On the night of the twenty-second of December Jeff left theWorldbuilding and moved down Powers Avenue to the all night restaurant he usually frequented. The man who was both cook and waiter remembered afterwards that Farnum called for coffee, sausage, and a waffle.
Before the editor left the waffle house it was the morning of the twenty-third. He had never felt less sleepy. Nor did a book and a pipe before his gas log seem quite what he wanted. The vagabond streak in him was awake, the same potent wanderlust that as a boy had driven him to the solitude of the forests and the hills. This morning it sent him questing down Powers Avenue to that lower town where the derelicts of the city floated without a rudder.
A cold damp mist had crept up from the water front and enwrapped the city so that its lights showed like blurred moons. Some instinct took him toward the wharves. He could hear the distant cough of a tug as it fussed across the bay, and as he drew near the big Transcontinental wharves of Joe Powers the black hulk of a Japanese liner rose black out of the gray fog shadow. But the freighters, the coasters, tramps that went hither and thither over the earth wherever fat cargoes lured them—they were either swallowed in the mist or shadowed to a ghost-like wraith of themselves so tenuous that all detail was lost in the haze.
Jeff leaned on a pile and let his imagination people the harbor with the wandering children of the earth who had been drawn from all its seafaring corners to this Mecca of trade. He knew that here were swarthy little Japanese with teas and silks, dusky Kanakas with copra, and Alaskan liners carrying gold and returning miners. There would be brigs from Buenos Ayres and schooners that had nosed into Robert Louis Stevenson's magic South Sea islands. Puffy London steamers, Nome and Skagway liners condemned long since on the Atlantic Coast, queer rigged hybrids from Rio and other South American ports, were gorging themselves with lumber or wheat or provisions according to their needs. Here truly lay before him the romance of the nations.
The sound of a stealthy footfall warned him of impending danger. He whirled, and faced three men who were advancing on him. A vague suspicion that had oppressed him more than once in the past week leaped to definite conviction in his brain. He was the victim of a plot to waylay—perhaps to murder him. One of these men was a huge Swede, another a swarthy Italian with rings in his ears. He had seen them before, lurking in the shadows of an alley outside theWorldbuilding. Last night he had come out from the office with Jenkins, which no doubt had saved him for the time. This morning he had played into the hands of these men, had obligingly wandered down to the waterfront where they could so easily conceal murder in a tide running out fast.
Strangely enough he felt no fear; rather a fierce exultant drumming of the blood that braced him for the struggle. His eyes swept the wharf for a weapon and found none.
“What do you want?” he demanded sharply.
The man in command ignored his question. “Stand by and down him.”
The Italian crouched and leaped. Jeff's fist caught him fairly between the eyes. He went down like a log, rolled over once and lay still. The others closed instantly with Farnum and the three swayed in a fierce silent struggle.
Both of his attackers were more powerful than Jeff, but he was far more active. The darkness, too, aided him and hampered them. The Swede he could have managed, for the fellow was awkward as a bear. But the leader stuck to him like a burr. They went down together over a cleat in the flooring, rolling over and over each other as they fought.
Somehow Jeff emerged out of the tangle. He dragged himself to his knees and hammered with his fist at an upturned face beside him. Battered, bleeding, and winded, he got to his feet and shook off the hands that reached for him. Dodging past, he lurched along the wharf like a drunken man. The Italian had gathered himself to his knees. When Jeff came opposite him he dived like a football tackle and threw his arms around the moving legs. The newspaper man crashed heavily down to unconsciousness.
When Farnum opened his eyes upon a world strangely hazy he found himself lying in a row boat, his head bolstered by a man's knees.
“Drink this, mate,” ordered a voice that seemed very far away.
The neck of a bottle was thrust between his lips and tilted so that he could not escape drinking.
“That dope'll hold him for a while, Say, Johnny Dago, put your back into them oars,” he heard indistinctly.
Faintly there came to him the slap of the waves against the side of the boat. These presently died rhythmically away.
It was daylight when he awakened again. His throbbing head slowly definitized the vile hole in which he lay as the forecastle of a ship. Gradually the facts sifted back to him. He recalled the fight on the wharf and the drink in the boat. In this last he suspected knockout drops. That he had been shanghaied was beyond suspicion.
