seen a genuine Saltmarsh-Handel is safe from imposture forever. Strip
it, flay it, skin it out of every detail but the bare color and
expression, and that man will still recognize it--still stop to
worship--"
"Oh, how it makes me feel to hear dose oxpressions!--"
--"still say to himself again as he had, said a hundred times before, the
art of the Saltmarsh-Handel is an art apart, there is nothing in the
heavens above or in the earth beneath that resembles it,--"
"Py chiminy, nur horen Sie einmal! In my life day haf I never heard so
brecious worts."
"So I talked him out of the hack, Mr. Tracy, and he let up on that, and
said put in a hearse, then--because he's chief mate of a hearse but don't
own it--stands a watch for wages, you know. But I can't do a hearse any
more than I can a hack; so here we are--becalmed, you see. And it's the
same with women and such. They come and they want a little johnry
picture--"
"It's the accessories that make it a 'genre?'"
"Yes--cannon, or cat, or any little thing like that, that you heave into
whoop up the effect. We could do a prodigious trade with the women if we
could foreground the things they like, but they don't give a damn for
artillery. Mine's the lack," continued the captain with a sigh, "Andy's
end of the business is all right I tell you he's an artist from way
back!"
"Yoost hear dot old man! He always talk 'poud me like dot," purred the
pleased German.
"Look at his work yourself! Fourteen portraits in a row. And no two of
them alike."
"Now that you speak of it, it is true; I hadn't noticed it before. It is
very remarkable. Unique, I suppose."
"I should say so. That's the very thing about Andy--he discriminates.
Discrimination's the thief of time--forty-ninth Psalm; but that ain't any
matter, it's the honest thing, and it pays in the end."
"Yes, he certainly is great in that feature, one is obliged to admit it;
but--now mind, I'm not really criticising--don't you think he is just a
trifle overstrong in technique?"
The captain's face was knocked expressionless by this remark. It
remained quite vacant while he muttered to himself-- "Technique--
technique--polytechnique--pyro-technique; that's it, likely--fireworks too
much color." Then he spoke up with serenity and confidence, and said:
"Well, yes, he does pile it on pretty loud; but they all like it, you
know--fact is, it's the life of the business. Take that No. 9, there,
Evans the butcher. He drops into the stoodio as sober-colored as
anything you ever see: now look at him. You can't tell him from scarlet
fever. Well, it pleases that butcher to death. I'm making a study of a
sausage-wreath to hang on the cannon, and I don't really reckon I can do
it right, but if I can, we can break the butcher."
"Unquestionably your confederate--I mean your--your fellow-craftsman--
is a great colorist--"
"Oh, danke schon!--"
--"in fact a quite extraordinary colorist; a colorist, I make bold to
say, without imitator here or abroad--and with a most bold and effective
touch, a touch like a battering ram; and a manner so peculiar and
romantic, and extraneous, and ad libitum, and heart-searching, that--
that--he--he is an impressionist, I presume?"
"No," said the captain simply, "he is a Presbyterian."
"It accounts for it all--all--there's something divine about his art,--
soulful, unsatisfactory, yearning, dim hearkening on the void horizon,
vague--murmuring to the spirit out of ultra-marine distances and
far-sounding cataclysms of uncreated space--oh, if he--if, he--has he
ever tried distemper?"
The captain answered up with energy:
"Not if he knows himself! But his dog has, and--"
"Oh, no, it vas not my dog."
"Why, you said it was your dog."
"Oh, no, gaptain, I--"
"It was a white dog, wasn't it, with his tail docked, and one ear gone,
and--"
"Dot's him, dot's him!--der fery dog. Wy, py Chorge, dot dog he would
eat baint yoost de same like--"
"Well, never mind that, now--'vast heaving--I never saw such a man. You
start him on that dog and he'll dispute a year. Blamed if I haven't seen
him keep it up a level two hours and a half."
"Why captain!" said Barrow. "I guess that must be hearsay."
"No, sir, no hearsay about it--he disputed with me."
"I don't see how you stood it."
"Oh, you've got to--if you run with Andy. But it's the only fault he's
got."
"Ain't you afraid of acquiring it?"
"Oh, no," said the captain, tranquilly, "no danger of that, I reckon."
The artists presently took their leave. Then Barrow put his hands on
Tracy's shoulders and said:
"Look me in the eye, my boy. Steady, steady. There--it's just as I
thought--hoped, anyway; you're all right, thank goodness. Nothing the
matter with your mind. But don't do that again--even for fun. It isn't
wise. They wouldn't have believed you if you'd been an earl's son.
Why, they couldn't--don't you know that? What ever possessed you to take
such a freak? But never mind about that; let's not talk of it. It was a
mistake; you see that yourself."
"Yes--it was a mistake."
"Well, just drop it out of your, mind; it's no harm; we all make them.
Pull your courage together, and don't brood, and don't give up. I'm at
your back, and we'll pull through, don't you be afraid."
When he was gone, Barrow walked the floor a good while, uneasy in his
mind. He said to himself, "I'm troubled about him. He never would have
made a break like that if he hadn't been a little off his balance.
But I know what being out of work and no prospect ahead can do for a man.
First it knocks the pluck out of him and drags his pride in the dirt;
worry does the rest, and his mind gets shaky. I must talk to these
people. No--if there's any humanity in them--and there is, at bottom--
they'll be easier on him if they think his troubles have disturbed his
reason. But I've got to find him some work; work's the only medicine for
his disease. Poor devil! away off here, and not a friend."
CHAPTER XVII
The moment Tracy was alone his spirits vanished away, and all the misery
of his situation was manifest to him. To be moneyless and an object of
the chairmaker's charity--this was bad enough, but his folly in
proclaiming himself an earl's son to that scoffing and unbelieving crew,
and, on top of that, the humiliating result--the recollection of these
things was a sharper torture still. He made up his mind that he would
never play earl's son again before a doubtful audience.
His father's answer was a blow he could not understand. At times he
thought his father imagined he could get work to do in America without
any trouble, and was minded to let him try it and cure himself of his
radicalism by hard, cold, disenchanting experience. That seemed the most
plausible theory, yet he could not content himself with it. A theory
that pleased him better was, that this cablegram would be followed by
another, of a gentler sort, requiring him to come home. Should he write
and strike his flag, and ask for a ticket home? Oh, no, that he couldn't
ever do. At least, not yet. That cablegram would come, it certainly
would. So he went from one telegraph office to another every day for
nearly a week, and asked if there was a cablegram for Howard Tracy.
No, there wasn't any. So they answered him at first. Later, they said
it before he had a chance to ask. Later still they merely shook their
heads impatiently as soon as he came in sight. After that he was ashamed
to go any more.
He was down in the lowest depths of despair, now; for the harder Barrow
tried to find work for him the more hopeless the possibilities seemed to
grow. At last he said to Barrow:
"Look here. I want to make a confession. I have got down, now, to where
I am not only willing to acknowledge to myself that I am a shabby
creature and full of false pride, but am willing to acknowledge it to
you. Well, I've been allowing you to wear yourself out hunting for work
for me when there's been a chance open to me all the time. Forgive my
pride--what was left of it. It is all gone, now, and I've come to
confess that if those ghastly artists want another confederate, I'm their
man--for at last I am dead to shame."
"No? Really, can you paint?"
"Not as badly as they. No, I don't claim that, for I am not a genius;
in fact, I am a very indifferent amateur, a slouchy dabster, a mere
artistic sarcasm; but drunk or asleep I can beat those buccaneers."
"Shake! I want to shout! Oh, I tell you, I am immensely delighted and
relieved. Oh, just to work--that is life! No matter what the work is--
that's of no consequence. Just work itself is bliss when a man's been
starving for it. I've been there! Come right along; we'll hunt the old
boys up. Don't you feel good? I tell you I do."
The freebooters were not at home. But their "works" were, displayed in
profusion all about the little ratty studio. Cannon to the right of
them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front--it was Balaclava come
again.
"Here's the uncontented hackman, Tracy. Buckle to--deepen the sea-green
to turf, turn the ship into a hearse. Let the boys have a taste of your
quality."
The artists arrived just as the last touch was put on. They stood
transfixed with admiration.
"My souls but she's a stunner, that hearse! The hackman will just go all
to pieces when he sees that won't he Andy?"
"Oh, it is sphlennid, sphlennid! Herr Tracy, why haf you not said you
vas a so sublime aartist? Lob' Gott, of you had lif'd in Paris you would
be a Pree de Rome, dot's votes de matter!"
The arrangements were soon made. Tracy was taken into full and equal
partnership, and he went straight to work, with dash and energy, to
reconstructing gems of art whose accessories had failed to satisfy.
Under his hand, on that and succeeding days, artillery disappeared and
the emblems of peace and commerce took its place--cats, hacks, sausages,
tugs, fire engines, pianos, guitars, rocks, gardens, flower-pots,
landscapes--whatever was wanted, he flung it in; and the more out of
place and absurd the required object was, the more joy he got out of
fabricating it. The pirates were delighted, the customers applauded, the
sex began to flock in, great was the prosperity of the firm. Tracy was
obliged to confess to himself that there was something about work,--even
such grotesque and humble work as this--which most pleasantly satisfied a
something in his nature which had never been satisfied before, and also
gave him a strange new dignity in his own private view of himself.
.......................
The Unqualified Member from Cherokee Strip was in a state of deep
dejection. For a good while, now, he had been leading a sort of life
which was calculated to kill; for it had consisted in regularly
alternating days of brilliant hope and black disappointment. The
brilliant hopes were created by the magician Sellers, and they always
promised that now he had got the trick, sure, and would effectively
influence that materialized cowboy to call at the Towers before night.
The black disappointments consisted in the persistent and monotonous
failure of these prophecies.
At the date which this history has now reached, Sellers was appalled to
find that the usual remedy was inoperative, and that Hawkins's low
spirits refused absolutely to lift. Something must be done, he
reflected; it was heart-breaking, this woe, this smileless misery,
this dull despair that looked out from his poor friend's face. Yes, he
must be cheered up. He mused a while, then he saw his way. He said in
his most conspicuously casual vein:
"Er--uh--by the way, Hawkins, we are feeling disappointed about this
thing--the way the materializee is acting, I mean--we are disappointed;
you concede that?"
"Concede it? Why, yes, if you like the term."
"Very well; so far, so good. Now for the basis of the feeling. It is
not that your heart, your affections are concerned; that is to say, it is
not that you want the materializee Itself. You concede that?"
"Yes, I concede that, too--cordially."
"Very well, again; we are making progress. To sum up: The feeling, it is
conceded, is not engendered by the mere conduct of the materializee; it
is conceded that it does not arise from any pang which the personality of
the materializee could assuage. Now then," said the earl, with the light
of triumph in his eye, "the inexorable logic of the situation narrows us
down to this: our feeling has its source in the money-loss involved.
Come--isn't that so?"
"Goodness knows I concede that, with all my heart."
"Very well. When you've found out the source of a disease, you've also
found out what remedy is required--just as in this case. In this case
money is required. And only money."
The old, old seduction was in that airy, confident tone and those
significant words--usually called pregnant words in books. The old
answering signs of faith and hope showed up in Hawkins's countenance,
and he said:
"Only money? Do you mean that you know a way to--"
"Washington, have you the impression that I have no resources but those
I allow the public and my intimate friends to know about?"
"Well, I--er--"
"Is it likely, do you think, that a man moved by nature and taught by
experience to keep his affairs to himself and a cautious and reluctant
tongue in his head, wouldn't be thoughtful enough to keep a few resources
in reserve for a rainy day, when he's got as many as I have to select
from?"
"Oh, you make me feel so much better already, Colonel!"
"Have you ever been in my laboratory?"
"Why, no."
"That's it. You see you didn't even know that I had one. Come along.
