[image]"I'm coming back, Wah-na-gi, dear; I'm coming back."Bill stood by with the horse. Hal leaped into the saddle."Explain it to the boys," he said to McCloud simply. Once more the girl went to him as if she would drag him from the saddle. He leaned down and kissed her and whispered "I'm coming back." Then he put spurs to his horse, and was off.No one who has not lived on a ranch or in the wilderness apart can ever know what it is—the solemn aching void left by the one who goes away. Hal turned as he reached the hill before descending into the Bad Lands and waved his sombrero to them. Wah-na-gi was standing on the rock, Nat-u-ritch's gravestone, to get the last glimpse of him. Bill and McCloud were standing below. She stood there looking, looking, long after he had disappeared. They had to lift her gently down. Still she stood looking, looking."He's gone, Wah-na-gi, child," said John McCloud gently."Will he come back?" she said.CHAPTER XVIIIt is a trying moment when we face the wrong answer and realize that we must go back step by step to find the mistake. There is a fascination about the unknown. The future beckons.Marching always onward, our courage each day finds an uplift in accomplishment. We are farther ahead if only a few inches. Incredible hardships and difficulties are put to flight.Retracing one's steps, going back, requires more bravery than to go on. Initial enthusiasm looks like a grinning skeleton. It is not the same army in retreat. Doubt, despair hang on its flanks, worry and harass it all the bleeding way.The moment Hal had decided to go back to England the necessary intermediate processes seemed wholly inadequate. He almost killed a good horse to reach Carbon on the D.&R.G. Railroad, only to find that he had eight hours to wait in that unmitigated by-product of civilization. They were eight heavy, heavy hours. He walked about the station, he gazed at the sage-brush and the water-tank, he went in and out of the "hotel," he attempted unsuccessfully to eat its so-called food, he tried to read its magazines six months old. The only possible object of interest was a very painful object. In the shade of one corner of the veranda on a stretcher lay a coal miner who had been hurt in the company's mines. His breast was heaving as if the life within him was struggling to get out. He was being removed to the company's hospital at Pedro. He had to wait for the train too, and it looked as if his impatient life refused to wait.The few people in the desolate spot were fortunately busy or they would have gone mad. So no one paid any attention to the sufferer."Some people are unlucky, born that way," explained the young company doctor who had the dying man in charge. "Larry's just out of the hospital, and now he's goin' back—to stay this time, I guess."It seemed to Hal as if he, too, were carrying is maimed life back on a stretcher, but he resisted the suggestion that it was to stay.At last the train, late as usual, arrived. It was a relief at first. At least it was in motion, and he was going, even if it was backward. He was so preoccupied that it was some time before he was conscious of his fellow-passengers; then he felt rather than saw that he was being elaborately searched, optically swept, marked and staked out; coaxed, petted, and allured. He looked across to see a formidable person of the female sex who was half-pretending to read a book under the solicitous title "Stolen Kisses." This person seemed the last word in modern fixtures. An elaborate baby face peered out from under an elaborate hat of huge dimensions, ornamented with an elaborate mixture of flowers, fruit, and fur. Her face had had elaborate treatment. She wore an elaborate gown with a wholly unnecessary wrap. She had on patent-leather shoes with white cloth tops and exaggerated French heels, and occasionally she unconsciously treated the patient observer to a glimpse of an elaborate silk stocking. Except for the hat, it looked to be a case of tight-fit. Indeed, she seemed a physical and moral protest against restrictions."One of the products of John McCloud's 'glorious civilization,'" commented Hal to himself as he got up and retreated to his own car. From which it may be observed that the young man was not in a mood to be altogether fair to civilization or John McCloud. He sat down at the window but he did not see the telegraph poles flying past or the varying monotony of the landscape rushing by. Each revolution of the wheels was taking him farther and farther from Red Butte Ranch. What were they doing there now—Wah-na-gi, John McCloud, Big Bill, and the others? She was no longer at the Agency and the victim of the deviltry of David Ladd and Appah. She was among friends. That was some consolation, much consolation. And the time would pass; then he would be going the other way, going back to pick up his life where he had now dropped it. He wondered at what time of day he would arrive, whether he should notify them or surprise them. Yes, the time would pass. London wouldn't keep him long. Edith would be glad to release him. He felt absolutely confident of that, and yet there was a shadow over all his thoughts. He had a curious unreasonable foreboding of ill. What could happen? Then he became aware that some one was speaking to him. Would the gentleman care to make up a bridge party?The invitation came to him from one of his fellow-travellers and it seemed a refuge from his thoughts, so Hal was glad to play. It would force him to think of other things. He played and lost quite a tidy sum of money before it came to him that he was being exploited by unfair means.Having virtuously resolved to do what was right and much against his will, he had a feeling that the way ought to be made smooth and easy. Civilization had never been fair to him, and his return to it was evidently not to be strewn with flowers. He began to grow morose.He found on picking up a newspaper that he would have two days in New York before his ship sailed, and he determined to spend those days in Washington. He had Ladd on the run. He must see to it that he wasn't allowed to stop short of losing his official head. He had offered to go to Washington at any time to substantiate his charges, and now Ladd was to face an investigation. The papers he had in his possession would go far to establish the agent's connection with the Trust and other papers he possessed would convict him of malfeasance in office. These papers were high explosives and had to be handled with the greatest care, for they involved not only Ladd but officials high in Government circles, and some leaders in Congress and in both of the political parties.Hal's train arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York at night. He took a cab and ordered the driver to drive to the Hotel Astor. The direct road to the hotel was of course through Forty-second street, which was obviously slow and difficult of negotiation, and the situation seemed to offer an inducement to go a roundabout way with the amiable intention of boosting the fare. It was a trick with which the proposed victim was familiar, and he resolved that while consenting to the extra ride he would resist any effort to collect an extra fare. It was election night, and as soon as the cab hit Broadway it was caught in a whirlpool of humanity. It could neither go on nor go back.The great city seemed to have resolved itself into a vast lunatic asylum and to have emptied all the patients into the streets. The incoherent maniacs seemed to be enjoying themselves and to be on the whole good-natured. In its gentlest moments New York is a noisy place, but to the ordinary din of traffic, the sag and smash of trucks, the rush and roar of the elevated on its iron bed was added an indescribable cacophony that was fiendish. Election night with its liberty and license—Hooligan's holiday! It seemed to Hal that he had never seen so many unpleasant faces in such a short distance or in so short a time. The sweat-shops seemed to have emptied into the streets, and the Tenderloin, and the submerged wreckage of the Bowery. They were mauling each other, jostling, joking, babbling, hurrahing, hardly knowing for whom or what, blowing fierce blasts on tin horns, ringing clusters of cow-bells, pulling fantastic shrieks out of motor sirens, whirring gigantic rattles—all struggling to see who could make the biggest noise. Women seemed more elated with the spirit of the occasion than men, and they evoked the attentions of strangers without the ceremony of an introduction. The interchange of pleasantries was sometimes marked by freedom and abandon. To Hal just from a country where it was possible to be for days and weeks without the sight of a human being, this seething, writhing mass of humanity, rubbing up against each other, jostling, pulling at each other, handling each other, bawling into each other's faces, was supremely obnoxious. His cab caught in the slow-moving swirl was a fine temptation to horse-play. As he leaned out of one window to try to understand the unusual tumult a vivacious young woman leaned in at the other window and blew a megaphonic tin horn directly into his ear. It seemed as if it would rip the drum of the ear. A greasy-faced urchin blew an expanding and suggestive-looking toy into his face. A buxom Amazon leaned in, gave his necktie a jerk, and screamed through her nose: "Why, sweetheart! I didn't know you was back!"Other enthusiasts threw confetti over him.This was civilization's welcome to him! He tried to take it good-naturedly but upon his face was a fixed look of disgust.The cab got ahead a few feet at a time, then stopped in another block, and he went through the felicitations of these joyous citizens all over again. To his immense relief they at last reached the hotel. Here at last was a haven of refuge. How much was it, he inquired of the cabbie."Ten dollars!"Hal smiled incredulously. He invited the jehu to guess again, to think it over. That worthy reminded him that it was election night, which was put forward as an argument that was in its nature unassailable. Hal patiently explained that he didn't see why he personally should pay five or six times the price because some one had been elected governor of a State which apparently stood in sore need of government. He reminded the obstinate and aggressive person that it was not over half a mile from the station to the hotel and one dollar was ample—two extravagant. He offered to compromise on two. This was received with profuse profanity of a highly inflammable character. In the interstices between expletives were interjected various allusions to the hours it had taken to go the half-mile, to the fact that the cab was scratched, that the horse's life had been endangered, and other more or less irrelevant matters. Hal thought he saw the cab-person signal to a police-person standing a little behind him. Finally the gathering waters of affliction broke and poured forth in righteous wrath. Hal stated with picturesque additions that the man was a crook and a thief.The burly brute tried to strike the young man with the butt end of his loaded whip. Hal avoided the blow and caught the man square on the jaw, and he went down for the count.That was all Hal knew until he came back to consciousness in a police cell. It was a very painful consciousness, associated with bandages, a head bursting with pain, and most unpleasant surroundings. Then little by little he came to a vague realization of what had happened. He was practically a stranger in New York. To whom could he turn? He was a British subject. Perhaps he could communicate with the representatives of His Majesty's Government.In addition to having been very thoroughly beaten, he found that he had been very thoroughly robbed. It was therefore with some difficulty that he could persuade his jailer to communicate with the British Consulate. The promise of a considerable reward finally held out inducements. Fortunately for the prisoner, the British Vice-Consul, Mr. Percy Holmes Tracy, proved to be an old friend of his father's family. Mr. Tracy supplied the prisoner with immediate funds and bestirred himself in his behalf. He found that Hal was accused of being drunk and disorderly, resisting arrest, and striking