Scott very cautiously laid his net level, stole forward, shining the lantern light full on the darting, hazy-winged creature, which was now poised, hovering over a white blossom and probing the honeyed depths with a long, slim proboscis.
"I thought it might be only a Lineata, but it isn't," he said excitedly. "Did you ever see such a timid moth? The slightest step scares the creature."
"Can't you try a quick net-stroke sideways?"
Her voice was as anxious and unsteady as his own.
"I'm afraid I'll miss. Lord but it's a lightning flier! Where is it now?"
"Behind you. Do be careful! Turn very slowly."
He pivoted; the slim moth darted past, circled, and hung before a blossom, wings vibrating so fast that the creature was merely a gray blur in the lantern light. The next instant Gray's net swung; a furious fluttering came from the green silk folds; Kathleen whipped off the cover of the jar, and Duane deftly imprisoned the moth.
"Upon my word," he said shakily, "I believe I've got a Tersa Sphinx!—a sub-tropical fellow whose presence here is mere accident!"
"Oh, if you have!" she breathed softly. She didn't know what a Tersa Sphinx might be, but if its capture gave him pleasure, that was all she cared for in the world.
"Itisa Tersa!" he almost shouted. "By George! it's a wonder."
Radiant, she bent eagerly above the jar where the strange, slender, gray-and-brown hawk-moth lay dying. Its recoiling proboscis and its slim, fawn-coloured legs quivered. The eyes glowed like tiny jewels.
"If we could only keep these little things alive," she sighed; then, fearful of taking the least iota from his pleasure, added: "but of course we can't, and for scientific purposes it's all right to let the lovely little creatures sink into their death-sleep."
A slight haze had appeared over the lake; a sudden cool streak grew in the air, which very quickly cleared the flower-beds of moths; and the pretty sub-tropical sphinx was the last specimen of the evening.
In the library Scott pulled out a card-table and Kathleen brought forceps, strips of oiled paper, pins, setting-blocks, needles, and oblong glass weights; and together, seated opposite each other, they removed the delicate-winged contents of the collecting jar.
Kathleen's dainty fingers were very swift and deft with the forceps. Scott watched her. She picked up the green-and-rose Pandorus, laid it on its back on a setting-block, affixed and pinned the oiled-paper strips, drew out the four wings with the setting-needle until they were symmetrical and the inner margin of the anterior pair was at right angles with the body.
Then she arranged the legs, uncoiled and set the proboscis, and weighted the wings with heavy glass strips.
They worked rapidly, happily there together, exchanging views and opinions; and after a while the brilliant spoils of the evening were all stretched and ready to dry, ultimately to be placed in plaster-of-Paris mounts and hermetically sealed under glass covers.
Kathleen went away to cleanse her hands of any taint of cyanide; Scott, returning from his own ablutions, met her in the hall, and so miraculously youthful, so fresh and sweet and dainty did she appear that, in some inexplicable manner, his awkward, self-conscious fear of touching her suddenly vanished, and the next instant she was in his arms and he had kissed her.
"Scott!" she faltered, pushing him from her, too limp and dazed to use the strength she possessed.
Surprised at what he had done, amazed that he was not afraid of her, he held her tightly, thrilled dumb at the exquisite trembling contact.
"Oh, what are you doing," she stammered, in dire consternation; "what have you done? We—you cannot—you must let me go, Scott——"
"You're only a girl, after all—you darling!" he said, inspecting her in an ecstacy of curiosity. "I wonder why I've been afraid of you for so long?—just because I love you!"
"You don't—you can't care for me that way——"
"I care for you in every kind of a way that anybody can care about anybody." She turned her shoulder, desperately striving to release herself, but she had not realised how tall and strong he was. "How small you are," he repeated wonderingly; "just a soft, slender girl, Kathleen. I can't see how I ever came to let you make me study when I didn't want to."
"Scott, dear," she pleaded breathlessly, "you must let me go. This—this is utterly impossible——"
"What is?"
"That you and I can—could care—this way——"
"Don't you?"
"I—no!"
"Is that the truth, Kathleen?"
She looked up; the divine distress in her violet eyes sobered him, awed him for a moment.
"Kathleen," he said, "there are only a few years' difference between our ages. I feel older than you; you look younger than I—and you are all in the world I care for—or ever have cared for. Last spring—that night——"
"Hush, Scott," she begged, blushing scarlet.
"I know you remember. That is when I began to love you. You must have known it."
She said nothing; the strain of her resisting arms against his breast had relaxed imperceptibly.
"What can a fellow say?" he went on a little wildly, checked at moments by the dryness of his throat and the rapid heartbeats that almost took his breath away when he looked at her. "I love you so dearly, Kathleen; there's no use in trying to live without loving you, for I couldn't do it!... I'm not really young; it makes me furious to think you consider me in that light. I'm a man, strong enough and old enough to love you—and make you love me! Iwillmake you!" His arms tightened.
She uttered a little cry, which was half a sob; his boyish roughness sent a glow rushing through her. She fought against the peril of it, the bewildering happiness that welled up—fought against her heart that was betraying her senses, against the deep, sweet passion that awoke as his face touched hers.
"Will you love me?" he said fiercely.
"No!"
"Will you?"
"Yes.... Let me go!" she gasped.
"Will you love me in the way I mean? Can you?"
"Yes. I do. I—have, long since.... Let me go!"
"Then—kiss me."
She looked up at him a moment, slowly put both arms around his neck: "Now," she breathed faintly, "release me."
And at the same instant he saw Geraldine descending the stairs.
Kathleen saw her, too; saw her turn abruptly, re-mount and disappear. There was a moment's painful silence, then, without a word, she picked up her lace skirts, ran up the stairway, and continued swiftly on to Geraldine's room.
"May I come in?" She spoke and opened the door of the bedroom at the same time, and Geraldine turned on her, exasperated, hands clenched, dark eyes harbouring lightning:
"Have I gone quite mad, Kathleen, or have you?" she demanded.
"I think I have," whispered Kathleen, turning white and halting. "Geraldine, you willhaveto listen. Scott has told me that he loves me——"
"Is this the first time?"
"No.... It is the first time I have listened. I can't think clearly; I scarcely know yet what I've said and done. What must you think?... But won't you be a little gentle with me—a little forbearing—in memory of what I have been to you—to him—so long?"
"What do you wish me to think?" asked the girl in a hard voice. "My brother is of age; he will do what he pleases, I suppose. I—I don't know what to think; this has astounded me. I never dreamed such a thing possible——"
"Nor I—until this spring. I know it is all wrong; this is making me more fearfully unhappy every minute I live. There is nothing but peril in it; the discrepancy in our ages makes it hazardous—his youth, his overwhelming fortune, my position and means—the world will surely, surely misinterpret, misunderstand—I think even you, his sister, may be led to credit—what, in your own heart, you must know to be utterly and cruelly untrue."
"I don't know what to say or think," repeated Geraldine in a dull voice. "I can't realise it; I thought that our affection for you was so—so utterly different."
She stared curiously at Kathleen, trying to reconcile what she had always known of her with what she now had to reckon with—strove to find some alteration in the familiar features, something that she had never before noticed, some new, unsuspected splendour of beauty and charm, some undetected and subtle allure. She saw only a wholesome, young, and lovely woman, fresh-skinned, slender, sweet, and graceful—the same companion she had always known and, as she remembered, unchanged in any way since the years of childhood, when Kathleen was twenty and she and her brother were ten.
"I suppose," she said, "that if Scott is in love with you, there is only one thing to do."
"There are several," said Kathleen in a low voice.
"Will you not marry him?"
"I don't know; I think not."
"Are you not in love with him?"
"Does that matter?" asked Kathleen steadily. "Scott's happiness is what is important."
"But his happiness, apparently, depends on you."
Kathleen flushed and looked at her curiously.
"Dear, if I knew that was so, I would give myself to him. Neither you nor he have ever asked anything of me in vain. Even if I did not love him—as I do—and he needed me, I would give myself to him. You and he have been all there was in life for me. But I am afraid that I may not always be all that life holds for him. He is young; he has had no chance yet; he has had little experience with women. I think he ought to have his chance."
She might have said the same thing of herself. A bride at her husband's death-bed, widowed before she had ever been a wife, what experience had she? All her life so far had been devoted to the girl who stood there confronting her, and to the brother. What did she know of men?—of whether she might be capable of loving some man more suitable? She had not given herself the chance. She never would, now.
There was no selfishness in Kathleen Severn. But there was much in the Seagrave twins. The very method of their bringing up inculcated it; they had never had any chance to be otherwise. The "cultiwation of the indiwidool" had driven it into them, taught them the deification of self, forced them to consider their own importance above anything else in the world.
