"I know!" The great man, who was also the simple man, smiled reminiscently. "They tried to teach me to herd sheep when my nose was itching for bird country. Bring on your man; I want to know him."
Samson was told nothing of the benevolent conspiracy, but one evening shortly later he found himself sitting at a café table with his sponsor and a stout man, almost as silent as himself. The stout man responded with something like churlish taciturnity to the half-dozen men and women who came over with flatteries. But later, when the trio was left alone, his face brightened, and he turned to the boy from Misery.
"Does Billy Conrad still keep store at Stagbone?"
Samson started, and his gaze fell in amazement. At the mention of the name, he saw a cross-roads store, with rough mules hitched to fence palings. It was a picture of home, and here was a man who had been there! With glowing eyes, the boy dropped unconsciously back into the vernacular of the hills.
"Hev ye been thar, stranger?"
The writer nodded, and sipped his whiskey.
"Not for some years, though," he confessed, as he drifted into reminiscence, which to Samson was like water to a parched throat.
When they left the café, the boy felt as though he were taking leave of an old and tried friend. By homely methods, this unerring diagnostician of the human soul had been reading him, liking him, and making him feel a heart-warming sympathy. The man who shrunk from lion-hunters, and who could return the churl's answer to the advances of sycophant and flatterer, enthusiastically poured out for the ungainly mountain boy all the rare quality and bouquet of his seasoned personal charm. It was a vintage distilled from experience and humanity. It had met the ancient requirement for the mellowing and perfecting of good Madeira, that it shall "voyage twice around the world's circumference," and it was a thing reserved for his friends.
"It's funny," commented the boy, when he and Lescott were alone, "that he's been to Stagbone."
"My dear Samson," Lescott assured him, "if you had spoken of Tucson, Arizona, or Caracas or Saskatchewan, it would have been the same. He knows them all."
It was not until much later that Samson realized how these two really great men had adopted him as their "little brother," that he might have their shoulder-touch to march by. And it was without his realization, too, that they laid upon him the imprint of their own characters and philosophy. One night at Tonelli's table-d'hôte place, the latest diners were beginning to drift out into Tenth Street. The faded soprano, who had in better days sung before a King, was wearying as she reeled out ragtime with a strong Neapolitan accent. Samson had been talking to the short-story writer about his ambitions and his hatreds. He feared he was drifting away from his destiny—and that he would in the end become too softened. The writer leaned across the table, and smiled.
"Fighting is all right," he said; "but a man should not be just the fighter." He mused a moment in silence, then quoted a scrap of verse:
"'Test of the man, if his worth be,"'In accord with the ultimate plan,"'That he be not, to his marring,"'Always and utterly man;"'That he bring out of the battle"'Fitter and undefiled,"'To woman the heart of a woman,"'To children the heart of a child.'"
Samson South offered no criticism. He had known life from the stoic's view-point. He had heard the seductive call of artistic yearnings. Now, it dawned on him in an intensely personal fashion, as it had begun already to dawn in theory, that the warrior and the artist may meet on common and compatible ground, where the fighting spirit is touched and knighted with the gentleness of chivalry. He seemed to be looking from a new and higher plane, from which he could see a mellow softness on angles that had hitherto been only stern and unrelieved.
"I have come, not to quarrel with you, but to try to dissuade you." The Honorable Mr. Wickliffe bit savagely at his cigar, and gave a despairing spread to his well-manicured hands. "You stand in danger of becoming the most cordially hated man in New York—hated by the most powerful combinations in New York."
Wilfred Horton leaned back in a swivel chair, and put his feet up on his desk. For a while, he seemed interested in his own silk socks.
"It's very kind of you to warn me," he said, quietly.
The Honorable Mr. Wickliffe rose in exasperation, and paced the floor.The smoke from his black cigar went before him in vicious puffs.Finally, he stopped, and leaned glaring on the table.
"Your family has always been conservative. When you succeeded to the fortune, you showed no symptoms of this mania. In God's name, what has changed you?"
"I hope I have grown up," explained the young man, with an unruffled smile. "One can't wear swaddling clothes forever, you know."
The attorney for an instant softened his manner as he looked into the straight-gazing, unafraid eyes of his client.
"I've known you from your babyhood. I advised your father before you were born. You have, by the chance of birth, come into the control of great wealth. The world of finance is of delicate balance. Squabbles in certain directorates may throw the Street into panic. Suddenly, you emerge from decent quiet, and run amuck in the china-shop, bellowing and tossing your horns. You make war on those whose interests are your own. You seem bent on hari-kari. You have toys enough to amuse you. Why couldn't you stay put?"
"They weren't the right things. They were, as you say, toys." The smile faded and Horton's chin set itself for a moment, as he added:
"If you don't think I'm going to stay put—watch me."
"Why do you have to make war—to be chronically insurgent?"
"Because"—the young man, who had waked up, spoke slowly—"I am reading a certain writing on the wall. The time is not far off when, unless we regulate a number of matters from within, we shall be regulated from without. Then, instead of giving the financial body a little griping in its gold-lined tummy, which is only the salutary effect of purging, a surgical operation will be required. It will be something like one they performed on the body politic of France not so long ago. Old Dr. Guillotine officiated. It was quite a successful operation, though the patient failed to rally."
"Take for instance this newspaper war you've inaugurated on the police," grumbled the corporation lawyer. "It's less dangerous to the public than these financial crusades, but decidedly more so for yourself. You are regarded as a dangerous agitator, a marplot! I tell you, Wilfred, aside from all other considerations the thing is perilous to yourself. You are riding for a fall. These men whom you are whipping out of public life will turn on you."
"So I hear. Here's a letter I got this morning—unsigned. That is, I thought it was here. Well, no matter. It warns me that I have less than three months to live unless I call off my dogs."
The Honorable Mr. Wickliffe's face mirrored alarm.
"Let me have it," he demanded. "You shouldn't treat such matters lightly. Men are assassinated in New York. I'll refer it to the police."
Horton laughed.
"That would be in the nature of referring back, wouldn't it? I fancy it came from some one not so remote from police sympathy."
"What are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going to stay put. If I can convict certain corrupt members of the department, I'm going to nail brass-buttoned hides all over the front of the city hall."
"Have you had any other threats?"
"No, not exactly, but I've had more touching recognition than that.I've been asked to resign from several very good clubs."
The attorney groaned.
"You will be a Pariah. So will your allies."
