CHAPTER I.

Transcriber’s note: The Table of Contents was created by the

Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.

CONTENTS

Young Carrington’s Career 1

The Song 47

Mrs. Massingbyrd Interferes 48

Autumn 59

The Warreners 60

October 75

America’s Social House of Peers 76

Couplets 84

False Equivalents 85

The Rivals 99

Conversations with Egeria 100

In the Garden 103

Ellen Berwick 104

The Two Raptures 113

The Mare and the Motor 114

The Wrecker 120

The Blind 135

Society and Racing 136

Our Lady of Succor 141

Elusion 148

London’s Stagnant Theatrical Season 149

For Book Lovers 156

AINSLEE’S

VOL. XVI. OCTOBER, 1905. No. 3.

YOUNG CARRINGTON’S CAREER

BY Beatrice Hanscom

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I.

The studio in Numero -- rue Boissonade had on its holiday togs: model

stand covered with rugs, tea table much in evidence, framed picture on

the easel, and lilacs enough in the great brass bowl in the corner to

serve as sweetly affirmative witnesses that the heart of Paris and the

heart of spring had renewed their yearly alliance.

To judge from the blitheness of Carrington, he, too, had spring in his

heart and a festal day in prospect.

Life, already lavish in good gifts, was on the point of giving him the

one he most desired to grasp.

At twenty-one he had health, plenty of money, and a talent to which he

considered health and money merely subservient--a talent which lured

him to work indefatigably.

The portrait on which he had lavished himself hung on the line

in the spring salon; and Velantour, the master for whom he had

toiled tirelessly for the last three years--Velantour, the sternest

critic in France, most sparing in praise--Velantour, whose painting

expeditions in the far East were always solitary save for his trusted

courier--_Velantour_ had invited Carrington to go with him to the Vale

of Cashmere and the Himalayas! To paint with him and by his side for

three long, delicious months.

“It is not enough to put people’s souls on canvas, _mon cher_, if

you can’t put nature’s heart back of them,” he had told him, hand on

his shoulder. Velantour, whose caustic criticisms usually confined

themselves to technique, and took small account of souls!

Carrington tingled to his finger tips in the desire to be off. Life was

good--was “bully,” as Carrington phrased it. And he whistled softly,

rapturous as a thrush, as he crossed the studio to lift a corner of

the rug which covered a trunk masquerading as a seat, a trunk locked

and strapped; packed with an infinite forethought for any possible

contingency that might arise during the trip; with enough paint tubes

and brushes to set up a small dealer; packed, too, with hopes and

aspiration, which luckily take up no room, and do not increase the

excess baggage rate. Had they weighed the smallest fraction of an ounce

apiece, modern hydraulics could not have lifted that trunk a single

inch.

“And we start to-night! Jove, it’s unbelievable!” he said, exultantly,

as he dropped the rug corner and stood up, straight and slender and

tall, a handsome boy with his black hair a trifle long, his blue eyes

aglow, his delicate features alight with enthusiasm as he drew in a

long breath of satisfaction.

There was a touch of the romantic in his attire--in the loosely

hanging, dark gray velveteen suit that was almost black, and the soft

cravat that had the color of pigeon’s blood.

He was young enough to like that sort of thing, dandy enough to order

those dull gray suits by the half dozen, with long, crimson lined

cloaks and marvelous soft felt hats; and handsome enough to make

Velantour vow he would immortalize him in them. “_Le nouveau_ Van

Dyck,” he whispered to himself, for he loved the boy as much as he

believed in his future, and he believed in that with the intensity and

concentrated fervor of a man who permits himself few beliefs.

“To have a son like that!” he would murmur--little, squat,

short-legged, gray-headed, lonely old, famous Velantour; and the words

wrenched his lips into the dry twist of an old grief.

For Velantour’s scapegrace son had rested many years in Père-la-Chaise.

* * * * *

Velantour was coming this afternoon to the informal little reunion

of the half dozen friends whom Carrington had summoned to wish him

God-speed.

With the warning swish of the curtains Carrington turned to see if it

was he even now. But he saw instead a young fellow of his own age, a

youth whose brown hair curled obstinately, whose mouth was wide and

mobile, and who had the kind of snub nose one inevitably associates

with jollity.

“My dear Ned, you’re most disappointing,” the newcomer stated, with

burlesque complaint and a gesture that sent his hands far apart.

“You ought to be putting the last touch to a tuft of grass in the

foreground. It’s a poor foreground that won’t stand a few extra tufts

here and there, and it’s an immensely effective proceeding. Or else

you ought to be on your knees to the gods. You’re neither posing

piously to please Providence, nor patently to please Paris. I’m afraid

we’ve overrated your genius. You’ll never make a Whistler.”

He laughed good-humoredly as he grasped Carrington’s outstretched hand.

Robert Parker, yclept Bobbins, took life easily.

“I’m so happy, Bobbins,” Carrington confided in him, “that I can’t even

think. Isn’t it ripping--going east with Velantour?”

“It is for you, Rising Genius,” Bobbins assured him, “but so far as I

am concerned, though I might manage to sit under a Kashmirian cedar

with a fan, standing on an icy peak with a pot of paint strapped to my

waistband, and a fault-finding old gentleman to tell me how badly I was

using it, isn’t my ideal of bliss. No Himalayas for me.”

“Bless you, Bobbins, we’re not contracting to paint them by the yard,

the way you do a fence,” expostulated Carrington, laughingly. “We’re

going to make pictures, not advertise breakfast foods.”

“What is your sister going to do?” queried Bobbins.

“Elenore is going to Brittany to-morrow with the Waldens,” Carrington

told him promptly.

“And Hastings, I presume, has always wanted to go to Brittany,” Bobbins

laughed.

“Well, Hastings has certainly developed a sudden enthusiasm in that

direction,” Carrington acknowledged.

“Do you suppose Elenore----” Bobbins began mysteriously.

“I know enough to know that I don’t know anything about girls,”

Elenore’s brother announced, promptly. “Do you suppose Hastings----”

“I certainly do,” said Bobbins, fervently. “And he has a bad case of

it. Wouldn’t go to the _Bal Bullier_ the other night; thinks _cafés

chantants_ are vulgar; doesn’t hear what you are saying half the time,

and has taken to humming ‘Home-keeping hearts are happiest.’ You don’t

have to take him to the hospital to see what’s the matter with him.”

“I told him distinctly _by the hour_,” a high-pitched, patrician voice

floated in from the hall, “and if he doesn’t stop swearing he’ll have

to put his _pourboire_ in troches.” Coincident with the remark a fluent

outburst of Parisian profanity came wafting in the open windows.

“My dear Ned,” said Mrs. Van Velt, the owner of the patrician voice,

appearing in the doorway; “would you mind sending some one to

chloroform my cabby? The more Carol argues with him, the more vocal he

becomes. He seems to think that they also swear who only sit and wait.”

Mrs. Van Velt was a dowager unmistakably American.

She appeared to have been poured into her black satin gown at some

abnormally high temperature and at a calculation perilously close. Her

gray pompadour strained back from her high forehead in an apparent

endeavor to oust her bonnet as an insolent trespasser on its private

domain, but the bonnet, a black octopus with an intelligent jetty eye,

wound two narrow black velvet tentacles firmly beneath Mrs. Van Velt’s

double chin, and triumphed calmly.

“You go, Bobbins,” said Carrington, gayly. “Mrs. Van Velt, may I

present Mr. Parker? Chloroforming cabbies is one of his specialties.

You may be sure that it will be painless and thorough.”

“And bring back my daughter, Mr. Parker,” said Mrs. Van Velt, as

placidly as though she had said spectacles or handkerchief. The

obliging young knight was already half way to the door. “Carol thought

she ought to argue it out with him; and as she couldn’t understand his

French, and he couldn’t understand hers, it seemed perfectly safe.”

She laughed good-humoredly.

“That’s a nice-looking boy, Ned,” she said, as the subject of her

remark disappeared. “Who is he, and how did he get such a remarkable

name?”

“Bobbins?” said Carrington. “Oh, he’s a trump. His father is the

inventor--no, his grandfather--of Parker’s Peerless Sewing Machine.

You know all the advertisements say: ‘Observe the bobbin. So simple, a

child can work it.’ And Robert the Third is such a generous chap, he’s

an awfully easy mark. So--Bobbins.”

His hands turned palms upward in an explanatory gesture.

Mrs. Van Velt laughed again. Then she put a hand on Carrington’s

shoulder with a touch that was almost motherly.

“Ned,” she said, affectionately, “I wish your father could be here

to-day to see you before you go east. He’d be so proud of you. How long

is it since he has seen you and Elenore?”

“Six years,” said Carrington. “Dear old dad! Not since he sent us

over here in Aunt Sarah’s care, six years ago, when mother died. He’s

intended to come every year, but there’s always been something at the

mine to prevent it. Dad loves the struggle of business, you know.”

“He loves his children, too,” said Mrs. Van Velt, seriously. “It

must be lonely for him. And the mine is in such a forlorn little,

out-of-the-way place, ’way up there in northern Michigan.”

“The mines situated right in the heart of Manhattan are pretty well

worked out,” Ned expostulated, humorously.

“Yellow Dog! Did you ever hear such a ghastly name?” Mrs. Van Velt went

on. “Half the people thought your mother was crazy when she married

him and went out there to live. They said he was harnessing Psyche to

his mine machinery for motive power. And the other half said that when

he was tired and wanted sympathy she’d write him a sonnet. Everybody

agreed that they would be unhappy. And they were the happiest people I

ever knew.”

“They certainly were,” said Carrington, emphatically. “How do you

account for it?”

“Modern prophets have a horror of the country,” said Mrs. Van Velt,

sententiously, “unless it’s in easy motoring distance of Sherry’s. And

they overlooked the vital fact that when you’re making two human beings

one, duplicate good qualities are quite as useless as duplicate wedding

presents.

“It’s curious,” she continued, “about you twins: that Elenore has all

her father’s love of adventure and his executive ability, for all

her girlishness; and you have your mother’s talent and her tastes.

You couldn’t be more different, and yet you look as much alike as you

did when you were tots. I remember the first time your mother brought

you east. Your Uncle Dick--well, your Uncle Dick thought rock-and-rye

a splendid tonic for other people, but personally he took it without

the rock, which he thought might be indigestible--and he looked at you

both as you stood there side by side. And he said: ‘Bring on your blue

ribbons. I can see two of them.’”

“Why, Mrs. Van Velt, and so early in the day, too!” said a gay voice

behind her, a voice so like Carrington’s that it seemed his echo; and

Elenore Carrington came forward to kiss the dowager on both cheeks.

As Mrs. Van Velt had said, the resemblance between the twins _was_

remarkable.

They had the same height, the same coloring, the same blue eyes

that had a trick of turning violet under emotion; the same delicate

arch to the eyebrows; the same wavy line of hair upon the forehead;

the same buoyant poise of body. Even a certain quick suppleness of

motion belonged to them both; and, stranger still, their hands were

wonderfully like.

The artistic impulse that gave to Ned’s a certain femininity in

slenderness and taper fingers was curiously balanced by a strain of

resourcefulness which lent to Elenore’s well-shaped white palms so

strong a resemblance to her twin’s that it was only by putting them

side by side and noting that hers were a bit smaller, a shade more

femininely modeled, a trifle more delicately cushioned, that they were

distinguishable.

The black locks that Carrington permitted to wave back just enough for

picturesqueness, with no trace of the bizarre or of unkemptness, gave

to his face a boyishness that carried a suggestion of eternal youth.

But Elenore’s dark hair was coiled low in the nape of her neck, and her

manner was as feminine as was her distinctly smart and frilly pale

blue chiffon frock.

“I’m glad,” Elenore went on, chaffingly, “that Aunt Sarah is safely on

her way to the North Cape and cannot hear you describe your shocking

condition.”

“Bless you, child,” said Mrs. Van Velt, promptly. “You’re altogether

too good-looking. You ought to wear a veil. That’s what young Hastings

thinks, I hear. He’s confided in Carol. And anyone who would confide in

Carol must be laboring under strong mental excitement. And so your Aunt

Sarah has really started for the North Cape! Women as plain as Sarah

Moore are always pretending to be absorbed in the beauties of nature,

but they are really trying to get their own minds and yours away from

such sensitive subjects as snub noses.”

“Where is Carol?” demanded Elenore, laughingly. “Isn’t she coming to

say good-by to Ned and me?”

“Carol seems to be putting in a stitch in time with that young sewing

machine,” said Mrs. Van Velt, unperturbed. “She’s like her father. He

never could bear to see machinery idle.”

Elenore looked up at her smilingly from the place she had taken at the

tea table. The samovar was steaming gayly, and the girl’s white hands

moved with housewifely deftness as she prepared to make tea. They were

firm, capable hands, that it was a pleasure to watch.

The portières swung back with a decided flourish to admit a short,

bright-eyed, gray-headed, animated old gentleman, who came forward with

the buoyancy of a boy.

“Here I am, _cher_ Edouard,” cried Velantour, gayly. “_Mademoiselle,

mes hommages_, I come _exprès_ to assure you that I shall take the bes’

of care of this brother of yours.”

“Mrs. Van Velt,” said Carrington, putting his hand affectionately on

old Velantour’s arm, “I present to you Monsieur Velantour, the master

of painting in France.”

“Madame,” said Velantour, courtly in turn, “I presen’ to you Monsieur

Edouard Carrington, a _nouveau maître_ of whom America will one day be

very proud.

“You have a daughter, madame?” he added, gravely.

“Somewhere,” said Mrs. Van Velt, calmly.

“_C’est ça!_” said Velantour. “I fall over two young peopl’ in the hall

as I enter--young Monsieur Parker and a young lady--and the young lady

say: ‘Oh, Monsieur Velantour, will you tell mother I’ll be in in a

minute?’ And Monsieur Parker say: ‘So soon as she have finish’ winding

the bobbin.’”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Van Velt,” said Carrington, amusedly. “Bobbins is

decidedly an eligible.”

“What is that, an eligible?” demanded Velantour, puzzled to know what

could justify such calm.

“Well, in America, Monsieur Velantour,” Mrs. Van Velt informed him, “an

eligible is an attractive man entirely surrounded by daughters--other

people’s daughters.”

“When mother begins to talk about other people’s daughters it’s always

time for me to appear,” announced Miss Carol Van Velt, entering gayly.

Bobbins, radiant, was just back of her; and a tall, serious,

thoroughbred young fellow followed them.

Carol Van Velt was a remarkably pretty blonde, who looked delightfully

_ingénue_, but was entirely capable of managing most masculinity. She

accepted admiration as nonchalantly as she did bonbons, and considered

that the sources of supply of both were unlimited. Experience seemed to

prove that this theory was correct.

“_We_ saw, anyway, that we were just being used as stepping-stones to

higher things,” she went on; “so we thought we might as well come in

with Mr. Hastings.”

She sank gracefully down on one end of a large divan, and drew her

skirts aside with a gesture that assumed matter-of-factly that Bobbins

would occupy the other half of the seat. He justified the conclusion

with a promptness which left no doubt that he regarded it as a

heaven-sent opportunity.

“Not that we minded being an angels’ ladder,” he asserted, cheerfully,

“but I thought from Hastings’ cast of countenance that he might be

going to give you a few scenes from ‘Hamlet,’ and I didn’t think it

was safe to be sitting behind a curtain when he got to that part about

_Polonius_.”

Velantour regarded them with that awe which a Frenchman must feel

for the rollicking frivolity of the American young and the placid

inefficiency of the American parent.

Meantime Hastings had made his way to Elenore and slipped into a vacant

chair by the tea table, as a matter of course.

She smiled at him very charmingly.

“You’re late,” she said, “and you were coming early, you know. Do you

think you deserve caravan tea with a dash of burgundy in it?”

“I think I deserve all the good things I can get to-day,” he said, and

though his tone was light, there was an undertone that suggested that

he meant it.

“It tastes to me more like burgundy with a dash of caravan tea,” said

Mrs. Van Velt. “After a while they will forget to put in the tea at

all.”

“And then, Monsieur Velantour?” said Carrington, amusedly; for the old

Frenchman was sipping the mixture cautiously.

“Then it will not need mademoiselle’s hands to make it perfection,”

said Velantour, with a humorous twist of his keen old lips.

His gray eyes gleamed as they applauded him laughingly. Age had

intensified in him the love of appreciation which is innate in the

Gallic heart.

“While we have tea, let us have toast,” said Bobbins, promptly. “I

propose a toast to Monsieur Velantour. Turn it into rhyme, Ned. You’re

a crack _improvisatore_.”

Carrington stood up, with the easy grace of an Italian. He had the

temperament of a troubadour, and he loved in turn a compliment.

“To Monsieur Velantour” (he began) “whose name

Is but a synonym for fame----”

He had the _improvisatore’s_ trick of lingering on the final syllable

until it brought its own suggestion.

“Bravo!” they applauded him; while Velantour enjoyed the adulation with

the frankness of a child.

“So irresistible that Art” (he glanced with gay raillery at Velantour)

“Quite womanlike, has lost her heart.

Yet knows it in his keeping, sure.

A health to Monsieur Velantour!”

They drank it in hilarious mood.

Velantour was on his feet the next instant.

“If I could but make one littl’ Americain verse,” he implored,

expansively. “But I speak so poorly. You mus’ help me a littl’.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Van Velt, practically, “you have to begin with the

street he lives on, or something like that. _Rue Boissonade_----” she

began, and halted.

“Shall have its Claude,” suggested Bobbins.

“_Bon!_” cried Velantour. “Now I have it.

“_Rue Boissonade_

Shall have its _Claude_,

And _l’Amerique_

The new _Van Dyck_.”

His _naïf_ delight was contagious.

He patted Carrington’s arm affectionately.

“But we shall paint, _cher_ Edouard!” he said, fondly. “And you are

quite ready?”

“More than ready,” laughed Carrington.

He glanced at the little clock on the mantel.

“And our train goes in just two hours,” he whispered, triumphantly.

“Till then,” said Velantour, gayly. Then he crossed over to Elenore.

“Mademoiselle, I will guard your brother as though he was--what is mos’

perishable in English--a bubbl’, is it not? Madame”--he bowed to Mrs.

Van Velt. “Mademoiselle”--he inclined to Carol. “In two littl’ hours,”

he called to Carrington from the doorway, and was gone.

“Isn’t he the dearest thing?” Carol demanded, frankly, of Bobbins.

“He’s an old brick, but not my idea of the dearest thing,” that

discriminating individual replied, promptly. “I don’t suppose you

could guess what my idea would be,” he insinuated.

“Oh, that’s too much of an antique,” said Miss Van Velt, with crushing

promptness.

“Antique! I bought it this year,” said Bobbins, tacking, unharmed.

“Then some one is selling you back numbers,” Miss Van Velt assured him.

“Try to get your money back. It’s been taking candy from children, and

it ought to be stopped.”

“The police won’t give it back,” said Bobbins, mysteriously.

“The police!” said Miss Van Velt, startled. “What have they to do----”

“With my Mercedes?” said Bobbins, cheerfully. “That’s just the attitude

I’ve tried to take with them. But it has cost me five hundred francs

this week, and this is only Wednesday. The dearest thing on earth to me

is Mercedes, my Mercedes,” he hummed, pathetically.

“You naturally would lavish your young affection on machines,” Miss Van

Velt remarked, cruelly, but she gave him a look of decided favor.

“So long as you think I am in the running,” said Bobbins, placidly.

The maid had brought in a letter with an American postmark. Carrington

held it in his hand as he crossed over to join the group around the tea

table.

Mrs. Van Velt was enjoying her usual volubility, and Hastings was

paying her the flattery of an apparent attention and a comprehendingly

amused smile, while his eyes gave the deeper homage of frequent and

involuntary glances to Elenore.

For him, at least, Elenore was the central figure. Nor was it only for

him. Things were quite apt to gravitate around Elenore. Ned himself did

not overshadow his twin. If there is any truth in theosophic theories,

she had an unusually powerful aura; if we discard the esoteric for

the exoteric, beauty and wit and reserve force, cast in the mold of

an alluring femininity, are quite as attractive as the same buoyant

youth, plus tremendous talent, in masculine fiber.

Elenore had, too, a certain firm, keen grasp on the realities of life

which Carrington, with all his localized talent, lacked. One felt that

she would not fail in any qualm, that she would not be daunted by any

obstacle, that in crises she would think not of surrender or sacrifice,

but of resource and expedient.

Mrs. Van Velt was concluding her story of a recent tea given for a

famous woman novelist.

“_Did_ she talk about her work?” she exclaimed. “She never got away

from her books, and she drenched us with her successes until our ardor

was more than dampened. It was soaked. She gave us to understand

that she had Browning beaten on obscurity, Ibsen on subtlety, and

Maeterlinck on imagination. And when she left there was a heavy silence

for a minute, and then Alec Carter said: ‘Now let’s talk nursery rhymes

for a while. We might begin on “Little _bas bleu_, come blow your

horn.”’”

She made her adieux on the strength of that, collecting her purse, her

feather boa and her daughter from different parts of the room, with

surprising promptitude.

It was her practice to save her best rocket for the last, and disappear

in the glory of its swish.

Bobbins accompanied the Van Velts to their carriage, and, to misquote

long-suffering Omar, once departed, he returned no more.

Carrington turned to Hastings the moment they were out of the door.

“You’ll excuse me if I read dad’s letter, won’t you? My time is getting

so short,” he said, apologetically; and went over to one of the long

windows to get the benefit of its light.

Elenore turned to Hastings with the question that had been hovering on

her lips for the last half-hour.

“Tell me why you are so serious,” she said. “Has anything gone wrong?

It doesn’t mean that you are not coming to Brittany to see the Waldens

and--me--this summer, does it?”

“It means a great deal more than that,” said Hastings, soberly.

“Yesterday I thought I was on my way to being a rising architect.

To-day I am simply cast into outer darkness. The shears of fate have

clipped this piece of my life short, and I can’t see what the next is

going to be like.”

“Tell me,” said Elenore, quietly.

“It’s grotesquely simple,” said Hastings, and there was an involuntary

tinge of bitterness in the tone he tried to keep even. “My uncle, who

has given me my start in life--the only relative I have--has written me

to come back to New York at once. I’m to give up being an architect.

When it’s the only thing I am fitted for! He has something else for

me. He doesn’t explain what. He does vouchsafe the information that

the place is quite impossible, but, he says, what are a few years out

of a young man’s life?” His voice was a trifle unsteady. Years seemed

eternity to him just then.

“I must go, of course, unquestioningly,” he went on, holding himself in

check. “Considering that I owe him everything, it’s a military command.

And I have no right to say anything but good-by to--to any woman. I’m

out of things, that’s all.”

So much, at least, he vowed he would tell her; but he was determined

that he would not be so weak as to ask her to wait for him.

The years of his uncle’s bounty fettered him hopelessly. When he knew

where he stood, when he had something definite to offer her, then--but

not till then. But it was bitter. He had supposed, of course, that he

would go back in the autumn, open an office, be self-supporting, and

then----

It was a few seconds before Elenore spoke. When she did her voice was

cheerful and friendly.

“There is always something interesting in the most impossible places,”

she said. “It may be rather fun. And we shall expect you to make it as

picturesque as possible in your letters, if we tell you all the gossip

here in exchange.”

He said to himself that she understood, at least. He thanked Heaven

for that, as youth is prone to thank Heaven when Heaven lives up to its

expectations. And if the place was not so very impossible--_if_--and

_perhaps_----

So hope began to whisper. And then because If and Perhaps were all

he could take with him, because she was so winsome and dear and so

desirably human, because she was so daintily proud, and because the

things he was not to tell her refused to be held back, he caught

her hands in his, whispered: “God bless you! I shall write you

everything--that I can,” and, wrapping his New England conscience round

him, went without a backward glance.

Elenore stood quite still for a moment. The shadows were beginning to

thicken in the long room, and she felt a certain restfulness in the

half-light.

Then she turned resolutely toward her brother. Something in the

dejection of his poise quickened her instantly.

“Ned! What is it?” she demanded.

“It’s the deluge--without an ark,” said Carrington, without stirring.

“Well?” said Elenore, tersely.

“I’m not going east with Velantour. I’m going home,” he said,

mechanically.