And it was of that importance that Geraldine was now thinking as she sat on the edge of her bed, darkly considering these new problems that chance was laying before her one by one.
If Scott was going to be unhappy without Kathleen, it followed, as a matter of course, that he must have Kathleen. The chances Kathleen might take, what she might have to endure of the world's malice and gossip and criticism, never entered Geraldine's mind at all.
"If he is in love with you," she repeated, "it settles it, I think. What else is there to do but marry him?"
Kathleen shook her head. "I shall do what is best for him—whatever that may be."
"You won't make him unhappy, I suppose?" inquired Geraldine, astonished.
"Dear, a woman may be truer to the man she loves—and kinder—by refusing him. Is not that whatyouhave done—for Duane's sake?"
Geraldine sprang to her feet, face white, mouth distorted with anger:
"I made a god of Duane!" she broke out breathlessly. "Everything that was in me—everything that was decent and unselfish and pure-minded dominated me when I found I loved him. So I would not listen to my own desire for him, I would not let him risk a terrible unhappiness until I could go to him as clean and well and straight and unafraid as he could wish!" She laughed bitterly, and laid her hands on her breast. "Look at me, Kathleen! I am quite as decent as this god of mine. Why should I worry over the chances he takes when I have chances enough to take in marrying him? I was stupid to be so conscientious—I behaved like a hysterical schoolgirl—or a silly communicant—making him my confessor! A girl is a perfect fool to make a god out of a man. I made one out of Duane; and he acted like one. It nearly ended me, but, after all, he is no worse than I. Whoever it was who said that decency is only depravity afraid, is right. Iamdepraved; Iamafraid. I'm afraid that I cannot control myself, for one thing; and I'm afraid of being unhappy for life if I don't marry Duane. And I'm going to, and let him take his chances!"
Kathleen, very pale, said: "That is selfishness—if you do it."
"Are not men selfish? He will not tell me as much of his life as I have told him of mine. I have told him everything. How do I know what risk I run? Yes—I do know; I take the risk of marrying a man notorious for his facility with women. And he lets me take that risk. Why should I not let him risk something?"
The girl seemed strangely excited; her quick breathing and bright, unsteady eyes betrayed the nervous tension of the last few days. She said feverishly:
"There is a lot of nonsense talked about self-sacrifice and love; about the beauties of abnegation and martyrdom, but, Kathleen, if I shall ever need him at all, I need him now. I'm afraid to be alone any longer; I'm frightened at the chances against me. Do you know what these days of horror have been to me, locked in here—all alone—in the depths of degradation for what—what I did that night—in distress and shame unutterable——"
"My darling——"
"Wait! I had more to endure—I had to endure the results of my education in the study of man! I had to realise that I loved one of them who has done enough to annihilate in me anything except love. I had to learn that he couldn't kill that—that I want him in spite of it, that I need him, that my heart is sick with dread; that he can have me when he will—Oh, Kathleen, I have learned to care less for him than when I denied him for his own sake—more for him than I did before he held me in his arms! And that is not a high type of love—I know it—but oh, if I could only have his arms around me—if I could rest there for a while—and not feel so frightened, so utterly alone!—I might win out; I might kill what is menacing me, with God's help—and his!"
She lay shivering on Kathleen's breast now, dry-eyed, twisting her ringless fingers in dumb anguish.
"Darling, darling," murmured Kathleen, "you cannot do this thing. You cannot let him assume a burden that is yours alone."
"Why not? What is one's lover for?"
"Not to use; not to hazard; not to be made responsible for a sick mind and a will already demoralised. Is it fair to ask him—to let him begin life with such a burden—such a handicap? Is it not braver, fairer, to fight it out alone, eradicate what threatens you—oh, my own darling! my little Geraldine!—is it not fairer to the man you love? Is he not worth striving for, suffering for? Have you no courage to endure if he is to be the reward? Is a little selfish weakness, a miserable self-indulgence to stand between you and life-long happiness?"
Geraldine looked up; her face was very white:
"Have you ever been tempted?"
"Have I not been to-night?"
"I mean by—something ignoble?"
"No."
"Do you know how it hurts?"
"To—to deny yourself?"
"Yes.... It is so—difficult—it makes me wretchedly weak.... I only thought he might help me.... You are right, Kathleen.... I must be terribly demoralised to have wished it. I—I will not marry him, now. I don't think I ever will.... You are right. I have got to be fair to him, no matter what he has been to me.... He has been fearfully unfair. After all, he is only a man.... I couldn't really love a god."
Rosalie had departed; Grandcourt followed suit next day; Sylvia's brother, Stuyvesant, had at last found a sober moment at his disposal and had appeared at Roya-Neh and taken his sister away. Duane was all ready to go to New York to find out whether his father was worrying over anything, as the tone of his letters indicated.
The day he left, Kathleen and Geraldine started on a round of August house parties, ranging from Lenox to Long Island, including tiresome week ends and duty visits to some very unpretentious but highly intellectual relatives of Mrs. Severn. So Scott remained in solitary possession of Roya-Neh, with its forests, gardens, pastures, lakes and streams, and a staggering payroll and all the multiplicity of problems that such responsibility entails. Which pleased him immensely, except for the departure of Kathleen.
To play the intellectual country squire had been all he desired on earth except Kathleen. From the beginning White's "Selborne" had remained his model for all books, Kathleen for all women. He was satisfied with these two components of perfect happiness, and with himself, as he was, for the third ingredient in a contented and symmetrical existence.
He had accepted his answer from her with more philosophy than she quite expected or was prepared for, saying that if she made a particular point of it he would go about next winter and give himself a chance to meet as many desirable young girls as she thought best; that it was merely wasting time, but if it made her any happier, he'd wait and endeavour to return to their relations of unsentimental comradeship until she was satisfied he knew his mind.
Kathleen was, at first, a little dismayed at his complacency. It was only certainty of himself. At twenty-two there is time for anything, and the vista of life ahead is endless. And there was one thing more which Kathleen did not know. Under the covering of this Seagrave complacency and self-centred sufficiency, all alone by itself was developing the sprouting germ of consideration for others.
How it started he himself did not know—nor was he even aware that it had started. But long, solitary rambles and the quiet contemplation of other things besides himself had awakened first curiosity, then a dawning suspicion of the rights of others.
In the silence of forests it is difficult to preserve complacency; under the stars modesty is born.
It began to occur to him, by degrees, that his own personal importance among his kindmightbe due, in part, to his fortune. And from the first invasion of that shocking idea matters progressed rather rapidly with the last of the Seagraves.
He said uneasily to Duane, once: "Are you going in seriously for painting?"
"Iamin," observed Duane drily.
"Professionally?"
"Sure thing. God hates an amateur."
"What are you after?" persisted Scott. "Fame?"
"Yes; I need it in my business."
"Are you contemplating a velvet coat and bow tie, and a bunch of the elect at your heels?—ratty men, and pop-eyed young women whose coiffure needs weeding?"
Duane laughed. "Are they any more deadly than our own sort? Why endure either? Because you are developing into a country squire, you don't have to marry Maud Muller." And he quoted Bret Harte:
"For there be women fair as she,Whose verbs and nouns do more agree."
"You don't have to wallow in a profession, you know."
"But why the mischief do you want to paint professionally?" inquired Scott, with unsatisfied curiosity. "It isn't avarice, is it?"
"I expect to hold out for what my pictures are worth, if that's what you mean by avarice. What I'm trying to do," added Duane, striking his palm with his fist as emphasis, "is not to die the son of a wealthy man. If I can't be anything more, I'm not worth a damn. But I'm going to be. I can do it, Scott; I'm lazy, I'm undecided, I've a weak streak. And yet, do you know, with all my blemishes, all my misgivings, all my discouragements, panics, despondent moments, I am, way down inside, serenely and unaccountably certain that I can paint like the devil, and that I am going to do it. That sounds cheeky, doesn't it?"
"It sounds all right to me," said Scott. And he walked away thoughtfully, fists dug deep in his pockets.
And one still, sunny afternoon, standing alone on the dry granite crags of the Golden Dome, he looked up and saw, a quarter of a million miles above him, the moon's ghost swimming in azure splendour. Then he looked down and saw the map of the earth below him, where his forests spread out like moss, and his lakes mirrored the clouds, and a river belonging to him traced its course across the valley in a single silver thread. And a slight blush stung his face at the thought that, without any merit or endeavour of his own, his money had bought it all—his money, that had always acted as his deputy, fought for him, conquered for him, spoken for him, vouched for him—perhaps pleaded for him!—he shivered, and suddenly he realised that this golden voice was, in fact, all there was to him.
