It was certainly a sunny enough day, and the Elbe glistened invitingly. Wooton had been up earlier than was usual for him and had taken a walk out into the level country; when he came into the hallway of the Bellevue he was in the best of spirits. Miss Ware came down the stairway, presently, her parasol in rest over her left arm, and her gloves still in process of being buttoned. She smiled down at him radiantly.
"I haven't kept you waiting, have I?" she cried.
"Not a moment," he answered, adding, with a smile, "strange to say. You young ladies usually do! But—do you notice how kind the clerk of the weather is?"
"Delightful!" They went slowly down toward the wharf where the little steamer was puffing lazily in the rising heat.
"Your mother is well?" He asked the I question as solicitously as if he were the family physician.
"Quite well. The fact is," she added with a comic effort to seem melancholy, "I'm afraid she'll be so well soon that she'll want to go back to the States."
"Ah, so you don't want to go just yet?"
"Oh, I haven't half seen it all, you know! Still,—" she sighed gently and looked out beyond the real horizon, "it will be nice to be home again."
Wooton brought a couple of steamer chairs and placed them on the deck-space that was well in the shadow of the awning. The sun was beginning to grow almost unpleasantly strong. Presently, with a minute or so of wriggling away from the wharf, of backing and sidling, the little steamer got proper headway and proceeded slowly on its way up the river. The central portion of the town was soon passed; green garden-spaces, and houses shut in by cherry-trees, gave way to low-lying meadows and hills rising up in the distance. The perpetual "shug-shug-shug" of the engines, and the hushed whispering of the river as the steamer bows cut through the water were almost the only sounds that broke the quiet. There was not a cloud in the sky. Swallows darted arrow-like through the air.
Wooton had pushed his hat back from his forehead and sat with half-closed eyes. He was silent. Miss Ware, looking at him shyly, wondered what he was thinking about; told herself once more that he was the handsomest man she had ever seen, and then sent her clear gaze riverward again. What Wooton was thinking at that moment was that he would give many things if in his spirit there were still that simplicity that would ask of life no more feverish pleasures than those he was now enjoying—the pleasures of peace and quiet. To be able to sit thus, with half-closed eyes, as it were, and let the wind of the world always blow merely a gentle breath across one's face!—perhaps, after all, that was the road to happiness. On the other hand, the thousand and one experiences; missed, the opportunities wasted! Surely it was impossible to appreciate the sweets of good had one not first tasted of the fruit of knowledge of evil! But supposing one so got the taste of the bitter apple into one's mouth that thereafter all things tasted bitter and the good, especially, created only nausea? For that was his own state. Well, in that case—he smiled to himself in his silence—there was nothing to be done but enjoy, enjoy to think of the once easily reached contentment as of a dream that is dead, and to strive so ceaselessly to blow the embers of the fires of pleasure that they would at least keep smouldering until all the vessel was ashes. The pleasures of the moment—those were the things to seize! The moment was the thing to enjoy; the morrow might not come.
He turned to look at the girl beside him, who had by this time resigned herself with something of quiet amusement to his silence, and now sat, veilless, her lips slightly open to the breeze, her face unspeakably fair-seeming with its rosy flush and its look of eager, expectant enjoyment. He told himself that, as far as this moment at least went, it left little to be desired; to sit beside so sweety a girl as Dorothy Ware was surely pleasure enough. And then he thought somewhat grimly that he himself was, unfortunately, impregnable to the infection of such simple joys.
"A penny!" he spoke softly, as if not to wake her too brusquely from a rêverie.
"Oh," she cried, with a little start, and, turning toward him, "they are not worth so much, really! I was thinking of Mr. Lancaster. He used to be so terribly ambitious; you know. Didn't you say you knew of him, in town?"
Wooton realized that he must needs be diplomatic. He called it diplomacy; some persons might have rudely termed it mendacity. The two are commonly confounded.
"Yes," he replied, "some artists that I knew used to mention his name occasionally." He paused an instant or two and then continued, impassively, "I seem to remember hearing someone say that he was engaged to some very rich girl."
Dorothy Ware smiled sadly. "I supposed he would be," she said, simply. She felt angry at herself for not feeling the news more deeply; yet it hardly seemed to touch her at all; it was just as if she had heard that one of her girl friends had married. She recalled Dick's impassioned, if soberly worded, farewell; she remembered her own words; she wondered how it was possible that the passing months could have changed her so that now she seemed almost indifferent as to young Lancaster's fortunes or misfortunes.
Wooton's exclamation of "Ah, there's Schandau!" broke in upon the train of her self-questioning thoughts. They walked over to the rail of the boat together, and looked out to where the roofs of summer-villas and hotels came peeping through the wooded banks of the river. As they stood thus she felt his right hand just touching her own left. Somehow, the blood came rushing into her face, and she took her hand away under pretense of fastening up her veil.
From the landing-stage they walked up to one of the hotels, where Wooton ordered a light repast. Miss Ware was in excellent spirits. The beauty of the day and the picturesqueness of the place, with its cozy villas tucked away against the hillside, its leafy lanes and its mountain shadows, filled her with the elixir of happiness. She chatted and laughed incessantly. She asked Wooton if they couldn't go for a walk into the woods. Walk, of course! No, she didn't want to drive; that was too much like poking along the boulevards at home in the States. She wanted to stroll up little foot-paths, into the heart of the wood, and gather flowers, and have the birds whistle to her! Didn't he remember that she was a country girl? She hadn't been in a real wood since she left Lincolnville, and did he suppose she was going to enjoy this one by halves?
They walked out along the white, dustychausseeuntil it reached the denser part of the hill-forest; then they struck off into a by-path. In the shadow of the pines it was cool and refreshing; the scent of pines filled the air. In the thick undergrowth there were occasional clumps of blue-berries. Dorothy Ware picked them eagerly, laughing carelessly when she stained her gloves with the juice. She plucked flowers in abundance, and had Wooton carry them. They strayed heedlessly into the forest, hardly noting whether they followed the path or not. They found themselves, presently, in the lee of a huge rock that some long-silent volcanic upheaval must once have thrust through the earth's shell. Close to the earth this rock was narrower than at its summit; under its sloping base there was a cavity all covered with moss. Overhead the pines shut out the sky.
A trifle tired with her walk, Miss Ware hailed the sight of this spot with unfeigned gladness. Wooton spread his top-coat for her. Sitting there, in the silence made voiceful by the rustling of the pines, Wooton felt his heart beat faster than it had in years. She was pretty, this girl; her voice was so caressing, and her presence and manner such a charm! Young enough, too, to be taught many things. He watched her, as she sat there, binding the flowers with the stems of long grasses, stray curls playing about her cheeks, and her mouth snowing the slight down on the upper lip, and, for an instant, there came to him a feeling of pity. It is possible, perhaps, that the serpent occasionally pauses to admire the pigeon's plumage.
"I wonder," he began, softly, "whether you know Hugh McCulloch's 'Scent o' Pines'? No? I think you will like it:
"Love shall I liken thee unto the roseThat is so sweet?Nay, since for a single day she grows,Then scattered lies upon the garden-rowsBeneath our feet."But to the perfume shed when forests nod,When noonday shines;That lulls us as we tread the wood-land sod,Eternal as the eternal peace of God—The scent of pines."
He quoted the verses musically. He gave the words all the sincerity that never found its way into his actions. He was one of those men who read a thing better than the man that wrote it, because they know better the art of simulating an emotion that he knows only how to feel.