“Not dad?” she said, breathlessly.

“No.” He answered the unfinished question. “But he’s broken his leg,

poor old dad! And other things are wrong, and he wants me.”

“And me?” she questioned, quickly. “Doesn’t he want me?”

“No,” said Carrington, impatiently. “He wants his son, he says, and he

shall have me. And he shan’t know I ever whimpered about coming. I’m

not cad enough for that. But going east with Velantour _is_ the chance

of a lifetime, and it takes a minute or two to get heroic about giving

it up, that’s all. All except that it’s bitter to think how little

use I shall be to him when I get there, for it’s partly business,

and I haven’t a particle of business ability. That will be _his_

disappointment, which is bitterer still.”

“Do you mean to say that he doesn’t want me?” Elenore demanded. “Where

is the letter?”

Carrington held it out to her without a word.

Dear Ned (it read), I’m sorry to call you home, but I must. I’m

laid up with a broken leg--compound fracture. Don’t be alarmed. I’m

in no danger of dying. But there are business complications I want

to talk over with you--things it’s only fair to you to let you help

decide. It may be only for a few weeks. Then you can go back. Let

Elenore stay in Paris. It’s all man’s work to be done here. Just

responsibilities to be met.

Your father,

JOHN CARRINGTON.

Ned Carrington was turning over the pages of the morning _Herald_.

“I can catch the train for London in an hour, and sail from Liverpool

tomorrow, or--no, here it is--I can leave here in the morning and get a

boat at Boulogne. That will be better,” he planned.

“And Velantour?” Elenore questioned.

He threw out his hands despairingly.

“I’ll drive to the station and tell him,” he said. “Then I’ll come back

and unpack--and pack.”

“Why can’t I go to dad instead of you?” Elenore demanded.

“Because it’s man’s work to be done,” said Carrington, impatiently.

“Don’t argue it. I wish I had your brains for it, though. But it’s me

that dad wants, and what he wants he shall have.”

“Two people are going to America who don’t want to go in the least.

But they are men, and so, presumably, useful,” she said, spiritedly.

“And the one person who would really like to go can’t; because she is a

woman, and so, presumably, useless.” She flung her head backward a bit

impatiently as she looked at her twin. He was fumbling among the papers

on his desk; and the long mirror above it showed his face flushed and

perturbed and boyish. Then she caught sight of her own in the glass,

and started.

“There isn’t a pen here,” Ned said, irritably. “I must send dad a

cable.”

“There’s one in my room,” she said, and her tone was full of energy and

spirit. “Get it, while I tell Berthe to run for a cab, and you can take

the message to the office on your way to tell Velantour.”

Her hand was on the bell as he disappeared. She had snatched up paper

and pencil the next second, and was dashing off a note.

“Berthe,” she said, as the little maid hurried in, “you are to go for

a cab, and see that it gets here in just fifteen minutes precisely;

not before, mind. Tell the _cocher_ that he shall have five francs

_pourboire_ if he is exact.”

“_Bien_, mademoiselle,” said the little maid.

“Post this note to Mrs. Walden, and come back with a second cab in

twenty-five minutes, without fail. Either my brother or myself will

give you your last instructions for the summer.”

“_Bien_, mademoiselle,” said the little maid--as she would have said it

to any command short of murder.

She sped out, pleasingly stimulated by the silver coin in her palm.

“Has she gone?” demanded Ned, feverishly, as he reappeared with the pen.

“Yes,” said Elenore. “Write your message and read it off to me when

you’ve done it, will you? I want to tuck some things into the bag

that’s going to America.”

She nodded, smilingly, as she sped into his room.

Carrington sat down with a stifled groan. The sweetness had gone out of

life. It was duty now. Say what you will, six years’ absence loosens

ties of blood; and though he was ashamed to confess it himself, it was

with a lagging loyalty that he thought of going home.

His whole life had been bent in one direction, and this abrupt break

demanded a heroism which he resolved to simulate, at least. But he need

not begin yet.

He could make his little moan to himself for this instant when he was

alone.

He dipped the pen in the ink.

The first sheet of paper blotted hopelessly. And the second. The

fingers that held a brush with unfaltering and delicate touch were

clumsily nervous now.

John Carrington, Yellow Dog, Mich, (he got down). Am coming first

boat.

“What was the boat?” he demanded of himself, and helplessly turned back

to the _Herald_ for information.

_Kaiser Wilhelm_ sailing Cherbourg tomorrow.

NED.

Then he dropped his face in his hands.

The written words seemed to make the thing so irrevocable.

He pulled himself together and walked nervously over to the window.

Where on earth _was_ the cab? It was a comfort to vent irritability on

something.

Then he roved over to the trunk he had packed with such forethought.

He laughed a little bitterly.

“Poor old Velantour! He will be disappointed, too,” he whispered. “But

of the two old men who love me, one has to go to the wall. And it

shan’t be dad.”

He tramped up and down restlessly until he heard the sound of wheels.

Then he called to Elenore.

“I am going now.”

“Not in this cab, you are not,” her voice answered him. “This is mine.

Yours will be here in ten minutes, and you will have lots of time then.”

“What?” he called, halfway to the door, and not believing his ears.

The door swung open, and in it he saw--himself.

Clad in loosely hanging dull gray velveteens, with a soft cravat the

color of pigeon blood. Over his arm a long crimson-lined cape hung,

half-concealing a suit case. The face, which was his, laughed at him

triumphantly, and shook its dark hair, worn a trifle long, back from

the forehead.

In the disencumbered hand a soft felt hat waved him back with a dash of

bravado.

“Tell Berthe what you please when she comes with your cab,” his own

voice cried gayly. “I’ve just time to catch the London train. You are

for the east, I believe.” Then, as he stood thunderstruck, his double

laughed exultantly.

“There’s a letter, with copious details, on your dresser,” the

apparition stated, with a lilt of pure joy of escapade. “Considering

the shortness of the time, I think I’ve been marvelous in thinking out

all possible exigencies.”

And to his gesture of protest, of incredulity: “Don’t argue! You

are to live the life you care for, for your three wonderful months,

and so shall I. It’s not sacrifice. It’s selfishness. I want to go

desperately. And I’ll write you here--volumes. You’ll find them when

you get back.”

Then that voice which was his, and was not his, chanted saucily:

“Rue Boissonade

Shall have its Claude,

And l’Amerique

The new Van Dyck;

But Carrington

Shall have his son.”

The doorway was empty. He heard a _cocher_ crack his whip, and a

cab-horse evidently making record time. Five francs, _mon Dieu, ça vaut

la peine_!

Ned Carrington stood bewildered. What should he do? He might follow

her--might make a scene--but he was always worsted when Elenore became

daintily willful. She was quite capable of carrying it off, too. And it

_was_ a lark!

A cab came clattering up the little street. The call of the East came

to him with an overpowering lure. A wave of joy swept over him that

he _could_ go, after all. He felt a fury of impatience to be off. He

grudged the time to give Berthe her instructions, to snatch Elenore’s

letter from the dresser, to catch up his hat and coat. The mere thought

to do these things should be enough. But Berthe’s willing feet were

speeding up the stairway. He flung the rug from his more-than-ready

trunk, and laughed as he touched the strap caressingly with his fingers.

“I’m going!” he whispered; and the words sung themselves to the rhythm

of rapture unalloyed.

“_Et puis, m’sieu?_” said Berthe, breathlessly, from the doorway.

CHAPTER II.

The case of the old-fashioned watch snapped together for the fortieth

time in John Carrington’s restless hands, and he sighed impatiently.

Not since those days of dread loneliness after his wife’s death, when

he had first sent the children abroad, had time dragged so rackingly.

His leonine, iron-gray head moved irritably among the pillows of the

bed where he had been “caged,” as he called it, for three interminable

weeks.

Mrs. Kipley, tidying up the room with an accentuation of her usual

briskness, gave him as indulgent a look as the formation of her rigid

cast of countenance would permit.

“Wearin’ out your watch case won’t hurry up that train none,” she

observed, as she straightened a china cat on the mantel into an

expectant attitude.

It had been her gift the previous Christmas to John Carrington, and her

admiration of it extended to the hope that it would pleasingly impress

the returning traveler.

“Miss Elenore was fondest of animals, though,” she murmured, absently.

John Carrington’s eyes twinkled appreciatively. He did not share Mrs.

Kipley’s admiration for her feline gift.

“Ned will appreciate that cat, though, Mrs. Kipley,” he said, genially.

“You know he’s been studying _art_;” but with the word a shadow came

over his face.

“It’s hard on the lad, bringing him back,” he said. “Yellow Dog will

look pretty crude to him, I expect.”

He moved his head restlessly, and the leg in its swinging splint became

more exasperatingly painful.

Of course it would be only natural for Ned to have grown away from

home ties. It was an unspoken thought against which he had braced

himself for all these ten days. If the boy came back half-heartedly,

contemptuous of the place, indifferent to the mine, alienated from his

father--that was the touch of the thumbscrew.

And yet, he told himself wearily, six years was a long time. The boy

was talented, cultured, used to all the refinements of an older

civilization. What wonder if---- And if he, through love for his

son, and carrying out his mother’s wishes for his future, had been

responsible for the separation which might mean all this?

Ah, well, he was not the first father, nor the last, to think out these

same things, and try to see them dispassionately.

“He was real spry about starting,” said Mrs. Kipley.

John Carrington’s face relaxed.

“Caught the first boat,” he said. Then “Is his room ready and

comfortable?” he demanded, as he had demanded many times.

“I wouldn’t worry about that room none, if I was you,” said Mrs.

Kipley, serenely.

“Did you remember about the cigars and a decanter of whisky?” he asked.

Mrs. Kipley looked at him in a patient exasperation.

“They’s two kinds of cigars, every brand of cigarettes Kipley could lay

hands on in Yellow Dog, the biggest decanter full of whisky, the motto

‘Love One Another,’ that my Sunday-school class worked for me last

winter; red-white-and-blue soap in the soap dish, and two pincushions

with a French motto worked on each of ’em. Hemmy did ’em in black and

white pins. She thought’t would make it seem more like Paris to him.

One says ‘_Vive Napoleon_,’ and the other says ‘_Veuve Cliquot_.’ Kind

of twins, you see.”

John Carrington’s mouth twitched. Then he frowned slightly. For

would the boy understand? If he were not amused--if he were merely

contemptuous!

“Hemmy’s picking some flowers for the house now,” Mrs. Kipley went on,

serenely. “And Kipley’s took a saddle horse besides the road wagon,

so’s if Mr. Ned wanted to ride over, he could.”

The case of John Carrington’s watch came open once more. If the

train was on time, and Ned did choose the saddle horse, another ten

minutes---- But would he? The lad was a bit of a dandy. Carrington

had smiled indulgently over some of his tailor’s bills. Probably you

couldn’t coax him on a horse, even in Yellow Dog, unless he was arrayed

in all the proper paraphernalia.

But what was that clatter of horse’s hoofs--fast and furious--faster

and more furious than any Yellow Dog had heard since the day three

weeks ago when the Carrington team, terrorized by a small boy’s

premature bunch of firecrackers, had run away, and John Carrington,

thrown from the wreckage of his light buggy, had been brought home with

a badly fractured leg?

Mrs. Kipley looked out of the window.

“Merciful sakes!” she ejaculated, startled.

Not an accident to Ned, John Carrington prayed, with stiff, dry lips

and apprehensive eyes.

“Of all things!” Mrs. Kipley murmured; and her tone indicated that she

was now past surprise, and merely numbered with the numb.

Some one was running up the veranda steps; the door was flung open, and

a tall, dark, slender boy in a marvelous suit of dull gray velveteens

stood on the threshold.

A long, crimson-lined cape was flung over his arm. He tossed it from

him. And “Dad!” he cried, exultantly, and was across the room, with his

arms around his father’s neck, and had kissed him on both cheeks.

“French fashion, dad!” he laughed, flushing suddenly.

“Now we’ll do it the Anglo-Saxon way;” and he caught both his father’s

hands in his own and wrung them heartily. “It’s great to be home

again,” he said, buoyantly.

And the joyful light in his eyes was unmistakably genuine.

John Carrington’s face softened amazingly. Happiness such as he had not

known for six years gripped him. The warm ardor of his son’s embrace,

the touch of the soft, boyish lips, unnerved him, but he liked it

astonishingly. It was so naïf, so unspoiled, so reassuring against that

dread of alienation he had endured, that he felt submerged in the warm,

comfortable certitude of his son’s affection. He gripped the lad’s

hands strongly, and surveyed him with a proud, fatherly interest.

The blue eyes that looked frankly into his own were like the lad’s

mother’s, like Althea’s; the face that smiled gayly at him was alight

with youthful energy, and the mouth, though the lips were a trifle

full, had firm and resolute lines.

It was no dawdling dreamer that he saw, but an action-lover.

He nodded satisfiedly.

“You’ll do, lad,” he said, briefly.

Then he smiled as he caught sight of Mrs. Kipley, standing with the

rigidity of an automaton, dust cloth in hand.

“You remember Mrs. Kipley,” he said, significantly. The boy wheeled

instantly.

“Don’t I!” he said, laughingly, and something in his advance galvanized

Mrs. Kipley into life again.

“None of your French fashions with me,” she said, severely, extending

her right hand to him, less in greeting than as a rampart.

He swept a wonderful bow over it. Bent to it as a courtier might have

done, and kissed its wrinkled, work-hardened back lightly. Then he

straightened up to look her full in the eyes, and laughed his bubbling

laugh once more.

“Do you still make those wonderful twisted doughnuts, Mrs. Kipley?” he

asked, gayly. “I’ve bragged about them in Paris till they’re famous.”

Mrs. Kipley was scrutinizing the back of her hand minutely, to see if

it was still intact. Finding it apparently uninjured, she drew breath

and looked the surprising apparition in the face. Her own relaxed to

his handsome, dashing youth and to his praise.

“I guess they’re about the same,” she said, dryly. But John Carrington

chuckled to himself. He recognized the subjugation of Mrs. Kipley.

“What will he be with the young women!” he commented, to himself,

amusedly.

Then he asked the question that was consuming Mrs. Kipley:

“Ned, are those clothes the _style_ in Paris?”

The boy swung himself lightly into the big armchair beside the bed.

“They’re the badge of my craft, sir,” he said, good-humoredly, settling

the soft cravat with deft fingers. “Don’t you like them?”

“Oh, _I_ like them,” said John Carrington. (“Handsome lad!” he was

whispering to himself, proudly.) “But I was wondering how they would

strike Yellow Dog, that’s all.”

“There did seem to be some little interest in my arrival,” the lad

admitted, gleefully.

“Sakes alive! They beat anything I ever see in all my life!” Mrs.

Kipley communed with herself.

“And Elenore?” said John Carrington. “How did you leave Elenore?”

The boy stirred slightly in his chair.

“Elenore is well, dad. She wanted to come. I think she was a little

disappointed that you didn’t want your daughter instead of your son.”

John Carrington shook his head.

“Yellow Dog is no place for a young lady, Ned,” he said. “It was better

for her to stay with her friends. I should have liked to see her,

though. She’s quite a woman, from her picture. Time for sweethearts,

eh? Your Aunt Sarah wrote a good deal about a young Hastings. She

seemed to think it might be serious.”

The boy flushed annoyedly.

“Aunt Sarah loves to fuss and exaggerate,” he said, and there was a

slight coolness in his voice. “Maiden aunts are apt to, you know,” he

went on, more naturally. He smiled his attractive smile once more.

Whatever had perturbed him for the instant was past.

Miss Hematite Kipley, _ætat_ seventeen, coming into the room with a

fragrant bowl of syringa blossoms, compared it favorably with any

picture her beloved romancers had been able to conjure up.

From the moment when she had seen the picturesque figure dismount and

make a rapid way into the house, she had been perishing to make this

entrance, but she had restrained herself in accordance with her ideas

of propriety and gentility. Miss Kipley strove to be “elegant,” aided

by certain open columns in respected periodicals, after which she

patterned her conduct and her clothes.

The meeting between father and son she characterized as “a sacred

moment,” and she regretted her mother’s continued intrusion upon it

with the resigned exasperation of one who had often and fruitlessly

pointed out to a primitive parent the proper forms of procedure.

Miss Kipley was rather pretty in a wholesome, buxom, blond way, and the

“open columns” had stimulated her to a crisp freshness of attire, and

partially reconciled her to the maternal regulations of its enforced

simplicity.

She came into the room with her eyelids so demurely lowered that she

might have been taken for a sleepwalker.

“Good-morning, Hemmy,” said John Carrington, with an outward courtesy

which marked an inward amusement. In spite of her physical bulk, Miss

Hematite was mentally transparent.

“Why, _Hemmy_!” said young Carrington, gayly, “how awfully pretty you

have grown!”

Miss Kipley felt an inward commotion which threatened suffocation. Her

fingers tightened on the blue bowl in a way which tested its enduring

qualities. Mrs. Kipley’s maternal eye became vigilant.

There was a suggestion of a wrinkle on John Carrington’s brow. He

hoped the boy would remember that this was not Paris; that the Kipleys

represented the survival of a good many New England traits.

But neither parent could find anything to criticise in the way the lad

relieved the blushing Hemmy of the bowl, shook her hand in a cordial,

unaffected way, and turned to set the white blossoms on the square

ledge of the open window, where the breeze converted them into a spicy

censer.

As for Hematite, though visibly she stood in a deep pink embarrassment,

in fancy she trod the sunny slopes of romance. This was the way things

happened in the books over which she pored, palpitant. She sought

vainly for some appropriate expression of welcome.

“I guess Hemmy and me will let you have a chance to get acquainted. I

can finish dusting by and by,” said Mrs. Kipley, tersely. “Your old

room’s all ready for you, Mr. Ned. Come, Hemmy.”

That young person followed her mother mechanically from the room.

“Cat got your tongue?” inquired Mrs. Kipley, severely, in the hall.

“For all you are forever reading about the proper way to do things, you

can’t even say ‘Glad to see you back.’”

Miss Kipley looked down from the happy heights to which she had

mentally withdrawn herself, to the prosaic parent treading the valley

of plain realities.

“There are moments beyond words,” she vouchsafed. Then she sped down

the garden path to the now sacred syringa.

Mrs. Kipley watched her from the doorway with an anxious air.

“I hope she ain’t caught anything,” she murmured. “That was a terrible

fool remark. I don’t know what there is around just now for her _to_

catch.”

But it is characteristic of the disorder which Miss Hematite had so

recently acquired that no one save the person afflicted knows it’s

around till the case has taken.

* * * * *

The lad had slipped his fingers in his father’s, and they sat a little

while in silence. So Althea and John Carrington had often sat, in that

silent communion which is the bond of the finest fellowship.

Mr. Abner Kipley, entering suddenly, with Ned’s suit case in hand and

a desire to expatiate on recent events oozing from every pore, viewed

this singular proceeding as one further extraordinary manifestation

emanating from the same remarkable cause.

“Seems you _can_ teach an old dog new tricks,” he communed with

himself. “Probably by to-morrow I’ll be holding hands myself.” He

chuckled grimly to himself over the impossible thought. But the glance

he gave the lad from under his shaggy eyebrows was unwillingly

admiring.

Yet Mr. Kipley prided himself on his unerring attitude of judicial

criticism.

The boy swung round in his chair to greet him smilingly.

“You walked over, Mr. Kipley, I assume,” he said, mischievously.

“I didn’t try to kill a horse ’n’ get my neck broke,” responded Mr.

Kipley, defensively.

“You picked up thet baby nice, though,” he added, with the air of a man

willing to be just.

John Carrington looked at him with an air of sudden inquiry.

“It _was_ lucky,” said the lad, languidly; and he lounged over to the

open window, as though the subject was finished.

“I’m goin’ to,” said Mr. Kipley, impatiently, to the growing insistence

of John Carrington’s look.

He objected to being hurried in the narration of a story which he

rejoiced was his to tell.

“When he,” he began, jerking his head in the lad’s direction, “’lected

to ride the Colonel home, he threw that red-backed garmint”--no

mere black-and-white could reproduce the patronage of Mr. Kipley’s

tone--“’cross the saddle in front of him. ’N’ the Colonel, not being

used to the fashions in Paris, bolted. They went up the road’s though

they was goin’ to glory, ’n’ didn’t have but one chance to ketch the

limited. ’N’ _I_ threw his grip in the wagon ’n’ started after ’em.

“It was good ridin’,” said Mr. Kipley, approvingly, “’n’ everybody thet

could turned out to see it. It was interestin’ and free.

“Thet curve by Trevanion’s cottage is a mean place,” Mr. Kipley

continued, reflectively. “I’ve run the team into several things there

myself, includin’ a dog fight, which c’ncluded about the time we run

over the principal fighter’s tail.” He switched himself back on the

main track. “Thet baby of Trevanion’s was tryin’ to ketch a hen just as

the exhibition come along.”

“Well?” said John Carrington, and his voice whistled like a pistol shot.

“Down with his arm, ’n’ half out of the saddle--grab--’n’ yank up--’n’

’bout face--hand the baby to a long-legged girl--’n’ off he goes,

leaving me to destroy my c’nstitution, breathin’ dust all the way home.

Thet’s your son’s idea of gettin’ here,” he concluded, dryly.

John Carrington drew a breath of relief.

“If anything had happened to that baby, we should have had the devil’s

own time,” he said. “Trevanion has been sullen ugly ever since his wife

died--took his trouble that way--and the baby is the only thing in the

world he cares for. If--well, we might have lost the best shift boss in

the country.”

Young Carrington stood very still, looking out of the window. If the

incident had shaken him a bit, there was at least no outward sign of it.

Mr. Kipley drew nearer to the bed.

“There’s good stuff in him,” he said, semi-confidentially, as though

recent residence in a foreign land unfitted one to hear undertone, “’n’

grit. But, for the sake of Moses, get those clo’s offen him.”

Upon which advice, he retired hastily from the room.

John Carrington looked across the room at his son with a smile that was

at once quizzical and affectionate.

“Yellow Dog finds you a trifle too picturesque, boy,” he said, and

his tone suggested that he at any rate was satisfied. “How about you?

Pretty big trial to come back?”

“I should have come, whether you sent for me or not, when I knew you

were hurt,” said the boy, and there was a defiant little ring in his

voice. “Where should I be, or want to be, but at home and with you?”

John Carrington’s heart beat proudly. This was the kind of son to

have. He said “home” as though he meant it. He was loyal. Now he, John

Carrington, had an heir to show to some people----

“I needed you,” he said, quietly. “Not on account of this confounded

leg; though it’s been hard to be shut up for the first time in my

life--hung up to mend, like a china plate. But it made me think I was

just mortal, after all. And of your future and Elenore’s. And it’s only

fair to you to let you decide how you’d rather have things.”

The look the boy gave him now was a quiet, concentrated attention.

“Without going into details about our mine, that no one but a mining

man could understand,” Carrington went on, with a restful security

engendered by that look, “I want to tell you the straight facts. It’s

characteristic of this region that in sinking every now and then you

strike a big hole filled with water--a vug, they call it. Now, we

can take care of what we strike ourselves, but the Tray-Spot, which

is newer and shallower, is letting us take care of theirs. Instead

of pumping it up, they let the water seep through to the Star, and

_we_ lift it. It cuts off profits, and makes our mine dangerous. The

two mines ought to be under the same management, anyway. Expenses

could be cut almost in two. So I wrote the owner of the Tray-Spot--an

Easterner--never comes out here--to ask him what he’d sell for.

Richards, the superintendent, is a good deal of a scoundrel, and

responsible for all the trouble. Of course mining is just a business

proposition to those Easterners. They haven’t fought things out here in

the early days, as some of us have. And this man had never even been on

the ground. Bought the mine from Riley when he went to smash. And he’s

childless. No second generation to take it up.

“That’s practically what I wrote him,” Carrington went on, doggedly,

“and why it should have struck him just wrong, and turned him pig-head

and ugly is beyond me. But he wrote back that if he had never been

here, he wasn’t too old to come now. And that if he didn’t have a

son, he had a nephew, who was a first-class business man and smart as

a steel trap, whom he proposed to bring out here, and to keep on the

ground. And that, as he understood from his superintendent that the one

son _I_ had was spending his time in Paris studying art, the mines

would be better off with his heir than mine. And would I put a selling

price on the Star? The Star, that I’ve put my lifeblood into! And that

letter”--there was the rage of a wounded lion now--“was the first thing

they read me after I came out from the ether to find myself tied up

like--like this----” he finished, at a loss for any adequate comparison.

