The stranger was accompanied by two muleteers, a cook, a wash-boy, and the guide. Not one of these was a menial, for menials do not breed in open country. When the stranger shouted for one of them, they all gathered round him and stood at ease, smiling at his gestures, guessing genially at what he was trying to say, and in the end calmly doing things their own way.
When Lewis called the guide, they all came, as was their custom.
"Your master," said Lewis to the guide, "wishes to go to the sea. He bids you start for the sea."
The guide stared at Lewis, then at the stranger.
"The sea! What is the sea?"
"The sea," said Lewis, gravely, "is the ocean, the great water where ships sail."
"Bah!" said the guide. "More madness. How shall I guide him to the sea if I know not where it is? Tell him there is no sea."
One of the muleteers broke in.
"Indeed, there is a sea, but it is far, far away. It is thirty days away."
"And how do you go?" asked Lewis.
"I do not know. I only know that one must go to Joazeiro, and from there they say there is a road of iron that leads one to the sea."
"Joazeiro!" exclaimed the guide. "Ah, that is some sense. Joazeiro is a place. It is on the river. Petrolina is on this side, Joazeiro on that. As for this road of iron, hah!" He turned on the muleteer. "Thou, too, art mad."
The stranger listened to what Lewis had to say, then he drew out a map from his pocket, unfolded it, and spread it on the table. "A road of iron, eh? Well, let's see."
The guide grinned at Lewis.
"It is a picture of the world," he said. "He stares at it daily."
"Yes," said the stranger, "here we are—Joazeiro."
Lewis leaned over his shoulder. He saw the word "Joazeiro." From it a straight red line ran eastward to the edge of the map.
The stranger measured distances with a pencil. "We can make Joazeiro in fifteen days," he said. "Tell the men we will rest to-day and to-night. To-morrow we start."
The marvels of that camp were a revelation to Lewis. He kept his mouth shut, but his eyes were open. One battered thing after another revealed its mystery to him. He turned to the stranger.
"You are a great traveler," he said.
The stranger started. He had been day-dreaming.
"A great traveler? Yes. I have been a wanderer on all the faces of the earth. I have lived seven lives. I'll give them to you, if you like."
Lewis smiled, puzzled, but somehow pleased.
"Give them to me—your seven lives?"
The stranger did not answer. Gloom had settled on the face that Lewis had seen only alight. Lewis, too, was silent. His life with Ann and the Reverend Orme had taught him much. He recognized the dwelling-place of sorrow.
Presently the stranger shook his mood from him.
"Come," he said, "let us begin." From one of his bags he took a pack of cards. He sat at the table and shuffled them. "There are many games of patience," he continued. "They are all founded on averages and thousands of combinations, so intricate that the law of recurrence can be determined only by months of figuring. However, one can learn a patience without bothering with the law of recurrence. I shall now teach you a game called Canfield."
Time after time the cards were laid out, played, and reshuffled.
"Now," said the stranger, "do you think you know the game?"
"Yes," said Lewis, "I think so."
He played, with some success.
"You have got out fourteen cards," said the stranger. "You have beaten the game."
"How can that be?" asked Lewis.
"It can be," said the stranger, "because this is one of the few games of patience that has been reduced to a scientific gambling basis. The odds, allowing for the usual advantage to the banker, have been determined at five to one. Say I'm the banker. I sell you the pack for fifty-two pennies, and I pay you five pennies for every card you get out. Five to one. Do you see that?"
Lewis nodded.
"Well," said the stranger. "You got out fourteen cards. If you had paid a penny a card for the pack, how much would you have gained over what you spent?"
"Eighteen pennies," said Lewis, after a moment. "If I had got them all out," he added, "it would have been two hundred and eight pennies."
"Right!" said the stranger. "You have a head for figures. Now, have you any money?"
Lewis colored slightly.
"Yes," he said. He fished out his two bank-notes and laid them on the table.
The stranger picked them up.
"All right," he said. "I'll sell you the pack for one of these. Now, go ahead."
All afternoon Lewis played against the bank with varying fortune. When he was ahead, some instinct made him ashamed to call off; when he was behind, a fever seized him—a fever to hold his own, to win. His eyes began to ache. Toward evening three successive bad hands suddenly wiped out his store of money. A feeling of despair came over him.
"Don't worry," said the stranger. He pushed the two notes and another toward Lewis. "I'll give you those for your pony. Now, at it you go. Win him back."
Lewis played feverishly. In an hour he had lost the three notes.
"Never mind," said the stranger; "I'll give you another chance." He pushed one of the notes toward Lewis. "That for your bundle in the red handkerchief. You may win the whole lot back in one hand."
Lewis played and lost. Despair seized upon him now with no uncertain hand. His money, his pony, even his little bundle gone! This was calamity. He suffered as only the young can suffer. His world had suddenly become a blank. Through bloodshot eyes he looked upon the stranger and tried to hate him, but could not.
"Come," said the stranger, rising and lighting a lantern. "I'm going to make you a foolish offer of big odds against me. I'll wager all I've won from you against one year's service that you can't beat the game in one hand. Eleven cards out of the fifty-two beats the game."
What was a year's service? thought Lewis. He had been willing to give that for nothing. He played and lost. Suddenly shame was added to his despair. To give service is noble, but to have it bought from you, won from you! Lewis fought back his tears desperately. What a fool, what a fool this man, this stranger, had made of him!
The stranger took out his watch and looked at it.
"In seven hours and seven minutes," he remarked, "I have given you one of my seven lives that it took almost seven years to live. Seven, by the way, is one of the mystic numbers."
At his first words Lewis felt a wave of relief—the relief of the diver in deep waters who feels himself rising to the surface. Perhaps all was not lost. Perhaps this man could restore their imperiled friendship, so sudden, already so dear.
The stranger went on:
"Ashamed to stop when you're ahead, too keen to stop when you're behind, you've lost all you possessed, jarred your trust in your fellow-man, and bartered freedom for slavery—mortgaged a year of your life. You've climbed the cliff of greed, got one whiff of sordid elation at the top, and tumbled down the precipice of despair. In short, you've lived the whole life of a gambler—all in seven hours."
He picked up Lewis's two notes and stuffed them into his own well-filled wallet. "They say," he continued, "that only experience teaches. You may gamble all the rest of your life, but take it from me, my friend, gambling holds no emotion you haven't gone through today."
Their eyes met. Lewis's gaze was puzzled, but intent. The stranger's eyes were almost twinkling.