an officer. Fortunately for the prisoner, Mr. Tracy found that the hotel detective had been a witness of the brutal assault. The detective told the Vice-Consul that the policemen's use of the night-stick was totally unprovoked and unnecessary, that Hal did not resist arrest, that he had no chance to do so, that the policeman and cab-driver were pals who had been suspected of "working together" before, etc., etc. Hal expressed the enthusiastic desire to "make it warm" for all concerned, to have the policeman "broke," etc., etc. All of which Mr. Tracy admitted to be a perfectly natural and justifiable feeling, but he reminded the young man that it would be a somewhat tedious and exacting undertaking. How much time was he willing to devote to it? Could he stay and give it his undivided attention? No, he could not. In fact he was due to sail at once for London. Ah, well, that was another matter, was it not? Under the circumstances it was Mr. Holmes Tracy's advice to pocket his losses, swallow his pride, smother his indignation, and set it down to valuable experience. It would have been cheaper to have paid the ten dollars. These are some of the disadvantages of a highly organized society. And so it happened that the man who had, single-handed, arrested desperadoes in a country where men carry a gun and know how to use it, was made the foolish victim of the polished machinery of "a highly organized society."Mr. Holmes Tracy's advice was too obviously wise to be ignored. Confronted with the hotel detective the police-grafter was glad to withdraw his charge, with the understanding that no countercharges should be preferred against him. It wasn't altogether satisfying. Community life was a series of compromises; its law expediency.The two days Hal had intended to spend in Washington had been spent in prison. Perhaps he was safer there. He and civilization had never been friends. Hal welcomed his escape from New York. He was glad to get out of her canyons and pigeon-holes into the light and air. He was glad to reach the boat. When he left London and had turned his face to the West there had seemed a conspiracy to help him on. The winds and waves had romped about him in the sunshine, and hope and joy sang in his heart. He had not felt lonely, but a great content had brooded over him. Now the elements frowned on him. Head winds blew a hurricane the whole way over. Huge waves smote the ship and shook her angrily. Now she rode them down, now shouldered them aside, now cut her way through them, then bowed her head to the blow, shook herself free, throbbing, quivering in every joint, every muscle and nerve and sinew of her crying out against the incessant wear and tear of it. And over all brooded a sky of fleeing gray and black demons. Not a ray of sunlight crept through the clouds. The voyage was a nightmare. Wind and wave were screaming to him to go back; trying to force him back. He was ill and frightfully depressed. He was as eager almost to get out of the ship as if Love's welcome waited for him; as it seemed to do for all but him. But it was scarcely better on shore. He rode up to London in a cold drenching rain. The land looked old, tired, and discouraged. And London!—this Mecca of the exiled Briton. How many hearts turn to it in far off-India, China, Australia, Canada, and the waste places of the earth! How many eager eyes look back to it or look forward to it! What memories it holds for those who know in their souls they can never see it again, and what radiant visions it offers to those who sweat and save and suffer and perhaps lie and steal that one day they may come back to it, and bring it the tribute of their blood and treasure. London is compelling like some great sad song that tells of sorrows and wrongs. But it had no message and no welcome to this returning pilgrim. Before they reached the city they rode out of the rain and into one of those fogs which creeps out of its tombs and graveyards and buried horrors, and tries to materialize itself and once more take possession of the actual life of the city.Hal took a cab and they began to grope their way toward his father's town house. Even in his thought he didn't call it home. Oh for the land of sunshine, he thought, where one can look into the infinite sky, and beyond and beyond and still beyond. Here he felt as if he were knocking his head against it. One didn't breathe; one swallowed the air in chunks and gulps. They almost rode down a procession of the unemployed, an army with banners, but an army with none of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. Hal shrank back in his cab and shivered in his great-coat. Their banners were dirty, but it was evident that each soldier of despair had made some little effort with bad success to make as decent an appearance in the public eye as possible. They were a sad lot with their gaunt faces and soiled and tattered clothes. They were of all ages and states of desperation, from the young mechanic with youth and health still left, to the wretch who had been submerged, who couldn't work if it were given him to do, fit only to fertilize the soil. Hal's cabman lost his way for a moment and they got into Hyde Park. One of its orators was about to dismiss his small audience because he could scarcely see or be seen by them as they huddled close to him and to each other, and the speaker complained that the fog got into his throat and wellnigh choked him. Hal called to his driver to stop and they drew up to the curb. Hal was not unfamiliar with the Hyde Park meetings and their speakers, but never in his life before had he stopped to listen. It was an admirable safety-valve where cranks could talk to cranks. That they had or could have any message to him or for the world had never entered his mind. The unemployed had impressed him painfully. They were wandering hopelessly up and down crying in unison: "Work, work! We want work." This dull cry and their faces peering at him out of clammy shadows and yellow smears had got on his nerves. He was curious to hear what the orator of such people had to say on such a day."One moment and I'll close. You think I'm a layin' of it on, that I'm a makin' it up, but I 'old in my 'and a report of Lord George 'amilton, Royal Commissioner, on the condition of the English poor, and these is'iswords, not mine,'is, moind ye."The conditions of life in London and other large cities 'ave produced a degenerate race, morally and physically enfeebled."Hal drove on. When he reached his father's house there was a new servant at the door and he had to explain who he was. This was the glorious civilization he was coming back to. This was its welcome to him! Oh, John McCloud! Is this your Christian civilization?CHAPTER XVIIIThe Earl of Kerhill's town house was plain and formal on the outside. Within, it was beautiful, but cold and stately. Even the arrangement of its contents was apparently fixed and unalterable. At any rate no one could remember when any one had had the courage to meddle with its established order. Hal remembered that he had early gained the impression that it was not a place for little boys to live in. Thou-shalt and Thou-shalt-not seemed to divide the house between them. And now amid its Boulle and Tudor tables, its Venetian carved chairs, its Chippendales, its tapestries and portraits of knights and ladies, its plate and glass, its marbles and carvings, Hal felt more of an anachronism than ever. Cold and stately and solemn! It was as if it felt superior to its tenants. "Look back," it seemed to say to any one inclined to be familiar with it; "look back and tell me where are the brave and beautiful and gallant lords and ladies who once danced here and feasted here, loved, and made merry here? Gone and forgotten! The present lord, he, too, will soon be with the others. I was before them and I will be after them. I am a house with an individuality. People come and people go, but I remain. Cold, stately, and solemn!" The library was the most livable room and even the library was stately. Perhaps there were people so lost to the eternal fitness of things, so empty and shallow that they might be flippant in it, but it required an effort, and even shallow people were not allowed to forget that Grinling Gibbons had done the carvings about the noble fire-place.The house seemed to have forgotten Gibbons and to arrogate the carvings to itself. It was a proud house. The library at least looked inhabited. Perhaps the books gave it the human touch that linked up the past and the present and brought people and things into relations, distant relations no doubt, but still relations. It is not surprising that Nat-u-ritch's son had never liked the Earl's town house.Lady Winifred was writing at a heavy oak table elaborately carved, the light from a jewelled lamp falling over her high-bred face and her abundant hair which had great snow patches lying gently on it. She needed that softening touch of white, for there was a mocking light in her eyes and a cynical play of the lips. Andrews had placed the coffee service and the liqueurs on a small table before a high-backed Charles II chair on the other side of the room."Andrews, ask the gentlemen to take their coffee here with me.""Yes, my lady."Back of the library was a recess from which sprang a graceful stairway to the floor above. It was lit by panels of jewelled glass. Crowning the newel post was an electric flambeau. As the butler left the room a beautiful woman entered from the main hall and stood by the stairway, looking quietly but nervously about. The light from the flambeau lit up a face so colorless, so bloodless that it seemed almost transparent. Out of the whiteness, crowned with glowing auburn hair, shone lustrous agate eyes, hard, brilliant, with sensuous lights beneath the surface. She had entered the room and looked about before Lady Winifred was aware of her presence. Then she stole down rapidly but softly to the side of the elder woman and said:"Well, have you seen him?""Why, I thought you were dining with Lord Yester at the Carlton.""So I was," assented the other, pulling nervously at her gloves."And going to the theatre afterward?""I couldn't sit still in the theatre. Even the thought of it upset me. You have seen him?""Hal? Why, of course.""What does he say?""About what?""About me.""He hasn't mentioned you to me as yet.""No? Oh!" and Edith, Viscountess Effington, Hal's wife, walked slowly over to the coffee service and lit a cigarette. She watched the vagrant smoke with a retrospective air."I had a curious sensation at dinner," she said. "I found I wasn't hearing what Lord Yester was saying. All of a sudden I was frightened. I felt as if I were choking. Hal seemed to stand behind and over Lord Yester and I got a queer idea that he had come back to, to—Winifred, you and he have always been pals;youtell him. Tell him all there is to tell, about Lord Yester and myself, so that he will be prepared, and make him understand that if ne has come back to interfere with my plans"—and her lips shut and her eyes glistened ominously—"well, don't let him think of it.""I think he knows you do as you please.""Why shouldn't I?" said Edith with a little reckless laugh. "Why shouldn't I? I've only one life to live and that's mine, to live my way. I'm selfish; so is everybody else. Some people get a selfish pleasure out of pretending to be unselfish. Well, let them! I'm not a hypocrite, thank God!"Edith took from her enormous ermine muff a gold and jewelled bonbon box, extracted from it a tablet, and swallowed it with a drink of brandy which she had poured from a decanter."Sir George's prescription for my headaches," she explained in answer to the other's look of disapproval."The brandy part of the prescription, Edith?""Not having headaches, Winifred, you have a fine superiority to those who have." And she pulled the long opera cloak of emerald green like the breast of the humming-bird about her white shoulders, adjusted her ermine stole as if she were cold, walked slowly toward the stairs. In repose she was very soft, pliant, lambent, but, when moved, quick and violent. She turned and stiffened, threw her head up into the air, and came down swiftly to Lady Winifred's side."I must have this settlednow—to-night! I