“We’ve got to fight or to sell,” he finished, “and if anything happened

to me, what would you children know about disposing of it? That’s what

I’ve thought as I’ve lain here. Hadn’t I better leave things safe for

you, if I do have to kill time for a few years myself?”

His eyes looked worn. How many times he had gone over it! How many

times affection for his children had warred against his pride in the

mine he had discovered, developed, managed, owned! It all seemed a

part of long, restless nights, of narcotics and anodynes that brought

nightmares as often as oblivion; nights in which the young mine doctor

seemed mixed up with the obstinate Easterner who owned the Tray-Spot,

and the pain throbs and the pumping apparatus at the mine seemed to

have some curious relationship.

“Sell! Never!” the fresh young voice flung back instantly, and the

timbre of it was a battle-cry. “We’ll fight, dad--for our rights first,

and then--then we’ll buy!”

He stood erect, every curve of fine youthfulness buoyant with victories

to come, his head flung a trifle back and his mouth resolute.

Fatherly pride, exultation, triumph, swung John Carrington up on his

elbow from his pillows in a certain fierce joy, and something glistened

on his cheek--something that pain and fatigue and loneliness had never

crystaled there.

“I have a son to stand by me,” he said, and it was the dignity of a

king to the crown prince.

The leonine old head was lifted proudly, and the hand that he stretched

out might have held a scepter.

Then reaction of the strain came swiftly, and the lad leaped to him,

as he dropped back limp and white against the pillows, with a sudden

film drawn over the eyes so lately keen of sight, and the rushing of

many waters in the ears that had heard so happily.

CHAPTER III.

Yellow Dog was having the time of its life.

It was, to use a local idiom, passing out a new line of talk every day.

What this sudden access of interest meant to an isolated small town

which existed solely on account of its two mines one would have to live

in Yellow Dog to understand.

The Tray-Spot and the Star were at opposite ends of the town’s main

street, each a local fetish in its way to the miners.

Underfoot everywhere the soft red hematite ore stained everything that

it touched.

Beyond, hills after hills covered with scraggy pine. Half a mile to the

south was the railway station, and a spur ran to both mines.

Since the loungers around that station had witnessed the home-coming of

young Carrington, conversation had flourished in dialects Cornish and

Irish and Swedish and “Dago,” as well as that tongue to which its users

alluded proudly as “United States.”

The first comment of all this polyglot assemblage had inclined toward

the critical, with emphasis which ran the gamut from the humorous to

the snarl, laid on what Mr. Kipley had characterized as “those dum

clothes.”

Trevanion, shift boss, coming to the surface that first night, to learn

of the child’s peril, heard it in silence and with smoldering eyes;

heard it sullenly as he held the child in his arms, and with a surly

nod went back to his cottage.

And the long-legged girl who told him resented his silence as a lack of

interest not only in the event, but in her narrative.

It was not often that anything so exciting happened. Events were

usually underground casualties in Yellow Dog. “’E could ’a’ said ’e

was glad the child wasna killed,” she complained to her father.

“’E’d na say what you maun know, onyway,” she got for comfort; for the

men admired Trevanion, and trusted him blindly.

They comprehended, too, the way he had taken his trouble, and they left

him to himself, since he wished it. It was his way; just as it was his

way to read, to study, to get some beginnings of the patiently dug-out

education of a dully persistent man.

If he had lost his Cornish accent, save in excitement or in his orders

to them, he had not lost his Cornish patience, nor that curious Cornish

affinity between man and mine.

What they did not understand was the measure of his fierce love for his

child; the child that was to have a chance. This was the mainspring of

his life.

Trevanion was seated on his doorstep, with the child on his knee, when

young Carrington rode down the street once more, leisurely this time;

looking at everything with interested eyes that recognized the old and

familiar, and saw the new and changed, with a buoyant alertness which

seemed to match the careless grace of the way he sat his horse.

The boy Trevanion had used to see at play had grown up to this

lordliness, had he? To ride recklessly, careless of whom he ran down,

trusting to luck to snatch children from under his horse’s feet.

Trevanion hated him.

He saw him rein in the Colonel to ask some question of a woman who was

leaning her elbows interestedly on her gatepost. Then young Carrington

came on to stop opposite him.

“You’re just the man I’m looking for, Trevanion,” he said, and his tone

was clear and crisp.

Trevanion got on his feet and looked at him loweringly. The child

smiled at him.

“One of these days, Trevanion, I’m going to let you give me a few

lessons in practical mining,” he said, pleasantly. “I may decide

to become a mining man, after all. But that will have to go for the

present, and you may be thankful for it. I’m inclined to think you’d

find it harder work than being shift boss.”

Trevanion looked at him unsmilingly.

“However,” young Carrington went on, “they tell me you’ve never failed

in anything you’ve tried yet, and I’m sure you wouldn’t begin with me.

I’m no record-breaker,” he laughed, and there was something so pleasant

in its sound that Trevanion was furious to find that he liked it.

“No, soberly, Trevanion,” he said, and his voice dropped to a

seriousness that was sweeter toned than even his laughter, “father

isn’t quite so well to-day. We’ve got to keep him pretty quiet for a

few days, free from worry as much as possible; but we don’t want the

men to know that. When he is up again we’ll get after those Tray-Spot

people and put a stop to those free baths they’ve been good enough to

give us. But we’ve got to pull him up carefully for a while. It’ll mean

extra work and responsibility for you.”

Then a new note came in the musical voice.

“It means everything to the mine just now, Trevanion, that you are just

where you are, a man to be trusted.”

The words were spoken with a grace which made them seem like a

decoration conferred. The eyes that Trevanion raised met deep blue

eyes with a mysterious something in them that conquered him. Fealty

was suddenly strong in him, loyalty to the lad through thick and thin.

Every fiber of his big burliness thrilled with a proud protectiveness.

The child on his arm was holding out his arms to young Carrington.

Three minutes before, his father would have resented it. Now he saw the

firm, sure, tender grasp with which Carrington took him up before him

on the saddle; he exulted in the child’s laugh as the Colonel walked

off daintily, then took a bit of a canter down the street, and finally

young Carrington brought a reluctant two-year-old back to the fatherly

arms.

It was then that he said what he had had in his mind since

morning--said it with a tenderness that rang perfectly true:

“All I was thinking of this morning, Trevanion, was to get to my father

as soon as possible. But if my impatience had resulted in accident I

should never have gotten over it.”

And Dick Trevanion, holding the little, warm, happy figure close in his

great arms, said what half an hour ago he had never thought to say:

“I believe you, Mr. Ned.”

* * * * *

“Quiet!” said Mr. Kipley, to young Carrington’s comment, as he sat

on the veranda steps that evening after dinner, looking with growing

approval at that young gentleman as he lounged in a big wicker chair.

“Well, of course, it tain’t the Boo-lee-vards”--for Mr. Kipley

had consulted the encyclopedia painstakingly in order to converse

comfortably with the returning traveler. “It tain’t the Boo-lee-vards,”

he repeated, with an air of erudition, “but there _are_ times when

Yellow Dog can have as big a pack of firecrackers tied to its tail as

you’d see anywhere.”

“Yes?” said the boy, and it was a yes that coaxed. He was enjoying Mr.

Kipley hugely.

“Yes,” said Kipley, placidly. “Day after pay-day occasionally, or

when the lumber-jacks come down from Raegan camp at Christmas time to

get their money and blow it in before New Year’s.” Then he chuckled

reminiscently.

“They’re queer cusses,” he said. “One of ’em came in last Christmas

that was a walkin’ woolen store, ’n’ when he tried to sell mittens and

stockin’s by the hundred pair, they just naturally locked him up. But

he come by ’em honest, after all. You know,” he explained, kindly,

“these lumber-jacks can’t get any money while they are in the woods,

but they can trade at the company’s store there, ’n’ have it checked

against their time. ’N’ they _will_ play poker. So they used mittens

’n’ stockings for chips. ’N’ this fellow had got most of ’em. He told

_me_,” said Mr. Kipley, with intense enjoyment, “that he won eleven

hundred pair of mittens on three aces. The other fellow had kings. ’N’

he bluffed forty pair of stockings outen a greenhorn on ace high.

“You play poker?” he inquired, for young Carrington’s laugh had been

deliciously prompt.

The boy nodded.

“Enough to appreciate a good poker story, anyway,” he said. “That’s a

corker.”

Mr. Kipley wiped his mouth with his handkerchief to hide a pleased

smile.

“D’you know,” he said, “Mis’ Kipley can’t see a thing in that story?”

His tone suggested a puzzled commiseration.

“Oh, well,” the boy said, gayly, “it’s hardly a woman’s story, you

know.” And he showed his white teeth in so gleeful a smile that it

warmed Mr. Kipley’s heart.

It resulted in his making some inquiries on a subject that had roused

his interest earlier in the day.

“Paris is gettin’ kind of run down, ain’t it?” he asked, cautiously.

“Why, no,” said the boy; “it’s getting built up. What made you think

so?”

“They’s a picture in the encyclopedia,” said Mr. Kipley, “that I come

acrost to-day. What a lot a person would know who’d read ’em all

through!” he commented. “It was a cathedral--Catholic, I s’pose, ’n’

they’re usually willin’ to give liberal to keep up their buildin’s,

too. It was pretty well timbered up the back, ’s though they was

expecting a cave-_out_.”

Young Carrington recognized the description with an inward joy.

“That’s one of the most famous churches of Paris,” he said, soberly.

“Notre Dame. And it was built that way on purpose.”

“Do they _believe_ that?” Mr. Kipley inquired.

“Yes,” said young Carrington.

“Who give it its name?” Kipley demanded.

“I really couldn’t say,” the boy laughed.

“It would be interestin’ to know,” reflected Mr. Kipley. “Of course

he wa’n’t no kind of an architect, or he wouldn’t have had to brace

his walls like that; but whether he had the gall to name it because he

didn’t care a damn, or they named it because it wasn’t worth a damn----”

“Your pa’s waked up and wanted to know where you was,” said Mrs.

Kipley, appearing in the door, just as young Carrington was trying to

decide whether to enlighten an ignorance which was such bliss to the

listener.

“Thank you,” he said, and sped into the house at once.

Mr. Kipley turned a philosopher’s eye upon the wife of his bosom.

“He’s got good principles, M’r’,” he said, with conviction; “’n’ a very

entertainin’ way of puttin’ things. He’s good company.”

“What was he talkin’ about?” asked Mrs. Kipley, interestedly.

Mr. Kipley’s cough was extremely apologetic.

“Come to think of it, I guess I did most of the talkin’,” he said, with

some embarrassment.

“I should say ’t was likely,” said Mrs. Kipley, dryly; and she

disappeared in the house. She reappeared for a parting shot. “I s’pose

his principles was good because he agreed with you,” she observed,

sarcastically. Mr. Kipley gazed at the evening star confidentially.

“Beats all about women!” he mused. “They act’s if all the principles

was theirs, ’n’ kind of exasperated if you’ve got any. ’N’ more if you

ain’t,” he murmured.

He had refilled his pipe, and was looking placidly across the lights of

the town to the hills beyond.

Hemmy came up the walk with the light of a new and lovely romantic

suggestion in her eyes.

She sat down beside her father and slipped a warm, plump hand in his.

“Pa,” she said, sweetly, “am I really your child and ma’s?”

Mr. Kipley recoiled sharply.

“Well, of all things!” he ejaculated.

Miss Hematite Kipley experienced a pang of disappointment.

She had just been reading a “perfectly lovely romance,” where an

adopted child turned out to be the daughter of a duke. While she did

not insist on a dukedom, she had had an ecstatic feeling that she might

be a millionairess.

“You never brought me home in your arms and told ma that a beautiful

young gypsy girl----” she began, falteringly.

“No,” said Mr. Kipley, with precision; “I never did, and that’s the

reason I’m alive to-day. If I’d come home with a baby, talking about

beautiful young gypsies, there’d have been a funeral, and no mourners.

An ’t would have served me right, too.”

Then he softened parentally toward this young woman of his own flesh

and blood.

“It don’t seem so very long ago, Hemmy, since you was born. Born in the

regular, genu-wine way. Why, we named you Hematite because they struck

the big find of ore in the mine that same morning. It was my idea,

too, for your aunt, who lived in the copper country, had just named

her little girl Amygdoloid--Amy, for short--and she was plum offensive

about having the most elegant name out. ‘What’s the matter with

Hematite?’ says I!”

Miss Hematite kissed her undoubted parent forgivingly, and rose from

the ashes of her air castle like an undiscouraged young phœnix.

Already she had another in process of construction, and she pillowed

her cheek against the battered volume containing the encounter between

Cophetua and the beggar maid, though _he_ was not a king, and _she_ was

not pauperized. “I think, perhaps, it’s even _sweeter_,” she whispered,

as she fell asleep.

* * * * *

Down in the village of Yellow Dog, the club which the Star had built

for its miners was ablaze not only with lights, but with excitement.

There was a circle of miners around the room.

In the center of the floor lay a man who had been shaken into a little

heap of clothes; a heap that stirred with caution even in catching

breath, lest more punishment should follow.

Over it towered Dick Trevanion’s sturdy figure, made brawnier still by

rage.

“Any more remarks about Mr. Ned and his clothes?” he demanded, sweeping

that quiet group with furious eyes.

There was not a breath from them. Trevanion’s reputation as an athlete

and a boxer was a matter of local pride.

He walked across the room to the door and flung it open.

Then he turned his flushed face to them.

“You can all have as much and more, if you like,” he said. “I stand for

him.”

He struck the side of the door a blow with his closed fist, a blow that

seemed to shake the entire side of the room. “Remember that when your

tongues start,” he emphasized, and was gone in the darkness.

There was no danger that they would forget.

* * * * *

In a quiet bedroom, the lad whom he had championed had fallen asleep in

a big chair beside his father’s bed.

He had sat there till John Carrington had slept, and then, too drowsy

to move, had slept himself--that youthful sleep of healthy exhaustion.

John Carrington, waking in the night, looked at the boy as he rested

his head in the corner of the high-backed chair. The long, dark lashes

lay lightly on cheeks rounded daintily enough for a girl, but the lines

of the firm young chin had a quiet decision even now.

Far into the night John Carrington lay with open eyes resting on his

son, and in the depths of those eyes was content immeasurable.

* * * * *

The days stretched into weeks, weeks to months. It was September now.

John Carrington was almost convalescent.

He could walk now with a crutch from his bedroom to the veranda couch.

The bone had knit, but the flesh was slow to heal.

And what a comfort his son had been to him through those months!

Sunny. Tireless. Capable. Ready to read if he wanted to be read to; to

write letters when they had to be written; to amuse him with tales of

his life and Elenore’s in Paris, when the pain was bad and time dragged.

And outside there was not a miner who did not speak boastingly of Mr.

Ned. Even Yellow Dog, noncommittal Yellow Dog, sang his praises.

Only the miners at the Tray-Spot sneered. Only their wives flung a

contemptuous laugh when young Carrington and the Colonel sped by out on

long rides through the country.

These rides, in whose solitude one might think one’s own mind freely;

and certain letters that went overseas addressed to one E. Carrington,

to be held in Paris till called for, were the only relaxations in which

young Carrington permitted himself an entire honesty of thought.

One morning Mr. Kipley came home jubilant.

“Strangers in town,” he announced. “Owner of the Tray-Spot, I guess,

and a young fellow. Saw them driving with Richards.”

John Carrington rapped his crutch sharply against a chair.

“Now there’s going to be something doing,” he said, defiantly; and all

the repressed activity of months rang in the words.

Young Carrington waved a hand airily in the direction of the other mine.

“The Tray-Spot shall cease from troubling,” he said, gayly, “and we’ll

just gather you gently in.”

If anything stirred the stillness, it was the mocking laughter of the

goddess of fate.

CHAPTER IV.

The brownstone house on Madison Avenue suggested the solid and

respectable affluence of its owner, Mr. Livingstone Wade, in that

quieter old New York way which preceded Millionaire’s Row, and which,

on account of that precedence, Mr. Livingstone Wade considered

immeasurably superior.

Nor was this suggestion a mere exterior effect.

The somber elegance of its interior furnishings showed in every detail

that Mr. Wade’s conservatism to earlier ideals was unfaltering.

The ormolu clock on the drawing-room mantel was flanked by a pair of

tall vases, Sèvres, as a matter of course, standing equidistant with

the precision of sentinels.

His pictures included a Landseer, a Meissonier, a Bouguereau, and some

excellent copies of Raphael. He was fond of calling your attention to

the fact that all of these gentlemen could draw, and that their figures

“stood out.”

The books in his library showed a strong tendency to run in sets, with

modern fiction conspicuously absent. And as for his dinner services,

they were complete, and he considered odd sets of plates as a fad which

had its origin in economy or inefficient housekeeping.

He rated _l’art nouveau_ with _nouveaux riches_, considered

impressionism as a cloak for defective draughtsmanship, declined to

admit anything made as far west as Rookwood to the companionship of the

Capodamonte and Meissen in his cabinets, and would have banished to his

stables the most priceless Indian basket ever made.

West of New York he considered that the wilderness howled, impelled

to such mournful vocalization by a dawning sense of its own abnormal

crudities.

In business, however, Mr. Wade consented to compromise with the

spirit of the times. No out-of-date methods characterized the bank of

which he was president, nor, on the other hand, did any up-to-date

crook contrive to outwit the keen-eyed, white-haired, thin-lipped old

gentleman, who held himself as erect ethically as he did physically.

His wife, born a Van Dorn, christened in Grace Church and married in

the same, had died at fifty-seven, childless--a course of conduct

which Mr. Wade, while he preserved a high silence, felt as deeply as a

European monarch might have done. It was not a mere personal question,

but the continuation of the Wade line would have been for the good of

the country at large.

As for his only nephew, he had done his duty by him. Not extravagantly,

to spoil the young man, or delude him with unfounded hopes of

heirship; but by a college course, Columbia _bien entendu_! and when

he determined to become an architect, the Beaux Arts was naturally the

only correct place.

When he read John Carrington’s letter, with its phrase “since you have

no direct heir,” Mr. Livingstone Wade experienced a very primitive

bitterness, which resolved itself into a determination to make his

nephew heir to that particular piece of property at least; to recall

him from Paris, and to insist upon his going out to Michigan and

becoming thoroughly conversant with the mine as soon as possible.

Having begun the accomplishment of this design, Mr. Livingstone Wade

began to feel a consciousness of benevolence in acting so generously

toward the young man, which resulted, very naturally, in his regarding

his nephew with more affection than even Mr. Wade himself would have

thought possible.

As they sat together in the well-ordered library, Mr. Wade said to

himself that he had done well.

“When the mine came to us with that tangle of collateral from the Riley

failure, I found that it was paying dividends regularly; and Richards,

the manager, wrote me that they could be doubled easily if he was

allowed a free hand to cut down expenses and exercise his own judgment.

He has done it, too, and the mine is a splendid property. And it is

yours, my boy, when you have made yourself thoroughly conversant with

it.” Mr. Wade’s tone was complacently benevolent.

“Do you mean that you want me to take a course in mining engineering?”

said Hastings, and his voice was carefully expressionless.

“No,” said his uncle; “I want you to go out to the mine itself, put

yourself in Richards’ hands, and get a good working knowledge of the

proposition, so that Richards will know you are master. He wouldn’t

try any tricks with me, because it is pretty well known that men who

have tried have repented it; but with a young fellow like you, it’s

different, of course. I shall not expect you to spend all your time

there. Perhaps for a year or so you’d better stay on the ground. Then

come East, open your architect’s office, and go West once a year on a

tour of inspection.”

Hastings’ face cleared.

“It is more than good of you, sir. I’ll try to deserve it,” he said,

frankly.

“There is only one condition,” Mr. Wade went on, “and your word is

sufficient for that. You are not to sell the mine without my consent.

The very fact that John Carrington is so anxious to get hold of it is

one of the best points in its favor.”

“Carrington?” said Hastings, mechanically, wondering if the name so

constantly in his thoughts had begun to repeat itself audibly.

“He is a--a boor--who owns the adjoining mine,” Mr. Wade classified

him. “He offered to buy the Tray-Spot. Of course I declined. And he

had the insolence to charge Richards with flooding his mine with water

from ours, instead of pumping it to the surface. Threatened us with a

lawsuit if we didn’t put in additional pumps. He said his men were not

educated to the luxury of free baths as yet, and that swimming was an

unpopular sport on the eleventh level.”

“But if it was true?” said Hastings.

“Of course it wasn’t,” said Mr. Wade, testily. “I wrote Richards,

and he said Carrington was just trying to get hold of the mine, and

wouldn’t stop at anything to do it, because his, the Star, is down so

deep it is about worked out. Do you know,” Mr. Wade went on, “this John

Carrington had the audacity to say that, since I’d never been West, he

didn’t suppose I’d care to begin such trips _at my age_, and that, as I

had no son, he should think a reasonable proposition to sell ought to

interest me.”

Mr. Wade intended to suggest only John Carrington’s breach of good

manners, but in spite of himself his voice showed where the taunt

stung. And Hastings had a sudden comprehension of his uncle’s sudden

benevolence, which in its very humanness quickened him from his heavy

sense of indebtedness for benefits received, into that warmer loyalty

of the ties of blood, into that sense of inter-dependence which this

was the first emergency to rouse.

He began to feel ashamed of the sense of injury he had had in the

abrupt summons to quit Paris, to put away his chosen profession for

a time. He began to feel ashamed of the lagging gratitude with which

he had received a gift which would make him a rich man; of that

involuntary wish that his uncle’s generosity had taken another form.

A realization of the loneliness of age bound him to the older man with

bonds of sentiment stronger far, with warmhearted, generous youth, than

all those the government has seen fit to issue.

But Carrington? Though there might be dozens of Carringtons who owned

mines in the West.

“We’ll take Holliday’s car--he’s offered it to me time and again--and

go out there. We can live on the car the few days I am here, and you’re

young and can manage to make yourself comfortable afterward. I shall be

proud to introduce you as my nephew, Laurence.” Mr. Wade was tasting

victory in prospect, and the taste was palatable. “Carrington has only

one son, and he’s daubing canvas in Paris.”

Then this was Elenore’s father. Hastings foresaw complications to come.

“Ned Carrington and his sister were two of my best friends in Paris,

sir,” he said, firmly. “I knew their father was a mine owner somewhere

in the West.”

“Has this young Carrington any business ability?” demanded Mr. Wade.

His tone was quick and keen. He was getting at an important factor.

Hastings smiled in spite of himself.

“Not a scrap,” he said, amusedly, “but he’s a genius. He’ll be a new

‘old master’ one of these days.”

Mr. Wade’s countenance relaxed amiably.

“These erratic young fellows are always _going_ to do wonders,” he

said, indulgently. “For all the help he’ll be to his father, he might

as well be a girl. One of these days you will be buying out John

Carrington on your own terms.”

Nor did he dream that in the silence that followed, as he sat

comfortably certain of the discomfiture of the man who had flung at him

the two-edged taunt of age and childlessness, his nephew was saying to

himself that surely Elenore’s father must be a reasonable man, that

there must be some rational basis on which he and John Carrington could

meet as friends. More, he saw himself with an assured income. _Then_

could he not, by virtue of that future friendship, gain a remarkably

valuable ally in that siege of the marvelous citadel--invulnerable,

indeed, save to a certain small sportsman who bends his bow to no man’s

dictation, and yet for love of valor, or from mere caprice, ranges

himself at the unlikeliest moment with the besieging force, and wins

with a single well-sped shaft?

Whatever emotions the arrival of Mr. Wade and his nephew at Yellow Dog

excited in Richards, his outward attitude was one of bluff heartiness.

“You can’t stay on your car, though, Mr. Wade,” he said, decisively,

looking over its comfortable appointments with an appraising eye. “The

miners at the Star are too lawless. You’ll have to put up with the

hotel.” (“About twenty-four hours of the Raegan House will start them

for New York,” he thought, with grim humor.)