What had he to identify him on earth among mankind? Only his money. Wherein did he differ from other men? He had more money. What had he to offer as excuse for living at all? Money. What had he done? Lived on it, by it. Why, then, it was the money that was entitled to distinction, and he figured only as its parasite! Then he was nothing—even a little less. In the world there was man and there was money. It seemed that he was a little lower in the scale than either; a parasite—scarcely a thing of distinction to offer Kathleen Severn.
Very seriously he looked up at the moon.
It was the day following his somewhat disordered and impassioned declaration. He expected to receive his answer that evening; and he descended the mountain in a curiously uncertain and perplexed state of mind which at times bordered on a modesty painfully akin to humbleness.
Meanwhile, Duane was preparing to depart on the morrow. And that evening he also was to have his definite answer to the letter which Kathleen had taken to Geraldine Seagrave that morning.
"Dear," he had written, "I once told you that my weakness needed the aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of courage and devotion that lies in me. It is surely so. Together we conquer the world—which is ourselves."For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not really alarm me. Even if I actually committed the inconsequential and casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there remains enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity and repay, in a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your interest in my behalf."Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you. And it takes something of a man to dare do it."There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in thought have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your heart.... Yet I must not say it.... Can you summon sufficient faith in me to accept that statement—against the evidence of those two divine witnesses which condemn me—your eyes? Circumstantial evidence is no good in this case, dear. I can say no more than that."Dearest, what can compare to the disaster of losing each other?"I ask you to let me have the right to stand by you in your present distress and despondency. What am I for if not for such moments?"That night you were closer to the danger mark than you have ever been. I know that my conduct—at least your interpretation of it—threw you, for the moment off your guarded balance; but that your attitude toward such a crisis—your solution of such a situation—should be a leap forward toward self-destruction—a reckless surrender to anger and blind impulse, only makes me the more certain that we need each other now if ever."The silent, lonely, forlorn battle that has been going on behind the door of your room and the doors of your heart during these last few days, is more than I can well endure. Open both doors to me; leagued we can win through!"Give me the right to be with you by night as well as by daylight, and we two shall stand together and see 'the day break and the shadows flee away.'"
"Dear," he had written, "I once told you that my weakness needed the aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of courage and devotion that lies in me. It is surely so. Together we conquer the world—which is ourselves.
"For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not really alarm me. Even if I actually committed the inconsequential and casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there remains enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity and repay, in a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your interest in my behalf.
"Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you. And it takes something of a man to dare do it.
"There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in thought have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your heart.... Yet I must not say it.... Can you summon sufficient faith in me to accept that statement—against the evidence of those two divine witnesses which condemn me—your eyes? Circumstantial evidence is no good in this case, dear. I can say no more than that.
"Dearest, what can compare to the disaster of losing each other?
"I ask you to let me have the right to stand by you in your present distress and despondency. What am I for if not for such moments?
"That night you were closer to the danger mark than you have ever been. I know that my conduct—at least your interpretation of it—threw you, for the moment off your guarded balance; but that your attitude toward such a crisis—your solution of such a situation—should be a leap forward toward self-destruction—a reckless surrender to anger and blind impulse, only makes me the more certain that we need each other now if ever.
"The silent, lonely, forlorn battle that has been going on behind the door of your room and the doors of your heart during these last few days, is more than I can well endure. Open both doors to me; leagued we can win through!
"Give me the right to be with you by night as well as by daylight, and we two shall stand together and see 'the day break and the shadows flee away.'"
That same evening his reply came:
"My darling, Kathleen will give you this. I don't care what my eyes saw if you tell me it isn't true. I have loved you, anyway, all the while—even with my throat full of tears and my mouth bitter with anger, and my heart torn into several thousand tatters—oh, it is not very difficult to love you, Duane; the only trouble is to love you in the right way; which is hard, dear, because I want you so much; and it's so new to me to be unselfish. I began to learn by loving you."Which means, that I will not let you take the risk you ask for. Give me time; I've fought it off since that miserable night. Heaven alone knows why I surrendered—turning to my deadly enemy for countenance and comfort to support my childish and contemptible anger against you."Duane, there is an evil streak in me, and we both must reckon with it. Long, long before I knew I loved you, things you said and did often wounded me; and within me a perfectly unreasoning desire to hurt you—to make you suffer—always flamed up and raged."I think that was partly what made me do what you know I did that night. It would hurt you; that was my ignoble instinct. God knows whether it was also a hideous sort of excuse for my weakness—for I was blazing hot after the last dance—and the gaiety and uproar and laughter all overexcited me—and then what I had seen you do, and your not coming to me, and that ominous uneasy impulse stirring!"That is the truth as I analyse it. The dreadful thing is that I could have been capable of dealing our chance of happiness such a cowardly blow."Well, it is over. The thing has fled for a while. I fought it down, stamped on it with utter horror and loathing. It—the encounter—tired me. I am weary yet—from honourable wounds. But I won out. If it comes back again—Oh, Duane! and it surely will—I shall face it undaunted once more; and every hydra-head that stirs I shall kill until the thing lies dead between us for all time."Then, dear, will you take the girl who has done this thing?"Geraldine Seagrave."
"My darling, Kathleen will give you this. I don't care what my eyes saw if you tell me it isn't true. I have loved you, anyway, all the while—even with my throat full of tears and my mouth bitter with anger, and my heart torn into several thousand tatters—oh, it is not very difficult to love you, Duane; the only trouble is to love you in the right way; which is hard, dear, because I want you so much; and it's so new to me to be unselfish. I began to learn by loving you.
"Which means, that I will not let you take the risk you ask for. Give me time; I've fought it off since that miserable night. Heaven alone knows why I surrendered—turning to my deadly enemy for countenance and comfort to support my childish and contemptible anger against you.
"Duane, there is an evil streak in me, and we both must reckon with it. Long, long before I knew I loved you, things you said and did often wounded me; and within me a perfectly unreasoning desire to hurt you—to make you suffer—always flamed up and raged.
"I think that was partly what made me do what you know I did that night. It would hurt you; that was my ignoble instinct. God knows whether it was also a hideous sort of excuse for my weakness—for I was blazing hot after the last dance—and the gaiety and uproar and laughter all overexcited me—and then what I had seen you do, and your not coming to me, and that ominous uneasy impulse stirring!
"That is the truth as I analyse it. The dreadful thing is that I could have been capable of dealing our chance of happiness such a cowardly blow.
"Well, it is over. The thing has fled for a while. I fought it down, stamped on it with utter horror and loathing. It—the encounter—tired me. I am weary yet—from honourable wounds. But I won out. If it comes back again—Oh, Duane! and it surely will—I shall face it undaunted once more; and every hydra-head that stirs I shall kill until the thing lies dead between us for all time.
"Then, dear, will you take the girl who has done this thing?
"Geraldine Seagrave."
This was his answer on the eve of his departure.
And on the morning of it Geraldine came down to say good-bye; a fresh, sweet, and bewildering Geraldine, somewhat slimmer than when he had last seen her, a little finer in feature, more delicate of body; and there was about her even a hint of the spirituel as a fascinating trace of what she had been through, locked in alone behind the doors of her room and heart.
She bade him good-morning somewhat shyly, offering her slim hand and looking at him with the slight uncertainty and bent brows of a person coming suddenly into a strong light.
He said under his breath: "You poor darling, how thin you are."
"Athletics," she said; "Jacob wrestled with an angel, but you know what I've been facing in the squared circle. Don't speak of it any more, will you? ... How sunburned you are! What have you been about since I've kept to my room?"
"I've painted Miller's kids in the open; I suppose the terrific influence of Sorolla has me in bondage for the moment." He laughed easily: "But don't worry; it will leave nothing except clean inspiration behind it. I'll think out my own way—grope it out through Pantheon and living maze. All I've really got to say in paint can be said only in my own way. I know that, even when realising that I've been sunstruck by Sorolla."
She listened demurely, watching him, her lips sensitive with understanding; and she laughed when he laughed away his fealty to the superb Spaniard, knowing himself and the untried strength within him.
"But when are you coming back to us, Duane?"
"I don't know. Father's letters perplex me. I'll write you every day, of course."
A quick colour tinted her skin:
"And I will write you every day. I will begin to-day. Kathleen and I expect to be here in September. But you will come back before that and keep Scott company; won't you?"
"I want to get into harness again," he said slowly. "I want to settle down to work."
"Can't you work here?"
"Not very well."
"Why?"
"To tell the truth," he admitted, smiling, "I require something more like a working studio than Miller's garret."
