“Ah!” thought Ethel, “I understand how a young girl in France should

take the husband they choose for her with eyes shut. It is to her own

interest to escape from such family tyranny.”

“But we shall go to see Miss Ethel?” Yvonne asked.

“Oh, certainly! We shall go to pass an afternoon with you,” Mme. de

Grojean said, encouraged by an indulgent smile from grand’mère, who,

seated squarely in her arm-chair, murmured between her lips:

“Ah! how insatiable for pleasure young people are nowadays! As if birds

and flowers in the garden were not enough! Soon we shall have girls

playing like boys; they will talk of the theater and sport, of tennis

and bicycles—horror!”

Yvonne, gay as usual, and without any expression of bitterness, spoke

low with her grandmother.

“Grand’mère, what if I should prepare a light collation for our

visitors?”

“You are right, my child,” said grand’mère; “here is the key of the

preserve pantry.”

Every one was now talking. A visitor had just made her appearance—Mme.

Riçois, the banker’s wife, alert and dimpling, as usual. Phil, Will,

and Mme. de Grojean talked pleasantly together. Caracal, with an air

of great importance, talked of bric-à-brac to Mme. Riçois. Grand’mère

and grandma made peace together. They found an admirable common ground

of interest. Grand’mère showed grandma, who looked at them like a

connoisseur, the photographs of her grandchildren, boys and girls,

and grand-nephews and -nieces. Grandma gave grand’mère a recipe for

home-made pie.

“The collation is ready,” Yvonne said, as she opened from without one

of the long windows on the terrace. Her joyful voice sounded through

the salon as the floods of light came in with the perfume of mignonette

and roses.

“Grand’mère,” Yvonne went on, “I have spread the collation under the

arbor by the waterside. Is that right?”

“You have done well, my child,” said grand’mère.

Mlle. Yvonne smiled with pride, like a soldier receiving his general’s

compliment. Without any more ado, they all crossed the terrace and went

down into the garden. It stretched out with straight alleys bordered

by cut box; and at each side thick trees isolated it from the rest of

the world. In the center there was a little basin of rockwork. At the

bottom of the garden, along the riverside, a trellis-work formed a

shady arbor—a nook of dainty freshness. As they went down to it Yvonne

threw bread-crumbs to the goldfish in the basin, and then showed her

flower-borders, in which the blue and white and red blossoms were like

a tricolor flag.

“I water them myself,” said Yvonne.

The table was spread under a trellis covered with honeysuckle. There

were biscuits and preserves, fruits, cool water, liqueurs and wine and

beer—all set out in perfect taste.

Yvonne served every one.

“Did you prepare all this yourself?” Ethel asked, in wonder. “And you

also found time to adorn the table with flowers—you are a real fairy!”

A balustrade, over which ivy was growing, separated them from the

river. On the other side of the water there spread out a vast plain, in

which factory-chimneys were smoking.

“Only look at the contrast!” Ethel said, pointing to the plain across

the river. “You would say it was America; while here, in this old

garden, surrounded by walls, with Yvonne beside her flower-beds and

all these savory fruits and beautiful golden grapes on their palings,

I seem to be looking at old France!”

“Here’s to France!” Will said, lifting his glass, full of clear water.

“To America!” Yvonne replied, pouring out for herself a little white

wine.

“To our alliance!” said the alert and dimpling Mme. Riçois, as she

tossed down her glass of champagne, while the rest of the party,

including grandma and grand’mère, gaily attacked the cakes and fruits.

“It’s understood, then, isn’t it, madame?” Ethel said to grand’mère,

“we can count on Yvonne for an afternoon, and, if you are willing, we

shall go together to see the fair.”

“It is understood,” answered grand’mère; “and we will go into the

booths and the circus, too—and you must come also, Mme. Riçois. It will

be a fête-day for us!”

“With pleasure,” said Mme. Riçois, filling her glass again in honor of

the alliance.

CHAPTER IV

THROUGH THE COUNTRY FAIR

The camping-party and the Grojeans were doing the fair. At the foot

of the platform, before the circus door, an open-mouthed circle

listened to the girl-clown dressed as Pierrette. All around, under

the burning sun, tents had been set up, painted in bright colors.

Groaning trombones proclaimed the wrestlers and the bearded woman.

Other mountebanks farther on attracted the public toward their own

side-shows. To the notes of an orchestrion, wooden horses turned

rigidly against a cotton-print background, spangled with mirrors.

Cries and laughter were heard above all the rumbling of the drums. Far

and wide rose the discordant noise, especially that of the market for

domestic animals, where the high “do” of squealing pigs quite mastered

the muffled bass of the oxen.

Everywhere there was something to see. But the Pierrette was so pretty

that the public disdained the rest and thronged around her, fascinated

by her air of good-fellowship, and her young, fresh laughter.

“Now’s the time! Now’s the time!” the Pierrette cried, while, behind

her on the platform, circus-riders and clowns, and the master in

person, Signor Perbaccho, listened gravely to her. “Come in! Come in!

Let us show you an animal that has been well trained—but not without

difficulty, for he is stupid enough to make soup of smoked beetles!

“Oh, you needn’t think it just happened!” the Pierrette ran on, making

gestures with her stick. “To begin with, such animals exist only in

Paris—Paris on the Seine, you understand; a big village where all the

pebbles are diamonds and the trees are gold, but you don’t dig potatoes

there! To live there your loafers have to become sculptors and painters

and musicians. Their heads are as empty as their stomachs! Mesdames

et messieurs, I am going to show you one of those animals. Don’t throw

him anything, I beseech you—no bread-crusts, no cabbage-leaves; he ate

yesterday! Attention! Here he comes! Come hither, my fly-killer! Come

when you are called.”

There were bursts of laughter as the Pierrette stretched out her arm

and seized a man by the ear, whirling him around and bringing him,

ashamed enough, to face the public. She might have been a marquise

disguised as a soubrette, playing in comedy with a clumsy rustic. The

man turned red as a tomato.

“Have you made your bread-winner shine to-day? Did you scrub it with

pumice powder? Answer!” said the Pierrette.

“Yes!” grunted the man, shaking his head like a bear.

“Let’s see!”

The man took off his hat, showing a skull of dazzling whiteness,

shining above his hairy brown face like a piece of crockery on a

cocoanut.

[Illustration: Suzanne and Poufaille at the Country Fair]

“Bow to the honorable company!” said the Pierrette. “Not so low! if

they see your skull that way, they’ll think your breeches are torn at

the knee. Now, stand up! To work, old fly-killer!

“Mesdames et messieurs,” the Pierrette said, pretending to roll up her

sleeves and get her stick ready, “it’s not so easy as that to kill

flies—unless your breath has alcohol enough in it to make them fall

in a fit! As for me, I have discovered the means, without drinking, to

rid myself of the treacherous gluttonous flies! Do you want my recipe?

Here it is. You take a bald-headed man, very delicately—there! like

that!—you spread on a layer of molasses and bird-lime, and then flies

and wasps, mosquitos and gnats, every insect with a sucker, will light

down on the human fly-trap; and then,—then, mesdames,—I address my

words to you!—you take a broomstick and hit hard where the molasses is

thickest! There! like that! _Aïe donc! vlan! pan!_ till the flies are a

jelly—_pan! pan!_—hit him again! that’s the way to kill flies and treat

men as they deserve—with a broomstick—_et aïe donc_!”

“What! Suzanne and Poufaille!” exclaimed Phil, getting nearer the

platform. The camping-party, followed by the Grojeans, joined him

just as Poufaille, covered with molasses and shame, escaped from

his executioner and dived back behind the canvas. Suzanne, full of

excitement from her bastinade, stamped her feet, and with voice and

gesture invited the public to come up and buy their places. High above

the noise of the band her piercing voice called out the program:

“Riding of the _haute école_ by the celebrated Perbaccho! The dance of

the sylphs by Mademoiselle Suzanne, pupil of the famous Helia! Hercules

O’Poufaille, of the family of O’Poufailles! Come in! Come in!”

Phil was greatly astonished. He had not seen Poufaille since the

evening when the latter, with his eyes starting from his head, had cast

at him the terrible accusation—“You have stolen from me my share of

glory!”

“So he’s made himself a Hercules of the fair,” thought Phil, “and he’s

made his name Irish! What a fall for an _autochtone_!”

“Phil,” asked Ethel, who had stopped in front of the Pierrette,

“wouldn’t you say it was Suzanne? And here on the poster is

O’Poufaille—it must be M. Poufaille! Decidedly, Tout-Paris has given

itself a rendezvous in the provinces!”

“What—do you know those people?” grand’mère asked of Ethel. “I suppose

you saw them in some circus!”

“I saw them in Paris—at the Louvre and at Monsieur Phil’s studio. They

are good, brave hearts. Suzanne has posed for me and so did the famous

Helia, whose portrait Yvonne did.”

“Impossible!”

“Why, yes, grand’mère,” Yvonne said. “That head of a Madonna—the

miniature which you keep on your prie-dieu, don’t you know?—Mlle. Helia

posed for it.”

“A Madonna copied from devils like that?” gasped grand’mère, amazed at

the Pierrette’s gesticulations on the platform. “What! you bring such

people into your house! You are not afraid?”

“I?” answered Ethel; “no fear at all! I would give them the key of my

desk! Mme. Grojean, only ask Monsieur Phil, who knows them better than

I. Every one earns his living as he can. Each one has his trade—and God

for us all!”

“When you go to see them—for I hope you are going to see them,” Ethel

continued, speaking to Phil, “remember me to them, and you will oblige

me much! If M. Poufaille still has a picture to sell, I will buy it.

Poor M. Poufaille!” she added. “After all, he might have succeeded, who

knows? It is all such a question of chance!”

Phil, in his heart, did not care much about seeing Poufaille again;

what sort of a welcome was there in store for him? But he could not

explain all that to Miss Rowrer; and, besides, her desires were orders

for him—and then, he would come to Poufaille bearing the gifts of

Artaxerxes; that would calm him, no doubt.

“I do not blush for my friends, Miss Rowrer,” Phil said. “I will go

this instant. The good fellow will be very glad to have your order.”

“We shall see you later,” answered Ethel.

The camping-party continued its stroll through the fair in two

distinct groups. Behind were grandma and grand’mère, talking familiarly

together. The piping-time of peace had come with currant-syrup under

the arbor by the riverside. Mme. Riçois, full of smiles, fat and

dimpling, came and went like a diplomatic valise between the group

ahead,—Ethel, Yvonne, and Will,—and the group behind, grandma and

grand’mère. These two elegant groups formed a phalanx, bannered by

parasols, in the midst of the crowd in blue blouses.