Laboriously he sat up on the side of his bunk and in doing so became aware of a sailor asleep in the crib opposite. His stertorous breathing stirred a doubt in Jeff's mind. Perhaps the crimps had taken him too.
The ship was rolling a good deal, but by a succession of tacks Jeff staggered to the scuttle and climbed the hatchway to the deck. A wintry sun was shining, and for a few moments he stood blinking in the light.
She was a three-masted schooner and was plunging forward into the choppy seas outside the jaws of the harbor. He whiffed the salt tang of the air and tasted the flying spray. An ebb tide was lifting the vessel forward on a freshening wind, and trim as a greyhound she slipped through the cat's-paws.
A thickset, powerful figure paced to and fro on the quarter-deck, occasionally bellowing an order in a tremendous voice like the roar of a bull. He was getting canvas set for the fresh breeze of the open seas that was catching him astern, and the sailors were jumping to obey his orders. The pounding sails and the singing cordage, the rattling blocks and the whipping ropes, would have told Jeff they were scudding along fast, even if the heeling of the schooner and its swift forward leaps had not made it plain.
“By God, Jones, she's walking,” he heard the captain boom across to the mate.
Just then a figure cut past him and made straight for the captain. Farnum recognized in it the sailor whom he had left asleep in the forecastle and even in that fleeting glance was aware of the man's livid fury. Up the steps he went like a wild beast.
“What kind of a boat is this?” he panted hoarsely.
The captain turned toward him. His eyes were shining wickedly, but his voice was ominously suave and honeyed. “This boat, son, is a threemasted schooner, name ofNancy Hanks, Master Joshua Green, bound for the Solomon Islands with a cargo of Oregon fir.”
“I've been shanghaied. This is a nest of crimps,” the man screamed.
Joshua Green's salient jaw came forward. “Been shanghaied, have you? And we're a nest of crimps, are we? Son, the less I hear of that line of talk the better. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
The man turned loose a flood of profanity and swore he would rot in hell before he would touch a rope on that ship.
Out went Green's great gnarled fist. The seaman shot back from the quarterdeck and struck a pile of rope below. He was up again and down again almost quicker than it takes to tell. Three times he hit the planks before he lay still.
The captain stood over him, his eyes blazing. He looked the savage, barbaric slavedriver he was.
“Me, I'm Bully Green, and don't you forget it. Been shanghaied, have you? Not going to touch a rope? Then, by thunder, you white-livered beachcomber, a rope will touch you till you're flayed. Get this in your coconut. You'll walk chalk, you lazy son of a sea cook, or I'll haze you till you wish you'd never been born.” He punctuated his remarks with vigorous kicks. “Bully Green runs this tub, strike me dead if he don't. Now you hump for'ard and clap a hand to them sheets. Walk, you shanghaied Dutchman!”
The sailor crawled away, completely cowed. For one day he had had more than enough. The captain watched him for a moment, his great jaw thrust grimly out. Then, as on a pivot, he whirled toward Jeff.
“Come here, you! Step lively, Sport!”
Farnum wondered whether he was about to undergo an experience similar to that of the sailor. “Do you want to know what kind of a ship this is?”
“No, sir. I'm perfectly satisfied about that,” smiled his victim.
“Got no opinions you want to hand out free, son?”
“Think I'll keep them bottled.”
“Say 'sir,' Sport!”
“Yes, sir,” answered Farnum, his quiet eyes steady and unafraid.
“When I give an order you expect to jump?”
“Jump isn't the word.”
“Sir!” thundered Green, and “Sir” the newspaper man corrected himself.
“Got no story to spiel about being shanghaied, son?”
“Would it do any good, sir?”
“Not unless you're aching to get what that son of a Dutchman got. See here, sport! You walk the chalk line, and Bully Green and you'll get along fine. I'm a lamb, I am, when I'm not riled. But get gay—and you'll have a hectic time. I'll rough you till you're shark-food. Get that through your teeth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now you trot down to the fo'c'sle and dive into them slops you find there. You got just three minutes to do the dress-suit act.”