“Do you mean to tell me that they would dare attack a private car?” Mr.

Wade demanded, aghast.

Richards shrugged his shoulders.

“There isn’t much they wouldn’t dare,” he said, coolly, wondering how

thick it would be safe to pile it on, “but they’re more interested in

people than property. The car’s safe enough as long as you aren’t in

it, but if a stick of dynamite happened to drop under it some night

when you were----”

“What has made such bad feeling between the mines?” Hastings asked,

quietly.

Richards’ eyes narrowed slightly.

“Miners take the tone of their manager,” he said, significantly.

Simple as question and answer were, antipathy quickened in that instant

between the two men.

Richards resented a certain something in Hastings’ tone, and Hastings

made up his mind that Richards was overplaying.

Mr. Wade was regretting with exceeding heartiness that he had come at

all. Being blown to bits in this desolate-looking hole was furthest

from his desire.

Trusting himself to the horrors of a wilderness hotel seemed about as

hazardous an alternative. As for leaving his nephew in such a place,

was it not virtually condemning him to a more or less lingering death?

And Mr. Wade had grown amazingly fond of him during the last few

months, in the companionship which had resulted from their many-times

delayed expedition westward.

He was half inclined to make a formal tour of inspection, announcing

Hastings as the future owner, and then take him back and let him open

his architect’s office at once. But Mr. Wade hated retreat.

“Then I am sure that you have men equally vigilant in repelling any

attacks upon property or persons,” Hastings said, smoothly. “However,

it doesn’t matter to me. I should have to come to the hotel, anyway,

later, when you have gone back, sir.”

“Going to stay with us a while?” Richards asked him.

“Permanently,” said Hastings, pleasantly.

Richards swung a questioning face toward Mr. Wade.

“The mine would have been my nephew’s at my death, naturally,

Richards,” Mr. Wade explained, with some dignity. “He is coming into

his own a little sooner, that is all. And if he chooses to remain----”

“As he does,” Hastings laughed, genially, “and to learn all about his

mine from its competent manager.”

Mr. Richards’ face did not express any extreme joy.

“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll go home with your uncle and leave

your mine in my hands, Mr. Hastings,” he said, bluffly. “It’s a rough

country, and hard, dangerous work--work that you don’t know anything

about, and that it will take you years to learn. And--I beg your

pardon, but I’ll speak plainly--while you are learning you’ll want to

give orders, and you’ll make bad mistakes--expensive mistakes. They’re

easy to make and hard to right. Not that it will be your fault. I

should if I tried to run Mr. Wade’s bank. If you want your mine to keep

on being a good paying proposition, leave it in the hands of men who

made it one. Isn’t that business, Mr. Wade? I’ve satisfied you, haven’t

I?” His manner had a certain brusque appeal.

“Perfectly,” said Mr. Wade, suavely.

Then he looked at Hastings. He was standing by the table heaped with

books and magazines, and there was something in the alertness of his

virile figure, well poised enough for a soldier; something in the lines

of his well-cut features, something in the steadiness and frankness of

the cool gray eyes, that suggested not only the strength of youth, but

the strength of the spirit. It came to Mr. Wade suddenly that he was

going to miss him, that the young fellow ought to have a chance to live

with his own class.

“And my nephew may suit himself,” Mr. Wade went on, steadily. “The

mine is his without condition”--he spoke the words slowly--“and if he

chooses to leave it in your hands, and return East with me, he is quite

at liberty to do so.”

Hastings smiled at him cheerfully.

“I shall stay, of course,” he said, decidedly. “But I’ll try not to

make my mining education too expensive.”

“I’ve got a carriage outside,” said Mr. Richards, rising abruptly.

“I s’pose you’d like to drive around town and out to the mine, to

look around a little. Then if you’ll take dinner with me at the Raegan

House, you’ll have quite an idea what it’s like out here.”

Mr. Livingstone Wade surveyed the landau into which he stepped with

scant favor; and the look which he gave to the ragged darky who held

the reins was only equaled by the one he bestowed on the two battered

equines who were to serve as their means of locomotion.

As they swung into the main street of the little town, Hastings laughed

with a perfectly genuine amusement.

“I might open an architect’s office here, on the side,” he said. “They

certainly need it.”

Mr. Wade’s eyes were upon an up-to-date trap, drawn by a well-matched,

high-stepping pair. The middle-aged man who was driving turned on them

a look of amused curiosity as they passed.

“Whom do those horses belong to?” demanded Mr. Wade, sharply.

“Belong to Carrington,” said Richards, shortly. “That was his man.

That’s his house at the other end of the street--that big one on the

hill.” He jerked his head to indicate that it was back of them, and

they turned to see it. It had a large, comfortable, hospitable look,

more suggestive of the South than of the North.

“The hotel’s good enough for me,” said Richards, dryly.

Mr. Wade wondered why this sentiment, which had seemed so admirable to

him in New York, lost its flavor here on the ground.

As they passed a blacksmith’s shop, the smith was shoeing a Kentucky

thoroughbred, who looked at them with an airy unconcern.

“Carrington’s,” said Richards to Mr. Wade’s uplifted eyebrows.

The expression on Mr. Wade’s face was a curious one. Your tourist in

Europe now and then wears its twin, on discovering that the United

States is renting a second-rate building for an embassy, when other

governments own pretentious ones.

“Tell you what,” said Hastings, suddenly. “I think I shall buy a neat

little touring car to run around here. Pretty bad grades, but there are

half a dozen makes that could take them easily.”

Mr. Wade looked at him with the ever-growing conviction that he was the

kind of nephew to have. In spite of his conservatism, he had adopted

the auto as he had the telephone.

“Quite right, Laurence,” he said, complacently. “When you order the one

you prefer, have the bill sent to me.”

“Going to import a show-fure?” queried Richards, with ironic pleasantry.

Hastings shook his head.

“Never saw one I couldn’t run yet,” he said, cheerfully, “and when I do

I’ll send it back to the factory as defective.”

“If he’ll just put in his time running it, it’s all I’ll ask of him,”

communed Richards with himself.

* * * * *

At two o’clock of that day Mr. Wade had concluded that all he had ever

heard of the enormities of the West was far below the actual fact.

His first grievance had been the dilapidated conveyance; his second the

fact that Richards, who for reasons of his own had not tried to make

the expedition a bed of roses, had insisted on his getting out a dozen

times to see certain offices, the shaft house, and a number of other

buildings, about whose use he was extremely hazy. And these pilgrimages

had necessitated his walking through fine red dust, which not only

reduced his immaculate footgear to its lowest terms, but bordered

the bottom of his pale gray trouser legs with a deep red band, which

Richards assured him was indelible.

But the crowning enormity came with the dinner at Raegan’s Hotel, which

invitation Mr. Wade had felt he could hardly refuse in courtesy.

At the moment they entered the dining room Richards was called to the

phone.

“Take these gentlemen down to my table, Maggie,” he said to the head

waitress as he turned away.

Mr. Wade regarded this young woman disapprovingly. The curve of her

pompadour and the curves of her figure were too aggressively spherical.

That her overgenerous bulk could be compressed to the dimensions of

her waist seemed to indicate that whalebone had been unduly overlooked

in modern mechanics. It hinted, too, though not to Mr. Wade, of

a forcefulness of spirit which, seeing in a handkerchief-sized,

knife-pleated white apron a legitimate adornment, adjusted the

physical, Spartan-like, to its requirements. But Mr. Wade’s mere

passive and impersonal dislike quickened to an active rage in that

awful moment when she tucked her arm comfortably in his, and promenaded

him the length of the dining room to an untidy looking table already

occupied by a portly Hibernian, who was engaged in extensive molar

exploration with a diminutive wooden pick.

“Friends of Mr. Richards, Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” she said, glibly, and Mr.

Wade felt himself released from her muscular arm only to feel the front

of a chair pressed with energetic purpose against the back of his knees.

As certain muscles automatically relaxed to enable him to be seated,

his stunned sense of propriety recovered consciousness enough to enable

him to decide that of all outrages ever perpetrated on a gentleman,

this last was the worst.

“Mr. Richards’ friends are my friends,” responded Mr. O’Shaughnessy,

cordially.

Mr. Wade looked at Hastings, who was seating himself with outer

sobriety and inward hilarity. He comforted himself by taking that

sobriety for disgust.

“I suppose you are not out here for your health?” Mr. O’Shaughnessy

opined, genially.

“No,” said Mr. Wade, icily.

“What line ar-re you in?” Mr. O’Shaughnessy pursued.

“I fail to understand you,” said Mr. Wade, stiffly.

“What house are you thravelin’ for? What are you selling?” Mr.

O’Shaughnessy explained.

That he, Mr. Livingstone Wade, should be taken for a traveling salesman!

“I am a banker,” said Mr. Wade. He felt it due to himself to say as

much as that.

“Faro and that face of yours ar-re twins the world over,” said Mr.

O’Shaughnessy, genially, closing one eye and looking intelligently at

Hastings through the other. Then he cast the toothpick on the floor.

“Have a cigar?” he said, hospitably, throwing a couple carelessly on

the table as he rose to depart. “Drop in and see me if you get thirsty

while you’re here. The palm garden. Two doors up. The house is good for

a few yet.”

He stopped to joke with the head waitress a moment on his way out.

Richards, returning, decided that Mr. Wade was pretty well fagged. He

had become monosyllabic.

The catsup bottle in the middle of the table, the greasy, lukewarm soup

in stone-china bowls, the tasteless profusion of canned vegetables, the

dubious-looking water, and the muddy mixture, bitter from long boiling,

which the Raegan House called coffee, were only additional affronts to

a man already at the limit of his endurance.

His announcement of his intention to spend the rest of the day in the

car, and to make it his headquarters during his stay, was delivered

with a decision which left no possibility for protest.

What was mere dynamite to such indignities as these!

He stepped into the landau, which Richards had ordered round again,

with a sensation of relief, heightened by that gentleman’s statement

that he shouldn’t be able to see them again until morning. Richards

found Mr. Wade rather exhausting, on his side.

“If you see a fellow in freak clothes on your way back, you can know

it’s that son of Carrington’s,” he observed, as he stood on the

sidewalk.

Hastings had his foot on the step of the landau, but he wheeled.

“Is Ned Carrington here?” he demanded.

“Been here all summer. Father broke his leg in a runaway and sent for

him,” Richards growled.

“Then I think I’ll walk over and see him,” Hastings said promptly, “if

you’ll excuse me, sir.”

He smiled confidently at his uncle.

“You shan’t go near him,” said Richards, fiercely, “with that shark of

a father of his trying to swindle us every way he can.”

“Whatever his father is, Ned Carrington is a gentleman and my friend,”

said Hastings, quietly.

“Tell him he can’t go,” Richards demanded of Mr. Wade. And his

insistence was fatal. Mr. Wade would not have influenced his nephew at

Richards’ dictation just now if Hastings had announced his intention of

going to perdition.

Moreover, he trusted Hastings. And--this is an awful anti-climax--he

wanted a nap.

“I hope you will find your friend home, Laurence,” he said, suavely.

“Business quarrels can safely be ignored between gentlemen.”

Richards, watching the erect old figure disappearing in the landau

toward the station, and the athletic young one striding off in the

direction of the Star mine, hated them with an equal intensity.

* * * * *

John Carrington, dozing away on the great wicker divan on his broad

veranda, in the warmth of a September afternoon, opened his eyes at the

click of the gate.

The young man coming rapidly up the graveled walk was a stranger.

“Mr. Carrington?” he said, pleasantly.

“Yes, sir,” Carrington replied.

“Your son and I were friends in Paris, Mr. Carrington,” he went on. “My

name is Hastings. I hope he is at home.”

Hastings! Paris! This was the young fellow whom Sarah had written

about--who was so attentive to Elenore.

Carrington looked at him critically, and was pleased.

“Sit down, Mr. Hastings,” he said, cordially. “Ned just went in to

order the horses for a little later. He will be out presently, and

will be glad to see you.”

“I was surprised to hear that Ned was here, Mr. Carrington,” Hastings

went on, seating himself. “He was to start for the East with Velantour

the day I left Paris, and I supposed he was painting away for dear life

somewhere in the Vale of Cashmere.”

“I didn’t even know he intended to go,” said Carrington, quietly.

“What!” said Hastings. “He hasn’t told you that Velantour asked him

to go? It was the greatest opportunity he could ever have!” Then he

thought. “Of course your illness was first with him,” he said. “I hope

I haven’t been telling tales out of school.” He smiled frankly. Then

“He’s a genius, though.” The praise burst out spontaneously. “They

expect great things of him in Paris, Mr. Carrington.”

John Carrington did some rapid thinking. So the boy had put aside the

biggest opportunity in his life to come back to him. Put it aside

cheerfully. To gratify--John Carrington was hard on himself now--his

father’s selfish pride. The need had not been imperative. He could have

written him all the questions it was advisable to ask him. But he had

been in pain, and harassed, and he had sacrificed the boy to it. Well,

he should go back soon. He, John Carrington, was not so near senility

that he couldn’t manage his own affairs. His jaw set squarely.

“I’m glad you told me, Mr. Hastings,” he said, calmly. Quick steps were

coming through the hall. “Before he had a chance to head you off,” he

concluded, smilingly. The eyes he turned toward the door were very

proud. “Here’s a friend you’ll be glad to see,” he said, cheerily. Yet

it seemed to him, and to Hastings, that the lad’s first impulse was

toward recoil.

He certainly paled a little. And Hastings said to himself that Ned had,

in some subtle way, changed indefinably, but certainly. His eyes did

not carry out the comfortable familiarity of his attire. It appeared to

Hastings that they were making some demand upon him--a demand that he

could not understand.

But the next second young Carrington came forward with at least a

surface cordiality.

“How did you find me out--Hastings?” he said, with a slight hesitation

before the name, as perplexing as the characteristic grasp of his

hand, familiar and unfamiliar at once, and the tinge of formality that

obtruded itself unmistakably.

“I had no idea you were here until I heard it just now from Richards,”

said Hastings, struggling with a vague sense of rebuff.

The name might have been the Medusa head.

Then “Richards?” John Carrington queried. Hastings flushed.

“My uncle, Mr. Wade, has given me the Tray-Spot mine,” he said, and his

voice became formal in turn. “We lunched with our manager to-day.”

In spite of his annoyance, his lips twitched at the memory of it.

“It seems that there is war between the two mines, Mr. Carrington;” he

turned to the older man. “I don’t know anything of mining, but there

must be some way out of it which would be just both to your interests

and to ours.”

For John Carrington had impressed him indelibly as an honest man.

Hastings’ tone was both dignified and frank. John Carrington liked it.

But could good come out of anything connected with the Tray-Spot? It

had always been a thorn in the flesh.

Ned had crossed the veranda quickly, to seat himself behind a

book-laden table. Once so ensconced, he drew a long breath of relief.

Then he began to look amused.

“We have suggested a way, but it did not meet with your uncle’s

approval,” said John Carrington, quietly.

“I quite agree with my uncle that we do not care to sell,” said

Hastings, calmly.

“Nor, I assume, do you care to discharge your manager,” John Carrington

went on.

“No,” said Hastings, frankly again; “my uncle has always considered

Richards an invaluable man.”

“He certainly has been,” Carrington commented, ironically. “Then, I

think we can cut out mining as a topic of conversation, Mr. Hastings.

You and Ned can gossip about Paris.”

“That’s where I differ with you, dad,” Ned broke in, spiritedly.

Hastings, stung, started to rise, but “Don’t be silly,” the lad said,

impatiently, but with more friendliness than he had yet shown. “We may

have a thousand pleasant things to say about Paris, but this is the

important thing, and we had better keep at it.

“Laurence”--Hastings gave a little start; Ned had never called him

Laurence--“is quite as much of a greenhorn about mines as I was a few

months ago. It’s only fair to tell him just what our position is. He

will at least hear a story of our grievances that hasn’t been garbled.”

His tone was spirited.

“I should like that,” said Hastings, quietly.

Ned leaned forward eagerly. Then he settled his cravat with a peculiar

twist, which Hastings recognized as Ned’s characteristic preliminary to

discourse. He and Elenore had laughed over it many times together.

“Ours is the older and deeper mine,” Ned began. “That’s the first

thing. And all the mines here strike the big bodies of water in

sinking. That’s the second. Your manager has hit on the economical plan

of doing without large pumps; and when you strike water, he lets it

seep through to us, and we raise it for you. It increases our dangers

and expenses and your dividends. How would you like it in our place?”

John Carrington watched him with a look of mingled pride and amusement.

“In the case you have stated, I shouldn’t like it at all,” Hastings

stated, coolly. “But Richards has assured my uncle that this grievance

of yours is imaginary; that the water you get comes from your own

sinking. Isn’t there a possibility that may be so?”

“No,” said Ned, positively; “there isn’t.”

Hastings hesitated. That Ned believed what he was saying was obvious;

but, after all, what did he know about it? Wasn’t he, save in his art,

the most impractical soul living? Why shouldn’t it be quite as likely

that Carrington’s men deceived him as that Richards deceived his uncle?

“There ought to be the simplest of ways of settling that,” he said,

slowly. “Let a couple of your men go down our mine and satisfy

themselves that we’re doing what’s right.”

John Carrington’s laugh was ironically amused.

“You might suggest that to Richards,” he said. Then his tone changed.

“He won’t even give us a map of your workings,” he said, sharply. “As

for letting anyone from the Star underground, he has announced pretty

clearly that the man who tried it wouldn’t come up again. And though

Richards’ word hasn’t any par value, I am willing to believe that for

once he meant what he said.”

“Aren’t you painting Richards in rather too black a color?” Hastings

protested. “Aren’t you unduly prejudiced against him? Premeditated

murder, now?”

“Accident, my dear sir,” John Carrington said, ironically, “and

underground accidents are almost too easy.”

Hastings hesitated. He looked at Ned.

The lad made a Gallic gesture that sent his hands far apart. “What

would you?” it signified.

There was a tinge of mockery in his friendly smile. Yet something of

confidence, too.

“My dear Hastings,” he said; “it is decidedly up to you. Our word or

Richards’.”

Hastings flushed.

“My dear Ned,” he said, steadily, “that I should doubt your good faith

is impossible. Nor,” he flared, “do I think you doubt mine. I have

been thrust suddenly, through the great generosity of an uncle to whom

I am as loyal as you are to your father, into a situation that I know

nothing about. I have a manager in whom my uncle, a cautious man, has

believed implicitly. You tell me this man is a rogue. But you may be

wrong. I can’t condemn him unheard. One thing is certain,” he went on.

“I shall find out. And if there has been anything crooked about our

management, it shall be righted.” The line of his lips straightened.

The muscles of his jaw grew tense. It was impossible to doubt that he

meant what he said.

Both listeners believed him. Both admired him. But John Carrington

looked his admiration frankly, and young Carrington dropped his eyelids

satisfiedly over his.

“That is all we could ask,” said John Carrington, approvingly. “Now let

me hear you youngsters chat about Paris.”

But Hastings was impatient to be off now.

“I must get back to my uncle,” he said, lightly. “It has been a hard

day for him, and I suggested that I would serve as secretary for once.”

“Then, order the horses round for Mr. Hastings, Ned,” said John

Carrington, and as the lad disappeared, and Hastings protested: “They

are standing harnessed in the stable,” he said, decisively. “You

mustn’t insist on our being too inhospitable.”

And as Hastings capitulated, John Carrington followed out a sudden

impulse.

“You will explain to your uncle that this half-mended leg of mine will

prevent my calling on him,” he stated, feeling suddenly that Hastings’

uncle must have some good points, “but I shall be glad to put my horses

at his disposal while he is here. Ned will come over to your car in the

morning, and say so gracefully.”

He smiled confidently at the returning lad.

There was a queer, contented look lurking in the lad’s eyes. “As

gracefully as he can,” he laughed, lightly. “I’ll walk down to the gate

with you,” he added.

It was on the way to the gate that Hastings asked the question which

was really the mainspring of his call.

“Where is your sister now? Did she go to Brittany?”

Young Carrington seemed amused.

“Elenore’s plans were rather upset this summer,” he said, lightly, “as

well as mine. She’s far from Brittany, in a curious little place you

never heard of in France.” He was rather proud of the way that sentence

was turned. “She’s with a friend, and enjoying herself, though she says

it’s all queer.”

Hastings had a mental vision of Elenore in some far-off corner of

France, making gay over all its out-of-the-way absurdities in that

companionable way of hers.

“I wish she were here,” he said, suddenly.

“Oh, well, I dare say she’d rather be where she is than anywhere else,”

Ned rejoined, carelessly.

Which was cold comfort to Hastings.

“By the way,” he said, turning, as he was about to step into the trap,

“I suppose we’re perfectly safe to make our headquarters in the car

here?”

“Safe as the Waldorf, if you’re on a siding,” Ned laughed. “If you stay

on the main track the cars will hit you.”

Hastings mentally swore at himself. The question had sounded idiotic.

“See you in the morning,” Ned called, as Hastings drove off. But he

walked back to the house rather slowly.

“Pretty tired, dad?” he asked, cheerfully.

“Ned,” said John Carrington, slowly, “when you children were little I’m

afraid I loved Elenore best. But no daughter can be to a man what his

son is.”

There was a little silence. John Carrington lay with his eyes closed.

He was tired.

“Do you think Elenore was interested in that young fellow?” he asked,

finally.

“If she was, she never said so,” young Carrington replied. He was

looking off in the direction of the Tray-Spot.

“If I were a girl, I’m inclined to think he could have me,” John

Carrington announced.

Young Carrington’s laugh was lightly amused.

“If I were a girl, I’d lead him on a bit, myself,” he announced.

CHAPTER V.

When Hastings had returned to the car the afternoon before, he told his

uncle the story of his interview with the Carringtons quite simply. He

was too wise to urge action upon a tired, out-of-temper man; nor did

he wait for Mr. Wade’s comment. He shifted conversation to pleasanter

things, and by the time Joseph had served them a nice little dinner

Mr. Wade’s outer man bore the visible signs of gastronomic peace. A

few games of cribbage, which he won, yet not too easily, were also a

soothing influence. When Hastings said good-night, Mr. Wade opened the

subject of his own accord.

“How did this claim of Carrington’s strike you, Laurence?”

“It struck me that we must satisfy ourselves about it as a matter of

personal honor,” said Hastings, firmly. “Of course you will know better

than I how and when to take the initiative.”

There was nothing that urged or insisted in his tone. It was quietly

assured.

“Good-night, sir,” he smiled, and disappeared. Disappeared to dream

that the car was a balloon, and that he was sailing swiftly through

sunny skies to Elenore.

Mr. Livingstone Wade, over-fatigued, was jolted through dreamland by

that unbridled nocturnal equine who bolts from one disaster to another.

The horror-stricken Mr. Wade found himself lunching at Sherry’s with

the head waitress from Raegan’s. She had tied that knife-pleated apron

around her neck, like a bib; and she told him things were “elegunt,”

and he could call her Maggie.

She insisted on his drinking catsup instead of claret, and ordered the

salad compounded with soft hematite instead of paprika.

All the directors of the bank were seated at a table near them; and

they looked quite as appalled as Mr. Wade felt _he_ would, had he seen

any one of them in his place.

How he came to be in this awful predicament, he had no idea. He only

knew that he was riveted to his chair, and that his face, in spite of

his inward horror, _would_ wear a pleased smile. And speech, though he

strove desperately to articulate, was an impossibility.

Then Hastings appeared, and said seriously: “This, sir, is a matter

that affects your personal honor.”

It was in a grim determination to escape from this purgatory at all

hazards that Mr. Wade finally jumped himself awake; and though every

muscle in his body ached throbbingly, he gave a sigh of contentment as

he stirred his face on his pillow.

* * * * *

Trevanion, coming up to the house on a summons from John Carrington,

found young Carrington coming down the steps, looking a bit more of a

swashbuckling dandy than ever.

“Morning, Trevanion,” he greeted him, buoyantly.

Then he nodded toward the waiting trap.

“I’m going to pay a morning call on the owners of the Tray-Spot,” he

announced, genially.

“Confound ’em!” muttered Trevanion.

The lad looked him straight in the eyes, in the way Trevanion found so

remarkable.

