"A nice way to contribute to the general entertainment!" It was Mrs. Stewart herself. She was shaking her fan at him. "Don't get up!" she went on, "I want to talk to you." She scrutenized him. "You don't look cheerful!"
"I'm not," he said curtly.
"Remorse?"
"No. Remorse is the divine right of cowards and gourmands. Mine is merely a case of weariness."
"With your own sweet self to blame. I know the feeling. You've been thinking, or, rather, you think you have been thinking. And when one is in that state, everything goes against the grain. Even such a galaxy as that!" She waved her fan to the direction of the inner rooms, and a smile of mischief curled her mouth. "What do you think of this year's crop of lions?"
"Bah!" he scorned viciously, with all the bitterness of the man knocking at the closed portals. "Who was it that first gave your friend Clarence Miller the idea that he was a novelist? His wife, I suppose. When a man's single his follies are suggested by the devil; when he's married, by his wife. I suppose she wants her husband to equal the notoriety attained by her brother-in-law, the composer of 'Rip Van Winkle' and other comic operas that society flocks to listen to. It's a great pity that art and literature happen to be the thing this season."
"You're thinking of the real artists and writers, I presume. Well, it is rather hard on them."
"Hard? Why, its death! Think of the author that finds the market glutted with the free-gratis product of the society butterfly's pen. Its enough to create suicides."
"But you can't very well include Mr. Wreath in the free-gratis class?"
"No. But he is a charlatan, for revenue only. He has so many fads that they stud his conversation as barnacles cover a rock. He is a trumpeter of theories. Oh, I don't deny that he writes well! But he is not satisfied with that, unfortunately; he must needs preach, and the man who preaches about his art is a dispiriting spectacle."
"Dear, dear! What a change! It used to be that we others said all the cutting things, while you listened in awe and trembling; now it is you that uses the edge tools of language. You have beaten us at our own game." Mrs. Stewart dropped her voice a little, and sighed. "But you have lost as much as you have gained, have you not?"
He nodded silently. "The world is a usurer that lends us wisdom if we will but pay our youth as interest. And when we are bankrupt in youth, the wisdom turns to ashes."
"Don't be morbid. It's too fashionable. Cynicism is so cheap nowadays that the poorest Philistine of us all can afford it. The only virtue in optimism, it seems to me, is that it is suffering neglect today; for that reason I may espouse it, merely to avoid the charge of being commonplace. Come, be gay I Laugh! Forget!"
"To forget is to forego one of life's sweetest pains." He laughed mechanically, and got up, offering Mrs. Stewart his arm. "I'm a stupid, morbid fool. My only saving grace is that I know just how big a fool I am." They entered the inner rooms, and Mrs. Stewart, with a smile and a bow, left Dick to talk flatteringly to the musical lion of the town.
Some of the people were already leaving. Dick determined to slip away quietly. But, as he turned to the vestibule, he found himself face to face with Dorothy Ware.
All his gloom vanished. "I've been trying to talk to you all evening," he declared. "I've been wanting to ask you something. I asked you once before. But that seems a very long time ago." He found himself carried away in a whirl of eager enthusiasm and hope. "Dorothy," he said, looking down at her, "there is still hope for me, is there not?"
But in the girl's eyes there was nothing save pain, and shame. She looked away. She played nervously with the lace of her dress.
Blind, man-like, he took it all for shyness. "Only a little hope," he repeated, tenderly. He tried to take her hand.
She shrank away from him in a sort of horror. "No, no," she murmured, in a voice of torture. She did not look him in the face.
Dick stared at her dumbly. Now, at last, he understood her silence, her averted head. He saw the expression that told him she feared to wound him, even though she cared for him not at all.
"Forget me!" she said, and moved away quickly.
He stood, for an instant, looking after her, then he went, moving his lips in a queer, mumbling way, to the vestibule, and asked for his wraps.
As he was leaving the house Dorothy was sinking into a chair by her mother's side. She stared straight out in front of her. When her mother spoke to her she turned slowly around and said, "It's very cold in here." She shivered.
And her mother, knowing that it was as warm as an oven in those rooms, and watching the queer look on her daughter's face, decided the latter was not very well, and must be taken home at once.
He went down the steps with his hand clutching the rail with the fervor of a tooth biting on a lip. If it had been daylight the twitching of his eyes and lip-corners would have been peculiarly noticeable.
For some reason or no reason he scorned the sidewalk; the middle of the road presently felt his nervous footfall. Underneath him he could feel and hear the droning of the cable. Some hundred yards before him he saw the vivid glare that betokened the headlight of an approaching cable-car. For an instant or two he asked himself why he should not continue walking in that direction, in the path of the Juggernaut, and allow himself to be ground into fragments—into the everlasting Forget. Gravely he pondered it: why not? Could the game be worth the candle that was snuffed? And yet, there was something so commonplace, so cheaply melodramatic in that manner of going out that he drew back; he stepped aside and let the dust of the passing car brush him spatteringly. To commit suicide, to choose such a moment for it—a moment that, after all, was but the repetition of a million similar ones—had something so ordinary, so vulgar in it, that after he resisted the thought of it, he shuddered. His lips took on a semblance of smiling.
"What a play for the gallery it would have been!" he thought bitterly.
Presently, as he walked, sobs broke through his lips. The measure of what was lost to him seemed terribly great. All the light of the world was but darkness for him now. What did it all matter now, this world, this life, this aimless race? What was ambition worth, when ambition's cause was gone? Could he take up the dream again, now that waking had brought such pain? Incoherently his mind went back to the moments that had elapsed just before he had left the house, moments that lasted longer than lifetimes. He saw it all again, that scene so indelibly graven on his mental film; he heard those fateful words again and felt their blighting import. His arms went up wildly, with fists clenched, toward the stars, and down again toward the earth like falling hammers, driven with curses.
If anyone had met him at that moment, Dick Lancaster would have been called insane.
Suddenly he stood still, and began to laugh. It was not a pleasant sound, and he himself noticed that it had the discordance of the laugh bred by artifice. He had remembered a sentence that someone had addressed to him, "The thing to do is to laugh!"
So it was. Yes, that was the only armor, the armor of indifference. He walked on, evolving a philosophy of flippancy. Wounded sorely, as he was, he found himself sympathetically wondering whether that flippancy that he once had so despised in his fellow-men and women was not as often a growth of experience as a mask of fashion.
When he reached his room he flung himself on a couch. Outside everything was still. He sent his mind back to the time when he had first entered this town. How void of all suspicion, all cynicism, he was in those days! Experience after experience had left its impress on his wax-like mind and now, with the slipping away of beliefs, the vanishment of idols, the twinges of fate, he found himself at the other extreme, in the mood that laughs at all things, and believes that there is nothing potent save chance.
In that mood he resolved to remain. It was the only one that was no longer unbearable. To attempt the old beliefs were merely to give hostages to disenchantment. He was done now with disenchantment. He would expect nothing, care for nothing. Except to laugh.
But, in the meanwhile, he could no longer bear the scenes and sounds of the town. He cast about for plans. The thought that in one mind at least his flight would look like cowardice did not annoy him; that also was merely a thing to laugh at. The country was not what he wanted. It was not quiet he desired; it was struggle and strife with the dragons of memory and boredom; he wanted new battles to fight, new experiences to harvest—not sensitively, as of old, but coldly, cruelly—in other fields, as far away as possible.