It is said that the new convert is ever the most extreme fanatic. Wilfred Horton had promised to put on his working clothes, and he had done it with reckless disregard for consequences. At first, he was simply obeying Adrienne's orders; but soon he found himself playing the game for the game's sake. Men at the clubs and women whom he took into dinner chaffed him over his sudden disposition to try his wings. He was a man riding a hobby, they said. In time, it began to dawn that he, with others, whom he had drawn to his standards, meant serious war on certain complacent evils in the world of finance and politics. Sleeping dogs of custom began to stir and growl. Political overlords, assailed as unfaithful servants, showed their teeth. From some hidden, but unfailing, source terribly sure and direct evidence of guilt was being gathered. For Wilfred Horton, who was demanding a day of reckoning and spending great sums of money to get it, there was a prospect of things doing.
Adrienne Lescott was in Europe. Soon, she would return, and Horton meant to show that he had not buried his talent.
* * * * *
For eight months Samson's life had run in the steady ascent of gradual climbing, but, in the four months from the first of August to the first of December, the pace of his existence suddenly quickened. He left off drawing from plaster casts, and went into a life class. His shyness secretly haunted him. The nudity of the woman posing on the model throne, the sense of his own almost as naked ignorance, and the dread of the criticism to come, were all keen embarrassments upon him.
In this period, Samson had his first acquaintanceship with women, except those he had known from childhood—and his first acquaintanceship with the men who were not of his own art world. Of the women, he saw several sorts. There were the aproned and frowsy students, of uncertain age, who seemed to have no life except that which existed under studio skylights. There were, also, a few younger girls, who took their art life with less painful solemnity; and, of course, the models in the "partially draped" and the "altogether."
Tony Collasso was an Italian illustrator, who lodged and painted in studio-apartments in Washington Square, South. He had studied in the Julian School and the Beaux Arts, and wore a shock of dark curls, a Satanic black mustache, and an expression of Byronic melancholy. The melancholy, he explained to Samson, sprang from the necessity of commercializing his divine gift. His companions were various, numbering among them a group of those pygmy celebrities of whom one has never heard until by chance he meets them, and of whom their intimates speak as of immortals.
To Collasso's studio, Samson was called one night by telephone. He had sometimes gone there before to sit for an hour, chiefly as a listener, while the man from Sorrento bewailed fate with his coterie, and denounced all forms of government, over insipid Chianti. Sometimes, an equally melancholy friend in soiled linen and frayed clothes took up his violin, and, as he improvised, the noisy group would fall silent. At such moments, Samson would ride out on the waves of melody, and see again the velvet softness of the mountain night, with stars hanging intimately close, and hear the ripple of Misery and a voice for which he longed.
But, to-night, he entered the door to find himself in the midst of a gay and boisterous party. The room was already thickly fogged with smoke, and a dozen men and women, singing snatches of current airs, were interesting themselves over a chafing dish. The studio of Tony Collasso was of fair size, and adorned with many unframed paintings, chiefly his own, and a few good tapestries and bits of bric-à-brac variously jettisoned from the sea of life in which he had drifted. The crowd itself was typical. A few very minor writers and artists, a model or two, and several women who had thinking parts in current Broadway productions.
At eleven o'clock the guests of honor arrived in a taxicab. They were Mr. William Farbish and Miss Winifred Starr. Having come, as they explained, direct from the theater where Miss Starr danced in the first row, they were in evening dress. Samson mentally acknowledged, though, with instinctive disfavor for the pair, that both were, in a way, handsome. Collasso drew him aside to whisper importantly:
"Make yourself agreeable to Farbish. He is received in the most exclusive society, and is a connoisseur of art. He is a connoisseur in all things," added the Italian, with a meaning glance at the girl. "Farbish has lived everywhere," he ran on, "and, if he takes a fancy to you, he will put you up at the best clubs. I think I shall sell him a landscape."
The girl was talking rapidly and loudly. She had at once taken the center of the room, and her laughter rang in free and egotistical peals above the other voices.
"Come," said the host, "I shall present you."
The boy shook hands, gazing with his usual directness into the show -girl's large and deeply-penciled eyes. Farbish, standing at one side with his hands in his pockets, looked on with an air of slightly bored detachment.
His dress, his mannerisms, his bearing, were all those of the man who has overstudied his part. They were too perfect, too obviously rehearsed through years of social climbing, but that was a defect Samson was not yet prepared to recognize.
Some one had naïvely complimented Miss Starr on the leopard-skin cloak she had just thrown from her shapely shoulders, and she turned promptly and vivaciously to the flatterer.
"It is nice, isn't it?" she prattled. "It may look a little up-stage for a girl who hasn't got a line to read in the piece, but these days one must get the spot-light, or be a dead one. It reminds me of a little run-in I had with Graddy—he's our stage-director, you know." She paused, awaiting the invitation to proceed, and, having received it, went gaily forward. "I was ten minutes late, one day, for rehearsal, and Graddy came up with that sarcastic manner of his, and said: 'Miss Starr, I don't doubt you are a perfectly nice girl, and all that, but it rather gets my goat to figure out how, on a salary of fifteen dollars a week, you come to rehearsals in a million dollars' worth of clothes, riding in a limousine—andten minutes late!'" She broke off with the eager little expression of awaiting applause, and, having been satisfied, she added: "I was afraid that wasn't going to get a laugh, after all."
She glanced inquiringly at Samson, who had not smiled, and who stood looking puzzled.
"A penny for your thoughts, Mr. South, from down South," she challenged.
"I guess I'm sort of like Mr. Graddy," said the boy, slowly. "I was just wondering how you do do it."
He spoke with perfect seriousness, and, after a moment, the girl broke into a prolonged peal of laughter.
"Oh, you are delicious!" she exclaimed. "If I could do theingénuelike that, believe me, I'd make some hit." She came over, and, laying a hand on each of the boy's shoulders, kissed him lightly on the cheek. "That's for a droll boy!" she said. "That's the best line I've heard pulled lately."
Farbish was smiling in quiet amusement. He tapped the mountaineer on the shoulder.
"I've heard George Lescott speak of you," he said, genially. "I've rather a fancy for being among the discoverers of men of talent. We must see more of each other."
Samson left the party early, and with a sense of disgust. It was, at the time of his departure, waxing more furious in its merriment. It seemed to him that nowhere among these people was a note of sincerity, and his thoughts went back to the parting at the stile, and the girl whose artlessness and courage were honest.
Several days later, Samson was alone in Lescott's studio. It was nearing twilight, and he had laid aside a volume of De Maupassant, whose simple power had beguiled him. The door opened, and he saw the figure of a woman on the threshold. The boy rose somewhat shyly from his seat, and stood looking at her. She was as richly dressed as Miss Starr had been, but there was the same difference as between the colors of the sunset sky and the exaggerated daubs of Collasso's landscape. She stood lithely straight, and her furs fell back from a throat as smooth and slenderly rounded as Sally's. Her cheeks were bright with the soft glow of perfect health, and her lips parted over teeth that were as sound and strong as they were decorative. This girl did not have to speak to give the boy the conviction that she was some one whom he must like. She stood at the door a moment, and then came forward with her hand outstretched.
