“Mr. Merrington,” she flashed, “if you will swim back to the shore, I

shall follow you at an agreeable distance.”

“You have given me the slip once,” he said, slowly. “I am acting _ex

officio_; I fear I must be the judge of the agreeableness of the

distance.” Abruptly his banter fell from him. The dancing light in his

large eyes darkened into intensity. “Won’t you let me see you safely

in, Miss Selwyn?”

“Have your own way, then,” she said, with swift impatience, turning

toward the land. Merrington kept but an arm’s-length between them.

As they came out of the water, a little distance apart, a tall woman

separated herself from a group standing to one side, and bore down upon

Jacqueline.

“What a fright you have given us!” she cried. “I came down to the

beach to find you, and found instead everyone watching your rescue in

mid-ocean. Who was your deliverer?”

“Be sensible, Peggie. I do not know who it was that drove me in by his

officious intrusion.”

“Intrusion! Good gracious, Jacqueline, do you think you own the

Atlantic?”

Mrs. Le Moyne turned to look at the man, who, having accomplished his

purpose, was making his way to the stand of the guard once more. She

gave a little cry of surprise, which arrested his attention.

“Geoffrey! Where in the world did you come from?”

“Peggie!” Merrington cried, gleefully. “You don’t mean to say you’re

here?”

“I never make useless remarks, Geoffrey. How good you are looking! Of

course I needn’t introduce you now to Miss Selwyn. Jacqueline, this is

Mr. Merrington, my only and best cousin.”

Jacqueline bowed stiffly, without looking up. She was wringing the

water from the skirt of her suit.

“Of course,” Mrs. Le Moyne laughed, “it’s absurd to introduce people

that have been across seas together, but Jacqueline said she didn’t

know you, Geof. When did you come down, and where are you? But it

doesn’t matter. You must come to my cottage. I am just next door to

Jacqueline--plenty of room for you.”

Merrington looked at the girl, who apparently did not hear. In a

moment she turned, and joined the group which Mrs. Le Moyne had

forsaken.

“She will never forgive me for intruding upon her out there,”

Merrington said, indicating the sea by a sidewise motion of his head.

“She was really in danger, but wouldn’t acknowledge it.”

“And you want her to forgive you! I can see that with half an eye. What

a boy you are still, for all your body and legs! Have you let her see

that you care for her?”

“Hold on, there,” he laughed, folding his arms as he stood dripping

before her. “Don’t be in such a hurry.”

She looked him over carefully.

“Of course you made love to her more or less earnestly,” she said,

frankly. “It may only have been with your eyes, but it is a tendency

you can’t resist. The only trouble is, you never mean it.”

“If I did, Peggie, she would have none of me, and I did not mean to,

because----”

“Why?”

“I should rather do it to better purpose later on.”

“Really!” laughed his cousin. “That is the first time I’ve ever known

you willing to put any purpose in the indulgence.”

The gravity of his manner made her serious also.

“Peggie, old girl, this is the first time the indulgence has become a

necessity.”

Mrs. Le Moyne glanced over the wide beach, and above, at the almost

deserted board walk. Her party had withdrawn under the shade of the

promenade, and the bathers had all disappeared. She and Merrington were

alone except for a few outstretched figures, their faces covered with

newspapers. She turned to her companion.

“Go and get on some clothes,” she said, a hint of amusement about her

eyes. “It’s absurd to talk love to a man in such a state of nature as

his bathing suit.”

II.

Merrington had not been slow to avail himself of Mrs. Le Moyne’s

invitation to transfer his things from the hotel to her cottage. Any

hesitation he might have felt at abandoning the bachelor freedom of the

public hostelry was quite overcome when she pointed out to him, from

the windows of the room she offered, a view of the Selwyn cottage, just

across a plot of trimly kept grass.

For the first few days the move did not seem to profit him any in his

desire to see more of Jacqueline. Once he had met her on her way to the

beach, and she had given him a bare nod of recognition. Now and again

he caught glimpses of her on the neighboring veranda, but she never let

her glances stray in the direction of Mrs. Le Moyne’s cottage. Several

times when he had passed her on the board walk at the promenade hour,

she had not cared to notice him, and never with anything but a bow so

formal as to make it evident that she did not cut him entirely merely

because of his cousin’s introduction. Merrington knew, for the first

time in his enviable life, the pangs of misprized love.

His cousin was watching the course of his malady with interest.

“What do you know about Jacqueline?” she asked him one morning, as they

sat upon their veranda, and in response to his reiterated determination

to conquer that young lady’s aversion and make her his wife.

Merrington leaned forward, his boyish face radiant, the bronze of his

skin dark against the white suit he wore. His cousin let her eyes rest

on him with an admiration he was too modest to detect.

“Nothing and everything,” he returned, after a time. “She is the most

striking girl I’ve ever seen. She is plucky and daring and defiant.”

“Charming qualities for a wife! Is that all?”

“I can’t put the rest in words,” he answered, coloring swarthily.

Just then the latch of the Selwyns’ front gate clicked, and Jacqueline

appeared on the shaded street. Peggie came to a speedy resolution.

“Jacqueline!” she cried. “Wait a minute until I get my hat. I want to

join you.”

As the girl stopped at the foot of the path, Merrington went briskly

toward her. She met him with grave annoyance.

“We have become near neighbors, Miss Selwyn.” There was not a trace of

nervousness in the clear tones.

“That is a seaside perquisite. Asbury, especially, makes the whole

world kin.”

He could not have said that she was rude, but every word was a rebuff

and a disclaimer of intimacy. His instinct told him it was not rudeness

of which she was accusing him. So much, at least, had his introduction

to her wrought. The reflection made him smile genially, and she noted

how dazzling his even teeth were in his suntanned face.

“Miss Selwyn, I wish you would forgive me.”

“Really there is nothing to forgive. Do you think Mrs. Le Moyne has

forgotten me?”

“I am sure she has not. Do you know that is the first friendly remark

you have made me?”

He saw her brows arch themselves slightly while her glance sought him

an instant.

“To be frank with you,” she said, “I do not know that I meant it to be

particularly friendly.”

“It wasn’t, but you have been so particularly unfriendly.”

She flushed, turning long before she needed to greet Peggie, who came

leisurely down the walk with book and parasol, and tossed a cap to

Merrington.

“We are all going to listen to the music, isn’t that it?” she asked.

“The orchestra is really worth hearing this year--too good, indeed, for

the crowd that goes to the pavilions.”

“I am going in the water,” Jacqueline said, laying an accent of defense

on the pronoun. They walked on together, Peggie in the middle.

“Let us all go,” Merrington urged. “It is a gorgeous day. The sea is

absolutely singing to us.”

When they reached the board walk, the sea stretched out before them

resplendent in the sun. There were a few bathers at the upper lines,

but lower down, the beach could be seen already dotted by the patrons

of the more central baths. In the glare of the hot sun the walk was

empty, but in the grateful coolness of the pavilions many had gathered

to hear the music. Peggie espied an acquaintance on the platform above

them, and ran thither. Jacqueline was plainly provoked.

“If Peggy deserts us,” Merrington said, sententiously, “why should we

not desert Peggie?”

Jacqueline frowned.

“Need I detain you?” she asked. “I was coming here alone when your

cousin stopped me. That is, I mean, I was going in the water. I had no

intention of stopping in this sunless dampness.”

“I hate it, too. Why should we stop?”

The girl looked at him intently, her heart quickening with an emotion

that she could not have defined, so complex was it, indeed, of

many emotions. Mingled with her anger and annoyance was an almost

imperceptible tremor of fear which made her catch her breath.

Merrington waited patiently for her answer. There was nothing in the

bold squareness of his youthful attitude to betoken the uncertainty

of mind in which she was holding him. On the contrary, he smiled with

well-assumed assurance, his eyes frankly admiring in their gaze.

Jacqueline spoke, suppressing partially her irritation:

“How dull you must be finding the time! Do you know no one down here?”

“I have forgotten time and people.” The meaning in his look and voice

sent the blood to the girl’s face. She glanced about her uneasily, but

Peggie’s back, and the animation with which she was talking to her

friends, gave no encouragement. She turned, impulsively.

“Come,” she said, imperiously enough. “We will go in the water for a

little while.”

To Merrington’s surprise, when he appeared on the beach in his

swimming suit, Jacqueline was already in the surf. This tacit

avoidance of him banished the smile from his lips for a moment as her

more positive combativeness had not been able to do.

That he was really in love at last, Merrington knew beyond the

possibility of a doubt. He knew it, because in all the twenty-six years

of his petted life he had never experienced anything like this peaceful

elation underlying all the tremor of his senses. Jacqueline disdained

him; he recognized that fact, but it caused him no more genuine

annoyance than the breaking upon him, when he entered the surf that was

now rolling in before him, of the waves which his manhood delighted to

buffet and overcome. For much favoring had never spoiled the sweetness

of his character, and he met resistance with a healthy determination.

He strolled into the surf, and a great billow lifted Jacqueline into

his arms. He held her firmly as another followed close upon.

“I hate the surf,” she gasped, blinded and helpless. “It does exactly

with you what you do not want.”

“Do you think so? Now rise to this one.”

He lifted her over a magnificent roller, turning to watch it break, and

sweep inward the less daring bathers near shore.

“Why did you not wait for me?” he asked.

“I never for a moment thought it necessary.”

He looked delighted.

“Is it very hard for you to accept the inevitable, Miss Selwyn?”

“In what way, Mr. Merrington?”

“In the way of my devotion?”

She hesitated, not daring to take him seriously. He still held her

hands, and the depth of the water at its smoothest was up to her neck

as they stood.

“We must look like a pair of jumping-jacks from the shore,” she said,

with a swift remembrance of his deserved punishment at her hands, and

of their present position. His strong muscles never seemed to tire

of lifting her to each succeeding billow. She hardly knew how her

reticence had slipped from her, but now, at the risk of being bowled

over by a wave, she released her hands from his. He turned back with

her.

“Do not let me take you in,” she said, politely formal. “You have had

no swim at all.”

“There is always the ocean,” he replied.

III.

It was easier for Jacqueline to assure herself that she would

discourage Merrington’s obvious attentions than it was in fact possible

for her to do so. With every meeting she was finding it harder to hold

her own against him.

It was his imperturbable good nature that defeated her. If she could

have provoked him to anger or even to moodiness, she would have found

it easier to forgive his original offense. Moreover, underlying all of

the determined deference of his bearing to her, there was that which

brought an undefined thrill of fear, that touch of primitive mastery in

his wooing with which a man of strong virility may yet transfuse his

personality through the pallid conventions of the centuries. It was but

a small consolation that she could still deny him the invitation to

call upon her at her father’s house, without which even so frequent an

intercourse as theirs had become remained but a street acquaintance.

Things had reached this pass when, one Saturday afternoon, Jacqueline

found herself threading her way among the crowds that packed the

station awaiting the incoming trains from New York, bringing their

loads of week-end guests. As she wedged her way to the front, a little

bewildered by the jam, she espied Merrington’s broad shoulders at the

outermost edge of the crowd. At the same instant he saw her, and in a

moment was beside her.

