earning that reward,” said Lansing, coolly, as the match went out.
Somehow, though, as Crandall lay awake through the night, within a
few yards of the body, to keep the wolves from it so that it would
be unmarred in the morning when they would lash it to a horse and
take it into the settlements for identification, he wondered why
Lansing could sleep so soundly. As for himself, the rigid form,
covered with only a saddle-blanket, lying where the snow was red
instead of white, was always before his eyes, even when he closed
them.
CONSCIENCE MONEY
By Geraldine Bonner
In January the darkness settles early in Paris. It was not yet five,
and it was closing in, soft and sudden. This particular night it was
rendered denser by the light rain that was falling--one of those
needle-pointed, noiseless rains that come in the midst of a Paris
winter and persist for days.
Celia Reardon came home through it, letting her skirts flap against
her heels. The package of sketches she had not sold to the dealer on
the Rue Bonaparte was under her arm. From beneath the dark tent of
her umbrella she looked straight before her down the vista of the
street, glistening and winking from its lamps and windows. The
light, striking clearly on her face, revealed it as small, pale, and
plain, with a tight line of lip, and eyes sombrely staring at
nothing. She made no attempt to lift her sodden skirt or avoid
puddles.
Walking heavily forward through the early dusk, she was advancing to
meet the giant Despair.
This was on her mind, and, to the observant eye, in her face. Celia
knew of only one way to evade the approaching giant. It was by the
turn that led to the river. Many people, in their terror at his
approach, took this turn. She had seen them in the morgue in the
days when she was new to Paris, and went about seeing the sights
like a tourist.
After the dealer on the Rue Bonaparte had given her back the
sketches, telling her it was impossible to sell them, she had turned
downward toward the _quais_, and came out there, under the skeleton
trees, where the book-stalls line the wall. The dark, slumberous
current of the river swept by under the gemmed arches of its
bridges. It was carrying away all the foul and useless things of the
day’s tumultuous life, all going helter-skelter, pell-mell, to the
oblivion of the sea.
She thought of herself going with them, whirling about in the
currents, serenely indifferent to everything that tortured her now.
The thought had a creeping fascination. She drew nearer, staring
down at the water, stabbed with hundreds of quivering lights, and
saw herself--a face, a trail of hair, a few folds of eddying
drapery--go floating by. A sudden gust of wind snatched at her
umbrella, and shook a deluge from the tree boughs, fretting the
surface of the pools. It roused her, and she turned away shuddering.
She would wait and meet the Giant face to face.
As she turned into the _impasse_ where her studio was, she felt that
he was getting very near. The long walk had tired her. Since
yesterday her only food had been the free tea at the Girls’ Club.
Her door was the last on the left-hand side, and broke the face of
what looked a blank wall. Near it a bell-handle hung on the end of a
wire. On the fourth floor she opened a door that had her card nailed
to it.
The studio was dark, only the large window showed a dim, gray
square. She lit the lamp, and then, suddenly, in the recklessness of
her desperation, the fire. There were eight pieces of wood and six
briquettes in the box. She would burn them all. She would burn the
bed and the chairs, but she would be warm to-night. To-morrow was
twelve hours off.
The light showed the emptiness of the chill, barn-like room. The
walls alone were furnished, decorated with a series of life-class
studies, some made twenty years before, when she had been the star
of one of the Julians. Now these spirited delineations of nakedness,
unlovely and unabashed, offered silent testimony to the brilliant
promise of Celia Reardon’s youth. To-night she only thought of the
fire and cowered over it--a little, pale shadow of a woman, near
upon middle age.
For hours she sat watching the flames dart up through the holes in
the briquettes. The warmth consoled her. She grew dreamy and
retrospective. Her thoughts went slipping back from point to point,
in the glamourous past, when she had been hung in the Salon, and
sold her pictures, and was an artist people spoke of who would some
day “arrive.” From those radiant days of youth and hope, things had
been gradually declining to this--one by one stand-bys failing and
her old patrons leaving, rich Americans who ordered copies growing
scarcer and scarcer. Finally no money to hire models, bad food, and,
in consequence, declining health, poor work that failed to find a
market; pride coming to her aid and withdrawing her from the help of
friends; furtive visits to the Mont de Piete, and more dreaded ones
to the dealers on the Rue Bonaparte; and to-night the end of all
things.