He unlocked his desk and searched for his bank-book. The figures seemed to satisfy him.
"Three thousand," he murmured, "will be enough. I will take a year. I will see everything that my fancy asks for, do everything, be everything. They call it the Old World. Well, it must be able to furnish amusement for me, be it old or young."
He turned to the unfinished sketches, the letters and the other impediments that littered the room. "These shall not hold me a minute," he said. "I want a change of air. I am going to take it. Nor friends, nor promises, nor prospects shall stay me. It's goodbye."
He laughed again, and went out to buy an evening paper, to scan the sailing-lists for the out-going steamers.
On one of the hottest days of August, a month by no means the most delightful of Berlin's moods, there sat in the pleasant, shady garden of the restaurant "Zum Kapuziner," facing the Schlossplatz, a tall young man, whose material externals proclaimed him, to the trained eye, either as an Englishman or an American. It is a safe axiom that all the well-dressed people in the German capital are either English or American.
In front of the young man, on the table, were a glass, a bottle ofMai-trankand an illustrated paper. But the young man was not regarding any of these things, but kept his eyes to an observance of the passers-by. This seemed to amuse him, for from time to time he smiled softly.
It was certainly a pleasant spot. In front there stretched the broad, paved square that gave to the Old Castle of the first German Emperors on the left, to the royal stables on the right, and beyond, straight ahead, gave a glimpse of the quaint, old-fashioned architecture of the "Alte Stadt." For the Schlossplatz marks the limits of the newer portion of Berlin; beyond the bridge everything is the real Berlin, the Berlin untouched by the triumphant splendors that came after '71, the Berlin that knows but little of the passing stranger and the ways to despoil him. And that was why Dick Lancaster had chosen the spot. The passers-by were not at all cosmopolitan; there was little of that mixture of all races, all garbs, all voices, that was to be seen and heard on the "Linden." These were the real Berliners.
In the months that lay between this day and the day on which Lancaster had first felt the soil of Europe under his foot, there had come to him many experiences, many amusements. He had accepted all things. Unfettered by any restraints he had probed all the novelties that presented themselves. He had lived in alternating fevers of discriminations and hard work. For all these new aspects of life and living filled him with the old, dear mania to create. He found himself inspired by the very overflow of his sensations. From long draughts of enjoyment he plunged into as long fits of artistic energy.
He found, moreover, that the increased tension of his spiritual being put a peculiar force into his pencil. Because it was merely one way of laughter, because he began in a spirit of flippancy, the sketches all succeeded immensely. Fortune began to favor him in artistic ways. In Paris he had made a portfolio full of the most admirable sketches of types. There was a crafty cynicism about his work that gave a fascination to them; something not caricature, but finer. Now he chose as his subject the traveling millionaire, now the splendid queen of the boulevard, now the phantom of the "brasserie," and now the rag-picker. One day he had showed some sketches to a man that had begged permission to glance through the portfolio, as they sat, in a crowded café, at the same table. The man was the manager of a famous illustrated paper. He bought some of the sketches, and presently there appeared a most astonishingly eulogistic article, about this young American.
People carefully read the name. They had never heard of him. They looked at the sketches. That was certainly talent of a significant sort. The other papers followed suit. The noise of this discovery went across the channel. There came to this young man orders from London, and the newspapers of that town began to print the most extraordinary inventions, by way of personalities, about him. The world, now as ever, is always glad of a new subject. After that Parisian journal had sounded the first note, the volume of sound that had as its burden Lancaster's name, grew and grew. Of course, there were those that dissented, that took occasion to flay this young man's achievements until there seemed left only a skeleton of faults. But even that only swelled the flood.
All the while, his sketches grew in force and individuality. For, whatever else his detractors denied him, they admitted the originality of his style. It had never been done before. Some called it hideous, some grotesque; but all called it new. That was the great point.
He became the fad. The representatives of American newspapers, who had been prompt to cable home reports of the successes of this unheard-of youth, began to attempt to interview him. Whereupon, having by that time exhausted the immediate enjoyments of Paris, he fled abruptly.
His success had at first surprised, then amused him. When, presently, he found that his bank account was swelling most astonishingly, he was more entertained than ever. He laughed—that unpleasant, mirthless laugh. But he felt no duties toward his success. When Paris became tiresome, he had no hesitation about quitting it without leaving an address. For that matter, he did not, himself, know just whither he would go.
His ticket had been taken for Monaco. The life of that place fascinated him no less than that of Paris, when Paris was fresh to him. Day after day he watched the procession that filed to and from the green tables; the princes of the blood, the newest nabobs, the touring Americans, the Russians, the worldlings and half-worldlings of all nations and degrees. He watched the blue of the Mediterranean as a contrast to the blacknesses of humanity that he saw daily.
And then without an accompanying word, he sent a selection of sketches to that Parisian paper whose discovery, so to say, he was. There came another salvo of applause from the world of art. It seemed, so they all said, as if this young man was destined to show such possibilities in black-and-white as had not yet been dreampt of.
From Monaco the wanderer went to Egypt. A white-sailed fishing-smack, anchored in the bay below him, had started the thought in his mind one sunny afternoon, when the attractions of Monte Carlo were beginning to pall. He could afford extravagances now. The fisherman, when he was accosted, had smiled. Yes, he might charter the boat. But where would the gentleman wish to sail to? And it was of Egypt that Dick thought, suddenly, with a longing for the cold silences of the sands, and the pyramids, and the quaking waves of heat. And so the bargain was arranged and to Egypt went the artist.
Thence he swung back to Italy. Then through Switzerland. Everywhere he roved through the corners that his fancy led him to; nowhere did he merely echo the footsteps of the millions of tourists. Sometimes he walked for whole days at a time. Sometimes he went to a petty inn and astonished the host by staying all day in his room and working. Whenever he found his purse suffering unduly through the vagaries of his nomadic fancies, he posted some sketches to such of the Paris or London papers as had been most clamorous for them.
It was, perhaps, just because he cared so little for it all, that this luck was come to him. In the old days he had chafed against misfortunes, against limitations of all sorts; he had declared that great successes were no longer possible, that everything worth doing had been done long ago. Now, when he cared not at all, fortune kissed him. Which also amused him.
Another man would have laid plans for the furtherment of this fame, would have counted the ways and means of plucking the fruit of success at it's ripest, would have plotted against the erasure—by caprice, of the world, or loss of his own skill, of his own name from the list of the world's favorites. Dick Lancaster did none of these things. He merely accepted the gifts of the moment, and continued recklessly in alternate disappearances and bursts of splendid achievement. There was nothing, he argued bitterly, for which he needed all the fame; so why should he care to be Fame's courtier? If fame chose to pursue him, that was another matter, and beyond his heed.
So, carelessly, recklessly eager for novelties and excitements, this young man adventured over the continent of Europe, gaining everywhere a reputation for devil-may-care-dom and bitterness.
And over many of these things he was thinking, as he sat in the garden of the "Kapuziner." He thought, too, with something of amused wistfulness of the Dick Lancaster that had once been himself,—the boy that had suffered twinges of conscience at the thought of giving up a Sunday to enjoyment, and had felt forever stained because of things that now caused him little save ennui. Was it possible that he had once been like that? Oh, yes, all things were possible; he had found that out plainly enough. Indeed, he reflected, if it should happen to him that the End came tomorrow, he would have the satisfaction of having lived his life, completely, fully, even to satisfy, in half the time that most men take for that task. Since that night, after a certain girl had told him to "forget," he had spared himself in nothing that promised entertainment. With the old restraints completely cast to the winds, with nothing but studied recklessness as his Mentor, he had followed all the promptings of that epicureanism that he now feigned to consider the only philosophy.