“This is worse than the breakers,” he said, with a nod of his capped

head at the surging crowd, “and almost as dangerous, and, of course,

you are to be found at the outer verge.”

“Do you think they all have friends coming? What an elastic place it

is!”

“Mere idle curiosity brings many of them, a summer idleness to see new

faces. It brought me.”

“I came to meet a cousin,” she said, a little sharply.

“Then I shall be handy with bag and baggage. Even in these days, I

believe, ladies carry things when they travel.”

Jacqueline looked at his gray eyes with an expression that baffled him.

At length she spoke.

“My cousin happens to be a man. He doubtless will carry the regulation

dress-suit case, which he is quite able to manage himself.”

Merrington let her irony pass unnoticed.

“How little you have allowed me to learn about you,” he said, holding

her sunshade so as to break the glare in her eyes, “and we have known

each other--how long?”

“Over two weeks,” she replied, instantly, and then shut her lips tight,

coloring crimson.

“And it seems to me for always. Do you think time has anything to do

with feelings of intimacy?”

“Oh, yes. There is the summer-time intimacy which the cool weather

and return to town put an end to.” She leaned past him with regained

composure, looking down the cinder-strewn tracks, over the shining

rails of which heat devils shimmered upward.

“You are thinking of the summer girl and her beaux,” he said, softly.

“I wasn’t.”

“Neither was I.”

“Tell me about your cousin,” he asked, demurely. “Isn’t it strange that

you and Peggie should both have cousins?”

“My cousin is a very nice man. He is not a bit like you.” Then her

audacity wavered. “He is very blond. Is the train late?”

“I hope so.”

“I hope not.”

It was not, and in a minute more it rolled in, distractingly long and

overflowing with eager passengers.

“How shall I ever find him?” Jacqueline cried, in dismay. “He may be

already out of a dozen cars and lost in the mob, and he doesn’t know

the way.”

“What is he like?” Merrington asked.

“Oh, he is tall, like you, and square-shouldered and very good-looking,

only his hair isn’t like yours.”

“Then I’m to look for some one like me with blond hair, is that it?”

“Of course not,” she exclaimed, indignantly. “He isn’t at all like you,

but you offered to help, and you are tall.”

Merrington, curiously happy, he could not just know why, looked around

over the sea of people.

“There is some one I know with yellow hair,” he said, presently.

“I wouldn’t acknowledge it if I did,” Jacqueline replied, with stiff

propriety, but for once Merrington was unmindful of her words, and was

waving his hand with facile grace above his head.

“There’s Dick, now!” the girl cried, as a tall, blond young fellow bore

down upon them; then she stood still in amazement as the two men seized

hands. “You two know each other!” she exclaimed.

“Know each other! I should say we did. Didn’t we ‘do’ Europe together

for a year, and then dine with each other the night we got home? How’s

that for a test, Jack?”

“Splendid,” Jacqueline responded, but she was not feeling very

comfortable.

When they reached the waiting trap, and Merrington had helped

Jacqueline up, Brinton turned to his friend.

“Where are you staying?”

“My cousin, Peggie Le Moyne, is down here. I am with her.”

In spite of her reluctance, Jacqueline spoke.

“Mrs. Le Moyne’s cottage is next door to ours, Dick.”

“Good!” exclaimed Brinton. “I say, Jack, have him over to dinner

to-night.”

Jacqueline turned to Merrington. “Will you come?” she asked, a lovely

smile adding to the beauty of her blushes.

Merrington hesitated. He felt that the invitation had been forced.

“Peggie will spare you,” Jacqueline urged, “and old friends do not turn

up every day.”

“Thank you,” said Merrington. “I will come.”

IV.

“You are a very lucky young man,” said Peggie Le Moyne to her cousin,

when he had told her of the invitation. “Of course Jacqueline was

cornered, and gave it perforce, but there is a potency in hospitality

that works both ways. Besides, when a man has seen a woman in her home

she can never be altogether formal to him again.”

“I feel as though I were sneaking in through the back door, all the

same,” Merrington replied, more moodily than was his wont.

Notwithstanding his misgivings, Jacqueline met her guest with a

graciousness that made her adorable in his sight. Driven from her

vantage ground though she was by her cousin’s outspoken invitation to

Merrington, there was no hint of anything but cordiality in her welcome.

It was her more strictly feminine side that she exhibited that evening.

There was nothing about her save the delicate tan of her skin to remind

Merrington that the girl of the surf and sun-flooded beach was one with

the dainty and charming woman in the trailing muslin, with the soft

masses of her hair dark above the small head.

“Why did you never mention to me your friendship with my cousin?” she

asked him after dinner, finding herself for the moment alone with him

in the dimly lit parlor. He answered with native frankness:

“You never encouraged me to talk about myself, and, to tell you the

truth, I never thought of anyone when with you--except yourself.”

“Dick has been telling me of your long friendship.”

“It has never brought me anything that I would less wish to part with

than this pleasure to-night.”

“I do not know,” she said, musingly, yet with a precision nearer

akin to her former treatment of him than she had shown that evening,

“that pleasures are what we should value most in our friendships. You

remember what Burns says about them?”

“Is that a hint or a threat?” he asked, smiling.

She colored slowly and threw him a question that changed the subject.

“Will you go with Dick and me to see the mob to-night? He does not know

the delights of this place. Indeed, I think he came down resigned to

boredom, until he met you.” She appealed to Brinton for confirmation of

her remark as he sauntered in.

“Don’t make me fib after a full dinner, Jack,” he protested. “Besides,

it isn’t anything like what I expected.”

“There,” she laughed, rising; “but now we are going to take you out and

realize your expectations, Mr. Merrington and I.”

As they walked along under the pulsing stars, the void of the sea

broken before them in crested waves that gleamed ghostly, a strange

disinclination for speech beset Merrington. The fact that he could,

without any sense of restraint, rather with a feeling of intimacy

that sent delirious thrills along his veins, be with Jacqueline as

one sharing her mood and interest so surely that he turned to silence

in preference to words, placed, as it were, a bewitching perspective

to his love. The mood changed, indeed, by the time they reached the

crowded portion of the board walk, for it was not Merrington’s nature

to keep silence long in the midst of jollification, and the Saturday

night spirit was abroad. Moreover, he suddenly found himself alone with

Jacqueline.

“I never had a brother,” she remarked, coming to a standstill by the

railing of the walk, “but if they hold themselves any freer to do

cavalier things than cousins, I am glad I hadn’t.” She showed annoyance

in the glance she sent at the laughing party her cousin had joined.

“Maybe he will leave them soon,” she added.

“I hope not. I am sure he won’t. The taste of cousins and brothers is

always poor, but it is to be depended on.”

“You are right,” she said, severely. “He does not deserve to have us

wait for him.”

Under the lower pavilion, the band was playing a Hungarian rhapsody,

and the crowd had packed itself close to listen. Merrington followed

Jacqueline slowly through the current moving in the middle. She stopped

so abruptly that he pressed upon her, and steadied himself by a touch

upon her arm.

“Why should we go on?” she asked, facing him. “Dick is joined to his

idols, let him alone. Shall we walk back where we may be quiet? Or do

you care for the crowd?”

He did not heed her last question, so rapturous was the music of her

other. He led her through the slowly moving impact of people, impatient

until he might get her beyond and to himself. Neither said very much

until they were where the crowd ceased to make itself felt, and the

night reclaimed its darkness from the glare of the many electric lights

of the gala part of the town.

He was madly palpitant under the almost somber calm which he preserved

outwardly. His passion, like a fever long incubating, leaped suddenly

into full force by no conscious volition of his own. That evening,

with Jacqueline in her home, the spell of the woman with the halo of

domesticity around her had swept his love into an ardent desire--the

desire of the man to have the woman he loves in a home of his own. And

now he was with her alone under the throbbing stars, and something

other than her former intolerance of him was keeping Jacqueline

wordless. He knew that it was something very different, knew it by

the instinct of the lover, and his heart bounded at her silence. When

he spoke, Jacqueline shivered at the ground-roll of emotion which his

words seemed to break into a momentary surge.

“I am very glad that Brinton came today.”

She nodded, acquiescent. She had meant to speak, but the words stuck.

“When the avalanche is ready,” he murmured, “or the sea is at the

flood, a touch of nature’s breath--and the thing is done.”

“How prosaically you drop your figures,” she said, with a nervous

laugh. “What are you trying to say?”

“Jacqueline!”

She started away from him, her face, very white, turned to his.

“Do I frighten you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes held by his penetrating gaze.

Merrington smiled.

“And yet,” he said, so low that the words seemed to her almost as

breathing in her ears, “I would give every drop of blood, every fiber

in my body, to make you happy, for I love you with every drop of my

blood.”

“Mr. Merrington----” she began, but he cut her short.

“Listen to me,” he said, guiding her into the little balcony that

projected from the walk just where they were, and overhung the beach.

“No man, since man and woman were made for each other, has wanted a

woman more than I want you. Every bit of myself, body and soul, soul

and body, I offer you, Jacqueline, in return for your love.”

“I have no love for you,” she breathed, slowly.

“You must have. Such love as I have for you compels love in return.”

She looked away, struggling with herself. At last her words came,

strained and muffled.

“I have always disliked you. You know it.”

“I would rather have your love at once, of course,” he said, with a

patience that sat well upon his power, “but I am not afraid of your

dislike.” He held out his hands impulsively. “Jacqueline, you must be

my wife. You are going to be my wife.”

She was silent, accepting, with a dullness of compliance, the

overmastering sense of his determination, her will for the moment

existing as something benumbed within her. The dashing of the

sea beneath them broke through its own monotony, and, with her

consciousness of it, a remembrance of Merrington’s early words rushed

to her mind. She drew herself up with a snapping of the spell that had

held her.

“You told me once that you had never been conquered, but the days

are past when a man carries a wife by storm. Shall we go on, Mr.

Merrington?”

“Jacqueline, do you love me?”

She had started forward, but at the tense question, fell back against

the railing of the balcony. There was that in the calm of Merrington’s

manner that left her breathless.

“I believe you do love me in your heart of hearts,” he said, the

passion of his tones thrilling through the words, though he stood

rigidly erect before her. “You may not know it, but you do, and I am

going to make you know it, because I cannot live without your love,

which, being mine, you shall not keep from me.”

“Oh!” she cried, facing him at her full height, “how I hate you for

that! Love you! From the first moment you spoke to me I have disliked

you. You are a cave-dweller! A savage! Such men as you don’t want

wives. They want mates.”

V.