"A pretty idea," she admitted. They talked on ramblingly, lightly. Overhead the sun was sinking into the west. A wind had sprung up from the southwest, and in the north-west banks of clouds had gathered, thick and threatening. Occasional flashes of lightning darted across the cloud-space. A thunderstorm was evidently approaching, proceeding stubbornly against the wind. The sun dipped behind the clouds, that rose higher, presently over-casting all the heavens. Light gusts of wind went puffing through the forest, scattering leaves and whirling twigs.
Suddenly, with a crash and a roar, the mountain storm broke over the forest. Almost on the stroke of the first flash of lightning came the thunder; then as if the clouds had been bulls charging in the arena, the furious concussion was followed by the gush of the blood of heaven. The rain came down in lances that struck the earth and bounded up again. About the heads of the pines the wind roared and wailed.
Coming upon them so suddenly, this riot of the elements made the two young people sitting there in the lee of the rock, start to their feet in dismay. A momentary gleam came into Wooton's eyes; whether it was anger or joy only himself could have told. All about them the storm was playing its tremendous tarantelle; the whole earth seemed to shake with the repeated cannonades of the thunderous artillery of the heavens, and through the darkness that had fallen the lightning sent such vivid streaks of light as only made the succeeding gloom more dismal. It was to tempt fate to venture out of the shelter the rock was giving. Instinctively the girl shrank a little toward Wooton. She looked at him appealingly. "It's dreadful," she said, "it—it hurts my eyes so! And—the steamer! Mamma will think—" She stopped and covered her eyes with her hands just as another flash seared its way into the forest.
Wooton stood still, biting his underlip nervously. "I—I'm afraid it's all my fault," he said, "I ought to have known it was getting late. And these storms come up so quickly here in the mountains. We can't stir from here. The storm is playing right around this wood. It means waiting." He saw her shivering slightly. Bending down, he picked up his top-coat, and put it gently about her shoulders. "You'll catch cold," he warned, in a tender voice.
She said nothing; but he could see gratitude in her eyes. Something seemed to draw her toward him. At each glaring flash she shrank nearer to him. He was looking tensely at her, his hand against a ledge of rock, lest the gusts of wind should swing him out into the open.
A crash that seemed to deafen all hearing for several instants; a flying mass of splintered wood, torn from a suddenly stricken tree that fell straight across the opening of their shelter; a light so white that it hurt the eyes; and a trembling under foot that shook the very ground these two storm-stayed ones stood. In the instant that followed the crash Wooton felt the girl beside him lean heavily towards him; her eyes were closed; she had fainted. Keeping her tightly in his arms, a queer smile played about the corners of his mouth. "It was ordained!" His thoughts uttered themselves almost unconsciously. Holding her so, with the thunder still rolling its chariot wheels all about the reverberate rocks, he kissed her.
The wind veered about, sending the rain spatteringly into their faces. Wooton unfastened the girl's veil, and took her hat off, very gently and carefully. The rain splashed into her face, streaming over the brow and the heavy lashes.
Slowly the lashes lifted; her breast moved in a tremulous breath. As comprehension of her position came to her awakening faculties she seemed to shudder a little, to attempt withdrawal; then her eyes sought his, and something found there seemed to soothe; she sighed again and sank more closely into his embrace. And now fires went coursing through the man; he pressed the girl's slight body to him fiercely, and kissing her upon both eyes, whispered into the rosy shell of her ear, "Dorothy—I love you!"
The storm still played relentlessly about them. The rain came further and further into the shelter-hole. But these two, lip to lip, and breath to breath, gave no heed save to the promptings of their own emotions. The elements might rend the rocks; but hearts they could not scar! The girl felt herself irresistibly drawn by this man. Something in him had always attracted her wonderfully—something she had never sought to explain, scarcely heeding it for any length of time. But now that chance had, as it seemed, thrown the magnet and the steel so closely together, she felt this hidden, mysterious force more mightily than ever; it seemed to her that in his kisses all the earth might melt away and become nothing. Moments when she feared him, when he inspired her with something not unlike anger, were succeeded by moments when she felt that he had put an arrow into her heart which to withdraw meant unutterable anguish; but which to bury more deeply meant the bitterest and sweetest of the bitter-sweets of love.
While the storm raged on and over the mountain, these two sat there where whatsoever forest-gods of love there be had drawn their magic circle. Reeling over the mountain top like a drunken man, the storm passed on along the river-banks, waking up echoes in the Bastei, and flying, presently, into Austria. Its muttered curses grew fainter and fainter, gradually to be swallowed up altogether in the swaying of the pines and the streaming of the rain.
Then, presently, the pines began to lift their heads again, to shake themselves as if in angry impatience, so that the rain dropped heavily, and after the flying column of darkness, light came in once more from the west. The sun was still above the horizon. Turning the rain-drops into opals that glistened with the rain-bow hues, the sunshine streamed over the forest. The afternoon, that had seen such a terrible battle of the elements, was to die in peace, and light, and sweetness.
They walked together to an eminence that was almost bared of trees. Below them the forest swept in every direction like a field of dark grass. The sun sent its last rays ricochetting over the waves of green to where they stood, silently. Another instant, and the great bronzed body was below the line of hills that made the horizon; only the salmon-colored streaks that stained the lower strata of the western sky remained to tell the tale of the sun-god's day. The air grew slightly chill.
With that first forerunner of the fall of night, there came into the dream that Dorothy Ware had moved in, the chilling thought of—certain facts. They had most assuredly missed the boat back to Dresden. Would there be another when they reached Schandau? Could they get home by carriage?
Wooton could only shrug his shoulders in despair. He did not know. He had counted only on the two hours—the hour of the departure from Dresden and the return from Schandau; the storm had upset all his plans. He was utterly at sea; he could say nothing until they reached Schandau and made inquiries. Would she not let the thought drop until then. Was there not the sweet present?
As they walked through the forest, picking their way as best they could, without a compass, and uncertain whether their direction was the right one or the wrong one, night falling surely and swiftly, Wooton held his arm about the young girl's waist, lest she stumble or slip. She looked up at him smilingly and trustingly, yet tremulous at the behest of that mysterious something that drove her to accept his caresses instead of spurning them, that made her quiver at his touch, like a wind-kissed aspen, and had her still the storm within her by giving it a storm to fight.
The darkness became denser. Their feet stumbled, and trees were hardly distinguishable in the blackness. Had there been no other thought save that considering their condition and surroundings, the girl, at least, would have been trembling in fear and and uncertainty. As it was, each loophole for a doubt was closed up by a kiss.
A streak of white came suddenly in view, and they found themselves upon the chaussee once more. But in which direction lay Schandau? Overhead the the stars were shining, but neither of these two could use the night heavens as a chart.
Behind them came the dull rumble of wheels. Around a turn of the road came carriage-lights. As they flashed close upon them, Wooton spoke to the driver.
"Sie fahren nach Schandau? nicht wahr?"
The driver assented, without stopping. At the sound of the questioner's voice, one of the occupants of the carriage had leaned window-ward.
It was Miss Tremont, of Boston. In the glare of the lanterns she had caught the faces plainly.
She leaned back to the cushions, smiling slightly.
"It's dark as an inferno, and the stairs make a man's back ache," said Laurence Stanley dismally to himself, as he climbed up to the Philistine Club, "but," as he caught his breath again and consequently began to feel more cheerful, "it's comfortable when you get there."
