"There'll be a hot time,In the old town to-night."Evidently this spirit of the waters, was of a lively, not to say hilarious, disposition—at least that was the first impression given—but as the hours passed, the music changed in character, and it finally dawned upon the populace that there was method in the madness of the Siren—for the news had flown rapidly of what the wonder was—gentler airs succeeded until the hour when the young men calling should go home, when apparently impersonating all the young women in the city, the Siren spoke softly:"Bid me good-bye and go!"and, later, as the time came when erring heads of families might be lingering out too late for their own good, the mentor started in with—"Oh, Willie, we have missed you!"and, a little later, after apparent consideration, wailed out despairingly:"Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now."It was charming! Still later, came soothing, familiar airs in a minor key, such as were sleep-encouraging, and there was no variationfrom this until six a.m., when there was an outbreak:"I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up this morning!The sergeant's worse than the private,The captain's worse than the sergeant!The major's worse than the captain,The colonel's the worst of 'em all!I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up to-day!"Ringing out over all the city was the reveille, but, as if in drowsy answer came a little later, almost like an echo—the lazy, listless,"Let me dream again."Evidently not what was approved of, for, sharply and indignantly, followed the peremptory demand to—"Take your clothes and go."And so, until the fog lifted, continued the interesting programme of the Siren. The people were delighted. No more was the name of the "Siren" a misnomer. The newspapers were full of praise of Hannibal Perkins, the inventor, and a dream, for once, was realized. Improvements were made by the elated genius. People in the city soon perceived that certain airs were played only at certain hours, so that one could tell what time of night it was while lying comfortablyin bed. The invention was recognized as a boon to the community. The Board of Trade voted a neat lump sum to Hannibal Perkins, he was elected member of numerous scientific and musical societies, and negotiations were begun with the government looking to the introduction of the Siren in harbors everywhere.Now comes reference to the action of a law of nature which has always been accounted curious, that law which is in direct contradiction of the old and popular saying that one cannot have too much of a good thing. The months passed, months of triumph and elation for Hannibal Perkins, and, at first, of enjoyment for those on land. Then in the city came a gradual change, though Hannibal, in the light-house, was not aware of it. There arose an anti-Siren party, and a clamorous one! It was the old story—they were "tired" of the same old tunes. They were all antiquated things it was declared. It was the result of that quality in the human ear and human nerves which enables them to endure the continual passing of a railroad train, but not the too frequent repetition of a musical air. Even an effort to remedy this fault did not avail. There came two dread November weeks of almost continual fog, day and night, and, as theSiren gave four tunes an hour for variety's sake, it necessarily played ninety-six tunes a day, and there weren't enough popular airs in existence to keep this up without constant duplication, or worse! A new form of nervousness was seizing upon the multitude. Even the mayor, who had grown fat, was getting thin again.On the other hand the Siren had a powerful supporting force in the officers and crews of every vessel entering the harbor. Most delightful was it to those gallant seamen, when the fog lay dense and sinister, to hear, at a greater distance from land than ever before, the sounds which guided them to safety and, at the same time, to recognize and be cheered by the notes of some familiar air. They heard the Siren only occasionally and to them there was no monotony. The whole shipping interest arose figuratively in arms against those who objected to the new order of things.And so the case stands now. The government is considering the matter. Doubtless the Perkins Siren will, in the end, be adopted—with modifications and restrictions. Hannibal Perkins is pondering over the question of why people get so maddeningly tired of a piece of music, from some favorite of the operas down to the latestbit of "rag-time." They do not get tired of bread and beefsteak! Is the palate wiser than the ear? Even Hannibal Perkins cannot answer that question. Human nature is odd.CHAPTER XITHE PORTER'S STORYFrom the beginning of the train's delay the porter of the sleeping car had attracted attention unostentatiously. This expression perhaps best describes the man's demeanor. He was, apparently, not much over thirty years of age, and a white man, but for that indefinable something which manifests itself in the bearing of a human being who, by unfortunate stress of circumstances, is fighting the world at a disadvantage. He was a blonde man, six feet in height. There was to his bearing a certain dignity. Yet, he was the porter of the car! It followed, as a practical certainty, that he was of African descent, however much of his blood had come in the intermingling with a preponderence in favor of the Anglo-Saxon.He looked like a Viking, one of those who sometimes sailed down to Africa, after ravaging the Seine Valley, and taking toll of the monasteries and castles of the Spanish Peninsulaen route,—but certainly not like one whose real ancestors, those who made the man, could have been African. The Colonel had recognized the fact that this big blonde man was one of Nature's mistakes in production under too sinister surroundings, and saw, too, that there was a story which might be told readily and impulsively and forcefully, and, perhaps most interestingly, under some momentum of the hour. He decided this to be the psychological moment."Will you not give us a story, now, John?" he said—he had learned the porter's name the day before, but half hesitated at the familiarity—"I've a fancy you may have more to tell than any of the rest of us. Will you let us know what it is?"The porter glanced at him curiously but not in any protesting way. It could be seen that he recognized in the other man, a sympathizing human being and he rose to the occasion."I will tell you the story," he said, slowly, "though, really, save as possibly amusing somebody for the moment, I scarcely see the object, but it may be that it will afford me a little relief personally. Come to think of it, I don't know that I've ever had a chance to tell mystory to intelligent human beings under anything like fair auspices. I'm going to tell it simply and truly. I'll leave the verdict to you. Your verdict cannot help me any, for you are as weak as I am in this case, but this is the story:HIS PROBLEMIs it well for me that I am a product of a University, that I am what I am?Some time ago I read an exceedingly clever poem in some magazine, describing the sufferings of Pierrot, that inimitable and fascinating French modification of Harlequin, ever vainly seeking his elusive Columbine."I, who am Pierrot, pity me! Oh pity me!" he cries in his helpless desire for sympathy. Sometimes I feel like Pierrot, though my suffering is not as his.I hesitate, somehow, at telling my own story lest I be misunderstood or offend in some manner. I have some courage and I'm not asking sympathy in any weak or maudlin way. I am but stating a case, a case with a problem attached and one which I have, so far, been unable to solve, though the quality of my life must depend upon the nature of the solution.I am neither whining nor begging. The story may or may not possess a degree of interest. I wish I could tell it better.I am thirty-four years of age, and I think I can fairly say, am well educated; so thorough was my college course and so diligently did I apply myself, that I excel most graduates in the extent of my real acquirements. I have forgotten neither my classics nor my mathematics and I read and speak French and German fluently. I keep myself familiar with what occurs in the field of literature. I chance to have a retentive memory and my perceptions are, it seems to me, at least reasonably keen.I am six feet in height and, absurd as it may seem in me to say it, am a well formed, well set up man. I have clean cut features, rather aquiline than otherwise, grey eyes, light hair, which curls slightly, and a fair complexion. I am an athlete, trained from boyhood, and have borne myself, I hope, as a man should in encounters in the southwest, where brawn has for the moment counted for more than brains. I describe myself thus directly, but not conceitedly, because I want to be known as you see me, for just what I am. To discredit myself unjustly in the least, to tell less than the truth, wouldmar the justice of the premises upon which I make my case and from which I make clear, or at least try to make clear, the nature of the problem which has proved too difficult for me.I have had ambitions, hopes and love. I have known men and women. I have become familiar with the affairs of the world. I am naturally of a buoyant and hopeful disposition and yet I, a strong man, am to-day perplexed, sad, almost hopeless. I have no incumbrances. A healthy, educated man of thirty-four, with no burden of the ordinary sort, and yet disheartened! I can imagine you saying, with an inflection of either pity or contempt. Well, what I have told of myself is the truth and I must take the consequences.I was born in one of the southern states. One of my grandfathers was a man of standing, and one of my grandmothers was, I am told, a very beautiful woman. My father was also a man of note, a distinguished officer in the civil war who did well in battle. My mother was a woman of exceptional charms of person and character, but died when I was a mere child. I was educated by a wealthy brother of my father, who chanced to take an interest in me. Until the age of twelveI was the almost constant companion of his own son.At the age of twelve, my cousin and I who had been so much together were separated, he going to a school in one of the great cities, I to one in a smaller town. After graduation at school we were each sent to college. My cousin went to one of the great universities and I was sent to one of the smaller colleges of the country, but one where the curriculum was extensive and the requirements severe. I studied hard and graduated in the same year with my cousin. We met again at the old homestead and I found that, because of my close attention to my studies, perhaps, too, because of a somewhat quicker apprehension, I excelled him decidedly in acquirements. We passed a not unpleasant month together, hunting and fishing in the old way, but, somehow, it was not the same as it had been when we were boys together. I noticed a change in my cousin's demeanor toward me. His manner was not unkindly, for he is one of the best and most generous of men, but there was a certain change, a certain distance of air which made it plain to me that we could never again be to each other what we had been as boys in the past. We separated each to go outinto the world to struggle for himself; I, alone; he, with the influential family and a host of influential friends behind him. I have never seen him since.Equipped as I was the natural course for me to pursue seemed to be to adopt for a time the work of teaching, not that I inclined toward it, but because it afforded opportunity to acquire a little capital which might enable me to take up a profession. I secured a school without much difficulty in a thriving southwestern town, and at the end of a course of three years had saved several hundred dollars. With the money thus obtained, I graduated at a famous law school, after which I studied diligently for a year in the office of a prominent attorney. I was clerk, porter, office boy, everything about the office, but the distinguished lawyer did me the honor, at the end of the year, to say that I was the most thorough student he had ever assisted and prophesied flatteringly as to my future. I was admitted to the bar with compliments from the examining judges as to my knowledge of the law. I at once established an office in a town of about two thousand people, where the outlook seemed exceptionally promising. I was entirely unknown in the littlecity, but for two years I prospered beyond my expectations. I knew the law and, as the event showed, I was strong with juries, possessing the power of interesting and winning the confidence of men to an exceptional degree. I won a number of cases, some of them important ones. I became known in the town and in the surrounding district as a public speaker of force and eloquence. Upon the lecture platform or political rostrum I felt as potent and at ease as in the court room. My future seemed assured. I found friends among the best people, my income was more than sufficient for my needs; in my rooms I was accumulating books of the world's literature. My law library was the best in the county. In all things I was flourishing and the world looked bright to me.One day there came to the town wherein I had established myself a young man who had been in college with me. I was glad to see him and did what I could for him during his stay, though we were unlike in temperament and tastes, and his associates and friends had all been different from mine. He soon left the place, and, not long after, I noticed a surprising change in the manner of the people toward me. I no longer received invitations to dinner nor to social gatherings.No reason was given me for the freezing indifference with which I was treated by my former friends. What was, from one point of view, a matter of as much importance, my business began to drop off; men who had placed their legal affairs in my hands no longer sought me for advice and only an occasional petty case in some justice's court came to afford me a livelihood. After a vain struggle with these intolerable conditions I gave up. I closed my office and left the city.It was early in June, that year when I left the place where I had hoped to become a lifelong resident and useful citizen.I drifted east and found myself in Boston. There I met two young men, seniors in college, but poor, who had engaged themselves as men of all work—partly as a midsummer lark, but chiefly for the money to be gained—to work in a great summer hotel in the mountains. A third man was needed, and they asked me if I would not go with them. I was ready for anything, and accepted the invitation.The hotel was one of the largest in the mountains, and the numerous guests included wealthy and distinguished families