"That's what I thought," she said shyly, "and Scott and I have the plans for a studio all ready; and the men are to begin Monday, and Miller is to take the new gate cottage. Oh, the plans are really very wonderful!" she added hastily, as Duane looked grateful but dubious. "Rollins and Calvert drew them. I wrote to Billy Calvert and sent him the original plans for Hurryon Lodge. Duane, I thought it would please you——"
"It does, you dear, generous girl! I'm a trifle overwhelmed, that's all my silence meant. You ought not to do this for me——"
"Why? Aren't we to be as near each other as we can be until—I am ready—for something—closer?"
"Yes.... Certainly.... I'll arrange to work out certain things up here. As for models, if there is nothing suitable at Westgate village, you won't mind my importing some, will you?"
"No," she said, becoming very serious and gravely interested, as befitted the fiancée of a painter of consequence. "You will do what is necessary, of course; because I—few girls—are accustomed in the beginning to the details of such a profession as yours; and I'm very ignorant, Duane, and I must learn how to second you—intelligently"—she blushed—"that is, if I'm to amount to anything as an artist's wife."
"You dear!" he whispered.
"No; I tell you I am totally ignorant. A studio is an awesome place to me. I merely know enough to keep out of it when you are using models. That is safest, isn't it?"
He said, intensely amused: "It might be safer not to give pink teas while I am working from the nude."
"Duane! Do you think me a perfect ninny? Anyway, you're notalwayspainting Venus and Ariadne and horrid Ledas, are you?"
"Not always!" he managed to assure her; and her pretty, confused laughter mingled with his unembarrassed mirth as the motor-car swung up to carry him and his traps to the station.
They said good-bye; her dark eyes became very tragic; her lips threatened to escape control.
Kathleen turned away, manoeuvring Scott out of earshot, who knowing nothing of any situation between Duane and his sister, protested mildly, but forgot when Kathleen led him to an orange-underwing moth asleep on the stone coping of the terrace.
And when the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminishing conceit found utterance:
"I say, Kathleen, it's all very well for me to collect these fascinating things, but any ass can do that. One can't make a particular name for one's self by doing what a lot of cleverer men have already done, and what a lot of idle idiots are imitating."
She raised her violet eyes, astonished:
"Doyouwant to make a name for yourself?"
"Yes," he said, reddening.
"Why not? I'm a nobody. I'm worse; I'm an amateur! You ought to hear what Duane has to say about amateurs!"
"But, Scott, you don't have to be anything in particular except what you are——"
"What am I?" he demanded.
"Why—yourself."
"And what's that?" He grew redder. "I'll tell you, Kathleen. I'm merely a painfully wealthy young man. Don't laugh; this is becoming deadly serious to me. By my own exertions I've never done one bally thing either useful or spectacular. I'm not distinguished by anything except an unfair share of wealth. I'm not eminent, let alone pre-eminent, even in that sordid class; there are richer men, plenty of them—some even who have made their own fortunes and have not been hatched out in a suffocating plethora of affluence like the larva of the Carnifex tumble-bug——"
"Scott!"
"And I!" he ended savagely. "Why, I'm not even pre-eminent as far as my position in the social puddle is concerned; there are sets that wouldn't endure me; there's at least one club into which I couldn't possibly wriggle; there are drawing-rooms where I wouldn't be tolerated, because I've nothing on earth to recommend me or to distinguish me from Algernon FitzNoodle and Montmorency de Sansgallette except an inflated income! What have I to offer anybody worth while for entertaining me? What have I to offer you, Kathleen, in exchange for yourself?"
He was becoming boyishly dramatic with sweeping gestures which amazed her; but she was conscious that it was all sincere and very real to him.
"Scott, dear," she began sweetly, uncertain how to take it all; "kindness, loyalty, and decent breeding are all that a woman cares for in a man——"
"You are entitled to more; you are entitled to a man of distinction, of attainment, of achievement——"
"Few women ask for that, Scott; few care for it; fewer still understand it——"
"You would. I've got a cheek to ask you to marry me—me!—before I wear any tag to identify me except the dollar mark——"
"Oh, hush, Scott! You are talking utter nonsense; don't you know it?"
He made a large and rather grandiose gesture:
"Around me lies opportunity, Kathleen—every stone; every brook——"
The mischievous laughter of his listener checked him. She said: "I'm sorry; only it made me think of
'Sermons in stones,Books in the running brooks,'
and the indignant gentleman who said: 'What damn nonsense! It's "sermons inbooks,stonesin the running brooks!"' Do go on, Scott, dear, I don't mean to be frivolous; it is fine of you to wish for fame——"
"It isn't fame alone, although I wouldn't mind it if I deserved it. It's that I want to do just one thing that amounts to something. I wish you'd give me an idea, Kathleen, something useful in—say in entomology."
Together they walked back to the terrace. Duane had gone; Geraldine sat sideways on the parapet, her brown eyes fixed on the road along which her lover had departed.
"Geraldine," said Kathleen, who very seldom relapsed into the vernacular, "this brother of yours desires to perform some startling stunt in entomology and be awarded Carnegie medals."
"That's about it," said Scott, undaunted. "Some wise guy put it all over the Boll-weevil, and saved a few billions for the cotton growers; another gentleman full of scientific thinks studied out the San José scale; others have got in good licks at mosquitoes and house-flies. I'd like to tackle something of that sort."
"Rose-beetles," said his sister briefly. In her voice was a suspicion of tears, and she kept her head turned from them.
"Nobody could ever get rid of Rose-beetles," said Kathleen. "But itwouldbe exciting, wouldn't it, Scott? Think of saving our roses and peonies and irises every year!"
"Iamthinking of it," said Scott gravely.
A few moments later he disappeared around the corner of the house, returning presently, pockets bulging with bottles and boxes, a field-microscope in one hand, and several volumes on Coleoptera in the other.
"They're gone," he said without further explanation.
"Who are gone?" inquired Kathleen.
"The Rose-beetles. They deposit their eggs in the soil. The larvæ ought to be out by now. I'm going to begin this very minute, Kathleen." And he descended the terrace steps, entered the garden, and, seating himself under a rose-tree, spread out his paraphernalia and began a delicate and cautious burrowing process in the sun-dried soil.
"Fame is hidden under humble things," observed Geraldine with a resolute effort at lightness. "That excellent brother of mine may yet discover it in the garden dirt."
"Dirt breeds roses," said Kathleen. "Oh, look, dear, how earnest he is about it. What a boy he is, after all! So serious and intent, and so touchingly confident!"
Geraldine nodded listlessly, considering her brother's evolutions with his trowel and weeder where he lay flat on his stomach, absorbed in his investigations.
"Why does he get so grubby?" she said. "All his coat-pockets are permanently out of shape. The other day I was looking through them, at his request, to find one of my own handkerchiefs which he had taken, and oh, horrors! a caterpillar, forgotten, had spun a big cocoon in one of them!"
She shuddered, but in Kathleen's laughter there was a tremor of tenderness born of that shy pride which arises from possession. For it was now too late, if it had not always been too late, for any criticism of this boy of hers. Perfect he had always been, wondrous to her, as a child, for the glimpses of the man developing in him; perfect, wonderful, adorable now for the glimpses of the child which she caught so constantly through the man's character now forming day by day under her loyal eyes. Everything masculine in him she loved or pardoned proudly—even his egotism, his slapdash self-confidence, his bullying of her, his domination, his exacting demands. But this new humility—this sudden humble doubt that he might not be worthy of her, filled her heart with delicious laughter and a delight almost childish.
So she watched him from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet, youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her conscience, fair as the current of her stainless life.
And beside her, seated sideways, brown eyes brooding, sat a young girl, delicately lovely, already harassed, already perplexed, already bruised and wearied by her first skirmishes with life; not yet fully understanding what threatened, what lay before—alas! what lay behind her—even to the fifth generation.
They were to motor to Lenox after luncheon. Before that—and leaving Scott absorbed in his grubbing, and Kathleen absorbed in watching him—Geraldine wandered back into the library and took down a book—a book which had both beguiled and horrified the solitude of her self-imprisonment. It was called "Simpson on Heredity."
There were some very hideous illustrated pages in that book; she turned to them with a fearful fascination which had never left her since she first read them. They dealt with the transmission of certain tendencies through successive generations.
That the volume was an old one and amusingly out of date she did not realise, as her brown eyes widened over terrifying paragraphs and the soft tendrils of her glossy hair almost bristled.
She had asked Kathleen about it, and Kathleen had asked Dr. Bailey, who became very irritated and told Geraldine that anybody except a physician who ever read medical works was a fool. Desperation gave her courage to ask him one more question; his well-meant reply silenced her. But she had the book under her pillow. It is better to answer such questions when the young ask them.
