CHAPTER XI.

Master Richard Shelton sat at the foot of his sister's table

dispensing its hospitalities chiefly to himself. Through some law

unknown to science, all dishes seemed to gravitate toward the main

center of Dicky's trencher, thereby leaving the rest of the table

comparatively bare.

For eighteen months Master Shelton had given Mrs. Ponsonby the

advantage of his company; not so much through volition--albeit, he was

well enough pleased with his quarters--as through submission to

paternal authority.

Conventional ideas are apt to wilt under the blight of poverty, and to

revive under the fuller harvesting of this world's goods, and Mr.

Shelton, Sr., who had, in the days of his leanness, let Polly run wild

with all the college boys of Harmouth, became suddenly particular, as

his bank account fattened, in regard to the niceties of conduct in his

daughters. His scruples even embraced Deena; he said she was too young

a widow to live alone, and a blank sight too handsome, and that either

she must return to the protection of his roof or else receive her

brother under her own. With the docility of the intelligent, she

accepted his fiat, but chose the evil represented by a unit rather

than by the sum total of family companionship.

So she and Dicky had lived together since the day when Simeon had been

laid to rest beside his mother in the churchyard, and Deena had taken

up life with such courage as she could muster in the old house. She

had started out with a long illness, as the result of overtaxed

nerves, and the nurse who had been engaged for Simeon found ample

employment with Simeon's widow; but a good constitution and a quiet

mind are excellent helps toward recovery, and by September she found

herself in admirable health.

Stephen's energies had been absorbed in editing Simeon's book. He had

the assistance of the botanical department of Harmouth, and the book

was produced in a manner which would have given poor Ponsonby infinite

pleasure. French spared no expense, especially in the color drawings

from Simeon's photographs and specimens, which were exceptionally

valuable. The printing was done in Boston, and Stephen was there much

of the time. During Deena's illness he was glad of an excuse to be

near enough to get daily reports of her progress, but as she became

strong and resumed the routine of living, so that intercourse became

unavoidable, he found the strain of silence more than he could bear.

He resigned his professorship permanently, and went abroad, making the

book his excuse. He wished to see that it was properly heralded by

both English and Continental scientific periodicals, and he preferred

to attend to it himself. To say that Deena missed him but feebly

expresses the void his going made in her life, but, knowing her own

heart, and suspecting the state of his, she was glad to be spared his

presence in these early days of widowhood, and could not but approve

his decision.

Dicky's society was hardly calculated to stifle her longings for

higher things, for his conduct called for constant repression. At

first he had nearly driven her wild by his prying interest in what did

not concern him, his way of unmasking her secret thoughts, his powers

of seeing round corners, if not through sealed envelopes, but as time

went on she grew fond of his honest boy-nature, and learned to laugh

at his precocious acuteness. Perhaps with Stephen's departure there

were fewer occasions for her to resent the challenge of his intrusive

eye. There were, also, alleviations coincident with the school year,

for then she was free from his company from the time he slammed the

front door, at five minutes to nine, till he returned at two, ravenous

for dinner.

On the particular morning indicated at the beginning of the chapter,

the season was the late autumn--the clock was pointing ominously near

nine--the lady opposite to Master Shelton looked more beautiful than

ever in her widow's weeds. Dicky conveyed half a sausage and a wedge

of buttered toast to the sustenance of boyhood before he asked--with

some difficulty, if the truth were confessed:

"May I take a bunch of grapes to school, Deena?"

She was about to give a cheerful consent, when he defeated his own

ends by adding:

"None of the other boys have hothouse grapes; it makes 'em think a lot

of me. I guess they know where they come from, too!"

"In those circumstances, certainly not," she answered, indignantly.

"You can eat all you like at home."

"Well, I call that low-down mean," he said, stabbing another sausage,

"and you gettin' all the fruit and flowers from Mr. French's place

sent to you every day. I wish Polly and Ben were there still--they

wouldn't begrudge me a little fruit."

Polly and Ben had taken Stephen's place for the summer, during his

protracted absence, and had but recently returned to New York.

"Polly and Ben would despise your snobbishness just as I do; besides,

I do not approve of your taking eatables to school," she added,

disingenuously, for her objection was to furnishing food for Harmouth

gossip--not to Dicky.

"Oh, pshaw!" he exclaimed. "As if I didn't know why you won't let me

take 'em! Mr. French will give me anything I ask for when he gets

home--that's one comfort. Did you know he may be here any day? The man

who brought the flowers told me so yesterday."

Deena's complexion flushed a lively pink, or else it was the

reflection from the wood fire, leaping in tongues of flame behind the

tall brass fender. She certainly looked singularly girlish as she sat

behind the array of Ponsonby breakfast silver, her severe black frock,

with the transparent bands of white at throat and wrists, only serving

to mark her youthful freshness. Her beauty was of little consequence

to her brother, who was busy considering the advantages that might

accrue to himself from Stephen's return.

"When Mr. French went away, he said I could ride his saddle horse, and

though I've been there half a dozen times since Ben left, that old

beast of a coachman won't let me inside the stable. Will you tell Mr.

French when he comes home what an old puddin' head he's got to look

after his horses? The man ought to be kicked out!"

"I shall hardly venture to complain to Mr. French about his servants,"

said Deena.

"You might be good-natured," he urged; "here's the whole autumn gone

without my getting any riding, and Mr. French would do anything you

asked----"

"It is time for you to go to school," said Deena, shortly.

"No, it isn't; not for three minutes yet," he contradicted. "'Tenny

rate, I don't mean to be early this morning--it's jography, and I

don't know my lesson; but I do think you might speak about the horse,

Deena; I never get a bit of sport worth countin'"--this in a high,

grumbling minor. "There was Ben; he had his automobile here the whole

summer, and never offered it to me once! The fellows all think it was

awfully mean--I had promised to take them out in it, and it made me

feel deuced cheap, I can tell you. The idea of using a machine like

that just to air a kid every day! I guess it pumped it full of wind,

anyhow--that's one comfort."

"If you are going to say disagreeable things about the baby, I won't

listen to you," said Deena, crossly, and then, ashamed of her

petulance, added: "Run along to school, dear; the sooner you get some

knowledge into that little red head of yours, the sooner you can have

automobiles and horses of your own."

"Those of my brothers-in-law will suit me just as well," he said,

favoring her with a horrid grimace, as he wiped his mouth on a rope of

napkin held taut between his outstretched fists. "Perhaps I had better

let Mr. French know myself what I expect in the future."

"Perhaps you'll mind your own business!" cried Deena, driven to fury.

He left the room singing in a quavering treble:

I'll pray for you when on the stormy ocean

With love's devotion. That's what I'll do.

It was a song with which a nursemaid of the Shelton children had been

wont to rock the reigning baby to sleep, and had lurked in Dicky's

memory for many a year.

