He had not thought of it. He was lost in a greater abstraction. That

infinite tenderness,--far above a woman's,--the tenderness of strength

and manliness towards weakness and delicacy, the tenderness that looks

down and not up, was already possessing him. An instinct of protection

drew him nearer this bowed but charming figure, and if he then noticed

that the shoulders were pretty, and the curves of the slim waist

symmetrical, it was rather with a feeling of timidity and a

half-consciousness of unchivalrous thought. Yet why should he not try to

keep the brave and honest girl near him always? Why should he not claim

the right to protect her? Why should they not--they who were alone in a

strange land--join their two lonely lives for mutual help and happiness?

A sudden perception of delicacy, the thought that he should have

spoken before her failure at the Conservatoire had made her feel her

helplessness, brought a slight color to his cheek. Would it not seem

to her that he was taking an unfair advantage of her misfortune? Yet

it would be so easy now to slip a loving arm around her waist, while he

could work for her and protect her with the other. THE OTHER! His eye

fell on his empty sleeve. Ah, he had forgotten that! He had but ONE arm!

He rose up abruptly,--so abruptly that Helen, rising too, almost touched

the arm that was hurriedly withdrawn. Yet in that accidental contact,

which sent a vague tremor through the young girl's frame, there was

still time for him to have spoken. But he only said:--

“Perhaps we had better dine.”

She assented quickly,--she knew not why,--with a feeling of relief. They

walked very quietly and slowly towards the restaurant. Not a word of

love had been spoken; not even a glance of understanding had passed

between them. Yet they both knew by some mysterious instinct that a

crisis of their lives had come and gone, and that they never again could

be to each other as they were but a brief moment ago. They talked very

sensibly and gravely during their frugal meal; the previous spectator

of their confidences would have now thought them only simple friends and

have been as mistaken as before. They talked freely of their hopes and

prospects,--all save one! They even spoke pleasantly of repeating their

little expedition after his return from the country, while in their

secret hearts they had both resolved never to see each other again.

Yet by that sign each knew that this was love, and were proud of each

other's pride, which kept it a secret.

The train was late, and it was past ten o'clock when they at last

appeared before the concierge of Helen's home. During their journey,

and while passing though the crowds at the station and in the streets,

Ostrander had exhibited a new and grave guardianship over the young

girl, and, on the first landing, after a scrutinizing and an almost

fierce glance at one or two of Helen's odd fellow lodgers, he had

extended his protection so far as to accompany her up the four flights

to the landing of her apartment. Here he took leave of her with a grave

courtesy that half pained, half pleased her. She watched his broad

shoulders and dangling sleeve as he went down the stairs, and then

quickly turned, entered her room, and locked the door. The smile had

faded from her lips. Going to the window, she pressed her hot forehead

against the cool glass and looked out upon the stars nearly level with

the black roofs around her. She stood there some moments until another

star appeared higher up against the roof ridge, the star she was looking

for. But here the glass pane before her eyes became presently dim with

moisture; she was obliged to rub it out with her handkerchief; yet,

somehow, it soon became clouded, at which she turned sharply away and

went to bed.

But Miss Helen did not know that when she had looked after the

retreating figure of her protector as he descended the stairs that night

that he was really carrying away on those broad shoulders the character

she had so laboriously gained during her four years' solitude. For when

she came down the next morning the concierge bowed to her with an air

of easy, cynical abstraction, the result of a long conversation with his

wife the night before. He had taken Helen's part with a kindly

cynicism. “Ah! what would you--it was bound to come. The affair of

the Conservatoire had settled that. The poor child could not starve;

penniless, she could not marry. Only why consort with other swallows

under the eaves when she could have had a gilded cage on the first

etage?” But girls were so foolish--in their first affair; then it was

always LOVE! The second time they were wiser. And this maimed warrior

and painter was as poor as she. A compatriot, too; well, perhaps

that saved some scandal; one could never know what the Americans were

accustomed to do. The first floor, which had been inclined to be civil

to the young teacher, was more so, but less respectful; one or two young

men were tentatively familiar until they looked in her gray eyes and

remembered the broad shoulders of the painter. Oddly enough, only

Mademoiselle Fifine, of her own landing, exhibited any sympathy with

her, and for the first time Helen was frightened. She did not show it,

however, only she changed her lodgings the next day. But before she left

she had a few moments' conversation with the concierge and an exchange

of a word or two with some of her fellow lodgers. I have already hinted

that the young lady had great precision of statement; she had a pretty

turn for handling colloquial French and an incisive knowledge of French

character. She left No. 34, Rue de Frivole, working itself into a white

rage, but utterly undecided as to her real character.

But all this and much more was presently blown away in the hot breath

that swept the boulevards at the outburst of the Franco-German War,

and Miss Helen Maynard disappeared from Paris with many of her fellow

countrymen. The excitement reached even a quaint old chateau in Brittany

where Major Ostrander was painting. The woman who was standing by his

side as he sat before his easel on the broad terrace observed that he

looked disturbed.

“What matters?” she said gently. “You have progressed so well in your

work that you can finish it elsewhere. I have no great desire to stay

in France with a frontier garrisoned by troops while I have a villa

in Switzerland where you could still be my guest. Paris can teach you

nothing more, my friend; you have only to create now--and be famous.”

“I must go to Paris,” he said quietly. “I have

friends--countrymen--there, who may want me now.”

“If you mean the young singer of the Rue de Frivole, you have

compromised her already. You can do her no good.”

“Madame!”

The pretty face which he had been familiar with for the past six weeks

somehow seemed to change its character. Under the mask of dazzling skin

he fancied he saw the high cheek-bones and square Tartar angle; the

brilliant eyes were even brighter than before, but they showed more of

the white than he had ever seen in them.

Nevertheless she smiled, with an equally stony revelation of her white

teeth, yet said, still gently, “Forgive me if I thought our friendship

justified me in being frank,--perhaps too frank for my own good.”

She stopped as if half expecting an interruption; but as he remained

looking wonderingly at her, she bit her lip, and went on: “You have

a great career before you. Those who help you must do so without

entangling you; a chain of roses may be as impeding as lead. Until you

are independent, you--who may in time compass everything yourself--will

need to be helped. You know,” she added with a smile, “you have but one

arm.”

“In your kindness and appreciation you have made me forget it,” he

stammered. Yet he had a swift vision of the little bench at Versailles

where he had NOT forgotten it, and as he glanced around the empty

terrace where they stood he was struck with a fateful resemblance to it.

“And I should not remind you now of it,” she went on, “except to say

that money can always take its place. As in the fairy story, the prince

must have a new arm made of gold.” She stopped, and then suddenly coming

closer to him said, hurriedly and almost fiercely, “Can you not see that

I am advising you against my interests,--against myself? Go, then, to

Paris, and go quickly, before I change my mind. Only if you do not find

your friends there, remember you have always ONE here.” Before he could

reply, or even understand that white face, she was gone.

He left for Paris that afternoon. He went directly to the Rue de

Frivole; his old resolution to avoid Helen was blown to the winds in

the prospect of losing her utterly. But the concierge only knew that

mademoiselle had left a day or two after monsieur had accompanied her

home. And, pointedly, there was another gentleman who had inquired

eagerly--and bountifully as far as money went--for any trace of

the young lady. It was a Russe. The concierge smiled to himself at

Ostrander's flushed cheek. It served this one-armed, conceited American

poseur right. Mademoiselle was wiser in this SECOND affair.

Ostrander did not finish his picture. The princess sent him a cheque,

which he coldly returned. Nevertheless he had acquired through his

Russian patronage a local fame which stood him well with the picture

dealers,--in spite of the excitement of the war. But his heart was no

longer in his work; a fever of unrest seized him, which at another time

might have wasted itself in mere dissipation. Some of his fellow artists

had already gone into the army. After the first great reverses he

offered his one arm and his military experience to that Paris which

had given him a home. The old fighting instinct returned to him with a

certain desperation he had never known before. In the sorties from

Paris the one-armed American became famous, until a few days before the

capitulation, when he was struck down by a bullet through the lung, and

left in a temporary hospital. Here in the whirl and terror of Commune

days he was forgotten, and when Paris revived under the republic he had

disappeared as completely as his compatriot Helen.

But Miss Helen Maynard had been only obscured and not extinguished. At

the first outbreak of hostilities a few Americans had still kept giddy

state among the ruins of the tottering empire. A day or two after she

left the Rue de Frivole she was invited by one of her wealthy former

schoolmates to assist with her voice and talent at one of their

extravagant entertainments. “You will understand, dear,” said Miss de

Laine, with ingenious delicacy, as she eyed her old comrade's well-worn

dress, “that Poppa expects to pay you professional prices, and it may be

an opening for you among our other friends.”

“I should not come otherwise, dear,” said Miss Helen with equal

frankness. But she played and sang very charmingly to the fashionable

assembly in the Champs Elysees,--so charmingly, indeed, that Miss de

Laine patronizingly expatiated upon her worth and her better days in

confidence to some of the guests.

“A most deserving creature,” said Miss de Laine to the dowager duchess

of Soho, who was passing through Paris on her way to England; “you would

hardly believe that Poppa knew her father when he was one of the richest

men in South Carolina.”

“Your father seems to have been very fortunate,” said the duchess

quietly, “and so are YOU. Introduce me.”

This not being exactly the reply that Miss de Laine expected, she

momentarily hesitated: but the duchess profited by it to walk over to

the piano and introduce herself. When she rose to go she invited Helen

to luncheon with her the next day. “Come early, my dear, and we'll have

a long talk.” Helen pointed out hesitatingly that she was practically

a guest of the de Laines. “Ah, well, that's true, my dear; then you may

bring one of them with you.”

Helen went to the luncheon, but was unaccompanied. She had a long talk

with the dowager. “I am not rich, my dear, like your friends, and cannot

afford to pay ten napoleons for a song. Like you I have seen 'better

days.' But this is no place for you, child, and if you can bear with an

old woman's company for a while I think I can find you something to

do.” That evening Helen left for England with the duchess, a piece of

“ingratitude, indelicacy, and shameless snobbery,” which Miss de Laine

was never weary of dilating upon. “And to think I introduced her, though

she was a professional!”

*****

It was three years after. Paris, reviving under the republic, had

forgotten Helen and the American colony; and the American colony,

emigrating to more congenial courts, had forgotten Paris.

It was a bleak day of English summer when Helen, standing by the window

of the breakfast-room at Hamley Court, and looking over the wonderful

lawn, kept perennially green by humid English skies, heard the

practical, masculine voice of the duchess in her ear at the same moment

that she felt the gentle womanly touch of her hand on her shoulder.

“We are going to luncheon at Moreland Hall to-day, my dear.”

“Why, we were there only last week!” said Helen.

“Undoubtedly,” returned the duchess dryly, “and we may luncheon there

next week and the next following. And,” she added, looking into her

companion's gray eyes, “it rests with YOU to stay there if you choose.”

Helen stared at her protector.

“My dear,” continued the duchess, slipping her arm around Helen's waist,

“Sir James has honored ME--as became my relations to YOU--with his

confidences. As you haven't given me YOURS I suppose you have none, and

that I am telling you news when I say that Sir James wishes to marry

you.”

The unmistakable astonishment in the girl's eye satisfied the duchess

even before her voice.

“But he scarcely knows me or anything of me!” said the young girl

quickly.