Which was distinctly true. The furniture, the carpets, the hangings in the spacious, rambling old rooms were all ancient and worn, but comfort was as common to them all as was age. When you came in and slid down into the shiny leather cavern of an arm chair you felt that you were at home. At least, the men who were members did. They were a queer lot, these members. Just what they had in common, no man might say; there were artists, and writers, and musicians, and men-about-town. To outsiders it seemed as if a certain sort of cleverness was the open sesame to the membership rolls. In the matter of name, it was doubtless, the effect of a stroke of humor that came to one of the founders. Perhaps, for the very reason that most of the members were men of the sort that one instinctively knew to be modern, and broad and untramelled by dogmas or doctrines, the club had been named the Philistine Club. It was no longer in its first youth. The walls were behung with the portraits of former presidents—portraits that were all alike in their effect of displaying an execrable sort of painting; it was evident that in its selection of painters in ordinary the club had lived strictly up to its name. The building that housed the club was an old one, on one of the busiest business thoroughfares in the city. It was very convenient, as the hard-working fellows among the members phrased it; in a minute you could drop out of the rush and roar of the street-traffic into the quiet gloom of the club, a lounge, and a book.
Stanley had not been in the dark corner that he usually affected very long before Vanstruther came in, his beard more pointed than ever. He dropped limply into a chair, put his feet on one of the whist tables, and said, as he lit a cigar: "Do you know this is about the time of year that I realize that this town is a hole? I repeat it—a hole! A hole, moreover, with the bottom out. I tell you there's not a soul in town just now."
"Most true," assented Stanley, "for neither you nor I have anything that deserves the name."
"Bosh! What I mean is that the place is a howling desert. Everybody is still at the seashore, or the mountains, or the mineral springs. Newport or the White Mountains, or Manitou, or Mackinac Island—there's where every self-respecting person is at this time; not in this old sweat-box. Why, it's a positive fact that there are no pretty girls at all on the avenue these days; or, if there are any, you can tell at a glance that they're from Podunk or Egypt."
"In other words, there is a scarcity of 'Mrs. Tomnoddy received yesterday,' and 'there will be a meeting of the Contributors' Club at Mrs. Mausoleum's on Friday.' People who like to see their names in the daily papers are out of town, so the society journalist waileth; is it not so? It all comes down to bread and butter in this country. Just as soon as we get away from bread and butter, we'll be greater idiots than the others ever knew how to be." He waved a hand carelessly to some remote space in which he inferred the continent of Europe.
"That's all very well," rejoined the other, "you are always great on magniloquent generalizations, but you never trouble about the concrete things. I'm up a tree for copy, day in, day out, and I groan just once, and what do you do? You moralize loftily. But do you help me with a real bit of news? Not a bit of it."
"Well, you know," Stanley said, lazily, "I'm the last man in the world to come to for items of news concerningle monde où l'on s'amuse. But if you want something a notch or two lower—say about the grade of members of this club. Do you notice that Dante Belden's sofa is empty today?"
The journalist looked around to the other side of the room where an old black leather lounge stood. It was the sofa that had long since become the special property, in the eyes of the other members, of the artist, Dante Gabriel Belden. He used to sleep there a great deal; and he used to dream also. Occasionally he waxed talkative, and then there usually grew up around him a circle of chairs. In such conclave, there passed anecdotes that were delightful, criticisms that were incisive, and, in total, nothing that was altogether stupid.
"Where is he?" asked Vanstruther.
"Where is who?" It was Marsboro, theChronicle'sartist, that had sauntered over.
"Belden."
"Married," said Stanley, laconically.
"The devil!" exclaimed Vanstruther, putting his cigar down on the window-ledge.
"Not the same," was the quiet reply. "Although—" and Stanley paused to smile—"it might be interesting to trace the relationship."
"Oh, talk straight talk for a minute, can't you! I never knew the man was thinking of it."
"Nor did I. Well, we're all friends of his, and men don't think any less of each other in a case of this kind, so I'll tell you the story. In my opinion, it's a clear case of 'Tomlinson, of Berkley Square'. However, that's open to individual interpretation. Belden has succumbed to a lifelong passion for Henri Murger?"
Marsboro swore audibly. "I don't see," he said, "that you're any plainer than you were! What's all that got to do with the man's marriage?"
"Everything! Everything—the way I look at it, at least. You know as well as I do, how saturated he is with admiration for those delightful escapades of the Quartier Latin that Murger makes such pretty stories of. Well—he has acted up to them. The trouble is that this is not the Quartier Latin, and that sort of thing is a trifle awkward when you make a Christian ceremony of it. Here are the facts: Belden and myself were coming home from the theatre a good while ago, when we came to a couple that were decidedly in liquor. The man had been out to dinner, or a dance or somewhere; he had his dress clothes on, and his white shirt was still immaculate. His silk hat was on straight enough. His walk was the only thing that betrayed him. He had his arm around the girl. When we passed them, or began to, we could hear that the girl was crying. Her boots were shabby and the skirt that trailed over them was badly fringed at the bottom; above the waist she had on such sham finery and her face, once pretty, had such a stale, hunted look, as told plainly to what class she belonged. The class that is no class at all, and yet that has always been. "I'm afraid of you—you've been drinking—let me go," she was crying out. Belden stopped at once. The man put his arm more tightly about her waist, and tried, drunkenly, to kiss her. The girl wrenched herself almost away from him. She screamed out, "Let loose of me, you beast!" Then she began to moan a little. That settled Belden. He walked in front of the man in the white shirt-front, and told him to let the woman go. The man said he would see him damned first. The words had hardly tortured their stuttering way from the drunken man's mouth, before Belden gave him a blow between the eyes that sent the fellow to the sidewalk. He lay there cursing, drunkenly. Belden asked the woman, quietly, where she lived. She looked at him and laughed. Laughed aloud! I've seen most things, in my time, but that woman's laugh, and the look on her face are about the most grewsome things I remember. She laughed, you know as if someone had just told her that he would like to walk down to hell with her. She laughed in that high, unnatural key, in which only women of that sort can laugh; it was a laugh that had in it the scorn of the Devil for his toy, man. There was in it a memory of a time when she might have unblushingly answered that question of 'Where do you live?' There was in it something like pity for this innocent who asked her that question in good faith, or seemed to. Then she steadied herself against a lamp-post, and said, with the whine coming back into her voice, 'What d'ye want to know for?' 'I'll see that you get there all right,' said Belden. The woman laughed again. She took her hand away from the lamp-post, and began an effort to walk on without replying; but in an instant she swayed, and, had not Belden jumped toward her and put an arm about her shoulders, would have fallen.
"She cursed feebly. 'Tell me where you live?' Belden persevered. His voice was harsher and almost a command. She stammered out more sneering evasions; then she flung out the name of the dismal street where she had such residence as that sort ever has. What do you suppose that man Belden did? Hailed a cab, put the woman in, and got in after her. Simply shouted a hasty goodnight to me, and drove off. Well,—that's where it all began." Stanley stopped, got up, and walked over to the wall, pressing a button that showed there.
"But you don't mean to say—" began one of the others, with wonder and incredulity in his tone.
"Oh, yes, I do, though. Russell, take the orders, will you? What'll you men drink—or smoke? I've been talking, and my throat's dry."
The darky waited patiently until the several orders had been given. Then he glided away as noiselessly as he had come.