Poor Deena was thoroughly ruffled. It was maddening to have a love she

held as the most sacred secret of her heart vulgarized by a boy's

coarse teasing, and, in addition, she was jealous of her own

dignity--anxious to pay her dead husband proper respect--distressed at

the possibility of Stephen's thoughtful kindness becoming a subject of

comment in the town. And yet what difference did it make?

This carefully guarded secret would be public property by her own

consent before a week was over, for Dicky's announcement of French's

return was no news to Deena--at that very moment her heart was beating

against a letter which assured her he was following fast upon its

tracks, and when he came he was not likely to prove a patient lover.

All through that second summer his letters had been growing more

tender, more urgent, till at last he had taken matters into his own

hands, and decided that their separation must end. For aught she knew,

his vessel might already have reached New York--he might be that

blessed moment on his way to Harmouth! The thought sent little thrills

of happiness bounding through her veins. She had a shrewd idea he

would appear unannounced by letter or telegram, but not

to-day--certainly not to-day--she reflected.

There were plenty of small duties waiting for her that morning, but in

woman's parlance she "couldn't settle to anything"; there was an

excitement in her mood that demanded the freedom of fresh air. She

went up to her bedroom and stood for a moment at her window before

yielding to the impulse that beckoned her out into the sunshine; and,

drawing Stephen's letter from her dress, she read it once more, to

make sure she had missed no precious hint as to the time of his

sailing. He wrote:

May I come back? You must know all I mean that to imply--to come

back, my best beloved, to you--to order my life in accordance to

your pleasure--to marry you the day I set foot in Harmouth--or

to wait impatiently till you are pleased to give yourself to me.

I trust your love too entirely to fear that you will needlessly

prolong the time. You are too fair-minded to let mere

conventions weigh with you as against my happiness. Between you

and me there must be no shams, and yet I would not shock or

hurry you for the world.

On second thoughts, I shall not wait for your permission to

return--that is not the best way to gain one's desires! No, I

shall come before you can stop me, and while you are saying to

yourself, "Perhaps he is on the ocean," I may be turning in at

your gate.

What did she mean to do? she asked herself, with a smile that was its

own answer.

She went into her closet, and, fetching her crape hat from the shelf,

began pinning it on before the glass. Its somber ugliness accorded ill

with the brightness of her hair, and somehow her hair seemed to turn

mourning into a mockery.

She couldn't help recalling an incident that had happened two years

before, when she had seen herself in that same glass transformed into

sudden prettiness by Polly's skillful fingers, and how her pleasure in

her appearance had been turned into humiliation by Simeon's petty

tyranny, when she asked him to pay for her hat. And then she was

ashamed of her own thoughts--distressed that she had let the paltry

reminiscence force itself into her mind; for great happiness should

put us in charity with all. Never again would she allow an unkind

remembrance to lodge in her thoughts.

She shut the door of her room and hurried out into the street--there

was so much indoors to remind her of what she most wished to forget.

When Stephen came for her they would go away from Harmouth--just for a

little while, till the memories faded--and, in a future of perfect

love, think kindly, gratefully, pitifully, of Simeon.

You see, she was desperately in love, poor child, and at last heart

and conscience were in accord.

Her feet fairly danced up the street; she moved so lightly she hardly

rustled the carpet of fallen leaves that overspread the pavement. It

was a glorious day, the sun was touching all prosaic things with gold,

and up in heaven, against the interminable blue, little white clouds

sailed in dapples, such as Raphael charged with angel faces, and every

face seemed to smile.

Wandering across the campus, under the stately arches of the college

elms, she finally reached the open country, and, realizing that even

the wings of happiness are mortal, she turned homeward, choosing the

avenue that led past French's place. Perhaps she hoped for reassuring

signs of his coming--doors and windows thrown open and gardeners at

work upon the ground--but before she got beyond the high hedge that

cut off her view, a carriage, which she recognized as Stephen's, drove

rapidly toward the gate, and in it sat a lady, stately and grand, but

so closely veiled as to defy both sun and curiosity. At a sign from

her the carriage stopped, and a voice exclaimed:

"I have just been to see you, Mrs. Ponsonby, and was so much

disappointed to find you out--and so was some one else, I fancy, who I

am sure has been at your house this morning! Pray get in and drive

home with me. And I will send you back to town after you have paid me

a little visit."

Deena had by this time recognized Mrs. Star, and recovered

sufficiently from her surprise to take the offered seat in the

carriage, but she was in such a tumult of hope and fear she hardly

dared trust herself to do more than greet her old friend. Mrs. Star

understood quite well, and gave her time to recover her wits by a

characteristic harangue.

"How am I?" she repeated, sardonically. "Lame for life! I have never

got over McTorture's treatment, and never shall. Oh, no, it was not

the original accident--that was an innocent affair--it is the result

of McTorture's nonsense in keeping me chained to my sofa in one

position till my leg stiffened. But never mind about doctors; they're

all alike--bad's the best! You look handsome and healthy enough to

keep out of their clutches; tell me all about yourself."

"There is never anything to tell about me," said Deena. "I am much

more concerned to know why you are here."

Mrs. Star's eyes softened.

"Because Stephen wouldn't stop long enough in New York for me to

exchange ten words with him, and so I did the next best thing--indeed,

the only thing I could do to satisfy my affection--I came with him;

and upon my word, I do not think he wanted me! Now, how do you account

for that, Mrs. Deena?"

Her expression was so insinuating that Deena might be excused a slight

irritation in her tone as she answered:

"I don't account for it."

Here they reached the front door, for the approach was a short one,

and Mrs. Star got out laboriously and ushered her guest into the hall.

"Do you know your way to the library?" she asked. "It is on the other

side of this barn of a room, and if you will make yourself comfortable

there, I will join you in a minute. The truth is, we are not in order,

and I must give a message before I can have the conscience to sit down

and enjoy a chat."

Deena's eyes were still blinded by the midday glare, but she managed

to cross the great drawing room without stumbling over an ottoman,

and, pushing aside the heavy curtain that shut off the library, she

walked directly into Stephen's arms.

As Mrs. Star saw fit to leave her undisturbed, it would be sheer

presumption for a humble person like the writer to disregard that

compelling example. Suffice it to say that for one hour Stephen's

horses stamped and champed in the stable, and that when finally Mrs.

Star did appear, the occupants of the library were under the

impression she had been gone barely long enough to take off her wraps.

Perhaps no mortals deserve happiness, and certainly few attain it, but

if ever a man and a woman were likely to find satisfaction in each

other's companionship, it was the lovers sitting hand in hand before

Stephen's fire.

Most women of twenty-four have had some experience of love as a

passion; they have known its fullness or its blight, or more often

still, they have frittered it away in successive flirtations, but with

Deena it had come as a revelation and been consecrated to one. To be

sure, she had tried to crush and repress it, but it had persisted

because of its inherent force. And with Stephen the passion was at

once the delight and glory of his life. His was no boy's love made up

of sentiment and vanity; he had brought a man's courage to follow duty

to the borders of despair, and all the while he held the image of her

he loved unsullied in his heart. At last they were free to take all

that life had before withheld of sympathy and friendship and perfect

understanding. What wonder that an hour should slip away before they

realized the flight of time?

