автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  The Short Stories

Booth Tarkington

The Short Stories Of Booth Tarkington

 

Booth Tarkington was born on July 29, 1869 in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He is one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once.  When you look through the quality of his work it is easy to understand why. The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams, Penrod, Penrod And Sam – all classics. The Penrod novels depict a typical upper-middle class American boy of 1910 vintage, revealing a fine, bookish sense of American humor. At one time, his Penrod series was as well known andregarded as Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Much of Tarkington's work consists of satirical and closely observed studies of the American class system and its foibles. Coming as he did from a patrician Midwestern family that lost much of its wealth after the Panic of 1873 the foundations for that outlook are clear. Today, he is best known for his novel The Magnificent Ambersons which contrasted the decline of the "old money" Amberson dynasty with the rise of "new money" industrial tycoons in the years between the American Civil War and World War I. In this volume you have an opportunity to read some of his very fine short stories. 

 

Index Of Contents

Monsieur Beaucaire

His Own People

Harlequin And Columbine

 

 

 

 

Monsieur Beaucaire

 

 

Chapter One

 

The young Frenchman did very well what he had planned to do. His guess that the Duke would cheat proved good. As the unshod half-dozen figures that had been standing noiselessly in the entryway stole softly into the shadows of the chamber, he leaned across the table and smilingly plucked a card out of the big Englishman's sleeve.

 

"Merci, M. le Duc!" he laughed, rising and stepping back from the table.

 

The Englishman cried out, "It means the dirty work of silencing you with my bare hands!" and came at him.

 

"Do not move," said M. Beaucaire, so sharply that the other paused. "Observe behind you."

 

The Englishman turned, and saw what trap he had blundered into; then stood transfixed, impotent, alternately scarlet with rage and white with the vital shame of discovery. M. Beaucaire remarked, indicating the silent figures by a polite wave of the hand, "Is it not a compliment to monsieur that I procure six large men to subdue him? They are quite devote' to me, and monsieur is alone. Could it be that he did not wish even his lackeys to know he play with the yo'ng Frenchman who Meestaire Nash does not like in the pomp-room? Monsieur is unfortunate to have come on foot and alone to my apartment."

 

The Duke's mouth foamed over with chaotic revilement. His captor smiled brightly, and made a slight gesture, as one who brushes aside a boisterous insect. With the same motion he quelled to stony quiet a resentful impetus of his servants toward the Englishman.

 

"It's murder, is it, you carrion!" finished the Duke.

 

M. Beaucaire lifted his shoulders in a mock shiver. "What words! No, no, no! No killing! A such word to a such host! No, no, not mur-r-der; only disgrace!" He laughed a clear, light laugh with a rising inflection, seeming to launch himself upon an adventurous quest for sympathy.

 

"You little devilish scullion!" spat out the Duke.

 

"Tut, tut! But I forget. Monsieur has pursue' his studies of deportment amongs' his fellow-countrymen.

 

"Do you dream a soul in Bath will take your word that I, that I"

 

"That M. le Duc de Winterset had a card up his sleeve?"

 

"You pitiful stroller, you stableboy, born in a stable"

 

"Is it not an honor to be born where monsieur must have been bred?"

 

"You scurvy foot-boy, you greasy barber, you cutthroat groom"

 

"Overwhelm'!" The young man bowed with imperturbable elation. "M. le Duc appoint' me to all the office' of his househol'."

 

"You mustachioed fool, there are not five people of quality in Bath will speak to you"

 

"No, monsieur, not on the parade; but how many come to play with me here? Because I will play always, night or day, for what one will, for any long, and always fair, monsieur."

 

"You outrageous varlet! Every one knows you came to England as the French Ambassador's barber. What man of fashion will listen to you? Who will believe you?"

 

"All people, monsieur. Do you think I have not calculate', that I shall make a failure of my little enterprise?"

 

"Bah!"

 

"Will monsieur not reseat himself?" M. Beaucaire made a low bow. "So. We must not be too tire' for Lady Malbourne's rout. Ha, ha! And you, Jean, Victor, and you others, retire; go in the hallway. Attend at the entrance, Francois. So; now we shall talk. Monsieur, I wish you to think very cool. Then listen; I will be briefly. It is that I am well known to be all, entire' hones'. Gamblist? Ah, yes; true and mos profitable; but fair, always fair; every one say that. Is it not so? Think of it. And is there never a w'isper come to M. le Duc that not all people belief him to play always hones'? Ha, ha! Did it almos' be said to him las' year, after when he play' with Milor' Tappin'ford at the chocolate-house"

 

"You dirty scandal-monger!" the Duke burst out. "I'll"

 

"Monsieur, monsieur!" said the Frenchman. "It is a poor valor to insult a helpless captor. Can he retort upon his own victim? But it is for you to think of what I say. True, I am not reco'nize on the parade; that my frien's who come here do not present me to their ladies; that Meestaire Nash has reboff' me in the pomp-room; still, am I not known for being hones' and fair in my play, and will I not be belief, even I, when I lif' my voice and charge you aloud with what is already w'isper'? Think of it! You are a noble, and there will be some hang-dogs who might not fall away from you. Only such would be lef' to you. Do you want it tol'? And you can keep out of France, monsieur? I have lef' his service, but I have still the ear of M. de Mirepoix, and he know' I never lie. Not a gentleman will play you when you come to Paris."

 

The Englishman's white lip showed a row of scarlet dots upon it. "How much do you want?" he said.

 

The room rang with the gay laughter of Beaucaire. "I hol' your note' for seven-hunder' pound'. You can have them, monsieur. Why does a such great man come to play M. Beaucaire? Because no one else willin' to play M. le Duc, he cannot pay. Ha, ha! So he come' to good Monsieur Beaucaire. Money, ha, ha! What I want with money?"

 

His Grace of Winterset's features were set awry to a sinister pattern. He sat glaring at his companion in a snarling silence.

 

"Money? Pouf!" snapped the little gambler. "No, no, no! It is that M. le Duc, impoverish', somewhat in a bad odor as he is, yet command the entree any-where, onless I, Ha, ha! Eh, monsieur?"

 

"Ha! You dare think to force me"

 

M. Beaucaire twirled the tip of his slender mustache around the end of his white forefinger. Then he said: "Monsieur and me goin' to Lady Malbourne's ball to-night, M. le Duc and me!"

 

The Englishman roared, "Curse your impudence!"

 

"Sit quiet. Oh, yes, that's all; we goin' together."

 

"No!"

 

"Certain. I make all my little plan'. 'Tis all arrange'." He paused, and then said gravely, "You goin' present me to Lady Mary Carlisle."

 

The other laughed in utter scorn. "Lady Mary Carlisle, of all women alive, would be the first to prefer the devil to a man of no birth, barber."

 

"'Tis all arrange'; have no fear; nobody question monsieur's You goin' take me to-night"

 

"No!"

 

"Yes. And after then I have the entree. Is it much I ask? This one little favor, and I never w'isper, never breathe that, it is to say, I am always forever silent of monsieur's misfortune."

 

"You have the entree!" sneered the other. "Go to a lackeys' rout and dance with the kitchen maids. If I would, I could not present you to Bath society. I should have cartels from the fathers, brothers, and lovers of every wench and madam in the place, even I. You would be thrust from Lady Malbourne's door five minutes after you entered it."

 

"No, no, no!"

 

"Half the gentlemen in Bath have been here to play. They would know you, wouldn't they, fool? You've had thousands out of Bantison, Rakell, Guilford, and Townbrake. They would have you lashed by the grooms as your ugly deserts are. You to speak to Lady Mary Carlisle! 'Od's blood! You! Also, dolt, she would know you if you escaped the others. She stood within a yard of you when Nash expelled you the pump-room."

 

M. Beaucaire flushed slightly. "You think I did not see?" he asked.

 

"Do you dream that' because Winterset introduces a low fellow he will be tolerated that Bath will receive a barber?"

 

"I have the distinction to call monsieur's attention," replied the young man gayly, "I have renounce that profession."

 

"Fool!"

 

"I am now a man of honor!"

 

"Faugh!"

 

"A man of the parts," continued the the young Frenchman, "and of deportment; is it not so? Have you seen me of a fluster, or gross ever, or, what sall I say, bourgeois? Shall you be shame' for your guest' manner? No, no! And my appearance, is it of the people? Clearly, no. Do I not compare in taste of apparel with your yo'ng Englishman? Ha, ha! To be hope'. Ha, ha! So I am goin' talk with Lady Mary Carlisle."

 

"Bah!" The Duke made a savage burlesque. "'Lady Mary Carlisle, may I assume the honor of presenting the barber of the Marquis de Mirepoix?' So, is it?"

 

"No, monsieur," smiled the young man. "Quite not so. You shall have nothing to worry you, nothing in the worl'. I am goin' to assassinate my poor mustachio, also remove this horrible black peruke, and emerge in my own hair. Behol'!" He swept the heavy curled, mass from his head as he spoke, and his hair, coiled under the great wig, fell to his shoulders, and sparkled yellow in the candle-light. He tossed his head to shake the hair back from his cheeks. "When it is dress', I am transform nobody can know me; you shall observe. See how little I ask of you, how very little bit. No one shall reco'nize 'M. Beaucaire' or 'Victor.' Ha, ha! 'Tis all arrange'; you have nothing to fear."

 

"Curse you," said the Duke, "do you think I'm going to be saddled with you wherever I go as long as you choose?"

 

"A mistake. No. All I requi - All I beg is this one evening. 'Tis all shall be necessary. After, I shall not need monsieur.

 

"Take heed to yourself after!" vouchsafed the Englishman between his teeth.

 

"Conquered!" cried M. Beaucaire, and clapped his hands gleefully. "Conquered for the night! Aha, it ts riz'nable! I shall meet what you send after. One cannot hope too much of your patience. It is but natural you should attemp' a little avengement for the rascal trap I was such a wicked fellow as to set for you. I shall meet some strange frien's of yours after to-night; not so? I must try to be not too much frighten'." He looked at the Duke curiously. "You want to know why I create this tragedy, why I am so unkind as to entrap monsieur?"

 

His Grace of Winterset replied with a chill glance; a pulse in the nobleman's cheek beat less relentlessly; his eye raged not so bitterly; the steady purple of his own color was returning; his voice was less hoarse; he was regaining his habit. "'Tis ever the manner of the vulgar," he observed, "to wish to be seen with people of fashion."

 

"Oh, no, no, no!" The Frenchman laughed. "'Tis not that. Am I not already one of these 'men of fashion'? I lack only the reputation of birth. Monsieur is goin' supply that. Ha, ha! I shall be noble from to-night. 'Victor,' the artis', is condemn' to death; his throat shall be cut with his own razor. 'M. Beaucaire'" Here the young man sprang to his feet, caught up the black wig, clapped into it a dice-box from the table, and hurled it violently through the open door. "'M. Beaucaire' shall be choke' with his own dice-box. Who is the Phoenix to remain? What advantage have I not over other men of rank who are merely born to it? I may choose my own. No! Choose for me, monsieur. Shall I be chevalier, comte, vicomte, marquis, what? None. Out of compliment to monsieur can I wish to be anything he is not? No, no! I shall be M. le Duc, M. le Duc de, de Chateaurien. Ha, ha! You see? You are my confrere."

 

M. Beaucaire trod a dainty step or two, waving his hand politely to the Duke, as though in invitation to join the celebration of his rank. The Englishman watched, his eye still and harsh, already gathering in craftiness. Beaucaire stopped suddenly. "But how I forget my age! I am twenty-three," he said, with a sigh. "I rejoice too much to be of the quality. It has been too great for me, and I had always belief' myself free of such ambition. I thought it was enough to behol' the opera without wishing to sing; but no, England have teach' me I have those vulgar desire'. Monsieur, I am goin' tell you a secret: the ladies of your country are very diff'runt than ours. One may adore the demoiselle, one must worship the lady of England. Our ladies have the, it is the beauty of youth; yours remain comely at thirty. Ours are flowers, yours are stars! See, I betray myself, I am so poor a patriot. And there is one among these stars, ah, yes, there is one, the poor Frenchman has observe' from his humble distance; even there he could bask in the glowing!" M. Beaucaire turned to the window, and looked out into the dark. He did not see the lights of the town. When he turned again, he had half forgotten his prisoner; other pictures were before him.

 

"Ah, what radiance!" he cried. "Those people up over the sky, they want to show they wish the earth to be happy, so they smile, and make this lady. Gold-haired, an angel of heaven, and yet a Diana of the chase! I see her fly by me on her great horse one day; she touch' his mane with her fingers. I buy that clipping from the groom. I have it here with my dear brother's picture. Ah, you! Oh, yes, you laugh! What do you know! 'Twas all I could get. But I have heard of the endeavor of M. le Duc to recoup his fortunes. This alliance shall fail. It is not the way that heritage shall be safe' from him! It is you and me, monsieur! You can laugh! The war is open', and by me! There is one great step taken: until to-night there was nothing for you to ruin, to-morrow you have got a noble of France, your own protégé, to besiege and sack. And you are to lose, because you think such ruin easy, and because you understand nothing, far less, of divinity. How could you know? You have not the fiber; the heart of a lady is a blank to you; you know nothing of the vibration. There are some words that were made only to tell of Lady Mary, for her alone, bellissima, divine, glorieuse! Ah, how I have watch' her! It is sad to me when I see her surround' by your yo'ng captains, your nobles, your rattles, your beaux, ha, ha! and I mus' hol' far aloof. It is sad for me but oh, jus' to watch her and to wonder! Strange it is, but I have almos' cry out with rapture at a look I have see' her give another man, so beautiful it was, so tender, so dazzling of the eyes and so mirthful of the lips. Ah, divine coquetry! A look for another, ah-i-me! for many others; and even to you, one day, a rose, while I, I, monsieur, could not even be so blessed as to be the groun' beneath her little shoe! But to-night, monsieur, ha, ha! to-night, monsieur, you and me, two princes, M. le Duc de Winterset and M. le Duc de Chateaurien, ha, ha! you see? we are goin' arm-in-arm to that ball, and I am goin' have one of those looks, I! And a rose! I! It is time. But ten minute', monsieur. I make my apology to keep you waitin' so long while I go in the nex' room and execute my poor mustachio that will be my only murder for jus' this one evening and inves' myself in white satin. Ha, ha! I shall be very gran', monsieur. Francois, send Louis to me; Victor, to order two chairs for monsieur and me; we are goin' out in the worl' to-right!"

 

 

Chapter Two

 

The chairmen swarmed in the street at Lady Malbourne's door, where the joyous vulgar fought with muddied footmen and tipsy link-boys for places of vantage whence to catch a glimpse of quality and of raiment at its utmost. Dawn was in the east, and the guests were departing. Singly or in pairs, glittering in finery, they came mincing down the steps, the ghost of the night's smirk fading to jadedness as they sought the dark recesses of their chairs. From within sounded the twang of fiddles still swinging manfully at it, and the windows were bright with the light of many candles. When the door was flung open to call the chair of Lady Mary Carlisle, there was an eager pressure of the throng to see.

 

A small, fair gentleman in white satin came out upon the steps, turned and bowed before a lady who appeared in the doorway, a lady whose royal loveliness was given to view for a moment in that glowing frame. The crowd sent up a hearty English cheer for the Beauty of Bath.

 

The gentleman smiled upon them delightedly. "What enchanting people!" he cried. "Why did I not know, so I might have shout' with them?" The lady noticed the people not at all; whereat, being pleased, the people cheered again. The gentleman offered her his hand; she made a slow courtesy; placed the tips of her fingers upon his own. "I am honored, M. de Chateaurien," she said.

 

"No, no!" he cried earnestly. "Behol' a poor Frenchman whom emperors should envy." Then reverently and with the pride of his gallant office vibrant in every line of his slight figure, invested in white satin and very grand, as he had prophesied, M. le Duc de Chateaurien handed Lady Mary Carlisle down the steps, an achievement which had figured in the ambitions of seven other gentlemen during the evening.

 

"Am I to be lef'in such onhappiness?" he said in a low voice. "That rose I have beg' for so long"

 

 

"Never!" said Lady Mary.

 

"Ah, I do not deserve it, I know so well! But"

 

"Never!"

 

"It is the greatness of my onworthiness that alone can claim your charity; let your kin' heart give this little red rose, this great alms, to the poor beggar."

 

"Never!"

 

She was seated in the chair. "Ah, give the rose," he whispered. Her beauty shone dazzlingly on him out of the dimness.

 

"Never!" she flashed defiantly as she was closed in. "Never!"

 

"Never!"

 

The rose fell at his feet.

 

 

"A rose lasts till morning," said a voice behind him.

 

Turning, M. de Chateaurien looked beamingly upon the face of the Duke of Winterset.

 

"'Tis already the daylight," he replied, pointing to the east. "Monsieur, was it not enough honor for you to han' out madame, the aunt of Lady Mary? Lady Rellerton retain much trace of beauty. 'Tis strange you did not appear more happy."

 

"The rose is of an unlucky color, I think," observed the Duke.

 

"The color of a blush, my brother."

 

"Unlucky, I still maintain," said the other calmly.

 

"The color of the veins of a Frenchman. Ha, ha!" cried the young man. "What price would be too high? A rose is a rose! A good-night, my brother, a good-night. I wish you dreams of roses, red roses, only beautiful red, red roses!"

 

"Stay! Did you see the look she gave these street folk when they shouted for her? And how are you higher than they, when she knows? As high as yonder horse-boy!"

 

"Red roses, my brother, only roses. I wish you dreams of red, red roses!"

 

 

Chapter Three

 

It was well agreed by the fashion of Bath that M. le Duc de Chateaurien was a person of sensibility and haut ton; that his retinue and equipage surpassed in elegance; that his person was exquisite, his manner engaging. In the company of gentlemen his ease was slightly tinged with graciousness (his single equal in Bath being his Grace of Winterset); but it was remarked that when he bowed over a lady's hand, his air bespoke only a gay and tender reverence.

 

He was the idol of the dowagers within a week after his appearance; matrons warmed to him; young belles looked sweetly on him, while the gentlemen were won to admiration or envy. He was of prodigious wealth: old Mr. Bicksit, who dared not, for his fame's sake, fail to have seen all things, had visited Chateaurien under the present Duke's father, and descanted to the curious upon its grandeurs. The young noble had one fault, he was so poor a gambler. He cared nothing for the hazards of a die or the turn of a card. Gayly admitting that he had been born with no spirit of adventure in him, he was sure, he declared, that he failed of much happiness by his lack of taste in such matters.

 

But he was not long wanting the occasion to prove his taste in the matter of handling a weapon. A certain led-captain, Rohrer by name, notorious, amongst other things, for bearing a dexterous and bloodthirsty blade, came to Bath post-haste, one night, and jostled heartily against him, in the pump-room on the following morning. M. de Chauteaurien bowed, and turned aside without offense, continuing a conversation with some gentlemen near by. Captain Rohrer jostled against him a second time. M. de Chateaurien looked him in the eye, and apologized pleasantly for being so much in the way. Thereupon Rohrer procured an introduction to him, and made some observations derogatory to the valor and virtue of the French. There was current a curious piece of gossip of the French court: a prince of the blood royal, grandson of the late Regent and second in the line of succession to the throne of France, had rebelled against the authority of Louis XV, who had commanded him to marry the Princess Henriette, cousin to both of them. The princess was reported to be openly devoted to the cousin who refused to accept her hand at the bidding of the king; and, as rumor ran, the prince's caprice elected in preference the discipline of Vincennes, to which retirement the furious king had consigned him. The story was the staple gossip of all polite Europe; and Captain Rohrer, having in his mind a purpose to make use of it in leading up to a statement that should be general to the damage of all Frenchwomen, and which a Frenchman might not pass over as he might a jog of the elbow, repeated it with garbled truths to make a scandal of a story which bore none on a plain relation.

 

He did not reach his deduction. M. de Chateaurien, breaking into his narrative, addressed him very quietly. "Monsieur," he said, "none but swine deny the nobleness of that good and gentle lady, Mademoiselle la Princesse de Bourbon-Conti. Every Frenchman know' that her cousin is a bad rebel and ingrate, who had only honor and rispec' for her, but was so wilful he could not let even the king say, 'You shall marry here, you shall marry there.' My frien's," the young man turned to the others, "may I ask you to close roun' in a circle for one moment? It is clearly shown that the Duke of Orleans is a scurvy fellow, but not" he wheeled about and touched Captain Rohrer on the brow with the back of his gloved hand "but not so scurvy as thou, thou swine of the gutter!"

 

Two hours later, with perfect ease, he ran Captain Rohrer through the left shoulder, after which he sent a basket of red roses to the Duke of Winterset. In a few days he had another captain to fight. This was a ruffling buck who had the astounding indiscretion to proclaim M. de Chateaurien an impostor. There was no Chateaurien, he swore. The Frenchman laughed in his face, and, at twilight of the same day, pinked him carefully through the right shoulder. It was not that he could not put aside the insult to himself, he declared to Mr. Molyneux, his second, and the few witnesses, as he handed his wet sword to his lackey, one of his station could not be insulted by a doubt of that station, but he fought in the quarrel of his friend Winterset. This rascal had asserted that M. le Duc had introduced an impostor. Could he overlook the insult to a friend, one to whom he owed his kind reception in Bath? Then, bending over his fallen adversary, he whispered: "Naughty man, tell your master find some better quarrel for the nex' he sen' agains' me."

 

The conduct of M. de Chateaurien was pronounced admirable.

 

There was no surprise when the young foreigner fell naturally into the long train of followers of the beautiful Lady Mary Carlisle, nor was there great astonishment that he should obtain marked favor in her eyes, shown so plainly that my Lord Townbrake, Sir Hugh Guilford, and the rich Squire Bantison, all of whom had followed her through three seasons, swore with rage, and his Grace of Winterset stalked from her aunt's house with black brows.

 

Meeting the Duke there on the evening after his second encounter de Chateaurien smiled upon him brilliantly. "It was badly done; oh, so badly!" he whispered. "Can you afford to have me strip' of my mask by any but yourself? You, who introduce' me? They will say there is some bad scandal that I could force you to be my god-father. You mus' get the courage yourself."

 

"I told you a rose had a short life," was the answer.

 

"Oh, those roses! 'Tis the very greates' rizzon to gather each day a fresh one." He took a red bud from his breast for an instant, and touched it to his lips.

 

"M. de Chateaurien!" It was Lady Mary's voice; she stood at a table where a vacant place had been left beside her. "M. de Chateaurien, we have been waiting very long for you."

 

The Duke saw the look she did not know she gave the Frenchman, and he lost countenance for a moment.

 

"We approach a climax, eh, monsieur?" said M. de Chateaurien.

 

 

Chapter Four

 

There fell a clear September night, when the moon was radiant over town and country, over cobbled streets and winding roads. From the fields the mists rose slowly, and the air was mild and fragrant, while distances were white and full of mystery. All of Bath that pretended to fashion or condition was present that evening at a fete at the house of a country gentleman of the neighborhood. When the stately junket was concluded, it was the pleasure of M. de Chateaurien to form one of the escort of Lady Mary's carriage for the return. As they took the road, Sir Hugh Guilford and Mr. Bantison, engaging in indistinct but vigorous remonstrance with Mr. Molyneux over some matter, fell fifty or more paces behind, where they continued to ride, keeping up their argument. Half a dozen other gallants rode in advance, muttering among themselves, or attended laxly upon Lady Mary's aunt on the other side of the coach, while the happy Frenchman was permitted to ride close to that adorable window which framed the fairest face in England.

 

He sang for her a little French song, a song of the voyageur who dreamed of home. The lady, listening, looking up at the bright moon, felt a warm drop upon her cheek, and he saw the tears sparkling upon her lashes.

 

"Mademoiselle," he whispered then, "I, too, have been a wanderer, but my dreams were not of France; no, I do not dream of that home, of that dear country. It is of a dearer country, a dream country, a country of gold and snow," he cried softly, looking it her white brow and the fair, lightly powdered hair above it. "Gold and snow, and the blue sky of a lady's eyes!"

 

"I had thought the ladies of France were dark, sir.

 

"Cruel! It is that she will not understan'! Have I speak of the ladies of France? No, no, no! It is of the faires' country; yes, 'tis a province of heaven, mademoiselle. Do I not renounce my allegiance to France? Oh, yes! I am subjec', no, content to be slave, in the lan' of the blue sky, the gold, and the snow.

 

"A very pretty figure," answered Lady Mary, her eyes downcast. "But does it not hint a notable experience in the making of such speeches?"

 

"Tormentress! No. It prove only the inspiration it is to know you."

 

"We English ladies hear plenty of the like sir; and we even grow brilliant enough to detect the assurance that lies beneath the courtesies of our own gallants."

 

"Merci! I should believe so!" ejaculated M. de Chateaurien: but he smothered the words upon his lips.

 

Her eyes were not lifted. She went on: "We come, in time, to believe that true feeling comes faltering forth, not glibly; that smoothness betokens the adept in the art, sir, rather than your true, your true" She was herself faltering; more, blushing deeply, and halting to a full stop in terror of a word. There was a silence.

 

"Your true lover," he said huskily. When he had said that word both trembled. She turned half away into the darkness of the coach.

 

"I know what make' you to doubt me," he said, faltering himself, though it was not his art that prompted him. "They have tol' you the French do nothing always but make love, is it not so? Yes, you think I am like that. You think I am like that now!"

 

She made no sign.

 

"I suppose," he sighed, "I am unriz'nable; I would have the snow not so col' for jus' me."

 

She did not answer.

 

"Turn to me," he said.

 

The fragrance of the fields came to them, and from the distance the faint, clear note of a hunting-horn.

 

"Turn to me."

 

The lovely head was bent very low. Her little gloved hand lay upon the narrow window ledge. He laid his own gently upon it. The two hands were shaking like twin leaves in the breeze. Hers was not drawn away. After a pause, neither knew how long, he felt the warm fingers turn and clasp themselves tremulously about his own. At last she looked up bravely and met his eyes. The horn was wound again nearer.

 

"All the cold was gone from the snows, long ago," she said.

 

"My beautiful!" he whispered; it was all he could say. "My beautiful!" But she clutched his arm, startled.

 

"'Ware the road!" A wild halloo sounded ahead. The horn wound loudly. "'Ware the road!" There sprang up out of the night a flying thunder of hoof-beats. The gentlemen riding idly in front of the coach scattered to the hedge-sides; and, with drawn swords flashing in the moon, a party of horsemen charged down the highway, their cries blasting the night.

 

"Barber! Kill the barber!" they screamed. "Barber! Kill the barber!"

 

Beaucaire had but time to draw his sword when they were upon him.

 

"A moi!" his voice rang out clearly as he rose in his stirrups. "A moi, Francois, Louis, Berquin! A moi, Francois!"

 

The cavaliers came straight at him. He parried the thrust of the first, but the shock of collision hurled his horse against the side of the coach. "Sacred swine!" he cried bitterly. "To endanger a lady, to make this brawl in a lady's presence! Drive on!" he shouted.

 

"No!" cried Lady Mary.

 

The Frenchman's assailants were masked, but they were not highwaymen. "Barber! Barber!" they shouted hoarsely, and closed in on him in a circle.

 

"See how he use his steel!" laughed M. Beaucaire, as his point passed through a tawdry waistcoat. For a moment he cut through the ring and cleared a space about him, and Lady Mary saw his face shining in the moonlight. "Canaille!" he hissed, as his horse sank beneath him; and, though guarding his head from the rain of blows from above, he managed to drag headlong from his saddle the man who had hamstrung the poor brute. The fellow came suddenly to the ground, and lay there.

 

"Is it not a compliment," said a heavy voice, "to bring six large men to subdue monsieur?"

 

"Oh, you are there, my frien'! In the rear, a little in the rear, I think. Ha, ha!"

 

The Frenchman's play with his weapon was a revelation of skill, the more extraordinary as he held in his hand only a light dress sword. But the ring closed about him, and his keen defense could not avail him for more than a few moments. Lady Mary's outriders, the gallants of her escort, rode up close to the coach and encircled it, not interfering.

 

"Sir Hugh Guilford!" cried Lady Mary wildly, "if you will not help him, give me your sword!" She would have leaped to the ground, but Sir Hugh held the door.

 

"Sit quiet, madam," he said to her; then, to the man on the box, "Drive on."

 

"If he does, I'll kill him!" she said fiercely. "Ah, what cowards! Will you see the Duke murdered?"

 

"The Duke!" laughed Guilford. "They will not kill him, unless, be easy, dear madam, 'twill be explained. Gad's life!" he muttered to Molyneux, "'Twere time the varlet had his lashing! D'ye hear her?"

 

"Barber or no barber," answered Molyneux, "I wish I had warned him. He fights as few gentlemen could. Ah, ah! Look at that! 'Tis a shame!"

 

On foot, his hat gone, his white coat sadly rent and gashed, flecked, too, with red, M. Beaucaire, wary, alert, brilliant, seemed to transform himself into a dozen fencing-masters; and, though his skill appeared to lie in delicacy and quickness, his play being continually with the point, sheer strength failed to beat him down. The young man was laughing like a child.

 

"Believe me," said Molyneux "he's no barber! No, and never was!"

 

For a moment there was even a chance that M. Beaucaire might have the best of it. Two of his adversaries were prostrate, more than one were groaning, and the indomitable Frenchman had actually almost beat off the ruffians, when, by a trick, he was overcome. One of them, dismounting, ran in suddenly from behind, and seized his blade in a thick leather gauntlet. Before Beaucaire could disengage the weapon, two others threw themselves from their horses and hurled him to the earth. "A moi! A moi, Francois!" he cried as he went down, his sword in fragments, but his voice unbroken and clear.

 

"Shame!" muttered one or two of the gentlemen about the coach.

 

"'Twas dastardly to take him so," said Molyneux. "Whatever his deservings, I'm nigh of a mind to offer him a rescue in the Duke's face."

 

"Truss him up, lads," said the heavy voice. "Clear the way in front of the coach. There sit those whom we avenge upon a presumptuous lackey. Now, Whiffen, you have a fair audience, lay on and baste him."

 

Two men began to drag M. Beaucaire toward a great oak by the roadside. Another took from his saddle a heavy whip with three thongs.

 

"A moi, Francois!"

 

There was borne on the breeze an answer "Monseigneur! Monseigneur!" The cry grew louder suddenly. The clatter of hoofs urged to an anguish of speed sounded on the night. M. Beaucaire's servants had lagged sorely behind, but they made up for it now. Almost before the noise of their own steeds they came riding down the moonlit aisle between the mists. Chosen men, these servants of Beaucaire, and like a thunderbolt they fell upon the astounded cavaliers.

 

"Chateaurien! Chateaurien!" they shouted, and smote so swiftly that, through lack of time, they showed no proper judgment, discriminating nothing between non-combatants and their master's foes. They charged first into the group about M. Beaucaire, and broke and routed it utterly. Two of them leaped to the young man's side, while the other four, swerving, scarce losing the momentum of their onset, bore on upon the gentlemen near the coach, who went down beneath the fierceness of the onslaught, cursing manfully.

 

"Our just deserts," said Mr. Molyneux, his mouth full of dust and philosophy.

 

Sir Hugh Guilford's horse fell with him, being literally ridden over, and the baronet's leg was pinned under the saddle. In less than ten minutes from the first attack on M. Beaucaire, the attacking party had fled in disorder, and the patrician non-combatants, choking with expletives, consumed with wrath, were prisoners, disarmed by the Frenchman's lackeys.

 

Guilford's discomfiture had freed the doors of the coach; so it was that when M. Beaucaire, struggling to rise, assisted by his servants, threw out one hand to balance himself, he found it seized between two small, cold palms, and he looked into two warm, dilating eyes, that were doubly beautiful because of the fright and rage that found room in them, too.

 

M. le Duc Chateaurien sprang to his feet without the aid of his lackeys, and bowed low before Lady Mary.

 

"I make ten thousan' apology to be' the cause of a such melee in your presence," he said; and then, turning to Francois, he spoke in French: "Ah, thou scoundrel! A little, and it had been too late."

 

Francois knelt in the dust before him. "Pardon!" he said. "Monseigneur commanded us to follow far in the rear, to remain unobserved. The wind malignantly blew against monseigneur's voice."

 

"See what it might have cost, my children," said his master, pointing to the ropes with which they would have bound him and to the whip lying beside them. A shudder passed over the lackey's frame; the utter horror in his face echoed in the eyes of his fellows.

 

"Oh, monseigneur!" Francois sprang back, and tossed his arms to heaven.

 

"But it did not happen," said M. Beaucaire.