I've got a little trick there that I want to show you. I've kept it
perfectly quiet, not fifty people know anything about it. But that's my
way, always been my way. Wait till you're ready, that's the idea; and
when you're ready, zzip!--let her go!"
"Well, Colonel, I've never seen a man that I've had such unbounded
confidence in as you. When you say a thing right out, I always feel as
if that ends it; as if that is evidence, and proof, and everything else."
The old earl was profoundly pleased and touched.
"I'm glad you believe in me, Washington; not everybody is so just."
"I always have believed in you; and I always shall as long as I live."
"Thank you, my boy. You shan't repent it. And you can't." Arrived in
the "laboratory," the earl continued, "Now, cast your eye around this
room--what do you see? Apparently a junk-shop; apparently a hospital
connected with a patent office--in reality, the mines of Golconda in
disguise! Look at that thing there. Now what would you take that thing
to be?"
"I don't believe I could ever imagine."
"Of course you couldn't. It's my grand adaptation of the phonograph to
the marine service. You store up profanity in it for use at sea.
You know that sailors don't fly around worth a cent unless you swear
at them--so the mate that can do the best job of swearing is the most
valuable man. In great emergencies his talent saves the ship. But a
ship is a large thing, and he can't be everywhere at once; so there have
been times when one mate has lost a ship which could have been saved if
they had had a hundred. Prodigious storms, you know. Well, a ship can't
afford a hundred mates; but she can afford a hundred Cursing Phonographs,
and distribute them all over the vessel--and there, you see, she's armed
at every point. Imagine a big storm, and a hundred of my machines all
cursing away at once--splendid spectacle, splendid!--you couldn't hear
yourself think. Ship goes through that storm perfectly serene--she's
just as safe as she'd be on shore."
"It's a wonderful idea. How do you prepare the thing?"
"Load it--simply load it."
"How?"
"Why you just stand over it and swear into it."
"That loads it, does it?"
"Yes--because every word it collars, it keeps--keeps it forever. Never
wears out. Any time you turn the crank, out it'll come. In times of
great peril, you can reverse it, and it'll swear backwards. That makes a
sailor hump himself!"
"O, I see. Who loads them?--the mate?"
"Yes, if he chooses. Or I'll furnish them already loaded. I can hire an
expert for $75 a month who will load a hundred and fifty phonographs in
150 hours, and do it easy. And an expert can furnish a stronger article,
of course, than the mere average uncultivated mate could. Then you see,
all the ships of the world will buy them ready loaded--for I shall have
them loaded in any language a customer wants. Hawkins, it will work the
grandest moral reform of the 19th century. Five years from now, all the
swearing will be done by machinery--you won't ever hear a profane word
come from human lips on a ship. Millions of dollars have been spent by
the churches, in the effort to abolish profanity in the commercial
marine. Think of it--my name will live forever in the affections of good
men as the man, who, solitary and alone, accomplished this noble and
elevating reform."
"O, it is grand and beneficent and beautiful. How did you ever come to
think of it? You have a wonderful mind. How did you say you loaded the
machine?"
"O, it's no trouble--perfectly simple. If you want to load it up loud and
strong, you stand right over it and shout. But if you leave it open and
all set, it'll eavesdrop, so to speak--that is to say, it will load
itself up with any sounds that are made within six feet of it. Now I'll
show you how it works. I had an expert come and load this one up
yesterday. Hello, it's been left open--it's too bad--still I reckon it
hasn't had much chance to collect irrelevant stuff. All you do is to
press this button in the floor--so."
The phonograph began to sing in a plaintive voice:
There is a boarding-house, far far away,
Where they have ham and eggs, 3 times a day.
"Hang it, that ain't it. Somebody's been singing around here."
The plaintive song began again, mingled with a low, gradually rising wail
of cats slowly warming up toward a fight;
O, how the boarders yell,
When they hear that dinner bell
They give that landlord--
(momentary outburst of terrific catfight which drowns out one word.)
Three times a day.
(Renewal of furious catfight for a moment. The plaintive voice on a high
fierce key, "Scat, you devils"--and a racket as of flying missiles.)
"Well, never mind--let it go. I've got some sailor-profanity down in
there somewhere, if I could get to it. But it isn't any matter; you see
how the machine works."
Hawkins responded with enthusiasm:
"O, it works admirably! I know there's a hundred fortunes in it."
"And mind, the Hawkins family get their share, Washington."
"O, thanks, thanks; you are just as generous as ever. Ah, it's the
grandest invention of the age!"
"Ah, well; we live in wonderful times. The elements are crowded full of
beneficent forces--always have been--and ours is the first generation to
turn them to account and make them work for us. Why Hawkins, everything
is useful--nothing ought ever to be wasted. Now look at sewer gas, for
instance. Sewer gas has always been wasted, heretofore; nobody tried to
save up sewer-gas--you can't name me a man. Ain't that so? you know
perfectly well it's so."
"Yes it is so--but I never--er--I don't quite see why a body--"
"Should want to save it up? Well, I'll tell you. Do you see this little
invention here?--it's a decomposer--I call it a decomposer. I give you
my word of honor that if you show me a house that produces a given
quantity of sewer-gas in a day, I'll engage to set up my decomposer there
and make that house produce a hundred times that quantity of sewer-gas in
less than half an hour."
"Dear me, but why should you want to?"
"Want to? Listen, and you'll see. My boy, for illuminating purposes
and economy combined, there's nothing in the world that begins with
sewer-gas. And really, it don't cost a cent. You put in a good inferior
article of plumbing,--such as you find everywhere--and add my decomposer,
and there you are. Just use the ordinary gas pipes--and there your
expense ends. Think of it. Why, Major, in five years from now you won't
see a house lighted with anything but sewer-gas. Every physician I talk
to, recommends it; and every plumber."
"But isn't it dangerous?"
"O, yes, more or less, but everything is--coal gas, candles, electricity
--there isn't anything that ain't."
"It lights up well, does it?"
"O, magnificently."
"Have you given it a good trial?"
"Well, no, not a first rate one. Polly's prejudiced, and she won't let
me put it in here; but I'm playing my cards to get it adopted in the
President's house, and then it'll go--don't you doubt it. I shall not
need this one for the present, Washington; you may take it down to some
boarding-house and give it a trial if you like."
CHAPTER XVIII.
Washington shuddered slightly at the suggestion, then his face took on a
dreamy look and he dropped into a trance of thought. After a little,
Sellers asked him what he was grinding in his mental mill.
"Well, this. Have you got some secret project in your head which
requires a Bank of England back of it to make it succeed?"
The Colonel showed lively astonishment, and said:
"Why, Hawkins, are you a mind-reader?"
"I? I never thought of such a thing."
"Well, then how did you happen to drop onto that idea in this curious
fashion? It's just mind-reading, that's what it is, though you may not
know it. Because I have got a private project that requires a Bank of
England at its back. How could you divine that? What was the process?
This is interesting."
"There wasn't any process. A thought like this happened to slip through
my head by accident: How much would make you or me comfortable?
A hundred thousand. Yet you are expecting two or three of--these
inventions of yours to turn out some billions of money--and you are
wanting them to do that. If you wanted ten millions, I could understand
that--it's inside the human limits. But billions! That's clear outside
the limits. There must be a definite project back of that somewhere."
The earl's interest and surprise augmented with every word, and when
Hawkins finished, he said with strong admiration:
"It's wonderfully reasoned out, Washington, it certainly is. It shows
what I think is quite extraordinary penetration. For you've hit it;
you've driven the centre, you've plugged the bulls-eye of my dream. Now
I'll tell you the whole thing, and you'll understand it. I don't need to
ask you to keep it to yourself, because you'll see that the project will
prosper all the better for being kept in the background till the right
time. Have you noticed how many pamphlets and books I've got lying
around relating to Russia?"
"Yes, I think most anybody would notice that--anybody who wasn't dead."
"Well, I've been posting myself a good while. That's a great and,
splendid nation, and deserves to be set free." He paused, then added in
a quite matter-of-fact way, "When I get this money I'm going to set it
free."
"Great guns!"
"Why, what makes you jump like that?"
"Dear me, when you are going to drop a remark under a man's chair that is
likely to blow him out through the roof, why don't you put some
expression, some force, some noise unto it that will prepare him? You
shouldn't flip out such a gigantic thing as this in that colorless kind
of a way. You do jolt a person up, so. Go on, now, I'm all right again.
Tell me all about it. I'm all interest--yes, and sympathy, too."
"Well, I've looked the ground over, and concluded that the methods of the
Russian patriots, while good enough considering the way the boys are
hampered, are not the best; at least not the quickest. They are trying
to revolutionize Russia from within; that's pretty slow, you know, and
liable to interruption all the time, and is full of perils for the
workers. Do you know how Peter the Great started his army? He didn't
start it on the family premises under the noses of the Strelitzes; no, he
started it away off yonder, privately,--only just one regiment, you know,
and he built to that. The first thing the Strelitzes knew, the regiment
was an army, their position was turned, and they had to take a walk.
Just that little idea made the biggest and worst of all the despotisms
the world has seen. The same idea can unmake it. I'm going to prove it.
I'm going to get out to one side and work my scheme the way Peter did."
"This is mighty interesting, Rossmore. What is it you are, going to do?"
"I am going to buy Siberia and start a republic."
"There,--bang you go again, without giving any notice! Going to buy it?"
"Yes, as soon as I get the money. I don't care what the price is, I
shall take it. I can afford it, and I will. Now then, consider this--
and you've never thought of it, I'll warrant. Where is the place where
there is twenty-five times more manhood, pluck, true heroism,
unselfishness, devotion to high and noble ideals, adoration of liberty,
wide education, and brains, per thousand of population, than any other
domain in the whole world can show?"
"Siberia!"
"Right."
"It is true; it certainly is true, but I never thought of it before."
"Nobody ever thinks of it. But it's so, just the same. In those mines
and prisons are gathered together the very finest and noblest and
capablest multitude of human beings that God is able to create. Now if
you had that kind of a population to sell, would you offer it to a
despotism? No, the despotism has no use for it; you would lose money.
A despotism has no use for anything but human cattle. But suppose you
want to start a republic?"
"Yes, I see. It's just the material for it."
"Well, I should say so! There's Siberia with just the very finest and
choicest material on the globe for a republic, and more coming--more
coming all the time, don't you see! It is being daily, weekly, monthly
recruited by the most perfectly devised system that has ever been
invented, perhaps. By this system the whole of the hundred millions of
Russia are being constantly and patiently sifted, sifted, sifted, by
myriads of trained experts, spies appointed by the Emperor personally;
and whenever they catch a man, woman or child that has got any brains or
education or character, they ship that person straight to Siberia. It is
admirable, it is wonderful. It is so searching and so effective that it
keeps the general level of Russian intellect and education down to that
of the Czar."
"Come, that sounds like exaggeration."
"Well, it's what they say anyway. But I think, myself, it's a lie. And
it doesn't seem right to slander a whole nation that way, anyhow. Now,
then, you see what the material is, there in Siberia, for a republic."
He paused, and his breast began to heave and his eye to burn, under the
impulse of strong emotion. Then his words began to stream forth, with
constantly increasing energy and fire, and he rose to his feet as if to
give himself larger freedom. "The minute I organize that republic, the
light of liberty, intelligence, justice, humanity, bursting from it,
flooding from it, flaming from it, will concentrate the gaze of the whole
astonished world as upon the miracle of a new sun; Russia's countless
multitudes of slaves will rise up and march, march!--eastward, with that
great light transfiguring their faces as they come, and far back of them
you will see-what will you see?--a vacant throne in an empty land! It
can be done, and by God I will do it!"
He stood a moment bereft of earthy consciousness by his exaltation; then
consciousness returned, bringing him a slight shock, and he said with
grave earnestness:
"I must ask you to pardon me, Major Hawkins. I have never used that
expression before, and I beg you will forgive it this time."