“On the contrary, my dear, he knows EVERYTHING about you. I have been

particular in telling him all I know--and some things even YOU don't

know and couldn't tell him. For instance, that you are a very nice

person. Come, my dear, don't look so stupefied, or I shall really think

there's something in it that I don't know. It's not a laughing nor a

crying matter yet--at present it's only luncheon again with a civil

man who has three daughters and a place in the county. Don't make the

mistake, however, of refusing him before he offers--whatever you do

afterwards.”

“But”--stammered Helen.

“But--you are going to say that you don't love him and have never

thought of him as a husband,” interrupted the duchess; “I read it in

your face,--and it's a very proper thing to say.”

“It is so unexpected,” urged Helen.

“Everything is unexpected from a man in these matters,” said the

duchess. “We women are the only ones that are prepared.”

“But,” persisted Helen, “if I don't want to marry at all?”

“I should say, then, that it is a sign that you ought; if you were

eager, my dear, I should certainly dissuade you.” She paused, and then

drawing Helen closer to her, said, with a certain masculine tenderness,

“As long as I live, dear, you know that you have a home here. But I

am an old woman living on the smallest of settlements. Death is as

inevitable to me as marriage should be to you.”

Nevertheless, they did not renew the conversation, and later received

the greetings of their host at Moreland Hall with a simplicity and

frankness that were, however, perfectly natural and unaffected in both

women. Sir James,--a tall, well-preserved man of middle age, with

the unmistakable bearing of long years of recognized and unchallenged

position,--however, exhibited on this occasion that slight consciousness

of weakness and susceptibility to ridicule which is apt to indicate the

invasion of the tender passion in the heart of the average Briton. His

duty as host towards the elder woman of superior rank, however, covered

his embarrassment, and for a moment left Helen quite undisturbed to gaze

again upon the treasures of the long drawing-room of Moreland Hall with

which she was already familiar. There were the half-dozen old masters,

whose respectability had been as recognized through centuries as

their owner's ancestors; there were the ancestors themselves,--wigged,

ruffled, and white-handed, by Vandyke, Lely, Romney, and Gainsborough;

there were the uniform, expressionless ancestresses in stiff brocade

or short-waisted, clinging draperies, but all possessing that brilliant

coloring which the gray skies outside lacked, and which seemed to have

departed from the dresses of their descendants. The American girl had

sometimes speculated upon what might have been the appearance of the

lime-tree walk, dotted with these gayly plumaged folk, and wondered if

the tyranny of environment had at last subdued their brilliant colors.

And a new feeling touched her. Like most of her countrywomen, she was

strongly affected by the furniture of life; the thought that all that

she saw there MIGHT BE HERS; that she might yet stand in succession to

these strange courtiers and stranger shepherdesses, and, like them, look

down from the canvas upon the intruding foreigner, thrilled her for a

moment with a half-proud, half-passive sense of yielding to what seemed

to be her fate. A narrow-eyed, stiff-haired Dutch maid of honor before

whom she was standing gazed at her with staring vacancy. Suddenly

she started. Before the portrait upon a fanciful easel stood a small

elaborately framed sketch in oils. It was evidently some recently

imported treasure. She had not seen it before. As she moved quickly

forward, she recognized at a glance that it was Ostrander's sketch from

the Paris grenier.

The wall, the room, the park beyond, even the gray sky, seemed to fade

away before her. She was standing once more at her attic window looking

across the roofs and chimney stacks upward to the blue sky of Paris.

Through a gap in the roofs she could see the chestnut-trees trilling in

the little square; she could hear the swallows twittering in the leaden

troughs of the gutter before her; the call of the chocolate vender

or the cry of a gamin floated up to her from the street below, or

the latest song of the cafe chantant was whistled by the blue-bloused

workman on the scaffolding hard by. The breath of Paris, of youth, of

blended work and play, of ambition, of joyous freedom, again filled her

and mingled with the scent of the mignonette that used to stand on the

old window-ledge.

“I am glad you like it. I have only just put it up.”

It was the voice of Sir James--a voice that had regained a little of

its naturalness--a calm, even lazy English voice--confident from the

experience of years of respectful listeners. Yet it somehow jarred upon

her nerves with its complacency and its utter incongruousness to her

feelings. Nevertheless, the impulse to know more about the sketch was

the stronger.

“Do you mean you have just bought it?” asked Helen. “It's not English?”

“No,” said Sir James, gratified with his companion's interest. “I bought

it in Paris just after the Commune.”

“From the artist?” continued Helen, in a slightly constrained voice.

“No,” said Sir James, “although I knew the poor chap well enough. You

can easily see that he was once a painter of great promise. I rather

think it was stolen from him while he was in hospital by those

incendiary wretches. I recognized it, however, and bought for a few

francs from them what I would have paid HIM a thousand for.”

“In hospital?” repeated Helen dazedly.

“Yes,” said Sir James. “The fact is it was the ending of the usual

Bohemian artist's life. Though in this case the man was a real

artist,--and I believe, by the way, was a countryman of yours.”

“In hospital?” again repeated Helen. “Then he was poor?”

“Reckless, I should rather say; he threw himself into the fighting

before Paris and was badly wounded. But it was all the result of the

usual love affair--the girl, they say, ran off with the usual richer

man. At all events, it ruined him for painting; he never did anything

worth having afterwards.”

“And now?” said Helen in the same unmoved voice.

Sir James shrugged his shoulders. “He disappeared. Probably he'll turn

up some day on the London pavement--with chalks. That sketch, by the

way, was one that had always attracted me to his studio--though he never

would part with it. I rather fancy, don't you know, that the girl had

something to do with it. It's a wonderfully realistic sketch, don't you

see; and I shouldn't wonder if it was the girl herself who lived behind

one of those queer little windows in the roof there.”

“She did live there,” said Helen in a low voice.

Sir James uttered a vague laugh. Helen looked around her. The duchess

had quietly and unostentatiously passed into the library, and in full

view, though out of hearing, was examining, with her glass to her eye,

some books upon the shelves.

“I mean,” said Helen, in a perfectly clear voice, “that the young girl

did NOT run away from the painter, and that he had neither the right nor

the cause to believe her faithless or attribute his misfortunes to her.”

She hesitated, not from any sense of her indiscretion, but to recover

from a momentary doubt if the girl were really her own self--but only

for a moment.

“Then you knew the painter, as I did?” he said in astonishment.

“Not as YOU did,” responded Helen. She drew nearer the picture, and,

pointing a slim finger to the canvas, said:--

“Do you see that small window with the mignonette?”

“Perfectly.”

“That was MY room. His was opposite. He told me so when I first saw the

sketch. I am the girl you speak of, for he knew no other, and I believe

him to have been a truthful, honorable man.”

“But what were you doing there? Surely you are joking?” said Sir James,

with a forced smile.

“I was a poor pupil at the Conservatoire, and lived where I could afford

to live.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“And the man was”--

“Major Ostrander was my friend. I even think I have a better right to

call him that than you had.”

Sir James coughed slightly and grasped the lapel of his coat. “Of

course; I dare say; I had no idea of this, don't you know, when I

spoke.” He looked around him as if to evade a scene. “Ah! suppose we

ask the duchess to look at the sketch; I don't think she's seen it.” He

began to move in the direction of the library.

“She had better wait,” said Helen quietly.

“For what?”

“Until”--hesitated Helen smilingly.

“Until? I am afraid I don't understand,” said Sir James stiffly,

coloring with a slight suspicion.

“Until you have APOLOGIZED.”

“Of course,” said Sir James, with a half-hysteric laugh. “I do. You

understand I only repeated a story that was told me, and had no idea of

connecting YOU with it. I beg your pardon, I'm sure. I er--er--in fact,”

he added suddenly, the embarrassed smile fading from his face as he

looked at her fixedly, “I remember now it must have been the concierge

of the house, or the opposite one, who told me. He said it was a Russian

who carried off that young girl. Of course it was some made-up story.”

“I left Paris with the duchess,” said Helen quietly, “before the war.”

“Of course. And she knows all about your friendship with this man.”

“I don't think she does. I haven't told her. Why should I?” returned

Helen, raising her clear eyes to his.

“Really, I don't know,” stammered Sir James. “But here she is. Of course

if you prefer it, I won't say anything of this to her.”

Helen gave him her first glance of genuine emotion; it happened,

however, to be scorn.

“How odd!” she said, as the duchess leisurely approached them, her glass

still in her eye. “Sir James, quite unconsciously, has just been showing

me a sketch of my dear old mansarde in Paris. Look! That little window

was my room. And, only think of it, Sir James bought it of an old friend

of mine, who painted it from the opposite attic, where he lived. And

quite unconsciously, too.”

“How very singular!” said the duchess; “indeed, quite romantic!”

“Very!” said Sir James.

“Very!” said Helen.

The tone of their voices was so different that the duchess looked from

one to the other.

“But that isn't all,” said Helen with a smile, “Sir James actually

fancied”--

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” said Sir James, interrupting, and

turning hastily to the duchess with a forced smile and a somewhat

heightened color. “I had forgotten that I had promised Lady Harriet to

drive you over to Deep Hill after luncheon to meet that South American

who has taken such a fancy to your place, and I must send to the

stables.”

As Sir James disappeared, the duchess turned to Helen. “I see what has

happened, dear; don't mind me, for I frankly confess I shall now eat my

luncheon less guiltily than I feared. But tell me, HOW did you refuse

him?”

“I didn't refuse him,” said Helen. “I only prevented his asking me.”

“How?”

Then Helen told her all,--everything except her first meeting with

Ostrander at the restaurant. A true woman respects the pride of those

she loves more even than her own, and while Helen felt that although

that incident might somewhat condone her subsequent romantic passion in

the duchess's eyes, she could not tell it.

The duchess listened in silence.

“Then you two incompetents have never seen each other since?” she asked.

“No.”

“But you hope to?”

“I cannot speak for HIM,” said Helen.

“And you have never written to him, and don't know whether he is alive

or dead?”

“No.”

“Then I have been nursing in my bosom for three years at one and the

same time a brave, independent, matter-of-fact young person and the most

idiotic, sentimental heroine that ever figured in a romantic opera or a

country ballad.” Helen did not reply. “Well, my dear,” said the duchess

after a pause, “I see that you are condemned to pass your days with

me in some cheap hotel on the continent.” Helen looked up wonderingly.

“Yes,” she continued, “I suppose I must now make up my mind to sell my

place to this gilded South American, who has taken a fancy to it. But

I am not going to spoil my day by seeing him NOW. No; we will excuse

ourselves from going to Deep Hill to-day, and we will go back home

quietly after luncheon. It will be a mercy to Sir James.”

“But,” said Helen earnestly, “I can go back to my old life, and earn my

own living.”

“Not if I can help it,” said the duchess grimly. “Your independence has

made you a charming companion to me, I admit; but I shall see that it

does not again spoil your chances of marrying. Here comes Sir James.

Really, my dear, I don't know which one of you looks the more relieved.”

On their way back through the park Helen again urged the duchess to give

up the idea of selling Hamley Court, and to consent to her taking up

her old freedom and independence once more. “I shall never, never

forget your loving kindness and protection,” continued the young girl,

tenderly. “You will let me come to you always when you want me; but

you will let me also shape my life anew, and work for my living.” The

duchess turned her grave, half humorous face towards her. “That means

you have determined to seek HIM. Well! Perhaps if you give up your other

absurd idea of independence, I may assist you. And now I really believe,

dear, that there is that dreadful South American,” pointing to a figure

that was crossing the lawn at Hamley Court, “hovering round like a

vulture. Well, I can't see him to-day if he calls, but YOU may. By the

way, they say he is not bad-looking, was a famous general in the South

American War, and is rolling in money, and comes here on a secret

mission from his government. But I forget--the rest of our life is to

be devoted to seeking ANOTHER. And I begin to think I am not a good

matchmaker.”