can't stand this suspense. If he attempts to upset my plans——""You may find him quite as eager to be free as you are.""Do you think so, Winifred? Do you really think so?" she said, rising at a bound to the extreme of elation. Then she crept softly out of the room, purring to herself: "Oh, I hope so; I hope so."There was a slight elevation to Lady Winifred's eyebrow and the slightest tilt to one of her shoulders. It seemed to suggest that she had ceased to be impressed with the moods and tenses of the other, that it was a pity that men could not see past the surface of things feminine, that Edith's egotism had the noble simplicity of all big things."My dear, wasn't Cousin Hal to take his after-dinner coffee here with us?"It was Sir Gordon Stuckley who spoke as he came into the room. Sir Gordon was known as Lady Winifred's husband. He was a retired army officer and considerably older than his handsome wife. His mind was the amiable repository of everything conventional and commonplace. He walked over to the writing-table and picked up a cigarette."He has gone up to say good-night to his father," said Lady Winifred, blotting and folding her finished letter."Well, Hal is back," said Sir Gordon sententiously, "and brings his problem with him still unsolved.""Whose life isn't a problem—'still unsolved'?" said his wife with an enigmatical smile."And it's quite difficult enough to face one's own problem, to face one's own mistakes," she continued. "It's rather hard to have to answer for the mistakes of somebody else; mistakes that can't be remedied; can't in the very nature of things. Hal can't help being a half-caste, can he?""What is he back for?" asked her husband shortly."To see his father, I presume. Sir George, I believe, cabled him to come.""The Earl is no worse than he has been or may be for some time to come. I hope, for his own sake, and for our sake Hal has no intention of staying, because you know he is quite impossible here, now isn't he?""I suppose so," said Lady Winifred with a note of regret, for she was fond of the boy, "and yet we pride ourselves here on being cosmopolitan, on havin' no race prejudices.""Officially? No! Socially? Most assuredly yes! Officially we treat these Indian potentates as princes. Actually, my dear, we regard them as niggers. Well, there you are.""Yes," she admitted. "We are fairly tolerant of aliens because there are not enough of them to annoy us. They don't crowd us off the pavement, or take our places in the tram, or lay hands on the stipends and positions we reserve for ourselves, but, as a matter of fact, we are quite the most intolerant people in the world. Still it isn't his being a half-breed that matters so much, I think. He was living that down—it's his having to leave the Army.""Quite so; but why did he have to leave the Army? Because he didn't know how to obey; because he couldn't submit to discipline, and why couldn't he submit to discipline? Because he had in his veins the blood of the American Indian. It comes down to race at last.""But why shouldn't a half-breed inherit the best of each type instead of the worst and so be superior to either?""Oh, there is only onebest, my dear," said Gordon as he walked to the coffee with a superior smile. "There is only one best.""And of course we assume that we are the superior type."Lady Winifred looked after Sir Gordon with toleration. She was a woman of unusual intelligence and it was hardly fair to ask her to maintain any real illusions as to her husband."Well," she continued, "this dear boy is a half-breed; his wife is of our best and purest blood. Yet, with all his peculiarities, Hal is adorable, and Edith—well, if she's a type of superiority, God help the British Empire.""Edith isn't representative; oh, no; oh,my, no!" Sir Gordon's enthusiasm in rejecting Edith on behalf of the British Empire almost upset the coffee urn."Oh,my, no!" he kept repeating with comic insistence."Isn't she?" objected Lady Winifred coming forward to take the cup offered by her husband. "Isn't she? Is the smoking, drinking, gambling woman with a moral code of her own an exception, or is she getting to be the London type?""By the way, where is Edith?""Dining with Lord Yester at the Carlton.""Dining at the Carlton the first night her husband is at home?""My dear Gordon, you are hopelessly old-fashioned. Husbands are like the vermiform appendix. They must have served some useful purpose once, but no one knows now what it was. A busy woman has no time for such trifles. Edith is just back from a house party at Groton Court, she had to devote some time in the forenoon to her modiste; she went to the races in the afternoon, had tea at the Austrian Embassy, played a little bridge, and naturally she had to dress for dinner. If Hal is patient they may eventually meet here or at some mutual friend's."Gordon never tried to follow the intricacies of his wife's raillery."Well, I must be hopelessly old-fashioned," he said in the most matter-of-fact way. "Modern matrimony is quite beyond me." Sir Gordon was old-fashioned. He belonged to an epoch when men, by an unwritten law, left the gossip to the women."Winifred," he began with much hesitation, and speaking with grave deliberation, "are you aware that Lord Yester's attentions to Edith are beginning to create talk?""Beginning?" laughed his wife. "Why, Gordon, that is so old that people have ceased to talk about it.""Is it really?" he ejaculated in hopeless confusion. "Well, Hal must put his foot down at once, at once," he repeated with feeble over-emphasis."My dear, the foot and the hand go together. They are both archaic. Since it is no longer good form to beat one's wife, the putting of the foot down or up is of no importance. Women only respected their husbands when they had to."One of Gordon's qualifications as a fighter and a husband was that he could take punishment. It is a useful accomplishment, and as rare as it is beautiful. It would have been impossible for Lady Winnifred to live with a man who was over-sensitive. As she explained the situation herself: "Some amiability is essential to contiguity. The bearings must have oil. Well, you mustn't expect it of me or of the cook. One doesn't look for it in one's friends. Well, there you are!""I have no doubt something of this has come to Hal's ears," said her husband, "and he has returned to put his house in order, and quite time indeed.""Well," she answered, "from the woman's point of view the civilized man is a glaring failure. Perhaps the half-savage may succeed.""Fancy, Rundall, fancy my wife suspecting the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race!"This remark was addressed to a polished, imposing person who was descending the stairs, and in the act of returning a thermometer to the pocket of his evening coat. Sir George Rundall had the right but not the time to add a long string of letters to his name. He was a self-made man and was a credit to himself. He had the figure of one who has been an athlete, the head of a scholar who was also a man of the world, a clean-shaven, florid face and perfectly white hair, what there was of it. The doctor was a man of learning, was an authority on all sorts of unpleasant things, and had a prodigious memory. Here was a man who could put Winifred in her proper place, if any one could.Sir Gordon had ripped out "the Anglo-Saxon race" with something of its sonorous after-dinner effect."Haven't you discovered, Stuckley, that our wives are always right?""Oh, I say!" groaned Sir Gordon, dismayed at this cowardly going over to the enemy."There is no such thing as an Anglo-Saxon race.""What?""And there's no such thing as a pure type of man. He simply doesn't exist. Finot says: 'All human beings are cross-breeds,'" and the doctor sat down at a small desk set into a bookcase, and began to write a prescription."Race" was one of Gordon's strong points. He had all the conviction of the profound amateur. He was an example of a little learning and its consequences."You mean to say," he asked with pompous incredulity, "that there is nothing in dolichocephalic superiority?" Having delivered this without a sign of distress he looked about, greatly pleased with himself."Dolly who?" asked Winifred. "Sir George, is that a real word, or just aggravated assault and battery?""Don't be alarmed, Lady Stuckley, it only means fair-haired people with narrow skulls.""And so blonds are the elect, are they?" she said. "Now I know the scientific explanation for the popularity of peroxide of hydrogen.""Joking aside," said the military man. It was a stock phrase in his domestic experiences. "Joking aside, I am sure our man of science will admit the importance of the—ah, the cephalic index?""Sir George, I look to you for protection.""Head measurements, Lady Stuckley, that's all," explained Sir George with a smile. "Well, as to that," he went on, rising and coming to the library table, "a fellow by the name of Parchappe, who went in for that sort of thing, found 'the head of an intelligent woman to be perceptibly inferior to the dimensions of the head of an idiot.' Now, Stuckley, justify that to your wife if you can."Lady Winifred laughed heartily."For Lord Kerhill," added the doctor to Winifred as he put a prescription on the corner of the table before her."It pleases Sir George to treat facts as jests," said the discomfited Gordon."Facts?" queried Winifred. "Facts? Why that is ground for divorce.""Facts?" echoed the man of science gravely. "I wonder what are facts? The conviction of to-day is the derision of to-morrow. We have long used the skull and the brain to assign hopeless inferiority to various peoples, now comes along Finot and says: 'The skull and the brain furnish no argument in favor of organic inequality.' Lamarck—I think it's Lamarck—puts it better. He affirms that 'Nature has created neither classes nor orders, nor families, nor kinds, nor permanent species, but only individuals!'""That's the answer to the problem, Gordon," cried Lady Winifred triumphantly—"the Individual!"Down the stairs came the Individual and lounged into the room. Hal knew at once from the suggestion of an embarrassed pause that he had been the subject of the conversation.It is rather trying to one with a problem to have inept hands dipping in, messing it about.The doctor was the first to regain his poise. He was used to difficult cases, and when he had to announce to the patient that he had only six weeks or six months to live, his manner was perfect. "Ah, Harold," he said with a kindly smile, putting his hand on the boy's arm with a reassuring touch, "splendid for your dear father, this home coming. You mustn't go away again." Then he dropped his voice for Hal's ear alone. "I'll be back. I want to speak with you before you retire," and the busy man passed out. Hal had on the conventional dinner coat. He looked at his relatives with an amused smile and came down to the table and started to help himself to a cigarette, then thought better of it, took some rice-paper from his pocket and made his own, manipulating it with one hand after the miraculous manner of the Mexican. When it was finished, amid the awed and fascinated wonder of the spectators, he lit a match on the leg of his trousers and lit the cigarette with the same hand to the dismay of Gordon and the joy of Winifred.To Gordon's mind no well-bred person could really care for miracles."Well, Cousin Hal, you have been three years an exile! What a joy, eh? What a joy to be back in dear old London!"The boy smiled as he took up his coffee."Do you remember Grafton? Used to be a pal of mine. Met him on the train coming up from Liverpool." The boy bent forward with an air of startled boredom. One could see Grafton. "Well, old chap, missed you awfully! Where have you been keeping yourself for the lastfortnight?" He dropped the assumption."Cordial place—London! Out our way men and their characters go in their shirt sleeves." And he stretched his arms and the dinner coat popped ominously. For the moment he seemed to fill the library and it dwarfed most people."But you don't escape the rotter even out there, do you?" asked Winifred."No, but the rotter shouts himself out to all the world, and if you don't like the noise he makes you shoot it full of