Hawkins was quite willing.
"You see, Washington, it is an error which I am by nature not liable to.
Only excitable people, impulsive people, are exposed to it. But the
circumstances of the present case--I being a democrat by birth and
preference, and an aristocrat by inheritance and relish--"
The earl stopped suddenly, his frame stiffened, and he began to stare
speechless through the curtainless window. Then he pointed, and gasped
out a single rapturous word:
"Look!"
"What is it, Colonel?"
"IT!"
"No!"
"Sure as you're born. Keep perfectly still. I'll apply the influence--
I'll turn on all my force. I've brought It thus far--I'll fetch It right
into the house. You'll see."
He was making all sorts of passes in the air with his hands.
"There! Look at that. I've made It smile! See?"
Quite true. Tracy, out for an afternoon stroll, had come unexpectantly
upon his family arms displayed upon this shabby house-front. The
hatchments made him smile; which was nothing, they had made the
neighborhood cats do that.
"Look, Hawkins, look! I'm drawing It over!"
"You're drawing it sure, Rossmore. If I ever had any doubts about
materialization, they're gone, now, and gone for good. Oh, this is a
joyful day!"
Tracy was sauntering over to read the door-plate. Before he was half way
over he was saying to himself, "Why, manifestly these are the American
Claimant's quarters."
"It's coming--coming right along. I'll slide, down and pull It in. You
follow after me."
Sellers, pale and a good deal agitated, opened the door and confronted
Tracy. The old man could not at once get his voice: then he pumped out a
scattering and hardly coherent salutation, and followed it with--
"Walk in, walk right in, Mr.--er--"
"Tracy--Howard Tracy."
"Tracy--thanks--walk right in, you're expected."
Tracy entered, considerably puzzled, and said:
"Expected? I think there must be some mistake."
"Oh, I judge not," said Sellers, who--noticing that Hawkins had arrived,
gave him a sidewise glance intended to call his close attention to a
dramatic effect which he was proposing to produce by his next remark.
Then he said, slowly and impressively--"I am--YOU KNOW WHO."
To the astonishment of both conspirators the remark produced no dramatic
effect at all; for the new-comer responded with a quite innocent and
unembarrassed air--
"No, pardon me. I don't know who you are. I only suppose--but no doubt
correctly--that you are the gentleman whose title is on the doorplate."
"Right, quite right--sit down, pray sit down." The earl was rattled,
thrown off his bearings, his head was in a whirl. Then he noticed
Hawkins standing apart and staring idiotically at what to him was the
apparition of a defunct man, and a new idea was born to him. He said to
Tracy briskly:
"But a thousand pardons, dear sir, I am forgetting courtesies due to a
guest and stranger. Let me introduce my friend General Hawkins--General
Hawkins, our new Senator--Senator from the latest and grandest addition to
the radiant galaxy of sovereign States, Cherokee Strip"--(to himself,
"that name will shrivel him up!"--but it didn't, in the least, and the
Colonel resumed the introduction piteously disheartened and amazed),--
"Senator Hawkins, Mr. Howard Tracy, of--er--"
"England."
"England!--Why that's im--"
"England, yes, native of England."
"Recently from there?"
"Yes, quite recently."
Said the Colonel to himself, "This phantom lies like an expert.
Purifying this kind by fire don't work. I'll sound him a little further,
give him another chance or two to work his gift." Then aloud--with deep
irony--
"Visiting our great country for recreation and amusement, no doubt.
I suppose you find that traveling in the majestic expanses of our Far
West is--"
"I haven't been West, and haven't been devoting myself to amusement with
any sort of exclusiveness, I assure you. In fact, to merely live, an
artist has got to work, not play."
"Artist!" said Hawkins to himself, thinking of the rifled bank; "that is
a name for it!"
"Are you an artist?" asked the colonel; and added to himself, "now I'm
going to catch him."
"In a humble way, yes."
"What line?" pursued the sly veteran.
"Oils."
"I've got him!" said Sellers to himself. Then aloud, "This is fortunate.
Could I engage you to restore some of my paintings that need that
attention?"
"I shall be very glad. Pray let me see them."
No shuffling, no evasion, no embarrassment, even under this crucial test.
The Colonel was nonplussed. He led Tracy to a chromo which had suffered
damage in a former owner's hands through being used as a lamp mat, and
said, with a flourish of his hand toward the picture--
"This del Sarto--"
"Is that a del Sarto?"
The colonel bent a look of reproach upon Tracy, allowed it to sink home,
then resumed as if there had been no interruption--
"This del Sarto is perhaps the only original of that sublime master in
our country. You see, yourself, that the work is of such exceeding
delicacy that the risk--could--er--would you mind giving me a little
example of what you can do before we--"
"Cheerfully, cheerfully. I will copy one of these marvels."
Water-color materials--relics of Miss Sally's college life--were brought.
Tracy said he was better in oils, but would take a chance with these.
So he was left alone. He began his work, but the attractions of the
place were too strong for him, and he got up and went drifting about,
fascinated; also amazed.
CHAPTER XIX.
Meantime the earl and Hawkins were holding a troubled and anxious private
consultation. The earl said:
"The mystery that bothers me, is, where did It get its other arm?"
"Yes--it worries me, too. And another thing troubles me--the apparition
is English. How do you account for that, Colonel?"
"Honestly, I don't know, Hawkins, I don't really know. It is very
confusing and awful."
"Don't you think maybe we've waked up the wrong one?"
"The wrong one? How do you account for the clothes?"
"The clothes are right, there's no getting around it. What are we going
to do? We can't collect, as I see. The reward is for a one-armed
American. This is a two-armed Englishman."
"Well, it may be that that is not objectionable. You see it isn't less
than is called for, it is more, and so,--"
But he saw that this argument was weak, and dropped it. The friends sat
brooding over their perplexities some time in silence. Finally the
earl's face began to glow with an inspiration, and he said, impressively:
"Hawkins, this materialization is a grander and nobler science than we
have dreamed of. We have little imagined what a solemn and stupendous
thing we have done. The whole secret is perfectly clear to me, now,
clear as day. Every man is made up of heredities, long-descended atoms
and particles of his ancestors. This present materialization is
incomplete. We have only brought it down to perhaps the beginning of
this century."
"What do you mean, Colonel!" cried Hawkins, filled with vague alarms by
the old man's awe-compelling words and manner.
"This. We've materialized this burglar's ancestor!"
"Oh, don't--don't say that. It's hideous."
"But it's true, Hawkins, I know it. Look at the facts. This apparition
is distinctly English--note that. It uses good grammar--note that. It is
an Artist--note that. It has the manners and carriage of a gentleman--
note that. Where's your cow-boy? Answer me that."
"Rossmore, this is dreadful--it's too dreadful to think of!"
"Never resurrected a rag of that burglar but the clothes, not a solitary
rag of him but the clothes."
"Colonel, do you really mean--"
The Colonel brought his fist down with emphasis and said:
"I mean exactly this. The materialization was immature, the burglar has
evaded us, this is nothing but a damned ancestor!"
He rose and walked the floor in great excitement.
Hawkins said plaintively:
"It's a bitter disappointment--bitter."
"I know it. I know it, Senator; I feel it as deeply as anybody could.
But we've got to submit--on moral grounds. I need money, but God knows
I am not poor enough or shabby enough to be an accessory to the punishing
of a man's ancestor for crimes committed by that ancestor's posterity."
"But Colonel!" implored Hawkins; "stop and think; don't be rash; you know
it's the only chance we've got to get the money; and besides, the Bible
itself says posterity to the fourth generation shall be punished for the
sins and crimes committed by ancestors four generations back that hadn't
anything to do with them; and so it's only fair to turn the rule around
and make it work both ways."
The Colonel was struck with the strong logic of this position. He strode
up and down, and thought it painfully over. Finally he said:
"There's reason in it; yes, there's reason in it. And so, although it
seems a piteous thing to sweat this poor ancient devil for a burglary he
hadn't the least hand in, still if duty commands I suppose we must give
him up to the authorities."
"I would," said Hawkins, cheered and relieved, "I'd give him up if he was
a thousand ancestors compacted into one."
"Lord bless me, that's just what he is," said Sellers, with something
like a groan, "it's exactly what he is; there's a contribution in him
from every ancestor he ever had. In him there's atoms of priests,
soldiers, crusaders, poets, and sweet and gracious women--all kinds and
conditions of folk who trod this earth in old, old centuries, and
vanished out of it ages ago, and now by act of ours they are summoned
from their holy peace to answer for gutting a one-horse bank away out on
the borders of Cherokee Strip, and it's just a howling outrage!"
"Oh, don't talk like that, Colonel; it takes the heart all out of me, and
makes me ashamed of the part I am proposing to--"
"Wait--I've got it!"
"A saving hope? Shout it out, I am perishing."
"It's perfectly simple; a child would have thought of it. He is all
right, not a flaw in him, as far as I have carried the work. If I've
been able to bring him as far as the beginning of this century, what's to
stop me now? I'll go on and materialize him down to date."
"Land, I never thought of that!" said Hawkins all ablaze with joy again.
"It's the very thing. What a brain you have got! And will he shed the
superfluous arm?"
"He will."
"And lose his English accent?"
"It will wholly disappear. He will speak Cherokee Strip--and other forms
of profanity."
"Colonel, maybe he'll confess!"
"Confess? Merely that bank robbery?"
"Merely? Yes, but why 'merely'?"
The Colonel said in his most impressive manner: "Hawkins, he will be
wholly under my command. I will make him confess every crime he ever
committed. There must be a thousand. Do you get the idea?"
"Well--not quite."
"The rewards will come to us."
"Prodigious conception! I never saw such ahead for seeing with a
lightning glance all the outlying ramifications and possibilities of a
central idea."
"It is nothing; it comes natural to me. When his time is out in one jail
he goes to the next and the next, and we shall have nothing to do but
collect the rewards as he goes along. It is a perfectly steady income as
long as we live, Hawkins. And much better than other kinds of
investments, because he is indestructible."
"It looks--it really does look the way you say; it does indeed."
"Look?--why it is. It will not be denied that I have had a pretty wide
and comprehensive financial experience, and I do not hesitate to say that
I consider this one of the most valuable properties I have ever
controlled."
"Do you really think so?"
"I do, indeed."
"O, Colonel, the wasting grind and grief of poverty! If we could realize
immediately. I don't mean sell it all, but sell part--enough, you know,
to--"
"See how you tremble with excitement. That comes of lack of experience.
My boy, when you have been familiar with vast operations as long as I
have, you'll be different. Look at me; is my eye dilated? do you notice
a quiver anywhere? Feel my pulse: plunk-plunk-plunk--same as if I were
asleep. And yet, what is passing through my calm cold mind? A
procession of figures which would make a financial novice drunk just the
sight of them. Now it is by keeping cool, and looking at a thing all
around, that a man sees what's really in it, and saves himself from the
novice's unfailing mistake--the one you've just suggested--eagerness to
realize. Listen to me. Your idea is to sell a part of him for ready
cash. Now mine is--guess."
"I haven't an idea. What is it?"
"Stock him--of course."
"Well, I should never have thought of that."
"Because you are not a financier. Say he has committed a thousand
crimes. Certainly that's a low estimate. By the look of him, even in
his unfinished condition, he has committed all of a million. But call it
only a thousand to be perfectly safe; five thousand reward, multiplied by
a thousand, gives us a dead sure cash basis of--what? Five million
dollars!"
"Wait--let me get my breath."
"And the property indestructible. Perpetually fruitful--perpetually; for
a property with his disposition will go on committing crimes and winning
rewards."
"You daze me, you make my head whirl!"
"Let it whirl, it won't do it any harm. Now that matter is all fixed--
leave it alone. I'll get up the company and issue the stock, all in good
time. Just leave it in my hands. I judge you don't doubt my ability to
work it up for all it is worth."