Mrs. Star received her nephew's announcement with suitable effusion,

and with an undercurrent of genuine feeling. After kissing Deena, she

made a confidence that had a spice of kindly malice.

"My dear child," she said, "I knew so well what was about to happen,

that I came all the way from New York in order to welcome you into the

family, and I think I showed great self-restraint not to tell you so

in the carriage when you put that very direct question as to what

brought me."

CONCERNING THE HEART'S DEEP PAGES

By SEWELL FORD

_Author of "Horses Nine," Etc._

When Dickie's mother put him in my charge for the summer she said:

"Keep him out of as much mischief as you can." This seemed

unnecessary, for, really, Dickie was a well-mannered, good-looking

young fellow, with broad shoulders, a clear skin and a clean heart. I

said as much.

"Oh, you old bachelors!" laughed Dickie's mother, and sailed away to

spend her second season of widowhood abroad.

Dickie and I were just taking a look at the country surrounding our

summer headquarters when we found Rosie. Balancing herself on a

gatepost and eating cherries was Rosie. It must be admitted that she

did both of these things with a certain grace, also that the picture

she made had its charm. For she was probably sixteen, with all that

the age implies.

Of course, one could not expect Dickie to be at all impressed.

Certainly I did not.

"Girls!" Here followed an ominous inbreathing, ending in an explosive

"Huh!" This was Dickie's expressed attitude toward the sex. For Dickie

was nineteen, which is the scornful age, you know. What are girls when

a fellow is going to be a soph. in the fall, with the prospect of

playing quarterback on the 'varsity eleven?

As we neared the girl on the gatepost Dickie gave her a careless

glance. She certainly deserved better. There was the sifting sunshine

in her hair and there were her white, rounded arms reaching up to pull

down a fruit-laden branch. Perhaps the girl on the gatepost felt the

slight of Dickie's unappreciative glance, perhaps not. At any rate,

she was unstirred.

"Want one?" she asked, saucily dangling a cherry at us.

Red as the cherry went Dickie's face, and he marched stiffly past

without reply. Once we were out of earshot, he remarked, with deep

disgust: "What a freshy!"

"Yes, but rather pretty," said I.

"Think so? Now, I don't." This with the air of a connoisseur. "But she

did have good eyes."

"Yes," I agreed. "I like brown ones myself."

"Brown?" protested Dickie. "They were blue, dark blue and big--the

deep kind."

"Oh, were they?" In my tone must have been that which caused Dickie to

suspect that I was teasing him.

"You bet she knows it, too," he added, vindictively. "Conceited

beggars, these girls."

"Awfully," I assented. Then, after a pause: "But I thought you were

fond of cherries?"

"So I am. If she'd been a boy, I would have tried to buy a quart."

"She seemed to want you to have some," I suggested. "Perhaps she would

sell you a few."

Dickie glanced at me suspiciously. "Think so? I've a mind to go back

and try. Will you wait?"

I said I would; in fact, it was the only thing to be done, for he was

off. So I sat down and watched the scorner of girls disappear eagerly

around a bend in the road. At the end of a half hour of waiting I

began to speculate. Had Dickie's courage failed him, had he taken to

the woods, or was he upbraiding her of the gatepost for the sin of

conceit? I would go and see for myself.

All unheeding the rest of the world, they were sitting at the foot of

the cherry tree. The "conceited beggar" of the deep blue eyes was

trying to toss cherries into Dickie's open mouth. When she missed it

became Dickie's turn to toss cherries. The game was a spirited one.

Dickie appeared to be well entertained.

"I thought you had forgotten me," said I, mildly. Dickie's laugh broke

square in the middle, and he smoothed his face into a bored

expression.

"Her name is Rosie," this was the substance of the stammered

introduction.

"Indeed!" I replied. "And you were right about her eyes; they _are_

blue."

Dickie flushed guiltily and hastily got on his feet.

"Come on," he said; "I guess we'd better be going."

Very frankly Rosie looked her opinion of me as we left. It was

interesting to note the elaborate strategy used by Dickie to conceal

the fact that he waved his handkerchief to her. There ensued a long

silence between us, but of this Dickie seemed unconscious. He broke it

by whistling "Bedelia" two notes off the key.

"It's too bad, Dickie," I said, finally, "that you dislike girls so

much."

"They're a silly lot," said Dickie, with a brave effort at a tired

drawl.

"But Rosie, now----"

"Oh, she's not like the rest of them. She's rather jolly."

"Conceited little beggar, though, I suppose?"

"No, sir; not a bit. She's just the right kind." Then Dickie flushed

and the conversation lapsed suddenly.

We were to go sailing on the river next morning, but when the time

came Dickie pleaded delay. He had "promised to take a book to a

friend." He would be back in a few minutes. Two hours did Dickie take

for that errand, and I began to think that perhaps my joking had been

unwise.

Dickie now entered upon a chronic state of being "togged up." He

treasured faded flowers, raising hue and cry because the maid threw

out a wilted peony which he had enshrined in a vase on his chiffonier.

Once he almost fell into the river rescuing an envelope which had

slipped from his pocket. The treasure it contained seemed to be a lock

of dark hair. His spending money went for fancy chocolates, which I

did not see him eat.

Such were the beginnings of this tremendous affair.

Very gentle and serious Dickie became in these days, moods new to him.

Also he took to reading poetry. Scott's "Marmion," about the only

piece of verse with which he had been on speaking acquaintance, he

abandoned for fragments of "Locksley Hall" and "Lucille." His musical

taste underwent like change. The rollicking college airs he was

accustomed to whistle with more vigor than accuracy gave place to

"Tell Me, Pretty Maiden," and "Annie Laurie." These he executed quite

as inaccurately, but--and this was some relief--in minor key.

Sitting in the sacred hush of the moonlight, we had long talks on

sober subjects not at all related to "revolving wedges" and "guards

back formation," on which he had been wont to discourse. With uneasy

conscience I meditated on the amazing alchemy, potent in young and

tender passion.

One morning a grinning youngster with big blue eyes, like Rosie's,

handed me a note. It was rather sticky to the touch, by reason of the

candy with which the messenger had been paid. It bore no address.

"Darlingest Dearest----" Thus far I read, then folded it promptly and

put it in my pocket.

The note was still there the next afternoon when, jibing our sail, we

came abruptly on an unexpected scene. In a smart cedar rowboat, such

as they have for hire at the summer hotel, an athletic youth wielded a

pair of long, spruce oars. Facing him, with her back toward us and

leaning comfortably against the chair seat in the stern, was a pretty

girl in white.

"Why," said I, with perhaps a suspicion of relief, "I believe that is

Rosie."