from all parts of the country. That we were college-bred men andhad students' ambitions also became known, and it came to pass, at last, that our duties for the day accomplished, we appeared in evening dress, and joined in the evening's amusements, laughed at in a friendly way, and jesting ourselves in return.I cannot go into further details of the happenings of that summer at the mountain resort, where all was healthy and healthful except my own mentality, which had been made what it was by conditions over which I had no control. I prayed, and prayer, while it strengthened me, did not help me bow to the injustice under which I suffered. I thought and tried to find what a logical brain, a broad view of things, and a keen intelligence might do, and that did not help me. Ever, ever came the same inevitable deduction. I was a hunted wretch, pursued by a social and partly natural law, driven ever into a cul de sac, into a side gorge in the mountains of life, a short gorge with precipitous walls on either side and ending suddenly and briefly in a wall as perpendicular and high and smooth. True, I had for the moment escaped, for the instant I was free, but I knew that soon, inevitably, the cordon would hem me in and that I wouldbe at the mercy of the pursuers—the unmalicious but instinctively impelled pursuers. Then came a respite from the torturing thought, a forgetfulness for the moment, a forgetfulness to be paid for.I was the man with the boats and, as well the guide who conducted individuals or parties to and from all the picturesque or curious spots of the wild region round about the summer resort which shrewd capitalists had implanted in the heart of nature. So it came that I met all, or nearly all the guests, groups who had chaffed at me, and yet, knowing my status, made me one of them. Strong young men and good ones made me a comrade, fathers and mothers of broods of little children leaned on me, and at last and worse in the end, the occasional woman who thought for herself, knew nature for herself and wanted but to go out alone to meet her sister, that same Nature, became my companion. There was one among those who, to me, was above the other women. There was one among those—may the good God ever have her in his keeping—who, from no thought or fault of hers, has given me the greatest vision of happiness and also such sorrow as few men know.Then I seemed to live for the first time and now it is still a thought deep in my mind that it was my only taste of real life when I held communion on lake and shore in that enchanted summer with the woman who held my heart in her white hands. No doubt I was guilty, frightfully guilty. What right has a pariah in a world of caste? But I am a human. I drifted and drifted. I cannot analyze my own feelings at the time. I knew that I was good and honest and as real in mind as she and yet, even then, I think I felt as if I were some vagrant who had wandered into a church and was inanely fumbling at the altar-cloth.Like every other rainbow that ever spanned my miserable sky it disappeared, not gradually, as do other rainbows when the clouds part slowly and the sun shines out between them, but suddenly, leaving blackness. One wild but simply honest letter I wrote telling all things, and then came silence. There was only the information that one fair guest of the great summer resort had departed suddenly.Yet in my letter I had told of nothing but a life of steadfast honor, principle, and high ambition and endeavor; I began to lose heart. I am a wanderer. What am I to do? I am aman without a country as much as was poor Nolan in Edward Everett Hale's immortal story, though unlike Nolan, I am blameless of even a moment's lapse of patriotism. I am without a country because my country will not give me what it gives to other men. I am even without a race, for that to which I really belong neglects me and with that into which my own would thrust me I have nothing in common. The presence of a faint strain of alien blood is killing me by inches.I am not black, I am white. Does one part of, perhaps, some African chieftain's blood offset thirty-one of white blood from good ancestors? I do not believe in miscegenation. There is some subtle underlying law of God and nature which forbids the close contact in any way of the different races. It is to me a horror. But I am not black, I am white. A negro woman is to me as she is to any other white man. A negro man is to me as of a strange race. A white man is to me my brother. All my thoughts, all my yearnings, are to be with him, to talk with him, to sympathize with him in all the affairs of life, to help him and have him help me, to go to war with him, if need be, to die by his side. I am a white man.But there is that one thirty-second of pariah blood. "Pity me, oh pity me."As I have said, I began to lose heart. There is no need to tell all the story. I remember it all. One or two incidents suffice to show the way I have traveled.Once in an eastern city, I obtained work as a brakeman on a freight train on the railway. At first my fellow workers received me well, named me Byron, some knowing me among them, with rude but kindly chaffing at my pale face and studious habits, for when not at work I had ever a book in my hand.One day, while we were waiting on a siding near a small station, a tramp recognized me. He was a man I had defended in court for some small offense, in the distant western town where I practiced law. I had him kept out of jail by my pleading. I had believed that his arrest and trial would be a lesson such as would keep him from the idle and vicious ways he was just beginning to follow at that time.The tramp rode a few miles on our train. After that the train crew ceased to consort with me. They looked sullenly upon me and muttered among themselves when I came near them. The engineer looked the other way when hehad to speak to me. His face was grim and sad, as well, but he looked the other way. There was no outbreak, but I could not endure my position. I left the railroad work as soon as our train arrived in the city where the company made its headquarters.Once again, some years after the railway episode, I thought to work on a street-car line. I applied for the position of motorman, and was well received by the superintendent to whom I reported after he had in reply to my letter, asked me to call at his office. I gave, at his request, the names of a half a dozen responsible men as references as to my character and responsibility. I arranged with a security company for giving the required bond, and was told that as soon as favorable answers were received from my friends I would be put to practice work; I felt assured of a position, laborious and nerve testing, it is true, but respectable and reasonable well paid.After two weeks I called upon the superintendent again, although he had not written, as he promised to do, after hearing from the men I had referred him to.He was a hard man of business, that superintendent, but he spoke to me kindly, regretfully,almost shamefacedly. The testimonials to my character and life were, he said, very flattering to me. No one had said anything but good of me. But it would never do, he explained, for me to be set to work on the road. The men would be sure to find out the truth about me, sooner or later, and then the officials of the road would be blamed. There was sure to be trouble. Personally, the superintendent had, he said, no "race prejudices," but he could not answer for the feelings of others less free from the influence of tradition and natural aversion.I stood silent while the man of my own race calmly, even tenderly, waved me back into the ranks of a people of whose blood a few drops only run in my veins. So another gate was closed. So I was once more forced into the narrow bounds of an invisible prison.My mother had one-sixteenth of negro blood in her veins and was a slave. Now what explains my most unfortunate condition? Is it because this ancestor had this trace of the blood of another race, and that I have one thirty-second part of the same blood, though I chance to be whiter than most Caucasians? Well, God made the races. Is it becausethis ancestor was a slave? So were the Britons slaves of the Romans. My father was a descendant of some slave. He is not responsible for the chase of his mother in ancient woods and for her capture by some fierce avaricious Roman legionary who knew the value of a breeder of sturdy Teutonic brawn in making Roman highways. It was through no fault of mine that the Arab trader chased my great-great-great-grandmother or grandfather down in the jungle and sold her to the sallow-faced slave dealer who brought her to America. The blood of my father's ancestors became intermixed with that of the captors. My father's race became free. So has mine. The difference is but in time. Why is it, then, that I am as I am? I do not want to become a barber, nor a porter, nor an attendant in a Turkish bath, nor to serve other men. I do not want to work upon the streets, though I am not afraid of manual labor nor do I count it dishonorable. But I am a cultivated man, a man skilled in a profession where intelligence and training are required, a man of moral character and refined tastes. I am starving for the companionship of my own kind. Brain and heart, I am starving. What am I to do?Pity me, good people, Oh, pity me!CHAPTER XIITHE PURPLE STOCKINGThere was unaccustomed silence for a time after the Porter finished speaking. He left the car at once, perturbed, it may be, by his own disclosure of his condition and emotions. Those who had listened to him, whatever may have been their views concerning one of the great problems of the age, could not but feel a certain sympathy for the man condemned to be thus isolated—the man without a race. That his case might be somewhat exceptional detracted in no way from its curious pathos. It was recognized as one of the tragedies of human life as it is, and the recital had induced a thoughtful mood among the Porter's audience. What should be the attitude of the ordinary man or woman in a case like this? And, seeking honestly in their own minds, those pondering could not answer the question satisfactorily, either to judgment or to conscience. By what law should they be guided?The Colonel was among the thinkers, buthe rose superior, as usual. That gilded optimist wanted not even reflection among the snowbound. Had his company been of males exclusively he might even have been tempted to introduce the flowing bowl, but for his knowledge of the inevitable depressing aftermath. He wanted but carelessness and distraction and forgetfulness until the time of pale monotony should end. Now he was tempted to an act most ruthless and unconjugal.His glance was toward his wife, whom he adored openly, and toward whom he, at all times, showed the greatest consideration, but who, through some prescience, was fidgeting a little."Madam," he began pompously, slapping his hand upon his chest, "the husband is the head of the family—he really isn't," he added in an audible aside, "but we'll assume it for the present. Madam, he is the head of the family and must be obeyed. I order, command and direct you to tell a story; if need be I will even abdicate for the moment and so far humiliate myself as to implore you to tell a story. Tell about that affair which took place at the Grand Cattaraugus, when we were stopping there last summer."The pleasant-faced lady appeared hesitant: "But it's almost a naughty story," she protested; "it's about a stocking, and, oh dear! there's something about a"—and she blushed prettily, as is always the case when a middle-aged woman thus demeans herself, "there's an ankle in it, too.""Nonsense," retorted the Colonel. "Do you mean in the story or in the stocking? In either case an ankle is all right. Go ahead, my dear."Mrs. Livingston yielded: "After all," she said, "it's not so very wicked and the story is chiefly about matching colors, which is a subject not unlikely to interest ladies. Anyhow, it interested me in this instance. I know all the shocking circumstances, and, since I've gone so far I may as well be reckless. I suppose the story might be calledTHE PURPLE STOCKINGMaxwell, a gentleman stopping at the hotel, was bored. There existed no particular excuse for his frame of mind, but the fact remained. He had fairly earned a vacation, but when the time came for escape from the midsummer heat of his offices he had found himself with no well-defined idea of where his outing should bespent. Circumstances rendered it necessary that it should be a brief one this time, else he would have known what to do with himself, for the man knew the Rocky Mountains. As it was, he had but taken train for one of the nearby summer resorts, where the Grand Cattaraugus caravansary, consisting, as those places do, of an enormous piazza with a hotel attached to its rear, loomed up beside and overlooked the pretty hill-surrounded lake with its blue waters, narrow beach and many pleasure boats. It was not a bad place and Maxwell had decided that it would be endurable for a week or two, especially after the arrival of his friend, Jim Farrington, who had promised to follow and loaf genially with him.But first impressions are not always final. Maxwell found the hotel full of people, mostly women. It was a fashionable place, and the women were fair to look upon, but there were not men enough to go round. There were two or three dowagers who knew Maxwell and, seek to avoid it as he might, he was soon generally introduced and his eligibility made widely known. Then came monotonous attention and, for his own peace, the man, who hadn't come after women, was driven to dailyexile either to his room or to the lake or hills. The elder ladies with daughters hunted him as hounds might hunt a rabbit. He resolved promptly upon escape and, within a week, an afternoon found him engaged in packing for that purpose.His laundry had just come in and among the articles he picked up first were a lot of blazing silken handkerchiefs. Colored silk handkerchiefs were a fad of his in summer. He tossed them idly into his valise when the color of one of them attracted his attention."I never owned a handkerchief like that," he muttered.He raised the article to examine it more closely, and to his amazement it unfolded and lengthened out. It was not a handkerchief at all. It was a lady's stocking—a brilliant purple stocking!Maxwell wondered. "Washing's been mixed," he said, and then devoted closer and more earnest attention to his prize. It was a charming affair, small of foot but not too small otherwise, and possessed, somehow, an especial symmetry, even in its present state."It's number eight—number three shoe,"thought Maxwell, "and it's the prettiest stocking I ever saw."His comment was fully justified. The stocking was a dream in its department