CHAPTER IIINOT TRIASSIC, CERTAINLY, BUT NEARLY AS OLDTo return again to the events attendant on the "Beggar's Opera." Harry slept late the morning after the performance, and when he awoke it was with a mind rested and vacant except for an intangible conviction that something pleasant had happened. He yawned and stretched delectably, and in a leisurely sort of way set about discovering just what it was."Let's see, now, what can it be?" he argued pleasantly. "Oh, yes, the 'Beggar's Opera.' It's all over, thank Heaven, and it went off creditably well. The wigs arrived in time and the prison set didn't fall over, and nobody lost a cue—so you could notice it." He lay back for a moment to give full rein to the enjoyment of these reflections. "There was something else, though." His mind languidly returned to the pursuit, as a dog crosses a room stretching at every step. "I'm sure there was something else....""Oh, yes, of course," he said at last; "I remember now. Madge Elliston."If, say, ten seconds sufficed for enjoyment of the recollection of the "Beggar's Opera," how long should you say would be necessary for the absorption of the truth contained in those two words? A lifetime? An honest answer; we won't undertake to say it's not the right one. Harry, at least, seemed to be of that opinion."After all, though, it would be rather absurd to spend a whole lifetime in bed," he observed, after devoting twenty minutes to the subject. Then he jumped out of bed and pulled up the shade.Vague flittings of poetry and song buzzed through his brain. One little phrase in particular kept humming behind his ears; a scrap from a song he had heard Madge herself sing often enough:—"What shall I do to show how much I love her?" The thing rather annoyed him by its insistence. He stood by the open window and inhaleda few deep breaths of the quickening March air. "What shall I do to show how much I love her!" sang the air as it rushed up his nose and became breath and out again and became carbon dioxide. "I really don't know, I'm sure," he answered, impatiently breaking off and starting on some exercises he performed on mornings when he felt particularly energetic and there was time. Their rhythm was fascinating; he found he could do them in two different ways:—What shall—I do—to show—how much—I love her, or, What shall I—do to show—how much I—? "Oh, hang it!" He suddenly lost all interest in them. With one impatient, dramatic movement he tore off the upper half of his pajamas, ripping off three buttons as he did so. With another slightly more complicated but even more dramatic, he extricated himself from the lower half, breaking the string in the process."Ts! ts! More work for somebody!" he said, making the sound in the roof of his mouth indicative of reproof. He kicked the damaged garments lightly onto the bed and sauntered into the adjoining bathroom.He turned on the water in the bathtub and stood watching it a moment as it gushed out in its noisy enthusiasm. "WhatshallIdotoshowhowmuchIloveher?" it inquired uncouthly. "Oh, do stop bothering me," said Harry, turning disgustedly away; "I've got to shave."He lathered his face and took the razor in his right hand, while with his left he delicately lifted the end of his nose, so as to make a taut surface of his upper lip. It was a trick he had much admired in barbers. "Somehow it's not so effective when you do it to yourself," he said regretfully, watching the effect in the mirror. It helped his shaving, however, and shaving helped his thinking. He was able to think quite clearly and seriously, in fact, in spite of the roaring of the water nearby."I suppose I might keep away from her for a while," he said presently.That really seemed a good idea; the more he thought of it the better he liked it. "I'll go down and stay with Trotty," he said as he scraped the last strip of lather off his face, remembering how fervently Trotty, recovering from a severe illness on the Trotwood estate in North Carolina, had begged him to come down and cheer his solitude. "And I won't come back until I know," he continued. "One must be sure. Absolutely."He plunged into his bath and the stimulus of the cold water set his brain working faster. "I'll start this very morning. Let's see; I've missed the ten-thirty, but I can catch the twelve-three, if I look alive, and get the three-fifty from New York.... No, on second thoughts, I'd better have lunch and pack comfortably and start this afternoon. That'll be better; it never does to be in too much of a hurry!"It never did; he became even more convinced of that when he remembered at breakfast the many post-mortem arrangements to be made in connection with the "Beggar's Opera." However, he spent an active afternoon in completing what he could of these and delegating the remainder to subordinates, with the calm explanation that he was called away on business, and started for southern climes the next morning.As soon as he had telegraphed Trotty and was actually on his way he became inclined to fear he had not done the right thing. It was so confoundedly quiet down there; he would have nothing to do but think about her. He should have plunged himself into some all-absorbing activity; he should have traveled or taken a nine-till-five clerkship or gone to New York for a while. This suspicion continued through his journey and even survived, though in a mangled form, Trotty's enthusiastic welcome of him. But after he had passed a few days among those pine-clad solitudes he began to see that he had done the wisest possible thing. Trotty was required to be out-of-doors practically the whole time, and the two drove endless miles in a dogcart through the quickening oaks and pines, or lay on fragrant carpets of needles, content with mere sensuous enjoyment of the wind and sun, sky and landscape.Somehow these things brought calm and conviction to the heart of Harry. They seemed to rest and purge his soul from the fatigues of the past months; the anxiety and effort of the autumn before, the pangs of composition that had marked the winter, the hurry and worry to which these had given place during the last few weeks, and to give coherence and sanctity to the tremendous discovery of that Friday night. He could not tell why it was that the sight of a flock of feathery clouds scurrying across a blue sky or the sound of warm wind among pine needles shouldwork this change in him, but it was so. "You're quite right," they seemed to say; "perfectly right. The thing has come, and it's not distracting or disturbing or frightening, as you feared it might be; it's just simple and great and unspeakably sweet. And you were quite right to come to us to find out about it; you can learn among us a great deal better than in all that hectic scrambling up north. So lay aside every thought and worry and ambition and open your whole heart and soul to us while we tell you how to take this, the greatest thing that ever was, is, or shall be!"Trotty was also a source of comfort to him; Trotty had lost nothing of his former singular faculty of always rubbing him the right way. Not that either of them made any open or covert allusion to Harry's state of mind, for they did not, but there was something particularly reassuring, something strangely in tune with the great natural forces about them in his silent presence. For they would drive or read or simply lie about together for hours without speaking, after the manner of certain types of people who become very intimate with each other.Whether these silences were to Trotty merely the intimate silences of yore or whether they had taken on for him also something of the character that colored them for Harry is not particularly clear; it is probable that he guessed something, but no more. As much might be gathered, at least, from the one occasion upon which their conversation even touched on anything vital.This occurred on the eve of Harry's departure. For of course he had to leave some time. The birds and trees and sky were all very well for a while, but after three weeks the thought forced itself into his mind that any more time spent among them would smack of laziness if not of cowardice."Trotty," said he, "I'm going north on the twelve-fifty to-morrow.""Oh," replied Trotty. "Bad news?""No.""In love?""Yep.""Oh." A silence of some length ensued."Carson?" asked Trotty at last."No, no—Elliston.""Oh.... Well, here's luck.""Thanks. I need it."In this matter-of-fact, almost coarse form was cast the most intimate conversation the two ever had together.Harry determined to "have it out," as he mentally expressed it, with Madge as soon as possible, and went to call on her the very first evening after his return. As he walked in the front door he caught sight of her ahead of him crossing the hall with a sheaf of papers under her arm, and immediately his heart began thumping in a way that fairly shocked him. Her appearance was so wonderfully everyday, so utterly at variance with the way his silly heart had been going on about her these weeks! He felt as if he had been intending to propose to an archangel who happened to be also a duchess."Hello! This is an unexpected pleasure! I thought you were away shooting things." Her manner was friendly enough; she was obviously glad, as well as surprised, to see him. He murmured something explanatory, which apparently satisfied her, for she went on: "I'm glad you're back, anyway, because you're just in time to help me with my arithmetic papers. Come along in."He sat down almost in despair, with the idea of merely making an evening call and postponing more important matters to a time when he should be better inured to the effects of her presence. But as he sat and watched her as she talked to him and looked over her arithmetic papers he felt his courage gradually return. Her physical presence was simply irresistible, distant and difficult of approach as she seemed."Do tell all about North Carolina," said Madge; "it's a delightful state, isn't it?""Oh, delightful.""So I understand. My idea of it is a fashionable place where people go to recover from something, but I suppose there's more to it than that. The only other thing I know about it is geological; a remnant of physical geography, ages ago. I seem to remember something about triassic.... What is your North Carolina like, fashionable or triassic?""Not triassic, certainly.""No, I suppose not. It's very nice triassic, though; coal, and all sorts of lovely things, as I remember it. You must have been fashionable. Asheville, and that sort of thing.""Not at all. I was helping Trotty to recover from something.""Oh, really? What?""Pneumonia. Also pleurisy.""Indeed! I didn't know anything about that; I thought you went simply to shoot things. So Jack Trotwood has had pleural pneumonia, has he? That's a horrid combination; poor Uncle Rudolph Scharndorst died of it. You often do if you have it hard enough and are old enough, or drink enough....""Well, Trotty doesn't," said Harry; "so he didn't.""My dear man, neither did Uncle Rudolph," rejoined Miss Elliston. "That wasn't what I meant; he just had it so hard he died of it—that was all.—How is he getting on?""Couldn't say, I'm sure.""I mean Trotty, of course! Poor Uncle Rudolph!""Very well, indeed.—Madge!" he went on, gathering courage for a break, "I didn't come here to-night to talk about Uncle Rudolph!"Miss Elliston raised her eyebrows ever so little and went on, with unabated cheerfulness: "We were talking about Jack Trotwood, I thought. However, here's this arithmetic; you can help me with that. Do you know anything about percentage? It's not so hard, when you really put your mind to it. Given the principal and interest, to find the rate—that's easy enough. Useful, too; if you know how much a person has a year all you have to do is to find what it's invested in and look it up on the financial page, and you can tell just what their capital is! It's quite simple!""Oh, yes, perfectly simple.""Let's see—Florrie Vicars; did you ever hear of any one whose name was really Florrie before?... Florrie gets a C—she generally does. That isn't on a scale of A B C, it stands for 'correct.' Did you ever hear of anything so delightfully Victorian? That's the way we do things at Miss Snellgrove's.... Sadie Jones—wouldn'tyou know that a girl called Sadie Jones who wrote like that—look at those sevens—would have frizzy yellow hair and sticky-out front teeth?""Yes, indeed, without any doubt.""Well, as a matter of fact she has straight black hair and a pure Grecian profile and is altogether the most beautiful creature you ever saw!... Marjorie Hamlin—she never could add two and two straight.... Jennie Fairbanks...."Harry realized more sharply than before that ordinary conversational paths would not lead where he wanted to go; he must break through the hedge and he must break with courage and determination."Madge!" he burst out again, "I didn't come here to talk about little girls' arithmetic papers, either! I am here to-night to declare a state of—" He stopped, unable, when the moment came, to treat the matter with even that amount of lightness. He had been over-confident!"Of what?" asked Madge, looking up from her arithmetic and smiling brightly yet distantly at him. There was just a chance that she might shame him back into mere conversation, even at this late moment."You know, perfectly well!" He sprang from his chair and took a step or two toward her. The thing was done now. A minute ago they had been occupied in trivial chatter; now they were launched on the momentous topic."Madge, don't pretend not to understand, at any rate!" He was by her side on the sofa now. "I used to think that when I was—when I was in love I should be able to joke and laugh about it as I have about every earthly thing in life. I thought that if love couldn't be turned into a joke it wasn't worth having. But it isn't that way, at all!... Oh, Madge, Madge, don't you see how it is with me?""Dear Harry, indeed I do!" said Madge impulsively, feeling a great wave of pity and unhappiness swell in her bosom. "Indeed I do!""Then don't you think that you could ever ... Madge, until you tell me you could possibly—feel that way—toward me, it's Hell, that's what it is, Hell!""Indeed it is, Harry; that's just what it is!""Then you think you can't—love me?""No—God forgive me, I can't!"He sat still for a moment, looking quietly at her from his sad brown eyes in a way she thought would break her heart. "I was afraid so," he said at last; "I suppose I really knew it, all along. It's been my fault.""Oh, Harry," she burst out, "if you only knew how much I wanted to! If you only knew how terrible it is to see you sit there and say that, and not be able to say yes! I like you so much, and you are such a dear altogether, and you're so wonderful about this—oh, why, why, in Heaven's name, can't I love you?""But Madge, surely you must be mistaken! How can you talk that way and not have—the real feeling? Madge, you must be in love with me, only you don't know it!""That's just what I've said to myself, time after time—I've lain awake whole nights telling myself that. But it isn't so, it isn't! I can't deceive myself into thinking so and I won't deceive you.... I just—can't—love you, because I'm not good enough! Oh, it is so terrible!..." Her voice suddenly failed; she sank to her knees on the floor and buried her head among the cushions of the sofa in an uncontrollable fit of weeping.For a moment Harry was overcome by a desire to seize that grief-stricken little figure in his arms and kiss away her ridiculous tears. A second thought, however, showed the fruitlessness of that; small comfort to his arms if their souls could not embrace! Instead he quietly arose from his seat and shut the door, which seemed the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances. He then walked over to the piano and stood leaning on it, head on hands, thoughtfully and silently watching the diminishing sobs of Madge.When these at last reached the vanishing point their author turned suddenly. Harry continued to stare quietly back at her for a second or two and then slowly and solemnly winked his right eye. Madge emitted a strange sound between a laugh and a sob, turned her face away again and plied her handkerchief briskly."Here I am, of course," she said presently, "thinking of nothing but indulging my own silly feelings, as usual. And you, poor Harry, who really are capable of feeling, just stand there like Patience on a monument.... Harry, why don't you swear at me, kick me? do something to make it easier for me?..." She picked herself up, walkedover toward the piano and laid her hands on its smooth black surface in a caressing sort of way. The piano had been given to her by her Aunt Tizzy and she loved it very much, but she did not think of it at all now. "Harry," she began again, "Harry, dear, I'll tell you what we'll do—I'll marry you, if you like, anyway.... I'll make you a lovely wife; I'll do anything in the wide world to be a comfort to you, just to show you how much I would love to love you if I could...."Harry, still looking gravely at her, shook his head slowly. "It would never do, Madge," he said; "never in the world. We must wait until we can start fair. You see that?"She nodded. "I suppose I do—from your point of view.""No—fromourpoint of view.""Well, yes.... It is just a little bit hard, though, that the first offer of marriage I ever made should be turned down."Harry laughed, loudly and suddenly. "That's right!" he said; "that'syou! Not that self-denunciatory thing of a minute ago. Don't ever be self-denunciatory again, please. Just remember there's nothing in the world that can possibly be your fault, andthenyou'll be all right!... Now then, we can talk. I suppose," he went on, with a change of tone, "you like me quite well, just as much as ever, and all that; only when it comes to the question of whether you could ever be happy for one instant without me you are forced to admit that you could. Is that it?"Madge nodded her head. "That's just about it. For a long time—oh, but what's the use inthat...?""No, go ahead.""Well, one or two people have been in love with me before—or thought they were, and though that disturbed me at times, it never amounted to much. In fact I thought the whole thing rather fun, as I remember it—Heaven forgive me for it! But then you came along and after a while—several months ago—it became borne in on me that you were going to—to act the same way, and I immediately realized that it was going to be much,muchmore serious than the others. And I—well, I had a cobblestone for a heart, and knew it. So I tried my best to keep you off the scent, in every way I could, knowing what a crash therewould be if it came tothat.... But I never knew what I missed till to-night, when you showed me what a magnificent creature a person really in love is, and what a loathsome, detestable, contemptible creature—""Come, come, remember my instructions," interpolated Harry."