“Oh, I think they’re square,” he said, lightly, “and that Richards’ day

is about done. It will decide itself in a few days now, anyway.”

Trevanion watched him with a curious expression as he drove off.

* * * * *

Mr. Wade had wakened not only refreshed but in a mood which a certain

irreverent clerk had once characterized as his “dusting off the earth

day” and a good time to lie low. Hastings greeted the morning sun

joyfully, because it shone on the little town where Elenore had spent

her childhood.

Richards came in just as they were enjoying their after-breakfast

cigars.

“Well,” he said, dropping into a chair without preliminary greetings,

or waiting for Mr. Wade to request him to do so, “what’s the program

for to-day?”

Then his eyes fell on Mr. Wade’s trouser legs.

“Told you it wouldn’t come off, didn’t I?” he laughed, boisterously.

Mr. Wade resented Richards’ unceremonious entrance, and resented still

more this direct allusion to his sartorial disfigurement, which had

resisted the most zealous efforts of Joseph. He considered that, under

present circumstances, the legs should be considered as analogous to

those of the Queen of Spain.

And that phrase of Hastings, “a matter of personal honor,” had hit the

bull’s-eye.

Mr. Wade prided himself first that the family fortune had been made

honestly, by the rise in Manhattan real estate; and last, that the Wade

name stood in the business world to-day as a symbol of integrity that

erred, if it erred at all, on the side of over-scrupulousness.

“Mr. Richards,” he said, a trifle stiffly, “when I inquired into the

matter, you wrote me that Mr. Carrington’s grievance had no foundation

in fact, did you not?”

The bluffness faded out of Richards’ face and left ugliness disclosed.

“He brought that old yarn back with him from Carrington’s yesterday, I

suppose,” he sneered, jerking his head toward Hastings.

Hastings had that rare faculty of knowing when to let the game play

itself.

“Very naturally, Mr. Richards,” said Mr. Wade, with dangerous

smoothness; “but that is not the question.”

Richards’ face darkened.

“I’ll tell you what the question is, Mr. Wade, and you can settle it

right now,” he snarled. “It’s whether you are going to take the word of

the man who has made the mine, or the word of the man who’s trying to

blackmail it, so’s he can buy it cheap.”

It was a good issue, so good that Richards himself was proud of it. He

leaned back in his chair with something of a swagger.

“That you are still in charge of the Tray-Spot is the best proof of

my confidence in you,” Mr. Wade said, in a more gracious tone, “but

I propose to place the Carringtons in a position where they will have

to admit that they are in the wrong, as you say they are. We will tell

them that they may send a representative through our mine at any time,

and that he will be accorded every courtesy.”

“Not on your life, we won’t!” said Richards, fiercely.

“That,” said Mr. Wade, serenely, “is a matter where we differ.”

“Do you suppose,” Richards went on, working himself into a rage, “that

anyone they sent down would come up and tell the truth? He’d say just

what he was paid to say, and he’d find just what he was paid to find.”

Joseph entered with two cards, and thereby effected a diversion.

One of the cards bore the name of Mr. John Carrington and the other

that of Mr. Edward Carrington.

The gods fought on the Carrington side.

“Show him in,” said Mr. Wade, suavely.

Young Carrington, debonair as a certain Monsieur Beaucaire, made his

entrance with an easy grace. The delicate deference of his manner

toward Mr. Wade, the pleasant _camaraderie_ which he showed to

Hastings, the impersonal politeness with which he recognized Richards’

existence, were all points in his favor.

So, too, were his punctiliousness in making his father’s excuses,

and the quiet courtesy with which he placed his horses at Mr. Wade’s

disposal.

His manner was so free from embarrassment or assertiveness, so

evidently inspired by a nice sense of proprieties, that he might have

been the ambassador of one king to another.

Richards, retiring to one of the car windows, his back toward them all,

his fingers beating a nerve-racking tattoo upon the glass, was his

direct antithesis.

“My nephew tells me you have distinct ability as an artist,” Mr. Wade

said, when, the preliminary interchange of courtesies over, the three

were comfortably seated. Mr. Wade thought it was likely, too.

“Then, I may tell you that we expect him to be one of our best

architects,” young Carrington returned, gracefully.

“The rising architect of Yellow Dog,” Hastings said, with a wave of his

hands. “I think I shall begin by building a little bungalow here for

myself.”

“A very good idea,” said Mr. Wade, decisively.

Hastings’ first phrase had smitten him with a sudden contrition. He

felt, too, that if he was going to come out to Yellow Dog himself, and

if his nephew stayed there he should, of course, come out once a year,

at least, a cozily built bungalow, where he might be made comfortable,

was in the line of a necessity. “I should get about it at once,” he

declared.

“Perhaps you would like to drive about this morning, and select your

site for ‘A Bungalow for One,’” said young Carrington, laughingly.

There was a slightly mocking emphasis on the last word.

“I shouldn’t have it too small,” said Mr. Wade, firmly.

Richards was whistling between his teeth now, a performance which

always enraged Mr. Wade.

“But we will have to let the site go for this morning, at least;” and

there was a precise distinctness about Mr. Wade’s words now. “Mr.

Richards has just been arranging to take us down the mine this morning.”

Richards wheeled round, surprised.

Young Carrington rose with an unhurried ease.

“Then, I must not detain you,” he said, calmly.

“And why would it not be a good idea for you to send one of your men,

in whom you have full confidence, down with us?”--Mr. Wade’s tone was

entirely urbane. “He would, perhaps, be able not only to assure himself

of actual conditions, but to explain your contention to us in the

workings under discussion.”

Richards held himself tense.

“I should like to send our shift boss, with your permission,” said

young Carrington, quietly, though inwardly he exulted. “I will have

him meet you at your shaft house whenever you say.”

“Mr. Wade,” said Richards, and the effort he made to control himself

made the veins in his face distend purplingly, “when Mr. John

Carrington is well enough to go down our mine, I shall be glad”--how

the word choked him--“to take him down myself; but Trevanion, their

shift boss, is at the bottom of the trouble. He’s tricky and dishonest.

I’d rather resign than take him down the mine.”

For in the time that would elapse before John Carrington was able to

take such a jaunt much could be done.

There was a moment’s pause, in which Richards’ claim and Carrington’s

were equi-balanced. The very fact of Hastings’ personal bias held him

inactive.

Then young Carrington spoke.

“I will answer for Trevanion’s honesty with my own,” he said. There was

an emotional note in the voice he tried to hold steady.

“Off the same piece, _I_ guess,” sneered Richards, nastily.

The scales swayed down on the Carrington side.

Mr. Wade’s code did not permit his guests to be insulted by his

subordinates.

“My dear Mr. Carrington, you leave us no option when you take that

stand,” he said, suavely. “Whenever your man is ready, then.”

“I think he is still at the house with my father,” said young

Carrington, unsteadily. “I can telephone from the station here.”

Mr. Wade looked out of the window. Beside Carrington’s trap stood the

landau of yesterday. “If you will drive home and bring your man over,

we will go directly to the mine with Mr. Richards,” he said.

* * * * *

Young Carrington, bursting in upon his father and Trevanion, told it

all in a breath.

Trevanion rose with the last word.

“The sooner I’m there the better,” he said, phlegmatically.

“It’s queer business,” said John Carrington, frowning. “Keep your eyes

open. What do you think of it?”

“I’ll tell you when I come up,” said Trevanion. “If I don’t come up,

you’ll look after my boy?”

John Carrington nodded.

“Keep close to young Hastings,” he said, tersely. “Don’t let Richards

get behind you alone. I’m inclined to think, though, that the whole

thing will be a farce. He’ll take you into a few levels where there

couldn’t be any question, and that will be all. Wade and his nephew

won’t know. And that will be all there is to it.”

“I’ll drive you over,” said Ned. His eyes were bright with excitement.

Trevanion grinned as he settled himself in the trap.

“I’m going to get my swell ride before I go down,” he said. “Mostly

they take ’em when they come up--in a box.”

* * * * *

The others were waiting, garbed in oilskins, candles in their

caps--precautionary measures which inclined Mr. Wade to feel that

there was something wrong in the management of a mine that was neither

lighted nor heated.

Hastings was struggling not to chafe under his rôle of masterly

inactivity; he comforted himself with the thought that it was causing

things to move in the right direction, at any rate.

Richards’ expression was sardonic. As Carrington had surmised, he

proposed to tire out the greenhorns by an exhaustive progress through

workings which would be of no possible interest to Trevanion.

He calculated shrewdly about how long it would take before they would

be glad to come up. If Trevanion remained behind them, or if he went

down without them later--Richards shrugged his shoulders. It was easy

for a man to fall down an uncovered winze in a strange mine. And the

fall would explain any bruises.

As they started for the cage, he turned to young Carrington. His smile

was distinctly disagreeable.

“Sorry you don’t feel like coming, too,” he said, “but you might catch

cold or get your clothes dirty.”

Whatever faults there were to young Carrington’s credit, cowardice was

not one of them. Not that foolhardiness is not almost as reprehensible.

“If you’ll lend me a cap and a pair of boots, I shall be delighted,” he

answered instantly.

“No, Mr. Ned. You’re not in this,” Trevanion remonstrated.

Young Carrington was pulling on his cap composedly now.

“You’ve never been down the Star, even. You won’t be of any use,”

Trevanion insisted. Young Carrington was getting into an oilskin coat.

Richards had not thought he would.

“I’ll telephone your father,” Trevanion declared.

“Then I’ll go down without you while you’re doing it,” young Carrington

declared, willfully.

Trevanion followed him into the cage without more ado. But he didn’t

like it.

As the cage dropped into the blackness of the shaft, Richards thought

with malicious pleasure that he would outwit them all. Trevanion,

holding it everyday work for himself, was uneasy over the boy; Hastings

was impatient at his own ignorance--he hated to feel so out of his

sphere; Mr. Wade, reviewing each successive stage of the proceedings

which had placed him in his present situation, called himself what he

would have slain any fellow man for thinking, a silly old fool; and

Carrington--ah, a curious tangle of thoughts was young Carrington’s

brain, with a curious after-vision of a bright blue sky.

Up in the big house on the hill, John Carrington was wondering if it

was not time for Ned to come home.

* * * * *

It is a curious experience--this going underground for the first time.

The chill and the dampness, the change in the air pressure, and the

darkness--that vague, depressing darkness, on which the candle in your

cap makes so vague and flickering an impression that it seems nervous

and palpitant at its own temerity in attempting so gigantic a task.

Above all, and above you, as you clearly realize, for an eighth of a

mile, perhaps, the huge impending weight of earth and rock, against

whose menace timbering a foot and a half thick seems like trying to

bolster the basement of a tottering St. Paul’s with matches.

It is like finding oneself in some gigantic letter press, the screw

of which the hand of fate may choose to turn--perhaps now; pressing

downward with pitiless, relentless, inanimate mechanism until the

Parchment of the World bears the dull red mark of these unwilling

witnesses to its deed.

These are all terrors unconfessed. Farthest of real menaces you

find--whose vague terror is made dormant by the real necessities of the

moment, the constant strain of the eye to distinguish--now to avoid the

direct peril of an uncovered winze underfoot, now to notice how closely

the “lagging” roofs in the drift, this indefinitely long hole, seven

and a half feet square, in which you find yourself.

Then comes the strain of the novice brain to comprehend the reasons and

the logic of it all.

Richards showed his native shrewdness in the way he managed the

expedition. The humor of its personnel was quite within his

comprehension. Three men, ignorant of every detail of mining, Trevanion

of the Star, and himself.

It was grotesque enough for comedy.

And, too, Richards had at last taken Mr. Wade’s measure--or thought he

had.

“You have to sling softsoap to suit the pig-headed old sissy,” he

phrased it.

And he assumed a bluff heartiness which actually became genuine at

times, as he explained carefully and clearly the A B C’s of things.

For Richards loved the mine he had made, loved it after the fashion of

his nature, with an intensity of possession.

Fought for it fairly when fairness served best, and trickily when

trickiness seemed more profitable. Took a man’s genuine pride when he

had forced it to obey him. Abused its future for the present good if he

felt like it. Slaved for it fiercely in reprisal. It was the only way

Richards knew how to love anything.

That these two men whom the accident of fortune had placed in actual

ownership of the mine should interfere with him had roused first

his rage, and now his determination to placate them, to hoodwink

them. He showed a good-natured tolerance of their ignorance, and an

indefatigable patience in explanation.

“That’s it; now you’re catching on fine,” he encouraged them, as they

grasped some elemental principle of mining. He led them over a good

deal of ground during these explanations. He piloted them with a rough

carefulness which even included young Carrington. The boy’s being there

at all amused him rather than otherwise. But Trevanion was guarding

young Carrington with as wary an eye as he was watching Richards.

Mr. Wade decided that for the first time Richards was appearing to

advantage.

Aboveground his crudities of manner might be repellent; here he was in

his native element, shrewd, practical and zealous.

Mr. Wade began to feel that Trevanion the Taciturn was quite as likely

to prove the villain of the piece.

To be sure, it appeared that they had embarked on a tremendous

undertaking. Mr. Wade felt that the mine was larger than he had

supposed, but, as Richards said, they might as well understand it

thoroughly. On this Mr. Wade, with legs that threatened to drop from

his hip sockets, plodded on.

Young Carrington turned white more than once, but shut his teeth

and went on defiantly; and Hastings owned to himself that he was

desperately tired. Trevanion was as unwearied as Cornish patience, but

Richards was not trying to tired out Trevanion--physically.

It lacked five minutes of the noon hour when they saw the cage ahead

of them, waiting at this, the seventh and lowest, working level of the

mine.

Below, as Richard told them, was the development level, to which the

cage did not descend.

“We can’t go down now,” he said, looking at his watch. “They’re just

going to blast, and it will take an hour afterward for the smoke

to clear. We’ll go up and have our dinner, and come down again this

afternoon to finish up, eh?”

Lunch, up on the earth’s surface, with sunshine and first grade air.

The words were as welcome to Mr. Wade as though an archangel had spoken

them.

Young Carrington, too, shared his feeling; shared, too, though

unknowingly, Mr. Wade’s calculation that his legs would just about

carry him to the cage.

Richards, with an inward grin, assured himself that those two, at

least, would attempt no afternoon expedition.

This farce of investigation would soon be ended. It would be quite safe

to urge them to come down again. They had had quite enough. He looked

forward with amused anticipation to making the suggestion after lunch.

Trevanion hesitated about declaring an intention to remain without the

others through the noon hour. No, he would see young Carrington safely

out of it first; then----

They were almost at the cage now.

Richards was showing them the bell at the side of the shaft, the signal

to the engineer to hoist the cage.

“All the men but one get in,” he explained. “He touches the bell and

races across to get in the cage. The engineer allows him so many

seconds to make it. No, you can’t stop it after it starts.”

Mr. Wade, who had arrived at that stage when he recked not how the cage

went up, as long as it went, continued an unlistening way to that haven.

There was a detonation from the development level.

“Blast,” said Richards, to young Carrington’s look. “They’re in rather

dangerous ground, and so we have them leave it until just before the

noon hour, in case----”

A man shot up from the ladder-way. Another. And another. The

ladder-hole spouted them out like a volcano.

They ran toward the cage panic-stricken, sweeping Mr. Wade into it

before them. With an instant comprehension of the disaster that placed

them all in a common peril, Richards turned swiftly to the others.

“Get in!” he shouted. “They’ve struck water!”

He caught Hastings by the arm, and rammed his way through the press

like a great machine.

“You ---- fools! There’s plenty of time!” he railed at his men.

Trevanion, guarding young Carrington with his right arm, thrust his

mighty bulk through the struggling mass just behind Richards.

They were almost at the cage door when a terrorized Finn fought his way

past them, striking out blindly at everything in reach.

One elbow thrust sent young Carrington spinning from Trevanion’s

protecting arm to the ground, and the next instant the Finn dropped his

full weight between Richards and Hastings, and leaped past them into

the cage.

He shouted triumphantly to his fellows. It was jargon to Mr. Wade. But

Richards knew, and raged, and the other miners knew, and rejoiced,

that he had given the signal to hoist. Trevanion was lifting young

Carrington in his arms.

Richards stepped into the cage, with an oath.

“Come!” he said, fiercely, to Hastings, jamming a few inches of space

free in the cage with his bulk. “Room for one. You haven’t a second to

lose!” he shouted.

Hastings put his hands in his pockets, coolly.

“I stay with my guests,” he said. And with his first word, the cage

started upward.

As he turned toward the others, Trevanion, one arm round young

Carrington, caught hold of his sleeve.

“We maun run for it!” he shouted.

For out of the great black hole beneath them rose the water, spreading

across the bottom of the shaft.

From above, and suddenly faint, they could hear Mr. Wade calling that

they must stop, that they must go back for his nephew, and his voice

was the voice of a very old man. Trevanion instinctively led them

running back into the drift. Young Carrington wrenched himself free.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Took the breath out of me for a minute. I

won’t hinder.”

Back of them the water followed silently, gaining gradually up the

grade of the drift.

“Not time to make that first rise--the one we came down,” Trevanion

said, as they sped along. “Ought to be another--here it is!”

He swerved into a black air shaft, but swept them back into the drift

the next instant.

“No ladder. Stripped!” he said, laconically, and on they hurried again.

The water was a thin encroaching line thirty feet back now. Now the

rise in the level hid it from sight.

And finally another rise. Stripped.

And on again.

Young Carrington was getting tired. Even peril was losing its spur. He

stumbled a little.

Trevanion caught him round the waist, lifting him along with a strong

gentleness; looking at him with curiously wondering eyes, but eyes that

never lost their look of fealty.

“Why are the ladders gone?” young Carrington asked, and he kept his

voice resolutely free from fear.

“Economy,” said Trevanion, briefly. “Wanted to use them somewhere else.

We’ll find one after a bit.” Which might or might not be so.

“And if we don’t?” said Hastings, swinging alongside.

“They’ll send the cage to the level above, and your men will be

hallooing all over the place for us,” Trevanion told him. He thought

with a certain grim humor that Richards would not make any wild

exertion to save him. Hastings’ presence was their best hope, if the

ladders failed.

“If it should take them a long time to find us?” It was young

Carrington now.

“Water may stop altogether,” Trevanion stated. “Depends on the size of

the vug. Anyway, it rises slower the more ground it covers. We’ll have

time enough.” But no one could tell that.

Disappointment. Hope. Then the end of the drift stared them in the

face--rock and dirt as a final blast had left it.

But “Here’s our raise,” said Trevanion, bluffly, turning off.

And the raise was ladderless: a vertical opening, whose hard rock walls

were too slippery for even a Cornishman to climb. Trapped!

They looked at the place where the ladder should have been, as though

it must, perforce, appear. Young Carrington ran a finger rapidly round

inside his collar, as though it had grown suddenly tight. The air

seemed close. Then he pulled himself together sharply. Say what you

will, blood will tell.

“And now what?” he asked Trevanion, cheerfully.

Hastings’ eyes were looking the same question.

“Wait,” said Trevanion, stoically.

To wait, inactive: it is the real test of courage.

With any kind of activity, hope plays an obligato; but when there is no

struggle to be made, fears tries a tremolo first on one heartstring and

then another.

“You should have gone with the others,” said young Carrington to

Hastings, reproachfully.

“Never!” said Hastings, decidedly. “There’s that drop of comfort in the

whole thing, anyway.

“How do you suppose I should feel,” he flashed, “if I were safe on the

surface, and you were here? I should feel as though I had decoyed you

into it.” He turned to Trevanion. “Can’t the pumps get the water under

control?” he demanded.

“If you had enough of ’em,” said Trevanion. “That’s another place where

Richards economized. The Star’ll pump it out for you after a while.”

“Richards will have his day of reckoning if I get out of this,” said

Hastings, furiously.

“Does he know that?” asked Trevanion, dryly.

And Hastings saw the point. So did young Carrington. The cards were

Richards’ now, to play as he chose. Hastings turned to his friends.

“Ned,” he said, “I’m mighty sorry. Sorry I interfered at all. I’d give

my life to have you and Trevanion safe on the surface.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said the lad, quickly.

Trevanion’s eyes watched him curiously.

“I want to talk with you about Elenore,” Hastings went on, quietly. “I

suppose you know that I love Elenore, Ned?”

Trevanion stepped back a few paces, but he listened intently.

“Do you?” said the lad, simply.

“Do I?” said Hastings, impetuously. “The hardest thing I ever did was

to leave her without telling her I loved her. But you can’t ask a girl

like that to wait indefinitely, you know. Then, when I found out where

I was coming, it seemed as though it might have been meant, after all.

And I wanted to patch up the trouble between the mines, so that I’d

have at least a fair chance.”

“And then?” said young Carrington, softly.

“Then,” said Hastings, recklessly, “I hoped--I was daft enough to

dream--that she might not think it a hardship to come back to the

little place where she was born--to her father--to me. To _me_! And

when I talked of building a bungalow, I thought what it would mean to

bring my wife home to it.”

There was silence. Then Hastings shrugged his shoulders.

“I may not have the chance to tell Elenore,” he said, bruskly,

half-ashamed of the emotion he had displayed. “It’s not quite the same

thing to tell you, old man. I’m afraid there’s small chance of our

ever being brothers-in-law, but you wouldn’t have objected to me as a

brother, would you?”

“Whatever Elenore wished, I should have wished,” the lad said, calmly.

Hastings laughed a short, impatient laugh.

“I suppose we’re all egoists,” he said. “But I don’t mind confessing to

you that it would be easier to face the music if I knew what Elenore

_did_ wish--whether _she_ cared.”

There was silence again. Trevanion’s figure in the background grew

tense. Then the lad laughed lightly.

“You hadn’t asked her, you know,” he said, “and Elenore isn’t the kind

of a girl to wear her heart on her sleeve. But I know Elenore pretty

well, and I think she cared--really.”

Hastings flung his arm in front of his face with a gesture that was

almost boyish.

“Elenore!” he whispered to the cold comfort of his coat sleeve. For

virile youth loves strongly, humanly.

Young Carrington’s eyes watched him with a wonderful light. Even the

flickering candlelight showed Trevanion that.

Then Hastings rammed his hands in his pockets and drew a deep breath.

“Thank Heaven, she’s on the other side of the ocean! It will be easier

for her, after all. Harder to realize,” he said, fervently.

Young Carrington drew a quick breath, a breath of relief. “I thought

you’d feel that way,” he said, quietly.

Trevanion stepped out into the drift.

“I want to speak with you a bit,” he nodded to young Carrington.

The lad followed him. Hastings, left alone, gave himself up to thoughts

of Elenore. The other side of the rock wall, young Carrington faced

Trevanion, and knew that he knew. Every detail of their surroundings

stood out in the light of that, with sudden distinctness. The great

timbers that walled in the drift, the flickering light of the candles

in their caps--all seemed but the setting for Trevanion’s eyes. The

hand he laid on young Carrington’s arm was almost reverential in its

touch.

“I’ve held you in my arms to-day twice,” he said, hurriedly. “I don’t

understand why it’s you, but it’s all right.” He looked at young

Carrington as one of Jeanne d’Arc’s soldiers might have looked.

Young Carrington faced him very quietly.

“I thought ’twas queer, the way you held the child that time,”

Trevanion went on. “And you ride just as you did as a youngster. Will

he come back now if----” he demanded.

Young Carrington nodded gently. “Yes, and he’s a splendid fellow.” If

the young voice broke for a second, that was all. “He’ll help dad to

bear it. It was best for me to come. Best, above all, if this was to

happen.” The voice was steady now. “I’m sorry you know, but it would

have been safe with you, anyway.”

It was that same confident charm that had conquered Trevanion at the

outset.

“You won’t tell _him_?” he questioned, jerking his head toward the

raise.

Young Carrington’s head shook a slow negative.

“Not unless at the very last I turn weak and womanish;” and there was a

whimsical touch in the last word.

Then the young figure straightened up with a quick decision.

“And I really think, Trevanion”--young Carrington’s voice was light

now--“that I shall make a nice, plucky, manly finish.”

Trevanion, following back into the raise, would have cut his heart out

to save that buoyant young life, but his devotion was the pure fealty

of a serf for his sovereign.

They played at bravery after that, each abetting the other.