"This is Mr. South, isn't it?" she asked, with a frank friendliness in her voice.
"Yes, ma'am, that's my name."
"I'm Adrienne Lescott," said the girl. "I thought I'd find my brother here. I stopped by to drive him up-town."
Samson had hesitatingly taken the gloved hand, and its grasp was firm and strong despite its ridiculous smallness.
"I reckon he'll be back presently." The boy was in doubt as to the proper procedure. This was Lescott's studio, and he was not certain whether or not it lay in his province to invite Lescott's sister to take possession of it. Possibly, he ought to withdraw. His ideas of social usages were very vague.
"Then, I think I'll wait," announced the girl. She threw off her fur coat, and took a seat before the open grate. The chair was large, and swallowed her up.
Samson wanted to look at her, and was afraid that this would be impolite. He realized that he had seen no real ladies, except on the street, and now he had the opportunity. She was beautiful, and there was something about her willowy grace of attitude that made the soft and clinging lines of her gown fall about her in charming drapery effects. Her small pumps and silk-stockinged ankles as she held them out toward the fire made him say to himself:
"I reckon she never went barefoot in her life."
"I'm glad of this chance to meet you, Mr. South," said the girl with a smile that found its way to the boy's heart. After all, there was sincerity in "foreign" women. "George talks of you so much that I feel as if I'd known you all the while. Don't you think I might claim friendship with George's friends?"
Samson had no answer. He wished to say something equally cordial, but the old instinct against effusiveness tied his tongue.
"I owe right smart to George Lescott," he told her, gravely.
"That's not answering my question," she laughed. "Do you consent to being friends with me?"
"Miss—" began the boy. Then, realizing that in New York this form of address is hardly complete, he hastened to add: "Miss Lescott, I've been here over nine months now, and I'm just beginning to realize what a rube I am. I haven't no—" Again, he broke off, and laughed at himself. "I mean, I haven't any idea of proper manners, and so I'm, as we would say down home, 'plumb skeered' of ladies."
As he accused himself, Samson was looking at her with unblinking directness; and she met his glance with eyes that twinkled.
"Mr. South," she said, "I know all about manners, and you know all about a hundred real things that I want to know. Suppose we begin teaching each other?"
Samson's face lighted with the revolutionizing effect that a smile can bring only to features customarily solemn.
"Miss Lescott," he said, "let's call that a trade—but you're gettin' all the worst of it. To start with, you might give me a lesson right now in how a feller ought to act, when he's talkin' to a lady—how I ought to act with you!"
Her laugh made the situation as easy as an old shoe.
Ten minutes later, Lescott entered.
"Well," he said, with a smile, "shall I Introduce you people, or have you already done it for yourselves?"
"Oh," Adrienne assured him, "Mr. South and I are old friends." As she left the room, she turned and added: "The second lesson had better be at my house. If I telephone you some day when we can have the school-room to ourselves, will you come up?"
Samson grinned, and forgot to be bashful as he replied:
"I'll come a-kitin'!"
Early that year, the touch of autumn came to the air. Often, returning at sundown from the afternoon life class, Samson felt the lure of its melancholy sweetness, and paused on one of the Washington Square benches, with many vague things stirring in his mind. Some of these things were as subtly intangible as the lazy sweetness that melted the façades of the walls into the soft colors of a dream city. He found himself loving the Palisades of Jersey, seen through a powdery glow at evening, and the red-gold glare of the setting sun on high-swung gilt signs. He felt with a throb of his pulses that he was in the Bagdad of the new world, and that every skyscraper was a minaret from which the muezzin rang toward the Mecca of his Art. He felt with a stronger throb the surety of young, but quickening, abilities within himself. Partly, it was the charm of Indian summer, partly a sense of growing with the days, but, also, though he had not as yet realized that, it was the new friendship into which Adrienne had admitted him, and the new experience of frankcamaraderiewith a woman not as a member of an inferior sex, but as an equal companion of brain and soul. He had seen her often, and usually alone, because he shunned meetings with strangers. Until his education had advanced further, he wished to avoid social embarrassments. He knew that she liked him, and realized that it was because he was a new and virile type, and for that reason a diversion —a sort of human novelty. She liked him, too, because it was rare for a man to offer her friendship without making love, and she was certain he would not make love. He liked her for the same many reasons that every one else did—because she was herself. Of late, too, he had met a number of men at Lescott's clubs. He was modestly surprised to find that, though his attitude on these occasions was always that of one sitting in the background, the men seemed to like him, and, when they said, "See you again," at parting, it was with the convincing manner of real friendliness. Sometimes, even now, his language was ungrammatical, but so, for the matter of that, was theirs…. The great writer smiled with his slow, humorous lighting of the eyes as he observed to Lescott:
"We are licking our cub into shape, George, and the best of it is that, when he learns to dance ragtime to the organ, he isn't going to stop being a bear. He's a grizzly!"
One wonderful afternoon in October, when the distances were mist-hung, and the skies very clear, Samson sat across the table from Adrienne Lescott at a road-house on the Sound. The sun had set through great cloud battalions massed against the west, and the horizon was fading into darkness through a haze like ash of roses. She had picked him up on the Avenue, and taken him into her car for a short spin, but the afternoon had beguiled them, luring them on a little further, and still a little further. When they were a score of miles from Manhattan, the car had suddenly broken down. It would, the chauffeur told them, be the matter of an hour to effect repairs, so the girl, explaining to the boy that this event gave the affair the aspect of adventure, turned and led the way, on foot, to the nearest road-house.
"We will telephone that we shall be late, and then have dinner," she laughed. "And for me to have dinner with you alone, unchaperoned at a country inn, is by New York standards delightfully unconventional. It borders on wickedness." Then, since their attitude toward each other was so friendly and innocent, they both laughed. They had dined under the trees of an old manor house, built a century ago, and now converted into an inn, and they had enjoyed themselves because it seemed to them pleasingly paradoxical that they should find in a place seemingly so shabby-genteel acuisineand service of such excellence. Neither of them had ever been there before, and neither of them knew that the reputation of this establishment was in its own way wide—and unsavory. They had no way of knowing that, because of several thoroughly bruited scandals which had had origin here, it was a tabooed spot, except for persons who preferred a semi-shady retreat; and they passed over without suspicion the palpable surprise of the head waiter when they elected to occupy a table on the terrace instead of acabinet particulier.
But the repairs did not go as smoothly as the chauffeur had expected, and, when he had finished, he was hungry. So, eleven o'clock found them still chatting at their table on the lighted lawn. After awhile, they fell silent, and Adrienne noticed that her companion's face had become deeply, almost painfully set, and that his gaze was tensely focused on herself.
"What is it, Mr. South?" she demanded.