Jeff, as he passed below, could hear the great bull voice roaring orders to the men. “Set y'r topsails! Jam 'er down hard, Johnnie Dago! Stand by, you lubbers!... Now then, easy does it... easy!”
Within the allotted three minutes Farnum had climbed into the foul oilskin coat and tarry breeches he found below and was ready for orders.
“Clap on to that windlass, sport! No loafing here.... Hump y'rself. D'ye hear me? Hump?”
Jeff threw his one hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle against the crank of the windlass. Some men would have fought first as long as they could stand and see. Others would have begged, argued, or threatened. But Jeff had schooled himself to master impulses of rage. He knew when to fight and when to yield. Nor did he give way sullenly or passionately. It was an outrage—highhanded tyranny—but at the worst it was a magnificent adventure. As he flung his weight into the crank he smiled.
Before the trade winds theNancy Hanksfoamed along day after day, all sails set, making excellent time. But for his anxiety as to the effect his disappearance would have upon the political situation, Jeff would have enjoyed immensely the wild rough life aboard the schooner. But he could not conceal from himself the interpretation of his absence the machine agents would scatter broadcast. He foresaw a reaction against his bill and its probable defeat.
The issue was on the knees of chance. The fact that could not be obliterated was that he had been wiped from the slate until after the legislature would adjourn. For every hour was carrying him farther from the scene of action.
His only hope was that theNancy Hanksmight put in at the Hawaiian Islands, from which place he might get a chance to write, or, better still, to cable the reason of his absence. Captain Green himself wiped out this expectation. He jocosely intimated to Farnum one afternoon that he had no intention of calling the Islands.
“When we get through this six months' cruise you'll be a first-rate sailorman, son, and you'll get a sailorman's wages,” he added genially.
The shanghaied man met his eye squarely. “I think I could arrange to draw on Verden for a thousand dollars if you would drop me at the Islands.”
“Not for twenty thousand. You're going to stay with us till we get to the Solomon Islands, and don't you forget it.”
Bully Green had taken rather a fancy to this amiable young man who had taken so sensible a view of the little misadventure that had befallen him, but of course business was business. He had been paid to keep him out of the way and he intended to fulfil the contract.
“Here I'm educatin' you, makin' an able-bodied seaman out of you, son. You had ought to be grateful,” he grinned.
“Oh, I am,” Jeff agreed with a twinkle.
But Captain Green had reckoned without the weather. TheNancy Hanksdrifted into three days of calm and sultry heat. At the end of the third day she began to rock gently beneath a murky sky.
“Dirty weather,” predicted the mate, the same who had assisted at the shanghaing. “When you see a satin sea turn indigo and that peculiar shade in the sky you want to look out for squalls,” he explained to Jeff.
It came on them in a rush. The sun went out of a black sky like a blown candle and the sea began to whip itself to a froth. The wind quickened, boomed to a roar, and sent the schooner heeling to a squall across the leaden waters. The open sea closed in on them. Before they could get in sail and make secure the sheets ripped with a scream, braces parted and the topmasts snapped off. TheNancywent pitching forward into the yawning deeps with drunken plunges from which it seemed she would never emerge. Great combing seas toppled down and pounded the decks, while the sailors clung to stays or whatever would give them a hold.
The squall lasted scarce an hour, but it left the schooner dismantled. Her sheets were in ribbons, her topmasts and bowsprit gone. There was nothing for it but a crippled beat toward the Islands.
Four days later she made an offing in the harbor at Honolulu just as a liner was nosing her way out.
Bully Green ranged up beside Farnum and cast a speculative eye on him.
“Sport, I had ought to iron you and keep you in the fo'c'sle until we leave here. It's the only square thing to do.”
Jeff's gaze was on the advancing steamer. She was scarce two hundred yards away now and he could plainly read the name painted on her side. She was theBellinghamof Verden.
“I don't see the necessity, sir,” he answered.
“I reckon you do, son. Samuel Green stands by his word to a finish. Now I've promised to keep you safe, and you can bet your last dollar I'm a-going to do it.”