"By the way," he said, "what's in the bundle? Let's see."
Lewis brought his sorry little bundle and laid it on the table. He untied the knots with trembling fingers. The stranger poked around the contents with his finger. He picked out the little kid of clay, already minus a leg.
"Hallo! What's this?"
"A toy," said Lewis, coloring.
"Who made it?"
"I did."
"You did, eh? Well, I'll keep it." The stranger fingered around until he found the missing leg. "You can take the rest of your things away. I'll lend 'em to you, and your pony. Now let's eat."
That night Lewis, too excited to sleep, lay awake for hours smiling at the moon. He was smiling because he felt that somehow, out of the wreck, friendship had been saved.
The country through which they traveled was familiar to Lewis, tedious to the stranger. Sand, sparse grass, and thorn-trees; thorn-trees and sand, was their daily portion. The sun beat down and up. They traveled long hours by night, less and less by day. They talked little, for night has a way of sealing the lips of those who journey under her wing.
Water was scarce. The day before that on which they hoped to make the river, a forced march brought them to a certain water-hole. The stranger, Lewis, and the guide arrived at it far ahead of the pack-train. The water-hole was dry. They were thirsty. They pushed on to a little mud house a short way off the trail. The stranger looked up as they approached it.
"Do you think it will stand till we get there?" he asked.
Lewis smiled. The house was leaning in three directions. The weight of its tiled roof threatened at any moment to crush the long-suffering walls to the ground. At one corner stood a great earthen jar, and beside the jar an old hag. She held a gourd to her lips. On some straw in the shade of the eaves was a setting hen.
"Auntie," called Lewis, "we thirst. Give us water."
The old woman turned and stared at them. Her face, all but her eyes, was as dilapidated as her house. Her black eyes, brilliant and piercing, shone out of the ruin.
"I have no water for thee to drink, my pretty son," she answered.
"Shameless one!" cried Lewis. "Dost thou drink thyself and deny the traveler?"
"Eh, eh!" cackled the old woman. "Thou wouldst share my gourd? Then drink, for thy tongue is not so pretty as thy face." She held up the gourd to Lewis in both her hands. He took it from her and passed it to the stranger.
The stranger made a grimace, but sipped the water. Then he flung gourd and water to the ground with; half an oath.
"Bah!" he said to Lewis. "It is salt."
"Salt!" cried Lewis. "But she drank of it. I saw her drink."
"Yes," said the stranger; "she's got an alkalified stomach. Let those who hanker after immortality look upon this woman. She will never die."
The old hag laughed.
"Ah, shameless one, eh?" she mumbled. "'Tis the young one should have tasted, but no matter, for the son is the spit of the father."
"Auntie," said Lewis, smiling, "give us of thy shade."
"Willingly, my pretty son, for thou hast smiled."
They dismounted. The stranger and Lewis entered the house.
"Here," cried the old woman, "sit here; for when the house falls, the weight will go yonder."
Lewis explained to the stranger. He glanced at the old woman.
"Old Immortality has brains," he said. "Might have known it, with those eyes."
They sat on the floor of beaten earth. The old woman went out. Through the gaps in the walls Lewis saw her build a fire and put a pot of the brackish water on to boil. Then he saw her drag the setting hen from her nest and wring its neck. He jumped up and rushed out.
"What are you doing?" he cried. "Why kill a setting hen?"
"Aye," said the old woman, "it is a pity, for she is the last chicken in the world."
Lewis and the stranger were hungry. Night was falling. There was no sign of their belated pack-train. When boiling had done its utmost, they ate the last chicken on earth. Before they had finished, a child, pitifully thin, came in, bearing on her head a small jar of water.
"Now drink," said the old woman, "for this water came from the river, twelve miles away."
They drank, then the stranger set his helmet on the floor for a pillow, laid his head upon it, and slept. Lewis sat beside him. The child had curled up in a corner. The guide was snoring outside. In the doorway the old woman crouched and crooned.
Presently she turned and peered into the house. She beckoned to Lewis. He rose and followed her. She led him around the house, through a thicket of thorn-trees, and up the slope of a small sand-dune. Toward the west sand-dunes rose and fell in monotonous succession.
At the top of the dune the old woman crouched on her heels and motioned to Lewis to sit.
"My son," she said, "thou hast taken my carcass for the common clay of these parts. I cannot blame thee, but had I the water to wash this cursed dust from my face and hands, I would show thee a skin that was stained at birth with the olive and veins whose blood flows unmixed through generations without end. These wrinkled feet have flattened the face of the earth bit by bit. Bear witness those who left me here behind to die! My eyes have looked upon things seen and unseen. I am old. To youth is given folly; to the old, wisdom. To-night my wisdom shall suckle thy folly, for the heavens have shown me a sign."
Lewis stared at the old woman with wondering eyes. He had never seen a Gipsy. What was she? he asked himself. No native. The native's mind was keen with knowledge of horses, cattle, and goats, but stolid, almost stupid, when it came to words and thoughts. There was an exception—the mad. The mad prattled and sometimes said extraordinary things. Perhaps this woman was mad. He turned half toward her.
"Look up," she commanded. "Dost thou see no sign?"
Lewis lay on his back and gazed into the sky. "I see the moon and the stars, Auntie—a young moon and very old stars—but no sign. Not even a cloud to remind the world of rain."
The old woman leaned forward and touched his arm. He started.
"Look over there!" She pointed to the west and south. "See how the young moon is held within the claws of Scorpion. His back is arched across the quarter. His tail points to the south. The Cross that some call Holy hangs like a pendent upon its tip. Look up. Upon his arched back he bears the circlet—the seven worlds of women."
"I see the Scorpion, Auntie," said Lewis, humoring her. "I see the circlet too, but it is far above his back. It is like a crown. Read me the sign of the seven worlds of women."
Lewis propped his head on one elbow. Before him squatted the old woman. Her hands were locked about her legs. Her chin rested on her knees. Her beady eyes shone like two black stars.
"And shall I not read thee a sign?" she continued, swaying from side to side. "Child of love art thou. At thy birth was thy mother rent asunder, for thou wert conceived too near the heart. Thy path through the world is blazed as one blazes a path in the forest. He who is at thy side is before thee and after thee. Thou travelest in darkness, but thou art cursed and blessed with the gift of sight. The worlds of women are seven: spirit, weed, flower, the blind, the visioned, libertine, and saint. None of these is for thee. For each child of love there is a woman that holds the seven worlds within a single breast. Hold fast to thy birthright, even though thou journey with thy back unto the light. I have spoken."