—a person incapable of love is. And it just knocked me flat for the moment.""I see," said Harry thoughtfully; "I see.""I suppose," continued Madge, "it would have been easier all around if I didn't like you so much. I could conceive of marriage without love, if the person was thoroughly nice and I was quite sure there was no chance of my loving any one else, just because it's nicer to be rich than poor, but with you—no!... And on the other hand, I daresay Imighthave come nearer falling in love with you if you hadn't been—such a notoriously good match ... you never realized that, perhaps?... I just couldn't bear the thought of givingyouanything but the real thing, if I gave you anything—that's what it comes to!""Madge, what I don't see is how you can go on talking that way and feeling that way and not be in love with me! Not much, of course, but just a teeny bit!... Don't you really think your conscience is making—well, making a fool of you?""No, no, Harry—please! I can't explain it, but I really am quite,quitesure! No one could be gladder than I if it were otherwise!""One person could, I fancy. Well, the thing to do now is to decide what's to be done to make you love me.... For that is the next thing, you know," he went on, in reply to an inarticulate expression of dissent from Madge. "You don't suppose I'm going to leave this house to-night and never think of you again, do you? You don't suppose I'm ever going to give up loving you and trying to make you love me, as long as we two shall live and after?""I thought," murmured Madge, apparently to her handkerchief. The rest was almost inaudible, but Harry succeeded in catching the phrase "some nice girl.""Oh, rot!!" he exclaimed vociferously. Then he sank down on the piano bench, rested his elbows on the keyboard cover and burst into paroxysms of laughter. The idea of his leaving Madge and going out in search of "some nicegirl"! Madge, still leaning on the edge of the piano, watched him with some apprehension, occasionally smothering a reluctant smile in her handkerchief."Excuse me, Madge," he said at last, wiping his eyes, "but that's probably the funniest remark ever made!... A large, shapeless person, with yellow hair and a knitted shawl ... a sort of German type, who'd take the most wonderful care of my socks ... with a large, soft kiss, like ... like a hot cross bun!..." He was off again."Hush, Harry, don't be absurd! Hush, you'll wake Mama! Harry, you're impossible!" Madge herself was laughing at the portrait, for all that. It was some minutes before either of them could return to the subject in hand."Oh, you'll love me all right, in time!" That laugh had cleared the atmosphere tremendously; it seemed much easier to talk freely and sensibly now. "Of course you don't think so now, and that's quite as it should be; but time makes one look at things differently.""No, no, you mustn't count on that. If I don't now, I can't ever possibly! Really—""What, not love me? Impossible! Look at me!" He became serious and went on: "Madge, granting that you don't care a hang for me now, can you look into your inmost heart and say you're perfectly sure you never, never could get to care for me, some time in the dim future of years?""I—don't know," replied Madge inconclusively."There you are—you know perfectly well you can't! However, I don't intend to bother you about that now. What I want to suggest now is that we had better be apart for a while, now that we know how things stand between us—not see anything of each other for a long time. That's the best way. That's how I fell in love with you—how I became sure about it, at any rate. That was why I went to North Carolina, of course."Madge thought seriously for a moment or two. What he said seemed reasonable. If he did go entirely out of her head after a few months' absence, he would be out of it for good and all, and there was the end of it. Whereas, in the unlikely event of hisnotgoing out of her head, but going into her heart, she would be much surer of herself than if under the continual stimulus and charm of his presence."Well," she said at length. "But how will you arrange it?""I shall simply go away—to-morrow. Abroad. You'll be here?""Yes.""What do you do this summer?""I'm not sure—that is, I had thought of going to Bar Harbor, with the Gilsons—as governess. They have a dear little girl."Harry made a gesture of impatience. "I suppose that's as good as anything. If you'll be happy?""Oh, perfectly. I should enjoy that, actually, more than anything else. Mama'll be with Aunt Tizzy. I think I'll do it, now. I'd rather be doing something.""Well, we'll meet here, then, at the end of the summer, in September. I suppose we'd better not write. Unless, that is, you see light before the time is up. Then you're to let me know—that's part of the bargain. Just wire to my bankers the single word, 'Elliston.' I'll know.""On one condition—that you do the same if you change your mind the other way!""Madge, what idiocy!""No, no; you must agree. Why shouldn't you be given a chance of changing your mind, as well as I?""Very well; it's probably the easiest bargain any one ever made.... Well, that's all, I think." They both paused, wondering what was to come next. The matter did seem to be fairly well covered. He made as if to go."Oh, one thing—your work!" Madge apparently was suffering a slight relapse of self-denunciation. "How absolutely like me, I never thought of that!""I can work abroad as well as here. I can work anywhere better than here—you must see that.""I suppose so." She fixed her eyes on the carpet. A hundred thousand things were teeming in her brain, clamoring to be said, but she turned them all down as "absurd" and contented herself at last with: "You sail immediately, then?""Saturday, I expect. To the Mediterranean. I shall leave town to-morrow, though; you won't be bothered by me again!""You must give yourself plenty of time to pack. Be sure—" she checked herself, apparently embarrassed."Be sure what?""Nothing—none of my business.""Yes, please! My dying request!""Well, I was going to tell you to be sure to take plenty of warm things for the voyage. Men are so silly about such things!"As with Madge a minute ago, all sorts of things shouted to be done and said in his brain, but he shut the door firmly on all of them and replied quietly, "All right, I will," and started toward the door.She could not let it go at that, after all. Before the door had swung to behind him she had rushed up and caught it."Oh, Harry!" she exclaimed; "if it does—if it should come off, wouldn't it be simply—Nirvana, and that sort of thing?""Madge," replied Harry solemnly from the doorstep, "it will make Nirvana look like the Black Hole of Calcutta!"If there rose in her mind one pang of remorse for her behavior that evening, one suggestion of a desire to rush out on the doorstep and fling herself into his arms and tell him what a fool she was, it was reduced to subjection before she had closed the door and entirely smothered by the time she reached the parlor again."No," she told herself quite firmly as she rearranged the tumbled sofa cushions, "that would never do—that was part of the Bargain." Just what was part of the bargain or exactly what the bargain was she did not bother to specify. "No, I must wait," she continued, trying the locks of the windows; "I must wait, a long time, a long,longtime. Till next September, in fact. One always has to wait to find out; nothing but time can show. And of course one must besure"—she turned out the gas—"first.Perfectlysure—beyond all manner of doubt and question. Both on my own account"—she reached up with considerable effort and turned out the hall light—"and Harry's.""No," she amended as she felt with her foot for the first step of the dark staircase; "not on my account. On Harry's."CHAPTER IVWILD HORSES AND CHAMPAGNEJames Wimbourne always had the reputation of being an exceptionally strong-willed person. None of his friends would have been in the least surprised to see him come so triumphantly through the first real test that life offered him, if they had known anything about it. Not one of them did know anything about it; no human being ever vaguely surmised that he renounced—the word is a big one but the act was worthy of it—Beatrice in favor of his brother. Beatrice may have suspected it at first, but her suspicion, if it existed at all, died an easy and natural death. Harry suspected it least of all, which was just what James wanted. The one reason why the renunciation did not turn out entirely as James intended was one over which he had no control, namely, the simple fact that Harry was never in love with Beatrice.But as a matter of fact one must look deeper into James' character to discover how it was that, long before the completion of the four years that the story has recently skipped, James was able to think of Beatrice without even a flutter of the heart. Deeply imbedded in his nature there lay a motive force to which his will power, as other people knew it, was merely the servant. This may perhaps be most safely described as James' attitude toward Harry. It is not easy to describe it. It does not do to lay stress upon the elements of brotherly affection, desire to protect, unselfishness and so forth, which made it up; those things all appear to smack of priggishness and cant and are at variance with the spontaneity of the thing we are talking about. One might perhaps refer to it as an ineradicable conviction in the soul of James that Harry was always to be thought of first.Very few people are capable of entertaining such a feeling. Very few are worthy of it. James had just the sort of nature in which it is most likely to occur. The Germans have an apt phrase for this type of nature—schöneSeele. James had aschöne Seele. He had his tastes and feelings, of course, like any one else, but the good always came naturally to him; the bad was abnormal. And this was why he found it possible and even—after a certain time—easy to erase from his brain the image of Beatrice, and set up in its place a vision of Harry and Beatrice coming into a mutual realization of each other.Well, it couldn't have been much of a love in the first place if it wasn't stronger than brotherly affection, does some one suggest? some one, we fancy, who is thoroughly familiar with the poems of the late Robert Browning and entertains apenchantfor the Paolo and Francesca brand of love. Well, possibly. We confess to our own moments of Paolomania; every healthy person has them. But we would call the attention of the aforesaid some one to the stern fact that love in the United States of America in the twentieth century is of necessity a different thing from love in—Rimini, we were going to say, but Rimini is a real place, with a railroad station and hotel omnibusses, so let us change it to Paolo-and-Francescadom. Also that he may have fostered his cult of Paoloism rather at the expense of his study of theschöne Seele. And we would also suggest, meeting him on his own ground, that there is no evidence of Paolo ever having got along very well with Giovanni. For if he had, of course, that whole beautiful story might have been spoilt.Then, of course, James' remoteness from Beatrice made it easier for him. Love is primarily a matter of geography, anyway. With the result that finally, when the month of June arrived and with it the offer of the New York position, the danger implied in New York's proximity to New Haven and Beatrice was not enough to deter James from closing with it. He accepted the offer, as we know, and took up his duties in New York in September.He took Stodger McClintock with him. Stodger by this time simply belonged to James, as far as the Emancipation Proclamation and other legal technicalities permit of one person belonging to another. He had already obtained for him a job as office boy in McClellan's and now proposed to take him east and educate him, with the eventual idea of turning him into a chauffeur. Stodger seemed delighted with the prospect."Only," he objected, "please, I'll have to ask me grand-mudder!""Oh, of course," said James gravely. "You couldn't go without her consent. I'll have a talk with her myself, if you like."Stodger seemed to think that would not be necessary. It ended by James taking a small apartment and installing Stodger as chore boy under the command of an eagle-eyed Swedish woman, where he could divide his time between cleaning shoes and attending high school.October arrived; it was ten months since James had seen Beatrice and he decided it was now time to see her again, to make the sight of her and Harry together chase the last shreds of regret from his mind. So he wrote to Aunt Selina announcing that he would spend his next free Saturday night in New Haven.It happened that Aunt Selina had fixed upon that night to have some people to dinner. When she learned that James would be one of the number that idea vanished in smoke and from its ashes, phoenix-like, arose the conception of making it a real occasion; not dinner, nor people-to-dinner, but frankly, out-and-out, A Dinner, like that. She arranged to have eighteen, and sent out invitations accordingly.James did not see Beatrice until nearly dinner-time on the Saturday night. He came downstairs at five minutes or so before the hour and discovered Harry standing before the drawing-room fireplace with Aunt Selina placidly sitting on a sofa and Beatrice flying about giving a finishing touch here and there. There was no strain or uneasiness about the meeting; his "Hello, Beatrice," received by her almost on the wing as she passed on some slight preprandial mission, was a model of cordial familiarity. And if she had not been too preoccupied to let the meeting be in the least awkward, Harry, gaily chattering from the chimney-piece, would have been enough to prevent it anyway."Well, here we all are," Harry was saying, "and nobody here to entertain. Of course if we had all happened to be a minute or two late there would have been a crowd of people waiting for us. We won't complain, though; being too early is the one great social sin. Yes, Aunt Selina dear, I know people didn't think so in the Hayes administration ... Beatrice, do stop pecking at those roses; they look very well indeed. You make me feel as if my hair wasn't properly brushed, or my shirt-front spotted. Thissuspense is telling on me; why doesn't somebody come?"Somebody did come almost immediately. Aunt Selina arose and stood in state in front of the fireplace to receive, and she made James stand with her, as though as a reward for returning to the eastern half of the country. He looked extremely well standing there. There was not one of the guests that came up and shook his hand that did not mentally congratulate the house of Wimbourne upon its present head.In some ways, indeed, one might say that those few minutes formed the very apex of James' life, the point toward which his whole past appeared to rise and his future to descend from. There are such moments in men's careers; moments to which one can point and say, Would that chance and my own nature had permitted me to stay there for the rest of my natural days! Surely there can be no harm in a soul remaining static if the level at which it remains is sufficiently high. Here was James, for example, not merely rich, good-looking, clever rather than otherwise, beloved of his fellow men, but with a very palpable balance on the side of good in his character. Why could not fate leave him stranded on that high point for the rest of his life, radiating goodness and happiness to every one who came near him?Schöne Seelenare rare enough in this world anyway; what a pity it is that they should not always be allowed to shine to the greatest possible advantage! What a pity it is that so many of them are overwhelmed with shadows too deep for their struggling rays to pierce; shadows so thick that the poor little flames are accounted lucky if they can manage to burn on invisibly in the darkness, illuminating nothing but their own frail substance, content merely to live! The thought, indeed, would be intolerable were it not for certain other considerations; as for example, that the purest flames burn clearest in the darkness, or that a candle at midnight is worth more than an arc-light at noonday.Having successfully survived the first meeting, James found himself performing the duties of the evening with astonishing ease. He devoted himself chiefly to his right-hand neighbor, who for some reason was always referred to as "little" Mrs. Farnsworth. He was not conscious of the slightest feeling of strain in his conversation; he got on so well and so easily that he perhaps failed to realize thathis was a real effort, made with the undoubted though unconscious purpose of keeping his mind off other things. If he had not succeeded so well, it might have been better. Certainly he would have been spared the let-down that he subsequently realized was inevitable. It came about halfway through dinner, in a general conversation which started with an account by James of Stodger's grandmother.He had made rather a good thing of this. "Of course I never force his hand," he was explaining; "I never ask him out and out what her name is and where she lives; I try to give the impression of believing in her as profoundly as himself. But it's most amusing to see how cleverly he dodges the questions I do ask. When we were about to come east, for instance, I asked him how his grandmother dared to trust him so far away without seeing me or knowing anything about me. He replied that she was satisfied with the description he gave her of me. 