"Indeed I don't. I can say that with truth."
"All right, then. That's disposed of. Everything in its turn. We old
operators, go by order and system--no helter-skelter business with us.
What's the next thing on the docket? The carrying on of the
materialization--the bringing it down to date. I will begin on that at
once. I think--
"Look here, Rossmore. You didn't lock It in. A hundred to one it has
escaped!"
"Calm yourself, as to that; don't give yourself any uneasiness."
"But why shouldn't it escape?"
"Let it, if it wants to? What of it?"
"Well, I should consider it a pretty serious calamity."
"Why, my dear boy, once in my power, always in my power. It may go and
come freely. I can produce it here whenever I want it, just by the
exercise of my will."
"Well, I am truly glad to hear that, I do assure you."
"Yes, I shall give it all the painting it wants to do, and we and the
family will make it as comfortable and contented as we can. No occasion
to restrain its movements. I hope to persuade it to remain pretty quiet,
though, because a materialization which is in a state of arrested
development must of necessity be pretty soft and flabby and
substanceless, and--er--by the way, I wonder where It comes from?"
"How? What do you mean?"
The earl pointed significantly--and interrogatively toward the sky.
Hawkins started; then settled into deep reflection; finally shook his
head sorrowfully and pointed downwards.
"What makes you think so, Washington?"
"Well, I hardly know, but really you can see, yourself, that he doesn't
seem to be pining for his last place."
"It's well thought! Soundly deduced. We've done that Thing a favor.
But I believe I will pump it a little, in a quiet way, and find out if we
are right."
"How long is it going to take to finish him off and fetch him down to
date, Colonel?"
"I wish I knew, but I don't. I am clear knocked out by this new detail--
this unforeseen necessity of working a subject down gradually from his
condition of ancestor to his ultimate result as posterity. But I'll make
him hump himself, anyway."
"Rossmore!"
"Yes, dear. We're in the laboratory. Come--Hawkins is here. Mind, now
Hawkins--he's a sound, living, human being to all the family--don't
forget that. Here she comes."
"Keep your seats, I'm not coming in. I just wanted to ask, who is it
that's painting down there?"
"That? Oh, that's a young artist; young Englishman, named Tracy; very
promising--favorite pupil of Hans Christian Andersen or one of the other
old masters--Andersen I'm pretty sure it is; he's going to half-sole some
of our old Italian masterpieces. Been talking to him?"
"Well, only a word. I stumbled right in on him without expecting anybody
was there. I tried to be polite to him; offered him a snack"--(Sellers
delivered a large wink to Hawkins from behind his hand), "but he
declined, and said he wasn't hungry" (another sarcastic wink); "so I
brought some apples" (doublewink), "and he ate a couple of--"
"What!" and the colonel sprang some yards toward the ceiling and came
down quaking with astonishment.
Lady Rossmore was smitten dumb with amazement. She gazed at the sheepish
relic of Cherokee Strip, then at her husband, and then at the guest
again. Finally she said:
"What is the matter with you, Mulberry?"
He did not answer immediately. His back was turned; he was bending over
his chair, feeling the seat of it. But he answered next moment, and
said:
"Ah, there it is; it was a tack."
The lady contemplated him doubtfully a moment, then said, pretty
snappishly:
"All that for a tack! Praise goodness it wasn't a shingle nail, it would
have landed you in the Milky Way. I do hate to have my nerves shook up
so." And she turned on her heel and went her way.
As soon as she was safely out, the Colonel said, in a suppressed voice:
"Come--we must see for ourselves. It must be a mistake."
They hurried softly down and peeped in. Sellers whispered, in a sort of
despair--
It is eating! What a grisly spectacle! Hawkins it's horrible! Take me
away--I can't stand--
They tottered back to the laboratory.
CHAPTER XX.
Tracy made slow progress with his work, for his mind wandered a good
deal. Many things were puzzling him. Finally a light burst upon him all
of a sudden--seemed to, at any rate--and he said to himself, "I've got
the clew at last--this man's mind is off its balance; I don't know how
much, but it's off a point or two, sure; off enough to explain this mess
of perplexities, anyway. These dreadful chromos which he takes for old
masters; these villainous portraits--which to his frantic mind represent
Rossmores; the hatchments; the pompous name of this ramshackle old crib--
Rossmore Towers; and that odd assertion of his, that I was expected. How
could I be expected? that is, Lord Berkeley. He knows by the papers that
that person was burned up in the New Gadsby. Why, hang it, he really
doesn't know who he was expecting; for his talk showed that he was not
expecting an Englishman, or yet an artist, yet I answer his requirements
notwithstanding. He seems sufficiently satisfied with me. Yes, he is a
little off; in fact I am afraid he is a good deal off, poor old
gentleman. But he's interesting--all people in about his condition are,
I suppose. I hope he'll like my work; I would like to come every day and
study him. And when I write my father--ah, that hurts! I mustn't get on
that subject; it isn't good for my spirits. Somebody coming--I must get
to work. It's the old gentleman again. He looks bothered. Maybe my
clothes are suspicious; and they are--for an artist. If my conscience
would allow me to make a change, but that is out of the question.
I wonder what he's making those passes in the air for, with his hands.
I seem to be the object of them. Can he be trying to mesmerize me?
I don't quite like it. There's something uncanny about it."
The colonel muttered to himself, "It has an effect on him, I can see it
myself. That's enough for one time, I reckon. He's not very solid, yet,
I suppose, and I might disintegrate him. I'll just put a sly question or
two at him, now, and see if I can find out what his condition is, and
where he's from."
He approached and said affably:
"Don't let me disturb you, Mr. Tracy; I only want to take a little
glimpse of your work. Ah, that's fine--that's very fine indeed. You are
doing it elegantly. My daughter will be charmed with this. May I sit
down by you?"
"Oh, do; I shall be glad."
"It won't disturb you? I mean, won't dissipate your inspirations?"
Tracy laughed and said they were not ethereal enough to be very easily
discommoded.
The colonel asked a number of cautious and well-considered questions--
questions which seemed pretty odd and flighty to Tracy--but the answers
conveyed the information desired, apparently, for the colonel said to
himself, with mixed pride and gratification:
"It's a good job as far as I've got, with it. He's solid. Solid and
going to last, solid as the real thing."
"It's wonderful--wonderful. I believe I could--petrify him." After a
little he asked, warily "Do you prefer being here, or--or there?"
"There? Where?"
"Why--er--where you've been?"
Tracy's thought flew to his boarding-house, and he answered with decision.
"Oh, here, much!"
The colonel was startled, and said to himself, "There's no uncertain ring
about that. It indicates where he's been to, poor fellow. Well, I am
satisfied, now. I'm glad I got him out."
He sat thinking, and thinking, and watching the brush go. At length he
said to himself, "Yes, it certainly seems to account for the failure of
my endeavors in poor Berkeley's case. He went in the other direction.
Well, it's all right. He's better off."
Sally Sellers entered from the street, now, looking her divinest, and the
artist was introduced to her. It was a violent case of mutual love at
first sight, though neither party was entirely aware of the fact,
perhaps. The Englishman made this irrelevant remark to himself, "Perhaps
he is not insane, after all." Sally sat down, and showed an interest in
Tracy's work which greatly pleased him, and a benevolent forgiveness of
it which convinced him that the girl's nature was cast in a large mould.
Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his
leave, saying that if the two "young devotees of the colored Muse"
thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his
affairs. The artist said to himself, "I think he is a little eccentric,
perhaps, but that is all." He reproached himself for having injuriously
judged a man without giving him any fair chance to show what he really
was.
Of course the stranger was very soon at his ease and chatting along
comfortably. The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities
of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is
nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities,
consequently her presence and her ways are unembarrassing, and one is
acquainted with her and on the pleasantest terms with her before he knows
how it came about. This new acquaintanceship--friendship, indeed--
progressed swiftly; and the unusual swiftness of it, and the thoroughness
of it are sufficiently evidenced and established by one noteworthy fact--
that within the first half hour both parties had ceased to be conscious
of Tracy's clothes. Later this consciousness was re-awakened; it was
then apparent to Gwendolen that she was almost reconciled to them, and it
was apparent to Tracy that he wasn't. The re-awakening was brought about
by Gwendolen's inviting the artist to stay to dinner. He had to decline,
because he wanted to live, now--that is, now that there was something to
live for--and he could not survive in those clothes at a gentleman's
table. He thought he knew that. But he went away happy, for he saw that
Gwendolen was disappointed.
And whither did he go? He went straight to a slopshop and bought as neat
and reasonably well-fitting a suit of clothes as an Englishman could be
persuaded to wear. He said--to himself, but at his conscience--"I know
it's wrong; but it would be wrong not to do it; and two wrongs do not
make a right."
This satisfied him, and made his heart light. Perhaps it will also
satisfy the reader--if he can make out what it means.
The old people were troubled about Gwendolen at dinner, because she was
so distraught and silent. If they had noticed, they would have found
that she was sufficiently alert and interested whenever the talk stumbled
upon the artist and his work; but they didn't notice, and so the chat
would swap around to some other subject, and then somebody would
presently be privately worrying about Gwendolen again, and wondering if
she were not well, or if something had gone wrong in the millinery line.
Her mother offered her various reputable patent medicines, and tonics
with iron and other hardware in them, and her father even proposed to
send out for wine, relentless prohibitionist and head of the order in the
District of Columbia as he was, but these kindnesses were all declined--
thankfully, but with decision. At bedtime, when the family were breaking
up for the night, she privately looted one of the brushes, saying to
herself, "It's the one he has used, the most."
The next morning Tracy went forth wearing his new suit, and equipped with
a pink in his button-hole--a daily attention from Puss. His whole soul
was full of Gwendolen Sellers, and this condition was an inspiration,
art-wise. All the morning his brush pawed nimbly away at the canvases,
almost without his awarity--awarity, in this sense being the sense of
being aware, though disputed by some authorities--turning out marvel upon
marvel, in the way of decorative accessories to the portraits, with a
felicity and celerity which amazed the veterans of the firm and fetched
out of them continuous explosions of applause.
Meantime Gwendolen was losing her morning, and many dollars. She
supposed Tracy was coming in the forenoon--a conclusion which she had
jumped to without outside help. So she tripped down stairs every little
while from her work-parlor to arrange the brushes and things over again,
and see if he had arrived. And when she was in her work-parlor it was
not profitable, but just the other way--as she found out to her sorrow.
She had put in her idle moments during the last little while back, in
designing a particularly rare and capable gown for herself, and this
morning she set about making it up; but she was absent minded, and made
an irremediable botch of it. When she saw what she had done, she knew
the reason of it and the meaning of it; and she put her work away from
her and said she would accept the sign. And from that time forth she
came no more away from the Audience Chamber, but remained there and
waited. After luncheon she waited again. A whole hour. Then a great
joy welled up in her heart, for she saw him coming. So she flew back up
stairs thankful, and could hardly wait for him to miss the principal
brush, which she had mislaid down there, but knew where she had mislaid
it. However, all in good time the others were called in and couldn't
find the brush, and then she was sent for, and she couldn't find it
herself for some little time; but then she found it when the others had
gone away to hunt in the kitchen and down cellar and in the woodshed,
and all those other places where people look for things whose ways they
are not familiar with. So she gave him the brush, and remarked that she
ought to have seen that everything was ready for him, but it hadn't
seemed necessary, because it was so early that she wasn't expecting--but
she stopped there, surprised at herself for what she was saying; and he
felt caught and ashamed, and said to himself, "I knew my impatience would
drag me here before I was expected, and betray me, and that is just what
it has done; she sees straight through me--and is laughing at me, inside,
of course."
Gwendolen was very much pleased, on one account, and a little the other
way in another; pleased with the new clothes and the improvement which
they had achieved; less pleased by the pink in the buttonhole.