Dickie, gripping the tiller hard, was staring as one in a trance. My

words roused him.

"Rosie? What Rosie?" said he.

"Why, the one who gave you the cherries."

"Is it?" asked Dickie, stoically. Then, with studied carelessness and

devilish abandon: "I say, old man, toss me a cigar, will you? I feel

like having a smoke."

After dinner I found Dickie in his room. There was a scent of burned

paper in the air and fresh ashes were in the grate. The mercury was

close to ninety.

"Chilly?" said I.

Dickie laughed unconvincingly. "No, just burning some old trash. Want

to take a tramp?"

I did. Was it chance or the immutable workings of fate which took us

in time past the house of the cherry tree? In a porch hammock was

Rosie, a vision of budding beauty only half clouded in flimsy lawn and

lace. Yet with never a turn of the head Dickie swaggered by, talking

meanwhile to me in tones meant to carry an idea of much

light-heartedness. Over my shoulder I noted that Rosie was standing

watching us, a puzzled look on her face.

"Dick!" It was rather a faint call, but loud enough to be heard.

"She's calling you," said I.

"Wait, Dickie!" This time there was an aggrieved, pleading note,

against which the stern Dickie was not proof.

"Well," said he, "I suppose I'd better see what she wants. Will you

wait?"

"No, I will go on slowly and you can catch up with me. Don't be long,

Dickie."

But a full hour later, when I returned, he was just starting. From

some distance up the road I could see them. On the veranda Rosie's

mother rocked and worked placidly away at something in her lap. Quite

sedately they walked down the path until a big hydrangea bush, studded

thickly with great clumps of blossoms, screened them from the house.

Then something occurred which told me that the boating incident and

the unanswered note had either been forgiven or forgotten. I dodged

out of sight behind a hedge. When I thought it safe to come out,

Dickie was swinging up the road toward me, whistling furiously.

Clawing my shoulder, he remarked: "Say, old man, what do you think of

her?"

"Think of whom?"

"Why, Rosie."

"Rosie! What Rosie? Oh, you mean the one who gave you the cherries?"

"Yes, of course. Say"--this impulsively in my ear--"she's the sweetest

girl alive."

"From what I saw just now," said I, "I should say that you were quite

competent to pass on Rosie's flavor. You took at least two tastes."

"I don't care if you did see," said Dickie. "Suppose you can keep a

secret? We're en----"

"You young scamp!" I exclaimed. Visions of an ambitious and angry

mother came to me with abrupt vividness. "You don't mean to tell me

that you two----"

"Yep, we are. But no one is to know of it until I've graduated."

Interesting news for me, wasn't it? Well, by means of discreet

deception and the use of such diplomacy as would have settled a

dispute between nations, I dragged Dickie far away that very night.

Moreover, although it was the most difficult and thankless task I had

ever undertaken, I kept him away until I had seen him safely bestowed

in a college dormitory. There I left him constructing, in defiance of

all the good advice I had given him, an elaborate missive to a person

whom he addressed as "My Darling Rosie." Then I knew that I might as

well give up. Sorrowfully I recalled the words of a forgotten

sentimentalist: "It is on the deep pages of the heart that Youth

writes indelibly its salutary to Cupid."

When I met Dickie's mother at the pier in October, I expected to hear

that he had written all about my wicked interference in the Rosie

affair. He hadn't, though, and I shamelessly accepted her thanks,

wondering all the while what she would say when the shocking truth

came out. Her Dickie engaged! And to a nameless nobody! It would not

be pleasant to face Dickie's mother after she had acquired this

knowledge.

So at the end of the term I was on hand to help Dickie pack his trunk,

meaning to save him, by hook or crook, from his precocious

entanglement. I should try reason first, then ridicule, and, lastly, I

would plead with him, as humbly as I might, to forget.

This program I did not carry out. On the mantel in Dickie's room,

propped against a tobacco jar, was a photograph of a girl with fluffy

hair and pouting lips. Observing that Dickie wrapped the picture

carefully in a sweater before tucking it away in his trunk, I asked:

"Who is that, Dickie?"

"Met her at the Junior hop," said Dickie. "She's a queen, all right."

"Indeed!" Then I added, anxiously: "And what of Rosie?"

"Rosie?" Could this blankness on Dickie's face be genuine? "What

Rosie?"

"Why, the one who gave you the cherries."

"Oh, _that_ one!" Dickie laughed lightly. "Why, that's all off long

ago, you know."

Right there I abandoned all faith in a sentimental theory having to do

with Cupid and certain pages in the heart of Youth.

SONG

I gave to love the fairest rose

That in my garden grew;

And still my heart its fragrance knows--

Does he remember, too?

He laid his dreams upon my day,

His kisses on my mouth,

I woke, to find him flown away

With summer to the south.

Love's vagrant step once more to greet,

My garden blooms in vain;

The roses of the south are sweet--

Love will not come again!

The roses of the south are sweet--

Love will not come again!

CHARLOTTE BECKER.

AN EDITORIAL

SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS I--XIII OF "THE DELUGE," BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

Matthew Blacklock, the central figure of the story, is essentially a

self-made man, who has made himself a power to be reckoned with. He is

a man of great natural force, immense egotism, insatiable greed for

notoriety and unswerving adherence to his own standards of morality.

He has two devouring ambitions: First to become one of the inner

circle that controls high finance and second to become one of the

elect in society.

The opening chapters explain these ambitions. The magnate of the

financial world is Roebuck, who has from time to time made use of

Blacklock's peculiar abilities and following. The latter has become

impatient and dissatisfied with his role as a mere instrument and

demands of Roebuck that he shall be given a place among the "seats of

the mighty." Roebuck makes a pretense of yielding to the demand.

Blacklock's social ambition is awakened and stimulated by his meeting

with Anita Ellersly, the sister of a young society man who has been

the recipient of many financial favors from Blacklock.

The latter finally succeeds in his wish so far as to receive an

invitation to dinner at the Ellerslys', which is given for reasons

that are obvious. It is made plain to him, however, that his

intentions with respect to Anita are extremely distasteful to her, and

after an evening spent under a tremendous nervous strain he leaves the

house exhausted and depressed.

His first impulse after his visit to the Ellerslys' house is to regard

his plans as hopeless, but his vanity comes to his rescue and

strengthens his resolution to succeed. For assistance he turns to

Monson, the trainer of his racing stable, an Englishman in whom he has

discovered unmistakable signs of breeding and refinement. Under

Monson's tuition he makes rapid progress in adapting himself to the

requirements imposed upon aspirants for social distinction.

His absorption in these pursuits leads to his unconscious neglect of

some of the finer points of his financial game. He allows himself to

be misled by the smooth appearance of the friendliness of Mowbray

Langdon, one of Roebuck's trusted lieutenants, and accumulates a heavy

short interest in one of his pet industrial stocks. He visits Roebuck

and is deceived by the latter's suavity. He has another invitation to

dine at the Ellerslys', but his experience is as discouraging as

before.