His prisoner turned from the rail against which he was leaning to the captain. Pinpoints of light were gleaming in the big eyes.
“How much safer do you want me than this?”
Green expectorated at a chip in the water and shifted his quid. “You've got brains, son. No telling what you might try to do. But see here. You're no drunken beachcomber. I know a gentleman when I see one. Gimme your word you'll not try to skip out or send a message back to the States and I'll go easy on you. I'm so dashed kindhearted, I am, that—”
Jeff leaped to the rail, stood poised an instant, and dived into the blue Pacific.
“Well, I'll be,” Bully Green interrupted himself to roar an order to lower a boat.
A young man left his father's house to see the world.Everywhere he found busy human beings. Cities were risingtoward the skies, seas and plains were being lined withtraffic, school, mill and office hummed with life. Hewondered why men were so busy and what they were trying todo.He went to a railroad director and asked: “Why are youbuilding railroads?” “For profits,” was the answer. But alaborer beckoned him aside and whispered: “No—we are makingtheWorldone neighborhood. East is now next door to West,and all peoples dwell in one continuing city.”The young man went to the boss of a labor union. “Why,” heasked, “do you spend your days breeding discontent andleading strikes?” “Why?” repeated the leader fiercely, “thatthe workers receive more pay for shorter hours.” “No,”whispered a laborer, “we are teaching theWorldthe sacredvalue of human beings. We are learning how to be brotherly—how to stand up for each other.—James Oppenheim.
UNDER STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES THE REBEL MAKES HIS BOW TO POLITE SOCIETY. TAKING AN APPLE AS A TEXT, HE PREACHES ON THE RISE OF ADAM
Somebody on the liner sang it out. Instantly there was a rush of passengers to the side. From the schooner a boat was being lowered and manned.
“I see him. He's swimming this way. I believe he's trying to escape,” one slender young woman cried.
“Nonsense, Alice! He fell overboard and he's probably so frightened he doesn't know which way he is swimming.” This suggestion was from the beautiful blonde with bronze hair who stood beside her under a tan parasol held by a fresh-faced globetrotter.
“Don't you believe it, Val. Look how he's cutting through the water. He's trying to reach us. Oh, I hope they won't get him. Somebody get a rope to throw out.”
“By Jove, you're right, Miss Alice,” cried the Englishman. “It's a race, and it's going to be a near thing.” He disappeared and was presently back with a rope.
“Come on! Come on!” screamed the passengers to the swimmer.
“He's ripping strong with that overhead stroke. Ye gods, it's close!” exclaimed the Britisher.
It was. The swimmer reached the side of the ship not four yards in front of the pursuing boat. He caught at the trailing rope and began to clamber up hand over hand, while the Englishman, a man standing near, and Alice Frome dragged him up.
The mate of the Nancy Hanks, standing up in the boat, caught at his foot and pulled. The man's hold loosened on the rope. He slid down a foot, steadied himself. Suddenly the left leg shot out and caught the grinning mate in the mouth. He went over backward into the bottom of the boat. Before he could extricate himself from the tangle his fall had precipitated, the dripping figure of the swimmer stood safely on the deck of theBellingham.
In his wet foul slops the man was a sight to draw stares. The cabin passengers moved back to give him a wide circle, as men do with a wet retriever.
“What does this mean, my man?” demanded the captain of theBellingham,pushing forward. He was a big red-faced figure with a heavy roll of fat over his collar.
“I have been shanghaied, sir. From Verden. I'm the editor of theWorldof that city.”
“That's a lie,” proclaimed the mate of theNancy Hanks, who by this time had reached the deck. “He's a nutty deckswabber we picked up at 'Frisco.”
“Why, it's Mr. Farnum,” cried a fresh young voice from the circle.
The rescued man turned. His eyes joined those of a slim golden girl and he was struck dumb.
“You know this man, Miss Frome?” the captain asked.
“I know him by sight.” She stepped to the front. “There can't be any doubt about it. He's Mr. Farnum of Verden, the editor of theWorld.”
“You're quite sure?”
“Quite sure, Captain Barclay. My cousin knows him, too.”