 

"It could not!" exclaimed Francois.

 

"No. And you did very well, my children" the young man smiled benevolently "very well. And now," he continued, turning to Lady Mary and speaking in English, "let me be asking of our gallants yonder what make' them to be in cabal with highwaymen. One should come to a polite understanding with them, you think? Not so?"

 

He bowed, offering his hand to conduct her to the coach, where Molyneux and his companions, having drawn Sir Hugh from under his horse, were engaged in reviving and reassuring Lady Rellerton, who had fainted. But Lady Mary stayed Beaucaire with a gesture, and the two stood where they were.

 

"Monseigneur!" she said, with a note of raillery in her voice, but raillery so tender that he started with happiness. His movement brought him a hot spasm of pain, and he clapped his hand to a red stain on his waistcoat.

 

"You are hurt!"

 

"It is nothing," smiled M. Beaucaire. Then, that she might not see the stain spreading, he held his handkerchief over the spot. "I am a little, but jus' a trifling bruise'; 'tis all."

 

"You shall ride in the coach," she whispered. "Will you be pleased, M. de Chateaurien?"

 

"Ah, my beautiful!" She seemed to wave before him like a shining mist. "I wish that ride might las' for always! Can you say that, mademoiselle?"

 

"Monseigneur," she cried in a passion of admiration, "I would what you would have be, should be. What do you not deserve? You are the bravest man in the world!"

 

"Ha, ha! I am jus' a poor Frenchman."

 

"Would that a few Englishmen had shown themselves as 'poor' tonight. The vile cowards, not to help you!" With that, suddenly possessed by her anger, she swept away from him to the coach.

 

Sir Hugh, groaning loudly, was being assisted into the vehicle.

 

"My little poltroons," she said, "what are you doing with your fellow-craven, Sir Hugh Guilford, there?"

 

"Madam," replied Molyneux humbly, "Sir Hugh's leg is broken. Lady Rellerton graciously permits him to be taken in."

 

"I do not permit it! M. de Chateaurien rides with us."

 

"But"

 

"Sir! Leave the wretch to groan by the roadside," she cried fiercely, "which plight I would were that of all of you! But there will be a pretty story for the gossips to-morrow! And I could almost find pity for you when I think of the wits when you return to town. Fine gentlemen you; hardy bravos, by heaven! to leave one man to meet a troop of horse single-handed, while you huddle in shelter until you are overthrown and disarmed by servants! Oh, the wits! Heaven save you from the wits!"

 

"Madam."

 

"Address me no more! M. de Chateaurien, Lady Rellerton and I will greatly esteem the honor of your company. Will you come?"

 

She stepped quickly into the coach, and was gathering her skirts to make room for the Frenchman, when a heavy voice spoke from the shadows of the tree by the wayside.

 

"Lady Mary Carlisle will, no doubt, listen to a word of counsel on this point."

 

The Duke of Winterset rode out into the moonlight, composedly untieing a mask from about his head. He had not shared the flight of his followers, but had retired into the shade of the oak, whence he now made his presence known with the utmost coolness.

 

"Gracious heavens, 'tis Winterset!" exclaimed Lady Rellerton.

 

"Turned highwayman and cut-throat," cried Lady Mary.

 

"No, no," laughed M. Beaucaire, somewhat unsteadily, as he stood, swaying a little, with one hand on the coach-door, the other pressed hard on his side, "he only oversee'; he is jus' a little bashful, sometime'. He is a great man, but he don' want all the glory!"

 

"Barber," replied the Duke, "I must tell you that I gladly descend to bandy words with you; your monstrous impudence is a claim to rank I cannot ignore. But a lackey who has himself followed by six other lackeys"

 

"Ha, ha! Has not M. le Duc been busy all this evening to justify me? And I think mine mus' be the bes' six. Ha, ha! You think?"

 

"M. de Chateaurien," said Lady Mary, "we are waiting for you."

 

"Pardon," he replied. "He has something to say; maybe it is bes' if you hear it now."

 

"I wish to hear nothing from him - ever!"

 

"My faith, madam," cried the Duke, "this saucy fellow has paid you the last insult! He is so sure of you he does not fear you will believe the truth. When all is told, if you do not agree he deserved the lashing we planned to"

 

"I'll hear no more!"

 

"You will bitterly repent it, madam. For your own sake I entreat"

 

"And I also," broke in M. Beaucaire. "Permit me, mademoiselle; let him speak."

 

"Then let him be brief," said Lady Mary, "for I am earnest to be quit of him. His explanation or an attack on my friend and on my carriage should be made to my brother."

 

"Alas that he was not here," said the Duke, "to aid me! Madam, was your carriage threatened? I have endeavored only to expunge a debt I owed to Bath and to avenge an insult offered to yourself through"

 

"Sir, sir, my patience will bear little more!"

 

"A thousan' apology," said M. Beaucaire. "You will listen, I only beg, Lady Mary?"

 

She made an angry gesture of assent.

 

"Madam, I will be brief as I may. Two months ago there came to Bath a French gambler calling himself Beaucaire, a desperate fellow with the cards or dice, and all the men of fashion went to play at his lodging, where he won considerable sums. He was small, wore a black wig and mustachio. He had the insolence to show himself everywhere until the Master of Ceremonies rebuffed him in the pump-room, as you know, and after that he forbore his visits to the rooms. Mr. Nash explained (and was confirmed, madam, by indubitable information) that this Beaucaire was a man of unspeakable, vile, low birth, being, in fact, no other than a lackey of the French king's ambassador, Victor by name, de Mirepoix's barber. Although his condition was known, the hideous impudence of the fellow did not desert him, and he remained in Bath, where none would speak to him."

 

"Is your farrago nigh done, sir?"

 

"A few moments, madam. One evening, three weeks gone, I observed a very elegant equipage draw up to my door, and the Duke of Chateaurien was announced. The young man's manners were worthy, according to the French acceptance, and 'twere idle to deny him the most monstrous assurance. He declared himself a noble traveling for pleasure. He had taken lodgings in Bath for a season, he said, and called at once to pay his respects to me. His tone was so candid, in truth, I am the simplest of men, very easily gulled and his stroke so bold, that I did not for one moment suspect him; and, to my poignant regret, though in the humblest spirit I have shown myself eager to atone that very evening I had the shame of presenting him to yourself."

 

"The shame, sir!"

 

"Have patience, pray, madam. Ay, the shame! You know what figure he hath cut in Bath since that evening. All ran merrily with him until several days ago Captain Badger denounced him as an impostor, vowing that Chateaurien was nothing."

 

"Pardon," interrupted M. Beaucaire. "'Castle Nowhere' would have been so much better. Why did you not make him say it that way, monsieur?"

 

Lady Mary started; she was looking at the Duke, and her face was white. He continued: "Poor Captain Badger was stabbed that same day. "

 

"Most befitting poor Captain Badger," muttered Molyneux.

 

"And his adversary had the marvelous insolence to declare that he fought in my quarrel! This afternoon the wounded man sent for me, and imparted a very horrifying intelligence. He had discovered a lackey whom he had seen waiting upon Beaucaire in attendance at the door of this Chateaurien's lodging. Beaucaire had disappeared the day before Chateaurien's arrival. Captain Badger looked closely at Chateaurien at their next meeting, and identified him with the missing Beaucaire beyond the faintest doubt. Overcome with indignation, he immediately proclaimed the impostor. Out of regard for me, he did not charge him with being Beaucaire; the poor soul was unwilling to put upon me the humiliation of having introduced a barber; but the secret weighed upon him till he sent for me and put everything in my hands. I accepted the odium; thinking only of atonement. I went to Sir John Wimpledon's. I took poor Sir Hugh, there, and these other gentlemen aside, and told them my news. We narrowly observed this man, and were shocked at our simplicity in not having discovered him before. These are men of honor and cool judgment, madam. Mr. Molyneux had acted for him in the affair of Captain Badger, and was strongly prejudiced in his favor; but Mr. Molyneux, Sir Hugh, Mr. Bantison, every one of them, in short, recognized him. In spite of his smooth face and his light hair, the adventurer Beaucaire was writ upon him amazing plain. Look at him, madam, if he will dare the inspection. You saw this Beaucaire well, the day of his expulsion from the rooms. Is not this he?"

 

M. Beaucaire stepped close to her. Her pale face twitched.

 

"Look!" he said.

 

"Oh, oh!" she whispered with a dry throat, and fell back in the carriage.

 

"Is it so?" cried the Duke.

 

"I do not know. I cannot tell."

 

"One moment more. I begged these gentlemen to allow me to wipe out the insult I had unhappily offered to Bath, but particularly to you. They agreed not to forestall me or to interfere. I left Sir John Wimpledon's early, and arranged to give the sorry rascal a lashing under your own eyes, a satisfaction due the lady into whose presence he had dared to force himself."

 

"'Noblesse oblige'?" said M. Beaucaire in a tone of gentle inquiry.

 

"And now, madam," said the Duke, "I will detain you not one second longer. I plead the good purpose of my intentions, begging you to believe that the desire to avenge a hateful outrage, next to the wish to serve you, forms the dearest motive in the heart of Winterset."

 

"Bravo!" cried Beaucaire softly.

 

Lady Mary leaned toward him, a thriving terror in her eyes. "It is false?" she faltered.

 

"Monsieur should not have been born so high. He could have made little book'."

 

"You mean it is false?" she cried breathlessly.

 

"'Od's blood, is she not convinced?" broke out Mr. Bantison. "Fellow, were you not the ambassador's barber?"

 

"It is all false?" she whispered.

 

"The mos' fine art, mademoiselle. How long you think it take M. de Winterset to learn that speech after he write it out? It is a mix of what is true and the mos' chaste art. Monsieur has become a man of letters. Perhaps he may enjoy that more than the wars. Ha, ha!"

 

Mr. Bantison burst into a roar of laughter. "Do French gentlemen fight lackeys? Ho, ho, ho! A pretty country! We English do as was done to-night, have our servants beat them."

 

"And attend ourselves," added M. Beaucaire, looking at the Duke, "somewhat in the background? But, pardon," he mocked, "that remind' me. Francois, return to Mr. Bantison and these gentlemen their weapons."

 

"Will you answer a question?" said Molyneux mildly.

 

"Oh, with pleasure, monsieur."

 

"Were you ever a barber?"

 

"No, monsieur," laughed the young man.

 

"Pah!" exclaimed Bantison. "Let me question him. Now, fellow, a confession may save you from jail. Do you deny you are Beaucaire?"

 

"Deny to a such judge?"

 

"Ha!" said Bantison. "What more do you want, Molyneux? Fellow, do you deny that you came to London in the ambassador's suite?"

 

"No, I do not deny."

 

"He admits it! Didn't you come as his barber?"

 

"Yes, my frien', as his barber." Lady Mary cried out faintly, and, shuddering, put both hands over her eyes.

 

"I'm sorry," said Molyneux. "You fight like a gentleman."

 

"I thank you, monsieur."

 

"You called yourself Beaucaire?"

 

"Yes, monsieur." He was swaying to and fro; his servants ran to support him.

 

"I wish" continued Molyneux, hesitating. "Evil take me! but I'm sorry you're hurt."

 

"Assist Sir Hugh into my carriage," said Lady Mary.

 

"Farewell, mademoiselle!" M. Beaucaire's voice was very faint. His eyes were fixed upon her face. She did not look toward him.

 

They were propping Sir Hugh on the cushions. The Duke rode up close to Beaucaire, but Francois seized his bridle fiercely, and forced the horse back on its haunches.

 

"The man's servants worship him," said Molyneux.

 

"Curse your insolence!" exclaimed the Duke. "How much am I to bear from this varlet and his varlets? Beaucaire, if you have not left Bath by to-morrow noon, you will be clapped into jail, and the lashing you escaped to-night shall be given you thrice tenfold!"

 

"I shall be in the Assemily Room' at nine o'clock, one week from to-night," answered the young man, smiling jauntily, though his lips were colorless. The words cost him nearly all his breath and strength. "You mus' keep in the backgroun', monsieur. Ha, ha!" The door of the coach closed with a slam.

 

"Mademoiselle, farewell!"

 

"Drive on!" said Lady Mary.

 

M. Beaucaire followed the carriage with his eyes. As the noise of the wheels and the hoof-beats of the accompanying cavalcade grew fainter in the distance, the handkerchief he had held against his side dropped into the white dust, a heavy red splotch.

 

"Only roses," he gasped, and fell back in the arms of his servants.

 

 

Chapter Five

 

Beau Nash stood at the door of the rooms, smiling blandly upon a dainty throng in the pink of its finery and gay furbelows. The great exquisite bent his body constantly in a series of consummately adjusted bows: before a great dowager, seeming to sweep the floor in august deference; somewhat stately to the young bucks; greeting the wits with gracious friendliness and a twinkle of raillery; inclining with fatherly gallantry before the beauties; the degree of his inclination measured the altitude of the recipient as accurately as a nicely calculated sand-glass measures the hours.

 

The King of Bath was happy, for wit, beauty, fashion, to speak more concretely: nobles, belles, gamesters, beaux, statesmen, and poets, made fairyland (or opera bouffe, at least) in his dominions; play ran higher and higher, and Mr. Nash's coffers filled up with gold. To crown his pleasure, a prince of the French blood, the young Comte de Beaujolais, just arrived from Paris, had reached Bath at noon in state, accompanied by the Marquis de Mirepoix, the ambassador of Louis XV. The Beau dearly prized the society of the lofty, and the present visit was an honor to Bath: hence to the Master of Ceremonies. What was better, there would be some profitable hours with the cards and dice. So it was that Mr. Nash smiled never more benignly than on that bright evening. The rooms rang with the silvery voices of women and delightful laughter, while the fiddles went merrily, their melodies chiming sweetly with the joyance of his mood.

 

The skill and brazen effrontery of the ambassador's scoundrelly servant in passing himself off for a man of condition formed the point of departure for every conversation. It was discovered that there were but three persons present who had not suspected him from the first; and, by a singular paradox, the most astute of all proved to be old Mr. Bicksit, the traveler, once a visitor at Chateaurien; for he, according to report, had by a coup of diplomacy entrapped the impostor into an admission that there was no such place. However, like poor Captain Badger, the worthy old man had held his peace out of regard for the Duke of Winterset. This nobleman, heretofore secretly disliked, suspected of irregular devices at play, and never admired, had won admiration and popularity by his remorse for the mistake, and by the modesty of his attitude in endeavoring to atone for it, without presuming upon the privilege of his rank to laugh at the indignation of society; an action the more praiseworthy because his exposure of the impostor entailed the disclosure of his own culpability in having stood the villain's sponsor. To-night, the happy gentleman, with Lady Mary Carlisle upon his arm, went grandly about the rooms, sowing and reaping a harvest of smiles. 'Twas said work would be begun at once to rebuild the Duke's country seat, while several ruined Jews might be paid out of prison. People gazing on the beauty and the stately but modest hero by her side, said they would make a noble pair. She had long been distinguished by his attentions, and he had come brilliantly out of the episode of the Frenchman, who had been his only real rival. Wherever they went, there arose a buzz of pleasing gossip and adulation. Mr. Nash, seeing them near him, came forward with greetings. A word on the side passed between the nobleman and the exquisite.

 

"I had news of the rascal tonight," whispered Nash. "He lay at a farm till yesterday, when he disappeared; his ruffians, too."

 

"You have arranged?" asked the Duke.

 

"Fourteen bailiffs are watching without. He could not come within gunshot. If they clap eyes on him, they will hustle him to jail, and his cutthroats shall not avail him a hair's weight. The impertinent swore he'd be here by nine, did he?"

 

"He said so; and 'tis a rash dog, sir."

 

"It is just nine now."

 

"Send out to see if they have taken him."

 

"Gladly."

 

The Beau beckoned an attendant, and whispered in his ear.

 

Many of the crowd had edged up to the two gentlemen with apparent carelessness, to overhear their conversation. Those who did overhear repeated it in covert asides, and this circulating undertone, confirming a vague rumor that Beaucaire would attempt the entrance that night, lent a pleasurable color of excitement to the evening. The French prince, the ambassador, and their suites were announced. Polite as the assembly was, it was also curious, and there occurred a mannerly rush to see the newcomers. Lady Mary, already pale, grew whiter as the throng closed round her; she looked up pathetically at the Duke, who lost no time in extricating her from the pressure.

 

"Wait here," he said; "I will fetch you a glass of negus," and disappeared. He had not thought to bring a chair, and she, looking about with an increasing faintness and finding none, saw that she was standing by the door of a small side-room. The crowd swerved back for the passage of the legate of France, and pressed upon her. She opened the door, and went in.

 

The room was empty save for two gentlemen, who were quietly playing cards at a table. They looked up as she entered. They were M. Beaucaire and Mr. Molyneux.

 

She uttered a quick cry and leaned against the wall, her hand to her breast. Beaucaire, though white and weak, had brought her a chair before Molyneux could stir.

 

"Mademoiselle"

 

"Do not touch me!" she said, with such frozen abhorrence in her voice that he stopped short. "Mr. Molyneux, you seek strange company!"

 

"Madam," replied Molyneux, bowing deeply, as much to Beaucaire as to herself, "I am honored by the presence of both of you.

 

"Oh, are you mad!" she exclaimed, contemptuously.

 

"This gentleman has exalted me with his confidence, madam," he replied.

 

"Will you add your ruin to the scandal of this fellow's presence here? How he obtained entrance"

 

"Pardon, mademoiselle," interrupted Beaucaire. "Did I not say I should come? M. Molyneux was so obliging as to answer for me to the fourteen frien's of M. de Winterset and Meestaire Nash."

 

"Do you not know," she turned vehemently upon Molyneux, "that he will be removed the moment I leave this room? Do you wish to be dragged out with him? For your sake, sir, because I have always thought you a man of heart, I give you a chance to save yourself from disgrace and your companion from jail. Let him slip out by some retired way, and you may give me your arm and we will enter the next room as if nothing had happened. Come, sir"

 

"Mademoiselle"

 

"Mr. Molyneux, I desire to hear nothing from your companion. Had I not seen you at cards with him I should have supposed him in attendance as your lackey. Do you desire to take advantage of my offer, sir?"

 

"Mademoiselle, I could not tell you, on that night"

 

"You may inform your high-born friend, Mr. Molyneux, that I heard everything he had to say; that my pride once had the pleasure of listening to his high-born confession!"

 

"Ah, it is gentle to taunt one with his birth, mademoiselle? Ah, no! There is a man in my country who say strange things of that, that a man is not his father, but himself."

 

"You may inform your friend, Mr. Molyneux, that he had a chance to defend himself against accusation; that he said all"

 

"That I did say all I could have strength to say. Mademoiselle, you did not see, as it was right, that I had been stung by a big wasp. It was nothing, a scratch; but, mademoiselle, the sky went round and the moon dance' on the earth. I could not wish that big wasp to see he had stung me; so I mus' only say what I can have strength for, and stand straight till he is gone. Beside', there are other rizzons. Ah, you mus' belief! My Molyneux I sen' for, and tell him all, because he show courtesy to the yo'ng Frenchman, and I can trus' him. I trus' you, mademoiselle, long ago, and would have tol' you ev'rything, excep' jus' because, well, for the romance, the fon! You belief? It is so clearly so; you do belief, mademoiselle?"

 

She did not even look at him. M. Beaucaire lifted his hand appealingly toward her. "Can there be no faith in, in, he said timidly, and paused. She was silent, a statue, my Lady Disdain.

 

"If you had not belief' me to be an impostor; if I had never said I was Chateaurien; if I had been jus' that Monsieur Beaucaire of the story they tol' you, but never with the heart of a lackey, an hones' man, a man, the man you knew, himself, could you, would you" He was trying to speak firmly; yet, as he gazed upon her splendid beauty, he choked slightly, and fumbled in the lace at his throat with unsteady fingers. "Would you have let me ride by your side in the autumn moonlight?" Her glance passed by him as it might have passed by a footman or a piece of furniture. He was dressed magnificently, a multitude of orders glittering on his breast. Her eye took no knowledge of him.

 

"Mademoiselle-I have the honor to ask you: if you had known this Beaucaire was hones', though of peasant birth, would you"

 

Involuntarily, controlled as her icy presence was, she shuddered. There was a moment of silence.

 

"Mr. Molyneux," said Lady Mary, "in spite of your discourtesy in allowing a servant to address me, I offer you a last chance to leave this room undisgraced. Will you give me your arm?"

 

"Pardon me, madam," said Mr. Molyneux.

 

Beaucaire dropped into a chair with his head bent low and his arm outstretched on the table; his eyes filled slowly in spite of himself, and two tears rolled down the young man's cheeks.

 

"An' live men are jus' names!" said M. Beaucaire.

 

 

 

Chapter Six

 

In the outer room, Winterset, unable to find Lady Mary, and supposing her to have joined Lady Rellerton, disposed of his negus, then approached the two visitors to pay his respects to the young prince, whom he discovered to be a stripling of seventeen, arrogant looking, but pretty as a girl. Standing beside the Marquis de Mirepoix, a man of quiet bearing, he was surrounded by a group of the great, among whom Mr. Nash naturally counted himself. The Beau was felicitating himself that the foreigners had not arrived a week earlier, in which case he and Bath would have been detected in a piece of gross ignorance concerning the French nobility, making much of de Mirepoix's ex-barber.

 

"'Tis a lucky thing that fellow was got out of the way," he ejaculated, under cover.

 

"Thank me for it," rejoined Winterset.

 

An attendant begged Mr. Nash's notice. The head bailiff sent word that Beaucaire had long since entered the building by a side door. It was supposed Mr. Nash had known of it, and the Frenchman was not arrested, as Mr. Molyneux was in his company, and said he would be answerable for him. Consternation was so plain on the Beau's trained face that the Duke leaned toward him anxiously.

 

"The villain's in, and Molyneux hath gone mad!"

 

Mr. Bantison, who had been fiercely elbowing his way toward them, joined heads with them. "You may well say he is in," he exclaimed "and if you want to know where, why, in yonder card-room. I saw him through the half-open door."

 

"What's to be done?" asked the Beau.

 

"Send the bailiffs"

 

"Fie, fie! A file of bailiffs? The scandal!"

 

"Then listen to me," said the Duke. "I'll select half-a-dozen gentlemen, explain the matter, and we'll put him in the center of us and take him out to the bailiffs. 'Twill appear nothing. Do you remain here and keep the attention of Beaujolais and de Mirepoix. Come, Bantison, fetch Townbrake and Harry Rakell yonder; I'll bring the others."

 

Three minutes later, his Grace of Winterset flung wide the card-room door, and, after his friends had entered, closed it.

 

"Ah!" remarked M. Beaucaire quietly. "Six more large men."

 

The Duke, seeing Lady Mary, started; but the angry signs of her interview had not left her face, and reassured him. He offered his hand to conduct her to the door. "May I have the honor?"

 

"If this is to be known, 'twill be better if I leave after; I should be observed if I went now."

 

"As you will, madam," he answered, not displeased. "And now, you impudent villain," he began, turning to M. Beaucaire, but to fall back astounded. "'Od's blood, the dog hath murdered and robbed some royal prince!" He forgot Lady Mary's presence in his excitement. "Lay hands on him!" he shouted. "Tear those orders from him!"

 

Molyneux threw himself between. "One word!" he cried. "One word before you offer an outrage you will repent all your lives!"

 

"Or let M. de Winterset come alone," laughed M. Beaucaire.

 

"Do you expect me to fight a cut-throat barber, and with bare hands?"

 

"I think one does not expec' monsieur to fight anybody. Would I fight you, you think? That was why I had my servants, that evening we play. I would gladly fight almos' any one in the won'; but I did not wish to soil my hand with a"

 

"Stuff his lying mouth with his orders!" shouted the Duke.

 

But Molyneux still held the gentlemen back. "One moment," he cried.

 

"M. de Winterset," said Beaucaire, "of what are you afraid? You calculate well. Beaucaire might have been belief, an impostor that you yourself expose'? Never! But I was not goin' reveal that secret. You have not absolve me of my promise."

 

"Tell what you like," answered the Duke. "Tell all the wild lies you have time for. You have five minutes to make up your mind to go quietly."

 

"Now you absolve me, then? Ha, ha! Oh, yes! Mademoiselle," he bowed to Lady Mary, "I have the honor to reques' you leave the room. You shall miss no details if these frien's of yours kill me, on the honor of a French gentleman."

 

"A French what?" laughed Bantison.

 

"Do you dare keep up the pretense?" cried Lord Town brake. "Know, you villain barber, that your master, the Marquis de Mirepoix, is in the next room."

 

Molyneux heaved a great sigh of relief. "Shall I" He turned to M. Beaucaire.

 

The young man laughed, and said: "Tell him come here at once.

 

"Impudent to the last!" cried Bantison, as Molyneux hurried from the room.

 

"Now you goin' to see M. Beaucaire's master," said Beaucaire to Lady Mary. "'Tis true what I say, the other night. I cross from Prance in his suite; my passport say as his barber. Then to pass the ennui of exile, I come to Bath and play for what one will. It kill the time. But when the people hear I have been a servant they come only secretly; and there is one of them, he has absolve' me of a promise not to speak, of him I learn something he cannot wish to be tol'. I make some trouble to learn this thing. Why I should do this? Well, that is my own rizzon. So I make this man help me in a masque, the unmasking it was, for, as there is no one to know me, I throw off my black wig and become myself and so I am 'Chateaurien,' Castle Nowhere. Then this man I use', this Winterset, he"

 

"I have great need to deny these accusations?" said the Duke.

 

"Nay," said Lady Mary wearily.

 

"Shall I tell you why I mus' be 'Victor' and 'Beaucaire' and 'Chateaurien,' and not myself?"

 

"To escape from the bailiffs for debts for razors and soap," gibed Lord Townbrake.

 

"No, monsieur. In France I have got a cousin who is a man with a very bad temper at some time', and he will never enjoy his relatives to do what he does not wish"

 

He was interrupted by a loud commotion from without. The door was flung open, and the young Count of Beaujolais bounded in and threw his arms about the neck of M. Beaucaire.

 

"Philippe!" he cried. "My brother, I have come to take you back with me."

 

M. de Mirepoix followed him, bowing as a courtier, in deference; but M. Beaucaire took both his hands heartily. Molyneux came after, with Mr. Nash, and closed the door.

 

"My warmest felicitations," said the Marquis. "There is no longer need for your incognito."

 

"Thou best of masters!" said Beaucaire, touching him fondly on the shoulder. "I know. Your courier came safely. And so I am forgiven! But I forget." He turned to the lady. She had begun to tremble exceedingly. "Faires' of all the English fair," he said, as the gentlemen bowed low to her deep courtesy, "I beg the honor to presen' to Lady Mary Carlisle, M. le Comte de Beaujolais. M. de Mirepoix has already the honor. Lady Mary has been very kind to me, my frien's; you mus' help me make my acknowledgment. Mademoiselle and gentlemen, will you give me that favour to detain you one instan'?"

 

"Henri," he turned to the young Beaujolais, "I wish you had shared my masque, I have been so gay!" The surface of his tone was merry, but there was an undercurrent, weary, sad, to speak of what was the mood, not the manner. He made the effect of addressing every one present, but he looked steadily at Lady Mary. Her eyes were fixed upon him, with a silent and frightened fascination, and she trembled more and more. "I am a great actor, Henri. These gentlemen are yet scarce convince' I am not a lackey! And I mus' tell you that I was jus' now to be expelled for having been a barber!"

 

"Oh, no!" the ambassador cried out. "He would not be content with me; he would wander over a strange country."

 

"Ha, ha, my Mirepoix! And what is better, one evening I am oblige' to fight some frien's of M. de Winterset there, and some ladies and cavaliers look on, and they still think me a servant. Oh, I am a great actor! 'Tis true there is not a peasant in France who would not have then known one 'born'; but they are wonderful, this English people, holding by an idea once it is in their heads, a mos' worthy quality. But my good Molyneux here, he had speak to me with courtesy, jus' because I am a man an' jus' because he is always kind. (I have learn' that his great-grandfather was a Frenchman.) So I sen' to him and tell him ev'rything, and he gain admittance for me here to-night to await my frien's.

 

"I was speaking to messieurs about my cousin, who will meddle in the affair' of his relatives. Well, that gentleman, he make a marriage for me with a good and accomplish' lady, very noble and very beautiful and amiable." (The young count at his elbow started slightly at this, but immediately appeared to wrap himself in a mantle of solemn thought.) "Unfortunately, when my cousin arrange' so, I was a dolt, a little blockhead; I swear to marry for myself and when I please, or never if I like. That lady is all things charming and gentle, and, in truth, she is very much attach' to me, why should I not say it? I am so proud of it. She is very faithful and forgiving and sweet; she would be the same, I think, if I were even a lackey. But I? I was a dolt, a little unsensible brute; I did not value such thing' then; I was too yo'ng, las' June. So I say to my cousin, 'No, I make my own choosing!' 'Little fool,' he answer, 'she is the one for you. Am I not wiser than you?' And he was very angry, and, as he has influence in France, word come' that he will get me put in Vincennes, so I mus' run away quick till his anger is gone. My good frien' Mirepoix is jus' leaving for London; he take' many risk' for my sake; his hairdresser die before he start', so I travel as that poor barber. But my cousin is a man to be afraid of when he is angry, even in England, and I mus' not get my Mirepoix in trouble. I mus' not be discover' till my cousin is ready to laugh about it all and make it a joke. And there may be spies; so I change my name again, and come to Bath to amuse my retreat with a little gaming, I am always fond of that. But three day' ago M. le Marquis send me a courier to say that my brother, who know where I had run away, is come from France to say that my cousin is appease'; he need me for his little theatre, the play cannot go on. I do not need to espouse mademoiselle. All shall be forgiven if I return, and my brother and M. de Mirepoix will meet me in Bath to felicitate.

 

"There is one more thing to say, that is all. I have said I learn' a secret, and use it to make a man introduce me if I will not tell. He has absolve' me of that promise. My frien's, I had not the wish to ruin that man. I was not receive'; Meestaire Nash had reboff me; I had no other way excep' to use this fellow. So I say, 'Take me to Lady Malbourne's ball as "Chateaurien."' I throw off my wig, and shave, and behol', I am M. le Duc de Castle Nowhere. Ha, ha! You see?"

 

The young man's manner suddenly changed. He became haughty, menacing. He stretched out his arm, and pointed at Winterset. "Now I am no 'Beaucaire,' messieurs. I am a French gentleman. The man who introduce' me at the price of his honor, and then betray' me to redeem it, is that coward, that card-cheat there!"

 

Winterset made a horrible effort to laugh. The gentlemen who surrounded him fell away as from pestilence. "A French gentleman!" he sneered savagely, and yet fearfully. "I don't know who you are. Hide behind as many toys and ribbons as you like; I'll know the name of the man who dares bring such a charge!"

 

"Sir!" cried de Mirepoix sharply, advancing a step towards him; but he checked himself at once. He made a low bow of state, first to the young Frenchman, then to Lady Mary and the company. "Permit me, Lady Mary and gentlemen," he said, "to assume the honor of presenting you to His Highness, Prince Louis-Philippe de Valois, Duke of Orleans, Duke of Chartres, Duke of Nemours, Duke of Montpeti'sier, First Prince of the Blood Royal, First Peer of France, Lieutenant-General of French Infantry, Governor of Dauphine, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Grand Master of the Order of Notre Dame, of Mount Carmel, and of St. Lazarus in Jerusalem; and cousin to His most Christian Majesty, Louis the Fifteenth, King of France."

 

"Those are a few of my brother's names," whispered Henri of Beaujolais to Molyneux. "Old Mirepoix has the long breath, but it take' a strong man two day' to say all of them. I can suppose this Winterset know' now who bring the charge!"

 

"Castle Nowhere!" gasped Beau Nash, falling back upon the burly prop of Mr. Bantison's shoulder.

 

"The Duke of Orleans will receive a message from me within the hour!" said Winterset, as he made his way to the door. His face was black with rage and shame.

 

"I tol' you that I would not soil my hand with you," answered the young man. "If you send a message no gentleman will bring it. Whoever shall bear it will receive a little beating from Francois."

 

He stepped to Lady Mary's side. Her head was bent low, her face averted. She seemed to breathe with difficulty, and leaned heavily upon a chair. "Monseigneur," she faltered in a half whisper, "can you forgive me? It is a bitter mistake I have made. Forgive."