They went along the principal part of the fair, a sort of central

alley, which the circus blocked at one end, whereas, at the other end,

under dusty trees, the show of domestic animals was lined up. From all

parts arose a continuous confusion of sounds, like the murmur of the

sea.

“What a noise!” grand’mère exclaimed. She was accustomed to her silent

house, between the deserted place and the garden with its clipped

yew-trees. “But there’s no harm in passing by such a Jericho now and

then—it disgusts you with noise for a year to come!”

Just then Mme. Riçois came up, breathing hard.

“Oh, no! It’s too funny! I never saw Yvonne amuse herself so much. Ah!

how gay these young people are! Do you know what M. Rowrer has been

telling us? He declares that the country, even on a fair-day like this,

soothes his nerves. Miss Rowrer is of the same opinion; they are as

merry as children.”

“Perhaps they are too merry,” grand’mère thought to herself. “What an

idea of my daughter’s to stay at the house for her preserves, and to

leave me alone to look after Yvonne. Really, she chose her time well;

was it so necessary for Yvonne to come here and admire the fronts

of the booths? Ah! nowadays young people never have their fill of

pleasure!”

To calm her conscience, grand’mère said to herself that it was all

right for once, but that it should not happen again. Mme. Riçois spoke

the truth. They were amusing themselves very much there in front—a

great deal too much for grand’mère. Will was as gay as a boy let loose

from school.

In comparison with such a provincial fête, Chicago, as he remembered

it, made on him the effect of a machine-shop full of the noise of

steam-hammers. Taking out his watch, he thought how at that very hour

he might have been at the Stock Exchange, worried with business, in

the midst of frenzied outcries and distorted faces; whereas, here there

were only smiles and gaiety. Every one seemed happy, even the poorest;

and the tumult was that of good-fellowship. Joyous vine-dressers were

buying baskets for their grapes. Farther along, waffles were frying.

Here they were selling cooked sausages; and expansive mouths were

emptying their glasses or biting into loaves of bread.

“Here are people,” Will said, “who know how to amuse themselves.”

“Is it a secret, monsieur?” asked Yvonne.

“To be content with what one has,” answered Will. “You have a French

proverb about it: ‘_S’il n’y en a pas, il n’en faut pas_’ [‘What you

can’t have, you don’t need’]—and that is right—don’t you think so,

mademoiselle?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Yvonne; “you seem to know the French people

better than I.”

The rare charm of Mlle. de Grojean, her innate simplicity and inherited

refinement, seemed to Will like the perfect expression of all he loved

in France. He, who was so taciturn, would have talked on for hours only

to see the manner, at once coquettish and reserved, with which Yvonne

listened to him.

“My impression of France is this,” said Will: “it is holiday every day,

and the next day you begin again.”

“You see everything in rose-color, M. Rowrer,” Yvonne remarked.

“No,” said Ethel, who, in her walks around the camp, had often visited

the poor—“no, it’s not all the time holiday for everybody.”

“I know that, too,” Will replied; “life is as hard here as anywhere

else; but it is the only country where you can give yourself the

illusion that it is easy.”

They had come to the end of the central alley. Followed by grand’mère

and grandma, they had passed by the Pretty Shepherdess of the Alps—a

woman of formidable proportions painted on canvas, in company with

three white goats, not far from the booth of the bearded woman. Just

there the group behind would have lost the forward group, if it had

not been for Mme. Riçois, who elbowed her way with energy through the

crowd, which, at this spot, pressed together like the current in a

narrow strait. An immense lottery-wheel was turning with a noise like

the wind.

The day drew on, and the peasants were already leading away their

cattle. They went along in single file, in front of their yoked oxen,

slow as a procession. The dust they raised settled on the trees in

white powder.

“You may say what you please, Will,” Ethel continued; “it may be all

very peaceable if you compare it with the Stock Exchange, but it’s not

so compared with Camp Rosemont.”

“We shall go to see you soon,” said Mlle. Yvonne; “you know that every

one is talking about it in the town. They tell wonders of it!”

“I am sorry you cannot come to stay with us, Yvonne. I so wish you had

been there the other day. I got up an open-air lunch for the village

children; and the way they played and laughed! We wound up everything

by dancing a great round. Sometimes autos come; and you’d almost think

you were at a gymkhana of the Bois de Boulogne. Then I’ve begun my

water-colors again. If you would come, Yvonne, we’d make Suzanne pose

in her costume as a Pierrette.”

“_Ce diable!_ That’s what grand’mère would say. She’d never be willing!”

“But we should be with you, you know—no ugly man—”

“With an exception for me, I hope?” Will put in.

“And if Suzanne or Helia should pose, after all, what harm could there

be?” continued Ethel. “I know very well there are prejudices,—and don’t

let’s be too severe on them; prejudice is the counterfeit brother of

good sense; hump-backed and with horns, sometimes even without pity.

Think of Helia, who wears a more than royal or imperial mantle—beauty!

It is impossible that so much beauty should not go along with virtue

also; and yet, no!—_un diable_, Mme. de Grojean would say!”

“Ah!—in such a profession!” said Yvonne.

“Ah!” said Ethel; “if Helia were an actress or a singer, she would wear

crowns and recite high-sounding verses; and the poets would give her

prestige in real life. But she has neither diamonds nor jewels; with

her full complement of arms, she is only a Venus de Milo in a silk

maillot!”

“You are jesting, Ethel,” said Will. “You are not going to compare

gymnastics with dramatic art?”

“Why not? Do you know anything more beautiful than a beautiful gesture?

What comedy, what drama can moralize us more than beauty which makes

us blush for our own ugliness, and for our poor limbs, like consumptive

chickens or stuffed turkeys! It is the training-school of the will and

of energy.”

“If she were beautiful as Venus,” Will retorted, “I’d never choose for

a wife an acrobat, offering me her heart with a triple high leap.”

“Of course,” said Ethel, “and you would be right; each one in his own

sphere. That is one of the conditions of happiness, and society with us

has intangible laws which only the unclassed and the _blasé_ venture to

break. We do not live in the East, where slaves become queens,—not even

in Morgania, a country of icons and superstition; in such countries

anything is natural, the only rule being the good pleasure of the

master. After all, it is one prejudice instead of another!”

Phil now came to find them. He had recognized them, from a distance, in

the crowd, by the shimmering of their parasols. He recounted to Ethel

his interview with Poufaille. He looked delighted; everything must have

passed off well.

“There are prejudices everywhere,” Ethel went on. “Yourself, Yvonne—do

you never stand out against prejudice? I will take Monsieur Phil for

witness.”

“In what, please?” Yvonne asked.

“For one example, in walking with us among hundreds of men,—those

fearful men of whom you spoke with such terror in Phil’s studio; don’t

you remember?”

“Oh,” said Yvonne, looking around her indifferently, “these good

country people in their blue blouses? It was not that I meant, Miss

Ethel.”

“Then men in blue blouses are not men?” Ethel answered, laughing. “It’s

like women in maillots,—they don’t count! What do you think, Phil?”

CHAPTER V

A BANQUET ON THE SAWDUST

Poufaille and Phil were now friends again—really they had been so for

some time, ever since the day when Phil had taken to Poufaille Ethel’s

order for a picture. Poufaille was incapable of nursing wrath, and

received Phil with open arms. The two _copains_ squeezed each other’s

hands.

“Good old Phil!” Poufaille exclaimed; and Phil answered: “Good old

Poufaille!”

And they did not speak once of their old quarrel until the day when the

artistes had their banquet in the ring of the circus itself.

Phil had a great deal of amusement that day. Suzanne beggared

description, and Poufaille was a show in himself, standing up, glass in

hand, and singing the glory of the vintage. With a gesture, he snatched

his collar from his shirt.

“It chokes me! I can’t give the trills!” he said, for the trills were

the strong point of this garlic-eater and roller of _r_’s from the

South. So he thundered out his song in honor of wine and vine, of vats

and presses, and of the good hot blood of the good old wine-drinkers.

Around the table all the voices took up the refrain, but they could

not drown the terrible voice of Poufaille, which rumbled and rolled,

covering all the rest as the noise of thunder covers the twittering of

sparrows.

“Buveurs de vin—couchez dans la poussière

Ces buveurs de bière!”

(“Wine drinkers, throw down in the dust

All drinkers of beer!”)

Scornful laughter shook his sides, and he struggled to give his

good-natured voice a diabolical, biting tone, as he repeated, looking

at Phil:

“Ces buveurs de bière!”

Poufaille, excited by the wine, had a look of fury. But when he had

finished, his shaggy eyebrows grew peaceful, and a smile spread all at

once over his big, good-natured face.

“You’re not angry at me, I hope?” he said to Phil, patting him on the

shoulder. “What I said about beer-drinkers does not vex you—_hein_?”

“It doesn’t touch me,” answered Phil, “for I only drink water!”

“True, so you do, poor fellow!” Poufaille said in a tone of pity. “Good

old Phil!”

“Good old Poufaille,” Phil replied, “sing whatever you wish; we sha’n’t

quarrel for that!”

Poufaille was reassured, filled up his glass, and emptied it at a

draught.

“Look out,” said Phil, “you’ll drink too much.”

“Let me be; I need it,” Poufaille answered; and it was almost with a

gesture of despair that he filled his glass again. Those around them,

also, were not drinking water. Phil had done things on a large scale.

He had ordered champagne—as much champagne as they wished. A full glass

was offered to Poufaille, but he refused it.

“Champagne? _Pouah!_ That is a wine for foreigners!” he explained.

“Give me good old red wine—and let me drink till my thirst is

quenched!”

On the table—or rather on the jumping-board of the circus, which

stood on props with its chalk-powder giving the illusion of a white

cloth—there was a mass of dishes and plates and empty bottles. It had

been spread in the very middle of the ring—in the good odor of sawdust.

Around the table, seated on the chairs of equilibrists, or on the

stools of hand-balancers, were the circus artistes and a few invited

guests. They had laughed a great deal during the banquet, before the

time came for the songs and toasts.

“We all look as if we had the plague!” Suzanne said, by way of

appetizer, pointing to the color of the faces under the green reflected

light of the tent. Thereupon Poufaille grew livid, in his constant

terror of the most imaginary ailments—stoppage of the blood, wind,

stiff neck, plague, and cholera.

“Shut off the draughts of air!” he cried, “we’ll all get our death!”

He all but fainted with fear as he saw, in front of him, his plate

rising up in the air without his touching it.

“My plate! my plate is going away!” he stammered, in terror.