And over it all she pondered and pored, and used a dictionary and shuddered, frightening herself into a morbid condition until, desperately scared, she even thought of going to Duane about it; but could not find the hardihood to do it or the vocabulary necessary.
Now Duane was gone; and the book lay there between her knees, all its technical vagueness menacing her with unknown terrors; and she felt that she could endure it alone no longer.
She wrote him:
"You have not been gone an hour, and already I need you. I wish to ask you about something that is troubling me; I've asked Kathleen and she doesn't know; and Dr. Bailey was horrid to me, and I tried to find out from Scott whether he knew, but he wasn't much interested. So, Duane, who else is there for me to ask except you? And I don't exactly know whether I may speak about such matters to you, but I'm rather frightened, and densely ignorant."It is this, dear; in a medical book which I read, it says that hereditary taints are transmissible; that sometimes they may skip the second generation but only to appear surely in the third. But it also says that the taint is very likely to appear ineverygeneration."Duane, is thistrue? It has worried me sick since I read it. Because, my darling, if it is so, is it not another reason for our not marrying?"Do you understand? I can and will eradicate what is threateningme, but if I marry you—youdounderstand, don't you? Isn't it all right for me to ask you whether, if we should have children, this thing would menace them? Oh, Duane—Duane! Have I any right to marry? Children come—God knows how, for nobody ever told me exactly, and I'm a fool about such things—but I summoned up courage to ask Dr. Bailey if there was any way to tell before I married whether I would have any, and he said I would if I had any notion of my duty and any pretence to self-respect. And I don't know what he means and I'm bewildered and miserable and afraid to marry you even when I myself become perfectly well. And that is what worries me, Duane, and I have nobody in the world to ask about it except you. Could you please tell me how I might learn what I ought to know concerning these things without betraying my own vital interest in them to whomever I ask? You see, Kathleen is as innocent as I."Please tell me all you can, Duane, for I am most unhappy.""The house is very still and full of sunlight and cut flowers. Scott is meditating great deeds, lying flat in the dirt. Kathleen sits watching him from the parapet. And I am here in the library, with that ghastly book at my elbow, pouring out all my doubts and fears to the only man in the world—whom God bless and protect wherever he may be—Oh, Duane, Duane, how I love you!"
"You have not been gone an hour, and already I need you. I wish to ask you about something that is troubling me; I've asked Kathleen and she doesn't know; and Dr. Bailey was horrid to me, and I tried to find out from Scott whether he knew, but he wasn't much interested. So, Duane, who else is there for me to ask except you? And I don't exactly know whether I may speak about such matters to you, but I'm rather frightened, and densely ignorant.
"It is this, dear; in a medical book which I read, it says that hereditary taints are transmissible; that sometimes they may skip the second generation but only to appear surely in the third. But it also says that the taint is very likely to appear ineverygeneration.
"Duane, is thistrue? It has worried me sick since I read it. Because, my darling, if it is so, is it not another reason for our not marrying?
"Do you understand? I can and will eradicate what is threateningme, but if I marry you—youdounderstand, don't you? Isn't it all right for me to ask you whether, if we should have children, this thing would menace them? Oh, Duane—Duane! Have I any right to marry? Children come—God knows how, for nobody ever told me exactly, and I'm a fool about such things—but I summoned up courage to ask Dr. Bailey if there was any way to tell before I married whether I would have any, and he said I would if I had any notion of my duty and any pretence to self-respect. And I don't know what he means and I'm bewildered and miserable and afraid to marry you even when I myself become perfectly well. And that is what worries me, Duane, and I have nobody in the world to ask about it except you. Could you please tell me how I might learn what I ought to know concerning these things without betraying my own vital interest in them to whomever I ask? You see, Kathleen is as innocent as I.
"Please tell me all you can, Duane, for I am most unhappy."
"The house is very still and full of sunlight and cut flowers. Scott is meditating great deeds, lying flat in the dirt. Kathleen sits watching him from the parapet. And I am here in the library, with that ghastly book at my elbow, pouring out all my doubts and fears to the only man in the world—whom God bless and protect wherever he may be—Oh, Duane, Duane, how I love you!"
She hurriedly directed and sealed the letter and placed it in the box for outgoing mail; then, unquiet and apprehensive regarding what she had ventured to write, she began a restless tour of the house, upstairs and down, wandering aimlessly through sunny corridors, opening doors for a brief survey of chambers in which only the shadow-patterns of leaves moved on sunlit walls; still rooms tenanted only by the carefully dusted furniture which seemed to stand there watching attentively for another guest.
Duane had left his pipe in his bedroom. She was silly over it, even to the point of retiring into her room, shredding some cigarettes, filling the rather rank bowl, and trying her best to smoke it. But such devotion was beyond her physical powers; she rinsed her mouth, furious at being defeated in her pious intentions, and, making an attractive parcel of the pipe, seized the occasion to write him another letter.
"There is in my heart," she wrote, "no room for anything except you; no desire except for you; no hope, no interest that is not yours. You praise my beauty; you endow me with what you might wish I really possessed; and oh, I really am so humble at your feet, if you only knew it! So dazed by your goodness to me, so grateful, so happy that you have chosen me (I just jumped up to look at myself in the mirror; Iampretty, Duane, I've a stunning colour just now and thereisa certain charm about me—even I can see it in what you call the upcurled corners of my mouth, and in my figure and hands)—and I am so happy that it is true—that you find me beautiful, that you care for my beauty.... It is so with a man, I believe; and a girl wishes to have him love her beauty, too."But, Duane, I don't think the average girl cares very much about that in a man. Of course you are exceedingly nice to look at, and I notice it sometimes, but not nearly as often as you notice what you think is externally attractive about me."In my heart, I don't believe it really matters much to a girl what a man looks like; anyway, it matters very little after she once knows him."Of course women do notice handsome men—or what we consider handsome—which is, I believe, not at all what men care for; because men usually seem to have a desire to kick the man whom women find good-looking. I know several men who feel that way about Jack Dysart. I think you do, for one."Poor Jack Dysart! To-day's papers are saying such horridly unpleasant things about the rich men with whom he was rather closely associated in business affairs several years ago. I read, but I do not entirely comprehend."The New York papers seem unusually gloomy this summer; nothing but predictions of hard times coming, and how many corporations the attorney-general is going to proceed against, and wicked people who loot metropolitan railways, and why the district-attorney doesn't do his duty—which you say he does—oh, dear; I expect that Scott and Kathleen and I will have to take in boarders this winter; but if nobody has any money, nobody can pay board, so everybody will be ruined and I don't very much care, for I could teach school, only who is to pay my salary if there's no money to pay it with? Oh, dear! what nonsense I am writing—only to keep on writing, because it seems to bring you a little nearer—my own—my Duane—my comrade—the same, same little boy who ran away from his nurse and came into our garden to fight my brother and—fall in love with his sister! Oh, Fate! Oh, Destiny! Oh, Duane Mallett!"Here is a curious phenomenon. Listen:"Away from you I have a woman's courage to tell you how I long for you, how my heart and my arms ache for you. But when I am with you I'm less of a woman and more of a girl—a girl not yet accustomed to some things—always guarded, always a little reticent, always instinctively recoiling from the contact I really like, always a little on the defensive against your lips, in spite of myself—against your arms—where, somehow, I cannot seem to stay long at a time—will not endure it—cannot, somehow."Yet, here, away from you, I so long for your embrace, and cannot imagine it too long, too close, too tender to satisfy my need of you."And this is my second letter to you within the hour—one hour after your departure."Oh, Duane, I do truly miss you so! I go about humming that air you found so quaint:"'Lisetto quittée la plaine,Moi perdi bonheur à moi—Yeux à moi semblent fontaineDepuis moi pas miré toi!'and there's a tear in every note of it, and I'm the most lonely girl on the face of the earth to-day."Geraldine Qui Pleure.""P.S.—Voici votre pipe, Monsieur!"
"There is in my heart," she wrote, "no room for anything except you; no desire except for you; no hope, no interest that is not yours. You praise my beauty; you endow me with what you might wish I really possessed; and oh, I really am so humble at your feet, if you only knew it! So dazed by your goodness to me, so grateful, so happy that you have chosen me (I just jumped up to look at myself in the mirror; Iampretty, Duane, I've a stunning colour just now and thereisa certain charm about me—even I can see it in what you call the upcurled corners of my mouth, and in my figure and hands)—and I am so happy that it is true—that you find me beautiful, that you care for my beauty.... It is so with a man, I believe; and a girl wishes to have him love her beauty, too.