In all things he was fickle. Just as the artistic side of him tired quickly of one place, one set of types, so his animal nature was essentially of the dilettante rather than the enthusiast. Wherever he saw a will-o'-the-wisp he followed; but it was no sooner caught than he was repentant of his success. The taste of pleasure was of the briefest to him; it turned to bitterness in a moment.
And yet, he mused, with all his varied experiences, with the feeling of satiety that sometimes overcame him from sheer excess of sensations, the fascination of the town was still upon him. It was surely in his blood, he speculated. He remembered with what passionate eagerness, after the final shaking off of all the old consciences—all those moral skins that he had shed, and left to rot, over there, in America—he had come to the realization of the varied facets of that bewildering jewel, the town.
He shut his eyes to escape the glare of the noon-day, and evolve, behind his closed lids, the aspect of the town after lamps are lit. The constant current of humanity, of the swishing of the women's gowns as they walked, the rattle of the cabs over the stones,—it all filled him with a passion of pleasure. His young blood went more quickly at each sight of that surging sea. The crowds going to the theatres and music-halls; the shadows that flitted hawk-like about the corners; the colors of the occasional uniforms; he drank in the picture thirstily. Both the artist and the man were joined, too, in a passionate eagerness for beauty; he had been known, in his folly as men may call it, to walk a mile so that he might the more often meet an attractive face again. The vision of a beautiful female figure, of a well-fitting gown, gave him an almost painful joy; he felt that charm of mere feminity most acutely and covetously.
And yet, with all, he had been a lonely creature. His pleasures were evanescent and he was ever constrained to browse upon fresh pastures. From this novel experience, that colorful scene, and that delightful companion he extracted the essence all too soon; and the dregs he ever avoided. In his mind there was a gallery of places, faces and voices—all loves of a moment.
It was a cheerless train of thought that he found himself in. But, as he sipped the paleMai-trank, the glad reflection occurred that the world was very large and that he had seen very little of it so far; there were still plenty of things left that were new to him. Surprise would not die for him just yet.
He was watching the rainbows that glimpsed in and out of the streams of cool water that the fountain, in the square, was sending up into the sun-light. And as he was so engaged, there came to his ear the sound of men's voices, speaking English with an unmistakable American accent.
He turned about.
One of the men was Wooton. As they came nearer, he recognized the other as Laurence Stanley. They were coming directly toward the garden, and in another instant they had seen him. Stanley put on his pince-nez. Then they hurried up to him with a flourish of hands.
"Why, God bless our home," laughed Wooton, "if here isn't our famous young friend, Dick Lancaster, the talk of two continents! I'm glad to see you, mighty glad."
"Stanley," said Dick, after they had all shaken hands, "what are you doing here? Where's Mrs. Stanley."
"My boy, I'm enjoying myself. I presume Mrs. Stanley is doing the same. For reasons not necessary of explanation to the mind capable in deduction we are not, at this moment, breathing the air of the same hemisphere."
"Will you fellows take a bit of lunch? We ought to celebrate this meeting with the famous, etcetera, etcetera," said Wooton.
"Look here," said Lancaster, a trifle coldly, "I'd just as soon you'd drop that adjective business. Here's the bill of the play, Stanley." He handed the carte-du-jour over.
While they were discussing their luncheon, chatting of the various causes that had brought them together, and recounting stories, and adventures, Wooton rose solemnly, after a few moments of reflection, and held out his hand to Lancaster. "I want to shake hands with you," he declared, "as with a genuine thoroughbred. I've been listening to you, watching you, and—but that was a long time ago,—hearing about you. You're not the Lancaster I knew."
But, for some strange reason, Lancaster did not hold out his hand. He pretended to be engaged in lifting his glass to his lips. Then he said, "I don't consider that a compliment."
Wooton scowled a little to himself, but passed the matter off lightly enough. "Well," he continued, "at any rate it does me good to see you. How are they all? I've not been back in years, you know." The reason for, and occasion of his exodus did not seem to touch him with the least shade of annoyance.
Lancaster looked at Stanley. "I'm not the man to say. I left there almost a year ago. Stanley was still there then. Stanley, tell us the news from home."
"Yes," was Stanley's reply, "and a nice lot of speculation there was about your sudden disappearance, Dick. There were all sorts of rumors. Some of them hinted at affairs of the heart." He caught the look on Dick's face, and stopped. "However, that's not to the point, I suppose you're thinking? Well, now let me see: they're all about as usual, I think, except, of course, Mrs. Stewart."
The others both started a little.
"Yes. Her husband died in January. She gave up the 'salon' of course; in fact, I think she went abroad."
Lancaster wondered what she would say to him, were they ever to meet. She must have heard about his sudden leap into public notice, his vagabondian ways, his reckless career. He became moody, abstracted. The others were not slow to observe the change in him.
"Stanley," said Wooton, "its time we left the great man to his thoughts. He is evolving a new and fearful sketch. Hope we've not intruded." They got up and were for leaving him, but he protested, and they all strolled away together. He accompanied them to their hotel, and then sauntered off for a stroll in theThiergarten. He found a bench that gave him a view of the sandy ditch wherein the children played all day long in the sun-light, while their nurses sat placidly knitting or reading. It attracted him immediately, this picture of the little bare-legged youngsters in their quaint German attire, digging about in the sand, shouting and laughing and fighting, and all living in the evergreen country of make-believe.
He began to draw some rough sketches. So engrossed was he that the sun had sunk behind the trees before he remembered that he had promised his two townsmen to go to the "Linden" theatre with them. He got up, looked at his watch, and hailed a passing Taxometer.
In the days that immediately followed, these three were together a great deal. Presently Stanley drawlingly, announced that he would have to be packing up; his bank account was getting low, he declared, and he would be forced once more to bask in the sunshine of his wife's presence.
The other two still stayed on. Berlin was just beginning to be amusing. People were beginning to return from Marienbad, from Schwalbach, from Heringsdorf. All the theatres were once more open. Summer was saying goodbye.
One day Wooton asked: "Of course you've seen Potsdam?"
Lancaster shook his head.
"Well, then it's high time you did. Leaves beginning to fall and all that sort of thing. The last chance. It's really very worth while. Castles till you can't rest. Babelsberg, Sans-souci, and the New Palace. To say nothing of a bit of Potsdam, near the Barberini Palace, that's almost as good as Venice."
They arranged to make the excursion the first sunny day, and had only to wait until the sun rose again. They chose to travel by boat. It was a splendid journey, in the bright sun-light, past the woods and rushes and villas that skirt the little series of inland lakes between Spandau and Potsdam. They left the steamer at the landing-stage for Babelsberg and went leisurely through the grounds and the simple, comfortable, old place. By the time a boatman had rowed them over to Potsdam, it was luncheon time.
They left the boat riding in the Venice-like waterway, and stepped directly into the garden of the vine-covered, shady café that skirted the water for quite a distance. Waiters were moving about and at tables sat family parties, eating and drinking cheerily and honestly. It was one of the things that enchanted Lancaster, this part of continental life, this open-air freedom of taking one's glass of beer, this cheerful way of supping out-doorsen famille, of devoting to restaurant-garden uses the most expensive corner-lots, of making the passing show of strollers one of the sights that you paid for with your glass.