'But Stodger,' I said, 'doesn't she want to see with her own eyes?' 'She's mygrandmother, not my mother,' he answered, which really covered the matter pretty well.""But he's never shown you either her or a letter from her?" asked Mrs. Farnsworth."Of course not—how could he? Oh, I must say I admire him for it! You see, I found him living practically in the gutter, sleeping Heaven knows where and eating Heaven knows what; but through it all he hung onto this grandmother business as his one last tie with the world of respectability and good clothes and enough to eat. I think I never saw a person get so much out of a mere idea.""It shows imagination, certainly," murmured Mrs. Farnsworth appreciatively, but her remark was drowned in the question of her right-hand neighbor, who had been listening to James' narrative and joined in with:"Have you ever succeeded in getting any idea of what the old lady is like? I should think the boy's mental picture of a grandmother might form a key to his whole character.""No," replied James; "I've never asked him anything very definite. I must find out something more about her some time.""What would the ideal grandmother be like, I wonder?" queried Mrs. Farnsworth. "Yours or mine, for example?Mine would be a dear old soul with a white cap and curls, whom I should always go to visit over Thanksgiving and eat too much pumpkin pie.""Yes, I think that comes pretty near my ideal, too," said James; "provided she didn't want to kiss me too often and had no other bad habits.""How idyllic!" said Mrs. Farnsworth's other neighbor. "Arcadians, both of you. I confess to something much more sophisticated; something living in town, say, with a box at the opera. Mrs. Harriman, it's your turn.""Oh, leave me out!" answered Mrs. Harriman, a woman who still, at forty, gave the impression of being too young for her husband. "You see, I have a grandmother still living.""So have I," irrepressibly retorted her neighbor, whose name was Nesmith; "two of them, in fact, and neither is anything like my ideal! You can feel quite at your ease.""Well, if I had to choose, I think I would have one more like yours, Mr. Nesmith; only very old and dignified, something of the dowager type, who would tell delightful stories of Paris under Louis Philippe and Rome under the Popes, and possibly write some rather indiscreet memoirs. Something definitely connecting my own time with hers, you know.""Oh, I say, no fair!" interrupted James in unthoughtful high spirits. "No fair stealing somebody else's grandmother! You've described Miss Carson's grandmother, Mrs. Harriman, unless I'm greatly mistaken. Beatrice, isn't Mrs. Harriman's ideal grandmother suspiciously like old Lady Moville?"Beatrice, who was sitting two places down the table from Mrs. Harriman, had heard the description; the grandmother conversation had, in fact, absorbed the attention of very nearly half the table."Very like, I admit; but Mrs. Harriman is quite welcome to her.... She is not exactly my ideal of a grandmother...!" She turned directly toward James and made the last remark straight at him with a sort of deprecating smile of comprehension. It was as though she said: "I say that toyoubecause I know you'll understand!" It did not amount to much; it was one of the fleeting signs of mutual comprehension that friends will frequently exchange in the presence of acquaintances. But unfortunatelythe remark and the way it was given were extremely ill-timed as far as James was concerned. The effect they caused in him may perhaps be best likened to one of those sudden fits of faintness that overcome people convalescing from a long illness; the sort of thing where you are all right one minute and gasping and calling for brandy the next, and the stronger you feel beforehand the harder the faintness seizes you when it comes. If James had been on the watch for such occurrences, the incident would not have had half the effect on him that it did. As it was, however, Beatrice's little speech and glance stirred into momentary activity much of the feeling that he had been striving all these months to keep down.It was not really much; it did not actually undo the work of those ten months. James was really convalescent. But the suddenness of the thing overcame him for the moment and gave him a feeling approaching that of actual physical faintness. He saw a glass of champagne standing at his side and involuntarily reached toward it.No one noticed him much. Mrs. Farnsworth was chattering easily with Mr. Nesmith; conversation had resumed its normal course. Possibly the knowledge that James had touched on a rather doubtful topic, Beatrice's father's family, gave conversation a slight added impetus; certainly if anybody noticed James' embarrassment they assumed that his slight indiscretion amply accounted for it. At any rate, when his embarrassment led him so far as not only to reach for his left-hand neighbor's glass of champagne instead of his own but to tip it over in the process, the said left-hand neighbor, who happened to be Madge Elliston, attributed his action to that reason and acted accordingly.With a tact that would have seemed overdone if it had not been so prompt and sufficient, she immediately assumed that it had been she who had knocked the glass over."Oh, I am so sorry!" she exclaimed. "Iamsuch an awkward idiot; I hope it didn't go all over you, James?... No, my dress is all right; apparently nothing but the tablecloth has suffered," and so forth, and so forth, to an accompaniment of gentle swabbings and shifting of table utensils."Oh, Madge?" said James vaguely. "That's all right—I mean, it's my fault, entirely...." He joined in therescue work with grateful fervor, and in a moment a servant came up and did something efficient with a napkin. Madge chattered on."I never do get through a party without doing something silly! I'm glad it's nothing worse than this; I generally count that dinner as lost when I don't drop a hairpin into my food. I used to be quite embarrassed about it, but I've got so now that I eat shamelessly on, right down to the hairpin. I wonder if your aunt saw? No—or rather, she did, and is far too polite to show it. She just won't ask me again, that's all!""She will if I have any influence with her," said James; "and I don't mind saying, between you and me and the gatepost, that I have a good deal! Only you must sing to us after dinner. You will, won't you?""My dear James, I don't suppose wild horses—""Oh, come now, you must!""I was going to say, wild horses couldn't stop me from singing, if I'm asked! Did you ever know me to refrain from singing, loudly and clearly, whenever I received the slightest encouragement?""I can't say—I haven't been here enough. I'm pretty sure, though, that there are no wild horses here to-night.""I'm not so sure...." She took a rapid glance around the table. "Yes, there are at least two wild horses right here in this room. See if you can guess who they are.""Oh, this is getting beyond me!""Guess!" said Madge, inexorably."Well ... Professor Dodd?""Right. Now the other.""Oh—old George Harriman.""No. You're on the wrong track; it isn't the unmusical people that keep me from singing; it's those who make me feel silly andde trop, somehow, when I'm doing it.""I can't guess," said James after a pause."Well, it's Beatrice Carson!""No, not Beatrice! Why, she's very fond of music!""It's not that, as I tried to explain. She is such a wonderful, Olympian sort of person, so beautiful, so well-bred, so good, and tremendously wise and capable—you've heard about the work she's doing here in the Working Girls' League?""Something, yes.""Well, it's perfectly extraordinary; they say she's been able to reach people no one else has ever been able to do anything with. Altogether, the thought of her listening to me makes me feel like a first-class fool when I stand up and warble, and even more so when I think of the time and money I waste on learning to do a little bit better something that isn't worth doing at all!""But you teach school," objected James. "That's sound constructive work.""That," replied Miss Elliston, "is not for eleemosynary reasons.""But you do it very well.""No, you're mistaken there, and beside, I hate teaching school; I simplyloatheit! Whereas ... let me tell you a secret. This singing business, this getting up in a drawing-room and opening my mouth and compelling people's attention, even for a moment—seeing people gradually stop talking and thinking about something else and wishing I'd stop, and at last just listening, listening with all their ears and minds to me, plain, stupid, vapid little ME—well, I just love it! It's meat and drink to me. Whenever I receive an invitation to dinner I want to write back, Yes, if you'll let me sing afterward!""Really," said James thoughtfully, "that's the way it is with you, is it?""I'm afraid so! You won't give me away though, will you, James?""Oh, no danger! And I'll promise you another thing—wild horses shan't have a chance when I'm around! Not one chance! Ever!"He was flattered by her confidence, of course, as well as grateful for her tact. She had not only dragged him out of the water where he was floundering on to the dry land, but had gone so far as to haul him up an agreeable eminence before leaving him.Conversation shifted again at that point and James turned again to Mrs. Farnsworth. He got on very well with her from his eminence; so well that they remained conversationally united for the rest of dinner. In the course of their talk he thought of another thing that made him even happier; something he had not had a chance to realize before. Madge thought his momentary embarrassment had been due to having broached the doubtful topicof the Carson family. She had no inkling of his feeling for Beatrice; the freedom of her references to Beatrice was proof positive of that. And if she did not suspect, probably no one else did! His secret was as safe as it had ever been.The full joy of this realization began to spread itself through him about the time when fingerbowls came into use and Aunt Selina was gathering eyes preparatory to starting an exodus. Just as they all rose he chanced to catch Madge's eye and, unable to withhold some expression of his relief, smiled and said softly: "Thank you, Madge!""What?" she asked, not understanding."Champagne," said James."Oh, nonsense!" As she started to walk doorward she turned her face directly toward his and gave him a deprecatory little smile of understanding, exactly like the one Beatrice had thrown him a short time ago.The coincidence at first rather took him aback. He was conscious, as the men rearranged themselves for coffee and cigars, of a feeling of loss, almost of desecration; the sort of feeling one might experience on seeing somebody else wear one's mother's wedding gown. Nobody but Beatrice had any real business to smile like that—to him, at least. Then it occurred to him that that was all nonsense; either it was all on or all off between him and Beatrice. After all, Madge's smile was just about as good to look at as Beatrice's, if one made allowance against the latter's unusual beauty. Madge was not unattractive in her way, either....Madge sang, of course. James enjoyed her singing very much, the more so for what she had told him at dinner. During her performance an inspiration came to him which he presently made an opportunity to impart to her."Look here," he asked; "have you ever sung for Beatrice's working girls?""No," answered she in some surprise. "Why?""Why not?""I've never been asked, for one thing!""Would you, if you were? I'd like to suggest it to Beatrice, at any rate.""That's all very well for me, but what about the poor working girls?""I should say that any working girl that didn't want tohear you sing didn't deserve to be helped. I may suggest it to her, then?""Certainly, if you like. I don't really imagine that she'll have any use for it, though.""We'll see." He dismissed the subject with a smile. It pleased him to be quite brief and businesslike. As the party broke up and the guests dispersed he was busy, in a half-conscious sort of way, constructing a vision of him and his whole future life on this scheme; irretrievably blighted in his own career he would devote himself to doing helpful little services for people he liked, without thought of other reward than the satisfaction of performing them.Sustained by this vision he embarked quite fearlessly and efficiently on atête-à-têtewith Beatrice before going to bed that night. He made the suggestion to her that he had told Madge he would make, and was pleased to find that Beatrice welcomed it warmly.Once in bed, with the light turned out and absolute quiet reigning throughout the house, of course disturbing things did force their way into his brain. It was bound to be that way, of course; had it not been that way for the past ten months? Fears, pains, doubts, memories, regrets—all passed in their accustomed procession before his mind's eye, gradually growing dimmer and fewer as drowsiness came on and at last dwindling to occasional mental pictures, as of a characteristic gesture, a look, a smile. A humorous little smile, for instance, suggestive of mutual understanding....Jove, that was a funny thing! He sat up in bed, shaking off his sleepiness and subjecting his mental vision to the test of conscious reason. That was Madge's smile that he had just seen, not Beatrice's; it was all there, the different position, the eyes, the hair and everything; all complete and unmistakable. Well, it was strange what a heavy dinner could do to a man—that, and a glass of champagne!CHAPTER VA SCHÖNE SEELE ON PISGAHMore than four years have elapsed before we see James Wimbourne again.Time has dealt easily with him, as far as appearances are concerned. No periods of searching care have imprinted their lines upon his face; no rending sorrow has dimmed the sweetness of its expression. No one could even be tempted to say that he had begun to grow stout. And if his face is a trifle thinner and more firmly molded than of old, if he has a more settled manner of sinking back in to a club chair, if he takes rather more time to get through the evening newspaper, or if, after the manner of many ex-athletes, he is inclined to become fidgety and bilious unless he has exactly the proper amount of physical exercise—well, who ever reaches his late twenties without showing similar preliminary symptoms of age; not so much the first stages of the process of ageing as indications of what the process will be like when it begins in earnest?The process in which we now find James engaged is mental rather than senescent, but you would hardly guess it to look at him. He is sitting on a rock on the top of a hill at sunset, smoking a cigarette and patently enjoying it. One leg is thrown easily over the other, his body is bent slightly forward; one hand rests on the rock by his side and the other, when not employed in propelling the cigarette to