"But, Duane, I don't think the average girl cares very much about that in a man. Of course you are exceedingly nice to look at, and I notice it sometimes, but not nearly as often as you notice what you think is externally attractive about me.
"In my heart, I don't believe it really matters much to a girl what a man looks like; anyway, it matters very little after she once knows him.
"Of course women do notice handsome men—or what we consider handsome—which is, I believe, not at all what men care for; because men usually seem to have a desire to kick the man whom women find good-looking. I know several men who feel that way about Jack Dysart. I think you do, for one.
"Poor Jack Dysart! To-day's papers are saying such horridly unpleasant things about the rich men with whom he was rather closely associated in business affairs several years ago. I read, but I do not entirely comprehend.
"The New York papers seem unusually gloomy this summer; nothing but predictions of hard times coming, and how many corporations the attorney-general is going to proceed against, and wicked people who loot metropolitan railways, and why the district-attorney doesn't do his duty—which you say he does—oh, dear; I expect that Scott and Kathleen and I will have to take in boarders this winter; but if nobody has any money, nobody can pay board, so everybody will be ruined and I don't very much care, for I could teach school, only who is to pay my salary if there's no money to pay it with? Oh, dear! what nonsense I am writing—only to keep on writing, because it seems to bring you a little nearer—my own—my Duane—my comrade—the same, same little boy who ran away from his nurse and came into our garden to fight my brother and—fall in love with his sister! Oh, Fate! Oh, Destiny! Oh, Duane Mallett!
"Here is a curious phenomenon. Listen:
"Away from you I have a woman's courage to tell you how I long for you, how my heart and my arms ache for you. But when I am with you I'm less of a woman and more of a girl—a girl not yet accustomed to some things—always guarded, always a little reticent, always instinctively recoiling from the contact I really like, always a little on the defensive against your lips, in spite of myself—against your arms—where, somehow, I cannot seem to stay long at a time—will not endure it—cannot, somehow.
"Yet, here, away from you, I so long for your embrace, and cannot imagine it too long, too close, too tender to satisfy my need of you.
"And this is my second letter to you within the hour—one hour after your departure.
"Oh, Duane, I do truly miss you so! I go about humming that air you found so quaint:
"'Lisetto quittée la plaine,Moi perdi bonheur à moi—Yeux à moi semblent fontaineDepuis moi pas miré toi!'
and there's a tear in every note of it, and I'm the most lonely girl on the face of the earth to-day.
"Geraldine Qui Pleure."
"P.S.—Voici votre pipe, Monsieur!"
August in town found an unusual number of New York men at the clubs, at the restaurants, at the summer theatres. Men who very seldom shoved their noses inside the metropolitan oven during the summer baking were now to be met everywhere and anywhere within the financial district and without. The sky-perched and magnificent down-town "clubs" were full of men who under normal circumstances would have remained at Newport, Lenox, Bar Harbor, or who at least would have spent the greater portion of the summer on their yachts or their Long Island estates.
And in every man's hand or pocket was a newspaper.
They were scarcely worth reading for mere pleasure, these New York newspapers; indeed, there was scarcely anything in them to read except a daily record of the steady decline in securities of every description; paragraphs noting the passing of dividends; columns setting forth minutely the opinions of very wealthy men concerning the business outlook; chronicles in detail of suits brought against railroads and against great industrial corporations; accounts of inquiries by State and by Federal authorities into combinations resulting in an alleged violation of various laws.
Here and there a failure of some bucket-branded broker was noted—the reports echoing like the first dropping shots along the firing line.
Even to the most casual and uninterested outsider it was evident that already the metropolis was under a tension; that the tension was increasing almost imperceptibly day by day; that there seemed to be no very clear idea as to the reason of it, only a confused apprehension, an apparently unreassuring fear of some grotesque danger ahead, which daily reading of the newspapers was not at all calculated to allay.
Of course there were precise reasons for impending trouble given and reiterated by those amateurs of finance and politics whose opinions are at the disposal of the newspaper-reading public.
Prolixity characterised these solemn utterances, packed full of cant phrases such as "undigested securities" and "the treacherous attack on the nation's integrity."
Two principal reasons were given for the local financial uneasiness; and the one made the other ridiculous—first, that the nation's Executive was mad as Nero and had deliberately begun a senseless holocaust involving the entire nation; the other that a "panic" was due, anyway. It resembled the logic of the White Queen of immortal memory, who began screaming before she pricked her finger in order to save herself any emotion after the pin had drawn blood.
Men knew in their hearts that there was no real reason for impending trouble; that this menace was an unreal thing, intangible, without substance—only a shadow cast by their own assininity.
Yet shadows can be made real property when authority so ordains. Because there was once a man with a donkey who met a stranger in the desert.
The stranger bargained for and bought the donkey; the late owner shoved the shekels into his ample pockets and sat down in the mule's shadow to escape the sun; and the new owner brought suit to recover the rent due him for the occupation of the shadow cast by his donkey.
There was also a mule which waited seven years to kick.
There are asses and mules and all sorts of shadows. The ordinance of authority can affect only the shadow; the substance is immutable.
Among other serious gentlemen of consideration and means who had been unaccustomed to haunt the metropolis in the dog days was Colonel Alexander Mallett, President of the Half Moon Trust Company, and incidentally Duane's father.
His town-house was still open, although his wife and daughter were in the country. To it, in the comparative cool of the August evenings, came figures familiar in financial circles; such men as Magnelius Grandcourt, father of Delancy; and Remsen Tappan, and James Cray.
Others came and went, men of whom Duane had read in the newspapers—very great men who dressed very simply, very powerful men who dressed elaborately; and some were young and red-faced with high living, and one was damp of hair and long-nosed, with eyes set a trifle too close together; and one fulfilled every external requisite for a "good fellow"; and another was very old, very white, with a nut-cracker jaw and faded eyes, blue as an unweaned pup's, and a cream-coloured wig curled glossily over waxen ears and a bloodless and furrowed neck.
All these were very great men; but they and Colonel Mallett journeyed at intervals into the presence of a greater man who inhabited, all alone, except for a crew of a hundred men, an enormous yacht, usually at anchor off the white masonry cliffs of the seething city.
All alone this very great man inhabited the huge white steamer; and they piped him fore and they piped him aft and they piped him over the side. Many a midnight star looked down at the glowing end of his black cigar; many a dawn shrilled with his boatswain's whistle. He was a very, very great man; none was greater in New York town.
It was said of him that he once killed a pompous statesman—by ridicule:
"I know whoyouare!" panted a ragged urchin, gazing up in awe as the famous statesman approached his waiting carriage.
"And who am I, my little man?"
"You are the great senator from New York."
"Yes—you are right.But"—and he solemnly pointed his gloved forefinger toward heaven—"but, remember, there is One even greater than I."
Duane had heard the absurd lampoon as a child, and one evening late in August, smoking his after-dinner cigar beside his father in the empty conservatory, he recalled the story, which had been one of his father's favorites.
But Colonel Mallett scarcely smiled, scarcely heard; and his son watched him furtively. The trim, elastic figure was less upright this summer; the close gray hair and cavalry mustache had turned white very rapidly since spring. For the first time, too, in all his life, Colonel Mallett wore spectacles; and the thin gold rims irritated his ears and the delicate bridge of his nose. Under his pleasant eyes the fine skin had darkened noticeably; thin new lines had sprung downward from the nostrils' clean-cut wings; but the most noticeable change was in his hands, which were no longer firm and fairly smooth, but were now the hands of an old man, restless if not tremulous, unsteady in handling the cigar which, unnoticed, had gone out.
They—father and son—had never been very intimate. An excellent understanding had always existed between them with nothing deeper in it than a natural affection and an instinctive respect for each other's privacy.
This respect now oppressed Duane because long habit, and the understood pact, seemed to bar him from a sympathy and a practical affection which, for the first time, it seemed to him his father might care for.
That his father was worried was plain enough; but how anxious and with how much reason, he had hesitated to ask, waiting for some voluntary admission, or at least some opening, which the older man never gave.
That night, however, he had tried an opening for himself, offering the old stock story which had always, heretofore, amused his father. And there had been no response.
In silence he thought the matter over; his sympathy was always quick; it hurt him to remain aloof when there might be a chance that he could help a little.
"It may amuse you," he said carelessly, "to know how much I've made since I came back from Paris."
The elder man looked up preoccupied. His son went on:
"What you set aside for me brings me ten thousand a year, you know. So far I haven't touched it. Isn't that pretty good for a start?"
Colonel Mallett sat up straighter with a glimmer of interest in his eyes.
