREAMED AT HER. ‘JUST KEEPING
YOU COMPANY, SIR,’ YAWNED THE WHITE LINEN NURSE”

DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER]

“I’m so late now, and everything,” she confided, “could you peel the
potatoes for me?”

“No, I couldn’t,” said the Senior Surgeon, shortly. Equally shortly he
turned on his heel, and, reaching out once more for his rod-case and
grip, went on up the stairs to his own room.

One of the pleasantest things about arriving home very late in the
afternoon is the excuse it gives you for loafing in your own room while
other people are getting supper. No existent domestic sound in the
whole twenty-four hours is as soothing at the end of a long journey as
the sound of _other_ people getting supper.

Stretched out at full length in a big easy-chair by his bedroom window,
with his favorite pipe bubbling rhythmically between his gleaming
white teeth, the Senior Surgeon studied his new “solid-gold bed” and
his new sage-green wall-paper and his new dust-colored rug, to the
faint, far-away accompaniment of soft-thudding feet and a girl’s laugh
and a child’s prattle and the _tink, tink, tinkle_ of glass, china,
silver,--all scurrying consciously to the service of one man, and that
man himself.

Very, very slowly, in that special half-hour an inscrutable little
smile printed itself experimentally across the right-hand corner of the
Senior Surgeon’s upper lip.

While that smile was still in its infancy, he jumped up suddenly and
forced his way across the hall to his dead wife’s room,--the one
ghost-room of his house and his life,--and there, with his hand on the
turning door-knob, tense with reluctance, goose-fleshed with strain,
his breath gasped out of him whether or no with the one word, “Alice!”

And, behold! there was no room there!

Lurching back from the threshold as from the brink of an elevator-well,
the Senior Surgeon found himself staring foolishly into a most
sumptuous linen-closet, tiered like an Aztec cliff with home after home
for pleasant, prosy blankets and gaily fringed towels and cheerful
white sheets reeking most conscientiously of cedar and lavender.
Tiptoeing cautiously into the mystery, he sensed at one astonished,
grateful glance how the change of a partition, the readjustment of a
proportion, had purged like a draft of fresh air the stale gloom of
an ill-favored memory. Yet so inevitable did it suddenly seem for a
linen-closet to be built right there, so inevitable did it suddenly
seem for the child’s meager playroom to be enlarged just there, that
to save his soul he could not estimate whether the happy plan had
originated in a purely practical brain or a purely compassionate heart.

Half proud of the brain, half touched by the heart, he passed on
exploringly through the new playroom out into the hall again.

Quite distinctly now through the aperture of the back stairs the
kitchen voices came wafting up to him.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” wailed his Little Girl’s peevish voice, “now
that--that man’s come back again, I suppose we’ll have to eat in the
dining-room all the time!”

“‘That man’ happens to be your darling father,” admonished the White
Linen Nurse’s laughing voice.

“Even so,” wailed the Little Girl, “I love you best.”

“Even so,” laughed the White Linen Nurse, “I love _you_ best.”

“Just the same,” cried the Little Girl, shrilly--“just the same, let’s
put the cream-pitcher ’way up high somewhere, so he can’t step in it.”

As though from a head tilted suddenly backward the White Linen Nurse’s
laugh rang out in joyous abandon.

Impulsively the Senior Surgeon started to grin; then equally
impulsively the grin soured on his lips. So they thought he was
clumsy? Eh? Resentfully he stared down at his hands, those wonderfully
dexterous, yes, ambidexterous, hands that were the aching envy of all
his colleagues. Interruptingly as he stared, the voice of the young
Wall-Paper Man rose buoyantly from the lower hallway.

“Supper’s all ready, sir!” came the clear, cordial summons.

For some inexplainable reason, at that particular moment almost nothing
in the world could have irritated the Senior Surgeon more keenly than
to be invited to his own supper, in his own house, by a stranger.
Fuming with a new sense of injury and injustice, he started heavily
down the stairs to the dining-room.

Standing patiently behind the Senior Surgeon’s chair with a laudable
desire to assist his carving in any possible emergency that might
occur, the White Linen Nurse experienced her first direct marital
rebuff.

“What do you think this is, an autopsy?” demanded the Senior Surgeon,
tartly. “For Heaven’s sake, go and sit down!”

Quite meekly the White Linen Nurse subsided into her place.

The meal that ensued could hardly have been called a success, though
the room was entrancing, the cloth snow-white, the silver radiant, the
guinea-chicken beyond reproach.

Swept and garnished to an alarming degree, the young Wall-Paper Man
presided over the gravy and did his uttermost, innocent country-best to
make the Senior Surgeon feel perfectly at home.

Conscientiously, as in the presence of a distinguished stranger, the
Little Crippled Girl most palpably from time to time repressed her
insatiable desire to build a towering pyramid out of all the salt-and
pepper-shakers she could reach.

Once when the young Wall-Paper Man forgot himself to the extent of
putting his knife in his mouth, the White Linen Nurse jarred the whole
table with the violence of her warning kick.

Once when the Little Crippled Girl piped out impulsively, “Say, Peach,
what was the name of that bantam your father used to fight against the
minister’s bantam?” the White Linen Nurse choked piteously over her
food.

Twice some one spoke about this year’s weather. Twice some one
volunteered an illuminating remark about last year’s weather. Except
for these four diversions, restraint indescribable hung like a horrid
pall over the feast.

Next to feeling unwelcome in your friend’s house, nothing certainly
is more wretchedly disconcerting than to feel unwelcome in your own
house. Grimly the Senior Surgeon longed to grab up all the knives
within reach and ram them successively into his own mouth, just to
prove to the young Wall-Paper Man what a--what a devil of a good fellow
he was himself. Grimly the Senior Surgeon longed to tell the White
Linen Nurse about the pet bantam of his own boyhood days, that he bet a
dollar could lick any bantam her father ever dreamed of owning. Grimly
the Senior Surgeon longed to talk dolls, dishes, kittens, yes, even
cream-pitchers, to his little daughter; to talk anything, in fact, to
_any one_; to talk, sing, shout _anything_ that would make him, at
least for the time being, one at heart, one at head, one at table, with
this astonishingly offish bunch of youngsters: but grimly instead, out
of his frazzled nerves, out of his innate spiritual bashfulness, he
merely roared forth, “Where are the potatoes?”

“Potatoes?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “Potatoes? Oh, potatoes?” she
finished more blithely. “Why, yes, of course. Don’t you remember you
didn’t have time to peel them for me? I was _so_ disappointed!”

“You were so disappointed?” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “You? You?”

Janglingly the Little Crippled Girl knelt right up in her chair and
shook her tiny fist right in her father’s face.

“Now, Lendicott Faber,” she screamed, “don’t you start in sassing my
darling little Peach!”

“Peach?” snorted the Senior Surgeon. With almost supernatural calm he
put down his knife and fork and eyed his offspring with an expression
of absolutely inflexible purpose. “Don’t you ever,” he warned
her--“ever, ever, let me hear you call--this woman ‘Peach’ again!”

A trifle faint-heartedly the Little Crippled Girl reached up and
straightened her absurdly diminutive little white cap, and pursed her
little mouth as nearly as possible into an expression of ineffable
peace.

“Why, Lendicott Faber!” she persisted heroically.

“Lendicott!” exclaimed the Senior Surgeon. “What are _you_
‘Lendicotting’ _me_ for?”

Hilariously with her own knife and fork the Little Crippled Girl began
to beat upon the table.

“Why, you dear silly!” she cried--“why, if I’m the new marma, I’ve
_got_ to call you Lendicott, and Peach has _got_ to call you Fat
Father.”

Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair and jumped to his
feet. The expression on his face was neither smile nor frown, nor war
nor peace, nor any other human expression that had ever puckered there
before.

“God!” he said, “this gives me the willies!” and strode tempestuously
from the room.

Out in his own workshop, fortunately, whatever the grotesque new
pinkness, whatever the grotesque new perkiness, his great free
walking-spaces had not been interfered with. Slamming his door
triumphantly behind him, he resumed once more the monotonous pace,
pace, pace that for eighteen years had characterized his first night’s
return to civilization.

Sharply around the corner of his battered old desk the little path
started, wanly along the edge of his dingy book-shelves the little
path furrowed, wistfully at the deep bay-window, where his favorite
lilac-bush budded whitely for his departure, and rusted brownly for his
return, the little path faltered, and went on again, on and on and on,
into the alcove where his instruments glistened, up to the fireplace,
where his college trophy-cups tarnished. Listlessly the Senior Surgeon
began anew his yearly vigil. Up and down, up and down, round and round,
on and on and on, through interminable ducks to unattainable dawns,
a glutted, bacchanalian soul sweating its own way back to sanctity
and leanness. Nerves always were in that vigil--raw, rattling nerves
clamoring vociferously to be repacked in their sedatives. Thirst also
was in that vigil; no mere whimpering tickle of the palate, but a
drought of the tissues, a consuming fire of the bones. Hurt pride was
also there, and festering humiliation.

But more rasping, this particular night, than nerves, more poignant
than thirst, more dangerously excitative even than remorse, hunger
rioted in him--hunger, the one worst enemy of the Senior Surgeon’s
cause, the simple, silly, no-account, gnawing, drink-provocative hunger
of an empty stomach. And one other hunger was also there--a sudden
fierce new lust for life and living, a passion bare of love, yet pure
of wantonness, a passion primitive, protective, inexorably proprietary,
engendered strangely in that one mad, suspicious moment at the edge of
the summer-house when every outraged male instinct in him had leaped to
prove that, love or no love, the woman was his.

Up and down, up and down, round and round, eight o’clock found the
Senior Surgeon still pacing.

At half-past eight the young Wall-Paper Man came to say good-by to him.

“As long as sister won’t be alone any more, I guess I’ll be moving on,”
beamed the Wall-Paper Man. “There’s a dance at home Saturday night,
and I’ve got a girl of my own,” he confided genially.

“Come again,” urged the Senior Surgeon. “Come again when you can stay
longer.” With one honest prayer in stock, and at least two purely
automatic social speeches of this sort, no man needs to flounder
altogether hopelessly for words in any ordinary emergency of life. With
no more mental interruption than the two-minute break in time, the
Senior Surgeon then resumed his bitter-thoughted pacing.

At nine o’clock, however, patrolling his long, rangy book-shelves,
he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door
the soft, whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled
voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little
daughter’s temperish protest, “I won’t! I won’t!” and the White Linen
Nurse’s fervid pleading, “Oh, you must! you must!” and the Little
Girl’s mumbled ultimatum, “Well, I won’t unless _you_ do.”

Irascibly he crossed the room and yanked the door open abruptly upon
their surprise and confusion. His nerves were very sore.

“What in thunder do you want?” he snarled.

Nervously for an instant the White Linen Nurse tugged at the Little
Girl’s hand. Nervously for an instant the Little Girl tugged at the
White Linen Nurse’s hand. Then with a swallow like a sob the White
Linen Nurse lifted her glowing face to his.

“K--kiss us good night!” said the White Linen Nurse.

Telescopically all in that startling second, vision after vision
beat down like blows upon the Senior Surgeon’s senses. The pink,
pink flush of the girl; the lure of her; the amazing sweetness; the
physical docility--oh, ye gods, the docility! Every trend of her
birth, of her youth, of her training, forcing her now, if he chose it,
to unquestioning submission to his will and his judgment! Faster and
faster the temptation surged through his pulses. The path from her lips
to her ear was such a little path; the plea so quick to make, so short,
“I want you _now_!”

“K--kiss us good night!” urged the big girl’s unsuspecting lips. “Kiss
us good night!” mocked the Little Girl’s tremulous echo.

Then explosively, with the noblest rudeness of his life, “No, I won’t!”
said the Senior Surgeon, and slammed the door in their faces.

Falteringly up the stairs he heard the two ascending, speechless with
surprise, perhaps, stunned by his roughness, still hand in hand,
probably, still climbing slowly bedward, the soft, smooth, patient
footfall of the White Linen Nurse and the jerky, laborious _clang,
clang, clang_ of a little dragging, iron-braced leg.

Up and down, round and round, on and on and on, the Senior Surgeon
resumed his pacing. Under his eyes great shadows darkened. Along the
corners of his mouth the lines furrowed like gray scars. Up and down,
round and round, on and on and on and on.

At ten o’clock, sitting bolt upright in her bed, with her worried eyes
straining bluely out across the Little Girl’s somnolent form into
unfathomable darkness, the White Linen Nurse in the throb of her own
heart began to keep pace with that faint, horrid _thud, thud, thud_ in
the room below. Was he passing the bookcase now? Had he reached the
bay-window? Was he dawdling over those glistening scalpels? Would his
nerves remember the flask in that upper desk drawer? Up and down, round
and round, on and on, the harrowing sound continued.

Resolutely at last she scrambled out of her snug nest, and, hurrying
into her great warm, pussy-gray wrapper, began at once very
practically, very unemotionally, with matches and alcohol and a shiny
glass jar, to prepare a huge steaming cup of malted milk. Beefsteak was
vastly better, she knew, or eggs, of course; but if she should venture
forth to the kitchen for real substantials the Senior Surgeon, she felt
quite positive, would almost certainly hear her and stop her. So very
stealthily thus, like the proverbial assassin, she crept down the front
stairs with the innocent malted-milk cup in her hand, and then with her
knuckles just on the verge of rapping against the grimly inhospitable
door, went suddenly paralyzed with uncertainty whether to advance or
retreat.

Once again through the somber, inert wainscoting, exactly as if a soul
had creaked, the Senior Surgeon sensed the threatening, intrusive
presence of an unseen personality. Once again he strode across the
room and jerked the door open with terrifying anger and resentment.

As though frozen there on his threshold by her own bare little feet,
as though strangled there in his doorway by her own great mop of gold
hair, as stolid and dumb as a pink-cheeked graven image, the White
Linen Nurse thrust the cup out awkwardly at him.

Absolutely without comment, as though she trotted on purely
professional business and the case involved was of mutual concern to
them both, the Senior Surgeon took the cup from her hand and closed the
door again in her face.

At eleven o’clock she came again, just as pink, just as blue, just as
gray, just as golden. And the cup of malted milk she brought with her
was just as huge, just as hot, just as steaming, only this time she had
smuggled two raw eggs into it.

Once more the Senior Surgeon took the cup without comment and shut the
door in her face.

At twelve o’clock she came again. The Senior Surgeon was unusually
loquacious this time.

“Have you any more malted milk?” he asked tersely.

“Oh, yes, sir!” beamed the White Linen Nurse.

“Go and get it,” said the Senior Surgeon.

Obediently the White Linen Nurse pattered up the stairs and returned
with the half-depleted bottle. Frankly interested, she recrossed the
threshold of the room and delivered her glass treasure into the hands
of the Senior Surgeon as he stood by his desk. Raising herself to her
tiptoes, she noted with eminent satisfaction that the three big cups on
the other side of the desk had all been drained to their dregs.

Then very bluntly before her eyes the Senior Surgeon took the
malted-milk bottle and poured its remaining contents out quite wantonly
into his waste-basket. Then equally bluntly he took the White Linen
Nurse by the shoulders and marched her out of the room.

“For God’s sake,” he said, “get out of this room, and stay out!”

_Bang!_ the big door slammed behind her. Like a snarling fang, the lock
bit into its catch.

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. Even just to herself, all alone
there in the big black hall, she was perfectly polite. “Y-e-s, sir,”
she repeated softly.

With a slightly sardonic grin on his face, the Senior Surgeon resumed
his pacing up and down, round and round, on and on and on.

At one o’clock, in the dull, clammy chill of earliest morning, he
stopped long enough to light his hearthfire. At two o’clock he stopped
again to pile on a trifle more wood. At three o’clock he dallied for an
instant to close a window. The new day seemed strangely cold. At four
o’clock dawn, the wonder, the miracle, the long-despaired-of, quickened
wanly across the east; then suddenly, more like a phosphorescent breeze
than a glow, the pale, pale yellow sunshine came wafting through the
green gloom of the garden. The vigil was over.

Stumbling out into the shadowy hall to greet the new day and the new
beginning, the Senior Surgeon almost tripped and fell over the White
Linen Nurse, sitting all huddled up and drowsy-eyed in a gray little
heap on his outer threshold. The sensation of stepping upon a human
body is not a pleasant one. It smote the Senior Surgeon nauseously
through the nerves of his stomach.

“What are you doing here?” he fairly screamed at her.

“Just keeping you company, sir,” yawned the White Linen Nurse. Before
her hand could reach her mouth again, another great childish yawn
overwhelmed her. “Just--watching with you, sir,” she finished more or
less inarticulately.

“Watching with me?” snarled the Senior Surgeon, resentfully. “Why
should you watch with me?”

Like the frightened flash of a bird the heavy lashes went swooping down
across the pink cheeks and lifted as suddenly again.

“Because you’re my--_man_,” yawned the White Linen Nurse.

Almost roughly the Senior Surgeon reached down and pulled the White
Linen Nurse to her feet.

“God!” said the Senior Surgeon. In his strained, husky voice the word
sounded like an oath. Grotesquely a little smile went scudding zigzag
across his haggard face. With an impulse absolutely alien to him he
reached out abruptly again and raised the White Linen Nurse’s hand to
his lips. “_Good_ God was what I meant--Miss Malgregor,” he grinned a
bit sheepishly.

Quite bruskly then he turned and looked at his watch.

“I’d like my breakfast just as soon now as you can possibly get it,” he
ordered peremptorily, in his own morbid, pathological emergency no more
stopping to consider the White Linen Nurse’s purely normal fatigue than
he in any pathological emergency of hers would have stopped to consider
his own comfort, safety, or, perhaps, even life.

Joyously then like a prisoner just turned loose, he went swinging up
the stairs to recreate himself with a smoke and a shave and a great
splashing, cold shower-bath.

Only one thing seemed really to trouble him now. At the top of the
stairs he stopped for an instant and cocked his head a bit worriedly
toward the drawing-room, where from some slow-brightening alcove
bird-carol after bird-carol went fluting shrilly up into the morning.

“Is that those damned canaries?” he asked briefly.

Very companionably the White Linen Nurse cocked her own towsled head on
one side and listened with him for half a moment.

“Only four of them are damned canaries,” she corrected very gently.
“The fifth one is a parrakeet that I got at a mark-down because it was
a widowed bird and wouldn’t mate again.”

“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon.

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse, and started for the kitchen.

No one but the Senior Surgeon himself breakfasted in state at five
o’clock that morning. Snug and safe in her crib up-stairs the Little
Crippled Girl slumbered peacefully on through the general disturbance.
And as for the White Linen Nurse herself, what with chilling and
rechilling melons, and broiling and unbroiling steaks, and making
and remaking coffee, and hunting frantically for a different-sized
water-glass or a prettier-colored plate, there was no time for anything
except an occasional hurried, surreptitious nibble half-way between the
stove and the table.

Yet in all that raucous, early morning hour together neither man
nor girl suffered toward the other the slightest personal sense of
contrition or resentment; for each mind was trained equally fairly,
whether reacting on its own case or another’s, to differentiate pretty
readily between mean nerves and a mean spirit.

Only once, in fact, across the intervening chasm of crankiness did
the Senior Surgeon hurl a smile that was even remotely self-conscious
or conciliatory. Glancing up suddenly from a particularly sharp and
disagreeable speech, he noted the White Linen Nurse’s red lips mumbling
softly one to the other.

“Are you specially--religious, Miss Malgregor?” he grinned quite
abruptly.

“No, not specially, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Why, sir?”

“Oh, it’s only,” grinned the Senior Surgeon, dourly--“it’s only that
every time I’m especially ugly to you, I see your lips moving as though
in ‘silent prayer,’ as they call it; and I was just wondering if there
was any special formula you used with me that kept you so everlastingly
damned serene. Is there?”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

“What is it?” demanded the Senior Surgeon, quite bluntly.

“Do I _have_ to tell?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. A little
tremulously in her hand the empty cup she was carrying rattled against
its saucer. “Do I _have_ to tell?” she repeated pleadingly.

A delirious little thrill of power went fluttering through the Senior
Surgeon’s heart.

“Yes, you _have_ to tell me,” he announced quite seriously.

In absolute submission to his demand, though with very palpable
reluctance, the White Linen Nurse came forward to the table, put down
the cup and saucer, and began to finger a trifle nervously at the cloth.

“Oh, I’m sure I didn’t mean any harm, sir,” she stammered; “but all I
say is,--honest and truly all I say is,--’Bah! he’s nothing but a man,
nothing but a man, nothing but a man!’ over and over and over. Just
that, sir.”

Uproariously the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair and jumped to his
feet.

“I guess, after all, I’ll have to let the little kid call you ‘Peach’
one day a week,” he acknowledged jocosely.

With great seriousness then he tossed back his great, splendid head,
shook himself free apparently from all unhappy memories, and started
for his workroom, a great, gorgeously vital, extraordinarily talented,
gray-haired boy, lusting joyously for his own work and play again after
a month’s distressing illness.

From the edge of the hall he turned round and made a really boyish
grimace at her.

“Now, if I only had the horns or the cloven hoof that you think I
have,” he called, “what an easy time I’d make of it, raking over all
the letters and ads. that are stacked up on my desk!”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

Only once did he come back into the kitchen or dining-room for
anything. It was at seven o’clock, and the White Linen Nurse was still
washing dishes.

As radiant as a gray-haired god he towered up in the doorway. The
boyish rejuvenation in him was even more startling than before.

“I’m feeling so much like a fighting-cock this morning,” he said, “I
think I’ll tackle that paper on--that I have to read at Baltimore next
month.” A little startlingly the gray lines furrowed into his cheeks
again. “For Heaven’s sake, see that I’m not disturbed by anything!” he
admonished her warningly.

It must have been almost eight o’clock when the ear-splitting scream
from up-stairs sent the White Linen Nurse plunging out panic-stricken
into the hall.

“Oh, Peach! Peach!” yelled the Little Girl’s frenzied voice, “come
quick and see what Fat Father’s doing _now_, out on the piazza!”

Jerkily the White Linen Nurse swerved off through the French door that
opened directly on the piazza. Had the Senior Surgeon hanged himself,
she tortured, in some wild, temporary aberration of the “morning after”?

But stanchly and reassuringly from the farther end of the piazza the
Senior Surgeon’s broad back belied her horrid terror. Quite prosily
and in apparently perfect health he was standing close to the railing
of the piazza. On a table directly beside him rested four empty
bird-cages. Just at that particular moment he was inordinately busy
releasing the last canary from the fifth cage. Both hands were smouched
with ink, and behind his left ear a fountain-pen dallied daringly.

At the very first sound of the White Linen Nurse’s step the Senior
Surgeon turned and faced her with a sheepish sort of defiance.

“Well, _now_, I imagine,” he said--“well, now I imagine I’ve really
made you mad.”

“No, not mad, sir,” faltered the White Linen Nurse--“no, not mad, sir,
but very far from well.” Coaxingly, with a perfectly futile hand, she
tried to lure one astonished yellow songster back from a swaying yellow
bush. “Why, they’ll die, sir!” she protested. “Savage cats will get
them.”

“It’s a choice of their lives or mine,” said the Senior Surgeon,
tersely.

“Yes, sir,” droned the White Linen Nurse.

Quite snappishly the Senior Surgeon turned upon her.

“For Heaven’s sake, do you think canary-birds are more valuable than I
am?” he demanded stentoriously.

Most disconcertingly before his glowering eyes a great sad, round tear
rolled suddenly down the White Linen Nurse’s flushed cheek.

“N-o-o, not more valuable,” conceded the White Linen Nurse, “but more
c-cunning.”

Up to the roots of the Senior Surgeon’s hair a flush of real contrition
spread hotly.

“Why--Rae,” he stammered, “why, what a beast I am! Why--why--” In
sincere perplexity he began to rack his brains for some adequate
excuse, some adequate explanation. “Why, I’m sure I didn’t mean to make
you feel badly,” he persisted. “Only I’ve lived alone so long that I
suppose I’ve just naturally drifted into the way of having a thing
if I wanted it and--throwing it away if I didn’t. And canary-birds,
now? Well, really--” He began to glower all over again. “Oh, hell!” he
finished abruptly, “I guess I’ll go on down to the hospital, where I
belong!”

A little wistfully the White Linen Nurse stepped forward.

“The hospital?” she said. “Oh, the hospital. Do you think that perhaps
you could come home a little bit earlier than usual to-night, and--and
help me catch just one of the canaries?”

“What?” gasped the Senior Surgeon. Incredulously with a very inky
finger he pointed at his own breast. “What? I?” he demanded. “I? Come
home early from the hospital to help _you_ catch a canary?”

Disgustedly, without further comment, he turned and stalked back again
into the house.

The disgust was still in his walk as he left the house an hour later.
Watching his exit down the long gravel path, the Little Crippled Girl
commented audibly on the matter.

“Peach! Peach!” she called, “what makes Fat Father walk so--surprised?”

People at the hospital also commented upon him.

“Gee!” giggled the new nurses, “we bet he’s a Tartar! But isn’t his
hair cute? And, say, is it really true that that Malgregor girl was
pinned down perfectly helpless under the car and he wouldn’t let
her out till she’d promised to marry him? Isn’t it awful? Isn’t it
romantic?”

“Why, Dr. Faber’s back!” fluttered the old nurses. “Isn’t he wonderful?
Isn’t he beautiful? But, oh, say,” they worried, “what do you suppose
Rae ever finds to talk with him about? Would she ever dare talk
_things_ to him,--just plain every-day things,--hats, and going to the
theater, and what to have for breakfast?” They gasped. “Why, yes, of
course,” they reasoned more sanely. “Steak? Eggs? Even oatmeal? Why,
people had to eat, no matter how wonderful they were. But evenings?”
they speculated more darkly. “But evenings?” In the whole range of
human experience was it even so much as remotely imaginable that,
evenings, the Senior Surgeon and Rae Malgregor sat in the hammock and
held hands? “Oh, gee!” blanched the old nurses.

“Good morning, Dr. Faber,” greeted the Superintendent of Nurses from
behind her austere office desk.

“Good morning, Madam,” said the Senior Surgeon.

“Have you had a pleasant trip?” quizzed the Superintendent of Nurses.

“Exceptionally so, thank you,” said the Senior Surgeon.

“And--Mrs. Faber, is she well?” persisted the Superintendent of Nurses,
conscientiously.

“_Mrs._ Faber?” gasped the Senior Surgeon. “_Mrs._ Faber? Oh, yes; why,
of course. Yes, indeed, she’s extraordinarily well. I never saw her
better.”

“She must have been very lonely without you this past month,” rasped
the Superintendent of Nurses, perfectly polite.

“Yes, she was,” replied the flushed Senior Surgeon. “She--she suffered
keenly.”

“And you, too?” drawled the Superintendent of Nurses. “It must have
been very hard for you.”

“Yes, it was,” replied the Senior Surgeon. “I suffered keenly, too.”

Distractedly he glanced back at the open door. An extraordinarily large
number of nurses, internes, orderlies, seemed to be having errands up
and down the corridor that allowed them a peculiarly generous length of
neck to stretch into the Superintendent’s office.

“Great Heavens!” snapped the Senior Surgeon, “what’s the matter with
everybody this morning?” Tempestuously he started for the door. “Hurry
up my cases, please, Miss Hartzen!” he ordered. “Send them to the
operating-room, and let me get to work.”

At eleven o’clock, absolutely calm, absolutely cool, as pure as a girl
in his white operating-clothes; cleaner, skin, hair, teeth, hands, than
any girl who ever walked the face of the earth, in a white-tiled room
as free from germs as himself, with three or four small glistening
instruments, and half a dozen breathless assistants almost as spotless
as himself, with his sleeves rolled back the whole length of his arms,
and the faintest possible little grin twitching oddly at one corner of
his mouth, he “went in,” as they say, to a new-born baby’s tortured,
twisted spine, and took out fifty years, perhaps, of hunchbacked pain
and shame and morbid passions flourishing banefully in the dark shades
of a disordered life.

At half-past twelve he did an appendix operation on the only son of
his best friend; at one o’clock he did another appendix operation.
Whom it was on didn’t matter; it couldn’t have been worse on any one.
At half-past one no one remembered to feed him. At two, in another
man’s operation, he saw the richest merchant in the city go wafted
out into eternity on the fumes of ether taken for the lancing of a
sty. At three o’clock, passing the open door of one of the public
waiting-rooms, an Italian peasant woman rushed out and spat in his
face because her tubercular daughter had just died at the sanatorium
where the Senior Surgeon’s money had sent her. Only in this one wild,
defiling moment did the lust for alcohol surge up in him again, surge
clamorously, brutally, absolutely mercilessly, as though in all the
world only interminable raw whisky was hot enough to cauterize a
polluted consciousness. At half-past three, as soon as he could change
his clothes again, he rebroke and reset an acrobat’s priceless leg. At
five o’clock, more to rest himself than anything else, he went up to
the autopsy amphitheater to look over an exhibit of enlarged hearts
whose troubles were permanently over.

At six o’clock, just as he was leaving the great building, with all
its harrowing sights, sounds, and smells, a peremptory telephone call
from one of the younger surgeons of the city summoned him back into the
stuffy office again.

“Dr. Faber?”

“Yes.”

“This is Merkley.”

“Yes.”

“Can you come immediately and help me with that fractured-skull case I
was telling you about this morning? We’ll have to trepan right away!”

“Trepan _nothing_!” grunted the Senior Surgeon. “I’ve got to go home
early to-night--and help catch a canary.”

“Catch a what?” gasped the younger surgeon.

“A canary,” grinned the Senior Surgeon, mirthlessly.

“A _what_?” roared the younger man.

“Oh, shut up, you damned fool! Of course I’ll come,” said the Senior
Surgeon.

There was no “boy” left in the Senior Surgeon when he reached home that
night.

Gray with road-travel, haggard with strain and fatigue, it was long,
long after the rosy sunset-time, long, long after the yellow supper
light, that he came dragging up through the sweet-scented dusk of the
garden and threw himself down without greeting of any sort on the top
step of the piazza, where the White Linen Nurse’s skirts glowed
palely through the gloom.

[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. C.
Merrill and H. Davidson

“HE WAS INORDINATELY BUSY RELEASING THE LAST CANARY”

DRAWN BY HERMAN PFEIFER]

“Well, I put a canary-bird back into its cage for you,” he confided
laconically. “It was a little chap’s soul. It sure would have gotten
away before morning.”

“Who was the man that tried to turn it loose _this_ time?” asked the
White Linen Nurse.

“I didn’t _say_ that anybody did,” growled the Senior Surgeon.

“Oh,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Oh.” Quite palpably a little shiver
of flesh and starch went rustling through her. “I’ve had a wonderful
day, too,” she confided softly. “I’ve cleaned the attic and darned nine
pairs of your stockings and bought a sewing-machine and started to make
you a white silk negligée shirt for a surprise.”

“Eh?” jerked out the Senior Surgeon.

The jerk seemed to liberate suddenly the faint vibration of dishes and
the sound of ice knocking lusciously against a glass.

“Oh, have you had any supper, sir?” asked the White Linen Nurse.

With a prodigious sigh the Senior Surgeon threw his head back against
the piazza railing and stretched his legs a little farther out along
the piazza floor.

“Supper?” he groaned. “No; nor dinner, nor breakfast, nor any other
blankety-blank meal as far back as I can remember.” Janglingly
in his voice, fatigue, hunger, nerves, crashed together like the
slammed notes of a piano. “But I wouldn’t move now,” he snarled,
“if all the blankety-blank-blank foods in Christendom were piled
blankety-blank-blank high on all the blankety-blank-blank tables in
this whole blankety-blank-blank house.”

Ecstatically the White Linen Nurse clapped her hands.

“Oh, that’s just exactly what I hoped you’d say!” she cried. “’Cause
the supper’s right _here_!”

“Here?” snapped the Senior Surgeon. Tempestuously he began all over
again: “I tell you I wouldn’t lift my little finger if all the
blankety-blank-blank-blank-blank--”

“Oh, goody, then!” said the White Linen Nurse. “’Cause now I can feed
you! I sort of miss fussing with the canary-birds,” she added wistfully.

“Feed me?” roared the Senior Surgeon. Again something started a lump of
ice tinkling faintly in a thin glass. “_Feed_ me?” he began all over
again.

Yet with a fragrant strawberry half as big as a peach held out suddenly
under his nose, just from sheer, irresistible instinct he bit out at
it, and nipped the White Linen Nurse’s finger instead.

“Ouch, sir!” said the White Linen Nurse.

Mumblingly down from an up-stairs window, as from a face flatted
smouchingly against a wire screen, a peremptory summons issued.

“Peach! _Peach!_” called an angry little voice, “if you don’t come to
bed now I’ll--I’ll say my curses instead of my prayers!”

A trifle nervously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her feet.

“Maybe I’d better go,” she said.

“Maybe you had,” said the Senior Surgeon, quite definitely.

At the edge of the threshold the White Linen Nurse turned for an
instant.

“Good night, Dr. Faber,” she whispered.

“Good night, Rae Malgregor--Faber,” said the Senior Surgeon.

“Good night _what_?” gasped the White Linen Nurse.

“Good night, Rae Malgregor--Faber,” repeated the Senior Surgeon.

Clutching at her skirts as though a mouse were after her, the White
Linen Nurse went scuttling up the stairs.

Very late on into the night the Senior Surgeon lay there on his piazza
floor, staring out into his garden. Very companionably from time to
time, like a tame firefly, a little bright spark hovered and glowed
for an instant above the bowl of his pipe. Puff, puff, puff; doze,
doze, doze; throb, throb, throb, on and on and on and on into the
sweet-scented night.

So the days passed, and the nights, and more days, and more
nights--July, August, on and on and on. Strenuous, nerve-racking,
heartbreaking surgical days, broken maritally only by the pleasant,
soft-worded greeting at the gate, or the practical, homely appeal of
good food cooked with heart as well as with hands, or the tingling,
inciting masculine consciousness of there being a woman’s blush in the
house. Strenuous, house-working, child-nursing, home-making domestic
days, broken maritally only by the jaded, harsh word at the gate,
the explosive criticism of food, the deadening depressing feminine
consciousness of there being a man’s vicious temper in the house.

Now and again, in one big automobile or another, the White Linen Nurse
and the Senior Surgeon rode out together, always and forever with the
Little Crippled Girl sitting between them, the other woman’s little
crippled girl. Now and again in the late summer afternoons the White
Linen Nurse and the Senior Surgeon strolled together through the
rainbow-colored garden, always and forever with the Little Crippled
Girl, the other woman’s little crippled girl, tagging close behind them
with her little sad, clanking leg. Now and again in the long sweet
summer evenings the White Linen Nurse and the Senior Surgeon sat on the
clematis-shadowed porch together, always and forever with the Little
Crippled Girl, the other woman’s little crippled girl, mocking them
querulously from some vague upper window.

Now and again across the mutually ghost-haunted chasm that separated
them flashed the incontrovertible signal of sex and sense, as when a
new interne, grossly bungling, stood at the hospital window with a
colleague to watch the Senior Surgeon’s car roll away as usual with its
two feminine passengers.

“What makes the chief so stingy with that big handsome girl of his?”
queried the new interne a bit resentfully. “He won’t ever bring her
into the hospital, won’t ever ask any of us young chaps out to his
house, and some of us come mighty near to being eligible, too. Who’s
he saving her for, anyway? A saint? A miracle-worker? A millionaire
medicine-man? They don’t exist, you know.”

“I’m saving her for myself,” snapped the Senior Surgeon, most
disconcertingly from the doorway. “She--she happens to be my wife, not
my daughter, thank you.” He hurried home that night as rattled as a
boy, with a big bunch of new magazines and a box of candy as large as
his head tucked courtingly under his arm.

Now and again across the chasm that separated them flashed the
incontrovertible signal of mutual trust and appreciation, as when once,
after a particularly violent vocal outburst on the Senior Surgeon’s
part, he sobered down very suddenly and said:

“Rae Malgregor, do you realize that in all the weeks we’ve been
together you’ve never once nagged me about my swearing? Not a word, not
a single word!”

“I’m not very used to--words,” smiled the White Linen Nurse, a bit
faintly. “All I know how to nag with is--is raw eggs. If we could only
get those nerves of yours padded just once, sir!”

In August the Senior Surgeon suggested sincerely that the house was
much too big for the White Linen Nurse to run all alone, but conceded
equally sincerely, under the White Linen Nurse’s vehement protest,
that servants, particularly new servants, _did_ creak considerably
round a house, and that maybe “just for the present” at least, until he
finished the very nervous paper he was working on--perhaps it would be
better to stay “just by ourselves.”

In September the White Linen Nurse wanted very much to go home to Nova
Scotia to her sister’s wedding, but the Senior Surgeon was trying a
very complicated and worrisome new brace on the Little Girl’s leg, and
it didn’t seem quite kind to go. In October she planned her trip all
over again. She was going to take the Little Crippled Girl with her
this time. But with their trunks already packed and waiting in the
hall, the Senior Surgeon came home from the hospital with a septic
finger, and it didn’t seem quite best to leave him.

“Well, how do you like being married _now_?” asked the Senior Surgeon,
a bit ironically in his workroom that night, after the White Linen
Nurse had stood for an hour with evil-smelling washes and interminable
bandages, trying to fix that finger the precise, particular way that
he thought it ought to be fixed. “Well, how do you like being married
_now_?” he insisted trenchantly.

“Oh, I like it all right, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. A little
bit wanly this time she smiled her pluck up into the Senior Surgeon’s
questioning face. “Oh, I like it all right, sir. Oh, of course, sir,”
she confided thoughtfully--“oh, of course, sir, it isn’t quite as fancy
as being engaged, or quite as free and easy as being single; but,
still,” she admitted with desperate honesty--“but, still, there’s a
sort of--a sort of a combination importance and--and comfort about it,
sir, like a--like a velvet suit--the second year, sir.”

“Is that all?” quizzed the Senior Surgeon, bluntly.

“That’s all so far, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

In November the White Linen Nurse caught a bit of cold that pulled her
down a little. But the Senior Surgeon didn’t notice it specially among
all the virulent ills he lived and worked with from day to day. And
then when the cold disappeared, Indian summer came like a reeking sweat
after a chill. And the house _was_ big, and the Little Crippled Girl
_was_ pretty difficult to manage now and then, and the Senior Surgeon,
no matter how hard he tried not to, did succeed somehow in creating
more or less of a disturbance at least every other day or two.

And then suddenly, one balmy, gold-and-crimson Indian summer morning,
standing out on the piazza trying to hear what the Little Crippled Girl
was calling from the window and what the Senior Surgeon was calling
from the gate, the White Linen Nurse fell right down in her tracks,
brutally, bulkily, like a worn-out horse, and lay, as she fell, a
huddled white blot across the gray piazza.

“Oh, Father, come quick! Come quick! Peach has deaded herself!” yelled
the Little Girl’s frantic voice.

Just with his foot on the step of his car the Senior Surgeon heard
the cry and came speeding back up the long walk. Already there before
him the Little Girl knelt, raining passionate, agonized kisses on her
beloved playmate’s ghastly white face.

“Leave her alone!” thundered the Senior Surgeon. “Leave her alone, I
say!”

Bruskly he pushed the Little Girl aside, and knelt to cradle his own
ear against the White Linen Nurse’s heart.