The next day Jacqueline was not on the beach, but as the day was

Sunday, and as he knew her aversion to holiday crowds, Merrington did

not take this as any indication that she especially desired to avoid

him. In the afternoon Peggie, who always did what she was wanted to

do without asking, proposed to her cousin that they stop with their

roadcart and take up Jacqueline and Brinton. But Jacqueline had a

headache, so Brinton said, as he mounted to the seat beside Peggie,

leaving Merrington in solitary state behind the grays all the way to

Seabright and back. When he dropped in casually that evening to see his

friend, Mr. Selwyn met him with the intelligence that Jacqueline and

her cousin had gone out for an informal tea with friends. Things began

to look serious. Peggie, whose ears and eyes had been open, hailed

Merrington as he sauntered slowly up her front walk.

“No one at home but papa, eh, Geof? I felt that headache of

Jacqueline’s was a bluff. What gave it to her?”

“Don’t ask questions,” he returned, a little disconsolately.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed, as he seated himself on the low railing before

her, “why did you do it in this heat? Men are so impatient.”

“It wasn’t anything I asked her. It was the statement of a fact that

offended.”

“Of course you told her you loved her, but that implied a question,

didn’t it?”

Merrington lit his pipe with deliberation. In the light of the match

Peggie saw his eyes, bright and humorous, fixed on her face.

“I told her she loved me,” he said, between puffs. “What does that

imply?”

“You didn’t!” was Peggie’s unsatisfactory answer. Then she was silent

for quite five minutes. She entirely approved, however, of his purpose,

expressed a little later, to go up to the city for a few days.

“And take my advice,” she said, rising to leave him, “and forget that

you ever laid eyes on Miss Selwyn. You’ve done the one unpardonable

thing in a woman’s sight.”

* * * * *

After his luncheon the next day, Merrington was aimlessly standing

on the corner of Broadway and Twenty-sixth Street when the clang of

bells and the shriek of a fire-engine whistle dashed the purposeless

hour with an instant’s interest. By some occult power, the drivers of

several coupés and hansoms, impelled by the same thought of safety and

curiosity, turned their vehicles into the short side street between

Broadway and Fifth Avenue, pausing there to see the engine tear by.

By a further process of this psychic power, one and all suddenly

became aware that the street they blocked was the street for which the

rapidly driven horses were heading. Merrington, with a quick thrill

of excitement, straightened his height, watching the now thoroughly

frenzied _impasse_. At that moment a swiftly driven hansom turned for

refuge into the congested street, the clatter and frantic signals of

the engine just behind. Then his heart leaped, and fell down, for the

girl in the hansom, heedless of her danger, was Jacqueline.

How he forced his way through the crowd that had gathered before him,

sprang before the rearing and terrified horses of the engine checked

in full flight, tore open the doors of the hansom and lifted out the

girl, Merrington could not have said. As he did so, however, the engine

tore on, carrying with it a wheel of the hansom. Jacqueline, white and

shaken, stood in his arms.

“You!” she gasped.

“I might say the same,” he answered, the blood coming back under his

bronze, but he seemed to speak with a very dry humor, indeed, for his

eyes were fixed upon her, dark almost beyond her recognition. Her own

drooped, as she shuddered slightly. “Don’t faint,” he begged, in quick

alarm. She shook her head.

“I thought you were down there,” she murmured.

“I came away that you might have the sea to yourself. That is, I

thought I came. It must be that I was sent.”

“I came away for the same reason,” she confessed. She was quite aware

that the colors of her resentment against him were flying very low, but

two things, at least, kept her humble. She had been badly frightened,

and her hat was awry. Somewhere about her there was a third reason

that, as she became conscious of it, made her abruptly stand away from

him and at once cloak her humility.

“I need not trouble you any more. You have been very good.”

His lips tightened grimly. He was not yet altogether over his alarm.

“You needn’t have troubled me at all--if you care to call it

trouble--for you need not have come to town at all. Your hansom is

wrecked, however. Shall I call another?”

“Let us walk,” she returned, with a meekness that made his heart throb

wildly.

Merrington dismissed the cabman, giving him such a tip and such a

berating for his carelessness that the man was left pondering whether

he was considered a hero or a fool. Jacqueline was looking on with a

new light in her regard. How big and strong he was, she thought. No

wonder he was so masterful. Her cheeks were flushed when he turned to

join her.

“Where is it?” he asked, taking his place beside her.

“Anywhere. I was just killing time.”

“And do you mean to say that thought of meeting me actually drove you

from one place to another?” The reproach in his voice fed her humility

hugely, but she even tilted her head back on the firmness of her neck,

and became perverse.

“I was really enjoying my day in town. I like to see New York

in midsummer. It is like meeting a woman you have known only

superficially, suddenly in negligée. Don’t you think so?”

“I had never thought of it in that way. Maybe my lack of experience

puts a damper on my imagination.”

She stopped with admirably feigned compunction.

“I am afraid I am keeping you from an engagement.”

“You are.”

She drew her brows together, puzzled, more hurt than provoked at his

candor. “Then please go,” she pleaded. “Was it very important?”

“Essentially so; to me, at least.”

She shrank somewhat from the look in his eyes, but held out her hand

with an accession of friendliness. The broad avenue was nearly deserted

at the moment.

“I have been thoughtless, but you said--that is, I thought you, too,

were just putting in your time to-day.” She smiled at him a little

shyly.

“The engagement I had in mind can’t possibly come to pass without you.”

He was holding her hand, and looking from it to her face, as though

uncertain of this new graciousness in her.

She laughed, attempting to withdraw her hand.

“Mr. Merrington, while no one in sight would suspect the absurdity of

our conversation, suppose we walk on.”

“Now, if I were that poor cave-dweller you likened me to,” he said,

not at all balking at the allusion, “I’d take you to the Little Church

Around the Corner.”

“Take me, anyway, will you not?” she surprised him by saying. “I am

fond of that little church.”

* * * * *

They were alone. Into the cool gloom the light of the outer day fell

through windows of exquisite dyes. Jacqueline sighed with a sense of

relief that was greater than she had anticipated. She made up her mind

that when she left the church she would go straight to the boat. In the

meantime, she felt sure that Merrington, if somewhat restless, would,

at least, not pursue his determined wooing.

It nonplused her to realize in what a different spirit she was

accepting that wooing. It did not seem to be within the range of her

emotions to summon up against him even a pale reflection of the fierce

anger with which she had met his first declaration, only two evenings

before. It was hard to believe that it had been only two evenings ago.

In some indefinable way, she knew him so much better to-day. During

the long hours of the previous day, when she had avoided him with

persistent purpose, her anger had not abated, nor yet this morning,

when she turned her back on the sea, and put the breach of other

surroundings between him and herself. Now she knew, with a warm wave of

color, that there had been no breach all this time in her thought of

him, even when she had most sought to have him think she was unmindful.

Under the force of this consideration, she slipped into a pew and sat

down, watching Merrington, as he stood with his back to her, a shaft

of topaz light outlining the firm, square cut of his profile and the

lithe blocking of his figure. Something in his attitude of vigorous yet

refined enjoyment of the painted window showed him to Jacqueline in a

new phase of his character.

He turned abruptly to appeal to her, and his hand rested on hers as it

lay on the top of the pew. She had withdrawn her glove, and the cool,

dry touch of his flesh affected her strangely. She rose quickly, but

her hand still lay beneath his.

The words he had been going to say died upon his lips. What he saw in

the girl’s face made him forget the art of the world in the magnetic

thrill of their young nature.

“It is another omen,” he murmured, his strong fingers closing about the

slimness of her hand. “Even unconsciously we find each other.”

For a moment she did not resist his pressure. Then she drew her hand

away. He noticed that she was paler than her wont.

“I am not a bit superstitious,” she said, softly but clearly. “I could

never detect an omen, good or bad.”

“I have the faculty. It will serve for both.”

“You are not religious.” She spoke with a hint of reproach in the

statement that was really to him a caress. He let her pass by him out

into the aisle, and walked with her toward the chancel, taking up her

words.

“I am reverent, and I love.”

She shook her head, but made no other answer. Her heart was beating

until she dared not speak, and she walked on because she dared not

stop. In the extreme corner of the chapel-like annex she came to a

standstill, facing him with a timidity that appealed unnoticed.

Merrington himself had followed, his senses tingling and his vision a

blur. When they stopped, his heart flamed into words.

“Do you not see that it must be, because it is?” Resting both hands on

the backs of the pews between which she stood, he held her prisoner.

She implored him silently.

“You think I am not in earnest, that I am impetuous, that I do not know

you, do not know my own mind, perhaps. I did not need to know you as

the social man knows women. At the first moment I spoke to you I knew

what it had been that, ever since I first saw you, had filled me with

a newness, a joy, a something that has no name because it underlies

and embraces all things--love, love, the love of a soul for a soul,

of a heart for a heart, of a man for the woman of all women for him.

Jacqueline!”

He bent to see her averted face, but she held up her hand, entreating.

He seized it in his own.

“That avalanche I spoke of the other night is started again. You did

not stop it. You cannot stop it. If you do not hear me now, the moment

will come at another time. It is the fulfillment of my being, to love

you as you never dreamed of love, as no one else will ever love you,

and to tell you so, over and over again, until it is music in your

ears.”

He was close to her. In the gathering twilight of the church her face

seemed very white, and she was watching his lips with a species of

enchantment. She did not see the ardor in his eyes that made them glow

as with fire, but as he ceased speaking, her lashes quivered and fell.

“I shall never give you up,” he whispered, his lips near her ear. “The

bud comes no surer to the tree, the rose comes no surer from the bud,

than my love will awaken love in you. Is it not so?”

The swift color darkened her face to the heavy shadow about her brow,

and she pressed her hand against his breast resistingly. But at the

touch he took her in his arms.

“Jacqueline,” he cried, “tell me that you love me.”

She lay very still, suddenly finding it good to be thus vanquished.

“Jacqueline,” he repeated, and bent his head to catch her words.

“You are a tyrant, but I am afraid I do.”

And then, his lips on hers, their world stood still.

THE INCOMPATIBILITY _of the_ CATHERWOODS

BY VIRGINIA NILES LEEDS

[Illustration]

When Katherine Corning married Dick Catherwood people predicted they

would not live together five years, and they didn’t. The five years

were up and so was the marriage.

Dick was the most charming fellow in the world, when you were not

married to him. As a companion for life he was intolerable. He was

far handsomer than a Greek god, but when you find your Greek god full

of mundane ungodliness you cannot help regretting that so much charm

should be wasted on merely outward appearance.

Yet, in spite of her thorough understanding of his character, Katherine

could not help going back sentimentally to the time she first met

and loved the man from whom she was now separated. He had attracted

her with a magnetism no other man had ever inspired. She _felt_ him

looking at the back of her head before she had ever seen his face. It

was at the opera, and later, when Mrs. Wesley introduced him, she knew

instinctively she had met her fate.

His wooing was prompt and picturesque. But possession with him was

_ennui_, and in the most childish fashion he ceased to prize the thing

he obtained, and treated it with as much indifference as he had sought

it with zeal.

Katherine, finding marriage an irremediable failure, had at length

resorted to that haven for the incompatibles--the divorce court.