[Illustration: The Banquet in the Ring of the Circus]

“Oh! what is the matter?” Suzanne cried. “I can’t understand it—perhaps

a snake has got loose from the menagerie next door!”

“Help! Help!” Poufaille sputtered, ready to faint.

“What are you afraid of?” said Perbaccho, the master of the show.

“Don’t you see that it is only Suzanne playing tricks on you?”

“Oh, it’s all right, then!” Poufaille said, recovering his assurance.

“She’s been playing me all sorts of tricks lately—not counting the

strokes of the broomstick!”

In fact, Suzanne had brought out her whole repertory of practical

jokes—liquids that flame up, powder which, thrown into a ragout, crawls

about in the shape of a worm, pasteboard mice that run across the

table, papier-mâché fruits and cheeses, and paste sweetmeats. The lunch

was one long burst of laughter.

When the dessert came Perbaccho, the master, arose, glass in hand.

“To the health of Monsieur Phil!” he said.

“Here’s to his health!” repeated the guests around the jumping-board.

“Vive Monsieur Phil!” said the children, who were sitting farther on,

at a little table with spangled velvet fringe, on which, during his

performances, the juggler placed his balls and knives. Sœurette was

there; Helia had brought her, although she was too great an artiste to

show herself at Perbaccho’s circus. She had come to the country to be

near Suzanne and to rest.

“Dear friends,” Perbaccho went on, in the same voice with which he

announced his Grrrand Representations, “the time has come to thank

Monsieur Phil for the great and numerous services which he has

rendered us. [Applause.] Now that Monsieur Phil is going to leave us,

we do not wish to let him depart without saying to him—hum, hum—how

grateful we are for his having been willing to put his talents at our

disposition. [“Bravo!”] Hum, hum—although Monsieur Phil has not yet

set up for himself in the fairs, nevertheless he is a real artiste;

and the delighted public looks with great pleasure—I will even say with

enchantment—at the portrait which decorates our platform and represents

Mademoiselle Suzanne of the O’Poufaille Family!”

“Vive la joie!” Suzanne began.

“Hear! hear!”

“Also Monsieur Poufaille’s portrait in his exercises of strength.”

“Bravo!” cried Poufaille, squeezing Phil’s hand hard enough to crush it.

“Mesdames et messieurs,” Perbaccho continued, “my modest establishment

does not permit me to offer Phil, the artiste, that salary to which

he has a right to pretend; but let not that prevent us from drinking

his health. Come now, mesdames et messieurs, here’s to the health of

Monsieur Phil!”

It was not a thing which had to be repeated; every one drank to Phil’s

health; and Phil returned thanks.

Phil enjoyed the popularity he had won by his friendliness to such

good people. It was true—to please Suzanne, he had done her portrait

with a few hours’ work. Yet Suzanne did not welcome him, as she had

done in the old times, with a “Good day, Phil! Roll me a cigarette,

_mon petit_!” Even her monkeyshines ceased in his presence; this was

something he did not understand. He had also painted Poufaille as a

Hercules, lifting enormous weights. Moreover, he had rendered light

services to all this little world of the fair. He had his recompense.

He had entered most intimately into the life of the little world.

His album had been enriched by any number of sketches and types, by

picturesque interiors as somber and stirring with life as those of

Rembrandt. He had daring foreshortenings of gymnasts at the trapeze, of

handsome boys and pretty girls with muscles like antique statues.

Every one admired the strength and address with which a simple amateur

like Phil handled the dumb-bells or climbed the smooth rope. They were

only astonished that, with a talent like his, he did not open a place

for himself to do portraits at four or five francs apiece—that would

bring him in a good day’s earnings; and this would not include the

pupils who would be with him from time to time—they had seen some of

them at the fair with him. He might open a permanent Beauty Exhibition;

there was that big blonde, especially—but they never spoke to him about

that. They were completely ignorant of whom he was or whom his friends

were. Suzanne, flighty as she was, was discretion itself on this point,

and there was no danger of Poufaille talking when Suzanne forbade him.

No one suspected that the big blonde was rich enough to buy up the

circus and its artistes with it, and Signor Perbaccho to boot, as well

as all the side-shows and the whole fair, and the houses round about

the fair. They did not even know her name. As to Phil, when they met

him in the circus-tent, or with the wrestlers, making his sketches,

they treated him like any other comrade.

The Rowrers’ yacht was to sail for Morgania in a few days, taking

away the whole party, after two months at Camp Rosemont. Before his

departure Phil wished to give pleasure to Poufaille and his friends by

this luncheon with him. They yielded to his insistence, and accepted

without ceremony. It gave him little trouble, and he brought his box

and canvas to finish a study near by in the fields. This was a present

he wished to offer to Ethel, and it reminded him of the pastimes of

other days.

On the morrow, during the hunt—on the morrow, he had promised, he

had sworn it to himself, and the moment was drawing near—no power in

the world could hinder him—and yet how anxious he was! He was already

in a fever and occupied himself with this lunch only to distract his

thoughts, to prove to himself that he was calm and reasonable, that he

had not lost his head. He looked at the groups around the jumping-board

which had been turned into a table, and thought of the morrow. He

surprised himself repeating in a low tone: “To-morrow!”

“What are you giving us with your ‘To-morrow’?” asked Poufaille, who

overheard it. “Perhaps to-morrow others and not we shall be drinking

the wine. I know no to-morrow but to-day! I tell you it’s drinking

water that makes you sad and dreamy.”

“And you—is it wine that makes you so gay?” Phil retorted.

“Well, I have little reason to be gay,” Poufaille replied. “If I drink,

it is to stun myself. See here, do you want me to tell you?—but what

use would it be! He who lives will see. By the way, you know that Helia

has come back with Sœurette. She’s in town for a few days.”

“What!” Phil exclaimed; “how is it she is not here?”

“She was tired,” replied Poufaille. “But, _entre nous_, Phil, you’d

just as lief she shouldn’t be here—eh?”

“But why?” Phil asked.

Poufaille was on the point of speaking, but some one at the end of the

table called out with all his might:

“Farine! farine!

Embrassez votre voisine!”

It was the gallant refrain which winds up rustic feasts. Around the

board all the women lent themselves with good grace to the custom.

Poufaille devoured Suzanne with his eyes.

“Here’s your time,” Phil said to him. “What are you waiting for? Kiss

her now, kiss her; she owes you as much as that!”

“Kiss her?” Poufaille said, looking at Phil gloomily. “Are you making

fun of me? She hasn’t let me kiss her for more than a month; she’s

furious against every one—against myself!”

“Oh, now!” said Phil, “Suzanne furious? She wouldn’t be so gay.”

“I tell you she is; and I can see it. Do you think it gives me pleasure

to take the blows of a broomstick on my head? The stick is light, it

is true, and I have a false pigskin skull; but never mind! is that a

trade? You knew me and you knew her. I was the creator of ‘Liberty’ and

‘Fraternity’; and now you see what I am—a fly-killer! It’s flattering,

_hein_? To be a fly-killer when I feel within myself the soul of a

lion!”

“Keep up your hopes,” Phil answered; “all that will change.”

“‘Keep up your hopes’! But you know nothing about it,” Poufaille

hurried on with his tragic voice; “oh, Suzanne strikes hard with her

_aïe donc_! But the hardest is that I should pay up for others. Oh,

yes; I receive blows which ought to have been for you!”

“For me?” Phil gasped.

“Yes, for you—which ought to have been for you—for you—you hear?” and

Poufaille shook Phil by the coat collar. “I tell you, it’s your fault!”

“You must be crazy,” Phil answered. “What have I done?”

“What have you done?” Poufaille continued, in the excitement of his

glass of rum. “Do you want to know what you have done? I am going

to tell you what you have done—to me! You have stolen my share of

happiness!”

“Has that taken hold of you again?” said Phil. “I thought it was

over—all this nonsense about stealing glory.”

“It isn’t glory, I tell you! It’s happiness!”

Phil and Poufaille were speaking low, and no one heard them. Suzanne

had sat down, and every one was accustomed to Poufaille’s gestures. No

one paid any attention.

“Good Poufaille, dear old Poufaille, I am sorry to give you pain, old

man,” Phil said pleasantly, as he took away the bottle.

“No; it’s not worth while,” Poufaille said sadly; “I shall drink no

more. Only follow what I say,—do you follow? Do you know why I am not

married?”

“No,” said Phil, putting the bottle beyond reach.

“It is because _you_ are not married.”

“Indeed!” said Phil. “So, my good Poufaille, you wish to marry me off

like that?”

“Yes; as you swore you would do!” answered Poufaille.

“To whom?”

“To Helia!”

“Speak lower!” Phil said, disquieted.

But even if they had talked louder, no one would have caught a word.

Conversation was general around the board. The kissing was finished,

and they were smoking cigarettes. The men talked horses, balancing,

feats of strength; the ladies talked dress, spangled maillots, gauze

skirts.

Phil and Poufaille, at their end of the table, were as free to converse

as if they had been alone. Poufaille now bent over Phil, as if to tell

him a secret.

“Yes; you swore it!” he continued. “And Suzanne concludes from it

that the best of men are worth nothing at all—that men are windmills

for lying. When I tell her I love her, that I’ll make her happy—when

I swear to her that I cannot live without her, she turns on her heel,

saying: ‘That’s all humbug!’ and that she can trust no one, not me more

than you; that it costs nothing to get down on one’s knees; that our

promises and oaths ought to be stuffed down our throats; and that the

way you treated Helia was a shame—”

“Speak lower!” said Phil.

“—that you had promised her marriage,” Poufaille kept on; “that

you loved her madly; that if need had been you would have taken God

to witness; that you had sworn to her she should be your wife, and

that you could not live without her. And, besides, it was no sudden

stroke—you had known her for years, you had long loved her. And all

at once, without any one knowing why, just because you earn a little

money and have talent, while she is only a poor acrobat,—suddenly,

without reason, you know her no longer; and if you should meet her in

the street, you would turn your head. That’s what Suzanne says; and she

has more head than all of us—and more heart, too!”

Poufaille looked toward Suzanne with a sigh. Then he went on again:

“Oh, Phil, I should never have told you all this; but, _ma foi_, it was

choking me! I’m not one of your Northern folks, to keep a secret. To me

it’s like a starched collar—I must pull it off! Now give me a glass of

wine!”

Phil hesitated.

“Pour it out, I tell you,” Poufaille insisted. “I have a fever. It

calms me; and, after all, there’s truth in wine!”

Phil poured out a full glass, which Poufaille emptied.