The captain turned to Mrs. Van Tyle. She nodded languidly.
Barclay swung back to the mate of theNancy Hanks. “I know your kind, my man, and I can tell you that I think the penitentiary would be the proper place for you and your captain, with my compliments to him.”
“Better come and pay 'em yourself, sir,” sneered the mate.
“Get off my deck, you dirty crimp,” roared the captain. “Slide now, or I'll have you thrown off.”
Mr. Jones made a hurried departure. Once in the boat, he shook his fist at Barclay and cursed him fluently.
The captain turned away promptly. “Mr. Farwell, if you'll step this way the steward will outfit you with some clothes. If they don't fit they'll do better than those togs you're wearing.”
The English youth came forward with a suggestion. “Really, I think I can do better than that for Mr. Far—” He hesitated for the name.
“Farnum,” supplied the owner of it.
“Ah! You're about my size, Mr. Farnum. If you don't mind, you know, you're quite welcome to anything I have.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Very well. Mr. Farwell—Farnum, I mean—shake hands with Lieutenant Beauchamp,” and with the sense of duty done the worthy captain dismissed the new arrival from his mind.
Jeff bowed to Miss Frome and followed his broad-shouldered guide to a cabin. He was conscious of an odd elation that had not entirely to do with a brave adventure happily ended. The impelling cause of it was rather the hope of a braver adventure happily begun.
“By Jove, I envy you, Mr. Farnum. Didn't know people bucked into adventures like that these tame days. Think of actually being shanghaied. It's like a novel. My word, the ladies will make a lion of you!”
The Englishman was dragging a steamer trunk from under his bed. It needed no second glance at his frank boyish face to divine him a friend worth having. Fresh-colored and blue-eyed, he looked very much the country gentleman Jeff had read about but never seen. It was perhaps by the gift of race that he carried himself with distinction, though the flat straight back and the good shoulders of the cricketer contributed somewhat, too. Jeff sized him up as a resolute, clean-cut fellow, happily endowed with many gifts of fortune to make him the likable chap he was.
Beauchamp threw out some clothes from a steamer trunk and left the rescued man alone to dress. Ten minutes later he returned.
“Expect you'd like an interview with the barber. I'll take you round. By the way, you'll let me be your banker till you reach Verden?”
“Thank you. Since I must.”
From the barber shop the Englishman took him to the dining saloon. “Awfully sorry you can't sit at our table, Mr. Farnum. It's full up. You're to be at the purser's.”
Jeff let a smile escape into his eyes. “Suits me. I've been at the bos'n's for several weeks.”
“Beastly outrage. We'll want to hear all about it. Miss Frome's tremendously excited. Odd you and she hadn't met before. Didn't know Verden was such a big town.”
“I'm not a society man,” explained Jeff. “And it happens I've been fighting her father politically for years. Miss Frome and Mrs. Van Tyle are about the last people I would be likely to meet.”
From his seat Jeff could see the cousins at the other end of the room. They were seated near the head of the captain's table, and that officer was paying particular attention to them, perhaps because theBellinghamhappened to be one of a line of boats owned by Joe Powers, perhaps because both of them were very attractive young women. They were types entirely outside Farnum's very limited experience. The indolence, the sheathed perfection, the soft sensuous allure of the young widow seemed to Jeff a product largely of her father's wealth. But the charm of her cousin, with its sweet and mocking smile, its note of youthful austerity, was born of the fine and gallant spirit in her.
Beauchamp sat beside Miss Frome and the editor observed that they were having a delightful time. He wondered what they could be talking about. What did a man say to bring such a glow and sparkle of life into a girl's face? It came to him with a wistful regret for his stolen youth that never yet had he sat beside a young woman at dinner and entertained her in the gay adequate manner of Lieutenant Beauchamp. James could do it, had done it a hundred times. But he had been sold too long to an urgent world of battle ever to know such delights.
After dinner Jeff lost no time in waiting upon Miss Frome to thank her for her assistance. It was already dark. When he found her it was not in one of the saloons, but on deck. She was leaning against the deck railing in animated talk with Beauchamp, the while Mrs. Van Tyle listened lazily from a deck chair.