From a crude Western town, where they had cyclones for breakfast, she

had only recently emerged, chastened in spirit and with a very formal

red-sealed document in her keeping.

It was what she had waited so patiently for, yet now that it was in

her possession she felt like going into mourning. It seemed indecent

to act as though nothing had happened. She kept Dick’s old letters and

cried over them, and wore a picture of him--taken during their happy

engagement--in a heart-shaped locket inside her bodice.

Quite unusual with young and handsome divorcées, there was no other

man in the case. She had not divorced Dick to marry some one else, but

because of their incompatibility, which absolutely prevented their

living together in harmony.

But no sooner was she settled in her old home than she began receiving

proposals. Her old beaux came flocking around her, in more or less

damaged condition, and there seemed a general belief that she had

divorced Dick only to try it again with a new candidate for Dick’s

shoes.

Her women friends were as bad. They would not permit her to pass into

retirement, but insisted upon her accepting invitations. “Now you are

free,” they told her, “you must make up for that miserable period of

your married life by being as gay as possible.”

They turned a deaf ear to remonstrances.

Katherine could not deny that a wonderful peace was settling over her

soul, freed from the wearing grind of Dick’s perpetual bickerings,

and she tried to blot out the memory of his faults and to think of

him kindly as one does of the dead. But she lived in the dread of

meeting him, for she knew he still was in town, where he had remained

throughout, gallantly permitting her to secure the decree without a

contest. Poor Dick, how like him! For, whatever his faults, he was

always a gentleman. She trembled at the thought of meeting him, for,

unmarried to him, it was easier to think of his fascinations than

of his shortcomings. It had never become possible for her to treat

the matter as some of her similarly placed women friends and to joke

flippantly about “my former.”

Among the beaux of the past who had promptly presented themselves,

on her return from the West, was Willis Shaw. She had come nearer

accepting him than any of the others in the old days; and had it not

been for Dick and his compelling magnetism, Shaw would have won out.

He had shown himself a man of worth, and had made a name for himself,

remaining, as some of the others had not done in spite of protestations

of hearts broken past mending, a bachelor. He was among the first to

send up his card; and Katherine, in her black frock, went down with

a sober face to receive him. She expected sympathy, and received--a

proposal.

Shaw could not but see the shock in her face.

“Forgive me,” he begged, becoming at once as grave as she; “I have been

too precipitate and have hurt you. I do not take back the words--I

cannot do that; but keep them in your mind and think them over, and,

when you feel ready, give me an answer. Although women parted from

their husbands have come to be an everyday occurrence, I cannot help

regarding them with pity. They seem so defenseless, so unprotected, and

the world is so unsparing in its treatment of unprotected, defenseless

things. It pains me to think of you who ought to be so tenderly

cherished and shielded occupying in any way an equivocal position. But

you must not think that pity is my reason for putting the question to

you again. It is the same reason which prompted me five years ago, and

which has never altered nor lessened in the years. I wish you could

give me a different answer, for I feel that I could make you happy.

You deserve happiness, and your failure to secure it makes me the more

anxious to mete it out to you in fullest measure.”

He left her a shade graver than he found her, but she only came to

appreciate his considerateness when other men pranced in, assumed easy

positions, talked jauntily about their blighted state and made more or

less rakish proposals. One had even genially suggested that if she were

disappointed in him she could easily have recourse to the divorce court

again. “It’s always a handy fire escape,” he added, pleasantly.

She took Dick’s picture into her confidence. Of course she had no

_love_ for Willis Shaw; she should never indulge in that confiding,

girlish thing again; but she respected him, and felt that with him

she would at least be safe. Her position certainly _was_ equivocal.

There were always people who had been abroad or something, and had

not heard of her decree, and who were forever rushing up in public

places and asking how her good husband was, and if he were as devoted

as ever. It would be embarrassing, of course, to have to explain that

another husband was now displaying that devotion, but not nearly so

embarrassing as to confess to no husband at all--even in these days of

rapid conjugal changes.

Katherine was going through the tortures of the sensitive divorced. One

day, returning from her lonely drive, a note was handed her, and she

recognized Mrs. “Billy” Wesley’s characteristic hand.

“Mrs. William Wesley requests the pleasure of your company at dinner on

Monday, November 16th, at half after seven”; then down in the left-hand

corner the words: “Vaccination at ten.”

It was sure to be something out of the ordinary--all of Mrs. Billy’s

affairs were--and at first she had no idea of accepting. Then Mrs.

Wesley called her up on the telephone and insisted upon her coming,

drawing her attention to the fact that several cases of varioloid

in the upper part of town had made her hit upon the idea of the

vaccination, and that it would not only be a pleasure but a precaution

to accept. She also impressed upon Katherine the necessity of a

sleeveless bodice for the occasion.

It was not until she had finally yielded that it suddenly occurred

to Katherine that Dick would certainly be at the dinner. Mrs. Wesley

had retained her friendship for both, and it would be just like her

erratic fancy to bring them together. In the women of Mrs. Billy

Wesley’s set that sort of thing passed for _chic_. At first a hot wave

of resentment rose in her breast, and she was on the point of calling

Mrs. Billy up and, incidentally, of calling her down; then all at once

a curious reaction came about. It was no less than a mad desire to see

Dick again. The _immodesty_ of the thing appalled her, but the desire

remained.

Not even in the rosy days of her engagement had she longed with such

eagerness to spend an evening in his society, and as the night drew

near she found herself making the foolish preparations of a débutante

for her first ball.

She engaged a dressmaker, who turned her out a purely classic costume;

and with a pedestal and the limelight upon her, she might have played

_Galatea_ with enthusiastic applause from the house. When fully arrayed

on the evening of the dinner, she surveyed herself in the glass, and

trembled.

Mrs. Billy greeted her effusively. She herself was prepared for the

surgical part of the entertainment with an arrangement of pearl chains

which attached her bodice to her person across the upper part of the

arms.

“A dream, darling!” she cried, in the caressing, coddling tone she used

to all. “I vow I could eat you!” and so saying, she dipped down, kissed

Katherine with a light peck on each shoulder, then passed her on, to

fall on the neck of the next.

Katherine glanced about the room with a beating heart. At first she

saw no one whose presence caused her agitation, and her spirits sank.

Then all at once a voice fell upon her ear which sent the blood

mantling to her cheeks and brought a faintness to her breast. A man had

just entered, and was paying his respects to Mrs. Wesley--a man like

unto whom there was not another in the room. Such an air! Such grace!

Bayard himself, who, historians agree, was an ideal knight in every

particular, was possessed of no more graceful bearing, comeliness of

person and affability of manner.

Katherine stood up and shivered. She might have been transformed to

_Galatea_ then and there, so statuesque her pose. She was totally

unconscious that every eye in the room was wandering with prying

curiosity from her to Dick.

Then he saw her.

For a moment he hesitated, but a moment only.

He sped to her with as much _empressement_ as he had shown in the most

zealous days of the courtship; his expressive eyes and face were aglow

with eagerness.

Katherine remained perfectly still, but two little pulses beating

visibly in her temples told whether she was indifferent. “You _will_

speak to me!” he cried, in eager entreaty, under his breath. “If you

want me to die in an hour, treat me as a stranger!” He was holding out

his hand, and, mechanically, and because she was suddenly aware of the

scrutiny of the room, hers went out to it. When Dick clasped it, and

she felt the familiar contact of his flesh, she thought she was going

to faint.

“Take me away,” she gasped, “into the air.”

He drew her arm quickly through his and led her to a seat in a bay

window, screened from the rest of the room by curtains.

Dick stood over her, breathing quickly. “I never thought it would be

like this,” he said, brokenly. “I fancied I should never see you again,

and that in time I would get over it, like other men who have lived

down their sorrows. But coming upon you unexpectedly like this takes

it out of me. Look up,” he begged; “let me see your eyes, and try if

I cannot find there some trace of the old affection. When I see you in

the flesh I forget your cruelty, your unkindness--how you have made me

suffer. I can only remember the happy days when you were loving and

affectionate, and wanted me by your side. Have you forgotten? Tell me

that, Katherine, have you? To think that, after all your vows of love,

you should have grown tired of me!”

Katherine dared steal a look at him. Reproach met her view.

Yet this was the man who had made life so unbearable that she was

forced to appeal to the courts for relief! Strangely enough, she could

only remember his faults in the vaguest way, and it did not seem at

all incongruous that he should be reproaching her. Never was his

fascination more dangerously potent, his charm of person more alluring.

“Forgive me, Dick,” she found herself murmuring.

She held out her hands, and he drew them to his breast.

She did not know what might have followed had not the voice of Billy

Wesley’s butler, announcing dinner, fallen upon her ear at the moment.

“_After dinner_,” whispered Dick, with significance; then offering her

his arm, they emerged from their retreat with assumed _sang-froid_.

“Been kissing and making up?” asked Mrs. Billy, with frank indelicacy;

but she was not indelicate enough to place them together at dinner,

although her decadent ideas made her quite capable of things of the

sort. Instead, she had separated them by the entire length of the

table. But over the orchids and the electric bulbs, with the glint of

glass and silver between, Katherine could feel Dick’s eyes upon her,

and her flesh warmed beneath that gaze as _Galatea’s_ when her sculptor

breathed life into her with the passion of his glance. It was when the

glass bells were brought in that she caught his eye fully and realized

with a thrill that he had not forgotten her relish for _champignons_

under glass.

In return, she flashed him a glance letting him know she had not

forgotten his partiality for canvasbacks, and after that the rest

of the dinner was a telegraphic communication between the pair of

recognized intimacies of their married life.

The dishes sometimes choked her with a too vital remembrance.

“But we can’t sit here all night!” exclaimed Mrs. Billy, suddenly.

“There’s Dr. Webb coming to vaccinate us!”

“Madam,” said the butler, “Dr. Webb is in the drawing room.”

The men were permitted to carry their cigars with them, owing to the

curtailing of the dinner, and the whole party passed into the drawing

room. Dr. Webb had been dining also, and was in evening dress, a

messenger having brought his instruments and the virus.

“Let’s see,” said Mrs. Billy, running her eye over her list, which she

found in a rose jar, “who’s to submit first? It wouldn’t be polite for

me in my own house; won’t you lead the way, Katherine?”

Katherine was just stepping boldly forward when she drew back in alarm.

“Oh!” she cried, “it might hurt, and I don’t like being hurt!” and she

drew her beautiful bare arm close to her, and stood nursing it.

Immediately Dick pressed forward. “And she shall not be hurt!” he

proclaimed, with authority. “It would be a shame to disfigure such an

arm, even as a precaution. I must ask you, Mrs. Wesley, not to insist

upon Mrs. Catherwood submitting to the operation. Let me be the first

victim;” and hastily throwing off his coat, he appeared before the

company in his well-made waistcoat and faultless shirt sleeves. The

latter he began rolling up coolly, and when the cuff refused his elbow,

he drew out his penknife and slit the linen along the seam. “Now, then,

doctor, I am ready for you,” he said, unconcernedly.