 

"Forgive?" he answered, and his voice was as broken as hers; but he went on, more firmly: "It is nothing, less than nothing. There is only jus' one in the whole worl' who would not have treat' me the way that you treat' me. It is to her that I am goin' to make reparation. You know something, Henri? I am not goin' back only because the king forgive' me. I am goin' to please him; I am goin' to espouse mademoiselle, our cousin. My frien's, I ask your felicitations."

 

"And the king does not compel him!" exclaimed young Henri.

 

"Henri, you want to fight me?" cried his brother sharply. "Don' you think the King of France is a wiser man than me?"

 

He offered his hand to Lady Mary. "Mademoiselle is fatigue'. Will she honor me?"

 

He walked with her to the door. Her hand fluttering faintly in his. From somewhere about the garments of one of them a little cloud of faded rose-leaves fell, and lay strewn on the floor behind them. He opened the door, and the lights shone on a multitude of eager faces turned toward it. There was a great hum of voices, and, over all, the fiddles wove a wandering air, a sweet French song of the voyageur.

 

He bowed very low, as, with fixed and glistening eyes, Lady Mary Carlisle, the Beauty of Bath, passed slowly by him and went out of the room.

 

 

 

 

His Own People

 

I.   A Change of Lodging

 

The glass-domed "palm-room" of the Grand Continental Hotel Magnifique in Rome is of vasty heights and distances, filled with a mellow green light which filters down languidly through the upper foliage of tall palms, so that the two hundred people who may be refreshing or displaying themselves there at the tea-hour have something the look of under-water creatures playing upon the sea-bed. They appear, however, to be unaware of their condition; even the ladies, most like anemones of that gay assembly, do not seem to know it; and when the Hungarian band (crustacean-like in costume, and therefore well within the picture) has sheathed its flying tentacles and withdrawn by dim processes, the tea-drinkers all float out through the doors, instead of bubbling up and away through the filmy roof. In truth, some such exit as that was imagined for them by a young man who remained in the aquarium after they had all gone, late one afternoon of last winter. They had been marvelous enough, and to him could have seemed little more so had they made such a departure. He could almost have gone that way himself, so charged was he with the uplift of his belief that, in spite of the brilliant strangeness of the hour just past, he had been no fish out of water.

 

While the waiters were clearing the little tables, he leaned back in his chair in a content so rich it was nearer ecstasy. He could not bear to disturb the possession joy had taken of him, and, like a half-awake boy clinging to a dream that his hitherto unkind sweetheart has kissed him, lingered on in the enchanted atmosphere, his eyes still full of all they had beheld with such delight, detaining and smiling upon each revelation of this fresh memory, the flashingly lovely faces, the dreamily lovely faces, the pearls and laces of the anemone ladies, the color and romantic fashion of the uniforms, and the old princes who had been pointed out to him: splendid old men wearing white mustaches and single eye-glasses, as he had so long hoped and dreamed they did.

 

"Mine own people!" he whispered. "I have come unto mine own at last. Mine own people!" After long waiting (he told himself), he had seen them, the people he had wanted to see, wanted to know, wanted to be of! Ever since he had begun to read of the "beau monde" in his schooldays, he had yearned to know some such sumptuous reality as that which had come true to-day, when, at last, in Rome he had seen, as he wrote home that night, "the finest essence of Old-World society mingling in Cosmopolis."

 

Artificial odors (too heavy to keep up with the crowd that had worn them) still hung about him; he breathed them deeply, his eyes half-closed and his lips noiselessly formed themselves to a quotation from one of his own poems:

 

While trails of scent, like cobweb's films

Slender and faint and rare,

Of roses, and rich, fair fabrics,

Cling on the stirless air,

The sibilance of voices,

At a wave of Milady's glove,

Is stilled

 

He stopped short, interrupting himself with a half-cough of laughter as he remembered the inspiration of these verses. He had written them three months ago, at home in Cranston, Ohio, the evening after Anna McCord's "coming-out tea." "Milady" meant Mrs. McCord; she had "stilled" the conversation of her guests when Mary Kramer (whom the poem called a "sweet, pale singer") rose to sing Mavourneen; and the stanza closed with the right word to rhyme with "glove." He felt a contemptuous pity for his little, untraveled, provincial self of three months ago, if, indeed, it could have been himself who wrote verses about Anna McCord's "coming-out tea" and referred to poor, good old Mrs. McCord as "Milady"!

 

The second stanza had intimated a conviction of a kind which only poets may reveal:

 

She sang to that great assembly,

They thought, as they praised her tone;

But she and my heart knew better:

Her song was for me alone.

 

He had told the truth when he wrote of Mary Kramer as pale and sweet, and she was paler, but no less sweet, when he came to say good-by to her before he sailed. Her face, as it was at the final moment of the protracted farewell, shone before him very clearly now for a moment: young, plaintive, white, too lamentably honest to conceal how much her "God-speed" to him cost her. He came very near telling her how fond of her he had always been; came near giving up his great trip to remain with her always.

 

"Ah!" He shivered as one shivers at the thought of disaster narrowly averted. "The fates were good that I only came near it!"

 

He took from his breast-pocket an engraved card, without having to search for it, because during the few days the card had been in his possession the action had become a habit.

 

"Comtesse de Vaurigard," was the name engraved, and below was written in pencil: "To remember Monsieur Robert Russ Mellin he promise to come to tea Hotel Magnifique, Roma, at five o'clock Thursday."

 

There had been disappointment in the first stages of his journey, and that had gone hard with Mellin. Europe had been his goal so long, and his hopes of pleasure grew so high when (after his years of saving and putting by, bit by bit, out of his salary in a real-estate office) he drew actually near the shining horizon. But London, his first stopping-place, had given him some dreadful days. He knew nobody, and had not understood how heavily sheer loneliness, which was something he had never felt until then, would weigh upon his spirits. In Cranston, where the young people "grew up together," and where he met a dozen friends on the street in a half-hour's walk, he often said that he "liked to be alone with himself." London, after his first excitement in merely being there, taught him his mistake, chilled him with weeks of forbidding weather, puzzled and troubled him.

 

He was on his way to Paris when (as he recorded in his journal) a light came into his life. This illumination first shone for him by means of one Cooley, son and inheritor of all that had belonged to the late great Cooley, of Cooley Mills, Connecticut. Young Cooley, a person of cheery manners and bright waistcoats, was one of Mellin's few sea-acquaintances; they had played shuffleboard together on the steamer during odd half-hours when Mr. Cooley found it possible to absent himself from poker in the smoking-room; and they encountered each other again on the channel boat crossing to Calais.

 

 "Hey!"  was Mr. Cooley's lively greeting. "I'm meetin' lots of people I know to-day. You runnin' over to Paris, too? Come up to the boat-deck and meet the Countess de Vaurigard."

 

"Who?" said Mellin, red with pleasure, yet fearing that he did not hear aright.

 

"The Countess de Vaurigard. Queen! met her in London. Sneyd introduced me to her. You remember Sneyd on the steamer? Baldish Englishman, red nose, doesn't talk much, younger brother of Lord Rugden, so he says. Played poker some. Well, yes!"

 

"I saw him. I didn't meet him."

 

"You didn't miss a whole lot. Fact is, before we landed I almost had him sized up for queer, but when he introduced me to the Countess I saw my mistake. He must be the real thing.  She  certainly is! You come along up and see."

 

So Mellin followed, to make his bow before a thin, dark, charmingly pretty young woman, who smiled up at him from her deck-chair through an enhancing mystery of veils; and presently he found himself sitting beside her. He could not help trembling slightly at first, but he would have giving a great deal if, by some miraculous vision, Mary Kramer and other friends of his in Cranston could have seen him engaged in what he thought of as "conversational badinage" with the Comtesse de Vaurigard.

 

Both the lady and her name thrilled him. He thought he remembered the latter in Froissart: it conjured up "baronial halls" and "donjon keeps," rang resonantly in his mind like "Let the portcullis fall!" At home he had been wont to speak of the "oldest families in Cranston," complaining of the invasions of "new people" into the social territory of the McCords and Mellins and Kramers, a pleasant conception which the presence of a De Vaurigard revealed to him as a petty and shameful fiction; and yet his humility, like his little fit of trembling, was of short duration, for gay geniality of Madame de Vaurigard put him amazingly at ease.

 

At Calais young Cooley (with a matter-of-course air, and not seeming to feel the need of asking permission) accompanied her to a compartment, and Mellin walked with them to the steps of the coach, where he paused, murmuring some words of farewell.

 

Madame de Vaurigard turned to him with a prettily assumed dismay.

 

"What! You stay at Calais?" she cried, pausing with one foot on the step to ascend. "Oh! I am sorry for you. Calais is ter-rible!"

 

"No. I am going on to Paris."

 

"So? You have frien's in another coach which you wish to be wiz?"

 

"No, no, indeed," he stammered hastily.

 

"Well, my frien'," she laughed gayly, "w'y don' you come wiz us?"

 

Blushing, he followed Cooley into the coach, to spend five happy hours, utterly oblivious of the bright French landscape whirling by outside the window.

 

There ensued a month of conscientious sightseeing in Paris, and that unfriendly city afforded him only one glimpse of the Countess. She whizzed by him in a big touring-car one afternoon as he stood on an "isle of safety" at the foot of the Champs Elysees. Cooley was driving the car. The raffish, elderly Englishman (whose name, Mellin knew, was Sneyd) sat with him, and beside Madame de Vaurigard in the tonneau lolled a gross-looking man, unmistakably an American, with a jovial, red, smooth-shaven face and several chins. Brief as the glimpse was, Mellin had time to receive a distinctly disagreeable impression of this person, and to wonder how Heaven could vouchsafe the society of Madame de Vaurigard to so coarse a creature.

 

All the party were dressed as for the road, gray with dust, and to all appearances in a merry mood. Mellin's heart gave a leap when he saw that the Countess recognized him. Her eyes, shining under a white veil, met his for just the instant before she was quite by, and when the machine had passed a little handkerchief waved for a moment from the side of the tonneau where she sat.

 

With that he drew the full breath of Romance.

 

He had always liked to believe that  "grandes dames"  leaned back in the luxurious upholstery of their victorias, landaulettes, daumonts or automobiles with an air of inexpressible though languid hauteur. The Newport letter in the Cranston Telegraph often referred to it. But the gayety of that greeting from the Countess' little handkerchief was infinitely refreshing, and Mellin decided that animation was more becoming than hauteur, even to a  "grande dame."

 

That night he wrote (almost without effort) the verses published in the Cranston Telegraph two weeks later. They began:

 

Marquise, ma belle, with your kerchief of

lace

Awave from your flying car,

And your slender hand

 

The hand to which he referred was the same which had arrested his gondola and his heart simultaneously, five days ago, in Venice. He was on his way to the station when Madame de Vaurigard's gondola shot out into the Grand Canal from a narrow channel, and at her signal both boats paused.

 

"Ah! but you fly away!" she cried, lifting her eyebrows mournfully, as she saw the steamer-trunk in his gondola. "You are goin' return to America?"

 

"No. I'm just leaving for Rome."

 

"Well, in three day'  I  am goin' to Rome!" She clapped her hands lightly and laughed. "You know this is three time' we meet jus' by chance, though that second time it was so quick,  pff ! like that, we didn't talk much togezzer! Monsieur Mellin," she laughed again, "I think we mus' be frien's. Three time' an' we are both goin' to Rome! Monsieur Mellin, you believe in  Fate ?"

 

With a beating heart he did.

 

Thence came the invitation to meet her at the Magnifique for tea, and the card she scribbled for him with a silver pencil. She gave it with the prettiest gesture, leaning from her gondola to his as they parted. She turned again, as the water between them widened, and with her " Au revoir " offered him a faintly wistful smile to remember.

 

All the way to Rome the noises of the train beat out the measure of his Parisian verses:

 

 Marquise, ma belle , with your kerchief of

lace

Awave from your flying car

 

He came out of his reverie with a start. A dozen men and women, dressed for dinner, with a gold-fish officer or two among them, swam leisurely through the aquarium on their way to the hotel restaurant. They were the same kind of people who had sat at the little tables for tea, people of the great world, thought Mellin: no vulgar tourists or "trippers" among them; and he shuddered at the remembrance of his pension (whither it was time to return) and its conscientious students of Baedeker, its dingy halls and permanent smell of cold food. Suddenly a high resolve lit his face: he got his coat and hat from the brass-and-blue custodian in the lobby, and without hesitation entered the "bureau."

 

"I 'm not quite satisfied where I am staying, where I'm stopping, that is," he said to the clerk. "I think I'll take a room here."

 

"Very well, sir. Where shall I send for your luggage?"

 

"I shall bring it myself," replied Mellin coldly, "in my cab."

 

He did not think it necessary to reveal the fact that he was staying at one of the cheaper pensions; and it may be mentioned that this reticence (as well as the somewhat chilling, yet careless, manner of a gentleman of the "great world" which he assumed when he returned with his trunk and bag) very substantially increased the rate put upon the room he selected at the Magnifique. However, it was with great satisfaction that he found himself installed in the hotel, and he was too recklessly exhilarated, by doing what he called the "right thing," to waste any time wondering what the "right thing" would do to the diminishing pad of express checks he carried in the inside pocket of his waistcoat.

 

"Better live a fortnight like a gentleman," he said, as he tossed his shoes into a buhl cabinet, "than vegetate like a tourist for a year."

 

He had made his entrance into the "great world" and he meant to hold his place in it as one "to the manor born." Its people should not find him lacking: he would wear their manner and speak their language, no gaucherie should betray him, no homely phrase escape his lips.

 

This was the chance he had always hoped for, and when he fell asleep in his gorgeous, canopied bed, his soul was uplifted with happy expectations.

 

II.   Music on the Pincio

 

The following afternoon found him still in that enviable condition as he stood listening to the music on the Pincian Hill. He had it of rumor that the Fashion of Rome usually took a turn there before it went to tea, and he had it from the lady herself that Madame de Vaurigard would be there. Presently she came, reclining in a victoria, the harness of her horses flashing with gold in the sunshine. She wore a long ermine stole; her hat was ermine; she carried a muff of the same fur, and Mellin thought it a perfect finish to the picture that a dark gentleman of an appearance most distinguished should be sitting beside her. An Italian noble, surely!

 

He saw the American at once, nodded to him and waved her hand. The victoria went on a little way beyond the turn of the drive, drew out of the line of carriages, and stopped.

 

"Ah, Monsieur Mellin," she cried, as he came up, "I am glad! I was so foolish yesterday I didn' give you the address of my little apartment an' I forgot to ask you what is your hotel. I tol' you I would come here for my drive, but still I might have lost you for ever. See what many people! It is jus' that Fate again."

 

She laughed, and looked to the Italian for sympathy in her kindly merriment. He smiled cordially upon her, then lifted his hat and smiled as cordially upon Mellin.

 

"I am so happy to fin' myself in Rome that I forget" Madame de Vaurigard went on " ever'sing!  But now I mus' make sure not to lose you. What is your hotel?"

 

"Oh, the Magnifique," Mellin answered carelessly. "I suppose everybody that one knows stops there. One does stop there, when one is in Rome, doesn't one?"

 

"Everybody go' there for tea, and to eat, sometime, but to  stay, ah, that is for the American!" she laughed. "That is for you who are all so abomin-ab-ly rich!" She smiled to the Italian again, and both of them smiled beamingly on Mellin.

 

"But that isn't always our fault, is it?" said Mellin easily.

 

"Aha! You mean you are of the new generation, of the yo'ng American' who come over an' try to spen' these immense fortune', those  'pile', your father or your gran-father make! I know quite well. Ah?"

 

"Well," he hesitated, smiling. "I suppose it does look a little by way of being like that."

 

"Wicked fellow!" She leaned forward and tapped his shoulder chidingly with two fingers. "I know what you wish the mos' in the worl', you wish to get into mischief. That is it! No, sir, I will jus' take you in han'!"

 

"When will you take me?" he asked boldly.

 

At this, the pleasant murmur of laughter, half actual and half suggested, with which she underlined the conversation, became loud and clear, as she allowed her vivacious glance to strike straight into his upturned eyes, and answered:

 

"As long as a little turn roun' the hill,  now . Cavaliere Corni -"

 

To Mellin's surprise and delight the Italian immediately descended from the victoria without the slightest appearance of irritation; on the contrary, he was urbane to a fine degree, and, upon Madame de Vaurigard's formally introducing him to Mellin, saluted the latter with grave politeness, expressing in good English a hope that they might meet often. When the American was installed at the Countess' side she spoke to the driver in Italian, and they began to move slowly along the ilex avenue, the coachman reining his horses to a walk.

 

"You speak Italian?" she inquired.

 

"Oh, not a great deal more than a smattering," he replied airily, a truthful answer, inasmuch as a vocabulary consisting simply of  "quanty costy"  and  "troppo"  cannot be seriously considered much more than a smattering. Fortunately she made no test of his linguistic attainment, but returned to her former subject.

 

"Ah, yes, all the worl' to-day know' the new class of American," she said " your  class. Many year' ago we have another class which Europe didn' like. That was when the American was ter-ri-ble! He was the, what is that you call? oh, yes; he 'make himself,' you say: that is it. My frien', he was abominable! He brag'; he talk' through the nose; yes, and he was niggardly, rich as he was! But you, you yo'ng men of the new generation, you are gentlemen of the idleness; you are aristocrats, with polish an' with culture. An' yet you throw your money away, yes, you throw it to poor Europe as if to a beggar!"

 

"No, no," he protested with an indulgent laugh which confessed that the truth was really "Yes, yes."

 

"Your smile betray' you!" she cried triumphantly. "More than jus' bein' guilty of that fault, I am goin' to tell you of others. You are not the ole-time, what is it you say? Ah, yes, the 'goody-goody.' I have heard my great American frien', Honor-able Chanlair Pedlow, call it the Sonday-school. Is it not? Yes, you are not the Sonday-school yo'ng men, you an' your class!"

 

"No," he said, bestowing a long glance upon a stout nurse who was sitting on a bench near the drive and attending to twins in a perambulator. "No, we're not exactly dissenting parsons."

 

"Ah, no!" She shook her head at him prettily. "You are wicked! You are up into all the mischief! Have I not hear what wild sums you risk at your game, that poker? You are famous for it."

 

"Oh, we play," he admitted with a reckless laugh, "and I suppose we do play rather high."

 

"High!" she echoed. " Souzands!  But that is not all. Ha, ha, ha, naughty one! Have I not observe' you lookin' at these pretty creature', the little contadina-girl, an' the poor ladies who have hire' their carriages for two lire to drive up and down the Pincio in their bes' dress an' be admire' by the yo'ng American while the music play'? Which one I wonder, is it on whose wrist you would mos' like to fasten a bracelet of diamon's? Wicked, I have watch' you look at them"

 

"No, no," he interrupted earnestly. "I have not once looked away from you, I  could n't ." Their eyes met, but instantly hers were lowered; the bright smile with which she had been rallying him faded and there was a pause during which he felt that she had become very grave. When she spoke, it was with a little quaver, and the controlled pathos of her voice was so intense that it evoked a sympathetic catch in his own throat.

 

"But, my frien', if it should be that I cannot wish you to look so at me, or to speak so to me?"

 

"I beg your pardon!" he exclaimed, almost incoherently. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I wouldn't do anything you'd think ungentlemanly for the world!"

 

Her eyes lifted again to his with what he had no difficulty in recognizing as a look of perfect trust; but, behind that, he perceived a darkling sadness.

 

"I know it is true," she murmured "I know. But you see there are time' when a woman has sorrow, sorrow of one kind, when she mus' be sure that there is only, only rispec' in the hearts of her frien's."

 

With that, the intended revelation was complete, and the young man understood, as clearly as if she had told him in so many words, that she was not a widow and that her husband was the cause of her sorrow. His quickened instinct marvelously divined (or else it was conveyed to him by some intangible method of hers) that the Count de Vaurigard was a very bad case, but that she would not divorce him.

 

"I know," he answered, profoundly touched. "I understand."

 

In silent gratitude she laid her hand for a second upon his sleeve. Then her face brightened, and she said gayly:

 

"But we shall not talk of  me!  Let us see how we can keep you out of mischief at leas' for a little while. I know very well what you will do to-night: you will go to Salone Margherita an' sit in a box like all the wicked Americans"

 

"No, indeed, I shall not!"

 

"Ah, yes, you will!" she laughed. "But until dinner let me keep you from wickedness. Come to tea jus' wiz me, not at the hotel, but at the little apartment I have taken, where it is quiet. The music is finish', an' all those pretty girl' are goin' away, you see. I am not selfish if I take you from the Pincio now. You will come?"

 

 

III.   Glamour

 

It was some fair dream that would be gone too soon, he told himself, as they drove rapidly through the twilight streets, down from the Pincio and up the long slope of the Quirinal. They came to a stop in the gray courtyard of a palazzo, and ascended in a sleepy elevator to the fifth floor. Emerging, they encountered a tall man who was turning away from the Countess' door, which he had just closed. The landing was not lighted, and for a moment he failed to see the American following Madame de Vaurigard.

 

"Eow, it's you, is it," he said informally. "Waitin' a devil of a long time for you. I've gawt a message for you.  He's  comin'. He writes that Cooley"

 

 "Attention!"  she interrupted under her breath, and, stepping forward quickly, touched the bell. "I have brought a frien' of our dear, droll Cooley with me to tea. Monsieur Mellin, you mus' make acquaintance with Monsieur Sneyd. He is English, but we shall forgive him because he is a such ole frien' of mine."

 

"Ah, yes," said Mellin. "Remember seeing you on the boat, running across the pond."

 

"Yes, ev coss," responded Mr. Sneyd cordially. "I wawsn't so fawchnit as to meet you, but dyuh eold Cooley's talked ev you often. Heop I sh'll see maw of you hyuh."

 

A very trim, very intelligent-looking maid opened the door, and the two men followed Madame de Vaurigard into a square hall, hung with tapestries and lit by two candles of a Brobdingnagian species Mellin had heretofore seen only in cathedrals. Here Mr. Sneyd paused.

 

 

"I weon't be bawthring you," he said. "Just a wad with you, Cantess, and I'm off."

 

The intelligent-looking maid drew back some heavy curtains leading to a salon beyond the hall, and her mistress smiled brightly at Mellin.

 

"I shall keep him to jus' his one word," she said, as the young man passed between the curtains.

 

It was a nobly proportioned room that he entered, so large that, in spite of the amount of old furniture it contained, the first impression it gave was one of spaciousness. Panels of carved and blackened wood lined the walls higher than his head; above them, Spanish leather gleamed here and there with flickerings of red and gilt, reflecting dimly a small but brisk wood fire which crackled in a carved stone fireplace. His feet slipped on the floor of polished tiles and wandered from silky rugs to lose themselves in great black bear skins as in unmown sward. He went from the portrait of a "cinquecento" cardinal to a splendid tryptich set over a Gothic chest, from a cabinet sheltering a collection of old glass to an Annunciation by an unknown Primitive. He told himself that this was a "room in a book," and became dreamily assured that he was a man in a book. Finally he stumbled upon something almost grotesquely out of place: a large, new, perfectly-appointed card-table with a sliding top, a smooth, thick, green cover and patent compartments.

 

He halted before this incongruity, regarding it with astonishment. Then a light laugh rippled behind him, and he turned to find Madame de Vaurigard seated in a big red Venetian chair by the fire.

 

She wore a black lace dress, almost severe in fashion, which gracefully emphasized her slenderness; and she sat with her knees crossed, the firelight twinkling on the beads of her slipper, on her silken instep, and flashing again from the rings upon the slender fingers she had clasped about her knee.

 

She had lit a thin, long Russian cigarette.

 

"You see?" she laughed. "I mus' keep up with the time. I mus' do somesing to hold my frien's about me. Even the ladies like to play now that breedge w'ich is so tiresome, they play, play, play! And you, you Americans, you refuse to endure us if we do not let you play. So for my frien's when they come to my house, if they wish it, there is that foolish little table. I fear" she concluded with a bewitching affectation of sadness "they prefer that to talkin' wiz me."

 

"You know that couldn't be so,  Comtesse ," he said. "I would rather talk to you than,than"

 

"Ah, yes, you say so, Monsieur!" She looked at him gravely; a little sigh seemed to breathe upon her lips; she leaned forward nearer the fire, her face wistful in the thin, rosy light, and it seemed to him he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

 

He came across to her and sat upon a stool at her feet. "On my soul," he began huskily, "I swear"

 

She laid her finger on her lips, shaking her head gently; and he was silent, while the intelligent maid, at that moment entering, arranged a tea-table and departed.

 

"American an' Russian, they are the worse," said the Countess thoughtfully, as she served him with a generous cup, laced with rum, "but the American he is the bes' to play  wiz ." Mellin found her irresistible when she said "wiz."

 

"Why is that?"

 

"Oh, the Russian play high, yes, but the American" she laughed delightedly and stretched her arms wide "he make' it all a joke! He is beeg like his beeg country. If he win or lose, he don' care! Ah, I mus' tell you of my great American frien', that Honor-able Chanlair Pedlow, who is comin' to Rome. You have heard of Honor-able Chanlair Pedlow in America?"

 

"I remember hearing that name."

 

"Ah, I shall make you know him. He is a man of distinction; he did sit in your Chamber of Deputies, what you call it? yes, your Con-gress. He is funny, eccentric, always he roar like a lion. Boum! but so simple, so good, a man of such fine heart, so lovable!"

 

"I'll be glad to meet him," said Mellin coldly.

 

"An', oh, yes, I almos' forget to tell you," she went on, "your frien', that dear Cooley, he is on his way from Monte Carlo in his automobile. I have a note from him to-day."

 

"Good sort of fellow, little Cooley, in his way," remarked her companion graciously. "Not especially intellectual or that, you know. His father was a manufacturer chap, I believe, or something of the sort. I suppose you saw a lot of him in Paris?"

 

"Eh, I thought he is dead!" cried Madame de Vaurigard.

 

"The father is. I mean, little Cooley."

 

"Oh, yes," she laughed softly. "We had some gay times, a little party of us. We shall be happy here, too; you will see. I mus' make a little dinner very soon, but not unless you will come. You will?"

 

"Do you want me very much?"

 

He placed his empty cup on the table and leaned closer to her, smiling. She did not smile in response; instead, her eyes fell and there was the faintest, pathetic quiver of her lower lip.

 

"Already you know that," she said in a low voice.

 

She rose quickly, turned away from him and walked across the room to the curtains which opened upon the hall. One of these she drew back.

 

"My frien', you mus' go now," she said in the same low voice. "To-morrow I will see you again. Come at four an' you shall drive with me but not, not more now . Please!"

 

She stood waiting, not looking at him, but with head bent and eyes veiled. As he came near she put out a limp hand. He held it for a few seconds of distinctly emotional silence, then strode swiftly into the hall.

 

She immediately let the curtain fall behind him, and as he got his hat and coat he heard her catch her breath sharply with a sound like a little sob.

 

Dazed with glory, he returned to the hotel. In the lobby he approached the glittering concierge and said firmly:

 

"What is the Salone Margherita? Cam you get me a box there to-night?"

 

 

IV. Good Fellowship

 

He confessed his wickedness to Madame de Vaurigard the next afternoon as they drove out the Appian Way. "A fellow must have just a bit of a fling, you know," he said; "and, really, Salone Margherita isn't so tremendously wicked."

 

She shook her head at him in friendly raillery. "Ah, that may be; but how many of those little dancing-girl' have you invite to supper afterward?"

 

This was a delicious accusation, and though he shook his head in virtuous denial he was before long almost convinced that he had given a rather dashing supper after the vaudeville and had not  gone quietly back to the hotel, only stopping by the way to purchase an orange and a pocketful of horse-chestnuts to eat in his room.

 

It was a happy drive for Robert Russ Mellin, though not happier than that of the next day. Three afternoons they spent driving over the Campagna, then back to Madame de Vaurigard's apartment for tea by the firelight, till the enraptured American began to feel that the dream in which he had come to live must of happy necessity last forever.

 

On the fourth afternoon, as he stepped out of the hotel elevator into the corridor, he encountered Mr. Sneyd.

 

"Just stottin', eh?" said the Englishman, taking an envelope from his pocket. "Lucky I caught you. This is for you. I just saw the Cantess and she teold me to give it you. Herry and read it and kem on t' the Amairikin Baw. Chap I want you to meet. Eold Cooley's thyah too. Gawt in with his tourin'-caw at noon."

 

"You will forgive, dear friend," wrote Madame de Vaurigard, "if I ask you that we renounce our drive to-day. You see, I wish to have that little dinner to-night and must make preparation. Honorable Chandler Pedlow arrived this morning from Paris and that droll Mr. Cooley I have learn is coincidentally arrived also. You see I think it would be very pleasant to have the dinner to welcome these friends on their arrival. You will come surely or I shall be so truly miserable. You know it perhaps too well! We shall have a happy evening if you come to console us for renouncing our drive. A thousand of my prettiest wishes for you.

 

"Helene."

 

The signature alone consoled him. To have that note from her, to own it, was like having one of her gloves or her fan. He would keep it forever, he thought; indeed, he more than half expressed a sentiment to that effect in the response which he wrote in the aquarium, while Sneyd waited for him at a table near by. The Englishman drew certain conclusions in regard to this reply, since it permitted a waiting friend to consume three long tumblers of brandy-and-soda before it was finished. However, Mr. Sneyd kept his reflections to himself, and, when the epistle had been dispatched by a messenger, took the American's arm and led him to the "American Bar" of the hotel, a region hitherto unexplored by Mellin.

 

Leaning against the bar were Cooley and the man whom Mellin had seen lolling beside Madame de Vaurigard in Cooley's automobile in Paris, the same gross person for whom he had instantly conceived a strong repugnance, a feeling not at once altered by a closer view.

 

Cooley greeted Mellin uproariously and Mr. Sneyd introduced the fat man. "Mr. Mellin, the Honorable Chandler Pedlow," he said; nor was the shock to the first-named gentleman lessened by young Cooley's adding, "Best feller in the world!"

 

Mr. Pedlow's eyes were sheltered so deeply beneath florid rolls of flesh that all one saw of them was an inscrutable gleam of blue; but, small though they were, they were not shifty, for they met Mellin's with a squareness that was almost brutal. He offered a fat paw, wet by a full glass which he set down too suddenly on the bar.

 

"Shake," he said, in a loud and husky voice, "and be friends! Tommy," he added to the attendant, "another round of Martinis."

 

"Not for me," said Mellin hastily. "I don't often"

 

" What! " Mr. Pedlow roared suddenly. "Why, the first words Countess de Vaurigard says to me this afternoon was, 'I want you to meet my young friend Mellin,' she says; 'the gamest little Indian that ever come down the pike! He's game,' she says 'he'll see you  all  under the table!' That's what the smartest little woman in the world, the Countess de Vaurigard, says about you."

 

This did not seem very closely to echo Madame de Vaurigard's habit of phrasing, but Mellin perceived that it might be only the fat man's way of putting things.

 

"You ain't goin' back on  her , are you?" continued Mr. Pedlow. "You ain't goin' to make her out a liar? I tell you, when the Countess de Vaurigard says a man 's game, he is game!" He laid his big paw cordially on Mellin's shoulder and smiled, lowering his voice to a friendly whisper. "And I'll bet ten thousand dollars right out of my pants pocket you  are  game, too!"

 

He pressed a glass into the other's hand. Smiling feebly, the embarrassed Mellin accepted it.

 

"Make it four more, Tommy," said Pedlow. "And here," continued this thoughtful man, "I don't go bandying no ladies' names around a bar-room, that ain't my style, but I do want to propose a toast. I won't name her, but you all know who I mean."

 

"Sure we do," interjected Cooley warmly. "Queen! That's what she is."

 

"Here's  to  her," continued Mr. Pedlow. "Here's to her, brightest and best and no heel-taps! And now let's set down over in the corner and take it easy. It ain't hardly five o'clock yet, and we can set here comfortable, gittin' ready for dinner, until half-past six, anyway."

 

Whereupon the four seated themselves about a tabouret in the corner, and, a waiter immediately bringing them four fresh glasses from the bar, Mellin began to understand what Mr. Pedlow meant by "gittin' ready for dinner." The burden of the conversation was carried almost entirely by the Honorable Chandler, though Cooley, whose boyish face was deeply flushed, now and then managed to interrupt by talking louder than the fat man. Mr. Sneyd sat silent.

 

"Good ole Sneyd," said Pedlow. " He  never talks, jest saws wood. Only Britisher I ever liked. Plays cards like a goat."

 

"He played a mighty good game on the steamer," said Cooley warmly.