Helen was in no mood for an interview with the stranger, whom, like the

duchess, she was inclined to regard as a portent of fate and sacrifice.

She knew her friend's straitened circumstances, which might make such

a sacrifice necessary to insure a competency for her old age, and,

as Helen feared also, a provision for herself. She knew the strange

tenderness of this masculine woman, which had survived a husband's

infidelities and a son's forgetfulness, to be given to her, and her

heart sank at the prospect of separation, even while her pride demanded

that she should return to her old life again. Then she wondered if the

duchess was right; did she still cherish the hope of meeting Ostrander

again? The tears she had kept back all that day asserted themselves

as she flung open the library door and ran across the garden into the

myrtle walk. “In hospital!” The words had been ringing in her ears

though Sir James's complacent speech, through the oddly constrained

luncheon, through the half-tender, half-masculine reasoning of her

companion. He HAD loved her--he had suffered and perhaps thought her

false. Suddenly she stopped. At the further end of the walk the ominous

stranger whom she wished to avoid was standing looking towards the

house.

How provoking! She glanced again; he was leaning against a tree and was

obviously as preoccupied as she was herself. He was actually sketching

the ivy-covered gable of the library. What presumption! And he was

sketching with his left hand. A sudden thrill of superstition came over

her. She moved eagerly forward for a better view of him. No! he had two

arms!

But his quick eye had already caught sight of her, and before she could

retreat she could see that he had thrown away his sketch-book and was

hastening eagerly toward her. Amazed and confounded she would have

flown, but her limbs suddenly refused their office, and as he at last

came near her with the cry of “Helen!” upon his lips, she felt herself

staggering, and was caught in his arms.

“Thank God,” he said. “Then she HAS let you come to me!”

She disengaged herself slowly and dazedly from him and stood looking at

him with wondering eyes. He was bronzed and worn; there was the second

arm: but still it was HE. And with the love, which she now knew he had

felt, looking from his honest eyes!

“SHE has let me come!” she repeated vacantly. “Whom do you mean?”

“The duchess.”

“The duchess?”

“Yes.” He stopped suddenly, gazing at her blank face, while his own grew

ashy white. “Helen! For God's sake tell me! You have not accepted him?”

“I have accepted no one,” she stammered, with a faint color rising to

her cheeks. “I do not understand you.”

A look of relief came over him. “But,” he said amazedly, “has not the

duchess told you how I happen to be here? How, when you disappeared from

Paris long ago--with my ambition crushed, and nothing left to me but

my old trade of the fighter--I joined a secret expedition to help the

Chilian revolutionists? How I, who might have starved as a painter,

gained distinction as a partisan general, and was rewarded with an

envoyship in Europe? How I came to Paris to seek you? How I found that

even the picture--your picture, Helen--had been sold. How, in tracing it

here, I met the duchess at Deep Hill, and learning you were with her, in

a moment of impulse told her my whole story. How she told me that though

she was your best friend, you had never spoken of me, and how she begged

me not to spoil your chance of a good match by revealing myself, and so

awakening a past--which she believed you had forgotten. How she implored

me at least to let her make a fair test of your affections and your

memory, and until then to keep away from you--and to spare you, Helen;

and for your sake, I consented. Surely she has told this, NOW!”

“Not a word,” said Helen blankly.

“Then you mean to say that if I had not haunted the park to-day, in the

hope of seeing you, believing that as you would not recognize me with

this artificial arm, I should not break my promise to her,--you would

not have known I was even living.”

“No!--yes!--stay!” A smile broke over her pale face and left it rosy. “I

see it all now. Oh, Philip, don't you understand? She wanted only to try

us!”

There was a silence in the lonely wood, broken only by the trills of a

frightened bird whose retreat was invaded.

“Not now! Please! Wait! Come with me!”

The next moment she had seized Philip's left hand, and, dragging him

with her, was flying down the walk towards the house. But as they neared

the garden door it suddenly opened on the duchess, with her glasses to

her eyes, smiling.

The General Don Felipe Ostrander did not buy Hamley Court, but he and

his wife were always welcome guests there. And Sir James, as became an

English gentleman,--amazed though he was at Philip's singular return,

and more singular incognito,--afterwards gallantly presented Philip's

wife with Philip's first picture.

THE JUDGMENT OF BOLINAS PLAIN

The wind was getting up on the Bolinas Plain. It had started the fine

alkaline dust along the level stage road, so that even that faint track,

the only break in the monotony of the landscape, seemed fainter than

ever. But the dust cloud was otherwise a relief; it took the semblance

of distant woods where there was no timber, of moving teams where there

was no life. And as Sue Beasley, standing in the doorway of One Spring

House that afternoon, shading her sandy lashes with her small red hand,

glanced along the desolate track, even HER eyes, trained to the dreary

prospect, were once or twice deceived.

“Sue!”

It was a man's voice from within. Sue took no notice of it, but remained

with her hand shading her eyes.

“Sue! Wot yer yawpin' at thar?”

“Yawpin'” would seem to have been the local expression for her

abstraction, since, without turning her head, she answered slowly and

languidly: “Reckoned I see'd som' un on the stage road. But 'tain't

nothin' nor nobody.”

Both voices had in their accents and delivery something of the sadness

and infinite protraction of the plain. But the woman's had a musical

possibility in its long-drawn cadence, while the man's was only

monotonous and wearying. And as she turned back into the room again,

and confronted her companion, there was the like difference in their

appearance. Ira Beasley, her husband, had suffered from the combined

effects of indolence, carelessness, misadventure, and disease. Two of

his fingers had been cut off by a scythe, his thumb and part of his left

ear had been blown away by an overcharged gun; his knees were crippled

by rheumatism, and one foot was lame from ingrowing nails,--deviations

that, however, did not tend to correct the original angularities of his

frame. His wife, on the other hand, had a pretty figure, which still

retained--they were childless--the rounded freshness of maidenhood. Her

features were irregular, yet not without a certain piquancy of outline;

her hair had the two shades sometimes seen in imperfect blondes, and

her complexion the sallowness of combined exposure and alkaline

assimilation.

She had lived there since, an angular girl of fifteen, she had been

awkwardly helped by Ira from the tail-board of the emigrant wagon in

which her mother had died two weeks before, and which was making its

first halt on the Californian plains, before Ira's door. On the second

day of their halt Ira had tried to kiss her while she was drawing water,

and had received the contents of the bucket instead,--the girl knowing

her own value. On the third day Ira had some conversation with

her father regarding locations and stock. On the fourth day this

conversation was continued in the presence of the girl; on the fifth day

the three walked to Parson Davies' house, four miles away, where Ira

and Sue were married. The romance of a week had taken place within the

confines of her present view from the doorway; the episode of her life

might have been shut in in that last sweep of her sandy lashes.

Nevertheless, at that moment some instinct, she knew not what, impelled

her when her husband left the room to put down the dish she was washing,

and, with the towel lapped over her bare pretty arms, to lean once more

against the doorpost, lazily looking down the plain. A cylindrical

cloud of dust trailing its tattered skirt along the stage road suddenly

assaulted the house, and for an instant enveloped it. As it whirled away

again something emerged, or rather dropped from its skirts behind the

little cluster of low bushes which encircled the “One Spring.” It was a

man.

“Thar! I knew it was suthin',” she began aloud, but the words somehow

died upon her lips. Then she turned and walked towards the inner

door, wherein her husband had disappeared,--but here stopped again

irresolutely. Then she suddenly walked through the outer door into the

road and made directly for the spring. The figure of a man crouching,

covered with dust, half rose from the bushes when she reached them. She

was not frightened, for he seemed utterly exhausted, and there was a

singular mixture of shame, hesitation, and entreaty in his broken voice

as he gasped out:--

“Look here!--I say! hide me somewhere, won't you? Just for a little.

You see--the fact is--I'm chased! They're hunting me now,--they're

just behind me. Anywhere will do till they go by! Tell you all about it

another time. Quick! Please do!”

In all this there was nothing dramatic nor even startling to her. Nor

did there seem to be any present danger impending to the man. He did

not look like a horse-thief nor a criminal. And he had tried to laugh,

half-apologetically, half-bitterly,--the consciousness of a man who had

to ask help of a woman at such a moment.

She gave a quick glance towards the house. He followed her eyes,

and said hurriedly: “Don't tell on me. Don't let any one see me. I'm

trusting you.

“Come,” she said suddenly. “Get on THIS side.”

He understood her, and slipped to her side, half-creeping,

half-crouching like a dog behind her skirts, but keeping her figure

between him and the house as she moved deliberately towards the barn,

scarce fifty yards away. When she reached it she opened the half-door

quickly, said: “In there--at the top--among the hay”--closed it, and was

turning away, when there came a faint rapping from within. She opened

the door again impatiently; the man said hastily: “Wanted to tell

you--it was a man who insulted a WOMAN! I went for him, you see--and”--

But she shut the door sharply. The fugitive had made a blunder. The

importation of her own uncertain sex into the explanation did not help

him. She kept on towards the house, however, without the least trace

of excitement or agitation in her manner, entered the front door again,

walked quietly to the door of the inner room, glanced in, saw that her

husband was absorbed in splicing a riata, and had evidently not missed

her, and returned quietly to her dish-washing. With this singular

difference: a few moments before she had seemed inattentive and careless

of what she was doing, as if from some abstraction; now, when she

was actually abstracted, her movements were mechanically perfect and

deliberate. She carefully held up a dish and examined it minutely for

cracks, rubbing it cautiously with the towel, but seeing all the while

only the man she had left in the barn. A few moments elapsed. Then there

came another rush of wind around the house, a drifting cloud of dust

before the door, the clatter of hoofs, and a quick shout.

Her husband reached the door, from the inner room, almost as quickly as

she did. They both saw in the road two armed mounted men--one of whom

Ira recognized as the sheriff's deputy.

“Has anybody been here, just now?” he asked sharply.

“No.”

“Seen anybody go by?” he continued.

“No. What's up?”

“One of them circus jumpers stabbed Hal Dudley over the table in Dolores

monte shop last night, and got away this morning. We hunted him into the

plain and lost him somewhere in this d----d dust.”

“Why, Sue reckoned she saw suthin' just now,” said Ira, with a flash of

recollection. “Didn't ye, Sue?”

“Why the h-ll didn't she say it before?--I beg your pardon, ma'am;

didn't see you; you'll excuse haste.”

Both the men's hats were in their hands, embarrassed yet gratified

smiles on their faces, as Sue came forward. There was the faintest of

color in her sallow cheek, a keen brilliancy in her eyes; she looked

singularly pretty. Even Ira felt a slight antenuptial stirring through

his monotonously wedded years.

The young woman walked out, folding the towel around her red hands and

forearms--leaving the rounded whiteness of bared elbow and upper arm

in charming contrast--and looked gravely past the admiring figures that

nearly touched her own. “It was somewhar over thar,” she said lazily,

pointing up the road in the opposite direction to the barn, “but I ain't

sure it WAS any one.”

“Then he'd already PASSED the house afore you saw him?” said the deputy.

“I reckon--if it WAS him,” returned Sue.

“He must have got on,” said the deputy; “but then he runs like a deer;

it's his trade.”