holes. Here they carry concealed weapons. I'm more at home with the shirt-sleeve crowd," and he sat down in the Charles II chair and threw his leg over one arm of it as he sipped his coffee.Sir Gordon rose from the upholstered rail in front of the fireplace where he had been sitting, put down his empty coffee-cup, then stood up with the air of taking charge personally of Hal's tangled affairs."Well, Hal, my boy, you have come back prepared I presume to settle down, settle down to some career befitting an English gentleman." Sir Gordon paused to draw Hal's fire. As the young man did not dispute this assumption, he continued with patronizing pomposity."We must place you. We must place you, my boy. It won't be an easy matter, will it? Of course you can't go into trade. The Army is the only gentleman's game, but—we must not speak of that. We must not speak of that," and he hastened to get away from a subject so painful. "Now, how about the church?""The church?" asked Hal with a laugh."Oh, your father could get you a living." Then he added hastily: "It's respectable at least.""For me? The church?""Oh, you don't have to go in for religion; oh, no; oh, my, no! None of that bally rot."Seeing that her amiable husband was in very deep water, Winifred reached out her hand and encouraged him to go deeper."Hal, how stupid of you," she said. "You have assistants, curates, and that sort of thing who do the religion for you. You ride to hounds, play cricket for your county, and enjoy similar spiritual diversions.""Well, you must dosomething," said Sir Gordon petulantly, annoyed with the young man's levity. "Of course whatever you decide to try, it is going to be a long hard struggle to live down the Army record; still with time and pluck it may be done. You are an earl's son and you have influential relatives. Well, then, how about politics?""Sit in the House and listen to the gabble on the Old Age Pensions and The Licensing Bill? I'd rather be a suffragette and go to jail."Sir Gordon had exhausted the careers. It wasn't a career exactly, but people went in for it and it was a devilish nice thing to go in for."Well," he suggested, "there's the life of a country gentleman.""The country would be all right," said Hal, "if the people would only stay away. They spoil everything. Even the gardens are as formal as the odious people, and the flowers, even the flowers, are made to look stiff and stuck-up and well-behaved, as if they felt they, too, were on exhibition and might be talked about. The country is only another setting for teas, tennis, and top hats, bridge, scandal, and flirting with each other's wives.""Well, there's shooting," said Sir Gordon in desperation. "You used to like shooting.""Yes, before people shot in mobs, and made it a function. Now they go into the solitudes, the cosey solitudes, with footmen, a French cook, vintage wines, and a Hungarian band."Sir Gordon did not realize that his wife and Hal were having fun with his prejudices. He was on the edge of losing his patience."Well, if you stayhere—" He was annoyed to observe that he had raised his voice almost to a vulgar scream. He repeated the phrase in a more temperate key. "If you stay here——""But I'm not going to stay here, Gordon. It's the West for me. It's in my blood. When I've visited with father and arranged one or two important matters, I'm goin' back to God's country.""Bravo, Hal," exclaimed Lady Winifred. "If you stay here you'll end by becoming a conventional little snob, and I should hate you. No; go back to your shirt-sleeve crowd.""Well, my dear boy," exclaimed Gordon completely nonplussed; "I can't make you out," and he made up his mind to beat a hasty retreat to the United Service Club, where anarchy was not petted and spoiled and fed on chocolate bonbons. Then he thought of something and came back."Winifred, speak to Hal about that.""About what?" inquired Hal.Again he lost some of his habitual poise in the fervor of his convictions."You must put your foot down, Hal; you really must—'er—for our sakes as well as for your own. You ought—er—Winifred will tell you," and the old soldier scrambled out of the trench and effected a most disorderly retreat.His cousin Winifred was about six years older than Hal, and in all the memories of his childhood and boyhood she was the one bright spot. His step-mother had died when he was but a lad. His father was much occupied with public affairs. No one else seemed to care to understand the queer little chap except this tall, queer girl. She stood by and encouraged him to whip the first little brat that called him an insulting name, a name suggested by his color. Then she washed and wiped his resulting wounds, and encouraged him to believe that he was in the path of duty and on the road to glory. Thus encouraged, the shy, timid lad had quickly developed into a fierce little warrior, and it was Winifred who somehow realized and foresaw that if he were ever to enjoy the blessings of peace he would have to fight for them, and she got the head gardener's son who had a distinguished reputation as an amateur pugilist, to teach him how to box, an accomplishment in which he soon distanced his teacher, and one which was destined to be of the greatest service to him in his subsequent career. His readiness to meet all comers and his demonstrated ability to do so was his passport through life.He had fought every step of the way from childhood to manhood. A battle or series of battles marked every change in environment, in school, in college, in his preparations for a military career. Soon it came as a routine. He knew he would have to "lick somebody" in order to be let alone. It didn't worry him, and he didn't seek these encounters, but he didn't mind them. In fact, it was one of the things he did exceptionally well. When he joined a swell regiment he had a terrific struggle to stay. He was "ragged" unmercifully, but he took his medicine, and before he was forced out, the regiment was ordered into the field, went through a campaign in which he had opportunities, which he eagerly accepted and with brilliant results, results which he took modestly. Eventually he compelled respect from his brother officers, but it was earned. Oh, it was earned! In all this bitter struggle with environment Cousin Winifred, this woman "with the serpent's tongue," was the only soul who knew and understood. He came over to her and put his hands affectionately on her shoulders."What is it you're to tell me?" he asked her."Dear, simple soul, he expects you to change Edith.""Change Edith, eh?" Hal walked away with a queer look on his face. She continued: "One can dam a river and change its course. You can't do that with a woman. Edith will go on being Edith, I fancy, to the end of the chapter.""She seems to be still rather careless of appearances," he said."She never was discreet, but there are many safely on the inside who are quite as careless. At all events, she's kept out of the papers. That's something. See here."She showed him a London society journal whose leaves she had been turning and glancing at in a desultory fashion, one of those hybrid products of modern life which make a specialty of social garbage and elevate blackmail to the point of high art; a journal which every one calls "a rag" and which all smart people read religiously. Hal took it and glanced through the article hastily.It was an account of a "well-known society woman," "name withheld out of consideration for her distinguished relatives and friends," who was found by a police officer wandering aimlessly in Hyde Park and utterly unable to give a lucid account of herself. Sir GeorgeBlank, a well-known specialist in nervous diseases, happens to be driving by, recognizes the unhappy lady, who is apparently under the influence of a powerful drug, and takes her to her home, etc., etc., etc."How awful!" he said. "Do you suppose it's true?""My dear boy, these things are becoming so common we're no longer shocked by them. Society has its favorites, and it has a broad mantle of charity for its favorites, but obviously one mustn't parade one's sins in Hyde Park. Edith hasn't been a huge social success, but she has kept out of the papers; she is still possible and she never gives up. She is still at it—climbing, climbing.""And Lord Yester is the latest ladder, eh?""Why, you haven't been in England more than a few minutes. How did you find that out?""Why, my friend Grafton laid one of these illustrated papers down on the seat beside me as we came up in the train. I saw a picture of Edith and Lord Yester, and I had the pleasure of reading 'an open letter' to my wife. It was very instructive. I thought you said she had kept out of the papers.""Oh, that's a small matter. That isn't publicity. That 'open letter' attention is merely an acknowledgment of her social prominence. That is a trifle. Lady Lucretia Burk-Owsley is dancing in one of our music halls. Now, you might object to that, though her husband, I understand, rather enjoys its democracy. It sort of takes the whole of London into the bosom of the family. She can't dance, of course, but she's a revelation. You must see it. Oh, we're not standing still.""And Lord Yester?" suggested Hal. "What is hisraison d'être?""Lord Yester's vocation is Edith, his avocation is being next in succession to the old Duke of Uxminster, and the Duke is feeble enough to satisfy even the most impatient heir.""A duchess, eh?""Nothing short of that.""But Yester," objected Hal in dreamy retrospection; "Yester's a boy. His father, though he was old enough to be my father, was a pal of mine. We served together in South Africa. Why you remember, Winifred? He was forced into retirement because he justified my disobedience and refused to be silenced—God bless him! One of the few friends I've had in the world! His son, eh? Why, the youngster must be just out of his perambulator.""Some women as they grow older suddenly display a fondness for children. When a woman has escaped being a mother, she sometimes meets her fate in the grandmother class.""He's rather a nice child, if I remember correctly," said Hal."Well, not a 'double-first,' not an intellectual giant, but a nicely brought-up child; a credit to his nurse, and, incidentally, just at the age to be madly in love with a married woman, married, of course, to a clod who cannot possibly understand her."Hal laughed."Yes, theclodunderstands that. They have already made their plans, I suppose?""Oh, yes; and you're just in time to give the bride away. Now there's a novelty, and they're rare these days—a wedding in which the ex-husband is the new husband's best man. No? Well, Edith pays you the compliment of believing that you will behave very well under the circumstances. I was expected to prepare you for the inevitable and, if possible, soften the blow.""And Lord Yester—is he willing?""Willing? Strenuously, madly willing. Personally, I think you are in tremendous luck. I congratulate you upon your prospective deliverance with all my heart."Lady Winifred continued to play with the situation, turning it inside and outside, holding it up to fantastic derision, until she saw that he was not listening. The strain was off. He had resigned himself to pleasant dreams. He had been pulling against wind and tide, every muscle, every nerve stretched to cracking, his head bursting, his heart breaking, and making no progress, barely holding his own. Now the tide had turned. The storm had passed. He could take in his oars, sit in the stern, and just keep her in the current, the current that was bearing him on to his desires. He could rest in delicious lethargy and see the flowers and gardens on the bank, and see at the end of the beautiful journey Wah-na-gi standing on the rock, holding out her arms to him."How do you do, Harold? Welcome home."Edith stood holding out her hand to him.
[image]"I'm coming back, Wah-na-gi, dear; I'm coming back."
[image]
[image]
"I'm coming back, Wah-na-gi, dear; I'm coming back."
Bill stood by with the horse. Hal leaped into the saddle.
"Explain it to the boys," he said to McCloud simply. Once more the girl went to him as if she would drag him from the saddle. He leaned down and kissed her and whispered "I'm coming back." Then he put spurs to his horse, and was off.