 

"I don't care what he did on the steamer, he played like a goat the only time I ever played with him. You know he did. I reckon you was there! "

 

"Should say I  was there! He played mighty well"

 

"Like a goat," reiterated the fat man firmly.

 

"Nothing of the sort. You had a run of hands, that was all. Nobody can go against the kind of luck you had that night; and you took it away from Sneyd and me in rolls. But we'll land you pretty soon, won't we, ole Sneydie?"

 

"We sh'll have a shawt at him, at least," said the Englishman.

 

"Perhaps he won't want us to try," young Cooley pursued derisively. "Perhaps he thinks I play like a goat, too!"

 

Mr. Pedlow threw back his head and roared. "Give me somep'n easy! You don't know no more how to play a hand of cards than a giraffe does. I'll throw in all of my Blue Gulch gold-stock and it's worth eight hundred thousand dollars if it's worth a cent, I'll put it up against that tin automobile of yours, divide chips even and play you freeze-out for it. You play cards? Go learn hop-scotch!"

 

"You wait!" exclaimed the other indignantly. "Next time we play we'll make you look so small you'll think you're back in Congress!"

 

At this Mr. Pedlow again threw back his head and roared, his vast body so shaken with mirth that the glass he held in his hand dropped to the floor.

 

"There," said Cooley, "that's the second Martini you've spilled. You're two behind the rest of us."

 

"What of it?" bellowed the fat man. "There's plenty comin', ain't there? Four more, Tommy, and bring cigars. Don't take a cent from none of these Indians. Gentlemen, your money ain't good here. I own this bar, and this is my night."

 

Mellin had begun to feel at ease, and after a time, as they continued to sit, he realized that his repugnance to Mr. Pedlow was wearing off; he felt that there must be good in any one whom Madame de Vaurigard liked. She had spoken of Pedlow often on their drives; he was an "eccentric," she said, an "original." Why not accept her verdict? Besides, Pedlow was a man of distinction and force; he had been in Congress; he was a millionaire; and, as became evident in the course of a long recital of the principal events of his career, most of the great men of the time were his friends and proteges.

 

"'Well, Mack,' says I one day when we were in the House together" (thus Mr. Pedlow, alluding to the late President McKinley) "'Mack,' says I, 'if you'd drop that double standard business' he was waverin' toward silver along then 'I don't know but I might git the boys to nominate you fer President.' 'I'll think it over,' he says 'I'll think it over.' You remember me tellin' you about that at the time, don't you, Sneyd, when you was in the British Legation at Washin'ton?"

 

"Pahfictly," said Mr. Sneyd, lighting a cigar with great calmness.

 

"'Yes,' I says, 'Mack,' I says, 'if you'll drop it, I'll turn in and git you the nomination.'"

 

"Did he drop it?" asked Mellin innocently.

 

Mr. Pedlow leaned forward and struck the young man's knee a resounding blow with the palm of his hand.

 

"He was  nominated , wasn't he?"

 

"Time to dress," announced Mr. Sneyd, looking at his watch.

 

"One more round first," insisted Cooley with prompt vehemence. "Let's finish with our first toast again. Can't drink that too often."

 

This proposition was received with warmest approval, and they drank standing. "Brightest and best!" shouted Mr. Pedlow.

 

"Queen! What she is!" exclaimed Cooley.

 

 "Ma belle Marquise!"  whispered Mellin tenderly, as the rim touched his lips.

 

A small, keen-faced man, whose steady gray eyes were shielded by tortoise-rimmed spectacles, had come into the room and now stood quietly at the bar, sipping a glass of Vichy. He was sharply observant of the party as it broke up, Pedlow and Sneyd preceding the younger men to the corridor, and, as the latter turned to follow, the stranger stepped quickly forward, speaking Cooley's name.

 

"What's the matter?"

 

"Perhaps you don't remember me. My name's Cornish. I'm a newspaper man, a correspondent." (He named a New York paper.) "I'm down here to get a Vatican story. I knew your father for a number of years before his death, and I think I may claim that he was a friend of mine."

 

"That's good," said the youth cordially. "If I hadn't a fine start already, and wasn't in a hurry to dress, we'd have another."

 

"You were pointed out to me in Paris," continued Cornish. "I found where you were staying and called on you the next day, but you had just started for the Riviera." He hesitated, glancing at Mellin. "Can you give me half a dozen words with you in private?"

 

"You'll have to excuse me, I'm afraid. I've only got about ten minutes to dress. See you to-morrow."

 

"I should like it to be as soon as possible," the journalist said seriously. "It isn't on my own account, and I"

 

"All right. You come to my room at ten t'morrow morning?"

 

"Well, if you can't possibly make it to-night," said Cornish reluctantly. "I wish"

 

"Can't possibly."

 

And Cooley, taking Mellin by the arm, walked rapidly down the corridor. "Funny ole correspondent," he murmured. "What do  I  know about the Vatican?"

 

 

V.  Lady Mount Rhyswicke

 

The four friends of Madame de Vaurigard were borne to her apartment from the Magnifique in Cooley's big car. They sailed triumphantly down and up the hills in a cool and bracing air, under a moon that shone as brightly for them as it had for Caesar, and Mellin's soul was buoyant within him. He thought of Cranston and laughed aloud. What would Cranston say if it could see him in a sixty-horse touring-car, with two millionaires and an English diplomat, brother of an earl, and all on the way to dine with a countess? If Mary Kramer could see him!... Poor Mary Kramer! Poor little Mary Kramer!

 

A man-servant took their coats in Madame de Vaurigard's hall, where they could hear through the curtains the sound of one or two voices in cheerful conversation.

 

Sneyd held up his hand.

 

"Listen," he said. "Shawly, that isn't Lady Mount-Rhyswicke's voice! She couldn't be in Reom, always a Rhyswicke Caws'l for Decembah. By Jev, it is!"

 

"Nothin' of the kind," said Pedlow. "I know Lady Mount-Rhyswicke as well as I know you. I started her father in business when he was clerkin' behind a counter in Liverpool. I give him the money to begin on. 'Make good,' says I, 'that's all. Make good!' And he done it, too. Educated his daughter fit fer a princess, married her to Mount-Rhyswicke, and when he died left her ten million dollars if he left her a cent! I know Madge Mount-Rhyswicke and that ain't her voice."

 

A peal of silvery laughter rang from the other side of the curtain.

 

"They've heard you," said Cooley.

 

"An' who could help it?" Madame de Vaurigard herself threw back the curtains. "Who could help hear our great, dear, ole lion? How he roar'!"

 

She wore a white velvet "princesse" gown of a fashion which was a shade less than what is called "daring," with a rope of pearls falling from her neck and a diamond star in her dark hair. Standing with one arm uplifted to the curtains, and with the mellow glow of candles and firelight behind her, she was so lovely that both Mellin and Cooley stood breathlessly still until she changed her attitude. This she did only to move toward them, extending a hand to each, letting Cooley seize the right and Mellin the left.

 

Each of them was pleased with what he got, particularly Mellin. "The left is nearer the heart," he thought.

 

She led them through the curtains, not withdrawing her hands until they entered the salon. She might have led them out of her fifth-story window in that fashion, had she chosen.

 

"My two wicked boys!" she laughed tenderly. This also pleased both of them, though each would have preferred to be her only wicked boy, a preference which, perhaps, had something to do with the later events of the evening.

 

"Aha! I know you both; before twenty minute' you will be makin' love to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Behol' those two already! An' they are only ole frien's."

 

She pointed to Pedlow and Sneyd. The fat man was shouting at a woman in pink satin, who lounged, half-reclining, among a pile of cushions upon a divan near the fire; Sneyd gallantly bending over her to kiss her hand.

 

"It is a very little dinner, you see," continued the hostess, "only seven, but we shall be seven time' happier."

 

The seventh person proved to be the Italian, Corni, who had surrendered his seat in Madame de Vaurigard's victoria to Mellin on the Pincio. He presently made his appearance followed by a waiter bearing a tray of glasses filled with a pink liquid, while the Countess led her two wicked boys across the room to present them to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Already Mellin was forming sentences for his next letter to the Cranston Telegraph: "Lady Mount-Rhyswicke said to me the other evening, while discussing the foreign policy of Great Britain, in Comtesse de Vaurigard's salon..." "An English peeress of pronounced literary acumen has been giving me rather confidentially her opinion of our American poets..."

 

The inspiration of these promising fragments was a large, weary-looking person, with no lack of powdered shoulder above her pink bodice and a profusion of "undulated" hair of so decided a blond that it might have been suspected that the decision had lain with the lady herself.

 

"Howjdo," she said languidly, when Mellin's name was pronounced to her. "There's a man behind you tryin' to give you something to drink."

 

"Who was it said these were Martinis?" snorted Pedlow. "They've got perfumery in 'em."

 

"Ah, what a bad lion it is!" Madame de Vaurigard lifted both hands in mock horror. "Roar, lion, roar!" she cried. "An' think of the emotion of our good Cavaliere Corni, who have come an hour early jus' to make them for us! I ask Monsieur Mellin if it is not good."

 

"And I'll leave it to Cooley," said Pedlow. "If he can drink all of his I'll eat crow!"

 

Thus challenged, the two young men smilingly accepted glasses from the waiter, and lifted them on high.

 

"Same toast," said Cooley. "Queen!"

 

 "A la belle Marquise!"

 

Gallantly they drained the glasses at a gulp, and Madame de Vaurigard clapped her hands.

 

"Bravo!" she cried. "You see? Corni and I, we win."

 

"Look at their faces!" said Mr. Pedlow, tactlessly drawing attention to what was, for the moment, an undeniably painful sight. "Don't tell me an Italian knows how to make a good Martini!"

 

Mellin profoundly agreed, but, as he joined the small procession to the Countess' dinner-table, he was certain that an Italian at least knew how to make a strong one.

 

The light in the dining-room was provided by six heavily-shaded candles on the table; the latter decorated with delicate lines of orchids. The chairs were large and comfortable, covered with tapestry; the glass was old Venetian, and the servants, moving like useful ghosts in the shadow outside the circle of mellow light, were particularly efficient in the matter of keeping the wine-glasses full. Madame de Vaurigard had put Pedlow on her right, Cooley on her left, with Mellin directly opposite her, next to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Mellin was pleased, because he thought he would have the Countess's face toward him. Anything would have pleased him just then.

 

"This is the kind of table  everybody  ought to have," he observed to the party in general, as he finished his first glass of champagne. "I'm going to have it like this at my place in the States if I ever decide to go back. I'll have six separate candlesticks like this, not a candelabrum, and that will be the only light in the room. And I'll never have anything but orchids on my table"

 

"For my part," Lady Mount-Rhyswicke interrupted in the loud, tired monotone which seemed to be her only manner of speaking, "I like more light. I like all the light that's goin'."

 

"If Lady Mount-Rhyswicke sat at my table," returned Mellin dashingly, "I should wish all the light in the world to shine upon so happy an event."

 

"Hear the man!" she drawled. "He's proposing to me. Thinks I'm a widow."

 

There was a chorus of laughter, over which rose the bellow of Mr. Pedlow.

 

"'He's game!' she says and  ain't  he?"

 

Across the table Madame de Vaurigard's eyes met Mellin's with a mocking intelligence so complete that he caught her message without need of the words she noiselessly formed with her lips: "I tol' you you would be making love to her!"

 

He laughed joyously in answer. Why shouldn't he flirt with Lady Mount-Rhyswicke? He was thoroughly happy; his Helene, his belle Marquise, sat across the table from him sending messages to him with her eyes. He adored her, but he liked Lady Mount-Rhyswicke, he liked everybody and everything in the world. He liked Pedlow particularly, and it no longer troubled him that the fat man should be a friend of Madame de Vaurigard. Pedlow was a "character" and a wit as well. Mellin laughed heartily at everything the Honorable Chandler Pedlow said.

 

"This is life," remarked the young man to his fair neighbor.

 

"What is? Sittin' round a table, eatin' and drinkin'?"

 

"Ah, lovely skeptic!" She looked at him strangely, but he continued with growing enthusiasm: "I mean to sit at such a table as this, with such a chef, with such wines, to know one crowded hour like this is to live! Not a thing is missing; all this swagger furniture, the rich atmosphere of smartness about the whole place; best of all, the company. It's a great thing to have the real  people around you, the right sort, you know, socially; people you'd ask to your own table at home. There are only seven, but every one  distingue , every one"

 

She leaned both elbows on the table with her hands palm to palm, and, resting her cheek against the back of her left hand, looked at him steadily.

 

"And you, are you distinguished, too?"

 

"Oh, I wouldn't be much known over  here ," he said modestly.

 

"Do you write poetry?"

 

"Oh, not professionally, though it is published. I suppose" he sipped his champagne with his head a little to one side as though judging its quality "I suppose I 've been more or less a dilettante. I've knocked about the world a good bit."

 

"Helene says you're one of these leisure American billionaires like Mr. Cooley there," she said in her tired voice.

 

"Oh, none of us are really quite billionaires." He laughed deprecatingly.

 

"No, I suppose not, not really. Go on and tell me some more about life and this distinguished company."

 

"Hey, folks!" Mr. Pedlow's roar broke in upon this dialogue. "You two are gittin' mighty thick over there. We're drinking a toast, and you'll have to break away long enough to join in."

 

"Queen! That's what she is!" shouted Cooley.

 

Mellin lifted his glass with the others and drank to Madame de Vaurigard, but the woman at his side did not change her attitude and continued to sit with her elbows on the table, her cheek on the back of her hand, watching him thoughtfully.

 

 

VI.   Rake's Progress

 

Many toasts were uproariously honored, the health of each member of the party in turn, then the country of each: France and England first, out of courtesy to the ladies, Italy next, since this beautiful and extraordinary meeting of distinguished people (as Mellin remarked in a short speech he felt called upon to make) took place in that wonderful land, then the United States. This last toast the gentlemen felt it necessary to honor by standing in their chairs.

 

[ Song: The Star-Spangled Banner, without words, by Mr. Cooley and chorus. ]

 

When the cigars were brought, the ladies graciously remained, adding tiny spirals of smoke from their cigarettes to the layers of blue haze which soon overhung the table. Through this haze, in the gentle light (which seemed to grow softer and softer) Mellin saw the face of Helene de Vaurigard, luminous as an angel's. She  was  an angel and the others were gods. What could be more appropriate in Rome? Lady Mount-Rhyswicke was Juno, but more beautiful. For himself, he felt like a god too, Olympic in serenity.

 

He longed for mysterious dangers. How debonair he would stroll among them! He wished to explore the unknown; felt the need of a splendid adventure, and had a happy premonition that one was coming nearer and nearer. He favored himself with a hopeful vision of the apartment on fire, Robert Russ Mellin smiling negligently among the flames and Madame de Vaurigard kneeling before him in adoration. Immersed in delight, he puffed his cigar and let his eyes rest dreamily upon the face of Helene. He was quite undisturbed by an argument, more a commotion than a debate, between Mr. Pedlow and young Cooley. It ended by their rising, the latter overturning a chair in his haste.

 

"I don't know the rudiments, don't I!" cried the boy. "You wait! Ole Sneydie and I'll trim you down! Corni says he'll play, too. Come on, Mellin."

 

"I won't go unless Helene goes," said Mellin. "What are you going to do when you get there?"

 

"Alas, my frien'!" exclaimed Madame de Vaurigard, rising, "is it not what I tol' you? Always you are never content wizout your play. You come to dinner an' when it is finish' you play, play, play!"

 

" Play ?" He sprang to his feet. "Bravo! That's the very thing I've been wanting to do. I knew there was something I wanted to do, but I couldn't think what it was."

 

Lady Mount-Rhyswicke followed the others into the salon, but Madame de Vaurigard waited just inside the doorway for Mellin.

 

"High play!" he cried. "We must play high! I won't play any other way. I want to play  high !"

 

"Ah, wicked one! What did I tell you?"

 

He caught her hand. "And you must play too, Helene."

 

"No, no," she laughed breathlessly.

 

"Then you'll watch. Promise you'll watch me. I won't let you go till you promise to watch me."

 

"I shall adore it, my frien'!"

 

"Mellin," called Cooley from the other room. "You comin' or not?"

 

"Can't you see me?" answered Mellin hilariously, entering with Madame de Vaurigard, who was rosy with laughter. "Peculiar thing to look at a man and not see him."

 

Candles were lit in many sconces on the walls, and the card-table had been pushed to the centre of the room, little towers of blue, white and scarlet counters arranged upon it in orderly rows like miniature castles.

 

"Now, then," demanded Cooley, "are the ladies goin' to play?"

 

"Never!" cried Madame de Vaurigard.

 

"All right," said the youth cheerfully; "you can look on. Come and sit by me for a mascot."

 

"You'll need a mascot, my boy!" shouted Pedlow. "That's right, though; take her."

 

He pushed a chair close to that in which Cooley had already seated himself, and Madame de Vaurigard dropped into it, laughing. "Mellin, you set there," he continued, pushing the young man into a seat opposite Cooley. "We'll give both you young fellers a mascot." He turned to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke, who had gone to the settee by the fire. "Madge, you come and set by Mellin," he commanded jovially. "Maybe he'll forget you ain't a widow again."

 

"I don't believe I care much about bein' anybody's mascot to-night," she answered. There was a hint of anger in her tired monotone.

 

"What?" He turned from the table and walked over to the fireplace. "I reckon I didn't understand you," he said quietly, almost gently. "You better come, hadn't you?"

 

She met his inscrutable little eyes steadily. A faint redness slowly revealed itself on her powdered cheeks; then she followed him back to the table and took the place he had assigned to her at Mellin's elbow.

 

"I'll bank," said Pedlow, taking a chair between Cooley and the Italian, "unless somebody wants to take it off my hands. Now, what are we playing?"

 

"Pokah," responded Sneyd with mild sarcasm.

 

"Bravo!" cried Mellin. "That's my  game. Ber- ravo! "

 

This was so far true: it was the only game upon which he had ever ventured money; he had played several times when the wagers were allowed to reach a limit of twenty-five cents.

 

"You know what I mean, I reckon," said Pedlow. "I mean what we are playin' fer ?"

 

"Twenty-five franc limit," responded Cooley authoritatively. "Double for jacks. Play two hours and settle when we quit."

 

Mellin leaned back in his chair. "You call that high?" he asked, with a sniff of contempt. "Why not double it?"

 

The fat man hammered the table with his fist delightedly. "'He's game,' she says. 'He's the gamest little Indian ever come down the big road!' she says. Was she right? What? Maybe she wasn't! We'll double it before very long, my boy; this'll do to start on. There." He distributed some of the small towers of ivory counters and made a memorandum in a notebook. "There's four hundred apiece."

 

"That all?" inquired Mellin, whereupon Mr. Pedlow uproariously repeated Madame de Vaurigard's alleged tribute.

 

As the game began, the intelligent-looking maid appeared from the dining-room, bearing bottles of whisky and soda, and these she deposited upon small tables at the convenience of the players, so that at the conclusion of the first encounter in the gentle tournament there was material for a toast to the gallant who had won it.

 

"Here's to the gamest Indian of us all," proposed the fat man. "Did you notice him call me with a pair of tens? And me queen-high!"

 

Mellin drained a deep glass in honor of himself. "On my soul, Chan' Pedlow, I think you're the bes' fellow in the whole world," he said gratefully. "Only trouble with you, you don't want to play high enough."

 

He won again and again, adding other towers of counters to his original allotment, so that he had the semblance of a tiny castle. When the cards had been dealt for the fifth time he felt the light contact of a slipper touching his foot under the table.

 

That slipper, he decided (from the nature of things) could belong to none other than his Helene, and even as he came to this conclusion the slight pressure against his foot was gently but distinctly increased thrice. He pressed the slipper in return with his shoe, at the same time giving Madame de Vaurigard a look of grateful surprise and tenderness, which threw her into a confusion so evidently genuine that for an unworthy moment he had a jealous suspicion she had meant the little caress for some other.

 

It was a disagreeable thought, and, in the hope of banishing it, he refilled his glass; but his mood had begun to change. It seemed to him that Helene was watching Cooley a great deal too devotedly. Why had she consented to sit by Cooley, when she had promised to watch Robert Russ Mellin? He observed the pair stealthily.

 

Cooley consulted her in laughing whispers upon every discard, upon every bet. Now and then, in their whisperings, Cooley's hair touched hers; sometimes she laid her hand on his the more conveniently to look at his cards. Mellin began to be enraged. Did she think that puling milksop had as much as a shadow of the daring, the devilry, the carelessness of consequences which lay within Robert Russ Mellin? "Consequences?" What were they? There were no such things! She would not look at him, well, he would make her! Thenceforward he raised every bet by another to the extent of the limit agreed upon.

 

Mr. Cooley was thoroughly happy. He did not resemble Ulysses; he would never have had himself bound to the mast; and there were already sounds of unearthly sweetness in his ears. His conferences with his lovely hostess easily consoled him for his losses. In addition, he was triumphing over the boaster, for Mr. Pedlow, with a very ill grace and swearing (not under his breath), was losing too. The Countess, reiterating for the hundredth time that Cooley was a "wicked one," sweetly constituted herself his cup-bearer; kept his glass full and brought him fresh cigars.

 

Mellin dealt her furious glances, and filled his own glass, for Lady Mount-Rhyswicke plainly had no conception of herself in the role of a Hebe. The hospitable Pedlow, observing this neglect, was moved to chide her.

 

"Look at them two cooing doves over there," he said reproachfully, a jerk of his bulbous thumb indicating Madame de Vaurigard and her young protege. "Madge, can't you do nothin' fer our friend the Indian? Can't you even help him to sody?"

 

"Oh, perhaps," she answered with the slightest flash from her tired eyes. Then she nonchalantly lifted Mellin's replenished glass from the table and drained it. This amused Cooley.

 

"I like that!" he chuckled. "That's one way of helpin' a feller! Helene, can you do any better than that?"

 

"Ah, this dear, droll Cooley!"

 

The tantalizing witch lifted the youth's glass to his lips and let him drink, as a mother helps a thirsty child. " Bebe! " she laughed endearingly.

 

As the lovely Helene pronounced that word, Lady Mount-Rhyswicke was leaning forward to replace Mellin's empty glass upon the table.

 

"I don't care whether you're a widow or not!" he shouted furiously. And he resoundingly kissed her massive shoulder.

 

There was a wild shout of laughter; even the imperturbable Sneyd (who had continued to win steadily) wiped tears from his eyes, and Madame de Vaurigard gave way to intermittent hysteria throughout the ensuing half-hour.

 

For a time Mellin sat grimly observing this inexplicable merriment with a cold smile.

 

"Laugh on!" he commanded with bitter satire, some ten minutes after play had been resumed and was instantly obeyed.

 

Whereupon his mood underwent another change, and he became convinced that the world was a warm and kindly place, where it was good to live. He forgot that he was jealous of Cooley and angry with the Countess; he liked everybody again, especially Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. "Won't you sit farther forward?" he begged her earnestly; "so that I can see your beautiful golden hair?"

 

He heard but dimly the spasmodic uproar that followed. "Laugh on!" he repeated with a swoop of his arm. "I don't care! Don't you care either, Mrs. Mount-Rhyswicke. Please sit where I can see your beautiful golden hair. Don't be afraid I'll kiss you again. I wouldn't do it for the whole world. You're one of the noblest women I ever knew. I feel that's true. I don't know how I know it, but I know it. Let 'em laugh!"

 

After this everything grew more and more hazy to him. For a time there was, in the centre of the haze, a nimbus of light which revealed his cards to him and the towers of chips which he constantly called for and which as constantly disappeared, like the towers of a castle in Spain. Then the haze thickened, and the one thing clear to him was a phrase from an old-time novel he had read long ago:

 

"Debt of honor."

 

The three words appeared to be written in flames against a background of dense fog. A debt of honor was as promissory note which had to be paid on Monday, and the appeal to the obdurate grandfather, a peer of England, the Earl of Mount-Rhyswicke, in fact, was made at midnight, Sunday. The fog grew still denser, lifted for a moment while he wrote his name many times on slips of blue paper; closed down once more, and again lifted, out-of-doors this time, to show him a lunatic ballet of moons dancing streakily upon the horizon.

 

He heard himself say quite clearly, "All right, old man, thank you; but don't bother about me," to a pallid but humorous Cooley in evening clothes; the fog thickened; oblivion closed upon him for a seeming second....

 

 

VII.  The Next Morning

 

Suddenly he sat up in bed in his room at the Magnifique, gazing upon a disconsolate Cooley in gray tweeds who sat heaped in a chair at the foot of the bed with his head in his hands.

 

Mellin's first sensation was of utter mystification; his second was more corporeal: the consciousness of physical misery, of consuming fever, of aches that ran over his whole body, converging to a dreadful climax in his head, of a throat so immoderately partched it seemed to crackle, and a thirst so avid it was a passion. His eye fell upon a carafe of water on a chair at his bedside; he seized upon it with a shaking hand and drank half its contents before he set it down. The action attracted his companion's attention and he looked up, showing a pale and haggard countenance.

 

"How do you feel?" inquired Cooley with a wan smile.

 

Mellin's head dropped back upon the pillow and he made one or two painful efforts to speak before he succeeded in finding a ghastly semblance of his voice.

 

"I thought I was at Madame de Vaurigard's."

 

"You were," said the other, adding grimly: "We both were."

 

"But that was only a minute ago."

 

"It was six hours ago. It's goin' on ten o'clock in the morning."

 

"I don't understand how that can be. How did I get here?"

 

"I brought you. I was pretty bad, but you - I never saw anything like you! From the time you kissed Lady Mount-Rhyswicke"

 

Mellin sat bolt upright in bed, staring wildly. He began to tremble violently.

 

"Don't you remember that?" asked Cooley.

 

Suddenly he did. The memory of it came with inexorable clarity, he crossed forearms over his horror-stricken face and fell back upon his pillow.

 

"Oh," he gasped. "Un-speakable! Un-speakable!"

 

"Lord! Don't worry about that! I don't think she minded."

 

"It's the thought of Madame de Vaurigard, it kills me! The horror of it, that I should do such a thing in her house! She'll never speak to me again, she oughtn't to; she ought to send her groom to beat me! You can't think what I've lost"

 

"Can't I!" Mr. Cooley rose from his chair and began to pace up and down the chamber. "I can guess to within a thousand francs of what  I 've lost! I had to get the hotel to cash a check on New York for me this morning. I've a habit of carrying all my money in bills, and a fool trick, too. Well, I'm cured of it!"

 

"Oh, if it were only a little  money  and nothing else that I'd lost! The money means nothing." Mellin choked.

 

"I suppose you're pretty well fixed. Well, so am I," Cooley shook his head, "but money certainly means something to me!"

 

"It wouldn't if you'd thrown away the most precious friendship of your life."

 

"See here," said Cooley, halting at the foot of the bed and looking at his stricken companion from beneath frowning brows, "I guess I can see how it is with you, and I'll tell you frankly it's been the same with me. I never met such a fascinating woman in my life: she throws a reg'ler ole-fashioned  spell  over you! Now I hate to say it, but I can't help it, because it plain hits me in the face every time I think of it; the truth is, well, sir, I'm afraid you and me have had little red soldier-coats and caps put on us and strings tied to our belts while we turned somersets for the children."

 

"I don't understand. I don't know what you're talking about."

 

"No? It seems to get more and more simple to me. I've been thinking it all over and over again. I can't  help  it! See here: I met Sneyd on the steamer, without any introduction. He sort of warmed into the game in the smoking-room, and he won straight along the trip. He called on me in London and took me to meet the Countess at her hotel. We three went to the theatre and lunch and so forth a few times; and when I left for Paris she turned up on the way: that's when you met her. Couple of days later, Sneyd came over, and he and the Countess introduced me to dear ole friend Pedlow. So you see, I don't rightly even know who any of 'em really  are : just took 'em for granted, as it were. We had lots of fun, I admit that, honkin' about in my car. We only played cards once, and that was in her apartment the last night before I left Paris, but that one time Pedlow won fifteen thousand francs from me. When I told them my plans, how I was goin' to motor down to Rome, she said  she  would be in Rome and, I tell you, I was happy as a poodle-pup about it. Sneyd said he might be in Rome along about then, and open-hearted ole Pedlow said not to be surprised if  he  turned up, too. Well, he did, almost to the minute, and in the meantime she'd got  you  hooked on, fine and tight."

 

"I don't understand you," Mellin lifted himself painfully on an elbow. "I don't know what you're getting at, but it seems to me that you're speaking disrespectfully of an angel that I've insulted, and I"

 

"Now see here, Mellin, I'll tell you something." The boy's white face showed sudden color and there was a catch in his voice. "I was, I've been mighty near in love  with that woman! But I've had a kind of a shock; I've got my common-sense back, and I'm  not , any more. I don't know exactly how much money I had, but it was between thirty-five and thirty-eight thousand francs, and Sneyd won it all after we took off the limit, over seven thousand dollars, at her table last night. Putting two and two together, honestly it looks bad. It looks  mighty  bad! Now, I'm pretty well fixed, and yesterday I didn't care whether school kept or not, but seven thousand dollars is real money to anybody! My old man worked pretty hard for his first seven thousand, I guess, and" he gulped "he'd think a lot of me for lettin' go of it the way I did last night,  wouldn't  he? You never  see  things like this till the next morning! And you remember that other woman sat where she could see every hand  you  drew, and the Countess"

 

"Stop!" Mellin flung one arm up violently, striking the headboard with his knuckles. "I won't hear a syllable against Madame de Vaurigard!" Young Cooley regarded him steadily for a moment. "Have you remembered yet," he said slowly, "how much  you  lost last night?"

 

"I only remember that I behaved like an unspeakable boor in the presence of the divinest creature that ever"

 

Cooley disregarded the outburst, and said:

 

"When we settled, you had a pad of express company checks worth six hundred dollars. You signed all of 'em and turned 'em over to Sneyd with three one-hundred-lire bills, which was all the cash you had with you. Then you gave him your note for twelve thousand francs to be paid within three days. You made a great deal of fuss about its being a 'debt of honor.'" He paused. "You hadn't remembered that, had you?"

 

Mellin had closed his eyes. He lay quite still and made no answer.

 

"No, I'll bet you hadn't," said Cooley, correctly deducing the fact. "You're well off, or you wouldn't be at this hotel, and, for all I know, you may be fixed so you won't mind your loss as much as I do mine; but it ought to make you kind of charitable toward my suspicions of Madame de Vaurigard's friends."

 

The six hundred dollars in express company checks and the three hundred-lire bills were all the money the unhappy Mellin had in the world, and until he could return to Cranston and go back to work in the real-estate office again, he had no prospect of any more. He had not even his steamer ticket. In the shock of horror and despair he whispered brokenly:

 

"I don't care if they 're the worst people in the world, they're better than I am!"

 

The other's gloom cleared a little at this. "Well, you  have  got it!" he exclaimed briskly. "You don't know how different you'll feel after a long walk in the open air." He looked at his watch. "I've got to go and see what that newspaper-man, Cornish, wants; it's ten o'clock. I'll be back after a while; I want to reason this out with you. I don't deny but it's possible I'm wrong; anyway, you think it over while I'm gone. You take a good hard think, will you?"

 

As he closed the door, Mellin slowly drew the coverlet over his head. It was as if he covered the face of some one who had just died.

 

 

VIII.  What Cornish Knew

 

Two hours passed before young Cooley returned. He knocked twice without a reply; then he came in.

 

The coverlet was still over Mellin's head.

 

"Asleep?" asked Cooley.

 

"No."

 

The coverlet was removed by a shaking hand.

 

"Murder!" exclaimed Cooley sympathetically, at sight of the other's face. "A night off certainly does things to you! Better let me get you some"

 

"No. I'll be all right after while."

 

"Then I'll go right ahead with our little troubles. I've decided to leave for Paris by the one-thirty and haven't got a whole lot of time. Cornish is here with me in the hall: he's got something to say that's important for you to hear, and I'm goin' to bring him right in." He waved his hand toward the door, which he had left open. "Come along, Cornish. Poor ole Mellin'll play Du Barry with us and give us a morning leevy while he listens in a bed with a palanquin to it. Now let's draw up chairs and be sociable."

 

The journalist came in, smoking a long cigar, and took the chair the youth pushed toward him; but, after a twinkling glance through his big spectacles at the face on the pillow, he rose and threw the cigar out of the window.

 

"Go ahead," said Cooley. "I want you to tell him just what you told me, and when you're through I want to see if he doesn't think I'm Sherlock Holmes' little brother."

 

"If Mr. Mellin does not feel too ill," said Cornish dryly; "I know how painful such cases sometimes"

 

"No." Mellin moistened his parched lips and made a pitiful effort to smile. "I'll be all right very soon."