“Ah, yes, yes!” he went on again, wanderingly, as he put his glass down

on the table; “when I think that without these stories she would have

been my wife—and now she will not be, for when she says No, it means

no! She may be gay to look at, but she’s sad at heart. She has heaps

of ideas that turn my blood. On my honor, I believe she will end in a

convent! What! Phil, I laugh also; but I have no desire to laugh. It’s

only by habit, you know; I feel more like weeping. And as to all those

stories about glory which bothered me, how stupid one is to curdle

one’s blood for so little! But my happiness is gone forever; I shall

never marry Suzanne, never, never!”

Poufaille’s gestures emphasized his words; his fist came down heavily

upon the table.

“Eh, over there! don’t break anything,” Suzanne cried. “Poufaille,

you’re losing your head!”

“Yes, I’m losing it—I mean no!” answered Poufaille. “I’m only telling

a story.”

“That’s no reason for getting into a rage,” Suzanne answered pleasantly.

“Yes, it is a reason,” Poufaille murmured. “There is reason to get into

a rage—and break things!”

“Calm yourself; be quiet,” said Phil, who now regretted that he had

come.

“Bah!” he thought; “is it worth my while listening to drunken

maunderings?” But the hour for breaking up was near.

Phil stayed on, however, and Poufaille kept on talking.

“Ah!” he said, crossing his arms and looking Phil in the face; “after

all, why didn’t you marry her? Yes, why? You loved Helia, and no one

can say anything against her. You agree with me about that, I suppose?”

Phil did not answer.

“Dear old Phil,” Poufaille insisted strongly, “you can’t deny it? We

shouldn’t be friends otherwise, you know.”

“I alone must be judge of that,” Phil said.

“No!” Poufaille said; “that’s your new way of looking at things;

but I tell you, there’s not a woman in the world above her—do you

understand?—not one! I tell you—not one!”

Phil frowned.

“I’m not making any allusions,” said Poufaille.

“I should hope not,” said Phil.

“I am only telling you the truth,” Poufaille declared; “and I am glad

to have said it. I can breathe better now. It’s true! It turned my

blood to hear Suzanne telling it, with Helia so sad. When I think that

you used to be so rigid about such things—and now you act just like the

others! What’s the difference between you and Socrate? For a man who is

always quoting the Bible and setting himself up as an example—you’re a

bad one, that’s all!”

Phil turned pale.

“Poufaille is drunk,” he thought. “I’d best go away.”

But he stayed on; and Poufaille kept on talking; and Phil listened,

in spite of himself, unmoved to all appearance, but deeply touched at

bottom, for he could not say to Poufaille: “You are lying! It is false!

I promised nothing!”

“Yes,” Poufaille continued, in a low voice, making sure that no one

was listening—“yes, I know what you might say: Helia’s surroundings,

Socrate,—I know not what. You have suspected her, that I do know!

Suzanne has told me. Our good Helia, who would give her life for you—if

she only gives money to a beggar you suspect her for it; for Socrate

is a beggar—a beggar she keeps alive out of pure charity, just as she

helps Cemetery, simply because he is old and cannot work. But you know

that as well as I.”

“But the duke,” Phil spoke up. “I saw Helia—”

“You saw Suzanne! Ah, I’ve blamed Suzanne often enough for it

since—what an idea in her to go to take supper with the duke! I’d

rather she would strike me with the broomstick!”

“And yet,” Phil began.

“It’s true the duke was greatly taken with her,” Poufaille continued;

“she had only a word to say and he would have offered her anything. She

never accepted a thing—not even a flower!”

“Ah!” said Phil.

“You see,” Poufaille went on, “you don’t care much to meet Helia—you

have your own reasons for it—for she is here, you know!”

Phil raised his head, as if he expected to see the canvas of the

circus-tent open and Helia appear there looking at him. But there was

no one save the artistes rising from the table and taking away the

things. They were even removing the board, so as to leave the ring

free. In the stables they were preparing the horses for rehearsal.

He could hear the harness rattling, and the whips snapping. The ring,

which had been so gay, suddenly became gloomy. Phil frankly regretted

that he had come. He had a single thought,—how to get away. Taking

up his color-box and canvas, he said good day to every one, and shook

Poufaille’s hand.

“You’re going away?” Poufaille said. “You haven’t a grudge against me,

I hope—it was too much for me!”

“I have nothing against you, old Poufaille.”

“Shall we see you again soon?”

“Who knows!” answered Phil; adding within himself: “Perhaps never!”

As he went out he cast a farewell look on the empty benches, on

the white ladder and great globe, on the saddles and the maillots

which were drying, and on the clowns’ costumes. They were like old

acquaintances whom he should see no more.

CHAPTER VI

WAS POUFAILLE RIGHT?

Once outside, Phil breathed easier. It seemed to him that the open air

was driving away his nightmare, as the sun drives the darkness before

it.

“Poufaille is either crazy or drunk,” he said to himself, as he went

through the fair with his paint-box in his hand. “Suzanne won’t

have him! I have nothing to do with it! Is that a reason to take

tragically a childish love-making? And why should Suzanne interfere?

Helia has never even breathed a word of it to me, and I’ve seen her

often enough since. Surely, love must be muddling Poufaille’s brain,

if it is not the blows of the broomstick. He forgets that I am no

longer the little boy to whom Suzanne was a great actress, Poufaille

a great sculptor, Caracal a great psychologist, and Socrate a

painter-poet-thinker-philosopher! There’s been a change since then—and

I alone am judge of it.”

Phil acknowledged to himself that he had been a little troubled.

Poufaille, with all his simplicity, was candor itself, and incapable of

lying. Yes,—Phil repeated it over as if it gave him relief: Poufaille

was drunk; the least beer-drinker would see ten wine-drinkers like that

under the table! He did Poufaille too much honor by listening to him;

and Suzanne was a scatterbrain. Leave Suzanne her salad, and Poufaille

his pig’s-rump and garlic and wine! Leave every one to his own trade,

and let them stop minding his affairs! Think of it! Now that he was

a man, just when he had fallen in love with a young girl whom no one

could approach, unless with a pure conscience—it was now that Poufaille

would bring him down to the ground, reproaching him with having proved

false to an oath,—with having been cowardly and mean, as if he had

taken up with Helia to amuse himself with her and then cast her away!

Poufaille, stupid and drunken, had said as much!

The absurdity of the idea, even more than the open air and gay

sunlight, drove from his memory the sculptor’s idle tales.

Phil hastened his steps, for he wished to finish the little picture

which he had in his box. It was a nook of the landscape out beyond

the last scattering houses of the town—a charming spot which they had

discovered one day in the automobile. It was a place which had greatly

pleased Miss Ethel.

She had said: “There are spots which you see for the first time, and

yet they impress you like old friends. Would it not be delightful to

have a little cottage here, and take care of one’s own flowers. But no!

one must have autos and horses—Longchamps and Epsom and Haymarket—ah!

what fools these mortals be!”

The snorting forty-horse-power machine bore them afar while she was

still building her little cottage.

“If I were a painter,” she added, “that is what I would paint. With the

simplest subject you can make a masterpiece. This nook has pleased me,

and I shall come back to it, be sure!”

Phil said nothing at the time; but he determined to paint the nook

which had pleased Ethel so much, and to give the picture to her as a

surprise before they left for Morgania.

Phil passed through the parts of the town which were between the open

country and the fair. They were like the outskirts of other towns, with

little boxes of houses and grimy wine-shops, and with great bare spaces

where goats, the cows of the poor man, bleated despairingly. Just

beyond was the full, open country. He approached the spot chosen by

Miss Ethel. The noise of the town was no longer heard; before him were

the gently rising hills crossed by flowering hedges and great leafy

groves, in which the birds were playing.

Phil set up his easel in a shady spot, where Ethel had lingered. It was

by a hedge above a slope leading down to a footpath. He opened his box,

prepared his colors, and set to work. At times he leaned back to judge

better the effect of the whole picture. At times he bent over to put in

a touch; and as he painted, he let his mind wander as it would.

He could not help thinking of the morrow—of the _chasse à courre_, the

mounted deer-hunt with dogs, with which the Comtesse de Donjeon was

honoring the camping-party. It seemed to him that he was already there,

taking in all its details. Even his costume occupied his mind—the

Chantilly boots, the full white breeches, the double-breasted coat, the

high felt hat—the things which constitute the true huntsman’s costume.

It would become him well; and how charming she would be, with her blond

hair under the three-cornered marquise hat!

Phil already fancied himself hearing the joyful notes of the

hunting-horn, and watching the unrestrained galloping beneath the great

trees,—a vision of the Middle Ages, with plumed knights and gentle

ladies on their palfreys. Oh! there was one gentle lady who would

follow the hunt with him,—and, lover as he was, Phil thought there

would be monstrous daring in his wish to offer Miss Rowrer a nosegay

of wild flowers,—for certainly she would see his trouble of soul, and

he would betray himself as he offered it. Miss Rowrer could not be

offended, of course! she had been too much courted in society not to

allow a little of it in the country. It was the business of bores in

society life; but supposing she saw what he meant, would she deign to

encourage him?

[Illustration: Phil Watching Helia and Socrate]

All this preoccupied Phil, as he put the finishing touches to his

landscape. The place inclined to reverie. While he was there, scarcely

two or three persons had passed along the road below. They could not

see him; it would be necessary to climb up the slope and break through

the hawthorn hedge. For two hours Phil had been working. He had reached

the time, so dangerous for the artist, when a few strokes too much

spoil the picture. He resolved to leave it as it was, without any

working up, in all its freshness of first inspiration. He was preparing

to close his box and fold his easel before going back to Camp Rosemont;

but two persons appeared in the lane below. He gave them no more

attention than he had given to others. It seemed to him that a man was

speaking, and a woman replying. He did not see them; but when they came

near him he recognized their voices.

He stopped motionless and listened again, thinking he must have been

mistaken. He leaned over and looked through the branches of the hedge.

It was indeed they—Helia and Socrate.

Phil felt a chill at his heart. He would like to have had Poufaille

there for a moment—only for a moment—yet no! he would be the only

witness! He would see falling away before him, dropping to the dust,

petal by petal, the flower of his childish love. He was going to hear

Helia talking sweetly, arm in arm, with the painter-thinker. His little

Saint John of other days, so pure and simple, he would hear her; but,

ah, how he wished that he was not there, that he could not hear!

But he heard everything. Bits of conversation mounted up to him as if

torn asunder by the thorns of the hedge.

“Listen to me!” Socrate was saying.

“I know what you are going to say,” answered Helia. “Begone!—I have

told you—no!”

“Yet you were so good to me,” continued the tearful voice of Socrate,

using the familiar “thou.”