of lingerie. The purple was relieved, from the ankle upward a little way, by a clocking of snow-white sprays of lilies-of-the-valley, and the purple itself was of such a hue as to send one dreaming of the glories of the ancients. It was a wonderful stocking, a fascinating stocking. It lured like a will-o'-the wisp.Maxwell abandoned his packing and sat stroking and admiring the hypnotizing object. He became vastly interested. "I wonder whom it belongs to?" he mused. Then—there's no explaining it with authority, and discreetly—a sudden fancy seized upon him. "I'll not leave to-night!" he said, "I'll find the owner of that stocking! It will give me something to do and add a little zest to things. Might as well be stocking-hunting as anything else. By Jove, what a neat little foot she must have!"The packing was left undone. The man had an object now, one which might have seemed trivial to the bloodless and unimaginative, but which to him became a serious matter. Talk about the Round Table fellows after the HolyGrail or Diogenes after an honest man, they were not in it with Maxwell! He dawdled and mooned over that stocking and made and unmade plans. He bribed a gentleman, youthful and dirty, connected with the laundry department of the hotel, and it came to naught. His gaze was ever downward. He appeared more frequently on the piazza among the scores of "porchers" engaged in idle converse there. He strolled along the little beach, ever with furtive eyes on twinkling feet, and neat ones he saw galore and stockings rainbow-hued galore, but never a purple one among them.It was the quality of the purple, he decided, which must have so enthralled him in the first place. He had never seen a purple like it. He read up on purples. He learned that royal purple is made up of fifty-five parts red, twelve parts blue and thirty-three parts black, and concluded that the stocking must be almost a royal purple, so wonderfully did the white lilies show out against its richness. Tyrian purple he rejected as being too dull for the comparison. Then he considered the purple of Amorgos, the wonderfully brilliant color obtained from the seaweed of the Grecian island, and this met with greater favor in his eyes.He decided, finally, that the hue of the stocking was between the royal and the purple of Amorgos, and this relieved his mind. But this didn't help him to find the girl—and how vain a thing is even the most beautiful stocking in the world without a girl attached!Then the unexpected happened as usual. There came a lapse in the search. The cure for Maxwell's dream was homeopathic. Like cures like. One girl blighted most of interest in the vague search for another. Maxwell was caught by the concrete. Miss Ward, a guest of the hotel, in company with her aunt, was not, Maxwell decided, like any of the other women. She was dignified, but piquant, pretty, certainly, and well educated. Likewise, she had self-possession and much wit. Maxwell enjoyed her society and they became close friends. He began to feel as if the world, if hollow, had at least a substantial crust. He was no longer bored and the stocking fancy was put aside.Then came Farrington. Farrington had spirits. He lightened up the hotel piazza and flirted with every one, from dowagers down to the little girls to whom he told liver-colored stories as evening and the gloom came. He was deeply interested when Maxwell told himof the stocking and the marvel. He became full of ardor."Don't give up the search!" he expostulated. "Such a stocking as that must belong to the one woman in four hundred and eighty-three thousand. Why, it's like finding a nugget in a valley! There's bound to be gold in the mountains!"So the interest of Maxwell became largely revived and his mind was on stockings when he was not in the company of Miss Ward. One day an inspiration came to him with the gentle suddenness of a love pat. He took Farrington into his confidence. That evening on the piazza that gifted friend adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of matching goods and colors.The debate became most animated. The ladies, one and all, declared that in the matter of matching things men were scarcely above the beasts that perish, while as for themselves, there was not a woman, young or old, among them who was not an adept. Maxwell, who had seemed at first uninterested, broke into the conversation."I'm not ungallant," he asserted as a preliminary. "When it comes to gallantry I'll venture to say I'd outdo any medieval troubadour,if I could only sing and twang a harp, but, though angels can do almost anything, to tell the truth I'm a shade doubtful concerning their absolute infallibility in matching hues and fabrics. I've a piece of silk I'd like matched for my sister, and I hereby, in the presence of all witnesses, offer a prize of one box of gloves to any lady who will match it for me within a week," and he produced about six inches square—thirty-six square inches—of splendid purple silk.As the war horse snuffeth the battle and says "Ha! ha!" to the trumpets; as the sea mew rises from the waves to riot in the spindrift; as the needle to the pole; as the river to the sea or the cat to the catnip in wild enthusiasm—so rose the ladies to the silken lure. Match the silk? Why, the gloves must be distributed among the score!And then ensued a busy week. The sample, divided into thirty-six pieces an inch square, was surrendered. There were trips to the nearest city and, as excitement grew, even to the metropolis. The afternoon for the test arrived and Maxwell, seated judicially beside a table on the piazza and provided with another sampleof his silk, awaited with manly dignity the onslaught of the gathered contestants.One by one they came and laid down their little pieces of purple silk; one by one the samples were compared by the judge with the piece held in his hand, and, one by one, he passed them back with a regretful and unnecessarily audible sigh. Last of all came Miss Ward, who had not been to town and who had, apparently, taken slight interest in the competition. It was too trivial for her, had been Maxwell's firm conclusion. Now she approached the table and laid down, as had the others, a piece of purple silk. Maxwell's heart thumped. There was no mistaking that wondrous hue!"Miss Ward has won the gloves," he said.There were congratulations and any amount of fun and curious speculation.That evening Maxwell caught Miss Ward upon the piazza and induced her to sit with him awhile, to improve his mind, he said. They chatted indifferently until he took occasion to compliment her upon her success in matching the purple silk. "You have a wonderful sense of color," he declared.She answered that she had always enjoyedmatching things, and then he ventured to expatiate a little on the particular silk which had been matched: "What pretty trimming for a hat, or what pretty stockings it would make," he said.She asked him why the nighthawks circling overhead and about gave utterance to their shrill cries so frequently, and he said he didn't know. Then they talked about the coming boat race.For a week Maxwell's chief occupation was what Farrington described as "concentrated musing." He walked much. One afternoon he was strolling along the narrow beach, which lay, a sandy stretch, between the water and a tree-grown grassy ledge, about fifteen feet in height, which was a favorite place of rest and outlook for the hotel guests. He was looking downward, but there came a moment when the heavens fell. Chancing to look upward to determine if any of the usual idlers there were of a companionable sort for him, he saw that which turned aside the current of his life as easily as an avalanche may turn a rivulet.There, projecting a little beyond the crest-crowning grass and greenery of the ledge above, was something trim and gloriously purple andgloriously perfect. The tan of the neatest of number three shoes blended upward into the purple paradise, and from the tan seemed growing a snowy spray of lilies-of-the-valley. Delicate is the subject, but it must be treated. Delicate is the making of a watch, but we must have watches; eggs are delicate, but we must eat them; goldfish are delicate, but we must lift them by hand occasionally. Duty first!Perfect the exterior of that wondrous stocking, perfect, absolutely so, but its contour and its contents! Ah, me! The flat, thin ankle—let Arabian fillies hide their heads! The even upward swell—just full enough, just trim enough, revealed, but not in view, as one sees things by starlight. Ah, me!Maxwell's eyes dimmed and he reeled. What is known as locomotor ataxia smote him there suddenly in his prime and pride of life. Then after a moment or two a degree of health came back and he turned and retraced his steps, feebly at first, then more rapidly, and then as hies the antlered stag. He gained the ledge and followed it and found Miss Ward seated demurely at its very crest and surrounded by a group of friends.Within three months he owned, after thewedding, not merely what was left of one, but two similar purple stockings, and their contents, together with, all and singular, the hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto belonging or in anywise appertaining.CHAPTER XIIITHE FATTENING OF PATThe general opinion seemed to be that the amiable lady's story was innocuous in every detail, while it commended itself as being absolutely true to human nature, that great essential in a narrative of any sort. There were the feminine instinct as to the matching of colors, inbred throughout each latitude, and the masculine instinct in relation to stockings, existent in every longitude, each indicated with all assuredness and delicacy. The account, it was declared by the Young Lady, was a veritable "Idyl of an Outing," and no one disagreed with her. Then came renewed expression of the now constant anxiety and curiosity regarding the progress of the rescuers and Stafford went forward to learn the situation, and report."We're in 'in a hole,' literally," came, the reply to Stafford's inquiry of the engineer in charge of the relief train; "That's all we make, at first, merely a hole, when we charge intothe big drift ahead of us now. It's thirty feet deep and we can't do much more than loosen up things, just here, and let the shovelers do the rest. It will be better when we get through this cut. We've sent men on ahead and they find the thing not nearly so bad half a mile from here. We're getting along.""But, how fast are you getting along?" queried Stafford impatiently. "When are you going to reach us?""I can't tell. I'm getting a little doubtful about the fourth day, now. Still, we may make it. How are you fixed for heat and provisions?""All right yet, I guess. I'll find out and let you know later," and Stafford went back to the sleeper.The bearer of unpleasant news is seldom received with an ovation and Stafford proved no exception. There were the usual plaints, but he did not notice them. Somehow, he had no interest in deliverance. He was satisfied to be where he was. He was living entirely in the present and what was near him. He looked about for the Far Away Lady, but she was not visible, and he indulged in a fit of moodiness, like a boy. He lingered with thecompany until the time for retiring came and then went forward to the smoking compartment, where the usual group of the gregarious were enjoying themselves. Here he found relaxation of thought, at least, and, to a degree, amusement.He entered as there was being related an incident of politics. It was told by a man portly, ruddy-faced and wearing a gold watch chain, weighty enough for a small cable, from which depended the emblems of two or three of the great secret fraternities. Though in the drawing-room gatherings he had appeared somewhat less in his element than here, he had become rather a favorite because of his unfailing good nature and evident shrewdness and sense of humor. He was known as a "commissioner" of something in one of the large cities, a typical city politician. He was relating the difficulties experienced in what he calledTHE FATTENING OF PATPat, who was an excellent janitor, in charge of a big bank building, with men under him, had aspirations. He wanted to become a policeman. The place he held was a good oneand most men of his class would have been contented, but Pat was not. He was dissatisfied with the monotonous indoor life and decided that to be on the "foorce" was the only thing for him. He was a fine fellow, overflowing with energy and full of persistence, he would not, however advised, abandon the idea. He was a tall, muscular man and, aside from the qualities already mentioned, was possessed of good sense and was of excellent habits. He had friends among the tenants of the big structure over the care of which he presided and when, realizing that to attain the object of his desire some strong alliance would be necessary he appealed for aid to an occupant of one of the offices in the building, a young man, who, if not in politics as a business, knew something of the game, he met with no discouragement."I'll do what I can, Pat," said Wheaton.The Municipal Civil Service Commission had just been established in the City and was yet "wobbly" and, to a degree, swayed by political influences. Under the direction of Wheaton, who decided to see fair play, Pat underwent the usual preliminary examination, passed admirably as to all questions and would havepassed physically, as well, but for his weight, or rather the lack of it. The required weight for a policeman of his height was one hundred and sixty-five pounds; Pat weighed only one hundred and fifty, for he was as gaunt as an Australian. Other men lacking as many pounds of the weight nominally demanded had secured places with no difficulty, but Pat was not desired by those in authority. His political views were not of the right sort for the examiners and his manner showed his independence. Fortunately for him, the first examination was only a preliminary—(A delay allowed the politicians time to select their men among the many)—and a second and final one was announced to take place four weeks after the first. Pat came to his friend almost with tears in his eyes:"Oi'm done fur," said he."What's the matter?" demanded Wheaton."Oi'm fifteen pounds short," said Pat."How long before the next examination?""Four wakes.""Pshaw," said Wheaton. "We'll fix it, yet. I'm not going to let those fellows squeeze you out. Will you do just as I tell you?""Oi will, begobs!" was the sturdy answer."Well you must begin to-morrow morning. You've got two sub-janitors, haven't you?""Oi have," said Pat."You can make them do all the work, if you want to, can't you?""Oi can that!""Then what I want you to do is this—and, mind, I'm going to take charge of the whole thing and foot the bills; they won't be much—I don't want you to do a lick of work for the next four weeks. I want you to stay in your room about all the time: you mustn't even walk about much. I want you to eat nothing but potatoes and bread with about a quarter of an inch thick of butter and sugar on it. Eat lots! You can have meat, too, if it's very fat. And—you're a sober man and I don't believe you'll get a fixed habit in four weeks—I'm going to send a keg of beer to your room in the morning, and another whenever one is finished. You're to drink a big mug of it every hour.""Blazes," interjected Pat, "Th' ould lady'll murther me. Oi'll be drunk, sure, an' me breath will breed a peshtiliench.""No it won't. You'll soon get used to it. We begin to-morrow."And the next day Pat began, resolutely,though with fears. Wheaton visited him frequently and encouraged him in every way; "I'll get you all the newspapers and teach you to play solitaire—it's a fine game with cards when you're alone. You're a goose," he said "and I'm training you forpate de fois gras," but Pat did not know what that meant. He only knew that times were queer. He was afraid of the "ould lady."The third morning he came down beaming. "It's quare," he announced. "Oi belave th' ould lady do be fallin' in love wid me over agin, she does be that foine an' carressin' wid me. 