“Oh, it’s all right,” he growled, and gathered the White Linen
Nurse right up in his arms--she was startlingly lighter than he had
supposed--and carried her up the stairs and put her to bed like a child
in the great sumptuous guest-room, in a great sumptuous nest of all the
best linens and blankets, with the Little Crippled Girl superintending
the task with many hysterical suggestions and sharp, staccato
interruptions. For once in his life the Senior Surgeon did not stop to
quarrel with his daughter.

Rallying limply from her swoon, the White Linen Nurse at last stared
out with hazy perplexity from her dimpling white pillows to see the
Senior Surgeon standing amazingly at the guest-room bureau with a
glass and a medicine-dropper in his hand, and the Little Crippled Girl
hanging apparently by her narrow, peaked chin across the foot-board of
the bed.

Gazing down worriedly at the lace-ruffled sleeve of her night-dress,
the White Linen Nurse made her first public speech to the world at
large.

“Who put me to bed?” whispered the White Linen Nurse.

Ecstatically the Little Crippled Girl began to pound her fists on the
foot-board of the bed.

“Father did!” she cried in unmistakable triumph. “All the little hooks,
all the little buttons! wasn’t it cunning?”

The Senior Surgeon would hardly have been human if he hadn’t glanced
back suddenly over his shoulder at the White Linen Nurse’s quickly
changing color. Quite irrepressibly, as he saw the red blood come
surging home again into her cheeks, a short, chuckling little laugh
escaped him.

“I guess you’ll live now,” he remarked dryly.

Then because a Senior Surgeon can’t stay home on the mere impulse of
the moment from a great rushing hospital just because one member of
his household happens to faint perfectly innocently in the morning, he
hurried on to his work again, and saved a little boy, and lost a little
girl, and mended a fractured thigh, and eased a gunshot wound, and came
dashing home at noon in one of his thousand-dollar hours to feel the
White Linen Nurse’s pulse and broil her a bit of tenderloin steak with
his own thousand-dollar hands; and then went dashing off again to do
one major operation or another, telephoned home once or twice during
the afternoon to make sure that everything was all right, and, finding
that the White Linen Nurse was comfortably up and about again, went
sprinting off fifty miles somewhere on a meningitis consultation, and
came dragging home at last, somewhere near midnight, to a big, black
house brightened only by a single light in the kitchen, where the
White Linen Nurse went tiptoeing softly from stove to pantry in deft
preparation of an appetizing supper for him.

Quite roughly again, without smile or appreciation, the Senior Surgeon
took her by the shoulders and turned her out of the kitchen and started
her up the stairs.

“Are you an idiot?” he said. “Are you an imbecile?” he came back and
called up the stairs to her just as she was disappearing from the upper
landing. Then up and down, round and round, on and on and on, the
Senior Surgeon began suddenly to pace again.

Only, for some unexplainable reason to the White Linen Nurse up-stairs,
his workroom didn’t seem quite large enough for his pacing this night.
Along the broad piazza she heard his footsteps creak. Far, far into
the morning, lying warm and snug in her own little bed, she heard his
footsteps crackling through the wet-leafed garden paths.

Yet the Senior Surgeon didn’t look an atom jaded or forlorn when he
came down to breakfast the next morning. He had on a brand-new gray
suit that fitted his big, powerful shoulders to perfection, and the
glad glow of his shower-bath was still reddening faintly in his cheeks
as he swung around the corner of the table and dropped down into his
place, with an odd little grin on his lips directed intermittently
toward the White Linen Nurse and the Little Crippled Girl, who already
waited him there at each end of the table.

“Oh, Father, _isn’t_ it lovely to have my darling, darling Peach all
well again!” beamed the Little Crippled Girl, with unusual friendliness.

“Speaking of your ’darling Peach,’” said the Senior Surgeon,
abruptly--“speaking of your ‘darling Peach,’ I’m going to take her away
with me to-day for a week or so.”

“Eh?” exclaimed the Little Crippled Girl.

“What? What, sir?” stammered the White Linen Nurse.

Quite prosily the Senior Surgeon began to butter a piece of toast;
but the little twinkle about his eyes belied in some way the utter
prosiness of the act.

“For a little trip,” he confided amiably, “a little holiday.”

A trifle excitedly the White Linen Nurse laid down her knife and fork
and stared at him as blue-eyed and wondering as a child.

“A holiday?” she gasped. “To a--_beach_, you mean? Would there be a--a
roller-coaster? I’ve never seen a roller-coaster.”

“Eh?” laughed the Senior Surgeon.

“Oh, I’m going, too! I’m going, too!” piped the Little Crippled Girl.

Most jerkily the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair from the table,
and swallowed half a cup of coffee at one single gulp.

“Going _three_, you mean?” he glowered at his little daughter. “Going
_three_?” His comment that ensued was distinctly rough as far as
diction was concerned, but the facial expression of ineffable peace
that accompanied it would have made almost any phrase sound like a
benediction. “Not by a damned sight!” beamed the Senior Surgeon. “This
little trip is just for Peach and me.”

“But, sir--” fluttered the White Linen Nurse. Her face was suddenly
pinker than any rose that ever bloomed.

With an impulse absolutely novel to him, the Senior Surgeon turned and
swung his little daughter very gently to his shoulder.

“Your Aunt Agnes is coming to stay with _you_ in just about ten
minutes,” he affirmed. “That’s what’s going to happen to _you_. And
maybe there’ll be a pony--a white pony.”

“But Peach is so--pleasant!” wailed the Little Crippled Girl. “Peach is
so pleasant!” she began to scream and kick.

“So it seems,” growled the Senior Surgeon; “and she’s--dying of it.”

Tearfully the Little Girl wriggled down to the ground, and hobbled
around and thrust her finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse’s blushiest
cheek.

“I don’t want Peach to die,” she admitted worriedly; “but I don’t want
anybody to take her away.”

“The pony is very white,” urged the Senior Surgeon with a diplomacy
quite alien to him.

Abruptly the Little Girl turned and faced him.

“What color is Aunt Agnes?” she asked vehemently.

“Aunt Agnes is pretty white, too,” declared the Senior Surgeon.

With the faintest possible tinge of superciliousness the Little Girl
lifted her sharp chin a trifle higher.

“If it’s just a perfectly plain white pony,” she said, “I’d rather
have Peach. But if it’s a white pony with black blots on it, and if
it can pull a little cart, and if I can whip it with a little switch,
and if it will eat sugar lumps out of my hand, and if its name is--is
’Beautiful, Pretty Thing--’”

“Its name has always been ‘Beautiful, Pretty Thing,’ I’m quite sure,”
insisted the Senior Surgeon. Inadvertently as he spoke he reached out
and put a hand very lightly on the White Linen Nurse’s shoulder.

Instantly into the Little Girl’s suspicious face flushed a furiously
uncontrollable flame of jealousy and resentment. Madly she turned upon
her father.

“You’re a liar!” she screamed. “There _is_ no white pony! You’re a
robber! You’re a--a--drunk! You sha’n’t have my darling Peach!” She
threw herself frenziedly into the White Linen Nurse’s lap.

Impatiently the Senior Surgeon disentangled the clinging little arms,
and, raising the White Linen Nurse to her feet, pushed her gently
toward the hall.

“Go to my workroom,” he said. “Quickly! I want to talk with you.”

A moment later he joined her there, and shut and locked the door behind
him. The previous night’s loss of sleep showed plainly in his face now,
and the hospital strain of the day before, and of the day before that,
and of the day before that.

Heavily, moodily, he crossed the room and threw himself down in his
desk chair, with the White Linen Nurse still standing before him as
though she were nothing but a white linen nurse. All the splendor was
suddenly gone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose.

“Well, Rae Malgregor,” he grinned mirthlessly, “the little kid is
right, though I certainly don’t know where she got her information. I
_am_ a liar. The pony’s name is not yet ’Beautiful, Pretty Thing’! I
_am_ a drunk. I was drunk most of June. I _am_ a robber. I have taken
you out of your youth and the love chances of your youth, and shut you
up here in this great, gloomy old house of mine, to be my slave and my
child’s slave and--”

“Pouf!” said the White Linen Nurse. “It would seem silly now, sir, to
marry a boy.”

“And I’ve been a beast to you,” persisted the Senior Surgeon. “From the
very first day you belonged to me I’ve been a beast to you, venting
brutally on your youth, on your sweetness, on your patience, all the
work, the worry, the wear and tear, the abnormal strain and stress of
my disordered days and years; and I’ve let my little girl vent also
on you all the pang and pain of _her_ disordered days. And because in
this great, gloomy, racketty house it seemed suddenly like a miracle
from heaven to have service that was soft-footed, gentle-handed,
pleasant-hearted, I’ve let you shoulder all the hideous drudgery, the
care, one horrid homely task after another piling up, up, up, till you
dropped in your tracks yesterday, still smiling!”

“But I got a good deal out of it, even so, sir!” protested the White
Linen Nurse. “See, sir!” she smiled. “I’ve got real lines in my face
now, like other women. I’m not a doll any more. I’m not a--”

“Yes,” groaned the Senior Surgeon; “and I might just as kindly have
carved those lines with my knife. But I was going to make it all up to
you to-day,” he hurried. “I swear I was! Even in one short little week
I could have done it, you wouldn’t have known me, I was going to take
you away--just you and me. I would have been a saint. I swear I would!
I would have given you such a great, wonderful, child-hearted holiday
as you never dreamed of in all your unselfish life--a holiday all you,
you, you! You could have dug in the sand if you’d wanted to. God! I’d
have dug in the sand if you’d wanted me to. And now it’s all gone from
me, all the will, all the sheer, positive self-assurance that I could
have carried the thing through absolutely selflessly. That little
girl’s sneering taunt, the ghost of her mother in that taunt--God! when
anybody knocks you just in your decency, it doesn’t harm you specially;
but when they knock you in your wanting-to-be-decent, it--it undermines
you somewhere. I don’t know exactly how. I’m nothing but a man again
now, just a plain, everyday, greedy, covetous, physical man on the
edge of a holiday, the first clean holiday in twenty years, that he no
longer dares to take!”

A little swayingly the White Linen Nurse shifted her standing weight
from one foot to the other.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. “I’d like to have seen a
roller-coaster, sir.”

Just for an instant a gleam of laughter went scudding zigzag across the
Senior Surgeon’s brooding face, and was gone again.

“Rae Malgregor, come here!” he ordered quite sharply.

Very softly, very glidingly, like the footfall of a person who has
never known heels, the White Linen Nurse came forward swiftly, and,
sliding in cautiously between the Senior Surgeon and his desk, stood
there, with her back braced against the desk, her fingers straying
idly up and down the edges of the desk, staring up into his face, all
readiness, all attention, like a soldier waiting further orders.

So near was she that he could almost hear the velvet heart-throb of
her, the little fluttering swallow, yet by some strange, persistent
aloofness of her, some determinate virginity, not a fold of her gown,
not an edge, not a thread, seemed even to so much as graze his knee,
seemed even to so much as shadow his hand, lest it short-circuit
thereby the seething currents of their variant emotions.

With extraordinary intentness for a moment the Senior Surgeon sat
staring into the girl’s eyes, the blue eyes too full of childish
questioning yet to flinch with either consciousness or embarrassment.

“After all, Rae Malgregor,” he smiled at last, faintly--“after all, Rae
Malgregor, Heaven knows when I shall ever get another holiday.”

“Yes, sir?” said the White Linen Nurse.

With apparent irrelevance he reached for his ivory paper-cutter and
began bending it dangerously between his adept fingers.

“How long have you been with me, Rae Malgregor?” he asked abruptly.

“Four months--actually with you, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

“Do you happen to remember the exact phrasing of my--proposal of
marriage to you?” he asked shrewdly.

“Oh, yes, sir!” said the White Linen Nurse. “You called it ’general
heartwork for a family of two.’”

A little grimly before her steady gaze the Senior Surgeon’s own eyes
fell, and rallied again almost instantly with a gaze as even and direct
as hers.

“Well,” he smiled, “through the whole four months I seem to have kept
my part of the contract all right, and held you merely as a drudge in
my home. Have you, then, decided once and for all time, whether you are
going to stay on with us or whether you will ‘give notice,’ as other
drudges have done?”

With a little backward droop of one shoulder the White Linen Nurse
began to finger nervously at the desk behind her, and turning half-way
round, as though to estimate what damage she was doing, exposed thus
merely the profile of her pink face, of her white throat, to the Senior
Surgeon’s questioning eyes.

“I shall never--give notice, sir!” fluttered the white throat.

“Are you perfectly sure?” insisted the Senior Surgeon.

The pink in the White Linen Nurse’s profiled cheek deepened a little.

“Perfectly sure, sir,” declared the carmine lips.

Like the crack of a pistol, the Senior Surgeon snapped the ivory
paper-cutter in two.

“All right, then,” he said. “Rae Malgregor, look at me! Don’t take your
eyes from mine, I say! Rae Malgregor, if I should decide in my own
mind, here and now, that it was best for you, as well as for me, that
you should come away with me now for this week, not as my guest, as I
had planned, but as my wife, even if you were not quite ready for it in
your heart, even if you were not yet remotely ready for it, would you
come because I told you to come?”

Heavily under her white eyelids, heavily under her black lashes, the
girl’s eyes struggled up to meet his own.

“Yes, sir,” whispered the White Linen Nurse.

Abruptly the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair from the desk and
stood up. The important decision once made, no further finessing of
words seemed either necessary or dignified to him.

“Go and pack your suitcase quickly, then,” he ordered. “I want to get
away from here within half an hour.”

But before the girl had half crossed the room he called to her
suddenly. And his face in that moment was as haggard as though a whole
lifetime’s struggle was packed into it.

“Rae Malgregor,” he drawled mockingly, “this thing shall be--barter
’way through to the end, with the credit always on your side of the
account. In exchange for the gift of yourself--your wonderful self,
and the trust that goes with it, I will give you,--God help me!--the
ugliest thing in my life. And God knows I have broken faith with myself
once or twice, but never have I broken my word to another. From now on,
in token of your trust in me, for whatever the bitter gift is worth to
you, as long as you stay with me, my Junes shall be yours, to do with
as you please.”

“_What_, sir?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “_What_, sir?”

Softly, almost stealthily, she was half-way back across the room to
him, when she stopped suddenly and threw out her arms with a gesture of
appeal and defiance.

“All the same, sir,” she cried passionately--“all the same, sir,
the place is too hard for the small pay I get. Oh, I will do what I
promised,” she declared with increasing passion; “I will never leave
you; and I will mother your little girl; and I will servant your big
house; and I will go with you wherever you say! And I will be to you
whatever you wish; and I will never flinch from any hardship you impose
on me, nor whine over any pain, on and on and on, all my days, all my
years, till I drop in my tracks again, and die, as you say, ‘still
smiling’: all the same,” she reiterated wildly, “the place is too hard!
It always was too hard, it always will be too hard, for such small pay!”

“For such small pay?” gasped the Senior Surgeon.

About his heart a horrid, clammy chill began to settle. Sickeningly
through his brain a dozen recent financial transactions began to
rehearse themselves.

“You mean, Miss Malgregor,” he said a bit brokenly--“you mean that I
haven’t been generous enough with you?”

“Yes, sir,” faltered the White Linen Nurse. All the storm and passion
died suddenly from her, leaving her just a frightened girl again,
flushing pink-white before the Senior Surgeon’s scathing stare. One
step, two steps, three, she advanced toward him. “Oh, I mean, sir,”
she whispered--“oh, I mean, sir, that I’m just an ordinary, ignorant
country girl, and you--are further above me than the moon from the sea!
I couldn’t expect you to--love me, sir, I couldn’t even dream of your
loving me; but I do think you might like me just a little bit with your
heart!”

“What?” cried the Senior Surgeon. “What?”

_Whacketty-bang_ against the window-pane sounded the Little Crippled
Girl’s knuckled fists. Darkly against the window-pane squashed the
Little Crippled Girl’s staring face.

“Father,” screamed the shrill voice. “Father, there’s a white lady
here, with two black ladies, washing the breakfast dishes! Is it Aunt
Agnes?”

With a totally unexpected laugh, with a totally unexpected desire to
laugh, the Senior Surgeon strode across the room and unlocked his door.
Even then his lips against the White Linen Nurse’s ear made just a
whisper, not a kiss.

“For God’s sake, hurry!” he said. “Let’s get out of here before any
telephone-message catches me!”

Then almost calmly he walked out on the piazza and greeted his
sister-in-law.

“Hello, Agnes!” he said.

“Hello, yourself!” smiled his sister-in-law.

“How’s everything?” he inquired politely.

“How’s everything with you?” parried his sister-in-law.

Idly for a few moments the Senior Surgeon threw out stray crumbs of
thought to feed the conversation, while smilingly all the while from
her luxuriant East Indian chair his sister-in-law sat studying the
general situation. The Senior Surgeon’s sister-in-law was always
studying something. Last year it was archæology; the year before,
basketry; this year it happened to be eugenics, or something funny like
that; next year, again, it might be book-binding.

“So you and your pink-and-white shepherdess are going off on a little
trip together?” she queried banteringly. “The girl’s a darling,
Lendicott. I haven’t had as much sport in a long time as I had that
afternoon last June when I came in my best calling clothes and helped
her paint the kitchen woodwork. And I had come prepared to be a bit
nasty, Lendicott. In all honesty, Lendicott, I might just as well ’fess
up that I had come prepared to be just a little bit nasty.”

“She seems to have a way,” smiled the Senior Surgeon--“she seems to
have a way of disarming people’s unpleasant intentions.”

A trifle quizzically for an instant the woman turned her face to the
Senior Surgeon’s. It was a worldly face, a cold-featured, absolutely
worldly face, with a surprisingly humorous mouth that warmed her nature
just about as cheerfully, and just about as effectually, as one open
fireplace warms a whole house. Nevertheless, one often achieved much
comfort by keeping close to “Aunt Agnes’s” humorous mouth, for Aunt
Agnes knew a thing or two, Aunt Agnes did, and the things that she made
a point of knowing were conscientiously amiable.

“Why, Lendicott Faber,” she rallied him now, “why, you’re as nervous as
a school-boy! Why, I believe--I believe that you’re going courting!”

More opportunely than any man could have dared to hope, the White
Linen Nurse appeared suddenly on the scene in her little blue serge
wedding-suit, with her traveling-case in her hand. With a gasp of
relief the Senior Surgeon took her case and his own and went on
down the path to his car and his chauffeur, leaving the two women
temporarily alone. When he returned to the piazza, the woman of the
world and the girl not at all of the world were bidding each other a
really affectionate good-by, and the woman’s face looked suddenly just
a little bit old, but the girl’s cheeks were most inordinately blooming.

In unmistakable friendliness his sister-in-law extended her hand to him.

“Good-by, Lendicott, old man!” she said, “and good luck to you!” A
little slyly out of her shrewd, gray eyes, she glanced up sidewise at
him. “You’ve got the devil’s own temper, Lendicott dear,” she teased,
“and two or three other vices probably, and if rumor speaks the truth,
you’ve run amuck more than once in your life; but there’s one thing I
will say for you, though it prove you a dear stupid: you never were
overquick to suspect that any woman could possibly be in love with you.”

“To what woman do you particularly refer?” mocked the Senior Surgeon,
impatiently.

Quite brazenly to her own heart, which never yet apparently had stirred
the laces that enshrined it, his sister-in-law pointed with persistent
banter.

“Maybe I refer to myself,” she laughed, “and maybe to the only other
lady present.”

“Oh!” gasped the White Linen Nurse.

“You do me much honor, Agnes,” bowed the Senior Surgeon. Quite
resolutely he held his gaze from following the White Linen Nurse’s
quickly averted face.

A little oddly for an instant the older woman’s glance hung on his.

“More honor perhaps than you think, Lendicott Faber,” she said, and
kept right on smiling.

“Eh?” jerked the Senior Surgeon. Restively he turned to the White Linen
Nurse.

Very flushingly on the steps the White Linen Nurse knelt arguing with
the Little Crippled Girl.

“Your father and I are going away,” she pleaded. “Won’t you please kiss
us good-by?”

“I’ve only got one kiss,” sulked the Little Crippled Girl.

“Give it to your father!” pleaded the White Linen Nurse.

Amazingly, all in a second, the ugliness vanished from the little face.
Dartlingly, like a bird, the child swooped down and planted one large,
round kiss on the astonished Senior Surgeon’s boot.

“Beautiful Father!” she cried. “I kiss your feet.”

Abruptly the Senior Surgeon plunged from the step and started down the
walk. His cheek-bones were quite crimson.

Two or three rods behind him the White Linen Nurse followed
falteringly. Once she stopped to pick up a tiny stick or a stone, and
once she dallied to straighten out a snarled spray of red and brown
woodbine.

Missing the sound or the shadow of her, the Senior Surgeon turned
suddenly to wait for her. So startled was she by his intentness, so
flustered, so affrighted, that just for an instant the Senior Surgeon
thought that she was going to wheel in her tracks and bolt madly back
to the house. Then quite unexpectedly she gave an odd, muffled little
cry, and ran swiftly to him, like a child, and slipped her bare hand
trustingly into his. And they went on together to the car.

With his foot already half lifted to the step, the Senior Surgeon
turned abruptly around, and lifted his hat, and stood staring back
bare-headed for some unexplainable reason at the two silent figures on
the piazza.

“Rae,” he said perplexedly--“Rae, I don’t seem to know just why, but
somehow I’d like to have you kiss your hand to Aunt Agnes.”

Obediently the White Linen Nurse withdrew her fingers from his and
wafted two kisses, one to “Aunt Agnes” and one to the Little Crippled
Girl.

Then the White Linen Nurse and the Senior Surgeon climbed up into the
tonneau of the car, where they had never, never sat alone before,
and the Senior Surgeon gave a curt order to his man, and the big car
started off again into interminable spaces.

Mutely, without a word, without a glance, passing between them, the
Senior Surgeon held out his hand to her once more, as though the
absence of her hand in his was suddenly a lonesomeness not to be
endured again while life lasted.

_Whizz, whizz, whizz, whir, whir, whir_, the ribbony road began to
roll up again on that hidden spool under the car.

When the chauffeur’s mind seemed sufficiently absorbed in speed and
sound, the Senior Surgeon bent down a little mockingly and mumbled his
lips inarticulately at the White Linen Nurse.

“See,” he laughed, “I’ve got a text, too, to keep my courage up. Of
course you _look_ like an angel,” he teased closer and closer to her
flaming face; “but all the time to myself, to reassure myself, I just
keep saying, ’Bah! she’s nothing but a woman, nothing but a woman,
nothing but a woman!’”

Within the Senior Surgeon’s warm, firm grasp the White Linen Nurse’s
calm hand quickened suddenly like a bud forced precipitously into full
bloom.

“Oh, don’t--talk, sir,” she whispered. “Oh, don’t talk, sir! Just
listen!”

“Listen? Listen to what?” laughed the Senior Surgeon.

From under the heavy lashes that shadowed the flaming cheeks the soul
of the girl who was to be his peered up at the soul of the man who was
to be hers, and saluted what she saw!

“Oh, my heart, sir!” whispered the White Linen Nurse. “Oh, my heart, my
heart, my _heart_.”


THE END



THE BEGGAR

BY JAMES W. FOLEY


    Always beside me as I go my way
      This beggar, Time, walks with his outstretched palms,
      Demanding, not beseeching, of me alms--
    Alms of the precious hours of my day.

    So side by side we walk until my day
      Is growing dusk, and Time’s purse of the years
      Holds alms of mine, bright-jeweled with my tears,
    Since I have given these treasured hours away.

    Nor from his swollen purse will he give me
      One hour, although with spendthrift song and gay
      I flung him alms, nor ever said him nay.
    A beggar and a miser both is he!



[Illustration]



IN “THE CIRCUIT OF THE SUMMER HILLS”

BY JOHN BURROUGHS

Author of “Wake Robin,” “Locusts and Wild Honey,” etc.

WITH A PORTRAIT


I

To sit on one’s rustic porch, or at the door of one’s tent, and see the
bees working on the catnip or motherwort or clover, to see the cattle
grazing leisurely in the fields or ruminating under the spreading
trees, or the woodchucks creeping about the meadows and pastures, or
the squirrels spinning along the fences, or the hawks describing great
spirals against the sky; to hear no sound but the voice of birds,
the caw of crows, the whistle of marmots, the chirp of crickets; to
smell no odors but the odors of grassy fields, or blooming meadows, or
falling rain; and amid it all, to lift one’s eyes to the flowing and
restful mountain lines--this is to get a taste of the peace and comfort
of the summer hills.

This boon is mine when I go to my little gray farm-house on a broad
hill-slope on the home farm in the Catskills. Especially is it mine
when, to get still nearer nature and beyond the orbit of household
sounds and interruptions, I retreat to the big hay-barn, and on an
improvised table in front of the big open barn-doors, looking out into
the sunlit fields where I hoed corn or made hay as a boy, and write
this and other papers.

The peace of the hills is about me and upon me, and the leisure of the
summer clouds, whose shadows I see slowly drifting across the face of
the landscape. The dissonance and the turbulence and the stenches of
cities, how far off they seem; the noise and the dust and the acrimony
of politics--how completely the hum of the honey-bees and the twitter
of swallows blot them all out!

In the circuit of the hills, the days take form and character as they
do not in town, or in a country of low horizons. George Eliot says in
one of her letters: “In the country the days have broad open spaces
and the very stillness seems to give a delightful roominess to the
hours.” This is especially true in a hilly and mountainous country,
where the eye has a great depth of perspective opened to it. Take those
extra brilliant days that we so often have in the autumn--what a vivid
sense one gets of their splendor amid the hills! The deep, cradle-like
valleys, and the long flowing mountain lines, make a fit receptacle for
the day’s beauty; they hold and accumulate it, as it were. I think of
Emerson’s line:

    “O, tenderly the haughty day fills his blue urn with fire.”

The valleys are vast blue urns that hold a generous portion of the
lucid hours.

To feel to the full the peace of the hills, one must choose his
hills, and see to it that they are gentle and restful in character.
Abruptness, jagged lines, sharp angles, frowning precipices, while they
may add an element of picturesqueness, interfere with the feeling of
ease and restfulness that the peace of the hills implies. The eye is
disturbed by a confusion of broken and abrupt lines as is the ear by a
volume of discordant sounds. Long, undulating mountain lines, broad,
cradle-like valleys, easy basking hill-slopes, as well as the absence
of loud and discordant sounds, are a factor in the restfulness of any
landscape.

My landscape is very old geologically, as old as the order of
vertebrate animals, but young historically, having been settled only
about one hundred and fifty years. The original forests still cover
the tops of the mountains with a dark-green mantle, which comes well
down upon their sides, where it is cut and torn and notched into by the
upper fields of the valley farms.

I call my place Woodchuck Lodge, as I tell my friends, because we are
beleagured by these rodents. There is a cordon of woodchuck-holes all
around us. In the orchard, in the meadows, in the pastures, these
whistling marmots have their dens. Here one might easily have woodchuck
venison for dinner every day, yea, and for supper and breakfast, too,
if one could acquire a taste for it. I tried to dine on a woodchuck
once when I was a boy, but never have felt inclined to repeat the
experiment. If one were born in the woods and lived in the woods,
maybe he could relish a woodchuck. Talk about being autocthonous, and
savoring of the soil--try a woodchuck! The feeding habits of this
animal are as cleanly as those of a sheep or a cow--clover, plantain,
peas, beans, cucumbers, cabbages, apples--all sweet and succulent
things go to the making of his flabby body; yet he spends so much of
his time in pickle in the ground that his flesh is rank with the earth
flavor. He is not lean like a rabbit or a squirrel, nor so firm of
muscle as a ’coon or a ’possum; he is little more than a skin filled
with viscera. He is busy all summer storing up fat in his loose pouch
of a body for fuel during his long winter sleep. This sleep appears
to begin in late September, or after the first white frost. This year
I saw my last specimen on the twenty-eighth of the month as he was
running in great haste to his hole. Evidently he does not like the
pinch of the cold. He is a fair-weather animal and is the epicure
of the meadows and pastures. While the apples are still mellow on
the ground, while the red-thorn is still dropping its fruit, and the
aftermath is still fresh in the meadows, my woodchucks turn their backs
upon the world and retreat to their underground chambers for their six
months’ slumber. I know of no other hibernating animal that retires
from the light of day so early in the season. His active life stretches
from the vernal equinox to the autumnal equinox, and that is about all.
Half the year he is under ground, and at least half of each summer
day. No wonder his flesh is rank with the earth flavor. He appears to
live only to accumulate his winter store of fat. Apparently he comes
out of his den in summer only to feed, and maybe occasionally to bask
in the sunshine. He is never sportive or discursive like the birds and
squirrels. Life is a very serious business with him, and he has reduced
it to the lowest terms--eat, breed, and sleep. If woodchucks ever
engage in any sort of play, like other wild creatures, I have never
seen them, though I once had a tame young ’chuck that would play with
the kitten.

The woodchuck probably sleeps more than half the time in summer; he
economizes his precious fat. Only once have I seen his tracks on the
snow. This was in late December; and following them up, I found the
woodchuck wandering about the meadow like one half demented. Something
had evidently gone wrong with him. Apparently he had not succeeded
in storing up his usual amount of fat. He showed little fight, and
we picked him up by the tail, put him into the sleigh, and brought
him home. A place under the barn floor was given to him, but he did
not long survive. All the glory of the fall, the heyday of the ’coon
and the squirrels, the woodchuck misses. No golden October, no Indian
summer for him; he has had his day.

Though the woodchuck’s muscles are flabby, his heart is stout. The
farm-dog can kill him, but he cannot make him show fear or dismay; he
is game to the last. Twice I have seen him from my porch at Woodchuck
Lodge put on so bold a front, and become so aggressive, when surprised
in the middle of a field by a big shepherd-dog, that the dog did not
dare attack him, but circled about, seeking some unfair advantage,
only to be met at every point with those threatening, grating teeth.
In one case the woodchuck was far from his hole, and he kept charging
the dog and driving him nearer and nearer the stone wall, where his
own safety lay. An observer inoculated with the idea of animal reason
would have said that the tactics of the ’chuck were premeditated; but
I am sure he was too much engrossed with the task of defending himself
from the jaws of that dog to do any logical thinking or planning.
It was only the fortunes of battle that finally brought the hunter
and the hunted near the hole of safety, when, seeing his chance, the
woodchuck made a sudden, successful dash, too hurried, I fancy, even
to whistle his usual note of defiance. In the other case, the dog was
of a still more timid nature, and when the surprised woodchuck showed
fight, he concluded that he had no business at all with that particular
’chuck, which actually chased him from the meadow. I can still see the
woodchuck’s bristling, expanded tail as he drove fiercely after the
fleeing dog, which, with a tail anything but threatening, escaped over
the wall into the road.

I find that one may be the principal actor in a little comedy, and not
see the humor of it at all at the time. I know the humor of a race I
had with a ’chuck last summer in my orchard was quite lost upon me till
it was over, and the ’chuck was in his hole, and I was back upon my
porch recovering my wind. The ’chuck was a hundred yards or more from
his den when I leaped over the fence from the road and surprised him. I
pressed him so closely that he took refuge in an apple-tree. Instantly
seeing his mistake, as the missile I hurled struck the tree, he sprang
down and rushed for his hole, a hundred and fifty feet away. But I got
there first. The ’chuck paused twenty feet to one side and regarded me
intently, defiantly. We stood and glared at each other a few moments,
while I recovered my breath. I wanted the scalp of that “varmint.” I
knew that he would make himself believe that I had planted my garden
for his special benefit, and I wanted to anticipate that conclusion. I
was weaponless. Twenty or more feet from me, on the opposite side from
the ’chuck, I saw a stone that would answer my purpose. I calculated
the chances; so did the woodchuck; I sprang for the stone and the
’chuck sprang for his hole, and was in it as my hand touched the stone.
He had won! As I sat on my porch, the recklessness and absurdity of a
man more than threescore and ten running down a woodchuck came over me;
and I have not yielded to such a temptation since.


II

Where cattle and woodchuck thrive, there thrive I. The pastoral is
in my veins. Clover and timothy, daisies and buttercups indirectly
colored my youthful life; and if the dairy cow did not rock my cradle,
her products sustained the hand that did rock it. Hence I love this
land of wide, open, grassy fields, of smooth, broad-backed hills,
and of long, sweeping mountain lines. The cow fits well into these
scenes. It seems as if her broad, smooth muzzle and her potent tongue
might have shaped the landscape; it is certainly her cropping that has
brought about the hour-glass form of so many of the red-thorn trees,
which give a unique feature to the fields. Her fragrant breath is upon
the air, her hoof-prints are upon the highway; she may not yet have
attained to wisdom, yet surely all her ways are ways of pleasantness
and all her paths are paths of peace. Hence, when her ways and her
paths coincide with mine, I thrive best. From Woodchuck Lodge I look
out upon broad pastures, lands where dairy herds have grazed for a
hundred years, never the same herd for many summers, but all of the
same habits and dispositions. They all scour the pastures in the same
way, scattering, searching out every nook and corner, leaving no yard
of ground unvisited, apparently hunting each day for the sweet morsel
they missed the day before, disposing themselves in picturesque groups
upon the hills; never massed, except under the shade-trees on hot days;
slow-moving, making their paths here and there, lingering under the
red-thorn trees, where the fruit begins to drop in September; tossing
their heads above the orchard wall, where the fragrance of ripening
apples is on the air; in the autumn lying upon the cold, damp ground
and ruminating contentedly, with no fear of our ills and pains before
them; wading in the swamps, converging slowly toward the pasture-bars
as milking-time draws nigh, with always some tardy, indifferent ones
that the farm-dog has to hurry up; many colored--white, black, red,
brown--at times showing rare gentleness and affection toward one
another, such as licking one another’s heads or bodies, then spitefully
butting or goring one another; occasionally one of them lifting up her
head and sending her mellow voice over the hills like a horn, as if
to give voice to a vague unrest, or invoking some far-off divinity to
release the imprisoned Io--what a series of shifting rural pictures I
thus have spread out before me! Such an atmosphere of peace and leisure
over it all! The unhurrying and ruminating cattle make the days long;
they make the fields friendly, the hills eloquent, the shade-trees
idyllic. I wake up to hear the farmer summoning them from the field
in the dewy summer dawns, and I listen for his call to them on the
tranquil afternoons. One season an especially musical voice did the
evening calling--a trained voice from beyond the hills. What a pleasure
it was as we swung in our hammocks under apple-trees to hear the free,
sonorous summons, and to see the response of the herd in many-colored
lines converging down the slope to the bar-way!

When the meadows have gotten a new carpet of tender grass in September,
and the cows are free to range in them, a new series of moving pictures
greets the eye. The grazing forms have a finer setting now, and
contentment and satisfaction are in every movement. How they sweep off
the tender herbage, into what artistic groups they naturally fall,
what pictures of peace and plenty they present! When they lie down to
ruminate, Emerson’s sentence comes to mind: “And the cattle lying on
the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts.” As a matter of
fact, I suppose no more vacant mind could be found in the universe
than that of the cow when she is reposing in a field, chewing her
cud. But she is the cause of tranquil if not of great thoughts in the
lookers-on, and that is enough. Tranquillity attends her wherever she
goes; it beams from her eyes, and lingers in her footsteps.

I sympathize with Whitman as he expressed himself in these lines:

    “I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid
            and self-contain’d,
    I stand and look at them, long and long.

    “They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
    They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
    They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
    Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
            owning things,
    Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
            years ago,
    Not one is respectable or happy over the whole earth.”


III

If one has a bit of the farmer in him, it is a pleasure in the country
to have a real farmer for a neighbor--a man whose heart is in his work,
who is not longing for the town or the city, who improves his fields,
who makes two spears of grass grow where none grew before, whose whole
farm has an atmosphere of thrift and well-being. There are so many
reluctant, half-hearted farmers in our eastern States nowadays, so many
who do only what they have to do in order to survive; who leave the
paternal acres to run to weeds or brush; the paternal fences to fall
into ruins; the paternal orchards untrimmed and unplowed; the paternal
meadows unfertilized, while the fertilizer wastes in the barn-yard; who
get but one spear of grass where their fathers or grandfathers got two
or three; and whose plaint always is that farming does not pay. What is
the matter with our rural population? Has all the good farming blood
gone West, and do only the dregs of it remain?

It is the man who makes the farm, as truly as it is the man who makes
any other business; it is the man behind the plow, as truly as it is
the man behind the gun, that wins the battle. A half-heart never won
a whole sheaf yet. The average farmer has deteriorated. He may know
more, but he does less than his father. He is like the second or third
steeping of the tea. Did the original settlers and improvers of the
farms, and the generations that followed them, leave all their virtue
and grip in the soil? It is certainly true that in my section the last
two generations have lived off the capital of labor and brains which
their ancestors put into the land; only here and there has a man added
anything, only here and there is a farmer who does not wish he had some
other business. If such men had that other business, they would reap
the same poor results. In the long run, you cannot reap where you have
not sown, and the only seed you can sow, in any business that yields
tenfold, is yourself--your own wit, your own industry. Unless you
plant your heart with your corn, it will mostly go to suckers; unless
you strike your own roots into the subsoil of your lands, it will not
bear fruit in your character, or in your bank-account--all of which
is simply saying that thin, leachy land will not bear good crops, and
unless a man has the real farming stuff in him, his farm quickly shows
it.

My neighbor makes smooth the way of the plow and of the mower. Last
summer I saw him take enough stones and rocks from a three-acre field
to build quite a fortress; and land whose slumbers had never been
disturbed by the plow was soon knee-high with Hungarian grass. How
one likes to see a permanent betterment of the land like that!--piles
of renegade stone and rock. It is such things that make the country
richer. If all New England and New York had had such drastic treatment
years ago, the blight of discouraged farming never would have fallen
upon them, and the prairie States would not have so far distanced the
granite States. A granite soil should grow a better crop of men than
the silt of lake or river bottom, though it yields less corn to the
acre.

The prairie makes a strong appeal to a man’s indolence and cupidity;
it is a place where he can sit at ease and let his team do most of his
work. But I much doubt whether the western farms ever will lay the
strong hands upon their possessors that our more varied and picturesque
eastern farms lay. Every field in these farms has a character of its
own, and the farms differ from one another as much as the people do.
An eastern farm is the place for a home; the western farm is the
place to grow wheat, pork, and beef. Oh, the flat, featureless,
monotonous, cornstalk-littered middle West! how can the rural virtues
of contentment and domesticity thrive there? There is no spot to make
your nest except right out on the rim of the world; no spot for a walk
or a picnic except in the featureless open of a thousand miles of black
prairie--the roads black, straight lines of mud or dust through the
landscape; the streams slow, indolent channels of muddy water; the
woods, where there are woods, a dull assemblage of straight-trunked
trees; the sky a brazen dome that shuts down upon you; there are no
hills or mountains to lift it up. The prairie draws no strong distinct
lines against the sky; the horizon is vague and baffling. Ah, my
mountains are very old measured by the geologic calendar! Yet how
foreign to our experience or ways of thinking it seems to speak of
mountains as either old or young, as if birth and death apply to them
also. But such is the fact: mountains have their day, which day is the
geologist’s day of millions of years. My mountains were being carved
out of a great plateau by the elements while the prairies were still
under the sea, and while most of the Rocky Mountains and the Alps, and
the Himalayas were gestating in the vast earth-womb. In point of age,
these mountains beside the Catskills are like infants beside their
great-grandfathers. Yet it is a singular contradiction that in their
outlines old mountains look young, and young mountains look old. The
only youthful feature about young mountains is that they carry their
heads very high, and the only old feature about old mountains is that
they have a look of repose and calmness and peace. All the gauntness,
leanness, angularity, and crumbling decrepitude are with the young
mountains; all the smoothness, plumpness, graceful flowing lines of
youth are with the old mountains. Not till the rocks are clothed with
soil made out of their own decay are outlines softened and life made
possible. Youthful mountains like the Alps are battle-marked by the
elements, and their proud heads are continually being laid low by
frost, wind, and snow; they are scarred and broken by avalanches the
season through. Old mountains, such as the Appalachian range, wear an
armor of soil and verdure over their rounded forms on which the arrows
of time have little effect. The turbulent and noisy and stiff-necked
period of youth is far behind them.