“Socrate, I tell you once again, you are to say ‘you’ when you speak

to me,” Helia interrupted firmly. “Any one listening to you might think

you had rights over me!”

“But no one is listening!”

“I hear you!”

There was a moment of silence. They had stopped and Phil looked at

them. He was astounded by the change in Socrate. His beard was unkempt,

and he lowered his head with an air at once humble and aggressive. He

spoke to Helia with looks which he tried to render touching. On his

ragged garments were bits of straw, as if he had slept in a stack. It

was clear that Socrate had been wandering around the neighborhood for

several days, waiting for Helia. He must have met her by chance and,

yielding to his entreaties, she had followed him to have, alone with

him, a final explanation.

Helia was pale, tired from her journey, as Poufaille had said. Her

black eyes shone feverishly. In her modest black gown she seemed to

Phil more beautiful than ever, and more refined. She scarcely turned

her head toward Socrate; and her glance at him was that of scornful

pity.

“You who were so good to me,” the tearful voice went on.

“Too good, it is true!” answered Helia. “I saw your wretchedness,—that

you were starving,—and I believed in your genius. I would have been

proud to help a poet,—to have had something to do, no matter how

little, with the production of a masterpiece. I sinned by pride; I

thought I could lift myself in the eyes of others—especially in _his_

eyes,” she added slowly. “I thought I was acting for the best; I was

wrong!”

“Why were you wrong?”

“It is wrong to aid one who does nothing!”

“Ah!” replied the man, with his look of a beaten dog, “it is not

my fault if I have not fulfilled my dream. Society is pitiless to

thinkers! Those who march to a lofty goal are disdained by the common

herd!”

Socrate, as he spoke, clenched his fist. Phil could see his fingers

working spasmodically—ah! if he could only strangle the whole world!

Helia did not let her eyes fall so low. She fixed them on the face of

Socrate, scorning his impotent gestures.

“Silence! You are only grotesque!”

“Be it so, I have made a mistake,” the voice went on. “But I can

make amends for my wrong-doing. Ah! if you only were willing—if you

were willing, I could make you happy. I would occupy myself with your

affairs; you should be rid of every care. You would have a sure friend,

and I, too,—I would become an artiste!”

“You—an artiste!”

She drew herself up to her full height and looked at the great empty

forehead, at the chicken-necked and round-shouldered Socrate, at his

sallow skin, his moral hideousness, this rag of a painter and poet and

thinker and philosopher.

“An artiste—you! Why, you would not be capable even to show a shaved

bear, or a sick dog, or a two-headed calf! Oh, I know you! You’d like

to be a professor and train Sœurette with strokes of the whip, if

you were allowed! And you’d always be there at my side, to steer me

through life like a devoted friend, would you? Just as you used to do

before. And when I think that people may have said as much, and perhaps

believed that I was your—friend,—and when I remember that you advised

me to frequent the company of a rich duke and forget the friend of my

childhood,—when I think of all that, it is enough to make me die of

shame!”

Socrate gnashed his teeth.

“So it’s the friend of your childhood, is it?—always he?”

“Always he!” said Helia, simply.

“Yet you know—I have told you—that he loves another.”

“I know it.”

“And that he no longer cares for you.”

“I shall believe it when he tells me so himself,” was Helia’s answer.

Socrate put his hands to his head, as if to say: “Can one be such a

fool!”

“But, really,” he said aloud, “since you love him so much, why do you

not use the weapons you have to bring him back to you?”

“Weapons!”

“His letters!”

“You are a miserable fellow! See—here are his letters!” And Helia took

from her breast a few yellowed envelopes. “They might, indeed, fall

into the hands of a wretch like you.” And opening them, she tore the

pages in small pieces.

“But there’s a fortune in them for you!” gasped Socrate. “You don’t

know what you are doing!”

“There’s what I care for such a fortune!” said Helia; and she opened

wide her hand. It might have been a flight of white butterflies. The

light breeze scattered the fragments on every side. Some seemed to

hesitate, as if issuing from a warm nest, and then mounted upward,

whirling around in space. Others fell on the hedge. All these poor

little things which had been promises of love, and held in themselves

an entire youth, were scattered at once by a breath from heaven.

“Yet I loved them well,” she said. “Only it is better so.”

Then, speaking to Socrate, she added proudly: “I will not have him love

me for fear,—I wish him to love me for love’s sake!”

Blushing for shame, she turned her back to Socrate, and walked away

without a look behind. The man began following her. She turned back a

last time, stopped him with an imperious gesture, and disappeared in

the lane.

Socrate, in his fury, growled like a wolf. Phil saw him turn his head

rapidly, to make sure there was no one near, and then put his hand

quickly to his pocket, as if to take out a knife. But no doubt what

he sought was not there; and his hand came forth empty—luckily for

Socrate, since Phil would have leaped the hedge with a bound and fallen

on him like a thunderbolt. Then Socrate disappeared among the trees

with a furtive look.

Phil remained alone. He put everything in order, folding his things

together, and went away. He felt a sort of embarrassment—a shame that

made him hurry his footsteps as if to flee from himself.

Was Poufaille right? Phil passed his hand across his forehead. A

thousand things came back to him now; a bright light was thrown on the

abyss where his youth had perished. The flight of the white butterflies

had been a seed of remembrance to him—the remembrance of the love of

his boyhood. Had it been the romantic passion of an ignorant heart? No;

there had been broken promises and contempt of oaths!

Well, even in such a case, drunken Poufaille had exaggerated; Helia

was more reasonable. She must understand that it was impossible.

She could not deceive herself to such a degree, nor keep on pursuing

imaginations never to be realized. Her own words, “I shall believe it

when he tells me so himself,” were a confession. She would submit to

the inevitable. How was she going to take the final rupture? Phil, in

his heart, trembled to think of it, but it had to be! He would tell her

everything; he would take back the word he had given. He would speak

to her, lowering his eyes, hunting for his words; low, as when one begs

for forgiveness. Never mind, he would tell her! He would act as with a

somnambulist, commanding: “Awake! it was a dream!”

Yes; Helia would understand, without need of insisting. They would part

with a loyal shake of the hand, like the good friends they were, and

would follow separate destinies.

Phil walked on, without looking behind, like one escaping. He felt

easier in his mind. No, there was not such a tragedy in it all as

Poufaille had led him to foresee. Things would go on simply, Phil mused

within himself. For him it was the time of slanting sophisms which

issue from the folds of the heart like crabs from under a rock. He was

more sincere and manly when he put aside with a gesture all his anguish

and uncertainty and, setting his jaw, lifted his head as he said to

himself: “It is too late! Fate has willed it; all society would be on

my side; they would say I was right. Even if Helia’s tears should flow,

even if I should see in her eyes a mute malediction for the slayer of

her illusions, I could do no otherwise; it is too late!”

Phil breathed deeply, as if his breast had been lightened of a heavy

load. He looked around him with the air of a man to whom the future

belongs.

Lowering his eyes, he saw upon his shoulder one of the poor little

fragments of torn letters. Phil threw it from him with a snap of his

finger.

CHAPTER VII

“A TRUE HEART LOVES BUT ONCE”

The day for which Phil had waited so impatiently was come at last—the

day of the _chasse à courre_. Ethel left the hunt and came back alone

to the glade where grandma, a little tired and seated in the great

break, was waiting for the return of the hunters. She got down from

her horse and tossed the reins to a valet. The sun lighted up the tops

of the lofty trees, leaving all the rest in the shade. From afar they

heard the voices of the hounds. The hunting-horn filled the forest with

a far-away melody.

“Poor little doe!” said Ethel, “it is nearly an hour since she left

the thicket, followed by the hounds. She must be by this time in

the pretty valley I christened the other day the Forest of Arden—you

remember?—when I was reading there Shakspere’s ‘As You Like It.’ They

must have lost the scent—her mate is leading the dogs away from her,

no doubt. But it is not for that I have come back, grandma. I wish to

speak with you.”

“Why don’t you follow the hunt?” grandma asked. “Has anything happened

to you, Ethel?”

“Nothing at all, grandma. My horse was in splendid form, and I, too;

but, while taking a ditch, she lost a shoe. She’s limping a little,

I think. And then—and then I couldn’t see you alone yesterday at the

château, and I have something to say to you. But let us not stay here;

they might overhear us,” Ethel added, glancing at the lackeys, who

were loading into a van the champagne-baskets and other remains of the

picnic.

“I will get down,” said grandma. Leaning on Ethel’s arm, she got out of

the break and they crossed the open space.

“Let us go over there,” Ethel said, pointing to one of those graceful

edifices called _nymphées_, which are the necessary ornament of every

self-respecting park. It consisted of a bench, green with the mold of

time and surrounded by a colonnade covered with moss and ivy. It gave

this corner of the forest a mythological note. It was like one of those

rustic shrines where, in the shadow of the sacred grove, goddesses were

appeased by the offering of victims.

“Who would not say this is a scene of Shakspere’s fancy?” said Ethel.

“Listen to the hunting-horn—you might believe you were in an enchanted

forest. But,” she added, as grandma sat down, “there is no question now

of Will the Great, but only of our own dear Will, and of Mlle. Yvonne.”

“She’s very nice,” said grandma. “She’ll profit a great deal by your

company, between Will and you. From being a doll, Yvonne will soon

become a woman.”

“Mlle. Yvonne is already a woman—a true one,” Ethel went on, gravely.

“She has an upright mind and a strong and resolute heart; and I love

her.”

“She’s going to marry Will?” grandma exclaimed, starting up. “That dear

little Yvonne?”

“No, grandma, Yvonne will never be Will’s wife. She has refused.”

“What did I say?” grandma replied. “She’s a doll—she doesn’t know what

she wants! Does a young girl let herself be buried alive like that?

Why shouldn’t she show herself as she is and say: ‘I will!’ when her

happiness is at stake? She has much in common with Will, I am sure. But

in this country no one dares to say what she thinks; people don’t look

each other squarely in the face. If you wish, Ethel, we’ll leave for

America to-morrow!”

“Wait a bit, grandma, and then you’ll love Yvonne with all your heart.”

“After what she has done? Never!”

“Because of what she has done? Sit down again, grandma, and I will tell

you everything.”

“You will waste your breath, Ethel.”

“Wait,” Ethel continued. “Will was very much taken with Yvonne—I am

sure that now he would be much more so if he were only allowed. The

fact that he has been refused shows him so much better the woman he is

losing. It has been a revelation to us. He was conquered by Yvonne as

Desdemona by Othello. In a way he pitied the young girl’s lot—it was

so childish; there was so little society for her. One ball a year,—a

poor little ball, next to nothing,—a life passed in the dim light of

curtains half drawn, near a deserted street, the strong contrast with

Will’s stormy life in Chicago.”