A long silence fell upon the sand-dune. Lewis felt held, oppressed. He was tired. He wished to sleep, but the woman's words rang in his brain like shouts echoing in an empty hall.
Presently came sounds from the mud hut beyond the thorn-thicket. Men were calling. There was the patter and scrape of mules' hoofs, the whistle of those that urged them on. Lewis and the old hag hurried down. The guide, the muleteers, and the stranger were having a wordy struggle.
"Hallo," said the stranger, "where have you been? What are they trying to say? I need you even in my sleep."
"They say," said Lewis, "that there is no help for it; we must push on to the river now. The mules must have water."
"Right you are," said the stranger. He pointed to one heavily laden mule. "We don't need those provisions. Give them to Old Immortality. They'll last her a hundred years."
They arrived in Petrolina at dawn. Before them swept the vast river. Beyond it could be seen the dazzling walls and restful, brown-tiled roofs of Joazeiro. The distant whistle of a shunting locomotive jarred on the morning stillness.
For the first time Lewis saw the stranger in action. Off came the loads. They were sorted rapidly. Tent, outfit, and baggage were piled into one of the ponderous ferry-canoes that lined the shore. All that was left was handed over to the guide for equal division among the men.
"Now," cried the stranger, "there's always a marketplace. Tell them to take this worn-out bunch along and find the cattle corner." He waved at the ponies and mules.
The market was in full swing. Rubber, goatskins, hides, and orchids from the interior; grain, tobacco, sugar, and rum from the river valley, met, mingled, and passed at this crossways of commerce. The stranger stood beside his mules. The dome of his pith helmet rose above the average level of heads. People gazed upon it in mild wonder, and began to crowd around.
"Now," said the stranger, poking Lewis's thin pony in the ribs, "offer this jack-rabbit for sale, cash and delivery on the minute."
"Offer my—my pony——" stammered Lewis.
The stranger eyed him grimly.
"Yourpony?"
Suddenly Lewis remembered. He threw up his head and called out as he was bidden. People nudged one another, but no man spoke. Then a wag on the outskirts of the crowd shouted:
"I'll give thee a penny for what's left of that horse, brother."
There was a ripple of laughter. Lewis colored, and his eyes grew moist.
"He says he will give a penny," he said.
"A penny?" said the stranger, gravely. "Take it. Cash, mind you. Cash on delivery."
The sale was made amid general consternation. As the dazed wag led his purchase away, he trembled as though from a first stroke of paralysis. The marketplace began to buzz, to hum, and then to shout, "A stranger sells horses for a penny, cash on delivery!" They laughed and crowded nearer. Merchants forgot their dignity, and came running from the streets of the town.
"Now, boy, this one," said the stranger, poking a mule; "but be careful.Be careful to wait for the highest bid."
The stranger's warning came just in time. No sooner had Lewis called the mule for sale than bids rained on him from every side. One after the other, in rapid succession, the animals were sold; but no more went for a penny.
His pockets stuffed with notes and silver, the stranger pushed his way through the crowd, suddenly grown silent. On the way to the river he paid off his men. He climbed into the canoe, and Lewis followed. The boatmen shoved off.
The wag, leading Lewis's pony, had followed them to the river-bank.
"Show me thy hoof, partner," he shouted, laughing, to the stranger. "Thou shouldst deal in souls, not in horses. I would I had shaken thy hand. God go with thee!"
The stranger calmly counted his money.
"Boy," he said, "I have just given you a five-year life in five minutes. Write this down in your mind. In high finance he who knows figures starves on two dollars a day; success comes to him who knows men."
During the long hours in the dirty train that jerked them toward the coat and civilization the stranger began to grow nervous. Lewis looked up more than once to find himself the object of a troubled gaze. They were the only passengers. There were moments when the road-bed permitted snatches of conversation, but it was during a long stop on a side-track that the stranger unburdened himself.
"Boy," he said, "the time is coming when I must tell you my name."
"I know your name," said Lewis.
"What!" cried the stranger.
"I know your name," repeated Lewis; "it is Leighton."
"How? How do you know?" The stranger was frowning.
"No," said Lewis, quietly; "I haven't been looking through your things. One day my—my foster-father and my foster-mother were talking. They did not know I was near. I didn't realize they were talking about me until mammy spoke up. Mammy is—well, you know, she's just a mammy——"
"Yes," said the stranger. "What did mammy say?"
"She said," continued Lewis, coloring slightly, "that a Leighton didn't have to have his name written in a family Bible because God never forgets to write it in his face."
"Good for mammy!" said the stranger. "So that's what they were talking about." For a moment he sat silent and thoughtful; then he said: "Boy, don't you worry about any family Bible business. Your name's written in the family Bible all right. Take it from me; I know. I'm Glendenning Leighton—your father." His eyes glistened.
"I'm glad about the name," said Lewis, his face alight. "I'm glad you're my dad, too. But I knew that."
"Knew it? How did you know it?"
"The old woman—Old Immortality. Don't you remember? She said, 'The son is the spit of the father.'"
"Did she?" said Leighton. "Do you believe everything as easily as that?"
"The heart believes easily," said Lewis.
"Eh? Where'd you get that?"
"I suppose I read it somewhere. I think it is true. She told me my fortune."
"Told you your fortune, did she? I thought I was missing something whenI snored the hours away instead of talking to that bright old lady.Fortunes are silly things. Do you remember what she told you?"
"Yes," said Lewis, "I think I remember every word. She said, 'Child of love art thou. At thy birth was thy mother rent asunder, for thou wert conceived too near the heart——'"
"Stop!"
Lewis looked up. His father's face was livid. His breast heaved as though he gasped for air. Then he clenched his fists. Lewis saw the veins on his forehead swell as he fought for self-mastery. He calmed himself deliberately; then slowly he dropped his face in his hands.
"Some day," he said in a voice so low that Lewis could hardly hear the words, "I shall tell you of your mother. Not now."
Gloom, like a tangible presence, filled the car. It pressed down upon Lewis. He felt it, but in his heart he knew that for him the day was a glad day. The train started. He leaned far out of a window. The evening breeze was blowing from the east. To his keen nostrils came a faint breath of the sea. When he drew his head in again, the twinkle he had already learned to watch for was back in his father's eyes.
"What do you smell, boy?"
"I smell the sea," said Lewis.