and from his mouth, lies quietly on his lap. He is very quiet; James is not the sort of person to make many unnecessary motions; he picks out a comfortable position and usually remains in it until it is time to do something else. He would do this even if he were not gazing at an absorbingly lovely view over the roofs of Bar Harbor, Frenchman's Bay and the tumbled hills of the Maine Coast, and even if the mental process were not such an absorbing one as a review of his relation with Madge Elliston,—a sort of indexing of the steps by which it had developedfrom the vaguest of acquaintanceships into its present state.It had really begun, he reflected, on the evening of that dinner. Before that Madge had been merely one of the group of chattery young women that he had danced with and was polite to and secretly rather afraid of; one of the genus débutante. After that she merged from her genus and, almost without going through the intermediate stages of species and variety, became an individual.At first he had deliberately fostered and encouraged the thought of Madge, for obvious reasons. It was clearly profitable to do anything that would help weed out the thought of Beatrice. It would be fruitless even to try to enumerate the stages by which from that point on Beatrice faded from his heart and that of Madge took her place; to a far larger place, as he now realized, than Beatrice had ever occupied there.It appeared to him now, as he looked back on the whole process, that Beatrice herself was responsible for a large part of it, Beatrice and her Working Girls' League. That had all grown quite logically out of that first evening and his inspiration about having Madge sing to the working girls. Beatrice adopted the suggestion, and the result was so successful that on the Saturday a month or two afterward, when James made his next visit to New Haven, Madge was engaged to sing to them for a second time. He accompanied Beatrice to that meeting and from that evening dated his acquaintance with the Working Girls' League and social work in general.Madge sang for the most part old English songs, things the girls could understand, and they followed them all with the most unaffected interest and pleasure. James was surprised to see several of them actually wipe tears from their eyes when she sang the plaintive ditty "A young country maid up to London had strayed," and during one intermission he was conscious of certain inarticulate sounds coming from the audience, of which the only intelligible part was the word "husband" uttered in beseeching accents again and again."They want her to sing 'Oh, for a husband,'" explained Beatrice to James. "She sang that the last time and they all went crazy about it." Madge complied with a really very spirited rendering of the old song, and the girls applaudedwith an enthusiasm that rather touched James. There was something appealing to him in the unaffected way in which these poor shop and factory drudges, physically half-starved and mentally wholly starved, responded to the slightest efforts to give them pleasure. He felt himself suddenly warming toward the movement."Tell me something about this place," he found a chance to say to Madge later on, when the gathering had broken up, and even before she replied he reflected that he had had ample opportunity to ask Beatrice that."Oh,I'mnot the person to ask—I've only just come into it.... It was started simply as a working girls' club, I believe; a place more especially for the homeless ones to come to after work hours and meet each other and spend a little time in cheerful surroundings before going back to their hall bedrooms.... Now it's become more than that; they have entertainments and dances and classes of various kinds, and we're trying to raise money enough to build them a lodging house.""You've become one of them then, have you?""Oh, yes, I'm one of those that have been drawn in. The thing has flourished amazingly lately, both among the helpers and the helped. The purpose of the League is entirely secular—I suppose that's what made it go so well. The churches don't seem—they don't get a chance at many people, do they?... This is aimed to help the very lowest class of workers; all unmarried wage-earners are eligible, regardless of age or race or religion.... Poor things, they are so glad to have their bodies and minds cared for and their souls left alone! The souls follow easily enough, we find, just as Shaw says—you've read 'Major Barbara'?""I don't think I have," replied James."Well, that shows what the League is trying to do better than I can.... It's had its results, too. The thing has been running about a year, and already the number of arrests for certain kinds of offenses has fallen off over fifty per cent. Keeping them off the streets alone is enough to make us feel proud and satisfied....""I should think so," said James, blushing hotly. He had never heard a young woman make such a remark before, and was at a loss how to take it. But there was something at once fearless and modest in the way Madge made it that not only put him at his ease but set him thinking."Good Lord, why can't we live in a world where every one talks like that?" he suddenly asked himself.Madge went on to give him a fuller account of the purposes and methods of the League, outlining some of its difficulties and indicating, as far as she knew it, the path of its future development. She paid him the compliment of asking him several questions, and he was displeased to find that he had either to bluff answers for them or confess ignorance."I wish I could do something of this sort," he said presently, in a musing sort of way."Why don't you? There's plenty of chance in New York, I should say.""Oh, New York, yes. I hadn't thought of that. I don't know what use I could be, though.""No difficulty about that, I should think. What about athletics? You'd work among boys, I presume?""Yes, I suppose so." Somehow the prospect did not attract him particularly. Then he thought of Stodger; of what Stodger's evenings would have been but for him. What did he do to illuminate Stodger's evenings under actual conditions, now that he come to think of it?"You'll find there are plenty of things you can do for them. Practically every one who knows anything at all can conduct an evening class. Even I—I have a class in hat trimming! One of the few subjects I can truthfully say I have practical knowledge in."Thus the germ of the desire for social service was sowed in him. It thrived pretty steadily during the winter that followed. He got himself introduced to the proper people and almost before he knew it he found himself volunteering in gymnasium work and pledged to give occasional evening talks on athletic subjects. The organization in which he worked was, he found to his satisfaction, like Madge's—Madge's, you observe, not Beatrice's—Working Girls' League, designed to help the very lowest classes of wage-earners. It had its clubrooms on the lower East Side and set itself up as a rival attraction to the saloon-haunting gangs of that interesting neighborhood, and since it dealt with the roughest section of the population it did not hesitate to employ means that other organizations would have hesitated to sanction. Beer and tobacco were sold on the place; billiards and card games were freely encouraged,though there was a rule against playing anything for money; but the chief interest of the place was athletic. Herein lay a problem, for it was found that in the hands of the descendants of Nihilists and pillars of the Mano Negra such respectable sports as boxing and wrestling were prone to degenerate into bloody duels.It was in this matter that James first made himself felt. Happening into the building at an unaccustomed hour one afternoon, he became aware of strange noises issuing from an upper floor, and dashing up to the gymnasium discovered two brawny young Italians apparently trying to brain each other with Indian clubs. In a storm of righteous and unaffected wrath he rushed into the fray, separated the combatants and treated them to such a torrent of obloquy as they had never heard even among their own associates. Too astonished and fascinated to reply, they allowed themselves to be hustled from the room by James and literally kicked down the stairs and out of the building without so much as getting into their clothes, running several blocks in their gymnasium costumes. They aroused no particular attention, for at that time even the East Side was becoming accustomed to the sight of scantily clad youths using the streets as a cinder track, but it was more than an hour before, timid and peaceful, the offenders ventured to slip back into the clubhouse and their trousers.From that day on James practically ran the Delancy Street Club. It never became a very large or famous organization, partly for the reason that it was purposely kept rather small, but it did much good in its own quiet way. It soon became the chief extra-business interest in James' life; it effectually drove the last vestiges of what he learned to refer to mentally as "that foolishness" from his head; his nights became full of sleep and empty of visions. And by the spring of the next year he found himself slipping into an intermittent but perfectly easy friendship with Madge Elliston, founded, naturally enough, on their common interest in social matters. He fell into the habit of running up to New Haven for week-ends, and into the habit of seeing Madge on those Saturday evenings. He liked talking to her about social problems; he soon caught up with her in the matter of knowledge and experience, and it was from a comfortingly similar viewpointthat they were able to discuss such matters as methods of handling evening classes, the moral effects of workmen's compensation and the great and growing problem of dance halls and all that it involves. They both found much to help and instruct them in each other's views; the mere dissimilarities of the state laws under which they worked furnished ample material for discussion, and their friendship was always tightened by the fact that they were, so to speak, marching abreast, running up against successive phases of their work at about the same time.It need cause no surprise that such a relation should have remained practically static for a period of three years or more. Each of them had much to think of beside social work. James had eight or nine hours' work per day and all the absorbing interests of metropolitan life to keep him from spending overmuch time over it. And Madge, as we know, was already an extremely busy young woman. For a long time their common interest hardly amounted to more than an absorbing topic of conversation during their meetings. The stages by which it became the agent of something greater were quite imperceptible.There was just one exterior fact that served as a landmark in the progress of his feeling. Some months before—shortly after Harry had so unexpectedly gone abroad—Madge had started a series of Saturday night dances for her working girls—that was at the time when the dance craze was spreading among all classes of society—and she asked James to help her give some exhibitions of new dances, to get the thing well launched. James rather hesitated in accepting this invitation."I'll do it, of course, if you really want me to," he said; "but I don't see why you want to drag me all the way up here for that. Why don't you ask somebody in town?""That's just the point," replied Madge; "I shall want you to give a little individual instruction to the girls, if you will, and I think it would be just as well if the person who did that had no chance of meeting the girls about town, in other capacities...! Beside, you happen to dance rather better than any one I know up here.""Oh, nonsense!" said James. "I'll come," he added in the next breath.It was from just about the time of those dances, James thought, that the personal element in his relation to Madgebegan to overbalance the intellectual. He had had his moments of being rather attracted by her, of course—the episode of Aunt Selina's dinner was a fair example—but such moments had been mere sparks, soulless little heralds of the flame that now began to burn brightly and warmly. Hitherto he had primarily been interested in her; now he began definitely to like her. And then, before long, something more.It is interesting to compare the processes by which the two brothers fell in love with the same woman. Harry's experience might be likened to a blinding but illuminating flash of lightning; James' to the gentle but permeating effect of sunrise. Both were held at first by the purely intellectual side of Madge's character, but by different aspects of it. Harry was primarily attracted to her by her active wit; this had at first repelled James, made him somewhat afraid of her, until he discovered the more solid qualities of her mind. Both at last fell in love with her as a person, not as a member of the female sex nor as a thinking machine. Both passions were founded upon solid rock; neither could be uprooted without violent and far-reaching results.How beautifully it had all worked out in the end, James reflected; how wisely the progress of things was ordained! How fortunate it was that his first futile passion for Beatrice had not been allowed to develop and bear ill-conceived fruit! Now that he almost went so far as to despise himself for that passion as unworthy both of himself and of her. What had he fallen in love with there? A lip, a cheek, a pair of eyes, a noble poise of a head, a thing to win and kiss and at last squeeze in his arms—nothing more! He had set her up as the image of a false, fleshly ideal, an empty Victorian husk of an ideal, a sentimental, boyish, calfish vision of womanhood. How paltry that image looked when compared to that newer one combining the attributes of friend, comrade, fellow-worker, kin of his mind and spirit! His first image had done injustice to its material counterpart, to be sure; Beatrice had turned out to be far different from the alluring but empty creature he had pictured her. She was a being with a will, ideas, powers, purposes of her own. Well, all the better—for Harry! How admirably suited she was to Harry! What a pair they would make, with their two keen minds, theiractive ambitions, their fine, dynamic personalities! The thought furnished almost as pleasing a mental picture as that of his union with a small blue-eyed person at this very moment covered by the sloping gray roof he had already taken pains to pick out from the ranks of its fellows....The contemplation of material things brought a slight diminution of pleasure. When one came down to solid facts, things were not going quite so well as could be desired. Harry was at this moment kiting unconcernedly about the continent of Europe and his match with Beatrice seemed, as far as James could make out, as much in the air as ever. Also, his own actual relation with Madge was not entirely satisfactory. That was due chiefly to sordid facts, no doubt; he could not expect to have the freedom of meeting and speech he naturally desired with a governess in a friend's house. Still, in the two or three conversations he had been able to arrange with her during the past three weeks he had been conscious of an unfamiliar spirit of elusiveness. Once, he remembered, she had gone so far as to bring the subject of conversation round to impersonal things with something little short of rudeness, just as he was getting started on something that particularly interested him, too....Plenty of time for that, though; it would never do to hurry things. He arose from his rock and stretched himself, lifting his arms high above his head in the cool evening air with a sense of strength and ease. There was nothing to worry about; things were fundamentally all right; ends would meet and issues right themselves, all in due time.It was time, or very nearly time, for Aunt Selina's evening meal, so he started off at a brisk pace down the hill, whistling softly and cheerfully to himself. He thought of Aunt Selina, how pleased she would be with it all, when she knew. Good old soul! He remembered how pointedly she had asked him to spend his month's vacation with her when she told him she had taken a house at Bar Harbor for the summer; could it be that she suspected anything? Perhaps she had, perhaps not; it had all worked in very conveniently with Madge being at Gilsons', at any rate. Let her and every one else suspect what they wished; it did not matter much. Nothing did matter much, whenyou came to that, except that small person in white linen and lawn who had flouted him when he had last seen her and whom he would show what was what, he promised himself, on the next favorable opportunity....
NOT TRIASSIC, CERTAINLY, BUT NEARLY AS OLD
To return again to the events attendant on the "Beggar's Opera." Harry slept late the morning after the performance, and when he awoke it was with a mind rested and vacant except for an intangible conviction that something pleasant had happened. He yawned and stretched delectably, and in a leisurely sort of way set about discovering just what it was.