"There is really where the story, as far as I know it, ends," Stanley went on, after he had cooled his throat a little, "The other end of it came to me from Belden the other day. 'Got anything to do Thursday evening?' he asked me. We had been talking of dry-point etching. I told him I thought not. 'Then will you help me jump off?' he went on. Then the whole scene of that winter-night flashed back to me in a sort of wave. I felt, before he answered my question for further information, what his answer would be, 'Yes,' he said, 'it's the same girl. I know her better than I did. Her's is a sad case; very sad. I'm lifting her up out of it.' I didn't say anything, he hadn't asked my opinion. As between man and man there was nothing for me to cavil at; I was invited to a friend's wedding, that was all. I went. I was the only other person present, barring the old German minister that Belden fished out from some dark corner. It was the queerest proceeding! Belden had brought the girl up into a righteous neighborhood some months ago, it seemed; had been paying her way; the neighbors thought she was a person of some means, I suppose. He introduced me to her on the morning of his wedding-day; I think she remembered me, although she has caught manners enough from Belden or her past to conceal what she felt. And so—they were married."
"My God!" groaned Vanstruther, "what an awful thing to do! Lifting her up out of it, does he say? No! He's bringing himself down to it! That's what it always ends in. Always. Oh, I've known cases! Every man thinks he is going to succeed where the others have failed. For they have failed, there is no doubt about that! Look at the case of Gripler, the Elevated magnate!—he did that sort of thing, and the world says and does the same old thing it has always done—sneers a little, and cuts her! He is having the most magnificent house in all Gotham built for himself, I understand, and they are going to move there, but do you suppose for a minute they will ever get into the circle of the elect? Not in a thousand years! Don't misunderstand me: I'm not considering merely the society of the 'society column,' I'm thinking of society at large, the entire human body, the mass of individuals scripturally enveloped in the phrase 'thy neighbor.' The taint never fades; a surface gloss may hide the spot, but some day it blazons itself to the world again in all it's unpleasantness. Take this case of our friend Belden. We, who sit here, are all men who know the world we live in; we will treat Belden himself as we have always done. We will even argue, in that exaggerated spirit of broadness that might better be called laxness, typical of our time, that the man has done a braver thing than ourselves had courage for had the temptation come to us. We will acknowledge that his motive was a good one. He honestly believes that he will educate the girl into the higher life. He thinks the past can be sunk into the pit of forgetfulness; but there is no pit deep enough to hide the past. We will say that he is putting into action what the rest of the radicals continually vapor about; the equal consideration, in matters of morality, of man and woman. He is remembering that a man, we argue, should in strict ethics demand of a woman no more than himself can bring. But, mark my words, the centuries have been wiser than we knew. It is ordained that the man who shall take to wife a woman that has what the world meaningly call 'a past,' shall see the ghost of that past shaking the piece of his house for ever and ever."
There was silence for a few moments. Beyond the curtains, someone came in and threw himself down on the sofa. Marsboro, looking vaguely out at window, said, somewhat irrelevantly, "I suppose that will be the end of the Sunday evening seances?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Stanley. "If I know anything about Belden, I shall not be surprised if he asks us all up there again one of these evenings. He has lived so long in Free-and-easy-dom that no thought of what people call 'the proprieties' will ever touch him."
"Heigh!" Vanstruther stretched himself reflectively. "It's a queer life a man leads, a queer life! God send us all easy consciences!"
"Don't be pathetic!" Stanley frowned. "The life is generally of our own choosing, and if we play the game we should pay the forfeits. Besides which, it is one of the few things I believe in, that the man who has tasted of sin, and in whose mouth the bitters of revulsion have corroded, is the only one who can ever safely be called good. It is different with a woman. If once she tastes—there's an end of her! Oh, I know very well that we never think this way at first. At first—when we are very young—we think there is nothing in the world so delightful as being for ever and ever as white as the driven snow; then Life sends his card, we make his acquaintance, he introduces us to some of his fastest friends, and we, h'm, begin to change our views a little. In accordance with the faint soiling that is gradually covering up the snowy hues of our being, the strictness of our opinions on the matter of whiteness relaxes notably. Arm in arm with Life, we step slowly down the ladder. Then, if we are in luck, there is a reaction, and we go up again—so far!—only so far, and never any further; if we are particularly fond of Life, we are likely to get very far down indeed; and the end is that Life bids us farewell of his own accord. That is the history of a modern man of the world."
"I believe you are right," said Marsboro, "I know, in my own case at least, that I can remember distinctly how beautiful my young ideal was. But Life is jealous of ideals; he shatters them with a single whiff of experience. And it happened as you just now said: as I descended, my ideals descended. I only hope"—he sighed, half in jest, half in earnest,—"that I will begin the upward climb and succeed in winning up."
"Ah," assented Stanley, "that is always the interesting problem. Which it will be: the elevator with the index pointing to 'Up' or the one destined 'Down.' You needn't look so curiously at me, Van, I know what you are wondering. Well you can rest easy in the assurance I give you: the nether slopes are beckoning to me. I became aware of it long ago, reconciled moreover. I live merely for the moment. My senses must amuse me until there is nothing left of them; that is all. But look here: don't think there is no reverse to the medal. I have, fate knows, my moments of being horrified at myself. It is, I presume, at the times when the ghost of my conscience comes to ask why it was murdered." He appeared to be concentrating all his attention on the ashes at the end of his cigarette. "Why, don't you know that there is no longer any meaning for me in any of those words: honor, and truth, and virtue? I have no standards, except my digestion, and my nerves. I don't mistreat my wife simply because it would come back to me in a thousand little annoyances that would grate on my nerves." He sipped slowly at the glass by his side. "And I'm not worse than some other men!"
"True. All of which is a pity. But we've got off the subject. The villainy of ourselves is too patent a proposition. The question is, by what right we continue to expect of the women we marry that which they dare not expect of us.
"Are you the mouthpiece of the New Woman? Well, the Creator made man king, and the laws of physiology cannot be twisted to suit the New Woman. For it is, in essentials, unfortunately a question of physiological consequences. Wherefore, suppose we stop the argument. This is not a medical congress!"
Stanley went over to the desk where the periodicals lay, and picking one up, began, with a cigarette in his mouth, to let his eyes rest on the printed pages.
"Will you go, if you're asked?" Marsboro said, presently.
"I?" Stanley looked up carelessly. "Certainly. As far as I'm concerned a man may marry the devil and all his angels. But I wouldn't take my wife or my sister."
Vanstruther laughed dryly. "If women were to apply the tit-for-tat principle," he said, "what terribly small visiting lists most of us fellows would have!"
But Stanley disdained further discussion, and the other men got up to go. When they had passed beyond the curtains Stanley laid down the paper he had been reading, and smiled to himself. He was wondering why he had been led into this waste of breath. A man's life was a man's life, and what was the use of cavilling at facts! The only thing to do was to take life lightly and to let nothing matter. Also, one must amuse oneself! If the manner of the amusement was distasteful or hurtful to others, why—so much the worse for the others!
So musing, Laurence Stanley passed into a light slumber, and dreamed of impossible virtues.
But Dick Lancaster, who, from the sofa beyond the curtains, had heard all of this conversation, did not dream of pleasant things that night. In fact, he spent a white night. Like a flood the horrors of self-revelation had come upon him at sound of those arguments and dissections; he saw himself as he was, compared with what he had been; he shuddered and shivered in the grip of remorse.