"How do you know? How old were you when you made your first voyage?"
"Don't you know?"
Leighton shook his head.
Lewis, looking at his father with wondering eyes, regretted the spoken question.
"I was three years old. I suppose I remember the smell of the sea, though it seems as if I couldn't possibly. I remember the funnel of the steamer, though."
"Seems like looking back on a quite separate life, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Lewis, nodding, "it does."
"Of course it does, and in that fact you've got the germ of an individual philosophy. Every man who goes through the stress of life has need of an individual philosophy."
"What's yours, sir?"
"I was going to tell you. Life, to me, is like this train, a lot of sections and a lot of couplings. When you're through with a car, side-track it and—yank out the coupling. Like all philosophies, this one has its flaw. Once in a while your soul looks out of the window and sees some long-forgotten, side-tracked car beckoning to be coupled on again. If you try to go back and pick it up, you're done. Never look back, boy; never look back. Live ahead even if you're only living a compensation."
"What's a compensation?" asked Lewis.
"A compensation," said Leighton thoughtfully, "is a thing that doesn't quite compensate."
Above the rattle of the train sounded the deep bellow of a steamer's throttle. Lewis turned to the window. Night had fallen.
"Oh, look, sir!" he cried. "We're almost there!"
Leighton joined him. Before them were spangled, in a great crescent, a hundred thousand lights. Along the water-front the lights clustered thickly. They climbed a cliff in long zigzags. At the top they clustered again. Out on the bay they swayed from halyards, their reflections glimmering back from the rippling water like so many agitated moons.
"Right you are—Bahia," said Leighton. "We're almost there, and it's no fishing-hamlet, either."
The next morning, as they were sitting, after their coffee and rolls, at a little iron table on the esplanade of the Sul Americano, Leighton said: "It takes a man five years to learn how to travel in a hurry and fifteen more to learn how not to hurry. You may consider that you've been a traveler for twenty years." He stretched and yawned. "Let's take a walk, slowly."
They started down the broad incline which, in long, descending zigzags, cut the cliff that divided lower town from upper. The closely laid cobblestones were slippery with age.
"It took a thousand slaves a century to pave these streets," saidLeighton. "Do you know anything about this town, Bahia?"
"It was once the capital of the empire," said Lewis.
"Yes," said Leighton. "Capital of the empire, seat of learning, citadel of the church, last and greatest of the great slave-marts. That's a history. Never bother your mind about a man, a woman, or a town that hasn't got a history. They may be happy, but they're stupid."
The principal street of the lower town was swarming with a strange mixture of humanity. Here and there hurried a foreigner in whites, his flushed cheeks and nose flying the banner of John Barleycorn.
Along the sidewalks passed leisurely the doctorated product of the universities—doctors of law, doctors of medicine, embryo doctors still in the making—each swinging a light cane. Their black hats and cutaway coats, in the fashion of a temperate clime, would have looked exotic were it not for the serene dignity with which they were worn. With them, merchants lazed along, making a deal as they walked. Clerks, under their masters' eyes, hurried hither and thither.
These were all white or near-white. The middle of the street, which held the great throng, was black. Slaves with nothing on but a loin-cloth staggered under two bags of coffee or under a single monster sack of cocoa. Their sweating torsos gleamed where the slanting sun struck them. Other slaves bore other burdens: a basket of chickens or a bundle of sugar-cane on the way to market; a case of goods headed for the stores of some importer; now and then a sedan-chair, with curtains drawn; and finally a piano, unboxed, on a pilgrimage.
The piano came up the middle of the street borne on the heads of six singing negroes. For a hundred yards they would carry it at a shuffling trot, their bare feet keeping time to their music, then they would set it down and, clapping their hands and still singing, do a shuffle dance about it. This was the shanty of piano-movers. No other slave dared sing it. It was the badge of a guild.
"D'you hear that?" asked Leighton, nodding his head. "That's a shanty.They're singing to keep step."
In shady nooks and corners and in the cool, wide doorways sat still other slaves: porters waiting for a stray job; grayheads, too old for burdens, plaiting baskets; or a fat mammy behind her pot of couscous.
Three porters sat on little benches on the top step of a church porch.Leighton approached one of them.
"Brother," he said, "give me your stool."
The slave rose, and straightened to a great height. He held up his hands for a blessing. He grinned when Leighton sat down on his bench. Then he looked keenly at Lewis's face, and promptly dragged the black at his side to his feet.
"Give thy bench to the young master, thou toad."
Leighton nodded his head.
"No fool, the old boy, eh? The son's the spit of the father." His eyes swept the swarming street. "What men! What men!" He was looking at the blacks. "Boy, did you ever hear of a general uprising among the slaves at home, in the States?"
"No," said Lewis; "there never was one."
"Exactly," said Leighton. "There never was one because in the early days our planters found out what not to buy in the way of black meat. They weren't looking for the indomitable spirit. They weren't looking for men, but for slaves, and the black-birders soon learned that if they didn't want to carry their cargo farther than New Orleans they had to load up with members of the gentlest tribes. Now, there have been terrible uprisings of blacks in the West Indies, in Demerara and here. Ask this old chap of what race he is."
Lewis turned and asked the question. The tall black straightened, his face grew stern, his eyes moist.
"Tito, my name. I am of the tribe of Minas. In the time of thy grandfather I was traded as ransom for a king."
"Hm—m, I can believe it," said Leighton. "Now ask the next one, the copper-colored giant."
"And thou?" said Lewis.
"I? I am a Fulah of the Fulahs. Before blacks were, or whites, we were thus, the color of both."
"You see?" said Leighton. "Pride. He was afraid you'd take him for a mulatto. Now the other fellow, there."
"And thou?" said Lewis.
The third black had remained seated. He turned his eyes slowly to Lewis.
"I am no slave," he began. "I am of the tribe of Houssa. To my master's wealth. I added fifteen of my sons. In the great rebellion they fell, one and all."
"The great rebellion," said Leighton. "He means the last Houssa uprising. Thirty thousand of 'em, and they fought and fell to a man. The Government was glad of the chance to wipe 'em out. Ask him how he escaped."
"Escaped?" The black's eyes gleamed. "Child, I did not escape. My master's son was a babe in arms. My master bade me bear him to safety. When I came back, alone I bore my master to the grave. Then it was too late. They would not kill me. Now the babe is grown. He tells me I am a free man. It is written on paper."