“That is real life!” said grandma.

“Well,” Ethel continued, “everything took hold of Will, just as a man

deafened with the noise of machinery loves the murmur of bees.”

“Oh, it is France Will’s in love with,” grandma said. “It was his auto

journey from Paris and our excursions round the camp that he was going

to marry—it’s only a fancy already passed.”

“No; it will never pass!” answered Ethel. “It is true all his

impressions were personified in Yvonne; but she shows such sterling

qualities that she has no need to personify anything to be loved.”

“You must tell me everything, Ethel,” said grandma.

“This is the way it happened. Of course, it was impossible for Will to

speak alone with Yvonne, especially on such subjects. Besides, he never

had the opportunity; and then—it isn’t done! In France, when a young

man sees a young girl that pleases him, he asks her parents for her;

and her parents accept or refuse.”

“How dreadful!” said grandma.

“Will,” Ethel kept on, “was speaking about it one day to Mme. Riçois.”

“Mme. Riçois? What has she got to do with it?”

“Why, everything, grandma; everything! If it had not been for Mme.

Riçois we should have gone off to Morgania without anything being

decided. Will passed his young days between our mines in Montana and

the Chicago Stock Exchange, and never had time to be in love. Mme.

Riçois opened his eyes. I ought to tell you that she is the most

inveterate marrier of the town.”

“A marrier? I thought she was a banker’s wife!”

“Oh, she has to do something,” replied Ethel. “Mme. Riçois makes

matches to please herself. The little woman delights in it. I can

imagine her embroidering on her sleeve, like an officer’s stripes, the

number of marriages she has brought about.”

“How dreadful!” said grandma.

“She and Will are great friends. Would you believe it, grandma?—last

month she said to him point-blank: ‘Mr. Rowrer, I must find a match

for you!’ Will only laughed. ‘Now, don’t say No!’ Mme. Riçois added

mysteriously; ‘I have a great scheme in my head.’ ‘What is your

scheme?’ Will asked, more and more amused. ‘But you mustn’t tell

anybody! I wish to bring about a Franco-American alliance!’ Will didn’t

answer, but I saw he understood, for I was present.”

“And what then?” asked grandma.

“Naturally they began talking about marriage. Mme. Riçois told us

how she takes hold of the matter; the measures she takes for the

parents: ‘I’ve found a young man who is quite in your line; this is

his situation.’ Thereupon a family council is held, and the young

girl is consulted as a matter of form. Oh, there’s a whole minute and

complicated diplomacy.”

“And yet it would be so simple for the young folks to explain matters

to each other!” grandma exclaimed.

“That is what Will answered; but Mme. Riçois objected that this is

never done. I thought as much, but I know France. It was quite new

to Will; and he kept repeating: ‘Is it possible? Is it possible? For

my part, I’d like to be better acquainted with the girl I marry! I

shall certainly never get married in France.’ Then Mme. Riçois spoke

up: ‘The main thing is that you should please the parents.’ ‘But

it’s the young girl I want to please, and to know if I am pleasing

her,’ Will said obstinately. ‘M. Rowrer,’ Mme. Riçois said, ‘I have

made twenty marriages and they’re all happy; and I myself married my

husband without being acquainted with him. That was thirty years ago,

and our honeymoon is not over yet!’ ‘Perhaps she is right,’ Will said

when Mme. Riçois was gone. ‘Marriages seem to me as happy here as

anywhere. Different countries have different manners, but at bottom

they’re all the same.’ I’m persuaded, grandma, that from that day the

Franco-American alliance began. I mean that the remembrance of Mlle.

Yvonne was crystallized in his heart.”

While Ethel was speaking the shadows had grown darker beneath the

trees. A purple haze softened the outlines of the glade. There was deep

silence, with now and then an echo of the hunting-horns, light as the

humming of a fly. Again the hunt found its way, and the doe, abandoned

by her cowardly mate, turned back toward her haunts. Soon the hallali

would push her to the thicket from which she had started, and where, at

the end of her strength, she would take shelter to die.

“Listen,” Ethel said to grandma, “Will, Phil, and every one are out

there, forgetful of care and trouble, chasing to its death a poor,

innocent animal. Isn’t it sad?” Then, taking up her interrupted

conversation, she continued: “From that day, especially, Will thought

of Mlle. Yvonne. He saw her again several times and fell more and more

under her charm, in spite of their commonplace interviews. Each time

he discovered new qualities in her. When I praised her, Will was glad

to listen; and Mme. Riçois was always after him with the scheme of

the alliance. You can imagine that it didn’t please Will much to be

obliged to win the parents in order to get the girl. Well! he won over

everybody. As to grand’mère, who is the Egeria of the family, the one

that decides difficult cases without appeal from her judgment—”

“Grand’mère said no for Yvonne?” grandma asked.

“Grand’mère said yes!”

“But if mother and grandmother, uncles and aunts, and Mme. Riçois say

yes, who is it says no?”

“Yvonne says no.”

“Well, I declare!” grandma exclaimed, in amazement. It was not the

first time she had declared since she was in France, but never with

such energy. In her voice there were astonishment and anger and

admiration and, most of all, curiosity.

“How did it happen, Ethel? Tell me all!” and she turned her face toward

her granddaughter with an expression of anxiety.

“Ah!” Ethel replied, “who would ever suspect that Yvonne had a romance

in her life?”

“A romance in Yvonne’s life! What are you telling me, Ethel? Watched

as she is, a romance! It must have been with another doll!—when she was

ten years old—or when she was playing husband and wife with some child

of her own age!”

“Exactly so,” Ethel answered, with a serious look. “Listen! Yesterday

I went in the auto to the Grojeans’, to say good day as I passed. I

suspected nothing. Everything was shut up, as usual. I knocked and was

let in. The door of the salon opened, and Yvonne, who had recognized my

voice, came toward me with outstretched hands, and said: ‘Oh, it’s you!

How glad I am! Come in!’”

Grandma was immensely interested, and listened, with her eyes fixed

on those of Ethel, with a scarcely perceptible movement of her lips,

as if, in her anxiety to lose nothing, she were repeating the words to

herself.

“By the way in which Yvonne took my hand,” Ethel went on, in a low

voice, “I understood something was happening. The Grojean ladies were

there, silent and much embarrassed, and there was Mme. Riçois, as red

as possible. I looked at Yvonne. ‘My dear friend,’ Yvonne said to me,

‘I am glad you came. Perhaps you know what is going on. For me it’s my

first news of it. They have just told me of a great scheme,—an offer

so honorable and so flattering—’ That moment, grandma, I understood

they had just communicated to Yvonne Will’s intentions. By the way in

which the ladies listened to Yvonne, I also learned that she had not

yet given her answer. She was going to speak in my presence.

“‘The offer is so flattering,’ Yvonne said, looking me squarely in the

face, ‘and I should have been so very happy to call you my sister;

the marriage would overwhelm every one here with joy’ (I had only

to look at the beaming faces to see that they expected Yvonne to say

‘I accept’)—‘the marriage would overwhelm us all with joy; but there

is some one—one only—who would have too great pain from it. I am not

free—I have given my word to another!’

“I wish you had been there, grandma, to judge of the consternation

caused by the word ‘another’! Mme. de Grojean arose, pale as death.

“‘Yvonne, you have given your word to another? Without your mother

knowing it? To whom? Answer!’

“‘To my cousin Henri,’ answered Yvonne.

“Mme. de Grojean breathed again: ‘To your cousin Henri! But he is only

a child-sweetheart, my dear daughter; every one has that in her life.

Now you must act like a woman. That was not in earnest. Henri will give

you back your word!’

“‘But I shall not take it back!’ said Yvonne.

“‘What are you thinking of! Your cousin Henri—nothing but an employee

at the Riçois bank, with no substantial situation and with no future;

do you compare him with Monsieur Rowrer, for whom, besides, you have a

sentiment? Avow it!—it is nothing to blush for.’

“‘I do not blush for it,’ Yvonne said; ‘but I have a sentiment for

Henri also; and, moreover, he has my word. If he is not rich, he will

work. Monsieur Rowrer is too rich! What an opinion Henri would have

of me if he thought I would marry another just because he is worth

millions, and would abandon him because he is poor! Surely he would

believe so! I would never dare look him in the face. Henri counts on

me,—I shall be his wife!’”

“Oh, brave little Yvonne!” said grandma. “Did she say that?”

“Yes, grandma, she said that; and she was radiant with beauty as she

said it, I can assure you. ‘My dear Ethel,’ she told me afterward, ‘you

see there is nothing to wound Monsieur Rowrer’s self-love. Tell him I

have the greatest esteem for him, and would have been so glad to call

you my sister, Ethel. But what would you have done in my place?’

“Yvonne must have seen in my looks how deeply I was moved, and how much

I admired her.”

“What about the family council—what did it say?” grandma asked.

“‘Is that your final decision?’ Mme. de Grojean demanded of Yvonne.

“‘It is my final decision,’ said Yvonne.

“‘Come, then, Yvonne, and be happy!’ and the mother pressed her to her

bosom.”

“But the grandmother—that terrible grand’mère?”

“Grand’mère kissed Yvonne on the forehead, and said to her, ‘You’ve

done well, my child,’—and then I came away. That is all, grandma.”

The evening was creeping over the forest. The high clumps of trees

stood out in somber masses against the deep sky. Ethel and grandma had

completely forgotten the hunt; but the sound of the horns drew near.

The exhausted doe was returning, followed close by the hounds.

“Let us go away; the dew is falling,” grandma said pensively. “Let us

go back to the breaks; the hunters will soon be here.”

“Go on alone, grandma; I will wait for them here. I shall return to the

château on horseback.”

Ethel remained on the stone bench. When she separated herself from the

hunt the branch of a tree in a narrow alley had ruffled her hair. She

took off her hat, to put it in order. She was just finishing, when a

hunter, who had doubtless left his horse at the rendezvous and seemed

to be looking for some one, crossed the glade and passed before her.

“Monsieur Phil!” Ethel said, rising.

Phil turned his head toward her. Ethel stood upright in the ruined

colonnade. Her blond hair shone bright against the dark background

of ivy-covered rock. With her black gown, she might have been a nymph

in mourning, staying some passing wanderer, in the depths of a sacred

grove.