“I like the way that red head of his came bobbing through the water,” Beauchamp was saying. “Looks to me as if he would take a lot of beating. He's no quitter. Since I haven't the pleasure of knowing Mr. Powers or Senator Frome, I think I'll back Farnum to win.”
“It's very plain you don't know Joe Powers. He always wins,” contributed his daughter blandly.
“But Mr. Farnum is a remarkable man just the same,” Alice added. Then, with a little cry to cover her flushed embarrassment: “Here he is. We do hope you're a little deaf, Mr. Farnum. We've been talking about you.”
“You may say anything you like about me, Miss Frome, except that I'm not grateful for the lift aboard you gave me this afternoon,” Jeff answered.
He found himself presently giving the story of his adventure. He did not look at Alice, but he told the tale to her alone and was aware of the eagerness with which she listened.
“But why should they want to kidnap you? I don't see any reason for it,” Alice protested.
A shadowy smile lay in the eyes of Mrs. Van Tyle. “Mr. Farnum is in politics, my dear.”
A fat pork packer from Chicago joined the group. “I've been thinking about the sharks, Mr. Farnum. You played in great luck to escape them.”
“Sharks!” Jeff heard the young woman beside him give a gasp. In the moonlight her face showed white.
“These waters are fairly infested with them,” the Chicagoan explained. “We saw two this morning in the harbor. It was when the stewards threw out the scraps. They turned over on their—”
“Don't!” cried Alice Frome sharply.
The petrified horror on the vivid mobile face remained long as a sweet memory to Jeff. It had been for him that she had known the swift heart clutch of terror.
Farnum, pacing the deck as he munched at an apple, heard himself hailed from the bridge above. He looked up, to see Alice Frome, caught gloriously in the wind like a winged Victory. Her hair was parted in the middle with a touch of Greek simplicity and fell in wavy ripples over her temples beneath the jaunty cap. She put her arms on the railing and leaned forward, her chin tilted to an oddly taking boyish piquancy.
“I say, give a fellow a bite.”
By no catalogue of summarized details could this young woman have laid claim to beauty, but in the flashing play of her expression, the exquisite golden coloring, one could not evade the charm of a certain warm witchery, of the passionate beat of innocent life. The wonder of her lay in the sparkle of her inner self. Every gleam of the deep true eyes, every impulsive motion of the slight supple body, expressed some phase of her infinite variety. Her flying moods swept her from demure to daring, from warm to cool. And for all her sweet derision her friends knew a heart full of pure, brave enthusiasms that would endure.
“I don't believe in indiscriminate charity,” Jeff explained, and he took another bite.
“Have you no sympathy for the deserving poor?” she pleaded. “Besides, since you're a socialist, it isn't your apple any more than it is mine. Bring my half up to me, sir.”
“Your half is the half I've already eaten. And if you knew as much as you pretend to about socialism you'd know it isn't yours until you've earned it.”
Her eyes danced. He noticed that beneath each of them was a sprinkle of tiny powdered freckles. “But haven't I earned it? Didn't I blister my hands pulling you aboard?”
He promptly shifted ground. “We're living under the capitalistic system. You earn it and I eat it,” he argued. “The rest of this apple is my reward for having appropriated what didn't belong to me.”
“But that's not fair. It's no better than stealing.”
“Sh—h! It's high finance. Don't use that other word,” he whispered. “And what's fair hasn't a thing to do with it. It's my apple because I've got it.”
“But—”
He waved her protest aside blandly. “Now try to be content with the lot a wise Providence has awarded you. I eat the apple. You see me eat it. That's the usual division of profits. Don't be an agitator, or an anarchist.”
“Don't I get even the core?” she begged.
“I'd like to give it to you, but it wouldn't be best. You see I don't want to make you discontented with your position in life.” He flung what was left of the apple into the sea and came up the steps to join her.
Laughter was in the eyes of both, but it died out of hers first.
“Mr. Farnum, is it really as bad as that?” Before he could find an answer she spoke again. “I've wanted for a long time to talk with some one who didn't look at things as we do. I mean as my father does and my uncle does and most of my friends. Tell me what you think of it—you and your friends.”