They chose a table that directly overlooked the water-front. Behind them lay the yellow shabbiness of the Barberini palace, that relic of a king's devotion to a dancer. Below them gleamed the water. It was by no means an unpicturesque spot.
"By the way," said Wooton, casually, as they were discussing the entree, "I met a friend of your's last summer, a Miss Ware."
"Oh." There was not much interest in Lancaster's tone, but Wooton helped himself to the Rauenthaler and went on:
"Yes. Rather a pleasant girl. Charmingly unsophisticated. Known her long?"
"We were children together."
"Ah, then she's a country girl, so to say, eh? I thought so."
Lancaster was deep in thought. The other continued to ply himself with wine.
"We had some charming days together," he went on, reminiscently. "She amused me immensely. The Tremonts were staying at the same place then, and I used to amuse myself contrasting that Tremont girl with Miss Ware. The one was like an armor-plate, the other impressionable as wax."
He began to smile to himself mysteriously. "Do have some of this Rauenthaler Berg," he urged, effusively. "It's really capital!" He ordered another bottle, and helped himself liberally. Lancaster was scarcely heeding his companion. He was looking out over the water. For once, he was forgetting to be amused.
"As between two men of the world, you know," Wooton was saying, leaning impressively on his elbow, "it may as well be understood that that Tremont girl is the newest kind a new woman." "Know what she said to me one day? 'The only thing I don't like about love is its consequences!' Nice girls, these new women, eh?" He laughed softly and drank again. Lancaster turned to watch him. The man was showing all the cad in him; the wine was bringing it out. "Women, nowadays," Wooton went on, "make a fad of everything except the homely virtues. They deliver lectures on art, and literature, and posters, and music, and the redemption of the fallen; but they never care for the staple virtues that bring happiness to households. I'm not saying that I'm a model, not by a damned sight, but I have my eyes open, and I think the woman of today is trying to usurp, chiefly, man's prerogative of being aroueif he chooses. What she needs is to go to a medical school. Then she knows the difference." He crumbled a piece of bread, and flung it out to the swans that floated down before them.
"I don't mind telling you," he continued, confidentially, "that they were both in love with me, Miss Tremont and Miss Ware. In Miss Tremont's case, I naturally, had no scruples at all. The fact is, I think she took the initiative." He stopped, smiling significantly, and sipping at the yellow wine.
Lancaster's eyes were glowing with anger. The man's brutality was so disgusting! Not that there was anything surprising in these wine-woven statements, for a man who could welch his debts in the way Wooton did, two years ago, was hardly a man to suffer from scruples of any sort; but the very fact of having the names of people well-known to him brought up in this way was nauseating to Lancaster.
"Why don't you drink some of this wine?" Wooton was holding the bottle across the table. "No? You're missing something good, you can bet on that! Wine is the way to forgetfulness, and most men would sell their souls to be able to forget. Don't you agree with me? That's right." He leered fatuously at his companion. "I've always liked you, y'know, Lancaster, always liked you. Friend of mine, yessir, friend of mine; you bet! Great artist, too, proud to know you. But, oh Scott! what a simple sort of idiot you were when you first came to town! You'll excuse my candor; friend of your's, I am, yessir, friend of yours." He proceeded to watch the swans that glided past them, rippling the smooth water gracefully. "Beautiful creature," he drawled in drunken sentimentality, "beautiful creature! Reminds me of that girl's neck,—that girl I kissed in Schandau. Beautiful neck, Lancaster, beautiful neck! White, and smooth, and soft, Moreover, she had the most adorable lips; extraordinarily sweet, I assure you. Lancaster, I understand you've been rioting all over this continent, you dog you; but I defy you to say you kissed any sweeter lips than those. I defy you to—!" He sank back into his chair, chuckling to himself. "Excuse me, didn't mean to be so energetic. Excuse me."
Lancaster half turned his head away from the man and looked out over the water. Where the canal widened out into the lake a crowd of youths were amusing themselves in diving from a considerable height; the sun flashed for one instant on each white body as it gleamed through the air down into the cool canal. From across the water came the voices of sightseers and pleasure-finders. Closer at hand, in the very garden they sat in, the occasional clirring of a sword over the gravel denoted the entrance or exit of an officer; in the warm sun-light all these things combined to make a delightful impressionistic scene. Lancaster turned to it as a relief from his companion.
But Wooton, with the growing persistence of intoxication, was heedless of the other's indifference. He began again, maunderingly:
"I don't deny, y'know, that there's an attraction about the woman of experience. Not for a minute! extremely fascinating person, woman of experience. As good as a comedy to make love to her. But the women of experience grow old, very old; while the fresh young sprigs of girlhood never grow old." He chuckled again. "No; they never grow old. They grow into experienced women. Axiom: I prefer the fresh flower of innocence because it never grows old. Sometimes, sometimes it withers. To wither innocence is one of the most fascinating games in the world. I wonder how often the average man of the world has played that game in his life?" He helped himself to the wine again, and looked at it lovingly as it gleamed yellow between him and the sun. "You really should let me pour you out some of this excellent vintage," he said, oilily smiling upon Lancaster, "you really should. There is a deal of philosophy in it."
Lancaster was now watching the fellow in an increase of amused attention. With the inflow of the wine the man's mood changed, from a species of maudlin sentimentality to an extravagantly ornate loquacity.
"Philosophy is one of the fairest jewels on the robe of fortune. In misfortune it is marked worthless collateral. When we are well off, we philosophize; when we are hard up we curse philosophy. Wine is the only real philosopher. Do you know, I consider your abstinence, disgraceful, positively disgraceful. It argues an unphilosophic mind.... There's that swan, again! Beautiful neck. Such grace! And yet, I prefer the other one. The other one had a beautiful face, as well as a glorious neck. Moreover, the taste of those lips was positively intoxicating." He looked solemnly at the glass of wine before him, and declared, impressively: "As between the two, do you know, I actually believe I prefer the lips?" He gulped at the liquor again. His eyes strayed dreamily into an abstracted stare. "Dear Dorothy!" he murmured.
"I beg your pardon?" Lancaster started savagely. He thought he might not have heard aright.
The other blandly continued. "I said 'Dear Dorothy!' That was her name, you know. Her name is almost as sweet as her kisses. Dorothy" he lingered over the syllables—"Dorothy Ware."
"What!" Lancaster half sprung up from his chair. Then he curbed himself, with intense efforts, to calmness. "Did I understand you to say that it was Miss Dorothy Ware?"
"Certainly, my dear boy. Most correct. Oh, yes; remember now: friend of your's. Recommend your taste, my boy, I really do. She—"
"Look here!" Lancaster's voice had grown hard and chill. "Do you mean to say that—all that—is true?"
Wooton noticed the other's repressed agitation, and it quickened this mischief in him. "Most exactly true. Are you—can it be?—are you, h'm, jealous? My dear boy, go in and win; I clear the field. I—only harvest once." He laughed at the thought. And then, in a second, his laughter choked to a rattling gurgle in his throat.