The young man began to speak, in a steady, self-accusing voice.
"I was sitting here, looking at you," he said, bluntly. "I was thinking how fine you are in every way; how there is as much difference in the texture of men and women as there is in the texture of their clothes. From that automobile cap you wear to your slippers and stockings, you are clad in silk. From your brain to the tone of your voice, you are woven of human silk. I've learned lately that silk isn't weak, but strong. They make the best balloons of it." He paused and laughed, but his face again became sober. "I was thinking, too, of your mother. She must be sixty, but she's a young woman. Her face is smooth and unwrinkled, and her heart is still in bloom. At that same age, George won't be much older than he is now."
The compliment was so obviously not intended as compliment at all that the girl flushed with pleasure.
"Then," went on Samson, his face slowly drawing with pain, "I was thinking of my own people. My mother was about forty when she died. She was an old woman. My father was forty-three. He was an old man. I was thinking how they withered under their drudgery—and of the monstrous injustice of it all."
Adrienne Lescott nodded. Her eyes were sweetly sympathetic.
"It's the hardship of the conditions," she said, softly. "Those conditions will change."
"But that's not all I was thinking," went on the boy.
"I was watching you lift your coffee-cup awhile ago. You did it unconsciously, but your movement was dainty and graceful, as though an artist had posed you. That takes generations, and, in my imagination, I saw my people sitting around an oil-cloth on a kitchen table, pouring coffee into their saucers."
"'There are five and twenty ways"'Of writing tribal lays,'"
quoted the girl, smilingly,
"'And every single one of them is right.'"
"And a horrible thought came to me," continued Samson. He took out his handkerchief, and mopped his forehead, then tossed back the long lock that fell over it. "I wondered"—he paused, and then went on with a set face—"I wondered if I were growing ashamed of my people."
"If I thought that," said Miss Lescott, quietly, "I wouldn't have much use for you. But I know there's no danger."
"If I thought there was," Samson assured her, "I would go back there to Misery, and shoot myself to death…. And, yet, the thought came to me."
"I'm not afraid of your being a cad," she repeated.
"And yet," he smiled, "I was trying to imagine you among my people. What was that rhyme you used to quote to me when you began to teach me manners?"
She laughed, and fell into nonsense quotation, as she thrummed lightly on the table-cloth with her slim fingers.
"'The goops they lick their fingers,"'The goops eat with their knives,"'They spill their broth on the table-cloth,"'And lead disgusting lives.'"
"My people do all those things," announced Samson, though he said it rather in a manner of challenge than apology, "except spilling their broth on the table-cloth…. There are no table-cloths. What would you do in such company?"
"I," announced Miss Lescott, promptly, "should also lick my fingers."
Samson laughed, and looked up. A man had come out onto the verandah from the inside, and was approaching the table. He was immaculately groomed, and came forward with the deference of approaching a throne, yet as one accustomed to approaching thrones. His smile was that of pleased surprise.
The mountaineer recognized Farbish, and, with a quick hardening of the face, he recalled their last meeting. If Farbish should presume to renew the acquaintanceship under these circumstances, Samson meant to rise from his chair, and strike him in the face. George Lescott's sister could not be subjected to such meetings. Yet, it was a tribute to his advancement in good manners that he dreaded making a scene in her presence, and, as a warning, he met Farbish's pleasant smile with a look of blank and studied lack of recognition. The circumstances out of which Farbish might weave unpleasant gossip did not occur to Samson. That they were together late in the evening, unchaperoned, at a road-house whose reputation was socially dubious, was a thing he did not realize. But Farbish was keenly alive to the possibilities of the situation. He chose to construe the Kentuckian's blank expression as annoyance at being discovered, a sentiment he could readily understand. Adrienne Lescott, following her companion's eyes, looked up, and to the boy's astonishment nodded to the new-comer, and called him by name.
"Mr. Farbish," she laughed, with mock confusion and total innocence of the fact that her words might have meaning, "don't tell on us."
"I never tell things, my dear lady," said the newcomer. "I have dwelt too long in conservatories to toss pebbles. I'm afraid, Mr. South, you have forgotten me. I'm Farbish, and I had the pleasure of meeting you" —he paused a moment, then with a pointed glance added—"at the Manhattan Club, was it not?"
"It was not," said Samson, promptly. Farbish looked his surprise, but was resolved to see no offense, and, after a few moments of affable and, it must be acknowledged, witty conversation, withdrew to his own table.
"Where did you meet that man?" demanded Samson, fiercely, when he and the girl were alone again.
"Oh, at any number of dinners and dances. His sort is tolerated for some reason." She paused, then, looking very directly at the Kentuckian, inquired, "And where did you meet him?"
"Didn't you hear him say the Manhattan Club?"
"Yes, and I knew that he was lying."
"Yes, he was!" Samson spoke, contemptuously. "Never mind where it was.It was a place I got out of when I found out who were there."
The chauffeur came to announce that the car was ready, and they went out. Farbish watched them with a smile that had in it a trace of the sardonic.
The career of Farbish had been an interesting one in its own peculiar and unadmirable fashion. With no advantages of upbringing, he had nevertheless so cultivated the niceties of social usage that his one flaw was a too great perfection. He was letter-perfect where one to the manor born might have slurred some detail.
He was witty, handsome in his saturnine way, and had powerful friends in the world of fashion and finance. That he rendered services to his plutocratic patrons, other than the repartee of his dinner talk, was a thing vaguely hinted in club gossip, and that these services were not to his credit had more than once been conjectured.
When Horton had begun his crusade against various abuses, he had cast a suspicious eye on all matters through which he could trace the trail of William Farbish, and now, when Farbish saw Horton, he eyed him with an enigmatical expression, half-quizzical and half-malevolent.
After Adrienne and Samson had disappeared, he rejoined his companion, a stout, middle-aged gentleman of florid complexion, whose cheviot cutaway and reposeful waistcoat covered a liberal embonpoint. Farbish took his cigar from his lips, and studied its ascending smoke through lids half-closed and thoughtful.
"Singular," he mused; "very singular!"
"What's singular?" impatiently demanded his companion. "Finish, or don't start."
"That mountaineer came up here as George Lescott's protégé," went on Farbish, reflectively. "He came fresh from the feud belt, and landed promptly in the police court. Now, in less than a year, he's pairing off with Adrienne Lescott—who, every one supposed, meant to marry Wilfred Horton. This little party to-night is, to put it quite mildly, a bit unconventional."
The stout gentleman said nothing, and the other questioned, musingly:
"By the way, Bradburn, has the Kenmore Shooting Club requested WilfredHorton's resignation yet?"
"Not yet. We are going to. He's not congenial, since his hand is raised against every man who owns more than two dollars." The speaker owned several million times that sum. This meeting at an out-of-the-way place had been arranged for the purpose of discussing ways and means of curbing Wilfred's crusades.