“Wot trade?”

“Acrobat.”

“Wot's that?”

The two men were delighted at this divine simplicity. “A man who runs,

jumps, climbs--and all that sort, in the circus.”

“But isn't he runnin', jumpin', and climbin' away from ye now?” she

continued with adorable naivete.

The deputy smiled, but straightened in the saddle. “We're bound to come

up with him afore he reaches Lowville; and between that and this house

it's a dead level, where a gopher couldn't leave his hole without your

spottin' him a mile off! Good-by!” The words were addressed to Ira,

but the parting glance was directed to the pretty wife as the two men

galloped away.

An odd uneasiness at this sudden revelation of his wife's prettiness and

its evident effect upon his visitors came over Ira. It resulted in his

addressing the empty space before his door with, “Well, ye won't ketch

much if ye go on yawpin' and dawdlin' with women-folks like this;” and

he was unreasonably delighted at the pretty assent of disdain and scorn

which sparkled in his wife's eyes as she added:--

“Not much, I reckon!”

“That's the kind of official trash we have to pay taxes to keep up,”

said Ira, who somehow felt that if public policy was not amenable to

private sentiment there was no value in free government. Mrs. Beasley,

however, complacently resumed her dish-washing, and Ira returned to his

riata in the adjoining room. For quite an interval there was no sound

but the occasional click of a dish laid upon its pile, with fingers

that, however, were firm and untremulous. Presently Sue's low voice was

heard.

“Wonder if that deputy caught anything yet. I've a good mind to meander

up the road and see.”

But the question brought Ira to the door with a slight return of his

former uneasiness. He had no idea of subjecting his wife to another

admiring interview. “I reckon I'll go myself,” he said dubiously; “YOU'D

better stay and look after the house.”

Her eyes brightened as she carried a pile of plates to the dresser;

it was possible she had foreseen this compromise. “Yes,” she said

cheerfully, “you could go farther than me.”

Ira reflected. He could also send them about their business if they

thought of returning. He lifted his hat from the floor, took his rifle

down carefully from its pegs, and slouched out into the road. Sue

watched him until he was well away, then flew to the back door, stopping

only an instant to look at her face in a small mirror on the wall,--yet

without noticing her new prettiness,--then ran to the barn. Casting

a backward glance at the diminishing figure of her husband in the

distance, she threw open the door and shut it quickly behind her.

At first the abrupt change from the dazzling outer plain to the deep

shadows of the barn bewildered her. She saw before her a bucket half

filled with dirty water, and a quantity of wet straw littering the

floor; then lifting her eyes to the hay-loft, she detected the figure of

the fugitive, unclothed from the waist upward, emerging from the loose

hay in which he had evidently been drying himself. Whether it was the

excitement of his perilous situation, or whether the perfect symmetry

of his bared bust and arms--unlike anything she had ever seen

before--clothed him with the cold ideality of a statue, she could not

say, but she felt no shock of modesty; while the man, accustomed to

the public half-exposure in tights and spangles, was more conscious of

detected unreadiness than of shame.

“Gettin' the dust off me,” he said, in hurried explanation; “be down

in a second.” Indeed, in another moment he had resumed his shirt and

flannel coat, and swung himself to the floor with a like grace and

dexterity, that was to her the revelation of a descending god. She found

herself face to face with him,--his features cleansed of dirt and grime,

his hair plastered in wet curls on his low forehead. It was a face

of cheap adornment, not uncommon in his profession--unintelligent,

unrefined, and even unheroic; but she did not know that. Overcoming a

sudden timidity, she nevertheless told him briefly and concisely of the

arrival and departure of his pursuers.

His low forehead wrinkled. “Thar's no getting away until they come

back,” he said without looking at her. “Could ye keep me in here

to-night?”

“Yes,” she returned simply, as if the idea had already occurred to her;

“but you must lie low in the loft.”

“And could you”--he hesitated, and went on with a forced smile--“you

see, I've eaten nothing since last night. Could you”--

“I'll bring you something,” she said quickly, nodding her head.

“And if you had”--he went on more hesitatingly, glancing down at his

travel-torn and frayed garments--“anything like a coat, or any other

clothing? It would disguise me also, you see, and put 'em off the

track.”

She nodded her head again rapidly: she had thought of that too; there

was a pair of doeskin trousers and a velvet jacket left by a Mexican

vaquero who had bought stock from them two years ago. Practical as she

was, a sudden conviction that he would look well in the velvet jacket

helped her resolve.

“Did they say”--he said, with his forced smile and uneasy glance--“did

they--tell you anything about me?”

“Yes,” she said abstractedly, gazing at him.

“You see,” he began hurriedly, “I'll tell you how it was.”

“No, don't!” she said quickly. She meant it. She wanted no facts to

stand between her and this single romance of her life. “I must go and

get the things,” she added, turning away, “before he gets back.”

“Who's HE?” asked the man.

She was about to reply, “My husband,” but without knowing why stopped

and said, “Mr. Beasley,” and then ran off quickly to the house.

She found the vaquero's clothes, took some provisions, filled a flask of

whiskey in the cupboard, and ran back with them, her mouth expanded to

a vague smile, and pulsating like a schoolgirl. She even repressed

with difficulty the ejaculation “There!” as she handed them to him. He

thanked her, but with eyes fixed and fascinated by the provisions. She

understood it with a new sense of delicacy, and saying, “I'll come again

when he gets back,” ran off and returned to the house, leaving him alone

to his repast.

Meantime her husband, lounging lazily along the high road, had

precipitated the catastrophe he wished to avoid. For his slouching

figure, silhouetted against the horizon on that monotonous level, had

been the only one detected by the deputy sheriff and the constable, his

companion, and they had charged down within fifty yards of him before

they discovered their mistake. They were not slow in making this an

excuse for abandoning their quest as far as Lowville: in fact, after

quitting the distraction of Mrs. Beasley's presence they had, without in

the least suspecting the actual truth, become doubtful if the fugitive

had proceeded so far. He might at that moment be snugly ensconced behind

some low wire-grass ridge, watching their own clearly defined figures,

and waiting only for the night to evade them. The Beasley house seemed a

proper place of operation in beating up the field. Ira's cold reception

of the suggestion was duly disposed of by the deputy. “I have the RIGHT,

ye know,” he said, with a grim pleasantry, “to summon ye as my posse

to aid and assist me in carrying out the law; but I ain't the man to

be rough on my friends, and I reckon it will do jest as well if I

'requisition' your house.” The dreadful recollection that the deputy had

the power to detail him and the constable to scour the plain while he

remained behind in company with Sue stopped Ira's further objections.

Yet, if he could only get rid of her while the deputy was in the

house,--but then his nearest neighbor was five miles away! There was

nothing left for him to do but to return with the men and watch his

wife keenly. Strange to say, there was a certain stimulus in this which

stirred his monotonous pulses and was not without a vague pleasure.

There is a revelation to some natures in newly awakened jealousy that is

a reincarnation of love.

As they came into the house a slight circumstance, which an hour ago

would have scarcely touched his sluggish sensibilities, now appeared to

corroborate his fear. His wife had changed her cuffs and collar, taken

off her rough apron, and evidently redressed her hair. This, with the

enhanced brightness of her eyes, which he had before noticed, convinced

him that it was due to the visit of the deputy. There was no doubt that

the official was equally attracted and fascinated by her prettiness, and

although her acceptance of his return was certainly not a cordial one,

there was a kind of demure restraint and over-consciousness in her

manner that might be coquetry. Ira had vaguely observed this quality in

other young women, but had never experienced it in his brief courtship.

There had been no rivalry, no sexual diplomacy nor insincerity in his

capture of the motherless girl who had leaped from the tail-board of her

father's wagon almost into his arms, and no man had since come between

them. The idea that Sue should care for any other than himself had been

simply inconceivable to his placid, matter-of-fact nature. That their

sacrament was final he had never doubted. If his two cows, bought

with his own money or reared by him, should suddenly have developed

an inclination to give milk to a neighbor, he would not have been more

astonished. But THEY could have been brought back with a rope, and

without a heart throb.

Passion of this kind, which in a less sincere society restricts its

expression to innuendo or forced politeness, left the rustic Ira only

dumb and lethargic. He moved slowly and abstractedly around the room,

accenting his slight lameness more than ever, or dropped helplessly into

a chair, where he sat, inanely conscious of the contiguity of his

wife and the deputy, and stupidly expectant of--he knew not what.

The atmosphere of the little house seemed to him charged with some

unwholesome electricity. It kindled his wife's eyes, stimulating the

deputy and his follower to coarse playfulness, enthralled his own limbs

to the convulsive tightening of his fingers around the rungs of his

chair. Yet he managed to cling to his idea of keeping his wife occupied,

and of preventing any eyeshot between her and her guests, or the

indulgence of dangerously flippant conversation, by ordering her to

bring some refreshment. “What's gone o' the whiskey bottle?” he said,

after fumbling in the cupboard.

Mrs. Beasley did not blench. She only gave her head a slight toss. “Ef

you men can't get along with the coffee and flapjacks I'm going to give

ye, made with my own hands, ye kin just toddle right along to the

first bar, and order your tangle-foot there. Ef it's a barkeeper you're

looking for, and not a lady, say so!”

The novel audacity of this speech, and the fact that it suggested

that preoccupation he hoped for, relieved Ira for a moment, while it

enchanted the guests as a stroke of coquettish fascination. Mrs. Beasley

triumphantly disappeared in the kitchen, slipped off her cuffs and set

to work, and in a few moments emerged with a tray bearing the cakes and

steaming coffee. As neither she nor her husband ate anything (possibly

owing to an equal preoccupation) the guests were obliged to confine

their attentions to the repast before them. The sun, too, was already

nearing the horizon, and although its nearly level beams acted like a

powerful search-light over the stretching plain, twilight would soon

put an end to the quest. Yet they lingered. Ira now foresaw a new

difficulty: the cows were to be brought up and fodder taken from the

barn; to do this he would be obliged to leave his wife and the deputy

together. I do not know if Mrs. Beasley divined his perplexity, but she

carelessly offered to perform that evening function herself. Ira's heart

leaped and sank again as the deputy gallantly proposed to assist her.

But here rustic simplicity seemed to be equal to the occasion. “Ef I

propose to do Ira's work,” said Mrs. Beasley, with provocative archness,

“it's because I reckon he'll do more good helpin' you catch your

man than you'll do helpin' ME! So clear out, both of ye!” A feminine

audacity that recalled the deputy to himself, and left him no choice but

to accept Ira's aid. I do not know whether Mrs. Beasley felt a pang of

conscience as her husband arose gratefully and limped after the deputy;

I only know that she stood looking at them from the door, smiling and

triumphant.

Then she slipped out of the back door again, and ran swiftly to the

barn, fastening on her clean cuffs and collar as she ran. The fugitive

was anxiously awaiting her, with a slight touch of brusqueness in his

eagerness.

“Thought you were never coming!” he said.

She breathlessly explained, and showed him through the half-opened door

the figures of the three men slowly spreading and diverging over the

plain, like the nearly level sun-rays they were following. The sunlight

fell also on her panting bosom, her electrified sandy hair, her red,

half-opened mouth, and short and freckled upper lip. The relieved

fugitive turned from the three remoter figures to the one beside him,

and saw, for the first time, that it was fair. At which he smiled, and

her face flushed and was irradiated.