Hundreds of dairy-farms nestle in the laps of the Catskills; and their
huge, grassy aprons, only a little wrinkled here and there, hold as
many grazing herds. Woodchuck Lodge is well upon the knee of one of
the ranges, and the fields we look upon are like green drapery lying
in graceful curves and broad, smooth masses over huge extended limbs.
Patches of maple forest here and there bend over a rounded arm or
shoulder, like a fur cape upon a woman. Here and there also huge,
weather-worn boulders rest upon the ground, dropped there by the moving
ice-sheet tens upon tens of thousands of years ago; and here and there
are streaks of land completely covered with smaller rocks wedged and
driven into the ground. It used to be told me in my youth that the
devil’s apron-string broke as he was carrying a load of these rocks
overhead, and let the mass down upon the ground. The farmers seldom
attempt to clear away these leavings of the devil.


IV

My interest in the birds is not as keen as it once was, but they are
still an asset in my life. I must live where I can hear the crows caw,
the robins sing, and the song-sparrow trill. If I can hear also the
partridge drum, and the owl hoot, and the chipmunk cluck in the still
days of autumn, so much the better. The crow is such a true countryman,
so much at home everywhere, so thoroughly in possession of the land,
going his way winter and summer in such noisy contentment and pride
of possession, that I cannot leave him out. The bird I missed most in
California was the crow. I missed his glistening coat in the fields,
his ebony form and hearty call in the sky.

One advantage of sleeping out of doors, as we do at Woodchuck Lodge,
is that you hear the day ushered in by the birds. Toward autumn you
hear the crows first, making proclamation in all directions that it
is time to be up and doing, and that life is a good thing. There is
not a bit of doubt or discouragement in their tones. They have enjoyed
the night, and they have a stout heart for the day. They proclaim
it as they fly over my porch at five o’clock in the morning; they
call it from the orchard, they bandy the message back and forth in
the neighboring fields; the air is streaked with cheery greetings and
raucous salutations. Toward the end of August, or in early September,
I witness with pleasure their huge mass-meetings or annual congress on
the pasture-hills or in the borders of the woods. Before that time,
you see them singly or in loose bands; but on some day in late summer,
or in early autumn, you see the clans assemble as if for some rare
festival and grand tribal discussion. A multitudinous cawing attracts
your attention when you look hillward and see a swarm of dusky forms
circling in the air, their voices mingling in one dissonant wave of
sound, while loose bands of other dusky forms come from all points of
the compass to join them. Presently many hundred crows are assembled,
alternately lighted upon the ground and silently walking about as if
feeding, or circling in the air, cawing as if they would be heard in
the next township. What they are doing or saying or settling, what
it all means, whether they meet by appointment in the human fashion,
whether it is a jubilee, a parliament, or a convention, I confess I
should like to know. But second thought tells me it is more likely
the gregarious instinct asserting itself after the scatterings and
separations of the summer. The time of the rookery is not far off, when
the inclement season will find all the crows from a large section of
the country massed at night in lonely tree-tops in some secluded wood.

These early noisy assemblages may be preliminary to the winter union of
the tribe. What an engrossing affair it seems to be with the crows, how
oblivious they appear to all else in the world! The world was made for
crows, and what concerns them is alone important. The meeting adjourns,
from time to time, from the fields to the woods, then back again, the
babel of voices waxing or waning according as they are on the wing
or at rest. Sometimes they meet several days in succession and then
disperse, going away in different directions and irregularly, singly or
in pairs and bands, as men do on similar occasions. No doubt in these
great reunions the crows experience some sort of feeling or emotion,
though one would doubtless err in ascribing to them anything like
human procedure. It is not a definite purpose, but a tribal instinct,
that finds expression in their jubilees.

The crow seems to have a great deal of business besides getting a
living. How social, how communicative he is--what picnics he has in
the fields and woods, how absolutely at home is he at all times and
places! I see them from my window flying by, by twos or threes or more,
on happy, holiday wings, sliding down the air, or diving and chasing
one another, or walking about the fields, their coats glistening in
the sun, the movement of their heads timing the movements of their
feet--what an air of independence and respectability and well-being
attends them always! The pedestrian crow! no more graceful walker ever
trod the turf. How different his bearing from that of a game-bird, and
from any of the falcon tribe. He never tries to hide like the former,
and he is never morose and sulky like the latter. He is gay and social
and in possession of the land; the world is his and he knows it, and
life is good.

I suppose that if his flesh were edible, like that of the gallinaceous
birds, he would have many more enemies and his whole demeanor would
be different. His complacent, self-satisfied air would vanish. He
would not advertise his comings and goings so loudly. He would be less
conspicuous in the landscape; his huge mass-meetings in September would
be more silent and withdrawn. Well, then, he would not be the crow--the
happy, devil-may-care creature as we now know him.

His little gaily dressed brother, the jay, does not tempt the sportsman
any more than the crow does, but he tempts other creatures--the owl
and squirrels, and maybe the hawks. Hence his tribe is much less. His
range is also more restricted, and his feeding habits are much less
miscellaneous. Only the woods and groves are his; the fields and rivers
he knows not.

The crow is a noisy bird. All his tribe are noisy, but the noise
probably has little psychic significance. The raven in Alaska appears
to soliloquize most of the time. This talkativeness of the crow tribe
is probably only a phase of crow life, and signifies no more and no
less than other phases--their color, their cunning, the flick of their
wings, and the like. The barn-yard fowls are loquacious also, but
probably their loquacity is not attended with much psychic activity.

In the mornings of early summer the out-of-door sleeper is more likely
to be awakened by the song-birds. In June and early July they strike
up about half-past three. “When it is light enough to see that all is
well around you, it is light enough to sing,” they carol. “Before the
early worm is stirring, we will celebrate the coming of day.” During
the summer the song-sparrows have been the first to nudge me in the
morning with their songs. One little sparrow especially would perch on
the telephone-wire above the roadside and go through his repertoire
of five songs with great regularity and joyousness. He will long be
associated in my mind with those early, fragrant, summer dawns. One of
his five songs fell so easily into words that I had only to call the
attention of my friends to it to have them hear the words that I heard:
“If, if, if you please, Mr. Durkee,”--the last word a little prolonged,
and with a rising inflection. Another was not quite so well expressed
by these words: “Please, please, speak to me, sweetheart.” The third
one suggested this sentence: “Then, then, Fitzhugh says, yes, sir!”
The fourth one was something like this: “If, if, if you seize her, do
it quick.” The fifth one baffled me to suggest by words. But in August
his musical enthusiasm began to decline. His different songs lost their
distinctiveness and emphasis. It was as if they had faded and become
blurred with the progress of the season.

The little birds are insignificant and unobtrusive on the great
background of nature, yet if one learns to distinguish them and to
love them, their songs may become a sort of accompaniment to one’s
daily life. In May, while I was much occupied in repairing and making
habitable an old farm-house, a solitary, mourning, ground-warbler,
which one rarely sees or hears, came and tarried about the place for
a week or ten days, singing most of each forenoon in the orchard
and garden about the house, and giving to my occupation a touch of
something rare and sylvan. He lent to the apple-trees, which I had
known as a boy, an interest that the boy knew not. Then he went away,
whether on the arrival of his mate or not I do not know.

[Illustration: Photograph, copyright, by Alvin Langdon Coburn.
Color-tone made for ~The Century~ by Henry Davidson

    JOHN BURROUGHS
]

A butternut-tree stands across the road in front of Woodchuck Lodge.
One season the red squirrels stored the butternuts in the wall of one
of the upper rooms of the unoccupied house, to which they gained access
through a hole in the siding. When we moved in, in the summer, the
squirrels soon became uneasy, and one day one of them began removing
the butternuts, not to some other granary or place of safety, but
to the grass and dry leaves on the ground in the orchard. He was
unwittingly planting them by the act of hiding them. The automatic
character of much animal behavior, the extent to which their lives flow
in fixed channels, was well seen in the behavior of this squirrel.
His procedure in transferring the nuts from his den in the house to
the ground in the orchard, a distance of probably one hundred feet,
was as definite and regular as that of a piece of machinery. He would
rush up and over the roof of the house with a nut in his mouth, by
those sharp, spasmodic sallies so characteristic of the movements of
the red squirrel, down the corner of the house to the ground by the
same jerky movements, across some rubbish and open ground in the same
manner, alert and cautious, up the corner of a small building ten feet
high and eight long, over its roof, with arched tail and spread feet,
snickering and jerking, down to the ground on the other side, dashing
to the trunk of an apple-tree ten feet away, up it a few feet to make
an observation, then down to the ground again, and out into the grass,
where he would carefully hide his nut, and cover it with leaves. Then
back to the house again by precisely the same route and with precisely
the same movements, and bring another nut. Day after day I saw him thus
engaged till apparently all the nuts were removed. He probably did not
know he was planting butternut-trees for other red squirrels, but that
was what he was blindly doing. The crows and jays carry away and plant
acorns and chestnuts in the same blind way, thereby often causing a
pine forest to be succeeded by these trees.

The red squirrel is only an irregular storer of nuts in the autumn.
In this respect he stands half-way between the chipmunk and the gray
squirrel, one of which regularly lays up winter stores and the other
none at all.

How diverse are the ways of nature in reaching the same end! Both the
chipmunk and the woodchuck lay up stores against the needs of winter,
the latter in the shape of fat upon his own ribs, and the former in
the shape of seeds and nuts in his den in the ground; and I fancy that
one of them is no more conscious of what he is doing than the other.
Animals do not take conscious thought of the future; it is as if
something in their organization took thought for them. One November,
seized with the cruel desire to go to the bottom of the question of
the chipmunk’s winter stores, I dug out one after he had got his house
settled for the season. I found his den three feet below the surface
of the ground--just beyond the frostline--and containing nearly four
quarts of various seeds, most of them the little black grains of wild
buckwheat--two hundred and fifty thousand of them, I estimated--all
cleaned of their husks as neatly as if done by some patent machine.

How many perilous journeys along stone walls and through weedy tangles
this store of seeds represented! One would say at least a thousand
trips, beset by many dangers from hawks and cats and weasels and other
enemies of the little rodent.

The chipmunk is provident; he is a wise housekeeper, but one can hardly
envy him those three or four months of inaction in the pitchy darkness
of his subterranean den. His mate is not with him, and evidently the
oblivion of the hibernating sleep, like that of the woodchuck and of
certain mice, is not his. The life of the red and gray squirrels, who
are more or less active all winter, seems preferable. They lay up no
stores and are no doubt often cold and hungry, but the light of day
and the freedom of the snow and of the tree-tops are theirs. Abundant
stores are a good thing for both man and beast, but action, adventure,
struggle are better.



THE FOREIGN TRADE OF THE UNITED STATES

(“THE TRADE OF THE WORLD” PAPERS)

BY JAMES DAVENPORT WHELPLEY

Author of “The Commercial Strength of Great Britain,” “Germany’s
Foreign Trade,” etc.


Queen Elizabeth was the founder of the school of “dollar diplomacy,”
and to this day her memory is revered by the merchant gilds of London.
This great queen paid much attention to the welfare of industry at
home, and sent trade adventurers abroad to open avenues of foreign
commerce; and in the degree with which the rulers and governments of
all lands have observed the necessities and development of the material
interests of their respective countries have nations flourished or
marked time.

Through a peculiar misuse of the term, the foreign policy of the United
States has been termed “dollar diplomacy,” whereas, partly because of
national tradition and partly through lack of skill and experience,
the diplomacy of America has less relation to the extension of foreign
commerce than that of any other great modern nation. American diplomacy
has been governed more by altruistic ideas, the protection of foreign
peoples against themselves and others, the elimination of money
tributes and indemnities, the recognition of new governments without
conditions, and arbitration of international troubles as a neutral
nation. In these and in many other ways America has played her part
in various international controversies; but in the general scramble
for selfish advantage in all these affairs she has taken little or
no successful part. Yet American diplomacy has been called that of
the “dollar,” and has been credited in the minds of many of her own
citizens, as well as by foreigners, with a mercenary basis.

The people of a nation have it within their power to advance the
interests of their foreign commerce in two ways: one by intelligent
legislation at home, and the other by intelligent diplomacy abroad.
The shipment of merchandise from one country to another means to the
selling nation a foreign market for the raw material, the employment
of labor to the extent of from thirty to ninety per cent. of the
selling value of the goods, and the payment for this material and
labor by foreigners in money or its equivalent. It is a clear gain
in every phase of the transaction. There is an old frontier adage,
which originated in the early days of the Western boom, to the effect
that “outside money makes the camp.” It is a homely expression that
summarizes the advantages of an export of two billion dollars’ worth
of goods with a comprehensiveness equal to its original application.
It is not too much to say that anything in the shape of legislation or
of increased facilities which assists the outward flow of the products
of labor is of unquestioned advantage to the producing nation. An
unnatural, though perhaps comprehensible, attitude of suspicion toward
successful export has come about in the United States. This has led to
hostility toward special rail and water-rates for export, lower prices
for bulk foreign business, niggardliness of national expenditures
for diplomatic representation and for the work of the Department of
Commerce and its foreign-trade bureau. It might almost be said that the
great and growing figures of foreign trade, issued triumphantly every
year by the government statisticians, have been achieved despite the
obstructions placed in the path of their progress.

The growth of those figures in their largest aspect is due to organized
private effort, the methods and operations of which are a sealed
book to the government official or the general public, and which
unfortunately have shared in the recent and sweeping condemnation
of the business methods of all big corporations. There has been no
sifting of the wheat from the chaff, the good from the evil, with most
deplorable results, for which both public and corporations are to
blame. The natural result has been that in attempting to regulate the
home activities of “big business” their foreign activities have been
hindered and even checked. Lost ground in foreign directions is more
difficult to regain than at home, for certain artificial and natural
barriers always exist, which favor home markets, while foreign trade
meets well-equipped rivals at least on equal terms, and often with a
handicap.

In the year 1913 the people of the United States are entering upon a
radical change in the national attitude toward domestic and foreign
commerce. There is a partial reversal of policy toward home industry;
there is also an important experiment afoot in diplomacy. It is too
early to say just how radical these changes will be in the final
reckoning, or what may be the outcome. It is quite possible that
increased freedom of trade may bring good results at home; and if
Congress recognizes the need of a commercial diplomacy auxiliary
to that of the litterateur, the reformer, the peace-advocate, the
missionary, and the general uplifter of mankind, and the administration
provides competent, permanent, and resident commercial diplomats or
attachés to all important American missions, a threatened disadvantage
may be turned into a victory. At present, however, American foreign
trade is the foot-ball of national politics.

Private enterprise, with its able American representatives abroad, is
the only real guard against serious damage possessed by this great
asset of the nation. The advance of American foreign commerce may be
likened to a more or less friendly conflict with an allied army of
foreign competitors. This is specially true of American trade, for it
is generally a new-comer, and is regarded with dislike and antagonism
to such an extent as to induce combinations of rivals to resist its
advance.

The strongest efforts of American diplomacy should be directed to
Russia and China to bring about a commercial entente between the
United States and these two countries. The future of China as a market
for foreign enterprise and merchandise will develop slowly, it is
true, but the results will in time prove stupendous. In view of this,
firm foundations should be laid for the structure of international
trade, which will inevitably develop in the course of years. In the
case of Russia there is no time to be lost. Here is a great area of
wonderfully productive territory inhabited by scores of millions of
people. Education is spreading among these people, and their wants
are multiplying. Such foreign trade as has found a lodgment there
is of the kind America wants, and will need more and more as her
productiveness increases and the oversupply of home markets becomes
more noticeable. England, Germany, France, the Low Countries, and those
of Scandinavia are losing no time. Political, financial, commercial,
and industrial bonds are being forged with all possible rapidity to
this awakening nation of industrious people. American interests in
Russia are already large, but their existence is due to private and
not national initiative. As a nation we have not only done much to
discourage the betterment of intercourse with Russia, but have even
actually threatened the existence of American interests therein by
inviting antagonism instead of friendly coöperation. It is not too late
to remedy this unfortunate attitude, but the situation needs prompt,
wise, and fearless handling by those responsible for the foreign policy
of the United States.

American foreign commerce rests on a basis of international friendship.
Once established, the needs of the respective countries determine the
extent of international trading, modified as it must be, however, by
conditions of transportation and such fiscal restrictions as may be
imposed. Leaving the matter of price and quality to be dealt with by
the industrial exporter, as must be the case, the influence of the
Government remains as the most important outside factor in determining
the prosperity of this trade. Under the control of the Government
come the treaty-making power, with its bid for favorable reception
of American products; the official attitude toward facilities for the
manufacturing of exports and toward transportation; and assistance in
gathering information for exporters. The important, but more technical,
details of foreign commerce can safely be left to private enterprise in
its effort toward profitable trading. There is no doubt as to the good
intention of government officials and of those who vote the money for
their work: it is, of course, that American consumers shall benefit.

There are two points of view, however, well illustrated in the attitude
of the British and the United States Government, respectively, as
to the direction in which governmental efforts may be extended in
the furtherance of foreign trade. The British Government pays great
attention to the diplomatic end of the business, and lets private
enterprise follow up any advantage gained. The United States Government
spends vastly more money and effort upon the details of trade, but in
many cases unfortunately attempts to build upon a shifting and insecure
foundation, in that the relations of the two countries may be weak
diplomatically, or there may be lack of knowledge or understanding as
to the general conditions to be met. For some American consul to inform
American manufacturers through the State Department of great openings
for the sale of goods does not mean necessarily that these goods can
be sold; for in some cases American competition would find itself
hopelessly handicapped by the superior trade diplomacy and knowledge
of its adversary, thus nullifying any possible superiority in goods or
prices.

From a practical point of view, to analyze American foreign trade in
detail would be an endless and useless task. It has grown to be what it
is through exports of food-stuffs and raw materials, followed naturally
by the surplus products of manufacturing. Of imports the same may be
said, reversing the order of the progression. The land furnished the
material, and labor came at its call from all parts of the world. The
logical result of plenty of material, a constantly increasing supply
of labor, combined with national ingenuity and a climate conducive to
the development of nervous energy, is the production of more or less
finished merchandise in such quantities as to keep half the ships of
the world in daily use carrying it to and fro. Whether governmental
intervention has helped or hindered has been the subject of controversy
since this commerce began, and will continue until commerce ends; but
out of it all must come a certain amount of wisdom, gained through
experience, which should be of practical benefit to those on whom rests
the responsibility of official coöperation with private adventure in
foreign lands.

The three great foreign trading nations of the world are England,
Germany, and the United States, in the order named. In 1912 the foreign
commerce of England amounted to a little less than $6,000,000,000,
that of Germany to more than $4,600,000,000, and that of the United
States to nearly $4,200,000,000. The total foreign trade of these three
countries is proportioned approximately between imports and exports as
follows:

                 England        Germany          United
                                                 States

    Imports    60 per cent.    54 per cent.    43 per cent.
    Exports    40  “    “      46  “    “      57  “    “

These figures mean that the United States is still a debtor nation.
If the imports of gold brought the imports level with the exports in
value, which they do not, but far from it, the figures would indicate
that the American people were getting cash for their goods instead of
merchandise, as would be the case if merchandise exports and imports
were equal. The most considerable factors that annually balance this
trade are the payments of interest and principal on American securities
held abroad, remittances by American immigrants to foreign lands, money
spent abroad by American tourists, and payments made to foreign-owned
vessels for freight-charges on goods carried to and from America. There
are several other factors in this balance, but the four named are the
most considerable. In the case of England and Germany, as well as many
other prosperous countries whose foreign-trade sheets show an excess
of imports over exports, this excess represents the profit on trading
abroad, and the inflow of returns upon capital invested abroad. In
other words, these nations are creditor, or money-lending, communities.
The imports of all money-lending countries, like France, England,
Germany, the Netherlands, and others, considerably exceed the exports,
while the exports of all borrowing, developing, or unequally developed
countries, like Russia, the United States, Argentina, Rumania, and many
others, exceed the imports, as the foreign investor must be paid his
interest, and the only source of money for such payment is eventually
either the product of the soil or of industry.

One hundred years ago, when the population of the United States
was about seven millions, the American people imported annually
considerably less than $100,000,000 worth of merchandise, less than ten
per cent. of which came in free of duty. In 1912, when the population
was more than ninety millions, the importations amounted to nearly
$1,700,000,000, of which about fifty-four per cent. entered duty free.
The average ad valorem rate of import duty on dutiable goods one
hundred years ago was about forty per cent., and on the total imports,
dutiable and free, it was about thirty-five per cent. In 1912 the
average ad valorem on dutiable goods was about the same as one hundred
years before, and on the total imports, both dutiable and free, it was
about nineteen per cent. The progress of American foreign trade in one
hundred years is recorded as follows:

    _Year_   _Imports_      _Exports_    _Total Foreign
                                             Trade_

    1810    $85,000,000    $67,000,000   $152,000,000
    1830     63,000,000     72,000,000    135,000,000
    1850    174,000,000    144,000,000    318,000,000
    1870    436,000,000    393,000,000    829,000,000
    1890    790,000,000    858,000,000  1,648,000,000
    1912  1,818,000,000  2,363,000,000  4,181,000,000

In one hundred years the population has increased more than thirteen
times, and the foreign trade more than twenty-five times. In 1810 the
per capita foreign trade of America was about $21, and in 1912 it was
nearly $40. These latter figures are really much more significant than
appears at first glance, for the population of America, as estimated
in 1810, was composed of a larger proportion of effective producing
units than in 1912. Few but white people were counted, the percentage
of women and children was smaller, and virtually every white American
was self-supporting. The estimate of to-day includes, therefore, a
much larger percentage of human beings who, though counted as units
in population, are not so potential in the material activities of
the nation. The $40 per capita of 1912 is much more significant of
the growth of American foreign interests, therefore, than merely the
increase from the $21 of 1810 appears.

Speaking generally, the foreign trade of the United States has
doubled every twenty years since 1830, regardless of wars, changes of
government, administrative policies, the rise or decline of shipping
interests, the increasing power of foreign competition, or the opening
and development of competitive territory in other parts of the world.
The development of industry in a country is usually written on the
character of the imports and exports, and the changes that take place
in the proportions of raw material and manufactured goods are most
significant. In the case of the United States, these are strikingly
shown in the more or less shifting percentages of a long period in
the growth of the nation--a period fully covering the time the United
States has figured to any marked degree in the economic affairs of the
world. In the last eighty-two years American foreign trade has been
roughly classified by percentages as follows:


_IMPORTS_

                              _1830_  _1870_  _1912_
    Crude food-stuffs and
      food animals             11.77   12.41   13.93
    Food-stuffs partly or
      wholly manufactured      15.39   22.03   11.86
    Crude manufactured
      material                  6.72   12.76   33.63
    Manufactures for use
      in manufacture            8.22   12.75   17.77
    Manufactures ready for
      consumption              56.97   39.82   21.78
    Miscellaneous                .93     .23    1.03
                              ------  ------  ------
                              100.00  100.00  100.00

The most noticeable features of the statement given above are that
the importation of crude food-stuffs and food animals remain about
the same in their relation to total imports, that the importation of
partly manufactured food-stuffs has decreased, that the importation
of materials for use in manufacture has enormously increased, and
that the importation of manufactured goods ready for consumption has
decreased by nearly two thirds. All of these figures, both of imports
and exports, are based on values and not on quantities. The latter
would be the most accurate measure of progress, as prices have changed
materially--either fallen or increased, mostly the latter--on many
important staples; but it would be virtually impossible to consider
these matters from a point of view other than that of values, where
everything is grouped under an inclusive total, and in all probability
the change that might follow a quantitative analysis, rather than one
based on values, would not materially alter any conclusions that might
be drawn. The changes in American exports during the same period were
by percentages as follows:


_EXPORTS_

                               _1830_   _1870_   _1912_
    Crude food-stuffs and
      food animals              4.65    11.12     4.60
    Food-stuffs partly or
      wholly manufactured      16.32    13.53    14.69
    Crude manufactured
      material                 62.34    56.64    33.31
    Manufactures for use
      in manufacture            7.04     3.66    16.04
    Manufactures ready
      for consumption           9.34    14.96    30.98
    Miscellaneous                .31      .09      .38
                              ------   ------   ------
                              100.00   100.00   100.00

The noticeable features of the record of American exports for the last
eighty-two years are that the export of food-stuffs has decreased
rather than increased in proportion to business in other commodities;
that the export of crude manufactured material has greatly decreased,
and in fact, with the exception of cotton, has become a negligible
quantity; and that the export of manufactured goods ready for
consumption has increased enormously. Exports of cotton are now the
basis of American export of raw material. Whereas the total production
of cotton in the United States in 1830 was only about 1,000,000 bales,
in 1912 the United States furnished nearly 11,000,000 bales for export,
valued at $625,000,000, amounting to fully five sixths of the value
of all raw material for manufacturing purposes exported by the United
States in that year.

The export of raw cotton in the case of the United States does not mean
any appreciable backwardness of home manufacture. The importations of
manufactured cotton goods are decreasing annually, so far as cloths are
concerned. In 1912 less than $8,000,000 in cotton cloth was imported
from abroad. The heaviest importation of cotton goods was in laces
and such other things as are specialties of foreign manufacture, in
many cases hereditary trades, or trades dependent upon cheap, trained
female labor, such as is not available in America. America uses
nearly 6,000,000 bales of home-grown cotton every year in her own
factories, and supplies not only the home market with manufactured
goods, but manufactures more than $30,000,000 worth for foreign sale,
in competition with the great spinning and manufacturing countries
of Europe. The growing of cotton is not a raw-material industry in
the strict sense of the word, for, owing to peculiarities of climate,
certain features of the American labor supply, and the great amount
of money this staple crop brings from abroad and distributes in
non-manufacturing districts, it possesses a peculiar and great economic
value to the country. Coal, tobacco, petroleum, and timber are the
more important of the crude materials exported from the United States
in addition to cotton; but the total value of all these is, as stated,
about one sixth of the whole.

The total value of the exports of domestic merchandise from the United
States in 1912 was about $2,363,000,000. As stated, cotton stands at
the head of the list. The iron and steel industry comes next; the
farmers of the United States furnish the third largest amount of
merchandise for export; and machinery of all kinds, oils, paper, fruit,
and chemicals, are the leaders in American export. The most interesting
changes that have taken place in American foreign trade in the last few
years are those that indicate certain possibilities of the future; in
fact, they are in a way prophetic of what is to happen in the economic
life of the nation. In 1902 93,000 head of cattle were imported, and in
1912 the importations numbered 325,000. In 1902 about 327,000 head of
cattle were exported, and in 1912 only about 46,000. This means that
the American people have nearly reached the point where the home market
absorbs all cattle grown in the country, and that in future other
peoples, who in the past have been dependent upon the United States for
their beef supply, must look elsewhere. The exportation of bread-stuffs
has decreased materially, while importation has quadrupled, thus
telling a story of shortage in food-supply, as did the change in the
cattle movement. This same shortage is shown in like changes in the
trade in meat products, dairy products, eggs, and nearly every other
variety of staple food.

The United States produces half the copper of the world, but both
exports and imports of this metal are increasing, showing that other
countries are sending copper to this country for treatment. In 1902,
America imported 135,000,000 pounds of tin plates, and in 1912 only
4,500,000 pounds. The exports of tin plates increased during the same
period from 3,500,000 pounds to 183,000,000 pounds. Iron and steel
show a marked decline in imports and an enormous gain in exports. The
American people are no longer importing automobiles to any extent,
but are increasing their sales abroad, and in 1912 sold $28,000,000
worth to foreign buyers. The importations of coffee virtually hold
their own, amounting in 1912 to nearly 1,000,000,000 pounds; but owing
to increased prices, the value of this importation is nearly double
that of 1902. The exports of the iron and steel industry of the United
States, including the manufactures of these materials as well, now
amount to about $1,000,000 per day. Europe takes the higher class of
goods, and Canada and South America take the rails, structural iron
and steel, heavy castings, and other like products that constitute the
heavy tonnage of the industry.

The countries taking their largest proportionate share of their imports
from the United States are: Haiti, 69 per cent.; Honduras, 68 per
cent.; Canada, 62 per cent.; Santo Domingo, 61 per cent.; Panama, 56
per cent.; Mexico, 55 per cent.; Cuba, 53 per cent.; and Costa Rica 51
per cent. England takes 17.3 per cent. of her imports from the United
States, Germany 13.3 per cent., and France 8.6 per cent. Of the South
American countries, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru take from
20 to 30 per cent. of their imports from the United States, while
others take smaller percentages, ranging from the 13.8 of Argentina
and the 12.8 of Brazil to the 2.8 per cent. of Bolivia. Other countries
draw very slightly upon the United States for their imports, notably
China, which takes only 5 per cent.; India, 3 per cent.; Morocco, less
than 1 per cent.; Servia, 1 per cent.; and about the same for Turkey
and Rumania. The great markets for American products at the present,
in total value of goods sold to the peoples of these countries, are
England, purchasing as she does from America goods to the amount of
$572,000,000; Canada, $285,000,000; Germany, $283,000,000; France,
$119,000,000; the Netherlands, $117,000,000; Italy, $70,000,000; Cuba,
$57,000,000; Mexico, $56,000,000; Russia, $52,000,000; Austria-Hungary,
Argentina, and Belgium, between $45,000,000 and $50,000,000 each, and
Australia, Brazil, and Japan, between $27,000,000 and $32,000,000 each.

Of the export trade of the United States, 60 per cent. goes to Europe,
23 per cent. to North America, 6 per cent. to South America, 5 per
cent. to Asia, 4 per cent. to Oceanica, and 2 per cent. to Africa.
American producers send more than 90 per cent. of their entire foreign
shipments, or more than $2,000,000,000 worth of goods, to nineteen
countries, and the remaining ten per cent. covers the trade with all
the rest of the world. England buys about 26 per cent. of the total
American export; Canada 15 per cent.; Germany 13 per cent.; France 7
per cent.; the Netherlands 4 per cent.; Italy, Cuba, and Belgium, each
3 per cent.; Mexico, Japan, Argentina, Australia, Russia, and Brazil,
each 2 per cent.; and Spain, Austria-Hungary, Panama, China, and the
Philippines, each about 1 per cent.

Official figures of imports and exports are useful as indications from
which deductions may safely be drawn, but they are not an accurate
record of the trade relations of any two countries. In some cases the
indirect trade of the United States with certain countries is much
larger than custom-house figures would indicate, in that American
goods are purchased by other nations, who act as distributors or
intermediaries in conducting the foreign trade of the world. This
is very largely so in American trade with England. That country is
credited with purchases of American goods far in excess of the needs
of the British people. These goods are bought by English firms whose
dealings are largely with other foreign countries, and by them sold
to their customers on the Continent of Europe, in Asia, Oceanica,
or elsewhere. A striking example of this is the American trade with
Russia. It is impossible to state exactly the value of American goods
which in time find their way to the Russian consumer, but it is vastly
in excess of the amount of trade between the United States and Russia,
or $52,380,000, as given in government statistics. In the official
statement of exports of American cotton, Russia is credited by the
Department of Commerce figures as receiving 64,590 bales, valued at
$3,796,867.

American consuls in Russia, and the cotton experts of that country,
estimate that Russia consumes annually nearly $50,000,000 worth of
American raw cotton, an amount nearly equal to the total export to
Russia of all American goods, according to United States government
figures. That the government figures are misleading is due to the fact
that they are figures of direct business only; and direct trade between
the United States and Russia is, for geographical, transportation, and
financial reasons, more or less hampered. American cotton is bought
for Russia in London, Hamburg, Antwerp, Copenhagen, and other great
European markets. The exports are credited in the United States to the
ports mentioned, and while the ultimate destination does not affect
the totals of American foreign trade, it does lead to wide-spread
confusion as to the comparative value of the various foreign markets
for American products. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of
Russia, a country with which the United States has recently had some
difficulty in the matter of a treaty of mutual trade and friendship.
Judging from United States government statistics, American trade
relations with Russia might be regarded as almost negligible; whereas
in fact they are already of the greatest value and importance, to say
nothing of the brilliant prospects of possible trade expansion in the
near future. Even the government figures show a direct sale to Russia
of nearly $50,000,000 worth of American goods, deducting the direct
sales of cotton. With a known consumption of $50,000,000 worth of
American cotton, this gives at least $100,000,000 as the value of
American sales to Russia. Cotton, however, is not the only merchandise
sold indirectly, and if other goods are handled in the same way to an
equal amount, it is possible that the annual sales of American goods to
Russia amount to nearly $200,000,000, or four times the amount allowed
by United States official figures.

This correction would give Russia fourth instead of ninth place in
the list of great buyers of American goods. This is the most striking
illustration of the deceptive feature of government trade-statistics
in determining the order of importance of foreign buyers of American
goods, though there are other countries which suffer in the estimation
of exporters for the same reason. As has been already stated, it was
peculiarly unfortunate that this was so in the case of Russia, for
those who, for reasons of their own, favored national retaliation
against that country through mutual trade relations used United States
government statistics to support their argument, and the American
public naturally accepted these data at their apparent value. A final
and accurate determination of the value of each foreign country as a
market for American merchandise, a laborious and almost impossible
task, would undoubtedly lead to interesting and unexpected results.
It would not only make many changes in the list of the most important
customers, but would immediately suggest possibilities of more direct
trading, which would stimulate American rail, shipping, and financial
interests, increase profits by cutting out the middleman, and in the
end give added stimulus to American foreign trade.

One of the most serious difficulties that confront the American
Government in its dealings with foreign nations is the inelasticity
of the American tariff laws. The most sensible and scientific tariff
law which the United States could have,--allowing that the principle
of tariff for revenue and protection is to prevail,--is such rate
of duty as may be deemed advisable, all things considered; an
arrangement whereby a surtax could be imposed upon goods from countries
discriminating against American merchandise, and a trading margin
for treaty-making purposes, ranging from the normal rate of duty,
as set forth in the customs laws, to absolute free trade between
the treaty-making powers. There is little or no hope that such a law
can prevail or will be formally advocated by any political party in
power; but it is a hopeful sign that it has been seriously suggested
and discussed by men prominent in the councils of the nation. That
tariff laws will in time be formulated on that basis is likely, but
such a statement reaches further into the domain of prophecy than is
apparently warranted in the present temper of actual legislation.
There is a simple truth, apparently often forgotten or ignored, and
it is that to give is necessary, to be able to take, in all dealings
between nations, as much as between individuals. All trading is in
the end a compromise, presumably mutually beneficent and equally so.
It rests with the wit and ability of the trader to see that he at
least comes out even. It would be interesting to know just how far
the late President McKinley intended to go in his advocacy of better
foreign-trade relations for the United States had not his tragic death
cut short his program. The last speech he made at Buffalo was crowded
with significance of what might come later. It was in a sense as though
he were only preparing the way for an important development of American
fiscal policy in connection with foreign trade. Those who were in his
closest confidence in the days just prior to his death have knowledge
of an evolution that had taken place in his mind--a mind that had given
more thorough thought and study to tariff matters than almost any
other in America at that time. They firmly believe that at the moment
the life of President McKinley ended, he had planned a pronunciamento
in favor of concessions to American foreign-trade interests which
would have startled the country, put the Republican party in line with
the mass of the voters who desired tariff revision, and of which his
Buffalo speech strongly advocating reciprocity in commerce was only the
opening paragraph. Had he lived, this one thing might have made a vast
difference in the subsequent fortunes of the Republican party; but when
he died his place was taken by a man whose marvelous activities did not
include an interest in the tariff. In fact, as he frankly expressed it,
the subject “bored” him, as it does many others, unfortunate for the
country as this may be.

The American diplomatic service has passed through some remarkable
phases in the last twenty-five years. A few years ago it was quite
frankly used as a means for rewarding political services to the party
in power. No good could possibly come out of such a system. There were
some exceptions to the general rule that American ambassadors and
ministers were either indifferent to or else ignorant of the needs of
the United States in international politics, but they were few and far
between. More recently men have been selected for the most important
places by reason of their wealth and social standing. Some of those
selected made excellent representatives, but owing to the shortness of
their terms of office they had no more than familiarized themselves
with their surroundings than they were either recalled or found it
expedient to return to their native land.

President Wilson has apparently established a new plan, or rather
revived an old one. He is selecting his foreign representatives
from the class known in Europe as the “intellectuals.” This policy
is adopted at a highly critical time in the history of the foreign
trading of the United States, and at a time when virtually all the
great international questions and controversies are those of respective
economic advantage, one nation over another. It comes also at a
time when the great commercial and industrial rivals of the United
States are pursuing a different policy, one which is perhaps worth
considering. England and Germany to a notable degree, and France,
Russia, and some others of the great Powers to a sufficient degree
to be noticeable, are training men for all diplomatic positions, and
promotions are made even to the highest places almost entirely upon the
merits and suitability of the candidates. The young man who enters the
foreign office service of England or Germany in a subordinate position
has within his power, if he develop accordingly, to become in time an
ambassador to some important country. He is thoroughly tried out, step
by step, as consul and minister before the highest rank is given to
him. He is moved about from one part of the world to another until he
becomes in truth a cosmopolitan not only in thought and habit, but
in language and knowledge. The most serious part of the education of
these men is, first, the economics of their own country, and, secondly,
the economics of the country to which they are to be accredited.
This education is practical and not theoretical. This is true to so
great an extent that, when a technical matter of trade enters into
a controversy between the two state departments, the minister or
ambassador is often found fully qualified to fight the battle himself
in aid of the material interests of the country he represents. There
are no more practical men anywhere than a majority of these who now
represent the progressive industrial countries of Europe as foreign
ministers or ambassadors. This particular feature of their equipment
for the office is not unnecessarily paraded, however, for their social
and political qualifications are more in the public eye. It is in the
private talks at the State Department at Washington, in London, Berlin,
Paris, St. Petersburg, or elsewhere, that their real fighting strength
is disclosed. It is not a question of private fortune with them, for
their governments remove any anxiety on that score by an adequate and
even abundant allowance of funds not only for salaries, but for housing
and maintenance. The British ambassador to Washington receives more
in salary and expense allowance than does the President of the United
States in proportion to the necessary expenditures of his office.