No one who has not lived on a ranch or in the wilderness apart can ever know what it is—the solemn aching void left by the one who goes away. Hal turned as he reached the hill before descending into the Bad Lands and waved his sombrero to them. Wah-na-gi was standing on the rock, Nat-u-ritch's gravestone, to get the last glimpse of him. Bill and McCloud were standing below. She stood there looking, looking, long after he had disappeared. They had to lift her gently down. Still she stood looking, looking.
"He's gone, Wah-na-gi, child," said John McCloud gently.
"Will he come back?" she said.
CHAPTER XVII
It is a trying moment when we face the wrong answer and realize that we must go back step by step to find the mistake. There is a fascination about the unknown. The future beckons.
Marching always onward, our courage each day finds an uplift in accomplishment. We are farther ahead if only a few inches. Incredible hardships and difficulties are put to flight.
Retracing one's steps, going back, requires more bravery than to go on. Initial enthusiasm looks like a grinning skeleton. It is not the same army in retreat. Doubt, despair hang on its flanks, worry and harass it all the bleeding way.
The moment Hal had decided to go back to England the necessary intermediate processes seemed wholly inadequate. He almost killed a good horse to reach Carbon on the D.&R.G. Railroad, only to find that he had eight hours to wait in that unmitigated by-product of civilization. They were eight heavy, heavy hours. He walked about the station, he gazed at the sage-brush and the water-tank, he went in and out of the "hotel," he attempted unsuccessfully to eat its so-called food, he tried to read its magazines six months old. The only possible object of interest was a very painful object. In the shade of one corner of the veranda on a stretcher lay a coal miner who had been hurt in the company's mines. His breast was heaving as if the life within him was struggling to get out. He was being removed to the company's hospital at Pedro. He had to wait for the train too, and it looked as if his impatient life refused to wait.
The few people in the desolate spot were fortunately busy or they would have gone mad. So no one paid any attention to the sufferer.
"Some people are unlucky, born that way," explained the young company doctor who had the dying man in charge. "Larry's just out of the hospital, and now he's goin' back—to stay this time, I guess."
It seemed to Hal as if he, too, were carrying is maimed life back on a stretcher, but he resisted the suggestion that it was to stay.
At last the train, late as usual, arrived. It was a relief at first. At least it was in motion, and he was going, even if it was backward. He was so preoccupied that it was some time before he was conscious of his fellow-passengers; then he felt rather than saw that he was being elaborately searched, optically swept, marked and staked out; coaxed, petted, and allured. He looked across to see a formidable person of the female sex who was half-pretending to read a book under the solicitous title "Stolen Kisses." This person seemed the last word in modern fixtures. An elaborate baby face peered out from under an elaborate hat of huge dimensions, ornamented with an elaborate mixture of flowers, fruit, and fur. Her face had had elaborate treatment. She wore an elaborate gown with a wholly unnecessary wrap. She had on patent-leather shoes with white cloth tops and exaggerated French heels, and occasionally she unconsciously treated the patient observer to a glimpse of an elaborate silk stocking. Except for the hat, it looked to be a case of tight-fit. Indeed, she seemed a physical and moral protest against restrictions.
"One of the products of John McCloud's 'glorious civilization,'" commented Hal to himself as he got up and retreated to his own car. From which it may be observed that the young man was not in a mood to be altogether fair to civilization or John McCloud. He sat down at the window but he did not see the telegraph poles flying past or the varying monotony of the landscape rushing by. Each revolution of the wheels was taking him farther and farther from Red Butte Ranch. What were they doing there now—Wah-na-gi, John McCloud, Big Bill, and the others? She was no longer at the Agency and the victim of the deviltry of David Ladd and Appah. She was among friends. That was some consolation, much consolation. And the time would pass; then he would be going the other way, going back to pick up his life where he had now dropped it. He wondered at what time of day he would arrive, whether he should notify them or surprise them. Yes, the time would pass. London wouldn't keep him long. Edith would be glad to release him. He felt absolutely confident of that, and yet there was a shadow over all his thoughts. He had a curious unreasonable foreboding of ill. What could happen? Then he became aware that some one was speaking to him. Would the gentleman care to make up a bridge party?
The invitation came to him from one of his fellow-travellers and it seemed a refuge from his thoughts, so Hal was glad to play. It would force him to think of other things. He played and lost quite a tidy sum of money before it came to him that he was being exploited by unfair means.
Having virtuously resolved to do what was right and much against his will, he had a feeling that the way ought to be made smooth and easy. Civilization had never been fair to him, and his return to it was evidently not to be strewn with flowers. He began to grow morose.
He found on picking up a newspaper that he would have two days in New York before his ship sailed, and he determined to spend those days in Washington. He had Ladd on the run. He must see to it that he wasn't allowed to stop short of losing his official head. He had offered to go to Washington at any time to substantiate his charges, and now Ladd was to face an investigation. The papers he had in his possession would go far to establish the agent's connection with the Trust and other papers he possessed would convict him of malfeasance in office. These papers were high explosives and had to be handled with the greatest care, for they involved not only Ladd but officials high in Government circles, and some leaders in Congress and in both of the political parties.
Hal's train arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York at night. He took a cab and ordered the driver to drive to the Hotel Astor. The direct road to the hotel was of course through Forty-second street, which was obviously slow and difficult of negotiation, and the situation seemed to offer an inducement to go a roundabout way with the amiable intention of boosting the fare. It was a trick with which the proposed victim was familiar, and he resolved that while consenting to the extra ride he would resist any effort to collect an extra fare. It was election night, and as soon as the cab hit Broadway it was caught in a whirlpool of humanity. It could neither go on nor go back.
The great city seemed to have resolved itself into a vast lunatic asylum and to have emptied all the patients into the streets. The incoherent maniacs seemed to be enjoying themselves and to be on the whole good-natured. In its gentlest moments New York is a noisy place, but to the ordinary din of traffic, the sag and smash of trucks, the rush and roar of the elevated on its iron bed was added an indescribable cacophony that was fiendish. Election night with its liberty and license—Hooligan's holiday! It seemed to Hal that he had never seen so many unpleasant faces in such a short distance or in so short a time. The sweat-shops seemed to have emptied into the streets, and the Tenderloin, and the submerged wreckage of the Bowery. They were mauling each other, jostling, joking, babbling, hurrahing, hardly knowing for whom or what, blowing fierce blasts on tin horns, ringing clusters of cow-bells, pulling fantastic shrieks out of motor sirens, whirring gigantic rattles—all struggling to see who could make the biggest noise. Women seemed more elated with the spirit of the occasion than men, and they evoked the attentions of strangers without the ceremony of an introduction. The interchange of pleasantries was sometimes marked by freedom and abandon. To Hal just from a country where it was possible to be for days and weeks without the sight of a human being, this seething, writhing mass of humanity, rubbing up against each other, jostling, pulling at each other, handling each other, bawling into each other's faces, was supremely obnoxious. His cab caught in the slow-moving swirl was a fine temptation to horse-play. As he leaned out of one window to try to understand the unusual tumult a vivacious young woman leaned in at the other window and blew a megaphonic tin horn directly into his ear. It seemed as if it would rip the drum of the ear. A greasy-faced urchin blew an expanding and suggestive-looking toy into his face. A buxom Amazon leaned in, gave his necktie a jerk, and screamed through her nose: "Why, sweetheart! I didn't know you was back!"
Other enthusiasts threw confetti over him.
This was civilization's welcome to him! He tried to take it good-naturedly but upon his face was a fixed look of disgust.
The cab got ahead a few feet at a time, then stopped in another block, and he went through the felicitations of these joyous citizens all over again. To his immense relief they at last reached the hotel. Here at last was a haven of refuge. How much was it, he inquired of the cabbie.
"Ten dollars!"
Hal smiled incredulously. He invited the jehu to guess again, to think it over. That worthy reminded him that it was election night, which was put forward as an argument that was in its nature unassailable. Hal patiently explained that he didn't see why he personally should pay five or six times the price because some one had been elected governor of a State which apparently stood in sore need of government. He reminded the obstinate and aggressive person that it was not over half a mile from the station to the hotel and one dollar was ample—two extravagant. He offered to compromise on two. This was received with profuse profanity of a highly inflammable character. In the interstices between expletives were interjected various allusions to the hours it had taken to go the half-mile, to the fact that the cab was scratched, that the horse's life had been endangered, and other more or less irrelevant matters. Hal thought he saw the cab-person signal to a police-person standing a little behind him. Finally the gathering waters of affliction broke and poured forth in righteous wrath. Hal stated with picturesque additions that the man was a crook and a thief.
The burly brute tried to strike the young man with the butt end of his loaded whip. Hal avoided the blow and caught the man square on the jaw, and he went down for the count.
That was all Hal knew until he came back to consciousness in a police cell. It was a very painful consciousness, associated with bandages, a head bursting with pain, and most unpleasant surroundings. Then little by little he came to a vague realization of what had happened. He was practically a stranger in New York. To whom could he turn? He was a British subject. Perhaps he could communicate with the representatives of His Majesty's Government.
In addition to having been very thoroughly beaten, he found that he had been very thoroughly robbed. It was therefore with some difficulty that he could persuade his jailer to communicate with the British Consulate. The promise of a considerable reward finally held out inducements. Fortunately for the prisoner, the British Vice-Consul, Mr. Percy Holmes Tracy, proved to be an old friend of his father's family. Mr. Tracy supplied the prisoner with immediate funds and bestirred himself in his behalf. He found that Hal was accused of being drunk and disorderly, resisting arrest, and striking an officer. Fortunately for the prisoner, Mr. Tracy found that the hotel detective had been a witness of the brutal assault. The detective told the Vice-Consul that the policemen's use of the night-stick was totally unprovoked and unnecessary, that Hal did not resist arrest, that he had no chance to do so, that the policeman and cab-driver were pals who had been suspected of "working together" before, etc., etc. Hal expressed the enthusiastic desire to "make it warm" for all concerned, to have the policeman "broke," etc., etc. All of which Mr. Tracy admitted to be a perfectly natural and justifiable feeling, but he reminded the young man that it would be a somewhat tedious and exacting undertaking. How much time was he willing to devote to it? Could he stay and give it his undivided attention? No, he could not. In fact he was due to sail at once for London. Ah, well, that was another matter, was it not? Under the circumstances it was Mr. Holmes Tracy's advice to pocket his losses, swallow his pride, smother his indignation, and set it down to valuable experience. It would have been cheaper to have paid the ten dollars. These are some of the disadvantages of a highly organized society. And so it happened that the man who had, single-handed, arrested desperadoes in a country where men carry a gun and know how to use it, was made the foolish victim of the polished machinery of "a highly organized society."