Then they fell to talk,--he grateful, boastful,--as the distant figures

grew dim; she quickly assenting, but following his expression rather

than his words, with her own girlish face and brightening eyes. But what

he said, or how he explained his position, with what speciousness he

dwelt upon himself, his wrongs, and his manifold manly virtues, is not

necessary for us to know, nor was it, indeed, for her to understand.

Enough for her that she felt she had found the one man of all the world,

and that she was at that moment protecting him against all the world! He

was the unexpected, spontaneous gift to her, the companion her childhood

had never known, the lover she had never dreamed of, even the child of

her unsatisfied maternal yearnings. If she could not comprehend all his

selfish incoherences, she felt it was her own fault; if she could not

follow his ignorant assumptions, she knew it was SHE who was deficient;

if she could not translate his coarse speech, it was because it was the

language of a larger world from which she had been excluded. To this

world belonged the beautiful limbs she gazed on,--a very different

world from that which had produced the rheumatic deformities and useless

mayhem of her husband, or the provincially foppish garments of the

deputy. Sitting in the hayloft together, where she had mounted for

greater security, they forgot themselves in his monologue of cheap

vaporing, broken only by her assenting smiles and her half-checked

sighs. The sharp spices of the heated pine-shingles over their heads

and the fragrance of the clover-scented hay filled the close air around

them. The sun was falling with the wind, but they heeded it not; until

the usual fateful premonition struck the woman, and saying “I must go

now,” she only half-unconsciously precipitated the end. For, as she

rose, he caught first her hand and then her waist, and attempted to

raise the face that was suddenly bending down as if seeking to hide

itself in the hay. It was a brief struggle, ending in a submission as

sudden, and their lips met in a kiss, so eager that it might have been

impending for days instead of minutes.

“Oh, Sue! where are ye?”

It was her husband's voice, out of a darkness that they only then

realized. The man threw her aside with a roughness that momentarily

shocked her above any sense of surprise or shame: SHE would have

confronted her husband in his arms,--glorified and translated,--had he

but kept her there. Yet she answered, with a quiet, level voice that

astonished her lover, “Here! I'm just coming down!” and walked coolly

to the ladder. Looking over, and seeing her husband with the deputy

standing in the barnyard, she quickly returned, put her finger to her

lips, made a gesture for her companion to conceal himself in the hay

again, and was turning away, when, perhaps shamed by her superior

calmness, he grasped her hand tightly and whispered, “Come again

tonight, dear; do!” She hesitated, raised her hand suddenly to her lips,

and then quickly disengaging it, slipped down the ladder.

“Ye haven't done much work yet as I kin see,” said Ira wearily. “Whitey

and Red Tip [the cows] are hangin' over the corral, just waitin'.”

“The yellow hen we reckoned was lost is sittin' in the hayloft, and

mustn't be disturbed,” said Mrs. Beasley, with decision; “and ye'll have

to take the hay from the stack to-night. And,” with an arch glance at

the deputy, “as I don't see that you two have done much either, you're

just in time to help fodder down.”

Setting the three men to work with the same bright audacity, the task

was soon completed--particularly as the deputy found no opportunity for

exclusive dalliance with Mrs. Beasley. She shut the barn door herself,

and led the way to the house, learning incidentally that the deputy had

abandoned the chase, was to occupy a “shake-down” on the kitchen-floor

that night with the constable, and depart at daybreak. The gloom of

her husband's face had settled into a look of heavy resignation and

alternate glances of watchfulness, which only seemed to inspire her

with renewed vivacity. But the cooking of supper withdrew her disturbing

presence for a time from the room, and gave him some relief. When

the meal was ready he sought further surcease from trouble in copious

draughts of whiskey, which she produced from a new bottle, and even

pressed upon the deputy in mischievous contrition for her previous

inhospitality.

“Now I know that it wasn't whiskey only ye came for, I'll show you that

Sue Beasley is no slouch of a barkeeper either,” she said.

Then, rolling her sleeves above her pretty arms, she mixed a cocktail in

such delightful imitation of the fashionable barkeeper's dexterity that

her guests were convulsed with admiration. Even Ira was struck with

this revelation of a youthfulness that five years of household care had

checked, but never yet subdued. He had forgotten that he had married a

child. Only once, when she glanced at the cheap clock on the mantel,

had he noticed another change, more remarkable still from its very

inconsistency with her burst of youthful spirits. It was another face

that he saw,--older and matured with an intensity of abstraction that

struck a chill to his heart. It was not HIS Sue that was standing there,

but another Sue, wrought, as it seemed to his morbid extravagance, by

some one else's hand.

Yet there was another interval of relief when his wife, declaring she

was tired, and even jocosely confessing to some effect of the liquor she

had pretended to taste, went early to bed. The deputy, not finding the

gloomy company of the husband to his taste, presently ensconced himself

on the floor, before the kitchen fire, in the blankets that she had

provided. The constable followed his example. In a few moments the house

was silent and sleeping, save for Ira sitting alone, with his head sunk

on his chest and his hands gripping the arms of his chair before the

dying embers of his hearth.

He was trying, with the alternate quickness and inaction of an

inexperienced intellect and an imagination morbidly awakened, to grasp

the situation before him. The common sense that had hitherto governed

his life told him that the deputy would go to-morrow, and that there was

nothing in his wife's conduct to show that her coquetry and aberration

would not pass as easily. But it recurred to him that she had never

shown this coquetry or aberration to HIM during their own brief

courtship,--that she had never looked or acted like this before. If this

was love, she had never known it; if it was only “women's ways,” as he

had heard men say, and so dangerously attractive, why had she not shown

it to him? He remembered that matter-of-fact wedding, the bride without

timidity, without blushes, without expectation beyond the transference

of her home to his. Would it have been different with another man?--with

the deputy, who had called this color and animation to her face? What

did it all mean? Were all married people like this? There were the

Westons, their neighbors,--was Mrs. Weston like Sue? But he remembered

that Mrs. Weston had run away with Mr. Weston from her father's house.

It was what they called “a love match.” Would Sue have run away with

him? Would she now run away with--?

The candle was guttering as he rose with a fierce start--his first

impulse of anger--from the table. He took another gulp of whiskey. It

tasted like water; its fire was quenched in the greater heat of his

blood. He would go to bed. Here a new and indefinable timidity took

possession of him; he remembered the strange look in his wife's face. It

seemed suddenly as if the influence of the sleeping stranger in the next

room had not only isolated her from him, but would make his presence

in her bedroom an intrusion on their hidden secrets. He had to pass the

open door of the kitchen. The head of the unconscious deputy was close

to Ira's heavy boot. He had only to lift his heel to crush that ruddy,

good-looking, complacent face. He hurried past him, up the creaking

stairs. His wife lay still on one side of the bed, apparently asleep,

her face half-hidden in her loosened, fluffy hair. It was well; for in

the vague shyness and restraint that was beginning to take possession

of him he felt he could not have spoken to her, or, if he had, it would

have been only to voice the horrible, unformulated things that seemed to

choke him. He crept softly to the opposite side of the bed, and began to

undress. As he pulled off his boots and stockings, his eye fell upon

his bare, malformed feet. This caused him to look at his maimed hand,

to rise, drag himself across the floor to the mirror, and gaze upon his

lacerated ear. She, this prettily formed woman lying there, must have

seen it often; she must have known all these years that he was not like

other men,--not like the deputy, with his tight riding-boots, his soft

hand, and the diamond that sparkled vulgarly on his fat little finger.

A cold sweat broke over him. He drew on his stockings again, lifted the

outer counterpane, and, half undressed, crept under it, wrapping its

corner around his maimed hand, as if to hide it from the light. Yet he

felt that he saw things dimly; there was a moisture on his cheeks and

eyelids he could not account for; it must be the whiskey “coming out.”

His wife lay very still; she scarcely seemed to breathe. What if she

should never breathe again, but die as the old Sue he knew, the lanky

girl he had married, unchanged and uncontaminated? It would be better

than this. Yet at the same moment the picture was before him of her

pretty simulation of the barkeeper, of her white bared arms and laughing

eyes, all so new, so fresh to him! He tried to listen to the slow

ticking of the clock, the occasional stirring of air through the house,

and the movement, like a deep sigh, which was the regular, inarticulate

speech of the lonely plain beyond, and quite distinct from the evening

breeze. He had heard it often, but, like so many things he had learned

that day, he never seemed to have caught its meaning before. Then,

perhaps, it was his supine position, perhaps some cumulative effect of

the whiskey he had taken, but all this presently became confused and

whirling. Out of its gyrations he tried to grasp something, to hear

voices that called him to “wake,” and in the midst of it he fell into a

profound sleep.

The clock ticked, the wind sighed, the woman at his side lay motionless

for many minutes.

Then the deputy on the kitchen floor rolled over with an appalling

snort, struggled, stretched himself, and awoke. A healthy animal, he had

shaken off the fumes of liquor with a dry tongue and a thirst for water

and fresh air. He raised his knees and rubbed his eyes. The water bucket

was missing from the corner. Well, he knew where the spring was, and a

turn out of the close and stifling kitchen would do him good. He

yawned, put on his boots softly, opened the back door, and stepped out.

Everything was dark, but above and around him, to the very level of his

feet, all apparently pricked with bright stars. The bulk of the barn

rose dimly before him on the right, to the left was the spring. He

reached it, drank, dipped his head and hands in it, and arose refreshed.

The dry, wholesome breath that blew over this flat disk around him,

rimmed with stars, did the rest. He began to saunter slowly back,

the only reminiscence of his evening's potations being the figure he

recalled of his pretty hostess, with bare arms and lifted glasses,

imitating the barkeeper. A complacent smile straightened his yellow

mustache. How she kept glancing at him and watching him, the little

witch! Ha! no wonder! What could she find in the surly, slinking, stupid

brute yonder? (The gentleman here alluded to was his host.) But the

deputy had not been without a certain provincial success with the fair.

He was true to most men, and fearless to all. One may not be too hard

upon him at this moment of his life.

For as he was passing the house he stopped suddenly. Above the dry,

dusty, herbal odors of the plain, above the scent of the new-mown hay

within the barn, there was distinctly another fragrance,--the smell of

a pipe. But where? Was it his host who had risen to take the outer air?

Then it suddenly flashed upon him that Beasley did NOT smoke, nor

the constable either. The smell seemed to come from the barn. Had he

followed out the train of ideas thus awakened, all might have been well;

but at this moment his attention was arrested by a far more exciting

incident to him,--the draped and hooded figure of Mrs. Beasley was just

emerging from the house. He halted instantly in the shadow, and held

his breath as she glided quickly across the intervening space and

disappeared in the half-opened door of the barn. Did she know he

was there? A keen thrill passed over him; his mouth broadened into a

breathless smile. It was his last! for, as he glided forward to the

door, the starry heavens broke into a thousand brilliant fragments

around him, the earth gave way beneath his feet, and he fell forward

with half his skull shot away.

Where he fell there he lay without an outcry, with only one

movement,--the curved and grasping fingers of the fighter's hand towards

his guarded hip. Where he fell there he lay dead, his face downwards,

his good right arm still curved around across his back. Nothing of him

moved but his blood,--broadening slowly round him in vivid color, and

then sluggishly thickening and darkening until it stopped too, and sank

into the earth, a dull brown stain. For an instant the stillness of

death followed the echoless report, then there was a quick and feverish

rustling within the barn, the hurried opening of a window in the loft,

scurrying footsteps, another interval of silence, and then out of the

farther darkness the sounds of horse-hoofs in the muffled dust of the

road. But not a sound or movement in the sleeping house beyond.