"Well, don't do it."
"Why the devil shouldn't we? We don't want anarchists in the Kenmore."
After awhile, they sat silent, Farbish smiling over the plot he had just devised, and the other man puffing with a puzzled expression at his cigar.
"That's all there is to it," summarized Mr. Farbish, succinctly. "If we can get these two men, South and Horton, together down there at the shooting lodge, under the proper conditions, they'll do the rest themselves, I think. I'll take care of South. Now, it's up to you to have Horton there at the same time."
"How do you know these two men have not already met—and amicably?" demanded Mr. Bradburn.
"I happen to know it, quite by chance. It is my business to know things—quite by chance!"
Indian summer came again to Misery, flaunting woodland banners of crimson and scarlet and orange, but to Sally the season brought only heart-achy remembrances of last autumn, when Samson had softened his stoicism as the haze had softened the horizon. He had sent her a few brief letters—not written, but plainly printed. He selected short words—as much like the primer as possible, for no other messages could she read. There were times in plenty when he wished to pour out to her torrents of feeling, and it was such feeling as would have carried comfort to her lonely little heart. He wished to tell frankly of what a good friend he had made, and how this friendship made him more able to realize that other feeling—his love for Sally. There was in his mind no suspicion—as yet—that these two girls might ever stand in conflict as to right-of-way. But the letters he wished to write were not the sort he cared to have read to the girl by the evangelist-doctor or the district-school teacher, and alone she could have made nothing of them. However, "I love you" are easy words—and those he always included.
The Widow Miller had been ailing for months, and, though the local physician diagnosed the condition as being "right porely," he knew that the specter of tuberculosis which stalks through these badly lighted and ventilated houses was stretching out its fingers to touch her shrunken chest. This had meant that Sally had to forego the evening hours of study, because of the weariness that followed the day of nursing and household drudgery. Autumn seemed to bring to her mother a slight improvement, and Sally could again sometimes steal away with her slate and book, to sit alone on the big bowlder, and study. But, oftentimes, the print on the page, or the scrawl on the slate, became blurred. Nowadays, the tears came weakly to her eyes, and, instead of hating herself for them and dashing them fiercely away, as she would have done a year ago, she sat listlessly, and gazed across the flaring hills.
Even the tuneful glory of the burgundy and scarlet mountains hurt her into wincing—for was it not the clarion of Beauty that Samson had heard—and in answer to which he had left her? So, she would sit, and let her eyes wander, and try to imagine the sort of picture those same very hungry eyes would see, could she rip away the curtain of purple distance, and look in on him—wherever he was. And, in imagining such a picture, she was hampered by no actual knowledge of the world in which he lived—it was all a fairy-tale world, one which her imagination shaped and colored fantastically. Then, she would take out one of his occasional letters, and her face would grow somewhat rapt, as she spelled out the familiar, "I love you," which was to her the soul of the message. The rest was unimportant. She would not be able to write that Christmas. letter. There had been too many interruptions in the self-imparted education, but some day she would write. There would probably be time enough. It would take even Samson a long while to become an artist. He had said so, and the morbid mountain pride forbade that she should write at all until she could do it well enough to give him a complete surprise. It must be a finished article, that letter—or nothing at all!
One day, as she was walking homeward from her lonely trysting place, she met the battered-looking man who carried medicines in his saddlebags and the Scriptures in his pocket, and who practised both forms of healing through the hills. The old man drew down his nag, and threw one leg over the pommel.
"Evenin', Sally," he greeted.
"Evenin', Brother Spencer. How air ye?"
"Tol'able, thank ye, Sally." The body-and-soul mender studied the girl awhile in silence, and then said bluntly:
"Ye've done broke right smart, in the last year. Anything the matter with ye?"
She shook her head, and laughed. It was an effort to laugh merrily, but only the ghost of the old instinctive blitheness rippled into it.
"I've jest come from old Spicer South's," volunteered the doctor."He's ailin' pretty consid'able, these days."
"What's the matter with Unc' Spicer?" demanded the girl, in genuine anxiety. Every one along Misery called the old man Unc' Spicer.
"I can't jest make out." Her informer spoke slowly, and his brow corrugated into something like sullenness. "He hain't jest to say sick. Thet is, his organs seems all right, but he don't 'pear to have no heart fer nothin', and his victuals don't tempt him none. He's jest puny, thet's all."
"I'll go over thar, an' see him," announced the girl. "I'll cook a chicken thet'll tempt him."
The physician's mind was working along some line which did not seem to partake of cheerfulness. Again, he studied the girl, still upright and high-chinned, but, somehow, no longer effervescent with wild, resilient strength.
"Hit sometimes 'pears to me," he said, gruffly, "thet this here thing of eddication costs a sight more than hit comes to."
"What d'ye mean, Brother Spencer?"
"I reckon if Samson South hadn't a-took this hyar hankerin' atter larnin', an' had stayed home 'stid of rainbow chasin', the old man would still be able-bodied, 'stid of dyin' of a broken heart—an' you——"
The girl's cheeks flushed. Her violet eyes became deep with a loyal and defensive glow.
"Ye mustn't say things like them, Brother Spencer." Her voice was very firm and soft. "Unc' Spicer's jest gettin' old, an' es fer me, I wasn't never better ner happier in my life." It was a lie, but a splendid lie, and she told herself as well as Brother Spencer that she believed it. "Samson would come back in a minit ef we sent fer him. He's smart, an' he's got a right ter l'arnin'! He hain't like us folks; he's a—" She paused, and groped for the word that Lescott had added to her vocabulary, which she had half-forgotten. "He's a genius!"
There rose to the lips of the itinerant preacher a sentiment as to how much more loyalty availeth a man than genius, but, as he looked at the slender and valiant figure standing in the deep dust of the road, he left it unuttered.
The girl spent much time after that at the house of old Spicer South, and her coming seemed to waken him into a fitful return of spirits. His strength, which had been like the strength of an ox, had gone from him, and he spent his hours sitting listlessly in a split-bottomed rocker, which was moved from place to place, following the sunshine.
"I reckon, Unc' Spicer," suggested the girl, on one of her first visits, "I'd better send fer Samson. Mebby hit mout do ye good ter see him."
The old man was weakly leaning back in his chair, and his eyes were vacantly listless; but, at the suggestion, he straightened, and the ancient fire came again to his face.
"Don't ye do hit," he exclaimed, almost fiercely. "I knows ye means hit kindly, Sally, but don't ye meddle in my business."
"I—I didn't 'low ter meddle," faltered the girl.