In the white light of shame he saw whither the wish to taste of life had led him; he realized that something of that hopeless corruption that Stanley had spoken of was already etched into his conscience. Oh, the terrible temptation of all those shibboleths, that told us that we must live while we may! He felt, now that he had seen how deep was the abyss below him, that his feet were long since on the decline, and that from a shy attempt at worldliness he had gone on to what, to his suddenly re-awakened conscience, constituted dissoluteness.
To the man of the world, perhaps, his slight defections from the puritanic code would have seemed ridiculously vague. But, he repeated to himself with quickened anguish, if he began to consider things from the standpoint of the world, he was utterly lost; he would soon be like those others.
He got up and opened the window of his bed-room. Below him was the hum of the cable; a dense mist obscured the electric lights, and the town seemed reeking with a white sweat. He felt as if he were a prisoner. He began to feel a loathing for this town that had made him dispise himself so much. The roar of it sounded like a wild animal's.
Then a breeze came and swept the mist away, and left the streets shining with silvery moisture. Lights crept out of the darkness, and the veil passed from the stars. The wild animal seemed to be smiling. But the watcher at the window merely shrank back a little, closing the window. Fascinating, as a serpent; poisonous as a cobra! The glitter and glamour of society; the devil-may-care fascinations of Bohemia; they had lured him to such agony as this!
Such agony? What, you ask, had this young man to be in agony about? He was a very nice young man—all the world would have told you that! Ah, but was there never a moment in your lives, my dear fellow-sinners—you men and women of the world—when it came to your conscience like a sword-thrust, that the beautiful bloom of your youth and innocence was gone from you forever and that ever afterward there would be a bitter memory or a bitterer forgetfulness? And was that not agony? Ah, we all hold the masks up before our faces, but sometimes our arms tire, and they slip down, and then how haggard we look! Perhaps, if we had listened to our consciences when they were quicker, we would not have those lines of care upon our faces now. You say you have a complexion and a conscience as clear as the dew? Ah, well, then I am not addressing you, of course. But how about your neighbors? Ah, you admit—? Well, then we will each of us moralize about our neighbor. It is so much pleasanter, so much more diverting!
With the coming of morning, Lancaster shook himself out of his painful rêveries, and decided that he must escape from this metropolitan prison, if for ever so short a time. He would go out into the country, home. He would go where the air was pure, and all life was not tainted. He walked to a telegraph office and sent a dispatch to his mother, telling of his coming.
Then he went for a walk in the park. Now that he had made up his mind to get out of this choking dungeon for a while he felt suddenly buoyant, refreshed. He tried to forget Stanley and the Imperial Theatre, and all other unpleasant memories of that sort. Some of the park policemen concluded that this was a young man who was feeling very cheerful indeed—else, why such fervid whistling?
When he got to his studio he found some people waiting for him. They had some commercial work for him to do. He shook his head at all of them.
"I'm going out of town for a week," he said, "and I can do nothing until I return. If this is a case of 'rush' you'll have to take it somewhere else."
He turned the key in the door with a wonderful feeling of elation, and the pinning of the small explanatory notice on his door almost made him laugh aloud. He thought of the joy that a jail bird must feel when he sees the gates opening to let him into the free world. No more elevated roads, no more cable cars, no more clanging of wheels over granite, no more deafening shouts of newsboys; no more tortuous windings through streets crowded with hurrying barbarians; no more passing the bewildering glances of countless handsome women; no more—town!
There was a train in half an hour. He bought his ticket and strolled up and down the platform. He wondered how the dear old village would look. He had been away only a little over a year, and yet, how much had happened in that short time! Then he smiled, thinking of the intangible nature of those happenings. There was nothing,—nothing that would make as much as a paragraph in the daily paper. Yet how it had changed him, this subtle flow of soul-searing circumstances! It was of such curious woof that modern life was made; so rich in things that in themselves were dismally commonplace and matters of course, and yet in total exerted such strong influences; so rich, too, in crime and casuality, that, though served up as daily dishes, yet seemed always far and outside of ourselves!
The novel he purchased to while away the hours between the town and Lincolnville confirmed his thoughts in this direction. It was one of the modern pictures of "life as it is." There was nothing of romance, hardly any action; it was nearly all introspection and contemplations of the complexity of modern existence. The story bored him I immensely, and yet he felt that it was a voice of the time. It was hard to invest today with romance.
Was it, he wondered, a real difference, or was it merely the difference in the point of view? Perhaps there was still romance abroad, but our minds had become too analytical to see the picture of it?—too much engaged in observing the quality of the paint?
His mother was waiting for him at the station. It was pleasant to see how proud she was of this tall young son of hers, and how wistfully she looked deep into his eyes. "You're looking pale, Dick," she said, holding him at the stretch of her arms. "And your eyes look like they needed sleep."
Dick gave a little forced laugh and patted his mother's hand.
"Yes, I guess you're right mother. I need a little fresh air and a rest."
"Ah, you shall have both, my boy. And now tell me all you've been doing up there in that big place."
They walked down to the little house wherein Dick had first seen the light of this world. He looked taller than ever beside the little woman who kept looking him over so wistfully. He told her many things, but he felt that he was talking to her in a language that was rusty on his lips, the language of the country, of simplicity and truth. The language of the world, in which his tongue was now glib, would be so full of mysteries to this sweet mother of his that he must needs eschew it for the nonce. It was a small thing, but he felt it as an evidence of the changes that had been wrought in him.
He told her of his work, of his career. Of theTorch, of his subsequent renting of a studio, and free-lance life. Yes, he was making money. He was independent; he had his own hours; work came to him so readily that he was in a position to refuse such as pleased him least. But, he sighed, it was all in black-and-white, so far. Paint loomed up, as before, merely as a golden dream. In illustrating and decorating, using black-and-white mediums, thatwaswhere the money lay, and he supposed he would have to stick to that for a time. But he was saving money for a trip abroad.
They talked on and on until nearly midnight. He asked after some of his old acquaintances; he listened patiently to his mother's gentle gossip and tried to feel interested.
"The Wares are back," explained Mrs. Lancaster.
"Ah," Dick looked up quickly. "Does Dorothy look well?"
"I don't think so, though I'm bound I hadn't the courage to tell her so to her face. She looks just like you do, Dick,—kinder fagged out."
"Yes. They say traveling is hard work. And her mother?"
"Oh, she's about the same as usual. Looks stouter, maybe."
"I must get over and call there, before I get back to town," he said, reflectively. "Well, mother, I suppose I'm keeping you up beyond your regular time. I'm a trifle tired, too. So goodnight."
He kissed her and passed up stairs to his old room. There were the same pictures that he had decorated the walls with a few years ago. He smiled; they were, fortunately, very crude compared to the work he was doing now. When all was dark, he lay awake for a long time, drinking in the deep silence of the place. He could hear the chirrup of the crickets over in the meadows, and from far over the western hills came the deep boom of a locomotive's whistle. The incessant roar of the town, in which even the shrillest of individual noises are swallowed into one huge conglomerate, was utterly gone. He could hear the wind slightly swaying the branches; the deep blue of the star-spotted sky was full of a caressing silence. The peace of it all soothed him, and ushered him into deep, refreshing sleep.
The sun touched him early in the morning, and seeing the beauty of the dawning day, he dressed quickly and went quietly down stairs and out, for a stroll about the dear old village. He passed the familiar houses, smiling to himself. He thought of all the quaint and queer characters in a little place of this sort. Presently he left the region of houses and passed into the woods that were beginning to blush at the approach of their snow-clad bridegroom. The picture of the sun rising over the fringe of trees, gilding the browned leaves with a burnish that blazed and sparkled, filled him with artistic delight. He said to himself that after he had been abroad, and after his hand was grown cunning in colors, he would ask for no better subject than these October woods of the West. He sat down on the log of a tree and watched the golden, crescent lamp of day. He had forgotten the town utterly, for the moment, and for the moment he was happy.