 

"I am very sorry," began the journalist, "that I wasn't able to get a few words with Mr. Cooley yesterday evening. Perhaps you noticed that I tried as hard as I could, without using actual force" he laughed "to detain him."

 

"You did your best," agreed Cooley ruefully, "and I did my worst. Nobody ever listens till the next day!"

 

"Well, I'm glad no vital damage was done, anyway," said Cornish. "It would have been pretty hard lines if you two young fellows had been poor men, but as it is you're probably none the worse for a lesson like this."

 

"You seem to think seven thousand dollars is a joke," remarked Cooley.

 

Cornish laughed again. "You see, it flatters me to think my time was so valuable that a ten minutes' talk with me would have saved so much money."

 

"I doubt it," said Cooley. "Ten to one we'd neither of us have believed you last night!"

 

"I doubt it, too." Cornish turned to Mellin. "I hear that you, Mr. Mellin, are still of the opinion that you were dealing with straight people?"

 

Mellin managed to whisper "Yes."

 

"Then," said Cornish, "I'd better tell you just what I know about it, and you can form your own opinion as to whether I do know or not. I have been in the newspaper business on this side for fifteen years, and my headquarters are in Paris, where these people are very well known. The man who calls himself 'Chandler Pedlow' was a faro-dealer for Tom Stout in Chicago when Stout's place was broken up, a good many years ago. There was a real Chandler Pedlow in Congress from a California district in the early nineties, but he is dead. This man's name is Ben Welch: he's a professional swindler; and the Englishman, Sneyd, is another; a quiet man, not so well known as Welch, and not nearly so clever, but a good 'feeder' for him. The very attractive Frenchwoman who calls herself 'Comtesse de Vaurigard' is generally believed to be Sneyd's wife, though I could not take the stand on that myself. Welch is the brains of the organization: you mightn't think it, but he's a very brilliant man, he might have made a great reputation in business if he'd been straight and, with this woman's help, he's carried out some really astonishing schemes. His manner is clumsy;  he  knows that, bless you, but it's the only manner he can manage, and she is so adroit she can sugar-coat even such a pill as that and coax people to swallow it. I don't know anything about the Italian who is working with them down here. But a gang of the Welch-Vaurigard-Sneyd type has tentacles all over the Continent; such people are in touch with sharpers everywhere, you see."

 

"Yes," Cooley interpolated, "and with woolly little lambkins, too."

 

"Well," chuckled Cornish, "that's the way they make their living, you know."

 

"Go on and tell him the rest of it," urged Cooley.

 

"About Lady Mount-Rhyswicke," said Cornish, "it seems strange enough, but she has a perfect right to her name. She is a good deal older than she looks, and I've heard she used to be remarkably beautiful. Her third husband was Lord George Mount-Rhyswicke, a man who'd been dropped from his clubs, and he deserted her in 1903, but she has not divorced him. It is said that he is somewhere in South America; however, as to that I do not know."

 

Mr. Cornish put the very slightest possible emphasis on the word "know," and proceeded:

 

"I've heard that she is sincerely attached to him and sends him money from time to time, when she has it, though that, too, is third-hand information. She has been declasse  ever since her first divorce. That was a 'celebrated case,' and she's dropped down pretty far in the world, though I judge she's a good deal the best of this crowd. Exactly what her relations to the others are I don't know, but I imagine that she's pretty thick with 'em."

 

"Just a little!" exclaimed Cooley. "She sits behind one of the lambkins and Helene behind the other while they get their woolly wool clipped. I suppose the two of 'em signaled what was in every hand we held, though I'm sure they needn't have gone to the trouble! Fact is, I don't see why they bothered about goin' through the form of playin' cards with us at all. They could have taken it away without that! Whee!" Mr. Cooley whistled loud and long. "And there's loads of wise young men on the ocean now, hurryin' over to take our places in the pens. Well, they can have  mine ! Funny, Mellin: nobody would come up to you or me in the Grand Central in New York and try to sell us greenbacks just as good as real. But we come over to Europe with our pockets full o' money and start in to see the Big City with Jesse James in a false mustache on one arm, and Lucresha Borgy, under an assumed name, on the other!"

 

"I am afraid I agree with you," said Cornish; "though I must say that, from all I hear, Madame de Vaurigard might put an atmosphere about a thing which would deceive almost any one who wasn't on his guard. When a Parisienne of her sort is clever at all she's irresistible."

 

"I believe you," Cooley sighed deeply.

 

"Yesterday evening, Mr. Mellin," continued the journalist, "when I saw the son of my old friend in company with Welch and Sneyd, of course I tried to warn him. I've often seen them in Paris, though I believe they have no knowledge of me. As I've said, they are notorious, especially Welch, yet they have managed, so far, to avoid any difficulty with the Paris police, and, I'm sorry to say, it might be hard to actually prove anything against them. You couldn't  prove  that anything was crooked last night, for instance. For that matter, I don't suppose you want to. Mr. Cooley wishes to accept his loss and bear it, and I take it that that will be your attitude, too. In regard to the note you gave Sneyd, I hope you will refuse to pay; I don't think that they would dare press the matter."

 

"Neither do I," Mr. Cooley agreed. "I left a silver cigarette-case at the apartment last night, and after talkin' to Cornish a while ago, I sent my man for it with a note to her that'll make 'em all sit up and take some notice. The gang's all there together, you can be sure. I asked for Sneyd and Pedlow in the office and found they'd gone out early this morning leavin' word they wouldn't be back till midnight. And, see here; I know I'm easy, but somehow I believe you're even a softer piece o' meat than I am. I want you to promise me that whatever happens you won't pay that I O U."

 

Mellin moistened his lips in vain. He could not answer.

 

"I want you to promise me not to pay it," repeated Cooley earnestly.

 

"I promise," gasped Mellin.

 

"You won't pay it no matter what they do?"

 

"No."

 

This seemed to reassure Mr. Cooley.

 

"Well," he said, "I've got to hustle to get my car shipped and make the train. Cornish has finished his job down here and he's goin' with me. I want to get out. The whole thing's left a mighty bad taste in my mouth, and I'd go crazy if I didn't get away from it. Why don't you jump into your clothes and come along, too?"

 

"I can't."

 

"Well," said the young man with a sympathetic shake of the head, "you certainly look sick. It may be better if you stay in bed till evening: a train's a mighty mean place for the day after. But I wouldn't hang around here too long. If you want money, all you have to do is to ask the hotel to cash a check on your home bank; they're always glad to do that for Americans." He turned to the door. "Mr. Cornish, if you're goin' to help me about shipping the car, I'm ready."

 

"So am I. Good-by, Mr. Mellin."

 

"Good-by," Mellin said feebly "and thank you."

 

Young Cooley came back to the bedside and shook the other's feverish hand. "Good-by, ole man. I'm awful sorry it's all happened, but I'm glad it didn't cost you quite as much money as it did me. Otherwise I expect it's hit us about equally hard. I wish, I wish I could find a nice one " the youth gulped over something not unlike a sob "as fascinatin' as her!"

 

Most people have had dreams of approaching dangers in the path of which their bodies remained inert; when, in spite of the frantic wish to fly, it was impossible to move, while all the time the horror crept closer and closer. This was Mellin's state as he saw the young man going. It was absolutely necessary to ask Cooley for help, to beg him for a loan. But he could not.

 

He saw Cooley's hand on the doorknob; saw the door swing open.

 

"Good-by, again," Cooley said; "and good luck to you!"

 

Mellin's will strove desperately with the shame that held him silent.

 

The door was closing.

 

"Oh, Cooley," called Mellin hoarsely.

 

"Yes. What?"

 

"J-j-just good-by," said Mellin.

 

And with that young Cooley was gone.

 

 

IX.  Expiation

 

A multitudinous clangor of bells and a dozen neighboring chimes rang noon; then the rectangular oblongs of hot sunlight that fell from the windows upon the carpet of Mellin's room began imperceptibly to shift their angles and move eastward. From the stone pavement of the street below came the sound of horses pawing and the voices of waiting cabmen; then bells again, and more bells; clamoring the slow and cruel afternoon into the past. But all was silent in Mellin's room, save when, from time to time, a long, shuddering sigh came from the bed.

 

The unhappy young man had again drawn the coverlet over his head, but not to sleep: it was more like a forlorn and desperate effort to hide, as if he crept into a hole, seeking darkness to cover the shame and fear that racked his soul. For though his shame had been too great to let him confess to young Cooley and ask for help, his fear was as great as his shame; and it increased as the hours passed. In truth his case was desperate. Except the people who had stripped him, Cooley was the only person in all of Europe with whom he had more than a very casual acquaintance. At home, in Cranston, he had no friends susceptible to such an appeal as it was vitally necessary for him to make. His relatives were not numerous: there were two aunts, the widows of his father's brothers, and a number of old-maid cousins; and he had an uncle in Iowa, a country minister whom he had not seen for years. But he could not cable to any of these for money; nor could he quite conjure his imagination into picturing any of them sending it if he did. And even to cable he would have to pawn his watch, which was an old-fashioned one of silver and might not bring enough to pay the charges.

 

He began to be haunted by fragmentary, prophetic visions, confused but realistic in detail, and horridly probable, of his ejectment from the hotel, perhaps arrest and trial. He wondered what they did in Italy to people who "beat" hotels; and, remembering what some one had told him of the dreadfulness of Italian jails, convulsive shudderings seized upon him.

 

The ruddy oblongs of sunlight crawled nearer to the east wall of the room, stretching themselves thinner and thinner, until finally they were not there at all, and the room was left in deepening grayness. Carriages, one after the other, in unintermittent succession, rumbled up to the hotel-entrance beneath the window, bringing goldfish for the Pincio and the fountains of Villa Borghese. Wild strains from the Hungarian orchestra, rhapsodical twankings of violins, and the runaway arpeggios of a zither crazed with speed-mania, skipped along the corridors and lightly through Mellin's door. In his mind's eye he saw the gay crowd in the watery light, the little tables where only five days ago he had sat with the loveliest of all the anemone-like ladies....

 

The beautifully-dressed tea-drinkers were there now, under the green glass dome, prattling and smiling, those people he had called his own. And as the music sounded louder, faster, wilder and wilder with the gipsy madness, then in that darkening bedchamber his soul became articulate in a cry of humiliation

 

"God in His mercy forgive me, how raw I was!"

 

A vision came before his closed eyes; the maple-bordered street in Cranston, the long, straight, wide street where Mary Kramer lived; a summer twilight; Mary in her white muslin dress on the veranda steps, and a wistaria vine climbing the post beside her, half-embowering her. How cool and sweet and good she looked! How dear and how  kind! she had always been to him.

 

Dusk stole through the windows: the music ceased and the tea-hour was over. The carriages were departing, bearing the gay people who went away laughing, calling last words to one another, and, naturally, quite unaware that a young man, who, five days before, had adopted them and called them "his own," was lying in a darkened room above them, and crying like a child upon his pillow.

 

 

X.  The Cab at the Corner

 

A ten o'clock, a page bearing a card upon a silver tray knocked upon the door, and stared with wide-eyed astonishment at the disordered gentleman who opened it.

 

The card was Lady Mount-Rhyswicke's. Underneath the name was written:

 

If you are there will you give me a few minutes? I am waiting in a cab at the next corner by the fountain.

 

Mellin's hand shook as he read. He did not doubt that she came as an emissary; probably they meant to hound him for payment of the note he had given Sneyd, and at that thought he could have shrieked with hysterical laughter.

 

"Do you speak English?" he asked.

 

"Spik little. Yes."

 

"Who gave you this card?"

 

"Coachman," said the boy. "He wait risposta."

 

"Tell him to say that I shall be there in five minutes."

 

"Fi' minute. Yes. Good-by."

 

Mellin was partly dressed, he had risen half an hour earlier and had been distractedly pacing the floor when the page knocked and he completed his toilet quickly. He passed down the corridors, descended by the stairway (feeling that to use the elevator would be another abuse of the confidence of the hotel company) and slunk across the lobby with the look and the sensations of a tramp who knows that he will be kicked into the street if anybody catches sight of him.

 

A closed cab stood near the fountain at the next corner. There was a trunk on the box by the driver, and the roof was piled with bags and rugs. He approached uncertainly.

 

"Is, is this, is it Lady Mount-Rhyswicke?" he stammered pitifully.

 

She opened the door.

 

"Yes. Will you get in? We'll just drive round the block if you don't mind. I'll bring you back here in ten minutes." And when he had tremulously complied, " Avanti, cocchiere ," she called to the driver, and the tired little cab-horse began to draw them slowly along the deserted street.

 

Lady Mount-Rhyswicke maintained silence for a time, while her companion waited, his heart pounding with dreadful apprehensions. Finally she gave a short, hard laugh and said:

 

"I saw your face by the corner light. Been havin' a hard day of it?"

 

The fear of breaking down kept him from answering. He gulped painfully once or twice, and turned his face away from her. Light enough from a streetlamp shone in for her to see.

 

"I was rather afraid you'd refuse," she said seriously. "Really, I wonder you were willin' to come!"

 

"I was, I was afraid not to." He choked out the confession with the recklessness of final despair.

 

"So?" she said, with another short laugh. Then she resumed her even, tired monotone: "Your little friend Cooley's note this morning gave us all a rather fair notion as to what you must be thinkin' of us. He seems to have found a sort of walkin' 'Who's-Who-on-the-Continent' since last night. Pity for some people he didn't find it before! I don't think I'm sympathetic with your little Cooley. I 'guess,' as you Yankees say, 'he can stand it.' But" her voice suddenly became louder "I'm not in the business of robbin' babies and orphans, no, my dear friends, nor of helpin' anybody else to rob them either! Here you are!"

 

She thrust into his hand a small packet, securely wrapped in paper and fastened with rubber bands. "There's your block of express checks for six hundred dollars and your I O U to Sneyd with it. Take better care of it next time."

 

He had been tremulous enough, but at that his whole body began to shake violently.

 

" What !" he quavered.

 

"I say, take better care of it next time," she said, dropping again into her monotone. "I didn't have such an easy time gettin' it back from them as you might think. I've got rather a sore wrist, in fact."

 

She paused at an inarticulate sound from him.

 

"Oh, that's soon mended," she laughed drearily. "The truth is, it's been a good thing for me, your turning up. They're gettin' in too deep water for me, Helene and her friends, and I've broken with the lot, or they've broken with me, whichever it is. We couldn't hang together after the fightin' we've done to-day. I had to do a lot of threatenin' and things. Welch was ugly, so I had to be ugly too. Never mind" she checked an uncertain effort of his to speak "I saw what you were like, soon as we sat down at the table last night, how new you were and all that. It needed only a glance to see that Helene had made a mistake about you. She'd got a notion you were a millionaire like the little Cooley, but I knew better from your talk. She's clever, but she's French, and she can't get it out of her head that you could be an American and not a millionaire. Of course, they  all  knew better when you brought out your express checks and talked like somebody in one of the old-time story-books about 'debts of honor.' Even Helene understood then that the express checks were all you had." She laughed. "I didn't have any trouble gettin' the  note  back!"

 

She paused again for a moment, then resumed: "There isn't much use our goin' over it all, but I want you to know one thing. Your little friend Cooley made it rather clear that he accused Helene and me of signalin'. Well, I didn't. Perhaps that's the reason you didn't lose as much as he did; I can't say. And one thing more: all this isn't goin' to do you any harm. I'm not very keen about philosophy and religion and that, but I believe if you're let in for a lot of trouble, and it only  half  kills you, you can get some good of it."

 

"Do you think," he stammered "do you think I'm worth saving?"

 

She smiled faintly and said:

 

"You've probably got a sweetheart in the States somewhere, a nice girl, a pretty young thing who goes to church and thinks you're a great man, perhaps? Is it so?"

 

"I am not worthy," he began, choked suddenly, then finished "to breathe the same air!"

 

"That's quite right," Lady Mount-Rhyswicke assured him. "Think what you'd think of her if she'd got herself into the same sort of scrape by doin' the things you've been doin'! And remember  that  if you ever feel impatient with her, or have any temptations to superiority in times to come. And yet" for the moment she spoke earnestly "you go back to your little girl, but don't you tell her a word of this. You couldn't even tell her that meetin' you has helped me, because she wouldn't understand."

 

"Nor do I. I can't."

 

"Oh, it's simple. I saw that if I was gettin' down to where I was robbin' babies and orphans...." The cab halted. "Here's your corner. I told him only to go round the block and come back. Good-by. I'm off for Amalfi. It's a good place to rest."

 

He got out dazedly, and the driver cracked his whip over the little horse; but Mellin lifted a detaining hand.

 

" A spet ," called Lady Mount-Rhyswicke to the driver. "What is it, Mr. Mellin?"

 

"I can't, I can't look you in the face," he stammered, his attitude perfectly corroborative of his words. "I would, oh, I would kneel in the dust here before you"

 

"Some of the poetry you told me you write?"

 

"I've never written any poetry," he said, not looking up. "Perhaps I can now. What I want to say is, I'm so ashamed of it, -I don't know how to get the words out, but I must. I may never see you again, and I must. I 'm sorry, please try to forgive me, I wasn't myself when I did it"

 

"Blurt it out; that's the best way."

 

"I'm sorry," he floundered "I'm sorry I kissed you."

 

She laughed her tired laugh and said in her tired voice the last words he was ever destined to hear from her:

 

"Oh, I don't mind, if you don't. It was so innocent, it was what decided me."

 

One of the hundreds of good saints that belong to Rome must have overheard her and pitied the young man, for it is ascribable only to some such special act of mercy that Mellin understood (and he did) exactly what she meant.

 

 

 

Harlequin And Columbine

 

I

For a lucky glimpse of the great Talbot Potter, the girls who caught it may thank that conjunction of Olympian events which brings within the boundaries of one November week the Horse Show and the roaring climax of the football months and the more dulcet, yet vast, beginning of the opera season. Some throbbing of attendant multitudes coming to the ears of Talbot Potter, he obeyed an inward call to walk to rehearsal by way of Fifth Avenue, and turning out of Forty-fourth Street to become part of the people-sea of the southward current, felt the eyes of the northward beating upon his face like the pulsing successions of an exhilarating surf. His Fifth Avenue knew its Talbot Potter.

 

Strangers used to leisurely appraisals upon their own thoroughfares are apt to believe that Fifth Avenue notices nothing; but they are mistaken; it is New York that is preoccupied, not Fifth Avenue. The Fifth Avenue eye, like a policeman's, familiar with a variety of types, catalogues you and replaces you upon the shelf with such automatic rapidity that you are not aware you have been taken down. Fifth Avenue is secretly populous with observers who take note of everything.

 

Of course, among these peregrinate great numbers almost in a stupor so far as what is closest around them is concerned; and there are those, too, who are so completely busied with either the consciousness of being noticed, or the hope of being noticed, or the hatred of it, that they take note of nothing else. Fifth Avenue expressions are a filling meal for the prowling lonely joker; but what will most satisfy his cannibal appetite is the passage of the self-conscious men and women. For here, on a good day, he cannot fail to relish some extreme cases of their whimsical disease: fledgling young men making believe to be haughty to cover their dreadful symptoms, the mask itself thus revealing what it seeks to conceal; timid young ladies, likewise treacherously exposed by their defenses; and very different ladies, but in similar case, being retouched ladies, tinted ladies; and ladies who know that they are pretty at first sight, ladies who chat with some obscured companion only to offer the public a treat of graceful gestures; and poor ladies making believe to be rich ladies; and rich ladies making believe to be important ladies; and many other sorts of conscious ladies. And men, ah, pitiful! pitiful the wretch whose hardihood has involved him in cruel and unusual great gloss and unsheltered tailed coat. Any man in his overcoat is wrapped in his castle; he fears nothing. But to this hunted creature, naked in his robin's tail, the whole panorama of the Avenue is merely a blurred audience, focusing upon him a vast glare of derision; he walks swiftly, as upon fire, pretends to careless sidelong interest in shop-windows as he goes, makes play with his unfamiliar cane only to be horror-stricken at the flourishings so evoked of his wild gloves; and at last, fairly crawling with the eyes he feels all over him, he must draw forth his handkerchief and shelter behind it, poor man, in the dishonourable affectation of a sneeze!

 

Piquant contrast to these obsessions, the well-known expression of Talbot Potter lifted him above the crowd to such high serenity his face might have been that of a young Pope, with a dash of Sydney Carton. His glance fixed itself, in its benign detachment, upon the misty top of the Flatiron, far down the street, and the more frequent the plainly visible recognitions among the north-bound people, the less he seemed aware of them. And yet, whenever the sieving current of pedestrians brought momentarily face to face with him a girl or woman, apparently civilized and in the mode, who obviously had never seen him before and seemed not to care if it should be her fate never to repeat the experience, Talbot Potter had a certain desire. If society had established a rule that all men must instantly obey and act upon every fleeting impulse, Talbot Potter would have taken that girl or woman by the shoulders and said to her: "What's the matter with you!"

 

At Forty-second Street he crossed over, proceeded to the middle of the block, and halted dreamily on the edge of the pavement, his back to the crowd. His face was toward the Library, with its two annoyed pet lions, typifying learning, and he appeared to study the great building. One or two of the passersby had seen him standing on that self-same spot before; in fact, he always stopped there whenever he walked down the Avenue.

 

For a little time (not too long) he stood there; and thus absorbed he was, as they say, a Picture. Moreover, being such a popular one, he attracted much interest. People paused to observe him; and all unaware of their attention, he suddenly smiled charmingly, as at some gentle pleasantry in his own mind, something he had remembered from a book, no doubt. It was a wonderful smile, and vanished slowly, leaving a rapt look; evidently he was lost in musing upon architecture and sculpture and beautiful books. A girl whisking by in an automobile had time to guess, reverently, that the phrase in his mind was: "A Stately Home for Beautiful Books!" Dinner-tables would hear, that evening, how Talbot Potter stood there, oblivious of everything else, studying the Library!

 

This slight sketch of artistic reverie completed, he went on, proceeding a little more rapidly down the Avenue; presently turned over to the stage door of Wallack's, made his way through the ensuing passages, and appeared upon the vasty stage of the old theatre, where his company of actors awaited his coming to begin the rehearsal of a new play.

 

 

II

 

"First act, please, ladies and gentlemen!"

 

Thus spake, without emotion, Packer, the stage-manager; but out in the dusky auditorium, Stewart Canby, the new playwright, began to tremble. It was his first rehearsal.

 

He and one other sat in the shadowy hollow of the orchestra, two obscure little shapes on the floor of the enormous cavern. The other was Talbot Potter's manager, Carson Tinker, a neat, grim, small old man with a definite appearance of having long ago learned that after a little while life will beat anybody's game, no matter how good. He observed the nervousness of the playwright, but without interest. He had seen too many.

 

Young Canby's play was a study of egoism, being the portrait of a man wholly given over to selfish ambitions finally attained, but "at the cost of every good thing in his life," including the loss of his "honour," his lady-love, and the trust and affection of his friends. Young Canby had worked patiently at his manuscript, rewriting, condensing, pouring over it the sincere sweat of his brow and the light of his boarding-house lamp during most of the evenings of two years, until at last he was able to tell his confidants, rather huskily, that there was "not one single superfluous word in it," not one that could possibly be cut, nor one that could be changed without "altering the significance of the whole work."

 

The moment was at hand when he was to see the vision of so many toilsome hours begin to grow alive. What had been no more than little black marks on white paper was now to become a living voice vibrating the actual air. No wonder, then, that tremors seized him; Pygmalion shook as Galatea began to breathe, and to young Canby it was no less a miracle that his black marks and white paper should thus come to life.

 

"Miss Ellsling!" called the stage-manager. "Miss Ellsling, you're on. You're on artificial stone bench in garden, down right. Mr. Nippert, you're on. You're over yonder, right cen -"

 

"Not at all!" interrupted Talbot Potter, who had taken his seat at a small table near the trough where the footlights lay asleep, like the row of night-watchmen they were. "Not at all!" he repeated sharply, thumping the table with his knuckles. "That's all out. It's cut. Nippert doesn't come on in this scene at all. You've got the original script there, Packer. Good heavens! Packer, can't you ever get anything right? Didn't I distinctly tell you. Here! Come here! Not garden set, at all. Play it interior, same as act second. Look, Packer, look! Miss Ellsling down left, in chair by escritoire. In heaven's name, can you read, Packer?"

 

"Yessir, yessir. I see, sir, I see!" said Packer with piteous eagerness, taking the manuscript the star handed him. "Now, then, Miss Ellsling, if you please"

 

"I will have my tea indoors," Miss Ellsling began promptly, striking an imaginary bell. "I will have my tea indoors, to-day, I think, Pritchard. It is cooler indoors, to-day, I think, on the whole, and so it will be pleasanter to have my tea indoors to-day. Strike bell again. Do you hear, Pritchard?"

 

Out in the dimness beyond the stage the thin figure of the new playwright rose dazedly from an orchestra chair.

 

"What, what's this?" he stammered, the choked sounds he made not reaching the stage.

 

"What's the matter?" The question came from Carson Tinker, but his tone was incurious, manifesting no interest whatever. Tinker's voice, like his pale, spectacled glance, was not tired; it was dead.

 

"Tea!" gasped Canby. "People are sick of tea! I didn't write any tea!"

 

"There isn't any," said Tinker. "The way he's got it, there's an interruption before the tea comes, and it isn't brought in."

 

"But she's ordered it! If it doesn't come the audience will wonder"

 

"No," said Tinker. "They won't think of that. They won't hear her order it."

 

"Then for heaven's sake, why has he put it in? I wrote this play to begin right in the story"

 

"That's the trouble. They never hear the beginning. They're slamming seats, taking off wraps, looking round to see who's there. That's why we used to begin plays with servants dusting and 'Well-I-never-half-past-nine-and-the-young-master-not-yet-risen!"

 

"I wrote it to begin with a garden scene," Canby protested, unheeding. "Why"

 

"He's changed this act a good deal."

 

"But I wrote"

 

"He never uses garden sets. Not intimate enough; and they're a nuisance to light. I wouldn't worry about it."

 

"But it changes the whole signify -"

 

"Well, talk to him about it," said Tinker, adding lifelessly, "I wouldn't argue with him much, though. I never knew anybody do anything with him that way yet."

 

Miss Ellsling, on the stage, seemed to be supplementing this remark. "Roderick Hanscom is a determined man," she said, in character. "He is hard as steel to a treacherous enemy, but he is tender and gentle to women and children. Only yesterday I saw him pick up a fallen crippled child from beneath the relentless horses' feet on a crossing, at the risk of his very life, and then as he placed it in the mother's arms, he smiled that wonderful smile of his, that wonderful smile of his that seems to brighten the whole world! Wait till you meet him. But that is his step now and you shall judge for yourselves! Let us rise, if you please, to give him befitting greeting."

 

"What, what!" gasped Canby.

 

"Sh!" Tinker whispered.

 

"But all I wrote for her to say, when Roderick Hanscom's name is mentioned, was 'I don't think I like him.' My God!"

 

"Sh!"

 

"The Honourable Robert Hanscom!" shouted Packer, in a ringing voice as a stage-servant, or herald.

 

"It gives him an entrance, you see," murmured Tinker. "Your script just let him walk on."

 

"And all that horrible stuff about his 'wonderful smile!'" Canby babbled. "Think of his putting that in himself."

 

"Well, you hadn't done it for him. It is a wonderful smile, isn't it?"

 

"My God!"

 

"Sh!"

 

Talbot Potter had stepped to the centre of the stage and was smiling the wonderful smile. "Mildred, and you, my other friends, good friends," he began, "for I know that you are all true friends here, and I can trust you with a secret very near my heart"

 

"Most of them are supposed never to have seen him before," said Canby, hoarsely. "And she's just told them they could judge for themselves when"

 

"They won't notice that."

 

"You mean the audience won't"

 

"No, they won't," said Tinker.

 

"But good heavens! it's 'Donald Gray,' the other character, that trusts him with the secret, and he betrays it later. This upsets the whole"

 

"Well, talk to him. I can't help it."

 

"It is a political secret," Potter continued, reading from a manuscript in his hand, "and almost a matter of life and death. But I trust you with it openly and fearlessly because"

 

At this point his voice was lost in a destroying uproar. Perceiving that the rehearsal was well under way, and that the star had made his entrance, two of the stage-hands attached to the theatre ascended to the flies and set up a great bellowing on high. "Lower that strip!" "You don't want that strip lowered, I tell you!" "Oh, my Lord! Can't you lower that strip!" Another workman at the rear of the stage began to saw a plank, and somebody else, concealed behind a bit of scenery, hammered terrifically upon metal. Altogether it was a successful outbreak.

 

Potter threw his manuscript upon the table, a gesture that caused the shoulders of Packer to move in a visible shudder, and the company, all eyes fixed upon the face of the star, suddenly wore the look of people watching a mysterious sealed packet from which a muffled ticking is heard. The bellowing and the sawing and the hammering increased in fury.

 

In the orchestra a rusty gleam of something like mummified pleasure passed unseen behind the spectacles of old Carson Tinker. "Stage-hands are the devil," he explained to the stupefied Canby. "Rehearsals bore them and they love to hear what an actor says when his nerves go to pieces. If Potter blows up they'll quiet down to enjoy it and then do it again pretty soon. If he doesn't blow up he'll take it out on somebody else later."

 

Potter stood silent in the centre of the stage, expressionless, which seemed to terrify the stage-manager. "Just one second, Mr. Potter!" he screamed, his brow pearly with the anguish of apprehension. "Just one second, sir!"

 

He went hotfoot among the disturbers, protesting, commanding, imploring, and plausibly answering severe questions. "Well, when do you expect us to git this work done?" "We got our work to do, ain't we?" until finally the tumult ceased, the saw slowing down last of all, tapering off reluctantly into a silence of plaintive disappointment; whereupon Packer resumed his place, under a light at the side of the stage, turning the pages of his manuscript with fluttering fingers and keeping his eyes fixed guiltily upon it. The company of actors also carefully removed their gaze from the star and looked guilty.

 

Potter allowed the fatal hush to continue, while the culpability of Packer and the company seemed mysteriously to increase until they all reeked with it. The stage-hands had withdrawn in a grieved manner somewhere into the huge rearward spaces of the old building. They belonged to the theatre, not to Potter, and, besides, they had a union. But the actors were dependent upon Potter for the coming winter's work and wages; they were his employees.

 

At last he spoke: "We will go on with the rehearsal," he said quietly.

 

"Ah!" murmured old Tinker. "He'll take it out on somebody else." And with every precaution not to jar down a seat in passing, he edged his way to the aisle and went softly thereby to the extreme rear of the house. He was an employee, too.

 

 

III

 

It was a luckless lady who helped to fulfil the prediction. Technically she was the "ingenue"; publicly she was "Miss Carol Lyston"; legally she was a Mrs. Surbilt, being wife to the established leading man of that ilk, Vorly Surbilt. Miss Lyston had come to the rehearsal in a condition of exhausted nerves, owing to her husband's having just accepted, over her protest, a "road" engagement with a lady-star of such susceptible gallantry she had never yet been known to resist falling in love with her leading-man before she quarrelled with him. Miss Lyston's protest having lasted the whole of the preceeding night, and not at all concluding with Mr. Surbilt's departure, about breakfast-time, avowedly to seek total anaesthesia by means of a long list of liquors, which he named, she had spent the hours before rehearsal interviewing female acquaintances who had been members of the susceptible lady's company, a proceeding which indicates that she deliberately courted hysteria.

 

Shortly after the outraged rehearsal had been resumed, she unfortunately uttered a loud, dry sob, startlingly irrelevant to the matter in hand. It came during the revelation of "Roderick Hanscom's" secret, and Potter stopped instantly.

 

"Who did that?"

 

"Miss Lyston, sir," Packer responded loyally, such matters being part of his duty.

 

The star turned to face the agitated criminal. "Miss Lyston," he said, delaying each syllable to pack it more solidly with ice, "will you be good enough to inform this company if there is anything in your lines to warrant your breaking into a speech of mine with a horrible noise like that?"

 

"Nothing."

 

"Then perhaps you will inform us why you do break into a speech of mine with a horrible noise like that?"

 

"I only coughed, Mr. Potter," said Miss Lyston, shaking.

 

"Coughed!" he repeated slowly, and then with a sudden tragic fury shouted at the top of his splendid voice, "COUGHED!" He swung away from her, and strode up and down the stage, struggling with emotion, while the stricken company fastened their eyes to their strips of manuscript, as if in study, and looked neither at him nor Miss Lyston.