"No, little gal." His voice softened at once into gentleness. "I knows ye didn't. I didn't mean ter be short-answered with ye neither, but thar's jest one thing I won't 'low nobody ter do—an' thet's ter send fer Samson. He knows the road home, an', when he wants ter come, he'll find the door open, but we hain't a-goin' ter send atter him."
The girl said nothing, and, after awhile, the old man wait on:
"I wants ye ter understand me, Sally. Hit hain't that I'm mad with Samson. God knows, I loves the boy…. I hain't a-blamin' him, neither…."
He was silent for awhile, and his words came with the weariness of dead hopes when he began again. "Mebby, I oughtn't ter talk about sech things with a young gal, but I'm an old man, an' thar hain't no harm in hit…. From the time when I used ter watch you two children go a-trapsin' off in the woods together atter hickory nuts, thar's been jest one thing thet I've looked forward to and dreamed about: I wanted ter see ye married. I 'lowed—" A mistiness quenched the sternness of his gray eyes. "I 'lowed thet, ef I could see yore children playin' round this here yard, everything thet's ever gone wrong would be paid fer."
Sally stood silently at his side, and her cheeks flushed as the tears crept into her eyes; but her hand stole through the thick mane of hair, fast turning from iron-gray to snow-white.
Spicer South watched the fattening hog that rubbed its bristling side against the rails stacked outside the fence, and then said, with an imperious tone that did not admit of misconstruction:
"But, Sally, the boy's done started out on his own row. He's got ter hoe hit. Mebby he'll come back—mebby not! Thet's as the Lord wills. Hit wouldn't do us no good fer him to come withouten he come willin'ly. The meanest thing ye could do ter me—an' him—would be ter send fer him. Ye mustn't do hit. Ye mustn't!"
"All right, Unc' Spicer. I hain't a-goin' ter do hit—leastways, not yit. But I'm a-goin' ter come over hyar every day ter see ye."
"Ye can't come too often, Sally, gal," declared the old clansman, heartily.
* * * * *
Wilfred Horton found himself that fall in the position of a man whose course lies through rapids, and for the first time in his life his pleasures were giving precedence to business. He knew that his efficiency would depend on maintaining the physical balance of perfect health and fitness, and early each morning he went for his gallop in the park. At so early an hour, he had the bridle path for the most part to himself. This had its compensations, for, though Wilfred Horton continued to smile with his old-time good humor, he acknowledged to himself that it was not pleasant to have men who had previously sought him out with flatteries avert their faces, and pretend that they had not seen him.
Horton was the most-hated and most-admired man in New York, but the men who hated and snubbed him were his own sort, and the men who admired him were those whom he would never meet, and who knew him only through the columns of penny papers. Their sympathy was too remote to bring him explicit pleasure. He was merely attempting, from within, reforms which the public and the courts had attempted from without. But, since he operated from within the walls, he was denounced as a Judas. Powerful enemies had ceased to laugh, and begun to conspire. He must be silenced! How, was a mooted question. But, in some fashion, he must be silenced. Society had not cast him out, but Society had shown him in many subtle ways that he was no longer her favorite. He had taken a plebeian stand with the masses. Meanwhile, from various sources, Horton had received warnings of actual personal danger. But at these he had laughed, and no hint of them had reached Adrienne's ears.
One evening, when business had forced the postponement of a dinner engagement with Miss Lescott, he begged her over the telephone to ride with him the following morning.
"I know you are usually asleep when I'm out and galloping," he laughed, "but you pitched me neck and crop into this hurly-burly, and I shouldn't have to lose everything. Don't have your horse brought. I want you to try out a new one of mine."
"I think," she answered, "that early morning is the best time to ride.I'll meet you at seven at the Plaza entrance."
They had turned the upper end of the reservoir before Horton drew his mount to a walk, and allowed the reins to hang. They had been galloping hard, and conversation had been impracticable.
"I suppose experience should have taught me," began Horton, slowly, "that the most asinine thing in the world is to try to lecture you, Drennie. But there are times when one must even risk your delight at one's discomfiture."
"I'm not going to tease you this morning," she answered, docilely. "I like the horse too well—and, to be frank, I like you too well!"
"Thank you," smiled Horton. "As usual, you disarm me on the verge of combat. I had nerved myself for ridicule."
"What have I done now?" inquired the girl, with an innocence which further disarmed him.
"The Queen can do no wrong. But even the Queen, perhaps more particularly the Queen, must give thought to what people are saying."
"What are people saying?"
"The usual unjust things that are said about women in society. You are being constantly seen with an uncouth freak who is scarcely a gentleman, however much he may be a man. And malicious tongues are wagging."
The girl stiffened.
"I won't spar with you. I know that you are alluding to Samson South, though the description is a slander. I never thought it would be necessary to say such a thing to you, Wilfred, but you are talking like a cad."
The young man flushed.
"I laid myself open to that," he said, slowly, "and I suppose I should have expected it."
He knew her well enough to dread the calmness of her more serious anger, and just now the tilt of her chin, the ominous light of her deep eyes and the quality of her voice told him that he had incurred it.
"May I ask," Adrienne inquired, "what you fancy constitutes your right to assume this censorship of my conduct?"
"I have no censorship, of course. I have only the interest of loving you, and meaning to marry you."
"And I may remark in passing, that you are making no progress to that end by slandering my friends."
"Adrienne, I'm not slandering. God knows I hate cads and snobs. Mr. South is simply, as yet, uncivilized. Otherwise, he would hardly take you, unchaperoned, to—well, let us say to ultra-bohemian resorts, where you are seen by such gossip-mongers as William Farbish."
"So, that's the specific charge, is it?"
"Yes, that's the specific charge. Mr. South may be a man of unusual talent and strength. But—he has done what no other man has done—with you. He has caused club gossip, which may easily be twisted and misconstrued."
"Do you fancy that Samson South could have taken me to the Wigwam Road- house if I had not cared to go with him?"
The man shook his head.
"Certainly not! But the fact that you did care to go with him indicates an influence over you which is new. You have not sought the bohemian and unconventional phases of life with your other friends."
Adrienne glanced at the athletic figure riding at her side, just now rather rigid with restraint and indignation, as though his vertebrae were threaded on a ramrod, and her eyes darkened a little.
"Now, let it be thoroughly understood between us, Wilfred," she said very quietly, "that if you see any danger in my unconventionalities, I don't care to discuss this, or any other matter, with you now or at any time." She paused, then added in a more friendly voice: "It would be rather a pity for us to quarrel about a thing like this."
The young man was still looking into her eyes, and he read there an ultimatum.
"God knows I was not questioning you," he replied, slowly. "There is no price under heaven I would not pay for your regard. None the less, I repeat that, at the present moment, I can see only two definitions for this mountaineer. Either he is a bounder, or else he is so densely ignorant and churlish that he is unfit to associate with you."