It was late when she slept. Waking in the gray dawn she found
herself lying cramped and cold in front of the white ashes of the
fire, and crept shivering to bed. There she slept on till after
midday. She felt weak and stupid when she rose, and her dressing
took a long time. She began to realize that her state was nearly as
bad physically as it was financially.
It was better to walk about the streets till the hour for tea than
to freeze in the studio. She put on her hat and jacket, relics of
better days to which she desperately clung, and went forth. In the
night the thermometer had fallen and the rain had turned to snow.
She buried her chin in her collar and tried to walk briskly. She
thought she would go to the Louvre, which was warm, and sit there
till four, when she could come back to the Girls’ Club. Both walks
were long, but the hour’s rest at the Louvre would strengthen her,
and there was still the faint possibility of meeting some one she
knew who would order a copy.
She felt singularly tired when the long flank of Catharine de’
Medici’s part of the old palace came into view with the river
sucking at the wall. All the surroundings were gray and motionless
like a picture, and in the midst of this dead immobility the swift,
turbulent tide rolled on, a thing of sinister life, calling to her
as it sped. Midway across the bridge she stopped to look down on it,
and then stood gazing, fascinated, unable to tear herself away.
Close to her, on the coping of the wall, an image-seller had set out
his wares. They were a dream of fair women, classic and modern. The
solemn majesty of the great Venus was contrasted with Phryne hiding
her eyes in a spasm of modesty. Clytie, with the perfect fall of her
shoulders, rising from the lily leaves that fold back as if
unwilling to hide so much beauty, stood droopingly beside the proud
nakedness of Falguière’s Diane. The boy who presided over this
gallery of loveliness--a meagre Italian, his face nipped with
frost--stood a hunched-up, wretched figure, his eyes questioning the
passers-by.
Presently one of these halted in the hurrying march with an eye on
Clytie. The boy drew his hands from his pockets, and with piteous
eagerness held out the bust. The tones of his voice penetrated
Celia’s dark musings, and she looked that way.
The buyer was a lady, young, and of a curiously soft and silly
prettiness. She displayed all of a Parisienne’s flawless finish. Her
cheek, by art or nature, was like a magnolia petal; her hair showed
burnished on its loose ripples. Beneath the edge of her veil her
uncovered mouth appeared, fresh as a child’s, serious, and
charmingly foolish. Her chin rested on a fluff of white tulle and
was a white of a warmer tint. There was dubious debate in her glance
as it paused on the figures. She looked the incarnation of sweet
indecision. Presently she decided on Clytie, and said she would take
it with her. Celia knew she had bought the head from a sudden,
careless pity for the boy’s red nose and chilblains. If _she_ had
peddled sketches on the bridge, with her nose red and her toes
coming through her boots, she, too, would have made money, she
thought, as she hungrily wondered how much the boy had made by his
sale.
The lady unclasped the little bag that hung by a chain to her wrist,
and searched for money. She was evidently careless, and carried many
things therein. Suddenly she jerked out a whisp of
pocket-handkerchief, and under it found the _cache_ where the money
had been secreted. She bent her face to search for the desired coin,
and so did not see that with the handkerchief a five-franc piece had
been twitched out.
Celia did see. She saw it spring out, and then drop into a bank of
snow, noiselessly, as if purposely to avoid detection. She made a
step forward to pick it up and return it. And then she stopped--a
thought went through her like a zigzag of lightning. Cupidity, born
of hunger, burst into life in her, and nailed her to the spot, her
mouth dry, her eyes vacant of expression. For the first time in her
life Temptation gripped her.
The traditions of generations of seemly New England forbears cried
out upon her and struggled within her. But she stood her ground. The
coin lying in the snow seemed of more importance to her than
everything else in the world.
As the lady passed away, Celia drew near the images. The boy was
rearranging them. When his back was turned she bent down and groped
in the snow. Then rose with her face red.
She crushed down the shame that surged in her, and turned to leave
the bridge. There is a Duval on the Boulevard St. Germain, and she
almost ran to it, thinking as she went of what she would order. She
would spend two francs and a half, allowing a twenty-five centime
_pourboire_ for the girl.