'Pat!' says she, 'you're the new mon intoirely! You do be as gentle as a lamb an' it's good to see ye so playful wid the childer' says she. 'Oi'm in love wid ye, Pat' says she. An' Oi all the toime falin' loike a baste, for I knew well 'twas only the mellowness av the beer in me. But it's given me a lesson it has. Oi'll be betther tempered after this.""Good idea," said Wheaton.At the end of the first week Wheaton took Pat out and weighed him, undressed—four pounds gained."We must do better than that," commented Wheaton. "We'll barely pull through at thisgait, and it will be harder work getting on flesh the last two weeks. Do you take your beer every hour?""O'm beginning to spake Dutch," said Pat."Well, keep on with it and eat—eat like a hobo! We'll make it! Don't exercise, don't even wink, if you can help it."Pat took his instructions literally and obeyed them. He stayed in his room and gorged. His eyes became a trifle heavy and his face flushed, but at the end of two weeks he weighed only one hundred and fifty-nine pounds. Somehow, the next week he didn't do so well, gaining only three pounds more. Dame Nature, in mistaken kindness, was trying to adjust him to his new diet. Wheaton was becoming excited—only one hundred and sixty-two pounds, and only a week to gain something over three more in!"We must hump ourselves!"And Pat did "hump" himself, ate and drank with an assumed voracity, and had a slight attack of indigestion. This didn't help matters. The night before the examination he weighed only one hundred and sixty-four pounds and four ounces—three quarters of a pound short!Wheaton was anxious but not despairing."The examination begins at ten," he said. "Meet me here at four o'clock in the morning. We'll have six hours left."At the hour named in the morning came Wheaton, carrying a big jug. "Have you had any beer, yet, Pat?" he asked."No sor.""Then don't take any. You must be clear-headed when you go before the Commission. Here's a gallon of water, good water it is. You must drink it all before ten o'clock."Pat looked dismayed. "Oi'll try sor."Then began the struggle. Pat washed down his breakfast at once, very salt-broiled mackerel—which Wheaton had brought,—with the usual potatoes and a big beefsteak. After that every five minutes, Wheaton forced the poor fellow to drink a glass of water. At half-past nine the gallon was done. Pat, like the tea-drinkers of Ebenezer Chapel, "swelled wisibly." But Wheaton made him drink more water."Oi feel loike a fishpond, sor," he complained.They hurried to the nearest Turkish bath and Pat stripped and got upon the scales. He weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds and three ounces. Pat was perspiring violently."If you sweat, I'll murder you!" said Wheaton.They appeared before the Commission, Wheaton watching everything like a hawk, his heart in his mouth as the weighing test came. One hundred and sixty-five pounds and one ounce! There was no getting around it!"Pat," said Wheaton, later, "You're on the force now and you've had a lesson in practical politics. You ought to be a sergeant in no time.""Politics is aisy," said Pat, "but Oi'm thinkin' Oi'll be changin' me diet. Oi'm forninst beer and bread and butther forever—an'" he added, reflectively, "Oi dunno but wather, too!""He's making a good policeman," concluded the Commissioner.So ended the relation of Pat's experience, and, a little later, the laughing group in the smoking room dissolved itself. Stafford sought his berth, largely recovered from his discontent and more like his reliant self. But he was not assured as to his dreams. Would his conscience be with him still? Could the line of conventional demarcation between him and the FarAway Lady be rigorously preserved, even in them?But no dreams came to him at once. He could not sleep at first but struggled with himself. He was tumultuous and impatient with his environment and obligations, all, seemingly, standing in the way of his happiness. He was lost, utterly, in the old conflict which comes with the hesitation between the recognized right and wrong, the accepted thing at the time in the age of the earth in which he lived? To his aid, he quoted to himself the sayings of the keen thinkers, the abstract reasoners: he thought of Anatole France: "What is morality? Morality is the rule of custom and custom is the rule of habit. Morality is, then, the rule of habit. Morality changes, continually with custom, of which it is only the general idea." He thought of the others, too, of one who reasoned from the fact that there were a Jewish morality, a Christian morality, a Buddhist morality, and all that. In his half sleep he mumbled; "Why, Reason is the thing," and then he added mumblingly and reflectively, "but then we have learned that there is a right and reason must end by being right. There is a right—we know that; we feel it—and we know what it is.It is, largely, a subordination, a regard for others. We cannot quite justify ourselves for any selfishness by quoting some great law of nature. Conscience, somehow, has become the greatest of these laws."And so, vaguely and jumblingly, as his senses oozed into sleep, he quoted failingly, the cold thinkers. Then the real dreams came to him, but they were misty and bizarre. He was with the Far Away Lady, but the surroundings were all strange and she was most elusive. They were in a great house and he could hear her voice but he could not find her, though he searched from room to room. Then they were in a forest where there were many flowers and tall trees and she was a bird somewhere up in the trees and he could hear her singing, but he could not see her amid the foliage. And, finally, they were where there was much shrubbery and where he could see her plainly enough, but she was at a distance and as he followed she would disappear among the roses down some garden path. All was most tantalizing and fantastic. And so his night passed.CHAPTER XIVA TEST OF ATTITUDEWhat are they going to do, a man and a woman who have met and loved in the past, and have separated conscientiously, when brought together again under extraordinary circumstances, after each has felt that loving and of real living had been denied, and endured it all for years? What is going to happen when, because of one of the accidents of life and of one of the great accomplishing conditions, such two as this have been, once more, thrown, figuratively, into each other's arms?This man had saved this woman's life yesterday, stumbling upon her after all this separation, after he done a man's work in another hemisphere and had, disappointed with life, supposed the chapter closed. Now he was to meet her at the breakfast table. What must be the demeanor of these two toward each other now? Be assured neither of them knew, not even the woman,—and in foreseeing as to such a situationa woman knows more, by some instinct, than a man may learn in a thousand years.She knew that they would meet that morning. That was the inevitable, after yesterday. Anything else would have been a foolish affectation. He knew, as well, that he must go in to that breakfast table and sit opposite her and that then they must face together a situation delicately psychological and dangerous and altogether fascinating—from a philosopher's point of view. It was not perhaps, quite so fascinating to these two people with what we call conscience and the possession of what makes the greatness of humanity, whether it appertain to man or woman. There is no sex to nobility.She was sitting there, divinely sweet, as he stalked in. She was sitting there, divinely sweet, because she was made that way, and never did Stafford realize it more. The years had taken from her gentle beauty not the slightest toll.She bloomed this fair morning—it was only moderately fair, by the way—as there entered the man who had saved her life the day before and with whom in the past hers had been the closest understanding of her life. To the eye she was merely placid and infinitely enchanting.The man did not appear to such advantage. He entered blunderingly and doubtful.There were, of course, the usual expression of morning courtesies and then they settled down to a fencing which was but a lovingness as vast as unexpressed. They talked of a variety of things but there was no allusion even so near as Saturn, to what was lying close against the hearts of both. We are rather fine but we are unexplainable sometimes, we men and women whom Nature made so curiously.As a matter of fact, this one of the most forceful of men and one of the most sweet and desirable of women said practically nothing throughout the entire breakfast. They did not even refer to the grim incident of the dog and the grapple, which had been something worth while. Had the thing been less they would have talked about it. But, to them, by an indefinable knowing, this matter was something too great to consider at the present moment. And, so, unconsciously, understanding each other, they consigned themselves to ordinary table talk.But we cannot always command lack of remembrance and get obedience. There is something better. Nature has her ways. One of her ways is to have given us eyes, and how she didplace us under her soft thumb when she did that!They said very little, but they looked into each other's eyes. They couldn't help that very well. Then the laws of life worked themselves out. It is a way they have.What are you going to do with a woman's eyes? Inside the depths of a woman's eyes, lurking lovingly, sometimes, are all the revelations that must come when the time comes and reflect themselves into the looking-glasses God provides to tell us of the thoughts of others. There are different women and different eyes, of course. We must take our chances on that.And, so as said, they did not even refer to the happenings of the day before or of any of the context of all that had occurred. They did not refer to the great hound. They talked of nothing but of things incidental. She asked him when they would probably be released from their snow imprisonment and he told her that it would be within two days.And, so they separated and had practically said nothing.But eyes, as announced, are the most astonishing things. They had talked a great deal that morning. As we human beings are made, they are a little the neatest and finestexpression of all there is in life. They hold and send forth the beaconing flash from every intellectual and loving light-house in the world. They are, with what they say, the confessional between any two human beings, man and woman, in the world. They are the mediums of revelation. No wonder that those who know want sometimes, foolishly, it may be, to die when to them comes a physical blindness which may not be remedied.And this man and woman looked into each other's eyes, he hardly comprehending at first but having the great consciousness come to him at last, she doubtless understanding sooner, and even more acutely.Intelligent fluttering of the heart is what might possibly be said of her. She was alarmed and yet, from another point of view, entirely without fear. She realized the situation better than did he. Ever since the world was first firmly encrusted out of the steaming fog woman has been the braver of the two in our love affairs.Exceedingly clever as these two people were, there is no opportunity to do any exceedingly brilliant work in telling all about them. Brought down to its last analysis, theirs wasbut the plain, old-fashioned love which has stood the test of all the centuries and which, in our modern English and American times, has the flavor of the hollyhocks which grow about the front fence and the old-fashioned pinks in the yard and a lot of other things. We have new ways in other things, but love has not changed much since the time of Egypt. Doubtless it was about the same way before."What is the day of the week, please," had been Stafford's last utterance. She did not even reply. She looked back into his eyes and that look, if it could have been weighed, could have been considered by nothing but Troy weight, the jeweller's weight, and then it would have been too coarse for the occasion and the demand.And so they separated and had practically said nothing.Not the great Sultan Schariar, when listening to the fair Scheherazade, as she prolonged her life from day to day and finally saved it by the fascination of her stories; not the august hearer, as Sinbad the Sailor described his marvelous adventures; not Margaret of Angouléme, as she gathered the more lettered ladies and gallants of her court and inducedthem to add to the gayety of nations by the relation of brisk and risque experiences; not Dickens, as he spun the threads himself of his Tales of a Wayside Inn, had a more keen enjoyment than the Colonel listening to the words of his drafted and mustered volunteers. He fairly glowed appreciation and satisfaction. As Stafford entered the Cassowary, he perceived that the Colonel was still recruiting.
"There'll be a hot time,In the old town to-night."
"There'll be a hot time,In the old town to-night."
Evidently this spirit of the waters, was of a lively, not to say hilarious, disposition—at least that was the first impression given—but as the hours passed, the music changed in character, and it finally dawned upon the populace that there was method in the madness of the Siren—for the news had flown rapidly of what the wonder was—gentler airs succeeded until the hour when the young men calling should go home, when apparently impersonating all the young women in the city, the Siren spoke softly:
"Bid me good-bye and go!"