"I make no apologies for Mr. South," she said, "because none are needed. He is a stranger in New York, who knows nothing, and cares nothing about the conventionalities. If I chose to waive them, I think it was my right and my responsibility."
Horton said nothing, and, in a moment, Adrienne Lescott's manner changed. She spoke more gently:
"Wilfred, I'm sorry you choose to take this prejudice against the boy. You could have done a great deal to help him. I wanted you to be friends."
"Thank you!" His manner was stiff. "I hardly think we'd hit it off together."
"I don't think you quite understand," she argued. "Samson South is running a clean, creditable race, weighted down with a burdensome handicap. As a straight-thinking sportsman, if for no better reason, I should fancy you'd be glad to help him. He has the stamina and endurance."
"Those," said Horton, who at heart was the fairest and most generous of men, "are very admirable qualities. Perhaps, I should be more enthusiastic, Drennie, if you were a little less so."
For the first time since the talk had so narrowly skirted a quarrel, her eyes twinkled.
"I believe you are jealous!" she announced.
"Of course, I'm jealous," he replied, without evasion. "Possibly, I might have saved time in the first place by avowing my jealousy. I hasten now to make amends. I'm green-eyed."
She laid her gloved fingers lightly on his bridle hand.
"Don't be," she advised; "I'm not in love with him. If I were, it wouldn't matter. He has,
"'A neater, sweeter maiden,"'In a greener, cleaner land.'
"He's told me all about her."
Horton shook his head, dubiously.
"I wish to the good Lord, he'd go back to her," he said. "This Platonic proposition is the doormat over-which two persons walk to other things. They end by wiping their feet on the Platonic doormat."
"We'll cross that—that imaginary doormat, when we get to it," laughed the girl. "Meantime, you ought to help me with Samson."
"Thank you, no! I won't help educate my successor. And I won't abdicate"—his manner of speech grew suddenly tense—"while I can fight for my foothold."
"I haven't asked you to abdicate. This boy has been here less than a year. He came absolutely raw—"
"And lit all spraddled out in the police court!" Wilfred prompted.
"And, in less than a year, he has made wonderful advancement; such advancement as he could not have made but for one thing."
"Which was—that you took him in hand."
"No—which is, that he springs from stock that, despite its hundred years of lapse into illiteracy, is good stock. Samson South was a gentleman, Wilfred, two hundred years before he was born."
"That," observed her companion, curtly, "was some time ago."
She tossed her head, impatiently.
"Come," she said, "let's gallop."
"No," protested Wilfred, his face becoming penitent. "Just a moment! I retract. It is I who am the cad. Please, tell Mr. South just what we have both said, and make my apologies if he'll accept them. Of course, if you insist, I'll meet him. I suppose I'll have to meet him some day, anyhow. But, frankly, Drennie, I hate the man. It will take a Herculean effort to be decent to him. Still, if you say so—"
"No, Wilfred," she declined, "if you can't do it willingly, I don't want you to do it at all. It doesn't matter in the least. Let's drop the subject."
One afternoon, swinging along Fifth Avenue in his down-town walk, Samson met Mr. Farbish, who fell into step with him, and began to make conversation.
"By the way, South," he suggested after the commonplaces had been disposed of, "you'll pardon my little prevarication the other evening about having met you at the Manhattan Club?"
"Why was it necessary?" inquired Samson, with a glance of disquieting directness.
"Possibly, it was not necessary, merely politic. Of course," he laughed, "every man knows two kinds of women. It's just as well not to discuss the nectarines with the orchids, or the orchids with the nectarines."
Samson made no response. But Farbish, meeting his eyes, felt as though he had been contemptuously rebuked. His own eyes clouded with an impulse of resentment. But it passed, as he remembered that his plans involved the necessity of winning this boy's confidence. An assumption of superior virtue, he thought, came rather illogically from Samson, who had brought to the inn a young woman whom he should not have exposed to comment. He, himself, could afford to be diplomatic. Accordingly, he laughed.
"You mustn't take me too literally, South," he explained. "The life here has a tendency to make us cynical in our speech, even though we may be quite the reverse in our practices. In point of fact, I fancy we were both rather out of our element at Collasso's studio."
At the steps of a Fifth Avenue club, Farbish halted.
"Won't you turn in here," he suggested, "and assuage your thirst?"
Samson declined, and walked on. But when, a day or two later, he dropped into the same club with George Lescott, Farbish joined them in the grill—without invitation.
"By the way, Lescott," said the interloper, with an easy assurance upon which the coolness of his reception had no seeming effect, "it won't be long now until ducks are flying south. Will you get off for your customary shooting?"
"I'm afraid not." Lescott's voice became more cordial, as a man's will whose hobby has been touched. "There are several canvases to be finished for approaching exhibitions. I wish I could go. When the first cold winds begin to sweep down, I get the fever. The prospects are good, too, I understand."
"The best in years! Protection in the Canadian breeding fields is bearing fruit. Do you shoot ducks, Mr. South?" The speaker included Samson as though merely out of deference to his physical presence.
Samson shook his head. But he was listening eagerly. He, too, knew that note of the migratory "honk" from high overhead.
"Samson," said Lescott slowly, as he caught the gleam in his friend's eyes, "you've been working too hard. You'll have to take a week off, and try your hand. After you've changed your method from rifle to shotgun, you'll bag your share, and you'll come back fitter for work. I must arrange it."
"As to that," suggested Farbish, in the manner of one regarding the civilities, "Mr. South can run down to the Kenmore. I'll have a card made out for him."
"Don't trouble," demurred Lescott, coolly, "I can fix that up."
"It would be a pleasure," smiled the other. "I sincerely wish I could be there at the same time, but I'm afraid that, like you, Lescott, I shall have to give business the right of way. However, when I hear that the flights are beginning, I'll call Mr. South up, and pass the news to him."
Samson had thought it rather singular that he had never met Horton at the Lescott house, though Adrienne spoke of him almost as of a member of the family. However, Samson's visits were usually in his intervals between relays of work and Horton was probably at such times in Wall Street. It did not occur to the mountaineer that the other was intentionally avoiding him. He knew of Wilfred only through Adrienne's eulogistic descriptions, and, from hearsay, liked him.
The months of close application to easel and books had begun to tell on the outdoor man in a softening of muscles and a slight, though noticeable, pallor. The enthusiasm with which he attacked his daily schedule carried him far, and made his progress phenomenal, but he was spending capital of nerve and health, and George Lescott began to fear a break-down for his protégé. Lescott did not want to advise a visit to the mountains, because he had secured from the boy a promise that, unless he was called home, he would give the experiment an unbroken trial of eighteen months.
If Samson went back, he feared his return would reawaken the sleeping volcano of the feud—and he could not easily come away again. He discussed the matter with Adrienne, and the girl began to promote in the boy an interest in the duck-shooting trip—an interest which had already awakened, despite the rifleman's inherent contempt for shotguns.