Everyone looked on with admiration, but particularly one to whom the

sight of him in the familiarity of shirt sleeves brought back the past

with even more moving and electrifying vividness. How many a time had

that same splendid arm been about her, and how often had she pillowed

her head in its bend!

“A fine development,” said Dr. Webb, appreciatively. He then took out

his point, and with a deft touch injected the virus, while Dick looked

on, smoking an Egyptian cigarette.

Emboldened by his example, Katherine insisted upon submitting next,

and, reclining on a gilded couch, she bravely held out her lovely

left arm. It was clear the doctor was quite as appreciative of its

perfection as he had been of the one before it, though he forbore any

comment. The scraping produced a faintness, and her eyes sought Dick’s

pleadingly. In a flash he was at her side, and supporting her head

against his shoulder, where it rested until the doctor had drawn a drop

of crimson to the ivory surface. A glass of water was brought, and she

quickly recovered.

The guests after that began submitting in turn, with more or less

merriment in the matter, until one Mrs. St. Cyr Smith cast discredit

upon the party by refusing to be vaccinated on the arm.

Discussion arose on every side, and under cover of it Dick sought

Katherine.

“Come,” he begged, not feeling at all interested in the location of

Mrs. St. Cyr Smith’s vaccination. “I did not finish what I had to say

before dinner;” and, gently shielding her newly scratched arm, he led

her back to the curtained recess.

Katherine let him guide her where he would, as completely under his

spell as in the first days of his magnetic attraction.

“You were so brave,” she murmured, “and so handsome!”

He drew the curtains before he answered.

“Then you _do_ cherish some little memory of the old days?” he asked,

with indescribable persuasion. “You have not forgotten? Yet you tired

of me, Katherine; cast me off like a worn glove. Oh, but you were cruel

to the man you swore to love and honor!”

She tried to look him in the face, but her eyes fell before the

passionate reproach of his.

“Dick,” she managed to gasp, “don’t blame it all on me. You forget how

soon you tired of me.”

“I tire of you!” he cried. “Never, Katherine.” He knelt on the window

seat, speaking in words that came warm and panting from his lips to her

shoulder. “It isn’t possible you ever imagined such a thing? I love

you now--to-night--this minute--as I have loved you always, and as it

is given to man to love but once in a lifetime. I never so appreciated

your beauty, never so longed for the privilege of owning it. Oh,

beautifulest”--the name he had given her in the happiest days of the

courtship--“I want you, want you, want you! You are the very breath of

me, and unless I can have you back, I swear to put an end to myself!”

His arm found her waist as it had in the old days, and before she was

aware, he had her close against him and was kissing her.

The never-to-be-forgotten essence of his lips suddenly brought her to

a realizing sense of the situation. He had no right to embrace her. It

was an impropriety as great as though any stranger in the room beyond

had presumed upon such a liberty. In spite of all they had been to each

other in the past, he was now no more to her, legally, than any of the

others, and there was nothing to warrant such a course of conduct.

True, his lips were dearer than anything this side of heaven, but she

had thought that once before, and yet had lived to feel those same

lips grow cold and passionless, those strong arms deny her protection.

This sudden return to his early ardor made her the more mindful of the

indifference that had followed. In his impetuosity he was forging the

sequence that her mind in its wrought up state had refused to grasp.

She tore herself with quickly summoned force from his embrace.

“For God’s sake,” he cried, hoarse as in the old days, when his

feelings rent him, “don’t refuse me! Haven’t you made me suffer

enough?”

“You forget,” she reminded him, a shiver running along her frame and

her words coming thinly, “that we are legally separated, and that you

have no right to the privileges you have presumed upon. You are not my

husband. In the law we are strangers.”

Yet always that magnetic influence which drew her with supernatural

force, and which she had to fight with all the strength of a body

and a mind which had no inclination to fight; and, even while she

remonstrated, she found herself drifting to him slowly, until, without

power or volition of her own, she sank into his arms. He spoke mad,

wild words in her ear; and she listened, thinking mad, wild things

herself.

Inferior people have their place in the world. They save their

superiors from grave situations. It was the Wesley butler who again

interposed to save Katherine from an impending fate. He came to the

curtains, coughing, in the respectful manner reserved for upper

servants, to say that her maid had come for her early, as she had

requested.

Dick caught her hand. “Let me take you home!” he entreated.

But the presence of Dunn, with his eyes that saw nothing and his mouth

that never relaxed, helped Katherine, and she could command herself

even with an upholstered lackey for inspiration.

“No,” she said, firmly; “that is out of the question.”

“But you cannot leave me like this,” he persisted, refusing to release

her hand; “you will kill me with your cruelty. If you will not let me

see you home, let me come to you to-morrow--you surely will not refuse

me that!”

“Well,” she yielded, in a hurried undertone, “to-morrow evening at

nine.” Then she passed out and made a hasty adieu to Mrs. Billy.

Dick did not stop much longer, and went to his hotel a bit fagged but

exultant. He had not lost his old power over Katherine, that was clear,

and he desired her with all the craving that non-possession brought him.

Meanwhile Katherine went home and thought--thought till her brows

ached, and until she had sounded the very depths of her reasoning

powers. The burden of her thoughts was much the same as his--that Dick

had not lost his old influence. The next day found her still thinking,

yet uncommonly active and busy. Indeed, it was quite the busiest, most

breathless day of her life. Time went rushingly, and when nine o’clock

chimed from the cathedral clock in the library she was still busy.

Dick was prompt. His eagerness manifested itself in his simultaneous

ring at the bell with the chiming of the clock.

Katherine, in a brilliant evening gown, with some long-stemmed roses on

her breast, heard the ring and started up with an excited flush.

Dick hurried in, groomed and perfect. He did not stop for

conventionalities of greeting, but let all the high pressure under

which he was laboring appear in his eloquent eyes. He had brought her

violets, but he dropped them from his fingers, and held out his arms

with entreaty.

“Soul of my soul,” he cried, “there are to be no more separations!

You belong to me, and you cannot live without me any more than I can

without you. Last night proved that, and that I have not lost your

love. I have come back, and you are never going to be cruel again.” But

to his astonishment Katherine did not yield to the arms that begged,

did not pale to marble as she had the night before when he had brought

the same influence to bear.

Instead, she stood off, without a sign of weakening, and smiled as

conventionally as she would to the merest chance visitor.

The sight maddened him, and he sprang forward to take her by force.

But Katherine held off with a strange new imperiousness that was not to

be trifled with. “You came for your answer this evening, Dick, and I

have it ready for you--the answer that will determine the future for us

both beyond a question;” then she held herself a little straighter and

spoke distinctly:

“I was married to Willis Shaw at three this afternoon.”

DRAMATIC FLASHES FROM LONDON & PARIS

_By_

ALAN DALE

[Illustration]

Some plays in Paris. “Ces Messieurs” at the Gymnase, once

prohibited by the Minister of Public Instruction, is

unsatisfactory, but well acted. Little theaters, like the Berkeley

Lyceum, immensely popular in Paris. In London one feels more at

home because the dramatic atmosphere seems more wholesome. Alfred

Sutro’s play at the Garrick, “The Walls of Jericho,” the most

successful of the season. Other plays and some players

Two distinct sets of impressions were carried away from the Paris

season by two distinctly different individuals. One pure and

conventional set was borne by that extremely nice and unsophisticated

young man, the King of Spain; the other by that not-so-nice, more

sophisticated, less-young person whose name appears at the head of

this. We jostled each other--the little juvenile king and myself. He,

poor young man, was taken by thoughtful people, who had his welfare

at heart, to that over-advertised home of mediocrity, the Théâtre

Français, and to a “gala” performance at the Opéra; I--well, I went

where I liked. Not being a young king, it was not necessary that my

impressions should run along conventional grooves.

The King of Spain saw what he could see anywhere, and would probably

avoid seeing in his own country. I was able to select my own dramatic

fodder. Possibly we were each equally glad when we had done our duty

and were allowed to proceed. If the King of Spain rejoiced more than

I did, then he must have been exceedingly exultant. We found the

Paris season quite disordered and fatigued. The Grand Prix was in the

air; open-air vaudeville was hurling defiance at the drama; Bernhardt

and Réjane were packing themselves off to London; it was all very

comfortless and noisy. I felt sorry for the little King of Spain, as I

saw him bowling along the Rue de Rivoli bound for the Français. I was

on my way to the Gymnase to see the new shocker called “Ces Messieurs.”

The most uncomfortable and gloomiest theater in Paris has given itself

up to the laudable purpose of stirring up dissension. Last year it

was “Le Retour de Jerusalem” that aimed at fomenting anti-Semitic

feeling; this year it is “Ces Messieurs,” the sole object of which is

to stir up anti-clerical strife. Perhaps the Gymnase needs this sort of

“attraction.” I cannot imagine anybody sitting tortured in its stuffy,

ill-kept, poverty-stricken auditorium for mere restful enjoyment.

“Ces Messieurs,” from the pen of M. Georges Ancey, was prohibited for

a long time by the minister of public instruction, a benign censor,

who objected to the play because it attacked the priests. His decision

was, of course, bitterly resented; and it was asserted that Molière in

“Tartuffe” had done a similar thing, and was a classic. Possibly we

should have urged the same arguments in New York if--let us say--Mr.

Theodore Kremer had woven a brand new melodrama around the theme of

Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline,” and it had been “stopped” on the ground of

impropriety.

The drama at the Gymnase seemed to me rather a pitiful effort at

sensation. There is but one way of treating a priest upon the stage,

and it is by placing him in juxtaposition with a woman. He is rarely

allowed to be interesting in any other shape. Among actors there is a

superstition that regards every play with a priest in it as “unlucky.”

The cleric is supposed to “hoodoo” the drama. If I were a playwright I

think I should elect to be on the “safe side.” I should take no risks,

for very rarely does a priest-ridden drama succeed. “Ces Messieurs”

certainly seems to be a case that justifies the actors’ superstition.

The heroine of the piece is a young widow, who, after the loss of her

husband and child, has given up mundane pleasure. She lives in the

provinces, with a large and singularly talky family, and has “taken

up” religion. Upon the scene comes the _Abbé Thibaut_, a young priest

with good looks and even better intentions. He is eloquent and mystic;

_Henriette_ interests herself in him immediately, and gives him funds

for his schools and benevolent institutions. _Thibaut_ is ambitious,

and he needs the money. The man and woman are soon embroiled in an

“affair,” though they are both unconscious of that fact.

Other priests occur. One--the villain of the piece--reports _Thibaut_

to the other, a benevolent Monsignor, who is displayed in a luxury of

“monsignor” robes. Pettiness, intrigue, jealousy, hatred, malevolence,

are ascribed to the _Abbé Morisson_, who is as deep-dyed a villain as

one could wish to find in the Third Avenue Theater or the Grand Opera

House. Through a sea of talk, the audience is carried to the fourth

act--which is _the_ act--where _Henriette_ learns that _Thibaut_ is to

be removed from her clutches to another scene of action. Then the storm

bursts, and the air is cleared with much electrical sensation.