[Illustration: “Ethel stood upright in the ruined colonnade”]

Phil was dazzled. He knew he should find her at this place, for he

had seen her leave the hunt near the spot of the hallali. He wished

to see Ethel. He had gathered in haste a nosegay of wild flowers to

offer her. Miss Rowrer was to see that he had come back for her,—that

he had gathered the flowers for her, that he was thinking of her. She

might, too, see his emotion when he should offer his simple gift. She

would thank him. He would say he knew not what,—but she would know! He

had sworn to himself to act; the time had come. Nature herself pushed

him forward. There was gladness in this beautiful evening. The wind

stirred the lofty trees and Phil listened to the hunting-horn as the

soldier sharpens his courage by the rolling of the drums. He advanced

respectfully toward Ethel, hiding the flowers with which he wished to

surprise her.

“You have something on your mind, Monsieur Phil,” Ethel said.

“Is it as plain as that?” Phil asked, in an uncertain voice.

Like a true lover, he thought he could already read in her face the

feelings which moved himself. He was almost sorry to have come. He

would have been glad to escape, and he tried to hide his trouble by

indifferent remarks.

“You, Miss Rowrer, are radiant this evening.”

“It is because I am so happy, Monsieur Phil. Oh, so happy!”

“The evening is so fine,” Phil began; “you—”

“I saw yesterday something finer and sweeter than all that,” Ethel

interrupted, with a gesture which took in the forest and the sumptuous

sky. “I saw some one yesterday repulse with disdain a fortune, to

remain faithful to a childhood love.”

Phil stopped short.

“It was a young girl,” Ethel went on, slowly, as if to communicate

to him her own conviction,—“a young girl who believes in the sanctity

of promises made when one is young, when the heart is as clear as the

sky,—a young girl who believes in loyalty to her word once given, and

to oaths exchanged later, when she knew what she was doing—at the age

when one still sees in love only love itself.”

“It might be for me and Helia!” Phil thought. “Yet, she knows nothing

about it.”

“That is why I look radiant,” Ethel continued. “Ah, it refreshes me

after what we see so often,—vile hearts and cowardly consciences.”

“This is my punishment,” thought Phil.

In full daylight, Ethel would certainly have noticed his fearful

pallor. He stammered out: “One is not always master of his own heart!”

“A true heart,” replied Ethel, “loves but once. There are not different

oaths for each different age of life.”

All this was a lightning-flash to Phil’s soul. Ethel had never seemed

more friendly to him, and she was radiant and gay. But he no longer

thought of her. He was face to face with himself.

“Yet, in spite of one’s self,” Phil answered, in a hesitating voice,

“the sacrifice of first love may be made to a later one—it sometimes

happens.”

“It happens every day,” said Ethel; “money talks!”

Phil let his nosegay of wild-flowers fall behind him to the ground.

“I won’t keep you, Monsieur Phil,” she said, believing that she

was preventing him from taking part in the hallali. “Go, now!” she

continued pleasantly, “they’re only waiting for you to cut the doe’s

throat—listen, they’re sounding the death!”

Indeed, the forest near them was full of a rising tumult; lackeys were

carrying torches; cries and calls were heard, and the barking of the

hounds grew savage. The poor doe had come back to her sleeping-place

to die. There was despair in her gasp; and the flaring horns set up the

triumphal song of the hallali.

“Really, Phil, I do not wish to deprive you of such pleasure. Go. But

you had something in your hand just now—some flowers, I think. Put them

on this bench. You will find them when you return.”

“I have nothing, Miss Ethel,” Phil answered, showing his empty hands.

Every word Ethel had said wounded him cruelly, though he felt sure she

knew nothing of his relations with Helia. It seemed to him they applied

to his own troubles. They thrilled him to the bottom of his heart.

He plunged into the night of the forest, toward the blood-red glow

lighting up the slaughter.

PART IV

CONSCIENCE

CHAPTER I

ON THE BLUE SEA

A blue sea—a blue sky. The yacht was sailing under deep azure,

reflected back by calm waters. It was unlike the jolts and staccato

teuf-teuf of the automobile; it was gentle as the swinging of a balloon

in the open heavens. The furrow of foam behind the yacht was like a

trail of clouds.

On the promenade-deck, in the shade of the big deck-house, grandma,

Ethel, and Will were taking the air, stretched out in bamboo chairs.

Through the open door books and newspapers could be seen on the table,

and in the corners of the salon baskets of beautiful flowers were

disposed. The sea breeze mingled with the smell of roses. Near the

yacht’s prow a band was playing softly. Among the crew there were

musicians by trade,—old sailors of the navy bands. They were training

themselves for gala-days later on—in Sicily, in Greece, in Morgania.

Their low notes reached the group at the stern like a murmur of distant

voices. Ethel looked abstractedly across the sea to the horizon.

She was thinking of the country she had left behind—of the mists and

gardens where the leaves fall in autumn; of the countries she was yet

to see, with their blue archipelagos, whose white minarets seem milky

pearls set in sapphire.

She was almost overwhelmed with remembrances. She thought of those

shores where poets sang of gods and heroes; of that sea which had

reflected, in turn, fable and faith, where the galley of St. Paul

crossed the meandering track of Ulysses’s bark. She found exquisite

delight in this legendary past. She fancied to herself Cleopatra and

Dido and Morgana, queens who were all but goddesses, and the Roman

matrons, borne across the waves to the sound of lutes, with their

jesters and their scribes. At her side, Will and grandma were chatting

quietly.

“You are a good boy,” grandma said. “I am glad you got my telegram in

time to put an elevator in the yacht;—perhaps the reason I like new

things is because I am growing old.”

“Not at all, grandma,” interrupted Ethel. “What is stupider than to go

climbing up-stairs? It is the least esthetic of all movements.”

“That was my idea!” said grandma.

“And the wireless telegraph was mine,” said Will.

Will had himself supervised the building of his yacht, to make it a

model of its type. He deserved a Nobel prize for the practical way in

which he had foreseen everything. But its nautical qualities, and the

rigidity of its double steel shell were as nothing in comparison with

its interior comfort.

The yacht could have held two hundred passengers, and it accommodated

only ten. Its furnishings and arrangements were sumptuous. The

deck-house was a hundred feet long. In front were a card-room and the

apartments of the captain; all the rest was taken for great cabins,

each with its boudoir and bath-room.

Through the music-room, where the breath of the open sea brought

to grandma, Ethel, and Will the smell of the roses, they would go

down to the great hall wainscoted in unvarnished cedar, which framed

decorative panels. Farther on in the suite of rooms was the library,

with its wide, red-leather sofas. Above the shelves twelve caryatids,

in yellow marble, upheld the plinth. There were radiators for heat

and ventilators for coolness, with telephones and electric buttons

everywhere. Their bells gave a thrill of life from end to end of the

yacht.

Ethel was on the point of ringing for her maid, when Suzanne appeared.

She brought the plaids, fearing the evening freshness might incommode

Mme. Rowrer or Miss Rowrer.

“Suzanne,” Ethel said, while she was putting a plaid over her

shoulders, “I don’t see Monsieur Phil. Perhaps he is showing the yacht

to Mademoiselle Helia.”

“No; Monsieur Phil is not showing the yacht. Monsieur Phil is giving a

lemon to M. Caracal to suck. M. Caracal suffers martyrdom. The sighs

of M. Caracal rend one’s heart. Mademoiselle Helia is in her cabin,

reading.”

Suzanne, since she had become a soubrette, said “Mademoiselle” when

she spoke of Helia. She had perfect tact; she was the ideal soubrette.

She had accepted eagerly Ethel’s offer to accompany her to Morgania.

The life she was leading with Perbaccho wearied her; and then, to hear

Poufaille always repeating the same thing over,—to be always knocking

on the same skull at the same hours,—she was tired of it all.

Will at first intended to take Poufaille along to help the cook, but

he prudently gave up the project when he heard Poufaille explaining

his ideas on pig’s-rump and garlic, and goat’s-milk cheese. So Suzanne

not only escaped from Poufaille for the present, but she served

Miss Rowrer, whom she adored; and, moreover, she followed Helia and

Phil. She guessed that something had lately passed between them. She

was devoured by curiosity to know how the romance would end. Was it

possible that Phil, who formerly had been so good and upright, could

have changed to such a degree? A hundred times over she had been called

to be a witness to his love and a confidante of his oaths. Ah, men,

men! for them the broomstick—_et aïe donc_!

“Tell me,” Ethel said, “is Mademoiselle Helia glad, now that she has

come? I had Monsieur Phil invite her, and she refused at first. I had

to insist myself, and almost get angry, to make her accept.”

“Oh, yes, Mademoiselle Helia is very glad!” and Suzanne, having

arranged the plaids, lifted to Miss Rowrer eyes in which she might have

read infinite gratitude for so much goodness.

“I need you, Helia,” Ethel had urged; “you know it well! I count on you

for my lessons in physical culture, and you know I’ve got it in my head

to take you to my father’s university. There are charming young girls

there, and you will teach them how to be strong and beautiful. Besides,

the voyage will do so much good to Sœurette. Come—you’ll be at home!”

Helia had accepted. To travel with Phil would be to lengthen her

torture; but, at least, she would see him.

At first, amid all these marble statues and bronze reliefs, Helia

felt herself intimidated, habituated as she was to the coarsely

painted scene-canvases and papier-mâché bronzes. But Ethel treated

her as an equal—Ethel, who had the art to be respected without being

unapproachable.

“Ask them to come up,” Ethel said to Suzanne. “It’s the finest hour of

the day.”

The sea was mild. Great clouds were climbing above the horizon, while

an enormous sun was slowly setting in splendor of molten gold.

“The duke was right,” Ethel said to Will. “From the point of view of

Paris the legend of Morgana might seem ridiculous, but here, in the

grandeur of such scene-setting, even the supernatural seems normal.

How far away are the ant-hills of Paris and London! Only think how

somewhere people are agitating themselves in fog and smoke, while we

are sailing straight for dreamland and—isn’t it curious?—a duchy with

sorceresses and fairies in its history, where legends a thousand years

old still move the people. I wish to believe in it—I wish to see the

return of Morgana!”

“Keep thy flight to the West, bold sailor;

The land thou seekest shall arise,

Even though it existed not,

From the depths of the waves to welcome thee.”

It was Phil, who arrived ahead of Caracal. He had heard Ethel, and

capped her thought with verses from Schiller.

“How is your patient, Monsieur Phil?” asked Ethel; “how is M. Caracal?

Seasickness is a sad affair; even animals suffer from it—the ox, the

ass, the hog, the monkey—”

“And especially man,” said Caracal, following Phil.