“That's a large order, Miss Frome. I hardly know where to begin.”
“Wait! Here comes Lieutenant Beauchamp to take me away. I promised to play ring toss with him, but I don't want to go now.” She led a swift retreat to a spot on the upper deck shielded from the wind and warmed by the two huge smokestacks. Dropping breathless into a chair, she invited him with a gesture to take another. Little imps of mischief flashed out at him from her eyes. In the adventure of the escape she had made him partner. A rush of warm blood danced through his veins.
“Now, sir, we're safe. Begin the propaganda. Isn't that the word you use? Tell me all about everything. You're the first real live socialist I ever caught, and I mean to make the most of you.”
“But I'm unfortunately not exactly a socialist.”
“An anarchist will do just as well.”
“Nor an anarchist. Sorry.”
“Oh, well, you're something that's dreadful. You haven't the proper bump of respect for father and for Uncle Joe. Now why haven't you?”
And before he knew it this young woman had drawn from him glimpses of what life meant to him. He talked to her of the pressure of the struggle for existence, of the poverty that lies like a blight over whole sections of cities, spreading disease and cruelty and disorder, crushing the souls of its victims, poisoning their hearts and bodies. He showed her a world at odds and ends, in which it was accepted as the natural thing that some should starve while others were waited upon by servants.
He made her see how the tendency of environment is to reduce all things to a question of selfinterest, and how the great triumphant fact of life is that love and kindness persist. Her interest was insatiable. She poured questions upon him, made him tell her stories of the things he had seen in that strange underworld that was farther from her than Asia. So she learned of Oscar Marchant, coughing all day over the shoes he half-soled and going out at night to give his waning life to the service of those who needed him. He told her—without giving names—the story of Sam Miller and his wife, of shop girls forced by grinding poverty to that easier way which leads to death, of little children driven by want into factories which crushed the youth out of them.
Her eyes with the star flash in them never left his face. She was absorbed, filled with a strange emotion that made her lashes moist. She saw not only the tragedy and waste of life, but a glorious glimpse of the way out. This man and his friends set the common good above their private gain. For them a new heart was being born into the world. They were no longer consumed with blind greed, with love of their petty selves. They were no longer full of cowardice and distrust and enmity. Life was a thing beautiful to them. It was flushed with the color of hope, of fine enthusiasms. They might suffer. They might be defeated. But nothing could extinguish the joy in their souls. They walked like gods, immortals, these brothers to the spent and the maimed. For they had found spiritual values in it that made any material profit of small importance. Alice got a vision of the great truth that is back of all true reforms, all improvement, all progress.
“Love,” she said almost in a whisper, “is forgetting self.”
Jeff lost his stride and pulled up. He thought he could not have heard aright. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Go on please.”
But she had broken the thread of his talk. He attempted to take it up again, but he was still trying for a lead when Alice saw Mrs. Van Tyle and Beauchamp coming toward them.
She rose. Her eyes were the brightest Jeff had ever seen. They were filled with an ardent tenderness. It was as if she were wrapped in a spiritual exaltation.
“Thank you. Thank you. I can't tell you what you've done for me.”
She turned and walked quickly away. To be dragged back to the commonplace at once was more than she could bear. First she must get alone with herself, must take stock of this new emotion that ran like wine through her blood. A pulse throbbed in her throat, for she was in a passionate glow of altruism.
“I'm glad of life—glad of it—glad of it!” she murmured through the veil she had lowered to screen her face from observation.
It had come to her as a revelation straight from Heaven that there can be no salvation without service. And the motive back of service must be love. Love! That was what Jesus had come to teach the world, and all these years it had warped and mystified his message.
She felt that life could never again be gray or colorless. For there was work waiting that she could do, service that she could give. And surely there could be no greater happiness than to find her work and do it gladly.
All sorts of absurd assumptions pass current as fixed andnon-debatable standards. We might be free, and we tieourselves to the slavery of rutted convention. Afraid ofideas, we come to no definite philosophy of life that is theresult of clear and pellucid thinking.We must get rid of our bonds, but only in order to take onnew ones. For our convictions will shackle us. Thedifference is that then we shall be servants of Truth andnot of dead Tradition.—From the Note Book of a Dreamer.