It is not necessary to go into details. All that a woman can say who

has horridly mixed up the religious with the secular, the carnal with

the mystic, _Henriette_ says, in an ecstasy of exclamation points.

_Thibaut_ was essential to her, for she could not pray without him! He

was part of her life, both earthly and heavenly. In an exasperation of

anguish she develops a sort of insanity that makes a plausible excuse

for the ugly irreverence and the blasphemy of the playwright.

Blasphemy always seems to me the weakest sort of sensation. Any

idiot can blaspheme, and most of them do. It is the keynote of “Ces

Messieurs.” The priest is the target at which the woman hurls her ugly

shafts. Sensuality masquerading in the cloak of religion renders this

heroine as disagreeable as any I have ever seen staged. And this--with

nothing more--is M. Ancey’s case against the priests. The _Abbé_ has

accepted _Henriette’s_ money for his works of benevolence, and she had

given it not because she was actuated by religion, but because she

was hopelessly in love with the priest himself, who had involuntarily

inspired the sentiment.

There was nothing at all in the play but this fourth act, that gave you

mingled sensations of disgust and shock. Moreover, nothing happened.

After _Henriette’s_ insanity, during which she threatened the priests

with all sorts of scandals, she calmed down, went back to the family,

devoted the rest of her life to her little nieces and nephews, and

lived happily ever afterward. The moral--as far as I could see--was

that women menace the life of priests, and not, as M. Ancey tried to

insist, that priests threaten the welfare of women. The minister of

public instruction, who must be as silly as the London censor, objected

to the piece because it was supposed to malign the priesthood, and to

hold it up as something to be ousted from the domestic hearth. The

piece taught me quite a different lesson. It was that priests should

beware of designing but apparently perfect ladies.

Fortunately “Ces Messieurs” was well acted. Madame Andrée Mégard played

_Henriette_ with exquisite distinction and much dramatic power. André

Hall was the _Abbé Thibaut_, and into the rôle he managed to infuse a

good deal of picturesque mysticism. The other priests were assigned to

M. Arvel and to M. Jean Dax, who resisted the temptation to cheapen a

cheap subject.

The cream of Paris--generally called “_tout Paris_,” which is quite a

mistake, because the underlying milk is more important--no longer goes

to the big, usual, conventional theaters. Little nooky places have

become immensely popular here, and are gaining ground all the time. The

Grand Guignol, the Boite a Fursy and the Mathurins are always packed

to their tiny little doors, and the idea is to present varied dramatic

entertainments in capsule form. It is the idea that Mr. Frank Keenan

essayed so unsuccessfully at the Berkeley Lyceum in New York last

season. Paris is fatigued, and finds no trouble in digesting tabloids.

New York, still young, vigorous and hale, prefers its drama in lumps,

and suffers from no dyspeptic results. We are not yet ready for drama

in whiffs. In Paris that is the approved style of taking the medicine.

While the little King of Spain was inhaling grand opera, I took five

dramatic pills at the Mathurins. It is such a tiny little place that

at first I thought I had gone wrong, and was in an antechamber.

Plain papered walls, ascetic chairs, a moldy piano, and a couple of

usherettes seemed extremely bare. The price of admission did not suffer

in the same way. It was exorbitant. The Mathurins was crowded with a

swagger-looking collection of men and women. Above its doors appeared

the following, that you may translate for yourselves:

_Ici point de facheux, ni de mine bourrue

Laissez, avant d’entrer, vos soucis dans la rue._

The five plays at the Mathurins were “Retour de Bal,” by Claude Real;

“Oui! Benoist,” by Rito de Marghy; “Le Chasseur de Tigre Blanc,” by

Tristan Bernard; “La Rupture,” by M. Nozière, and “Le Pyjama,” by Jules

Rateau. Two of these, the second and fourth, were blood-curdlers, in

the style of Edgar Allan Poe, with modern improvements and a Parisian

outlook.

“Oui! Benoist” was a frenzied effort to be grewsome. The title

represents the incessant remark of a country clodhopper to his

“boss.” This “boss” was in love with a stout siren, who preferred a

neurasthenic gentleman perpetually haunted by a particular melody. This

melody had got on his nerves and had made him insane. (I couldn’t help

wondering if he had enjoyed a season in musical comedy in New York,

for, if so, I could quite understand his case.) _Mathyas_, as he was

called, was trying to live down the melody, and nobody dared to hum it

in his presence. He was made up with a white face, and dark rings under

his eyes. The siren was most solicitous for his welfare.

Then came the innings of _Benoist_, the jealous “boss.” There was a

well upon the stage, very deep and dark, and--in dismal conspiracy--he

prevailed upon the country clodhopper to go down into the well and

from its depths sing up the forbidden melody till it reached the

neurasthenic gentleman. The scheme worked. No sooner was the invalid

upon the stage than from the bowels of the well the luckless dirge

emerged. Instantly the patient was stricken. In wild insanity, he took

a huge stone, and flung it into the well to kill the music.

Groans and anguish from the clodhopper. Agony all over the stage.

“Are you mortally hurt, Joseph?” asked the guilty “boss,” peering into

the depths.

And from the well came up the halting murmur, “_Oui, Benoist!_” as the

curtain fell.

The other blood-curdler was “La Rupture,” which introduced Mme.

Polaire, a lady who has had a multi-colored career. At one time she

was a sort of rival of Yvette Guilbert. At present she does the

melodramatic upon the slightest provocation. Her “attraction” is her

ugliness--her extreme and unmitigated homeliness. Even that sort of

thing is popular in fatigued Paris. A woman who is homely to the verge

of distraction may be as great a draw as her sister who is just as

bewilderingly beautiful. It is the extremes that meet.

In “La Rupture” Mme. Polaire played the part of a woman with a poor

lover. She was very fond of him, but he was impecunious, and she

was expensive and terribly jealous. So she listens to the suit of a

disgusting old fossil, who is smitten with her charms. Her repulsion

is displayed with startling realism, and it furnishes the cue to the

lover, who darts out and stabs the old man in the back. He falls dead,

and there is a panic-stricken scene between the lovers. The woman is

terrified; the man is horror-stricken; the corpse lies before them.

There is a dark green atmosphere, full of the hoarse whispers of the

guilty couple, in recrimination and disgust. There is no end to “La

Rupture.” It leaves off suddenly; the curtain falls. You spear a

sensation, but it is half-fraudulent.

Across the Channel, and to London. It seems healthier, even if it

isn’t. At any rate, one feels more at home there. The American manager

stalks through the English land, with his pocketbook in evidence, and

his plans neatly newspapered. He is a bit lost in Paris, because he

can’t produce the plays offered there without adapting them, and in

the adaptation much is lost, and nothing takes its place. He sees a

Parisian success, but the hero and heroine are never married. That is

the stickler. A wedding ring would ruin them, and we have our little

prejudice in favor of that magic circlet. The wedding ring may not be

artistic--that is the Parisian answer to our plaints--but until we have

discovered something that will aptly take its place, we prefer it. The

American manager dare not fly in the face of the wedding ring, and that

is why he shuffles about rather uneasily in Paris.

Sometimes he takes his adapter with him to see these French plays. Even

that is unsatisfactory. The adapter is human, and he wants some work

to do-o-o. He scents “possibilities,” and he is not afraid to say so.

But French plays are becoming more and more impossible for New York.

An American audience will not stand talk, and a French audience enjoys

it when it hovers around the one eternal theme. Then the French idea

of ending happily differs so essentially from the American notion,

which is indissolubly allied with the wedding ring. The merry peals of

nuptial bells ring no music into French ears.

The one attraction of the London season that has “attracted” is Mr.

Alfred Sutro’s play at the Garrick Theater, called “The Walls of

Jericho.” Mr. James K. Hackett, who has hitherto contented himself with

being merely beautiful, in the rôles of fanciful and highly upholstered

kings, and the daredevil idiots of cheap, book-tweaked “romance,” has

secured the play for New York. Mr. Hackett will have to forego his gilt

and plush adornments, the silken tights that he has worn so long and so

lovingly. He will have to dress as a modern man, and to blazon forth

the persistent and hackneyed criminality of that section of humanity

known as “society.”

Society, as we are all aware, has an irresistible attraction for the

“kid-glove” playwright. Whether it be a case of “the fox and the

grapes,” or a mere gallery desire to cater to the multitude, certain

it is that the dramatist, skilled or unskilled, delights in portrayal

of the alleged smart set; even if he be forced to approach the tinsel

glories of Mayfair and Fifth Avenue by the way of the scullery door.

Even if all his “points” be obtained from a communicative Jeames or a

not-too-reticent Sarah Jane, he is not dismayed.

Society must be shown up and periodically exposed; its vagaries must

be held up to ridicule; it must be set forth as degenerate; it must be

made to suggest the effeminacy and luxury of Rome at the time when Mr.

Gibbon made it “decline and fall.” How to do this perpetually, and with

a “new wrinkle”? The playwright in reality has no grudge at all against

“society”--that is blissfully unaware of his very existence. His object

is merely to evolve some sort of a “roast” that has a semblance of

novelty. In London there are penny papers devoted purely to “society

gossip” that are boons to the ambitious playwright--and to Sarah Jane.

Mr. Alfred Sutro, author of “The Walls of Jericho,” was in luck. In

England at the present time there lurks a horrible disease known as

“bridge.” It is a kind of mania on this side of the pond, and, although

it is quite as middle class, and even lower class, as it is smart set,

naturally Mr. Sutro need not notice that unimportant fact. That society

plays bridge is no more remarkable than that society golfs and motors.

Mr. Sutro’s point--very far-fetched, cheap and sensational--is that

Mayfair has undermined and corrupted itself by the game. According to

“The Walls of Jericho,” bridge seems to be responsible for childless

women, sexless ladies, an unmoral outlook and other ills from which

society--in novels and on the stage--is bound to suffer.

From what I have seen of the game--and I am not a card player--it

seems to be nothing more than disagreeable in a very ordinary way.

Every fellow hates his partner, and dogs certainly delight to bark

and bite--for is it not their nature to? But, as for any illicit

after-effect, I cannot imagine where it can come in. Bridge players

appear to me to be far too engrossed in bickering and fault-finding to

worry about immorality and laxity.

You will pardon this apparent digression. “The Walls of Jericho” being

a long, preachy and rather foolish tirade against a game of cards, my

apparent digression is necessary. The success of the play with the pit

and gallery in London shows that the game is popular with the butcher,

the baker and the candlestick maker. Otherwise, these would fail to

understand the second act, as--I candidly admit--I did.