Nevertheless, having now become hopelessly in love with Anita, he

persists in his attentions and finally becomes engaged to her, though

it is perfectly understood by both that she does not love him and

accepts him only because he is rich and her family is poor.

Meantime, he has to some extent lost his hold upon his affairs in Wall

Street and suddenly awakens to the fact that he has been betrayed by

Langdon, who, knowing that Blacklock is deeply involved in a short

interest in Textile Trust stock, has taken advantage of the latter's

preoccupation with Miss Ellersly to boom the price of the stock. With

ruin staring him in the face, Blacklock takes energetic measures to

save himself.

He makes the startling discovery that Langdon is the person

responsible for the rise in Textile, the object being to drive him

from the Street. He sees Anita, tells her the situation and frees her,

but she refuses to accept her release when she hears of Langdon's

duplicity.

With the aid of money loaned to him by a gambler friend, he succeeds

the next day, by means of large purchases of Textile Trust, in

postponing the catastrophe.

Calling at the house of the Ellerslys', he has a violent scene with

Mrs. Ellersly, who attempts to break the engagement between him and

Anita, but it ends in his taking her with him from the house.

THE DELUGE

A STORY OF MODERN FINANCE

By DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

[FOR SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS SEE PRECEDING PAGE]

As we neared the upper end of the park, I told my chauffeur, through

the tube, to enter and go slowly. Whenever a lamp flashed in at us, I

had a glimpse of her progress toward composure--now she was drying her

eyes with the bit of lace she called a handkerchief; now her bare arms

were up, and with graceful fingers she was arranging her hair; now she

was straight and still, the soft, fluffy material with which her wrap

was edged drawn close about her throat. I shifted to the opposite

seat, for my nerves warned me that I could not long control myself, if

I stayed on where her garments were touching me.

I looked away from her for the pleasure of looking at her again, of

realizing that my overwrought senses were not cheating me. Yes, there

she was, in all the luster of that magnetic beauty I cannot think of

even now without an up-blazing of the fire which is to the heart what

the sun is to the eyes of a blind man dreaming of sight. There she was

on my side of the chasm that had separated us--alone with

me--mine--mine! And my heart dilated with pride. But a moment later

came a sense of humility. Her beauty intoxicated me, but her youth,

her fineness, so fragile for such rough hands as mine, awed and

humbled me. "I must be very gentle," said I to myself. "I have

promised that she shall never regret. God help me to keep my promise!

She is mine, but only to preserve and protect." And that idea of

_responsibility in possession_ was new to me--was to have far-reaching

consequences. Now I think it changed the whole course of my life.

She was leaning forward, her elbow on the casement of the open window

of the brougham, her cheek against her hand; the moonlight was

glistening on her round, firm forearm and on her serious face. "How

far, far away from--everything it seems here!" she said, her voice

tuned to that soft, clear light, "and how beautiful it is!" Then,

addressing the moon and the shadows of the trees rather than me: "I

wish I could go on and on--and never return to--to the world."

"I wish we could," said I.

My tone was low, but she started, drew back into the brougham, became

an outline in the deep shadow. In another mood that might have angered

me. Just then it hurt me so deeply that to remember it to-day is to

feel a faint ache in the scar of the long healed wound. My face was

not hidden as was hers; so, perhaps, she saw. At any rate, her voice

tried to be friendly as she said: "Well--I have crossed the Rubicon.

And I don't regret. It was silly of me to cry. I thought I had been

through so much that I was beyond such weakness. But you will find me

calm from now on, and reasonable."

"Not too reasonable, please," said I, with an attempt at her

lightness. "A reasonable woman is as trying as an unreasonable man."

"But we are going to be sensible with each other," she urged, "like

two friends. Aren't we?"

"We are going to be what we are going to be," said I. "We'll have to

take life as it comes."

That clumsy reminder set her to thinking, stirred her vague uneasiness

in those strange circumstances to active alarm. For presently she

said, in a tone that was not quite so matter-of-course as she would

have liked to make it: "We'll go now to my uncle Frank's. He's a

brother of my father. I always used to like him best--and still do.

But he married a woman mamma thought--queer--and they hadn't much--and

he lives away up on the West Side--One Hundred and Twenty-seventh

Street."

"The wise plan, the only wise plan," said I, not so calm as she must

have thought me, "is to go to my partner's house and send out for a

minister."

"Not to-night," she replied, nervously. "Take me to uncle Frank's, and

to-morrow we can discuss what to do and how to do it."

"To-night," I persisted. "We must be married to-night. No more

uncertainty and indecision and weakness. Let us begin bravely, Anita!"

"To-morrow," she said. "But not to-night. I must think it over."

"To-night," I repeated. "To-morrow will be full of its own problems.

This is to-night's."

She shook her head, and I saw that the struggle between us had

begun--the struggle against her timidity and conventionality. "No, not

to-night." This in her tone for finality.

To have argued with any woman in such circumstances would have been

dangerous; to have argued with her would have been fatal. To reason

with a woman is to flatter her into suspecting you of weakness and

herself of strength. I told the chauffeur to turn about and go slowly

uptown. She settled back into her corner of the brougham. Neither of

us spoke until we were passing Clairmont. Then she started out of her

secure confidence in my obedience, and exclaimed: "This is not the

way!" And her voice had in it the hasty call-to-arms.

"No," I replied, determined to push the panic into a rout. "As I told

you, our future shall be settled to-night." That in _my_ tone for

finality.

A pause, then: "It _has_ been settled," she said, like a child that

feels, yet denies, its impotence as it struggles in the compelling

arms of its father. "I thought until a few minutes ago that I really

intended to marry you. Now I see that I didn't."

"Another reason why we're not going to your uncle's," said I.

She leaned forward so that I could see her face. "I cannot marry you,"

she said. "I feel humble toward you, for having misled you. But it is

better that you--and I--should have found out now than too late."

"It _is_ too late--too late to go back."

"Would you wish to marry a woman who does not love you, who loves some

one else, and who tells you so and refuses to marry you?" She had

tried to concentrate enough scorn into her voice to hide her fear.

"I would," said I. "And I shall. I'll not desert you, Anita, when your

courage and strength fail. I will carry you on to safety."

"I tell you I cannot marry you," she cried, between appeal and

command. "There are reasons--I may not tell you. But if I might, you

would--would take me to my uncle's. I cannot marry you!"

"That is what conventionality bids you say now," I replied. "But what

will it bid you say to-morrow morning, as we drive down crowded Fifth

Avenue, after a night in this brougham?"

I could not see her, for she drew back into the darkness as sharply as

if I had struck her with all my force full in the face. But I could

feel the effect of my words upon her. I paused, not because I expected

or wished an answer, but because I had to steady myself--myself, not

my purpose; my purpose was inflexible. I would put through what we had

begun, just as I would have held her and cut off her arm with my

pocketknife if we had been cast away alone, and I had had to do it to

save her life. She was not competent to decide for herself. Every

problem that had ever faced her had been decided by others for her.