Yesterday's pink had hardly interested her; this one was just like it,
but somehow it had got her immediate attention, and kept it. She wished
she could think of some way of getting at its history in a properly
colorless and indifferent way. Presently she made a venture. She said:
"Whatever a man's age may be, he can reduce it several years by putting a
bright-colored flower in his button-hole. I have often noticed that.
Is that your sex's reason for wearing a boutonniere?"
"I fancy not, but certainly that reason would be a sufficient one. I've
never heard of the idea before."
"You seem to prefer pinks. Is it on account of the color, or the form?"
"Oh no," he said, simply, "they are given to me. I don't think I have
any preference."
"They are given to him," she said to herself, and she felt a coldness
toward that pink. "I wonder who it is, and what she is like." The
flower began to take up a good deal of room; it obtruded itself
everywhere, it intercepted all views, and marred them; it was becoming
exceedingly annoying and conspicuous for a little thing. "I wonder if he
cares for her." That thought gave her a quite definite pain.
CHAPTER XXI.
She had made everything comfortable for the artist; there was no further
pretext for staying. So she said she would go, now, and asked him to
summon the servants in case he should need anything. She went away
unhappy; and she left unhappiness behind her; for she carried away all
the sunshine. The time dragged heavily for both, now. He couldn't paint
for thinking of her; she couldn't design or millinerize with any heart,
for thinking of him. Never before had painting seemed so empty to him,
never before had millinerizing seemed so void of interest to her. She
had gone without repeating that dinner-invitation--an almost unendurable
disappointment to him. On her part-well, she was suffering, too; for she
had found she couldn't invite him. It was not hard yesterday, but it was
impossible to-day. A thousand innocent privileges seemed to have been
filched from her unawares in the past twenty-four hours. To-day she felt
strangely hampered, restrained of her liberty. To-day she couldn't
propose to herself to do anything or say anything concerning this young
man without being instantly paralyzed into non-action by the fear that he
might "suspect." Invite him to dinner to-day? It made her shiver to
think of it.
And so her afternoon was one long fret. Broken at intervals. Three
times she had to go down stairs on errands--that is, she thought she had
to go down stairs on errands. Thus, going and coming, she had six
glimpses of him, in the aggregate, without seeming to look in his
direction; and she tried to endure these electric ecstasies without
showing any sign, but they fluttered her up a good deal, and she felt
that the naturalness she was putting on was overdone and quite too
frantically sober and hysterically calm to deceive.
The painter had his share of the rapture; he had his six glimpses, and
they smote him with waves of pleasure that assaulted him, beat upon him,
washed over him deliciously, and drowned out all consciousness of what he
was doing with his brush. So there were six places in his canvas which
had to be done over again.
At last Gwendolen got some peace of mind by sending word to the
Thompsons, in the neighborhood, that she was coming there to dinner.
She wouldn't be reminded, at that table, that there was an absentee who
ought to be a presentee--a word which she meant to look out in the
dictionary at a calmer time.
About this time the old earl dropped in for a chat with the artist, and
invited him to stay to dinner. Tracy cramped down his joy and gratitude
by a sudden and powerful exercise of all his forces; and he felt that now
that he was going to be close to Gwendolen, and hear her voice and watch
her face during several precious hours, earth had nothing valuable to add
to his life for the present.
The earl said to himself, "This spectre can eat apples, apparently.
We shall find out, now, if that is a specialty. I think, myself, it's a
specialty. Apples, without doubt, constitute the spectral limit. It was
the case with our first parents. No, I am wrong--at least only partly
right. The line was drawn at apples, just as in the present case, but it
was from the other direction." The new clothes gave him a thrill of
pleasure and pride. He said to himself, "I've got part of him down to
date, anyway."
Sellers said he was pleased with Tracy's work; and he went on and engaged
him to restore his old masters, and said he should also want him to paint
his portrait and his wife's and possibly his daughter's. The tide of the
artist's happiness was at flood, now. The chat flowed pleasantly along
while Tracy painted and Sellers carefully unpacked a picture which he had
brought with him. It was a chromo; a new one, just out. It was the
smirking, self-satisfied portrait of a man who was inundating the Union
with advertisements inviting everybody to buy his specialty, which was a
three-dollar shoe or a dress-suit or something of that kind. The old
gentleman rested the chromo flat upon his lap and gazed down tenderly
upon it, and became silent and meditative. Presently Tracy noticed that
he was dripping tears on it. This touched the young fellow's sympathetic
nature, and at the same time gave him the painful sense of being an
intruder upon a sacred privacy, an observer of emotions which a stranger
ought not to witness. But his pity rose superior to other
considerations, and compelled him to try to comfort the old mourner with
kindly words and a show of friendly interest. He said:
"I am very sorry--is it a friend whom--"
"Ah, more than that, far more than that--a relative, the dearest I had on
earth, although I was never permitted to see him. Yes, it is young Lord
Berkeley, who perished so heroically in the awful conflagration, what is
the matter?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing."
"It was a little startling to be so suddenly brought face to face, so to
speak, with a person one has heard so much talk about. Is it a good
likeness?"
"Without doubt, yes. I never saw him, but you can easily see the
resemblance to his father," said Sellers, holding up the chromo and
glancing from it to the chromo misrepresenting the Usurping Earl and back
again with an approving eye.
"Well, no--I am not sure that I make out the likeness. It is plain that
the Usurping Earl there has a great deal of character and a long face
like a horse's, whereas his heir here is smirky, moon-faced and
characterless."
"We are all that way in the beginning--all the line," said Sellers,
undisturbed. "We all start as moonfaced fools, then later we tadpole
along into horse-faced marvels of intellect and character. It is by that
sign and by that fact that I detect the resemblance here and know this
portrait to be genuine and perfect. Yes, all our family are fools at
first."
"This young man seems to meet the hereditary requirement, certainly."
"Yes, yes, he was a fool, without any doubt. Examine the face, the shape
of the head, the expression. It's all fool, fool, fool, straight
through."
"Thanks,--" said Tracy, involuntarily.
"Thanks?"
"I mean for explaining it to me. Go on, please."
"As I was saying, fool is printed all over the face."
"A body can even read the details."
"What do they say?"
"Well, added up, he is a wobbler."
"A which?"
"Wobbler. A person that's always taking a firm stand about something or
other--kind of a Gibraltar stand, he thinks, for unshakable fidelity and
everlastingness--and then, inside of a little while, he begins to wobble;
no more Gibraltar there; no, sir, a mighty ordinary commonplace weakling
wobbling--around on stilts. That's Lord Berkeley to a dot, you can see
it look at that sheep! But,--why are you blushing like sunset! Dear
sir, have I unwittingly offended in some way?"
"Oh, no indeed, no indeed. Far from it. But it always makes me blush to
hear a man revile his own blood." He said to himself, "How strangely his
vagrant and unguided fancies have hit upon the truth. By accident, he
has described me. I am that contemptible thing. When I left England I
thought I knew myself; I thought I was a very Frederick the Great for
resolution and staying capacity; whereas in truth I am just a Wobbler,
simply a Wobbler. Well--after all, it is at least creditable to have
high ideals and give birth to lofty resolutions; I will allow myself that
comfort." Then he said, aloud, "Could this sheep, as you call him, breed
a great and self-sacrificing idea in his head, do you think? Could he
meditate such a thing, for instance, as the renunciation of the earldom
and its wealth and its glories, and voluntary retirement to the ranks of
the commonalty, there to rise by his own merit or remain forever poor and
obscure?"
"Could he? Why, look at him--look at this simpering self-righteous mug!
There is your answer. It's the very thing he would think of. And he
would start in to do it, too."
"And then?"
"He'd wobble."
"And back down?"
"Every time."
"Is that to happen with all my--I mean would that happen to all his high
resolutions?"
"Oh certainly--certainly. It's the Rossmore of it."
"Then this creature was fortunate to die! Suppose, for argument's sake,
that I was a Rossmore, and--"
"It can't be done."
"Why?"
"Because it's not a supposable case. To be a Rossmore at your age, you'd
have to be a fool, and you're not a fool. And you'd have to be a
Wobbler, whereas anybody that is an expert in reading character can see
at a glance that when you set your foot down once, it's there to stay;
and earthquake can't wobble it." He added to himself, "That's enough to
say to him, but it isn't half strong enough for the facts. The more
I observe him, now, the more remarkable I find him. It is the strongest
face I have ever examined. There is almost superhuman firmness here,
immovable purpose, iron steadfastness of will. A most extraordinary
young man."
He presently said, aloud:
"Some time I want to ask your advice about a little matter, Mr. Tracy.
You see, I've got that young lord's remaims--my goodness, how you jump!"
"Oh, it's nothing, pray go on. You've got his remains?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure they are his, and not somebody else's?"
"Oh, perfectly sure. Samples, I mean. Not all of him."
"Samples?"
"Yes--in baskets. Some time you will be going home; and if you wouldn't
mind taking them along--"
"Who? I?"
"Yes--certainly. I don't mean now; but after a while; after--but look
here, would you like to see them?"
"No! Most certainly not. I don't want to see them."
"O, very well. I only thought--hey, where are you going, dear?"
"Out to dinner, papa."
Tracy was aghast. The colonel said, in a disappointed voice:
"Well, I'm sorry. Sho, I didn't know she was going out, Mr. Tracy."
Gwendolen's face began to take on a sort of apprehensive 'What-have-I-
done expression.'
"Three old people to one young one--well, it isn't a good team, that's a
fact."
Gwendolen's face betrayed a dawning hopefulness and she said--with a tone
of reluctance which hadn't the hall-mark on it:
"If you prefer, I will send word to the Thompsons that I--"
"Oh, is it the Thompsons? That simplifies it--sets everything right.
We can fix it without spoiling your arrangements, my child. You've got
your heart set on--"
"But papa, I'd just as soon go there some other--"
"No--I won't have it. You are a good hard-working darling child, and
your father is not the man to disappoint you when you--"
"But papa, I--"
"Go along, I won't hear a word. We'll get along, dear."
Gwendolen was ready to cry with venation. But there was nothing to do
but start; which she was about to do when her father hit upon an idea
which filled him with delight because it so deftly covered all the
difficulties of the situation and made things smooth and satisfactory:
"I've got it, my love, so that you won't be robbed of your holiday and at
the same time we'll be pretty satisfactorily fixed for a good time here.
You send Belle Thompson here--perfectly beautiful creature, Tracy,
perfectly beautiful; I want you to see that girl; why, you'll just go
mad; you'll go mad inside of a minute; yes, you send her right along,
Gwendolen, and tell her--why, she's gone!" He turned--she was already
passing out at the gate. He muttered, "I wonder what's the matter; I
don't know what her mouth's doing, but I think her shoulders are
swearing. Well," said Sellers blithely to Tracy, "I shall miss her--
parents always miss the children as soon as they're out of sight, it's
only a natural and wisely ordained partiality--but you'll be all right,
because Miss Belle will supply the youthful element for you and to your
entire content; and we old people will do our best, too. We shall have a
good enough time. And you'll have a chance to get better acquainted with
Admiral Hawkins. That's a rare character, Mr. Tracy--one of the rarest
and most engaging characters the world has produced. You'll find him
worth studying. I've studied him ever since he was a child and have
always found him developing. I really consider that one of the main
things that has enabled me to master the difficult science of
character-reading was the livid interest I always felt in that boy
and the baffling inscrutabilities of his ways and inspirations."
Tracy was not hearing a word. His spirits were gone, he was desolate.
"Yes, a most wonderful character. Concealment--that's the basis of it.
Always the first thing you want to do is to find the keystone a man's
character is built on--then you've got it. No misleading and apparently
inconsistent peculiarities can fool you then. What do you read on the
Senator's surface? Simplicity; a kind of rank and protuberant
simplicity; whereas, in fact, that's one of the deepest minds in the
world. A perfectly honest man--an absolutely honest and honorable man--
and yet without doubt the profoundest master of dissimulation the world
has ever seen."