To the American manufacturer, deeply engaged with his cost of
production and the filling of orders, it may appear that too much
stress is laid upon the function of foreign diplomacy in the success of
American business abroad; but it will not be necessary to give emphasis
to its importance with those Americans who have already pioneered their
business into remote parts of the world. They know, through bitter
experience, how inefficiency in an American embassy or legation can
hinder and even destroy the greater possibilities for American success.

At present, and for years past, the fortunes of American foreign
trading depend, so far as diplomacy is concerned, upon the character,
ability, common sense, and adroitness of the individual government
representative abroad rather than upon the Government or the system as
a whole. Within the year 1912 we had the two extremes: in one country
an able, intelligent, and practical man, working persistently for weeks
to bring about a commercial entente cordiale between the United States
and the country in which he was stationed; and in another country
American interests were forced to appeal to English or other foreign
representatives to help them through a time of stress, because the
American representative considered things commercial as outside of
the province of his labors. Both of these men are out of office now
not because one was useful and the other useless, but because of the
system, or lack of system, which required their places for others.

An English minister who was stationed in an important country a few
years ago failed when there to secure certain large contracts for
English builders. This same minister is still in the service, but is
now kicking his heels in an unimportant place, where what he does or
does not is of little consequence. A certain German ambassador was
recently denied the place of his choice because he had done so well
where he was that his services were still needed at that point; but
when the crisis has passed, he will get his reward all the more surely.

The day will come in America when it will be realized that a nation
can well afford to cheapen for export by every means in its power,
and that such cheapness does not necessarily mean discrimination
against the home consumer. There are few signs of the dawn of this day
at the moment, and it will come only when the ultimate and general
overproduction of manufactures forces the attention of the whole nation
upon the need of still greater markets elsewhere. There is one comfort
for the people of the United States, possessed in no such degree by
any other nation at the present time or for several generations to
come, and that is, the abounding possibilities of the North American
continent in its natural resources, and the amazing vitality and
resourcefulness of its inhabitants.

[Illustration: LAÏLA, FROM MESOPOTAMIA

NEW-MADE AMERICANS

A Few Types of Foreign Women Sketched, in New York, from the Life

By W. T. Benda]

[Illustration: ZOBÉIDA, FROM SYRIA]

[Illustration: MARGHERITA, FROM ITALY]

[Illustration: JENNY, FROM CANADA

ULANA, FROM POLAND

DOLORES, FROM SPAIN

KALINKA, FROM BULGARIA

ALICE, FROM ENGLAND

SARAH, FROM SOUTHERN RUSSIA]



[Illustration]



THE DEVIL, HIS DUE

BY PHILIP CURTISS


Now, Furniss was a devil. I mean that exactly, and if I might, I should
like to explain it, for I wish to draw a distinction between the
devils and the merely devilish. If argot had not spoiled the phrase, I
might have said that he was a regular devil, as distinguished from the
volunteer, the territorial, the occasional, or the would-be devil.

The distinction between a regular devil and one who is merely devilish
is exactly the distinction between the professional and the amateur
in all occupations. The devilish do things purely for the éclat of
the doing, while the devils do them because they want the things
done. A professional carpenter carpenters in order that he may have
a table, to be used for his varying ends; an amateur uses his tools
merely for the sake of the chips. That an occasional amateur displays
unusual brilliancy in the accomplishment has nothing to do with the
distinction. The real devils, moreover, regard the devilish purely
with a mild amusement, if they regard them at all. Their only vexation
is that of professional craftsmen at the “pin-money” workers, whose
spasmodic efforts cut into legitimate trade.

The most powerful proof which I can bring to the statement that Furniss
was a real devil, however, is the one that he did not regard himself as
a devil at all. On the contrary, he regarded himself as an industrious
citizen, fairly successful in the accomplishments of his ends. As
a career, devilishness did not interest him in the slightest. Its
material rewards were all that he sought.

Now, at midnight, on the thirtieth of October, Furniss, with the best
intentions in the world, was standing in a group in the ball-room of
the Fitchly Country Club, harmlessly singing “Auld Lang Syne.” At one
minute past twelve the engineer turned out all the lights, having
standing instructions to do so, for Fitchly was a goodly town, and on
this particular night the steward had forgotten to make an exception.
The result was that which usually occurs when the lights are turned
out on a perfectly respectable and usually sane gathering of grown men
and women--every bit of asininity in the mob swarmed to the surface.
There were cat calls, screams, and suggestive labials, while all the
naturally executive began groping toward the door and the steward.

What the others did, however, did not matter. It was generally
understood that they were merely devilish, and no score was to be
counted against them. Furniss, on the other hand, played everything
for stakes, and his tally had to meet with a reckoning. For, when the
lights left their sudden wave of darkness on the mixed and rollicking
group, Furniss quietly and modestly followed the promptings of his
profession, turned slowly, gathered the nearest woman into his arms,
and thoroughly and deliberately kissed her. Who she was he had not the
slightest idea, nor did he, indeed, have any very lively curiosity.
The act was purely professional, perfectly methodic, as automatic
and unemotional as a response in a ritual. Thus, despite Furniss’s
known make-up, the fact would have passed unnoticed had it not been
for two things, first, that, owing to the deliberateness of Furniss
and the quickness of the engineer, the lights went on again before
he was through, and the second that the woman thus discovered in his
arms was the only one in the room whom he would have had the slightest
reason for wanting to kiss. It was a perfect triumph of circumstantial
evidence.

The sudden hush which fell on the group when the lights were restored
at once displayed the awfulness of Furniss’s depravity, as viewed by
the Fitchly Country Club, in riot assembled. Had any other man been
caught in the same act, with any other woman, there would have been
merely a triumphant outcry of self-acknowledged devilishness. The man
would have bought at the bar below, and the women would have screamed
themselves to their motors; but, by some unusual instinct that was
positively primitive, every man and woman in the room realized that
Furniss was a professional and his act took a much more vital aspect.
By the same perfect precision of instinct not a single iota of blame
was attached to the lady in question, for the accurate conception of
Furniss on the part of the Country Club demonstrated also that she was
only an instrument in a tragedy of the elements. One does not accuse a
person of being an accessory to a cyclone.

At the vivid and not wholly beautiful picture thus presented by
the electrics, the whole room foolishly and utterly unsuccessfully
attempted to give an imitation of a gathering which knows that nothing
has happened. After the awful hush of the first moment, the women began
quietly conversing in tones unusually subdued; the men began skylarking
and shouting on subjects unusually hollow. The object of instructing
the engineer to turn on the lights again, after midnight, had been to
allow the dance to continue until two in the morning. At one there was
not a single person left in the ball-room, and the waiters were already
sweeping up the fragments. Some fragments, however, they could not
sweep, and these make the following prelude:

Ten years before, at the age of twenty-five, Furniss had had one chance
in a million of being decent; that is to say, he had nearly married a
good woman, and that woman, needless to explain, was the one whom by
sheer accident he kissed just ten years later. Furthermore, it was the
nearest that he had ever come to marrying anybody, or ever would come,
and it was a hollow victory for the law of chances.

Furniss was a devil because he came of that stock. It bred true to
type, merely with refinements in each succeeding generation. His father
was a stout, red-faced man of the kind that, thirty years ago, drove
trotting-horses to a red-wheeled run-about, with wooden knobs on the
reins, and loops to hold to--a true example of the days when it took
absolute defiance to be a sporting-man. Furniss himself drove the
best-looking motor-car in Fitchly, and his effect was esthetically
better than his father’s, for, owing to the rigidity of the thing, it
is much easier to have a good taste in motor-cars than in horses. His
mother was a blonde, expensively-dressed woman of the type which goes
through life in the hideous belief that tight-lacing will make feminine
obesity anything but revolting.

Yet at twenty-five Furniss had had his chances. He went to college
and played foot-ball. He played it well. It is frequently the noblest
thing that men of his stamp ever do, except one. They sometimes get
into the army, and into the cavalry; less frequently into the infantry,
but never, absolutely never, into the engineers. It was, moreover, the
heyday of the college athlete, those golden years of the nineties when
men wore huge white Y’s and H’s on high-necked sweaters at mountain
resorts all summer, and when reputations lasted more than a year.
With one of these reputations Furniss had come out of college, and
tentatively, against its judgment, Fitchly had received him. It was one
of those inconceivable cases when reason and instinct battle. Everybody
knew old man Furniss and had not the slightest illusions about him;
yet here was young Furniss a half-back at Yale! Time has helped us to
understand these things nowadays, but they troubled us then.

In Furniss’s case reason won over instinct, and Fitchly received him
with open arms which wavered slightly. The only return he made was to
fall mildly in love with Helen Witherspoon. It would be nice to think
that something in the sweet, old-fashioned manner of this dainty,
refined girl, whose ancestors had been immigrants two hundred years
before Furniss’s, appealed to the brute and barbaric in the foot-ball
hero, and perhaps it did, but a more plausible reason for his falling
in love with her was that every one else was doing it. It was the
temptation of the desired, the invitation of a contest, and of all
things this appealed most to Furniss. Every one was doing it; but in a
very short time it narrowed down to Furniss and Butley Smith, of the
well-known legal firm of Smith, Smith & Smith, which drew up the city
charter and refused to accept criminal practice. She married Smith.
You could hardly call it a disappointed love-affair. It was rather
precision by elimination, and Furniss was eliminated. Furnisses were
all right as half-backs, but we didn’t marry them in Fitchly; at least
Father and Mother Witherspoon didn’t marry them, and in Fitchly they
did the marrying.

From Furniss’s point of view it was unfortunate, but it was natural. As
an economic system, marriage did not wholly persuade him, anyway.

So Furniss reverted to type, and did well at it. He lost little of his
athletic good looks, and he was certainly invaluable as a club-man.
Thirty-five found him stocky, but not fat, with a face rather round,
but not repellent; a tiny, trim mustache; the inevitable blue serge
and that almost offensively white linen which one associates with the
broker type--that whiteness which threatens to, but does not quite,
suggest scented soap. It would have been extremely difficult to say
whether or not he had brains. His achievements rather pointed to the
fact that he had, and his tastes to the fact that he had not; but, in
any case, he made money, and whatever might be his misdeeds, he never
bothered any one by telling about them. He manufactured in quantity the
best off-set drill in America, and furthermore, as he held the patents,
the wholesale jobbers who bought the drill troubled not one whit with
his morals. The society of Fitchly shook its head occasionally, but on
the whole kept him along. It would be extremely difficult to drop a man
who had nowhere to drop to; and as he asked nothing of Fitchly, there
was nothing to refuse. This occasion at the Country Club, then, was
the first real instance in which the elements had come in conflict.

Of the many mixed emotions which accompanied the premature withdrawal
from the Country Club that night, only two will suffice for
illustration, as they marked the extremes--those of Furniss himself
and of Butley Smith, the Menelaus of the ravished Helen. Those of
Furniss, indeed, were no doubt very similar to the emotions of the son
of Priam himself on the occasion of the original Hellenic uprising--an
amusing incident and an unfortunate one, but why this unseemly outcry?
His kissing some one when the lights went out had been a perfectly
consistent act. It was not an emotional impulse; it was, in a way, a
duty to the conventions, and how was he to know that the recipient was
a former sweetheart? He had no desire to repeat the crime. The attitude
of the Country Club had made osculation rather nauseous. It would seem
better breeding not to notice it; and yet, and yet, it was rather funny
that it should have been Helen. It was the first personal illustration
which Furniss had ever had of the dramatic, and he began to ponder. If
you ever wish to reclaim a devil, just try him on the dramatic. It is
the only uplifting influence which sleeps in the souls of most of them.

The emotions of Butley Smith were less happily chosen. He also felt the
impulse of the drama, but his was the stiff and unnatural drama of the
classic schools, for his cue directed him to punch in the face of the
offending Furniss. It was a glowing idea, but it wasn’t practical, as
associates of Butley brutally pointed out when they drew attention to
the fact that the face of the ex-half-back, and the present associate
of half the prize-fighters in the East, would be an extremely hard one
to pummel, and their logic suggests an admirable course of action for
one who would play a dramatic part in such histories. If you must be an
outraged husband, be one in a novel or a play, where you will always
be able to thrash or horsewhip or shoot the villain within an inch
of his life. The physical incapacity of villains in these circles is
admirable. In real life, unfortunately, they are quite apt to be fully
the equals of the outraged husband, or otherwise the husbands would be
less frequently outraged.

The probabilities of this situation were easily comprehended by a legal
mind which spurned a criminal practice, and Butley Smith had to take
his satisfaction in biding his time, reserving, however, the privilege
of biting his lip, to which extent he lived up to the unities. Meantime
the situation in Fitchly did not improve.

Just how bad the situation was growing, just how fitfully the pot was
boiling, how it was even fanned by his own disregard of it, was utterly
aside from the observation of Furniss. He never knew, for example,
and probably would not have cared if he did, that there had been a
proposition to expel him from the Fitchly Country Club. But, then, as
was pointed out by Carter of the firm of Carter, Pills & Carter, who
did take an occasional criminal case, if an action were instituted
against Furniss, it must necessarily involve the guileless Helen, and,
whatever might be the popular verdict, just how much she could be
called an accomplice would be a decision extremely delicate for the
trained legal mind. It was certain that Furniss’s face had borne no
scratches when the lights went on again.

So Butley boiled and chafed under his natural injunction against
punching Furniss, and bit his lip, and bided his time, until ultimately
it began to react on Helen, whose original emotions had been as simple
as those of the criminal. He boiled and chafed and bided his time until
the desperate Helen resolved on a terrible step--no less than an actual
move to the walls of Ilium. She wrote a note, and invited Furniss to
meet her in the private dining-room of the Fitchly Inn.

He went. We will not flatter Furniss. Any note in a feminine
handwriting would have brought him just the same, and his mood was not
of the most elevated. His dim, uncertain stirrings of the dramatic on
the morning of the thirty-first had gone permanently back to sleep, and
on this particular day he had reasons to be distinctly savage, for he
had just lost a forty-thousand-dollar order for the off-set drill, and
he had no active inclinations toward mushrooms. Still, business was
business, and one had to buy luncheon for two, anyway.

So Helen met him, and Helen pleaded. Aside from the boiling of Butley,
her feminine sense of the just had told her that wrong must be
righted and happy endings must prevail. She had not the rude melodrama
of her consort, which saw a trouncing as the only fit remedy for
non-patrons of husbandry; but she had, nevertheless, an Emersonian
theory of compensation, which perceived that the apparent impunity of
the outrager was contrary to the ultimate laws of existence. So Helen
pleaded, and Paris got mad. He didn’t like Butley, anyway. He would
apologize to Helen, but he wouldn’t to Menelaus. He couldn’t see that
the affair was international, anyway. It seemed to him distinctly
Parisian. But Helen wore a tailored gown with a fringe of lace at her
neck, so Paris surrendered, and the entente cordiale was restored.
He promised to apologize at the Quoits Club that very day, and that
evening, at a prearranged dinner, the nations would banquet in harmony.
Seven stalwart oxen would be killed, a libation poured to the gods, and
for seven hours--

But just then the waiter brought the bill.

The bill, with tips, was twenty-four dollars and sixty cents, and with
a sudden recollection of the forty-thousand-dollar order, Furniss
reverted to type. With the usual inconsistency of a man who can lose
large sums with apparent indifference, he raved and fumed at the loss
of a penny. He raved and fumed all the afternoon at his office, and it
was not until well after five that he made an unaccustomed appearance
at the Quoits Club, still raging and fuming, with the only horror that
a man of his type can ever know--the horror of losing money.

Butley Smith was already at the Quoits Club, as Helen well knew
he would be; but Furniss was an unaccustomed presence. He usually
preferred the Racquets, where the stakes were worth playing, and his
advent in this, the stronghold of strictly civil practice, made a
commotion. The commotion, moreover, soon attracted the attention of
Butley, who was straying through the tables looking for a partner.

Now, Butley Smith was rated a magnificent card-player, which meant that
he played auction like a stop-watch, and poker like a two-year-old
child. The exact opposite was true, by reputation, of Furniss, and at
sight of him in the stronghold of his own followers, who demanded his
redemption, Butley had a sudden golden inspiration. He ceased biting
his lip, and his time was bid. He would beard the lion in his den, and
beard him he did.

“Furniss,” he said, “are you busy?”

Furniss looked up in perplexity.

“Suppose,” continued Butley, “that we throw a few hands of poker.”

Butley was right. With Furniss of Fitchly that was indeed an audacious
suggestion to give, but, brooding on the circumstances of the last
two months, in the minds of the Quoits Club it instantly assumed
Homeric proportions. The turn of a card, the fall of a die, a woman’s
honor--there was a romance about it that struck clear home to their
devilishness; a veritable thrill went among them. Only Furniss was
mystified; but, then, he was a devil, and naturally did not know how it
felt to be devilish. But he saw light--his own light, a light that is
not on land or sea, only in the waters under the earth.

“I’m on,” he said, and Butley dealt.

In a crowded club-room at five o’clock in the afternoon a two-handed
game would ordinarily have been a monstrosity, but this was no
ordinary contest. It was a fight to the very death, and without a word
the spectators gathered at the only points where it is proper for
spectators to gather in a poker-game--without a word and without a
suggestion to join.

I want to do justice to that game, but the truth is that Butley did not
win a single hand--or just one in the early part.

“I raise you four,” said Furniss as the clock struck six.

Butley glanced at his hand.

“It’s yours,” he said sadly, and regretfully laid down three jacks,
while Furniss rapidly shuffled an ace high into the pack and looked at
his watch.

Six o’clock had been fixed as the hour for stopping, as both had
confessed the common engagement for dinner, and Butley rose with the
sad, sweet air of one defeated, but still game. Knowing Furniss of
Fitchly, the onlookers applauded. But Furniss was busily counting his
chips.

“Twenty--twenty-two--twenty-four--twenty-four-fifty”--the last chip! A
sudden warm triumph came over him. Like a flash, he drew ten cents from
his pocket.

“Butley,” he exclaimed, “I’ll match you for a dime.”

Was it a challenge to game on all fields? Was it a contemptuous fling
at the triviality of the winnings? Or was it really the recognition of
the instincts of one sportsman by another? Butley did not know; but if
Furniss was flinging down the glove, he would still pick it up again.
Any one would die game for ten cents, and with the debonair air of the
devilish, Butley drew forth a coin and slapped it down on the table.
Two heads. Furniss had won, and Butley had paid for the luncheon.

Nevertheless, most astounding of all, the unities were suddenly
restored, for across the table, with a genial, companionable smile,
Furniss was extending the right hand of fellowship.

“Butley,” he said, and honestly, with the thought of twenty-four-sixty,
“if there is anything that I have to apologize for, you can take this
for my apology.”

Now at this point there settles down a despondency like a pall. Oh, how
one might wish that one could leave them there with that happy scene
as a curtain, and that devils were not, and that they were all merely
devilish. But this is the story of Furniss.

For after the prearranged dinner that evening, while Furniss and Butley
were making a four at bridge with the hosts, fair Helen, who played
bridge not at all, was strumming faint chords in the music-room. And
during his partner’s play, while Butley was racking his mathematical
memory to recall every card that had ever been played in the world,
this Furniss pushed in through the curtains, and Helen looked up.

“You apologized?” she asked him, softly, still playing the bass.

He nodded.

She looked down, then up again wistfully.

“For my sake?”

“For your sake,” lied Furniss, his eyes like a babe’s.

She took both hands from the keyboard and faced him, while Furniss
leaned over. She did not move back, and a slow, gentle smile reflected
his own while Furniss deliberately kissed her.

In the card-room Menelaus was recalling the bid.

“One lily,” he said with elation.



[Illustration]



PADEREWSKI AT HOME

BY ABBIE H. C. FINCK

WITH A PORTRAIT BY EMIL FUCHS


Riond-Bosson, Paderewski’s beautiful place at Morges, on the Swiss side
of Lake Geneva, has become one of the show-places of Europe not only on
account of its famous owner, but also for its orchards, greenhouses,
and the chicken farm, which is one of Mme. Paderewska’s chief cares.
Better still, it is a charming home, where the world’s greatest pianist
and his wife spend the happiest part of their lives, the time when he
is free to compose, to practise, and to surround himself with friends,
to whom in gracious hospitality both manage to devote much time.
Neither appears officially before luncheon; but Mme. Paderewska, shaded
by a sunbonnet, accompanied by several dogs, and followed by a retinue
of workmen, is one of the frequent morning sights about the premises.
She oversees everything, the house,--notably the kitchen, in which
both she and Paderewski are greatly interested,--the chickens, and the
growing of the fruit and vegetables. Besides this, she attends to her
husband’s enormous correspondence, and is always ready with help and
advice to smooth difficulties out of his way.

The Paderewskis are very fond of animals, especially dogs and parrots.
The wild birds, too, receive Mme. Paderewska’s care, and by her special
orders birdhouses have been placed on every tree on the place. She has
her reward, for the air is filled with the melody of their songs. With
all the other demands on her time, she finds leisure for collecting
material for a cook-book, which promises to be a valuable work, many of
its recipes being the result of her personal experience.

Paderewski spends most of the morning and afternoon hours in his own
study. He finds some time for exercise during the day, grass-cutting
on lawn and fields being his favorite outdoor work; and although his
priceless hands have to be protected by gloves, he gets a good deal of
fun as well as benefit from being a “farm-hand.” At luncheon-time he
appears, after a hard morning’s work, looking well, happy, and boyish,
dressed, like Mark Twain, in pure white, and ready to chat delightfully
on any subject, whether it be gastronomy, American politics, his own
interesting South-American experiences, or other topics.

Paderewski’s love of the picturesque made him long to own one of the
splendid old châteaux that abound in that part of Switzerland; but
the more practical counsels of his wife prevailed, and their home is
simply a comfortable modern house, standing at the top of a large,
sloping, green field. It is built somewhat in the chalet type, of
red brick, with many balconies, and a stately front terrace, and it
commands a magnificent prospect, first of the rose-garden, then of the
wide sweep of green, bordered by huge trees--lindens, chestnuts, and
evergreens. Farther on is the lake, with a splendid view of Mont Blanc
for a background. Flowers abound: orange-trees in tubs, geraniums,
heliotrope, mignonette, and chiefly roses, which not only fill the
formal rose-garden, but scramble over the fences of the chicken-yards,
a mass of pink-and-red bloom; while in the orchard, between the
espalier-grown fruit-trees, there is almost an equal number of tall
rose-bushes, all in bloom in July.

[Illustration: Half-tone plate engraved for ~The Century~ by H.
Davidson

IGNACE PADEREWSKI

FROM A CHARCOAL SKETCH BY EMIL FUCHS]

There are many portraits of Paderewski at Riond-Bosson, but none except
the pencil-sketch by Burne-Jones has represented both the strength
and the spirituality of his head. This portrait hangs in the salon,
surrounded by old prints, which are one of the master’s hobbies.
Fragonard’s pictures are evidently among his favorites, as they also
occupy a place of honor in the drawing-room. Autographed engravings
by Alma-Tadema, caricatures of Paderewski by well-known artists, and
photographs of famous friends--Modjeska, Saint-Saëns, and Sembrich,
among others--adorn the house from top to bottom; and Paderewski is the
possessor of a remarkable collection of old Swiss prints of towns and
scenery. A few very interesting family photographs hang in the library,
a whole group being of Mme. Paderewska in her childhood and girlhood, a
maiden with beautiful dreamy eyes and a delicate face, framed in dusky
hair.

There are seven pianos in the house, two being in the drawing-room;
but it is in his own study that Paderewski does all his practising
and composing. His practising would be both an encouragement and a
discouragement to students. Hour after hour he works, with the patience
that none but the greatest possess, polishing and repolishing phrases
that sound perfect even to a practised ear, but which do not satisfy
his critical judgment. Only occasionally does he allow himself the
relaxation of playing even a page of music; after this he returns
relentlessly to octave work, to staccato finger-passages, to separate
phrases from Liszt’s sonatas, to the more difficult portions of his own
magnificent “Variations et fugue,” to snatches of Chopin, or to bits of
Debussy, whose piano-music he likes.

Paderewski has much admiration for the greatest masters of the French
school: Gounod, Bizet, and especially Saint-Saëns, whom he considers
the greatest living musician. With enthusiasm he tells of Saint-Saëns’s
achievement in playing four Mozart concertos from memory at the age of
seventy-six. He also admires Massenet, particularly his “Jongleur,”
which he calls the French composer’s masterpiece. He feels that
Gounod’s “Faust,” even more than his “Roméo et Juliette,” is immortal,
and that “Carmen” is one of the works which can never grow old, and
of which one cannot tire. He finds Gounod’s influence in Bizet’s
compositions, and still more in those of Tschaikovsky, who in all his
work was dominated by the great Frenchman, the “Faust” waltz even
having colored Tschaikovsky’s symphonic ideas, coming into them either
in conventional waltz time or in the unusual rhythm of five beats,
as in the second movement of the “Symphonie Pathétique.” Still more
pronounced is Tschaikovsky’s debt to Gounod in “Eugen Onegin,” where,
in the love-scene, this same waltz phrase appears reversed, though
almost identical with that in “Faust.” “But I prefer the father,”
Paderewski adds. To him, as to many other lovers of “Faust,” the
“Soldiers’ Chorus” is uninteresting; but he singles out for special
admiration _Mefisto’s_ striking song of the “Veau d’or,” his serenade,
and the “immortally beautiful” love-music.

Acquaintance with Tschaikovsky’s music means knowing the whole Russian
school, Paderewski says, although the younger Russian musicians
repudiate him and Rubinstein, just as Russian writers turn against
their greatest representative, and call Turgenieff a foreigner,
expatriated, and untrue to Russian characteristics. The first and last
movements of Tschaikovsky’s best-loved symphony, the “Pathétique,”
Paderewski considers sublime; but he regards the other two as rather
commonplace.

His opinion of the modern French school has not changed since his
talk with Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason, which was published in ~The
Century~ for November, 1908. Some of the Debussy piano-music
appeals to him; but he still considers “Pelléas” little more than
color, and rather monotonous color.

“I think I must be very old-fashioned,” he once said, “for I know many
persons no younger than I who like it.” His own “Variations,” in which
some listeners found a surface resemblance to the modern French school,
have no more real relation to it than has the music of Chopin or of
Liszt.

Paderewski is as great in gastronomy as in music, and he believes
the subject of food is “the most important question” in our country.
Of Americans he says: “They are rich--rich enough to spoil French
cooking,” meaning their frequent indifference to quality, a fact which
he deeply deplores; for in this art, to him as to other connoisseurs,
the French are supreme. “You have good fruits, good meats, but nothing
else is good except the scallops, which are the best thing you have.
The fish is abominable.” In saying this he probably had in mind the
cold-storage fish served in our hotels. “You have destroyed your
lobsters, your salmon, your terrapin, your forests. You never think
that another generation is coming.”

America is not the only country he censures thus sharply. The English
are still more blameworthy, for their food-stuffs are perfection,
and yet nothing tastes good; though he admitted that one could get
excellent dinners in some London restaurants and private houses.

The sour cherry, which Europe owes to Lucullus, is Paderewski’s
favorite fruit. Following the Roman’s example, he has imported the
choicest varieties for his Swiss home. These trees came from Poland,
and those who ate of the fruit agreed with Paderewski’s statement that
they are “the aristocrats among cherries.”

Perhaps the most vital subject to the great Pole is his own beloved
country. He is considered an important factor in the Polish-European
politics of the day. Considerable apprehension was felt as to the
possible effect of his speech on his inflammable compatriots at the
Chopin centenary, in 1910, and at the presentation of the magnificent
monument which Paderewski had caused to be erected at Cracow in
commemoration of the Polish victory over the order of Teutonic Knights
at Grunewald, in 1410. One of his countrymen was the sculptor of the
splendid equestrian statue of Wladislaus II. The mere description
of the scenes that followed, of the acclamations of the Poles, the
cheers of thousands for their beloved Paderewski, moves the hearer
deeply; what it must have meant to the man in whose honor those
thousands gathered from all Poland--a man ready to give his heart’s
blood for his country--can be known only to himself and to his wife.
Among the interesting souvenirs of this occasion are autographs of
many distinguished Poles who gathered to do honor to Poland and to
Paderewski. It is hardly strange that the Powers that hold Poland
should have felt that very serious consequences might arise from this
one man’s magnetism, enthusiasm, and patriotism.

In the speech he made at the Chopin centenary, he advanced an
interesting theory to explain the genius of his country and the unrest
and moodiness of the Poles. He believes that, as a nation, they are
like their music, and live in a perpetual state of _tempo rubato_,
caused by a physical defect--arrhythmia, or unevenness of heartbeat.
He was not in the best of health; and being unable to play at this
festival, he offered that honor to his American pupil and friend Ernest
Schelling, who passed through the ordeal triumphantly, satisfying not
only his Polish audience, but his sponsor by his interpretation of the
works of Poland’s idol, Chopin.

Paderewski is not addicted to talking much about himself; but
occasionally he gives his friends a glimpse of the real man. One
autobiographic incident concerns his own playing. Berlin has always
been unjust to Paderewski, not for artistic reasons, but on political
grounds. One well-known critic, after hearing Paderewski play, went to
the artist’s room, his eyes filled with tears of joy, to congratulate
the master; but later, obeying the official _mot d’ordre_ which is
frequently used in the attempt to kill great artists, he wrote most
disagreeably about Paderewski, who, in relating the experience, added
half deprecatingly: “He spoiled me by his call. It is easy to be
spoiled; and he was so pleased the first time that I thought he would
come again.”

The remarkable songs to the poems of Catulle Mendès, which Paderewski
published a few years ago, were written, he told us, in three weeks;
and in that year, produced in an incredibly short space of time, the
piano sonata and the sketch of the symphony also saw the light. The
scoring of the latter he could not finish until three years later. The
composer is very particular about his manuscript, and if he makes an
error, he rewrites the whole page. At times he could score only one
page; at others, as many as five; and he smilingly says, “I was so
proud of my five pages, even if they were all rests.” He himself has to
study the piano accompaniments to his later songs, and he says that “it
is foolish to make them so difficult.”

His South-American experiences had been of great interest to him both
from the point of view of the artist and that of the observer. He
had played ten times in Buenos Aires to growing houses and increasing
enthusiasm, the last of the series being to a $12,000 audience; he
had tasted barbecued beef at a great plantation feast, and found it
very unpalatable; he had studied the agricultural conditions of the
South-American countries, and had been amazed at the natural wealth
of the Argentine Republic, at its forests of trees unknown to us, and
still more at its humus, forty meters deep, which makes a soil so
fertile that it will last for centuries with no enriching. Being a
practical farmer himself, and deeply interested in the good of his own
land and forests, every detail of this extraordinary wealth fascinated
the great pianist.

Like many other famous artists of to-day, Paderewski finds the making
of records for a phonograph far more trying and fatiguing than playing
in public. He says he would “rather play at twenty concerts than once
for a phonograph.” One of these records was so difficult to make, and
needed so many repetitions to insure perfection in every note, not only
artistically, but acoustically, that he almost dislikes to hear it. It
is safe to predict that his admirers will not share this feeling, and
that his own “Cracovienne,” Mendelssohn’s “Hunting-Song,” and Liszt’s
“Campanella,” to mention only three, will become popular additions
to their collections of records. He has a large number of Oriental
records, in which he is greatly interested. Years ago, when he first
went to San Francisco, he spent much of his spare time at the Chinese
theater listening to their music; so the study of Oriental tunes is no
new thing, although, thanks to the recording machines, it has taken a
new form.

Never shall we forget our last afternoon at Riond-Bosson, when
Paderewski played for us, giving almost a professional recital, at
which the greatest of all the music he played was his own “Variations
et fugue,” Opus 23. To hear them in the concert-hall, as New York
audiences have heard them, is a great experience; but to hear them in a
room, with three or four enthusiasts as the only listeners, is a much
greater one. Mme. Wilkonska, Paderewski’s sister; Miss Mickiewicz,
granddaughter of the famous Polish poet; Mr. Blake, a young Polish
sculptor, and we two, were the only persons there besides the pianist
and his wife. She stood at his side to turn the leaves for him,
although he hardly glanced at the printed page; but as he had not
played this composition in a long time, and had had only a few hours’
practice to recall it to memory and fingers, he preferred to have the
music before him. Lovers of music will recall the majestic theme in
octaves upon which Paderewski has built one of the most splendid sets
of variations in all music, one worthy to be compared with Schubert’s
sublime variations on his song of “Death and the Maiden.” He had
thundered out his theme, when two of Mme. Paderewska’s dogs began a
mad romp through the room. Paderewski’s hands dropped from the keys,
and the culprits were summarily put out, little realizing their sins.
They reappeared at doors and windows, scratching and barking; but, once
fairly launched, Paderewski was undisturbed by their small noises, and
played on to the end. After finishing the fugue, he replied, in answer
to questions, that one of the variations was difficult, then mentioned
another, and ended by repeating several of the best variations and also
the splendid fugue.

We had been privileged to enjoy an experience such as Liszt described
in his book on Chopin, when the other great Polish composer-pianist
let his friends hear his own works interpreted by himself; but at
Riond-Bosson there was no jarring note of Philistinism such as Liszt
found in the aristocratic salons in which Chopin played.



[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF THE SEINE]



PARIS

BY THEODORE DREISER

Author of “Sister Carrie,” “Jennie Gerhardt,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY W. J. GLACKENS


When the train rolled into the Gare du Nord, it must have been about
eight o’clock in the evening. X. had explained to me that, in order to
make my entrance into Paris properly gay and interesting, we were to
dine at the Café de Paris, then visit the Folies-Bergère, and afterward
have supper at the Abbaye Thélème. Now, as usual, X. was alert and
prepared. He had industriously piled all the bags close to the door,
and was hanging out of a window, doing his best to signal a _facteur_.
I was to stay in the car and hand all the packages down rapidly while
he ran to secure a taxi and an inspector, and in other ways to clear
away the impediments to our progress. With great executive enthusiasm
he told me that we must be at the Hôtel Normandy by eight-fifteen or
twenty, and that by nine o’clock we must be ready to sit down in the
Café de Paris to an excellent dinner, which he had ordered by telegraph.

I recall my wonder in entering Paris--the lack of any extended suburbs,
the sudden flash of electric lights and electric cars. Mostly we seemed
to be entering through a tunnel or gully, and then we were there. The
noisy facteurs in their caps and blue aprons were all about the cars.
They ran and chattered and gesticulated, wholly unlike the porters
at Paddington and Waterloo, Victoria and Euston. The one we finally
secured, a husky little enthusiast, did his best to gather all our
packages in one grand mass and shoulder them, stringing them on a
single strap. The result of it was that the strap broke right over a
small pool of water, and among other things the canvas bag containing
my blanket and magnificent shoes fell into the water.

The excited facteur was fairly dancing in anguish, doing his best to
get the packages strung together. Between us we relieved him of about
half of them, and from about his waist he unwrapped another large strap
and strung the remainder on that. Then we hurried on, for nothing would
do but that we must hurry. A taxi was secured, and all our luggage
piled on it. It looked half suffocated under bundles as it swung
away, and we were off at a mad clip through crowded, electric-lighted
streets. I pressed my nose to the window and took in as much as I
could, while X., between calculations as to how much time this would
take and that would take and whether my trunk had arrived safely,
expatiated laconically on French characteristics.

“You smell this air? It is characteristic of Paris.”

“The taxis always go like this.” We were racing like mad.

“There is an excellent type; look at her.”

“Now you see the chairs out in front. They are this way all over Paris.”

I was looking at the interesting restaurant life, which never really
seems to be interrupted anywhere in Paris. One can always find a dozen
chairs, if not fifty or a hundred, somewhere out on the sidewalk, under
the open sky or a glass roof, with little stone-topped tables beside
them, the crowd surging to and fro in front. Here one can sit and have
one’s coffee, liqueur, sandwich. Everybody seems to do it; it is as
common as walking in the streets.

We whirled through street after street, partaking of this atmosphere,
and finally swung up in front of a rather plain hotel, which was close
to the Avenue de l’Opéra, on the corner of the Rue St. Honoré and
the Rue de l’Echelle. Our luggage was quickly distributed, and I was
shown into my room by a maid who could not speak English. I unlocked
my belongings and rapidly changed my clothes, while X., breathing
mightily, fully arrayed, soon appeared, saying that I should await him
at the door below, where he would arrive with our guests. I did so, and
in fifteen minutes he returned, the taxi spinning up out of a steady
stream that was flowing by. I think my head was dizzy with the whirl
of impressions which I was garnering, but I did my best to keep a sane
view of things, and to get my impressions as sharp and clear as I could.

I am satisfied of one thing in this world, and that is that the
commonest intelligence is very frequently confused or hypnotized or
overpersuaded by certain situations, and that the weaker ones are
ever full of the wildest forms of illusion. We talk about the sanity
of life. I question whether it exists. Mostly it is a succession of
confusing, disturbing impressions which are only rarely valid. This
night I know I was moving in a sort of maze, and when I stepped into
the taxi and was introduced to two ladies, I easily succumbed to what
was obviously their great beauty.

Greuze has painted over and over the type that I saw before me--soft,
buxom, ruddy womanhood. I think the two may have been respectively
twenty-four and twenty-six. The elder was smaller than the younger,
although both were of good size, and not so ruddy; but both were plump,
round-faced, dimpled, and with a wealth of brownish-black hair, white
teeth, smooth, plump arms, necks, and shoulders. Their chins were
adorably rounded, their lips red, and their eyes laughing and gay.
They began laughing and chattering the moment I entered, extending
their soft, white hands, and saying things in French which I could not
understand. X. was smiling, beaming through his monocle in an amused,
superior way. The older girl was arrayed in pearl-colored silk, with
a black mantilla spangled with silver, and the younger had a dress of
peachblow hue, with a white lace mantilla, that was also spangled, and
they breathed a faint perfume.

I shall never forget the grand air with which this noble band went into
the Café de Paris. We were in fine feather, and the ladies radiated
a charm and a flavor which immediately attracted attention. This
brilliant café was aglow with lights and alive with people. It is not
large in size, and is triangular in shape. The charm of it comes not so
much from the luxury of the fittings, which are luxurious enough, but
from their exceedingly good taste and the fame of the cuisine. One does
not see a bill of fare here that indicates prices. You order what you
like, and are charged what is suitable. Champagne is not an essential
wine, as it is in some restaurants; you may drink what you please.
There is a delicious sparkle and spirit to the place which can spring
only from a high sense of individuality. Paris is supposed to provide
nothing better than the Café de Paris in so far as food is concerned.

I turned my attention to the elder of the two ladies, who was quite as
vivacious, if not quite so forceful, as her younger sister. I never
before knew what it meant to sit in a company of this kind, welcomed
as a friend, looked to for gaiety as a companion and admirer, and yet
not able to say a word in the language of the occasion. There were
certain words which could be quickly acquired, such as “beautiful,”
“charming,” “very delightful,” and so on, for which X. gave me the
French equivalent, and then I could make complimentary remarks, which
he would translate for all, and the ladies would say things in reply
which would come to me by the same medium. It went gaily enough, for
the conversation would not have been of a high order if I had been
able to speak French. X. objected to being used constantly as an
interpreter, and when he became stubborn and chatted gaily without
stopping to explain, I was compelled to fall back on the resources of
looks, smiles, and gestures. It interested me to see how quick these
women were to adapt themselves to the difficulties of the situation.
They were constantly laughing and chaffing between themselves, looking
at me and saying obviously flattering things, and then laughing at my
discomfiture in not being able to understand. The elder explained what
certain objects were by lifting them up and insisting on the French
name. X. was constantly telling me of the remarks they made at my
expense, and how sad they thought it was that I could not speak French.