Who but me could decide for her now? I longed to plead with her, to

show her how I was suffering; but I dared not. "She would

misunderstand," said I to myself. "She would think you were

weakening."

Full fifteen minutes of that frightful silence before she said: "I

will go where you wish." And she said it in a tone which makes me

wince as I recall it now.

I called my partner's address up through the tube. Again that

frightful silence, then she was trying to choke back the sobs. A few

words I caught: "They have broken my will--they have broken my will."

Ball lived in a big, graystone house that stood apart and commanded a

noble view of the Hudson and the Palisades. It was, in the main, a

reproduction of a French chateau, and such changes as the architect

had made in his model were not positively disfiguring, though amusing.

There should have been trees and shrubbery about it, but--"As Mrs. B.

says," Joe had explained to me, "what's the use of sinking a lot of

cash in a house people can't see?" So there was not a bush, not a

flower. Inside---- One day Ball took me on a tour of the art shops.

"I've got a dozen corners and other big bare spots to fill," said he.

"Mrs. B. hates to give up money, haggles over every article. I'm going

to put the job through in business style." I soon discovered that I

had been brought along to admire his "business style," not to suggest.

After two hours, in which he bought in small lots about a carload of

statuary, paintings, vases and rugs, he said, "This is too slow." He

pointed his stick at a crowded corner of the shop. "How much for that

bunch of stuff?" he demanded. The proprietor gave him a figure. "I'll

close," said Joe, "if you'll give fifteen off for cash." The

proprietor agreed. "Now we're done," said Joe to me. "Let's go

downtown, and maybe I can pick up what I've dropped."

You can imagine that interior. But don't picture it as notably worse

than the interior of the average New York palace. It was, if anything,

better than those houses, where people who deceive themselves about

their lack of taste have taken great pains to prevent anyone else from

being deceived. One could hardly move in Joe's big rooms for the

litter of gilded and tapestried furniture, and their crowded walls

made the eyes ache.

The appearance of the man who opened the door for Anita and me

suggested that our ring had roused him from a bed where he had

deposited himself without bothering to take off his clothes. At the

sound of my voice, Ball peered out of his private smoking room, at the

far end of the hall. He started forward; then, seeing how I was

accompanied, stopped with mouth ajar. He had on a ragged smoking

jacket, a pair of shapeless old Romeo slippers, his ordinary business

waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing neither tie nor collar, and a

short, black pipe was between his fingers. We had evidently caught the

household stripped of "lugs," and sunk in the down-at-the-heel

slovenliness which it called "comfort." Joe was crimson with

confusion, and was using his free hand to stroke, alternately, his

shiny bald head and his heavy brown mustache. He got himself together

sufficiently, after a few seconds, to disappear into his den. When he

came out again, pipe and ragged jacket were gone, and he rushed for us

in a gorgeous gray velvet jacket with dark red facings, and a showy

pair of slippers.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Blacklock"--he always addressed every man as

Mister in his own house, just as "Mrs. B." always called him "Mister

Ball," and he called her "Missus Ball" before "company." "Come right

into the front parlor. Billy, turn on the electric lights."

Anita had been standing with her head down. She now looked round with

shame and terror in those expressive blue-gray eyes of hers; her

delicate nostrils were quivering. I hastened to introduce Ball to her.

Her impulse to fly passed; her training in doing the conventional

thing asserted itself. She lowered her head again, murmured an

inaudible acknowledgment of Joe's greeting.

"Your wife is at home?" said I. If one was at home in the evening, the

other always was also, and both were always there, unless they were at

some theater--except on Sunday night, when they dined at Sherry's,

because many fashionable people did it. They had no friends and few

acquaintances. In their humbler and happy days they had had many

friends, but had lost them when they moved away from Brooklyn and went

to live, like uneasy, out-of-place visitors, in their grand house,

pretending to be what they longed to be, longing to be what they

pretended to be, and as discontented as they deserved.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. B.'s at home," Joe answered. "I guess she and Alva

were--about to go to bed." Alva was their one child. She had been

christened Malvina, after Joe's mother; but when the Balls "blossomed

out" they renamed her Alva, which they somehow had got the impression

was "smarter."

At Joe's blundering confession that the females of the family were in

no condition to receive, Anita said to me in a low voice: "Let us go."

I pretended not to hear. "Rout 'em out," said I to Joe. "And then take

my electric and bring the nearest parson. There's going to be a

wedding--right here." And I looked round the long salon, with

everything draped for the summer departure. Joe whisked the cover off

one chair, his man off another. "I'll have the women folks down in two

minutes," he cried. Then to the man: "Get a move on you, Billy. Stir

'em up in the kitchen. Do the best you can about supper--and put a lot

of champagne on the ice. That's the main thing at a wedding."

Anita had seated herself listlessly in one of the uncovered chairs.

The wrap slipped back from her shoulders and--how proud I was of her!

Joe gazed, took advantage of her not looking up to slap me on the back

and to jerk his head in enthusiastic approval. Then he, too,

disappeared.

A wait, during which we could hear through the silence excited

undertones from the upper floors. The words were indistinct until

Joe's heavy voice sent down to us an angry "No damn' nonsense, I tell

you. Allie's got to come, too. She's not such a fool as you think. Bad

example--bosh!"

Anita started up. "Oh--please--please!" she cried. "Take me

away--anywhere! This is dreadful."

It was, indeed, dreadful. If I could have had my way at just that

moment, it would have gone hard with "Mrs. B." and "Allie"--and

heavy-voiced Joe, too. But I hid my feelings. "There's nowhere else to

go," said I, "except the brougham."

She sank helplessly into her chair.

A few minutes more of silence, and there was a rustling on the stairs.

She started up, trembling, looked round, as if seeking some way of

escape or some place to hide. Joe was in the doorway holding aside one

of the curtains. There entered, in a beribboned and beflounced tea

gown, a pretty, if rather ordinary, woman of forty, with a petulant

baby face. She was trying to look reserved and severe. She hardly

glanced at me before fastening sharp, suspicious eyes on Anita.

"Mrs. Ball," said I, "this is Miss Ellersly."

"Miss Ellersly!" she exclaimed, her face changing. And she advanced

and took both Anita's hands. "Mr. Ball is so stupid," she went on,

with that amusingly affected accent which is the "Sunday clothes" of

speech.

"I didn't catch the name, my dear," Joe stammered.

"Be off," said I, aside, to him. "Get the nearest preacher, and hustle

him here with his tools."

I had one eye on Anita all the time, and I saw her gaze follow Joe as

he hurried out; and her expression made my heart ache. I heard him

saying in the hall, "Go in, Allie. It's O. K.;" heard the door slam,

knew we should soon have some sort of minister with us.