"Let's see, now, what can it be?" he argued pleasantly. "Oh, yes, the 'Beggar's Opera.' It's all over, thank Heaven, and it went off creditably well. The wigs arrived in time and the prison set didn't fall over, and nobody lost a cue—so you could notice it." He lay back for a moment to give full rein to the enjoyment of these reflections. "There was something else, though." His mind languidly returned to the pursuit, as a dog crosses a room stretching at every step. "I'm sure there was something else...."
"Oh, yes, of course," he said at last; "I remember now. Madge Elliston."
If, say, ten seconds sufficed for enjoyment of the recollection of the "Beggar's Opera," how long should you say would be necessary for the absorption of the truth contained in those two words? A lifetime? An honest answer; we won't undertake to say it's not the right one. Harry, at least, seemed to be of that opinion.
"After all, though, it would be rather absurd to spend a whole lifetime in bed," he observed, after devoting twenty minutes to the subject. Then he jumped out of bed and pulled up the shade.
Vague flittings of poetry and song buzzed through his brain. One little phrase in particular kept humming behind his ears; a scrap from a song he had heard Madge herself sing often enough:—"What shall I do to show how much I love her?" The thing rather annoyed him by its insistence. He stood by the open window and inhaleda few deep breaths of the quickening March air. "What shall I do to show how much I love her!" sang the air as it rushed up his nose and became breath and out again and became carbon dioxide. "I really don't know, I'm sure," he answered, impatiently breaking off and starting on some exercises he performed on mornings when he felt particularly energetic and there was time. Their rhythm was fascinating; he found he could do them in two different ways:—What shall—I do—to show—how much—I love her, or, What shall I—do to show—how much I—? "Oh, hang it!" He suddenly lost all interest in them. With one impatient, dramatic movement he tore off the upper half of his pajamas, ripping off three buttons as he did so. With another slightly more complicated but even more dramatic, he extricated himself from the lower half, breaking the string in the process.
"Ts! ts! More work for somebody!" he said, making the sound in the roof of his mouth indicative of reproof. He kicked the damaged garments lightly onto the bed and sauntered into the adjoining bathroom.
He turned on the water in the bathtub and stood watching it a moment as it gushed out in its noisy enthusiasm. "WhatshallIdotoshowhowmuchIloveher?" it inquired uncouthly. "Oh, do stop bothering me," said Harry, turning disgustedly away; "I've got to shave."
He lathered his face and took the razor in his right hand, while with his left he delicately lifted the end of his nose, so as to make a taut surface of his upper lip. It was a trick he had much admired in barbers. "Somehow it's not so effective when you do it to yourself," he said regretfully, watching the effect in the mirror. It helped his shaving, however, and shaving helped his thinking. He was able to think quite clearly and seriously, in fact, in spite of the roaring of the water nearby.
"I suppose I might keep away from her for a while," he said presently.
That really seemed a good idea; the more he thought of it the better he liked it. "I'll go down and stay with Trotty," he said as he scraped the last strip of lather off his face, remembering how fervently Trotty, recovering from a severe illness on the Trotwood estate in North Carolina, had begged him to come down and cheer his solitude. "And I won't come back until I know," he continued. "One must be sure. Absolutely."
He plunged into his bath and the stimulus of the cold water set his brain working faster. "I'll start this very morning. Let's see; I've missed the ten-thirty, but I can catch the twelve-three, if I look alive, and get the three-fifty from New York.... No, on second thoughts, I'd better have lunch and pack comfortably and start this afternoon. That'll be better; it never does to be in too much of a hurry!"
It never did; he became even more convinced of that when he remembered at breakfast the many post-mortem arrangements to be made in connection with the "Beggar's Opera." However, he spent an active afternoon in completing what he could of these and delegating the remainder to subordinates, with the calm explanation that he was called away on business, and started for southern climes the next morning.
As soon as he had telegraphed Trotty and was actually on his way he became inclined to fear he had not done the right thing. It was so confoundedly quiet down there; he would have nothing to do but think about her. He should have plunged himself into some all-absorbing activity; he should have traveled or taken a nine-till-five clerkship or gone to New York for a while. This suspicion continued through his journey and even survived, though in a mangled form, Trotty's enthusiastic welcome of him. But after he had passed a few days among those pine-clad solitudes he began to see that he had done the wisest possible thing. Trotty was required to be out-of-doors practically the whole time, and the two drove endless miles in a dogcart through the quickening oaks and pines, or lay on fragrant carpets of needles, content with mere sensuous enjoyment of the wind and sun, sky and landscape.
Somehow these things brought calm and conviction to the heart of Harry. They seemed to rest and purge his soul from the fatigues of the past months; the anxiety and effort of the autumn before, the pangs of composition that had marked the winter, the hurry and worry to which these had given place during the last few weeks, and to give coherence and sanctity to the tremendous discovery of that Friday night. He could not tell why it was that the sight of a flock of feathery clouds scurrying across a blue sky or the sound of warm wind among pine needles shouldwork this change in him, but it was so. "You're quite right," they seemed to say; "perfectly right. The thing has come, and it's not distracting or disturbing or frightening, as you feared it might be; it's just simple and great and unspeakably sweet. And you were quite right to come to us to find out about it; you can learn among us a great deal better than in all that hectic scrambling up north. So lay aside every thought and worry and ambition and open your whole heart and soul to us while we tell you how to take this, the greatest thing that ever was, is, or shall be!"
Trotty was also a source of comfort to him; Trotty had lost nothing of his former singular faculty of always rubbing him the right way. Not that either of them made any open or covert allusion to Harry's state of mind, for they did not, but there was something particularly reassuring, something strangely in tune with the great natural forces about them in his silent presence. For they would drive or read or simply lie about together for hours without speaking, after the manner of certain types of people who become very intimate with each other.
Whether these silences were to Trotty merely the intimate silences of yore or whether they had taken on for him also something of the character that colored them for Harry is not particularly clear; it is probable that he guessed something, but no more. As much might be gathered, at least, from the one occasion upon which their conversation even touched on anything vital.
This occurred on the eve of Harry's departure. For of course he had to leave some time. The birds and trees and sky were all very well for a while, but after three weeks the thought forced itself into his mind that any more time spent among them would smack of laziness if not of cowardice.
"Trotty," said he, "I'm going north on the twelve-fifty to-morrow."
"Oh," replied Trotty. "Bad news?"
"No."
"In love?"
"Yep."
"Oh." A silence of some length ensued.
"Carson?" asked Trotty at last.
"No, no—Elliston."
"Oh.... Well, here's luck."
"Thanks. I need it."
In this matter-of-fact, almost coarse form was cast the most intimate conversation the two ever had together.
Harry determined to "have it out," as he mentally expressed it, with Madge as soon as possible, and went to call on her the very first evening after his return. As he walked in the front door he caught sight of her ahead of him crossing the hall with a sheaf of papers under her arm, and immediately his heart began thumping in a way that fairly shocked him. Her appearance was so wonderfully everyday, so utterly at variance with the way his silly heart had been going on about her these weeks! He felt as if he had been intending to propose to an archangel who happened to be also a duchess.
"Hello! This is an unexpected pleasure! I thought you were away shooting things." Her manner was friendly enough; she was obviously glad, as well as surprised, to see him. He murmured something explanatory, which apparently satisfied her, for she went on: "I'm glad you're back, anyway, because you're just in time to help me with my arithmetic papers. Come along in."
He sat down almost in despair, with the idea of merely making an evening call and postponing more important matters to a time when he should be better inured to the effects of her presence. But as he sat and watched her as she talked to him and looked over her arithmetic papers he felt his courage gradually return. Her physical presence was simply irresistible, distant and difficult of approach as she seemed.
"Do tell all about North Carolina," said Madge; "it's a delightful state, isn't it?"
"Oh, delightful."
"So I understand. My idea of it is a fashionable place where people go to recover from something, but I suppose there's more to it than that. The only other thing I know about it is geological; a remnant of physical geography, ages ago. I seem to remember something about triassic.... What is your North Carolina like, fashionable or triassic?"
"Not triassic, certainly."
"No, I suppose not. It's very nice triassic, though; coal, and all sorts of lovely things, as I remember it. You must have been fashionable. Asheville, and that sort of thing."
"Not at all. I was helping Trotty to recover from something."
"Oh, really? What?"
"Pneumonia. Also pleurisy."
"Indeed! I didn't know anything about that; I thought you went simply to shoot things. So Jack Trotwood has had pleural pneumonia, has he? That's a horrid combination; poor Uncle Rudolph Scharndorst died of it. You often do if you have it hard enough and are old enough, or drink enough...."
"Well, Trotty doesn't," said Harry; "so he didn't."
"My dear man, neither did Uncle Rudolph," rejoined Miss Elliston. "That wasn't what I meant; he just had it so hard he died of it—that was all.—How is he getting on?"
"Couldn't say, I'm sure."
"I mean Trotty, of course! Poor Uncle Rudolph!"
"Very well, indeed.—Madge!" he went on, gathering courage for a break, "I didn't come here to-night to talk about Uncle Rudolph!"
Miss Elliston raised her eyebrows ever so little and went on, with unabated cheerfulness: "We were talking about Jack Trotwood, I thought. However, here's this arithmetic; you can help me with that. Do you know anything about percentage? It's not so hard, when you really put your mind to it. Given the principal and interest, to find the rate—that's easy enough. Useful, too; if you know how much a person has a year all you have to do is to find what it's invested in and look it up on the financial page, and you can tell just what their capital is! It's quite simple!"
"Oh, yes, perfectly simple."
"Let's see—Florrie Vicars; did you ever hear of any one whose name was really Florrie before?... Florrie gets a C—she generally does. That isn't on a scale of A B C, it stands for 'correct.' Did you ever hear of anything so delightfully Victorian? That's the way we do things at Miss Snellgrove's.... Sadie Jones—wouldn'tyou know that a girl called Sadie Jones who wrote like that—look at those sevens—would have frizzy yellow hair and sticky-out front teeth?"
"Yes, indeed, without any doubt."
"Well, as a matter of fact she has straight black hair and a pure Grecian profile and is altogether the most beautiful creature you ever saw!... Marjorie Hamlin—she never could add two and two straight.... Jennie Fairbanks...."
Harry realized more sharply than before that ordinary conversational paths would not lead where he wanted to go; he must break through the hedge and he must break with courage and determination.
"Madge!" he burst out again, "I didn't come here to talk about little girls' arithmetic papers, either! I am here to-night to declare a state of—" He stopped, unable, when the moment came, to treat the matter with even that amount of lightness. He had been over-confident!
"Of what?" asked Madge, looking up from her arithmetic and smiling brightly yet distantly at him. There was just a chance that she might shame him back into mere conversation, even at this late moment.
"You know, perfectly well!" He sprang from his chair and took a step or two toward her. The thing was done now. A minute ago they had been occupied in trivial chatter; now they were launched on the momentous topic.
"Madge, don't pretend not to understand, at any rate!" He was by her side on the sofa now. "I used to think that when I was—when I was in love I should be able to joke and laugh about it as I have about every earthly thing in life. I thought that if love couldn't be turned into a joke it wasn't worth having. But it isn't that way, at all!... Oh, Madge, Madge, don't you see how it is with me?"
"Dear Harry, indeed I do!" said Madge impulsively, feeling a great wave of pity and unhappiness swell in her bosom. "Indeed I do!"
"Then don't you think that you could ever ... Madge, until you tell me you could possibly—feel that way—toward me, it's Hell, that's what it is, Hell!"
"Indeed it is, Harry; that's just what it is!"
"Then you think you can't—love me?"
"No—God forgive me, I can't!"
He sat still for a moment, looking quietly at her from his sad brown eyes in a way she thought would break her heart. "I was afraid so," he said at last; "I suppose I really knew it, all along. It's been my fault."
"Oh, Harry," she burst out, "if you only knew how much I wanted to! If you only knew how terrible it is to see you sit there and say that, and not be able to say yes! I like you so much, and you are such a dear altogether, and you're so wonderful about this—oh, why, why, in Heaven's name, can't I love you?"
"But Madge, surely you must be mistaken! How can you talk that way and not have—the real feeling? Madge, you must be in love with me, only you don't know it!"
"That's just what I've said to myself, time after time—I've lain awake whole nights telling myself that. But it isn't so, it isn't! I can't deceive myself into thinking so and I won't deceive you.... I just—can't—love you, because I'm not good enough! Oh, it is so terrible!..." Her voice suddenly failed; she sank to her knees on the floor and buried her head among the cushions of the sofa in an uncontrollable fit of weeping.
For a moment Harry was overcome by a desire to seize that grief-stricken little figure in his arms and kiss away her ridiculous tears. A second thought, however, showed the fruitlessness of that; small comfort to his arms if their souls could not embrace! Instead he quietly arose from his seat and shut the door, which seemed the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances. He then walked over to the piano and stood leaning on it, head on hands, thoughtfully and silently watching the diminishing sobs of Madge.
When these at last reached the vanishing point their author turned suddenly. Harry continued to stare quietly back at her for a second or two and then slowly and solemnly winked his right eye. Madge emitted a strange sound between a laugh and a sob, turned her face away again and plied her handkerchief briskly.
"Here I am, of course," she said presently, "thinking of nothing but indulging my own silly feelings, as usual. And you, poor Harry, who really are capable of feeling, just stand there like Patience on a monument.... Harry, why don't you swear at me, kick me? do something to make it easier for me?..." She picked herself up, walkedover toward the piano and laid her hands on its smooth black surface in a caressing sort of way. The piano had been given to her by her Aunt Tizzy and she loved it very much, but she did not think of it at all now. "Harry," she began again, "Harry, dear, I'll tell you what we'll do—I'll marry you, if you like, anyway.... I'll make you a lovely wife; I'll do anything in the wide world to be a comfort to you, just to show you how much I would love to love you if I could...."