"Bid me good-bye and go!"
and, later, as the time came when erring heads of families might be lingering out too late for their own good, the mentor started in with—
"Oh, Willie, we have missed you!"
"Oh, Willie, we have missed you!"
and, a little later, after apparent consideration, wailed out despairingly:
"Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now."
"Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now."
It was charming! Still later, came soothing, familiar airs in a minor key, such as were sleep-encouraging, and there was no variationfrom this until six a.m., when there was an outbreak:
"I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up this morning!The sergeant's worse than the private,The captain's worse than the sergeant!The major's worse than the captain,The colonel's the worst of 'em all!I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up to-day!"
"I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up this morning!The sergeant's worse than the private,The captain's worse than the sergeant!The major's worse than the captain,The colonel's the worst of 'em all!I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up to-day!"
Ringing out over all the city was the reveille, but, as if in drowsy answer came a little later, almost like an echo—the lazy, listless,
"Let me dream again."
"Let me dream again."
Evidently not what was approved of, for, sharply and indignantly, followed the peremptory demand to—
"Take your clothes and go."
"Take your clothes and go."
And so, until the fog lifted, continued the interesting programme of the Siren. The people were delighted. No more was the name of the "Siren" a misnomer. The newspapers were full of praise of Hannibal Perkins, the inventor, and a dream, for once, was realized. Improvements were made by the elated genius. People in the city soon perceived that certain airs were played only at certain hours, so that one could tell what time of night it was while lying comfortablyin bed. The invention was recognized as a boon to the community. The Board of Trade voted a neat lump sum to Hannibal Perkins, he was elected member of numerous scientific and musical societies, and negotiations were begun with the government looking to the introduction of the Siren in harbors everywhere.
Now comes reference to the action of a law of nature which has always been accounted curious, that law which is in direct contradiction of the old and popular saying that one cannot have too much of a good thing. The months passed, months of triumph and elation for Hannibal Perkins, and, at first, of enjoyment for those on land. Then in the city came a gradual change, though Hannibal, in the light-house, was not aware of it. There arose an anti-Siren party, and a clamorous one! It was the old story—they were "tired" of the same old tunes. They were all antiquated things it was declared. It was the result of that quality in the human ear and human nerves which enables them to endure the continual passing of a railroad train, but not the too frequent repetition of a musical air. Even an effort to remedy this fault did not avail. There came two dread November weeks of almost continual fog, day and night, and, as theSiren gave four tunes an hour for variety's sake, it necessarily played ninety-six tunes a day, and there weren't enough popular airs in existence to keep this up without constant duplication, or worse! A new form of nervousness was seizing upon the multitude. Even the mayor, who had grown fat, was getting thin again.
On the other hand the Siren had a powerful supporting force in the officers and crews of every vessel entering the harbor. Most delightful was it to those gallant seamen, when the fog lay dense and sinister, to hear, at a greater distance from land than ever before, the sounds which guided them to safety and, at the same time, to recognize and be cheered by the notes of some familiar air. They heard the Siren only occasionally and to them there was no monotony. The whole shipping interest arose figuratively in arms against those who objected to the new order of things.
And so the case stands now. The government is considering the matter. Doubtless the Perkins Siren will, in the end, be adopted—with modifications and restrictions. Hannibal Perkins is pondering over the question of why people get so maddeningly tired of a piece of music, from some favorite of the operas down to the latestbit of "rag-time." They do not get tired of bread and beefsteak! Is the palate wiser than the ear? Even Hannibal Perkins cannot answer that question. Human nature is odd.
THE PORTER'S STORY
From the beginning of the train's delay the porter of the sleeping car had attracted attention unostentatiously. This expression perhaps best describes the man's demeanor. He was, apparently, not much over thirty years of age, and a white man, but for that indefinable something which manifests itself in the bearing of a human being who, by unfortunate stress of circumstances, is fighting the world at a disadvantage. He was a blonde man, six feet in height. There was to his bearing a certain dignity. Yet, he was the porter of the car! It followed, as a practical certainty, that he was of African descent, however much of his blood had come in the intermingling with a preponderence in favor of the Anglo-Saxon.
He looked like a Viking, one of those who sometimes sailed down to Africa, after ravaging the Seine Valley, and taking toll of the monasteries and castles of the Spanish Peninsulaen route,—but certainly not like one whose real ancestors, those who made the man, could have been African. The Colonel had recognized the fact that this big blonde man was one of Nature's mistakes in production under too sinister surroundings, and saw, too, that there was a story which might be told readily and impulsively and forcefully, and, perhaps most interestingly, under some momentum of the hour. He decided this to be the psychological moment.
"Will you not give us a story, now, John?" he said—he had learned the porter's name the day before, but half hesitated at the familiarity—"I've a fancy you may have more to tell than any of the rest of us. Will you let us know what it is?"
The porter glanced at him curiously but not in any protesting way. It could be seen that he recognized in the other man, a sympathizing human being and he rose to the occasion.
"I will tell you the story," he said, slowly, "though, really, save as possibly amusing somebody for the moment, I scarcely see the object, but it may be that it will afford me a little relief personally. Come to think of it, I don't know that I've ever had a chance to tell mystory to intelligent human beings under anything like fair auspices. I'm going to tell it simply and truly. I'll leave the verdict to you. Your verdict cannot help me any, for you are as weak as I am in this case, but this is the story:
HIS PROBLEM
Is it well for me that I am a product of a University, that I am what I am?
Some time ago I read an exceedingly clever poem in some magazine, describing the sufferings of Pierrot, that inimitable and fascinating French modification of Harlequin, ever vainly seeking his elusive Columbine.
"I, who am Pierrot, pity me! Oh pity me!" he cries in his helpless desire for sympathy. Sometimes I feel like Pierrot, though my suffering is not as his.
I hesitate, somehow, at telling my own story lest I be misunderstood or offend in some manner. I have some courage and I'm not asking sympathy in any weak or maudlin way. I am but stating a case, a case with a problem attached and one which I have, so far, been unable to solve, though the quality of my life must depend upon the nature of the solution.I am neither whining nor begging. The story may or may not possess a degree of interest. I wish I could tell it better.
I am thirty-four years of age, and I think I can fairly say, am well educated; so thorough was my college course and so diligently did I apply myself, that I excel most graduates in the extent of my real acquirements. I have forgotten neither my classics nor my mathematics and I read and speak French and German fluently. I keep myself familiar with what occurs in the field of literature. I chance to have a retentive memory and my perceptions are, it seems to me, at least reasonably keen.
I am six feet in height and, absurd as it may seem in me to say it, am a well formed, well set up man. I have clean cut features, rather aquiline than otherwise, grey eyes, light hair, which curls slightly, and a fair complexion. I am an athlete, trained from boyhood, and have borne myself, I hope, as a man should in encounters in the southwest, where brawn has for the moment counted for more than brains. I describe myself thus directly, but not conceitedly, because I want to be known as you see me, for just what I am. To discredit myself unjustly in the least, to tell less than the truth, wouldmar the justice of the premises upon which I make my case and from which I make clear, or at least try to make clear, the nature of the problem which has proved too difficult for me.
I have had ambitions, hopes and love. I have known men and women. I have become familiar with the affairs of the world. I am naturally of a buoyant and hopeful disposition and yet I, a strong man, am to-day perplexed, sad, almost hopeless. I have no incumbrances. A healthy, educated man of thirty-four, with no burden of the ordinary sort, and yet disheartened! I can imagine you saying, with an inflection of either pity or contempt. Well, what I have told of myself is the truth and I must take the consequences.
I was born in one of the southern states. One of my grandfathers was a man of standing, and one of my grandmothers was, I am told, a very beautiful woman. My father was also a man of note, a distinguished officer in the civil war who did well in battle. My mother was a woman of exceptional charms of person and character, but died when I was a mere child. I was educated by a wealthy brother of my father, who chanced to take an interest in me. Until the age of twelveI was the almost constant companion of his own son.
At the age of twelve, my cousin and I who had been so much together were separated, he going to a school in one of the great cities, I to one in a smaller town. After graduation at school we were each sent to college. My cousin went to one of the great universities and I was sent to one of the smaller colleges of the country, but one where the curriculum was extensive and the requirements severe. I studied hard and graduated in the same year with my cousin. We met again at the old homestead and I found that, because of my close attention to my studies, perhaps, too, because of a somewhat quicker apprehension, I excelled him decidedly in acquirements. We passed a not unpleasant month together, hunting and fishing in the old way, but, somehow, it was not the same as it had been when we were boys together. I noticed a change in my cousin's demeanor toward me. His manner was not unkindly, for he is one of the best and most generous of men, but there was a certain change, a certain distance of air which made it plain to me that we could never again be to each other what we had been as boys in the past. We separated each to go outinto the world to struggle for himself; I, alone; he, with the influential family and a host of influential friends behind him. I have never seen him since.
Equipped as I was the natural course for me to pursue seemed to be to adopt for a time the work of teaching, not that I inclined toward it, but because it afforded opportunity to acquire a little capital which might enable me to take up a profession. I secured a school without much difficulty in a thriving southwestern town, and at the end of a course of three years had saved several hundred dollars. With the money thus obtained, I graduated at a famous law school, after which I studied diligently for a year in the office of a prominent attorney. I was clerk, porter, office boy, everything about the office, but the distinguished lawyer did me the honor, at the end of the year, to say that I was the most thorough student he had ever assisted and prophesied flatteringly as to my future. I was admitted to the bar with compliments from the examining judges as to my knowledge of the law. I at once established an office in a town of about two thousand people, where the outlook seemed exceptionally promising. I was entirely unknown in the littlecity, but for two years I prospered beyond my expectations. I knew the law and, as the event showed, I was strong with juries, possessing the power of interesting and winning the confidence of men to an exceptional degree. I won a number of cases, some of them important ones. I became known in the town and in the surrounding district as a public speaker of force and eloquence. Upon the lecture platform or political rostrum I felt as potent and at ease as in the court room. My future seemed assured. I found friends among the best people, my income was more than sufficient for my needs; in my rooms I was accumulating books of the world's literature. My law library was the best in the county. In all things I was flourishing and the world looked bright to me.
One day there came to the town wherein I had established myself a young man who had been in college with me. I was glad to see him and did what I could for him during his stay, though we were unlike in temperament and tastes, and his associates and friends had all been different from mine. He soon left the place, and, not long after, I noticed a surprising change in the manner of the people toward me. I no longer received invitations to dinner nor to social gatherings.No reason was given me for the freezing indifference with which I was treated by my former friends. What was, from one point of view, a matter of as much importance, my business began to drop off; men who had placed their legal affairs in my hands no longer sought me for advice and only an occasional petty case in some justice's court came to afford me a livelihood. After a vain struggle with these intolerable conditions I gave up. I closed my office and left the city.
It was early in June, that year when I left the place where I had hoped to become a lifelong resident and useful citizen.
I drifted east and found myself in Boston. There I met two young men, seniors in college, but poor, who had engaged themselves as men of all work—partly as a midsummer lark, but chiefly for the money to be gained—to work in a great summer hotel in the mountains. A third man was needed, and they asked me if I would not go with them. I was ready for anything, and accepted the invitation.
The hotel was one of the largest in the mountains, and the numerous guests included wealthy and distinguished families from all parts of the country. That we were college-bred men andhad students' ambitions also became known, and it came to pass, at last, that our duties for the day accomplished, we appeared in evening dress, and joined in the evening's amusements, laughed at in a friendly way, and jesting ourselves in return.