While Leighton and Lewis watched the crowd, they themselves did not remain unnoticed. A small group of the leisurely class began to block the pavement before them. Father and son were a strange pair. Lewis was still in his leather cow-boy clothes. Alone, he would not have attracted more notice than a man with a beard and a carpet-bag on Broadway; but the juxtaposition of pith helmet, a thing unknown in those parts, and countryman's flat leather hat, and the fact of their wearers usurping the seats of two black carriers was too much for one native son, dressed in the latest Paris fashion.
"Thou, porter," he called to Leighton, "an errand for thee. Go fetch my father. He would not miss this sight."
"What does he say?" asked Leighton.
Lewis blushed as people stopped and added their sparkling eyes to those of the crowd already gathered.
"He calls you a porter, and bids you fetch his father to see the sight."
"Ask him," said Leighton, calmly, "shall I know him who he thinks is his father by his horns?"
Lewis translated innocently enough. The crowd gasped, and then roared with laughter. The youth in Paris clothes turned purple with rage, shook his little cane at Leighton, and burst into abusive language.
"Why," cried Lewis—"why, what's the matter with him?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Leighton, pensively. "And just now he was so dignified!"
A private sedan-chair, borne by four splendid blacks, swung by at a run. As it passed, one of its silk curtains was drawn aside and the face of a woman, curious to see the reason of the crowd, looked out. The face was clear white, blue-veined, red-lipped; under the black eyes were shadows. A slight smile curved the red lips as the shadowy eyes fell upon Leighton and Lewis.
Leighton went tense, like a hound in leash.
"Look, boy!" he cried. "A patrician passes!"
The lady heard, understood. The smile, that was half-disdain, deepened.She bowed slightly, but graciously. The curtain fell.
"Come, boy," said Leighton, "we can't stand that. Let's go find a tailor."
"Dad," said Lewis, "do you know her? She bowed."
"She did, God bless her!" said Leighton. "No, I don't know her; but let's think kindly of her, for she has added a charming memory to life."
Four days later Lewis sat beside his bed, piled high with all the paraphernalia that go to make up a gentleman's wardrobe and toilet. He was very nervous—so nervous that he had passed an hour striding from one side of the small bedroom to the other, making up his mind to try to carry out his father's instructions, which were simply to go to his room and dress. Lewis had never in his life put on a collar or knotted a tie.
He answered a knock on the door with a cry of dismay. Leighton strode into the room.
"Well, what's the matter?"
Lewis looked ruefully from his father's face to the things on the bed and back again. He felt himself flushing painfully. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it.
Suddenly Leighton's face lit up. He laughed.
"Well, well," he cried, "this is splendid! You've given me a new sensation." He yanked a bath-robe from the bed. "Here, you savage, shed those leather togs, but don't lose them. You'll want to take them out and look at them some stuffy day. Now put this on and run to your bath."
When Lewis came back to the room he found most of his things had been packed away in the big, new trunk. On the bed certain garments were laid out. They were laid out in correct order.
Leighton stood beside the bed in a deferential attitude. His face was a blank. "Will you be wearing the white flannels to-night, sir, or the dinner-jacket? If you will allow me, I would suggest the flannels. Sultry evening, and Mr. Leighton will be dining on the terrace."
"Yes, I'll wear the flannels," stammered Lewis.
"Your singlet, sir," said Leighton, picking up the undershirt from the bed. Article after article he handed to his son in allotted order. Lewis put each thing on as fast as his nervous hands would let him. He tried to keep his eyes from wandering to the head of the line, where lay collar and tie. The collar had been buttoned to the back of the shirt, but when it came to fastening it in front, Lewis's fingers fumbled hopelessly.
"Allow me, sir," said Leighton. He fastened the collar deftly. "I see you don't like that tie with the flannels, sir. My mistake."
He threw open the trunk, and took out a brown cravat of soft silk. "Your brown scarf, sir. It goes well with the flannels. Will you watch in the glass, sir?" He placed the cravat, measured it carefully, knotted it, and drew it up.
Lewis did not watch in the mirror. His eyes were fixed on his father's mask of a face. He knew that, inside, his father was bubbling with fun; but no ripple showed in his face, no disrespectful twinkle in his eye. Leighton was playing the game. Suddenly, for no reason that he could name, Lewis began to adore his father.
"Will that do, sir?"
"Certainly," stammered Lewis. "Very nicely, thank you"
"Thankyou, sir," said Leighton. He handed Lewis the flannel trousers and then the coat.
As Lewis finished putting them on, Leighton whirled on his heel.
"Ready, my boy?" The mask was gone.
Lewis laughed back into his father's twinkling eyes.
"Yes, I'm ready," he said rather breathlessly. He followed his father out of the room. The new clothes gripped him in awkward places, but as he glanced down at the well-pressed flannels, he felt glorified.
That night, while strolling in a back street of the lower town, they discovered a tunnel running into the cliff. At its mouth was a turnstile.
"Shades of Avernus! What's this?" asked Leighton.
Lewis inquired of the gateman.
"It's an elevator to the upper town," he said.
They paid their fare and walked into the long tunnel. At its end they found a prehistoric elevator and a terrific stench. Leighton clapped his handkerchief to his nose and dived into the waiting car. Lewis followed him. An attendant started the car, and slowly they crept up and up, two hundred feet, to the crest of the cliff. As they emerged, Leighton let go a mighty breath.
"Holy mackerel!" he said, "and what was that? Ugh! it's here yet!"
The attendant explained. At the bottom of the shaft was a pit into which sank the great chains of the car. The pit was full of crude castor-oil, cheapest and best of lubricants.
"My boy," said Leighton, as he led the way at a rapid stride toward the hotel, "never confuse the picturesque with the ugly. I can stand a bit of local color in the way of smells, but there's such a thing as going too far, and that went it. We'll prepare at once to leave this town. Would you like to go north or south?"
"I don't know, sir," said Lewis.
"Well, we'll just climb on board that big double-funnel that came in to-day and leave it to her. What do you say?"
They went south. Four days later, in the early morning, Lewis was wakened by a bath-robe hurled at his head.
"Put that on and come up on deck quick!" commanded his father.
Lewis gasped when he reached the deck. They were just entering the harbor. On the left, so close that it seemed to threaten them, loomed the Sugar-Loaf. On the right, the wash of the steamer creamed on the rocks of Santa Cruz. Before them opened the mighty bay, dotted with a hundred islands, some crowned with foliage, others with gleaming, white walls, and one with an aspiring minaret. Between water and sky stretched the city. There was no horizon, for the jagged wall of the Organ Mountains towered in a circle into the misty blue. Heaven and earth were one.