But the sun's progress warned him that it was time to start back to the house. With swinging stride he passed over the highway, over the slopes that led to the village. Suddenly he heard his named called, and turning, saw a tall figure hastening toward him.
It was Mr. Fairly, the minister.
"My dear Dick," he said, shaking the young man's hand, "I am rejoiced to see you. We have heard of you, of course; we have heard of you. But that is not seeing you. Let me look at you!"
Dick smiled. "I've grown, I believe."
"Yes. In stature and wisdom, I dare say. But—" He slipped his arm within Dick's, and walked with him silently for a few minutes. "The town," he went on, "has a brand of its own, and all that live there, wear it." They passed a boy going to school. "Look at that youngster. Isn't he bright-eyed!" A farm wagon drove by, the farmer and his wife sitting side by side on the springless seat. "Did you get the sparkle of their faces?" said the minister. "Their skins were tanned and rough, no doubt, but their eyes were clear. Now, Dick, your eyes have been reading many pages of the Book of Knowledge and they are tired. I know, my boy, I know. We buzz about the electric arc-light till we singe our wings, and then, perhaps, we are wiser. Have you been singeing your's?"
"Not enough, I'm afraid. The fascination is still there. Sometimes it is the fascination of danger, sometimes of repulsion; but it is always fascination."
"Ah, so you have got to the repulsion!"
The minister spoke softly, almost as if to himself. "And you no longer think the world is all beautiful, and sometimes you wonder whether virtue is a dream or a reality? I know, I know! And sometimes you wish you were blind again, as once you were; and you want to wipe away the taste of the fruit of knowledge?"
Dick said nothing.
"Those who chose the world as their arena," the minister went on, "must suffer the world's jars and jeers. The world is a magnet that draws all the men of courage; it sucks their talents and their virtues and spews them forth, as often as not into the waters of oblivion. To swim ashore needs wonderful strength! Here in the calmer waters we are but tame fellows; we miss most of the prizes, but, we also miss the dangers. Perhaps, some day, Dick, you'll come back to us again?"
"I don't know. Perhaps. But I don't think so. That other taste is bitter, perhaps, but it holds one captive. And I'm changed, you see; the old things that delighted me once are stale, and I need the perpetual excitation of the town's unceasing changes. The town is a juggernaut with prismatic wheels."
They had nearly reached the minister's house.
"I haven't preached to you, have I Dick?"
Dick looked at the minister quickly. There was a sort of wistfulness behind the eye-glasses, and a half smile beneath the waving mustache.
"No. I wish you would!"
"Ah, Dick, I can't! I'm not competent. You're in one world, and I'm in another. Too many make the mistake that they can live in the valleys and yet tell the mountaineers how to climb. But, Dick, whatever you do, keep your self-respect! In this complex time of ours, circumstances and comparisons alter nearly everything, and one sometimes wonders whether b-a-d does not, after all, spell good; but self-respect should stand against all confusions! Goodbye, Dick. Remember we're all fond of you! I go to a convention in one of the neighboring towns tonight, and I won't see you again before you go back. Goodbye!"
Dick carried the picture of the kindly, military-looking old face with him for many minutes. If there were more such ministers! He recalled some of the pale, cold clergymen he had met at various houses in town, and remembered how repellant their naughty assumption of superiority has been to him. He was still musing over his dear old friend's counsel, when he noticed that he was approaching the house where the Wares lived. There was the veranda, blood red with it's creeper-clothing, and full of memories for him.
He began to walk slowly as he drew nearer. He was thinking of the last time that he had seen Dorothy Ware. He recalled, with a queer smile, her parting words: 'Goodbye, Dick, be good!' He realized that the Dick of that day and the Dick of today were two very differing persons. And she, too, doubtless, would no longer be the Dorothy Ware he once had known. Something of fierce hate toward the world and fate came to him as he thought of the way of human plans and planning were truthlessly canceled by the decrees of change. Had he been good? Bah, the thought of it made him sneer. If these memories were not to be driven away he would presently settle down into determined, desperate melancolia.
The conflict, in this man, was always between the intrinsic good and the veneer of vice that the world puts on. In most men the veneer chokes everything else. When those men read this, if they ever do, they will wonder why in the world this young man was torturing himself with fancies? But the men whose outer veneer has not yet choked the soul will remember and understand.
Dorothy Ware was on the veranda, gathering some of the vine's dead leaves when Dick's step sounded on the wooden sidewalk. As he saw her, his face lit up. He never noticed that the flush on her face was of another sort.
She smiled at him.
"How do you do, Dick? Come up and shake hands."
Then they stood and looked at each other silently for an instant. "We're both a little older," said Dick. "But I suppose we have so much to talk about that we'll have to make this a very passing meeting. Besides, mother's waiting for me; I've been for a morning walk, you see. You'll be at the great and only Fair, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes; I've almost forgotten how it looks. I do hope they will have a fine day for it."
Miss Ware looked after him wistfully. She thought of the thunderstorm in the forest at Schandau, and sighed.
The first day of the County Fair was hardly eventful. The farmers were busy bringing in their exhibits of stock and produce, and arranging them properly for the inspection of the judges. It is all merely by way of preparation for the big day, the day on which the trotting and running races take place.
Fortunately, it was a cloudless day. Shortly after sunrise clouds of dust began to fill the air. All the roads leading fairwards are filled all morning with every sort and condition of vehicle. Farmers come from the farthest bounderies of the county, bringing their families; the young men bringing their "best girls." This volume of traffic soon reduces the road-bed to a fine, powdery dust, that rises, mist-like and obscures the face of the earth and sky.
Soon the presence of the Fair is felt in the village itself, and the "square" resounds to the cries of the omnibus drivers soliciting fares. "All aboard, now, for the Fair Grounds, only ten cents!" So runs the invitation yelled from half a dozen lusty, though dusty throats. For this occasion every livery stable in the place brings out all the ramshackle conveyances it has. Everything on wheels is pressed into service. Like Christmas, the great day of the County Fair, comes but once a year, and must be made the most of. Few people are going to walk on so dusty a day as this, so the 'bus drivers ply up and down from seven in the morning until dusk sets in, and the last home-stragglers have left the grounds.
At noon, the highway was become a very sea of dust. Dick had walked down to the "square," and was looking about for a conveyance of some sort when a carriage came up with Mrs. Ware and her daughter inside. Dorothy spoke to the coachman, and then waved a daintily gloved hand at Dick. "Delighted!" said that young man, getting in quickly, and adding, in Mrs. Ware's direction, "This is awfully kind in you!" In that course of the drive there was as little said as possible, because each sentence meant a mouthful of dust.
As they passed through the gates at last, Dick smiled at the dear familiar sight that yet seemed something strange. There was the half-mile track in the open meadow; the ridiculously small grand-stand perched against the western horizon, the acres of sloping ground, shaded by lofty oaks, and covered by a mass of picturesquely rural humanity. Against the inclosing fence the countless stalls, filled with the show stock of the county. The crowd was surging around the track, the various refreshment booths, the merry-go-rounds, and the spaces where the "fakirs" held forth. The grand-stand was filled to running over. The air was resonant with laughter; with the appeals of the "fakirs," with the neighing of the hundreds of horses hitched in every part of the field.