I cannot go into further details of the happenings of that summer at the mountain resort, where all was healthy and healthful except my own mentality, which had been made what it was by conditions over which I had no control. I prayed, and prayer, while it strengthened me, did not help me bow to the injustice under which I suffered. I thought and tried to find what a logical brain, a broad view of things, and a keen intelligence might do, and that did not help me. Ever, ever came the same inevitable deduction. I was a hunted wretch, pursued by a social and partly natural law, driven ever into a cul de sac, into a side gorge in the mountains of life, a short gorge with precipitous walls on either side and ending suddenly and briefly in a wall as perpendicular and high and smooth. True, I had for the moment escaped, for the instant I was free, but I knew that soon, inevitably, the cordon would hem me in and that I wouldbe at the mercy of the pursuers—the unmalicious but instinctively impelled pursuers. Then came a respite from the torturing thought, a forgetfulness for the moment, a forgetfulness to be paid for.
I was the man with the boats and, as well the guide who conducted individuals or parties to and from all the picturesque or curious spots of the wild region round about the summer resort which shrewd capitalists had implanted in the heart of nature. So it came that I met all, or nearly all the guests, groups who had chaffed at me, and yet, knowing my status, made me one of them. Strong young men and good ones made me a comrade, fathers and mothers of broods of little children leaned on me, and at last and worse in the end, the occasional woman who thought for herself, knew nature for herself and wanted but to go out alone to meet her sister, that same Nature, became my companion. There was one among those who, to me, was above the other women. There was one among those—may the good God ever have her in his keeping—who, from no thought or fault of hers, has given me the greatest vision of happiness and also such sorrow as few men know.
Then I seemed to live for the first time and now it is still a thought deep in my mind that it was my only taste of real life when I held communion on lake and shore in that enchanted summer with the woman who held my heart in her white hands. No doubt I was guilty, frightfully guilty. What right has a pariah in a world of caste? But I am a human. I drifted and drifted. I cannot analyze my own feelings at the time. I knew that I was good and honest and as real in mind as she and yet, even then, I think I felt as if I were some vagrant who had wandered into a church and was inanely fumbling at the altar-cloth.
Like every other rainbow that ever spanned my miserable sky it disappeared, not gradually, as do other rainbows when the clouds part slowly and the sun shines out between them, but suddenly, leaving blackness. One wild but simply honest letter I wrote telling all things, and then came silence. There was only the information that one fair guest of the great summer resort had departed suddenly.
Yet in my letter I had told of nothing but a life of steadfast honor, principle, and high ambition and endeavor; I began to lose heart. I am a wanderer. What am I to do? I am aman without a country as much as was poor Nolan in Edward Everett Hale's immortal story, though unlike Nolan, I am blameless of even a moment's lapse of patriotism. I am without a country because my country will not give me what it gives to other men. I am even without a race, for that to which I really belong neglects me and with that into which my own would thrust me I have nothing in common. The presence of a faint strain of alien blood is killing me by inches.
I am not black, I am white. Does one part of, perhaps, some African chieftain's blood offset thirty-one of white blood from good ancestors? I do not believe in miscegenation. There is some subtle underlying law of God and nature which forbids the close contact in any way of the different races. It is to me a horror. But I am not black, I am white. A negro woman is to me as she is to any other white man. A negro man is to me as of a strange race. A white man is to me my brother. All my thoughts, all my yearnings, are to be with him, to talk with him, to sympathize with him in all the affairs of life, to help him and have him help me, to go to war with him, if need be, to die by his side. I am a white man.But there is that one thirty-second of pariah blood. "Pity me, oh pity me."
As I have said, I began to lose heart. There is no need to tell all the story. I remember it all. One or two incidents suffice to show the way I have traveled.
Once in an eastern city, I obtained work as a brakeman on a freight train on the railway. At first my fellow workers received me well, named me Byron, some knowing me among them, with rude but kindly chaffing at my pale face and studious habits, for when not at work I had ever a book in my hand.
One day, while we were waiting on a siding near a small station, a tramp recognized me. He was a man I had defended in court for some small offense, in the distant western town where I practiced law. I had him kept out of jail by my pleading. I had believed that his arrest and trial would be a lesson such as would keep him from the idle and vicious ways he was just beginning to follow at that time.
The tramp rode a few miles on our train. After that the train crew ceased to consort with me. They looked sullenly upon me and muttered among themselves when I came near them. The engineer looked the other way when hehad to speak to me. His face was grim and sad, as well, but he looked the other way. There was no outbreak, but I could not endure my position. I left the railroad work as soon as our train arrived in the city where the company made its headquarters.
Once again, some years after the railway episode, I thought to work on a street-car line. I applied for the position of motorman, and was well received by the superintendent to whom I reported after he had in reply to my letter, asked me to call at his office. I gave, at his request, the names of a half a dozen responsible men as references as to my character and responsibility. I arranged with a security company for giving the required bond, and was told that as soon as favorable answers were received from my friends I would be put to practice work; I felt assured of a position, laborious and nerve testing, it is true, but respectable and reasonable well paid.
After two weeks I called upon the superintendent again, although he had not written, as he promised to do, after hearing from the men I had referred him to.
He was a hard man of business, that superintendent, but he spoke to me kindly, regretfully,almost shamefacedly. The testimonials to my character and life were, he said, very flattering to me. No one had said anything but good of me. But it would never do, he explained, for me to be set to work on the road. The men would be sure to find out the truth about me, sooner or later, and then the officials of the road would be blamed. There was sure to be trouble. Personally, the superintendent had, he said, no "race prejudices," but he could not answer for the feelings of others less free from the influence of tradition and natural aversion.
I stood silent while the man of my own race calmly, even tenderly, waved me back into the ranks of a people of whose blood a few drops only run in my veins. So another gate was closed. So I was once more forced into the narrow bounds of an invisible prison.
My mother had one-sixteenth of negro blood in her veins and was a slave. Now what explains my most unfortunate condition? Is it because this ancestor had this trace of the blood of another race, and that I have one thirty-second part of the same blood, though I chance to be whiter than most Caucasians? Well, God made the races. Is it becausethis ancestor was a slave? So were the Britons slaves of the Romans. My father was a descendant of some slave. He is not responsible for the chase of his mother in ancient woods and for her capture by some fierce avaricious Roman legionary who knew the value of a breeder of sturdy Teutonic brawn in making Roman highways. It was through no fault of mine that the Arab trader chased my great-great-great-grandmother or grandfather down in the jungle and sold her to the sallow-faced slave dealer who brought her to America. The blood of my father's ancestors became intermixed with that of the captors. My father's race became free. So has mine. The difference is but in time. Why is it, then, that I am as I am? I do not want to become a barber, nor a porter, nor an attendant in a Turkish bath, nor to serve other men. I do not want to work upon the streets, though I am not afraid of manual labor nor do I count it dishonorable. But I am a cultivated man, a man skilled in a profession where intelligence and training are required, a man of moral character and refined tastes. I am starving for the companionship of my own kind. Brain and heart, I am starving. What am I to do?
Pity me, good people, Oh, pity me!
THE PURPLE STOCKING
There was unaccustomed silence for a time after the Porter finished speaking. He left the car at once, perturbed, it may be, by his own disclosure of his condition and emotions. Those who had listened to him, whatever may have been their views concerning one of the great problems of the age, could not but feel a certain sympathy for the man condemned to be thus isolated—the man without a race. That his case might be somewhat exceptional detracted in no way from its curious pathos. It was recognized as one of the tragedies of human life as it is, and the recital had induced a thoughtful mood among the Porter's audience. What should be the attitude of the ordinary man or woman in a case like this? And, seeking honestly in their own minds, those pondering could not answer the question satisfactorily, either to judgment or to conscience. By what law should they be guided?
The Colonel was among the thinkers, buthe rose superior, as usual. That gilded optimist wanted not even reflection among the snowbound. Had his company been of males exclusively he might even have been tempted to introduce the flowing bowl, but for his knowledge of the inevitable depressing aftermath. He wanted but carelessness and distraction and forgetfulness until the time of pale monotony should end. Now he was tempted to an act most ruthless and unconjugal.
His glance was toward his wife, whom he adored openly, and toward whom he, at all times, showed the greatest consideration, but who, through some prescience, was fidgeting a little.
"Madam," he began pompously, slapping his hand upon his chest, "the husband is the head of the family—he really isn't," he added in an audible aside, "but we'll assume it for the present. Madam, he is the head of the family and must be obeyed. I order, command and direct you to tell a story; if need be I will even abdicate for the moment and so far humiliate myself as to implore you to tell a story. Tell about that affair which took place at the Grand Cattaraugus, when we were stopping there last summer."
The pleasant-faced lady appeared hesitant: "But it's almost a naughty story," she protested; "it's about a stocking, and, oh dear! there's something about a"—and she blushed prettily, as is always the case when a middle-aged woman thus demeans herself, "there's an ankle in it, too."
"Nonsense," retorted the Colonel. "Do you mean in the story or in the stocking? In either case an ankle is all right. Go ahead, my dear."
Mrs. Livingston yielded: "After all," she said, "it's not so very wicked and the story is chiefly about matching colors, which is a subject not unlikely to interest ladies. Anyhow, it interested me in this instance. I know all the shocking circumstances, and, since I've gone so far I may as well be reckless. I suppose the story might be called
THE PURPLE STOCKING
Maxwell, a gentleman stopping at the hotel, was bored. There existed no particular excuse for his frame of mind, but the fact remained. He had fairly earned a vacation, but when the time came for escape from the midsummer heat of his offices he had found himself with no well-defined idea of where his outing should bespent. Circumstances rendered it necessary that it should be a brief one this time, else he would have known what to do with himself, for the man knew the Rocky Mountains. As it was, he had but taken train for one of the nearby summer resorts, where the Grand Cattaraugus caravansary, consisting, as those places do, of an enormous piazza with a hotel attached to its rear, loomed up beside and overlooked the pretty hill-surrounded lake with its blue waters, narrow beach and many pleasure boats. It was not a bad place and Maxwell had decided that it would be endurable for a week or two, especially after the arrival of his friend, Jim Farrington, who had promised to follow and loaf genially with him.
But first impressions are not always final. Maxwell found the hotel full of people, mostly women. It was a fashionable place, and the women were fair to look upon, but there were not men enough to go round. There were two or three dowagers who knew Maxwell and, seek to avoid it as he might, he was soon generally introduced and his eligibility made widely known. Then came monotonous attention and, for his own peace, the man, who hadn't come after women, was driven to dailyexile either to his room or to the lake or hills. The elder ladies with daughters hunted him as hounds might hunt a rabbit. He resolved promptly upon escape and, within a week, an afternoon found him engaged in packing for that purpose.
His laundry had just come in and among the articles he picked up first were a lot of blazing silken handkerchiefs. Colored silk handkerchiefs were a fad of his in summer. He tossed them idly into his valise when the color of one of them attracted his attention.
"I never owned a handkerchief like that," he muttered.
He raised the article to examine it more closely, and to his amazement it unfolded and lengthened out. It was not a handkerchief at all. It was a lady's stocking—a brilliant purple stocking!
Maxwell wondered. "Washing's been mixed," he said, and then devoted closer and more earnest attention to his prize. It was a charming affair, small of foot but not too small otherwise, and possessed, somehow, an especial symmetry, even in its present state.
"It's number eight—number three shoe,"thought Maxwell, "and it's the prettiest stocking I ever saw."
His comment was fully justified. The stocking was a dream in its department of lingerie. The purple was relieved, from the ankle upward a little way, by a clocking of snow-white sprays of lilies-of-the-valley, and the purple itself was of such a hue as to send one dreaming of the glories of the ancients. It was a wonderful stocking, a fascinating stocking. It lured like a will-o'-the wisp.