 

"You only coughed!" He paused before her in his stride. "Is it your purpose to cough during my speeches when this play is produced before an audience?" He waited for no reply, but taking his head woefully in his hands, began to pace up and down again, turning at last toward the dark auditorium to address his invisible manager:

 

"Really, really, Mr. Tinker," he cried, despairingly, "we shall have to change some of these people. I can't act with Mr. Tinker! Where's Mr. Tinker? Mr. Tinker! My soul! He's gone! He always is gone when I want him! I wonder how many men would bear what I" But here he interrupted himself unexpectedly. "Go on with the rehearsal! Packer, where were we?"

 

"Here, sir, right here," brightly responded Packer, ready finger upon the proper spot in the manuscript. "You had just begun, 'Nothing in this world but that one thing can defeat my certain election and nothing but that one thing shall de -"

 

"That will do," thundered his master. "Are you going to play the part? Get out of the way and let's get on with the act, in heaven's name! Down stage a step, Miss Ellsling. No; I said down. A step, not a mile! There! Now, if you consent to be ready, ladies and gentlemen. Very well. 'Nothing in this world but that one thing can defeat my certain election and noth'" Again he interrupted himself unexpectedly. In the middle of the word there came a catch in his voice; he broke off, and whirling once more upon the miserable Miss Lyston, he transfixed her with a forefinger and a yell.

 

"It wasn't a cough! What was that horrible noise you made?"

 

Miss Lyston, being unable to reply in words, gave him for answer an object-lesson which demonstrated plainly the nature of the horrible noise. She broke into loud, consecutive sobs, while Potter, very little the real cause of them, altered in expression from indignation to the neighborhood of lunacy.

 

"She's doing this in purpose!" he cried. "What's the matter with her? She's sick! Miss Lyston, you're sick! Packer, get her away, take her away. She's sick! Send her home, send her home in a cab! Packer!"

 

"Yes, Mr. Potter, I'll arrange it. Don't be disturbed."

 

The stage-manager was already at the sobbing lady's side, and she leaned upon him gratefully, continuing to produce the symptoms of her illness.

 

"Put her in a cab at once," said the star, somewhat recovered from his consternation. "You can pay the cabman," he added. "Make her as comfortable as you can; she's really ill. Miss Lyston, you shouldn't have tried to rehearse when you're so ill. Do everything possible for Miss Lyston's comfort, Packer."

 

He followed the pair as they entered the passageway to the stage door; then, Miss Lyston's demonstrations becoming less audible, he halted abruptly, and his brow grew dark with suspicion. When Packer returned, he beckoned him aside. "Didn't she seem all right as soon as she got out of my sight?"

 

"No, sir; she seemed pretty badly upset."

 

"What about?"

 

"Oh, something entirely outside of rehearsal, sir," Packer answered in haste. "Entirely outside. She wanted to know if I'd heard any gossip about her husband lately. That's it, Mr. Potter."

 

"You don't think she was shamming just to get off?"

 

"Oh, not at all. I"

 

"Ha! She may have fooled you, Packer, or perhaps, perhaps" he paused, frowning "perhaps you were trying to fool me, too. I don't know your private life; you may have reasons to help her de -"

 

"Mr. Potter!" cried the distressed man. "What could be my object? I don't know Miss Lyston off. I was only telling you the simple truth."

 

"How do I know?" Potter gave him a piercing look. "People are always trying to take advantage of me."

 

"But Mr. Potter, I"

 

"Don't get it into your head that I am too easy, Packer! You think you've got a luxurious thing of it here, with me, but" He concluded with an ominous shake of the head in lieu of words, then returned to the centre of the stage. "Are we to be all day getting on with this rehearsal?"

 

Packer flew to the table and seized the manuscript he had left there. "All ready, sir! 'Nothing in this world but one thing can defeat' and so on, so on. All ready, sir!"

 

The star made no reply but to gaze upon him stonily, a stare which produced another dreadful silence. Packer tried to smile, a lamentable sight.

 

"Something wrong, Mr. Potter?" he finally ventured, desperately.

 

The answer came in a voice cracking with emotional strain: "I wonder how many men bear what I bear? I wonder how many men would pay a stage-manager the salary I pay, and then do all his work for him!"

 

"Mr. Potter, if you'll tell me what's the matter," Packer quavered; "if you'll only tell me"

 

"The understudy, idiot! Where is the understudy to read Miss Lyston's part? You haven't got one! I knew it! I told you last week to engage an understudy for the women's parts, and you haven't done it. I knew it, I knew it! God help me, I knew it!"

 

"But I did, sir. I've got her here."

 

Packer ran to the back of the stage, shouting loudly: "Miss-oh, Miss, I forget-your-name! Understudy! Miss"

 

"I'm here!"

 

It was an odd, slender voice that spoke, just behind Talbot Potter, and he turned to stare at a little figure in black, she had come so quietly out of the shadows of the scenery into Miss Lyston's place that no one had noticed. She was indefinite of outline still, in the sparse light of that cavernous place; and, with a veil lifted just to the level of her brows, under a shadowing black hat, not much was to be clearly discerned of her except that she was small and pale and had bright eyes. But even the two words she spoke proved the peculiar quality of her voice: it was like the tremolo of a zither string; and at the sound of it the actors on each side of her instinctively moved a step back for a better view of her, while in his lurking place old Tinker let his dry lips open a little, which was as near as he ever came, nowadays, to a look of interest. He had noted that this voice, sweet as rain, and vibrant, but not loud, was the ordinary speaking voice of the understudy, and that her "I'm here," had sounded, soft and clear, across the deep orchestra to the last row in the house.

 

"Of course!" Packer cried. "There she is, Mr. Potter! There's Miss, Miss"

 

"Is her name 'Missmiss'?" the star demanded bitterly.

 

"No sir. I've forgotten it, just this moment, Mr. Potter, but I've got it. I've got it right here." He began frantically to turn out the contents of his pockets. "It's in my memorandum book, if I could only find"

 

"The devil, the devil!" shouted Potter. "A fine understudy you've got for us! She sees me standing here like, like a statue, delaying the whole rehearsal, while we wait for you to find her name, and she won't open her lips!" He swept the air with a furious gesture, and a subtle faint relief became manifest throughout the company at this token that the newcomer was indeed to fill Miss Lyston's place for one rehearsal at least. "Why don't you tell us your name?" he roared.

 

"I understood," said the zither-sweet voice, "that I was never to speak to you unless you directly asked me a question. My"

 

"My soul! Have you got a name?"

 

"Wanda Malone."

 

Potter had never heard it until that moment, but his expression showed that he considered it another outrage.

 

 

IV

 

The rehearsal proceeded, and under that cover old Tinker came noiselessly down the aisle and resumed his seat beside Canby, who was uttering short, broken sighs, and appeared to have been trying with fair success to give himself a shampoo.

 

"It's ruined, Mr. Tinker!" he moaned, and his accompanying gesture was misleading, seeming to indicate that he alluded to his hair. "It's all ruined if he sticks to these horrible lines he's put in, people told me I ought to have it in my contract that nothing could be changed. I was trying to make the audience see the tragedy of egoism in my play and how people get to hating an egoist. I made 'Roderick Hanscom' a disagreeable character on purpose, and oh, listen to that!"

 

Miss Ellsling and Talbot Potter stood alone, near the front of the stage. "Why do you waste such goodness on me, Roderick?" Miss Ellsling was inquiring. "It is noble and I feel that I am unworthy of you."

 

"No, Mildred, believe me," Potter read from his manuscript, "I would rather decline the nomination and abandon my career, and go to live in some quiet spot far from all this, than that you should know one single moment's unhappiness, for you mean far more to me than worldly success." He kissed her hand with reverence, and lifted his head slowly, facing the audience with rapt gaze; his wonderful smile, that ineffable smile of abnegation and benignity, just beginning to dawn.

 

Coming from behind him, and therefore unable to see his face, Miss Wanda Malone advanced in her character of ingenue, speaking with an effect of gayety: "Now what are you two good people conspiring about?"

 

Potter stamped the floor; there was wrenched from him an incoherent shriek containing fragments of profane words and ending distinguishably with: "It's that Missmiss again!"

 

Packer impelled himself upon Miss Malone, pushing her back. "No, no, no!" he cried. "Count ten! Count ten before you come down with that speech. You mustn't interrupt Mr. Potter, Miss, Miss"

 

"It was my cue," she said composedly, showing her little pamphlet of typewritten manuscript. "Wasn't I meant to speak on the cue?"

 

Talbot Potter recovered himself sufficiently to utter a cry of despair: "And these are the kind of people an artist must work with!" He lifted his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods for pity; then, with a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of the stage and came mincing forward evidently intending saturnine mimicry, repeating the ingenue's speech in a mocking falsetto: "Now what are you two good people conspiring about?" After that he whirled upon her, demanding with ferocity: "You've got something you can think with in your head, haven't you, Missmiss? Then what do you think of that?"

 

Miss Malone smiled, and it was a smile that would have gone a long way at a college dance. Here, it made the pitying company shudder for her. "I think it's a silly, makeshift sort of a speech," she said cheerfully, in which opinion the unhappy playwright out in the audience hotly agreed. "It's a bit of threadbare archness, and if I were to play Miss Lyston's part, I'd be glad to have it changed!"

 

Potter looked dazed. "Is it your idea," he said in a ghostly voice, "that I was asking for your impression of the dramatic and literary value of that line?"

 

She seemed surprised. "Weren't you?"

 

It was too much for Potter. He had brilliant and unusual powers of expression, but this was beyond them. He went to the chair beside the little table, flung himself upon it, his legs outstretched, his arms dangling inert, and stared haggardly upward at nothing.

 

Packer staggered into the breach. "You interrupted the smile, Miss, Mi -"

 

"Miss Malone," she prompted.

 

"You interrupted the smile, Miss Malone. Mr. Potter gives them the smile there. You must count ten for it, after your cue. Ten, slow. Count slow. Mark it on your sides, Miss, ah, Miss. 'Count ten for smile. Write it down please, Miss, Miss"

 

Potter spoke wearily. "Be kind enough to let me know, Packer, when you and Missmiss can bring yourselves to permit this rehearsal to continue."

 

"All ready, sir," said Packer briskly. "All ready now, Mr. Potter." And upon the star's limply rising, Miss Ellsling, most tactful of leading women, went back to his cue with a change of emphasis in her reading that helped to restore him somewhat to his poise. "It is noble," she repeated, "and I feel that I am unworthy of you!"

 

Counting ten slowly proved to be the proper deference to the smile, and Miss Malone was allowed to come down the stage and complete, undisturbed, her ingenue request to know what the two good people were conspiring about. Thereafter the rehearsal went on in a strange, unreal peace like that of a prairie noon in the cyclone season.

 

"Notice that girl?" old Tinker muttered, as Wanda Malone finished another ingenue question with a light laugh, as commanded by her manuscript. "She's frightened but she's steady."

 

"What girl?" Canby was shampooing himself feverishly and had little interest in girls. "I made it a disagreeable character because"

 

"I mean the one he's letting out on, Malone," said Tinker. "Didn't you notice her voice? Her laugh reminds me of Fanny Caton's and Dora Preston's"

 

"Who?" Canby asked vaguely.

 

"Oh, nobody you'd remember; some old-time actresses that had their day and died long ago. This girl's voice made me think of them."

 

"She may, she may," said Canby hurriedly. "Mr. Tinker, the play is ruined. He's tangled the whole act up so that I can't tell what it's about myself. Instead of Roderick Hanscom's being a man that people dislike for his conceit and selfishness he's got him absolutely turned round. I oughtn't to allow it but everything's so different from what I thought it would be! He doesn't seem to know I'm here. I came prepared to read the play to the company; I thought he'd want me to."

 

"Oh, no," said Tinker. "He never does that."

 

"Why not?"

 

"Wastes time, for one thing. The actors don't listen except when their own parts are being read."

 

"Good gracious!"

 

"Their own parts are all they have to look out for," the old man informed him dryly. "I've known actors to play a long time in parts that didn't appear in the last act, and they never know how the play ended."

 

"Good gracious!"

 

"Never cared, either," Tinker added.

 

"Good gr -"

 

"Sh! He's breaking out again!"

 

A shriek of agony came from the stage. "Pack-e-r-r-! Where did you find this Missmiss understudy? Can't you get me people of experience? I really cannot bear this kind of thing, I can not!" And Potter flung himself upon the chair, leaving the slight figure in black standing alone in the centre of the stage. He sprang up again, however, surprisingly, upon the very instant of despairing collapse. "What do you mean by this perpetual torture of me?" he wailed at her. "Don't you know what you did?"

 

"No, Mr. Potter." She looked at him bravely, but she began to grow red.

 

"You don't?" he cried incredulously. "You don't know what you did? You moved! How are they going to get my face if you move? Don't you know enough to hold a picture and not ruin it by moving?"

 

"There was a movement written for that cue," she said, a little tremulously. "The business in the script is, 'Showing that she is touched by Roderick's nobleness, lifts handkerchief impulsive gesture to eyes.'"

 

"Not," he shouted, "not during the SMILE!"

 

"Oh!" she cried remorsefully. "Have I done that again?"

 

"'Again!' I don't know how many times you've done it!" He flung his arms wide, with hands outspread and fingers vibrating. "You do it every time you get the chance! You do it perpetually! You don't do anything else! It's all you live for!"

 

He hurled his manuscript violently at the table, Packer making a wonderful pick-up catch of it just as it touched the floor.

 

"That's all!" And the unhappy artist sank into the chair in a crumpled stupor.

 

"Ten o'clock to-morrow morning, ladies and gentlemen!" Packer called immediately, with brisk cheerfulness. "Please notice: to-morrow's rehearsal is in the morning. Ten o'clock to-morrow morning!"

 

"Tell the understudy to wait, Packer," said the star abysmally, and Packer addressed himself to the departing backs of the company:

 

"Mr. Potter wants to speak to Miss, Miss"

 

"Malone," prompted the owner of the name, without resentment.

 

"Wait a moment, Miss Malone," said Potter, looking up wearily. "Is Mr. Tinker anywhere about?"

 

"I'm here, Mr. Potter." Tinker came forward to the orchestra railing.

 

"I've been thinking about this play, Mr. Tinker," Potter said, shaking his head despondently. "I don't know about it. I'm very, very doubtful about it." He peered over Tinker's head, squinting his eyes, and seemed for the first time to be aware of the playwright's presence. "Oh, are you there, Mr. Canby? When did you come in?"

 

"I've been here all the time," said the dishevelled Canby, coming forward. "I supposed it was my business to be here, but-"

 

"Very glad to have you if you wish," Potter interrupted gloomily. "Any time. Any time you like. I was just telling Mr. Tinker that I don't know about your play. I don't know if it'll do at all."

 

"If you'd play it," Canby began, "the way I wrote it"

 

"In the first place," Potter said with sudden vehemence, "it lacks Punch! Where's your Punch in this play, Mr. Canby? Where is there any Punch whatever in the whole four acts? Surely, after this rehearsal, you don't mean to claim that the first act has one single ounce of Punch in it!"

 

"But you've twisted this act all round," the unhappy young man protested. "The way you have it I can't tell what it's got to it. I meant Roderick Hanscom to be a disagr -"

 

"Mr. Canby," said the star, rising impressively, "if we played that act the way you wrote it, we'd last just about four minutes of the opening night. You gave me absolutely nothing to do! Other people talked at me and I had to stand there and be talked at for twenty minutes straight, like a blithering ninny!"

 

"Well, as you have it, the other actors have to stand there like ninnies," poor Canby retorted miserably, "while you talk at them almost the whole time."

 

"My soul!" Potter struck the table with the palm of his hand. "Do you think anybody's going to pay two dollars to watch me listen to my company for three hours? No, my dear man, your play's got to give me something to do! You'll have to rewrite the second and third acts. I've done what I could for the first, but, good God! Mr. Canby, I can't write your whole play for you! You'll have to get some Punch into it or we'll never be able to go on with it."

 

"I don't know what you mean," said the playwright helplessly. "I never did know what people mean by Punch."

 

"Punch? It's what grips 'em," Potter returned with vehemence. "Punch is what keeps 'em sitting on the edge of their seats. Big love scenes! They've got Punch. Or a big scene with a man. Give me a big scene with a man." He illustrated his meaning with startling intensity, crouching and seizing an imaginary antagonist by the throat, shaking him and snarling between his clenched teeth, while his own throat swelled and reddened: "Now, damn you! You dog! So on, so on, so on! Zowie!" Suddenly his figure straightened. "Then change. See?" He became serene, almost august. "'No! I will not soil these hands with you. So on, so on, so on. I give you your worthless life. Go!'" He completed his generosity by giving Canby and Tinker the smile, after which he concluded much more cheerfully: "Something like that, Mr. Canby, and we'll have some real Punch in your play."

 

"But there isn't any chance for that kind of a scene in it," the playwright objected. "It's the study of an egoist, a disagree"

 

"There!" exclaimed Potter. "That's it! Do you think people are going to pay two dollars to see Talbot Potter behave like a cad? They won't do it; they pay two dollars to see me as I am not pretending to be the kind of man your 'Roderick Hanscom' was. No, Mr. Canby, I accepted your play because it has got quite a fair situation in the third act, and because I thought I saw a chance in it to keep some of the strength of 'Roderick Hanscom' and yet make him lovable."

 

"But, great heavens! if you make him lovable the character's ruined. Besides, the audience won't want to see him lose the girl at the end and 'Donald Grey' get her!"

 

"No, they won't; that's it exactly," said Potter thoughtfully. "You'll have to fix that, Mr. Canby. 'Roderick Hanscom' will have to win her by a great sacrifice in the last act. A great, strong, lovable man, Mr. Canby; that's the kind of character I want to play: a big, sweet, lovable fellow, with the heart of a child, that makes a great sacrifice for a woman. I don't want to play 'egoists'; I don't want to play character parts. No." He shook his head musingly, and concluded, the while a light of ineffable sweetness shone from his remarkable eyes: "Mr. Canby, no! My audience comes to see Talbot Potter. You go over these other acts and write the part so that I can play myself."

 

The playwright gazed upon him, inarticulate, and Potter, shaking himself slightly, like one aroused from a pleasant little reverie, turned to the waiting figure of the girl.

 

"What is it, Miss Malone?" he asked mildly. "Did you want to speak to me?"

 

"You told Mr. Packer to ask me to wait," she said.

 

"Did I? Oh, yes, so I did. If you please, take off your hat and veil, Miss Malone?"

 

She gave him a startled look; then, without a word, slowly obeyed.

 

"Ah, yes," he said a moment later. "We'll find something else for Miss Lyston when she recovers. You will keep the part."

 

 

V

 

When Canby (with his hair smoothed) descended to the basement dining room of his Madison Avenue boarding-house that evening, his table comrades gave him an effective entrance; they rose, waving napkins and cheering, and there were cries of "Author! Author!" "Speech!" and "Cher maitre!"

 

The recipient of these honours bore them with an uneasiness attributed to modesty, and making inadequate response, sat down to his soup with no importunate appetite.

 

"Seriously, though," said a bearded man opposite, who always broke into everything with "seriously though," or else, "all joking aside," and had thereby gained a reputation for conservatism and soundness "seriously, though, it must have been a great experience to take charge of the rehearsal of such a company as Talbot Potter's."

 

"Tell us how it felt, Canby, old boy," said another. "How does it feel to sit up there like a king makin' everybody step around to suit you?"

 

Other neighbors took it up.

 

"Any pretty girls in the company, Can?"

 

"How does it feel to be a great dramatist, old man?"

 

"When you goin' to hire a valet-chauffeur?"

 

"Better ask him when he's goin' to take us to rehearsal, to see him in his glory."

 

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," said the hostess deprecatingly, "Miss Cornish is trying to speak to Mr. Canby."

 

Miss Cornish, a middle-aged lady in black lace, sat at her right, at the head of the largest table, being the most paying of these paying guests, by which virtue she held also the ingleside premiership of the parlour overhead. She was reputed to walk much among gentles, and to have a high taste in letters and the drama; for she was chief of an essay club, had a hushing manner, and often quoted with precision from reviews, or from such publishers' advertisements as contained no slang; and she was a member of one of the leagues for patronizing the theatre in moderation.

 

"Mr. Canby," said the hostess pleasantly, "Miss Cornish wishes to"

 

This obtained the attention of the assembly, while Canby, at the other end of the room, sat back in his chair with the unenthusiastic air of a man being served with papers.

 

"Yes, Miss Cornish."

 

Miss Cornish cleared her throat, not practically, but with culture, as preliminary to an address. "I was saying, Mr. Canby," she began, "that I had a suggestion to make which may not only interest you, but certain others of us who do not enjoy equal opportunities in some matters as, as others of us who do. Indeed, I believe it will interest all of us without regard to, to, to this. What I was about to suggest was that since today you have had a very interesting experience, not only interesting because you have entered into a professional as well as personal friendship with one of our foremost artists, an artist whose work is cultivated always but also interesting because there are some of us here whose more practical occupations and walk in life must necessarily withhold them from, from this. What I meant to suggest was that, as this prevents them from, from this, would it not be a favourable opportunity for them to, to glean some commentary upon the actual methods of a field of art? Personally, it happens that whenever opportunities and invitations have been, have been urged, other duties intervened, but though, on that account never having been actually present, I am familiar, of course, through conversation with great artists and memoirs and, and other sources of literature, with the procedure and etiquette of rehearsal. But others among us, no doubt through lack of leisure, are perhaps less so than, than this. What I wished to suggest was that, not now, but after dinner, we all assemble quietly, in the large parlour upstairs, of which Mrs. Reibold has kindly consented to allow us the use for the evening, for this purpose, and that you, Mr. Canby, would then give us an informal talk" (She was momentarily interrupted by a deferential murmur of "Hear! Hear!" from everybody.) "What I meant to suggest," she resumed, smiling graciously as from a platform, "was a sort of descriptive lecture, of course wholly informal, not so much upon your little play itself, Mr. Canby, for I believe we are all familiar with its subject-matter, but what would perhaps be more improving in artistic ways would be that you give us your impressions of this little experience of yours to-day while it is fresh in your mind. I would suggest that you tell us, simply, and in your own way, exactly what was the form of procedure at rehearsal, so that those of us not so fortunate as to be already en rapport with such matters may form a helpful and artistic idea of, of this. I would suggest that you go into some details of this, perhaps adding whatever anecdotes or incidents of, of, of the day, you think would give additional value to this. I would suggest that you tell us, for instance, how you were received upon your arrival, who took you to the most favourable position for observing the performance, and what was said. We should be glad to hear also, I am sure, and artistic thoughts or, or knowledge, Mr. Potter may have let fall in the green-room; or even a few witticisms might not be out of place, if you should recall these. We should all like to know, I am sure, what Mr. Potter's method of conceiving his part was. Also, does he leave entire freedom to his company in the creation of their own roles, or does he aid them? Many questions, no doubt, occur to all of us. For instance: Did Mr. Potter offer you any suggestions for changes and alterations that might aid to develop the literary and artistic value of the pl -"

 

The placid voice, flowing on in gentle great content of itself (while all the boarders gallantly refrained from eating), was checked by an interruption which united into one shattering impact the effects of lese-majeste and of violence.

 

"Couldn't! No! No parlour! Horrib -"

 

The words mingled in the throat of the playwright, producing an explosion somewhere between choke and bellow, as he got upon his feet, overturning his chair and coincidentally dislodging several articles of china and glassware. He stood among the ruins for one moment, publicly wiping his brow with a napkin, then plunged, murmuring, out of the room and up the stairway; and, before any of the company had recovered speech, the front door was heard to slam tumultuously, its reverberations being simultaneous with the sound of footsteps running down the stoop.

 

Turning northward upon the pavement, the fugitive hurriedly passed the two lighted windows of the dining-room; they rattled with a concussion, the outburst of suddenly released voices beginning what was to be a protracted wake over the remains of his reputation as a gentleman. He fled, flinging on his overcoat as he went. In his pockets were portions of the manuscript of his play, already distorted since rehearsal to suit the new nobleness of "Roderick Hanscom," and among these inky sheets was a note from Talbot Potter, received just before dinner:

 

Dear Mr. Canby,

 

Come up to my apartments at the Pantheon after dinner and let me see what changes you have been able to make in the second and third acts. I should like to look at them before deciding to put on another play I have been considering.

 

Hastily y'rs,

 

Tal't Potter.

 

 

VI

 

Canby walked fast, the clamorous dining-room seeming to pursue him, and the thought of what figure he had cut there filling him with horror of himself, though he found a little consolation in wondering if he hadn't insulted Miss Cornish because he was a genius and couldn't help doing queer things. That solace was slight, indeed; Canby was only twenty-seven, but he was frightened.

 

The night before he had been as eagerly happy as a boy at Christmas Eve. He had finished his last day at the office, and after initiating the youth who was to take his desk, had parted with his employer genially, but to the undeniable satisfaction of both. The new career, opening so gloriously, a month earlier, with Talbot Potter's acceptance of the play, was thus definitely adopted, and no old one left to fall back upon. And Madison Avenue, after dark, shows little to reassure a new playwright who carries in his pocket a note ending with the words, "before deciding to put on another play I have been considering." It was Bleak Street, that night, for young Stewart Canby, and a bleak, bleak walk he took therein.

 

Desperate alterations were already scratched into the manuscript; plans for more and more ran overlapping one another in his mind, accompanied by phrases, echoes and fragments of Talbot Potter: "Punch! What this play needs is Punch!" "Big love scenes!" "Big scene with a man!" "Great sacrifice for a woman!" "Big-hearted, lovable fellow!" "You dog! So on, so on!" "Zowie!" He must get all this into the play and yet preserve his "third act situation," leniently admitted to be "quite a fair" one. Slacking his gait somewhat, the tormented young man lifted his hat in order to run his hand viciously through his hair, which he seemed to blame for everything. Then he muttered, under his breath, indignantly: "Darn you, let me alone!"

 

Curious bedevilment! It was not Talbot Potter whom he thus adjured: it was Wanda Malone. And yet, during the rehearsal, he had not once thought consciously of the understudy; and he had come away from the theatre occupied, exclusively, he would have sworn, with the predicament in which he found himself and his play. Surely that was enough to fill and overflow any new playwright's mind, but, about half an hour after he had reached his room and set to work upon the manuscript of the second act, he discovered that he had retained, unawares, a singularly clear impression of Miss Malone.

 

Then, presently, he realized that distinct pictures of her kept coming between him and his work, and that her voice rang softly and persistently in his ear. Over and over in that voice's slender music, plaintive, laughing, reaching everywhere so clearly, he heard the detested "line": "What are you two good people conspiring about?" Over and over he saw the slow, comprehending movement with which she removed her hat and veil to let Talbot Potter judge her. And as she stood, with that critic's eye searching her, Canby remembered that through some untraceable association of ideas he had inexplicably thought of a drawing of "Florence Dombey" in an old set of Dickens engravings he had seen at his grandfather's in his boyhood and had not seen since. And he remembered the lilac bushes in bloom on a May morning at his grandfather's. Somehow she made him think of them, too.

 

And as he sat at his desk, striving to concentrate upon the manuscript, the clearness with which Wanda Malone came before him increased; she became more and more vivid to him, and she would not be dismissed; she persisted and insisted, becoming first an annoyance, and then, as he fought the witchery, a serious detriment to his writing. She became part of every thought about his play, and of every other thought. He did not want her; he felt no interest in her; he had vital work to do and she haunted him, seemed to be in the very room with him. He worked in spite of her, but she pursued him none the less constantly; she had gone down the stairs to dinner with him; she floated before him throughout the torture of Miss Cornish's address; she was present even when he exploded and fled; she was with him now, in this desolate walk toward Talbot Potter's apartment, the pale, symmetrical little face and the relentless sweet voice commandeering the attention he wanted desperately to keep upon what he meant to say to Potter.

 

Once before in his life he had suffered such an experience: that of having his thoughts possessed, against his will, by a person he did not know and did not care to know. It had followed his happening to see an intoxicated truck-driver lying beneath an overturned wagon. "Easy, boys! Don' mangle me!" the man kept begging his rescuers. And Canby recalled how "Easy, boys! Don' mangle me!" sounded plaintively in his ears for days, bothering him in his work at the office. Remembering it now, he felt a spiteful satisfaction in classing that obsession with this one. It seemed at least a step toward teaching Miss Wanda Malone to know her place.

 

But he got no respite from the siege, and was still incessantly beleaguered when he encountered the marble severities of the Pantheon Apartments' entrance hall and those of its field-marshal, who paraded him stonily to the elevator. Mr. Potter's apartment was upon the twelfth floor, a facet stated in a monosyllable by the field-marshal, and confirmed, upon the opening of the cage at that height, by Mr. Potter's voice melodiously belling a flourish of laughter on the other side of a closed door bearing his card. It was rich laughter, cadenced and deep and loud, but so musically modulated that, though it might never seem impromptu, even old Carson Tinker had once declared that he liked to listen to it almost as much as Potter did.

 

Old Carson Tinker was listening to it now, as Canby discovered, after a lisping Japanese had announced him at the doorway of a cream-coloured Louis Sixteenth salon: an exquisite apartment, delicately personalized here and there by luxurious fragilities which would have done charmingly, on the stage, for a marquise's boudoir. Old Tinker, in evening dress, sat uncomfortably, sideways, upon the edge of a wicker and brocade "chaise lounge," finishing a tiny glass of chartreuse, while Talbot Potter, in the middle of the room, took leave of a second guest who had been dining with him.

 

Potter was concluding the rendition of hilarity which had penetrated to the outer hall, and, merely waving the playwright toward Tinker, swept the same gesture upward to complete it by resting a cordial hand upon the departing guest's shoulder. This personage, a wasp-figured, languorous youth, with pale plastered hair over a talcum face, flicked his host lightly upon the breast with a pair of white gloves.

 

"None the less, Pottuh," he said, "why shouldn't you play Othello as a mulatto? I maintain, you see, it would be taking a step in technique; they'd get the face, you see. Then I want you to do something really and truly big: Oedipus. Why not Oedipus? Think of giving the States a thing like Oedipus done as you could do it! Of coss, I don't say you could ever be another Mewnay-Sooyay. No. I don't go that far. You haven't Mewnay-Sooyay's technique. But you could give us just the savour of Attic culture, at least the savour, you see. The mere savour would be something. Why should you keep on producing these cheap little plays they foist on you? Oh, I know you always score a personal success in the wahst of them, but they've never given you a Big character and the play, outside of you, is always piffle. Of coss, you know what I've always wanted you to do, what I've constantly insisted in print: Rostand. You commission Rostand to do one of his magnificent things for you and we serious men will do our part. Now, my duh good chap, I must be getting on, or the little gel will be telephoning all round the town!" He turned to the door, pausing upon the threshold. "Now, don't let any of these cheap little fellows foist any of their cheap little plays on you. This for my stirrup-cup: you cable Rostand tomorrow. Drop the cheap little things and cable Rostand. Tell him I suggested it, if you like." He disappeared in the hallway, calling back: "My duh Pottuh, good-night!" And the outer door was heard to close.

 

Canby, feeling a natural prejudice against this personage, glanced uneasily at Talbot Potter's face and was surprised to find that fine bit of modelling contorted with rage. The sight of this emotion was reassuring, but its source was a mystery, for it had seemed to the playwright that the wasp-waisted youth's remarks, though horribly damaging to the cheap little Canbys with their cheap little "Roderick Hanscoms" were on the whole rather flattering to the subject of them, and betokened a real interest in his career.

 

"Ass!" said Potter.

 

Canby exhaled a breath of relief. He began to feel that it might be possible to like this man.

 

"Ass!" said Potter, striding up and down the room. "Ass! Ass! Ass! Ass!"

 

And Canby felt easier and happier. He foresaw, too, that there would be no cabling to Rostand, a thing he had naively feared, for a moment, as imminent.

 

Potter halted, bursting into speech less monosyllabic but no less vehement: "Mr. Tinker, did you ever see Mounet-Sully?"

 

"No."

 

"Did you, Mr. Canby?"

 

"No."

 

"Mewnay-Sooyay!" Potter mimicked the pronunciation of his adviser. "'Mewnay-Sooyay! Of coss I don't say YOU could ever be another Mewnay-Sooyay!' Ass! I'll tell you what Mounet-Sully's 'technique' amounts to, Mr. Tinker. It's yell! Just yell, yell, yell! Does he think I can't yell! Why, Packer could open his mouth like a hippopotamus and yell through a part! Ass!"