Lancaster had sprung up, white and trembling with rage, and stood over him, squeezing the breath out of the fellow's windpipe. "You drunken, hideous hound you," he crunched from between his teeth, "you rifler of reputations, you damnable dog!" He stopped. His rage scarcely permitted words. "You're drunk, damn you, and you're a puny little brute, so I can't whip you as you should be whipped. But if you don't take that back, if you don't say you lied—I'll—give your burning head the cooling it deserves." He eased his hold on the other's throat for a time. Wooton glared at him, breathlessly, with a fantastically ugly sneer attempting lodgment on the lips that still writhed for air.
"Say you lied!" Lancaster loomed over him in tremendous wrath.
Wooton glared doggedly. "I shall do nothing of the sort," he managed to whisper. His left hand was sliding along the table to where the glass, half full of wine, stood. Suddenly he gripped it and with a wrench, splashed up the contents and the glass, full into Lancaster's face. The crystal shattered on the artist's chin, fortunately, and so did but little harm. Before the crash of the breaking glass was stilled, and the wine spent, Lancaster's hands were about the other's throat again; he gave a swing, viciously, and flung the body completely over the low railing.
It splashed into the still waters noisily. The swans swam away for a moment, then returned in curiosity. As Wooton came to the surface, he screamed out an oath and a cry for help. There was a boatman at the water-steps of the adjoining café, and in a few minutes he had pulled the choking man out of the water.
Wooton glared up to where Lancaster stood, still hot with anger. "Damn him," he thought, "if he were not so much stronger than I—" But the thought prevailed, and he told the boatman to row further down the canal.
To the waiters who had rushed up, Lancaster had been very cool. "Es handelt sich um eine Wette" he assured them. The whole thing had been so swift, so silent, that up to the moment of the splash in the water, there had been no eye-witnesses. He smiled at the waiters, paying his bill, and leaving a liberaltrinkgeld. "Mein freund hat die wette gewonnen." Then he sauntered out with a final fierce glance in the direction of the boat that was turning the corner in the far distance, bearing away the scoundrelisms that lived in Wooton.
When he reached the marble circle of the fountain in the gardens of Sans-souci, Lancaster stopped, and addressed the spray, bitterly: "So that was why I was refused? Well, well! It seems, as I said a little while ago, that there are still new emotions in store for me." He watched the spray turn to mist that was almost invisible. "That is the way with ideals," he mused. Then he turned with a laugh in the direction of the terraces. "How absurd he looked, in the water!" He went on, laughing quietly.
The late John Stewart had, in his lifetime, achieved the distinction of being a model husband. He was devoted to his wife in more senses of the word than one; he was content to appear stupid so she might shine the more; content to slave at Mammon's shrine for his wife's sake. His fund of patience, of tolerance, of faith, had been infinite. It was in return for these things that his wife, as he lay in the dying moments of typhoid, whispered to him, with a tremendous suspicion that she had seemed blind to much of her fortune, "John, dear John, you musn't go, not yet. I—I—"
And though John assured her that he was going to get well, the next day found the promise broken.
Mrs. Stewart, after his death, realized all that he had been to her, all that she, except in his loving fancy, had not been to him. And brooding over such recollections she began to feel the ban of morbidness, the old rooms, the dear, familiar haunts that had once known his voice, were peopled now with sadness, and she resolved to seek escape, for a time at least, from these living voices of a silenced lip. She had some cousins in London; she determined to travel, to visit them. With her went her nearer cousin, Miss Leigh, whose whimsical, cynical sincerities she loved the while she combated them.
So, in the spring, they found themselves in London, then harboring the whirl of society at its swiftest. But that had palled on Mrs. Stewart, and she dragged Miss Leigh off for an apparently aimless tour through Wales, and the Lake district, and on up to Scotland.
September found them in St. Andrews.
Although it was one of the months that constitute the "short season" of that dear old academic village, it was easily possible to escape the crowds of golf-enthusiasts that studded the links with their glaringly colorful costumes. The old castle, the ruins of the cathedral, the legends of the historic, bloody occurrences that had taken place here for religion's sake,—all these were full of charms to these two American women, saturated, as is nearly all that Nation, with a peculiar, wistful reverence for things antique.
There were drives, too, that gave opportunities for enjoyment of the Scotch autumn scenery. Along the banks of the Tay, with the solemn Crampians showing dim in the distance.
Mrs. Stewart loved to sit in the silent coolness of the college quadrangles and dream. It seemed to her that only for such places were dreams fit companions.
One day, they were sitting together on the turf that once had marked a cathedral wall. Miss Leigh was reading; Mrs. Stewart idly watching the breakers roll up to the cliffs.
"I beg your pardon!"
The two ladies looked up, and turned to find Lancaster standing before them, with his hat off and a look of amused surprise on his face.
"Well," said Mrs. Stewart, shaking hands heartily, "the world is small as ever, is it not? It's like home, seeing you!"
"It strikes me the same way." He sat down beside them. They noticed that he was browned and furrowed; the marks of travel, the brace of different climes, the scars caught in the thick of life's battle were all sharply dominant in his externals.
"We ought to feel honored," smiled Miss Leigh. "You are such a celebrity nowadays! We have heard the most weird anecdotes about you of late, you know. You are pictured as the Sphinx and the Chimera in one."
"You are still," he answered, "as cruel as ever."
"But we really feel very proud of you," said Mrs. Stewart. "We know each other too well, I hope, to veil our honest opinions. I admire your work immensely; but I think you're terribly bitter sometimes."
"Ah," he laughed gently, "I'm glad it strikes you that way. Bitterness is the only taste that lives after a complete course of life. But we really must talk of something less embarassing than myself. Do tell me the news! How are all the dear familiars?" He paused, and lowered his voice a little. "If it pains you," he said gently, "let us talk of other things. I—have heard. Believe me, I am sorry, very sorry. It is a poor word, but—" he stopped as she looked up at him gratefully for an instant, and then said with an effort at cheerfulness:
"Oh, they were all well, when we left."
"Yes," put in Miss Leigh, "and doing about the same old things. Mr. Wreath still expounds, in and out of season, the doctrine of his own surpassingly correct theories on veritism in literature; and incidentally takes all occasions to assail the sincerity of every other living writer. He's an amusing man, and if he had only been given a sense of honor he would find himself an ever re-direct jest. Clarence Miller has written another novel, and all society is wondering whether it will be translated into Magyar or Mongolian. He calls it 'Five Loaves and Two Fishes.' His brother-in-law has composed another comic opera that some people have the originality to declare original. And—but why continue the catalogue? It's just the same ridiculous circus it ever was."
Lancaster laughed. "Thank you. That's really a volume in a nutshell. I wonder if the performers in that circus really know how amusing they are?"
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Stewart, "but they keep it up nevertheless. Of course, it's only when one gets away from it that one really gets the most entertaining focus on that sort of a thing. I'm sure," she sighed, "I don't seem to belong to those ranks at all, now." She shivered a little. The sun was setting, and a chill breeze blowing off the sea. "I'm afraid we must go," she said, rising, "but you must be sure and come to see us." She gave Lancaster a small card, and then, with smiles and bows, and rustling of skirts, they were gone.
In the weeks that followed Lancaster availed himself of the privilege accorded in Mrs. Stewart's invitation as often as possible. The three were together almost daily, if only for a few moments. Lancaster was busily employed, the while, in fixing in black-and-white some of the types and features that prevailed in this fashionable corner of Fife. The London and Paris journals soon gave evidences of his industry. Fortunately, but few of these papers found their way to St. Andrews, and Lancaster's love of incognito was not disturbed. Sometimes the artist would disappear for days; a fishing-boat would be his hope for the time, and he would drink in the free winds of the sea, and the passing joy of that toilsome life of the fishermen. The winds and the freshness of the life were like a tonic to him, but he knew that it would presently pall and he would give way to the fever for the metropolitan whirlpool.