Maxwell abandoned his packing and sat stroking and admiring the hypnotizing object. He became vastly interested. "I wonder whom it belongs to?" he mused. Then—there's no explaining it with authority, and discreetly—a sudden fancy seized upon him. "I'll not leave to-night!" he said, "I'll find the owner of that stocking! It will give me something to do and add a little zest to things. Might as well be stocking-hunting as anything else. By Jove, what a neat little foot she must have!"
The packing was left undone. The man had an object now, one which might have seemed trivial to the bloodless and unimaginative, but which to him became a serious matter. Talk about the Round Table fellows after the HolyGrail or Diogenes after an honest man, they were not in it with Maxwell! He dawdled and mooned over that stocking and made and unmade plans. He bribed a gentleman, youthful and dirty, connected with the laundry department of the hotel, and it came to naught. His gaze was ever downward. He appeared more frequently on the piazza among the scores of "porchers" engaged in idle converse there. He strolled along the little beach, ever with furtive eyes on twinkling feet, and neat ones he saw galore and stockings rainbow-hued galore, but never a purple one among them.
It was the quality of the purple, he decided, which must have so enthralled him in the first place. He had never seen a purple like it. He read up on purples. He learned that royal purple is made up of fifty-five parts red, twelve parts blue and thirty-three parts black, and concluded that the stocking must be almost a royal purple, so wonderfully did the white lilies show out against its richness. Tyrian purple he rejected as being too dull for the comparison. Then he considered the purple of Amorgos, the wonderfully brilliant color obtained from the seaweed of the Grecian island, and this met with greater favor in his eyes.He decided, finally, that the hue of the stocking was between the royal and the purple of Amorgos, and this relieved his mind. But this didn't help him to find the girl—and how vain a thing is even the most beautiful stocking in the world without a girl attached!
Then the unexpected happened as usual. There came a lapse in the search. The cure for Maxwell's dream was homeopathic. Like cures like. One girl blighted most of interest in the vague search for another. Maxwell was caught by the concrete. Miss Ward, a guest of the hotel, in company with her aunt, was not, Maxwell decided, like any of the other women. She was dignified, but piquant, pretty, certainly, and well educated. Likewise, she had self-possession and much wit. Maxwell enjoyed her society and they became close friends. He began to feel as if the world, if hollow, had at least a substantial crust. He was no longer bored and the stocking fancy was put aside.
Then came Farrington. Farrington had spirits. He lightened up the hotel piazza and flirted with every one, from dowagers down to the little girls to whom he told liver-colored stories as evening and the gloom came. He was deeply interested when Maxwell told himof the stocking and the marvel. He became full of ardor.
"Don't give up the search!" he expostulated. "Such a stocking as that must belong to the one woman in four hundred and eighty-three thousand. Why, it's like finding a nugget in a valley! There's bound to be gold in the mountains!"
So the interest of Maxwell became largely revived and his mind was on stockings when he was not in the company of Miss Ward. One day an inspiration came to him with the gentle suddenness of a love pat. He took Farrington into his confidence. That evening on the piazza that gifted friend adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of matching goods and colors.
The debate became most animated. The ladies, one and all, declared that in the matter of matching things men were scarcely above the beasts that perish, while as for themselves, there was not a woman, young or old, among them who was not an adept. Maxwell, who had seemed at first uninterested, broke into the conversation.
"I'm not ungallant," he asserted as a preliminary. "When it comes to gallantry I'll venture to say I'd outdo any medieval troubadour,if I could only sing and twang a harp, but, though angels can do almost anything, to tell the truth I'm a shade doubtful concerning their absolute infallibility in matching hues and fabrics. I've a piece of silk I'd like matched for my sister, and I hereby, in the presence of all witnesses, offer a prize of one box of gloves to any lady who will match it for me within a week," and he produced about six inches square—thirty-six square inches—of splendid purple silk.
As the war horse snuffeth the battle and says "Ha! ha!" to the trumpets; as the sea mew rises from the waves to riot in the spindrift; as the needle to the pole; as the river to the sea or the cat to the catnip in wild enthusiasm—so rose the ladies to the silken lure. Match the silk? Why, the gloves must be distributed among the score!
And then ensued a busy week. The sample, divided into thirty-six pieces an inch square, was surrendered. There were trips to the nearest city and, as excitement grew, even to the metropolis. The afternoon for the test arrived and Maxwell, seated judicially beside a table on the piazza and provided with another sampleof his silk, awaited with manly dignity the onslaught of the gathered contestants.
One by one they came and laid down their little pieces of purple silk; one by one the samples were compared by the judge with the piece held in his hand, and, one by one, he passed them back with a regretful and unnecessarily audible sigh. Last of all came Miss Ward, who had not been to town and who had, apparently, taken slight interest in the competition. It was too trivial for her, had been Maxwell's firm conclusion. Now she approached the table and laid down, as had the others, a piece of purple silk. Maxwell's heart thumped. There was no mistaking that wondrous hue!
"Miss Ward has won the gloves," he said.
There were congratulations and any amount of fun and curious speculation.
That evening Maxwell caught Miss Ward upon the piazza and induced her to sit with him awhile, to improve his mind, he said. They chatted indifferently until he took occasion to compliment her upon her success in matching the purple silk. "You have a wonderful sense of color," he declared.
She answered that she had always enjoyedmatching things, and then he ventured to expatiate a little on the particular silk which had been matched: "What pretty trimming for a hat, or what pretty stockings it would make," he said.
She asked him why the nighthawks circling overhead and about gave utterance to their shrill cries so frequently, and he said he didn't know. Then they talked about the coming boat race.
For a week Maxwell's chief occupation was what Farrington described as "concentrated musing." He walked much. One afternoon he was strolling along the narrow beach, which lay, a sandy stretch, between the water and a tree-grown grassy ledge, about fifteen feet in height, which was a favorite place of rest and outlook for the hotel guests. He was looking downward, but there came a moment when the heavens fell. Chancing to look upward to determine if any of the usual idlers there were of a companionable sort for him, he saw that which turned aside the current of his life as easily as an avalanche may turn a rivulet.
There, projecting a little beyond the crest-crowning grass and greenery of the ledge above, was something trim and gloriously purple andgloriously perfect. The tan of the neatest of number three shoes blended upward into the purple paradise, and from the tan seemed growing a snowy spray of lilies-of-the-valley. Delicate is the subject, but it must be treated. Delicate is the making of a watch, but we must have watches; eggs are delicate, but we must eat them; goldfish are delicate, but we must lift them by hand occasionally. Duty first!
Perfect the exterior of that wondrous stocking, perfect, absolutely so, but its contour and its contents! Ah, me! The flat, thin ankle—let Arabian fillies hide their heads! The even upward swell—just full enough, just trim enough, revealed, but not in view, as one sees things by starlight. Ah, me!
Maxwell's eyes dimmed and he reeled. What is known as locomotor ataxia smote him there suddenly in his prime and pride of life. Then after a moment or two a degree of health came back and he turned and retraced his steps, feebly at first, then more rapidly, and then as hies the antlered stag. He gained the ledge and followed it and found Miss Ward seated demurely at its very crest and surrounded by a group of friends.
Within three months he owned, after thewedding, not merely what was left of one, but two similar purple stockings, and their contents, together with, all and singular, the hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto belonging or in anywise appertaining.
THE FATTENING OF PAT
The general opinion seemed to be that the amiable lady's story was innocuous in every detail, while it commended itself as being absolutely true to human nature, that great essential in a narrative of any sort. There were the feminine instinct as to the matching of colors, inbred throughout each latitude, and the masculine instinct in relation to stockings, existent in every longitude, each indicated with all assuredness and delicacy. The account, it was declared by the Young Lady, was a veritable "Idyl of an Outing," and no one disagreed with her. Then came renewed expression of the now constant anxiety and curiosity regarding the progress of the rescuers and Stafford went forward to learn the situation, and report.
"We're in 'in a hole,' literally," came, the reply to Stafford's inquiry of the engineer in charge of the relief train; "That's all we make, at first, merely a hole, when we charge intothe big drift ahead of us now. It's thirty feet deep and we can't do much more than loosen up things, just here, and let the shovelers do the rest. It will be better when we get through this cut. We've sent men on ahead and they find the thing not nearly so bad half a mile from here. We're getting along."
"But, how fast are you getting along?" queried Stafford impatiently. "When are you going to reach us?"
"I can't tell. I'm getting a little doubtful about the fourth day, now. Still, we may make it. How are you fixed for heat and provisions?"
"All right yet, I guess. I'll find out and let you know later," and Stafford went back to the sleeper.
The bearer of unpleasant news is seldom received with an ovation and Stafford proved no exception. There were the usual plaints, but he did not notice them. Somehow, he had no interest in deliverance. He was satisfied to be where he was. He was living entirely in the present and what was near him. He looked about for the Far Away Lady, but she was not visible, and he indulged in a fit of moodiness, like a boy. He lingered with thecompany until the time for retiring came and then went forward to the smoking compartment, where the usual group of the gregarious were enjoying themselves. Here he found relaxation of thought, at least, and, to a degree, amusement.
He entered as there was being related an incident of politics. It was told by a man portly, ruddy-faced and wearing a gold watch chain, weighty enough for a small cable, from which depended the emblems of two or three of the great secret fraternities. Though in the drawing-room gatherings he had appeared somewhat less in his element than here, he had become rather a favorite because of his unfailing good nature and evident shrewdness and sense of humor. He was known as a "commissioner" of something in one of the large cities, a typical city politician. He was relating the difficulties experienced in what he called
THE FATTENING OF PAT
Pat, who was an excellent janitor, in charge of a big bank building, with men under him, had aspirations. He wanted to become a policeman. The place he held was a good oneand most men of his class would have been contented, but Pat was not. He was dissatisfied with the monotonous indoor life and decided that to be on the "foorce" was the only thing for him. He was a fine fellow, overflowing with energy and full of persistence, he would not, however advised, abandon the idea. He was a tall, muscular man and, aside from the qualities already mentioned, was possessed of good sense and was of excellent habits. He had friends among the tenants of the big structure over the care of which he presided and when, realizing that to attain the object of his desire some strong alliance would be necessary he appealed for aid to an occupant of one of the offices in the building, a young man, who, if not in politics as a business, knew something of the game, he met with no discouragement.
"I'll do what I can, Pat," said Wheaton.
The Municipal Civil Service Commission had just been established in the City and was yet "wobbly" and, to a degree, swayed by political influences. Under the direction of Wheaton, who decided to see fair play, Pat underwent the usual preliminary examination, passed admirably as to all questions and would havepassed physically, as well, but for his weight, or rather the lack of it. The required weight for a policeman of his height was one hundred and sixty-five pounds; Pat weighed only one hundred and fifty, for he was as gaunt as an Australian. Other men lacking as many pounds of the weight nominally demanded had secured places with no difficulty, but Pat was not desired by those in authority. His political views were not of the right sort for the examiners and his manner showed his independence. Fortunately for him, the first examination was only a preliminary—(A delay allowed the politicians time to select their men among the many)—and a second and final one was announced to take place four weeks after the first. Pat came to his friend almost with tears in his eyes:
"Oi'm done fur," said he.
"What's the matter?" demanded Wheaton.
"Oi'm fifteen pounds short," said Pat.
"How long before the next examination?"
"Four wakes."
"Pshaw," said Wheaton. "We'll fix it, yet. I'm not going to let those fellows squeeze you out. Will you do just as I tell you?"
"Oi will, begobs!" was the sturdy answer.
"Well you must begin to-morrow morning. You've got two sub-janitors, haven't you?"
"Oi have," said Pat.
"You can make them do all the work, if you want to, can't you?"
"Oi can that!"