"O, it's devilish!" This was wrung from the unlistening Tracy by the
anguished thought of what might have been if only the dinner arrangements
hadn't got mixed.
"No, I shouldn't call it that," said Sellers, who was now placidly
walking up and down the room with his hands under his coat-tails and
listening to himself talk. "One could quite properly call it devilish
in another man, but not in the Senator. Your term is right--perfectly
right--I grant that--but the application is wrong. It makes a great
difference. Yes, he is a marvelous character. I do not suppose that any
other statesman ever had such a colossal sense of humor, combined with
the ability to totally conceal it. I may except George Washington and
Cromwell, and perhaps Robespierre, but I draw the line there. A person
not an expert might be in Judge Hawkins's company a lifetime and never
find out he had any more sense of humor than a cemetery."
A deep-drawn yard-long sigh from the distraught and dreaming artist,
followed by a murmured, "Miserable, oh, miserable!"
"Well, no, I shouldn't say that about it, quite. On the contrary, I
admire his ability to conceal his humor even more if possible than I
admire the gift itself, stupendous as it is. Another thing--General
Hawkins is a thinker; a keen, logical, exhaustive, analytical thinker--
perhaps the ablest of modern times. That is, of course, upon themes
suited to his size, like the glacial period, and the correlation of
forces, and the evolution of the Christian from the caterpillar--any of
those things; give him a subject according to his size, and just stand
back and watch him think! Why you can see the place rock! Ah, yes, you
must know him; you must get on the inside of him. Perhaps the most
extraordinary mind since Aristotle."
Dinner was kept waiting for a while for Miss Thompson, but as Gwendolen
had not delivered the invitation to her the waiting did no good, and the
household presently went to the meal without her. Poor old Sellers tried
everything his hospitable soul could devise to make the occasion an
enjoyable one for the guest, and the guest tried his honest best to be
cheery and chatty and happy for the old gentleman's sake; in fact all
hands worked hard in the interest of a mutual good time, but the thing
was a failure from the start; Tracy's heart was lead in his bosom, there
seemed to be only one prominent feature in the landscape and that was a
vacant chair, he couldn't drag his mind away from Gwendolen and his hard
luck; consequently his distractions allowed deadly pauses to slip in
every now and then when it was his turn to say something, and of course
this disease spread to the rest of the conversation--wherefore, instead
of having a breezy sail in sunny waters, as anticipated, everybody was
bailing out and praying for land. What could the matter be? Tracy alone
could have told, the others couldn't even invent a theory.
Meanwhile they were having a similarly dismal time at the Thompson house;
in fact a twin experience. Gwendolen was ashamed of herself for allowing
her disappointment to so depress her spirits and make her so strangely
and profoundly miserable; but feeling ashamed of herself didn't improve
the matter any; it only seemed to aggravate the suffering. She explained
that she was not feeling very well, and everybody could see that this was
true; so she got sincere sympathy and commiseration; but that didn't help
the case. Nothing helps that kind of a case. It is best to just stand
off and let it fester. The moment the dinner was over the girl excused
herself, and she hurried home feeling unspeakably grateful to get away
from that house and that intolerable captivity and suffering.
Will he be gone? The thought arose in her brain, but took effect in her
heels. She slipped into the house, threw off her things and made
straight for the dining room. She stopped and listened. Her father's
voice--with no life in it; presently her mother's--no life in that;
a considerable vacancy, then a sterile remark from Washington Hawkins.
Another silence; then, not Tracy's but her father's voice again.
"He's gone," she said to herself despairingly, and listlessly opened the
door and stepped within.
"Why, my child," cried the mother, "how white you are! Are you--has
anything--"
"White?" exclaimed Sellers. "It's gone like a flash; 'twasn't serious.
Already she's as red as the soul of a watermelon! Sit down, dear, sit
down--goodness knows you're welcome. Did you have a good time? We've
had great times here--immense. Why didn't Miss Belle come? Mr. Tracy is
not feeling well, and she'd have made him forget it."
She was content now; and out from her happy eyes there went a light that
told a secret to another pair of eyes there and got a secret in return.
In just that infinitely small fraction of a second those two great
confessions were made, received, and perfectly understood. All anxiety,
apprehension, uncertainty, vanished out of these young people's hearts
and left them filled with a great peace.
Sellers had had the most confident faith that with the new reinforcement
victory would be at this last moment snatched from the jaws of defeat,
but it was an error. The talk was as stubbornly disjointed as ever.
He was proud of Gwendolen, and liked to show her off, even against Miss
Belle Thompson, and here had been a great opportunity, and what had she
made of it? He felt a good deal put out. It vexed him to think that
this Englishman, with the traveling Briton's everlasting disposition to
generalize whole mountain ranges from single sample-grains of sand, would
jump to the conclusion that American girls were as dumb as himself--
generalizing the whole tribe from this single sample and she at her
poorest, there being nothing at that table to inspire her, give her a
start, keep her from going to sleep. He made up his mind that for the
honor of the country he would bring these two together again over the
social board before long. There would be a different result another
time, he judged. He said to himself, with a deep sense of injury,
"He'll put in his diary--they all keep diaries--he'll put in his diary
that she was miraculously uninteresting--dear, dear, but wasn't she!
I never saw the like--and yet looking as beautiful as Satan, too--and
couldn't seem to do anything but paw bread crumbs, and pick flowers to
pieces, and look fidgety. And it isn't any better here in the Hall of
Audience. I've had enough; I'll haul down my flag--the others may fight
it out if they want to."
He shook hands all around and went off to do some work which he said was
pressing. The idolaters were the width of the room apart; and apparently
unconscious of each other's presence. The distance got shortened a
little, now. Very soon the mother withdrew. The distance narrowed
again. Tracy stood before a chromo of some Ohio politician which had
been retouched and chain-mailed for a crusading Rossmore, and Gwendolen
was sitting on the sofa not far from his elbow artificially absorbed in
examining a photograph album that hadn't any photographs in it.
The "Senator" still lingered. He was sorry for the young people; it had
been a dull evening for them. In the goodness of his heart he tried to
make it pleasant for them now; tried to remove the ill impression
necessarily left by the general defeat; tried to be chatty, even tried to
be gay. But the responses were sickly, there was no starting any
enthusiasm; he would give it up and quit--it was a day specially picked
out and consecrated to failures.
But when Gwendolen rose up promptly and smiled a glad smile and said with
thankfulness and blessing, "Must you go?" it seemed cruel to desert, and
he sat down again.
He was about to begin a remark when--when he didn't. We have all been
there. He didn't know how he knew his concluding to stay longer had been
a mistake, he merely knew it; and knew it for dead certain, too. And so
he bade goodnight, and went mooning out, wondering what he could have
done that changed the atmosphere that way. As the door closed behind him
those two were standing side by side, looking at that door--looking at it
in a waiting, second-counting, but deeply grateful kind of way. And the
instant it closed they flung their arms about each other's necks, and
there, heart to heart and lip to lip--
"Oh, my God, she's kissing it!"
Nobody heard this remark, because Hawkins, who bred it, only thought it,
he didn't utter it. He had turned, the moment he had closed the door,
and had pushed it open a little, intending to re-enter and ask what
ill-advised thing he had done or said, and apologize for it. But he
didn't re-enter; he staggered off stunned, terrified, distressed.
CHAPTER XXII.
Five minutes later he was sitting in his room, with his head bowed within
the circle of his arms, on the table--final attitude of grief and despair.
His tears were flowing fast, and now and then a sob broke upon the
stillness. Presently he said:
"I knew her when she was a little child and used to climb about my knees;
I love her as I love my own, and now--oh, poor thing, poor thing, I
cannot bear it!--she's gone and lost her heart to this mangy
materializee! Why didn't we see that that might happen? But how could
we? Nobody could; nobody could ever have dreamed of such a thing. You
couldn't expect a person would fall in love with a wax-work. And this
one doesn't even amount to that."
He went on grieving to himself, and now and then giving voice to his
lamentations.
"It's done, oh, it's done, and there's no help for it, no undoing the
miserable business. If I had the nerve, I would kill it. But that
wouldn't do any good. She loves it; she thinks it's genuine and
authentic. If she lost it she would grieve for it just as she would for
a real person. And who's to break it to the family! Not I--I'll die
first. Sellers is the best human being I ever knew and I wouldn't any
more think of--oh, dear, why it'll break his heart when he finds it out.
And Polly's too. This comes of meddling with such infernal matters!
But for this, the creature would still be roasting in Sheol where it
belongs. How is it that these people don't smell the brimstone?
Sometimes I can't come into the same room with him without nearly
suffocating."
After a while he broke out again:
"Well, there's one thing, sure. The materializing has got to stop right
where it is. If she's got to marry a spectre, let her marry a decent one
out of the Middle Ages, like this one--not a cowboy and a thief such as
this protoplasmic tadpole's going to turn into if Sellers keeps on
fussing at it. It costs five thousand dollars cash and shuts down on the
incorporated company to stop the works at this point, but Sally Sellers's
happiness is worth more than that."
He heard Sellers coming, and got himself to rights. Sellers took a seat,
and said:
"Well, I've got to confess I'm a good deal puzzled. It did certainly
eat, there's no getting around it. Not eat, exactly, either, but it
nibbled; nibbled in an appetiteless way, but still it nibbled; and that's
just a marvel. Now the question is, what does it do with those
nibblings? That's it--what does it do with them? My idea is that we
don't begin to know all there is to this stupendous discovery yet.
But time will show--time and science--give us a chance, and don't get
impatient."
But he couldn't get Hawkins interested; couldn't make him talk to amount
to anything; couldn't drag him out of his depression. But at last he
took a turn that arrested Hawkins's attention.
"I'm coming to like him, Hawkins. He is a person of stupendous
character--absolutely gigantic. Under that placid exterior is concealed
the most dare-devil spirit that was ever put into a man--he's just a
Clive over again. Yes, I'm all admiration for him, on account of his
character, and liking naturally follows admiration, you know. I'm coming
to like him immensely. Do you know, I haven't the heart to degrade such
a character as that down to the burglar estate for money or for anything
else; and I've come to ask if you are willing to let the reward go, and
leave this poor fellow--"
"Where he is?"
"Yes--not bring him down to date."
"Oh, there's my hand; and my heart's in it, too!"
"I'll never forget you for this, Hawkins," said the old gentleman in a
voice which he found it hard to control. "You are making a great
sacrifice for me, and one which you can ill afford, but I'll never forget
your generosity, and if I live you shall not suffer for it, be sure of
that."
Sally Sellers immediately and vividly realized that she was become a new
being; a being of a far higher and worthier sort than she had been such a
little while before; an earnest being, in place of a dreamer; and
supplied with a reason for her presence in the world, where merely a
wistful and troubled curiosity about it had existed before. So great and
so comprehensive was the change which had been wrought, that she seemed
to herself to be a real person who had lately been a shadow; a something
which had lately been a nothing; a purpose, which had lately been a
fancy; a finished temple, with the altar-fires lit and the voice of
worship ascending, where before had been but an architect's confusion of
arid working plans, unintelligible to the passing eye and prophesying
nothing.
"Lady" Gwendolen! The pleasantness of that sound was all gone; it was an
offense to her ear now. She said:
"There--that sham belongs to the past; I will not be called by it any
more."
"I may call you simply Gwendolen? You will allow me to drop the
formalities straightway and name you by your dear first name without
additions?"
She was dethroning the pink and replacing it with a rosebud.
"There--that is better. I hate pinks--some pinks. Indeed yes, you are to
call me by my first name without additions--that is,--well, I don't mean
without additions entirely, but--"
It was as far as she could get. There was a pause; his intellect was
struggling to comprehend; presently it did manage to catch the idea in
time to save embarrassment all around, and he said gratefully--
"Dear Gwendolen! I may say that?"