Harry, still looking gravely at her, shook his head slowly. "It would never do, Madge," he said; "never in the world. We must wait until we can start fair. You see that?"
She nodded. "I suppose I do—from your point of view."
"No—fromourpoint of view."
"Well, yes.... It is just a little bit hard, though, that the first offer of marriage I ever made should be turned down."
Harry laughed, loudly and suddenly. "That's right!" he said; "that'syou! Not that self-denunciatory thing of a minute ago. Don't ever be self-denunciatory again, please. Just remember there's nothing in the world that can possibly be your fault, andthenyou'll be all right!... Now then, we can talk. I suppose," he went on, with a change of tone, "you like me quite well, just as much as ever, and all that; only when it comes to the question of whether you could ever be happy for one instant without me you are forced to admit that you could. Is that it?"
Madge nodded her head. "That's just about it. For a long time—oh, but what's the use inthat...?"
"No, go ahead."
"Well, one or two people have been in love with me before—or thought they were, and though that disturbed me at times, it never amounted to much. In fact I thought the whole thing rather fun, as I remember it—Heaven forgive me for it! But then you came along and after a while—several months ago—it became borne in on me that you were going to—to act the same way, and I immediately realized that it was going to be much,muchmore serious than the others. And I—well, I had a cobblestone for a heart, and knew it. So I tried my best to keep you off the scent, in every way I could, knowing what a crash therewould be if it came tothat.... But I never knew what I missed till to-night, when you showed me what a magnificent creature a person really in love is, and what a loathsome, detestable, contemptible creature—"
"Come, come, remember my instructions," interpolated Harry.
"—a person incapable of love is. And it just knocked me flat for the moment."
"I see," said Harry thoughtfully; "I see."
"I suppose," continued Madge, "it would have been easier all around if I didn't like you so much. I could conceive of marriage without love, if the person was thoroughly nice and I was quite sure there was no chance of my loving any one else, just because it's nicer to be rich than poor, but with you—no!... And on the other hand, I daresay Imighthave come nearer falling in love with you if you hadn't been—such a notoriously good match ... you never realized that, perhaps?... I just couldn't bear the thought of givingyouanything but the real thing, if I gave you anything—that's what it comes to!"
"Madge, what I don't see is how you can go on talking that way and feeling that way and not be in love with me! Not much, of course, but just a teeny bit!... Don't you really think your conscience is making—well, making a fool of you?"
"No, no, Harry—please! I can't explain it, but I really am quite,quitesure! No one could be gladder than I if it were otherwise!"
"One person could, I fancy. Well, the thing to do now is to decide what's to be done to make you love me.... For that is the next thing, you know," he went on, in reply to an inarticulate expression of dissent from Madge. "You don't suppose I'm going to leave this house to-night and never think of you again, do you? You don't suppose I'm ever going to give up loving you and trying to make you love me, as long as we two shall live and after?"
"I thought," murmured Madge, apparently to her handkerchief. The rest was almost inaudible, but Harry succeeded in catching the phrase "some nice girl."
"Oh, rot!!" he exclaimed vociferously. Then he sank down on the piano bench, rested his elbows on the keyboard cover and burst into paroxysms of laughter. The idea of his leaving Madge and going out in search of "some nicegirl"! Madge, still leaning on the edge of the piano, watched him with some apprehension, occasionally smothering a reluctant smile in her handkerchief.
"Excuse me, Madge," he said at last, wiping his eyes, "but that's probably the funniest remark ever made!... A large, shapeless person, with yellow hair and a knitted shawl ... a sort of German type, who'd take the most wonderful care of my socks ... with a large, soft kiss, like ... like a hot cross bun!..." He was off again.
"Hush, Harry, don't be absurd! Hush, you'll wake Mama! Harry, you're impossible!" Madge herself was laughing at the portrait, for all that. It was some minutes before either of them could return to the subject in hand.
"Oh, you'll love me all right, in time!" That laugh had cleared the atmosphere tremendously; it seemed much easier to talk freely and sensibly now. "Of course you don't think so now, and that's quite as it should be; but time makes one look at things differently."
"No, no, you mustn't count on that. If I don't now, I can't ever possibly! Really—"
"What, not love me? Impossible! Look at me!" He became serious and went on: "Madge, granting that you don't care a hang for me now, can you look into your inmost heart and say you're perfectly sure you never, never could get to care for me, some time in the dim future of years?"
"I—don't know," replied Madge inconclusively.
"There you are—you know perfectly well you can't! However, I don't intend to bother you about that now. What I want to suggest now is that we had better be apart for a while, now that we know how things stand between us—not see anything of each other for a long time. That's the best way. That's how I fell in love with you—how I became sure about it, at any rate. That was why I went to North Carolina, of course."
Madge thought seriously for a moment or two. What he said seemed reasonable. If he did go entirely out of her head after a few months' absence, he would be out of it for good and all, and there was the end of it. Whereas, in the unlikely event of hisnotgoing out of her head, but going into her heart, she would be much surer of herself than if under the continual stimulus and charm of his presence.
"Well," she said at length. "But how will you arrange it?"
"I shall simply go away—to-morrow. Abroad. You'll be here?"
"Yes."
"What do you do this summer?"
"I'm not sure—that is, I had thought of going to Bar Harbor, with the Gilsons—as governess. They have a dear little girl."
Harry made a gesture of impatience. "I suppose that's as good as anything. If you'll be happy?"
"Oh, perfectly. I should enjoy that, actually, more than anything else. Mama'll be with Aunt Tizzy. I think I'll do it, now. I'd rather be doing something."
"Well, we'll meet here, then, at the end of the summer, in September. I suppose we'd better not write. Unless, that is, you see light before the time is up. Then you're to let me know—that's part of the bargain. Just wire to my bankers the single word, 'Elliston.' I'll know."
"On one condition—that you do the same if you change your mind the other way!"
"Madge, what idiocy!"
"No, no; you must agree. Why shouldn't you be given a chance of changing your mind, as well as I?"
"Very well; it's probably the easiest bargain any one ever made.... Well, that's all, I think." They both paused, wondering what was to come next. The matter did seem to be fairly well covered. He made as if to go.
"Oh, one thing—your work!" Madge apparently was suffering a slight relapse of self-denunciation. "How absolutely like me, I never thought of that!"
"I can work abroad as well as here. I can work anywhere better than here—you must see that."
"I suppose so." She fixed her eyes on the carpet. A hundred thousand things were teeming in her brain, clamoring to be said, but she turned them all down as "absurd" and contented herself at last with: "You sail immediately, then?"
"Saturday, I expect. To the Mediterranean. I shall leave town to-morrow, though; you won't be bothered by me again!"
"You must give yourself plenty of time to pack. Be sure—" she checked herself, apparently embarrassed.
"Be sure what?"
"Nothing—none of my business."
"Yes, please! My dying request!"
"Well, I was going to tell you to be sure to take plenty of warm things for the voyage. Men are so silly about such things!"
As with Madge a minute ago, all sorts of things shouted to be done and said in his brain, but he shut the door firmly on all of them and replied quietly, "All right, I will," and started toward the door.
She could not let it go at that, after all. Before the door had swung to behind him she had rushed up and caught it.
"Oh, Harry!" she exclaimed; "if it does—if it should come off, wouldn't it be simply—Nirvana, and that sort of thing?"
"Madge," replied Harry solemnly from the doorstep, "it will make Nirvana look like the Black Hole of Calcutta!"
If there rose in her mind one pang of remorse for her behavior that evening, one suggestion of a desire to rush out on the doorstep and fling herself into his arms and tell him what a fool she was, it was reduced to subjection before she had closed the door and entirely smothered by the time she reached the parlor again.
"No," she told herself quite firmly as she rearranged the tumbled sofa cushions, "that would never do—that was part of the Bargain." Just what was part of the bargain or exactly what the bargain was she did not bother to specify. "No, I must wait," she continued, trying the locks of the windows; "I must wait, a long time, a long,longtime. Till next September, in fact. One always has to wait to find out; nothing but time can show. And of course one must besure"—she turned out the gas—"first.Perfectlysure—beyond all manner of doubt and question. Both on my own account"—she reached up with considerable effort and turned out the hall light—"and Harry's."
"No," she amended as she felt with her foot for the first step of the dark staircase; "not on my account. On Harry's."
WILD HORSES AND CHAMPAGNE
James Wimbourne always had the reputation of being an exceptionally strong-willed person. None of his friends would have been in the least surprised to see him come so triumphantly through the first real test that life offered him, if they had known anything about it. Not one of them did know anything about it; no human being ever vaguely surmised that he renounced—the word is a big one but the act was worthy of it—Beatrice in favor of his brother. Beatrice may have suspected it at first, but her suspicion, if it existed at all, died an easy and natural death. Harry suspected it least of all, which was just what James wanted. The one reason why the renunciation did not turn out entirely as James intended was one over which he had no control, namely, the simple fact that Harry was never in love with Beatrice.
But as a matter of fact one must look deeper into James' character to discover how it was that, long before the completion of the four years that the story has recently skipped, James was able to think of Beatrice without even a flutter of the heart. Deeply imbedded in his nature there lay a motive force to which his will power, as other people knew it, was merely the servant. This may perhaps be most safely described as James' attitude toward Harry. It is not easy to describe it. It does not do to lay stress upon the elements of brotherly affection, desire to protect, unselfishness and so forth, which made it up; those things all appear to smack of priggishness and cant and are at variance with the spontaneity of the thing we are talking about. One might perhaps refer to it as an ineradicable conviction in the soul of James that Harry was always to be thought of first.
Very few people are capable of entertaining such a feeling. Very few are worthy of it. James had just the sort of nature in which it is most likely to occur. The Germans have an apt phrase for this type of nature—schöneSeele. James had aschöne Seele. He had his tastes and feelings, of course, like any one else, but the good always came naturally to him; the bad was abnormal. And this was why he found it possible and even—after a certain time—easy to erase from his brain the image of Beatrice, and set up in its place a vision of Harry and Beatrice coming into a mutual realization of each other.
Well, it couldn't have been much of a love in the first place if it wasn't stronger than brotherly affection, does some one suggest? some one, we fancy, who is thoroughly familiar with the poems of the late Robert Browning and entertains apenchantfor the Paolo and Francesca brand of love. Well, possibly. We confess to our own moments of Paolomania; every healthy person has them. But we would call the attention of the aforesaid some one to the stern fact that love in the United States of America in the twentieth century is of necessity a different thing from love in—Rimini, we were going to say, but Rimini is a real place, with a railroad station and hotel omnibusses, so let us change it to Paolo-and-Francescadom. Also that he may have fostered his cult of Paoloism rather at the expense of his study of theschöne Seele. And we would also suggest, meeting him on his own ground, that there is no evidence of Paolo ever having got along very well with Giovanni. For if he had, of course, that whole beautiful story might have been spoilt.
Then, of course, James' remoteness from Beatrice made it easier for him. Love is primarily a matter of geography, anyway. With the result that finally, when the month of June arrived and with it the offer of the New York position, the danger implied in New York's proximity to New Haven and Beatrice was not enough to deter James from closing with it. He accepted the offer, as we know, and took up his duties in New York in September.
He took Stodger McClintock with him. Stodger by this time simply belonged to James, as far as the Emancipation Proclamation and other legal technicalities permit of one person belonging to another. He had already obtained for him a job as office boy in McClellan's and now proposed to take him east and educate him, with the eventual idea of turning him into a chauffeur. Stodger seemed delighted with the prospect.
"Only," he objected, "please, I'll have to ask me grand-mudder!"
"Oh, of course," said James gravely. "You couldn't go without her consent. I'll have a talk with her myself, if you like."
Stodger seemed to think that would not be necessary. It ended by James taking a small apartment and installing Stodger as chore boy under the command of an eagle-eyed Swedish woman, where he could divide his time between cleaning shoes and attending high school.
October arrived; it was ten months since James had seen Beatrice and he decided it was now time to see her again, to make the sight of her and Harry together chase the last shreds of regret from his mind. So he wrote to Aunt Selina announcing that he would spend his next free Saturday night in New Haven.
It happened that Aunt Selina had fixed upon that night to have some people to dinner. When she learned that James would be one of the number that idea vanished in smoke and from its ashes, phoenix-like, arose the conception of making it a real occasion; not dinner, nor people-to-dinner, but frankly, out-and-out, A Dinner, like that. She arranged to have eighteen, and sent out invitations accordingly.
James did not see Beatrice until nearly dinner-time on the Saturday night. He came downstairs at five minutes or so before the hour and discovered Harry standing before the drawing-room fireplace with Aunt Selina placidly sitting on a sofa and Beatrice flying about giving a finishing touch here and there. There was no strain or uneasiness about the meeting; his "Hello, Beatrice," received by her almost on the wing as she passed on some slight preprandial mission, was a model of cordial familiarity. And if she had not been too preoccupied to let the meeting be in the least awkward, Harry, gaily chattering from the chimney-piece, would have been enough to prevent it anyway.
"Well, here we all are," Harry was saying, "and nobody here to entertain. Of course if we had all happened to be a minute or two late there would have been a crowd of people waiting for us. We won't complain, though; being too early is the one great social sin. Yes, Aunt Selina dear, I know people didn't think so in the Hayes administration ... Beatrice, do stop pecking at those roses; they look very well indeed. You make me feel as if my hair wasn't properly brushed, or my shirt-front spotted. Thissuspense is telling on me; why doesn't somebody come?"
Somebody did come almost immediately. Aunt Selina arose and stood in state in front of the fireplace to receive, and she made James stand with her, as though as a reward for returning to the eastern half of the country. He looked extremely well standing there. There was not one of the guests that came up and shook his hand that did not mentally congratulate the house of Wimbourne upon its present head.