We departed finally for the Folies-Bergère, where the newest sensation
of Paris, Mistinguett, was playing. She proved to be a brilliant hoyden
to look upon; a gay, slim, yellow-haired tomboy who seemed to fascinate
the large audience by her boyish manners and her wayward air. There
was a brilliant chorus in spangled silks and satins. The vaudeville
acts were about as good as they are anywhere. I did not think that the
performance was any better than one might see in one or two places
in New York, though of course the humor was much broader. Now and
then one of their remarkable _bons mots_ was translated for me by X.
just to give me an inkling of the character of the place. Back of the
seats was a great lobby, or promenade, where some of the demi-monde of
Paris were congregated--beautiful creatures, in many instances, and
as unconventional as you please. I was particularly struck with the
smartness of their costumes and the cheerfulness of their faces. The
companion type in London and New York is somewhat colder-looking. Their
eyes snapped with Gallic intelligence, and they walked as though the
whole world held their point of view and no other.

From here at midnight we left for the Abbaye Thélème, and there I
encountered the best that Paris has to show in the way of that gaiety
and color and beauty and smartness for which it is famous. One really
ought to say a great deal about the Abbaye Thélème, because it is the
last word, the quintessence, of midnight excitement and international
savoir-faire. The Russian and the Brazilian, the Frenchman, the
American, the Englishman, the German, and the Italian--all these meet
here on common ground. I saw much of restaurant life in Paris while I
was there, but nothing better than this. Like the Café de Paris, it
was very small when compared with restaurants of similar repute in New
York and London. I fancy it was not more than sixty feet square; only
it was not square, but pentagonal, almost circular. To begin with, the
tables were around the walls, with seats which had the wall for the
back; and then, as the guests poured in, the interior space was filled
with tables brought in for the purpose. Later in the morning, when the
guests began to leave, these tables were taken out again, and the space
was devoted to dancing and entertainers.

As in the Café de Paris, I noticed that it was not so much the quality
of the furnishings as the spirit of the place which was important.
This latter was compounded of various elements, success being the
first one, perfection of service another, absolute individuality of
cooking another, and lastly the subtlety and magnetism of sex, which
is capitalized and used in Paris as it is nowhere else in the world.
Until I stepped into this restaurant I never actually realized what it
is that draws a certain moneyed element to Paris. The tomb of Napoleon,
the Panthéon, and the Louvre are not the significant attractions of
that important city. Those things have their value and constitute
an historical and artistic element that is imposing, romantic, and
forceful; but over and above that there is something else, and that
is sex. I did not learn until later what I am going to say now, but
it might as well be said here, for it illustrates the point exactly.
A little experience and inquiry in Paris quickly taught me that the
owners and managers of the more successful restaurants encourage and
help to sustain a certain type of woman whose presence is desirable.
She must be young, beautiful, or attractive, and, above all things,
possessed of temperament. A woman can rise in the café and restaurant
world of Paris quite as she can on the stage, and she can easily be
graduated from the Abbaye Thélème and Maxim’s to the stage; and, on the
other hand, the stage contributes freely to the atmosphere of Maxim’s,
the Abbaye Thélème, and other similar resorts. A large number of the
figures seen here and at the Folies-Bergère and at other places of
the same type are interchangeable. They are in the restaurants when
they are not on the stage, and they are on the stage when they are not
in the restaurants. They rise or fall by a world of strange devices,
and you can hear brilliant or ghastly stories illustrating either
conclusion. Paris--this aspect of it--is a perfect maelstrom of sex,
and it is sustained by the wealth and the curiosity of the stranger, as
well as of the Frenchman.

The Abbaye Thélème on this occasion presented a brilliant scene.
Outside a small railing near the door several negro singers, a
mandolin-and a guitar-player, and several stage dancers were
congregated. A throng of people was pouring through the doors, all with
their tables previously arranged for. Outside, where a January wind was
blowing, you could hear a perfect uproar of slamming taxi doors, and
the calls of doormen and chauffeurs getting their vehicles in and out
of the way. The company generally, as on all such occasions, was alert
to see who was present and what the general spirit of the occasion was
to be. Instantly I detected a number of Americans; three amazingly
beautiful Englishwomen, such as I had not seen in England, and their
escorts; a few Spaniards or South Americans; and, after that, a variety
of persons whom I took to be largely French, although it was impossible
to tell. The Englishwomen interested me because in all my stay in
Europe I never saw three other women quite so beautiful, and because
in all my stay in England I scarcely saw a good-looking Englishwoman.
X. suggested that they were of that high realm of fashion which rarely
remains in London during the winter, when I was there; that if I
came again in May or June, and went to the races, I would see plenty
of them. Their lovely hair was straw-colored, and their cheeks and
foreheads were a faint pink and cream. Their arms and shoulders were
delightfully bare, and they carried themselves with amazing hauteur.
By one o’clock, when the majority of the guests had arrived, this room
fairly shimmered with white silks and satins, white arms and shoulders,
roses in black hair, and blue and lavender ribbons fastened about hair
of a lighter color. There were jewels in plenty,--opals and amethysts,
turquoises and rubies,--and there was a perfect artillery of champagne
corks. Every table was attended by its silver bucket of ice, and the
mandolins and guitars in their crowded angle were strumming mightily.

As we seated ourselves, I speculated interestedly as to what drew
all these people from all parts of the world to see this, to be here
together. I do not know where you could go and for a hundred francs see
more of really amazing feminine beauty. I do not know where for the
same money you could buy the same atmosphere of lightness and gaiety
and enthusiasm. This place was fairly vibrating with a wild desire
to live. I fancy the majority of those who were here for the first
time, and particularly of the young, would tell you that they would
rather be here than in any other spot you could name. The place had a
peculiar glitter of beauty which was compounded by the managers with
great skill. The waiters were all deft, swift, suave, good-looking;
the dancers who stepped out on the floor after a few moments were of
an orchid-like Spanish type--ruddy, brown, full-bodied, black-haired,
black-eyed. They had on dresses that were as close-fitting as the
scales of a fish, and that glittered with the same radiance. They waved
and rattled and clashed castanets and tambourines and danced wildly and
sinuously to and fro among the tables. Some of them sang, or voices
accompanied them from the raised platform devoted to music.

After a while red, blue, pink, and green balloons were introduced,
anchored to the champagne bottles, and allowed to float gaily in the
air. Paper parcels of small paste balls of all colors, and as light as
feathers, were distributed for the guests to throw at one another. In
ten minutes a wild artillery battle was raging. Young girls were up
on their feet, their hands full of these colored weapons, pelting the
male strangers of their selection. You would see tall Englishmen and
Americans exchanging a perfect volley of colored spheres with girls of
various nationalities--laughing, chattering, calling, screaming. The
_cocotte_ in all her dazzling radiance was here, exquisitely dressed,
her white arms shimmering.

After a time, when the audience had worn itself through excitement to
satisfaction or weariness, or both, a few of the tables were cleared
away and the dancing began, occasional guests joining. There were
charming dances in costume from Russia, from Scotland, from Hungary,
and from Spain. I myself waltzed with a Spanish dancer, and had the
wonder of seeing an American girl rise from her table and dance
with more skill and grace than the employed talent. A wine-enthused
Englishman, a handsome youth of twenty-six or more, took the floor
and remained there gaily prancing about from table to table, dancing
alone or with whomsoever would welcome him. What looked like a
dangerous argument started at one time because a high-mettled Brazilian
considered that he had been insulted. A cordon of waiters and the
managers soon adjusted that. It was between three and four in the
morning when we finally left, and I was very tired. It was decided that
we should meet for dinner; and since it was almost daylight, I was
glad when we had seen our ladies to their apartment and returned to our
hotel.

I shall never forget my first morning in Paris--the morning that I woke
up after about two hours’ sleep or less, prepared to put in a hard
day at sight-seeing, because X. had a program which must be adhered
to. He could be with me only until Monday, when he had to return. It
was fortunately a bright day, a little hazy and chill, but agreeable.
I looked out of the window of my very comfortable room on the fifth
floor, which gave out on a balcony overhanging the Rue St. Honoré, and
watched the crowd of French people below coming to work. It would be
hard to say what makes the difference between a crowd of Englishmen
and a crowd of Frenchmen, but there is a difference. It struck me
that these men and women walked faster, and that their movements were
more spirited than those of the English or Americans. They looked
more like Americans, though, than like the English, and they were
much more cheerful than either, chatting and talking as they came. I
was interested to see whether I could make the maid understand that
I wanted coffee and rolls without talking French, but the wants of
American travelers are an old story to French maids; and no sooner did
I say “_Café_” and make the sign of drinking from a cup than she said,
“_Oh, oui, oui, oui; oh, oui, oui, oui_,” and disappeared. Presently
the coffee was brought me, with rolls and butter and hot milk; and I
ate my breakfast as I dressed.

About nine o’clock X. arrived with his program. I was to walk in
the garden of the Tuileries which was close at hand, where he would
join me later. We were to go for a walk in the Rue de Rivoli as
far as a certain bootmaker’s, who was to make me a pair of shoes
for the Riviera. Then we were to visit a haberdasher’s or two, and
after that go straight about the work of sight-seeing, visiting the
old book-stalls on the Seine, the churches of St.-Etienne-du-Mont,
Notre-Dame, Ste.-Chapelle, thereafter regulating our conduct by the
wishes of several guests who were to appear.

We started off briskly, and my first adventure in Paris led me straight
to the gardens of the Tuileries, lying west of the Louvre. If any
one wanted a proper introduction to Paris, I should recommend this
above all others. Such a noble piece of gardening as this is the best
testimony France has to offer as to its taste, discrimination, and
sense of the magnificent. I should say, on mature thought, that we
shall never have anything like it in America. We have not the same
lightness of fancy.

I recall walking in here and being struck at once with the magnificent
proportions of it all,--the breadth and stately lengths of its walks,
the utter wonder and charm of its statuary,--snow-white marble nudes
standing out on the green grass and marking the circles, squares, and
paths of its entire length. No such charm and beauty could be attained
in America because we would not permit the public use of the nude in
this fashion.

Everywhere I went in Paris I was struck by the charming unity in the
conduct of business between husband and wife and son and daughter.
We talk much about the economic independence of women in America. It
seems to me that the French have solved it in the only way that it can
be solved. Madame helps her husband in his business and they make a
success of it together. Monsieur Galoyer took the measurements for my
shoes, but madame entered them in a book, and to me the shop was fifty
times as charming for her presence. She was pleasingly dressed, and
the shop looked as though it had experienced the tasteful touches of a
woman’s hand. It was clean and bright and smart, and smacked of good
housekeeping; and this was equally true of book-stalls, haberdashers’
shops, art-stores, coffee-rooms, and places of public sale generally.
Wherever madame was, and she looked nice, there was a nice store; and
monsieur looked as fat and contented as could reasonably be expected in
the circumstances.

I shall never forget this first morning’s impression of Paris, although
all my impressions of it were delightful and inspiring, from the
poorest quarter of the Charenton district to the perfections of the
Bois and the region about the Arc de Triomphe. It chanced that this
morning was bright, and I saw the Seine glimmering over the stones
of its shallow banks and racing madly. How much the French have
made of little in the way of a river! It is not very wide--about
half as wide as the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge, and not so wide as
the Harlem River. Here the Seine was as bright as a new button, its
banks properly lined with gray, but not dull-looking, walls, the two
streets which parallel it on each side alive with traffic; at every
few blocks a handsome bridge; every block a row of very habitable, if
not imposing, apartment-houses; at various points views of Notre-Dame,
the Tuileries, the Cours-la-Reine, of the Trocadéro, and the Eiffel
Tower. I followed the Seine from city wall to city wall one day,
from Charenton to Issy, and found every inch of it delightful. I was
never tired of looking at the wine-barges near Charenton; the little
bathing-pavilions and passenger-boats in the vicinity of the Louvre;
the brick-barges, hay-barges, coal-barges, and Heaven knows what else
plying between the city’s heart and points down-stream past Issy. It
gave me the impression of being one of the brightest, cleanest rivers
in the world--a river on a holiday. I saw it once at Issy at what is
known in Paris as the “green hour,” which is five o’clock, when the
sun was going down, and a deep, palpable fragrance wafted from a vast
manufactory of perfume filled the air. Men were poling boats of hay,
and laborers in their great wide-bottomed corduroy trousers, blue
shirts, and inimitable French caps, were trudging homeward, and I felt
as though the world had nothing to offer Paris which it did not already
have. I could have settled in a small house in Issy and worked as a
laborer in a perfume factory, carrying my dinner-pail with me every
morning, with a right good-will, or such was the mood of the moment. As
I write this, the mood comes back.

This morning, on our way to St.-Etienne-du-Mont and the cathedral,
we examined the book-stalls along the Seine. To enjoy them, one has
to be in an idle mood and love out of doors; for they consist of a
dusty row of four-legged boxes, with lids coming quite to your chest
in height, and reminding one of those high-legged counting-tables
at which clerks sit on tall stools making entries in their ledgers.
These boxes are old and paintless and weather-beaten; and at night the
very dusty-looking keepers, who from early morning until dark have
had their shabby-backed wares spread out where dust and sunlight and
wind and rain can attack them, pack them in the body of the box on
which they are lying and close the lid. You can always see an idler or
two here, perhaps many idlers, between the Quai d’Orsay and the Quai
Voltaire.

Paris is as young in its mood as any city in the world. It is as wildly
enthusiastic as a child. This morning I noticed here the strange
occurrence of battered-looking old fellows singing to themselves, which
I never noticed anywhere else in this world. Age sits lightly on the
Parisian, I am sure, and youth is a wild fantasy, an exciting realm of
romantic dreams. The Parisian, from the keeper of a market-stall to
the prince of the money world or of art, wants to live gaily, briskly,
laughingly, and he will not let the necessity of earning his living
deny him. I felt it in the churches, the depots, the department stores,
the theaters, the restaurants, the streets--a wild, keen desire for
life, with the blood and the body to back it up. It must be in the soil
and the air, for Paris sings. It is like poison in the veins, and I
felt myself growing positively giddy with enthusiasm. I believe that
for the first six months Paris would be a disease from which one would
suffer greatly and recover slowly. After that you would settle down to
live the life you found there in contentment and with delight, but you
would not be in so much danger of wrecking your very mortal body and
your uncertainly immortal soul.

Now there was luncheon at Foyot’s, a little restaurant near the
Luxembourg and the Musée de Cluny, where the wise in the matter of food
love to dine, and where, as usual, X. was at his best. Foyot’s, as the
initiated will attest, is a delightful place to lunch or dine, for the
cooking is perfection itself. The French, while entirely discarding
show in many instances, and allowing their restaurants to look as
though they had been put together with an effort, nevertheless attain
an individuality of atmosphere which is delightful. For the life of me
I could not tell why this little restaurant seemed so smart and bright,
for there was nothing either smart or bright about it when I examined
it in detail; and so I was compelled to attribute the impression to
the all-pervading temperament of the owner. Always, in these cases,
there is a man, or a woman, quite remarkable for his point of view;
and although I did not see him, I fancied the owner, whatever his
name, must be such a man. Otherwise you could not take such simple
appointments and make them into anything so pleasing and so individual.

Later in the day we took a taxi through singing streets, lighted by a
springtime sun, and came finally to the Restaurant Prunier, where it
was necessary to secure a table and order dinner in advance; and thence
to the Théâtre des Capucines in the Rue des Capucines, where tickets
for a farce had to be secured; and thence to a café near the Avenue de
l’Opéra, where we were to meet Madame de J., who, out of the goodness
of her heart, was to help entertain me while I was in the city.

We came to her out of the whirl of the “green hour,” when the Paris
boulevards in this vicinity were fairly swarming with people--the
gayest world I have ever seen. We have enormous crowds in New York,
but they seem to be going somewhere very much more definitely than
in Paris. With us there is an eager, strident, almost objectionable
effort to get home or to the theater or to the restaurant which one can
easily resent, it is so inconsiderate and indifferent. In London you
do not feel that there are any crowds that are going to the theaters
or the restaurants; and if they are, they are not very cheerful about
it. They are enduring life; they have none of the lightness of the
Parisian world. I think it is all explained by the fact that Parisians
feel keenly that they are living now, and that they wish to enjoy
themselves as they go. The American and the Englishman--the Englishman
much more than the American--have decided that they are going to live
in the future. Only the American is a little angry about his decision,
and the Englishman a little meek or patient. Both feel that life is
intensely grim. But the Parisian, while he may feel or believe it,
decides wilfully to cast it off. He lives by the way, out of books,
restaurants, theaters, boulevards, and the spectacle of life generally.
The Parisians move briskly, and they come out where they can see
one another--out into the great wide-sidewalked boulevards and the
thousands upon thousands of cafés, and make themselves comfortable and
talkative and gay. It is obvious that everybody is having a good time,
not merely trying to have it; that they are enjoying the wine-like
air, the _brasseries_, the net-like movements of the cabs, the dancing
lights of the roadways, and the flare of the shops. It may be chill or
drizzling in Paris, but you scarcely feel it. Rain can scarcely drive
the people off the streets; literally it does not, for there are crowds
whether it rains or not, and they are not despondent. This particular
hour that brought us to the bar was essentially thrilling, and I was
interested to see what Madame de J. was like.

We were sitting at a table, sipping a brandy and soda, when she
entered, a brisk, genial, sympathetic French person whose voice on the
instant gave me a delightful impression of her. It was the loveliest
voice I ever heard, soft and musical, a colorful voice touched with
both gaiety and sadness. Her eyes were light blue, her hair was brown,
and her manner sinuous and insinuating. She seemed to have the spirit
of a delightfully friendly collie or a child, and all the vitality and
alertness that go with either. I had a chance to observe her keenly.
In a moment she turned to me and asked whether I knew either of two
American authors whom she knew, men of considerable repute. Knowing
them both very well, it surprised me to think that she knew them. From
the way she spoke, she seemed to have been on the friendliest terms
with both; and any one by looking at her could have understood why they
should have taken an interest in her.

If she had been of a somewhat more calculating type, I fancy that,
with her intense charm of face and manner and her intellect and
voice, she would have been very successful. I gained the impression
that she had been on the stage in some small capacity; but she had
been too diffident, not really brazen enough for the grim world in
which the French actress rises. I soon gained the impression that she
was a charming blend of emotion, desire, and refinement which one
sometimes meets with in the demi-monde. She would have done better in
literature or music or art, and she seemed fitted by her moods and her
understanding to be a light in any one of them or all.

I shall never forget how she looked at me, quite in the spirit of a
gay uncertain child, and how quickly she made me feel that we should
get along very well together. “Why, yes,” she said in her soft voice,
“I will go about with you, although I should not know what is best
to see. But I shall be here, and if you want to come for me, we can
see things together.” Suddenly she reached over and took my hand and
pressed it genially, as though to seal the bargain. Then Madame de J.,
promising to join us at the theater, went away.

I would not say more of this evening except that it gave me another
glimpse of this unquestionably remarkable woman, who was especially
charming in a pale bluish-gray dress and gray furs. She helped
entertain us through what to me was a somewhat dull performance of
a farce in a tongue I did not understand. I was entertained by the
effective character work of the actors, but nothing compensates, as I
found everywhere, for ignorance of French.

When we came out of this theater at half-past eleven, Madame de J.
was anxious to return to her apartment, and X. said he’d give me an
additional taste of the very vital café life of Paris.

The strange impression which all this world of restaurant life gave me,
still endures. Obviously, when we arrived at twelve o’clock, the fun
was just getting under way. Some of these places, like the first one
we entered, were no larger than a fair-sized room in an apartment, but
crowded with a gay and even giddy throng of Americans, South Americans,
English, and others. One of the tricks in Paris to make a restaurant
successful is to keep it small, so that it has an air of overflow and
activity. Here, after allowing room for the red-jacketed orchestra,
the piano, and the waiters, there was scarcely space for the forty or
fifty guests who were present. Champagne was twenty francs the bottle,
and champagne was all that was served. It was necessary here, as at all
the restaurants, to contribute to the support of the musicians; and if
a strange young woman should sit at your table for a moment and share
either the wine or the fruit which would be quickly offered, you would
have to pay for that. Peaches were three francs each, and grapes five
francs the bunch. It was plain that all these things are offered in
order that the house might thrive and prosper. It was so at all of them.

The personality of X. supplied a homy quality of comfortable
companionship. He was so full of a youthful zest to live, and so keen
after the shows and customs of the world, that to be near him was to
enjoy the privilege of great company. I never pondered why he was so
popular with women, or why his friends in different walks of life
constituted so great a company. He seemed to have known thousands
of all sorts, and to be at home in all conditions. That persistent,
unchanging atmosphere of “All is well with me,” to maintain which was
as much a duty as a tradition with him, made for exceedingly pleasant
companionship.

This very remarkable evening X. and I spent wandering from one
restaurant to another in an effort to locate a certain Rillette, a girl
of whom I had heard when we first came to Paris. She had been one of
the most distinguished figures of the stage. Four or five years before
she had held at the Folies-Bergère much the same position recently
attained by Mistinguett, who was just then enthralling Paris; in other
words, she was the sensation of that stormy world of art and romance
of which these restaurants are a part. She was more than that. She
had a wonderful mezzo-soprano voice of great color and richness and a
spirit for dancing that was Greek in its quality. I was anxious to get
at least a glimpse of this exceptional Parisian type, the real spirit
of this fast world, the true artistic poison-flower, the lovely hooded
cobra, before she should be too old or too wretched to be interesting.

At one café, quite by accident, we encountered Miss F., whom I had not
seen since we left Fishguard, and who was here in Paris doing her best
to outshine the women of the gay restaurants in the matter of dresses,
hats, and beauty. I must say she presented a ravishing spectacle, quite
as wonderful as any of the other women who were to be seen here; but
she lacked, as I was to note, the natural vivacity of the French. We
Americans, despite our high spirits and our healthy enthusiasm for
life, are nevertheless a blend of the English, the German, and some
of the sedate nations of the North, and we are inclined to a physical
and mental passivity which is not common to the Latins. This girl,
vivid creature that she was, did not have the spiritual vibration
which accompanies the Frenchwomen. As far as spirit was concerned,
she seemed superior to most of the foreign types present; but the
Frenchwomen are naturally gayer, their eyes brighter, their motions
lighter. She gave us at once an account of her adventures since I
had seen her. I could not help marveling at the disposition which
set above everything else in the world the privilege of moving in
this peculiar realm, which fascinated her much. As she told me on the
_Mauretania_, all she hoped for was to become a woman of Machiavellian
finesse, and to have some money. If she had money and attained to real
social wisdom, conventional society could go to the devil; for the
successful adventuress, according to her, was welcome anywhere--that
is, everywhere she would care to go. She did not expect to retain her
beauty entirely; but she did expect to have some money, and meanwhile
to live brilliantly, as she deemed that she was now doing. Her comments
on the various women of her class were as hard and accurate as they
were brilliant. I remember her saying of one woman, with an easy sweep
of her hand, “Like a willow, don’t you think?” Of another, “She glows
like a ruby.” It was true; it was fine character delineation.

At Maxim’s, an hour later, she decided to go home, so we took her
to her hotel, and then resumed our pursuit of Rillette. After much
wandering, we finally came upon her, about four in the morning, in one
of those showy pleasure-resorts that I have described.

“Ah, yes, there she is!” X. exclaimed, and I looked to a distant table
to see the figure he indicated, that of a young girl seemingly not
more than twenty-four or twenty-five, a white silk neckerchief tied
about her brown hair, her body clothed in a rather nondescript costume
for a world as showy as this. Most of the women wore evening clothes.
She had on a skirt of light-brown wool, a white shirtwaist open in
the front, with the collar turned down, showing her pretty neck. Her
skirt was short, and her sleeves were short, showing a solid fore
arm. Before she noticed X. we saw her take a slender girl in black
for a partner and dance, with others, in the open space between the
tables that circled the walls. Her face did not suggest the depravity
which her career would indicate, although it was by no means ruddy;
but she seemed to scorn rouge. Her eyes--eyes are always revealing
in a forceful personage--were large and vague and brown, set beneath
a wide, full forehead--very wonderful eyes. In her idle security and
profound nonchalance, she appeared like a figure out of the Revolution
or the Commune. She would have been magnificent in a riot, marching
up a Parisian street, her white band about her brown hair, carrying a
knife, a gun, or a flag. She would have had the courage, too; for it
was plain that life had lost much of its charm and she nearly all of
her caring. When her dance was done, she came over to us, and extended
an indifferent hand to X. He told me, after their light conversation
in French, that he had chided her to the effect that her career was
ruining her once lovely voice. “I shall find it again at the next
corner,” she said, and walked smartly away.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE CAFÉS ON THE BOULEVARDS OF
PARIS]

“Some one should write a novel about a woman like that,” X. explained.
“She ought to be painted. It is amazing the sufficiency of soul that
goes with that type. There aren’t many like her. She could be the
sensation of Paris again if she wanted to, would try. But she won’t.
See what she said of her voice just now.” He shook his head. I smiled
approvingly, for obviously the appearance of the woman, her full,
compelling eyes, bore him out.

She was a figure of distinction in this restaurant world, for many knew
her and kept track of her. I watched her from time to time talking
with the guests of one table and another, and the chemical content
which made her exceptional was as obvious as though she were a bottle
and bore a label. To this day she stands out in my mind, in her simple
dress and indifferent manner, as perhaps the one forceful, significant
figure that I saw in all the cafés of Paris or elsewhere.

I should like to add here, before I part forever with this curious
and feverish Parisian restaurant world, that, after much and careful
observation, my conclusion has been that it was too utterly feverish,
artificial, and exotic not to be dangerous and grimly destructive, if
not merely touched upon at long intervals.

[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF PARISIAN CAFÉ LIFE]

This world of champagne-drinkers was apparently interested in only
two things--the flare and glow of the restaurants, which were always
brightly lighted and packed with people, and women. In the last
analysis, women were the glittering attraction; and truly one might say
they were glittering. Fine feathers make fine birds, and nowhere more
so than in Paris. But there were many birds who would have been fine
in much less showy feathers. In many instances they craved and secured
a demure simplicity which was even more destructive than the flaring
costumes of the demi-monde. It was strange to see American innocence,
the products of Petosky, Michigan, and Hannibal, Missouri, cheek by
jowl with the most daring and the most flagrant women that the great
metropolis could produce. I did not know until later how hard some of
these women were, how schooled in vice, how weary of everything save
this atmosphere of festivity and the privilege of wearing beautiful
clothes. It was a scorching lesson, and it displayed vice as an upper
and a nether millstone between which youth and beauty are ground or
pressed quickly to a worthless mass. I would defy anybody to live in
this atmosphere as long as five years and not exhibit strongly the
telltale marks of decay.

Most people come here for a night or two, or a month or two, or once
in a year or so, and then return to the comparatively dull world from
which they emanated, which is fortunate. If they were here a little
while, this deceptive world of delight would lose all its glamour;
for in a very few days you see through the dreary mechanism by which
it is produced: the browbeating of shabby waiters by greedy managers,
the extortionate charges and tricks by which money is lured from the
pockets of the unwary, the wretched rooms and garrets from which some
of these butterflies emanate, to wing here in seeming delight and then
disappear. When the natural glow of youth has gone, then come powder
and paint for the face, belladonna for the eyes, rouge for the lips,
palms, and nails, and perfumes and ornament and the glitter of good
clothing; but underneath it all one reads the weariness of the eye, the
sickening distaste for bargaining hour by hour and day by day, the cold
mechanism of what was once natural, instinctive coquetry.

[Illustration: “IN ONE OF THOSE SHOWY PLEASURE-RESORTS”]

You feel constantly that many of these women would sell their souls for
one last hour of delight, and that some of them would then gladly take
poison, as many of them doubtless do, to end it all.

Consumption, cocaine, and opium maintain their persistent toll. This is
a furnace of desire, this Montmartre district, and it burns furiously
with a hard, white-hot flame until there is nothing left save black
cinders and white ashes. Those who can endure its consuming heat are
quite welcome to its wonders until emotion and feeling and beauty are
no more.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]



EMERGENCY

BY WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT


    I’ve borne it out. There wasn’t much to bear,
    By your own tenets; but there was for me,--
    A flaming onslaught; cohorts furiously
    Charging the ramparts; fearful thunders booming;
    Lightning and holocaust, and Terror looming
    With black war-towers on the sky-line there!

    You saw not even a gnat to make one wince
    While your own buoyant thoughts beat up the blue.
    Let me be glad of that. The happier you!
    I found myself alone to face disaster
    Through age-long seconds. While your pulse beat faster
    For mirth, my own--stopped dead, a moment since.

    Then, at my elbow--and whole worlds away--
    You turned; and I was snatching at my breath
    After a sudden bout with worse than death,
    With worse than beasts of Ephesus, uprisen
    One moment from my heart that is their prison.
    I bore it out. That’s all there is to say.

    They flash unwarning on our dozing acts,
    The angel or the fiend. It seems to me
    There’s nothing too sublime for Man to be
    (In such clear moments),--naught too foully crawling!
    What “self” is most our own, when this appalling
    Apocalypse lights up the inmost facts?

    Something is changed; even though one drops back
    In the next instant to the old routine,
    Forgets the risk and is, as he has been,
    The slowly-trailing, patient slug of Time,
    Neither contemptible nor yet sublime,
    Inching with pain along the beaten track;

    Something is changed--the mind paints heavens and hells;
    And I, their dizzy colors in my brain,
    Wonder just what is “sane” and what “insane,”
    And what one can be sure of--where we’re master
    Of our own triumphs, or our own disaster...?
    But that’s enough. Let’s talk of something else!

[Illustration]

[Illustration: ELIHU VEDDER

FROM THE BUST BY CHARLES KECK

Sculpture

_By_

Charles Keck

(_Examples of American Sculpture_)]

[Illustration: DRAMA

FROM THE SCULPTURE BY CHARLES KECK

OWNED BY MRS. E. D. BRANDEGEE


MUSIC

FROM THE SCULPTURE BY CHARLES KECK

OWNED BY MRS. E. D. BRANDEGEE]

[Illustration: YOUTHFUL AMERICA

THE ALLEGHANY COUNTY SOLDIERS MEMORIAL AT PITTSBURGH

FROM THE SCULPTURE BY CHARLES KECK]



[Illustration: Drawn by Alpheus Cole]



THE MOTHER

BY TIMOTHY COLE


    Dear solacer and goddess of the hearth,
    O mother! whose enfolding arms and breast
    Cradle the infant world from dawn’s fair birth
    To the sun’s ripening noon with loving girth;
    How oft, in dreaming, of thy sheltering rest,
    Whose ingle-glow now kindles to new worth
    Our souls, we see thy phantom figure blest,
    Still ministrant, in light and beauty dressed.
    Where light is, thitherward the spirit tends:
    Mankind were yet within the womb of night,
    From joy imprison’d save for thy sweet might,
    Save for the flame thy love forever lends.
    While beacon-like thy fire throws its spark,
    We shall not fear, though all the world grow dark.

[Illustration: Color-Tone, engraved for ~The Century~ by H. C.
Merrill and H. Davidson

“’YOU’RE ALIVE, THANK HEAVEN!... SHALL I SEND FOR A PARSON?’”

DRAWN BY HARRY RALEIGH]



[Illustration]



A GARAGE IN THE SUNSHINE

BY JOSEPH ERNEST

WITH A PICTURE BY HARRY RALEIGH


Falling in love is specially a critical business for simple-minded
persons who have room in their heads for only one idea at a time. It
has a tendency to shift the basis of their existence in a perilous
degree before they are in the least aware what has happened to them.

Like most persons who earn their living at the daily risk of their
lives, Teddy Rocco was not burdened with too active an imagination.
He did his regular ninety miles an hour round the motordromes on a
“Yellow Fiend” autocycle with a simple faith in his luck and no higher
aspirations than he could express in this way:

“No, sir, you won’t find me in this speed game one day longer than it
takes me to clean up the price of a share in a cement garage, with
machine-tools complete, and beat it back to sunny Jax, Florida.”

It was this ambition that led him, when he was not racing, to give
exhibitions at Santoni’s velodrome at Palmetto Beach, a track known to
the speed profession as the “Devil’s Soup-plate.” It was the same lack
of imagination that enabled him to hear of the introduction of Miss
Sadie Simmons to the soup-plate with feelings of unmingled disgust.

“A girl!” he ejaculated, and made for Santoni’s office with his
features richly adorned with chain lubricant. “A girl! Yes, and a speed
limit, too, I reckon, and pretty-pretty stunts, and bouquets--what do
you know? Better call it the ’Angel’s Roundabout,’ and be done!”

The graphite lubricant failed to conceal the scowl on his face as
he burst into the office. The proprietor, a keen purveyor of popular
excitement, was rubbing his hands in Mephistophelian satisfaction over
a new poster.

“Daredevil Ted Rocco,” it said, and “Wild Will Ryan”; and below, in
big red type that crowded the rest almost off the sheet, “Miss Sadie
Simmons, America’s Queen of the Track.” From which the sagacious reader
will infer that Miss Simmons was new and unproved; otherwise Santoni
would infallibly have billed her as “Crazy Sadie,” in suggestion of
death-defying recklessness.

“Hullo, Teddy!” cried Santoni in his mighty voice. “What you been doing
to your face?”

“Greasin’ up,” Teddy answered shortly, and cast a malevolent glance at
the bill. “Listen here, San. What’s all this talk about a skirt comin’
on? We don’t run any musical leg-show here, you know. If you let a dame
on to this track, it’s going to put the speeds on the blink, and then
you’ll need a complete Ziegfeld chorus to hold the crowd. I’ve got a
fine motion-picture of myself bein’ paced by something in bag-tights
and a picture-hat.”

Santoni frowned warningly, jerked his head toward the half-open door
of his sanctum, and passed a large, embarrassed hand over his heavy
showman’s jowl.

“I do’ know, Ted,” he growled. “Maybe she ain’t any funeral, either, if
you can believe her. But if you fancy your chance, you can argue the
point with her yourself, for she’s right here. Miss Simmons!”

From Santoni’s sanctum came the sound of a chair abruptly pushed back,
and the click of high heels on the floor. The proprietor turned away
under the pretense of affixing the poster to the wall; then the door
opened wide and revealed “America’s Queen of the Track.”

For a moment she inspected Teddy Rocco with the interest of a
professional rival. He did not look at all like a daredevil just then,
but merely a rather astonished little man with a square mechanic’s
jaw and a compact, wiry figure, his sleeves rolled up and his arms
and face besmeared. There was some reason for his astonishment, too,
for in America’s “Queen,” instead of the superannuated, hard-featured
circus-performer he had expected, he saw a rather shy, spruce little
girl, with bright, black eyes and an absurdly small nose. Her dark hair
hung in two thick, glossy ropes over her shoulders, and her skirt was
short enough to reveal several inches of well-modeled ankle.

“What is it, Mr. Santoni?” she asked in a small, husky voice.

“It’s only Ted Rocco,” explained the proprietor. “He don’t think you’ll
be fast enough for this track.”

The girl stared at Teddy as though he had questioned her respectability.

“How do you _know_ I won’t?” she demanded.

They were particularly bright eyes. The daredevil shifted
uncomfortably, and his own eyes wandered over the room as though in
search of succor.

“It isn’t that, exactly,” he stammered; “but, you see, miss, we let ’em
rip here. My makers pay for speed, and I got to show speed or I don’t
collect.”

“You aren’t so much,” retorted the “Queen.” “I bet you don’t average
ninety, and I touched ninety myself at Coney last week.”

The daredevil’s eyes ceased to wander, meeting hers in a stare of blank
incredulity.

“You did ninety? You!” he said. “For the love of Mike!”

“Why shouldn’t I? My makers pay for speed, too. And when they send me
along something with more power to it, I guess I’ll lap you every mile.
I think you’re mean to knock me just because I’m not a man.”

“You see?” said Santoni, shrugging his shoulders.

Whereupon the daredevil mumbled apologies, and retreated to the garage
in great discomfiture. He sat brooding on a pile of gasolene-cans and
watched Wild Will Ryan circling the track in a private try-out; but
instead of the racing auto-cycle, he saw only two black eyes that
stared reproachfully, and heard a small, curiously deep, and husky
voice that assured him over and over again that he was mean.

When Ryan dismounted, red-eyed and hoarse from cleaving the air like
a projectile, Ted was still fidgeting with a wrench and muttering
gloomily.

“Is it a goil?” asked Ryan.

“Search me. It looks like one--a little brown girl about as big as a
ten-cent cigar. But with a nerve! Tips me the crinkled nose because
I said she might get in the way on a small track. Reckons I don’t
average ninety--me, that’s held five records! And when her dear
manufacturers, understand me, send her the cute little peacherino of a
sixteen-cylinder, eighty-horse dynamite-gun that they’re building for
her to go to finishing-school on, she’s going to make me look like a
pram-pusher with paralysis. Can you beat it?”

“Never heard of her,” said Ryan. “She must be a new one in this game.”

“Oh, she’s all kinds of new, take it from me. But if she tries to do
ninety an hour round this saucer, we won’t pick up enough of her to be
worth dressing.”

Teddy swung off to remove the stains of toil from his face. When he
reappeared, normally dapper, as becomes a successful autocyclist, he
found little Miss Simmons preparing to try the track. Her costume wrung
from him an involuntary exclamation. Her cap, coat, and knickers were
all of gleaming scarlet leather.

“Isn’t she the dandy?” grinned Ryan, as they stood aside and watched
her. “I reckon she knows the business, at that. She just shooed her
mechanic away, and started in to fix all the juice connections herself.
And look at her now, testing every spoke with her fingers. Some great
kid!”

“What’s she riding?” asked Teddy.

“Flying Centaur; new make, I guess. Bet she pulls down a wad for it,
too. Chunky little thing, ain’t she? You wouldn’t think she carried
metal to see her in skirts. If she took a spill at ninety, she’d bounce
some.”

“Oh, shut your head!” exclaimed Teddy Rocco, with a sudden anger that
puzzled even himself.

It was not without a tinge of professional jealousy that the two young
men stood in the center of the course and watched Miss Simmons pull her
bright new machine to the starting-point and climb into the saddle. In
Teddy’s mind there was also a certain jealousy of Santoni, who held her
for the start. But with the first healthy rip of the exhaust, and the
first smooth and perfect circle she described round the soup-plate,
these feelings were submerged in professional appreciation.

Moment by moment she gathered speed, mounting the steep banking
accurately with every lap, until she was roaring and rattling round the
very uppermost edge like a bright-red marble in a basin. Santoni slowly
sauntered over to them, performing a sort of involuntary waltz as he
turned to follow her with his goggle eyes.

“Maybe she ain’t no funeral, either,” he said.

“You ought to be lynched for letting her do it, San,” said Teddy. “It
isn’t a girl’s game.”

“Well, wouldn’t that jar you?” Santoni turned on Ryan with palms
outspread. “First he was sore because he thought she couldn’t ride, and
now he’s sore because she can!”