Occasionally Miss Leigh preferred to remain in her apartments, leaving Mrs. Stewart to stroll along the links alone with the young artist. "Do you know," remarked Mrs. Stewart, on one such occasion, "that my cousin's tremendously fond of you?"
Lancaster looked up in surprise: Then he gave a short laugh. "She's tremendously mistaken," he said, "I'm not the sort that anyone should be fond of—now." He looked out over the sea. "There goes a steamer. I suppose it's the Aberdeen boat." He watched it wistfully.
"She thinks," continued Mrs. Stewart, heedless of his abstraction, "that you are a young man much to be envied. Already you have a name that is known far and wide, and all life is yet before you. She—"
He interrupted, bitterly: "Life is all behind me, you should say. All, all! I have tried everything, the good and the evil. The one broke my belief in all things; the other gives me the belief that the only thing to do is to laugh. Strange! I heard that phrase first in your drawing-room, Mrs. Stewart! Suppose we sit down. These rocks are fashioned delightfully for easy chairs."
The sun was burnishing the water with a lustre of copper. The sea-gulls moaned as they circled about hungrily. The breakers hissed sullenly below them.
"My philosophy," he went on, after he had seen that Mrs. Stewart was comfortably seated, "is very simple, now. Laugh! That is the text of it."
She mused in silence. "You used to be so different," she murmured, presently. "You were, not so long ago, at the other extreme. You thought everything was solemn, awful, important, that there were majestic duties in life, splendid obligations, and splendid things to live for. Now,—you say it is all a jest, and the only thing to do is to laugh. I think you have had too much curiosity."
"Perhaps. Curiosity is a guide that takes us into a labyrinth and leaves us there. But why," he shrugged his shoulders impatiently, "why must we be forever talking of this hapless personage, me? Suppose we talk, instead, of you?"
"Oh, no. You are the interesting one. You are a study. I should like to help you. I think you are doing yourself an injustice: letting yourself drift as you are. Your fame, alone, won't bring you happiness."
"I'm not expecting happiness."
Mrs. Stewart watched his face, hard set, with it's bitter drop to the right corner of the mouth, and something of pity came to her. "Once," she went on, "it seemed to me that there was a woman who meant for you the same thing as happiness."
"Perhaps." His voice was as hard as before. "That was a very long time ago,—counting by experiences. Why talk of marriage? I don't think I could stand it for an instant; I don't think any woman could stand me. As I once was—that was different."
"Some women are very patient."
"Yes. And then I should go mad until they came out of their deadly patience into something more exciting. A woman's fury would amuse me vastly, I think." He twisted his stick into the rocks, and outlined vague designs in the sandstone. "Why, supposing, for the sake of the argument, that I asked you to marry me, you would, I am sure, consider me a madman to expect you to make such a fool of yourself?"
She flushed slightly. "Merely for the sake of the argument, I don't say that I would do anything of the sort. I might consider it ill-timed, inconsiderate."
"Ah, I beg your pardon, humbly. I realize that deeply. Merely, I said, for the sake of the argument. I want to show you the utter hopelessness of my position. Suppose then, that I asked you that question, what would you tell yourself? That I was a man, young in years, old in experiences, soured in thought and taste, bitter in mind, selfish, a slave to the most egoistic of epicureanisms. A man who considers nothing too sacred for laughter, or too ridiculous for tears. A man who is a perpetual evidence of the corroding influences of flippancy; whose very art, even, is merely a means for amusement. No,—you, clever, shrewd, adaptable woman of the world though you are, would realize at once that to enter into a life-partnership with a man of that sort were to invite immediate misery. Think: the man would be ungovernable, save by his moods; when he should be at home acting as host to a dinner-party he would be tramping the moors in a wild passion for solitude? A man who would perpetually fling at his wife the most mordant of sarcasms, merely for the pleasure they caused his powers of creation. If a biting jest came to him, he would hurl it at his wife, without malice, but because she happened to be present. Not even the cleverest woman in the world can decide between the words and the motive in a case like that. No; this man has fed too much on the lees of disenchantment to be himself aught but a sorry-devil of a jester."
She signed. "You have the modern disease in terrible development—self-analysis. It seems to me to be quite as cruel as vivisection. And I think you exaggerate your vices. After all—I may speak frankly, may I not? I am a woman that has ever kept her eyes open—you represent nothing so very dreadful. You are young, impetuous; you have had the bandages of stern puritanism roughly torn from you, and you have had a little of what the world calls 'your fling!' You realize yourself far too much. You are not one whit worse than others. All men worship, for a time, at the shrine of their animal natures, I suppose. But instead of letting the thought of it all drive you further and further into bitterness, why not resolve to shake off the whole cloak, and put it back into the limbo of thinks henceforth to be avoided?" She paused, and looked at him with a smile. "Get married. I believe, in spite of your fears, that you will make a good husband. Believe me, you will be a much better one than if you had never taught yourself the revolting nausea that the other side of life brings."
"Marry?" he repeated, "why do you harp on that? I tell you, there is no one, no one at all! Unless—" he looked over the breakers to the setting sun, "unless there were a woman somewhere that could understand and forgive. A woman that knew something of the world, of the stings of experience and the hollowness of hope. With a woman like that I might become the owner of the new youth, might sink all these bitternesses, live earnest in ambition and.... But there is no such woman, none...." A sudden light flashed into his eyes, and with passion he continued, "Except-yourself. Yes—you are the only one. You know; you understand. Oh, listen to me, listen! Why tell me that this is a sacrilege, an insult to a memory. Do you suppose I don't know that? I do; I feel it deeply; but I also feel that I am pleading for a helping hand, that I see in you the only chance of safety, that you mean for me a new life, and that I must tell you so now, before the opportunity is gone. Oh, don't tell me I'm a coward—I know that, too, well enough. I confess it; I am a coward, a broken-hearted cur." He groaned, and getting up, began to walk slowly up and down before her. "Is it so impossible? I would—you yourself admitted that hope!—improve. Is there no hope?"
"What a boy you are, what a boy! You have all the headstrong, passionate eagerness of youth, and yet you pretend to play the wearied liver of many lives! No, Dick," her voice grew gentler, and it came to him like a pleasant harmony, "we will do nothing so foolish. You and I are always to be very good friends, and we will help each other always, but not that, not that! You are too young; regret would come to you all too soon. No matter how nicely each of us were to fashion his or her temper to the other's, there would come that thought: for the hope of mere comfort I have sacrificed an idol. For, Dick, think, think! Dorothy Ware! Do you think I have not watched you, found you out long ago? What was it, Dick, a tiff? A refusal?"
He stopped in his sentry-go, and began to whistle, softly, 'La donna e Mobile.' "I—I beg your pardon," he added, hastily, "I fear I forget my manners. Was it a refusal? you ask. Well,—perhaps, perhaps not. At the time, I thought it was. Since then I have found out things—things—Bah, what does it matter!"
"Go on," she said, "tell me!"
"In Germany, I met Wooton—"
She interrupted. "Ah, yes; I remember a terrible cruel picture you drew of a man at a café table, drinking. It was his face, unmistakably. Why did you do that?"