Mr. Holmes Tracy's advice was too obviously wise to be ignored. Confronted with the hotel detective the police-grafter was glad to withdraw his charge, with the understanding that no countercharges should be preferred against him. It wasn't altogether satisfying. Community life was a series of compromises; its law expediency.
The two days Hal had intended to spend in Washington had been spent in prison. Perhaps he was safer there. He and civilization had never been friends. Hal welcomed his escape from New York. He was glad to get out of her canyons and pigeon-holes into the light and air. He was glad to reach the boat. When he left London and had turned his face to the West there had seemed a conspiracy to help him on. The winds and waves had romped about him in the sunshine, and hope and joy sang in his heart. He had not felt lonely, but a great content had brooded over him. Now the elements frowned on him. Head winds blew a hurricane the whole way over. Huge waves smote the ship and shook her angrily. Now she rode them down, now shouldered them aside, now cut her way through them, then bowed her head to the blow, shook herself free, throbbing, quivering in every joint, every muscle and nerve and sinew of her crying out against the incessant wear and tear of it. And over all brooded a sky of fleeing gray and black demons. Not a ray of sunlight crept through the clouds. The voyage was a nightmare. Wind and wave were screaming to him to go back; trying to force him back. He was ill and frightfully depressed. He was as eager almost to get out of the ship as if Love's welcome waited for him; as it seemed to do for all but him. But it was scarcely better on shore. He rode up to London in a cold drenching rain. The land looked old, tired, and discouraged. And London!—this Mecca of the exiled Briton. How many hearts turn to it in far off-India, China, Australia, Canada, and the waste places of the earth! How many eager eyes look back to it or look forward to it! What memories it holds for those who know in their souls they can never see it again, and what radiant visions it offers to those who sweat and save and suffer and perhaps lie and steal that one day they may come back to it, and bring it the tribute of their blood and treasure. London is compelling like some great sad song that tells of sorrows and wrongs. But it had no message and no welcome to this returning pilgrim. Before they reached the city they rode out of the rain and into one of those fogs which creeps out of its tombs and graveyards and buried horrors, and tries to materialize itself and once more take possession of the actual life of the city.
Hal took a cab and they began to grope their way toward his father's town house. Even in his thought he didn't call it home. Oh for the land of sunshine, he thought, where one can look into the infinite sky, and beyond and beyond and still beyond. Here he felt as if he were knocking his head against it. One didn't breathe; one swallowed the air in chunks and gulps. They almost rode down a procession of the unemployed, an army with banners, but an army with none of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. Hal shrank back in his cab and shivered in his great-coat. Their banners were dirty, but it was evident that each soldier of despair had made some little effort with bad success to make as decent an appearance in the public eye as possible. They were a sad lot with their gaunt faces and soiled and tattered clothes. They were of all ages and states of desperation, from the young mechanic with youth and health still left, to the wretch who had been submerged, who couldn't work if it were given him to do, fit only to fertilize the soil. Hal's cabman lost his way for a moment and they got into Hyde Park. One of its orators was about to dismiss his small audience because he could scarcely see or be seen by them as they huddled close to him and to each other, and the speaker complained that the fog got into his throat and wellnigh choked him. Hal called to his driver to stop and they drew up to the curb. Hal was not unfamiliar with the Hyde Park meetings and their speakers, but never in his life before had he stopped to listen. It was an admirable safety-valve where cranks could talk to cranks. That they had or could have any message to him or for the world had never entered his mind. The unemployed had impressed him painfully. They were wandering hopelessly up and down crying in unison: "Work, work! We want work." This dull cry and their faces peering at him out of clammy shadows and yellow smears had got on his nerves. He was curious to hear what the orator of such people had to say on such a day.
"One moment and I'll close. You think I'm a layin' of it on, that I'm a makin' it up, but I 'old in my 'and a report of Lord George 'amilton, Royal Commissioner, on the condition of the English poor, and these is'iswords, not mine,'is, moind ye.
"The conditions of life in London and other large cities 'ave produced a degenerate race, morally and physically enfeebled."
Hal drove on. When he reached his father's house there was a new servant at the door and he had to explain who he was. This was the glorious civilization he was coming back to. This was its welcome to him! Oh, John McCloud! Is this your Christian civilization?
CHAPTER XVIII
The Earl of Kerhill's town house was plain and formal on the outside. Within, it was beautiful, but cold and stately. Even the arrangement of its contents was apparently fixed and unalterable. At any rate no one could remember when any one had had the courage to meddle with its established order. Hal remembered that he had early gained the impression that it was not a place for little boys to live in. Thou-shalt and Thou-shalt-not seemed to divide the house between them. And now amid its Boulle and Tudor tables, its Venetian carved chairs, its Chippendales, its tapestries and portraits of knights and ladies, its plate and glass, its marbles and carvings, Hal felt more of an anachronism than ever. Cold and stately and solemn! It was as if it felt superior to its tenants. "Look back," it seemed to say to any one inclined to be familiar with it; "look back and tell me where are the brave and beautiful and gallant lords and ladies who once danced here and feasted here, loved, and made merry here? Gone and forgotten! The present lord, he, too, will soon be with the others. I was before them and I will be after them. I am a house with an individuality. People come and people go, but I remain. Cold, stately, and solemn!" The library was the most livable room and even the library was stately. Perhaps there were people so lost to the eternal fitness of things, so empty and shallow that they might be flippant in it, but it required an effort, and even shallow people were not allowed to forget that Grinling Gibbons had done the carvings about the noble fire-place.
The house seemed to have forgotten Gibbons and to arrogate the carvings to itself. It was a proud house. The library at least looked inhabited. Perhaps the books gave it the human touch that linked up the past and the present and brought people and things into relations, distant relations no doubt, but still relations. It is not surprising that Nat-u-ritch's son had never liked the Earl's town house.
Lady Winifred was writing at a heavy oak table elaborately carved, the light from a jewelled lamp falling over her high-bred face and her abundant hair which had great snow patches lying gently on it. She needed that softening touch of white, for there was a mocking light in her eyes and a cynical play of the lips. Andrews had placed the coffee service and the liqueurs on a small table before a high-backed Charles II chair on the other side of the room.
"Andrews, ask the gentlemen to take their coffee here with me."
"Yes, my lady."
Back of the library was a recess from which sprang a graceful stairway to the floor above. It was lit by panels of jewelled glass. Crowning the newel post was an electric flambeau. As the butler left the room a beautiful woman entered from the main hall and stood by the stairway, looking quietly but nervously about. The light from the flambeau lit up a face so colorless, so bloodless that it seemed almost transparent. Out of the whiteness, crowned with glowing auburn hair, shone lustrous agate eyes, hard, brilliant, with sensuous lights beneath the surface. She had entered the room and looked about before Lady Winifred was aware of her presence. Then she stole down rapidly but softly to the side of the elder woman and said:
"Well, have you seen him?"
"Why, I thought you were dining with Lord Yester at the Carlton."
"So I was," assented the other, pulling nervously at her gloves.
"And going to the theatre afterward?"
"I couldn't sit still in the theatre. Even the thought of it upset me. You have seen him?"
"Hal? Why, of course."
"What does he say?"
"About what?"
"About me."
"He hasn't mentioned you to me as yet."
"No? Oh!" and Edith, Viscountess Effington, Hal's wife, walked slowly over to the coffee service and lit a cigarette. She watched the vagrant smoke with a retrospective air.
"I had a curious sensation at dinner," she said. "I found I wasn't hearing what Lord Yester was saying. All of a sudden I was frightened. I felt as if I were choking. Hal seemed to stand behind and over Lord Yester and I got a queer idea that he had come back to, to—Winifred, you and he have always been pals;youtell him. Tell him all there is to tell, about Lord Yester and myself, so that he will be prepared, and make him understand that if ne has come back to interfere with my plans"—and her lips shut and her eyes glistened ominously—"well, don't let him think of it."
"I think he knows you do as you please."
"Why shouldn't I?" said Edith with a little reckless laugh. "Why shouldn't I? I've only one life to live and that's mine, to live my way. I'm selfish; so is everybody else. Some people get a selfish pleasure out of pretending to be unselfish. Well, let them! I'm not a hypocrite, thank God!"
Edith took from her enormous ermine muff a gold and jewelled bonbon box, extracted from it a tablet, and swallowed it with a drink of brandy which she had poured from a decanter.
"Sir George's prescription for my headaches," she explained in answer to the other's look of disapproval.
"The brandy part of the prescription, Edith?"
"Not having headaches, Winifred, you have a fine superiority to those who have." And she pulled the long opera cloak of emerald green like the breast of the humming-bird about her white shoulders, adjusted her ermine stole as if she were cold, walked slowly toward the stairs. In repose she was very soft, pliant, lambent, but, when moved, quick and violent. She turned and stiffened, threw her head up into the air, and came down swiftly to Lady Winifred's side.
"I must have this settlednow—to-night! I can't stand this suspense. If he attempts to upset my plans——"
"You may find him quite as eager to be free as you are."
"Do you think so, Winifred? Do you really think so?" she said, rising at a bound to the extreme of elation. Then she crept softly out of the room, purring to herself: "Oh, I hope so; I hope so."
There was a slight elevation to Lady Winifred's eyebrow and the slightest tilt to one of her shoulders. It seemed to suggest that she had ceased to be impressed with the moods and tenses of the other, that it was a pity that men could not see past the surface of things feminine, that Edith's egotism had the noble simplicity of all big things.