The stars at last paled slowly, the horizon lines came back,--a thin

streak of opal fire. A solitary bird twittered in the bush beside the

spring. Then the back door of the house opened, and the constable came

forth, half-awakened and apologetic, and with the bewildered haste of a

belated man. His eyes were level, looking for his missing leader as he

went on, until at last he stumbled and fell over the now cold and rigid

body. He scrambled to his feet again, cast a hurried glance around

him,--at the half-opened door of the barn, at the floor littered with

trampled hay. In one corner lay the ragged blouse and trousers of the

fugitive, which the constable instantly recognized. He went back to the

house, and reappeared in a few moments with Ira, white, stupefied, and

hopelessly bewildered; clear only in his statement that his wife had

just fainted at the news of the catastrophe, and was equally helpless in

her own room. The constable--a man of narrow ideas but quick action--saw

it all. The mystery was plain without further evidence. The deputy had

been awakened by the prowling of the fugitive around the house in search

of a horse. Sallying out, they had met, and Ira's gun, which stood in

the kitchen, and which the deputy had seized, had been wrested from him

and used with fatal effect at arm's length, and the now double assassin

had escaped on the sheriff's horse, which was missing. Turning the body

over to the trembling Ira, he saddled his horse and galloped to Lowville

for assistance.

These facts were fully established at the hurried inquest which met that

day. There was no need to go behind the evidence of the constable, the

only companion of the murdered man and first discoverer of the body. The

fact that he, on the ground floor, had slept through the struggle and

the report, made the obliviousness of the couple in the room above

a rational sequence. The dazed Ira was set aside, after half a dozen

contemptuous questions; the chivalry of a Californian jury excused the

attendance of a frightened and hysterical woman confined to her room.

By noon they had departed with the body, and the long afternoon shadows

settled over the lonely plain and silent house. At nightfall Ira

appeared at the door, and stood for some moments scanning the plain; he

was seen later by two packers, who had glanced furtively at the scene

of the late tragedy, sitting outside his doorway, a mere shadow in the

darkness; and a mounted patrol later in the night saw a light in the

bedroom window where the invalid Mrs. Beasley was confined. But no one

saw her afterwards. Later, Ira explained that she had gone to visit a

relative until her health was restored. Having few friends and fewer

neighbors, she was not missed; and even the constable, the sole

surviving guest who had enjoyed her brief eminence of archness and

beauty that fatal night, had quite forgotten her in his vengeful quest

of the murderer. So that people became accustomed to see this lonely man

working in the fields by day, or at nightfall gazing fixedly from his

doorway. At the end of three months he was known as the recluse or

“hermit” of Bolinas Plain; in the rapid history-making of that epoch it

was forgotten that he had ever been anything else.

But Justice, which in those days was apt to nod over the affairs of the

average citizen, was keenly awake to offenses against its own officers;

and it chanced that the constable, one day walking through the streets

of Marysville, recognized the murderer and apprehended him. He was

removed to Lowville. Here, probably through some modest doubt of the

ability of the County Court, which the constable represented, to deal

with purely circumstantial evidence, he was not above dropping a hint to

the local Vigilance Committee, who, singularly enough, in spite of his

resistance, got possession of the prisoner. It was the rainy season, and

business was slack; the citizens of Lowville were thus enabled to

give so notorious a case their fullest consideration, and to assist

cheerfully at the ultimate hanging of the prisoner, which seemed to be a

foregone conclusion.

But herein they were mistaken. For when the constable had given his

evidence, already known to the county, there was a disturbance in the

fringe of humanity that lined the walls of the assembly room where the

committee was sitting, and the hermit of Bolinas Plain limped painfully

into the room. He had evidently walked there: he was soaked with rain

and plastered with mud; he was exhausted and inarticulate. But as he

staggered to the witness-bench, and elbowed the constable aside, he

arrested the attention of every one. A few laughed, but were

promptly silenced by the court. It was a reflection upon its only

virtue,--sincerity.

“Do you know the prisoner?” asked the judge.

Ira Beasley glanced at the pale face of the acrobat, and shook his head.

“Never saw him before,” he said faintly.

“Then what are you doing here?” demanded the judge sternly.

Ira collected himself with evident effort, and rose to his halting feet.

First he moistened his dry lips, then he said, slowly and distinctly,

“Because I killed the deputy of Bolinas.”

With the thrill which ran through the crowded room, and the relief that

seemed to come upon him with that utterance, he gained strength and even

a certain dignity.

“I killed him,” he went on, turning his head slowly around the circle of

eager auditors with the rigidity of a wax figure, “because he made

love to my wife. I killed him because he wanted to run away with her. I

killed him because I found him waiting for her at the door of the barn

at the dead o' night, when she'd got outer bed to jine him. He hadn't no

gun. He hadn't no fight. I killed him in his tracks. That man,” pointing

to the prisoner, “wasn't in it at all.” He stopped, loosened his collar,

and, baring his rugged throat below his disfigured ear, said: “Now take

me out and hang me!”

“What proof have we of this? Where's your wife? Does she corroborate

it?”

A slight tremor ran over him.

“She ran away that night, and never came back again. Perhaps,” he added

slowly, “because she loved him and couldn't bear me; perhaps, as I've

sometimes allowed to myself, gentlemen, it was because she didn't want

to bear evidence agin me.”

In the silence that followed the prisoner was heard speaking to one that

was near him. Then he rose. All the audacity and confidence that the

husband had lacked were in HIS voice. Nay, there was even a certain

chivalry in his manner which, for the moment, the rascal really

believed.

“It's true!” he said. “After I stole the horse to get away, I found that

woman running wild down the road, cryin' and sobbin'. At first I thought

she'd done the shooting. It was a risky thing for me to do, gentlemen;

but I took her up on the horse and got her away to Lowville. It was that

much dead weight agin my chances, but I took it. She was a woman and--I

ain't a dog!”

He was so exalted and sublimated by his fiction that for the first time

the jury was impressed in his favor. And when Ira Beasley limped across

the room, and, extending his maimed hand to the prisoner, said, “Shake!”

there was another dead silence.

It was broken by the voice of the judge addressing the constable.

“What do you know of the deputy's attentions to Mrs. Beasley? Were they

enough to justify the husband's jealousy? Did he make love to her?”

The constable hesitated. He was a narrow man, with a crude sense of

the principles rather than the methods of justice. He remembered the

deputy's admiration; he now remembered, even more strongly, the object

of that admiration, simulating with her pretty arms the gestures of

the barkeeper, and the delight it gave them. He was loyal to his

dead leader, but he looked up and down, and then said, slowly and

half-defiantly: “Well, judge, he was a MAN.”

Everybody laughed. That the strongest and most magic of all human

passions should always awake levity in any public presentment of or

allusion to it was one of the inconsistencies of human nature which even

a lynch judge had to admit. He made no attempt to control the tittering

of the court, for he felt that the element of tragedy was no longer

there. The foreman of the jury arose and whispered to the judge amid

another silence. Then the judge spoke:--

“The prisoner and his witness are both discharged. The prisoner to leave

the town within twenty-four hours; the witness to be conducted to his

own house at the expense of, and with the thanks of, the Committee.”

They say that one afternoon, when a low mist of rain had settled over

the sodden Bolinas Plain, a haggard, bedraggled, and worn-out woman

stepped down from a common “freighting wagon” before the doorway where

Beasley still sat; that, coming forward, he caught her in his arms and

called her “Sue;” and they say that they lived happily together ever

afterwards. But they say--and this requires some corroboration--that

much of that happiness was due to Mrs. Beasley's keeping forever in her

husband's mind her own heroic sacrifice in disappearing as a witness

against him, her own forgiveness of his fruitless crime, and the

gratitude he owed to the fugitive.

THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF ALKALI DICK

He was a “cowboy.” A reckless and dashing rider, yet mindful of his

horse's needs; good-humored by nature, but quick in quarrel; independent

of circumstance, yet shy and sensitive of opinion; abstemious by

education and general habit, yet intemperate in amusement; self-centred,

yet possessed of a childish vanity,--taken altogether, a characteristic

product of the Western plains, which he never should have left.

But reckless adventure after adventure had brought him into

difficulties, from which there was only one equally adventurous escape:

he joined a company of Indians engaged by Buffalo Bill to simulate

before civilized communities the sports and customs of the uncivilized.

In divers Christian arenas of the nineteenth century he rode as a

northern barbarian of the first might have disported before the Roman

populace, but harmlessly, of his own free will, and of some little

profit to himself. He threw his lasso under the curious eyes of languid

men and women of the world, eager for some new sensation, with admiring

plaudits from them and a half contemptuous egotism of his own. But

outside of the arena he was lonely, lost, and impatient for excitement.

An ingenious attempt to “paint the town red” did not commend itself as a

spectacle to the householders who lived in the vicinity of Earl's Court,

London, and Alkali Dick was haled before a respectable magistrate by a

serious policeman, and fined as if he had been only a drunken coster. A

later attempt at Paris to “incarnadine” the neighborhood of the Champs

de Mars, and “round up” a number of boulevardiers, met with a more

disastrous result,--the gleam of steel from mounted gendarmes, and a

mandate to his employers.

So it came that one night, after the conclusion of the performance,

Alkali Dick rode out of the corral gate of the Hippodrome with his

last week's salary in his pocket and an imprecation on his lips. He had

shaken the sawdust of the sham arena from his high, tight-fitting boots;

he would shake off the white dust of France, and the effeminate soil

of all Europe also, and embark at once for his own country and the Far

West!

A more practical and experienced man would have sold his horse at the

nearest market and taken train to Havre, but Alkali Dick felt himself

incomplete on terra firma without his mustang,--it would be hard enough

to part from it on embarking,--and he had determined to ride to the

seaport.

The spectacle of a lithe horseman, clad in a Rembrandt sombrero, velvet

jacket, turnover collar, almost Van Dyke in its proportions, white

trousers and high boots, with long curling hair falling over his

shoulders, and a pointed beard and mustache, was a picturesque one, but

still not a novelty to the late-supping Parisians who looked up under

the midnight gas as he passed, and only recognized one of those men whom

Paris had agreed to designate as “Booflo-bils,” going home.

At three o'clock he pulled up at a wayside cabaret, preferring it to

the publicity of a larger hotel, and lay there till morning. The slight

consternation of the cabaret-keeper and his wife over this long-haired

phantom, with glittering, deep-set eyes, was soothed by a royally-flung

gold coin, and a few words of French slang picked up in the arena,

which, with the name of Havre, comprised Dick's whole knowledge of

the language. But he was touched with their ready and intelligent

comprehension of his needs, and their genial if not so comprehensive

loquacity. Luckily for his quick temper, he did not know that they had

taken him for a traveling quack-doctor going to the Fair of Yvetot, and

that madame had been on the point of asking him for a magic balsam to

prevent migraine.

He was up betimes and away, giving a wide berth to the larger towns;

taking byways and cut-offs, yet always with the Western pathfinder's

instinct, even among these alien, poplar-haunted plains, low-banked

willow-fringed rivers, and cloverless meadows. The white sun shining

everywhere,--on dazzling arbors, summer-houses, and trellises; on light

green vines and delicate pea-rows; on the white trousers, jackets, and

shoes of smart shopkeepers or holiday makers; on the white headdresses

of nurses and the white-winged caps of the Sisters of St. Vincent,--all

this grew monotonous to this native of still more monotonous wastes. The

long, black shadows of short, blue-skirted, sabotted women and short,

blue-bloused, sabotted men slowly working in the fields, with slow oxen,

or still slower heavy Norman horses; the same horses gayly bedecked,

dragging slowly not only heavy wagons, but their own apparently more

monstrous weight over the white road, fretted his nervous Western

energy, and made him impatient to get on.