In this act, various ladies of rank and title, including a duchess, are

displayed in the act of playing bridge, in _Lady Alethea Frobisher’s_

boudoir. They are all handsomely gowned, and exceedingly “bong tong,”

but nothing happens at all. Mr. Sutro undoubtedly intends that the

picture shall be extremely infamous, and prepare us for the subsequent

rebellion of _Lady Alethea’s_ nauseatingly right-minded husband. To

my mind, _Lady Alethea_ was but a weak and wishy-washy version of a

certain _Lady Teazle_, and if Jericho could fall so easily there must

have been Buddensiecks in those days. It deserved to fall.

I should like to come down to mere facts, but in “The Walls of Jericho”

there are so few that they are scarcely worth mentioning. Viewed from

the standpoint of one immune from the bridge germ, it is a dull and

preachy succession of platitudes. _Jack Frobisher_, the righteous hero,

has made his money in Queensland, with sheep. Perhaps that is why he

baas through four acts. He is the husband of _Alethea_. They have a

son. She is too absorbed in her “set” to pay much interest to the

child, who--thank goodness!--does not appear.

In the third act _Frobisher_ announces his intention of returning

to Queensland and “nature,” and of taking her with him. Queensland,

under any circumstances, must be horrible, but with such a prig as Mr.

Sutro’s hero, it would be so loathsome that my sympathy was entirely

with _Lady Alethea_, when, like a Laura Jean Libbey lady, she “drew

herself up to her full height” and refused to go. In the last act she

changed her mind, and went. _Mr. Frobisher_ blew the trumpet, and the

walls of Jericho fell. There is the play. As the comedian in the piece

remarked--and it is the only phrase you carry away--“Jericho must have

been jerry-built.”

Mr. Arthur Bourchier, who, I understand, is reveling in the fact that

he “discovered” Mr. Alfred Sutro, played _Frobisher_. Mr. Bourchier is

an actor-manager of much talk and self-importance. As the righteous

husband of a butterfly wife, and the adoring father of an unseen

brat, he was lacking in lightness and “sympathy.” The playwright’s

point--always presuming that he had one--went hopelessly astray. Mr.

Bourchier was a bore, rather than a bridge-pecked husband, and his

preachiness was appallingly tedious, his delivery savoring of that

supposed to be popular in the House of Commons. I could have slept

through it; I think I did.

Miss Violet Vanbrugh, popular in London as the actor-manager’s

wife, is a clever actress marred by mannerisms which would make her

impossible outside of London. The affectation of her speech, the

peculiarity of her stare and glare, give the casual spectator a curious

sensation. There is a good deal of the freakish in her method; it is

not natural, wholesome and universal. Yet beneath the surface one

realizes that Miss Vanbrugh is an artist, who has evolved marvelously

since New York saw her in a silly play called “The Queen’s Proctor.”

The other puppets in this bridge bout included Miss Muriel Beaumont, a

little _ingénue_ who is charming; H. Nye Chart, Sydney Valentine, O. B.

Clarence--one of the conventional senile bores--and Miss Lena Halliday.

Stamped as a London success--and the stamp is genuine--it will be

curious to watch the fate of “The Walls of Jericho” in New York.

Possibly Mr. Hackett may do more for it than Mr. Bourchier, for he has

played so many inane heroes that one more cannot hurt him; but he will

have to work very hard, and I do not envy him his job.

The second play I saw after my arrival in London was “What Pamela

Wanted,” at the Criterion Theater. Of course I had no idea what

_Pamela_ did want. I had a vague notion what I, myself, wanted. It was

a good play, and I’m sorry to say I didn’t get it, and the piece has

since been withdrawn. It was a so-called comedy from the pen of Mme.

Fred de Gresac--author of “The Marriage of Kitty”--and that weakest

of French writers, Pierre Veber. These twain were done into London by

Charles Brookfield.

Mme. de Gresac is an amusing Parisienne, who has played some merry

tunes on the marriage theme. She is a bit flighty, according to our

notions, and inclined to regard the wedding ring as a huge joke, but

she is really humorous, and with a clever adapter has possibilities. We

realized that fact when we saw “The Marriage of Kitty.” “What Pamela

Wanted” was unfortunately used as a vehicle for Miss Ethel Irving,

who--unlike Marie Tempest--was by no means ready to emerge from the

slough of musical comedy. In an effort to make the piece fit Miss

Irving, Mr. Brookfield failed to make it fit her public.

_Pamela_ was introduced as a bread-and-butter miss, who, after a few

moments’ talk with a strange young man, agreed to marry him, on the

understanding that both should gang their ain gait. _Pamela_ had

just left school as she met the youth, and the character, translated

into English, was not plausible enough to be funny. There must be

plausibility before comedy can take root. The foolish husband, jealous

of _Pamela_, and the badly drawn _Pamela_, jealous of the foolish

husband, all leading up to a happy understanding, which was “what

Pamela wanted,” left gaps in an evening’s entertainment.

The piece was eked out by conventionally stupid characters, including

one of those nasty old fathers that our sense of propriety will not

tolerate; the usual “dashing” young actress, a French maid, and a

skittish widow. The only type that amused was a flabby dude, and this

was funny only because it was so well played by Mr. Lennox Pawle. Miss

Ethel Irving herself, so charming in musical comedy, was heavy, stodgy

and uninteresting. As a “star,” she was so lacking in all essentials

that she reminded me of New York rather than of London. She recalled my

favorite “rushlights,” and I didn’t cross the Atlantic to sample them

anew.

FOR BOOK LOVERS

_Archibald Lowery Sessions_

[Illustration]

The part played by “high life” in fiction. The significance of its

popularity as a theme for new novels illustrated by recent books.

“The Marriage of William Ashe,” “Belchamber,” “The Dark Lantern.”

Other books. The twenty-five best selling books of the month

There is at least one field in fiction that will probably never be

exhausted; at any rate, not until the distinctions that have always

divided human beings into classes become obliterated. High life has

always possessed, as it does to-day, peculiar attractions both for the

novel writer and the novel reader. Whatever may be the truth about the

importance of the part played by the devotees of society from a purely

utilitarian point of view, whatever may be said about their follies

and extravagances and even immoralities, it still remains true that

their doings and characters constitute a theme in fiction which is

perennially active.

Other “types” come and go as manners and methods change, just as, in

recent years, we have seen the development of the “industrial” or

“commercial” novel, but the society story still flourishes, as it

always has. The Englishman is not the only one who dearly loves a lord.

Though we have no nobility on this side of the water, there is no lack

among us of interest in the class that in America supplies its place.

The society columns in the daily newspapers furnish sufficient evidence

of this, for it is not to be presumed that so much space would be

devoted to a topic if there were not a widespread interest in it.

What is done by the votaries of fashion is of little importance, so

long as they do something. It may be that they shock sober-minded

people and supply material for satirists. Their scandals, of which

probably they have no more than their fair share, and their monkey

dinners, may be offenses against propriety and good taste, but those

who object still consume the news that comes from Fifth Avenue and

Newport and Belgravia, whether it is told in newspapers or in the

latest novel.

The significance of all this is that, even if we ourselves have not

the time for play in our strenuous lives, we still like to hear about

those whose chief pursuit is entertainment and recreation. The leisure

class in every community is the conspicuous class, just as is the

successful man. The toilers and the failures may be sure that they will

be undisturbed and forgotten, and take what comfort they can in the

knowledge that their right to privacy will be respected.

But social leaders must pay the penalty of their leadership. The

publicity that those in humbler walks of life shrink from, they

must accept as part of the day’s work. They must submit to satire,

caricature, and even slander, without concern. They must not complain

if, as has recently been intimated, envious novelists misrepresent them

and their customs and traditions. They are to remember that they exist,

not only to entertain and amuse themselves, but to do the same for the

lookers-on, who are not part of the show.

* * * * *

Mrs. Humphry Ward has outdone herself in the interest aroused by “The

Marriage of William Ashe,” Harpers, and the book has kept readers and

reviewers busy, with many editions, since its publication. The surmise

that its author provided herself with some historical backing for her

portraiture of Lady Kitty and Geoffry Cliffe, in the characters of Lady

Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron, by no means diminishes admiration of her

creative powers. The background of reality merely serves to protect

her from the charge of over-exaggeration, while the personality of the

restless and many-sided little heroine herself takes too strong a hold

upon all readers to leave much room for criticism in this respect.

Ashe is, as the best type of English gentleman and statesman, capitally

done. Mary Lyster would have been as perfect a portrait of the same

class of social product but for the author’s inartistic slip in

degrading her unexpectedly to the rôle of stage villain, the jarring

note in this clever story. Logically, Mary would have been William’s

wife but for Kitty’s appeal to the latter at a time when his sympathies

were most vulnerable. Their marriage is, from the first, an incongruous

one; Ashe’s indulgence and blindness throw Kitty’s absurdities into

increasingly conspicuous relief, and his absorption in political

exigencies is broken only at intervals by some startling misdemeanor

on her part, resulting in scenes of passionate and half-remorseful

affection. Cliffe’s strange influence upon Kitty forms a powerful

developing force upon her destiny. Her occasional revolt against it is

quite in keeping with the strength which now and then manifests itself

in her untrained and abnormal make-up. The character of Lady Caroline

is followed in main events; seldom overdrawn, though in the capacity

of hostess she is now and then allowed to lapse into a lower grade of

social standards than one would expect, and her heartlessness toward

her child seems inconsistent with certain other outbreaks of maternal

passion.

The gentle, worldly-wise little Dean must not be passed over. Perhaps

the strongest point in the whole story is laid in the closing scene,

where he brings home to Ashe the latter’s terrible responsibility for

his wife’s degradation because of the poverty of a love which has taken

no account of the soul and its claims in his policy of blindness and

indulgence. Poor Lady Kitty discovers that same soul, too late for the

discovery to be of much use either to herself or her husband, but one

is rather relieved to leave them reconciled, even with the interruption

of Lady Kitty’s demise, and to wish William a more serene period of

existence. For Mrs. Ward’s heroes and heroines are very real people,

moving in familiar paths, and the charm of her stories is that one

forgets the fictitious in a thoroughly absorbing interest.

* * * * *

“A Dark Lantern,” by Elizabeth Robins, Macmillan Company, is another

story of English society, and involves a somewhat striking study of

character, though that is by no means all there is to the book.

Katharine Dereham is a very human and a very charming personality, in

spite of the almost incredible inconsistencies which mark her relations

with Prince Anton of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein in the beginning, and

Garth Vincent at the end. It is not altogether incomprehensible that

she should have been both attracted and repelled by the prince, when

one considers the innate deceitfulness of his nature, and perhaps,

after her experience with him, it is not so strange that she should

have turned with relief to Vincent, whose sincerity was indomitable,

even if it was habitually brutal.

Probably the feminine reader will more thoroughly understand and

sympathize with Kitty Dereham’s distress of mind and spirit in her

struggles with the problems presented to her, and even with her

unconditional surrender to Garth Vincent.

If so, it will be because women lay greater stress upon uncompromising

truthfulness in a man than in a mere artificial exterior.

These three characters are the predominating ones in the book, and they

are drawn with a good deal of skill; those who assume the minor rôles

are used with good effect to carry on the action and develop the story

naturally and logically.