Teddy made no reply. A new and strange feeling gripped him by the
throat until he choked. As he watched the track, a picture engraved
itself indelibly on his heart: a tiny scarlet figure astride a machine
that roared round and round with fiendish energy until it hung out
almost horizontally from the steep rim of the banking. Sadie’s black
eyes were narrowed to slits; her roped hair flew out behind her;
her lips were compressed in the lust of speed as she braced her
strong little knees and elbows hard against the leaping of her angry
motor. This was a sort of girl he had never imagined in his wildest
speculations. A girl who understood motors, he thought, could not fail
to be in every other way admirable. From such a girl, for example, a
man need never fear anything less than a square deal.

When she cut off her ignition and slipped gradually down the banking,
he was the first to assist her to alight.

“Say, kid, I want to tell you I’m sorry,” he whispered before the
others ran up. “I’m glad you’re going to ride with us.”

For a moment the “Queen’s” eyes danced with pleasure; then they became
softly diffident again as she turned away to stable her machine.

“I don’t fancy I’ll let the show down so badly,” she smiled over her
shoulder.

In truth, the popularity of Sadie Simmons among the crowds that
flocked to the velodrome was immediate and great. She was irresistibly
diminutive and dainty, and silent and retiring in manner when not
racing; but once on her machine, rattling and bouncing round the
circumscribed track with the noise of a whole express-train, she was
transformed into a little red imp of daring unexcelled by the men; and
though they consistently beat her when it came to a test, it was Sadie
whom the crowds cheered and the fans petted.

A faded woman, of an incurable pessimism, clucked everywhere after
her, like a hen after an adventurous duckling. Except for this
unexhilarating person, whom she addressed as “Aunty,” but who
frequently forgot the suggested relationship and called her “Miss,”
Sadie appeared to be quite alone in the world. She accepted with frank
pleasure the friendly advances of the fans, the comradeship of Wild
Will Ryan, and the wondering worship of Teddy Rocco.

One morning Ryan emerged from the garage, laughing immoderately, and
pressing a hand to his face.

“What’s bitin’ you, Irish?” inquired Teddy.

The big Irishman withdrew his hand, and exhibited a cheek decorated
with the imprint of small and oily fingers on a ground that flamed
scarlet.

“It’s little Sadie; she’s straight, that’s all,” he replied with a
grin, as though he had discovered a choice witticism.

Teddy tore off his coat and flung it from him recklessly, and his cheek
flamed suddenly redder than Ryan’s.

“Yes, and you’ll be stiff when I’m through with you, you big loafer!”
he said savagely. “How’d you find that out?”

Ryan stretched forth a long arm, and swept his colleague into a hug
like a bear’s.

“Be aisy, little man,” he said. “I just tried to kiss her while she was
fightin’ with a set o’ new piston-rings. I got mine all right--from the
lady.”

But Teddy tore loose and rushed into the garage, where he found Sadie
still struggling with a recalcitrant piston of her dismounted motor. He
seized a cold chisel from the work-bench.

“What did that fresh Mick say to you?” he demanded.

“Drop it at once, Teddy,” commanded Sadie. “When I can’t manage Ryan
with my own hands, I’ll get a gun. Besides, I want you to hold these
rings tight for me, so I can push this piston in.”

Teddy obeyed, marveling at the strength of the small brown fingers that
had essayed the task unaided. Once more that strange, choking sensation
assailed him, and he felt his eyes unaccountably filling with tears.

“Sadie, you’re an everlasting little marvel,” he said. “I expect you’ll
marry one of these rich fans; but I wish it was me.”

“I don’t want to marry anybody,” the girl replied. “Say, can’t you hold
those rings in without trembling so?”

“But you got to marry somebody,” Teddy insisted.

“I don’t have to,--there, that’s well in at last,--at least not for a
long time, till I get good and ready. And then he’ll have to be extra
good and handsome and rich. I’m awfully ambitious, you know.”

“That’s all right, kid,”--Teddy swallowed a lump in his throat,--“but
take care you don’t put it off too long.”

The girl looked up from her work with a puzzled air.

“Take a good slant at me,” explained Teddy. “Don’t you see anything in
my eyes?”

“They look queer, kind of anxious and strained. They’re like Will
Ryan’s.”

“Everybody that stays in this game as long as we have gets the same
look. It comes from being scared stiff once or twice, and not being
able to forget it.”

“I’m never scared,” said Miss Simmons, with a toss of her shapely
little head.

“You haven’t begun yet. Wait till some one drops in front of you in the
last lap, and you have just half a second to make up your mind whether
you’ll run over him or take a chance among the crowd. One stunt like
that, and you won’t be so pretty.”

“Then you can ask me again,” said Miss Simmons, with her usual quiet
self-possession. “I can almost see you doing it.”

“I tell you it’s no game for a girl,” Teddy persisted.

“Why not? I’d look nicer dead than you.”

“Touch wood when you say that,” advised Teddy, laying his own hand on
the bench.

“I won’t,” the girl retorted. “I reckoned all the chances before I came
into the game, and there’s no one to cry over me if I did get killed
except Aunty, and she’s made up her mind to it long ago and become
quite resigned. Besides, I’ve taken chances ever since I can remember.
Did you ever play the carnivals? I was raised in them, if you can call
it that. I did the high dive for years into a sort of canvas bucket
half-full of water, and I don’t think I’ve a scare in me.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Teddy Rocco might have recalled this conversation, with superstitious
interest in its prophetic nature, the week before he left for the prize
meetings; but that, with most other things, was swept out of his mind
when he hunted for Santoni with blood on his face, swearing that he had
always intended to kill the proprietor and might as well get it over.

It all happened in consequence of Santoni’s attempt to achieve a gala
finish to his season before his stars departed. To that end, he had
employed many banners in decoration of the velodrome, and one of them,
insecurely affixed to its post, came loose while the riders were in
mid-career. It fluttered aimlessly down upon the track, was caught up
in the wind of Ryan’s rush, danced a little behind him, and finally
wrapped itself round Sadie’s front wheel. There was a gasp of horror
from the spectators as the flimsy, yellow cotton wound itself tightly
on the hub.

For a fraction of a second the heavy cycle, urged by its frantic motor,
slurred along the track with its front wheel jammed; then the tire
burst, the forks snapped like carrots, and Sadie’s tiny red figure
shot ahead over the handle-bars, struck the wire fence in front of the
spectators, and fell back limply on the track.

In that final emergency she had retained presence of mind enough to cut
off the ignition, and below her on the incline her machine lay crumpled
and inert, as silent and shattered as herself.

Teddy Rocco was fully fifty yards behind; that is, he had a good long
second in which to do his thinking. To his left was Sadie’s machine,
on his right the crowd yelled an inarticulate chorus of fear and
warning, which he heard above the roar of his motor. Dead ahead of him
lay a small, outstretched figure in torn and dusty scarlet leather;
and immediately above the white little face was a clear foot of almost
perpendicular banking.

With a prayer for speed, he tore his throttle wide open, and steered
straight for that pale, blood-stained face until he could see the dark
lashes on the flickering eyelids; then with a violent swerve he shot up
the incline, and cleared her by inches.

The spectators cried aloud in terror as his front wheel rose on the
wire mesh in front of them, raced along it for a yard or two, shaved
a fence-post, and slipped back upon the track. The machine lurched
sickeningly into the hollow of the banking in a last effort to recover
its balance.

Teddy Rocco’s engine had stopped as he cleared the girl, and his toe
was pressed hard into the fork of his front wheel. The braked tire
screeched along the track, and when at last he struck the ground, his
speed was not more than twenty miles an hour. To the crowd it seemed
that he lay just where he had fallen, and they roared aloud in relief,
and in admiration of what appeared to be purely consummate pluck and
skill.

When Teddy recovered his senses, drank out of a flask that Ryan held
to his lips, and stared about him, the first thing he saw was a tiny
patch of red disappearing over the edge of the track in the arms of the
attendants. Behind walked the faded woman he knew as “Aunty,” wringing
her hands in utterly justified pessimism. At one entrance a knot of
spectators filed sadly out, and among them a frightened woman wept
without restraint.

Teddy went mad. He wanted to follow the little red patch wherever it
might be bound. Restrained from this, he desired greatly the death of
Santoni.

“I told him them things was dangerous,” he repeated, with the futile
insistence of an intoxicated man.

When they laid hands on him again, he fainted, and it was then that
they had the first opportunity to ascertain that his shoulder was
dislocated. With the tenderness of a woman, Ryan picked him up and bore
him away.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the week before he was due to depart Teddy besieged the hospital
in which lay Sadie’s tortured little form, and sent up flowers daily,
until at last the nurse assured him that she had been able to see
them, and even to hold some of them in her hand. At this he begged and
stormed and wept until he was allowed to see her, despite the fact
that, as they explained to him in vain, it was not visitors’ day.

But when he stood at her bedside, and she smiled wanly up at him out
of her bandages, and even put forth a very white little hand for him
to shake, a great peace came over him. There was still enough of her,
after all, to be worth dressing.

“Tough luck, Teddy-Eddy!” she whispered in that deep, small voice of
hers. “Just to think I might never hear the band play for the start
again, or the engine rip when I turn on the juice--it gives me a lot to
worry about. You ought to be glad I didn’t take you at your word that
day in the garage when you wanted to lay Ryan out and asked me to marry
you. Look at what a fix you’d be in now!”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” murmured Teddy. “I’d have
wanted you just the same.”

“Do you mean to say you’d marry a wreck like me, Teddy Rocco? I’m all
to pieces; you haven’t a notion how badly I got mashed.”

“And I don’t care, neither,” said Teddy, stoutly. “You’re alive, thank
Heaven! And you’re Sadie Simmons, and you can smile. Shall I send for a
parson?”

“What, now?”

“Only say the word.”

The girl picked at the sheet for a moment, and her eyes, now ringed
with suffering and no longer bright, searched his face wonderingly;
but they found no trace of an emotion other than eagerness to be as
good as his word.

“I don’t know,” she said at last; “it’ll need thinking over. You know,
it was hitting the wire fence that saved me, Teddy. It was like diving
into a net.”

“Pretty hard net,” grinned the boy, reminiscently.

“Lucky for you, or you’d have gone through it. Teddy boy, why didn’t
you run over me? I’m so small! You must have been mad to ride into the
fence like that.”

“Who told you?” demanded Teddy.

“Nurse. She says you hadn’t a chance in a thousand to get round me
without breaking your neck. I always liked you, Teddy. I’m glad you’re
brave.”

“Then why not marry me, Sadie?” The boy came closer, while the nurse
hovered about impatiently. “You can’t come back, you know. However good
they patch you up, you’re done with the game.”

“Marry you, after what I said about looking for a rich guy? I’m bad
and selfish, and I want so much. And I’m older than you think--nearly
nineteen. I only wore my hair that way for a stall. Would you really
marry me now, when I’m all cut up and no one else would look at me?”

“Call me and see,” suggested Teddy, quietly.

“I’ll let you know later, Teddy. It depends--”

“But I’m going to Dayton to-night to race, and then I go South again.
How am I to know?”

Sadie considered for a moment with eyes closed. When she opened them
again, her face was very grave.

“Come past here on your way to the depot,” she said, “and look at this
window above the bed. It’s the fourth from the end. If the blind’s up,
you can bring along your parson.”

“And if it’s down?”

“If it’s down, it will mean that you’d better forget all about me.”

“Then leave it up, Sadie,” he whispered as the nurse bustled up
suggestively. “I’m only two thousand short of buying a garage in
Florida, where I used to work. You’d love to be down there--all
sunshine, pelicans, palms, and sugar-cane, and butterflies as big as
your hand soaring about. You’d get well and strong down there, Sadie,
and I’d be so good to you! Don’t let them pull it down!”

The nurse came nearer and began to fidget with the pillows.

“I’ll have to get you to leave now, young man,” she said. “The doctor
will be here in a moment.”

“Take care of yourself, Teddy,” smiled the girl, waving her hand feebly
as he tore himself away. “Touch wood as you go out.”

She set her teeth for the doctor’s visit, and said not a word until he
had finished his examination; but her black eyes studied his face in an
agony of suspense. A momentary smile, accompanied by a raising of his
bushy, gray eyebrows, gave her the cue.

“Doctor, will I get well?” she asked almost under her breath.

“Why, of course,” replied the doctor. “As well as ever you were, I’m
hoping.”

“But--but will I be ugly?”

“Little Miss Vanity!” grinned the doctor. “You ought to be thankful you
have a breath left in your body. No, you won’t be ugly, if you mean
disfigured. Of course there’ll be scars--”

“Do you think I’ll be able to ride again?” persisted the girl.

“I don’t know why you shouldn’t be able to ride; but I guess when you
set eyes on the track you won’t want to. As for the rest, the cuts are
pretty clean and not deep. I should say, on the whole, that you’ll
have to look fairly close into the glass to see the one on your cheek,
and your hair will cover the scalp-wound. The others aren’t anywhere
to prevent you from wearing low-cut frocks. Now, are you satisfied,
daughter of Eve?”

“Yes, thank you, Doctor. If the bone in my arm mends all right, that
is. It’s hurting a whole lot to-day.”

“That means precisely that it is mending,” said the doctor as he picked
up his bag to depart. “And now that you’re sure of your precious
beauty, you’d better try to get some sleep.”

Sadie closed her eyes obediently, but her brows were knitted in
thought. When the doctor had moved on, she looked up again with a sigh.

“Nurse, the light bothers my eyes, and I can’t turn my head,” she said.
“Will you please pull down the blind?”

       *       *       *       *       *

While it is still young and overflowing with vitality, the human frame
is able to summon life forces to its aid that can sometimes knit up
broken bones and torn tissues as though by magic power. Teddy Rocco
had seen various striking demonstrations of this quality in his racing
career, but it had never occurred to him that a mere girl might possess
it. He was greatly astonished, therefore, on meeting Ryan at a southern
track, to hear that Sadie was once more riding for the “Flying Centaur”
people.

“She don’t look a cent worse,” said Ryan. “Same little red suit, same
little smile, same throaty little voice. And she’s making good, too.
Been all over the West, and packed up a nice parcel of the long green.
Not that she’ll ever need it; that kid will marry a million some day.
One of the guys that was following her round was big rich.”

All that day Teddy rode entirely without judgment, and his old
daredevil dash was not in him. In fact, that was becoming his
consistent experience. Every time he would set his teeth and let his
engine out to the last notch to pass the man in front, a blind seemed
to shut down in front of him, or a little red figure would appear
stretched on the track ahead, and he would let the chance slip by.

Consequently, when he returned to give exhibitions at the Devil’s
Soup-plate, he was no nearer the white southern garage of his dreams
than he had been the previous season. And the life of a speed-man is
short,--much shorter, as a rule, than that of a boxing champion.

That garage, gleaming in the sun, with a palm or two in front and
lizards basking in its shadow, had been Teddy’s lodestar for years;
but on the first day of their meeting, Sadie’s brisk little figure
had slipped into the picture, and he could not imagine the place now
without seeing her standing at the door in a white dress, with no hat,
but with a bunch of crimson flowers at her waist.

“This is my finish,” he told Santoni; “I’m a has-been. I’ve started
seein’ things. I won’t ride after this season.”

Then he learned, with a shock, that Sadie was to be his
racing-companion once more. She had walked into Santoni’s office and
offered to give exhibitions on the old terms; and Santoni, being too
good a business man, and too stout withal to stand on his head for
joy, had shaken her by both hands, and spent an afternoon in devising a
poster more sensational than any he had previously compassed.

When he wrote “America’s Foremost Queen of the Track” it seemed to him
weak and colorless; and he threw adjectives into it until Sadie had a
title as long as her arm.

Teddy slipped away and hid himself when he saw her arrive, with a knot
of admirers, to survey the track. An expensively tailored costume
emphasized her recent prosperity, and her obvious gaiety of manner was
like a snub. When she laughingly pointed out to her companions the
precise spot on which she had struck the providential wire fence, Teddy
shuddered and turned away.

In the garage he came upon a mechanic overhauling her mount, an
excessively powerful machine with four cylinders, its frame enameled
bright scarlet, and nickeled in an unusual degree. It looked a
sufficiently dangerous mount for a strong and skilful man racing on a
spacious track. He shrank from seeing Sadie ride it in the restricted
circle of the soup-plate.

When they appeared on the track in the evening, however, he could no
longer ignore her presence. Indeed, she came behind him and slapped him
gaily on the shoulder, such a trim, joyously captivating midget, in her
scarlet leather motor-jacket, that his heart leaped at the sight of her.

“Who said I couldn’t come back, Teddy Rocco?” she asked, and the
familiar, curious huskiness of her voice thrilled him so that he could
not reply.

“I’m going to make you look like a never-was to-night, Teddy-Eddy,” she
went on, with a sort of malicious exhilaration in her manner. “I expect
you’re still single?”

“Oh, cut it out, Sadie!” he pleaded. “I never done you any harm.”

“Do you love me as much as ever?” asked little Miss Simmons, with an
unwonted feline delight in cruelty. “The villain thought he had the
poor little girl just where he wanted her, didn’t he? But the kind,
handsome doctor rescued her all right; and now she’s going to make the
villain look like thirty cents.”

“You’ll have to go some,” said Teddy, grinning miserably, as he stooped
to adjust his carbureter. When he mounted his machine he was in a
white-hot, searing temper. If all the women in the world had been laid
side by side on an endless track, he would have ridden over their necks
at that moment with an exquisite pleasure.

But though he rode with the courage of bitterness and desperation, he
soon found that Sadie had the heels of him. Once or twice when she
shot past him with an almost crazy recklessness, the thought flashed
through his mind that an imperceptible swerve of his handle-bar would
all but inevitably end both their lives, and he weakly throttled down
his engine, fearful lest the subconscious working of his tortured mind
might communicate a tremor to his arm; and every time that Sadie passed
him with a vicious spurt of her diabolical scarlet mount, he caught in
her eye a gleam of impish triumph.

It was when he found himself riding behind her, with his front wheel
a hand’s-breadth from her hind one, that he realized how utterly his
nerve had failed. Ever and again, under his front wheel appeared a
white, blood-flecked little face, with eyelashes that quivered in
agony. With a sob, he cut out his engine and slid slowly down the track.

“I’m through,” he said to a mechanic who seized his cycle. “I don’t
think I’ll need her again.”

For a long time he sat in the gloom of the garage in dumb agony, and
even there the rip of Sadie’s powerful engine followed him above
the cheers of the crowd. Now and then, in the midst of the uproar,
he could hear the voice of Santoni yelling the laps; then there was
a final outburst of cheering. When it died away, Sadie’s motor was
silent. A moment later, as it seemed to him, the door of the workshop
slammed, and he looked up, to see her standing before him, her black
eyes dancing in that strange exhilaration that he had noted before, her
chest heaving with excitement under the vivid scarlet of her jacket.

“I’ve shaded your track record, Teddy Rocco!” she cried. “I’ve beaten
you to bits! Now say I can’t come back! I’ve come, haven’t I?”

“I guess,” said Teddy, humbly.

“And what’s more, I’ve cleaned up three thousand dollars this season,
and I haven’t a scar left on me that you could see in this light. But
you’ll have to take my word for that. We can talk on level terms now,
Teddy. I’m as good as ever I was, don’t you think?”

“I expect so,” stammered Teddy. “It’s me that’s in bad. I’ve lost
heart, Sadie, and my nerve’s gone. I’ve been scared a time too many.”

“Then get your machine and rush me away,” cried Sadie, “and marry me
the first minute you can; and we’ll get out of this to Florida in the
morning, and see the garage and the sunshine and the butterflies. It’s
a square deal now, Teddy-Eddy. Stand up and kiss your honey-bird, you
brave, silly, big-hearted, mush-headed little man; for I love you so
much I couldn’t have offered you anything less, and I’ve waited so
long, my heart feels like it will burst!”

[Illustration]



[Illustration]



T. TEMBAROM

BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

Author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc.

WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN


CHAPTER XXXII

When Tembarom repeated the words “and you’re going to listen,” Lady
Joan began to stare at him. It was not the ridiculous boyish drop
in his voice which arrested her attention. It was a fantastic,
incongruous, wholly different thing. He had suddenly dropped his
slouch, and stood upright. Did he realize that he had slung his words
at her as if they were an order given with the ring of authority?

“I’ve not bucked against anything you’ve said or done since you’ve been
here,” he went on, speaking fast and grimly. “I didn’t mean to. I had
my reasons. There were things that I’d have given a good deal to say to
you and ask you about, but you wouldn’t let me. You wouldn’t give me a
chance to square things for you--if they could be squared. You threw
me down every time I tried.”

He was too wildly incomprehensible with his changes from humanness
to folly. Remembering what he had attempted to say on the day he had
followed her in the avenue, she was inflamed again.

“What in the name of New York slang does that mean?” she demanded.

“Never mind New York,” he answered, cool as well as grim. “A fellow
that’s learned slang in the streets has learned something else as well.
He’s learned to keep his eyes open. He’s on to a way of seeing things.
And what I’ve seen is that you’re so doggone miserable that--that
you’re almost down and out.”

This time she spoke to him in the voice with the quality of deadliness
in it which she had used to her mother.

“Do you think that because you are in your own house you can be as
intrusively insulting as you choose?” she said.

“No, I don’t,” he answered. “What I think is quite different. I think
that if a man _has_ a house of his own, and there’s any one in big
trouble under the roof of it,--a woman most of all,--he’s a cheap skate
if he doesn’t get busy and try to help--just plain, straight _help_.”

He saw in her eyes all her concentrated disdain of him, but he went on,
still obstinate and cool and grim.

“I guess ‘help’ is too big a word just yet. That may come later, and
it mayn’t. What I’m going to have a try at now is making it easier for
you--just easier.”

Her contemptuous gesture registered no impression on him, as he paused
a moment and looked fixedly at her.

“You just hate me, don’t you?” It was a mere statement which couldn’t
have been more impersonal to himself if he had been made of wood.
“That’s all right. I seem like a low-down intruder to you. Well, that’s
all right, too. But what _ain’t_ all right is what your mother has set
you on to thinking about me. You’d never have thought it yourself.
You’d have known better.”

“What,” she said fiercely, “is that?”

“That I’m mutt enough to have a mash on you.”

The common slangy crassness of it was a kind of shock. She caught her
breath and merely stared at him. But he was not staring at her; he was
simply looking straight into her face, and it amazingly flashed upon
her that the extraordinary words were so entirely unembarrassed and
direct that they were actually not offensive. He was merely telling her
something in his own way, not caring the least about his own effect,
but absolutely determined that she should hear and understand it.

Her caught breath ended in something which was like a half-laugh. His
queer, sharp, incomprehensible face, his queer, unmoved voice, were too
extraordinarily unlike anything she had ever seen or heard before.

“I don’t want to be brash, and what I want to say may seem kind of that
way to you; but it ain’t. Anyhow, I guess it’ll relieve your mind. Lady
Joan, you’re a looker--you’re a beaut from Beautsville. If I were your
kind, and things were different, I’d be crazy about you--crazy. But I’m
_not_ your kind--and things _are_ different.” He drew a step nearer
still to her in his intentness. “They’re _this_ different: why, Lady
Joan, I’m dead stuck on another girl!”

She caught her breath again, leaning forward.

“Another--”

“She says she’s not a lady; she threw me down just because all
this darned money came to me,” he hastened on, and suddenly he was
imperturbable no longer, but flushed and boyish, and more of New York
than ever. “She’s a little bit of a quiet thing, and she drops her h’s;
but gee! You’re a looker--you’re a queen, and she’s not. But little Ann
Hutchinson--Why, Lady Joan, as far as this boy’s concerned,”--and he
oddly touched himself on the breast,--“she makes you look like thirty
cents.”

Joan quickly sat down on the chair she had just left. She rested an
elbow on the table and shaded her face with her hand. She was not
laughing; she scarcely knew what she was doing or feeling.

“You are in love with Ann Hutchinson,” she said, in a low voice.

“Am I?” he answered hotly. “Well, I should smile!” He disdained to say
more.

Then she began to know what she felt. There came back to her in flashes
scenes from the past weeks in which she had done her worst by him; in
which she had swept him aside, loathed him, set her feet on him, used
the devices of an ingenious demon to discomfit and show him at his
poorest and least ready. And he had not been giving a thought to the
thing for which she had striven to punish him. And he plainly did not
even hate her. His mind was clear, as water is clear. He had come back
to her this evening to do her a good turn--a good turn! Knowing what
she was capable of in the way of arrogance and villainous temper, he
had determined, despite herself, to do her a good turn.

“I don’t understand you,” she faltered.

“I know you don’t. But it’s only because I’m so dead easy to
understand. There’s nothing to find out. I’m just friendly--friendly,
that’s all.”

“You would have been friends with me!” she exclaimed. “You would have
told me, and I wouldn’t let you! Oh!”--with an impulsive flinging out
of her hand to him,--“you good--good fellow!”

“Good be darned!” he answered, taking the hand at once.

“You _are_ good to tell me! I have behaved like a devil to you. But,
oh! if you only knew!”

His face became mature again, but he took a most informal seat on the
edge of the table near her.

“I do know, part of it. That’s _why_ I’ve been trying to be friends
with you all the time.” He said his next words deliberately. “If I was
the woman Jem Temple Barholm had loved, wouldn’t it have driven _me_
mad to see another man in his place--and remember what was done to
him? I never even saw him, but, good God!”--she saw his hand clench
itself,--“when I think of it, I want to kill somebody! I want to kill
half a dozen. Why didn’t they _know_ it couldn’t be true of a fellow
like that!”

She sat up stiffly and watched him.

“Do--_you_--feel like that--about _him_?”

“Do I!” he said hotly. “There were men there that _knew_ him, there
were women there that knew him: why wasn’t there just _one_ to stand
by him? A man that’s been square all his life doesn’t turn into a
card-sharp in a night. Damn fools! I beg your pardon!” he said hastily.
And then, as hastily again: “No, I _mean_ it. Damn fools!”

“Oh!” she gasped just once.

Her passionate eyes were suddenly blinded with tears. She caught at his
clenched hand and dragged it to her, letting her face drop on it and
crying like a child.

The way he took her breakdown was just like him and like no one else.
He put the other hand on her shoulder and spoke to her exactly as he
had spoken to Miss Alicia on that first afternoon.

“Don’t you mind me, Lady Joan,” he said. “Don’t you mind me a bit. I’ll
turn my back. I’ll go into the billiard-room and keep them playing
until you get away up-stairs. Now we understand each other, it’ll be
better for both of us.”

“No, don’t go! Don’t!” she begged. “It is so wonderful to find some one
who sees the cruelty of it.” She spoke fast and passionately. “No one
would listen to any defense of him. My mother simply raved when I said
what you are saying--what you said of him just now.”

“Do you want”--he put it to her with a curious comprehending of her
emotion--“to talk about him? Would it do you good?”

“Yes! yes! I have never talked to any one. There has been no one to
listen.”

“Talk all you want,” he answered with immense gentleness. “I’m here.”

“I can’t understand it even now, but he would not see me,” she broke
out. “I was half mad. I wrote, and he would not answer. I went to his
chambers when I heard he was going to leave England. I went to beg him
to take me with him, married or unmarried. I would have gone on my
knees to him. He was _gone_! Oh, why? Why?”

“You didn’t think he’d gone because he didn’t love you?” he asked her
quite literally and unsentimentally. “You knew better than that?”

“How could I be sure of anything? When he left the room that awful
night he would not _look_ at me! He would not _look_ at me!”

“Since I’ve been here I’ve been reading a lot of novels, and I’ve found
out a lot of things about fellows that are not the common, practical
kind. Now, he wasn’t. He’d lived pretty much like a fellow in a novel,
I guess. What’s struck me about that sort is that they think they
have to make noble sacrifices, and they’ll just walk all over a woman
because they won’t do anything to hurt her. There’s not a bit of sense
in it, but that was what he was doing. He believed he was doing the
square thing by you, and you may bet your life it hurt him like hell. I
beg your pardon; but that’s the word--just plain hell.”

“I was only a girl. He was like iron. He went away alone. He was
killed, and when he was dead the truth was told.”

“That’s what I’ve remembered,” he said quite slowly, “every time I’ve
looked at you. By gee! I’d have stood anything from a woman that had
suffered as much as that.”

It made her cry, his genuineness, and she did not care in the least
that the tears streamed down her cheeks. How he _had_ stood things! How
he had borne, in that odd, unimpressive way, insolence and arrogance
for which she ought to have been blackballed by decent society! She
could scarcely bear it.

“Oh! to think it should have been _you_,” she wept, “just _you_ who
understood!”

“Well,” he answered speculatively, “I mightn’t have understood as well
if it hadn’t been for Ann. By jinks! I used to lie awake at night
sometimes, thinking, ‘Supposing it had been Ann and me!’ That’s why I
understood.”

He put out his hand and caught hers and frankly squeezed it--squeezed
it hard; and the unconventional clutch was a wonderful thing to her.

“It’s all right now, ain’t it?” he said. “We’ve got it straightened
out. You’ll not be afraid to come back here if your mother wants
you to.” He stopped for a moment and then went on with something of
hesitation: “We don’t want to talk about your mother. We can’t. But I
understand her, too. Folks are different from each other in their ways.
She’s different from you. I’ll--I’ll straighten it out with her if you
like.”

“Nothing will need straightening out after I tell her that you are
going to marry Little Ann Hutchinson,” said Joan, with a half-smile,
“and that you were engaged to her before you saw me.”

“Well, that does sort of finish things up, doesn’t it?” said T.
Tembarom.

He looked at her so speculatively for a moment after this that she
wondered whether he had more to say. He had.

“There’s something I want to ask you,” he ventured.

“Ask anything.”

“Do you know any one--just any one--who has a photo--just any old
photo--of Jem Temple Barholm?”

She was rather puzzled.

“I know a woman who has worn one for eight years. Do you want to see
it?”

“I’d give a good deal to,” he replied. She took a flat locket from her
dress and handed it to him.

“Women don’t wear lockets in these days,”--he could barely hear her
voice, it was so low,--“but I’ve never taken it off. I wanted him near
my heart. It’s _Jem_!”

He held it on the palm of his hand and stood under the light, studying
it as if he wanted to be sure he wouldn’t forget it.

“It’s--sorter like that picture of Miles Hugo, ain’t it?” he suggested.

“Yes; people always said so. That was why you found me in the
picture-gallery the first time we met.”

“I knew that was the reason, and I knew I’d made a break when I butted
in,” he answered. Then, still looking at the photograph, he said:
“You’d know that face again most anywhere you saw it, I guess. A man
would know a face like that again wherever he saw it. Thank you, Lady
Joan.”

He handed back the picture, and she put out her hand again.

“I think I’ll go to my room now,” she said. “You’ve done a strange
thing to me. You’ve taken nearly all the hatred and bitterness out of
my heart. I shall want to come back here whether my mother comes or
not--I shall want to.”

“The sooner the quicker,” he said. “And so long as I’m here, I’ll be
ready and waiting.”

“Don’t go away,” she said softly. “I shall need you.”

“Isn’t that great?” he cried, flushing delightedly. “Isn’t it just
great that we’ve got things straightened so that you can say that. Gee!
This is a queer old world! There’s such a lot to do in it, and so few
hours in the day. Seems like there ain’t time to stop long enough to
hate anybody and keep a grouch on. A fellow’s got to keep hustling not
to miss the things worth while.”

The liking in her eyes was actually wistful.

“That’s your way of thinking, isn’t it?” she said. “Teach it to me if
you can. I wish you could. Good night.” She hesitated a second. “God
_bless_ you!” she added quite suddenly, almost fantastic the words
sounded to her, that she, Joan Fayre, should be calling down devout
benisons on the head of T. Tembarom--T. Tembarom!

       *       *       *       *       *

Her mother was in her room when she reached it. She had come up
early to look over her possessions and Joan’s before she began
her packing. The bed, the chairs, and the tables were spread with
evening, morning, and walking-dresses, and the millinery collected
from their combined wardrobes. She was examining anxiously a
laces-appliquéd-and-embroidered white coat, and turned a slightly
flushed face toward the opening door.

“I am going over your things as well as my own,” she said. “I shall
take what I can use. You will require nothing in London. What is the
matter?” she said sharply, as she saw her daughter’s face.

Joan came forward, feeling it a strange thing that she was not in the
mood to fight--to lash out and be glad to do it.

“Captain Palliser told me as I came up that Mr. Temple Barholm had
been talking to you,” her mother went on. “He heard you having some
sort of scene as he passed the door. As you have made your decision, of
course I know I needn’t hope that anything has happened.”

“What has happened has nothing to do with my decision. He wasn’t
waiting for that,” Joan answered her. “We were both entirely mistaken,
Mother.”

“What are you talking about?” cried Lady Mallowe. “What do you mean by
mistaken?”

“He doesn’t want me; he never did,” Joan answered again. A shadow of a
smile hovered over her face, and there was no derision in it, only a
warming recollection of his earnestness when he had said the words she
quoted, “He is what they call in New York ’dead stuck on another girl.’”

Lady Mallowe sat down on the chair that held the white coat, and she
did not push the coat aside.

“He told you that in his vulgar slang!” she gasped out. “You--you ought
to have struck him _dead_ with your answer.”

“Except poor Jem Temple Barholm,” was the amazing reply she received,
“he is the only _friend_ I ever had in all my life.”


CHAPTER XXXIII

It was business of serious importance which was to bring Captain
Palliser’s visit to a close. He explained it perfectly to Miss Alicia a
day or so after Lady Mallowe and her daughter left them. He had lately
been most amiable in his manner toward Miss Alicia, and had given
her much valuable information about companies and stocks. He rather
unexpectedly found it imperative that he should go to London and Berlin
to “see people,” dealers in great financial schemes who were deeply
interested in solid business speculations such as his own.

“I suppose he will be very rich some day,” Miss Alicia remarked the
first morning she and T. Tembarom took their breakfast alone together
after his departure. “It would frighten me to think of having as much
money as he seems likely to have quite soon.”

“It would scare me to death,” said Tembarom. She knew he was making a
sort of joke, but she thought the point of it was her tremor at the
thought of great fortune.

“He seemed to think that it would be an excellent thing for you to
invest in--I’m not sure whether it was the India Rubber Tree Company,
or the mahogany-forests, or the copper-mines that have so much gold and
silver mixed in them that it will pay for the expense of the digging,”
she went on.

“I guess it was the whole lot,” put in Tembarom.

“Perhaps it was. They are all going to make everybody so rich that it
is quite bewildering. He is _very clever_ in business matters. And so
kind. He even said that if I really wished it, he might be able to
invest my income for me and actually treble it in a year. But of course
I told him that my income was your generous gift to me, and that it was
far more than sufficient for my needs.”

Tembarom put down his coffee-cup so suddenly to look at her that she
was fearful that she had appeared to do Captain Palliser some vague
injustice.

“I am sure he meant to be most obliging, dear,” she explained. “I was
really quite touched. He said most sympathetically and delicately that
when women were unmarried, and unaccustomed to investment, sometimes a
business man could be of use to them. He forgot”--affectionately--“that
I had you.”

Tembarom regarded her with tender curiosity. She often opened up vistas
for him as he himself opened them for the Duke of Stone.

“If you hadn’t had me, would you have let him treble your income in a
year?” he asked.

Her expression as that of a soft, woodland rabbit or a trusting
spinster dove.

“Well, of course, if one were quite alone in the world and had only a
small income, it _would_ be nice to have it wonderfully added to in
such a short time,” she answered. “But it was his friendly solicitude
which touched me.”

“If the time ever comes when you haven’t got me,” said Tembarom,
buttering his toast, “just you make a dead sure thing of it that you
don’t let any solicitous business gentleman treble your income in a
year.”

“Temple,” gasped Miss Alicia, “you--you surely cannot mean that you do
not think Captain Palliser is--sincere!”

Tembarom laughed outright his most hilarious and comforting laugh.

“Sincere?” he said. “He’s sincere down to the ground--in what he’s
reaching after; but he’s not going to treble your income or mine. If he
ever makes that offer again, you just tell him I’m interested, and that
I’ll talk it over with him.”

Their breakfast was at an end, and he got up, laughing again, as he
came to her end of the table, and put his arm round her shoulders in
the unconventional young caress she adored him for.

“It’s nice to be by ourselves again for a while,” he said. “Let us go
for a walk together. Put on the little bonnet and dress that are the
color of a mouse. Those little duds just get me. You look so pretty in
them.”

The sixteen-year-old blush ran up to the roots of her gray
side-ringlets. Just imagine his remembering the color of her dress and
bonnet, and thinking that anything could make her look pretty! She was
overwhelmed with innocent and grateful confusion. There really was no
one else in the least like him.

“I wonder if it is wrong of me to be so pleased,” Miss Alicia thought.
“I must make it a subject of prayer.”

She was pathetically serious, having been trained to a view of the
great first cause as figuratively embodied in the image of a gigantic,
irascible, omnipotent old gentleman specially wrought to fury by
feminine follies connected with becoming headgear.

“It has sometimes even seemed to me that our Heavenly Father has a
special objection to ladies,” she had once timorously confessed to
Tembarom. “I suppose it is because we are so much weaker than men, and
so much more given to vanity and petty vices.”

He had caught her in his arms and actually hugged her that time. Their
intimacy had reached the point where the affectionate outburst did not
alarm her.

“Say,” he had laughed, “it’s not the men who are going to have the
biggest pull with the authorities when folks try to get into the place
where things are evened up. What I’m going to work my passage with is
a list of the few ‘ladies’ I’ve known. You and Ann will be at the head
of it. I shall just slide it in at the box-office window and say: ’Just
look over this, will you? These were friends of mine, and they were
mighty good to me. I guess if they didn’t turn me down, you needn’t.
I know they’re in here. Reserved seats. I’m not expecting to be put
with them, but if I’m allowed to hang around where they are, that’ll be
heaven enough for me.’”

“I know you don’t mean to be irreverent, dear Temple,” she had gasped,
“I am quite sure you don’t. It is--it is only your American way of
expressing your kind thoughts.” Somehow or other, he was always _so_
comforting.

He held her arm as they took their walk. She had become used to that
also, and no longer thought it odd. It was only one of the ways he had
of making her feel that she was being taken care of. They had not been
able to have many walks together since the arrival of the visitors, and
this occasion was at once a cause of relief and inward rejoicing. The
entire truth was that she had not been altogether happy about him of
late. Sometimes, when he was not talking and saying amusing New York
things which made people laugh, he seemed almost to forget where he was
and to be thinking of something which baffled and tried him. The way
in which he pulled himself together when he realized that any one was
looking at him was, to her mind, the most disturbing feature of his
fits of abstraction.

As they walked through the park and the village, her heart was greatly
warmed by the way in which every person they met greeted him. They
_liked_ him, really _liked_ him. Every man touched his cap or forehead
with a friendly grin. It was as if there were some extremely human
joke between them. Miss Alicia had delightedly remembered the Duke of
Stone’s saying that he was “the most popular man in the county.”

Tembarom was rather silent during the first part of their walk, and
when he spoke it was of Captain Palliser.

“He’s a fellow that’s got lots of curiosity. I guess he’s asked you
more questions than he’s asked me,” he began at last, and he looked at
her interestedly, though she was not aware of it.