It was not the crowded hour, and she had no need to hurry. She ate
sumptuously and slowly, and began to feel the revivifying tide of
life flowing back into her starved body. The Giant began to look dim
and distant. The river called no more. In the leisurely French
fashion she sat a long time over her meal. The day was darkening to
its early twilight as she emerged and fared down the boulevard.
She was walking slowly down the great street, her body warmed, the
cries of her hunger stilled, when the enormity of her act began to
force itself upon her. She refused to acknowledge it at first.
Hunger was sufficient excuse. But not so much her conscience as her
sense of dainty self-respect insisted on her shame. She was a thief.
Her whiteness was stained forever. She had never before done
anything for which to blush or to lie. Her poverty, her
discouragement, her pitiful, proud struggles, had always been
honest. She would as soon have thought of murdering some one as of
stealing from them.
Now she had done it. One moment’s temptation had marked her forever.
As the money had fallen into the snow something in her had fallen,
never to rise.
Pursued by harassing thoughts, she half-unconsciously wended her way
toward the river. Here, unencumbered by houses, daylight still
lingered. The gray afternoon was dying with a frosty brilliance. In
its death throes it exhaled a sudden, angry red which broke through
the clouds in smoldering radiance. Its flush tinted the sky and
touched the tops of the wavelets, and Celia felt it on her face like
the color of shame.
As she stood staring at it, her pallor glazed with an unnatural
blush, an inspiration came to her which sent a tide of real color
into her face. A manner of redeeming herself suddenly was revealed
to her. She would give the rest of the money to the most needy
person she met that evening. She would walk the city till she found
some one more deserving of it than she. Then she would give all she
had--share her theft with some other pauper to whom two francs would
mean salvation.
She felt instantly stimulated and revived by a return of
self-respect. Either side of the river would be rich in case of
heartbreak and hunger. Standing in the middle of the bridge, she
looked from the straight line of gray houses on the Quai Voltaire to
the vast façade of the Louvre. Then some whim impelled her to choose
the side of the city where wealth dwells, and she walked forward
toward the _guichets_ of the old palace.
The city had on the first phase of its evening aspect of brilliantly
illumined gayety. People were dining; she caught glimpses of them
over the half-curtains of restaurant windows. Women in voluminous
wraps were making mincing exits from the hotel doorways to waiting
fiacres. There was the _frou-frou_ of skirts, whiffs of perfumery,
the shifting of many feet under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli.
Passing the entrance of one of the largest hotels, she was arrested
by a familiar voice, and a richly clad and rustling lady deflected
her course from the carriage that awaited her at the curb toward the
astonished artist. Celia felt a curious sensation of fatefulness
when she saw in the face before her that of an old patron, long
absent from Paris. The lady gave her a warm greeting; she wanted to
see her to-morrow, apropos of some copies to be made. Had Celia time
to make the copies? Well, then, would she come to lunch to-morrow
and talk it over?
The little artist blinked in the glare of the doorway and the lady’s
diamonds. She would.
And now would she go to the theatre with the lady? Only her niece
was with her, and they had a box.
No--Celia could not do that. She had--er--business--business that
might keep her up very late.
The carriage rolled away with the lady and the niece, and Celia
turned up one of the side streets that lead to the great boulevard.
So Fortune was going to smile on her once more. All the more reason
to square things with her conscience. She grasped her purse tightly
and looked about her as she passed up the narrow thoroughfare.
Misery often lurked ashamed in corners. She knew just how and why.
A few moments more walking, with an occasional turn into cross-cuts,
brought her into the spacious widening of the ways before the Gare
St. Lazare. It was particularly lively inside the depot inclosure,
as the boat train for Calais was soon to leave. There was an
incessant rattling of carriages piled high with trunks, and a great
disgorging of travelers, who ran staggering up the steps weighted
with the amazing amount of hand luggage indispensable to the
Continental tourist.
Certainly it did not look a promising place in which to seek
distressed humanity. Celia turned away and began to walk upward
toward the street which flanks the building on the left, and winds
an ascending course toward Montmartre. It was badly lit, sheltered
by the vast blank wall of the depot, and showed only an occasional
passer-by, and the lamps of a long line of waiting fiacres.