"You will be in your blind," she enthusiastically told him, "before daybreak, and after a while the wedges will come flying into view, cutting the fog in hundreds and dropping into the decoys. You'll love it! I wish I were going myself."
"Do you shoot?" he asked, in some surprise.
She nodded, and added modestly;
"But I don't kill many ducks."
"Is there anything you can't do?" he questioned in admiration, then demanded, with the touch of homesickness in his voice, "Are there any mountains down there?"
"I'm afraid we can't provide any mountains," laughed Adrienne. "Just salt marshes—and beyond them, the sea. But there's moonshine—of the natural variety—and a tonic in the wind that buffets you."
"I reckon I'd like it, all right," he said, "and I'll bring you back some ducks, if I'm lucky."
So, Lescott arranged the outfit, and Samson awaited the news of the coming flights.
That same evening, Farbish dropped into the studio, explaining that he had been buying a picture at Collasso's, and had taken the opportunity to stop by and hand Samson a visitor's card to the Kenmore Club.
He found the ground of interest fallow, and artfully sowed it with well-chosen anecdotes calculated to stimulate enthusiasm.
On leaving the studio, he paused to say:
"I'll let you know when conditions are just right." Then, he added, as though in afterthought: "And I'll arrange so that you won't run up on Wilfred Horton."
"What's the matter with Wilfred Horton?" demanded Samson, a shade curtly.
"Nothing at all," replied Farbish, with entire gravity. "Personally, I like Horton immensely. I simply thought you might find things more congenial when he wasn't among those present."
Samson was puzzled, but he did not fancy hearing from this man's lips criticisms upon friends of his friends.
"Well, I reckon," he said, coolly, "I'd like him, too."
"I beg your pardon," said the other. "I supposed you knew, or I shouldn't have broached the topic."
"Knew what?"
"You must excuse me," demurred the visitor with dignity. "I shouldn't have mentioned the subject. I seem to have said too much."
"See here, Mr. Farbish," Samson spoke quietly, but imperatively; "if you know any reason why I shouldn't meet Mr. Wilfred Horton, I want you to tell me what it is. He is a friend of my friends. You say you've said too much. I reckon you've either said too much, or too little."
Then, very insidiously and artistically, seeming all the while reluctant and apologetic, the visitor proceeded to plant in Samson's mind an exaggerated and untrue picture of Horton's contempt for him and of Horton's resentment at the favor shown him by the Lescotts.
Samson heard him out with a face enigmatically set, and his voice was soft, as he said simply at the end:
"I'm obliged to you."
Farbish had hoped for more stress of feeling, but, as he walked home, he told himself that the sphinx-like features had been a mask, and that, when these two met, their coming together held potentially for a clash. He was judge enough of character to know that Samson's morbid pride would seal his lips as to the interview—until he met Horton.
In point of fact, Samson was at first only deeply wounded. That through her kindness to him Adrienne was having to fight his battles with a close friend he had never suspected. Then, slowly, a bitterness began to rankle, quite distinct from the hurt to his sensitiveness. His birthright of suspicion and tendency to foster hatreds had gradually been falling asleep under the disarming kindness of these persons. Now, they began to stir in him again vaguely, but forcibly, and to trouble him.
Samson did not appear at the Lescott house for two weeks after that. He had begun to think that, if his going there gave embarrassment to the girl who had been kind to him, it were better to remain away.
"I don't belong here," he told himself, bitterly. "I reckon everybody that knows me in New York, except the Lescotts, is laughing at me behind my back."
He worked fiercely, and threw into his work such fire and energy that it came out again converted into a boldness of stroke and an almost savage vigor of drawing. The instructor nodded his head over the easel, and passed on to the next student without having left the defacing mark of his relentless crayon. To the next pupil, he said:
"Watch the way that man South draws. He's not clever. He's elementally sincere, and, if he goes on, the first thing you know he will be a portrait painter. He won't merely draw eyes and lips and noses, but character and virtues and vices showing out through them."
And Samson met every gaze with smoldering savagery, searching for some one who might be laughing at him openly, or even covertly; instead of behind his back. The long-suffering fighting lust in him craved opportunity to break out and relieve the pressure on his soul. But no one laughed.
One afternoon late in November, a hint of blizzards swept snarling down the Atlantic seaboard from the polar floes, with wet flurries of snow and rain. Off on the marshes where the Kenmore Club had its lodge, the live decoys stretched their clipped wings, and raised their green necks restively into the salt wind, and listened. With dawn, they had heard, faint and far away, the first notes of that wild chorus with which the skies would ring until the southerly migrations ended—the horizon-distant honking of high-flying water fowl.
Then it was that Farbish dropped in with marching orders, and Samson, yearning to be away where there were open skies, packed George Lescott's borrowed paraphernalia, and prepared to leave that same night.
While he was packing, the telephone rang, and Samson heard Adrienne's voice at the other end of the wire.
"Where have you been hiding?" she demanded. "I'll have to send a truant officer after you."
"I've been very busy," said the man, "and I reckon, after all, you can't civilize a wolf. I'm afraid I've been wasting your time."
Possibly, the miserable tone of the voice told the girl more than the words.
"You are having a season with the blue devils," she announced. "You've been cooped up too much. This wind ought to bring the ducks, and——"
"I'm leaving to-night," Samson told her.
"It would have been very nice of you to have run up to say good-bye," she reproved. "But I'll forgive you, if you call me up by long distance. You will get there early in the morning. To-morrow, I'm going to Philadelphia over night. The next night, I shall be at the theater. Call me up after the theater, and tell me how you like it."
It was the same old frankness and friendliness of voice, and the same old note like the music of a reed instrument. Samson felt so comforted and reassured that he laughed through the telephone.
"I've been keeping away from you," he volunteered, "because I've had a relapse into savagery, and haven't been fit to talk to you. When I get back, I'm coming up to explain. And, in the meantime, I'll telephone."
On the train Samson was surprised to discover that, after all, he had Mr. William Farbish for a traveling companion. That gentleman explained that he had found an opportunity to play truant from business for a day or two, and wished to see Samson comfortably ensconced and introduced.
The first day Farbish and Samson had the place to themselves, but the next morning would bring others. Samson's ideas of a millionaires' shooting-box had been vague, but he had looked forward to getting into the wilds. The marshes were certainly desolate enough, and the pine woods through which the buckboard brought them. But, inside the club itself, the Kentuckian found himself in such luxurious comfort as he could not, in his own mind, reconcile with the idea of "going hunting." He would be glad when the cushioned chairs of the raftered lounging- room and the tinkle of high-ball ice and gossip were exchanged for the salt air and the blinds.