“I thought,--” she hesitated slightly because she did not wish to be
critical,--“I sometimes thought he asked me too many. He asked so much
about you and your life in New York, but more, I think, about you and
Mr. Strangeways. He was really quite persistent once or twice about
poor Mr. Strangeways.”

“What did he ask?”

“He asked if I had seen him, and if you had preferred that I should
not. He calls him your mystery, and thinks your keeping him here is so
extraordinary.”

“I guess it is, the way he’d look at it,” Tembarom dropped in.

“He was so anxious to find out what he looked like. He asked how old he
was and how tall, and whether he was quite mad or only a little, and
where you picked him up, and when, and what reason you gave for not
putting him in some respectable asylum. I could only say that I really
knew nothing about him, and that I hadn’t seen him because he had a
dread of strangers and I was a little timid.”

She hesitated again.

“I wonder,” she said, still hesitating even after her pause--“I wonder
if I ought to mention a rather rude thing I once saw him do?”

“Yes, you ought,” Tembarom answered promptly, “I’ve a reason for
wanting to know.”

“It was such a singular thing to do--in the circumstances,” she went on
obediently. “He knew, as we all know, that Mr. Strangeways must _not_
be disturbed. One afternoon I saw him walk slowly backward and forward
before the west room window. He had something in his hand, and kept
looking up. That was what first attracted my attention--his queer way
of looking up. Quite suddenly he threw something which rattled on the
panes of glass; it sounded like gravel or small pebbles. I couldn’t
help believing he thought Mr. Strangeways would be startled into coming
to the window.”

Tembarom smiled.

“He did that twice,” he said. “Pearson caught him at it, though
Palliser didn’t know he did. He’d have done it three times, or more
than that, perhaps, but I casually mentioned in the smoking-room one
night that some curious fool of a gardener-boy had thrown some stones
and frightened Strangeways, and that Pearson and I were watching
for him, and that if I caught him, I was going to knock his block
off--_bing_! He didn’t do it again. Darned fool! And he’d better not
try it again when he comes back,” remarked Tembarom.

Miss Alicia’s surprised expression made him laugh.

“Do you think he will come back?” she exclaimed, “after such a long
visit?”

“Oh, yes, he’ll come back. He’ll come back as often as he can until
he’s got a chunk of my income to treble--or until I’ve done with him.”

“Until you’ve done with him, dear?” she said inquiringly.

“Oh, well,” he said casually, “I’ve a sort of idea that he may tell me
something I’d like to know. I’m not sure; I’m only guessing. But even
if he knows it, he won’t tell me until he gets good and ready, and
thinks I don’t want to hear it.”

He would not talk any more of Captain Palliser or allow her to talk of
him. He began to make jokes, and led her to other subjects. He asked
her to go to the Hibblethwaites’ cottage and pay a visit to Tummas.
He had learned to understand his accepted privileges in the making
of cottage visits by this time; and when he clicked any wicket-gate,
the door was open before he had time to pass up the wicket-path. They
called at several cottages, and he nodded at the windows of others
where faces appeared as he passed by.

They had a happy morning together, a pleasant drive in the afternoon,
and a cozy evening in the library.

About nine o’clock he laid his paper aside and spoke to her.

“I’m going to ask you to do me a favor,” he said. “I couldn’t ask it
if we weren’t alone like this. I know you won’t mind. I’m going to ask
you to go to your room rather early. I want to try a sort of stunt on
Strangeways. I want to bring him down-stairs if he’ll come. I’m not
sure I can get him to do it; but he’s been a heap better lately, and
perhaps I can.”

“Is he so much better as that?” she said. “Will it be safe?”

He looked as serious as she had ever seen him look, even a trifle more
serious.

“I don’t know how much better he is,” was his answer. “Sometimes you’d
think he was almost all right, and then--The doctor says that if he
could get over being afraid of leaving his room, it would be a big
thing for him. He wants him to go to his place in London so that he can
watch him.”

“Do you think you could persuade him to go?”

“I’ve tried my level best, but so far nothing doing.”

He got up and stood before the mantel, his back against it, his hands
in his pockets.

“I’ve found out one thing,” he said. “He’s used to houses like this.
Every now and again he lets something out quite natural. He knew that
the furniture in his room was Jacobean--that’s what he called it--and
he knew it was fine stuff. He wouldn’t have known that if he’d been a
piker. I’m going to try if he won’t let out something else when he sees
things here, if he’ll come.”

“You have such a wonderfully reasoning mind, dear,” said Miss Alicia as
she rose.

“If Ann had been with him,” he said, rather gloomily, “she’d have
caught on to a lot more than I have. I don’t feel very chesty about the
way I’ve managed it.”

Miss Alicia went up-stairs shortly afterward, and half an hour later
Tembarom told the footmen in the hall that they might go to bed. The
experiment he was going to make demanded that the place should be
cleared of any disturbing presence. He had been thinking it over for
some time past. He had sat in the private room of the great nerve
specialist in London and had talked it over with him. He had talked of
it with the duke on the lawn at Stone Hover. There had been a flush of
color in the older man’s cheek-bones, and his eyes had been alight as
he took his part in the discussion. He had added the touch of his own
personality to it, as always happened.

“We are having some fine moments, my dear fellow,” he had said, rubbing
his hands. “This is extremely like the fourth act. I’d like to be sure
what comes next.”

“I’d like to be sure myself,” Tembarom answered. “It’s as if a flash
of lightning came sometimes, and then things clouded up. And sometimes
when I am trying something out, he’ll get so excited that I daren’t go
on until I’ve talked to the doctor.”

It was the excitement he was dubious about to-night. It was not
possible to be quite certain as to the entire safety of the plan; but
there might be a chance, even a big chance, of wakening some cell from
its deadened sleep. Sir Ormsby Galloway had talked to him a good deal
about brain-cells, and he had listened faithfully, and learned more
than he could put into scientific English. Gradually, during the past
months, he had been coming upon strangely exciting hints of curious
possibilities. They had been mere hints at first, and had seemed almost
absurd in their unbelievableness; but each one had linked itself with
another, and led him on to further wondering and exploration. When
Miss Alicia and Palliser had seen that he looked absorbed and baffled,
it had been because he had frequently found himself, to use his own
figures of speech, “mixed up to beat the band.” He had not known which
way to turn; but he had gone on turning because he could not escape
from his own excited interest, and the inevitable emotion roused by
being caught in the whirl of a melodrama. That was what he’d dropped
into--a whacking big play. It had begun for him when Palford butted
in that night and told him he was a lost heir, with a fortune and an
estate in England; and the curtain had been jerking up and down ever
since. But there had been thrills in it, queer as it was. Something
doing all the time, by gee!

He sat and smoked his pipe and wished Ann were with him because he knew
he was not as cool as he had meant to be. He felt a certain tingling
of excitement in his body, and this was not the time to be excited.
He waited for some minutes before he went up-stairs. It was true that
Strangeways had been much better lately. He had seemed to find it
easier to follow conversation. During the last few days, Tembarom had
talked to him in a matter-of-fact way about the house and its various
belongings. He had at last seemed to waken to an interest in the
picture-gallery. Evidently he knew something of picture-galleries and
portraits, and found himself relieved by his own clearness of thought
when he talked of them.

“I feel better,” he said two or three times. “Things seem
clearer--nearer.”

“Good business!” exclaimed Tem-barom. “I told you it’d be that way.
Let’s hold on to pictures. It won’t be any time before you’ll be
remembering where you’ve seen some.”

He had been secretly rather strung up; but he had been very gradual in
approaching his final suggestion that some night, when everything was
quiet, they might go and look at the gallery together.

“What you need is to get out of the way of wanting to stay in one
place,” he argued. “The doctor says you’ve got to have change, and even
going from one room to another is a fine thing.”

Strangeways had looked at him anxiously for a few moments, even
suspiciously, but his face had cleared after the look. He drew himself
up and passed his hand over his forehead.

“I believe--perhaps he is right,” he murmured.

“Sure he’s right,” said Tembarom. “He’s the sort of chap who ought to
know. He’s been made into a baronet for knowing. Sir Ormsby Galloway,
by jingo! That’s no slouch of a name. Oh, he knows, you bet your life!”

This morning when he had seen him he had spoken of the plan again. The
visitors had gone away; the servants could be sent out of sight and
hearing; they could go into the library and smoke and he could look at
the books. And then they could take a look at the picture-gallery if he
wasn’t too tired. It would be a change, anyhow.

       *       *       *       *       *

To-night, as he went up the huge staircase, Tembarom’s calmness of
being had not increased. He was aware of a quickened pulse. The dead
silence of the house added to the unusualness of things. He could not
remember ever having been so anxious before, except on the occasion
when he had taken his first day’s “stuff” to Galton. But he showed
no outward signs of excitement when he entered the room and found
Strangeways standing, perfectly attired in evening dress.

Pearson, setting things in order at the other side of the room, was
taking note of him furtively over his shoulder. Quite in the casual
manner of the ordinary man, he had expressed his intention of dressing
for the evening, and Pearson had thanked his stars for the fact
that the necessary garments were at hand. From the first, he had
not infrequently asked for articles such as only the resources of a
complete masculine wardrobe could supply; and on one occasion he had
suddenly wished to dress for dinner, and the lame excuses it had been
necessary to make had disturbed him horribly instead of pacifying him.
To explain that his condition precluded the necessity of the usual
appurtenances would have been out of the question. He had been angry.
What did Pearson mean? What was the matter? He had said it over and
over again, and then had sunk into a hopelessly bewildered mood, and
had sat huddled in his dressing-gown staring at the fire. Pearson
had been so harrowed by the situation that it had been his own idea
to suggest to his master that all possible requirements should be
provided. There were occasions when it appeared that the cloud over him
lifted for a passing moment, and a gleam of light recalled to him some
familiar usage of his past. When he had finished dressing, Pearson had
been almost startled by the amount of effect produced by the straight,
correctly cut lines of black and white. The mere change of clothes had
suddenly changed the man himself--had “done something to him,” Pearson
put it. After his first glance at the mirror he had straightened
himself, as if recognizing the fault of his own carriage. When he
crossed the room it was with the action of a man who has been trained
to move well. The good looks, which had been almost hidden behind a
veil of uncertainty of expression and strained fearfulness, became
obvious. He was tall, and his lean limbs were splendidly hung together.
His head was perfectly set, and the bearing of his square shoulders was
a soldierly thing. It was an extraordinarily handsome man Tembarom and
Pearson found themselves gazing at. Each glanced involuntarily at the
other.

“Now, that’s first-rate. I’m glad you feel like coming,” Tembarom
plunged in. He didn’t intend to give him too much time to think.

“Thank you. It will be a change, as you said,” Strangeways answered.
“One needs change.”

His deep eyes looked somewhat deeper than usual, but his manner was
that of any well-bred fellow doing an accustomed thing. If he had been
an ordinary guest in the house, and his host had dropped into his
room, he would have comported himself in exactly the same way.

They went together down the corridor as if they had passed down it
together a dozen times before. On the stairway Strangeways looked at
the tapestries with the interest of a familiarized intelligence.

“It is a beautiful old place,” he said as they crossed the hall. “That
armor was worn by a crusader.” He hesitated a moment when they entered
the library, but it was only for a moment. He went to the hearth
and took the chair his host offered him, and, lighting a cigar, sat
smoking it. If T. Tembarom had chanced to be a man of an analytical or
metaphysical order of intellect, he would have found during the last
month many things to lead him far in mental argument concerning the
weird wonder of the human mind--of its power where its possessor, the
body, is concerned, its sometime closeness to the surface of sentient
being, its sometime remoteness. He would have known, awed, marveling at
the blackness of the pit into which it can descend, the unknown shades
that may enfold it and imprison its gropings. The old Duke of Stone
had sat and pondered many an hour over stories his favorite companion
had related to him. What curious and subtle processes had the queer
fellow not been watching in the closely guarded quiet of the room
where the stranger had spent his days: the strange thing cowering in
its darkness; the ray of light piercing the cloud one day and seeming
lost again the next; the struggles the imprisoned thing made to come
forth--to cry out that it was only immured, not wholly conquered,
and that some hour would arrive when it would fight its way through
at last! Tembarom had not entered into psychological research. He
had been entirely uncomplex in his attitude, sitting down before his
problem as a besieger might have sat down before a castle. The duke
had sometimes wondered whether it was not a good enough thing that he
had been so simple about it, merely continuing to believe the best
with an unswerving obstinacy and lending a hand when he could. A never
flagging sympathy had kept him singularly alive to every chance, and
now and then he had illuminations which would have done credit to a
cleverer man, and which the duke had rubbed his hands in half-amused,
half-touched elation. How he had kept his head and held to his purpose!

T. Tembarom talked but little as he sat in his big chair and smoked.
Best let him alone and give him time to get used to the newness, he
thought. Nothing must happen that could give him a jolt. Let things
sort of sink into him, and perhaps they’d set him to thinking and lead
him somewhere. Strangeways himself evidently did not want talk. He
never wanted it unless he was excited. He was not excited now, and had
settled down as if he was comfortable. Having finished one cigar, he
took another, and began to smoke it much more slowly than he had smoked
his first. The slowness began to arrest Tembarom’s attention. This was
the smoking of a man who was either growing sleepy or sinking into deep
thought, becoming oblivious to what he was doing. Sometimes he held
the cigar absently between his strong, fine fingers, seeming to forget
it. Tembarom watched him do this until he saw it go out, and its white
ash drop on the rug at his feet. He did not notice it, but sat sinking
deeper and deeper into his own being, growing more remote. What was
going on under his absorbed stillness? Tembarom would not have moved or
spoken “for a block of Fifth Avenue,” he said internally. The dark eyes
seemed to become darker until there was only a pin’s point of light
to be seen in their pupils. It was as if he were looking at something
at a distance--at a strangely long distance. Twice he turned his head
and appeared to look slowly round the room, but not as normal people
look--as if it also was at the strange, long distance from him, and he
were somewhere outside its walls. It was an uncanny thing to behold.

“How dead-still the room is!” Tembarom found himself thinking.

It was “dead-still.” And it was “a queer deal,” sitting, not daring to
move, just watching. Something was bound to happen, sure. What was it
going to be?

Strangeways’s cigar dropped from his fingers and appeared to rouse him.
He looked puzzled for a moment, and then stooped quite naturally to
pick it up.

“I forgot it altogether. It’s gone out,” he remarked.

“Have another,” suggested Tembarom, moving the box nearer to him.

“No, thank you.” He rose and crossed the room to the wall of
book-shelves. And Tembarom’s eye was caught again by the fineness of
movement and line the evening clothes made manifest. “What a swell he
looked when he moved about like that! What a swell, by jingo!”

He looked along the line of shelves and presently took a book down
and opened it. He turned over its leaves until something arrested his
attention, and then he fell to reading. He read several minutes, while
Tembarom watched him. The silence was broken by his laughing a little.

“Listen to this,” he said, and began to read something in a language
totally unknown to his hearer. “A man who writes that sort of thing
about a woman is an old bounder, whether he’s a poet or not. There’s a
small, biting spitefulness about it that’s cattish.”

“_Who_ did it?” Tembarom inquired softly. It might be a good idea to
lead him on.

“Horace. In spite of his genius, the ‘Lampoons’ make you feel he was
rather a blackguard.”

“Horace!” For the moment T. Tembarom forgot himself. “I always heard he
was a sort of Y. M. C. A. old guy--old Horace Greeley. The ‘Tribune’
was no yellow journal when he had it.”

He was sorry he had spoken the next moment. Strangeways looked puzzled.

“The ’Tribune,’” he hesitated. “The Roman tribune?”

“No, New York. He started it--old Horace did. But perhaps we’re not
talking of the same man.”

Strangeways hesitated again.

“No, I think we’re not,” he answered politely.

“I’ve made a break,” thought Tembarom. “I ought to have kept my mouth
shut. I must try to switch him back.”

Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his
hand.

“This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65
~B.C.~ You know it,” he said.

“Oh, _that_ one!” exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense
relief. “What a fool I was to forget! I’m glad it’s him. Will you go on
reading, and let me hear some more? He’s a winner from Winnersville,
that Horace is.”

Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to
help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong
thing. Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before
turning to his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly
forming itself to draw him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom,
lightly sweating as a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe
and listening intently to “Satires” and “Lampoons,” read aloud in the
Latin of 65 ~B.C.~

“By gee!” he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader’s
face that the moment was ripe, “He knew it all,--old Horace,--didn’t
he?”

He had steered his charge back. Things were coming along the line to
him. He’d learned Latin at one of these big English schools. Boys
always learned Latin, the duke had told him. They just had to. Most of
them hated it like thunder, and they used to be caned when they didn’t
recite it right. Perhaps if he went on, he’d begin to remember the
school. A queer part of it was that he did not seem to notice that he
was not reading his own language.

He did not, in fact, seem to remember anything in particular, but went
on quite naturally for some minutes. He had replaced Horace on the
shelf and was on the point of taking another book when he paused, as if
recalling something else.

“Weren’t we going to see the picture-gallery?” he inquired. “Isn’t it
getting late? I should like to see the portraits.”

“No hurry,” answered T. Tembarom. “I was just waiting till you were
ready. But we’ll go right away, if you like.”

They went without further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and
down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt
that perhaps the eyes of an ancient, darkling portrait or so looked
down at the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather
slouching along by the soldierly almost romantic figure which in a
measure suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same
oaken floor, wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot and sword. There
was a far cry between the two, but they walked closely in friendly
union. When they entered the picture-gallery, Strangeways paused a
moment again, and stood peering down its length.

“It is very dimly lighted. How can we see?” he said.

“I told Pearson to leave it dim,” Tembarom answered.

He tried, and succeeded tolerably well, to say it casually as he led
the way ahead of them. He and the duke had not talked the scheme over
for nothing. As his grace had said, they had “worked the thing up.” As
they moved down the gallery, the men and women in their frames looked
like ghosts staring out to see what was about to happen.

“We’ll turn up the lights after a while,” T. Tembarom explained still
casually. “There’s a picture here I think a good deal of. I’ve stood
and looked at it pretty often. It reminded me of someone the first day
I set eyes on it; but it was quite a time before I made up my mind who
it was. It used to drive me half dotty trying to think it out.”

“Which one?” asked Strangeways.

“We’re coming to it. I want to see if it reminds you of any one. And I
want you to see it sudden.” “It’s got to be sudden,” he had said to the
duke. “If it’s going to pan out, I believe it’s got to be sudden. When
he first sees that picture he’s _got_ to get a jolt--he’s got to.”

That was why Tembarom had the lights left dim. He had told Pearson to
leave a lamp that he could turn up quickly.

The lamp was on a table near by and was shaded by a screen. He took
it from the shadow and lifted it suddenly, so that its full gleam
fell upon the portrait of the handsome youth with the lace collar and
the dark, drooping eyes. It was done in a second, with a dramatically
unexpected swiftness. His heart fairly thumped.

“Who’s that?” he demanded, with abruptness so sharp-pitched that the
gallery echoed with the sound. “Who’s that?”

He heard a hard, quick gasp, a sound which was momentarily a little
horrible, as if the man’s soul was being jerked out of his body’s
depths.

“Who is he?” Tembarom cried again. “Tell me!”

After the gasp, Strangeways stood still and stared. His eyes were glued
to the canvas, drops of sweat came out on his forehead, and he was
shuddering. He began to back away with a look of gruesome struggle. He
backed and backed, and stared and stared. The gasp came twice again,
and then his voice seemed to tear itself loose from some power that was
holding it back.

“Th--at!” he cried. “It is--it--is Miles Hugo!”

The last words were almost a shout, and he shook as if he would have
fallen. But T. Tembarom put his hand on his shoulder and held him,
breathing fast himself. Gee! if it wasn’t like a thing in a play!

“Page at the court of Charles the Second,” he rattled off. “Died of
smallpox when he was nineteen. Miles Hugo! Miles Hugo! You hold on to
that for all you’re worth. And hold on to me. I’ll keep you steady. Say
it again.”

“Miles Hugo,” the poor majestic-looking fellow almost sobbed it. “Where
am I? What is the name of this place?”

“It’s Temple Barholm, in the county of Lancashire, England. Hold on to
that, too--like thunder!”

Strangeways held the young man’s arm with hands that clutched. He
dragged at him. His nightmare held him yet; Tembarom saw it, but
flashes of light were blinding him.

“Who,” he pleaded in a shaking and hollow whisper, “are you?”

Here was a stumper, by jingo! and not a minute to think it out. But the
answer came all right.

“My name’s Tembarom. T. Tembarom.” And he grinned his splendid grin
from sheer sense of relief. “I’m a New Yorker--Brooklyn. I was just
forked in here anyhow. Don’t you waste time thinking over me. You sit
down here and do your durndest with Miles Hugo.”


CHAPTER XXXIV

Tembarom did not look as though he had slept particularly well, Miss
Alicia thought, when they met the next morning; but when she asked
him whether he had been disappointed in his last night’s experiment,
he answered that he had not. The experiment had come out all right,
but Strangeways had been a good deal worked up, and had not been
able to sleep until daylight. Sir Ormsby Galloway was to arrive in
the afternoon, and he’d probably give him something quieting. “Had
the coming down-stairs seemed to help him to recall anything?” Miss
Alicia naturally inquired. Tembarom thought it had. He drove to Stone
Hover and spent the morning with the duke; he even lunched with him.
He returned in time to receive Sir Ormsby Galloway, however, and until
that great personage left, they were together in Mr. Strangeways’ rooms.

“I guess I shall get him up to London to the place where Sir Ormsby
wants him,” he said rather nervously, after dinner. “I’m not going to
miss any chances. If he’ll go, I can get him away quietly some time
when I can fix it so there’s no one about to worry him.”

She felt that he had no inclination to go much into detail. He had
never had the habit of entering into the details connected with his
strange charge. She did not ask questions because she was afraid she
could not ask them intelligently.

During the passage of the next few weeks, Tembarom went up to London
several times. Once he seemed called there suddenly, as it was only
during dinner that he told her that he was going to take a late train,
and should leave the house after she had gone to bed. She felt as
though something important must have happened, and hoped it was nothing
disturbing.

When he had said that Captain Palliser would return to visit them, her
private impression, despite his laugh, had been that it must surely be
some time before this would occur. But a little more than three weeks
later he appeared, preceded only half an hour by a telegram, asking
whether he might not spend a night with them on his way farther north.
He could not at all understand why the telegram, which he said he had
sent the day before, had been delayed.

A certain fatigued haggardness in his countenance caused Miss Alicia
to ask whether he had been ill, and he admitted that he had at least
not been well, as a result of long and too hurried journeys, and the
strenuousness of extended and profoundly serious interviews with his
capitalist and magnates.

“No man can engineer gigantic schemes to success without feeling the
reaction when his load drops from his shoulders,” he remarked.

“You’ve carried it quite through?” inquired Tembarom.

“We have set on foot one of the largest, most substantially capitalized
companies in the European business world,” Palliser replied with the
composure which is almost indifference.

“Good!” said Tembarom, cheerfully.

He watched his guest a good deal during the day. He was a bad color for
a man who had just steered clear of all shoals and reached the highest
point of success. He had a haggard eye as well as a haggard face.
It was a terrified eye when its desperate determination to hide its
terrors dropped from it for an instant, as a veil might drop. A certain
restlessness was manifest in him, and he talked more than usual. He
was going to make a visit in Northumberland to an elderly lady of
great possessions. It was to be vaguely gathered that she was somewhat
interested in the great company--the Cedric. She was a remarkable old
person who found a certain agreeable excitement in dabbling in stocks.
She was rich enough to be in a position to regard it as a sort of game,
and he had been able on several occasions to afford her entertainment.

“If she can play with things that way, she’ll be sure to want stock in
it,” Tembarom remarked.

“If she does, she must make up her mind quickly,” Palliser smiled, “or
she will not be able to get it. It is not easy to lay one’s hands on
even now.”

Tembarom thought of certain speculators of entirely insignificant
standing of whom he had chanced to see and hear anecdotes in New York.
He always detested “bluff,” whatsoever its disguise.

“He’s got badly stung,” was his internal comment as he sucked at his
pipe and smiled urbanely at Palliser across the room as they sat
together. “He’s come here with some sort of deal on that he knows he
couldn’t work with any one but just such a fool as he thinks I am. I
guess,” he added in composed reflectiveness, “I don’t really know _how_
big a fool I do look.”

Whatsoever the deal was, he would be likely to let it be known in time.

“He’ll get it off his chest if he’s going away to-morrow,” decided
Tembarom. “If there’s anything he’s found out, he’ll use it. If it
doesn’t pan out as he thinks it will, he’ll just float away to his old
lady.”

He gave Palliser every chance, talking to him and encouraging him to
talk, even asking him to let him look over the prospectus of the new
company and explain details to him, as he was going to explain them
to the old lady in Northumberland. He opened up avenues; but for a
time Palliser made no attempt to stroll down them. His walk would be a
stroll, Tembarom knew, being familiar with his methods. He seemed to be
thinking things over before he decided upon the psychological moment at
which he would begin, if he began. When a man had a good deal to lose
or to win, Tembarom realized that he would be likely to hold back until
he felt something like solid ground under him.

After Miss Alicia had left them for the night, perhaps he felt, as a
result of thinking the matter over, that he had reached a foothold of a
firmness at least somewhat to be depended upon.

“What a change you have made in that poor woman’s life!” he said,
walking to the side table and helping himself to a brandy and soda.
“What a change!”

“It struck me that a change was needed just about the time I dropped
in,” answered his host.

“All the same,” suggested Palliser, tolerantly, “you were immensely
generous. She wasn’t entitled to expect it, you know.”

“She didn’t expect anything, not a darned thing,” said Tembarom. “That
was what hit me.”

Palliser smiled a cold, amiable smile.

“Do you purpose to provide for the future of all your indigent
relatives even to the third and fourth generation, my dear chap?” he
inquired.

“I won’t refuse till I’m asked, anyhow,” was the answer.

“Asked!” Palliser repeated. “I’m one of them, you know, and Lady
Mallowe is another. There are lots of us, when we come out of our
holes. If it’s only a matter of asking, we might all descend on you.”

Tembarom, smiling, wondered whether they hadn’t descended already, and
whether the descent had so far been all that they had anticipated.

Palliser strolled down his opened avenue with an incidental air
which was entirely creditable to his training of himself. His host
acknowledged that much.

“You are too generous,” said Palliser. “You are the sort of fellow
who will always need all he has, and more. The way you go among the
villagers! You think you merely slouch about and keep it quiet, but you
don’t. You’ve set an example no other landowner can expect to live up
to. It’s too lavish. It’s pernicious, dear chap. I know all about the
cottage you are doing over for Pearson and his bride. You had better
invest in the Cedric.”

Palliser had reason to be so much more eager than he professed to be
that momentarily he swerved, despite himself, and ceased to be casual.

“It is an enormous opportunity,” he said--“timber lands in Mexico, you
know. If you had spent your life in England, you would realize that
timber has become a desperate necessity, and that the difficulties
which exist in the way of supplying the demand are almost insuperable.
These forests are virtually boundless, and the company which controls
them--”

“That’s a good spiel!” broke in Tembarom.

It sounded like the crudely artless interruption of a person whose
perceptions left much to be desired.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he replied rather stiffly.

“There was a fellow I knew in New York who used to sell type-writers,
and he had a thing to say he used to reel off when any one looked like
a customer. He used to call it his ’spiel.’”

Palliser’s quick glance at him asked questions, and his stiffness did
not relax itself.

“Is this New York chaff?” he inquired coldly.

“No,” Tembarom said. “You’re not doing it for ten per. He was.”

“No, not exactly,” said Palliser. “Neither would you be doing it for
ten per if you went into it.” His voice changed. He became slightly
haughty. “Perhaps it was a mistake on my part to think you might care
to connect yourself with it. You have not, of course, been in the
position to comprehend such matters.”

But the expression of Tembarom’s face did not change. He only gave a
half-awkward sort of laugh.

“I guess I can learn,” he said.

Palliser felt the foothold become firmer. The bounder was interested,
but, after a bounder’s fashion, was either nervous or imagined that
a show of hesitation looked shrewd. The slight hit made at his
inexperience in investment had irritated him and made him feel less
cock-sure of himself. A slightly offended manner might be the best
weapon to rely upon.

“I thought you might care to have the thing made clear to you,” he
continued indifferently. “I meant to explain. You may take the chance
or leave it, as you like, of course. That is nothing to me at this
stage of the game. But, after all, we are, as I said, relatives of a
sort, and it is a gigantic opportunity. Suppose we change the subject.”

Palliser paused in an unconcerned opening of a copy of the Sunday
“Earth.”

“Oh, I don’t mind trying to catch on to what’s doing in any big
scheme,” said Tembarom.

Palliser’s manner at the outset was perfect. He produced his papers
without too obvious eagerness. He spread them upon the table, and
coolly examined them himself before beginning his explanation. There
was more to explain to a foreigner and one unused to investment than
there would be to a man who was an Englishman and familiar with the
methods of large companies, he said. He went into technicalities, so to
speak, and used rapidly and lightly some imposing words and phrases, to
which T. Tembarom listened attentively, but without any special air of
illumination. He dealt with statistics and the resulting probabilities.
He made apparent the existing condition of England’s inability to
supply an enormous and unceasing demand for timber. He had acquired
divers excellent methods of stating his case to the party of the second
part.

“He made me feel as if a fellow had better hold on to a box of matches
like grim death, and that the time wasn’t out of sight when you’d have
to give fifty-seven dollars and a half for a toothpick,” Tembarom later
said to the duke.

What Tembarom was thinking as he listened to him was that he was not
getting over the ground with much rapidity.

“If he thought I wanted to know what he thinks I’d a heap rather _not_
know, he’d never tell me,” he speculated. “If he gets a bit hot in the
collar, he may let it out. Thing is to stir him up. He’s lost his nerve
a bit, and he’ll get mad pretty easy.”

“Of course money is wanted,” Palliser said at length. “Money is always
wanted, and as much when a scheme is a success as when it isn’t.
Good names, with a certain character, are wanted. The fact of your
inheritance is known everywhere; and the fact that you are an American
is a sort of guaranty of shrewdness.”

“Is it?” said T. Tembarom. “Well,” he added slowly, “I guess Americans
are pretty good business men.”

Palliser thought that this was evolving upon perfectly natural lines,
as he had anticipated it would. The fellow was flattered and pleased.

He went on in smooth, casual laudation:

“No American takes hold of a scheme of this sort until he knows jolly
well what he’s going to get out of it. You were shrewd enough,” he
added significantly, “about Hutchinson’s affair. You ‘got in on the
ground floor’ there. That was New York forethought, by Jove!”

Tembarom shuffled a little in his chair, and grinned a faint, pleased
grin.

“I’m a man of the world, my boy--the business world,” Palliser
commented, hoping that he concealed his extreme satisfaction. “I know
New York, though I haven’t lived there. I’m only hoping to. Your air of
ingenuous ignorance is the cleverest thing about you,” which agreeable
implication of the fact that he had been privately observant and
impressed ought to have fetched the bounder if any thing would.

T. Tembarom’s grin was no longer faint, but spread itself. Palliser’s
first impression was that he had “fetched” him. But when he answered,
though the very crudeness of his words seemed merely the result of
his betrayal into utter tactlessness by soothed vanity, there was
something--a shade of something--not entirely satisfactory in his face
and nasal twang.

“Well, I guess,” he said, “New York _did_ teach a fellow not to buy a
gold brick off every con man that came along.”

Palliser was guilty of a mere ghost of a start. Was there something
in it, or was he only the gross, blundering fool he had trusted to his
being? He stared at him a moment, and saw that there _was_ something
under the words and behind his professedly flattered grin--something
which must be treated with a high hand.

“What do you mean?” he exclaimed haughtily. “I don’t like your tone. Do
you take _me_ for what you call a ’con man’?”

“Good Lord, no!” answered Tembarom; and he looked straight at Palliser
and spoke slowly. “You’re a gentleman, and you’re paying me a visit.
You could no more try on a game to do me in my own house than--well,
than I could _tell_ you if I’d got on to you if I saw you doing it.
You’re a gentleman.”

Palliser glared back into his infuriatingly candid eyes. He was a far
cry from being a dullard himself; he was sharp enough to “catch on” to
the revelation that the situation was not what he had thought it, the
type was more complex than he had dreamed. The chap had been playing
a part; he had absolutely been “jollying him along,” after the New
York fashion. He became pale with humiliated rage, though he knew his
only defense was to control himself and profess not to see through the
trick. Until he could use his big lever, he added to himself.

“Oh, I see,” he commented acridly. “I suppose you don’t realize that
your figures of speech are unfortunate.”

“That comes of New York streets, too,” Tembarom answered with
deliberation. “But you can’t live as I’ve lived and be dead easy--not
_dead_ easy.”

Palliser had left his chair, and stood in contemptuous silence.

“You know how a fellow hates to be thought _dead_ easy”--Tembarom
actually went to the insolent length of saying the words with a touch
of cheerful confidingness--“when he’s _not_. And I’m not. Have another
drink.”

There was a pause. Palliser began to see, or thought he began to
see, where he stood. He had come to Temple Barholm because he had
been driven into a corner and had a dangerous fight before him. In
anticipation of it he had been following a clue for some time, though
at the outset it had been one of incredible slightness. Only his
absolute faith in his theory that every man had something to gain
or lose, which he concealed discreetly, had led him to it. He held a
card too valuable to be used at the beginning of a game. Its power
might have lasted a long time, and proved an influence without limit.
He forbore any mental reference to blackmail; the word was absurd.
One used what fell into one’s hands. If Tembarom had followed his
lead with any degree of docility, he would have felt it wiser to save
his ammunition until further pressure was necessary. But behind his
ridiculous rawness, his foolish jocularity, and his professedly candid
good humor, had been hidden the Yankee trickster who was fool enough to
think he could play his game through. Well, he could not.

During the few moments’ pause he saw the situation as by a photographic
flashlight. He leaned over the table and supplied himself with a fresh
brandy and soda from the tray of siphons and decanters. He gave himself
time to take the glass up in his hand.

“No,” he answered, “you are not ‘dead easy.’ That’s why I am going to
broach another subject to you.”

Tembarom was refilling his pipe.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Who, by the way, is Mr. Strangeways?”

He was deliberate and entirely unemotional. So was T. Tembarom, when,
with match applied to his tobacco, he replied between puffs as he
lighted it:

“You can search me. You can search him, too, for that matter. He
doesn’t know who he is himself.”

“Bad luck for him!” remarked Palliser, and allowed a slight pause
again. After it he added, “Did it ever strike you it might be good luck
for somebody else?”

“Somebody else?” Tembarom puffed more slowly, because his pipe was
lighted.

Palliser took some brandy in his soda.

“There are men, you know,” he suggested, “who can be spared by their
relatives. I have some myself, by Jove!” he added with a laugh. “You
keep him rather dark, don’t you?”

“He doesn’t like to see people.”

“Does he object to people seeing him? I saw him once myself.”

“When you threw the gravel at his window?”

Palliser stared contemptuously.

“What are you talking about? I did not throw stones at his window,” he
lied. “I’m not a school-boy.”

“That’s so,” Tembarom admitted.

“I saw him, nevertheless. And I can tell you he gave me rather a start.”

“Why?”

Palliser half laughed again. He did not mean to go too quickly; he
would let the thing get on Tembarom’s nerves gradually.

“Well, I’m hanged if I didn’t take him for a man who is dead.”

“Enough to give any fellow a jolt,” Tembarom admitted again.

“It gave me a ‘jolt.’ Good word, that. But it would give you a bigger
one, my dear fellow, if he was the man he looked like.”

“Why?” Tembarom asked laconically.

“He looked like Jem Temple Barholm.”

He saw Tembarom start. There could be no denying it.

“You thought that? Honest?” he said sharply, as if for a moment he had
lost his head. “You thought that?”

“Don’t be nervous. Perhaps I couldn’t have sworn to it. I did not see
him very close.”

T. Tembarom puffed rapidly at his pipe, and only ejaculated, “Oh!”

“Of course he’s dead. If he wasn’t,”--with a shrug of his
shoulders,--“Lady Joan Fayre would be Lady Joan Temple Barholm, and
the pair would be bringing up an interesting family here.” He looked
about the room, and then, as if suddenly recalling the fact, added, “By
George! you’d be selling newspapers, or making them--which was it?--in
New York!”

It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his hit there. T.
Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a very perturbed
expression.

“Say,” he put it to him, coming back, “are you in earnest, or are you
just saying it to give me a jolt?”

Palliser studied him. The American sharpness was not always so keen as
it seemed. His face would have betrayed his uneasiness to the dullest
onlooker.

“Have you any objection to my seeing him in his own room?” Palliser
inquired.

“It does him harm to see people,” Tembarom said with nervous bruskness.
“It worries him.”

Palliser smiled a quiet, but far from agreeable, smile. He enjoyed what
he put into it.

“Quite so; best to keep him quiet,” he returned. “Do you know what
my advice would be? Put him in a comfortable sanatorium. A lot of
stupid investigations would end in nothing, of course, but they’d be a
frightful bore.”

He thought it extraordinarily stupid in T. Tembarom to come nearer to
him with an eagerness entirely unconcealed, if he really knew what he
was doing.

“Are you sure that if you saw him close you’d _know_, so that you could
swear to him?” he demanded.

“You’re extremely nervous, aren’t you?” Palliser watched him with
smiling coolness. “Of course Jem Temple Barholm is dead; but I’ve no
doubt that if I saw this man of yours, I could swear he had remained
dead--if I were asked.”

“If you knew him well, you could make me sure. You could swear one way
or another. I want to be _sure_,” said Tembarom.

“So should I in your place; couldn’t be too sure. Well, since you ask
me, I _could_ swear. I knew him well enough. He was one of my most
intimate enemies. What do you say to letting me see him?”

“I would if I could,” Tembarom replied, as if thinking it over. “I
would if I could.”

Palliser treated him to the far from pleasing smile again.

“But it’s quite impossible at present?” he suggested. “Excitement is
not good for him, and all that sort of thing. You want time to think it
over.”

Tembarom’s slowly uttered answer, spoken as if he were still
considering the matter, was far from being the one he had expected.

“I want time; but that’s not the reason you can’t see him right now.
You can’t see him because he’s not here. He’s gone.”

Then it was Palliser who started, taken totally unaware in a manner
which disgusted him altogether. He had to pull himself up.

“He’s gone!” he repeated. “You are quicker than I thought. You’ve got
him safely away, have you? Well, I told you a comfortable sanatorium
would be a good idea.”

“Yes, you did.” T. Tembarom hesitated, seeming to be thinking it over
again. “That’s so.” He laid his pipe aside because it had gone out.

He suddenly sat down at the table, putting his elbows on it and his
face in his hands, with a harried effect of wanting to think it over in
a sort of withdrawal from his immediate surroundings. This was as it
should be. His Yankee readiness had deserted him altogether.

“By Jove! you are nervous!” Palliser commented. “It’s not surprising,
though. I can sympathize with you.” With a markedly casual air he
himself sat down and drew his documents toward him. “Let us talk of
something else,” he said. He preferred to be casual and incidental, if
he were allowed. It was always better to suggest things and let them
sink in until people saw the advantage of considering them and you. To
manage a business matter without open argument or too frank a display
of weapons was at once more comfortable and in better taste.