At the close of the second day he found some relief on entering a

trackless wood,--not the usual formal avenue of equidistant trees,

leading to nowhere, and stopping upon the open field,--but apparently

a genuine forest as wild as one of his own “oak bottoms.” Gnarled roots

and twisted branches flung themselves across his path; his mustang's

hoofs sank in deep pits of moss and last year's withered leaves;

trailing vines caught his heavy-stirruped feet, or brushed his broad

sombrero; the vista before him seemed only to endlessly repeat the same

sylvan glade; he was in fancy once more in the primeval Western forest,

and encompassed by its vast, dim silences. He did not know that he had

in fact only penetrated an ancient park which in former days resounded

to the winding fanfare of the chase, and was still, on stated occasions,

swept over by accurately green-coated Parisians and green-plumed

Dianes, who had come down by train! To him it meant only unfettered and

unlimited freedom.

He rose in his stirrups, and sent a characteristic yell ringing down

the dim aisles before him. But, alas! at the same moment, his mustang,

accustomed to the firmer grip of the prairie, in lashing out, stepped

upon a slimy root, and fell heavily, rolling over his clinging and still

unlodged rider. For a few moments both lay still. Then Dick extricated

himself with an oath, rose giddily, dragged up his horse,--who,

after the fashion of his race, was meekly succumbing to his reclining

position,--and then became aware that the unfortunate beast was badly

sprained in the shoulder, and temporarily lame. The sudden recollection

that he was some miles from the road, and that the sun was sinking,

concentrated his scattered faculties. The prospect of sleeping out in

that summer woodland was nothing to the pioneer-bred Dick; he could

make his horse and himself comfortable anywhere--but he was delaying his

arrival at Havre. He must regain the high road,--or some wayside inn.

He glanced around him; the westering sun was a guide for his general

direction; the road must follow it north or south; he would find a

“clearing” somewhere. But here Dick was mistaken; there seemed no

interruption of, no encroachment upon this sylvan tract, as in his

western woods. There was no track or trail to be found; he missed even

the ordinary woodland signs that denoted the path of animals to water.

For the park, from the time a Northern Duke had first alienated it from

the virgin forest, had been rigidly preserved.

Suddenly, rising apparently from the ground before him, he saw the high

roof-ridges and tourelles of a long, irregular, gloomy building. A few

steps further showed him that it lay in a cup-like depression of the

forest, and that it was still a long descent from where he had wandered

to where it stood in the gathering darkness. His mustang was moving

with great difficulty; he uncoiled his lariat from the saddle-horn,

and, selecting the most open space, tied one end to the trunk of a large

tree,--the forty feet of horsehair rope giving the animal a sufficient

degree of grazing freedom.

Then he strode more quickly down the forest side towards the building,

which now revealed its austere proportions, though Dick could see that

they were mitigated by a strange, formal flower-garden, with quaint

statues and fountains. There were grim black allees of clipped trees, a

curiously wrought iron gate, and twisted iron espaliers. On one side the

edifice was supported by a great stone terrace, which seemed to him as

broad as a Parisian boulevard. Yet everywhere it appeared sleeping in

the desertion and silence of the summer twilight. The evening breeze

swayed the lace curtains at the tall windows, but nothing else moved. To

the unsophisticated Western man it looked like a scene on the stage.

His progress was, however, presently checked by the first sight of

preservation he had met in the forest,--a thick hedge, which interfered

between him and a sloping lawn beyond. It was up to his waist, yet he

began to break his way through it, when suddenly he was arrested by the

sound of voices. Before him, on the lawn, a man and woman, evidently

servants, were slowly advancing, peering into the shadows of the wood

which he had just left. He could not understand what they were saying,

but he was about to speak and indicate by signs his desire to find the

road when the woman, turning towards her companion, caught sight of his

face and shoulders above the hedge. To his surprise and consternation,

he saw the color drop out of her fresh cheeks, her round eyes fix in

their sockets, and with a despairing shriek she turned and fled

towards the house. The man turned at his companion's cry, gave the

same horrified glance at Dick's face, uttered a hoarse “Sacre!” crossed

himself violently, and fled also.

Amazed, indignant, and for the first time in his life humiliated,

Dick gazed speechlessly after them. The man, of course, was a sneaking

coward; but the woman was rather pretty. It had not been Dick's

experience to have women run from him! Should he follow them, knock the

silly fellow's head against a tree, and demand an explanation? Alas,

he knew not the language! They had already reached the house and

disappeared in one of the offices. Well! let them go--for a mean

“lowdown” pair of country bumpkins:--HE wanted no favors from them!

He turned back angrily into the forest to seek his unlucky beast. The

gurgle of water fell on his ear; hard by was a spring, where at least he

could water the mustang. He stooped to examine it; there was yet light

enough in the sunset sky to throw back from that little mirror the

reflection of his thin, oval face, his long, curling hair, and his

pointed beard and mustache. Yes! this was his face,--the face that

many women in Paris had agreed was romantic and picturesque. Had those

wretched greenhorns never seen a real man before? Were they idiots,

or insane? A sudden recollection of the silence and seclusion of the

building suggested certainly an asylum,--but where were the keepers?

It was getting darker in the wood; he made haste to recover his horse,

to drag it to the spring, and there bathe its shoulder in the water

mixed with whiskey taken from his flask. His saddle-bag contained enough

bread and meat for his own supper; he would camp for the night where he

was, and with the first light of dawn make his way back through the

wood whence he came. As the light slowly faded from the wood he rolled

himself in his saddle-blanket and lay down.

But not to sleep. His strange position, the accident to his horse,

an unusual irritation over the incident of the frightened

servants,--trivial as it might have been to any other man,--and, above

all, an increasing childish curiosity, kept him awake and restless.

Presently he could see also that it was growing lighter beyond the

edge of the wood, and that the rays of a young crescent moon, while it

plunged the forest into darkness and impassable shadow, evidently was

illuminating the hollow below. He threw aside his blanket, and made his

way to the hedge again. He was right; he could see the quaint, formal

lines of the old garden more distinctly,--the broad terrace, the queer,

dark bulk of the house, with lights now gleaming from a few of its open

windows.

Before one of these windows opening on the terrace was a small, white,

draped table with fruits, cups, and glasses, and two or three chairs. As

he gazed curiously at these new signs of life and occupation, he became

aware of a regular and monotonous tap upon the stone flags of the

terrace. Suddenly he saw three figures slowly turn the corner of the

terrace at the further end of the building, and walk towards the table.

The central figure was that of an elderly woman, yet tall and stately

of carriage, walking with a stick, whose regular tap he had heard,

supported on the one side by an elderly Cure in black soutaine, and on

the other by a tall and slender girl in white.

They walked leisurely to the other end of the terrace, as if performing

a regular exercise, and returned, stopping before the open French

window; where, after remaining in conversation a few moments, the

elderly lady and her ecclesiastical companion entered. The young girl

sauntered slowly to the steps of the terrace, and leaning against a huge

vase as she looked over the garden, seemed lost in contemplation. Her

face was turned towards the wood, but in quite another direction from

where he stood.

There was something so gentle, refined, and graceful in her figure, yet

dominated by a girlish youthfulness of movement and gesture, that Alkali

Dick was singularly interested. He had probably never seen an ingenue

before; he had certainly never come in contact with a girl of that caste

and seclusion in his brief Parisian experience. He was sorely tempted

to leave his hedge and try to obtain a nearer view of her. There was a

fringe of lilac bushes running from the garden up the slope; if he could

gain their shadows, he could descend into the garden. What he should do

after his arrival he had not thought; but he had one idea--he knew not

why--that if he ventured to speak to her he would not be met with the

abrupt rustic terror he had experienced at the hands of the servants.

SHE was not of that kind! He crept through the hedge, reached the

lilacs, and began the descent softly and securely in the shadow. But at

the same moment she arose, called in a youthful voice towards the open

window, and began to descend the steps. A half-expostulating reply

came from the window, but the young girl answered it with the laughing,

capricious confidence of a spoiled child, and continued her way into the

garden. Here she paused a moment and hung over a rose-tree, from which

she gathered a flower, afterwards thrust into her belt. Dick paused,

too, half-crouching, half-leaning over a lichen-stained, cracked stone

pedestal from which the statue had long been overthrown and forgotten.

To his surprise, however, the young girl, following the path to the

lilacs, began leisurely to ascend the hill, swaying from side to side

with a youthful movement, and swinging the long stalk of a lily at her

side. In another moment he would be discovered! Dick was frightened; his

confidence of the moment before had all gone; he would fly,--and yet, an

exquisite and fearful joy kept him motionless. She was approaching him,

full and clear in the moonlight. He could see the grace of her delicate

figure in the simple white frock drawn at the waist with broad satin

ribbon, and its love-knots of pale blue ribbons on her shoulders; he

could see the coils of her brown hair, the pale, olive tint of her oval

cheek, the delicate, swelling nostril of her straight, clear-cut nose;

he could even smell the lily she carried in her little hand. Then,

suddenly, she lifted her long lashes, and her large gray eyes met his.

Alas! the same look of vacant horror came into her eyes, and fixed

and dilated their clear pupils. But she uttered no outcry,--there was

something in her blood that checked it; something that even gave a

dignity to her recoiling figure, and made Dick flush with admiration.

She put her hand to her side, as if the shock of the exertion of her

ascent had set her heart to beating, but she did not faint. Then her

fixed look gave way to one of infinite sadness, pity, and pathetic

appeal. Her lips were parted; they seemed to be moving, apparently in

prayer. At last her voice came, wonderingly, timidly, tenderly: “Mon

Dieu! c'est donc vous? Ici? C'est vous que Marie a crue voir! Que

venez-vous faire ici, Armand de Fontonelles? Repondez!”

Alas, not a word was comprehensible to Dick; nor could he think of

a word to say in reply. He made an uncouth, half-irritated,

half-despairing gesture towards the wood he had quitted, as if to

indicate his helpless horse, but he knew it was meaningless to the

frightened yet exalted girl before him. Her little hand crept to her

breast and clutched a rosary within the folds of her dress, as her soft

voice again arose, low but appealingly:

“Vous souffrez! Ah, mon Dieu! Peuton vous secourir? Moi-meme--mes

prieres pourraient elles interceder pour vous? Je supplierai le ciel de

prendre en pitie l'ame de mon ancetre. Monsieur le Cure est la,--je lui

parlerai. Lui et ma mere vous viendront en aide.”

She clasped her hands appealingly before him.

Dick stood bewildered, hopeless, mystified; he had not understood a

word; he could not say a word. For an instant he had a wild idea of

seizing her hand and leading her to his helpless horse, and then came

what he believed was his salvation,--a sudden flash of recollection that

he had seen the word he wanted, the one word that would explain all, in

a placarded notice at the Cirque of a bracelet that had been LOST,--yes,

the single word “PERDU.” He made a step towards her, and in a voice

almost as faint as her own, stammered, “PERDU!”

With a little cry, that was more like a sigh than an outcry, the girl's

arms fell to her side; she took a step backwards, reeled, and fainted

away.