The driver halted his horses as close as possible to get to the centre of attraction, the race-track. Then, the horses turning restive, Mrs. Ware decided to get out and go over to the dairy-booth, and see some of her friends from the farms. Dorothy and Dick accompanied her, but had soon exhausted the attractions of the booth. Mrs. Ware guessed she wouldn't go with them. They started out into the motley crew of sightseers together.
As they approached the grand-stand again, their ears were assailed with by a number of quaint and characteristic cries. "Right down this way, now, and see the man with the iron jaw! Free exhibition inside every minute! Walk up, walk up, and see the ring-tailed monkey eat his own tail!" The most laughable part of this exuberant invitation was that it had nothing to do with a circus or a dime-museum, it was merely the vocal hall-mark of an ambitious seller of lemonade and candy. It was one of the tricks of the trade. It caught the fancy of the countryman. It sounded well.
There were other cries, such as: "Here's your chance. Ten shots for a nickel," and "the stick you ring is the stick you gits!" "This way for the great panoramy of Gettysburg, just from Chicago!" "Pink lemo, here, five a glass; peanuts, popcorn!" "The only Californy fruit on the grounds here!" "Ten cents admits you to the quarter-stretch—don't crowd the steps, move on, keep a-moving!" Babel was come again.
The farm-people themselves were a healthy, cheering sight. They were all bent on as much wholesome enjoyment as was possible. It looked as if every man, woman and child in the county was there. They had, most of them, come for the day, eating their meals in their vehicles, or under the trees on the green sward. The meadow was a blaze of color. The dresses of the women, with the color-note in them exaggerated in rustic love of brightness, gave the scene a touch of picturesqueness. The white tents of the various booths, the greenleaf trees, the glaring yellow sun over head, and the dust-white track stretching out in the gray mist of heat and dust made a picture of cheer and warmth.
A cheering from the grand-stand. A trotting heat is being run, and the horses have been around for the first time. It is not like the big circuit meeting, this, and Dick thought with something of gladness that the absence of a betting-shed left the scene an unalloyed charm.
Everybody thinks himself competent to speak of the merits of the horses. "He ain't got that sorrel bitted right," declares one authority. "He'll push the bay mare so she'll break on the turn; there—watch her—what 'd I tell you!" triumphs another. A third utters the disgusted sentiment that "Dandy Dan 'd win ef he wuz driv right." And so on. Dick and Dorothy smile at each other as they listen. There is nothing pleasanter in the world than a silent jest as jointure.
Then there comes a rush of dust up the track, a clatter of hoofs over the "stretch," a whirl of wheels, cheers from the crowd and the heat is lost and won.
And so the day wears on, and the program dwindles. There are several trotting races, a pacing event, a running race, and some bicycle exhibitions. The day is to be topped off with a balloon ascent, the balloonist, a woman, being billed to descend, afterward, by way of a parachute.
But to neither of these two spectators did the events of the program seem the most interesting of the displays. It was the country people themselves that had the most of quaint charms. Miss Dorothy Ware was become so saturated with the polish of cosmopolitan views, and the manners caught from extensive travel, that these scenes, once so familiar and natural, now struck her as very strange and extraordinary. In Dick the air of the metropolis had so keyed him up to the quick, unwholesome pleasures of the urban mob that this breath of country holiday filled him with a pleasant sense of rest. Never again could he be as these were, but he could, in a far-off, dreamy way, still appreciate their primitive emotions. They were all so ingenious, so openly joyful, so gayly bent on having a good time, these country folk! They strolled about in groups of young folk, or in couples, or in family parties. She casts a wistful look toward a fruit-stand; he must go promptly and buy her something. He bargains closely; he is mindful, doubtless, of the fact that there is still the yearning for the merry-go-round, the phonograph, and the panorama, to be appeased.
In the West the sun was taking on the dull red tone of shining, beaten bronze. The haze of dust began to lift, mist-wise, up against the shadowgirt horizon. From thousands of lips there presently issues a long drawn "Ah-h!" and the unwieldy mass of a balloon is seen to rise up over the meadow. A damsel in startling, grass-green tights floats in mid-air upheld by the resisting parachute, and drops earthward to the safe seclusion of a neighboring pasture. Vehicles are unhitched; there are some moments of wild shouting and maneuvering, and then the stream of humanity and horses pours out into the dusty road, and in a little while the fair grounds are merely a place for the ghosts of the things that were.
When it was all over, when he had said goodbye to Miss Ware and her mother, a sense of loneliness came over Dick, and he sank into one of those moody states that nowadays invariably meant torment. He could not remember to have talked to Dorothy of anything save commonplace and obvious things, and yet with every glance of her eye, every tone of her voice, the old glamour that he had felt aforetime had come upon him again. She was no longer the same, he had observed so much; the girlish exuberance and forth-rightness had given way to a more subdued manner, a fine, but somewhat colorless polish. Something, too, of the sparkle seemed to have gone from her; her smile had much of sadness. It flashed over him that never once had either of them referred to the words with which they once had parted. Had it been his fault, or hers? Once, she had let him hope, had she not? He remembered the dead words, but he smiled at the dim tone that yon whole picture took in his memory. It was as if it had all happened to someone else. Well,—perhaps it had; certainly he was separated by leagues of too well remembered things from that other self, the self that had said to a girl, once, "Dorothy, will you wish me luck?"
But in spite of the changes in them both, Dick felt that her charm for him was potent with a new fervor. He could not define it; it seemed a halo that surrounded her, in his eyes at least. The sardonic recesses of his memory flashed to him the echo of his foolish words to Mrs. Stewart, at the opera. "Oh, damn the past," he muttered, hotly. He would begin all over again, he would atone for those pretty steps aside; he would pin his faith to the banner of his love for Dorothy. For he felt that he did love this girl. He longed for her; she seemed to personify a harbor of refuge, a comfort; he felt that if he could go to her, and tell her everything, and feel her hand upon his forehead, her smile, and the touch of her hand would wipe away all the ghostly cobwebs of his memory, of his past, and leave him looking futureward with stern resolves for white, and happy, wholesome days.
Surely it would be madly foolish to let a Past spoil a Future!
He saw the grin upon the face of Sophistry, and set his lips. No, there were no excusing circumstances; he had gone the way of the world, because that way was easy and pleasant. Only his weakness was to blame.
"She is as far above me," he said, before he went to sleep that night, "as the stars. But—we always want the stars!"
As for Miss Ware, it need only be chronicled that she was very quiet and abstracted that evening, so that her mother was prompted to remark that "Lincolnville don't appear to suit you powerful well, Dorothy." As a matter of fact, the girl was afar off, in thought, and her eyes were bright with tears because of the things she was remembering.
She had loved Dick, on a time. And to realize that never, in all time, would her conscience permit her to satisfy that love—that was bitter, very bitter.
Winter was coming over the town. The gripmen of the cable cars were muffled to their noses in heavy buffalo coats, and the pedestrians were heralded by the white steam that testified to the frostiness of the air. The newspaper boys performed "break downs" on the corners for the mere warmth thereof, and the beggars and tramps presented a more blue-nosed, frost-bitten appearance than usual.