“You are making a great mistake in not going into this,” he suggested
amiably. “You could go in now, as you went into Hutchinson’s affair,
‘on the ground floor.’ That’s a good enough phrase, too. Twenty
thousand pounds would make you a million. You Americans understand
nothing less than millions.”

But T. Tembarom did not take him up. He muttered in a worried way from
behind his shading hands, “We’ll talk about that later.”

“Why not talk about it now, before anything can interfere?” Palliser
persisted politely, almost gently.

Tembarom sprang up, restless and excited. He had plainly been planning
fast in his temporary seclusion.

“I’m thinking of what you said about Lady Joan,” he burst forth. “Say,
she’s gone through all this Jem Temple Barholm thing once; it about
half killed her. If any one raised false hopes for her, she’d go
through it all again. Once is enough for any woman.”

His effect at professing heat and strong feeling made a spark of
amusement show itself in Palliser’s eye. It struck him as being
peculiarly American in its affectation of sentiment and chivalry.

“I see,” he said. “It’s Lady Joan you’re disturbed about. You want to
spare her another shock. You are a considerate man, as well as a man
of business.”

“I don’t want her to begin to hope if--”

“Very good taste on your part.” Palliser’s polite approval was
admirable, but he tapped lightly on the paper after expressing it. “I
don’t want to seem to press you about this, but don’t you feel inclined
to consider it? I can assure you that an investment of this sort would
be a good thing to depend on if the unexpected happened. If you gave
me your check now, it would be Cedric stock to-morrow, and quite safe.
Suppose you--”

“I--I don’t believe you were right--about what you thought.” The
sharp-featured face was changing from pale to red. “You’d have to be
able to swear to it, anyhow, and I don’t believe you can.” He looked at
Palliser in eager and anxious uncertainty. “If you could,” he dragged
out, “I shouldn’t have a check-book. Where would you be then?”

“I should be in comfortable circumstances, dear chap, and so would you
if you gave me the money to-night, while you possess a check-book. It
would be only a sort of temporary loan in any case, whatever turned up.
The investment would quadruple itself. But there is no time to be lost.
Understand that.”

T. Tembarom broke out into a sort of boyish resentment.

“I don’t believe he did look like him, anyhow,” he cried. “I believe
it’s all a bluff.” His crude-sounding young swagger had a touch of
final desperation in it as he turned on Palliser. “I’m dead sure it’s
a bluff. What a fool I was not to think of that! You want to bluff me
into going into this Cedric thing. You could no more swear he was like
him than--than I could.”

The outright, presumptuous, bold stripping bare of his phrases
infuriated Palliser too suddenly and too much. He stepped up to him and
looked into his eyes.

“Bluff you, you young bounder!” he flung out at him. “You’re losing
your head. You’re not in New York streets here. You are talking to a
gentleman. No,” he said furiously, “I couldn’t swear that he was like
him, but what I _can_ swear in any court of justice is that the man I
saw at the window _was_ Jem Temple Barholm, and no other man on earth.”

[Illustration]

When he had said it, he saw the astonishing dolt change his expression
utterly again, as if in a flash. He stood up, putting his hands in his
pockets. His face changed, his voice changed.

“Fine!” he said. “First-rate! That’s what I wanted to get on to.”


CHAPTER XXXV

After this climax the interview was not so long as it was interesting.
Two men, as far apart as the poles, as remote from each other in
mind and body, in training and education or lack of it, in desires
and intentions, in points of view and trend of being, as nature and
circumstances could make them, talked in a language foreign to each
other of a wildly strange thing. Palliser’s arguments and points of
aspect were less unknown to T. Tembarom than his own were to Palliser.
He had seen something very like them before, though they had developed
in different surroundings and had been differently expressed. The
colloquialism “You’re not doing that for your health” can be made to
cover much ground in the way of the stripping bare of motives for
action. This was what, in excellent and well-chosen English, Captain
Palliser frankly said to his host. Of nothing which T. Tembarom said
to him in his own statement did he believe one word or syllable. The
statement in question was not long or detailed. It was, of course,
Palliser saw, a ridiculously impudent flinging together of a farrago
of nonsense, transparent in its effort beyond belief. Before he had
listened five minutes with the distinctly “nasty” smile, he burst out
laughing.

“That is a good ‘spiel,’ my dear chap,” he said. “It’s as good a
‘spiel’ as your type-writer friend used to rattle off when he thought
he saw a customer; but I’m not a customer.”

Tembarom looked at him interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands
were thrust into his trousers’ pockets, as was his almost invariable
custom. Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were
usually expressed in this unconventional manner.

“You don’t believe a darned word of it,” was his sole observation.

“Not a darned word,” Palliser smiled. “You are trying a ‘bluff,’
which doesn’t do credit to your usual sharpness. It’s a bluff that is
actually silly. It makes you look like an ass.”

“Well, it’s true,” said Tembarom; “it’s true.”

Palliser laughed again.

“I only said it made you _look_ like an ass,” he remarked. “I don’t
profess to understand you altogether, because you are a new species.
Your combination of ignorance and sharpness isn’t easy to calculate on.
But there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you
want to play a particularly sharp trick you are willing to let people
take you for a fool. I’ll own you’ve deceived me once or twice, even
when I suspected you. I’ve heard that’s one of the most successful
methods used in the American business world. That’s why I only say you
_look_ like an ass. You _are_ an ass in some respects; but you are
letting yourself look like one now for some shrewd end. You either
think you’ll slip out of danger by it when I make this discovery
public, or you think you’ll somehow trick me into keeping my mouth
shut.”

“I needn’t trick you into keeping your mouth shut,” Tembarom suggested.
“There’s a straight way to do that, ain’t there?” And he indelicately
waved his hand toward the documents pertaining to the Cedric Company.

It was stupid as well as gross, in his hearer’s opinion. If he had
known what was good for him he would have been clever enough to ignore
the practical presentation of his case made half an hour or so earlier.

“No, there is not,” Palliser replied, with serene mendacity. “No
suggestion of that sort has been made. My business proposition was
given on an entirely different basis. You, of course, choose to put
your personal construction upon it.”

“Gee whizz!” ejaculated T. Tembarom. “I was ’way off, wasn’t I?”

“I told you that professing to be an ass wouldn’t be good enough in
this case. Don’t go on with it,” said Palliser, sharply.

“You’re throwing bouquets. Let a fellow be natural,” said Tembarom.

“That is bluff, too,” Palliser replied more sharply still. “I am not
taken in by it, bold as it is. Ever since you came here, you have been
playing this game. It was your fool’s grin and guffaw and pretense of
good nature that first made me suspect you of having something up your
sleeve. You were _too_ unembarrassed and candid.”

“So you began to look out,” Tembarom said, considering him curiously,
“just because of that.” Then suddenly he laughed outright, the fool’s
guffaw.

It somehow gave Palliser a sort of puzzled shock. It was so hearty
that it remotely suggested that he appeared more secure than seemed
possible. He tried to reply to him with a languid contempt of manner.

“You think you have some tremendously sharp ‘deal’ in your hand,” he
said, “but you had better remember you are in England, where facts are
like sledge-hammers. You can’t dodge from under them as you can in
America. I dare say you won’t answer me, but I should like to ask you
what you propose to do.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do any more than you do,” was the
unilluminating answer. “I don’t mind telling you that.”

“And what do you think _he_ will do?”

“I’ve got to wait till I find out. I’m doing it. That was what I told
you. What are _you_ going to do?” he added casually.

“I’m going to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to have an interview with Palford &
Grimby.”

“That’s a good enough move,” commented Tembarom, “if you think you can
prove what you say. You’ve got to prove things, you know. I couldn’t,
so I lay low and waited, just like I told you.”

“Of course, of course,” Palliser himself almost grinned in his
derision. “You have only been waiting.”

“When you’ve got to prove a thing, and haven’t much to go on, you’ve
got to wait,” said T. Tembarom--“to wait and keep your mouth shut,
whatever happens, and to let yourself be taken for a fool or a
horse-thief isn’t as gilt-edged a job as it seems. But proof’s what
it’s best to have before you ring up the curtain. _You’d_ have to have
it yourself. So would Palford & Grimby before it’d be stone-cold safe
to rush things and accuse a man of a penitentiary offense.”

He took his unconventional half-seat on the edge of the table, with
one foot on the floor and the other one lightly swinging. “Palford &
Grimby are clever old ducks, and they know that much. Thing they’d know
best would be that to set a raft of lies going about a man who’s got
money enough to defend himself, and to make them pay big damages for it
afterward, would be pretty bum business. I guess _they_ know all about
what proof stands for. _They_ may have to wait; so may you, same as I
have.”

Palliser realized that he was in the position of a man striking at an
adversary whose construction was of india-rubber. He struck home, but
left no bruise and drew no blood, which was an irritating thing. He
lost his temper.

“Proof!” he jerked out. “There will be proof enough, and when it is
made public, you will not control the money you threaten to use.”

“When you get _proof_, just you let me hear about it,” T. Tembarom
said. “And all the money I’m threatening on shall go where it belongs,
and I’ll go back to little old New York and sell papers if I have to.
It won’t come as hard as you think.”

The flippant insolence with which he brazened out his pretense that he
had not lied, that his ridiculous romance was actual and simple truth,
suggested dangerous readiness of device and secret knowledge of power
which could be adroitly used.

“You are merely marking time,” said Palliser, rising, with cold
determination to be juggled with no longer. “You have hidden him away
where you think you can do as you please with a man who is an invalid.
That is your dodge. You’ve got him hidden somewhere, and his friends
had better get at him before it is too late.”

“I’m not answering questions this evening, and I’m not giving
addresses, though there are no witnesses to take them down. If he’s
hidden away, he’s where he won’t be disturbed,” was T. Tembarom’s
rejoinder. “You may lay your bottom dollar on that.”

Palliser walked toward the door without speaking. He had almost reached
it when he whirled about involuntarily, arrested by a shout of laughter.

“Say,” announced Tembarom, “you mayn’t know it, but this lay-out would
make a first-rate turn in a vaudeville. You _think_ I’m lying, I _look_
like I’m lying, I guess every word I say _sounds_ like I’m lying. To a
fellow like you, I guess it couldn’t help sound that way. And I’m not
lying. That’s where the joke comes in. I’m not lying. I’ve not told you
all I know because it’s none of your business and wouldn’t help; but
what I have told you is the stone-cold truth.”

He was keeping it up to the very end with a desperate determination not
to let go his hold of his pose until he had made his private shrewd
deal, whatsoever it was. At least, so it struck Palliser, who merely
said:

“I’m leaving the house by the first train to-morrow morning.” He fixed
a cold gray eye on the fool’s grin.

“Six forty-five,” said T. Tembarom. “I’ll order the carriage. I might
go up myself.”

The door closed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tembarom was looking cheerful enough when he went into his bedroom. He
had become used to its size and had learned to feel that it was a good
sort of place. It had the hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse’s boarding-house
“beaten to a frazzle.” There was about everything in it that any man
could hatch up an idea he’d like to have. He had slept luxuriously
on the splendid carved bed through long nights, he had lain awake
and thought out things on it, he had lain and watched the fire-light
flickering on the ceiling, as he thought about Ann and made plans,
and “fixed up” the Harlem flat which could be run on fifteen per.
He had picked out the pieces of furniture from the Sunday “Earth”
advertisement sheet, and had set them in their places. He always saw
the six-dollar mahogany-stained table set for supper, with Ann at one
end and himself at the other. He had grown actually fond of the old
room because of the silence and comfort of it, which tended to give
reality to his dreams. Pearson, who had ceased to look anxious, and who
had acquired fresh accomplishments in the form of an entirely new set
of duties, was waiting, and handed him a telegram.

“This just arrived, sir,” he explained. “James brought it here because
he thought you had come up, and I didn’t send it down because I heard
you on the stairs.”

“That’s right. Thank you, Pearson,” his master said.

He tore the yellow envelop, and read the message. In a moment Pearson
knew it was not an ordinary message, and therefore remained more than
ordinarily impassive of expression. He did not even ask of himself what
it might convey.

Mr. Temple Barholm stood still a few seconds, with the look of a man
who must think and think rapidly.

“What is the next train to London, Pearson?” he asked.

“There is one at twelve thirty-six, sir,” he answered. “It’s the last
till six forty-five in the morning. You have to change at Crowley.”

“You’re always ready, Pearson,” returned Mr. Temple Barholm. “I want to
get that train.”

Pearson _was_ always ready. Before the last word was quite spoken he
had turned and opened the bedroom door.

“I’ll order the dog-cart; that’s quickest, sir,” he said. He was
out of the room and in again almost immediately. Then he was at the
wardrobe and taking out what Mr. Temple Barholm called his “grip,” but
what Pearson knew as a Gladstone bag. It was always kept ready packed
for unexpected emergencies of travel.

[Illustration]

Mr. Temple Barholm sat at the table and drew pen and paper toward him.
He looked excited; he looked more troubled than Pearson had seen him
look before.

“The wire’s from Sir Ormsby Galloway, Pearson,” he said. “It’s about
Mr. Strangeways. He’s done what I used to be always watching out
against: he’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared, sir!” cried Pearson, and almost dropped the Gladstone
bag. “I beg pardon, sir. I know there’s no time to lose.” He steadied
the bag and went on with his task without even turning round.

His master was in some difficulty. He began to write, and after dashing
off a few words, suddenly stopped, and then tore them up.

“No,” he muttered, “that won’t do. There’s no time to explain.” Then he
began again, but tore up his next lines also. “That says too much and
not enough. It’d scare the life out of her.”

He wrote again, and ended by folding the sheet and putting it into an
envelop.

“This is a message for Miss Alicia,” he said to Pearson. “Give it to
her in the morning. I don’t want her to worry, because I had to go in
a hurry. Tell her everything’s going to be all right; but you needn’t
mention that anything’s happened to Mr. Strangeways.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Pearson.

Mr. Temple Barholm was already moving about the room, doing odd things
for himself rapidly, and he went on speaking.

“I want you and Rose to know,” he said, “that whatever happens, you are
both fixed all right--both of you. I’ve seen to that.”

“Thank you, sir,” Pearson faltered, made uneasy by something new in his
tone. “You said whatever happened, sir--”

“Whatever old thing happens,” his master took him up.

“Not to _you_, sir. Oh, I hope, sir, that nothing--”

Mr. Temple Barholm put a cheerful hand on his shoulder.

“Nothing’s going to happen that’ll hurt any one. Things may change,
that’s all. You and Rose are all right, Miss Alicia’s all right, I’m
all right. Come along. Got to catch that train.”

In this manner he took his departure.


    (To be continued)



[Illustration: TOPICS OF THE TIME]


THE MOST IMPORTANT YEAR

This number of ~The Century~ closes its eighty-sixth volume, and
the November number will begin what we confidently believe will be the
most important year in the history of this magazine. The period through
which we are living is, in its display of scientific accomplishment
and clashing social forces, the most broadly significant and humanly
spectacular in our forty-three years of existence, and it is our
ambition to be, as nearly as possible, representative of the times in
which we live.

Recognizing that this is, in a real and vital sense, the very age
of fiction, we plan that each number beginning with the November
~Century~ shall contain, in addition to a leading article on
modern conditions, an exceptional fiction feature. In fact the present
number, containing the beginning of the anonymous serial, “Home,” and
Colonel Roosevelt’s paper on the Progressive Party, illustrates our
purpose.

In the November number the fiction feature will be an extraordinary
story by Stephen French Whitman entitled “The Woman from Yonder,”
and the non-fiction feature will be a paper entitled “The Militant
Women--and Women” by Edna Kenton, which, for dignity, power, and
clarity, states the case for the feminists as it never has been stated.
Indeed no person with a mind in the least open can read Miss Kenton’s
brief without sympathy and understanding. Also it is typical of many
clarifying papers on many timely subjects which we plan to publish
through the year.

In December the non-fiction feature will be an absorbing paper on
“The Search for a Modern Religion” by Winston Churchill. In January
the fiction feature will be a most unusual story by May Sinclair. In
February we shall begin a new and important serial novel.

Of course this does not mean that our leaders shall exhaust our
resources. Each number will contain other stories and other papers on
subjects of current importance. The leaders, however, are intended to
be the most important papers on their several subjects that the world
can produce.

An eminent novelist declared to us years ago in his newspaper days his
belief that reporting was the noblest work of man. In later years,
when he had added art to his reports of life and was selling his
novels by the hundreds of thousands, he confirmed the statement of his
enthusiastic youth. Modern fiction is, literally, a report of life,
colored by personality, and formed by art. Its appeal is universal. Its
power is greater than any other engine of civilization. It is to this
period what poetry, what preaching, what oratory, and what editorials
have been to preceding periods. It is practically the only effective
means of approaching the minds of millions of intelligent persons. It
influences to a greater or a less degree the imagining, the thinking,
and the living of nearly all who are literate.

During the coming years ~The Century~ will recognize this
important function of fiction, but in so doing it will not the less
regard fiction as an art. Roughly speaking, one half of each number
will be devoted to serials and short stories, and we shall, in their
selection, work toward an ideal. The problem of selection will be more
complex than for some other magazines, perhaps, for ~Century~
readers are of many and varied tastes. There must be fiction for all
kinds of cultivated readers, for the lovers of artistry and subtlety
and the fine distinctions of human nature and for those who revel in
plot and climax. There must be fiction for the laughter-loving and
fiction for those for whom fiction seriously interprets life. But
whatever its kind it must all possess a common quality, and this, we
realize, it will take long to attain consistently.

Apart from fiction and in addition to the distinguished series
of papers on great current movements already foretold, ~The
Century~ has planned for the coming year a number of features of
extraordinary interest and value. In November, for example, Professor
Edward Alsworth Ross, the distinguished sociologist of the University
of Wisconsin, will begin an examination into Immigration which cannot
fail to stir every American deeply, and undoubtedly will blaze the way
to greatly needed reforms. This is no sensational “campaign,” nor is
it a dry, scientific compilation, but a searching study of great human
facts and conditions that make their own prophecy. And, early in the
winter, Hilaire Belloc will begin an important series of papers on
French Revolutionary subjects.

In literature we have in preparation several papers of permanent and
vital interest. Albert Bigelow Paine, for example, the biographer of
Mark Twain, will contribute, from European wanderings in an automobile
under his own leisurely guidance, papers bubbling with the humor that
is his special possession. The same note of vitality underlies the
year’s projects in biography, history, and science.

In politics ~The Century~ will remain wholly non-partizan.
From time to time, as passing events or other occasions demand, we
shall deal with political personages and parties and policies from a
point of view altogether remote from any mere political interest, and
for the broad purpose of enlightening all citizens irrespective of
partizan creed. We expect, for example, when new situations develop, to
follow Mr. Roosevelt’s paper with papers by political leaders of equal
prominence upon the changing purposes and objects of their respective
parties.

Art has always been ~The Century’s~ special field, and our plans
involve an interesting and important year. But there is another use
for pictures than the selection and display of beautiful and admirable
specimens of art. One picture is often more descriptive than pages upon
pages of the most skilful text, and we purpose to reproduce freely, for
the information of ~Century~ readers, examples illustrating the
more important transitional tendencies in the art and sculpture of our
day.



In Lighter Vein


HOMER AND HUMBUG

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

Author of “Literary Lapses,” “Nonsense Novels,” etc.

I do not mind confessing that for a long time past I have been very
skeptical about the classics. I was myself trained as a classical
scholar. It seemed the only thing to do with me. I acquired such a
singular facility in handling Latin and Greek that I could take a page
of either of them, distinguish which it was by glancing at it, and,
with the help of a dictionary and a compass, whip off a translation of
it in less than three hours.

But I never got any pleasure from it. I lied about the pleasure of it.
At first, perhaps, I lied through vanity. Any scholar will understand
the feeling. Later on I lied through habit; later still because, after
all, the classics were all that I had and so I valued them. I have seen
a deceived dog thus value a pup with a broken leg, and a pauper child
nurse a dead doll with the sawdust out of it. So I nursed my dead Homer
and my broken Demosthenes though I knew that there was more sawdust
in the stomach of one modern author than in the whole lot of them.
Observe, I do not say which it is that has it full of it.

So, I say, I began to lie about the classics. I said to people who
knew no Greek that there was a sublimity, a majesty about Homer which
they could never hope to grasp. I said it was like the sound of the
sea beating against the granite cliffs of the Ionian Esophagus; or
words to that effect. As for the truth of it, I might as well have
said that it was like the sound of a rum distillery running a night
shift on half-time. At any rate this is what I said about Homer,
and when I spoke of Pindar,--the dainty grace of his strophes,--and
Aristophanes, the delicious sallies of his wit, sally after sally, each
sally explained in a note, calling it a sally, I managed to suffuse my
face with a coruscation of appreciative animation which made it almost
beautiful.

I admitted of course that Vergil, in spite of his genius, had a
hardness and a cold glitter which resembled rather the brilliance of a
cut diamond than the soft grace of a flower. Certainly I admitted this:
the mere admission of it would knock the breath out of any one who was
arguing.

From such talks my friends went away saddened. The conclusion was too
cruel. It had all the cold logic of a syllogism (like that almost
brutal form of argument so much admired in the Paraphernalia of
Socrates). For if:--

    Vergil and Homer and Pindar had all this grace, and pith, and these
            sallies,
    And if I read Vergil and Homer and Pindar,
    And if they only read Mrs. Wharton and Mrs. Humphry Ward,
    Then where were they?

So, continued lying brought its own reward in the sense of superiority,
and I lied some more.

When I reflect that I have openly expressed regret, as a personal
matter, even in the presence of women, for the missing books of
Tacitus, and the entire loss of the Abracadabra of Polyphemus of
Syracuse, I can find no words in which to beg for pardon. In reality
I was just as much worried over the loss of the ichthyosaurus. More,
indeed: I’d like to have seen it; but if the books Tacitus _did_ lose
were like those he didn’t, I wouldn’t.

I believe all scholars lie like this. An ancient friend of mine, a
clergyman, tells me that in Hesiod he finds a peculiar grace that
he doesn’t find elsewhere. He’s a liar. That’s all. Another man, in
politics and in the legislature, tells me that every night before going
to bed he reads over a page or two of Thucydides to keep his mind
fresh. Either he never goes to bed or _he’s_ a liar. Doubly so; no one
could read Greek at that frantic rate; and, anyway, his mind isn’t
fresh. How could it be?--he’s in the legislature. I don’t object to his
talking freely of the classics, but he ought to keep it for the voters.
My own opinion is that before he goes to bed he takes whisky; why call
it Thucydides?

[Illustration: THE ICHTHYOSAURUS DEVOURING TWO OF THE LOST BOOKS OF
TACITUS]

I know there are solid arguments advanced in favor of the classics. I
often hear them from my colleagues. My friend the Professor of Greek
tells me that he truly believes the classics have made him what he is.
This is a very grave statement, if well founded. Indeed, I have heard
the same argument from a great many Latin and Greek scholars. They all
claim, with some heat, that Latin and Greek have practically made them
what they are. This damaging charge against the classics should not be
too readily accepted. In my opinion some of these men would be what
they are, no matter what they were.

Be this as it may, I for my part bitterly regret the lies I have told
about my appreciation of Latin and Greek literature. I am anxious to
do what I can to set things right. I am therefore engaged on, indeed
have nearly completed, a work which will enable all readers to judge
the matter for themselves. What I have done is a translation of all
the great classics, not in the usual literal way but on a design that
brings them into harmony with modern life.

The translation is intended to be within reach of everybody. It is so
designed that the entire set of volumes can go on a shelf twenty-seven
feet long, or even longer. The first edition will be an _édition de
luxe_ bound in vellum, or perhaps in buckskin, and sold at five hundred
dollars. It will be limited to five hundred copies, and, of course,
sold only to the feeble-minded. The next edition will be the Literary
Edition, sold to artists, authors, and actors.

My plan is to transpose the classical writers so as to give, not the
literal translation word for word, but what is really the modern
equivalent. Let me give an odd sample or two to show what I mean.
Take the passage in the First Book of Homer that describes Ajax, the
Greek, dashing into the battle in front of Troy. Here is the way it
runs (as nearly as I remember) in the usual word for word translation
of the classroom, as done by the very best professor, his spectacles
glittering with the literary rapture of it.

    Then he too Ajax on the one hand leaped (or possibly jumped) into
    the fight wearing on the other hand yes certainly a steel corselet
    (or possibly a bronze under tunic) and on his head of course yes
    without doubt he had a helmet with a tossing plume taken from the
    mane (or perhaps extracted from the tail) of some horse which
    once fed along the banks of the Scamander (and it sees the herd
    and raises its head and paws the ground) and in his hand a shield
    worth a hundred oxen and on his knees two especially in particular
    greaves made by some cunning artificer (or perhaps blacksmith) and
    he blows the fire and it is hot.

    Thus Ajax leaped (or, better, was propelled from behind) into the
    fight.

[Illustration: AJAX, “PROPELLED FROM BEHIND”]

Now that’s grand stuff. There is no doubt of it. There’s a wonderful
movement and force to it. You can almost see it move, it goes so
fast. But the modern reader can’t get it. It won’t mean to him what
it meant to the early Greek. The setting, the costume, the scene have
all got to be changed in order to let the modern reader have a real
equivalent so as to judge for himself just how good the Greek verse
is. In my translation I alter the original just a little, not much
but just enough to give the passage a form that reproduces for us
the proper literary value of the verses, without losing anything of
their majesty. It describes, I may say, the Directors of the American
Industrial Stocks plunging into the Balkan War Cloud:

    Then there came rushing to the shock of war
    Mr. McNicoll of the C. P. R.
    He wore suspenders and about his throat
    High rose the collar of a sealskin coat.
    He had on gaiters and he wore a tie,
    He had his trousers buttoned good and high;
    About his waist a woollen undervest
    Bought from a sad-eyed farmer of the West.
    (And every time he clips a sheep he sees
    Some bloated plutocrat who ought to freeze.)
    Thus in the Stock Exchange he burst to view,
    Leaped to the post, and shouted, “Ninety-two!”

There! That’s Homer, the real thing! Just exactly as it sounded to the
rude crowd of Greek peasants who sat in a ring and guffawed at the
rhymes and watched the minstrel stamp it out into “feet” as he recited
it!

Let me take another example, this time from the so-called Catalogue of
the Ships, which fills up nearly an entire book of Homer. This famous
passage names all the ships, one by one, and names the chiefs who
sailed on them, and names the particular town, or hill, or valley that
each came from. It has been much admired. It has that same majesty of
style that has been brought to an even loftier pitch in the New York
Business Directory and the City Telephone Book. It runs along, as I
recall it, something after this fashion:

    And first indeed oh, yes, was the ship of Homistogetes, the
    Spartan, long and swift, having both its masts covered with cowhide
    and two banks of oars. And he, Homistogetes, was born of Hermogenes
    and Ophthalmia, and was at home in Syncope beside the fast-flowing
    Paresis. And after him came the ship of Preposterus, the Eurasian,
    son of Oasis and Hysteria,

--and so on, endlessly.

Instead of this I substitute, with the permission of the New York
Central Railway, a more modern example, the official catalogue of their
locomotives, taken almost word for word from the list compiled by their
Chief Superintendent of Rolling Stock and rendered into Homeric verse.
I admit that he wrote it in hot weather.

[Illustration]

    Out in the yard and steaming in the sun
    Stands locomotive engine number forty-one;
    Seated beside the windows of its cab
    Are Pat McGraw and Peter James McNab.
    Pat comes from Troy and Peter from Cohoes,
    And when they pull the throttle, off she goes;
    And as she vanishes there comes to view
    Steam locomotive engine number forty-two.
    Observe her mighty wheels, her easy roll,
    With William J. McArthur in control.
    They say her engineer some time ago
    Lived on a farm outside of Buffalo,
    Whereas her fireman, Henry Edward Foy,
    Attended school in Springfield, Illinois.
    Thus does the race of men decay and rot--
    SOME MEN CAN HOLD THEIR JOBS AND SOME CAN NOT.

Please observe that if Homer had actually written that last line, it
would have been quoted for nearly three thousand years as one of the
deepest sayings ever said. Orators would still be rounding out their
speeches with the majestic phrase (in Greek), “Some men can hold their
jobs”; essayists would open their most scholarly dissertations with the
words, “It has been finely said by Homer that some men can hold their
jobs”; and the clergy in the mid-pathos of a funeral sermon would lift
an eve skyward and echo, “and some can not.”

This is what I should like to do: I’d like to take a large stone and
write on it--

    “_The classics are only primitive literature. They belong in the
    same class as primitive machinery, primitive music, and primitive
    medicine,_”

--and then throw it through the windows of a UNIVERSITY and hide behind
a fence to see the professors buzz!



CASUS BELLI


There has long been current in New Haven what is sure to be an
apocryphal story of college loyalty, told at the expense of Anson
Phelps Stokes, the popular secretary of Yale. Secretary Stokes is an
ordained clergyman in the Episcopal Church, and, so the story goes, as
he was once journeying west on the train in non-clerical garb, a man of
the self-appointed missionary type approached, and asked him solemnly:

“I beg your pardon, sir, but are you a Christian man?”

Startled, Dr. Stokes looked up and said:

“Oh, d---- it, no.”

The man turned to go, saying in a deeply offended tone:

“Well, I only asked you if you were a Christian man. I don’t see--”

Impulsively, Dr. Stokes caught him by the arm.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I beg your pardon. I thought you
asked me if I was a Princeton man!”


[Illustration]

Died

[Illustration]

[Illustration: R. R.

_HIS LAST PORTRAIT_]

    RYMBEL.--Suddenly, of weariness, at his home in Lighter Vein;
    Rondeau Rymbel, aged two months. Please omit flowers.

    “_Blessed are the misunderstood._”

[Illustration]


[Illustration]


THE HUSBAND SHOP

A FABLE FOR HEIRESSES

BY OLIVER HERFORD

    Above the plate-glass window-pane,
      Inviting every passing gaze,
    Hung an inscription, large and plain,
      “_THE HUSBAND SHOP_.” This, in amaze,
    Clorinda seeing, stopped wide-eyed,
    And stared, then turned and stepped inside.

    A floor-walker whose faultlessness
      And condescending air proclaimed
    One of the _table d’haute noblesse_,
      Approached Clorinda and exclaimed,
    With graceful undulating palm:
    “Something in husbands? _Oui, Madame._”

    “We have the latest thing of all
      In husbands; kindly step this way.
    We’re using them on hats this fall,
      In place of plume or floral spray,
    The creature being pinned or tied
    With chiffon bows on either side.”

    He leads the way, all wreathed in smiles,
      And wonderful in spotless spats
    That flitter like twin butterflies
      Along an avenue of hats,
    Each one displaying on its brim
    A husband--fashion’s latest whim.

    Clorinda tries them each in turn
      Before the glass; some are too small,
    And some too cold, and some too stern,
      And some are slightly soiled, and all,
    When punctured by the hat-pin’s steel,
    Betray by squirms how bored they feel.

    At last Clorinda came to one
      Marked “_Dobbs_,” that scarce seemed worth her while;
    But when she tried it on for fun,
      It met the hat-pin with a smile,
    As if to say, “Oh, beauteous miss,
    Even a stab from you is bliss!”

    “The very thing! but thrown away
      Upon a _hat_!” Clorinda cried.
    “’T would make a sweet corsage bouquet.”
      The shoppers stared quite stupefied
    To see Clorinda Dobbs depart
    Wearing a husband next her heart.


[Illustration: Drawing by F. R. Gruger]


A TRIUMPH FOR THE FRESH-AIR FUND

_Charity Note._ “Owing to the enterprise and generosity of the United
Welfare League, a gentleman, widely known in New York as Happy Harry,
was recently ‘rescued’ on the Bowery, washed, shaved, shod, and sent to
Sunnyside, in Sullivan County, New York.

“We are glad to learn, from recent advices from Sunnyside, that the
stranger is wholeheartedly entering into the life and spirit of the
place.”


THE SENIOR WRANGLER

_SNOBBERY--AMERICA VS. ENGLAND_

“How the Americans _do_ love a Duke!” is a frequent comment of the
British journals, and they then proceed to the sober generalization
that “the United States is a nation of flunkies and of snobs.” Whoever
will be at the pains to follow British weekly journalism will find
this sentiment repeated every little while. Good old British Podsnap!
No half-way course for him. He is not the man to shilly-shally with
a nation, and he will speak the plain truth to any hemisphere, no
matter how it hurts the hemisphere’s feelings. Vulgarity is a matter of
geography. It is reckoned from Pall Mall as time is from Greenwich.

But as to snobs. New York’s streets are of course often choked with
them. A duke, an elephant, a base-ball pitcher on Fifth Avenue, may
at any time be the center of a disproportionate and servile attention
from both the American people and the press. Yet the cult of the
egregious and the greatly advertised has never the deep devotion
of sound snobbery. It is not for an upstart and volatile people to
dispute the calm supremacy of British snobbery. Your true snob is not
inquisitive at all. He has no sense of any social values not his own.
It is among the tightly closed minds of the tight little island that he
is seen at his best. What other nation could produce, in journalism,
such inimitable snobs as the Lord Alfred Douglases and the Saturday
Reviewers?

American snobbery is not a sturdy plant. There is too much social
uncertainty at the root of it. What the British take for snobbery
over here springs from quite alien qualities--curiosity, a vast
social innocence, and a blessed inexperience of rank. To be sure, if
King George comes to New York some one may clip his coat-tails for a
keepsake; and it is quite probable that Mrs. Van Allendale, of Newport,
if asked to meet him, will be all of a tremble whether to address
him as “Sire” or “My God.” But what has this in common with the huge
assurances of British snobbery--its enormous certainty of the Proper
Thing, in clothes, people, religion, sports, manners, and races, and
its indomitable determination not to guess again?

[Illustration: KING GEORGE IN NEW YORK]


_OUR TENDER LITERARY CELEBRITIES_

One day, not so very long ago, a well-known American author was laughed
at in a morning newspaper. It was apparently not meant for stinging
satire. But the author felt it somewhere about him and complained
to the editor of the pain. He wrote a letter for publication--long,
earnest, very indignant. I am, said he, the victim of a “malignantly
humorous attack.” By which process he turned a poor joke on himself
into a good one, and incidentally exposed a too tender private
temperament to the public gaze.

Sometimes it seems as if the whole body of recent American literature
were not worth the damage sustained by character while consuming the
fruits of success. There are signs of a bad schooling, of too steady
a fare of sweets. For what doth it profit a man to run to a hundred
thousand if he turn out a prig? The thing too often happens. His
constitution may have been none too robust at the start, but it is
awful to think what might become of any of us. Undermined by reciprocal
endearments, we, too, might rage at the first word of criticism and
swoon at the sound of laughter. Potatoes will sprout in a warm cellar,
though some are worse than others. It is the effect of too much shelter
in the great author’s life.

I condemn no man. I condemn the influences. Fortified against
displeasure, barricaded against even chaff, there comes a time when the
soul’s dark cottage needs ventilation. There should be more outside
breezes in The Literary Life.


[Illustration]

OUR PARENTS

TWO POEMS BY CHARLES IRVIN JUNKIN

PICTURES BY HARRY RALEIGH

[Illustration]


_WHEN PA IS SICK_

    When pa is sick,
      He’s scared to death,
    An’ ma an’ us
      Just holds our breath.

    He crawls in bed,
      An’ puffs an’ grunts,
    An’ does all kinds
      Of crazy stunts.

    He wants “_Doc_” Brown,
      An’ mighty quick;
    For when pa’s ill,
      He’s _awful_ sick.

    He gasps an’ groans,
      An’ sort o’ sighs,
    He talks s’ queer,
      An’ rolls his eyes.

    Ma jumps an’ runs,
      An’ all of us,
    An’ all the house,
      Is in a fuss,

    An’ peace an’ joy
      Is mighty skeerce.--
    When pa is sick,
      It’s somethin’ fierce.

[Illustration: “WHEN PA IS SICK, IT’S SOMETHIN’ FIERCE”]


    _WHEN MA IS SICK_

    When ma is sick,
      She pegs away;
    She’s quiet, though,
      Not much t’ say.

    She goes right on
      A-doin’ things,
    An’ sometimes laughs,
      Er even sings.

    She says she don’t
      Feel extry well,
    But then it’s just
      A kind o’ spell;

    She’ll be all right
      To-morrow, sure.
    A good old sleep
      Will be the cure.

    An’ pa he sniffs,
      An’ makes no kick,
    Fer women-folks
      Is always sick.

    An’ ma she smiles,
      Lets on she’s glad.--
    When ma is sick,
      It ain’t s’ bad.

[Illustration: “WHEN MA IS SICK, IT AIN’T S’ BAD”]



[Illustration: HORACE.--]


“I SING OF MYSELF”

(An ode by Horace.--Book II, Ode 20)

BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER


    Before I end this glorious batch
      Of deathless verses, friend Mæcenas,
    I’ve something still to add, to snatch
      One laurel more to share between us.
    (I mention all of this to no man
    Except perhaps a friend--or Roman.)

    Now that my time has come to die
      (Within a score or two of years),
    I wish to have it known that I
      Shall gladly leave this “vale of tears,”
    Because (and how my friends will chortle!)
    I shall be more than just immortal.

    Into the clear and boundless air
      I shall ascend with sounding pinions.
    Shouting a buoyant “I don’t care,”
      Laughing at kings and their dominions.
    And folks will say (how well you know it!),
    “Q. Flaccus? Ah, he _was_ a poet!”

    My wings shall sprout,--why, even now
      I feel all creepy and absurd-like,--
    My skin is roughening somehow,
      My legs are positively birdlike.
    And see, sure as I’m growing older,
    Feathers and quills on either shoulder!

    And I shall fly about as long
      As I’ve the slightest inclination,
    A veritable Bird of Song
      Without a local habitation.
    Like Icarus, I’ll travel surely
    And (need I say it?) more securely.

    From where the Dacian hides in shame
      To where the river Rhone runs muddy,
    All men will celebrate my name;
      My works will constitute a study.
    I shall be loved by people pat in
    The ways of elementary Latin.

    Then let there be no dirge for me,
      No petty grief or lamentation.
    Why weep for one who’s sure to be
      A joy and honor to creation?
    Ah, you’re a lucky man, by Venus!
    To have a friend like _me_, Mæcenas.


NEWPORT NOTE

THE LATEST SENSATION IN SMART SOCIETY

“Mrs. Algy Flint gave an informal turkey-trot last evening at ‘On
the Rocks,’ her palace in Newport. Prizes were awarded to the best
dancers. The first prize (an Owen Johnson Salamander fire-screen--for
stenographers and débutantes) was won by Miss Dolly Marble, for a novel
little dance entitled ‘The Tangorilla.’ The second prize (a Pankhurst
forcible feeder--for infants and invalids) was awarded to Bertie Stone,
her clever and light-footed partner.”

[Illustration:

    Drawing by Birch

“THE TANGORILLA”]


SOCRATIC ARGUMENT

BY JOHN CARVER ALDEN

    Straight, at his ruler’s stern command,
    The contents of the cup, offhand,
    Inclusive of its dregs and lees,
    Was promptly drained by Socrates.
    More than his foes,--perhaps his wife--
    Caused his Xanthippe-thy for life.


THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK





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