"My dear, wasn't Cousin Hal to take his after-dinner coffee here with us?"
It was Sir Gordon Stuckley who spoke as he came into the room. Sir Gordon was known as Lady Winifred's husband. He was a retired army officer and considerably older than his handsome wife. His mind was the amiable repository of everything conventional and commonplace. He walked over to the writing-table and picked up a cigarette.
"He has gone up to say good-night to his father," said Lady Winifred, blotting and folding her finished letter.
"Well, Hal is back," said Sir Gordon sententiously, "and brings his problem with him still unsolved."
"Whose life isn't a problem—'still unsolved'?" said his wife with an enigmatical smile.
"And it's quite difficult enough to face one's own problem, to face one's own mistakes," she continued. "It's rather hard to have to answer for the mistakes of somebody else; mistakes that can't be remedied; can't in the very nature of things. Hal can't help being a half-caste, can he?"
"What is he back for?" asked her husband shortly.
"To see his father, I presume. Sir George, I believe, cabled him to come."
"The Earl is no worse than he has been or may be for some time to come. I hope, for his own sake, and for our sake Hal has no intention of staying, because you know he is quite impossible here, now isn't he?"
"I suppose so," said Lady Winifred with a note of regret, for she was fond of the boy, "and yet we pride ourselves here on being cosmopolitan, on havin' no race prejudices."
"Officially? No! Socially? Most assuredly yes! Officially we treat these Indian potentates as princes. Actually, my dear, we regard them as niggers. Well, there you are."
"Yes," she admitted. "We are fairly tolerant of aliens because there are not enough of them to annoy us. They don't crowd us off the pavement, or take our places in the tram, or lay hands on the stipends and positions we reserve for ourselves, but, as a matter of fact, we are quite the most intolerant people in the world. Still it isn't his being a half-breed that matters so much, I think. He was living that down—it's his having to leave the Army."
"Quite so; but why did he have to leave the Army? Because he didn't know how to obey; because he couldn't submit to discipline, and why couldn't he submit to discipline? Because he had in his veins the blood of the American Indian. It comes down to race at last."
"But why shouldn't a half-breed inherit the best of each type instead of the worst and so be superior to either?"
"Oh, there is only onebest, my dear," said Gordon as he walked to the coffee with a superior smile. "There is only one best."
"And of course we assume that we are the superior type."
Lady Winifred looked after Sir Gordon with toleration. She was a woman of unusual intelligence and it was hardly fair to ask her to maintain any real illusions as to her husband.
"Well," she continued, "this dear boy is a half-breed; his wife is of our best and purest blood. Yet, with all his peculiarities, Hal is adorable, and Edith—well, if she's a type of superiority, God help the British Empire."
"Edith isn't representative; oh, no; oh,my, no!" Sir Gordon's enthusiasm in rejecting Edith on behalf of the British Empire almost upset the coffee urn.
"Oh,my, no!" he kept repeating with comic insistence.
"Isn't she?" objected Lady Winifred coming forward to take the cup offered by her husband. "Isn't she? Is the smoking, drinking, gambling woman with a moral code of her own an exception, or is she getting to be the London type?"
"By the way, where is Edith?"
"Dining with Lord Yester at the Carlton."
"Dining at the Carlton the first night her husband is at home?"
"My dear Gordon, you are hopelessly old-fashioned. Husbands are like the vermiform appendix. They must have served some useful purpose once, but no one knows now what it was. A busy woman has no time for such trifles. Edith is just back from a house party at Groton Court, she had to devote some time in the forenoon to her modiste; she went to the races in the afternoon, had tea at the Austrian Embassy, played a little bridge, and naturally she had to dress for dinner. If Hal is patient they may eventually meet here or at some mutual friend's."
Gordon never tried to follow the intricacies of his wife's raillery.
"Well, I must be hopelessly old-fashioned," he said in the most matter-of-fact way. "Modern matrimony is quite beyond me." Sir Gordon was old-fashioned. He belonged to an epoch when men, by an unwritten law, left the gossip to the women.
"Winifred," he began with much hesitation, and speaking with grave deliberation, "are you aware that Lord Yester's attentions to Edith are beginning to create talk?"
"Beginning?" laughed his wife. "Why, Gordon, that is so old that people have ceased to talk about it."
"Is it really?" he ejaculated in hopeless confusion. "Well, Hal must put his foot down at once, at once," he repeated with feeble over-emphasis.
"My dear, the foot and the hand go together. They are both archaic. Since it is no longer good form to beat one's wife, the putting of the foot down or up is of no importance. Women only respected their husbands when they had to."
One of Gordon's qualifications as a fighter and a husband was that he could take punishment. It is a useful accomplishment, and as rare as it is beautiful. It would have been impossible for Lady Winnifred to live with a man who was over-sensitive. As she explained the situation herself: "Some amiability is essential to contiguity. The bearings must have oil. Well, you mustn't expect it of me or of the cook. One doesn't look for it in one's friends. Well, there you are!"
"I have no doubt something of this has come to Hal's ears," said her husband, "and he has returned to put his house in order, and quite time indeed."
"Well," she answered, "from the woman's point of view the civilized man is a glaring failure. Perhaps the half-savage may succeed."
"Fancy, Rundall, fancy my wife suspecting the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race!"
This remark was addressed to a polished, imposing person who was descending the stairs, and in the act of returning a thermometer to the pocket of his evening coat. Sir George Rundall had the right but not the time to add a long string of letters to his name. He was a self-made man and was a credit to himself. He had the figure of one who has been an athlete, the head of a scholar who was also a man of the world, a clean-shaven, florid face and perfectly white hair, what there was of it. The doctor was a man of learning, was an authority on all sorts of unpleasant things, and had a prodigious memory. Here was a man who could put Winifred in her proper place, if any one could.
Sir Gordon had ripped out "the Anglo-Saxon race" with something of its sonorous after-dinner effect.
"Haven't you discovered, Stuckley, that our wives are always right?"
"Oh, I say!" groaned Sir Gordon, dismayed at this cowardly going over to the enemy.
"There is no such thing as an Anglo-Saxon race."
"What?"
"And there's no such thing as a pure type of man. He simply doesn't exist. Finot says: 'All human beings are cross-breeds,'" and the doctor sat down at a small desk set into a bookcase, and began to write a prescription.
"Race" was one of Gordon's strong points. He had all the conviction of the profound amateur. He was an example of a little learning and its consequences.
"You mean to say," he asked with pompous incredulity, "that there is nothing in dolichocephalic superiority?" Having delivered this without a sign of distress he looked about, greatly pleased with himself.
"Dolly who?" asked Winifred. "Sir George, is that a real word, or just aggravated assault and battery?"
"Don't be alarmed, Lady Stuckley, it only means fair-haired people with narrow skulls."
"And so blonds are the elect, are they?" she said. "Now I know the scientific explanation for the popularity of peroxide of hydrogen."
"Joking aside," said the military man. It was a stock phrase in his domestic experiences. "Joking aside, I am sure our man of science will admit the importance of the—ah, the cephalic index?"
"Sir George, I look to you for protection."
"Head measurements, Lady Stuckley, that's all," explained Sir George with a smile. "Well, as to that," he went on, rising and coming to the library table, "a fellow by the name of Parchappe, who went in for that sort of thing, found 'the head of an intelligent woman to be perceptibly inferior to the dimensions of the head of an idiot.' Now, Stuckley, justify that to your wife if you can."
Lady Winifred laughed heartily.
"For Lord Kerhill," added the doctor to Winifred as he put a prescription on the corner of the table before her.
"It pleases Sir George to treat facts as jests," said the discomfited Gordon.
"Facts?" queried Winifred. "Facts? Why that is ground for divorce."
"Facts?" echoed the man of science gravely. "I wonder what are facts? The conviction of to-day is the derision of to-morrow. We have long used the skull and the brain to assign hopeless inferiority to various peoples, now comes along Finot and says: 'The skull and the brain furnish no argument in favor of organic inequality.' Lamarck—I think it's Lamarck—puts it better. He affirms that 'Nature has created neither classes nor orders, nor families, nor kinds, nor permanent species, but only individuals!'"
"That's the answer to the problem, Gordon," cried Lady Winifred triumphantly—"the Individual!"
Down the stairs came the Individual and lounged into the room. Hal knew at once from the suggestion of an embarrassed pause that he had been the subject of the conversation.
It is rather trying to one with a problem to have inept hands dipping in, messing it about.
The doctor was the first to regain his poise. He was used to difficult cases, and when he had to announce to the patient that he had only six weeks or six months to live, his manner was perfect. "Ah, Harold," he said with a kindly smile, putting his hand on the boy's arm with a reassuring touch, "splendid for your dear father, this home coming. You mustn't go away again." Then he dropped his voice for Hal's ear alone. "I'll be back. I want to speak with you before you retire," and the busy man passed out. Hal had on the conventional dinner coat. He looked at his relatives with an amused smile and came down to the table and started to help himself to a cigarette, then thought better of it, took some rice-paper from his pocket and made his own, manipulating it with one hand after the miraculous manner of the Mexican. When it was finished, amid the awed and fascinated wonder of the spectators, he lit a match on the leg of his trousers and lit the cigarette with the same hand to the dismay of Gordon and the joy of Winifred.
To Gordon's mind no well-bred person could really care for miracles.
"Well, Cousin Hal, you have been three years an exile! What a joy, eh? What a joy to be back in dear old London!"
The boy smiled as he took up his coffee.
"Do you remember Grafton? Used to be a pal of mine. Met him on the train coming up from Liverpool." The boy bent forward with an air of startled boredom. One could see Grafton. "Well, old chap, missed you awfully! Where have you been keeping yourself for the lastfortnight?" He dropped the assumption.
"Cordial place—London! Out our way men and their characters go in their shirt sleeves." And he stretched his arms and the dinner coat popped ominously. For the moment he seemed to fill the library and it dwarfed most people.
"But you don't escape the rotter even out there, do you?" asked Winifred.