"That was—only an afterthought. Well, he had been—drinking, and he talked a good deal. Some of it was about Miss Ware."
For a moment there was silence.
Then "And you believed it?" she asked.
"At the time, no. Lord knows I did not want to. But, afterward, I remembered the look on her face when she gave me that last refusal. It was a strange look; it meant more than I could account for, at that time. Yes," he sighed, "I believe it. Why shouldn't I? I know how vile a man may be; be a woman only half as weak, or half as 'new,' and she is a thing for loathing."
"Hush! What a conventional man it is, after all. Always the same old tune, one thing for the man, another for the woman! Listen: I know Dorothy Ware, better, perhaps, than you do; I know her later self, you only know her as a child. There are great points of similarity between you two. She has much of your absurd sensitiveness; self-torment is one of her vices. She is very much given to making mountains out of molehills. She—"
"No, no," he interrupted, wearily, "I tell you I believe it. All, all of it!"
"Well," she said, somewhat angrily, "and suppose you do! What then! Who are you, that you should judge?"
He winced slightly, but then shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, of course, of course; I've heard all about that. But it won't do, in practice."
"Won't it? Let us put the cases plainly, for comparison's sake: You are a young man that has had more than his share of selfish indulgence; you have thrown aside all scruples and done everything and anything you pleased. Your actual transgressions of the commandments we will waive; there is a greater crime: you have allowed yourself to become a soured, bitter, heartless creature, fit only to disseminate scorn and distaste. She, the woman in the case, once, we will say, allowed her senses to oust her sense. Ever since, she has suffered agonies of regret. Unlike the man she has not told herself that she might as well let fate have it's play out. She is as sweet as the dew of Maytime, and the slight trace of sadness only needs the touch of love to fall and almost fade. I think she loves you; I am not sure—she is a woman, and it is hard to say. As for you, in spite of everything, you love her. You coward! Why don't you ask her again? She will tell you that it is impossible, of course. She will say there was once another. Then, unless you are a greater coward than I think you, you will tell her that compared to yourself she is as pure as the driven snow, and you want nothing, only her forgiveness for yourself."
He was still stubborn. "It is the old story," he said, "one has heard it all before. The woman is to be put on a par with the man; there is no actual difference in ethics. But I once saw it tried; I shudder when I think of it. To be sure—the woman was notorious."
"Ah! How can you compare the cases? And yet—" she laughed a trifle bitterly,—"in this case the man is notorious." She watched him wince under the callousness of triumph.
"Think," she continued, "what she could be to you, how she could help you; how you could help each other! The happy days and dreams together, the planning for new artistic achievements, the sweet companionship of a soul capable of understanding! Instead of—what? Fierce flights into forgetfulness; pursuits of vanishing pleasures, palling desires; short triumphs in art merged into long revulsions from life! It seems, to me, a fair exchange!" She rose, as if to end the subject. He put her shawl about her shoulders, and they walked slowly back to the village, talking of other things, gaily, lightly, insincerely.
Lancaster said goodbye on the following morning, and by noon he was in Edinboro'. At the Travelers' club he found a letter from the firm of publishers, at home, that had lately been using a great many of his sketches. They took the liberty of informing him that owing to the popularity of his work they had thought proper to open an exhibition of his original sketches in the Museum Art Galleries. While they were aware that possession of these originals was entirely vested in themselves, they had decided to lay aside a share of the receipts from the exhibition and sale for him, as a courtesy royalty. Lancaster folded the letter up, drummed on the table for a second or two, and then went out to get a paper. It had occurred to him that, if he sailed for home at once, he could reach there before the exhibition closed. It would be a grim bit of humor to appear there in person, and listen to the comments of the very people who, a year ago, would have considered him and his work beneath their notice. Now, with a European reputation, his stock, so to put it, had gone far beyond par in his native country. Besides,—the memory of the things that Mrs. Stewart had said to him refused to pass from him—there was Dorothy! He would see her again; he would put his fate to the touch once more.
It had been a white night that had passed between his conversation with Mrs. Stewart and his departure from St. Andrews. He had lain awake listening to the hissing of the sea over the rocks, and recounting the arguments that affected his feelings toward Miss Ware. Now, it had seemed to him that she represented for him the one chance of happiness; that the touch of sadness that had come to her would make her but the more merciful to his own past. Then, again, the old bitterness, the old distaste came; he could not escape the thought that the old conventions teach, that one step aside means, for the woman, eternal disgrace. Well, and even if the old conventions said so a thousand times, were they to bind him now, when they had so long been thrust away by him in scorn? At any rate, the torment of these conflicting thoughts was to be avoided. He must decide upon one attempt or another—the return home and the repetition of a certain question, or the effort to continue more steadfast than ever in the philosophy of laughter.
He decided for the return to America.
No boat left Liverpool for two days. In the interval he roamed about the most beautiful city in Scotland, enjoying the memories and pictures of the past that Holyrood, the old Castle, and John Knox's house brought up. The autumn sun turned Prince's Street Gardens, and the Scott Monument into a green and gold and flowered picture that he remembered no equal to, in his wanderings through the capitals of Europe, Prince's Street, he maintained, was the prettiest thoroughfare in the world. He left it with regret.
His voyage across the Atlantic merely gave him material for a study of the gowns adopted by the fair ocean travelers, and several chances for cynical representations of the humors of upper-deck flirtations. Otherwise his journey was as monotonous as the luxuriance of the modern travel could make it.
It was morning, when after another fatiguing journey by rail, he reached the metropolis that held so many mixed memories for him. He went straight to the Philistine club, and took some rooms there. The servants hardly knew him. He had, it was true, changed a great deal. He was browner, thinner; there were deep lines about his eyes and mouth.
The first man he met in the smoking-room, after he had refreshed himself with a bath and a lunch, was Vanstruther.
"Why," said that gentleman, after a long, puzzled look, "dashed if it isn't Dick Lancaster!" "Come into the light, most noble genius, and let me gaze upon you. You—you put bright crimson tints on all the effete European cities, didn't you? I declare it's good to see you again! You've seemed a good deal like a myth lately, you know; no one ever seemed to know just where you were, or whether you were alive at all."
They walked up and down the room, asking and answering such pleasant questions as come between two familiars after a long absence.
"Oh, there's not much change," Vanstruther was explaining, "except in yourself. You'll be no end of a lion, I'm afraid. Have to do a couple of paragraphs about you myself, just to scoop the other fellows. Give me a text or two. Oh, but you have hit the fad in the exact centre, somehow! I'm not saying a thing against the real value of your stuff, but the fact remains that this whole blessed nation is fad-mad just now, and it simply has got to have a fad or quit. Your European reputation came along just about the time the fad for the newest English novel was dying. You went, so to say, with a whoop. One can't pick up a Sunday paper now but what one finds weird, impossible interviews with you; descriptions of your favorite models, or reproductions of your newest sketch. You are depicted as the founder of a new style; they talk of women as being "Lancaster-like," and you are a pest generally. In print, I mean, of course, only in print. You are about to furnish my own dear self with material for about a column, so I shouldn't call you a pest; but from the standpoint of the reader, rather than the penny-a-liner, I abhor you!" He made a gesture of aversion, laughingly.