"Then what I want you to do is this—and, mind, I'm going to take charge of the whole thing and foot the bills; they won't be much—I don't want you to do a lick of work for the next four weeks. I want you to stay in your room about all the time: you mustn't even walk about much. I want you to eat nothing but potatoes and bread with about a quarter of an inch thick of butter and sugar on it. Eat lots! You can have meat, too, if it's very fat. And—you're a sober man and I don't believe you'll get a fixed habit in four weeks—I'm going to send a keg of beer to your room in the morning, and another whenever one is finished. You're to drink a big mug of it every hour."
"Blazes," interjected Pat, "Th' ould lady'll murther me. Oi'll be drunk, sure, an' me breath will breed a peshtiliench."
"No it won't. You'll soon get used to it. We begin to-morrow."
And the next day Pat began, resolutely,though with fears. Wheaton visited him frequently and encouraged him in every way; "I'll get you all the newspapers and teach you to play solitaire—it's a fine game with cards when you're alone. You're a goose," he said "and I'm training you forpate de fois gras," but Pat did not know what that meant. He only knew that times were queer. He was afraid of the "ould lady."
The third morning he came down beaming. "It's quare," he announced. "Oi belave th' ould lady do be fallin' in love wid me over agin, she does be that foine an' carressin' wid me. 'Pat!' says she, 'you're the new mon intoirely! You do be as gentle as a lamb an' it's good to see ye so playful wid the childer' says she. 'Oi'm in love wid ye, Pat' says she. An' Oi all the toime falin' loike a baste, for I knew well 'twas only the mellowness av the beer in me. But it's given me a lesson it has. Oi'll be betther tempered after this."
"Good idea," said Wheaton.
At the end of the first week Wheaton took Pat out and weighed him, undressed—four pounds gained.
"We must do better than that," commented Wheaton. "We'll barely pull through at thisgait, and it will be harder work getting on flesh the last two weeks. Do you take your beer every hour?"
"O'm beginning to spake Dutch," said Pat.
"Well, keep on with it and eat—eat like a hobo! We'll make it! Don't exercise, don't even wink, if you can help it."
Pat took his instructions literally and obeyed them. He stayed in his room and gorged. His eyes became a trifle heavy and his face flushed, but at the end of two weeks he weighed only one hundred and fifty-nine pounds. Somehow, the next week he didn't do so well, gaining only three pounds more. Dame Nature, in mistaken kindness, was trying to adjust him to his new diet. Wheaton was becoming excited—only one hundred and sixty-two pounds, and only a week to gain something over three more in!
"We must hump ourselves!"
And Pat did "hump" himself, ate and drank with an assumed voracity, and had a slight attack of indigestion. This didn't help matters. The night before the examination he weighed only one hundred and sixty-four pounds and four ounces—three quarters of a pound short!
Wheaton was anxious but not despairing."The examination begins at ten," he said. "Meet me here at four o'clock in the morning. We'll have six hours left."
At the hour named in the morning came Wheaton, carrying a big jug. "Have you had any beer, yet, Pat?" he asked.
"No sor."
"Then don't take any. You must be clear-headed when you go before the Commission. Here's a gallon of water, good water it is. You must drink it all before ten o'clock."
Pat looked dismayed. "Oi'll try sor."
Then began the struggle. Pat washed down his breakfast at once, very salt-broiled mackerel—which Wheaton had brought,—with the usual potatoes and a big beefsteak. After that every five minutes, Wheaton forced the poor fellow to drink a glass of water. At half-past nine the gallon was done. Pat, like the tea-drinkers of Ebenezer Chapel, "swelled wisibly." But Wheaton made him drink more water.
"Oi feel loike a fishpond, sor," he complained.
They hurried to the nearest Turkish bath and Pat stripped and got upon the scales. He weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds and three ounces. Pat was perspiring violently.
"If you sweat, I'll murder you!" said Wheaton.
They appeared before the Commission, Wheaton watching everything like a hawk, his heart in his mouth as the weighing test came. One hundred and sixty-five pounds and one ounce! There was no getting around it!
"Pat," said Wheaton, later, "You're on the force now and you've had a lesson in practical politics. You ought to be a sergeant in no time."
"Politics is aisy," said Pat, "but Oi'm thinkin' Oi'll be changin' me diet. Oi'm forninst beer and bread and butther forever—an'" he added, reflectively, "Oi dunno but wather, too!"
"He's making a good policeman," concluded the Commissioner.
So ended the relation of Pat's experience, and, a little later, the laughing group in the smoking room dissolved itself. Stafford sought his berth, largely recovered from his discontent and more like his reliant self. But he was not assured as to his dreams. Would his conscience be with him still? Could the line of conventional demarcation between him and the FarAway Lady be rigorously preserved, even in them?
But no dreams came to him at once. He could not sleep at first but struggled with himself. He was tumultuous and impatient with his environment and obligations, all, seemingly, standing in the way of his happiness. He was lost, utterly, in the old conflict which comes with the hesitation between the recognized right and wrong, the accepted thing at the time in the age of the earth in which he lived? To his aid, he quoted to himself the sayings of the keen thinkers, the abstract reasoners: he thought of Anatole France: "What is morality? Morality is the rule of custom and custom is the rule of habit. Morality is, then, the rule of habit. Morality changes, continually with custom, of which it is only the general idea." He thought of the others, too, of one who reasoned from the fact that there were a Jewish morality, a Christian morality, a Buddhist morality, and all that. In his half sleep he mumbled; "Why, Reason is the thing," and then he added mumblingly and reflectively, "but then we have learned that there is a right and reason must end by being right. There is a right—we know that; we feel it—and we know what it is.It is, largely, a subordination, a regard for others. We cannot quite justify ourselves for any selfishness by quoting some great law of nature. Conscience, somehow, has become the greatest of these laws."
And so, vaguely and jumblingly, as his senses oozed into sleep, he quoted failingly, the cold thinkers. Then the real dreams came to him, but they were misty and bizarre. He was with the Far Away Lady, but the surroundings were all strange and she was most elusive. They were in a great house and he could hear her voice but he could not find her, though he searched from room to room. Then they were in a forest where there were many flowers and tall trees and she was a bird somewhere up in the trees and he could hear her singing, but he could not see her amid the foliage. And, finally, they were where there was much shrubbery and where he could see her plainly enough, but she was at a distance and as he followed she would disappear among the roses down some garden path. All was most tantalizing and fantastic. And so his night passed.
A TEST OF ATTITUDE
What are they going to do, a man and a woman who have met and loved in the past, and have separated conscientiously, when brought together again under extraordinary circumstances, after each has felt that loving and of real living had been denied, and endured it all for years? What is going to happen when, because of one of the accidents of life and of one of the great accomplishing conditions, such two as this have been, once more, thrown, figuratively, into each other's arms?
This man had saved this woman's life yesterday, stumbling upon her after all this separation, after he done a man's work in another hemisphere and had, disappointed with life, supposed the chapter closed. Now he was to meet her at the breakfast table. What must be the demeanor of these two toward each other now? Be assured neither of them knew, not even the woman,—and in foreseeing as to such a situationa woman knows more, by some instinct, than a man may learn in a thousand years.
She knew that they would meet that morning. That was the inevitable, after yesterday. Anything else would have been a foolish affectation. He knew, as well, that he must go in to that breakfast table and sit opposite her and that then they must face together a situation delicately psychological and dangerous and altogether fascinating—from a philosopher's point of view. It was not perhaps, quite so fascinating to these two people with what we call conscience and the possession of what makes the greatness of humanity, whether it appertain to man or woman. There is no sex to nobility.
She was sitting there, divinely sweet, as he stalked in. She was sitting there, divinely sweet, because she was made that way, and never did Stafford realize it more. The years had taken from her gentle beauty not the slightest toll.
She bloomed this fair morning—it was only moderately fair, by the way—as there entered the man who had saved her life the day before and with whom in the past hers had been the closest understanding of her life. To the eye she was merely placid and infinitely enchanting.The man did not appear to such advantage. He entered blunderingly and doubtful.
There were, of course, the usual expression of morning courtesies and then they settled down to a fencing which was but a lovingness as vast as unexpressed. They talked of a variety of things but there was no allusion even so near as Saturn, to what was lying close against the hearts of both. We are rather fine but we are unexplainable sometimes, we men and women whom Nature made so curiously.
As a matter of fact, this one of the most forceful of men and one of the most sweet and desirable of women said practically nothing throughout the entire breakfast. They did not even refer to the grim incident of the dog and the grapple, which had been something worth while. Had the thing been less they would have talked about it. But, to them, by an indefinable knowing, this matter was something too great to consider at the present moment. And, so, unconsciously, understanding each other, they consigned themselves to ordinary table talk.
But we cannot always command lack of remembrance and get obedience. There is something better. Nature has her ways. One of her ways is to have given us eyes, and how she didplace us under her soft thumb when she did that!
They said very little, but they looked into each other's eyes. They couldn't help that very well. Then the laws of life worked themselves out. It is a way they have.
What are you going to do with a woman's eyes? Inside the depths of a woman's eyes, lurking lovingly, sometimes, are all the revelations that must come when the time comes and reflect themselves into the looking-glasses God provides to tell us of the thoughts of others. There are different women and different eyes, of course. We must take our chances on that.
And, so as said, they did not even refer to the happenings of the day before or of any of the context of all that had occurred. They did not refer to the great hound. They talked of nothing but of things incidental. She asked him when they would probably be released from their snow imprisonment and he told her that it would be within two days.
And, so they separated and had practically said nothing.
But eyes, as announced, are the most astonishing things. They had talked a great deal that morning. As we human beings are made, they are a little the neatest and finestexpression of all there is in life. They hold and send forth the beaconing flash from every intellectual and loving light-house in the world. They are, with what they say, the confessional between any two human beings, man and woman, in the world. They are the mediums of revelation. No wonder that those who know want sometimes, foolishly, it may be, to die when to them comes a physical blindness which may not be remedied.
And this man and woman looked into each other's eyes, he hardly comprehending at first but having the great consciousness come to him at last, she doubtless understanding sooner, and even more acutely.
Intelligent fluttering of the heart is what might possibly be said of her. She was alarmed and yet, from another point of view, entirely without fear. She realized the situation better than did he. Ever since the world was first firmly encrusted out of the steaming fog woman has been the braver of the two in our love affairs.
Exceedingly clever as these two people were, there is no opportunity to do any exceedingly brilliant work in telling all about them. Brought down to its last analysis, theirs wasbut the plain, old-fashioned love which has stood the test of all the centuries and which, in our modern English and American times, has the flavor of the hollyhocks which grow about the front fence and the old-fashioned pinks in the yard and a lot of other things. We have new ways in other things, but love has not changed much since the time of Egypt. Doubtless it was about the same way before.
"What is the day of the week, please," had been Stafford's last utterance. She did not even reply. She looked back into his eyes and that look, if it could have been weighed, could have been considered by nothing but Troy weight, the jeweller's weight, and then it would have been too coarse for the occasion and the demand.
And so they separated and had practically said nothing.
Not the great Sultan Schariar, when listening to the fair Scheherazade, as she prolonged her life from day to day and finally saved it by the fascination of her stories; not the august hearer, as Sinbad the Sailor described his marvelous adventures; not Margaret of Angouléme, as she gathered the more lettered ladies and gallants of her court and inducedthem to add to the gayety of nations by the relation of brisk and risque experiences; not Dickens, as he spun the threads himself of his Tales of a Wayside Inn, had a more keen enjoyment than the Colonel listening to the words of his drafted and mustered volunteers. He fairly glowed appreciation and satisfaction. As Stafford entered the Cassowary, he perceived that the Colonel was still recruiting.