Duane went on, checking off on his fingers:
"I got fifteen hundred for Mrs. Varick's portrait, the same for Mrs. James Cray's, a thousand each for portraits of Carl and Friedrich Gumble; that makes five thousand. Then I had three thousand for the music-room I did for Mrs. Ellis; and Dinklespiel Brothers, who handle my pictures, have sold every one I sent; which gives me twelve thousand so far."
"I am perfectly astonished," murmured his father.
Duane laughed. "Oh, I know very well that sheer merit had nothing much to do with it. The people who gave me orders are all your friends. They did it as they might have sent in wedding presents; I am your son; I come back from Paris; it's up to them to do something. They've done it—those who ever will, I expect—and from now on it will be different."
"They've given you a start," said his father.
"They certainly have done that. Many a brilliant young fellow, with more ability than I, eats out his heart unrecognised, sterilised for lack of what came to me because of your influence."
"It is well to look at it in that way for the present," said his father. He sat silent for a while, staring through the dusk at the lighted windows of houses in the rear. Then:
"I have meant to say, Duane, that I—we"—he found a little difficulty in choosing his words—"that the Trust Company's officers feel that, for the present, it is best for them to reconsider their offer that you should undertake the mural decoration of the new building."
"Oh," said Duane, "I'm sorry!—but it's all right, father."
"I told them you'd take it without offence. I told them that I'd tell you the reason we do not feel quite ready to incur, at this moment, any additional expenses."
"Everybody is economising," said Duane cheerfully, "so I understand. No doubt—later——"
"No doubt," said his father gravely.
The son's attitude was careless, untroubled; he dropped one long leg over the other knee, and idly examining his cigar, cast one swift level look at the older man:
"Father?"
"Yes, my son."
"I—it just occurred to me that if you happen to have any temporary use for what you very generously set aside for me, don't stand on ceremony."
There ensued a long silence. It was his bedtime when Colonel Mallett stirred in his holland-covered armchair and stood up.
"Thank you, my son," he said simply; they shook hands and separated; the father to sleep, if he could; the son to go out into the summer night, walk to his nearest club, and write his daily letter to the woman he loved:
"Dear, it is not at all bad in town—not that murderous, humid heat that you think I'm up against; and you must stop reproaching yourself for enjoying the delicious breezes in the Adirondacks. Women don't know what a jolly time men have in town. Follows the chronical of this August day:"I had your letter; that is breeze enough for me; it was all full of blue sky and big white clouds and the scent of Adirondack pines. Isn't it jolly for you and Kathleen to be at the Varicks' camp! And what a jolly crowd you've run into."I note what you say about your return to the Berkshires, and that you expect to be at Berkshire Pass Inn with the motor on Monday. Give my love to Naïda; I know you three and young Montross will have a bully tour through the hill country."I also note your red-pencil cross at the top of the page—which always gives me, as soon as I open a letter of yours, the assurance that all is still well with you and that victory still remains with you. Thank God! Stand steady, little girl, for the shadows are flying and the dawn is ours."After your letter, breakfast with father—a rather silent one. Then he went down-town in his car and I walked to the studio. It's one of those stable-like studios which decorate the cross-streets in the 50's, but big enough to work in."A rather bothersome bit of news: the Trust Company reconsiders its commission; and I have three lunettes and three big mural panels practically completed. For a while I'll admit I had the blues, but, after all, some day the Trust Company is likely to take up the thing again and give me the commission. Anyway, I've had a corking time doing the things, and lots of valuable practice in handling a big job and covering large surfaces; and the problem has been most exciting and interesting because, you see, I've had to solve it, taking into consideration the architecture and certain fixed keys and standards, such as the local colour and texture of the marble and the limitations of the light area. Don't turn up your pretty nose; it's all very interesting."I didn't bother about luncheon; and about five I went to the club, rather tired in my spinal column and arm-weary."Nobody was there whom you know except Delancy Grandcourt and Dysart. The latter certainly looks very haggard. I do not like him personally, as you know, but the man looks ill and old and the papers are becoming bolder in what they hint at concerning him and the operations he was, and is still supposed to be, connected with; and it is deplorable to see such a physical change in any human being, guilty or innocent. I do not like to see pain; I never did. For Dysart I have no use at all, but he is suffering, and it is difficult to contemplate any suffering unmoved."There was a letter at the club for me from Scott. He says he's plugging away at the Rose-beetle's life history as a hors-d'oeuvre before tackling the appetising problem of his total extermination. Dear old Scott! I never thought that the boy I fought in your garden would turn into a spectacled savant. Or that his sister would prove to be the only inspiration and faith and hope that life holds for me!"I talked to Delancy. Heisa good young man, as you've always insisted. I know one thing; he's high-minded and gentle. Dysart has a manner of treating him which is most offensive, but it only reflects discredit on Dysart."Delancy told me that Rosalie is hostess in her own cottage this month and has asked him up. I heard him speaking rather diffidently to Dysart about it, and Dysart replied that he didn't 'give a damn who went to the house,' as he wasn't going."So much for gossip; now a fact or two: my father is plainly worried over the business outlook; and he's quite alone in the house; and that is why I don't go back to Roya-Neh just now and join your brother. I could do plenty of work there. Scott writes that the new studio is in good shape for me. What a generous girl you are! Be certain that at the very first opportunity I will go and occupy it and paint, no doubt, several exceedingly remarkable pictures in it which will sell for enormous prices and enable us to keep a maid-of-all-work when we begin our ménage!"Father has retired—poor old governor—it tears me all to pieces to see him so silent and listless. I am here at the club writing this before I go home to bed. Now I am going. Good-night, my beloved."Duane.""P.S.—An honour, or the chance of it, has suddenly confronted me, surprising me so much that I don't really dare to believe that it can possibly happen to me—at least not for years. It is this: I met Guy Wilton the other day; you don't know him, but he is a most charming and cultivated man, an engineer. I lunched with him at the Pyramid—that bully old club into which nothing on earth can take a man who has not distinguished himself in his profession. It is composed of professional and business men, the law, the army, navy, diplomatic and consular, the arts and sciences, and usually the chief executive of the nation."During luncheon Wilton said: 'You ought to be in here. You are the proper timber.'"I was astounded and told him so."He said: 'By the way, the president of the Academy of Design is very much impressed with some work of yours he has seen. I've heard him, and other artists, also, discussing some pictures of yours which were exhibited in a Fifth Avenue gallery.'"Well, you know, Geraldine, the breath was getting scarcer in my lungs every minute and I hadn't a word to say. And do you know what that trump of a mining engineer did? He took me about after luncheon and I met a lot of very corking old ducks and some very eminent and delightful younger ducks, and everybody was terribly nice, and the president of the Academy, who is startlingly young and amiable, said that Guy Wilton had spoken about me, and that it was customary that when anybody was proposed for membership, a man of his own profession should do it."And I looked over the club list and saw Billy Van Siclen's name, and now what do you think! Billy has proposed me, Austin, the marine painter, has seconded me, and no end of men have written in my behalf—professors, army men, navy men, business friends of father's, architects, writers—and I'm terribly excited over it, although my excitement has plenty of time to cool because it's a fearfully conservative club and a man has to wait years, anyway."This is the very great honour, dear, for it is one even to be proposed for the Pyramid. I know you will be happy over it."D."
"Dear, it is not at all bad in town—not that murderous, humid heat that you think I'm up against; and you must stop reproaching yourself for enjoying the delicious breezes in the Adirondacks. Women don't know what a jolly time men have in town. Follows the chronical of this August day:
"I had your letter; that is breeze enough for me; it was all full of blue sky and big white clouds and the scent of Adirondack pines. Isn't it jolly for you and Kathleen to be at the Varicks' camp! And what a jolly crowd you've run into.
"I note what you say about your return to the Berkshires, and that you expect to be at Berkshire Pass Inn with the motor on Monday. Give my love to Naïda; I know you three and young Montross will have a bully tour through the hill country.
"I also note your red-pencil cross at the top of the page—which always gives me, as soon as I open a letter of yours, the assurance that all is still well with you and that victory still remains with you. Thank God! Stand steady, little girl, for the shadows are flying and the dawn is ours.
"After your letter, breakfast with father—a rather silent one. Then he went down-town in his car and I walked to the studio. It's one of those stable-like studios which decorate the cross-streets in the 50's, but big enough to work in.
"A rather bothersome bit of news: the Trust Company reconsiders its commission; and I have three lunettes and three big mural panels practically completed. For a while I'll admit I had the blues, but, after all, some day the Trust Company is likely to take up the thing again and give me the commission. Anyway, I've had a corking time doing the things, and lots of valuable practice in handling a big job and covering large surfaces; and the problem has been most exciting and interesting because, you see, I've had to solve it, taking into consideration the architecture and certain fixed keys and standards, such as the local colour and texture of the marble and the limitations of the light area. Don't turn up your pretty nose; it's all very interesting.