The style of the narrative is a little vexatious at times, but, on the

whole, the story is extremely well told, and there is a succession of

more or less dramatic episodes that make the book very interesting

reading.

* * * * *

It happens, sometimes, that a novel is written for the publication of

which no good reason can be given. Fortunately, such occurrences are

rare, even in these days of “the literary deluge.” One such book has

lately appeared from the press of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, under the title

of “Belchamber,” the author of which is Howard Overing Sturgis.

The book is one of undeniable literary excellence in many respects,

a fact which merely adds to the regret one must feel at its equally

undeniable immorality in tone, its artistic iconoclasm, its distinctly

pessimistic tendency, and its deplorably bad taste in its frank

discussion of conjugal matters, some of which are commonly referred to

only in treatises on physiology.

It is a story of English society, and, notwithstanding all the

unpleasant truths that have been and may be told of this branch of

“high life,” it is difficult to believe that any such considerable

portion of it as Mr. Sturgis deals with is so destitute of attractive

characters. It is for this reason that the book cannot be read without

a feeling of depression. People as depraved as Cissy Eccleston and

Claude Morland, so sordidly unprincipled as Lady Eccleston, so

uselessly selfish as Arthur, so nearly degenerate, physically and

mentally, as Sainty, the hero, is intentionally represented to be,

should, if they are to be used in fiction at all, be subjected to the

counterbalancing influence of decent people; but in “Belchamber” there

is no such relief.

Sainty, otherwise Lord Belchamber, in spite of the fictitious virtues

with which his creator seeks to invest him, cannot but repel the

healthy-minded reader by his pitiable weakness of character, to say

nothing of his physical infirmities, the more that they are the

consequences of the excesses of his progenitors.

* * * * *

A superficial reading of “The Fire of Spring,” by Margaret Potter, D.

Appleton & Co., might lead to the conclusion that the book is very

different from “The Flame Gatherers,” the last work of the same author,

which was published a year ago, but, as a matter of fact, they are, in

substance, not at all dissimilar. In one respect, at least, they are

identical, and that is the point of view from which the love element

is considered. The time and space which separate the scene of the

action of the two stories have not modified the primitive quality of

the love which supplies the _motif_. It is a love in which the material

predominates.

It must be confessed that there were grounds for the doubt felt by

Charles Van Studdiford’s two companions as to the possibility of his

being in love “with a young girl, of gentle birth and highest breeding,

as unassailable by the coarser methods as the women Charles had

hitherto known would have been by the finer.” Nevertheless, he cannot

justly be blamed for all of the trouble that followed his marriage with

Virginia Merrill. As she took him obviously for his money, her distress

at the subsequent discovery of his grossness is not likely to provoke

much sympathy for her, and in becoming entangled with Philip Atkinson,

“the erotic man,” she sacrificed her last claim to respect.

The theme and plot are more or less familiar, but the author has, with

an unusual subtlety and power, imparted to them a vitality that not

merely engages the attention, but actually involves the reader as an

active participant. She has given evidences of a rather unique gift of

magnetism, the development of which will bear watching.

* * * * *

“Lady Noggs, Peeress,” by Edgar Jepson, McClure, Phillips & Co., though

a story of children, or, rather, of a child, for her contemporaries

play an inconspicuous part through most of the tale, is essentially

a book for the grown-ups, and unhappy must the man or woman be who

cannot enjoy it. Lady Noggs, who would, if she were actually what she

is represented to be, have her place in “Burke’s Peerage” as Lady

Felicia Grandison, is a delightful mixture of dignity and impudence.

Full to brimming over with a harmless mischief that is instinctive

in a healthy, normal child, yet when the occasion requires she never

fails to exact the homage which she considers due to her position as a

peeress and her birth as a British subject, as the Prince and Princess

of Meiningen-Schwerin found to their cost.

If her uncle, the prime minister, was invariably baffled and perplexed

by her vagaries and distressed by the consequences of her escapades,

Mr. Borrodaile and Miss Caldecott had reason to be grateful for her aid

in straightening out their affairs.

Mr. Beresford Caldecott’s dismay at the openly expressed admiration and

persistent attentions of the Lady Noggs, the Admirable Tinker and Elsie

will not excite much sympathy; on the contrary, the emotions of the

children will be appreciated and shared by most readers. For “a dapper

little man with a very red face and a very shiny top hat” to assume

such a sobriquet as “Tiger Jake” is calculated to stir the suspicions

even of children; and when such children begin to suspect that they are

being imposed upon, the results are likely to be unpleasant for the

offender.

“The Belted Seas,” by Arthur Colton, Henry Holt & Co., is a story,

or, strictly speaking, a series of stories, told in the course of a

winter’s afternoon by Captain Buckingham, who, with his audience, was

seated “by Pemberton’s Chimney.”

“Pemberton’s” was a small hotel near the village of Greenough,

somewhere, perhaps anywhere, on the southern coast of Long Island,

frequented mostly by sailors, not superannuated exactly, but at least

of the age when men who have had an active and adventurous life like to

sit around and tell of what they have seen and done, or listen while

some one else tells of their experiences. Of course, if a landsman

happens along, he hears many strange tales, and, if he is an author,

gets “copy.” And on this particular winter afternoon such a landsman

was present while Captain Buckingham talked. Hence “The Belted Seas.”

The captain, according to his own account, had had some extraordinary

adventures, shared by extraordinary companions, Stevey Todd, Sadler

and Captain Abe Dalrimple. It seems doubtful, however, if Captain

Buckingham would have had such a fund of rich material to draw upon for

his yarns if it had not been for Sadler’s genius for creating original

situations. The latter’s doings in Portale and Saleratus would make a

book of themselves, if they were duly amplified.

The “Hotel Helen Mar” was an inspiration, and only goes to show how

buoyant and optimistic dispositions may, with a little ingenuity, turn

disaster into prosperity.

The stories are deliberately told, a little too much so, perhaps, for

sustained interest, though it is to be remembered that an old sailor

cannot be hurried while he is spinning a yarn.

* * * * *

Miss Marie Van Vorst, who collaborated with her sister-in-law, Mrs.

John Van Vorst, in the authorship of “The Woman Who Toils,” the book

which, it will be remembered, provoked President Roosevelt’s famous

utterance concerning race suicide, has published, through Dodd, Mead &

Co., a novel that ought to make a permanent place for itself, and add

much to its author’s fame.

If it can be classified at all, it must be said to belong to the

industrial type; the scene of its action is laid in the cotton mills

of the South, and its special problem is the employment of child

labor--though it is not to be understood that it is a problem novel in

the strict sense of the term.

The degradation of Henry Euston, his descent into the moral and

physical depths which he has reached at the opening of the story, and

his subsequent regeneration; Amanda’s development from a child of the

“poor whites” to the impressively elegant young woman, are the main

threads about which the story is woven. Other matters, incidents and

characters alike, are subordinate to these two, but are of a nature to

combine in making a very strong story. The book is full of dramatic

climaxes, more or less strenuous, and it cannot be said to be lacking

at any point in interest; it is a book to be read more than once if it

is to be thoroughly digested and appreciated.

If it contains any faults, they are to be found in the construction

rather than in conception or style. There is rather forced upon the

reader the impression of deficiency in this respect, which seems to be

due to the author’s failure to grasp thoroughly and hold firmly at all

times the details of the plot, with a resulting lack of co-ordination

in the action.

* * * * *

It must be said of John F. Whitson’s new book, “Justin Wingate,

Ranchman,” Little, Brown & Co., that in it the author has failed to

realize the promise of his earlier book, “The Rainbow Chasers.” This

is partly due, doubtless, to the fact that, compared with the latter

story, the theme of “Justin Wingate” is more or less threadbare. The

lumber camps of Arkansas furnished a new setting for a story, and

their customs and local color were intrinsically interesting, even

though, aside from this, the story was a good one.

But the sheep and cattle ranch, especially the latter, and the cowboy,

have figured so often in novels, that to make a commendable tale of

such material nowadays, there must be a decided human and dramatic

interest, and a considerable degree of literary skill.

* * * * *

The Twenty-five Best Selling Books of the Month.

“The Marriage of William Ashe,” Mrs. Humphry Ward, Harper & Bros.

“The Masquerader,” Katherine C. Thurston, Harper & Bros.

“The Accomplice,” Fred’k Trevor Hill, Harper & Bros.

“The Orchid,” Robert Grant, Chas. Scribner’s Sons.

“A Dark Lantern,” Elizabeth Robins, Macmillan Co.

“The Game,” Jack London, Macmillan Co.

“The Life Worth Living,” Thos. Dixon, Doubleday, Page & Co.

“The Clansman,” Thos. Dixon, Doubleday, Page & Co.

“Sandy,” Alice Hegan Rice, Century Co.

“Mrs. Essington,” Esther and Lucia Chamberlain, Century Co.

“Constance Trescot,” S. Weir Mitchell, Century Co.

“Pam,” Bettina von Hutten, Dodd, Mead & Co.

“The Purple Parasol,” George B. McCutcheon, Dodd, Mead & Co.

“The Princess Passes,” C. N. and A. M. Williamson, Henry Holt & Co.

“The Divine Fire,” May Sinclair, Henry Holt & Co.

“Nancy Stair,” Elinor M. Lane, D. Appleton & Co.

“The Garden of Allah,” Robert Hichens, F. A. Stokes & Co.

“The Rose of the World,” Agnes and Egerton Castle, F. A. Stokes & Co.

“The Man on the Box,” Harold McGrath, Bobbs-Merrill.

“The Master Mummer,” E. Phillips Oppenheim, Little, Brown.

“The Breath of the Gods,” Sidney McCall, Little, Brown.

“The Great Mogul,” Louis Tracy, E. J. Clode.

“Jörn Uhl,” Gustav Frenssen, Dana, Estes & Co.

“For the White Christ,” Robert A. Bennet, McClurg Co.

“The Ravenels,” Harris Dickson, J. B. Lippincott Co.

Transcribers’ Notes:

The articles in this magazine were written by different people, and

some of the articles contain dialect. So, inconsistent punctuation,

hyphenation, and spelling were not changed.

In the original magazine, the articles’ titles and authors were

enclosed in illustrations, while the poems’ titles followed headpieces.

In this version of this eBook, all titles are shown as normal headings,

with [Illustration] placeholders following the articles’ headings and

preceding the poems’.

Page 1: The opening quotation mark of the first paragraph was

intentionally omitted by the original publisher.

Page 17: “CHAPTER VIII.” was misprinted as “CHAPTER VII.” and has been

corrected here.

Page 45: The closing quotation mark after “masculine point of view:”

was added by the Transcriber. It may belong after “dazzle me with

light.”

Page 150: The introduction to “Dramatic Flashes from London & Paris”

ends abruptly after the word “players”.

Page 150: An unmatched quotation mark before “prohibited for a long

time” was removed by the Transcriber.

Page 156: The introduction to “For Book Lovers” ends abruptly after the

word “month”.