As she advanced into the semi-obscurity of this dark byway, a
carriage rattled up and stopped precipitately near the side entrance
into the yard. A man sprang out and then turned with a sort of
elaboration of gallantry and helped out a woman. Celia idly noted
her trim foot as it felt for the step, her darkly clad, elegant
figure, then her face. It came with a shock of familiarity on its
smooth, rounded prettiness; now, however, no longer placid, but
deeply disturbed. Under it unwonted currents of feeling were
corrugating the brow and making the lips droop. Only an eye used to
note faces would have recognized it as that of the woman who had
bought the head of Clytie a few hours before.
Celia loitered, and then drew back into the shadow of the wall. The
woman was evidently in the grip of mental distress. Apprehension,
indecision, terror almost, were stamped on her mobile and childish
countenance. The man stretched his hand inside the carriage and
pulled out two valises. He spoke to her, shortly but with slightly
veiled tenderness, and with a start like a frightened animal she
drew back into the shadow. He paid the driver, and then, standing
between the bags, he drew out his pocket-book and gave her some
murmured instructions.
She suddenly interrupted him in a louder key.
“I have my ticket,” she said, “I bought it this afternoon. I passed
Cook’s, and went in and bought it.”
“You bought it yourself?” giving her a fatuously loving look from
under his hat-brim, “you were afraid we would perhaps be late? Dear
one, how thoughtful!”
“I don’t know what I thought. Oh, yes, I do. I thought if I went in
to buy it here with you I might see some one I knew. That would be
so dreadful.”
“Of course, you must not go in with me. You must wait here. Keep
back in the shadow there while I’m gone.”
“Here--take it--Oh, I’m so nervous! Take it, and get yours, and then
come back.”
She feverishly clawed off the little bag she wore on her wrist, and
thrust it into his hand. Though less obviously so, the man was also
nervous. He clutched up his valises, and put them down; then glanced
uneasily up and down the street’s dim length.
“I’ll go alone and buy mine,” he said, “and put the bags in the
compartment. I’ll be gone a few moments. You wait here, and don’t
move till I come for you.”
“Oh, of course, not. I shouldn’t dare. And please hurry. I don’t see
how I will ever be able to get in. At any moment I might meet some
one I know. Think of what that would be! I had no idea this was
going to be so terrible. It’s not easy to do wrong.”
“Do wrong?” echoed the man, in a tone of tender, though somewhat
hurried, reproof. “Don’t say such foolish things. We have a right to
happiness. Oh--er--haven’t you got a veil you could put on when you
enter the Gare? It would be better.”
A bell rang within the building, and the woman gave a suppressed
shriek.
“Oh, go--go!” she cried wildly. “Don’t stop to talk now. That may be
the train. What would happen if we missed it?”
The bell struck him into action, too, and he hurried off, swaying
between the two heavy valises.
Celia, from her station near the wall, was too smitten by the sudden
revelation before her to have will to move. So she was eloping, this
baby-cheeked creature, whose kindly impulse had prompted her to buy
the Clytie from the frost-nipped boy on the bridge. Without any
natural predisposition in that direction, she was going the way of
the Devil, and even at this stage stood aghast, bemused, and
terrified at what she had done.
The Frenchwoman moved forward into the light, and stood for a moment
watching her departing lover. Then she began to send fearful glances
up and down the street. Celia thought she could hear her breathing,
and the thumping of her heart. It was not hard to see how she had
been cajoled and overruled.
Suddenly, from the fullness of her heart her mouth spoke: “Oh, I
want to go home.” She spoke aloud, making at the same moment a
gesture of clasping her hands. Her face took on an expression as
near to resolution as possible. Its flower-soft curves stiffened.
Her lover was gone, and her hypnotized will was struggling to life.
She turned desperately toward the line of carriages and beckoned to
the _cocher_ of the nearest one, then dropped the raised hand to her
wrist, where the bag had hung. It encountered nothing, and in a
moment she remembered that her purse was with the man.
“Good God!” she said, and this time the violent Gallic ejaculation
sounded appropriate.
As the carriage rattled up, Celia came out of the shadow. She spoke
excellent French, and the Parisienne might have thought her a
fellow-countrywoman. “What is the matter?” she said, quietly. “Do
you feel sick?”
“No--no--but my money is gone. I gave my purse to my friend, and now
I want to go back.”
“But he’ll be here again in a minute.”