A white line of surf-foam ran along all the edge of the bay. Languorous Aphrodite of the cities of the world, Rio de Janeiro lay naked beyond that line, and gloried. Like a dream of fair woman, her feet plunged in foam, her body reclining against the heights, her arms outstretched, green hills for her pillows, her diadem the shining mountain-peaks, queen of the cities of the earth by the gift of Almighty God, she gleamed beneath the kiss of dawn.
Leighton drew a long, long breath.
"It will take a lot of bad smells to blot the memory ofthat," he said.
They came to the bad smells in about an hour and a quarter. An hour later they left the custom-house. Then, each in a rocketing tilbury, driven by a yelling Jehu, they shot through the narrow and filthy streets of the Rio of that far day and drew up, still trembling with fright, at the doors of the Hotel dos Estrangeiros.
"You got here, too!" cried Leighton as Lewis tumbled out of his cab. "We had both wheels on the ground at once three separate times. How about you?"
"I really don't know anything about what happened, sir," said Lewis, grinning. "I was holding on."
"What were they yelling? Did you make anything out of that?" askedLeighton, when they had surveyed their rooms and were washing.
"They were shouting at the people in the way," said Lewis. "My driveryelled only two things. When a colored person was in the way, it was,'Melt chocolate-drop!' and when he shouted at a white man, it was:'Clear the way to hell! a foreigner rides with me.'"
"Boy," said Leighton, speaking through several folds of towel and the open connecting-door, "if you ever find your brains running to seed, get a job as a cabman. There's something about a cab, the world over, that breeds wit."
The Rio of 1888 was seething at the vortex of the wordy battle for emancipation. The Ouvidor, the smart street of the town, so narrow that carriages were not allowed upon it, was the center of the maelstrom. Here crowded politician and planter; lawyers, journalists, and students; conservative and emancipationist.
At each end of the Ouvidor were squares where daily meetings were held the emotional surge of which threatened to lap over into revolution at any moment.
The emotion was real. Youths of twenty blossomed into verse never equaled before or since in the writings of their prolific race. An orator, maddened by the limits of verbal expression, shot himself through the heart to add a fitting period to a thundered phrase. Women forgot their own bondage, and stripped themselves of jewels for the cause.
Leighton and his son, wandering through these scenes, felt like ghosts. They had the certainty that all this had happened before. Their lonely, calm faces drew upon them hostile, wondering stares.
"Got a clean tablet in your mind?" asked Leighton one day as they emerged from an unusually excited scene. "Write this down: Nothing bores one like somebody else's belated emotions. When you've had some woman insist on kissing you after you're tired of her, you'll understand me better. In the meantime, this is bad enough. I can think of only one cure for what we've been through here, and that is a Sunday in London. Let us start."
"London!" breathed Lewis. "Are we going to London?"
"Yes, we are. It's a peculiar fact, well known and long cursed among travelers, that all the steamers in the world arrive in England on Saturday afternoon. We'll get to London for Sunday."
During the long voyage, for the first time since the day on which he met the stranger, and which already seemed of long ago, Lewis had time to think. A sadness settled on him. What were they doing at Nadir on this starry night? Were the goats corraled? Who had brought them in? Was mammy crooning songs of low-swinging chariots and golden stairs? Was Mrs. Leighton still patiently sewing? The Reverend Orme, was he still sitting scowling and staring and staring? And Natalie? Was she there, or was she gone, married? He drew a great, quivering sigh.
Leighton looked around.
"Trying to pick up a side-tracked car?"
Lewis smiled faintly, but understandingly.
"It's not quite side-tracked—yet," he said.
"Ah, boy, never look back," said Leighton. "But, no; do. Do look back.You're young yet. Tell me about it."
Then for a long time Lewis talked of Nadir: of the life there, of the Reverend Orme, grown morose through unnamed troubles; of Mrs. Leighton, withered away till naught but patience was left; of happy mammy, grown sad; of Natalie, friend, playmate, and sacrifice.
"So they wanted to marry your little pal into motherhood twenty times over, ready-made," said Leighton. "And you fought them, told 'em what you thought of it. You were right, boy; you were right. The wilderness must have turned their heads. But you ought to have stayed with it. Why didn't you stay with it? You're no quitter."
"There were things I said to the Reverend Orme," said Lewis, slowly—"things I knew, that made it impossible for me to stay."
"Things you knew? What things?"
Lewis did not answer.
* * * * *
It was on a gray Sunday that they entered London. In a four-wheeler, the roof of which groaned under a pyramid of baggage, they started out into the mighty silence of deserted streets. Theplunk! plunk!of the horse's shod hoofs crashed against the blank walls of the shuttered houses and reverberated ahead of them until sound dribbled away down the gorge of the all-embracing nothing. Gray, gray; heaven and earth and life were gray.
Lewis felt like crying, but Leighton came to the rescue. He was in high spirits.
"Boy, look out of the window. Is there anywhere in the world a youth spouting verse on a street corner?"
"No," said Lewis.
"Or an orator shooting himself to give point to an impassioned speech?"
"No."
"Or women shaking their bangles into the melting-pot for the cause of freedom?"
"No."
"I should say not. This is Sunday in London. Take off your hat. You are in the graveyard of all the emotions of the earth."
Up one flight of stairs, over a tobacconist's shop, Leighton raised and dropped the massive bronze knocker on a deep-set door. He saw Lewis's eyes fix on the ponderous knocker.
"Strong door to stand it, eh? They don't make 'em that way any more."
The door swung open. A man-servant in black bowed as Leighton entered.
"Glad to welcome you back, sir. I hope you are well, sir."
"Thanks, Nelton, I'm well as well. So is Master Lewis. Got his room ready? Show him the bath."
Lewis, looking upon Nelton, suddenly remembered a little room in the Sul Americano at Bahia. He felt sure that when Nelton opened his mouth it would be to say, "Will you be wearing the white flannels to-night, sir, or the dinner-jacket?"
By lunch-time Leighton's high spirits were on the decline, by four o'clock they had struck bottom. He kept walking to the windows, only to turn his back quickly on what he saw. At last he said:
"D'you know what a 'hundred to one shot' is?"
"No, sir," said Lewis.