Young Carrington coaxed Trevanion into telling them mining stories,

wheedled Hastings into all kinds of reminiscences of his boyhood,

assumed their ultimate escape so confidently that Hastings thought it a

genuine hopefulness.

Not so Trevanion. He knew what the spring was that moved young

Carrington to play up to a buoyant part. And he helped, with anecdotes

of wonderful rescues, of escapes just in the nick of time.

He was in the midst of one of the best of these when a little lapping

sound stopped him.

A thin little line of water pulsed gently into the entrance of the

raise.

CHAPTER VI.

Mr. Wade had shouted his fruitless commands, in the ascending cage,

all the way to the surface, raging at Richards and his management,

and unconvinced, in spite of a united and profane assurance, of his

inability to stop the cage and go back; furious at him for having

installed such a defective system, and threatening him with dismissal

at the earliest possible moment.

His nephew and his nephew’s friend left to danger, while these brutes

were being brought to the surface! He had never suffered such helpless

frenzy in all his neatly adjusted life.

At the surface the cage cleared with magical suddenness. Mr. Wade,

breathless with rage, was fairly dragged out by Richards, and in so

short a time as a signal may be given and obeyed, the cage had again

started downward.

Mr. Wade leaned back against the timbers of the shaft house, with the

exhaustion of relief.

But it was a relief that Richards did not share. This particular kind

of disaster was so frequently recurrent that he knew its possibilities

all too well. And he raged that it should have come just now. It was

such a routine danger that he had not thought of it as a special menace

in taking them down. Casualty, with Mr. Wade involved or witnessing,

had been furthest from his thoughts or desires.

“How long before they will be up?”’ Mr. Wade asked, faintly.

Richards, tensely alert, made no answer. The cage had reached the

bottom of the shaft now. He waited a minute--two--three. There was no

sign from below. He himself gave the signal to hoist.

“Are they coming?” demanded Mr. Wade.

Richards shook his head. “I can’t say, sir,” he said, “but they’ve

had plenty of time. Either they got in the cage and forgot to

give the signal”--and with Trevanion below this was an unlikely

contingency--“or----” he hesitated.

“Or?” said Mr. Wade, sharply.

“Or the water has cut them off,” Richards finished.

“Then----” said Mr. Wade, faintly.

“Reach ’em from the level above,” Richards answered. But he thought of

certain contingencies--thought of a good many important things.

There was a crowd of miners now, watching for the cage to appear. The

jargon of Finnish comment sounded to Mr. Wade like the buzzing of bees.

Then the cage came in sight. Empty and dripping wet.

The next second everything was action, and Richards its mainspring. His

orders pelted down like hailstones. Men, tools, paraphernalia, filled

the cage. Other men went racing off on surface errands.

Mr. Wade, paralyzed by his complete ignorance of conditions or

remedies, seemed crushed under the consciousness of casualty. Richards

caught him by the arm and shook him into attention.

“We’ll bring them up, if they are alive,” he shouted to him, as though

he were deaf.

Then he stepped into the cage, and down it went again. Mr. Wade leaned

back against the wall, motionless, his eyes fixed on the hole where it

had disappeared.

But over all the little town the news was spreading like wildfire.

* * * * *

John Carrington had spent a horrible morning. When the trap came back,

and the stable boy Ike, who was driving, announced that Mr. Ned had

sent him home, John Carrington promptly demanded why.

“I dunno,” said the boy. “He said, ‘That’s all,’ so I come.”

It couldn’t be possible that Ned had gone down the Tray-Spot! Ned,

who had never shown the slightest eagerness to go down the Star. But

what---- And why----

John Carrington fumed, fretted and finally telephoned--to find to

his consternation that Ned was underground. What under heavens had

Trevanion been thinking of, to let him go? John Carrington raged at

him. And what was Ned thinking of? He knew absolutely nothing of

underground conditions. Had Richards decoyed him into it for some

reason? Any reason of Richards was not a good one.

John Carrington hobbled along on his crutch from the divan on the

veranda to the couch in his bedroom, and back again, in a nervous

unrest which made all places equally distasteful to him.

He raged at his own stupidity in letting Ned drive Trevanion over. He

raged at this miserable leg of his that had held him prisoner so long.

He raged at the strength which came back so slowly.

He sent Mrs. Kipley, who came up to remonstrate with him on this

exhausting promenade, back to her kitchen in short order.

“He’s fairly beside himself, worrying over Mr. Ned, who ought to have

had more sense than to do such a thing, anyway,” she scolded to Hemmy,

feeling that she must vent her own nervousness in wrath upon some one.

“Now what’s the matter with you?” she demanded, exasperatedly, for

Hemmy’s face was assuming a chalk color.

“To think that _he_ may be in danger!” said Hemmy, with a gulp.

“The only danger you need to worry about is spoiling those doughnuts,”

said Mrs. Kipley, severely.

And Hemmy, condemned for the next half hour to drop little doughy

circles in boiling lard, wondered, as she choked back a sob, why even

the luxury of grief was denied her.

Carrington found solitude fast becoming unbearable.

He sent for Mrs. Kipley. He ordered her to tell Kipley to have the trap

over at the Tray-Spot, and when Ned came up at the noon hour, to tell

him he was needed at home at once.

Kipley had no sooner started than Carrington thought of the lad’s

dignity. He would not make a baby of him. He dispatched Ike on Ned’s

saddle horse, to tell Kipley to place himself at Mr. Wade’s disposal,

to tell Ned to bring Hastings and Mr. Wade back to luncheon, if he

chose; but to telephone him at once from the mine in any case.

He hobbled out on the veranda to wait for noon. He told himself that he

was getting to be an old woman; that Ned was young and strong, and able

to take care of himself anywhere; that Trevanion would keep his eyes

open for any deviltry on Richards’ part; that Richards would look after

any party which contained Mr. Wade and Hastings.

Then the sound of galloping hoofs came ominously. Ike, fairly hanging

on the Colonel’s neck, came flying homeward.

Disaster was stamped on his terrorized face.

Carrington swung up on his crutch as the boy ran stumblingly up the

walk.

The clatter brought Mrs. Kipley and Hemmy to the door.

“What is it?” Carrington called, sharply.

“Water!” the boy choked. “The Tray-Spot is flooded, and they’re down

there.”

“Who’s down there?” Carrington’s words cut.

“The young fellow--Trevanion--and Mr. Ned,” Ike sobbed.

Carrington’s ashy face worked curiously.

“And Richards?” he demanded.

“Come up and left ’em,” moaned the boy.

John Carrington wheeled, strode limpingly, and for the first time

without a crutch, into the house, snatched something that glistened

from the drawer of his desk, and came running rapidly in that uneven,

limping way toward the saddled horse.

“For pity’s sake, what are you going to do?” Mrs. Kipley called out, as

he managed, by the aid of the horse block, to get into the saddle.

The face that turned toward her was distorted with fury, but the

twisting lips spoke only two words in a hoarsely guttural cry: “My

boy!” But in them was anguish and revenge.

The Colonel shot forward like a shell from a gun.

* * * * *

Kipley, mingling with the crowd around the shaft house, picking up

every shred of information heavy-heartedly, saw with consternation the

bulky figure pounding toward them on the Colonel. He was beside the

horse’s head when John Carrington drew rein.

“They’ve gone down for ’em,” he said, swiftly, and his voice was

weighted with pity: “They’re going to get ’em on the level above.”

John Carrington gave no sign of hearing him. He was trying to dismount.

“Give me your shoulder,” he said, sharply. “This cursed leg----” He

groaned as he came awkwardly and heavily to the ground. Then, steadying

himself by Kipley’s shoulder, he hurried in that lunging, uneven way to

the shaft.

He had flung the bridle automatically over the Colonel’s head, and that

sagacious animal, well trained as a cavalry horse, stood motionless,

waiting.

Kipley told all he had learned of the story, tersely, as he steadied

him along.

Mr. Wade, waiting numbly by the shaft, found himself confronted by two

men.

“You,” said a deep voice, strangling with rage, “came up and left my

son.”

Mr. Wade raised his tired eyes to meet John Carrington’s bloodshot ones.

“They,” said Mr. Wade, mechanically, “came up and left my nephew.”

Then the consciousness of who this man was, and what Hastings had done,

awoke in him a sense of pride of blood which restored him in voice and

bearing to some semblance of himself.

“My nephew,” he repeated, with a touch of arrogance, “who refused to

save himself and leave your son and your workman.” He straightened

himself up with a dignity whose assumed calm hardly covered its pathos.

“As he would, naturally,” he finished.

John Carrington’s eyes softened.

“I thought he was that kind,” he said. “I like him.”

Mr. Wade’s heart warmed to a man who appreciated his nephew.

“Then my son would have done the same thing for him, in his place,”

John Carrington added, proudly.

Young Carrington was a splendid young fellow, Mr. Wade thought. His

sympathy swept out to his father.

“I’m sure of it,” he said. And the two men’s hands met.

When Mr. Wade spoke again, it was with a feeling of placing reliance in

John Carrington.

“Are they doing all they can?” he said, simply. “You ought to know.”

Carrington’s mind swept like a microscope over the details of the

rescuers’ plans, as Kipley had given them to him. “Tell me your side of

it,” he said.

Mr. Wade told him mechanically.

Carrington pondered it.

“I’m inclined to think they are,” he said, at last.

For the conviction forced itself upon him that Richards would do his

best to rescue Hastings. And if there was safety underground, Trevanion

would find it. Time was the uncertain factor. If there was time!

Kipley brought a rough bench, and the two men sat down.

If there was silence between them, there was also the bond of a common

anxiety.

* * * * *

From the moment Richards had seen the three men left on the seventh

level he had seen several other things clearly.

One was that it would be no longer possible to parry the question of

pumping apparatus with Mr. Wade.

Another was that the only thing which could make the possibility of his

continuing as manager of the Tray-Spot worth a straw was the quick,

well-planned rescue of the three men. In the reaction of relief from

casualty, resourcefulness now might plead for him.

And the last was that if Trevanion did not have time to get them up the

first raise, they were caught in some one of those other raises, from

which he had had the ladders removed only the week before.

Everything depended on the progress the three had been able to make,

and the rapidity with which the water was coming.

When the cage dropped to the sixth level, Richards knew from its

solitude that they had not been able to make the first raise, and

Richards’ men understood that they were to do their best.

They ran to the second, calling down as they uncovered it: no answer.

And the third: to hear only the hollow reverberation of their own

voices; to see by the light of a falling candle the glint of water in

the bottom. And the fourth: Richards himself, hurrying along in advance

of his men toward the final raise to the south, acknowledged that this

was a last and very slender hope.

As he hallooed down the raise the answering cry came back as swiftly to

his ears as the sight of the three twinkling lights to his eyes. If the

candle in his cap was a star of safety to them, those three lights were

relief to him.

With swift brevity he ordered the ladders, then called down: “We’ll

have you up, all right.”

And up the blackness came Hastings’ voice: “Hurry, for God’s sake; it’s

ankle deep!”

The first ladder dropped swiftly to the position, to be nailed in place

by the fastest man the Tray-Spot had. Three minutes. The second one

sped down after it. Men stood by with ropes, if ladders should prove

too slow.

Seven minutes, and the third ladder started down. This was rapid work,

but the ropes slid down, as well. The fourth ladder touched the bottom

of the hole.

The water was at their knees when they saw it come. Trevanion had begun

to knot a rope around young Carrington’s waist. He flung it off now, to

swing the slight young figure to his shoulders, to set the stiff feet

firmly on the ladder. “I maun take him! ’E can’t do it alone!” he said

to Hastings, as he swung himself up after the lad, supporting him.

And it was, in truth, fidelity to young Carrington, not hurry to save

himself before Hastings. Nor did Hastings misunderstand. He would have

gone last, anyway.

But it seemed a long way to the top. He was terribly stiff and wet and

chilled, grateful to the strong hands that lifted him out at last.

He saw Trevanion ahead, half carrying Ned, refusing to let anyone else

touch the lad.

It seemed to him that he followed more because he was led along than

because of any will of his own. They were in the cage now, going up,

and the cheers of the miners with them rose before them.

It would mean but one thing to those on the surface; a thing that made

two haggard-faced, gray-headed men stand shaken with emotion as the

cage came in sight.

To Mr. Wade the other faces were but a blur around Hastings; to

Carrington nothing was clear but his son’s face, chilled blue-white, as

the lad leaned in utter weariness against Trevanion.

Neither man saw Richards, nor heard his bluff “All safe!” But the

waiting crowd, heedless of old animosities for the moment, took up the

cheer. It served as chorus when John Carrington, catching Ned’s icy

hands in his, said, hoarsely: “Thank God!”--when the lad, striving to

smile his wonted brave smile, answered: “I do, dad;” when Trevanion,

crying: “’E must keep movin’!” swept young Carrington along to where

the Colonel stood patiently waiting, and, lifting him into the saddle,

held him with one hand as he ran alongside, urging the animal into a

gentle trot; when John Carrington, impatient to follow, and turning

for Kipley’s shoulder to steady him, saw Mr. Wade, his face pinched

with suspense and fatigue, resting rather heavily on Hastings’ arm, saw

Hastings, gray-drab with fag, looking about for a vehicle of some sort.

If John Carrington’s heartstrings pulled tenaciously toward home, it

was not visible in the cordial insistence with which he drove Hastings

and Mr. Wade to their car.

“I count on you both for lunch tomorrow,” he called, as he left them at

that haven of refuge.

Then he gripped Kipley’s arm.

“Drive like the devil!” he whispered, hoarsely.

* * * * *

The ride had shaken the chill from young Carrington’s blood, but

Trevanion refused to leave him until he saw him safely in the house.

At the door young Carrington turned and laid his hand lightly and

firmly on Trevanion’s arm.

“You’re splendid, Trevanion,” he said, gently; “I shan’t forget.”

And Trevanion, turning away, would have given his heart’s blood for

just that.

Mrs. Kipley bore down upon them, bustlingly energetic, a glass of

whisky in one hand and a telegram in the other. Hemmy, red-eyed,

lingered in the offing.

Young Carrington tossed off the whisky, tore open the envelope, and,

calling to Trevanion, who was halfway down the steps, sped to him and

spoke low and rapidly.

Trevanion nodded. Young Carrington, coming back, was smiling rather

tremulously.

“Not a thing, thanks,” he said, to Mrs. Kipley’s offer of assistance.

“All I need is a bath and a rest. In the morning I shall be

quite--myself.”

He laughed an odd, gay little laugh.

“You don’t feel any bone ache?” said Mrs. Kipley, anxiously, as he went

up the stairs.

Young Carrington looked down gleefully.

“I feel--relieved,” he said.

“I don’t wonder,” said Mrs. Kipley, to Hemmy, who was altering a

determination to enter a convent into a desire to be a trained nurse.

But Mrs. Kipley and young Carrington were not thinking of the same

predicament.

For the telegram read:

Shall arrive Yellow Dog nine to-night; your trunk with me.

E. CARRINGTON.

John Carrington, his abused leg stretched out on a chair in front of

him, was smoking a final cigar for the night, in the big downstairs

bedroom.

He was resting one elbow on his desk; and the head that leaned upon

his hand was full of plans for his son’s future. He was safe upstairs,

thank God! He was snug in bed and sleeping when his father got home.

And he left him to sleep off his fatigue, though he was impatient to

talk with him.

The clock over the fireplace chimed the half hour after nine. There was

the sound of quick steps on the veranda, then in the hall. A murmur of

voices. One was Trevanion’s. “The room at the head of the hall,” he

heard his undertone. Some one ran up the stairs, and some one closed

the hall door gently and went down the steps.

John Carrington was out in the hall the next instant. He heard the door

of Ned’s room open. He stumped up the stairs.

Light came through a half-opened door. A murmur of voices and laughing

greeting came to him.

Ned, fully dressed, as though he were the newcomer, had his arms around

some one who was sitting up in bed.

“Dear old girl! What a brick you are!” Carrington heard Ned say.

“Trevanion told me.”

“Ned!” he cried, uncomprehendingly.

The boy swung round joyously.

“Dad!” he shouted, and there was glad greeting in his tone. “You bully

old dad!”

He caught his father by the hand and shoulder with both his hands, but

John Carrington held him off mechanically.

For the figure sitting up in bed, flushed, mischievous and laughing at

his bewilderment, was Ned!

The hands that grasped John Carrington’s arm and shoulder gripped him,

shook him slightly.

“She’s been ripping, perfectly ripping, dad, and I’m four months late,

but be a little glad to see me,” this Ned’s laughing voice went on.

“She----” John Carrington stammered.

Ned waved a genial hand toward the figure in the bed.

“Miss Elenore Carrington, the most successful self-made man in

history!” he announced, with a flourish.

CHAPTER VII.

When Miss Elenore Carrington opened her eyes the following morning,

it was to gaze contentedly from her bed at a large, square,

hotel-placarded object in the center of her room.

Objectively, it was merely an uncommonly good-sized trunk, but

subjectively, it stood for Femininity, sweetly personal and newly

reincarnated.

“But what do you suppose he put in?” murmured Miss Carrington. And

uncertainty became unbearable.

She shook her fist gayly at a masculine-looking bathrobe hanging over

the back of a chair. “I won’t put you on again, even to _look_!” she

announced, with a gayly menacing flourish.

She caught the coverings of the bed around her, and was out in a great

white splash on the floor, fumbling with the key in the lock.

The trunk lid flew open, and she knelt, looking like a boyish little

novice, in the plain white night garment, with the big splash of white

spreading all over the floor about her.

She had that floor strewn with her treasures. Lovely frilly feminine

garments, dainty slippers all buckle and heel, dear little everyday

frocks and lingerie blouses, and gowns for occasions in the big trays

beneath. She laughed and blessed Ned as she delved down.

And hats--actually all her hats! But alack-a-day! She clutched her

shorn locks with a grimace. And that square package--toilet things;

useless hairpins and unusable jeweled shell combs; and here, in tissue

paper--oh, the forethought of Ned!--the very locks of hair of which she

had shorn herself so recklessly, bound together by the hairdresser’s

skill into a lustrous coil that had distinct possibilities.

She looked at it with an admiration such as she had never felt when it

was growing on her own head.

She swathed herself in the laciest and swirliest of pale blue silk

negligées, and sped to the mirror to experiment.

* * * * *

An hour later. Miss Elenore Carrington, daintily fresh as a

morning-glory, brown hair coiled closely at the back of her head

and pompadoured loosely around a face worthy of its best efforts;

garbed in a fetching little morning frock of white linen elaborately

embroidered, and short enough to permit the eye of man to rejoice over

the well-shaped _chaussure_ which supported a high-arched instep in a

deliciously restful way--Miss Carrington, in short, not only in her

right mind but in her right clothes, stood looking out of her window

at a world glowing with the glory of the September sun.

Her lips curved smilingly as she thought of many things: of her

father’s surprise the night before, of the long, long talk and the

flood of explanations which had lasted far into the night, and brought

them into a completeness of understanding which had meant happiness to

them all.

Ned had told them what those months in the East had done for him, not

only in technique but in inspiration; how, returning to Paris, he

found that his salon portrait had brought him a commission to paint a

certain crown prince that coming winter; how Velantour, pleased as he

was himself, had shouted “_Déjà!_”--a much prettier “_déjà_” than the

famous one--and had added: “Now you will paint his soul in his face,

his responsibilities in his clothes, and his destiny in the background.”

How, too, returning to Paris, he had found Elenore’s letters, telling

him that things were going on successfully in her imposture; and how,

getting her things together as hastily as possible, he had come to

relieve her on the fastest greyhound afloat, determining remorsefully

to give up even the crown prince if his father needed him.

Needed him! John Carrington was so proud of his talent that he would

have cut off his right hand before he would have kept him.

Then they had discussed the exigencies of the present; how the thing

was to be played out. Elenore insisted that no one should know; Ned

that everyone should; he wanted no more credit that didn’t belong to

him. John Carrington, considering it the cleverest thing that had ever

happened, would have blazoned it on the stars.

They compromised: first, that the Kipleys should be told, a plan which

had everything in its favor; second, that Hastings and Mr. Wade should

know. This was the battleground.

Even when Elenore had yielded the question of Hastings, she objected

strenuously to Mr. Wade’s enlightenment. He wouldn’t understand. But

easygoing Ned turned dogged.

“If you had only _seen_ him, you’d know how appalling he’d think it,”

Elenore had defended.

“When I see him to-morrow, I’ll meditate on the best way to break it to

him,” Ned had retorted.

“But you’ll wait a little,” she coaxed.

“Oh, I’ll give you time to get in a bit of work,” he conceded.

Miss Elenore Carrington, looking out of the window, grew suddenly

dreamy-eyed.

Over on the far hill, a branch of hard maple had turned brilliantly

scarlet. But it could hardly have been its reflection that brought the

delicate stain into Miss Carrington’s cheeks. Oddly enough, it was on

that particular hill that Hastings had planned to build his bungalow.

* * * * *

It was a morning of merriment, of buoyancy, of stupefactions.

Mr. Kipley was fairly swamped by the last emotion. He sat on the steps

of the side porch, and only a medical expert could have told that his

condition was not merely comatose.

All that saved Mrs. Kipley was the urgency of preparing a suitable

lunch for “those New York folks.”

Even then she discovered herself doing the most remarkable things.

“I’ll bake the ice cream next,” she remarked to Hemmy. Hemmy, used to

the startling changes of romance, adjusted herself to the situation

with apparent ease--and a new dream of bliss.

For had not Mr. Ned said, jubilantly: “Jove, this air is pure ozone!

I want to paint everything in sight. You, too, Hemmy, in that

pink-checked gown.”

Painters fell in love with their models sometimes.

* * * * *

John Carrington fairly basked in happiness. Only one thing troubled

him, and when he caught Elenore alone for a moment that came out. He

took her hands in his and looked into her blue eyes lovingly.

“I told you once,” he said, gently, “that no daughter could be so dear

to a man as his son.”

“Yes, dad,” she said, frankly.

He bent and kissed her forehead.

“I was wrong,” he said.

Then they spoke of other things.

* * * * *

“How is young Mr. Carrington this morning?” said Mr. Wade, stepping

into the trap, to Mr. Kipley, driving. “None the worse for yesterday, I

hope?”

Mr. Kipley’s face contorted, as though he were about to sneeze.

“He’s lookin’ about the same,” he replied, and his voice sounded

muffled. He seemed to derive such inward satisfaction from the phrase

that he repeated it: “He’s lookin’ about the same. I don’t think it

hurt him none.” And immediately gave his attention to his horses.

John Carrington was on the veranda to receive them.

“This is a gala day,” he told them, as he grasped their hands in warm

welcome. “My other child came home last night.”

Hastings’ heart leaped.

“Your daughter?” said Mr. Wade, politely. And with his words Elenore

came forward to meet them.

She had doffed the linen gown of the morning for the delicately

elaborate one she had last worn at that farewell tea in Paris.

There was the faintest suggestion of shyness in the gracefully smiling

welcome she gave Mr. Wade, which suited that particular old gentleman

to a T.

“You have every reason to be proud of both your children,” he said,

affably, to John Carrington.

“I am,” John Carrington replied, and he meant it.

Hastings, wordlessly happy to feel Elenore’s hand resting lightly in

his, pressed it tenderly as he tried to look into the eyes he had so

longed to see.

Her long lashes veiled them distractingly.

Then she raised them to his with a certain laughing mockery which was

delicious but baffling.

“Have I changed much?” she demanded, lightly.

“I shall have to look a long time to find out,” said Hastings. His

voice shook a little.

She laughed with sweet spontaneity.

“I shall not waste myself on anyone with such a disgracefully bad

memory,” she said, with mock reproach. “I shall devote myself to your

uncle.”

She turned to Mr. Wade and proceeded to make her word good.

Mr. Wade found himself sitting on a broad, shady veranda, talking to

as pretty a girl as he had seen in years; talking, as he felt with a

commendable thrill of pride, his very best. What a listener she was!

How graceful! How super-feminine! How ready-witted!

She agreed with him, and Mr. Wade felt even more agreeably conscious

than usual of his own good judgment. She disagreed daintily. It was

exhilarating to show her where she was wrong.