"Yes--part of it. But--don't kiss me when I am talking, it makes me
forget what I was going to say. You can call me by part of that form,
but not the last part. Gwendolen is not my name."
"Not your name?" This in a tone of wonder and surprise.
The girl's soul was suddenly invaded by a creepy apprehension, a quite
definite sense of suspicion and alarm. She put his arms away from her,
looked him searchingly in the eye, and said:
"Answer me truly, on your honor. You are not seeking to marry me on
account of my rank?"
The shot almost knocked him through the wall, he was so little prepared
for it. There was something so finely grotesque about the question and
its parent suspicion, that he stopped to wonder and admire, and thus was
he saved from laughing. Then, without wasting precious time, he set
about the task of convincing her that he had been lured by herself alone,
and had fallen in love with her only, not her title and position; that he
loved her with all his heart, and could not love her more if she were a
duchess, or less if she were without home, name or family. She watched
his face wistfully, eagerly, hopefully, translating his words by its
expression; and when he had finished there was gladness in her heart--
a tumultuous gladness, indeed, though outwardly she was calm, tranquil,
even judicially austere. She prepared a surprise for him, now,
calculated to put a heavy strain upon those disinterested protestations
of his; and thus she delivered it, burning it away word by word as the
fuse burns down to a bombshell, and watching to see how far the explosion
would lift him:
"Listen--and do not doubt me, for I shall speak the exact truth. Howard
Tracy, I am no more an earl's child than you are!"
To her joy--and secret surprise, also--it never phased him. He was
ready, this time, and saw his chance. He cried out with enthusiasm,
"Thank heaven for that!" and gathered her to his arms.
To express her happiness was almost beyond her gift of speech.
"You make me the proudest girl in all the earth," she said, with her head
pillowed on his shoulder. "I thought it only natural that you should be
dazzled by the title--maybe even unconsciously, you being English--and
that you might be deceiving yourself in thinking you loved only me, and
find you didn't love me when the deception was swept away; so it makes me
proud that the revelation stands for nothing and that you do love just
me, only me--oh, prouder than any words can tell!"
"It is only you, sweetheart, I never gave one envying glance toward your
father's earldom. That is utterly true, dear Gwendolen."
"There--you mustn't call me that. I hate that false name. I told you it
wasn't mine. My name is Sally Sellers--or Sarah, if you like. From this
time I banish dreams, visions, imaginings, and will no more of them.
I am going to be myself--my genuine self, my honest self, my natural
self, clear and clean of sham and folly and fraud, and worthy of you.
There is no grain of social inequality between us; I, like you, am poor;
I, like you, am without position or distinction; you are a struggling
artist, I am that, too, in my humbler way. Our bread is honest bread,
we work for our living. Hand in hand we will walk hence to the grave,
helping each other in all ways, living for each other, being and
remaining one in heart and purpose, one in hope and aspiration,
inseparable to the end. And though our place is low, judged by the
world's eye, we will make it as high as the highest in the great
essentials of honest work for what we eat and wear, and conduct above
reproach. We live in a land, let us be thankful, where this is
all-sufficient, and no man is better than his neighbor by the grace
of God, but only by his own merit."
Tracy tried to break in, but she stopped him and kept the floor herself.
"I am not through yet. I am going to purge myself of the last vestiges
of artificiality and pretence, and then start fair on your own honest
level and be worthy mate to you thenceforth. My father honestly thinks
he is an earl. Well, leave him his dream, it pleases him and does no one
any harm: It was the dream of his ancestors before him. It has made
fools of the house of Sellers for generations, and it made something of a
fool of me, but took no deep root. I am done with it now, and for good.
Forty-eight hours ago I was privately proud of being the daughter of a
pinchbeck earl, and thought the proper mate for me must be a man of like
degree; but to-day--oh, how grateful I am for your love which has healed
my sick brain and restored my sanity!--I could make oath that no earl's
son in all the world--"
"Oh,--well, but--but--"
"Why, you look like a person in a panic. What is it? What is the
matter?"
"Matter? Oh, nothing--nothing. I was only going to say"--but in his
flurry nothing occurred to him to say, for a moment; then by a lucky
inspiration he thought of something entirely sufficient for the occasion,
and brought it out with eloquent force: "Oh, how beautiful you are! You
take my breath away when you look like that."
It was well conceived, well timed, and cordially delivered--and it got
its reward.
"Let me see. Where was I? Yes, my father's earldom is pure moonshine.
Look at those dreadful things on the wall. You have of course supposed
them to be portraits of his ancestors, earls of Rossmore. Well, they are
not. They are chromos of distinguished Americans--all moderns; but he
has carried them back a thousand years by re-labeling them. Andrew
Jackson there, is doing what he can to be the late American earl; and the
newest treasure in the collection is supposed to be the young English
heir--I mean the idiot with the crape; but in truth it's a shoemaker, and
not Lord Berkeley at all."
"Are you sure?"
"Why of course I am. He wouldn't look like that."
"Why?"
"Because his conduct in his last moments, when the fire was sweeping
around him shows that he was a man. It shows that he was a fine,
high-souled young creature."
Tracy was strongly moved by these compliments, and it seemed to him that
the girl's lovely lips took on anew loveliness when they were delivering
them. He said, softly:
"It is a pity he could not know what a gracious impression his behavior
was going to leave with the dearest and sweetest stranger in the
land of--"
"Oh, I almost loved him! Why, I think of him every day. He is always
floating about in my mind."
Tracy felt that this was a little more than was necessary. He was
conscious of the sting of jealousy. He said:
"It is quite right to think of him--at least now and then--that is, at
intervals--in perhaps an admiring way--but it seems to me that--"
"Howard Tracy, are you jealous of that dead man?"
He was ashamed--and at the same time not ashamed. He was jealous--and at
the same time he was not jealous. In a sense the dead man was himself;
in that case compliments and affection lavished upon that corpse went
into his own till and were clear profit. But in another sense the dead
man was not himself; and in that case all compliments and affection
lavished there were wasted, and a sufficient basis for jealousy. A tiff
was the result of the dispute between the two. Then they made it up, and
were more loving than ever. As an affectionate clincher of the
reconciliation, Sally declared that she had now banished Lord Berkeley
from her mind; and added, "And in order to make sure that he shall never
make trouble between us again, I will teach myself to detest that name
and all that have ever borne it or ever shall bear it."
This inflicted another pang, and Tracy was minded to ask her to modify
that a little just on general principles, and as practice in not
overdoing a good thing--perhaps he might better leave things as they were
and not risk bringing on another tiff. He got away from that particular,
and sought less tender ground for conversation.
"I suppose you disapprove wholly of aristocracies and nobilities, now
that you have renounced your title and your father's earldom."
"Real ones? Oh, dear no--but I've thrown aside our sham one for good."
This answer fell just at the right time and just in the right place, to
save the poor unstable young man from changing his political complexion
once more. He had been on the point of beginning to totter again, but
this prop shored him up and kept him from floundering back into democracy
and re-renouncing aristocracy. So he went home glad that he had asked
the fortunate question. The girl would accept a little thing like a
genuine earldom, she was merely prejudiced against the brummagem article.
Yes, he could have his girl and have his earldom, too: that question was
a fortunate stroke.
Sally went to bed happy, too; and remained happy, deliriously happy, for
nearly two hours; but at last, just as she was sinking into a contented
and luxurious unconsciousness, the shady devil who lives and lurks and
hides and watches inside of human beings and is always waiting for a
chance to do the proprietor a malicious damage, whispered to her soul and
said, "That question had a harmless look, but what was back of it?--what
was the secret motive of it?--what suggested it?"
The shady devil had knifed her, and could retire, now, and take a rest;
the wound would attend to business for him. And it did.
Why should Howard Tracy ask that question? If he was not trying to marry
her for the sake of her rank, what should suggest that question to him?
Didn't he plainly look gratified when she said her objections to
aristocracy had their limitations? Ah, he is after that earldom, that
gilded sham--it isn't poor me he wants.
So she argued, in anguish and tears. Then she argued the opposite
theory, but made a weak, poor business of it, and lost the case. She
kept the arguing up, one side and then the other, the rest of the night,
and at last fell asleep at dawn; fell in the fire at dawn, one may say;
for that kind of sleep resembles fire, and one comes out of it with his
brain baked and his physical forces fried out of him.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Tracy wrote his father before he sought his bed. He wrote a letter which
he believed would get better treatment than his cablegram received, for
it contained what ought to be welcome news; namely, that he had tried
equality and working for a living; had made a fight which he could find
no reason to be ashamed of, and in the matter of earning a living had
proved that he was able to do it; but that on the whole he had arrived at
the conclusion that he could not reform the world single-handed, and was
willing to retire from the conflict with the fair degree of honor which
he had gained, and was also willing to return home and resume his
position and be content with it and thankful for it for the future,
leaving further experiment of a missionary sort to other young people
needing the chastening and quelling persuasions of experience, the only
logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged
health. Then he approached the subject of marriage with the daughter of
the American Claimant with a good deal of caution and much painstaking
art. He said praiseful and appreciative things about the girl, but
didn't dwell upon that detail or make it prominent. The thing which he
made prominent was the opportunity now so happily afforded, to reconcile
York and Lancaster, graft the warring roses upon one stem, and end
forever a crying injustice which had already lasted far too long. One
could infer that he had thought this thing all out and chosen this way of
making all things fair and right because it was sufficiently fair and
considerably wiser than the renunciation-scheme which he had brought with
him from England. One could infer that, but he didn't say it. In fact
the more he read his letter over, the more he got to inferring it
himself.
When the old earl received that letter, the first part of it filled him
with a grim and snarly satisfaction; but the rest of it brought a snort
or two out of him that could be translated differently. He wasted no ink
in this emergency, either in cablegrams or letters; he promptly took ship
for America to look into the matter himself. He had staunchly held his
grip all this long time, and given no sign of the hunger at his heart to
see his son; hoping for the cure of his insane dream, and resolute that
the process should go through all the necessary stages without assuaging
telegrams or other nonsense from home, and here was victory at last.
Victory, but stupidly marred by this idiotic marriage project. Yes, he
would step over and take a hand in this matter himself.
During the first ten days following the mailing of the letter Tracy's
spirits had no idle time; they were always climbing up into the clouds or
sliding down into the earth as deep as the law of gravitation reached.
He was intensely happy or intensely miserable by turns, according to Miss
Sally's moods. He never could tell when the mood was going to change,
and when it changed he couldn't tell what it was that had changed it.
Sometimes she was so in love with him that her love was tropical, torrid,
and she could find no language fervent enough for its expression; then
suddenly, and without warning or any apparent reason, the weather would
change, and the victim would find himself adrift among the icebergs and
feeling as lonesome and friendless as the north pole. It sometimes
seemed to him that a man might better be dead than exposed to these
devastating varieties of climate.
The case was simple. Sally wanted to believe that Tracy's preference was
disinterested; so she was always applying little tests of one sort or
another, hoping and expecting that they would bring out evidence which
would confirm or fortify her belief. Poor Tracy did not know that these
experiments were being made upon him, consequently he walked promptly
into all the traps the girl set for him. These traps consisted in
apparently casual references to social distinction, aristocratic title
and privilege, and such things. Often Tracy responded to these
references heedlessly and not much caring what he said provided it kept
the talk going and prolonged the seance. He didn't suspect that the girl
was watching his face and listening for his words as one who watches the
judge's face and listens for the words which will restore him to home and
friends and freedom or shut him away from the sun and human companionship
forever. He didn't suspect that his careless words were being weighed,
and so he often delivered sentence of death when it would have been just
as handy and all the same to him to pronounce acquittal. Daily he broke
the girl's heart, nightly he sent her to the rack for sleep. He couldn't
understand it.