"Well," said Leighton, "watch me play one." He sat down, wrote a hurried note, and sent it out by Nelton. "The chances, my boy, are one hundred to one that the lady's out of town."
When Nelton came back with an answer, Leighton scarcely stopped to open it.
"Come on, boy," he called, and was off. By the time Lewis reached the street, his father was stepping into a cab. Lewis scrambled after him.
"Doesn't seem proper, Dad, to rush through a graveyard this way."
"Graveyard? It isn't a graveyard any more. I'll prove it to you in a minute."
It was more than a minute before they pulled up at a house that seemed to belie Leighton's promise. Its door was under a massive portico the columns of which rose above the second story. The portico was flanked by a parapeted balcony, upon which faced, on each side, a row of French windows, closed and curtained, but not shuttered.
Leighton rang. The door was opened by a man in livery. So pompous was he that Lewis gazed at him open-mouthed. He could hardly tear his eyes from him to follow his father, who was being conducted by a second footman across the glassy, waxed hall into a vast drawing-room.
The drawing-room might have been a tomb for kings, but Lewis felt more awed by it than depressed. It was a room of distances. Upon its stately walls hung only six paintings and a tapestry. Leighton did not tell his son that the walls carried seven fortunes, because he happened to be one of those who saw them only as seven things of joy.
There were other things in the room besides the pictures: a few chairs, the brocade of which matched the tapestry on the wall; an inlaid spinet; three bronzes. Before one of the bronzes Lewis stopped involuntarily. From its massive, columned base to the tip of the living figure it was in one piece. Out of the pedestal itself writhed the tortured, reaching figure—aspiring man held to earth. Lewis stretched out a reverent hand as though he would touch it.
The lackey had thrown open a door and stood waiting. Leighton turned and called:
"Come on, boy."
Lewis followed them through a second drawing-room and into a library. Here they were asked to sit. Never had Lewis dreamed of such a room. It was all in oak—in oak to which a century of ripening had given a rare flower.
There was only one picture, and that was placed over the great fireplace. It was the portrait of a beautiful woman—waves of gray hair above a young face and bright black eyes. The face laughed at them and at the rows upon rows of somber books that reached from floor to ceiling.
Before the fireplace were two leather chairs and a great leather couch. At each end of the couch stood lighted lamps, shaded to a deep-amber glow.
The lackey returned.
"Her ladyship waits for you in her room, sir."
Leighton nodded, and led Lewis down a short hall. The library had been dark, the hall was darker. Lewis felt depressed. He heard his father knock on a door and then open it. Lewis caught his breath.
The door had opened on a little realm of light. Fresh blue and white cretonnes and chintzes met his unaccustomed eyes; straight chairs, easy-chairs, and deep, low comfy chairs; airy tables, the preposterously slender legs of which looked frail and were not; books, paper-backed, and gay magazines; a wondrous, limpid cheval-glass.
Across the farther side of the room was a very wide window. Through its slender gothic panes one saw a walled lawn and a single elm. Beside the window and half turned toward it, so that the light fell across her face, sat the woman of the portrait.
"How do!" she cried gaily to Leighton, and held out her hand. She did not rise.
"H lne," said Leighton, "your room's so cursedly feminine that it's like an assault for a man to enter it."
"I can't give you credit for that, Glen," said the lady, laughing."You've had a year to think it up. Where have you been? That's right.Sit down, light up, and talk."
Leighton nodded over his shoulder at Lewis.
"Been fetching him."
"So this is the boy, is it?" The bright eyes stopped smiling. For an instant they became shrewd. They swept Lewis from head to foot and back again. Lewis bowed, and then stood very straight. He felt the color mounting in his cheeks. The smile came back to the lady's eyes.
"Sit down, boy," she said.
For an hour Lewis sat on the edge of a chair and listened to a stream of questions and chatter. The chatter was Greek to him. It skimmed over the surface of things like a swift skater over thin ice. It never broke into deep waters, but somehow you knew the deep waters were there.
At last Leighton arose.
"Boy," he said, "come here. This lady is my pal. There are times when a man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to H lne. Don't be afraid of that peacock of a doorman; push him over. He's so stiff he'll topple easy."
"Oh, please don't ever!" cried the lady, turning to Lewis. "I'll give you money to tip him." She turned back to Leighton. "They're so hard to get with legs, Glen."
"Legs be hanged!" said Leighton. "Our age is trading civility for legs.The face that welcomes you to a house should be benign——"
"There you go," broke in the lady. "If you'd think a minute, you would realize that we don't charter doormen to welcome people, but to keep them out." She turned to Lewis. "But not you, boy. You may come any time except between nine and ten. That's when I have my bath. What's your name? I can't call you boy forever."
"Lewis."
"Well, Lew, you may call me H lne, like your father. It'll make me feel even younger than I am."
"H lne is a pretty name," said Lewis.
"None of that, young man," said Leighton. "You'll call H lne my Lady."
"That's a pretty name, too," said Lewis.
"Yes," said the lady, rising and holding out her hand, "call me that—at the door."
"Dad," said Lewis as they walked back to the flat, "does she live all alone in that big house?"
Leighton came out of a reverie.
"That lady, Lew, is Lady H lne Derl. She is the wife of Lord Derl. You won't see much of Lord Derl, because he spends most of his time in a sort of home for incurables. His hobby is faunal research. In other words, he's a drunkard. Bah! We won't talk any more aboutthat."
A few months later, when Lewis had very much modified his ideas of London, he was walking with his father in the park at the hour which the general English fitness of things assigns to the initiated. A very little breaking in and a great deal of tailoring had gone a long way with Lewis. Men looked at father and son as though they thought they ought to recognize them even if they didn't. Women turned kindly eyes upon them.
The morning after Lady Derl took Lewis into her carriage in the park she received three separate notes from female friends demanding that she "divvy up." Knowing women in general and the three in special, she prepared to comply. Often Lewis and his father had been summoned by a scribbled note for pot-luck with Lady Derl; but this time it was a formal invitation, engraved.
Lewis read his card casually. His face lighted up. Leighton read his with deeper perception, and frowned.
"Already!" he grunted. Then he said: "When you've finished breakfast, come to my den. I want to talk to you."
Lewis found his father sitting like a judge on the bench, behind a great oak desk he rarely used. An envelope, addressed, lay before him. He rang for Nelton and sent it out.
"Sit down," he said to Lewis. "Where did you get your education? By education I don't mean a knowledge of knives, forks, and fish-eaters. That's from Ann Leighton, of course. Nor do I mean the power of adding two to two or reciting A B C D, etc. By education a gentleman means skill in handling life."