"Allie" entered the drawing room. I had not seen her in six years. I

remembered her unpleasantly as a great, bony, florid child, unable to

stand still or to sit still, or to keep her tongue still, full of

aimless questions and giggles and silly remarks, which she and her

mother thought funny. I saw her now, grown into a handsome young

woman, with enough beauty points for an honorable mention, if not for

a prize--straight and strong and rounded, with a brow and a keen look

out of the eyes which it seemed a pity should be wasted on a woman.

Her mother's looks, her father's good sense, a personality got from

neither, but all her own, and unusual and interesting.

"From what Mr. Ball said," Mrs. Ball was gushing affectedly to Anita,

"I got an idea, that--well, really, I didn't know _what_ to think."

Anita looked as if she were about to suffocate. Allie came to the

rescue. "Not very complimentary to Mr. Blacklock, mother," said she,

good-humoredly. Then to Anita, with a simple friendliness there was no

resisting: "Wouldn't you like to come up to my room for a few

minutes?"

"Oh, thank you," responded Anita, after a quick but thorough

inspection of Alva's face, to make sure she was like her voice. I had

not counted on this; I had been assuming that Anita would not be out

of my sight until we were married. It was on the tip of my tongue to

interfere when she looked at me--for permission to go. "Don't keep her

too long," said I to Alva, and they were gone.

"You can't blame me--really you can't, Mr. Blacklock," Mrs. Ball began

to plead for herself, as soon as they were safely out of hearing.

"After some things--mere hints, you understand--for I'm careful what I

permit Mr. Ball to say before _me_. I think married people cannot be

too respectful of each other. I _never_ tolerate _vulgarity_."

"No doubt, Joe has made me out a very vulgar person," said I,

forgetting her lack of sense of humor.

"Oh, not at all, not at all, Mr. Blacklock," she protested, in a panic

lest she had done her husband damage with me. "I understand, men will

be men, though as a pure-minded woman, I'm sure I can't imagine why

they should be."

"How far off is the nearest church?" I cut in.

"Only two blocks--that is, the Methodist church," she replied. "But I

know Mr. Ball will bring an Episcopalian."

"Why, I thought you were a devoted Presbyterian," said I, recalling

how in their Brooklyn days she used to insist on Joe's going with her

twice every Sunday to sleep through long sermons.

She looked uncomfortable. "I was reared Presbyterian," she explained,

confusedly, "but you know how it is in New York. And when we came to

live here, we got out of the habit of churchgoing. And all Alva's

little friends were Episcopalians. So I drifted toward that church. I

find the service so satisfying--so--elegant. And--one sees there the

people one sees socially."

"How is your culture class?" I inquired, deliberately malicious, in my

impatience and nervousness. "And do you still take conversation

lessons?"

She was furiously annoyed. "Oh, those old jokes of Joe's," she said,

affecting disdainful amusement.

In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she

used to attend a class for women who, like herself, wished to be

"up-to-date on culture and all that sort of thing." They hired a

teacher to cram them with odds and ends about art and politics and the

"latest literature, heavy and light." On Tuesdays and Fridays she had

an "indigent gentlewoman," whatever that may be, come to her to teach

her how to converse and otherwise conduct herself according to the

"standards of polite society." Joe used to give imitations of those

conversation lessons that raised roars of laughter round the poker

table, the louder because so many of the other men had wives with the

same ambitions and the same methods of attaining them.

Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita. "I am glad you are going

to settle with such a charming girl. She comes of such a charming

family. I have never happened to meet any of them. We are in the West

Side set, you know, while they move in the East Side set, and New York

is so large that one almost never meets anyone outside one's own set."

This smooth snobbishness, said in the affected "society" tone, was as

out of place in her as rouge and hair dye in a wholesome, honest old

grandmother.

I began to pace the floor. "Can it be," I fretted aloud, "that Joe's

racing round looking for an Episcopalian preacher, when there was a

Methodist at hand?"

"I'm sure he wouldn't bring anything but a Church of England priest,"

Mrs. Ball assured me, loftily. "Why, Miss Ellersly wouldn't think she

was married, if she hadn't a priest of her own church."

My temper got the bit in its teeth. I stopped before her, and fixed

her with an eye that must have had some fire in it. "I'm not marrying

a fool, Mrs. Ball," said I. "You mustn't judge her by her bringing

up--by her family. Children have a way of bringing themselves up, in

spite of damn fool parents."

She weakened so promptly that I was ashamed of myself. My only excuse

for getting out of patience with her is that I had seen her seldom in

the last few years, had forgotten how matter-of-surface her

affectation and snobbery were, and how little they interfered with her

being a good mother and a good wife, up to the limits of her brain

capacity.

"I'm sure, Mr. Blacklock," she said, plaintively, "I only wished to

say what was pleasant and nice about your fiancee. I know she's a

lovely girl. I've often admired her at the opera. She goes a great

deal in Mrs. Langdon's box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the

board of managers of the Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the

Hospital for Unfortunate Gentlefolk." And so on, and on.

I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables

and cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the

minister--and he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen

Mrs. Ball's look as he advanced his portly form and round face with

its shaven upper lip into the drawing room. She tried to be cordial,

but she couldn't--her mind was on Anita, and the horror which would

fill her when she discovered that she was to be married by a preacher

of a sect unknown to fashionable circles.

"All I ask of you," said I, "is that you cut it as short as possible.

Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous." This while we were shaking hands

after Joe's introduction.

"You can count on me, sir," said McCabe, giving my hand an extra shake

before dropping it. "I've no doubt, from what my young neighbor here

tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and with

all solemnity. The form is an incident--important, but only an

incident."

I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice

had more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard

in New York in many a day. I mentally added fifty dollars to the fee I

had intended to give him. And now Anita and Alva were coming down the

stairway. I was amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given

place to a pretty blue street suit with a short skirt--white showing

at her wrists, at her neck and through slashings in the coat over her

bosom; and on her head was a hat to match. I looked at her feet--the

slippers had been replaced by boots. "And they're just right for her,"

said Alva, who was following my glance, "though I'm not so tall as

she."

But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that Anita seemed to be

almost in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe's

daughter one of those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that

they rarely live long after the passing of the heat of the emergency

which bred them. Mrs. Ball saw it, also, and was straightway giddied

into a sort of ecstasy. You can imagine the visions it conjured. I've

no doubt she talked house on the east side of the park to Joe that

very night, before she let him sleep. However, Anita's face was

serious enough when we took our places before the minister, with his

little, black-bound book open. And as he read in a voice that was

genuinely impressive those words that no voice could make

unimpressive, I watched her, saw her paleness blanch into pallor, saw

the dusk creep round her eyes until they were like stars waning

somberly before the gray face of dawn. When they closed and her head

began to sway, I steadied her with my arm. And so we stood, I with my

arm round her, she leaning lightly against my shoulder. Her answers

were mere movements of the lips.