Caracal thanked Miss Rowrer. He was better. The responsibility of the

old French politeness weighed on Caracal. He went through his most

graceful manners, lifting his little finger in the air, and smiling and

scraping his foot. And then—_crac_! a diving bow, with his lip turned

up, to kiss one’s hand—or to bite it.

He wore a faultless suit, and an artistic cravat, which the wind

swelled out like a banner. He redoubled his politeness to grandma, a

sure means, in his mind, to win her granddaughter. He hummed to himself

a music-hall refrain:

“Pour avoir la fille

Aimable et gentille,

C’est à la maman

Qu’il faut d’abord faire des compliments!”

(“To gain the daughter,

Sweet and pretty,

To the old mother

Sing your ditty!”)

He rhymed sonnets to Miss Rowrer, and trotted out his erudition,

working up his Baedeker in his cabin, and astonishing every one by his

qualifications as a cicerone.

“M. Caracal would make an ideal courier,” thought grandma.

Caracal, out of the tail of his eye, glanced at the books on the

salon table. “The House of Glass,” which had just appeared before

their departure, lay, uncut, under a pile of magazines. Caracal was a

little annoyed; but, with an author’s pride, he hesitated to call Miss

Rowrer’s attention again to his own novel.

“A wireless for Miss Rowrer.” The captain’s boy approached, with his

cap off and a paper in his hand.

“Where does it come from?” Ethel asked.

“From a ship off there.”

Ethel instinctively lifted her eyes to the mast, which seemed to be

throwing out its feelers into space. Then she opened the paper and

read:

Captain _Far East_ en route New York wishes good journey to

Captain _Columbia_. R. K. Rowrer’s orders to put himself at

disposition of yacht. Bad news from Morgania—land excursions

dangerous. Any message for New York.

Ethel arose. One point appeared on the horizon and then another.

“It’s the _Far East_ and the _Far West_,” said Will. “They’ve been

carrying bridge iron to Africa for the Cape-to-Cairo railway, and

machinery for the Nyanza ferry-boat company. They belong to pa.”

“Really!” said Ethel, looking at the two ships coming into sight along

the horizon.

“Boy!” she called, giving him the answer:

Sailing straight for Morgania—danger adds to attraction. Our

love to dear old pa!

Ethel, with her sea-glass, could observe the ships saluting the yacht;

the flags tumbled at the mizzen.

She felt a thrill of pride. Roman matrons and Cleopatras and Didos,

slowly dragged over the sea by their chained galley-slaves, what were

they beside her? How much better it was to live nowadays! She felt

herself more powerful than they had ever been. Space seemed bringing

her the salutes of the East and of the distant West. She remained

standing until the ships were lost to sight in the evening mists.

They were cruising along the Italian coast, visiting now one spot and

now another. Sometimes there were cool streets bordered with palaces

whose windows were without glass. The presence of the yachting-party

drew swarms of _ragazzi_, boys and girls, more importunate than Jersey

mosquitos, and harassing them for _baiocchi_ and _madonne_.

Again, there were islands which from afar were like bouquets of

flowers, and from near smelled of cheese and fried fish and garlic.

Capri, with the sea like a liquid sky at its feet, lifted its houses

along terraces like shelves. It was nothing but a going up and coming

down.

“This is a perpendicular country,” was Ethel’s observation. “We are

like flies walking along a wall.”

On the days when there was no climbing of the islands that sink

abruptly to the sea, the party could look at them from the deck or the

library, as they passed. Ethel took the opportunity for her physical

training, or put herself out of breath on a stationary bicycle, like

those on which the travelers on the trans-Siberian line get the rust

from their legs.

“You’ll tire yourself, Miss Rowrer,” Helia said to her, when she saw

what ardor she displayed.

“No, no!” said Ethel, “just show me how to do it.”

Helia went through a few movements with consummate ease. There was no

getting out of breath, no swelling of veins—neck and shoulders and arms

were smooth as marble; for exercise only developed in her the exquisite

purity of her form.

“Oh, Helia!” Ethel added, “show me how I can have a neck and shoulders

and arms like yours.”

During these short training lessons her friendship for Helia grew; and

it is possible Ethel’s only ambition was to have arms like Helia. But

it was not such an ambition which the press had been attributing to her

for some time back. For the newspapers were always talking about her.

When the yacht entered the smallest port, it drew more attention than

a war squadron. The cabbage-leaf papers of Calabria and Sicily all had

something to say of Miss Rowrer. They spoke of her as a wild woman,

because she had bought and saved from death the dog whom the natives

were asphyxiating, in honor of foreign tourists, amid the noxious gases

of a sulphur grotto. Then they had a story of some hermit on a cliff,

whom she wished, so it seemed, to take to Chicago to have him bless her

father’s stock-yard from the top of a sky-scraper!

“What fools!” said Will. “They’d do better to put glass in their

windows and cultivate their _nespoli_ and _pomidoro_ than lose their

time in such silliness. It’s true that time is not worth much in a

country where Stromboli and Vesuvius take the place of our Pittsburgs

and Homesteads—where there’s nothing smoking on the horizon except some

old volcano!”

Yet the yachting-party found pleasure in the halts when, for a change,

they went to dine at the hotels. The rushing down-stairs of the clerks

and porters and maîtres-d’hôtel, who got suddenly into rank and waited

for their orders, amused them. For the landlords their landing was a

signal to make all the hay they could while the sun was shining.

Not the cabbage-leaf papers alone, but the great journals also, printed

Ethel’s name. At least, she concluded this must be the case one day

when she remained on board while Will and the others visited the museum

at Palermo. Ethel had letters to write and sat herself down near the

music-room under an awning. The yacht was moored beside a great steamer

for tourists. Without being seen she could hear, above her head, the

talk of these cosmopolitan people, familiar with the Pyramids and the

Acropolis, the Smyrna bazaars and Monte Carlo. The whole international

swarm knew the Columbia by name. On the steamer they were talking

travel and trade and the weather. Ethel heard her name pronounced along

with the rest. They were discussing her probable marriage with the Duke

of Morgania—“a glorious name in Europe.” “Do you know what Chartered is

quoted at on the Stock Exchange?” “They’ll be a magnificent couple!”

“The big Pyramid is seven hundred feet less than the Eiffel Tower.”

“She’d be a charming duchess!” “The best chance Morgania ever had!”

[Illustration: “She dreamed under a sky studded with stars”]

Then all the voices were lost in the siren’s wailing, long drawn out.

The steamer shook itself gently, and issued from the port, leaving

Ethel in a reverie.

“Reigning duchess! Queen of Antioch! Lady Knight of Malta!” All

this—she acknowledged it to herself—had already passed through her

brain. It had even amused her to see how timid the duke was in her

presence. She had to say but a word,—not even that,—merely to encourage

him with a smile, to see him at her feet. But the newspapers were in

too great a hurry. They spoke of something that was not yet decided.

She would see; she had never so well appreciated her power as since her

departure from Marseilles. Everybody in the world seemed to know her.

True enough, across the Red Sea and India and Japan,—everywhere, to the

other side of the earth, as far as ’Frisco, it would have been just the

same.

The voyage continued tranquilly. Villages at the foot of the rugged

Calabrian cliffs saw the yacht passing by, white upon the blue sea, or

at night shining with lights like a meteor.

At that hour, most of all after dinner, it was pleasant on the bridge.

Will walked backward and forward, and smoked his cigar. Grandma, half

asleep, looked at the sea, which reminded her of her Western prairies.

At her side, to give her pleasure, Phil picked his banjo. Caracal was

bored; he had verified the fact that no one had yet opened his book.

Ethel had other things to do. Stretched out in her bamboo chair, she

dreamed under a sky studded with stars.

CHAPTER II

ETHEL’S VICTORY

Phil, ever since the day of the hunt, had also been living in a dream.

He was sure that Ethel knew nothing of his past. He even suspected

the events to which she had alluded, for he knew Will’s story well.

Moreover, she had since then shown herself more amiable than ever to

him. He might have thought himself more encouraged than ever to pay

her court and to forget Helia more and more. But just the contrary

happened. Within himself he felt a passion storm going on, with sudden

illumination of vivid lightning flashes. Then all sank back into

shadow.

He no longer dared look Helia in the face. Under Ethel’s clear eyes his

conscience had awakened.

One evening, weary of the ideas that beset him, Phil had thrown himself

on a sofa in the music-room, when he saw Ethel enter, seat herself, and

absently take up a book which chanced to be lying there. She cut one

page and looked through it, two pages, ten pages. Then, suddenly, she

arose angrily. Phil was astounded.

“Do you understand?” Ethel asked him. “He dares to offer me this filthy

book with the author’s compliments! I have only read a few lines, and

it nauseates me.”

“Of what book are you speaking, Miss Rowrer?” Phil asked.

“Of ‘The House of Glass,’ which Caracal has dared to offer me.” And

Ethel showed Phil the volume, with its modern-style cover decorated by

creeping plants and monkeys’ tails.

“Would you believe it?” Ethel continued. “The poor fool is trying to be

gallant with me. Every day he composes a sonnet in my honor. There’s no

great harm in that; but since he is the author of ‘The House of Glass,’

it has another meaning. Here, Phil, take the book, I beg of you, and

throw it overboard. But, wait a minute, we’ll throw to-day’s sonnet

with it. Only give me time to open the envelop—you’ll see how grotesque

it is.”

Ethel opened the envelop, but she had scarcely glanced through the

letter it contained when she grew pale with wrath and pride.

“What an outrage!” she exclaimed, in her fury. “See, Phil, Caracal made

a mistake in addressing his envelop. He has sent the sonnet on to Paris

and put here, instead of it, a letter to Vieillecloche. Richard the

Lion-hearted! Those attacks which vexed me so,—they came from him. He

has a family arrangement for it with Vieillecloche. Look, Phil, read,

read! What do you think of that? Is it not infamous? He attacks us for

pay!”

Phil was indignant. The letter left no possible doubt. He already could

see Caracal disembarked in a hurry at the first port, and going down

the gangway crushed by his shame.

“But he also attacked you once, Phil. How is it you didn’t pull his

ears?”

“That was my great desire!” answered Phil.

“But you did not do it!”

“Let me tell you—”

“You did not do it!”

Phil, without changing a detail, told the whole story—the rage which

had pushed him on to hunt for Caracal, and his feelings at sight

of the poor creature a prey to his own dreams, with anguish on his

tear-stained face.

“That is why I did not do it, Miss Rowrer,” said Phil.

“Ah!” Ethel exclaimed, as she looked at Phil.

There was a moment of silence.

“Throw book and letter into the sea,” Ethel concluded. “And, I beseech

you, not a word of all this to any one!”

[Illustration: “She arose angrily”]