In some ways, indeed, one might say that those few minutes formed the very apex of James' life, the point toward which his whole past appeared to rise and his future to descend from. There are such moments in men's careers; moments to which one can point and say, Would that chance and my own nature had permitted me to stay there for the rest of my natural days! Surely there can be no harm in a soul remaining static if the level at which it remains is sufficiently high. Here was James, for example, not merely rich, good-looking, clever rather than otherwise, beloved of his fellow men, but with a very palpable balance on the side of good in his character. Why could not fate leave him stranded on that high point for the rest of his life, radiating goodness and happiness to every one who came near him?Schöne Seelenare rare enough in this world anyway; what a pity it is that they should not always be allowed to shine to the greatest possible advantage! What a pity it is that so many of them are overwhelmed with shadows too deep for their struggling rays to pierce; shadows so thick that the poor little flames are accounted lucky if they can manage to burn on invisibly in the darkness, illuminating nothing but their own frail substance, content merely to live! The thought, indeed, would be intolerable were it not for certain other considerations; as for example, that the purest flames burn clearest in the darkness, or that a candle at midnight is worth more than an arc-light at noonday.
Having successfully survived the first meeting, James found himself performing the duties of the evening with astonishing ease. He devoted himself chiefly to his right-hand neighbor, who for some reason was always referred to as "little" Mrs. Farnsworth. He was not conscious of the slightest feeling of strain in his conversation; he got on so well and so easily that he perhaps failed to realize thathis was a real effort, made with the undoubted though unconscious purpose of keeping his mind off other things. If he had not succeeded so well, it might have been better. Certainly he would have been spared the let-down that he subsequently realized was inevitable. It came about halfway through dinner, in a general conversation which started with an account by James of Stodger's grandmother.
He had made rather a good thing of this. "Of course I never force his hand," he was explaining; "I never ask him out and out what her name is and where she lives; I try to give the impression of believing in her as profoundly as himself. But it's most amusing to see how cleverly he dodges the questions I do ask. When we were about to come east, for instance, I asked him how his grandmother dared to trust him so far away without seeing me or knowing anything about me. He replied that she was satisfied with the description he gave her of me. 'But Stodger,' I said, 'doesn't she want to see with her own eyes?' 'She's mygrandmother, not my mother,' he answered, which really covered the matter pretty well."
"But he's never shown you either her or a letter from her?" asked Mrs. Farnsworth.
"Of course not—how could he? Oh, I must say I admire him for it! You see, I found him living practically in the gutter, sleeping Heaven knows where and eating Heaven knows what; but through it all he hung onto this grandmother business as his one last tie with the world of respectability and good clothes and enough to eat. I think I never saw a person get so much out of a mere idea."
"It shows imagination, certainly," murmured Mrs. Farnsworth appreciatively, but her remark was drowned in the question of her right-hand neighbor, who had been listening to James' narrative and joined in with:
"Have you ever succeeded in getting any idea of what the old lady is like? I should think the boy's mental picture of a grandmother might form a key to his whole character."
"No," replied James; "I've never asked him anything very definite. I must find out something more about her some time."
"What would the ideal grandmother be like, I wonder?" queried Mrs. Farnsworth. "Yours or mine, for example?Mine would be a dear old soul with a white cap and curls, whom I should always go to visit over Thanksgiving and eat too much pumpkin pie."
"Yes, I think that comes pretty near my ideal, too," said James; "provided she didn't want to kiss me too often and had no other bad habits."
"How idyllic!" said Mrs. Farnsworth's other neighbor. "Arcadians, both of you. I confess to something much more sophisticated; something living in town, say, with a box at the opera. Mrs. Harriman, it's your turn."
"Oh, leave me out!" answered Mrs. Harriman, a woman who still, at forty, gave the impression of being too young for her husband. "You see, I have a grandmother still living."
"So have I," irrepressibly retorted her neighbor, whose name was Nesmith; "two of them, in fact, and neither is anything like my ideal! You can feel quite at your ease."
"Well, if I had to choose, I think I would have one more like yours, Mr. Nesmith; only very old and dignified, something of the dowager type, who would tell delightful stories of Paris under Louis Philippe and Rome under the Popes, and possibly write some rather indiscreet memoirs. Something definitely connecting my own time with hers, you know."
"Oh, I say, no fair!" interrupted James in unthoughtful high spirits. "No fair stealing somebody else's grandmother! You've described Miss Carson's grandmother, Mrs. Harriman, unless I'm greatly mistaken. Beatrice, isn't Mrs. Harriman's ideal grandmother suspiciously like old Lady Moville?"
Beatrice, who was sitting two places down the table from Mrs. Harriman, had heard the description; the grandmother conversation had, in fact, absorbed the attention of very nearly half the table.
"Very like, I admit; but Mrs. Harriman is quite welcome to her.... She is not exactly my ideal of a grandmother...!" She turned directly toward James and made the last remark straight at him with a sort of deprecating smile of comprehension. It was as though she said: "I say that toyoubecause I know you'll understand!" It did not amount to much; it was one of the fleeting signs of mutual comprehension that friends will frequently exchange in the presence of acquaintances. But unfortunatelythe remark and the way it was given were extremely ill-timed as far as James was concerned. The effect they caused in him may perhaps be best likened to one of those sudden fits of faintness that overcome people convalescing from a long illness; the sort of thing where you are all right one minute and gasping and calling for brandy the next, and the stronger you feel beforehand the harder the faintness seizes you when it comes. If James had been on the watch for such occurrences, the incident would not have had half the effect on him that it did. As it was, however, Beatrice's little speech and glance stirred into momentary activity much of the feeling that he had been striving all these months to keep down.
It was not really much; it did not actually undo the work of those ten months. James was really convalescent. But the suddenness of the thing overcame him for the moment and gave him a feeling approaching that of actual physical faintness. He saw a glass of champagne standing at his side and involuntarily reached toward it.
No one noticed him much. Mrs. Farnsworth was chattering easily with Mr. Nesmith; conversation had resumed its normal course. Possibly the knowledge that James had touched on a rather doubtful topic, Beatrice's father's family, gave conversation a slight added impetus; certainly if anybody noticed James' embarrassment they assumed that his slight indiscretion amply accounted for it. At any rate, when his embarrassment led him so far as not only to reach for his left-hand neighbor's glass of champagne instead of his own but to tip it over in the process, the said left-hand neighbor, who happened to be Madge Elliston, attributed his action to that reason and acted accordingly.
With a tact that would have seemed overdone if it had not been so prompt and sufficient, she immediately assumed that it had been she who had knocked the glass over.
"Oh, I am so sorry!" she exclaimed. "Iamsuch an awkward idiot; I hope it didn't go all over you, James?... No, my dress is all right; apparently nothing but the tablecloth has suffered," and so forth, and so forth, to an accompaniment of gentle swabbings and shifting of table utensils.
"Oh, Madge?" said James vaguely. "That's all right—I mean, it's my fault, entirely...." He joined in therescue work with grateful fervor, and in a moment a servant came up and did something efficient with a napkin. Madge chattered on.
"I never do get through a party without doing something silly! I'm glad it's nothing worse than this; I generally count that dinner as lost when I don't drop a hairpin into my food. I used to be quite embarrassed about it, but I've got so now that I eat shamelessly on, right down to the hairpin. I wonder if your aunt saw? No—or rather, she did, and is far too polite to show it. She just won't ask me again, that's all!"
"She will if I have any influence with her," said James; "and I don't mind saying, between you and me and the gatepost, that I have a good deal! Only you must sing to us after dinner. You will, won't you?"
"My dear James, I don't suppose wild horses—"
"Oh, come now, you must!"
"I was going to say, wild horses couldn't stop me from singing, if I'm asked! Did you ever know me to refrain from singing, loudly and clearly, whenever I received the slightest encouragement?"
"I can't say—I haven't been here enough. I'm pretty sure, though, that there are no wild horses here to-night."
"I'm not so sure...." She took a rapid glance around the table. "Yes, there are at least two wild horses right here in this room. See if you can guess who they are."
"Oh, this is getting beyond me!"
"Guess!" said Madge, inexorably.
"Well ... Professor Dodd?"
"Right. Now the other."
"Oh—old George Harriman."
"No. You're on the wrong track; it isn't the unmusical people that keep me from singing; it's those who make me feel silly andde trop, somehow, when I'm doing it."
"I can't guess," said James after a pause.
"Well, it's Beatrice Carson!"
"No, not Beatrice! Why, she's very fond of music!"
"It's not that, as I tried to explain. She is such a wonderful, Olympian sort of person, so beautiful, so well-bred, so good, and tremendously wise and capable—you've heard about the work she's doing here in the Working Girls' League?"
"Something, yes."
"Well, it's perfectly extraordinary; they say she's been able to reach people no one else has ever been able to do anything with. Altogether, the thought of her listening to me makes me feel like a first-class fool when I stand up and warble, and even more so when I think of the time and money I waste on learning to do a little bit better something that isn't worth doing at all!"
"But you teach school," objected James. "That's sound constructive work."
"That," replied Miss Elliston, "is not for eleemosynary reasons."
"But you do it very well."
"No, you're mistaken there, and beside, I hate teaching school; I simplyloatheit! Whereas ... let me tell you a secret. This singing business, this getting up in a drawing-room and opening my mouth and compelling people's attention, even for a moment—seeing people gradually stop talking and thinking about something else and wishing I'd stop, and at last just listening, listening with all their ears and minds to me, plain, stupid, vapid little ME—well, I just love it! It's meat and drink to me. Whenever I receive an invitation to dinner I want to write back, Yes, if you'll let me sing afterward!"
"Really," said James thoughtfully, "that's the way it is with you, is it?"
"I'm afraid so! You won't give me away though, will you, James?"
"Oh, no danger! And I'll promise you another thing—wild horses shan't have a chance when I'm around! Not one chance! Ever!"
He was flattered by her confidence, of course, as well as grateful for her tact. She had not only dragged him out of the water where he was floundering on to the dry land, but had gone so far as to haul him up an agreeable eminence before leaving him.
Conversation shifted again at that point and James turned again to Mrs. Farnsworth. He got on very well with her from his eminence; so well that they remained conversationally united for the rest of dinner. In the course of their talk he thought of another thing that made him even happier; something he had not had a chance to realize before. Madge thought his momentary embarrassment had been due to having broached the doubtful topicof the Carson family. She had no inkling of his feeling for Beatrice; the freedom of her references to Beatrice was proof positive of that. And if she did not suspect, probably no one else did! His secret was as safe as it had ever been.
The full joy of this realization began to spread itself through him about the time when fingerbowls came into use and Aunt Selina was gathering eyes preparatory to starting an exodus. Just as they all rose he chanced to catch Madge's eye and, unable to withhold some expression of his relief, smiled and said softly: "Thank you, Madge!"
"What?" she asked, not understanding.
"Champagne," said James.
"Oh, nonsense!" As she started to walk doorward she turned her face directly toward his and gave him a deprecatory little smile of understanding, exactly like the one Beatrice had thrown him a short time ago.
The coincidence at first rather took him aback. He was conscious, as the men rearranged themselves for coffee and cigars, of a feeling of loss, almost of desecration; the sort of feeling one might experience on seeing somebody else wear one's mother's wedding gown. Nobody but Beatrice had any real business to smile like that—to him, at least. Then it occurred to him that that was all nonsense; either it was all on or all off between him and Beatrice. After all, Madge's smile was just about as good to look at as Beatrice's, if one made allowance against the latter's unusual beauty. Madge was not unattractive in her way, either....
Madge sang, of course. James enjoyed her singing very much, the more so for what she had told him at dinner. During her performance an inspiration came to him which he presently made an opportunity to impart to her.
"Look here," he asked; "have you ever sung for Beatrice's working girls?"
"No," answered she in some surprise. "Why?"
"Why not?"
"I've never been asked, for one thing!"
"Would you, if you were? I'd like to suggest it to Beatrice, at any rate."
"That's all very well for me, but what about the poor working girls?"
"I should say that any working girl that didn't want tohear you sing didn't deserve to be helped. I may suggest it to her, then?"
"Certainly, if you like. I don't really imagine that she'll have any use for it, though."
"We'll see." He dismissed the subject with a smile. It pleased him to be quite brief and businesslike. As the party broke up and the guests dispersed he was busy, in a half-conscious sort of way, constructing a vision of him and his whole future life on this scheme; irretrievably blighted in his own career he would devote himself to doing helpful little services for people he liked, without thought of other reward than the satisfaction of performing them.
Sustained by this vision he embarked quite fearlessly and efficiently on atête-à-têtewith Beatrice before going to bed that night. He made the suggestion to her that he had told Madge he would make, and was pleased to find that Beatrice welcomed it warmly.
Once in bed, with the light turned out and absolute quiet reigning throughout the house, of course disturbing things did force their way into his brain. It was bound to be that way, of course; had it not been that way for the past ten months? Fears, pains, doubts, memories, regrets—all passed in their accustomed procession before his mind's eye, gradually growing dimmer and fewer as drowsiness came on and at last dwindling to occasional mental pictures, as of a characteristic gesture, a look, a smile. A humorous little smile, for instance, suggestive of mutual understanding....
Jove, that was a funny thing! He sat up in bed, shaking off his sleepiness and subjecting his mental vision to the test of conscious reason. That was Madge's smile that he had just seen, not Beatrice's; it was all there, the different position, the eyes, the hair and everything; all complete and unmistakable. Well, it was strange what a heavy dinner could do to a man—that, and a glass of champagne!
A SCHÖNE SEELE ON PISGAH
More than four years have elapsed before we see James Wimbourne again.