“If I were twenty years younger!” said Mr. Wade to himself, which was

a little more than half the number he should have stated, but what

elderly gentleman is exactly accurate in such statements!

He looked sharply at Hastings, and something in the divided attention

his nephew was giving John Carrington seemed to please him.

There was a flutter of Hemmy’s apron in the doorway.

“Ned will join us in the dining room,” said John Carrington, genially.

Ned was, in fact, standing on its threshold.

He greeted them with gay good fellowship.

“I’m glad to see you looking so well after yesterday,” Mr. Wade assured

him.

Ned flashed a frank, bright smile at him.

“I’m as fresh as though yesterday had never happened,” he said, gayly,

“and we’re going to keep conversation on pleasanter things through

luncheon, on Elenore’s account.”

Mr. Wade nodded. “Of course,” he said, “we must not alarm the young

lady with what might have been.”

And the chatter that ensued was, in truth, gay and bright and full of

reminiscences of the life the three young people had enjoyed in Paris.

If Mr. Wade had ever tasted better fried chicken, he had forgotten

where, and he praised it with an emphasis that turned Mrs. Kipley, who

was helping Hemmy wait on table, a deep magenta with suppressed pride.

He approved highly, too, of the champagne cup, and when Elenore

confessed its concoction, declared gallantly that that explained its

excellence.

“Indeed, I imagine that you succeed in whatever you do,” he added, as

the string to his floral bouquet.

They were at the coffee-and-cordial stage of proceedings now, and Mrs.

Kipley and Hemmy had disappeared on their laurels.

“She does, Mr. Wade,” said Ned, gayly, “and she attempts appallingly

difficult things at that. Would you like to hear about her star

performance?”

“I would, indeed,” said Mr. Wade, heartily.

And Elenore, with a look at her brother, knew that the moment had come.

“Then I shall leave you to your cigars,” she said, lightly, pushing

back her chair, in the instinct to escape.

For back of the lightness, excitement, altogether too insecurely

barred, was making a dash for liberty.

But Ned was on his feet as well, and caught her firmly but lightly

around the waist as she tried to pass him.

“You’ll have to stay and help me out,” he said, with mock reproach.

“How do you expect a man who only arrived last night to tell it

straight?”

Even then they thought he must have mis-spoken himself.

But Elenore turned with her hand on his shoulder and faced them

buoyantly.

“There was once a Rising Genius, who had one great, glorious

opportunity,” she began. “He had, too, a sister whom the gods hadn’t

dowered with talent of any kind; and a father----”

“Who not only fractured his leg,” John Carrington broke in, “but got

fractious in other ways as well. And, not knowing of the opportunity,

insisted on his son’s coming home.”

“So the sister, who was perfectly bully, and the pluckiest girl----”

Ned began.

But Elenore interposed.

“He was perfectly willing to come,” she insisted to them. “Don’t

forget that.” She slipped from his arm and swept them the daintiest of

courtesies.

She touched the elaborate chiffon quillings of her skirt with daintily

approving fingers. “I never knew the sustaining and soothing influence

of feminine attire until I was bereft of it,” she assured them,

laughingly. “I shall be distractingly fond of frills all the rest of my

life. Wasn’t it horrid underground!” she flashed; and they heard the

swish of her retreating skirts.

Hastings gripped Ned suddenly by the arm.

“You weren’t down the mine with me yesterday?” he demanded.

“Pullman, Lower 8, from Chicago,” said that young gentleman, serenely.

“Then I _shall_ be your brother-in-law,” he ejaculated, and vanished

like a shot.

Mr. Wade’s expression approached imbecility.

“Do you mean to tell me----” he began, numbly.

“That I only came last night, but my sister has been here all summer,”

said Ned, concisely.

* * * * *

The air came in refreshingly through the opened windows. Elenore was

standing, one arm on the back of a chair. She smiled slightly as

Hastings came toward her impetuously.

“It was quite a composite speech, wasn’t it?” she said.

He covered the hand on the back of the chair with his own.

“I can’t realize it,” he said. “You--all that time.”

“It seemed quite a long time, too,” she confessed.

“You underground!” he went on. “I should have died of anxiety if I had

suspected it.”

“I wanted to tell you dreadfully,” she murmured. “There’s no harm in

owning now that I was afraid.”

The hand that held hers closed over it more tightly.

“There’s no harm now,” he said, tensely, “in telling me if you meant

what you said: that you thought Elenore cared for me.”

“There’s no particular harm now,” she parodied, daringly, with downcast

eyes, “in your telling Elenore now what you told her then.”

He swept her into his arms with a tender forcefulness. “That I love

her. Elenore! Elenore!”

The full red lips that his own found, breathlessly, were mysteriously,

maddeningly sweet. And those deep blue eyes--what marvelous things they

confessed to him!

“The dear little bungalow!” he whispered. “But we needn’t wait for it,

Elenore. Marry me soon, and we’ll build it afterward.”

She laughed deliciously.

The sound of steps in the hall came to them, and Hastings drew her

to the vantage ground of a corner as Mr. Wade and the Carringtons,

_père et fils_, came in view outside the windows to seat themselves

comfortably in the big veranda chairs.

“And,” said Mr. Wade, in high good humor, and evidently continuing a

conversation begun at the table, “it shouldn’t be difficult for you and

your son-in-law to arrange the management of the two mines amicably

between you.”

“Aren’t you getting on rather rapidly?” John Carrington demanded, with

a twinkle in his eye.

“Not as rapidly as Laurence would like to, I’ll wager,” Mr. Wade said,

with confidence.

Then he polished his eyeglasses with his handkerchief. “I have always

had a great admiration for the heroines of Shakespeare--_Rosalind_,

in particular,” he said, with a hint of pedantic precision; “but I

consider Miss Elenore more charming still.”

“My idea, exactly,” murmured Hastings.

“As long as you’ve settled it all for them, you two,” said Ned, with

confidential raillery, “perhaps you’d better hurry up the great event,

so it can take place before I go back to Paris. Everything has to be

sacrificed to my career, you know.”

He spoke with light mockery.

Hastings’ arm tightened around Elenore, and his pleading lost none of

its force because it was silent.

The head on his shoulder gave a sudden gay, bewitching little nod.

“We consent to sacrifice ourselves,” Hastings called, jubilantly.

And the sound of applause drifted in through the open windows.

[Illustration]

THE SONG

In her castle by the sea

Dwelt the daughter of the king;

Sweet and beautiful was she

As a morn in Spring.

Lovers had she, young and old,

Princes foolish, princes wise,

Lured by all the love untold

In her tender eyes.

By her window in the tower

Once she sat and listened long--

Fairer she than any flower

That inspires a song!

Far below her, in his boat,

Sang the poet, and her name

Soaring in a silver note

Through the window came.

Just a simple lyric, yet

Fashioned with such perfect art

Nevermore could she forget

How it thrilled her heart.

She will never wed a prince,

Though the king’s own choice he were;

Life holds something dearer since

Love’s self sang to her.

FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN.

MRS. MASSINGBYRD INTERFERES

_By Mary H. Vorse_

[Illustration]

What makes the boom go sheering up in the air in that silly way?” Mrs.

Massingbyrd asked me.

“It’s trying to gooseneck,” I told her. “And if you would like me to

take the tiller----” Now, how foolish this suggestion was, I ought to

have known.

“Not at all,” Mrs. Massingbyrd briskly cut me short, pulling the tiller

smartly toward her to emphasize her refusal.

The boat jibed, and the next thing we were both in the water. Mrs.

Massingbyrd’s shining head came to the surface a few feet from mine.

She shook the water from her eyes, gasped for breath once or twice, and

then with a magnificent affectation of composure:

“Something told me I ought to wear my bathing suit,” she remarked,

reflectively.

“It was vanity told you,” I replied with irritation. Nothing had told

me I ought to wear mine. It was just like Lydia Massingbyrd to wear

a bathing suit to get capsized in. I’ve never known a woman who so

infallibly landed on her feet.

“I think,” she continued, complacently, as we struck out for the shore,

not far distant, “I chose a very nice place for spilling us. I know

women who would have been capable of doing it in the middle of Long

Island Sound!”

“It would have been still more considerate if you’d chosen a spot near

the mainland to show your seamanship,” I suggested, with polite sarcasm.

“I thought that all wrecks always took place near Huckleberry Island. I

thought that was one of the things one _did_.” Her voice was a trifle

aggrieved, she smiled at me, a smile like a little flickering flame.

“She needn’t,” I thought, “try to put the comether on me.” Suspenders

are in the way when swimming, and my heavy, rubber-soled shoes helped

to spoil my temper.

“Of course,” I gloomily returned, “our lunch is now at the bottom of

the Sound.” I knew that would fetch her. I have never seen a woman who

has so retained a child’s unimpaired appetite. Mrs. Massingbyrd turned

an uneasy eye on the catboat, which, buoyed by its sail, was floating

on its side like some great, awkward, wounded bird.

Mrs. Massingbyrd’s feet struck the sandy beach off Huckleberry Island.

“But we can’t sit here all day, you know, on a desert island, with

nothing to eat,” she remonstrated, as she made her way to the shore.

“You must do something about it, Bobby. I call it tragic, simply

tragic, to think of all that good lunch put out of our reach.”

She was by now quite on dry land, and with great expedition pulled the

shell pins from her lovely and extraordinary hair.

The jealous say that Mrs. Massingbyrd’s strength, like Samson’s, rests

in her hair. It is that meek, silvery gold color that usually has

neither kink nor curl, but in her case it curled riotously, broke out

at the nape of her neck in absurd babyish ringlets and at her temples.

“So that was why you upset us?” I asked, irritably. “I would have taken

your word for it that it did.”

“Did what?” she queried, rising promptly to the bait.

“Come down to your knees, I mean.”

“You might know that not for anything in the world, with hair as thick

and as hard to dry as mine, would I wet it unnecessarily!” she flashed.

“It’s a mercy it’s so fine,” I quoth, maliciously, “or you would

never get it up at all.” Mrs. Massingbyrd is notoriously vain of her

wonderful hair.

“You might have spared yourself all the trouble,” I continued,

cuttingly, as I took off my collar, and began on my shoes. “It’s

not nearly as nice a color all soaked and wet; in fact, it’s rather

unpleasant and seaweedy!”

“Wait until it’s dry,” she triumphed, radiantly. “You may in the end be

glad you came. But _I_ won’t!” she continued. “There’s nothing in it

for me! _You’re_ not going to present a sight for sore eyes now or at

any other portion of the day! And there’s nothing to eat!”

“You’re a vain and greedy woman, Lydia Massingbyrd,” I said, severely.

“And it would serve you right if the lockers of Mason’s boat were empty

instead of being garnished with cans of soup and meat, as I suspect

them to be.” And I started forth to rescue the capsized boat, but the

tide had carried it on the reef, the mast caught between two rocks,

and, already strained as it was, it cracked and broke.

And I was due to meet my wife and some other friends off Rye in a

couple of hours. That’s what comes of going off on a lady’s sailing

party, each man to be sailed down by a girl. A foolish idea, and

hatched out, you may be sure, in the crazy pates of Felicia and her

friend, Lydia Massingbyrd.

I did what I could for the poor boat. It’s a light little thing, an

eighteen-foot cat, and, as I’ve often told Mason, heavily oversparred.

I got her on the beach without much trouble, while my companion

inquired anxiously, from time to time, as to the state of the larder.

I found I was right. There was soup, and shortly I was warming it by

means of a wire cleverly slung around it and a wooden handle. For,

luckily, my match case was watertight.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” said I, taking my companion

into favor again.

“Necessity is the mother of indigestion!” she retorted, and I saw her

mind was back with our shipwrecked flesh-pots. “I can’t bear canned

things!”

She spread her long, wet hair around her like a mantle; the corners

of her mouth drooped with a pathetic quiver, changed their mind and

flickered out into a radiant little smile, which in its turn gave way

to a long chuckle.

“I never quite understood about jibing,” she remarked. “But now I

understand perfectly. It’s about the suddenest thing I know. I’ve a

very objective mind. A thing has to be put before me actually, in the

flesh, for me to comprehend it. That’s what I shall tell the reporters.”

“Reporters?” I wondered.

“Reporters, of course,” she repeated. “And the longer we’re out here,

the more there’ll be! They won’t begin to hunt for us until to-night.

It’s a good thing Felicia is my lifelong friend;” and Mrs. Massingbyrd

laughed again. The situation had none of the serious aspects to her

that it had to me. Of course Felicia was Lydia Massingbyrd’s friend,

but no woman cares to have her husband absent and missing with another

woman, and what with the anxiety and reporters and all--no, I didn’t

look forward to the next two or three days.

Mrs. Massingbyrd’s spirits rose during lunch.

“After a swim canned things aren’t really so awful,” she conceded. “I

suppose they’ll tell the police and get out searchlights. I’ve had most

things happen to me, but this is quite brand new.”

“One would think you were a popular actress,” I complained.

“Well, so, in a way, I am,” she philosophized.

Her hair was drying fast, and hung about her a dress of living gold.

Her black silk bathing suit fitted her closely in all the places it

ought not to. I marveled that so slender a little creature could be

at the same time so deliciously rounded. Her face, ever so slightly

tanned, had all sorts of delicious golden tones, her eyes were

surprisingly blue and as candidly innocent as those of a delightful

child. In her short skirt and her golden hair, so meek in its color, so

wayward in its curls, she looked like a little girl.

“Lydia Massingbyrd,” I found myself saying spontaneously, “I forgive

you everything! And it’s a lucky thing for me I’m deeply in love with

Felicia.”

“I told you you’d be glad you came,” she said, joyously.

“It was worth the price,” I generously conceded. “Your lovely mane is

all you have pretended it was. ‘It’s all wool’!”

“A sail!” cried Mrs. Massingbyrd, pointing to a yawl that even as she

spoke had rounded the island.

“It’s the Phillips’ yawl,” I agreed.

“Conscientiously, I don’t suppose we can stay shipwrecked any longer

than we can help. We’ll have to give up the reporters!” There was a

note of disappointment in her voice. “Shout, Bobby!”

I shouted.

“They don’t hear us. What we need is a flag of distress. Wave, wave

your coat!” Then catching her long hair in both her hands, she held it

far above her head and waved it like a golden banner. The wind caught

it and played with it; in her eager abandon she looked like some Mænad,

some fire spirit--choose your own simile for her, but in that moment

out there in the full sunlight she had I know not what touch of the

superterrestrial.

I believe at that moment it was given to me to see her at the highest

point of her somewhat amazing beauty. As she stood there her hand was

holding her wonderful hair above her head; she was for a moment outside

the pale of everyday womanhood. She was, I tell you, something to

commit follies for.

They saw us. The boat put about. Mrs. Massingbyrd let fall the most

original and the most beautiful flag that ever waved distress.

“They’ve recognized me,” she remarked with satisfaction. She held a

strand of hair high above her head and let it fall. “There isn’t anyone

who could have done that.”

“Or who would have done it if they could,” I added, severely.

“Or who would have done it if they could,” she agreed. “Not all women

are so conscientious as to what they owe mankind.”

“Indeed they are not,” I put in, sarcastically.

She was on her knees, gathering her hairpins and combs.

“Let your light so shine before men,” said she, cheerfully. “A city

that’s built on a hill cannot be hid. Don’t put your candle under a

bushel.”

I was putting on my shoes--now fairly well dried--and my ruined collar,

just to show I had one.

“I suppose you’re the vainest woman on the seacoast,” I scolded. I am

the only man in all Lydia Massingbyrd’s acquaintance who never flatters

her, and who from time to time gives her the great benefit of hearing

the whole truth about herself.

“I suppose I am, and good reason, too;” and there was some heat in her

voice. Her back was toward me; all I could see of her was a mass of

silvery gold.

“Now, what shall I do?” she asked. “There’s plenty of time to put

up my hair any which way--it would look horrid--I look so nice like

this--now, what would you do?”

“You ought to put it up,” I conclusively told her. “It’s an indecent

exposure. One would think, to look at you, that you were playing

tableaux of Lady Godiva.”

“I shall never get such another chance,” she implored.

“Put up your hair, Lydia Massingbyrd,” I commanded.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she moaned. “And now just as there’s

going to be any good in it you bully me.” Her mouth dropped again, she

looked at me with appealingly candid eyes.

“Oh, have it your way,” I growled. “Show off before Phillips, and

Almington, and little Cecilia Bennett, and Mrs. Day, and the Drake

boys!”

“Almington!” exclaimed Mrs. Massingbyrd. “That settles it!” and she

resolutely shook out her hair again.

“Almington!” I exclaimed, in amazement. “Why does Almington settle it?”

“I can’t bear the man!” cried she, stamping her foot.

“Oh, well, if this is by way of punishment----”

“Cecilia Bennett’s sister is one of my dearest friends.” Apparently she

thought this was an explanation.

“And so you want Cecilia to see you with your hair down,” I sneered.

“Men are _too_ dense!” was all she vouchsafed me. “He’s a popinjay of a

professional heart-breaker.”

“I suppose you’ll know what they’ll say about you?” I tried another

tack.

“I know what they’ll think,” she told me, with her inimitable calm.

“If you have the nerve, it’s no business of mine,” I conceded.

“Felicia’ll be so busy scolding me that she’ll forget all about you,”

she suggested, naïvely.

“There’s something in that,” I was manly enough to confess.

The boat now lay-to in the shallow water. Phillips hailed us.

“You’ll have to put your hair up,” I told her. “They’ve got no dinghy.

We’ll have to swim for it.”

“And wet myself all over again? No, indeed; you’ll have to carry me,”

she calmly announced. “They can come inshore as far as that.”

“You’ll have to square me with Felicia,” I muttered.

Laughingly Lydia Massingbyrd made a rope of her hair, to keep it safe

from the water, that she might the better blind the poor wretches in

the boat with its radiance. So carry her I did. As we were well out in

the water I heard the snap of Almington’s camera.

“Won’t Felicia be in a wax?” the incorrigible woman giggled in my ear.

“It’s lucky for you it’s me,” I said to her, critically. “Even as it

is, it’s most imprudent!”

She looked at me, an impudent gleam in her eye.

“I’m mighty careful in choosing my company when I’m cast away on a

desert island,” said she.

II.

“I don’t understand women at all,” I rather rashly confessed to Felicia.

“That’s all the better for us--I mean for me,” she threw back at me.

“But I do understand you’re all a matchmaking lot,” I continued,

severely.

“Oh, we’re a matchmaking lot, are we?” Felicia’s tone was one of

flattering interest. She was arranging a bit of vine that had somehow

gotten torn down. She now turned toward me, the picture of innocent

surprise.

“You like matchmaking for the fun of the thing--just as a man likes

shooting,” I went on. “You’d marry any person to any other person,

regardless of age, position or----”

“Sex?” suggested Felicia, politely.

“Suitability,” I amended; “just for the sake of having a wedding.”

“You’re talking now in the manner and tone of a husband,” Felicia

accusingly told me. “Anyone who heard your voice afar off would know

you were one.” I paid no attention to Felicia’s interruption.

“If I’m not right, kindly tell me if Lydia Massingbyrd wasn’t

matchmaking when she got you to ask Almington and little Cecilia

Bennett down here; and if you weren’t matchmaking when you consented to

ask them.”

“Undoubtedly it’s because Lydia is anxious to arrange a marriage

between them she wanted them here.” Felicia’s tone was so guilelessly

axiomatic that it made me uncomfortable.

“Has she told you?”

“She’s told me nothing,” Felicia assured me. “If she’d told me her

reasons I couldn’t, as she very well knows, have asked them.”

“And that’s why I say,” I concluded, “that I don’t understand women.

First Lydia Massingbyrd told me she couldn’t bear Almington. Then she

did her little Venus-rising-from-the-sea act for his benefit. And then,

I tell you, Felicia, if ever a mortal woman flirted, it was your little

golden-locked friend. And, Jove, she was pretty!”

“What Lydia Massingbyrd needs is a husband,” Felicia declared, “who

would keep her from tampering with other people’s! You’ve been utterly

ruined ever since you went around that day carrying Lydia all over the

place. You talk about her hair in your sleep.”

Again I ignored Felicia and her unjust accusations. “Poor little

Cecilia Bennett! Between admiration and fear she was almost frightened

to death.”

“Cecilia is a nice, upstanding, decent little girl,” Felicia asserted,

aggressively.

“So she is, so she is,” I hastened to agree. “And that is why--she

being only two months out of Farmington--you want to marry her to a man

like Almington!”

“What’s wrong with Almington?” asked Felicia, still in her most

guileless manner, which I have learned to know is the most finished

form of impertinence.

“What’s the matter with Almington?” I exclaimed. “Oh, nothing at all!

He’s the stuff perfect husbands are made of. He’s ripe, is Almington,

for a little, innocent flower of a girl like Cecilia.”

“Almington’s lots of money,” said Felicia, reflectively; “and Cecilia’s

mother’s keen for it. You know there’s no end to the Bennett girls, and

they’re poor as anything.”

I maintained a disgusted silence, for I had an inkling that Felicia

would have been charmed with an outbreak from me about the iniquity of

sacrificing young girls on the altar of Mammon. I therefore resolved to

commit myself no further.

It was at this moment that Mrs. Massingbyrd arrived.

The two ladies embraced. Then Felicia held her friend at arms’ length.

“Remember,” she warned, “no Croquemitaine! I’ve done two things for

you--what you wanted me to--and I’ve asked no questions. So go ahead,

but no Lady Godiva here under my roof-tree. No, nor any coming out

shrieking burglars at two with your hair down, Lydia Massingbyrd!” And

Felicia gave her friend an affectionate shake.

I had the sense that there had passed between the two women

intelligences far beyond what appeared on the surface; a feeling that

there were in the air all kinds of things--and that these things had

passed over my head. In fact, I felt hopelessly at a disadvantage, as a

man so often does in the presence of his wife and his wife’s intimate

friend; in a word, I suppose I felt like a husband, and I was glad

enough to join young Drake, who had come up in the same train with

little Cecilia Bennett.

As we strolled off together--

“There’s something awfully nice about a really fresh young girl, when

one’s been knocking around with older women a bit,” he confided to me.

“There’s nothing as charming as an unspoiled girl,” I agreed. “And

Cecilia is that.”

“I don’t know but the French way is the best. I hate a young girl who’s

too darned knowing.”

Now, I knew that Ellery Drake had made calf love to Felicia when

Felicia herself had been a young girl of the kind he so eloquently

described as “too darned knowing”; and that he had in vain followed the

fascinating wake of Mrs. Massingbyrd. So it was not without malice I

replied:

“Oh, the less a little, young girl knows the better; give me a _tabula

rara_ any time.”

Ellery Drake looked at me sharply. “I shouldn’t go as far as that,” he

said. “But I like them like Cecilia--so awfully interested in things

you know, and a little bit shy, and all that. Gee! Did you see her

stare when you toted Mrs. Massingbyrd into the boat the other day?”

“No wonder,” I said. “You don’t see things like that every day.”

“She’s a wonder, Mrs. Massingbyrd”--Drake was full of enthusiasm--“but

almost _too_ spectacular for a quiet man. I think Cecilia was really a

little shocked.”

I had noted poor little Cecilia’s

what-have-we-here-and-whatever-is-the-world-coming-to expression.

There’s nothing quite as conventional as your properly-brought-up young

person; and Cecilia was as perfectly turned out a specimen as a wise

mother and a good school could accomplish. She was, in fact, the beau

ideal of the young person for whom we keep our magazines spotlessly

pure, and in whose behalf we cry aloud when a play is not better than

it should be.

“She said afterward,” Drake told me, “that she felt as if she’d been

reading one of those society papers that haven’t the best reputation in

the world.”

“I didn’t know she was up to that,” I remarked.

“Oh, you don’t know Cecilia. She’s really very funny when you get her

alone,” Drake protested. “I’ve known her ever since I was knee-high,

so, you see, she’s not a bit shy with me. When she was a little kid,

I’d no idea she’d turn out so pretty. The trouble is, they get spoiled

so soon,” Drake gloomily went on--“spoiled and knowing and worldly.”

“You can’t expect a flower to keep in bud forever.”

“But you can train it to be a nice, sweet, modest, homekeeping plant,

or an exotic thing trained for the flower show.”