 

"Was that young man a-a critic?" Canby asked.

 

"No!" shouted Potter. "There aren't any!"

 

"He writes about theatrical matters," said Carson Tinker. "Talky-talk writing: 'the drama' - 'temperament' - 'people of cultivation' - quotes Latin or Italian or something. 'Technique' is his star word; he plays 'technique' for a hand every other line. Doesn't do any harm; in fact, I think he does us a good deal of good. Lots of people read that talky-talk writing nowadays. Not in New York, but in road-towns, where they have plenty of time. This fellow's never against any show much, unless he takes a notion. You slip 'dolsy far nienty' or something about Danty or logarithms somewhere into your play, where it won't delay the action much, and he'll be for you."

 

Canby nodded and laughed eagerly. Tinker seemed to take it for granted that "Roderick Hanscom" was to be produced in spite of "another play I have been considering."

 

"There aren't any critics, I tell you!" Potter stormed. "Mounet-Sully!"

 

"Well," said old Tinker quietly, "I'd like to believe it, but people making a living that way have ruined a good many million dollars' worth of property in this town. Some of it was very good property." He paused, and added: "Some of it was mine, too."

 

"Good property?" said the playwright with fresh uneasiness. "You mean the critics sometimes ruin a good play?"

 

"How do they know a good play or good acting?" Tinker returned placidly. "Every play you ever saw in your life, some people in the audience said they thought it was good; some said it was bad. How do critics know any more about it than anybody else? For instance, how can anybody that hasn't been in the business tell what's good acting and what's a good part?"

 

"But a critic, aren't critics in the bus"

 

"No. They aren't theatrical people," said Tinker dryly. "They're writers."

 

"But some of them must have studied from the inside," Canby urged, feeling that "Roderick Hanscom's" chances were getting slighter and slighter. "Some of them must have either been managers for a while, or actors, or had plays pro -"

 

"No," said Tinker. "If they had they wouldn't do for critics. They wouldn't have the heart."

 

"They oughtn't to have so much power!" the young man exclaimed passionately. "Think of a playwright working on his play, two years, maybe, night after night, and then, all in one swoop, these fellows that you say don't know anything"

 

"Power!" Potter laughed contemptuously. "Tinker, you're in your dotage! Look at what I've done: Haven't I made my way in spite of everything they could do to stifle me? And have I ever compromised for one moment? Haven't I gone my own way, absolutely?"

 

"Yes." Tinker's face was more cryptic than usual. "Yes, indeed!"

 

"Power! Haven't I made them eat out of my hand? Look at that ass, glad to crawl in here and nibble a crust from my table to-night! Ass!" He had halted for a second in front of the manager, but resumed his pacing with a mutter of subterranean thunder: "Mounet-Sully!"

 

"Hasn't the public got a mind?" cried Canby. "Doesn't the public understand that a good play might be ruined by these scoundrels?"

 

Old Tinker returned his chartreuse glass to the case whence it came, a miniature sedan chair in silver and painted silk. "The public?" he said. "I've never been able to find out what that was. Just about the time I decided it was a trained sheep it turned out to be a cyclone. You think it's intelligent, and it plays the fool; you decide it's a fool, and it turns out to know more than you do. You make love to it, and it may sidle up and kiss you or give you a good, hard kick!"

 

"But if we make this a good play"

 

"It won't be a play at all," said Tinker, "unless the public thinks it's a good one. A play isn't something you read; it's something actors do on a stage; and they can't afford to do it unless the public pays to watch 'em. If it won't buy tickets, you haven't got a play; you've only got some typewriting."

 

Canby glanced involuntarily at the blue-covered manuscript he had placed upon a table beside him. It had a guilty look.

 

"I get confused," he said. "If the public's so flighty, why does it take so much stock in what these wolves print about a play?"

 

"Print. That's it," old Tinker answered serenely. "Write your opinion in a letter or say it with your mouth, and it doesn't amount to anything. Print's different. You see some nonsense about yourself in a newspaper, and you think I'm an idiot for believing it. But you read nonsense about me, and you believe it. You don't stop and think; 'That's a lie; he isn't that sort of a man.' No. You just wonder why I'm such a darn fool."

 

"Then these cannibals have got us where"

 

"Dotage!" Talbot Potter broke in, halting under the chandelier. "Tinker's reached his dotage!" He levelled a denouncing forefinger at the manager. "Do you mean to tell me that if I decide to go on with Mr. Canby's play any critic or combination or cabal of critics can keep it from being a success? Then I tell you, you're in your dotage! For one point, if I play this part they're going to say it's a big thing; I don't mean the play, of course, because you must know, yourself, Mr. Canby, we could bribe them into calling it a strong play. We know it isn't, and they'll know it isn't. What I mean is the characterization of 'Roderick Hanscom.' I tell you, if I do it, they're going to call it a big thing. They aren't all maniacs about everything made in France, thank heaven! Rostand! Ass! I'm not playing parts with a clothespin on the end of my nose!" And again he mimicked the departed visitor: "'This for my stirrup-cup: you cable Rostand tomorrow.' My soul! Does he think I want to play CHICKENS?"

 

Sulphurously, he resumed his pacing of the floor.

 

Old Tinker seemed unaffected by this outburst, but for that matter he seemed unaffected by anything. His dead gaze followed his employer's to-and-fro striding as a cat's follows a pendulum, but without the cat's curiosity about a pendulum. He never interrupted when Potter was speaking; and Canby noticed that whenever Potter talked at any length Tinker looked thoughtful and distant, like a mechanic so accustomed to the whirr and thunder of the machine-shop that he may indulge in reveries there. After a moment or two the old fellow ceased to follow the pendulum stride, and turned to the playwright.

 

"I'll tell you the two surest ways to make what you call the public like a play, Mr. Canby," he said. "Nothing is sure, but these are the nearest to it. Make 'em laugh. I mean, make 'em laugh after they get home, or the next day in the office, any time they get to thinking about it. The other way is to get two actors for your lovers that the audience, young and old, can't help falling in love with; a young actor that the females in the audience think they'd like to marry, and a young actress that the males all think they'd like to marry. It doesn't matter much about the writing; just have something interfere between them from eight-fifteen until along about twenty-five minutes after ten. The two lovers don't necessarily have to know much about acting, either, though of course it's better if they happen to. The best stage-lover I ever knew, and the one that played in the most successes, did happen to understand acting thor -"

 

"Who was that?" Potter interrupted fiercely. "Mounet-Sully?"

 

"No. I meant Dora Preston."

 

"Never heard of her!"

 

"No," said the old man. "You wouldn't. They don't put up monuments to pretty actresses, nor write about them in school histories. She dropped dead in her dressing-room one night forty-two years ago. I was thinking of her to-day; something reminded me of her."

 

"Was she a friend of yours, Mr. Tinker?" Canby asked.

 

"Friend? No. I was an usher in the old Calumet Theatre, and she owned New York. She had this quality; every man in the audience fell in love with her. So did the women, too, for that matter, and the actors who played with her. When she played a love-scene, people who'd been married thirty years would sit and watch her and hold each other's hands, yes, with tears in their eyes. I've seen 'em. And after the performance, one night, the stage-door keeper, a man seventy years old, was caught kissing the latch of the door where she'd touched it; and he was sober, too. There was something about her looks and something about her voice you couldn't get away from. You couldn't tell to save you what it was, but after you'd seen her she'd seem to be with you for days, and you couldn't think much about anything else, even if you wanted to. People used to go around in a kind of spell; they couldn't think of anything or talk of anything but Dora Preston. It didn't matter much what she did; everything she did made you feel like a boy falling in love the first time. It made you think of apple-blossoms and moonlight just to look at her. She"

 

"See here, Mr. Canby" Talbot Potter interrupted suddenly. He dropped into a chair and picked up the manuscript "See here! I've got an idea that may save this play. Suppose we let 'Roderick Hanscom' make his sacrifice, not for the heroine, but because he's in love with the other girl, the ingénue, I've forgotten the name you call her in the script. I mean the part played by that little Miss Miss girl, Miss-what's-her-name - Wanda Malone!"

 

Canby stared at Potter in fascinated amazement, his straining eyes showing the whites above and below the pupils. It was the look of a man struck dumb by a sudden marvel of telepathy.

 

"Why, yes," he said slowly, when he had recovered his breath, "I believe that would be a good idea!"

 

 

VII

 

For two hours, responding to the manipulation of the star and his thoroughly subjugated playwright, the character of "Roderick Hanscom" grew nobler and nobler, speech by speech and deed by deed, while the expression of the gentleman who was to impersonate it became, in precise parallel with this regeneration, sweeter and loftier and lovelier.

 

"A little Biblical quotation wouldn't go so bad right in there," he said, when they had finally established the Great Sacrifice for a Woman. "We'll let Roderick have a line like: 'Greater love hath no man than laying down his life to save another's.'" He touched a page of the manuscript with his finger. "There's a good place for it."

 

"Aren't you afraid it would sound a little smug?" Canby asked timidly. "The way we've got him now, Roderick seems to me to be always seeing himself as a splendid man and sort of pointing it out to the"

 

"Good gracious!" cried Potter, astounded. "Hasn't it got to be pointed out? The audience hasn't got a whole lifetime to study him in; it's only got about two hours. Besides, I don't see what you say; I don't see it at all! It seems to me I've worked him around into being a perfectly natural character."

 

"I suppose you're right," said Canby, meekly scribbling.

 

"Biblical quotations never do any harm to the box-office," Potter added. "You may not get a hand on 'em, but you'll never get a cough, either." He looked dreamily at the ceiling. "I've often thought of doing a Biblical play. I'd have it built around the character of St. Paul. That's one they haven't touched yet, and it's new. I wouldn't do it with a beard and long hair. I wouldn't use much makeup. No. Just the face as it is."

 

"You can do practically anything with a religious show," said Tinker. "That's been proved. You can run in gambling and horse-racing and ballys, and you'll get people into the house, night after night, that think the theatre's wicked and wouldn't go to see 'Rip Van Winkle.' They do a lot of good, too, religious shows, just that way."

 

"I think I'd play it in armour," Potter continued his thought, still gazing at the ceiling. "I believe it would be a big thing."

 

"It might if it was touted right," said Tinker. "It all depends on the touting. If you get it touted to the tank towns that you've got a play with the great religious gonzabo, then your show's a big property. Same if you get it touted for a great educational gonzabo. Or 'artistic.' Get it touted right for 'artistic,' and the tanks'll think they like it, even if they don't. Look at 'Cyrano' they liked Mansfield and his acting, but they didn't like the show. They said they liked the show, and thought they did, but they didn't. If they'd like it as much as they said they did, that show would be running like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Speaking of that" he paused, coughed, and went on "I'm glad you've got the ingenue's part straightened out in this piece. I thought from the first it would stand a little lengthening."

 

Potter, unheeding, dreamily proceeded: "In silver armour. Might silver the hair a little, not too much. Play it as a spiritual character, but not solemn. Wouldn't make it turgid; keep it light. Have the whole play spiritual but light. For instance, have room in it for a religious ingenue part, make her a younger sister of Mary Magdalene, say, with St. Paul becoming converted for her sake after he'd been a Roman General. I believe it's a big idea."

 

Canby was growing nervous. All this seemed to be rambling farther and farther from "Roderick Hanscom." Potter relieved his anxiety, however, after a thoughtful sigh, by saying abruptly: "Well, well, we can't go into a big production like that, this late in the year. We'll have to see what can be done with 'Roderick Hanscom.'" He looked at the door, where the Japanese was performing a shrinking curtsey. "What is it, Sato?"

 

"Miss Pata."

 

"Who?"

 

"Miss Pata."

 

A voice called from the hallway: "It's me, Mr. Potter. Packer."

 

"Oh, come in! Come in!"

 

The stage-manager made a deferential entrance. "It's about Miss"

 

"Sit down, Packer."

 

"Thank you, Mr. Potter." Evidently considering the command a favour, Packer sat. "I saw Miss Lyston, sir"

 

"I won't turn her adrift," said his employer peevishly. "You see, Mr. Canby, here's another of the difficulties of my position. Miss Lyston has been with me for several years, and for this piece we've got somebody I think will play her part better, but I haven't any other part for Miss Lyston. And we start so late in the season, this year, she'll probably not be able to get anything else to do; so she's on my hands. I can't turn people out in the snow like that. Some managers can, but I can't. And yet I have letters begging me for all kinds of charities every day. They don't know what my company costs me in money like this, absolutely thrown away so far as any benefit to me is concerned. And often I find I've been taken advantage of, too. I shouldn't be at all surprised to find that Miss Lyston has comfortable investments right now, and that she's only scheming to, -Packer, don't you know whether she's been saving her salary or not? If you don't you ought to."

 

"I came to tell you, sir. I thought you might be relieved to know. We don't have to bother about her, Mr. Potter. I've been to see her at her flat, this evening, and she's as anxious to get away from us, Mr. Potter, as we are to"

 

The star rose to his feet, his face suffusing. "You sit there," he exclaimed, "and tell me that a member of my company finds the association so distasteful that she wants to get away!"

 

"Oh, no, Mr. Potter!" the stage-manager protested. "Not that at all! She's very sorry to go. She asked me to tell you that she felt she was giving up a great honour, and to thank you for all your kindness to her."

 

"Go on!" Potter sternly bade him. "Why does she wish to leave my company?"

 

"Why, it seems she's very much in love with her husband, sir, Vorley Surbilt -"

 

"It doesn't seem possible," said Potter, shaking his head. "I know him, and it sounds like something you're making up as you go along, Packer."

 

"Indeed, I'm not, Mr. Potter!" the stage-manager cried, in simple distress. "I wouldn't know how."

 

"Go on!"

 

"Well, sir, it seems Vorly Surbilt was to go out with Mrs. Romaley, and it seems that when Miss Lyston left rehearsal she drove around till she found him"

 

"Ah! I knew she was fooling me! I knew she wasn't sick! Went to drive with her husband, and I pay the cab bill!"

 

"No, no, sir! I forgot to tell you; she wouldn't let me pay it. She took him home and put him to bed and from what I heard on Broadway it was time somebody did! It seems they'd had an offer to go into a vaudeville piece together, and after she got him to bed she telephoned the vaudeville man, and had him bring up a contract, and they signed it, though she had to guide Vorley's hand for him. Anyway, he's signed up all right, and so is she. That's why she was so anxious about fixing it up with us. I told her it would be all right."

 

Potter relapsed into his chair in an attitude of gloom. "So they've begun to leave Talbot Potter's company!" he said, nodding his head with bitter melancholy. "For vaudeville! I'd better go to farming at once; I often think of it. What sort of an act is it that Miss Lyston prefers to remaining with me? Acrobatic?"

 

"It's a little play," said Packer. "It's from the Grand Guignol."

 

"French!" Potter this simply as an added insult on the part of Miss Lyston. "French!"

 

"They say it's a wonderful little thing," said Packer innocently, but it was as if he had run a needle into his sensitive employer. Potter instantly sprang up again with a cry of pain.

 

"Of course it's wonderful! It's French; everything French is wonderful, magnificent, Supreme! Everything French is HOLY! Good God, Packer! You'll be telling me what my 'technique' ought to be, next!"

 

He hurled himself again into the chair and moaned, then in a dismal voice inquired; "Miss Lyston struck you as feeling that her condition in life was distinctly improved by this ascent into vaudeville, didn't she?"

 

"Oh, not at all, Mr. Potter! But, of course," Packer explained deprecatingly, "she's pleased to have Vorly where she can keep an eye on him. She said that though she was all broken up about leaving the company, she expected to be very happy in looking after him. You see, sir, it's the first time in all their married life they've had a chance to be together except one summer when neither of 'em could get a stock engagement."

 

Potter made no reply but to shake his head despondently, and Packer sat silent in deference, as if waiting to be questioned further. It was the playwright who presently filled the void. "Why haven't Mr. and Mrs. Surbilt gone into the same companies, if they care to be together? I should think they'd have made it a point to get engagements in the same ones."

 

Packer looked disturbed. "It's not done much," he said.

 

"Besides, Vorly Surbilt plays leading parts with women stars," old Tinker volunteered. "You see, naturally, it wouldn't do at all."

 

"Jealousy, you mean?"

 

"Not necessarily the kind you're thinking of. But it just doesn't do."

 

"Some managers will allow married couples in their companies," Potter said, adding emphatically: "I won't! I never have and I never will! Never! There's just one thing every soul in my support has got to keep working for, and that is a high-tension performance every night in the year. If married people are in love with each other, they're going to think more about that than about the fact that they're working for me. If they aren't in love with each other, there's the devil to pay. I'd let the best man or woman in the profession go, and they could go to vaudeville, for all I cared! if I had to keep their wives or husbands travelling with us. I won't have 'em! My soul! I don't marry, do I?"

 

Packer rose. "Is there anything else for me, Mr. Potter?"

 

"Yes. Take this interlined script, get some copies typewritten, and see that the company's sides are changed to suit it. Be especially careful about that young Miss, ah, Miss Malone's. You'll find her part is altered considerably, and will be even more, when Mr. Canby gets the dialogue for other changes finished. He'll let you have them to-morrow. By the way, Packer, where did you find" He paused, stretched out his hand to the miniature sedan chair of liqueurs, took a decanter and tiny glass therefrom, and carefully poured himself a sparkling emerald of creme de menthe. "Will you have something, Mr. Canby?" he asked. "You, Tinker?"

 

Both declined in silence; they seemed preoccupied.

 

"Where did I what, Mr. Potter?" asked the stage-manager, reminding him of the question left unfinished.

 

"What?"

 

"You said: 'By the way, where did you find'"

 

"Oh, yes." Potter smiled negligently. "Where did you find that little Miss Malone? At the agents'?"

 

Packer echoed him: "Where did I find her?" He scratched his head. "Miss" he said ruminatively, repeating the word slowly, like a man trying to work out the solution of a puzzle, "Miss"

 

"Miss Malone. I suppose you got her at an agent's?"

 

"Let's see," said Packer. "At an agent's? No. No, it wasn't. Come to think of it, it wasn't."

 

"Then where did you get her?" Tinker inquired.

 

"That's what I just asked him," Potter said, placing his glass upon a table without having tasted the liqueur. "What's the matter, Packer? Gone to sleep?"

 

"I remember now," said Packer, laughing deferentially. "Of course! No. It wasn't through any of the agents. Now I remember, come to think of it, I sort of ran across her myself, as a matter of fact. I wasn't just sure who you meant at first. You mean the understudy, the one that's to play Miss Lyston's part, that Miss, Miss" He snapped a finger and thumb to spur memory and then, as in triumphant solution of his puzzle, cried, "Ma-Malone! Miss Malone!"

 

"Yes," said Potter, looking upon him darkly. "Where did you sort of run across her, come to think of it, as a matter of fact?"

 

"Oh, I remember all about it, now," said Packer brightly. "Why, she was playing last summer in stock out at Seeleyville, Pennsylvania. That's only about six miles from Packer's Ridge, where my father lives. I spent a couple of weeks with him, and we trolleyed over one evening to see 'The Little Minister,' because father got it in his head some way that it was about the Baptists, and I couldn't talk him out of it. It wasn't as bad a performance as you'd think, and this little girl was a pretty fair 'Babbie.' Father forgot all about the Baptists and kept talking about her after we got home, until nothing would do but we must go over and see that show again. He wanted to take her right out to the farm and adopt her or something; he's a widower, and all alone out there. Fact is, I had all I could do to keep him from going around to ask her, and I was pretty near afraid he'd speak to her from the audience. Well, to satisfy him, I did go around after the show, and gave her my card, and told her if I could do anything for her in New York to let me know. Of course, naturally, when I got back to town I forgot all about it, but I got a note from her that she was here, looking for an engagement, the very day you told me to scare up an understudy. So I thought she might do as well as anybody I'd get at the agent's, and I let her have it." He drew a breath of relief, like that of a witness leaving the stand, and with another placative laugh, letting his eyes fall humbly under the steady scrutiny of his master, he concluded: "Of course I remember all about it, only at first I wasn't sure which one you meant; it's such a large company."

 

"I see," said Potter grimly. "You engaged her to please your father."

 

"Oh, Mr. Potter!" the stage-manager protested. "If you don't like her"

 

"That will do!" Potter cut him off, and paced the floor, virulently brooding. "And so Talbot Potter's company is to be made up of actors engaged to suit the personal whims of L. Smith Packer's father, old Mister Packer of Baptist Ridge, near Seeleyville, Pennsylvania!"

 

"But, Mr. Potter, if you don't"

 

"I said that would DO!" roared Potter. "Good-night!"

 

"Good-night, sir," said the stage-manager humbly, and humbly got himself out of the room, to be heard, an instant later, bidding the Japanese an apologetic good-night at the outer door of the apartment.

 

Canby rose to take his own departure, promising to have the new dialogue "worked out" by morning.

 

"He is, too!" said Potter, not heeding the playwright, but confirming an unuttered thought in his own mind. He halted at the table, where he had set his tiny glass, and gulped the emerald at a swallow. "I always thought he was!"

 

"Was what?" inquired old Tinker.

 

"A hypocrite!"

 

"D'you mean Packer?" said Tinker incredulously.

 

"He's a hypocrite!" Potter shouted fiercely. "And I shouldn't be surprised if his father was another! Widower! I never saw the man in my life, but I'd swear it on oath! He is a hypocrite! Packer's father is a damned old Baptist hypocrite!"

 

 

VIII

 

With this sonorous bit of character reading still ringing in his ears, Canby emerged from the cream-coloured apartment to find the stoop-shouldered figure of the also hypocritical son leaning wearily against the wall, waiting for a delaying elevator. The attitude was not wholly devoid of pathos, to Canby's view of it. Neither was the careworn, harried face, unharmoniously topped by a green hat so sparklingly jaunty, not only in colour but in its shape and the angle of its perch, that it was outright hilarious, and, above the face of Packer, made the playwright think pityingly of a St. Patrick's Day party holding a noisy celebration upon a hearse.

 

Its wearer nodded solemnly as the elevator bounced up, flashing, and settled to the level of the floor; but the quick drop through the long shaft seemed to do the stage-manager a disproportionate amount of good. Halfway down he emitted a heavy "Whew!" of relief and threw back his shoulders. He seemed to swell, to grow larger; lines verged into the texture of his face, disappearing; and with them went care and seeming years. Canby had casually taken him to be about forty, but so radical was the transformation of him that, as the distance from his harrowing overlord increased, the playwright beheld another kind of creature. In place of the placative, middle-aged varlet, troubled and hurrying to serve, there stepped out of the elevator, at the street level, a deep-chested, assertive, manly adventurer, about thirty, kindly eyed, picturesque, and careless. The green hat belonged to him perfectly.

 

He gave Canby a look of burlesque ruefulness over his shoulder, the comedy appeal of one schoolboy to another as they leave a scolding teacher on the far side of the door. "The governor does keep himself worked up!" he laughed, as they reached the street and paused. "If it isn't one thing, it's some thing!"

 

"Perhaps it's my play just now," said Canby. "I was afraid, earlier this evening, he meant to drop it. Making so many changes may have upset his nerves."

 

"Lord bless your soul! No!" exclaimed the new Packer. "His nerves are all right! He's always the same! He can't help it!"

 

"I thought possibly he might have been more upset than usual," Canby said. "There was a critic or something that"

 

"No, no, Mr. Canby!" Packer chuckled. "New plays and critics, they don't worry him any more than anything else. Of course he isn't going to be pleased with any critics. Most of them give him splendid notices, but they don't please him. How could they?"

 

"He's always the same, you think?" Canby said blankly.

 

"Always, always at top pitch, that is, and always unexpected. You'll see as you get to know him. You won't know him any better than you do now, Mr. Canby; you'll only know him more. I've been with him for four years, stage-manager, hired man, maid-of-all-work, order his meals for him in hotels, and I guess old Tinker and I know him as well as anybody does, but it's a mighty big job to handle him just right. It keeps us hopping, but that's bread and butter. Not much bread and butter anywhere these days unless you do hop! We all have to hop for somebody!" He chuckled again, and then unexpectedly became so serious he was almost truculent. "And I tell you, Mr. Canby," he cried, "by George! I'd sooner hop for Talbot Potter than for any other man that ever walked the earth!"

 

He took a yellow walking-stick from under his arm, thrust the manuscript Potter had given him into the pocket of his light overcoat, and bade his companion good-night with a genial flourish of the stick. "Subway to Brooklyn for mine. Your play will go, all right; don't worry about that, Mr. Canby. Good-night and good luck, Mr. Canby."

 

Canby went the other way, marvelling.

 

It was eleven; and for half an hour the theatres had been releasing their audiences to the streets; the sidewalks were bobbing and fluttering; automobiles cometed by bleating peevishly. Suddenly, through the window of a limousine, brilliantly lighted within, Canby saw the face of Wanda Malone, laughing, and embowered in white furs. He stopped, startled; then he realized that Wanda Malone's hair was not red. The girl in the limousine had red hair, and was altogether unlike Wanda Malone in feature and expression.

 

He walked on angrily.

 

Immediately a slender girl, prettily dressed, passed him. She clung charmingly to the arm of a big boy; and to Canby's first glance she was Wanda Malone. Wrenching his eyes from her, he saw Wanda Malone across the street getting into a taxicab, and then he stumbled out of the way of a Wanda Malone who almost walked into him. Wherever there was a graceful gesture or turn of the head, there was Wanda Malone.

 

He wheeled, and walked back toward Broadway, and thought he caught a glimpse of Packer going into a crowded drug-store near the corner. The man he took to be Packer lifted his hat and spoke to a girl who was sitting at a table and drinking soda-water, but when she looked up and seemed to be Wanda Malone with a blue veil down to her nose, Canby turned on his heel, face-about, and headed violently for home.

 

When he reached quieter streets his gait slackened, and he walked slowly, lost in deep reverie. By and by he came to a halt, and stood still for several minutes without knowing it. Slowly he came out of the trance, wondering where he was. Then he realized that his staring eyes had halted him automatically; and as they finally conveyed their information to his conscious mind, he perceived that he was standing directly in front of a saloon, and glaring at the sign upon the window:

 

ALES WINES LIQUORS AND CIGARS

 

TIM MALONE

 

At that, somewhere in his inside, he cried out, in a kind of anguish: "Isn't there anything, anywhere, any more, except Wanda Malone!"

 

 

IX

 

"Second act, ladies and gentlemen!" cried Packer, at precisely ten o'clock the next morning.

 

About a dozen actors were chatting in small groups upon the stage; three or four paced singly, muttering and mildly gesticulating, with the fretful preoccupation of people trying to remember; two or three, seated, bent over their typewritten "sides," studying intently; and a few, invisible from the auditorium, were scattered about the rearward rooms and passageways. Talbot Potter, himself, was nowhere to be seen, and, what was even more important to one tumultuously beating heart "in front," neither was Wanda Malone. Mr. Stewart Canby in a silvery new suit, wearing a white border to his waistcoat collar and other decorations proper to a new playwright, sat in the centre of the front row of the orchestra. Yesterday he had taken a seat about nine rows back.

 

He bore no surface signs of the wear and tear of a witches' night; riding his runaway play and fighting the enchantment that was upon him. Elastic twenty-seven does not mark a bedless session with violet arcs below its eyes; what violet a witch had used upon Stewart Canby this morning appeared as a dewey boutonniere in the lapel of his new coat; he was that far gone.

 

Miss Ellsling and a youth of the company took their places near the front of the stage and began the rehearsal of the second act with a dialogue that led up to the entrance of the star with the "ingenue," both of whom still remained out of the playwright's range of vision.

 

As the moment for their appearance drew near, Canby became, to his own rage, almost uncontrollably agitated. Miss Ellsling's scene, which he should have followed carefully, meant nothing to him but a ticking off of the seconds before he should behold with his physical eyes the living presence of the fairy ghost that had put a spell upon him. He was tremulous all over.

 

Miss Ellsling and her companion came to a full stop and stood waiting. Thereupon Packer went to the rear of the stage, leaned through an open doorway, and spoke deferentially:

 

"Mr. Potter? All ready, sir. All ready, Miss, ah, Malone?"

 

Then he stepped back with the air of an unimportant person making way for his betters to pass before him, while Canby's eyes fixed themselves glassily upon the shabby old doorway through which an actual, breathing Wanda Malone was to come.

 

But he was destined not to see her appear in that expectant frame. Twenty years before, though he had forgotten it, in a dazzling room where there was a Christmas tree, he had uttered a shriek of ecstatic timidity just as a jingling Santa Claus began to emerge from behind the tree, and he had run out of the room and out of the house. He did exactly the same thing now, though this time the shriek was not vocal.

 

Suffocating, he fled up the aisle and out into the lobby. There he addressed himself distractedly but plainly:

 

"Jackass!"

 

Breathing heavily, he went out to the wide front steps of the theatre and stood, sunlit Broadway swimming before him.

 

"Hello, Canby!"

 

A shabby, shaggy, pale young man, with hot eyes, checked his ardent gait and paused, extending a cordial, thin hand, the fingers browned at the sides by cigarettes smoked to the bitter end. "Rieger," he said. "Arnold Rieger. Remember me at the old Ink Club meetings before we broke up?"

 

"Yes," said Canby dimly. "Yes. The old Ink Club. I came out for a breath of air. Just a breath."

 

"We used to settle the universe in that little back restaurant room," said Rieger. "Not one of use had ever got a thing into print and me, I haven't yet, for that matter. Editors still hate my stuff. I've kept my oath, though; I've never compromised, never for a moment."

 

"Yes," Canby responded feebly, wondering what the man was talking about. Wanda Malone was surely on the stage, now. If he turned, walked about thirty feet, and opened a door, he would see her, hear her speaking!

 

"I've had news of your success," said Rieger. "I saw in the paper that Talbot Potter was to put on a play you'd written. I congratulate you. That man's a great artist, but he never seems to get a good play; he's always much, much greater than his part. I'm sure you've given him a real play at last. I remember your principles: Realism; no compromise! The truth; no shirking it, no tampering with it! You've struck out for that, you've never compro -"

 

"No. Oh, no," said Canby, waking up a little. "Of course you've got to make a little change or two in plays. You see, you've got to make an actor like a play or he won't play it, and if he won't play it you haven't got any play, you've only got some typewriting."

 

Rieger set his foot upon the step and rested his left forearm upon his knee, and attitude comfortable for street debate. "Admitting the truth of that for the sake of argument, and only for the moment, because I don't for one instant accept such a jesuitism"

 

"Yes," said Canby dreamily. "Yes." And, with not only apparent but genuine unconsciousness of this one-time friend's existence, he turned and walked back into the lobby, and presently was vaguely aware that somebody near the street doors of the theatre seemed to be in a temper. Somebody kept shouting "Swell-headed pup!" and "Go to the devil!" at somebody else repeatedly, but finally went away, after reaching a vociferous climax of even harsher epithets and instructions.

 

The departure of this raging unknown left the lobby quiet; Canby had gone near to the inner doors. Listening fearfully, he heard through these a murmurous baritone cadencing: Talbot Potter declaiming the inwardness of "Roderick Hanscom"; and then oh, bells of Elfland faintly chiming! the voice of Wanda Malone!

 

He pressed, trembling, against the doors, and went in.

 

Talbot Potter and Wanda Malone stood together, the two alone in the great hollow space of the stage. The actors of the company, silent and remote, watched them; old Tinker, halfway down an aisle, stood listening; and near the proscenium two workmen, tools in their hands, had paused in attitudes of arrested motion. Save for the voices of the two players, the whole vast cavern of the theatre was as still as the very self of silence. And the stirless air that filled it was charged with necromancy.

 

Rehearsal is like the painted canvas without a frame; it is more like a plaster cast, most like of all to the sculptor's hollow moulds. It needs the bronze to bring a statue to life, and it needs the audience to bring a play to life. Some glamour must come from one to the other; some wind of enchantment must blow between them, there must be a magic spell. But these two actors had produced the spell without the audience.

 

And yet they were only reading a wistful little love-scene that Stewart Canby had written the night before.

 

Two people were falling in love with each other, neither realizing it. And these two who played the lovers had found some hidden rhythm that brought them together in one picture as a chord is one sound. They played to each other and with each other instinctively; Talbot Potter had forgotten "the smile" and all the mechanism that went with it. The two held the little breathless silences of lovers; they broke these silences timidly, and then their movements and voices ran together like waters in a fountain. A radiance was about them as it is about all lovers; they were suffused with it.