Time has dealt easily with him, as far as appearances are concerned. No periods of searching care have imprinted their lines upon his face; no rending sorrow has dimmed the sweetness of its expression. No one could even be tempted to say that he had begun to grow stout. And if his face is a trifle thinner and more firmly molded than of old, if he has a more settled manner of sinking back in to a club chair, if he takes rather more time to get through the evening newspaper, or if, after the manner of many ex-athletes, he is inclined to become fidgety and bilious unless he has exactly the proper amount of physical exercise—well, who ever reaches his late twenties without showing similar preliminary symptoms of age; not so much the first stages of the process of ageing as indications of what the process will be like when it begins in earnest?
The process in which we now find James engaged is mental rather than senescent, but you would hardly guess it to look at him. He is sitting on a rock on the top of a hill at sunset, smoking a cigarette and patently enjoying it. One leg is thrown easily over the other, his body is bent slightly forward; one hand rests on the rock by his side and the other, when not employed in propelling the cigarette to and from his mouth, lies quietly on his lap. He is very quiet; James is not the sort of person to make many unnecessary motions; he picks out a comfortable position and usually remains in it until it is time to do something else. He would do this even if he were not gazing at an absorbingly lovely view over the roofs of Bar Harbor, Frenchman's Bay and the tumbled hills of the Maine Coast, and even if the mental process were not such an absorbing one as a review of his relation with Madge Elliston,—a sort of indexing of the steps by which it had developedfrom the vaguest of acquaintanceships into its present state.
It had really begun, he reflected, on the evening of that dinner. Before that Madge had been merely one of the group of chattery young women that he had danced with and was polite to and secretly rather afraid of; one of the genus débutante. After that she merged from her genus and, almost without going through the intermediate stages of species and variety, became an individual.
At first he had deliberately fostered and encouraged the thought of Madge, for obvious reasons. It was clearly profitable to do anything that would help weed out the thought of Beatrice. It would be fruitless even to try to enumerate the stages by which from that point on Beatrice faded from his heart and that of Madge took her place; to a far larger place, as he now realized, than Beatrice had ever occupied there.
It appeared to him now, as he looked back on the whole process, that Beatrice herself was responsible for a large part of it, Beatrice and her Working Girls' League. That had all grown quite logically out of that first evening and his inspiration about having Madge sing to the working girls. Beatrice adopted the suggestion, and the result was so successful that on the Saturday a month or two afterward, when James made his next visit to New Haven, Madge was engaged to sing to them for a second time. He accompanied Beatrice to that meeting and from that evening dated his acquaintance with the Working Girls' League and social work in general.
Madge sang for the most part old English songs, things the girls could understand, and they followed them all with the most unaffected interest and pleasure. James was surprised to see several of them actually wipe tears from their eyes when she sang the plaintive ditty "A young country maid up to London had strayed," and during one intermission he was conscious of certain inarticulate sounds coming from the audience, of which the only intelligible part was the word "husband" uttered in beseeching accents again and again.
"They want her to sing 'Oh, for a husband,'" explained Beatrice to James. "She sang that the last time and they all went crazy about it." Madge complied with a really very spirited rendering of the old song, and the girls applaudedwith an enthusiasm that rather touched James. There was something appealing to him in the unaffected way in which these poor shop and factory drudges, physically half-starved and mentally wholly starved, responded to the slightest efforts to give them pleasure. He felt himself suddenly warming toward the movement.
"Tell me something about this place," he found a chance to say to Madge later on, when the gathering had broken up, and even before she replied he reflected that he had had ample opportunity to ask Beatrice that.
"Oh,I'mnot the person to ask—I've only just come into it.... It was started simply as a working girls' club, I believe; a place more especially for the homeless ones to come to after work hours and meet each other and spend a little time in cheerful surroundings before going back to their hall bedrooms.... Now it's become more than that; they have entertainments and dances and classes of various kinds, and we're trying to raise money enough to build them a lodging house."
"You've become one of them then, have you?"
"Oh, yes, I'm one of those that have been drawn in. The thing has flourished amazingly lately, both among the helpers and the helped. The purpose of the League is entirely secular—I suppose that's what made it go so well. The churches don't seem—they don't get a chance at many people, do they?... This is aimed to help the very lowest class of workers; all unmarried wage-earners are eligible, regardless of age or race or religion.... Poor things, they are so glad to have their bodies and minds cared for and their souls left alone! The souls follow easily enough, we find, just as Shaw says—you've read 'Major Barbara'?"
"I don't think I have," replied James.
"Well, that shows what the League is trying to do better than I can.... It's had its results, too. The thing has been running about a year, and already the number of arrests for certain kinds of offenses has fallen off over fifty per cent. Keeping them off the streets alone is enough to make us feel proud and satisfied...."
"I should think so," said James, blushing hotly. He had never heard a young woman make such a remark before, and was at a loss how to take it. But there was something at once fearless and modest in the way Madge made it that not only put him at his ease but set him thinking."Good Lord, why can't we live in a world where every one talks like that?" he suddenly asked himself.
Madge went on to give him a fuller account of the purposes and methods of the League, outlining some of its difficulties and indicating, as far as she knew it, the path of its future development. She paid him the compliment of asking him several questions, and he was displeased to find that he had either to bluff answers for them or confess ignorance.
"I wish I could do something of this sort," he said presently, in a musing sort of way.
"Why don't you? There's plenty of chance in New York, I should say."
"Oh, New York, yes. I hadn't thought of that. I don't know what use I could be, though."
"No difficulty about that, I should think. What about athletics? You'd work among boys, I presume?"
"Yes, I suppose so." Somehow the prospect did not attract him particularly. Then he thought of Stodger; of what Stodger's evenings would have been but for him. What did he do to illuminate Stodger's evenings under actual conditions, now that he come to think of it?
"You'll find there are plenty of things you can do for them. Practically every one who knows anything at all can conduct an evening class. Even I—I have a class in hat trimming! One of the few subjects I can truthfully say I have practical knowledge in."
Thus the germ of the desire for social service was sowed in him. It thrived pretty steadily during the winter that followed. He got himself introduced to the proper people and almost before he knew it he found himself volunteering in gymnasium work and pledged to give occasional evening talks on athletic subjects. The organization in which he worked was, he found to his satisfaction, like Madge's—Madge's, you observe, not Beatrice's—Working Girls' League, designed to help the very lowest classes of wage-earners. It had its clubrooms on the lower East Side and set itself up as a rival attraction to the saloon-haunting gangs of that interesting neighborhood, and since it dealt with the roughest section of the population it did not hesitate to employ means that other organizations would have hesitated to sanction. Beer and tobacco were sold on the place; billiards and card games were freely encouraged,though there was a rule against playing anything for money; but the chief interest of the place was athletic. Herein lay a problem, for it was found that in the hands of the descendants of Nihilists and pillars of the Mano Negra such respectable sports as boxing and wrestling were prone to degenerate into bloody duels.
It was in this matter that James first made himself felt. Happening into the building at an unaccustomed hour one afternoon, he became aware of strange noises issuing from an upper floor, and dashing up to the gymnasium discovered two brawny young Italians apparently trying to brain each other with Indian clubs. In a storm of righteous and unaffected wrath he rushed into the fray, separated the combatants and treated them to such a torrent of obloquy as they had never heard even among their own associates. Too astonished and fascinated to reply, they allowed themselves to be hustled from the room by James and literally kicked down the stairs and out of the building without so much as getting into their clothes, running several blocks in their gymnasium costumes. They aroused no particular attention, for at that time even the East Side was becoming accustomed to the sight of scantily clad youths using the streets as a cinder track, but it was more than an hour before, timid and peaceful, the offenders ventured to slip back into the clubhouse and their trousers.
From that day on James practically ran the Delancy Street Club. It never became a very large or famous organization, partly for the reason that it was purposely kept rather small, but it did much good in its own quiet way. It soon became the chief extra-business interest in James' life; it effectually drove the last vestiges of what he learned to refer to mentally as "that foolishness" from his head; his nights became full of sleep and empty of visions. And by the spring of the next year he found himself slipping into an intermittent but perfectly easy friendship with Madge Elliston, founded, naturally enough, on their common interest in social matters. He fell into the habit of running up to New Haven for week-ends, and into the habit of seeing Madge on those Saturday evenings. He liked talking to her about social problems; he soon caught up with her in the matter of knowledge and experience, and it was from a comfortingly similar viewpointthat they were able to discuss such matters as methods of handling evening classes, the moral effects of workmen's compensation and the great and growing problem of dance halls and all that it involves. They both found much to help and instruct them in each other's views; the mere dissimilarities of the state laws under which they worked furnished ample material for discussion, and their friendship was always tightened by the fact that they were, so to speak, marching abreast, running up against successive phases of their work at about the same time.
It need cause no surprise that such a relation should have remained practically static for a period of three years or more. Each of them had much to think of beside social work. James had eight or nine hours' work per day and all the absorbing interests of metropolitan life to keep him from spending overmuch time over it. And Madge, as we know, was already an extremely busy young woman. For a long time their common interest hardly amounted to more than an absorbing topic of conversation during their meetings. The stages by which it became the agent of something greater were quite imperceptible.
There was just one exterior fact that served as a landmark in the progress of his feeling. Some months before—shortly after Harry had so unexpectedly gone abroad—Madge had started a series of Saturday night dances for her working girls—that was at the time when the dance craze was spreading among all classes of society—and she asked James to help her give some exhibitions of new dances, to get the thing well launched. James rather hesitated in accepting this invitation.
"I'll do it, of course, if you really want me to," he said; "but I don't see why you want to drag me all the way up here for that. Why don't you ask somebody in town?"
"That's just the point," replied Madge; "I shall want you to give a little individual instruction to the girls, if you will, and I think it would be just as well if the person who did that had no chance of meeting the girls about town, in other capacities...! Beside, you happen to dance rather better than any one I know up here."
"Oh, nonsense!" said James. "I'll come," he added in the next breath.
It was from just about the time of those dances, James thought, that the personal element in his relation to Madgebegan to overbalance the intellectual. He had had his moments of being rather attracted by her, of course—the episode of Aunt Selina's dinner was a fair example—but such moments had been mere sparks, soulless little heralds of the flame that now began to burn brightly and warmly. Hitherto he had primarily been interested in her; now he began definitely to like her. And then, before long, something more.
It is interesting to compare the processes by which the two brothers fell in love with the same woman. Harry's experience might be likened to a blinding but illuminating flash of lightning; James' to the gentle but permeating effect of sunrise. Both were held at first by the purely intellectual side of Madge's character, but by different aspects of it. Harry was primarily attracted to her by her active wit; this had at first repelled James, made him somewhat afraid of her, until he discovered the more solid qualities of her mind. Both at last fell in love with her as a person, not as a member of the female sex nor as a thinking machine. Both passions were founded upon solid rock; neither could be uprooted without violent and far-reaching results.
How beautifully it had all worked out in the end, James reflected; how wisely the progress of things was ordained! How fortunate it was that his first futile passion for Beatrice had not been allowed to develop and bear ill-conceived fruit! Now that he almost went so far as to despise himself for that passion as unworthy both of himself and of her. What had he fallen in love with there? A lip, a cheek, a pair of eyes, a noble poise of a head, a thing to win and kiss and at last squeeze in his arms—nothing more! He had set her up as the image of a false, fleshly ideal, an empty Victorian husk of an ideal, a sentimental, boyish, calfish vision of womanhood. How paltry that image looked when compared to that newer one combining the attributes of friend, comrade, fellow-worker, kin of his mind and spirit! His first image had done injustice to its material counterpart, to be sure; Beatrice had turned out to be far different from the alluring but empty creature he had pictured her. She was a being with a will, ideas, powers, purposes of her own. Well, all the better—for Harry! How admirably suited she was to Harry! What a pair they would make, with their two keen minds, theiractive ambitions, their fine, dynamic personalities! The thought furnished almost as pleasing a mental picture as that of his union with a small blue-eyed person at this very moment covered by the sloping gray roof he had already taken pains to pick out from the ranks of its fellows....
The contemplation of material things brought a slight diminution of pleasure. When one came down to solid facts, things were not going quite so well as could be desired. Harry was at this moment kiting unconcernedly about the continent of Europe and his match with Beatrice seemed, as far as James could make out, as much in the air as ever. Also, his own actual relation with Madge was not entirely satisfactory. That was due chiefly to sordid facts, no doubt; he could not expect to have the freedom of meeting and speech he naturally desired with a governess in a friend's house. Still, in the two or three conversations he had been able to arrange with her during the past three weeks he had been conscious of an unfamiliar spirit of elusiveness. Once, he remembered, she had gone so far as to bring the subject of conversation round to impersonal things with something little short of rudeness, just as he was getting started on something that particularly interested him, too....
Plenty of time for that, though; it would never do to hurry things. He arose from his rock and stretched himself, lifting his arms high above his head in the cool evening air with a sense of strength and ease. There was nothing to worry about; things were fundamentally all right; ends would meet and issues right themselves, all in due time.
It was time, or very nearly time, for Aunt Selina's evening meal, so he started off at a brisk pace down the hill, whistling softly and cheerfully to himself. He thought of Aunt Selina, how pleased she would be with it all, when she knew. Good old soul! He remembered how pointedly she had asked him to spend his month's vacation with her when she told him she had taken a house at Bar Harbor for the summer; could it be that she suspected anything? Perhaps she had, perhaps not; it had all worked in very conveniently with Madge being at Gilsons', at any rate. Let her and every one else suspect what they wished; it did not matter much. Nothing did matter much, whenyou came to that, except that small person in white linen and lawn who had flouted him when he had last seen her and whom he would show what was what, he promised himself, on the next favorable opportunity....