"I didn't bother about luncheon; and about five I went to the club, rather tired in my spinal column and arm-weary.
"Nobody was there whom you know except Delancy Grandcourt and Dysart. The latter certainly looks very haggard. I do not like him personally, as you know, but the man looks ill and old and the papers are becoming bolder in what they hint at concerning him and the operations he was, and is still supposed to be, connected with; and it is deplorable to see such a physical change in any human being, guilty or innocent. I do not like to see pain; I never did. For Dysart I have no use at all, but he is suffering, and it is difficult to contemplate any suffering unmoved.
"There was a letter at the club for me from Scott. He says he's plugging away at the Rose-beetle's life history as a hors-d'oeuvre before tackling the appetising problem of his total extermination. Dear old Scott! I never thought that the boy I fought in your garden would turn into a spectacled savant. Or that his sister would prove to be the only inspiration and faith and hope that life holds for me!
"I talked to Delancy. Heisa good young man, as you've always insisted. I know one thing; he's high-minded and gentle. Dysart has a manner of treating him which is most offensive, but it only reflects discredit on Dysart.
"Delancy told me that Rosalie is hostess in her own cottage this month and has asked him up. I heard him speaking rather diffidently to Dysart about it, and Dysart replied that he didn't 'give a damn who went to the house,' as he wasn't going.
"So much for gossip; now a fact or two: my father is plainly worried over the business outlook; and he's quite alone in the house; and that is why I don't go back to Roya-Neh just now and join your brother. I could do plenty of work there. Scott writes that the new studio is in good shape for me. What a generous girl you are! Be certain that at the very first opportunity I will go and occupy it and paint, no doubt, several exceedingly remarkable pictures in it which will sell for enormous prices and enable us to keep a maid-of-all-work when we begin our ménage!
"Father has retired—poor old governor—it tears me all to pieces to see him so silent and listless. I am here at the club writing this before I go home to bed. Now I am going. Good-night, my beloved.
"Duane."
"P.S.—An honour, or the chance of it, has suddenly confronted me, surprising me so much that I don't really dare to believe that it can possibly happen to me—at least not for years. It is this: I met Guy Wilton the other day; you don't know him, but he is a most charming and cultivated man, an engineer. I lunched with him at the Pyramid—that bully old club into which nothing on earth can take a man who has not distinguished himself in his profession. It is composed of professional and business men, the law, the army, navy, diplomatic and consular, the arts and sciences, and usually the chief executive of the nation.
"During luncheon Wilton said: 'You ought to be in here. You are the proper timber.'
"I was astounded and told him so.
"He said: 'By the way, the president of the Academy of Design is very much impressed with some work of yours he has seen. I've heard him, and other artists, also, discussing some pictures of yours which were exhibited in a Fifth Avenue gallery.'
"Well, you know, Geraldine, the breath was getting scarcer in my lungs every minute and I hadn't a word to say. And do you know what that trump of a mining engineer did? He took me about after luncheon and I met a lot of very corking old ducks and some very eminent and delightful younger ducks, and everybody was terribly nice, and the president of the Academy, who is startlingly young and amiable, said that Guy Wilton had spoken about me, and that it was customary that when anybody was proposed for membership, a man of his own profession should do it.
"And I looked over the club list and saw Billy Van Siclen's name, and now what do you think! Billy has proposed me, Austin, the marine painter, has seconded me, and no end of men have written in my behalf—professors, army men, navy men, business friends of father's, architects, writers—and I'm terribly excited over it, although my excitement has plenty of time to cool because it's a fearfully conservative club and a man has to wait years, anyway.
"This is the very great honour, dear, for it is one even to be proposed for the Pyramid. I know you will be happy over it.
"D."
The weather became hotter toward the beginning of September; his studio was almost unendurable, nor was the house very much better.
To eat was an effort; to sleep a martyrdom. Night after night he rose from his hot pillows to stand and listen outside his father's door; but the old endure heat better than the young, and very often his father was asleep in the stifling darkness which made sleep for him impossible.
The usual New York thunder-storms rolled up over Staten Island, covered the southwest with inky gloom, veined the horizon with lightning, then burst in spectacular fury over the panting city, drenched it to its steel foundations, and passed on rumbling up the Hudson, leaving scarcely any relief behind it.
In one of these sudden thunder-storms he took refuge in a rather modest and retired restaurant just off Fifth Avenue; and it being the luncheon hour he made a convenience of necessity and looked about for a table, and discovered Rosalie Dysart and Delancy Grandcourt en tête-à-tête over their peach and grapefruit salad.
There was no reason why they should not have been there; no reason why he should have hesitated to speak to them. But he did hesitate—in fact, was retiring by the way he came, when Rosalie glanced around with that instinct which divines a familiar presence, gave him a startled look, coloured promptly to her temples, and recovered her equanimity with a smile and a sign for him to join them. So he shook hands, but remained standing.
"We ran into town in the racer this morning," she explained. "Delancy had something on down-town and I wanted to look over some cross-saddles they made for me at Thompson's. Do be amiable and help us eat our salad. What a ghastly place town is in September! It's bad enough in the country this year; all the men wear long faces and mutter dreadful prophecies. Can you tell me, Duane, what all this doleful talk is about?"
"It's about something harder to digest than this salad. The public stomach is ostrichlike, but it can't stand the water-cure. Which is all Arabic to you, Rosalie, and I don't mean to be impertinent, only the truth is I don't know why people are losing confidence in the financial stability of the country, but they apparently are."
"There's a devilish row on down-town," observed Delancy, blinking, as an unusually heavy clap of thunder rattled the dishes.
"What kind of a row?" asked Duane.
"Greensleeve & Co. have failed, with liabilities of a million and microscopical assets."
Rosalie raised her eyebrows; Greensleeve & Co. were once brokers for her husband if she remembered correctly. Duane had heard of them but was only vaguely impressed.
"Is that rather a bad thing?" he inquired.
"Well—I don't know. It made a noise louder than that thunder. Three banks fell down in Brooklyn, too."
"What banks?"
Delancy named them; it sounded serious, but neither Duane nor Rosalie were any wiser.
"The Wolverine Mercantile Loan and Trust Company closed its doors, also," observed Delancy, dropping the tips of his long, highly coloured fingers into his finger-bowl as though to wash away all personal responsibility for these financial flip-flaps.
Rosalie laughed: "This is pleasant information for a rainy day," she said. "Duane, have you heard from Geraldine?"
"Yes, to-day," he said innocently; "she is leaving Lenox this morning for Roya-Neh. I hear that there is to be some shooting there Christmas week. Scott writes that the boar and deer are increasing very fast and must be kept down. You and Delancy are on the list, I believe."
Rosalie nodded; Delancy said: "Miss Seagrave has been good enough to ask the family. Yours is booked, too, I fancy."
"Yes, if my father only feels up to it. Christmas at Roya-Neh ought to be a jolly affair."
"Christmas anywhere away from New York ought to be a relief," observed young Grandcourt drily.
They laughed without much spirit. Coffee was served, cigarettes lighted. Presently Grandcourt sent a page to find out if the car had returned from the garage where Rosalie had sent it for a minor repair.
The car was ready, it appeared; Rosalie retired to readjust her hair and veil; the two men standing glanced at one another:
"I suppose you know," said Delancy, reddening with embarrassment, "that Mr. and Mrs. Dysart have separated."
"I heard so yesterday," said Duane coolly.
The other grew redder: "I heard it from Mrs. Dysart about half an hour ago." He hesitated, then frankly awkward: "I say, Mallett, I'm a sort of an ass about these things. Is there any impropriety in my going about with Mrs. Dysart—under the circumstances?"
"Why—no!" said Duane. "Rosalie has to go about with people, I suppose. Only—perhaps it's fairer to her if you don't do it too often—I mean it's better for her that any one man should not appear to pay her noticeable attention. You know what mischief can get into print. What's taken below stairs is often swiped and stealthily perused above stairs."
"I suppose so. I don't read it myself, but it makes game of my mother and she finds a furious consolation in taking it to my father and planning a suit for damages once a week. You're right; most people are afraid of it. Do you think it's all right for me to motor back with Mrs. Dysart?"
"Areyouafraid?" asked Duane, smiling.
"Only on her account," said Grandcourt, so simply that a warm feeling rose in Duane's heart for this big, ungainly, vividly coloured young fellow whose direct and honest gaze always refreshed people even when they laughed at him.