 

To Stewart Canby, watching, they seemed to move within a sorcerer's circle of enchantment. Upon his disturbed mind there was dawning a conviction that these inspired mummers were beings apart from him, knowing things he never could know, feeling things he never could feel, belonging to another planet whither he could never voyage, where strange winds blew and all things lived and grew in a light beyond his understanding. For the light that shone in the faces of these two was "the light that never was, on sea or land."

 

It had its blessing for him. From that moment, if he had known it, this play, which was being born of so many parents, was certain of "success," of "popularity," and of what quality of renown such things may bring. And he who was to be called its author stood there a Made Man, unless some accident befell.

 

Miss Ellsling spoke and came forward, another actor with her. The scene was over. There was a clearing of throats; everybody moved. The stage-carpenter and his assistant went away blinking, like men roused from deep sleep. The routine of rehearsal resumed its place; and old Tinker, who had not stirred a muscle, rubbed the back of his neck suddenly, and came up the aisle to Canby.

 

"Good business!" he cried. "Did you see that little run off the stage she made when Miss Ellsling came on? And you saw what he can do when he wants to!"

 

"He?" Canby echoed. "He?"

 

"Played for the scene instead of himself. Oh, he can do it! He's an old hand, got too many tricks in the bag to let her get the piece away from him but he's found a girl that can play with him at last, and he'll use every value she's got. He knows good property when he sees it. She's got a pretty good box of tricks herself; stock's the way to learn 'em, but it's apt to take the bloom off. It hasn't taken off any of hers, the darlin'! What do you think, Mr. Canby?"

 

To Canby, who hardly noticed that this dead old man had come to life, the speech was jargon. The playwright was preoccupied with the fact that Talbot Potter was still on the stage, would continue there until the rather distant end of the act, and that the "ingenue," after completing the little run at her exit, had begun to study the manuscript of her part, and in that absorption had disappeared through a door into the rear passageway. Canby knew that she was not to be "on" again until the next act, and he followed a desperate impulse.

 

"See a person," he mumbled, and went out through the lobby, turned south to the cross-street, proceeded thereby to the stage-door of the theatre, and resolutely crossed the path of the distrustful man who lounged there.

 

"Here!" called the distrustful man.

 

"I'm with the show," said Canby, an expression foreign to his lips and a clear case of inspiration. The distrustful man waved him on.

 

Wanda Malone was leaning against the wall at the other end of the passageway, studying her manuscript. She did not look up until he paused beside her.

 

"Miss Malone," he began. "I have come, I have come, I have-ah"

 

These were his first words to her. She did nothing more than look at him inquiringly, but with such radiance that he floundered to a stop. There were only two things within his power to do: he had either to cough or to speak much too sweetly.

 

"There's a draught here," she said, Christian anxiety roused by the paroxysm which rescued him from the damning alternative. "You oughtn't to stand here perhaps, Mr. Canby."

 

"'Canby?'" he repeated inquiringly, the name seeming new to him. "Canby?"

 

"You're Mr. Canby, aren't you?"

 

"I meant where, who" he stammered. "How did you know?"

 

The stage-manager pointed you out to me yesterday at rehearsal. I was so excited! You're the first author I ever saw, you see. I've been in stock where we don't see authors."

 

"Do you like it?" he said. "I mean stock. Do you like stock? How much do you like stock? I ah" Again he fell back upon the faithful old device of nervous people since the world began.

 

"I'm sure you oughtn't to stand in this passageway," she urged.

 

"No, no!" he said hurriedly. "I love it! I love it! I haven't any cold. It's the air. That's what does it." He nodded brightly, with the expression of a man who knows the answer to everything. "It's bad for me."

 

"Then you"

 

"No," he said, and went back to the beginning. "I have come, I wanted to come, I wished to say that I wi -" He put forth a manful effort which made him master of the speech he had planned. "I want to thank you for the way you play your part. What I wrote seemed dry stuff, but when you act it, why, then, it seems to be beautiful!"

 

"Oh! Do you think so?" she cried, her eyes bedewing ineffably. "Do you think so?"

 

"Oh – I - oh!" He got no further, and, although a stranger to the context of this conversation might have supposed him to be speaking of a celebrated commonwealth, Mother of Presidents, his meaning was sufficiently clear to Wanda Malone.

 

"You're lovely to me," she said, wiping her eyes. "Lovely! I'll never forget it! I'll never forget anything that's happened to me all this beautiful, beautiful week!"

 

The little kerchief she had lifted to her eyes was wet with tears not of the stage. "It seems so foolish!" she said bravely. "It's because I'm so happy! Everything has come all at once, this week. I'd never been in New York before in my life. Doesn't that seem funny for a girl that's been on the stage ever since she left school? And now I am here, all at once I get this beautiful part you've written, and you tell me you like it and Mr. Potter says he likes it. Oh! Mr. Potter's just beautiful to me! Don't you think Mr. Potter's wonderful, Mr. Canby?"

 

The truth about Mr. Canby's opinion of Mr. Potter at this moment was not to the playwright's credit. However, he went only so far as to say: "I didn't like him much yesterday afternoon."

 

"Oh, no, no!" she said quickly. "That was every bit my fault. I was frightened and it made me stupid. And he's just beautiful to me to-day! But I'd never mind anything from a man that works with you as he does. It's the most wonderful thing! To a woman who loves her profession for its own sake"

 

"You do, Miss Malone?"

 

"Love it?" she cried. "Is there anything like it in the world?"

 

"I might have known you felt that, from your acting," he said, managing somehow to be coherent, though it was difficult.

 

"Oh, but we all do!" she protested eagerly. "I believe all actors love it more than they love life itself. Don't think I mean those that never grew up out of their 'show-off' time in childhood. Those don't count, in what I mean, any more than the 'show-girls' and heaven knows what not that the newspapers call 'actresses'. Oh, Mr. Canby, I mean the people with the art and the fire born in them: those who must come to the stage and who ought to and who do. It isn't because we want to be 'looked at' that we go on the stage and starve to stay there! It's because we want to make pictures, to make pictures of characters in plays for people in audiences. It's like being a sculptor or painter; only we paint and model with ourselves and we're different from sculptors and painters because they do their work in quiet studios, while we do ours under the tension of great crowds watching every stroke we make and, oh, the exhilaration when they show us we make the right stroke!"

 

"Bravo!" he said. "Bravo!"

 

"Isn't it the greatest of all the arts? Isn't it?" she went on with the same glowing eagerness. "We feed our nerves to it, and our lives to it, and are glad! It makes us different from other people. But what of that? Don't we give ourselves? Don't we live and die just to make these pictures for the world? Oughtn't the world to be thankful for us? Oughtn't it? Oh, it is, Mr. Canby; it is thankful for us; and I, for one, never forget that a Prime Minister of England was proud to warm Davy Garrick's breeches at the grate for him!"

 

She clapped her hands together in a gesture of such spirit and fire that Canby could have thrown his hat in the air and cheered, she had lifted him so clear of his timidity.

 

"Bravo!" he cried again. "Bravo!"

 

At that she blushed. "What a little goose I am!" she cried. "Playing the orator! Mr. Canby, you mustn't mind"

 

"I won't!"

 

"It's because I'm so happy," she explained, to his way of thinking, divinely. "I'm so happy I just pour out everything. I want to sing every minute. You see, it seemed such a long while that I was waiting for my chance. Some of us wait forever, Mr. Canby, and I was so afraid mine might never come. If it hadn't come now it might never have come. If I'd missed this one, I might never have had another. It frightens me to think of it and I oughtn't to be thinking of it! I ought to be spending all my time on my knees thanking God that old Mr. Packer got it into his head that 'The Little Minister' was a play about the Baptists!"

 

"I don't see"

 

"If he hadn't," she said, "I wouldn't be here!"

 

"God bless old Mr. Packer!"

 

"I hope you mean it, Mr. Canby." She blushed again, because there was no possible doubt that he meant it. "It seems a miracle to me that I am here, and that my chance is here with me, at last. It's twice as good a chance as it was yesterday, thanks to you. You've given me such beautiful new things to do and such beautiful new things to say. How I'll work at it! After rehearsal this afternoon I'll learn every word of it in the tunnel before I get to my station in Brooklyn. That's funny, too, isn't it; the first time I've ever been to New York I go and board over in Brooklyn! But it's a beautiful place to study, and by the time I get home I'll know the lines and have all the rest of the time for the real work: trying to make myself into a faraway picture of the adorable girl you had in your mind when you wrote it. You see"

 

She checked herself again. "Oh! Oh!" she said, half-laughing, half-ashamed. "I've never talked so much in my life! You see it seems to me that the whole world has just burst into bloom!"

 

She radiated a happiness that was almost tangible; it was a glow so real it seemed to warm and light that dingy old passageway. Certainly it warmed and lighted the young man who stood there with her. For him, too, the whole world was transfigured, and life just an orchard to walk through in perpetual April morning.

 

The voice of Packer proclaimed: "Two o'clock, ladies and gentlemen! Rehearsal two o'clock this afternoon!"

 

The next moment he looked into the passageway. "This afternoon's rehearsal, two o'clock, Miss, ahh, Malone. Oh, Mr. Canby, Mr. Potter wants you to go to lunch with him and Mr. Tinker. He's waiting. This way, Mr. Canby."

 

"In a moment," said the young playwright. "Miss Malone, you spoke of your going home to work at making yourself into 'the adorable girl' I had in my mind when I wrote your part. It oughtn't" he faltered, growing red "it oughtn't to take much - much work!"

 

And, breathless, he followed the genially waiting Packer.

 

 

X

 

"Your overcoat, Mr. Potter!" called that faithful servitor as Potter was going out through the theatre with old Tinker and Canby. "You've forgotten your overcoat, sir."

 

"I don't want it."

 

"Yes sir; but it's a little raw to-day." He leaped down into the orchestra from the high stage, striking his knee upon a chair with violence, but, pausing not an instant for that, came running up the aisle carrying the overcoat. "You might want it after you get out into the air, Mr. Potter. I'm sure Mr. Tinker or Mr. Canby won't mind taking charge of it for you until you feel like putting it on."

 

"Lord! Don't make such a fuss, Packer. Put it on me, put it on me!"

 

He extended his arms behind him, and was enveloped solicitously and reverently in the garment.

 

"Confound him!" said Potter good-humouredly, as they came out into the lobby. "It is chilly; he's usually right, the idiot!"

 

Turning from Broadway, at the corner, they went over to Fifth Avenue, where Potter's unconsciousness of the people who recognized and stared at him was, as usual, one of the finest things he did, either upon the stage or "off." Superb performance as it was, it went for nothing with Stewart Canby, who did not even see it, for he walked entranced, not in a town, but through orchards in bloom.

 

If Wanda Malone had remained with him, clear and insistent after yesterday's impersonal vision of her at rehearsal, what was she now, when every tremulous lilt of the zither-string voice, and every little gesture of the impulsive hands, and every eager change of the glowing face, were fresh and living, in all their beautiful reality, but a matter of minutes past? He no longer resisted the bewitchment; he wanted all of it. His companions and himself were as trees walking, and when they had taken their seats at a table in the men's restaurant of a hotel where he had never been, he was not roused from his rapturous apathy even by the conduct of probably the most remarkable maitre d'hotel in the world.

 

"You don't git 'em!" said this personage briefly, when Potter had ordered chops and "oeufs a la creole" and lettuce salad, from a card. "You got to eat partridge and asparagus tips salad!"

 

And he went away, leaving the terrible Potter resigned and unrebellious.

 

The partridge was undeniable when it came; a stuffed man would have eaten it. But Talbot Potter and his two guests did little more than nibble it; they neither ate nor talked, and yet they looked anything but unhappy. Detached from their surroundings, as they sat over their coffee, they might have been taken to be three poetic gentlemen listening to a serenade.

 

After a long and apparently satisfactory silence, Talbot Potter looked at his watch, but not, as it proved, to see if it was time to return to the theatre, his ensuing action being to send a messenger to procure a fresh orchid to take the place of the one that had begun to droop a little from his buttonhold. He attached the new one with an attentive gravity shared by his companions.

 

"Good thing, a boutonniere," he explained. "Lighten it up a little. Rehearsal's dry work, usually. Thinking about it last night. Why not lighten it up a little? Why shouldn't an actor dress as well for a company of strangers at a reception? Ought to make it as cheerful as we can."

 

"Yes," said Tinker, nodding. "Something in that. I believe they work better. I must say I never saw much better work than those people were doing this morning. It was a fine rehearsal."

 

"It's a fine company," Potter said warmly. "They're the best people I ever had. They're all good, every one of them, and they're putting their hearts into this play. It's the kind of work that makes me proud to be an actor. I am proud to be an actor! Is there anything better?" He touched the young playwright on the arm, a gesture that hinted affection. "Stewart Canby," he said, "I want to tell you I think we're going to make a big thing out of this play. It's going to be the best I've ever done. It's going to be beautiful!"

 

From the doorway into the lobby of the hotel there came a pretty sound of girlish voices whispering and laughing excitedly, and, glancing that way, the three men beheld a group of peering nymphs who fled, delighted.

 

"Ladies stop to rubber at Mr. Potter," explained the remarkable headwaiter over the star's shoulder. "Mr. Potter, it's time you got marrit, anyhow. You git marrit, you don't git stared at so much!" He paused not for a reply, but hastened away to countermand the order of another customer.

 

"Married," said Potter musingly. "Well, there is such a thing as remaining a bachelor too long, even for an actor."

 

"Widower, either," assented Mr. Tinker as from a gentle reverie. "A man's never too old to get married."

 

His employer looked at him somewhat disapprovingly, but said nothing; and presently the three rose, without vocal suggestion from any of them, and strolled thoughtfully back to the theatre, pausing a moment by the way, while Tinker bought a white carnation for his buttonhole. There was a good deal, he remarked absent-mindedly, in what Mr. Potter had said about lightening up a rehearsal.

 

Probably there never was a more lightened-up rehearsal than that afternoon's. Potter's amiability continued; nay, it increased: he was cordial; he was angelic; he was exalted and unprecedented. A stranger would have thought Packer the person in control; and the actors, losing their nervousness, were allowed to display not only their energy but their intelligence. The stage became a cheery workshop, where ambition flourished and kindness was the rule. For thus did the starry happiness that glowed within the beatific bosom of the little "ingenue" make Arcady around her.

 

At four o'clock Talbot Potter stepped to the front of the stage and lifted his hand benevolently. "That will do for to-day," he said, facing the company. "Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. I have never had a better rehearsal, and I think it is only your due to say you have pleased me very much, indeed. I cannot tell you how much. I feel strongly assured of our success in this play. Again I thank you. Ladies and gentlemen" he waved his hand in dismissal "till to-morrow morning."

 

"By Joles!" old Carson Tinker muttered. "I never knew anything like it!"

 

"Oh, ah, Packer," called the star, as the actors moved toward the doors. "Packer, ask Miss, Malone to wait a moment. I want, I'd like to go over a little business in the next act before tomorrow."

 

"Yes, Mr. Potter?" It was she who answered, turning eagerly to him.

 

"In a moment, Miss Malone." He spoke to the stage-manager in a low tone, and the latter came down into the auditorium, where Canby and Tinker had remained in their seats.

 

"He says for you not to wait, gentlemen. There's nothing more to do this afternoon, and he may be detained quite a time."

 

The violet boutonniere and the white carnation went somewhat reluctantly up the aisle together, and, after a last glance back at the stage from the doorway, found themselves in the colder air of the lobby, a little wilted.

 

Bidding Tinker farewell, on the steps of the theatre, Canby walked briskly out to the Park, and there, abating his energy, paced the loneliest paths he could find until long after dark. They were not lonely for him; a radiant presence went with him through the twilight. She was all about him: in the blue brightness of the afterglow, in the haze of the meadow stretches, and in the elusive woodland scents that vanished as he caught them; she was in the rosy vapour wreaths on the high horizon, in the laughter of children playing somewhere in the darkness, in the twinkling of the lights that began to show, for now she was wherever a lover finds his lady, and that is everywhere. He went over and over their talk of the morning, rehearsing wonderful things he would say to her upon the morrow, and taking the liberty of suggesting replies from her even more wonderful. It was a rhapsody; he was as happy as Tom o'Bedlam.

 

By and by, he went to a restaurant in the Park and ordered food to be brought him. Then, after looking at it with an expression of fixed animation for half an hour, he paid for it and went home. He let himself into the boarding-house quietly, having hazy impressions that he was not popular there, also that it might be embarrassing to encounter Miss Cornish in the hall; and, after reconnoitering the stairway, went cautiously up to his room.

 

Three minutes later he came bounding down again, stricken white, and not caring if he encountered the devil. On his table he had found a package, the complete manuscript of "Roderick Hanscom" and this scrawl:

 

Canby,

 

I can't produce your play, everything off.

 

Y'rs,

 

Tal't P'r.

 

 

XI

 

Carson Tinker was in the elevator at the Pantheon, and the operator was closing the door thereof, about to ascend, but delayed upon a sound of running footsteps and a call of "Up!" Stewart Canby plunged into the cage; his hat, clutched in his hand, disclosing emphatically that he had been at his hair again.

 

"What's he mean?" he demanded fiercely. "What have I done?"

 

"What's the matter?" inquired the calm Tinker.

 

"What's he called it off for?"

 

"Called what off?"

 

"The play! My play!"

 

"I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen him since rehearsal. His Japanese boy called me on the telephone a little while ago and told me he wanted to see me."

 

"He did?" cried the distracted Canby. "The Japanese boy wanted to see"

 

"No," Tinker corrected. "He did."

 

"And you haven't heard"

 

"Twelfth," urged the operator, having opened the door. "Twelfth, if you please, gentlemen."

 

"I haven't heard anything to cause excitement," said Tinker, stepping out. "I haven't heard anything at all." He pressed the tiny disc beside the door of Potter's apartment. "What's upset you?"

 

With a pathetic gesture Canby handed him Potter's note. "What have I done? What does he think I've done to him?"

 

Tinker read the note and shook his head. "The Lord knows! You see he's all moods, and they change, they change any time. He knows his business, but you can't count on him. He's liable to do anything, anything at all."

 

"But what reason"

 

The Japanese boy, Sato, stood bobbing in the doorway.

 

"Mis' Potter kassee," he said courteously. "Ve'y so'y Mis' Potter kassee nobody."

 

"Can't see us?" said Tinker. "Yes, he can. You telephoned me that he wanted to see me, not over a quarter of an hour ago."

 

Sato beamed upon him enthusiastically. "Yisso, yisso! See Mis' Tinker, yisso! You come in, Mis' Tinker. Ve'y so'y. Mis' Potter kassee nobody."

 

"You mean he'll see Mister Tinker but won't see anybody else?" cried the playwright.

 

"Yisso," said Sato, delighted. "Ve'y so'y. Mis' Potter kassee nobody."

 

"I will see him. I"

 

"Wait. It's all right," Tinker reassured him soothingly. "It's all right, Sato. You go and tell Mr. Potter that I'm here and Mr. Canby came with me."

 

"Yisso." Sato stood back from the door obediently, and they passed into the hall. "You sidowm, please."

 

"Tell him we're waiting in here," said Tinker, leading the way into the cream-coloured salon.

 

"Yisso." Sato disappeared.

 

The pretty room was exquisitely cheerful, a coal fire burning rosily in the neat little grate, but for its effect upon Canby it might have been a dentist's anteroom. He was unable to sit, and began to pace up and down, shampooing himself with both hands.

 

"I've racked my brains every step of the way here," he groaned. "All I could think of was that possibly I've unconsciously paralleled some other play that I never saw. Maybe someone's told him about a plot like mine. Such things must happen, they do happen, of course because all plots are old. But I can't believe my treatment of it could be so like"

 

"I don't think it's that," said Tinker. "It's never anything you expect with him."

 

"Well, what else can it be?" the playwright demanded. "I haven't done anything to offend him. What have I done that he should"

 

"You'd better sit down," the manager advised him. "Going plumb crazy never helped anything yet that I know of."

 

"But, good heavens! How can I"

 

"Sh!" whispered Tinker.

 

A tragic figure made its appearance upon the threshold of the inner doorway: Potter, his face set with epic woe, gloom burning in his eyes like the green fire in a tripod at a funeral of state. His plastic hair hung damp and irregular over his white brow, a wreath upon a tombstone in the rain, and his garment, from throat to ankle, was a dressing-gown of dead black, embroidered in purple; soiled, magnificent, awful. Beneath its midnight border were his bare ankles, final testimony to his desperate condition, for only in ultimate despair does a suffering man remove his trousers. The feet themselves were distractedly not of the tableau, being immersed in bedroom shoes of gay white fur shaped in a Romeo pattern; but this was the grimmest touch of all, the merry song of mad Ophelia.

 

"Mr. Potter!" the playwright began, "I"

 

Potter turned without a word and disappeared into the room whence he came.

 

"Mr. Potter!" Canby started to follow. "Mr. Pot -"

 

"Sh!" whispered Tinker.

 

Potter appeared again upon the threshold In one hand he held a large goblet; in the other a bottle of Bourbon whiskey, just opened. With solemn tread he approached a delicate table, set the goblet upon it, and lifted the bottle high above.

 

"I am in no condition to talk to anybody," he said hoarsely. "I am about to take my first drink of spirits in five years."

 

And he tilted the bottle. The liquor clucked and guggled, plashed into the goblet, and splashed upon the table; but when he set the bottle down the glass was full to its capacious brim, and looked, upon the little "Louis Sixteenth" table, like a sot at the Trianon. Potter stepped back and pointed to it majestically.

 

"That," he said, "is the size of the drink I am about to take!"

 

"Mr. Potter," said Canby hotly, "will you tell me what's the matter with my play? Haven't I made every change you suggested? Haven't"

 

Potter tossed his arms above his head and flung himself full length upon the chaise lounge.

 

"STOP it!" he shouted. "I won't be pestered. I won't! Nothing's the matter with your play!"

 

"Then what"

 

Potter swung himself round to a sitting position and hammered with his open palm upon his knee for emphasis: "Nothing's the matter with it, I tell you! I simply won't play it!"

 

"Why not?"

 

"I simply won't play it! I don't like it!"

 

The playwright dropped into a chair, open-mouthed. "Will you tell me why you ever accepted it?"

 

"I don't like any play! I hate 'em all! I'm through with 'em all! I'm through with the whole business! 'Show-business!' Faugh!"

 

Old Tinker regarded him thoughtfully, then inquired: "Gone back on it?"

 

"I tell you I'm going to buy a farm!" He sprang up, went to the mantel and struck it a startling blow with his fist, which appeared to calm him somewhat for a moment. "I've been thinking of it for a long time. I ought never to have been in this business at all, and I'm going to live in the country. Oh, I'm in my right mind!" He paused to glare indignantly in response to old Tinker's steady gaze. "Of course you think 'something's happened' to upset me. Well, nothing has. Nothing of the slightest consequence has occurred since I saw you at rehearsal. Can't a man be allowed to think? I just came home here and got to thinking of the kind of life I lead and I decided that I'm tired of it. And I'm not going to lead it any longer. That's all."

 

"Ah," said Tinker quietly. "Nerves."

 

Talbot Potter appealed to the universe with a passionate gesture. "Nerves!" he cried bitterly. "Yes, that's what they say when an actor dares to think. 'Go on! Play your part! Be a marionette forever!' That's what you tell us! 'Slave for your living, you sordid little puppet! Squirm and sweat and strut, but don't you ever dare to think!' You tell us that because you know if we ever did stop to think for one instant about ourselves you wouldn't have any actors! Actors! Faugh! What do we get, I ask you?"

 

He strode close to Tinker and shook a frantic forefinger within a foot of the quiet old fellow's face.

 

"What do I get?" he demanded, passionately. "Do you think it means anything to me that some fat old woman sees me making love to a sawdust actress at a matinee and then goes home and hates her fat old husband across the dinner-table?"

 

He returned to the fireplace, seeming appeased, at least infinitesimally, by this thought. "There wouldn't even be that, except for the mystery. It's only because I'm mysterious to them, the way a man always thinks the girl he doesn't know is prettier than the one he's with. What's that got to do with acting? What is acting, anyhow?" His voice rose passionately again. "I'll tell you one thing it is: It's the most sordid profession in this devilish world!"

 

He strode to the centre of the room. "It's at the bottom, in the muck! That's where it is. And it ought to be! What am I, out there on that silly platform they call a stage? A fool, that's all, making faces, and pretending to be somebody with another name, for two dollars! A monkey-on-a-stick for the children! Of course the world despises us! Why shouldn't it? It calls us mummers and mountebanks, and that's what we are! Buffoons! We aren't men and women at all, we're strolling players! We're gypsies! One of us marries a broker's daughter and her relatives say she's married 'a damned actor!' That's what they say 'a damned actor!' Great heavens, Tinker, can't a man get tired of being called a 'damned actor' without your making all this uproar over it, squalling 'nerves' in my face till I wish I was dead and done with it!"

 

He went back to the fireplace again, but omitted another dolorous stroke upon the mantel. "And look at the women in the profession," he continued, as he turned to face his visitors. "My soul! Look at them! Nothing but sawdust, sawdust, sawdust! Do you expect to go on acting with sawdust? Making sawdust love with sawdust? Sawdust, I tell you! Sawdust, sawdust, saw -"

 

"Oh, no," said Tinker easily. "Not all. Not by any means. No."

 

"Show me one that isn't sawdust!" the tragedian cried fiercely. "Show me just one!"

 

"Well," said Tinker with extraordinary deliberation, "to start near home: Wanda Malone."

 

Potter burst into terrible laughter. "All sawdust! That's why I discharged her this afternoon."

 

"You what?" Canby shouted incredulously.

 

"I dismissed her from my company," said Potter with a startling change to icy calmness. "I dismissed her from my company this afternoon."

 

Old Tinker leaned forward. "You didn't!"

 

Potter's iciness increased. "Shall I repeat it? I was obliged to dismiss Miss Wanda Malone from my company, this afternoon, after rehearsal."

 

"Why?" Canby gasped.

 

"Because," said Potter, with the same calmness, "she has an utterly commonplace mind."

 

Canby rose in agitation, quite unable, for that moment, to speak; but Tinker, still leaning forward, gazing intently at the face of the actor, made a low, long-drawn sound of wonder and affirmation, the slow exclamation of a man comprehending what amazes him. "So that's it!"

 

"Besides being intensely ordinary," said Potter, with superiority, "I discovered that she is deceitful. That had nothing whatever to do with my decision to leave the stage." He whirled upon Tinker suddenly, and shouted: "No matter what you think!"

 

"No," said Tinker. "No matter."

 

Potter laughed. "Talbot Potter leaves the stage because a little 'ingenue' understudy tries to break the rules of his company! Likely, isn't it?"

 

"Looks so," said old Tinker.

 

"Does it?" retorted Potter with rising fury. "Then I'll tell you, since you seem not to know it, that I'm not going to leave the stage! Can't a man give vent to his feelings once in his life without being caught up and held to it by every old school-teacher that's stumbled into the 'show-business' by mistake! We're going right on with this play, I tell you; we rehearse it to-morrow morning just the same as if this hadn't happened. Only there will be a new 'ingenue' in Miss Malone's place. People can't break iron rules in my company. Maybe they could in Mounet-Sully's, but they can't in mine!"

 

"What rule did she break?" Canby's voice was unsteady. "What rule?"

 

"Yes," Tinker urged. "Tell us what it was."

 

"After rehearsal," the star began with dignity, "I was, I" He paused. "I was disappointed in her."

 

"Ye-es?" drawled Tinker encouragingly.

 

Potter sent him a vicious glance, but continued: "I had hopes of her intelligence, as an actress. She seemed to have, also, a fairly attractive personality. I felt some little, ah, interest in her, personally. There is something about her that" Again he paused. "I talked to her, about her part at length; and finally I, ah, said I should be glad to walk home with her, as it was after dark. She said no, she wouldn't let me take so much trouble, because she lived almost at the other end of Brooklyn. It seemed to me that, ah, she is very young, you both probably noticed that, so I said I would, that is, I offered to drive her home in a taxicab. She thanked me, but said she couldn't. She kept saying that she was sorry, but she couldn't. It seemed very peculiar, and, in fact, I insisted. I asked her if she objected to me as an escort, and she said, 'Oh, no!' and got more and more embarrassed. I wanted to know what was the matter and why she couldn't seem to like, that is, I talked very kindly to her, very kindly indeed. Nobody could have been kinder!" He cleared his throat loudly and firmly, with an angry look at Tinker. "I say nobody could have been kinder to an obscure member of the company that I was to Miss Malone. But I was decided. That's all. That's all there was to it. I was merely kind. That's all." He waved his hand as in dismissal of the subject.

 

"All?" repeated Canby. "All? You haven't"

 

"Oh, yes." Potter seemed surprised at his own omission. "Oh, yes. Right in the midst of, of what I was saying, she blurted out that she couldn't let me take her home, because 'Lancelot' was waiting for her at a corner drug-store."

 

"Lancelot!" There was a catch of dismay in Canby's outcry.

 

"That's what I said, 'Lancelot'!" cried Potter, more desolately than he intended. "It seems they've been meeting after rehearsal, in their damn corner drug-store. Lancelot!" His voice rose in fury. "If I'd known I had a man named Lancelot in my company I'd have discharged him long ago! If I'd known it was his name I'd have shot him. 'Lancelot!' He came sneaking in there just after she'd blundered it all out to me. Got uneasy because she didn't come, and came to see what was the matter. Naturally, I discharged them both, on the spot! I've never had a rule of my company broken yet and I never will! He didn't say a word. He didn't dare."

 

"Who?" shouted Canby and old Tinker together.

 

"Lancelot!" said Potter savagely.

 

"Who?"

 

"Packer! His first name's Lancelot, the hypocrite! L. Smith Packer! She's Mrs. Packer! They were married two days before rehearsals began. She's Mrs. L. Smith Packer!"

 

 

XII

 

As the sound of the furious voice stopped short, there fell a stricken silence upon these three men.

 

Old Carson Tinker's gaze drifted downward from his employer's face. He sat, then, gazing into the rosy little fire until something upon the lapel of his coat caught his attention, a wilted and disreputable carnation. He threw it into the fire; and, with a sombre satisfaction, watched it sizzle. This brief pleasure ended, he became expressionless and relapsed into complete mummification.

 

Potter cleared his throat several times, and as many times seemed about to speak, and did not; but finally, hearing a murmur from the old man gazing at the fire, he requested to be informed of its nature.

 

"What?" Tinker asked, feebly.

 

"I said: 'What are you mumbling about?'"

 

"Nothing."

 

"What was it you said?"

 

"I said it was the bride-look," said the old man gently. "That's what it was about her, the bride-look."

 

"The bride-look!"

 

It was a word that went deep into the mourning heart of the playwright. "The bride-look!" That was it: the bride's happiness!

 

"She had more than that," said Potter peevishly, but, if the others had noticed it his voice shook. "She could act! And I don't know how the devil to get along without that hypocrite. Just like her to marry the first regular man that asked her!"

 

Then young Stewart Canby had a vision of a room in a boarding- house far over in Brooklyn, and of two poor, brave young people there, and of a loss more actual than his own, a vision of a hard-working, careworn, stalwart Packer trying to comfort a weeping little bride who had lost her chance, the one chance,  "that might never have come!"

 

Something leaped into generous life within him.

 

"I think I was almost going to ask her to marry me, to-morrow," he said, turning to Talbot Potter. "But I'm glad Packer's the man. For years he's been a kind of nurse for you, Mr. Potter. And that's what she needs, a nurse, because she's a genius, too. And it will all be wasted if she doesn't get her chance!"

 

"Are you asking me to take her back?" Potter cried fiercely. "Do you think I'll break one of my iron"

 

"We couldn't all have married her!" said the playwright with a fine inspiration. "But if you take her back we can all see her every day!"

 

The actor gazed upon him sternly, but with sensitive lips beginning to quiver. He spoke uncertainly.

 

"Well," he began. "I'm no stubborn Frenchman"

 

"Do it!" cried Canby.

 

Then Potter's expression changed; he looked queer.

 

He clapped his hands loudly; Sato appeared.

 

"Sato, take that stuff out." He pointed to the untouched whiskey. "Order supper at ten o'clock for five people. Champagne. Orchids. Get me a taxicab in half an hour."

 

"Yisso!"

 

Tinker rose, astounded. "Taxicab? Where you"

 

"To Brooklyn!" shouted Potter with shining eyes. "She'll drive with me if I bring them both, I guess, won't she?"

 

He began to sing:

 

"For to-night we'll merry, merry be!

For to-night we'll merry, merry be"

 

Leaping uproariously upon the aged Tinker, he caught him by the waist and waltzed him round and round the room.