“That’s just it--in a minute. And I must go before he comes back,
and I have no money.”
“You can always pay the _cocher_ at the house.”
“Not now--not to-night.”
She was far past a regard for the ordinary reticences of every-day
life, but the humiliation of her admission was in her face. “My
husband--he’s there, with only one old servant. He thinks I’m in the
country with my mother. So I was till this afternoon. If I come home
unexpectedly with no money to pay the _cocher_, he will be
surprised. He will be angry. He will want to know all about it--I
can’t explain it or tell more lies. I was mad when I said I’d go. I
didn’t realize--Oh, good heavens!” with a sudden burst of agonized
incoherence, “here he is! He’s coming and that will be the end of
me.”
Celia turned. Against the bright background of the depot entrance
she saw the Frenchman’s thick-set figure coming rapidly down the
steps. He had got rid of the valises, and was almost running.
“Quick,” she said, and turning to the waiting carriage wrenched open
the door.
“Get in,” she commanded. The terrified creature did so. She was
ready to be dominated by any imperious will. Celia stretched her arm
through the window, and into the little gloved hand pressed the
two-franc piece, then cried:
“You can tell the _cocher_ the address when you get started. Don’t
stop him till you get some way off. Go,” she cried to the man, “down
by the Rue Auber--don’t waste a minute. Fly!”
The _cocher_ flicked his horse with the whip, and it started. At the
window a pale face appeared, and Celia heard the cry: “But your
name, your address? I must send the money back.”
“Never mind that,” cried Celia, “it isn’t mine. It’s conscience
money.”
The fiacre rolled down the street, and, plunging into the mêlée of
vehicles, wound its way through the press to the Rue Auber. A man
standing on the sidewalk drew the stares of the passers-by as he
gazed blankly this way and that. A woman quietly picked her way
across the _carrefour_, toward the station where one takes the
Vaugirard omnibus.
THE JACK-POT
By Charles Dwight Willard
There were five of us in the party--six, counting Long Tom, the
guide. After two days’ hard climbing, which the _burros_ endured
with exemplary fortitude, we arrived at the little valley high up in
the mountains, through which threaded the trout-stream.
“Jest you all go over into the cabin there and make yourself
comf’ble, while I ’tend to gettin’ this stuff unpacked,” said Long
Tom; “there ain’t no one there. My pardner, he’s down below.”
“The cabin appears to be two cabins,” said the colonel, as we
approached it.
“That is for economy in ridge-poles,” said the doctor; “sleeping
apartments on one side and kitchen on the other. In the space
between, you keep your fishing-tackle and worms.”
We entered the right-hand section of the twin cabin, which proved to
be the kitchen side. There was not much furniture--a table of hewn
logs, a chair of bent saplings, and a rough bench.
However, we did not notice such furniture as there was, for each
member of the party, as he stepped over the high threshold, had his
attention instantly attracted by the stove, and a brief roundelay of
ejaculations went along the group.
“Well, that staggers me,” said the stock-broker.
“H’m,” said the professor, in a mysterious tone, and rubbed his
chin.
The stove was a plain, small cooking-range, rather old and rusty.
The strange thing about it was its position. Its abbreviated legs
stood upon large cedar posts, which were planted in the floor and
were over four feet in height. This brought the stove away up in
mid-air, so that the top was about on a level with the face of the
colonel, and he was a six-footer.
We formed in a circle about the stove and stared at it as solemnly
as a group of priests around a sacrificial tripod. We felt of the
posts--they were firm and solid, showing that the mysterious
arrangement was a permanent, not a temporary, one. Then we all bent
our necks and opened our mouths to look up at the hole in the roof,
through which the stove-pipe vanished.
Suddenly the stock-broker burst out into a laugh.
“Oh, I understand it now,” said he.
“Understand what?” asked the colonel, sharply.
“Why Long Tom has his stove hoisted up so high from the floor.”
“So do I,” said the doctor; “but I suspect that my explanation is
not the same that any one else would offer.”
“Well, I will bet that I am right,” said the stock-broker, “and put
up the money.”
“I am in this,” said the judge; “I have a clear idea about that
stove and will back it.”
“Make it a jack-pot,” said the colonel; “I want to take a hand.”
The stock-broker drew a small yellow coin out of his pocket and
dropped it on the table.