Some people would have put this and that together and perceived that the
weather never changed until one particular subject was introduced,
and that then it always changed. And they would have looked further,
and perceived that that subject was always introduced by the one party,
never the other. They would have argued, then, that this was done for a
purpose. If they could not find out what that purpose was in any simpler
or easier way, they would ask.
But Tracy was not deep enough or suspicious enough to think of these
things. He noticed only one particular; that the weather was always
sunny when a visit began. No matter how much it might cloud up later,
it always began with a clear sky. He couldn't explain this curious fact
to himself, he merely knew it to be a fact. The truth of the matter was,
that by the time Tracy had been out of Sally's sight six hours she was so
famishing for a sight of him that her doubts and suspicions were all
consumed away in the fire of that longing, and so always she came into
his presence as surprisingly radiant and joyous as she wasn't when she
went out of it.
In circumstances like these a growing portrait runs a good many risks.
The portrait of Sellers, by Tracy, was fighting along, day by day,
through this mixed weather, and daily adding to itself ineradicable signs
of the checkered life it was leading. It was the happiest portrait, in
spots, that was ever seen; but in other spots a damned soul looked out
from it; a soul that was suffering all the different kinds of distress
there are, from stomach ache to rabies. But Sellers liked it. He said it
was just himself all over--a portrait that sweated moods from every pore,
and no two moods alike. He said he had as many different kinds of
emotions in him as a jug.
It was a kind of a deadly work of art, maybe, but it was a starchy
picture for show; for it was life size, full length, and represented the
American earl in a peer's scarlet robe, with the three ermine bars
indicative of an earl's rank, and on the gray head an earl's coronet,
tilted just a wee bit to one side in a most gallus and winsome way. When
Sally's weather was sunny the portrait made Tracy chuckle, but when her
weather was overcast it disordered his mind and stopped the circulation
of his blood.
Late one night when the sweethearts had been having a flawless visit
together, Sally's interior devil began to work his specialty, and soon
the conversation was drifting toward the customary rock. Presently, in
the midst of Tracy's serene flow of talk, he felt a shudder which he knew
was not his shudder, but exterior to his breast although immediately
against it. After the shudder came sobs; Sally was crying.
"Oh, my darling, what have I done--what have I said? It has happened
again! What have I done to wound you?"
She disengaged herself from his arms and gave him a look of deep
reproach.
"What have you done? I will tell you what you have done. You have
unwittingly revealed--oh, for the twentieth time, though I could not
believe it, would not believe it!--that it is not me you love, but that
foolish sham my father's imitation earldom; and you have broken my
heart!"
"Oh, my child, what are you saying! I never dreamed of such a thing."
"Oh, Howard, Howard, the things you have uttered when you were forgetting
to guard your tongue, have betrayed you."
"Things I have uttered when I was forgetting to guard my tongue? These
are hard words. When have I remembered to guard it? Never in one
instance. It has no office but to speak the truth. It needs no guarding
for that."
"Howard, I have noted your words and weighed them, when you were not
thinking of their significance--and they have told me more than you meant
they should."
"Do you mean to say you have answered the trust I had in you by using it
as an ambuscade from which you could set snares for my unsuspecting
tongue and be safe from detection while you did it? You have not done
this--surely you have not done this thing. Oh, one's enemy could not do
it."
This was an aspect of the girl's conduct which she had not clearly
perceived before. Was it treachery? Had she abused a trust? The
thought crimsoned her cheeks with shame and remorse.
"Oh, forgive me," she said, "I did not know what I was doing. I have
been so tortured--you will forgive me, you must; I have suffered so much,
and I am so sorry and so humble; you do forgive me, don't you?--don't
turn away, don't refuse me; it is only my love that is at fault, and you
know I love you, love you with all my heart; I couldn't bear to--oh,
dear, dear, I am so miserable, and I sever meant any harm, and I didn't
see where this insanity was carrying me, and how it was wronging and
abusing the dearest heart in all the world to me--and--and--oh, take me
in your arms again, I have no other refuge, no other home and hope!"
There was reconciliation again--immediate, perfect, all-embracing--and
with it utter happiness. This would have been a good time to adjourn.
But no, now that the cloud-breeder was revealed at last; now that it was
manifest that all the sour weather had come from this girl's dread that
Tracy was lured by her rank and not herself, he resolved to lay that
ghost immediately and permanently by furnishing the best possible proof
that he couldn't have had back of him at any time the suspected motive.
So he said:
"Let me whisper a little secret in your ear--a secret which I have kept
shut up in my breast all this time. Your rank couldn't ever have been an
enticement. I am son and heir to an English earl!"
The girl stared at him--one, two, three moments, maybe a dozen--then her
lips parted:
"You?" she said, and moved away from him, still gazing at him in a kind
of blank amazement.
"Why--why, certainly I am. Why do you act like this? What have I done
now?"
"What have you done? You have certainly made a most strange statement.
You must see that yourself."
"Well," with a timid little laugh, "it may be a strange enough statement;
but of what consequence is that, if it is true?"
"If it is true. You are already retiring from it."
"Oh, not for a moment! You should not say that. I have not deserved it.
I have spoken the truth; why do you doubt it?"
Her reply was prompt.
"Simply because you didn't speak it earlier!"
"Oh!" It wasn't a groan, exactly, but it was an intelligible enough
expression of the fact that he saw the point and recognized that there
was reason in it.
"You have seemed to conceal nothing from me that I ought to know
concerning yourself, and you were not privileged to keep back such a
thing as this from me a moment after--after--well, after you had
determined to pay your court to me."
"Its true, it's true, I know it! But there were circumstances--in--
in the way--circumstances which--"
She waved the circumstances aside.
"Well, you see," he said, pleadingly, "you seemed so bent on our
traveling the proud path of honest labor and honorable poverty, that I
was terrified--that is, I was afraid--of--of--well, you know how you
talked."
"Yes, I know how I talked. And I also know that before the talk was
finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my answer
was calculated to relieve your fears."
He was silent a while. Then he said, in a discouraged way:
"I don't see any way out of it. It was a mistake. That is in truth all
it was, just a mistake. No harm was meant, no harm in the world.
I didn't see how it might some time look. It is my way. I don't seem to
see far."
The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment. Then she flared up again.
"An Earl's son! Do earls' sons go about working in lowly callings for
their bread and butter?"
"God knows they don't! I have wished they did."
"Do earls' sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come sober
and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when they can
go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy the pick and
choice of the millionaires' daughters of America? You an earl's son!
Show me the signs."
"I thank God I am not able--if those are the signs. But yet I am an
earl's son and heir. It is all I can say. I wish you would believe me,
but you will not. I know no way to persuade you."
She was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring her
foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out:
"Oh, you drive all patience out of me! Would you have one believe that
you haven't your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are?
You do not put your hand in your pocket now--for you have nothing there.
You make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without
credentials. These are simply incredibilities. Don't you see that,
yourself?"
He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other--hesitated
a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence:
"I will tell you just the truth, foolish as it will seem to you--
to anybody, I suppose--but it is the truth. I had an ideal--call it
a dream, a folly, if you will--but I wanted to renounce the privileges
and unfair advantages enjoyed by the nobility and wrung from the nation
by force and fraud, and purge myself of my share of those crimes against
right and reason, by thenceforth comrading with the poor and humble on
equal terms, earning with my own hands the bread I ate, and rising by my
own merit if I rose at all."
The young girl scanned his face narrowly while he spoke; and there was
something about his simplicity of manner and statement which touched her
--touched her almost to the danger point; but she set her grip on the
yielding spirit and choked it to quiescence; it could not be wise to
surrender to compassion or any kind of sentiment, yet; she must ask one
or two more questions. Tracy was reading her face; and what he read
there lifted his drooping hopes a little.
"An earl's son to do that! Why, he were a man! A man to love!--oh,
more, a man to worship!"
"Why?"
"But he never lived! He is not born, he will not be born. The
self-abnegation that could do that--even in utter folly, and hopeless of
conveying benefit to any, beyond the mere example--could be mistaken for
greatness; why, it would be greatness in this cold age of sordid ideals!
A moment--wait--let me finish; I have one question more. Your father is
earl of what?"
"Rossmore--and I am Viscount Berkeley!"
The fat was in the fire again. The girl felt so outraged that it was
difficult for her to speak.
"How can you venture such a brazen thing! You know that he is dead,
and you know that I know it. Oh, to rob the living of name and honors
for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the
defenceless dead--why it is more than crime, it degrades crime!"
"Oh, listen to me--just a word--don't turn away like that. Don't go--
don't leave me, so--stay one moment. On my honor--"
"Oh, on your honor!"
"On my honor I am what I say! And I will prove it, and you will believe,
I know you will. I will bring you a message--a cablegram--"
"When?"
"To-morrow--next day--"
"Signed 'Rossmore'?"
"Yes--signed Rossmore."
"What will that prove?"
"What will it prove? What should it prove?"
"If you force me to say it--possibly the presence of a confederate
somewhere."
This was a hard blow, and staggered him. He said, dejectedly:
"It is true. I did not think of it. Oh, my God, I do not know any way
to do; I do everything wrong. You are going?--and you won't say even
good-night--or good-bye? Ah, we have not parted like this before."
"Oh, I want to run and--no, go, now." A pause--then she said, "You may
bring the message when it comes."
"Oh, may I? God bless you."
He was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already quivering, and now
she broke down. Through her sobbings her words broke from time to time.
"Oh, he is gone. I have lost him, I shall never see him any more. And
he didn't kiss me good-bye; never even offered to force a kiss from me,
and he knowing it was the very, very last, and I expecting he would, and
never dreaming he would treat me so after all we have been to each other.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! He is a dear, poor,
miserable, good-hearted, transparent liar and humbug, but oh, I do love
him so--!" After a little she broke into speech again. "How dear he is!
and I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so! Why won't he ever think to
forge a message and fetch it?--but no, he never will, he never thinks of
anything; he's so honest and simple it wouldn't ever occur to him.
Oh, what did possess him to think he could succeed as a fraud--and he
hasn't the first requisite except duplicity that I can see. Oh, dear,
I'll go to bed and give it all up. Oh, I wish I had told him to come and
tell me whenever he didn't get any telegram--and now it's all my own
fault if I never see him again. How my eyes must look!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
Next day, sure enough, the cablegram didn't come. This was an immense
disaster; for Tracy couldn't go into the presence without that ticket,
although it wasn't going to possess any value as evidence. But if the
failure of the cablegram on that first day may be called an immense
disaster, where is the dictionary that can turn out a phrase sizeable
enough to describe the tenth day's failure? Of course every day that the
cablegram didn't come made Tracy all of twenty-four hours' more ashamed
of himself than he was the day before, and made Sally fully twenty-four
hours more certain than ever that he not only hadn't any father anywhere,
but hadn't even a confederate--and so it followed that he was a
double-dyed humbug and couldn't be otherwise.
These were hard days for Barrow and the art firm. All these had their
hands full, trying to comfort Tracy. Barrow's task was particularly
hard, because he was made a confidant in full, and therefore had to humor
Tracy's delusion that he had a father, and that the father was an earl,
and that he was going to send a cablegram. Barrow early gave up the idea
of trying to convince Tracy that he hadn't any father, because this had
such a bad effect on the patient, and worked up his temper to such an
alarming degree. He had tried, as an experiment, letting Tracy think he
had a father; the result was so good that he went further, with proper
caution, and tried letting him think his father was an earl; this wrought
so well, that he grew bold, and tried letting him think he had two
fathers, if he wanted to, but he didn't want to, so Barrow withdrew one
of them and substituted letting him think he was going to get a
cablegram--which Barrow judged he wouldn't, and was right; but Barrow
worked the cablegram daily for all it was worth, and it was the one thing
that kept Tracy alive; that was Barrow's opinion.