He puffed at his cigarette. I saw he thought he’d gotten off a good

thing. When I’m with Drake I understand only too well the kind of

amusement I so frequently afford Felicia. He enhanced the resemblance

by now saying:

“I don’t understand women at all!”

“No?” I encouraged him.

“What the devil is a sweet little thing like Cecilia Bennett doing

messing around with a fellow like Almington?”

“He’ll soon take off the bloom,” I said.

If the women were going to match-make, it occurred to me I could do

a little work of the kind off my own bat, and I was pleased with my

dexterity when Drake enthusiastically snatched at the bait.

“You bet he will,” he said. “He’s not the man for a young girl like

Cecilia; nothing more than a baby, you know, who doesn’t know how to

take care of herself. Though I’ve nothing against Almington. He’s all

right for married women.”

“A perfect companion for Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd,” I sarcastically

threw in, but my sarcasm didn’t touch Ellery Drake, for he said, simply:

“Oh, he’s all right for _them_!”

“So,” I said, magnanimously, “let them take care of him. He’s coming

down to-night, and you keep Cecilia out of his clutches.”

Roars of mirth, in which I distinguished the voices of my wife, Mrs.

Massingbyrd and Cecilia, now interrupted us, and they all came running

across the lawn like a troop of charming, grown-up children.

Indeed, Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd seemed younger than their little

companion. I’ve told you that Lydia Massingbyrd has the youngest, most

candid eyes I’ve ever seen; and she and Felicia ran down the lawn with

the abandon of those who know their world.

Spontaneity is one of civilization’s most perfect flowers, and Cecilia

wasn’t as yet civilized enough to have acquired it. She followed the

others with a certain dry rigidity that I found perfectly charming for

her age and the time she had been in the world.

“No, no; you can’t come,” said Mrs. Massingbyrd, waving us back.

“You’ll know soon enough. Don’t tell, Cecilia;” and she caught the

child by the arm and carried her along, as they made for the stable.

There was something preposterous in the air. I have known Felicia long

enough to recognize a certain irresponsible little laugh as a danger

signal. Presently the children came back, Mrs. Massingbyrd with Cecilia

still tucked under her wing.

“Yes, it’s the strangest thing,” she was chattering, “the impression I

produce on strangers! First they always call me _Miss_ Massingbyrd,

then, later, they always ask where Massingbyrd is! Not one person in a

thousand will believe I’m a real, bona-fide, dyed-in-the-wool widow!”

Cecilia’s eyes were open wide. I could see in her attitude that she

didn’t think it good taste to joke about being taken for a divorcée.

Nor did I, and I wondered what my friend was up to, for generally Mrs.

Massingbyrd adapts herself to her company with all the flexibility in

the world.

I followed them into the house, and I was in time to see as pretty a

little tableau as ever was presented on the stage.

Discovered on the piazza was Almington, and at sight of him my little

_ingénue_, Cecilia, hesitated, and was lost in a sea of blushes.

Mrs. Massingbyrd ran forward and greeted him gayly and gladly. Mamma’s

training came to Cecilia’s aid; she gathered herself together and,

in spite of burning cheeks and very bright eyes, advanced to meet

Almington in good order.

He greeted her pleasantly but indifferently, and turned eagerly to Mrs.

Massingbyrd.

“You’re none the worse for your shipwreck, I hope,” he asked.

“I never had a pleasanter day,” Mrs. Massingbyrd assured him. “It’s not

often I get a chance to display my only beauty free and unrebuked.”

“Your pictures came out well,” said Almington. “I couldn’t wait for the

film to be through. I had it developed at once;” and he felt in his

pocket.

Mrs. Massingbyrd held out her rosy palm, then drew it back.

“No, not here,” she decided. “Come down to the rose garden and show

them to me there. After all, they’re just for you and me.” And it was

with a self-satisfied air, the air of a conqueror, that Almington

unfolded his long legs and followed Mrs. Massingbyrd.

I looked at my companions. Cecilia’s cheeks were still hot. I saw she

was a little bewildered, but she acted like a little thoroughbred, and

made pretty, perfunctory, young-girl talk with Felicia, whose face told

me nothing; and with Drake, who looked profoundly pleased.

Mrs. Massingbyrd and her cavalier were strolling up and down in the

rose garden at the foot of the terrace. Coquetry was in every movement

of her little blond head. Conquest was written large on Almington.

In pursuance of my own little policy, “There goes a lost man,” I

remarked.

“He’s been lost so often and won so often that it doesn’t matter much,

does it?” said Felicia, lightly. “So if it’s only he that’s lost, we

won’t have far to look for him.”

“I thought Mrs. Mass. had turned him down,” remarked Ellery Drake.

“It hasn’t apparently prevented his turning up again,” Felicia replied,

pertly.

I looked at Cecilia. Mamma’s training held good; there was a visible

strain about her attitude, but she did her best to seem natural. It

was Cecilia’s first time under fire, and she did her superior officers

credit. But there was that about the still babyish lines of her mouth

which showed me that she longed to be away by herself and have a good

cry. Drake couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Come on, Cecilia, let us go for a walk, too,” he suggested. And while

I blessed him for his kindness I thought the “too” unfortunate.

When they were out of earshot I turned severely to Felicia.

“I don’t consider the Torture of the Innocents a pretty game,” I told

her.

“Tell that to Lydia,” was all I got out of my wife.

“I thought Cecilia’s sister was a great friend of Lydia’s,” I asked.

“Exactly,” Felicia assented, dryly.

III.

“For a spotless child of heaven, Cecilia’s playing the game pretty

well,” I mused, as I watched her at dinner. During the hour of dressing

she had pulled herself wonderfully together. She held her little round

chin high in the air and devoted herself to Drake with all the aplomb

of a Felicia.

The cup of bitterness held its touch of sweet to her. Even if one must

suffer, one was out in the world, one was living, was what I read in

her attitude. But as I have said, I don’t pretend to understand women;

still, I’m much mistaken if, during dinner, at least, she didn’t have a

good time.

She ignored Almington as much as she could in a general conversation.

“Mrs. Massingbyrd can have you,” her attitude seemed to say. “I fight

for no man.”

I looked at Drake. If he wanted to keep his rose in the bud, he had

better carry her away quickly to a fresher atmosphere.

At the end of dinner the ladies exchanged nods and smiles. I saw that

an explanation was forthcoming for the mysterious visit to the stable.

They had been preparing what to me seemed not unlike a little amateur

Walpurgisnacht.

It was, of course, Lydia Massingbyrd’s idea. Nobody else, not even

Felicia, could have been wrong-minded enough to want to slide downhill

in summer. My coachman’s children have a species of roller sled on

which they daily endanger their lives by coasting down the steep

macadamized road which leads from my house.

“I saw them on my way from the station,” proclaimed Mrs. Massingbyrd,

triumphantly; “and saw at once their possibilities.”

“Will you steer me, Mr. Curtis?” asked Cecilia, turning her back on

Almington, and giving poor Drake a killing glance; and I thought

I surprised a glance of malicious intelligence pass between Mrs.

Massingbyrd and my wife.

Now, I know that, told in plain words the morning after, most of our

maddest fun seems flat and puerile enough. I know that a decent married

man of my age and a lady killer of Almington’s ought to have poohpoohed

this childish sport, and sat with our cigars and our whiskies and sodas

on the piazza.

I suppose you think that’s what you would have done. But I can tell

you, if you had dined with Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd, you’d have

been caught up in the fire of their folly. It’s contagious, more

than anything I know. In the glamour of their lovely nonsense sliding

downhill on the coachman’s children’s roller sled would have seemed an

appropriate and delightful thing--or sliding down the banister or the

cellar door, if it had been their mad whim to do that.

Haven’t you ever been a kid since you were grown up? Did all your

fooling stop before you were out of college? I’m sorry for you if it’s

so. I hope, for my part, that Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd and their

like will make me forget my years for a long time to come. And I hope

often to wake up in the sober light of the next day wondering just what

magic it was that had turned back the hand of time for me, that I could

find merriment in sliding down a macadamized hill on a roller sled.

The night was cold, with a bit of a breeze; there was a moon, and the

glow from Felicia’s gayety and Lydia Massingbyrd lasted my little

companion on our first swift, delirious slides.

It wasn’t coasting, but it was exciting enough, as one went very fast.

And coming up we piled into a cart to be drawn up the hill. But after a

few slides the flame of my little friend’s gayety flickered out, and as

the others were piling into the cart, “Let’s walk,” Cecilia suggested.

Youth is ever selfish in its distress, and what did Cecilia care

whether my legs were tired or not climbing that hill? Her little flock

of conventions had come fluttering back to her. Her doll was sawdust,

and there was a bad taste in her mouth.

Now, of course, you know that there’s nothing more revolting than the

folly of others when you yourself are serious. Haven’t you been annoyed

time and again by the senseless and meaningless good spirits of the

people next door? I’m sure you have. And just as often you’ve felt a

certain compassion for the people who give you sour looks and grim

glances when you’re having the time of your life.

So it was with ever-increasing disapproval of my wife’s merriment and

Mrs. Massingbyrd’s abandon that Cecilia walked up the hill with me.

“I think,” she confided to me, sadly, “I was born old!”

“There are some people who stay babies forever,” I encouraged her.

“They are the fortunate ones,” Cecilia said, gloomily. “I never have

been able to enjoy things long at a time. Even our good times at school

used to seem childish to me. And I thought when I came out and was

among grown people----”

“That things would be different,” I supplemented. “And you find it’s

just the same.”

“Just the same,” she agreed, in a gratified tone. “I feel as old as I

did at school!”

“Some people are born with a realization of the futility of pleasure,”

I went on, trying to voice Cecilia’s mood.

“I suppose it’s that,” she sighed. “When I was at school I thought of

the world as a playground where I could amuse myself with the others.”

“And instead, you find that you’re only learning a different kind of

lesson, and play is as uninteresting as ever?”

“Yes, it’s just like another kind of school, and the lessons harder to

learn--and of less use when you’ve learned them!” There was a pathetic

note in her voice.

“You’re very different from other girls, Miss Bennett,” I felt was an

appropriate and comforting thing to say.

“I know I am, and it’s a great misfortune to be so,” she acknowledged,

with becoming modesty.

“But it has its compensations.”

“It’s very lonely,” she said. “No one has ever understood all I think

and feel. Mamma never has, nor the girls.”

“And since you’ve been out?”

“Since I’ve been out I met some one--once”--the once threw the time of

meeting in the remote past--“some one I thought understood me--but I

was disappointed.”

I murmured something sympathetic.

“Because I’m young in years people think I can’t see things,” she

cried, with a little rising temper.

“You have the best possible vantage, then, to observe the world as it

really is.”

“And I do see things as they really are, and many things!” and she

clinched her little fists under cover of the darkness. Things were

getting somewhat strenuous for me, so I brought our conversational boat

to smoother waters.

“You make me think a little of Ellery Drake,” I said. (Machiavelli

to the front!) “Because he seems so simple and direct; shallow

people don’t take the trouble to understand him. But you’ve seen, of

course----”

“Yes,” she assented; and I saw she was interested.

“What a lonely time he has of it, and under his apparent simplicity how

much depth there is.”

“I’ve known him all my life--but I’ve never really known him--that is,

what _I_ call knowing a person.” There was a great deal of intensity

in Cecilia’s voice. “Ah, how hard it is to really know any--and so few

realize it.” The atmosphere was getting a little rarefied, so I was

glad of the diversion caused by the two roller sleds whiffling by us.

“We’re racing,” called Mrs. Massingbyrd. “If we win, I’m to grant a

boon to Jack Almington.”

“He’ll probably ask her to take down her hair,” said Machiavelli. “Men

always do.”

“Oh, if that sort of thing amuses him”--contempt spoke in Cecilia’s

tone--“let him have--his hank of hair!”

“There’s a remarkably happy man,” I said. “No still waters in his; a

perfectly delightful fellow, only spoiled by women!”

“Is he?” asked Cecilia, indifferently.

“He’s been so immensely liked, you know, that what he really needs is a

snub. He thinks he’s only to look at a woman for him to like her.”

“Wouldn’t one call that just a trifle conceited?” Cecilia’s voice

dripped sarcasm.

“Not in his case,” I returned, cruelly. “For, you see, it’s generally

so. I’ve never known a more fatal man than Almington.”

“He’s not _always_ fatal,” Cecilia gave out, dryly; and she shut her

little mouth with a firmness that even in the dim moonlight made

itself visible.

We stood at the top of the hill in silence for a moment, waiting for

the cart with the others in it. They came up laughing. How vain and

empty their laughter was, I was sure Cecilia was thinking. Her deep

knowledge of the world and its iniquity were fairly bowing down her

young shoulders.

IV.

The laughter and nonsense grew louder, and I descried, standing upright

in the cart, a vision, spirit or woman I couldn’t tell.

My companion stared a moment and then remarked:

“_Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair has come down!_” Into these simple words was

packed all the quintessence of disapproval that Cecilia had learned

from her various advisers. There were echoes of her mother’s shocked

tones, haunting accents of her offended teacher, all welded together by

the cool disapproval that was Cecilia’s own.

I am sure that if my delightful little guest could have heard the

awful, the chilling, contempt of “Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair has come

down,” she would have veiled her face with it in abject shame.

I gathered by her attitude and that of Felicia and Almington that

these silly creatures were playing at tableaux, the cart serving as a

_Mi-carême char_.

Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair, more miraculous than ever in the moonlight,

fell down to her knees. Her eyes looked seraphically heavenward.

Almington held her hand, kneeling before her, while Felicia, a little

shawl disposed as drapery about her, was pointing dramatically out into

the night, giving an admirable impersonation of those statuesque young

ladies who, in tableaux, have no _raison d’être_ save to round out the

composition and look pretty.

Later I learned that the name of this impressive tableau was: “The

Triumph of Virtue.”

At that moment I was too occupied with the attitude of my little

companion to pay attention to Mrs. Massingbyrd’s foolery.

Cecilia had just caught sight of Almington as he knelt, holding the

hand of Virtue, his lean legs bent like the blade of a knife. Almington

generally cuts a fine figure, through a certain sense of the fitness of

things. His air of secret melancholy wins half his battles for him, and

he is one of those men who must at any cost hang on to the last shred

of dignity, as they are nothing without it. In his present situation I

have no hesitation in saying he looked fatuous and grotesque.

How he came to lend himself to the crazy whim of the two girls I can’t

tell. I suppose he was carried away by the flood of their high spirits,

as many a wiser man has been before him and will be after him.

But if I had excuses for him, Cecilia had none.

It may be heartbreaking to have your first “serious young man” leave

you at the smiles of a pretty widow with blond hair; but, after all,

by showing how truly noble you are, you may some day crush your rival

and bring your suitor to your knees, crying, “Peccavi!” It’s bad to

learn he’s a heartbreaker, but, after all, then there’s all the more

incentive to break his heart. You can, whatever happens, bear your

suffering nobly, and at the worst you have lots of things, heaps

simply, to tell the girls.

But to have your first hero of romance make himself ridiculous--that is

the end of all things. Sorrow has then no dignity. A broken heart for a

man like that is out of the question. Oh, it’s a bitter thing to think

the drama of one’s life a tragedy and have it turn out a low comedy!

Cecilia saw her hero exactly as he was, at that moment, stripped of all

adornment.

Glamour died, romance withered away; in the clear fire of her

uncompromising young scorn.

She was proving again that man’s only unpardonable crime toward the

woman who loves him is to make himself ridiculous.

It was really quite a dramatic little moment. The late hero, now

turned mountebank, descended and helped out Felicia and Lydia, radiant

in her white and gold attire--and it was only then I saw Drake, who had

been sitting stiffly in the back of the cart.

_He_ had taken no part in the pageant. If his temper was impaired, his

dignity wasn’t. Sliding downhill was all right, his rigidity seemed to

say, but no play acting in his. His mood and Cecilia’s jumped together.

Her eyes met his. “I know you now,” her grateful glance seemed to say.

Meantime Mrs. Massingbyrd, lovely as an angel, drifted along the white

road.

“It’s breaking the rules of the game,” Felicia said to her, “for you to

have taken down your hair.”

“It fell down itself,” answered Lydia the unashamed.

“But you looked so entirely lovely,” my wife went on, “that I forgive

you. It’s worth the price.”

And I guiltily hoped that Mrs. Massingbyrd would refrain from saying,

“That’s exactly what Bobby said.”

She stood pensive a moment in the moonlight. Drake and Cecilia, drawn

together by the feeling of superiority they shared in common--and

which I had helped to point out--wandered off together. Almington was

absorbed in an open and impertinent admiration of Mrs. Massingbyrd’s

beauty, and Felicia and I gazed at her, and again Felicia said,

approvingly: “It’s an unfair advantage to take--but it’s really worth

it!”

Then the dreamy look in lovely Mrs. Massingbyrd’s eyes deepened, and

she opened her lovely lips and said:

“Felicia, I’m so desperately hungry that I wouldn’t coast down that

hill again--not for anything! Did you say you had something good for

supper?”

“And at supper I shall ask my boon,” Almington answered.

“Boon?” said Mrs. Massingbyrd, as she watched Cecilia and Drake vanish

together in the moonlight among the flowers. “Boon? You greedy person!

Isn’t it boon enough to have seen me with my hair down by moonlight! I

wonder at your graspingness, Jack Almington!”

* * * * *

After we had said good-night to our guests, after Cecilia and Drake had

at last come in from an interminable talk on the piazza, after Mrs.

Massingbyrd had stuffed herself--in the face of her ethereal loveliness

I hate to use such a word, but I know no other; indeed, she applied

herself to supper with such a fair, frank and honest appetite that she

had neither eyes nor ears for Almington’s compliments--after all this

was over, Felicia turned to me with a look of satisfaction.

“You played up nobly that time, Robert,” she said. “I’ve never known

you to catch on so quickly and without a word from anyone.”

I gained time with remarking, pathetically, “You’ve always underrated

my intelligence.”

“I call it a thoroughly artistic performance,” my wife said; “and the

beauty of it is that there was no talk, no nothing, but each one doing

his work.”

I looked at Felicia, to see if by any chance she was making a pitfall

for me, but there was no danger signal. I thought it safe to give out,

“I’m glad you liked my little share in it.”

“You were splendid,” she cried, cordially. “And if Miss Bennett only

knew it, we deserve a vote of thanks from her.”

“Yes, don’t we?” I took care not to commit myself.

“It isn’t as if we hadn’t provided Cecilia with another suitor, and I’m

sure Ellery Drake, from any point of view, is far more desirable than

Almington.”

“I should say he was,” I cordially assented.

“And then, who can tell if Almington was really serious? And for a

young girl to be _affichée_ with Almington her first season is nothing

short of tarnishing,” Felicia went on, virtuously.

“That’s what I’ve said from the beginning,” I put in.

“And you certainly played up nobly. We couldn’t have put it through so

quickly without you,” my wife was generous enough to confess. “But did

you ever see anything as splendid and self-sacrificing as Lydia?”

“Self-sacrificing?” I wondered, feeling my way.

“Why, she made herself odious--simply odious--in Cecilia’s eyes, so

Cecilia would feel furious at having Almington like her.” Sometimes

Felicia is anything but lucid.

“Like whom?” I naturally wanted to know.

“Like Lydia,” replied my wife, impatiently. “A girl can stand anything

but having a man she likes fall in love with a woman she doesn’t. It’s

queer,” she said, suspiciously, “clever as you are sometimes, how dense

you are others. _Did_ you understand----”

But at this late date I wasn’t going to have my laurels snatched from

me. So I hastened to assure her. “Of course,” I said, loftily, “I

understood Mrs. Massingbyrd intended to interfere!”

[Illustration]

AUTUMN

Scarlet her cloak, her lips all scarlet too,

Her cloudy hair as golden as the leaves

Of the sun-mellowed hickories, her voice

The rich, low whispers of the brooks that please

By hinting Autumn mysteries, her eyes

Witch-lights of laughter and of mad surprise.

Oh, gypsy prodigal, who gives and gives,

Till penury in winter strips you bare,

Cover me with the splendor of your locks,

Let your eyes challenge me from dull despair--

Wake me and sting me till I, too, shall sweep

Round in the revels that your whirlwinds keep.

CLINTON DANGERFIELD.

THE WARRENERS

_By_ MARIE VAN VORST

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I.

Gertrude Warrener was twenty-five years old on the day she went into

the back library and, seated in a rocking chair, a newspaper and a box

of candy-kitchen chocolates in her lap--began to live.

Hitherto the boundaries of her lifeline had been limited by a wooden

fence circling a few feet of coarse grass and two frame houses like her

own. To the rear, in the yard, four poles formed a square with peculiar

precision, and on washdays the level lines of a cord, stretching

cat’s-cradle-wise, supported the household laundry.

She had taken for eight years the front rooms of the house for her

point of vantage, and when she had mentally stated “Mrs. Felter’s just

gone into the Perches’,” or “Pearl Exeter does her marketing in the

afternoons instead of the mornings,” she had nothing further to say.

One day she caught herself in the middle of some such banal reflection,

and, going to the back of the house, took her place in the window of a

microscopic library.

Gertrude Warrener did not remotely dream that she on this day passed

the Rubicon lying between existence and life.

When the mind is sensible of inertia--the eyes catch sight of living

forms, and the soul yearns toward something which it has not--it may be

taken for granted that a life-breath has blown over the valley of dead

bones.

In the case of Gertrude Warrener, it was indeed a tomb in which she

awakened, and she did not know that she had been immured.

In her seventeenth year, George Warrener, just received into a

subordinate position in a New York banking and broking firm, began to

pay her his bashful attentions. With no spoken words on his part that

she could remember--nor could he for the life of him have recalled the

formula--there was an engagement. She married him before her eighteenth

birthday.

As she sat in the library, all image of the youthful lover was

completely effaced from her mind. He was now like hundreds and dozens

of other middle-rank business men. Of medium height, stocky, his hair

and short, stubby mustache nondescript, his eyes blue, wide apart and

rather small, he was a successful type and entirely sacrificed as an

individual. He often said:

“I look like a prosperous Wall Street man, and that is as near as I

shall ever come to it--to look like it.”

But in spite of his dapper appearance, Warrener was an overworked

drudge. He worked so hard and so long, his daily trips on unhealthy

ferries and hot cars sapped his vitality to such an extent, that all

his life had been spent and lived by the time he crossed at night the

threshold of his home.

Gertrude in the little library opened the pages of the _Slocum Daily_

slowly. She read the town gossip, a local weather prediction, an

account of the hospital fair; and as she rocked and ate one after the

other the chocolate marshmallows she had a feeling of freedom, whose

cause was due simply to the fact that she had changed her point of

view--due to the humble novelty of her transposition.

George’s library smelled of stale tobacco. She had sensitive nostrils,

and was beginning to find the dead odor unpleasant, when at this point

she fell upon an item in the _Slocum Daily_ which held her attention:

We are glad to learn that the McAllister homestead has been opened.

After the long absence in Europe of the family, Mr. and Mrs.

Bellamy have returned, and Slocum welcomes them back with much

pleasure.

“Slocum!” She spoke aloud, and there was scorn in her tone. “Well,

I guess they’ll laugh at that. I don’t believe _they_ care for the

_Daily_!”

Old Mrs. McAllister at once took form for her. She had come to their

wedding, and Gertrude remembered her as tall, and that her dress

and hat became her. The young, light-minded bride had remarked the

difference between this guest and other Slocumites.

Kept in state on the buffet downstairs was a silver pitcher, the sole

real silver in the house. Mrs. McAllister had sent it to the Warreners

as a wedding present.

Gertrude got up and went out in the hall. “Eliza!”

“Yes, ma’am.” The maid of all work appeared at the foot of the back

stairs.

“Say--just go and get that silver pitcher off the dining-room buffet

and clean it. I guess it hasn’t been cleaned for three years.”

The maid looked at her in astonishment. “Why, we haven’t got a mite of

cleaning powder in the house, Mrs. Warrener!”

Mrs. Warrener came slowly down the stairs herself, and, going to the

dining-room buffet, looked at her wedding gift--or what she could see

of it through a thick layer of dirt and discoloration. Then she carried

it to the bathroom, and, with nail brush and tooth powder, shone it up

as well as she could. It was a tribute of welcome to the return of the

Bellamys.