"And have I got it?" asked Lewis, smiling.
"You meet life with a calmness and deftness unusual in a boy," saidLeighton, gravely.
"I—I don't know," began Lewis. "I've never been educated. By the time I was nine I knew how to read and write and figure a little. After that—you know—I just sat on the hills for years with the goats. I read the Reverend Orme's books, of course."
"What were the books?"
"There weren't many," said Lewis. "There was the Bible, of course. There was a little set of Shakspere in awfully fine print and a set of Walter Scott."
Leighton nodded. "The Bible is essential but not educative until you learn to depolarize it. Shakspere—you'll begin to read Shakspere in about ten years. Walter Scott. Scott—well—Scott is just a bright ax for the neck of time. What else did you read?"
"I read 'The City of God' but not very often."
For a second Leighton stared; then he burst into laughter. He checked himself suddenly.
"Boy," he said, "don't misunderstand. I'm not laughing at the book; I'm laughing at your reading St. Augustine even 'not very often!'"
"Why shouldn't you laugh?" asked Lewis, simply. "I laughed sometimes. I remember I always laughed at the heading to the twenty-first book."
"Did you?" said Leighton, a look of wonder in his face. "What is it? I don't quite recollect the headings that far."
"'Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell, and of the various objections urged against it,'" quoted Lewis, smiling.
Leighton grinned his appreciation.
"There is a flavor about unconscious humor," he said, "that's like the bouquet to a fine wine: only the initiated catch it. I'm afraid you were an educated person even before you read St. Augustine. Did he put up a good case for torment? You see, you've found me out. I've never read him."
"His case was weak in spots," said Lewis. "His examples from nature, for instance, proving that bodies may remain unconsumed and alive in fire."
"Yes?" said Leighton.
"He starts out, 'if, therefore the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists have recorded——' I looked up salamander in the dictionary."
Lewis's eyes were laughing, but Leighton's grew suddenly grave. "Poor old chap!" he said. "He didn't know that time rots the sanest argument. 'Oh… that mine adversary had written a book,' cried one who knew."
Leighton sat thoughtful for a moment, then he threw up his head.
"Well," he said, "we'll give up trying to find out how you got educated. Let's change the subject. Has it occurred to you that at any moment you may be called upon to support yourself?"
"It did once," said Lewis, "when I started for Oeiras. Then I met you. You haven't given me time or—or cause to think about it since. I'm—I'm not ungrateful——"
"That's enough," broke in Leighton. "Let's stick to the point. It's a lucky thing for the progress of the world that riches often take to the wing. It may happen to any of us at any time. The amount of stupidity that sweating humanity applies to the task of making a living is colossal. In about a million years we'll learn that making a living consists in knowing how to do well any necessary thing. It's harder for a gentleman to make a living than for a farm-hand. But—come with me."
He took Lewis to a certain Mecca of mighty appetites in the Strand. Before choosing a table, he made the round of the roasts, shoulders and fowl. They were in great domed, silver salvers, each on a barrow, each kept hot over lighted lamps.
Leighton seated himself and ordered.
"Now, boy, without staring take a good look at the man that does the carving."
One of the barrows was trundled to their table. An attendant lifted the domed cover with a flourish. With astounding rapidity the carver took an even cut from the mighty round of beef, then another. The cover was clapped on again, and the barrow trundled away.
"You saw him?" asked Leighton.
Lewis nodded.
"Well, that chap got through twenty thousand a year,—pounds, not dollars,—capital and income, in just five years. After that he starved. I know a man that lent him half a crown. The borrower said he'd live on it for a week. Then he found out that, despite being a gentleman, there was one little thing he could do well. He could make a roast duck fall apart as though by magic, and he could handle a full-sized carving-knife with the ease and the grace of a duchess handling a fan. Wow he's getting eight hundred a year—pounds again—and all he can eat."
From the eating-house Leighton took Lewis to his club. He sought out a small room that is called the smoking-room to this day, relic of an age when smokers were still a race apart. In the corner sat an old man reading. He was neatly dressed in black. Beside him was a decanter of port.
Leighton led the way back to the lounge-room.
"Well, did you see him?"
"The old man?" said Lewis. "Yes, I saw him."
"That's Old Ivory," said Leighton. "He's an honorable. He was cursed by the premature birth—to him—of several brothers. In other words, he's that saddest of British institutions, a younger son. His brothers, the other younger sons, are still eating out of the hand of their eldest brother, Lord Bellim. But not Old Ivory. He bought himself an annuity ten years ago. How did he do it? Well, he had enough intelligence to realize that he hadn't much. He decided he could learn to shoot well at fifty yards. He did. Then he went after elephants, and got 'em, in a day when they shipped ivory not by the tusk, but by the ton, and sold it at fifteen shillings a pound." As they walked back to the flat, Leighton said: "Now, take your time and think. Is there anything you know how to do well?"
"Nothing," stammered Lewis—"nothing except goats."
"Ah, yes, goats," said Leighton, but his thoughts were not on goats. Back in his den, he took from a drawer in the great oak desk the kid that Lewis had molded in clay and its broken legs, for another had gone. He looked at the fragments thoughtfully. "To my mind," he said, "there is little doubt but that you could become efficient at terra-cotta designing; you might even become a sculptor."
"A sculptor!" repeated Lewis, as though he voiced a dream.
Leighton paid no attention to the interruption. "I hesitate, however, to give you a start toward art because you carry an air of success with you. One predicts success for you too—too confidently. And success in art is a formidable source of danger."
"Success a source of danger, Dad?"
"In art," corrected Leighton.
"Yesterday," he continued, "you wanted to stop at a shop window, and I wouldn't let you. The window contained an inane repetition display of thirty horrible prints at two and six each of Lalan's 'Triumph.'" Leighton sprang to his feet. "God! Poster lithographs at two and six! Boy, Lalan's 'Triumph'wasa triumph once. He turned it into a mere success. Before the paint was dry, he let them commercialize his picture, not in sturdy, faithful prints, but in that—that rubbish."
Leighton strode up and down the room, his arms behind him, his eyes on the floor.
"Taking art into the poor man's home, they call it. Bah! If you multiply the greatest glory that the genius of man ever imprisoned, and put it all over the walls of your house,—bath, kitchen and under the bed,—you'll find the mean level of that glory is reduced to the terms of the humblest of household utensils."