"No, but the rotter shouts himself out to all the world, and if you don't like the noise he makes you shoot it full of holes. Here they carry concealed weapons. I'm more at home with the shirt-sleeve crowd," and he sat down in the Charles II chair and threw his leg over one arm of it as he sipped his coffee.
Sir Gordon rose from the upholstered rail in front of the fireplace where he had been sitting, put down his empty coffee-cup, then stood up with the air of taking charge personally of Hal's tangled affairs.
"Well, Hal, my boy, you have come back prepared I presume to settle down, settle down to some career befitting an English gentleman." Sir Gordon paused to draw Hal's fire. As the young man did not dispute this assumption, he continued with patronizing pomposity.
"We must place you. We must place you, my boy. It won't be an easy matter, will it? Of course you can't go into trade. The Army is the only gentleman's game, but—we must not speak of that. We must not speak of that," and he hastened to get away from a subject so painful. "Now, how about the church?"
"The church?" asked Hal with a laugh.
"Oh, your father could get you a living." Then he added hastily: "It's respectable at least."
"For me? The church?"
"Oh, you don't have to go in for religion; oh, no; oh, my, no! None of that bally rot."
Seeing that her amiable husband was in very deep water, Winifred reached out her hand and encouraged him to go deeper.
"Hal, how stupid of you," she said. "You have assistants, curates, and that sort of thing who do the religion for you. You ride to hounds, play cricket for your county, and enjoy similar spiritual diversions."
"Well, you must dosomething," said Sir Gordon petulantly, annoyed with the young man's levity. "Of course whatever you decide to try, it is going to be a long hard struggle to live down the Army record; still with time and pluck it may be done. You are an earl's son and you have influential relatives. Well, then, how about politics?"
"Sit in the House and listen to the gabble on the Old Age Pensions and The Licensing Bill? I'd rather be a suffragette and go to jail."
Sir Gordon had exhausted the careers. It wasn't a career exactly, but people went in for it and it was a devilish nice thing to go in for.
"Well," he suggested, "there's the life of a country gentleman."
"The country would be all right," said Hal, "if the people would only stay away. They spoil everything. Even the gardens are as formal as the odious people, and the flowers, even the flowers, are made to look stiff and stuck-up and well-behaved, as if they felt they, too, were on exhibition and might be talked about. The country is only another setting for teas, tennis, and top hats, bridge, scandal, and flirting with each other's wives."
"Well, there's shooting," said Sir Gordon in desperation. "You used to like shooting."
"Yes, before people shot in mobs, and made it a function. Now they go into the solitudes, the cosey solitudes, with footmen, a French cook, vintage wines, and a Hungarian band."
Sir Gordon did not realize that his wife and Hal were having fun with his prejudices. He was on the edge of losing his patience.
"Well, if you stayhere—" He was annoyed to observe that he had raised his voice almost to a vulgar scream. He repeated the phrase in a more temperate key. "If you stay here——"
"But I'm not going to stay here, Gordon. It's the West for me. It's in my blood. When I've visited with father and arranged one or two important matters, I'm goin' back to God's country."
"Bravo, Hal," exclaimed Lady Winifred. "If you stay here you'll end by becoming a conventional little snob, and I should hate you. No; go back to your shirt-sleeve crowd."
"Well, my dear boy," exclaimed Gordon completely nonplussed; "I can't make you out," and he made up his mind to beat a hasty retreat to the United Service Club, where anarchy was not petted and spoiled and fed on chocolate bonbons. Then he thought of something and came back.
"Winifred, speak to Hal about that."
"About what?" inquired Hal.
Again he lost some of his habitual poise in the fervor of his convictions.
"You must put your foot down, Hal; you really must—'er—for our sakes as well as for your own. You ought—er—Winifred will tell you," and the old soldier scrambled out of the trench and effected a most disorderly retreat.
His cousin Winifred was about six years older than Hal, and in all the memories of his childhood and boyhood she was the one bright spot. His step-mother had died when he was but a lad. His father was much occupied with public affairs. No one else seemed to care to understand the queer little chap except this tall, queer girl. She stood by and encouraged him to whip the first little brat that called him an insulting name, a name suggested by his color. Then she washed and wiped his resulting wounds, and encouraged him to believe that he was in the path of duty and on the road to glory. Thus encouraged, the shy, timid lad had quickly developed into a fierce little warrior, and it was Winifred who somehow realized and foresaw that if he were ever to enjoy the blessings of peace he would have to fight for them, and she got the head gardener's son who had a distinguished reputation as an amateur pugilist, to teach him how to box, an accomplishment in which he soon distanced his teacher, and one which was destined to be of the greatest service to him in his subsequent career. His readiness to meet all comers and his demonstrated ability to do so was his passport through life.
He had fought every step of the way from childhood to manhood. A battle or series of battles marked every change in environment, in school, in college, in his preparations for a military career. Soon it came as a routine. He knew he would have to "lick somebody" in order to be let alone. It didn't worry him, and he didn't seek these encounters, but he didn't mind them. In fact, it was one of the things he did exceptionally well. When he joined a swell regiment he had a terrific struggle to stay. He was "ragged" unmercifully, but he took his medicine, and before he was forced out, the regiment was ordered into the field, went through a campaign in which he had opportunities, which he eagerly accepted and with brilliant results, results which he took modestly. Eventually he compelled respect from his brother officers, but it was earned. Oh, it was earned! In all this bitter struggle with environment Cousin Winifred, this woman "with the serpent's tongue," was the only soul who knew and understood. He came over to her and put his hands affectionately on her shoulders.
"What is it you're to tell me?" he asked her.
"Dear, simple soul, he expects you to change Edith."
"Change Edith, eh?" Hal walked away with a queer look on his face. She continued: "One can dam a river and change its course. You can't do that with a woman. Edith will go on being Edith, I fancy, to the end of the chapter."
"She seems to be still rather careless of appearances," he said.
"She never was discreet, but there are many safely on the inside who are quite as careless. At all events, she's kept out of the papers. That's something. See here."
She showed him a London society journal whose leaves she had been turning and glancing at in a desultory fashion, one of those hybrid products of modern life which make a specialty of social garbage and elevate blackmail to the point of high art; a journal which every one calls "a rag" and which all smart people read religiously. Hal took it and glanced through the article hastily.
It was an account of a "well-known society woman," "name withheld out of consideration for her distinguished relatives and friends," who was found by a police officer wandering aimlessly in Hyde Park and utterly unable to give a lucid account of herself. Sir GeorgeBlank, a well-known specialist in nervous diseases, happens to be driving by, recognizes the unhappy lady, who is apparently under the influence of a powerful drug, and takes her to her home, etc., etc., etc.
"How awful!" he said. "Do you suppose it's true?"
"My dear boy, these things are becoming so common we're no longer shocked by them. Society has its favorites, and it has a broad mantle of charity for its favorites, but obviously one mustn't parade one's sins in Hyde Park. Edith hasn't been a huge social success, but she has kept out of the papers; she is still possible and she never gives up. She is still at it—climbing, climbing."
"And Lord Yester is the latest ladder, eh?"
"Why, you haven't been in England more than a few minutes. How did you find that out?"
"Why, my friend Grafton laid one of these illustrated papers down on the seat beside me as we came up in the train. I saw a picture of Edith and Lord Yester, and I had the pleasure of reading 'an open letter' to my wife. It was very instructive. I thought you said she had kept out of the papers."
"Oh, that's a small matter. That isn't publicity. That 'open letter' attention is merely an acknowledgment of her social prominence. That is a trifle. Lady Lucretia Burk-Owsley is dancing in one of our music halls. Now, you might object to that, though her husband, I understand, rather enjoys its democracy. It sort of takes the whole of London into the bosom of the family. She can't dance, of course, but she's a revelation. You must see it. Oh, we're not standing still."
"And Lord Yester?" suggested Hal. "What is hisraison d'être?"
"Lord Yester's vocation is Edith, his avocation is being next in succession to the old Duke of Uxminster, and the Duke is feeble enough to satisfy even the most impatient heir."
"A duchess, eh?"
"Nothing short of that."
"But Yester," objected Hal in dreamy retrospection; "Yester's a boy. His father, though he was old enough to be my father, was a pal of mine. We served together in South Africa. Why you remember, Winifred? He was forced into retirement because he justified my disobedience and refused to be silenced—God bless him! One of the few friends I've had in the world! His son, eh? Why, the youngster must be just out of his perambulator."
"Some women as they grow older suddenly display a fondness for children. When a woman has escaped being a mother, she sometimes meets her fate in the grandmother class."
"He's rather a nice child, if I remember correctly," said Hal.
"Well, not a 'double-first,' not an intellectual giant, but a nicely brought-up child; a credit to his nurse, and, incidentally, just at the age to be madly in love with a married woman, married, of course, to a clod who cannot possibly understand her."
Hal laughed.
"Yes, theclodunderstands that. They have already made their plans, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes; and you're just in time to give the bride away. Now there's a novelty, and they're rare these days—a wedding in which the ex-husband is the new husband's best man. No? Well, Edith pays you the compliment of believing that you will behave very well under the circumstances. I was expected to prepare you for the inevitable and, if possible, soften the blow."
"And Lord Yester—is he willing?"
"Willing? Strenuously, madly willing. Personally, I think you are in tremendous luck. I congratulate you upon your prospective deliverance with all my heart."
Lady Winifred continued to play with the situation, turning it inside and outside, holding it up to fantastic derision, until she saw that he was not listening. The strain was off. He had resigned himself to pleasant dreams. He had been pulling against wind and tide, every muscle, every nerve stretched to cracking, his head bursting, his heart breaking, and making no progress, barely holding his own. Now the tide had turned. The storm had passed. He could take in his oars, sit in the stern, and just keep her in the current, the current that was bearing him on to his desires. He could rest in delicious lethargy and see the flowers and gardens on the bank, and see at the end of the beautiful journey Wah-na-gi standing on the rock, holding out her arms to him.
"How do you do, Harold? Welcome home."
Edith stood holding out her hand to him.