THE CHAPERONE EXPLAINS THAT THE REBEL IS IMPOSSIBLE AND THE CHAPERONED BEGS LEAVE TO DIFFER
Her cousin regarded her with indolent amusement. “My dear, you are positively the most energetic person I know. It is refreshing to see with what interest you enter into a discussion.”
Miss Frome, very erect and ready for argument, watched her steadily from the piano stool of their joint sitting room. “Well?”
“I didn't say you mustn't, my dear. I know better than to deal in imperatives with Miss Alice. What I did was mildly to suggest that you are going rather far. It's all very well to be civil, but—” Mrs. Van Tyle shrugged her shoulders and let it go at that. She was leaning back in an easychair and across its arm her wrist hung. Between the fingers, polished like old ivory to the tapering pink nails, was a lighted cigarette.
“Why shouldn't I be—pleasant to him? I like him.” Her color deepened, but the eyes of the girl did not give way. There was in them a little flare of defiance.
“Be pleasant to him if you like, and if it amuses you. But—” Again Valencia stopped, but after a puff or two at her cigarette she added presently: “Don't get too interested in him.”
“I'm not likely to,” Alice returned with a touch of scorn. “Can't I like a man and admire him without wanting to marry him? I think that's a hateful way to look at it.”
“It's your interpretation, not mine,” Mrs. Van Tyle answered with perfect good humor. “Of course you couldn't want to marry him under any circumstances. His station in life—his anarchistic ideas—his reputation as a confirmed libertine—all of them make the thought of such a thing impossible.”
Miss Frome's mind seized on only one of the charges. “I don't believe it. I don't believe a word of it. Anybody can throw mud—and some of it is bound to stick. He's a good man. You can see that in his face.”
“You can perhaps. I can't.” Valencia studied her beneath a droop of eyelids behind which she was very alert. “Those things aren't said about a man unless they are true. Moreover, it happens we don't have to depend on hearsay.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember that night we saw the Russian dancers?”
“Yes.”
“On the way home our car passed him. He was helping a woman out of a cab in front of the building where he rooms. She was intoxicated, and—his arm was round her waist.”
“I don't believe it. It was somebody else,” the young woman flamed.
“His cousin recognized him. So did I.”
“There must be some explanation. I'll ask him.”
“Ask him!” Valencia's level eyebrows lifted “Really, I don't think that will do. Better quietly eliminate him.”
“You mean treat him as if he were guilty when, I am sure he is not.”
Mrs. Van Tyle's little laugh rippled out. “You're quite dramatic about it, my dear. The man's of no importance. He's aposeur, a demagogue, and one with a vicious streak in him. I understand, of course, that you're interested only because he different from the other men you know. That merely a part of his pose.”
“I'm sure it isn't.”
“You're romantic, my dear. I'll admit his arrival on this ship was dramatic. No doubt you're imagining him a knight going back to save gallantly a day that is lost. He's only a politician, and so far as I can understand they are almost all a bad lot.”
“Including Father and Uncle Joe and Ned Merrill?” Alice asked acidly.
“They are not politicians, but business men. They are in politics merely to protect their interests. But I didn't intend to start a discussion about Mr. Farnum. I ask you to remember that as your chaperone I'm here to represent your father. Would he wish you to be friendly with this man?”
Alice was silent. What her father would think was not a matter of doubt.
“The man's impossible,” Mrs. Van Tyle went on pleasantly. “And it's just as well to be careful. Not that I'm very prudish myself. But if you're going to marry Ned Merrill—”
She had struck the wrong note. Like a flash Alice answered.
“I'm not. That's definitely decided.”
“Really! I thought it was rather arranged,” Valencia smiled blandly.
It was all very well for Alice to protest, but in the end she would be a good girl and do as she was told. Not that her cousin objected to her having a little fling before the fatal day. But why couldn't the girl do her flirting with Beauchamp instead of with this wild socialist?
Valencia reflected that at any rate she had done her duty.