"You want to know about the old guard, do you? Well, Stanley is still the same dismal distiller of cynicisms that he ever was; his trip abroad only seems to have made him worse. Belden? Oh, he plods along in the same old way, drawing bloody battles for the dailies, and making all creation look like the prize-ring 'toughs.' We have the same old Sunday evenings up at his house, too; his wife's turned out well, as far as one can see. He certainly doesn't look unhappy. We were all up there not long ago, Marsboro, Stanley and myself. Mind you, I never take Mrs. Van. I'm about the same as ever, too. I've got a blood-curdling dime-novel on the stocks just now, and the 'season' is beginning for the winter, so I'm not likely to have much time for idle trifling for a while. Oh,—did you see Mrs. Stewart while you were abroad? Thanks! That'll be another scoop on the rest of the society editors. Hallo! three o'clock,—got to be off to the office—see you again!" He rushed off, leaving Lancaster smiling at his frank, jerky sentences.
Lancaster sat down and took up the morning paper. Before long the advertisement of his exhibition at the museum met his eyes. It occurred to him that if what Vanstruther had said was only in part true, it would be wise for him to go and take a peep at the show this very afternoon, before people knew he was in town.
The place was crowded with well-dressed men and women. They flowed in and out in a constant stream. They held catalogues in their hands, and chatted volubly. In front of one picture, whereon was depicted a London music-hall scene, there was an especially large gathering.
"He's so dreadfully cynical, don't you think so?" one man was saying to the girl that was with him. "I really think he ought to be called a caricaturist."
"Oh, but, after all, it's nearly all true, you know. Look at the expression on that gallery-god's face, will you!"
"Wonder what sort of a chap he is personally?"
"Oh—impossible, I suppose. Although I ought not to say that; nothing is impossible nowadays, there never was such a run on intellect. I never saw anything like it! It positively seems as if society was intellect-mad. Singers, actors, painters, writers—all sorts of queer people go everywhere now, and that isn't the worst of it! The society people won't be content with just playing at 'society' as they used to: they want to sing, and paint, and write, too! It's awful! I'll have to go on the stage, or something of that sort, myself, if I want to keep up with the procession."
Lancaster moved away from that corner. It was amusing, certainly; but it was also painful. What pleased him more than the overheard conversations were the little labels, displaying the word "SOLD" that decorated many of his sketches. It was balm to him to think that these moneybags, these puppets mumbling set phrases, were being despoiled of some of their wealth for his sake.
Walking over to the wall whereon hung the sketch for which Wooton had been the unconscious model, Lancaster heard a voice that seemed familiar.
"It certainly looks like him," the voice was saying. "That would be a wanton brutality."
It was Miss Tremont. Lancaster flushed angrily. What had she to judge by? It was Mrs. Tremont who was accompanying her daughter; the elder lady moved away, that moment, to speak to an acquaintance. Miss Tremont remained in front of the picture of the drunkard, her brows moving nervously.
Lancaster stepped close up to her.
"If I were you," he said quietly, but distinctly, "I should go and look after him. He needs it."
The girl started quickly, turned momentarily pale, and then, seeing who it was, nerved herself to stony calmness. "How dare you?" she said twisting her catalogue into shapelessness.
"Oh," he laughed, "I really mean it for the best. As you see—" he looked sneeringly at the sketch—"he's not the pink of sobriety. And when he drinks, he talks a good deal. He sometimes talks about—you, for instance." He paused and seemed engrossed in nothing save the smoothing out of the wrinkles in his gloves.
"You coward!" If intention could have killed, Miss Tremont's eyes committed murder.
"True; I fear for you both. And I take such an interest in you! But I believe he will make an excellent husband—for you!" He lifted his hat, with a fleeting mockery of a smile, and left her before the picture, staring, trembling.
"That," he told himself, "was wanton brutality number two. But she should not have judged me!"
He left the galleries, taking with him a feeling of scorn for himself, that he should have put himself on the level of the praise or blame of the fadists in such a public way. Yet, he reflected, it had been not of his own seeking.
The afternoon was already touched with the darkening shadow of evening. The town roared and hissed and seethed in all it's wonted fervor; the chill-hardness of its material manners were painfully evident to Lancaster as he came from the comparative quiet of the picture-galleries. He contrasted the grim roar of the place with the smiling, careless, jovial glitter of those other towns he had lately enjoyed; for the bright cheer of the boulevards and the gardens and the open-air café's he found the skypiercing buildings that shut out the sun-light, hemmed in masses of money-mad humanity, and extended apparently to all the horizons. For the strolling gayety he had grown to love so; for the ever-changing current of picturesque triflers, idlers and dandies,—he had received in exchange a breathless surge of anxious, nervous, straining men and women, plunging wildly down the slopes to an imaginary sea of gold. Something of the old repulsion made itself felt in him; he foresaw that it would never again be possible for him to endure life here. That other glittering, careless, joyous maelstrom,—perhaps; this one, never! He realized that while for future generations it was possible, for himself the hope of finding an American metropolis tinged with aught but the feverish strivings after riches was utterly vain. He tried to argue with himself about it; to persuade himself that it was a nobler sign, this one of the masses all honest in labor and in pursuit of it's fruits, than the evidences of inherited wealth, or quiet content with small means, that were the prevailing notes of older countries. But he failed. His temperament rebelled; he loved the smooth, the finished sides of life; the artist in him rebelled against the commercialism of his native haunts. If it should be the decree of fate that he continue to seek out life's most distracting enchantments, he would certainly have to bid his native land farewell again. If there were anything else in store for him; if it happened that he be required by Dame Chance to do something more serious than to laugh, to laugh, and laugh—well, that consideration would bear postponement.
It seemed to him, as he walked through the streets that were now beginning to glitter with the white and yellow lights born of electricity and gas, that these faces were the same faces always, that there was never any change, from year to year, in the puppets that paraded on this urban stage. A thousand differing types, to be sure; but always the same in their hard, tense, sinister look of restraint; all wore the same tiring eyes, the same rounded shoulders. The same fierce passion for excitement swam in the eyes of the women. In his morbidness he fancied that it was as if all these city-dwellers were life-prisoners, condemned forever to walk, and mumble and laugh shrilly.
"The metropolis," he told himself, "is a maelstrom that never gives up it's human prisoners: it merely changes their cells occasionally." At which reflection he presently laughed. The old text came to him: "The thing to do is to laugh!"
"Yes," he thought, "but it's harder here than anywhere else. Much harder."
Arrived at the club, he ordered dinner, and in the short interval, set down to write a letter to his mother. For the many months of his absence abroad he had contented himself with sending her occasional newspapers, the briefest of notes, and illustrated magazines. In none of these missives had there ever been the real personal, familiar note. He had given merely the scantest news of his whereabouts and his well-being. In the life and the philosophy he had chosen there was little room for comradeships, even with his own mother. Now, however, with the distance between them so vastly less, he felt again some of the old affections that he had thought to have slain with laughter. In any event, he wrote, whether he decided to remain on this or that continent, he would pay Lincolnville a visit presently. They would have that dear, delightful talk that the months had despoiled them of.
As he stepped into the dining-room, Vanstruther nailed him. "Saw a friend of yours just now, Dick," he said, "Miss Ware!"
"Ah," was the reply, given in apparent abstraction, "they still live here then?"
"Yes. Dick did it ever occur to you that she's a devilish pretty girl?"
"Oh, look here, Van," said Dick, laughingly, "I came to feed on solids, not the lilies of your imagination. The prettiest thing in the world to me, at this date, is a good dinner."