Everybody was in town once more. The hills, the seaside and the watering places had all given up their summer captives, and the metropolis held them all. The Tremonts were returned from Europe. The opera season, promising better entertainment than ever, had lured many of the wealthier folk from the country, for the winter at least. Among these were the Wares. It was a fashion steadily increasing in favor, this of living in town the winter over, and retiring to rusticity for the dog days. With the Wares it was not yet become a fashion; it was merely in accordance with Dorothy's wish to hear the opera and the concert season that the move townward was made.
Mrs. Annie McCallum Stewart's little "evenings" were more popular than ever. There seemed a positive danger that she would become known as the possessor of a "salon" and have a society reporter describe a representative gathering of her satellites. On this particular evening the carriages drove up to the house and drove off again without intermission all the evening. People had a habit of coming there before the theatre, or after; of staying ten minutes or two hours, just as their fancy, or Mrs. Stewart might dictate.
One of the latest to arrive was Dick Lancaster. It was his first appearance there that season. He had only come because he had heard that Dorothy Ware was to be there. He hardly looked as well as usual. He had been working very hard, making up for the time lost in the country. His cheek-bones stood out a trifle prominently, and his eyes were tired.
Mrs. Stewart proffered him the tips of her fingers, shaking her head at him with mockery of a frown.
"You ought to be introduced to me again," she said.
"I've been tremendously busy."
"Ah, you plagiarist! The sins that the word 'busy' is made to cover! People escape debts, and calls, and engagements, nowadays, by simply flourishing the magic word 'busy.'" She broke off, and began to look at him steadily over the top of her fan. Then she went on in a very low voice, "And have you found out how one's youth is lost in town?"
"You're cruel," he murmured.
"Not I. But there, go in and talk to the others. There are lots of people you haven't met before, and there are some pretty girls. Go in, and enjoy yourself if you can. And perhaps, if you find time, and I think of it again, I shall ask you to introduce me to your new self.
"I've never been introduced to that new self yet,egomet ipse."
He found two arch-enemies, Mrs. Tremont and Miss Leigh, conversing with cheerless enthusiasm. "I heard of you a good deal while I was abroad," said Mrs. Tremont, after greetings had been exchanged. Dick bowed, and looked a question.
"It was Mr. Wooton mentioned you," Mrs. Tremont went on, pompously. "We met in Germany. A charming man!" She said it with the air of one conferring a knighthood.
Dick was wondering how many times a day a woman like this one managed to be sincere. Then he said, "Miss Tremont is well, I trust?"
"Yes. She's here somewhere." She lifted her lorgnette deliberately and gazed toward the piano, "Who is that playing?" she asked.
"Mrs. Stewart herself," said Miss Leigh.
"Dear me! I didn't know she played. I must go and congratulate her." She moved off with severe dignity.
Miss Leigh laughed as she watched the expression on Dick's face.
"Do you believe in heredity?" he asked.
"Yes, and no. Not in this case, if that's what you mean. Miss Tremont is far too clever. Do you know," she went on, with slow distinctness, "that you are changed."
He made a movement of impatience. "I have heard nothing but that all evening," he declared. "Simply because the town had put it's brand on me, whether I wished it or no, am I to be forever upbraided?" There was both petulence and pathos in his voice.
"H'm," she said, "you still have all your old audacity. But I don't think it is anything but genuine interest in you that prompts such remarks."
"You once said something about being genuine. You said it was pathetic. Now I know why that is so true. The pathos comes after one has lost the genuineness."
"Yes, but when one does nothing but think and think, and brood and brood, the pathos turns bathos. The thing to do is to laugh!"
"Is that why there is so much flippancy?"
"No doubt. Tragedy evokes flippancy and comedy starts tears."
"You are a very fountain of worldly paradoxes. Where do you get them all from?"
"From my enemies. I love my enemies, you know, for what I can deprive them of. That's right, leave me just when I'm getting brilliant! Go and talk to Miss Ware about the rich red tints of the Indian summer leaves and the poetry in the gurgle of the brook. Go on, it will be like a breath of fresh air after the dismal gloom of my conversation!" She got up, laughing, and added, in a voice that he had not heard before, "Go in and win! Your eyes have told your secret."
She moved off, and he saw Dorothy Ware coming toward him. He noticed how delightfully she seemed to fit into this scene; how charmingly at ease and how natural she looked. Her color was not as fresh as it once had been: but he remembered how popular she had at once become in town, and that her life was now a very whirl of dances and receptions and festive occasions of that sort. He had hardly shaken hands when Mrs. Tremont and her daughter approached from different directions. They were both, they declared, so perfectly delighted to see Miss Ware again.
Mrs. Stewart sailed majestically up to them at this juncture, and bore Lancaster away in triumph. He heard Mrs. Tremont asking Dorothy, as he moved away, "And how's your poor, dear mother?" Then he found himself being introduced to a personage with a Vandyke beard.
"Ah," said the personage, with some show of interest, "you're an artist? Now, tell me, frankly, why do you Western artists never treat Western subjects?" And then Dick found himself floundering about in a sea of argument with this personage. Afterwards, when the agony was over, he discovered that it was the author, Mr. Wreath, who had thus been catechizing him. It was noised about the world that Mr. Wreath was a monomaniac on the subject of realism. Dick remembered wishing he had caught the man's name at the introduction.
In the meanwhile Miss Tremont stood talking to Dorothy Ware in a dim corner of the room. There was a small table near them, and upon it were scattered portfolios of photographs.
"Do you ever hear of Mr. Wooton?" Miss Tremont asked, smiling sweetly.
Dorothy gave a little start, and a flush touched her cheek.
"No," she said tonelessly.
"He's a very clever man," persisted Miss Tremont. "I congratulate you." She smiled meaningly.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean?" Dorothy's eyes flashed and her fingers toyed nervously with the photographs.
"If I were an expert photographer I could show you what I mean instantly. Speech is so clumsy!"
Dorothy still looked at her blankly, though she felt her heart beating with accelerated speed.
"From what I saw at Schandau," the other went on coldly, "I should say it was time to announce the engagement."
Dorothy gripped the little table with a tight clasp. Bending over, as if to examine the pictures, she felt waves of heat and cold follow each other over her cheeks and forehead. Her breath seemed to choke. How warm the room was! She longed for a breath of fresh air. She would go and tell her mother that she wanted to have the carriage called at once. But there was her mother talking busily with Mrs. Tremont. And there, beyond, was Dick.
Something very like tears came to the borders of her eyes, as Miss Dorothy Ware looked at, and thought of Dick. He had loved her, and she—Ah, well, that was all over now! Even had she been able to compound with her own conscience, Miss Tremont had effectually barred the way to—ah, to everything! There was Miss Tremont talking, now, to Mr. Wreath and to Dick. Surely the girl would not dare—but no, that was absurd!
Fortunately, Miss Leigh, noticing Dorothy's solitude, decided, just then, that she would go and talk to the girl, which succeeded in diverting Dorothy's mind from unpleasant thoughts.
At the other end of the room the various groups were constantly changing. Above the chatter one could hear the strains of music that floated in from the music-room. Miss Tremont having finally succeeded in luring Mr. Wreath on to a discussion of his own peculiar theory of the art of fiction, Dick left them and strolled into the conservatory. He wanted to be alone. He had been suffering more than ever before from such accute pain as afflicts each individual soul that submits to drowning itself in the meaningless chatter of society. As he himself put it, with something like an oath of disgust, "I've been listening to people I don't care a pin about; hearing rubbish and talking rubbish!" The real key to his feeling of disgust, however, was in the fact that his opportunities to a confidential talk with Miss Ware had all been ruthlessly killed.