Dick caught her as she fell. What had he said!--but, more than all, what

should he do now? He could not leave her alone and helpless,--yet how

could he justify another disconcerting intrusion? He touched her hands;

they were cold and lifeless; her eyes were half closed; her face as pale

and drooping as her lily. Well, he must brave the worst now, and carry

her to the house, even at the risk of meeting the others and terrifying

them as he had her. He caught her up,--he scarcely felt her weight

against his breast and shoulder,--and ran hurriedly down the slope to

the terrace, which was still deserted. If he had time to place her on

some bench beside the window within their reach, he might still fly

undiscovered! But as he panted up the steps of the terrace with his

burden, he saw that the French window was still open, but the light

seemed to have been extinguished. It would be safer for her if he could

place her INSIDE the house,--if he but dared to enter. He was desperate,

and he dared!

He found himself alone, in a long salon of rich but faded white and gold

hangings, lit at the further end by two tall candles on either side of

the high marble mantel, whose rays, however, scarcely reached the window

where he had entered. He laid his burden on a high-backed sofa. In

so doing, the rose fell from her belt. He picked it up, put it in

his breast, and turned to go. But he was arrested by a voice from the

terrace:--

“Renee!”

It was the voice of the elderly lady, who, with the Cure at her side,

had just appeared from the rear of the house, and from the further end

of the terrace was looking towards the garden in search of the young

girl. His escape in that way was cut off. To add to his dismay, the

young girl, perhaps roused by her mother's voice, was beginning to show

signs of recovering consciousness. Dick looked quickly around him.

There was an open door, opposite the window, leading to a hall which, no

doubt, offered some exit on the other side of the house. It was his only

remaining chance! He darted through it, closed it behind him, and

found himself at the end of a long hall or picture-gallery, strangely

illuminated through high windows, reaching nearly to the roof, by the

moon, which on that side of the building threw nearly level bars of

light and shadows across the floor and the quaint portraits on the wall.

But to his delight he could see at the other end a narrow, lance-shaped

open postern door showing the moonlit pavement without--evidently the

door through which the mother and the Cure had just passed out. He ran

rapidly towards it. As he did so he heard the hurried ringing of bells

and voices in the room he had quitted--the young girl had evidently

been discovered--and this would give him time. He had nearly reached the

door, when he stopped suddenly--his blood chilled with awe! It was his

turn to be terrified--he was standing, apparently, before HIMSELF!

His first recovering thought was that it was a mirror--so accurately

was every line and detail of his face and figure reflected. But a second

scrutiny showed some discrepancies of costume, and he saw it was a

panelled portrait on the wall. It was of a man of his own age, height,

beard, complexion, and features, with long curls like his own, falling

over a lace Van Dyke collar, which, however, again simulated the

appearance of his own hunting-shirt. The broad-brimmed hat in the

picture, whose drooping plume was lost in shadow, was scarcely

different from Dick's sombrero. But the likeness of the face to Dick was

marvelous--convincing! As he gazed at it, the wicked black eyes seemed

to flash and kindle at his own,--its lip curled with Dick's own sardonic

humor!

He was recalled to himself by a step in the gallery. It was the Cure who

had entered hastily, evidently in search of one of the servants.

Partly because it was a man and not a woman, partly from a feeling of

bravado--and partly from a strange sense, excited by the picture, that

he had some claim to be there, he turned and faced the pale priest with

a slight dash of impatient devilry that would have done credit to the

portrait. But he was sorry for it the next moment!

The priest, looking up suddenly, discovered what seemed to him to be the

portrait standing before its own frame and glaring at him. Throwing

up his hands with an averted head and an “EXORCIS--!” he wheeled and

scuffled away. Dick seized the opportunity, darted through the narrow

door on to the rear terrace, and ran, under cover of the shadow of

the house, to the steps into the garden. Luckily for him, this new and

unexpected diversion occupied the inmates too much with what was going

on in the house to give them time to search outside. Dick reached the

lilac hedge, tore up the hill, and in a few moments threw himself,

panting, on his blanket. In the single look he had cast behind, he had

seen that the half-dark salon was now brilliantly lighted--where no

doubt the whole terrified household was now assembled. He had no fear

of being followed; since his confrontation with his own likeness in

the mysterious portrait, he understood everything. The apparently

supernatural character of his visitation was made plain; his ruffled

vanity was soothed--his vindication was complete. He laughed to himself

and rolled about, until in his suppressed merriment the rose fell from

his bosom, and--he stopped! Its freshness and fragrance recalled

the innocent young girl he had frightened. He remembered her gentle,

pleading voice, and his cheek flushed. Well, he had done the best he

could in bringing her back to the house--at the risk of being taken for

a burglar--and she was safe now! If that stupid French parson didn't

know the difference between a living man and a dead and painted one, it

wasn't his fault. But he fell asleep with the rose in his fingers.

He was awake at the first streak of dawn. He again bathed his horse's

shoulder, saddled, but did not mount him, as the beast, although better,

was still stiff, and Dick wished to spare him for the journey to still

distant Havre, although he had determined to lie over that night at the

first wayside inn. Luckily for him, the disturbance at the chateau had

not extended to the forest, for Dick had to lead his horse slowly and

could not have escaped; but no suspicion of external intrusion seemed to

have been awakened, and the woodland was, evidently, seldom invaded.

By dint of laying his course by the sun and the exercise of a little

woodcraft, in the course of two hours he heard the creaking of a

hay-cart, and knew that he was near a traveled road. But to his

discomfiture he presently came to a high wall, which had evidently

guarded this portion of the woods from the public. Time, however, had

made frequent breaches in the stones; these had been roughly filled in

with a rude abatis of logs and treetops pointing towards the road. But

as these were mainly designed to prevent intrusion into the park rather

than egress from it, Dick had no difficulty in rolling them aside and

emerging at last with his limping steed upon the white high-road.

The creaking cart had passed; it was yet early for traffic, and Dick

presently came upon a wine-shop, a bakery, a blacksmith's shop, laundry,

and a somewhat pretentious cafe and hotel in a broader space which

marked the junction of another road.

Directly before it, however, to his consternation, were the massive, but

timeworn, iron gates of a park, which Dick did not doubt was the one

in which he had spent the previous night. But it was impossible to go

further in his present plight, and he boldly approached the restaurant.

As he was preparing to make his usual explanatory signs, to his great

delight he was addressed in a quaint, broken English, mixed with

forgotten American slang, by the white-trousered, black-alpaca coated

proprietor. More than that--he was a Social Democrat and an enthusiastic

lover of America--had he not been to “Bos-town” and New York, and

penetrated as far west as “Booflo,” and had much pleasure in that

beautiful and free country? Yes! it was a “go-a-'ed” country--you

“bet-your-lif'.” One had reason to say so: there was your

electricity--your street cars--your “steambots”--ah! such steambots--and

your “r-rail-r-roads.” Ah! observe! compare your r-rail-r-roads and the

buffet of the Pullman with the line from Paris, for example--and where

is one? Nowhere! Actually, positively, without doubt, nowhere!

Later, at an appetizing breakfast--at which, to Dick's great

satisfaction, the good man had permitted and congratulated himself to

sit at table with a free-born American--he was even more loquacious.

For what then, he would ask, was this incompetence, this imbecility, of

France? He would tell. It was the vile corruption of Paris, the grasping

of capital and companies, the fatal influence of the still clinging

noblesse, and the insidious Jesuitical power of the priests. As for

example, Monsieur “the Booflo-bil” had doubtless noticed the great gates

of the park before the cafe? It was the preserve,--the hunting-park of

one of the old grand seigneurs, still kept up by his descendants, the

Comtes de Fontonelles--hundreds of acres that had never been tilled,

and kept as wild waste wilderness,--kept for a day's pleasure in a year!

And, look you! the peasants starving around its walls in their small

garden patches and pinched farms! And the present Comte de Fontonelles

cascading gold on his mistresses in Paris; and the Comtesse, his mother,

and her daughter living there to feed and fatten and pension a brood

of plotting, black-cowled priests. Ah, bah! where was your Republican

France, then? But a time would come. The “Booflo-bil” had, without

doubt, noticed, as he came along the road, the breaches in the wall of

the park?

Dick, with a slight dry reserve, “reckoned that he had.”

“They were made by the scythes and pitchforks of the peasants in the

Revolution of '93, when the count was emigre, as one says with reason

'skedadelle,' to England. Let them look the next time that they burn not

the chateau,--'bet your lif'!'”

“The chateau,” said Dick, with affected carelessness. “Wot's the blamed

thing like?”

It was an old affair,--with armor and a picture-gallery,--and bricabrac.

He had never seen it. Not even as a boy,--it was kept very secluded

then. As a man--you understand--he could not ask the favor. The Comtes

de Fontonelles and himself were not friends. The family did not like a

cafe near their sacred gates,--where had stood only the huts of their

retainers. The American would observe that he had not called it “Cafe de

Chateau,” nor “Cafe de Fontonelles,”--the gold of California would not

induce him. Why did he remain there? Naturally, to goad them! It was a

principle, one understood. To GOAD them and hold them in check! One kept

a cafe,--why not? One had one's principles,--one's conviction,--that was

another thing! That was the kind of “'air-pin”--was it not?--that HE,

Gustav Ribaud, was like!

Yet for all his truculent socialism, he was quick, obliging, and

charmingly attentive to Dick and his needs. As to Dick's horse, he

should have the best veterinary surgeon--there was an incomparable one

in the person of the blacksmith--see to him, and if it were an affair of

days, and Dick must go, he himself would be glad to purchase the

beast, his saddle, and accoutrements. It was an affair of business,--an

advertisement for the cafe! He would ride the horse himself before the

gates of the park. It would please his customers. Ha! he had learned a

trick or two in free America.

Dick's first act had been to shave off his characteristic beard and

mustache, and even to submit his long curls to the village barber's

shears, while a straw hat, which he bought to take the place of his

slouched sombrero, completed his transformation. His host saw in the

change only the natural preparation of a voyager, but Dick had really

made the sacrifice, not from fear of detection, for he had recovered his

old swaggering audacity, but from a quick distaste he had taken to his

resemblance to the portrait. He was too genuine a Westerner, and too

vain a man, to feel flattered at his resemblance to an aristocratic

bully, as he believed the ancestral De Fontonelles to be. Even his

momentary sensation as he faced the Cure in the picture-gallery was

more from a vague sense that liberties had been taken with his, Dick's,

personality, than that he had borrowed anything from the portrait.

But he was not so clear about the young girl. Her tender, appealing

voice, although he knew it had been addressed only to a vision, still

thrilled his fancy. The pluck that had made her withstand her fear

so long--until he had uttered that dreadful word--still excited his

admiration. His curiosity to know what mistake he had made--for he knew

it must have been some frightful blunder--was all the more keen, as he

had no chance to rectify it. What a brute she must have thought him--or

DID she really think him a brute even then?--for her look was one more

of despair and pity! Yet she would remember him only by that last word,

and never know that he had risked insult and ejection from her friends

to carry her to her place of safety. He could not bear to go across the

seas carrying the pale, unsatisfied face of that gentle girl ever before

his eyes! A sense of delicacy--new to Dick, but always the accompaniment

of deep feeling--kept him from even hinting his story to his host,

though he knew--perhaps BECAUSE he knew--that it would gratify his

enmity to the family. A sudden thought struck Dick. He knew her house,

and her name. He would write her a note. Somebody would be sure to

translate it for her.

He borrowed pen, ink, and paper, and in the clean solitude of his fresh

chintz bedroom, indited the following letter:--