At the end, when I kissed her cheek, she said: "Is it over?"

"Yes," McCabe answered--she was looking at him. "And I wish you all

happiness, Mrs. Blacklock."

She stared at him with great wondering eyes. Her form relaxed. I

carried her to a chair. Joe came with a glass of champagne; she drank

some of it, and it brought life back to her face, and some color. With

a naturalness that deceived even me for the moment, she smiled up at

Joe as she handed him the glass. "Is it bad luck," she asked, "for me

to be the first to drink my own health?" And she stood, looking

tranquilly at everyone--except me.

I took McCabe into the hall and paid him off. When we came back, I

said: "Now we must be going."

"Oh, but surely you'll stay for supper!" cried Joe's wife.

"No," replied I, in a tone which made it impossible to insist. "We

appreciate your kindness, but we've imposed on it enough." And I shook

hands with her and with Allie and the minister, and, linking Joe's arm

in mine, made for the door. I gave the necessary directions to my

chauffeur while we were waiting for Anita to come down the steps.

Joe's daughter was close beside her, and they kissed each other

good-by, Alva on the verge of tears, Anita not suggesting any emotion

of any sort. "To-morrow--sure," Anita said to her. And she answered:

"Yes, indeed--as soon as you telephone me." And so we were off, a

shower of rice rattling on the roof of the brougham--the slatternly

manservant had thrown it from the midst of the group of servants.

Neither of us spoke. I watched her face without seeming to do so, and

by the light of occasional street lamps saw her studying me furtively.

At last she said: "I wish to go to my uncle's now."

"We are going home," said I.

"But the house will be shut up," said she, "and everyone will be in

bed. It's nearly midnight. Besides, they might not----" She came to a

full stop.

"We are going home," I repeated. "To the Willoughby."

She gave me a look that was meant to scorch--and it did. But I showed

at the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.

She drew further into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a

low voice: "How I _hate_ you!" like the whisper of a bullet.

I kept silent until I had control of myself. Then, as if talking of a

matter which had been finally and amicably settled, I began: "The

apartment isn't exactly ready for us, but Joe's just about now

telephoning my man that we are coming, and telephoning your people to

send your maid down there."

"I wish to go to my uncle's," she repeated.

"My wife will go with me," said I, quietly and gently. "I am

considerate of her, not of _her_ unwise impulses."

A long pause, then from her, in icy calmness: "I am in your power just

now, but I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle's, you

will wish you had never seen me."

"I've wished that many times already," said I, sadly. "I've wished it

from the bottom of my heart this whole evening, when step by step fate

has been forcing me on to do things that are even more hateful to me

than to you. For they not only make me hate myself, but make you hate

me, too." I laid my hand on her arm and held it there, though she

tried to draw away. "Anita," I said, "I would do anything for

you--live for you, die for you. But there's that something inside

me--you've felt it--and when it says 'must,' I can't disobey--you know

I can't. And, though you might break my heart, you could not break

that will. It's as much your master as it is mine."

"We shall see--to-morrow," she said.

"Do not put me to the test," I pleaded. Then I added what I knew to be

true: "But you will not. You know it would take some one stronger than

your uncle, stronger than your parents, to drive me from what I

believe right for you and for me." From the moment that I found the

bogy of conventionality potent enough with her to frighten her into

keeping her word and marrying me, I had no fear for "to-morrow." The

hour when she could defy me had passed.

A long, long silence, the electric speeding southward under the

arching trees of the West Drive. I remember it was as we skirted the

lower end of the Mall that she said evenly: "You have made me hate you

so that it terrifies me. I am afraid of the consequences that must

come to you and to me."

"And well you may be," I answered, gently. "For you've seen enough of

me to get at least a hint of what I would do, if you drove me to it.

Hate is terrible, Anita, but love can be more terrible."

At the Willoughby she let me help her descend from the electric,

waited until I sent it away, walked beside me into the building. My

man, Sanders, had evidently been listening for the elevator; the door

opened without my ringing, and there he was, bowing low. She

acknowledged his welcome with that regard for "appearances" which

training had made instinctive. In the center of my--our--drawing-room

table was a mass of gorgeous roses. "Where did you get 'em?" I asked

him, in an aside.

"The elevator boy's brother, sir," he replied, "works in the florist's

shop just across the street, next to the church. He happened to be

downstairs when I got your message, sir. So I was able to get a few

flowers. I'm sorry, sir, I hadn't a little more time."

"You've done noble," said I, and I shook hands with him warmly.

Anita was greeting those flowers as if they were a friend suddenly

appearing in a time of need. She turned now and beamed on Sanders.

"Thank you," she said; "thank you." And Sanders was hers.

"Anything I can do--ma'am--sir?" asked Sanders.

"Nothing--except send my maid as soon as she comes," she replied.

"I shan't need you," said I.

"Mr. Monson is still here," he said, lingering. "Shall I send him

away, sir, or do you wish to see him?"

"I'll speak to him myself in a moment," I answered.

When Sanders was gone, she seated herself and absently played with the

buttons of her glove.

"Shall I bring Monson?" I asked. "You know, he's my--factotum."

"_I_ do not wish to see him," she answered.

"You do not like him?" said I.

After a brief hesitation she answered, "No."

I restrained a strong impulse to ask her why, for instinct told me she

had some especial reason that somehow concerned me. I said merely:

"Then I shall get rid of him."

"Not on my account," she replied, indifferently. "I care nothing about

him one way or the other."

"He goes at the end of his month," said I.

She was now taking off her gloves. "Before your maid comes," I went

on, "let me explain about the apartment. This room and the two leading

out of it are yours. My own suit is on the other side of our private

hall there."

She colored high, paled. I saw that she did not intend to speak.

I stood awkwardly, waiting for something further to come into my own

head. "Good-night," said I, finally, bowing as if I were taking leave

of a formal acquaintance at the end of a formal call.

She did not answer.

I left the room, closing the door behind me. I paused an instant,

heard the key click in the lock. And I burned in a hot flush of

shame--shame that she should have thought so basely of me. For I did

not then realize how far apart we were, and utterly in the dark, each

toward the other. I joined Monson in my little smoking room.

"Congratulate you," he began, with his nasty, supercilious grin, which

of late had been getting on my nerves severely.

"Thanks," I replied, curtly, paying no attention to his outstretched

hand. "I want you to put a notice of the marriage in to-morrow

morning's _Herald_."

"Give me the facts--clergyman's name--place, and so on," said he.

"Unnecessary," I answered. "Just our names and the date--that's all.

You'd better step lively. It's late, and it'll be too late if you

delay."

With an irritating show of deliberation he lit a fresh cigarette

before setting out. I heard her maid come. After about an hour I went

into the hall--no light showed through the transoms of her suit. I

returned to my own part of the flat and went to bed in the spare room

to which Sanders had hastily moved my personal belongings. And almost

as soon as my head touched the pillow I was asleep. That day which

began in disaster--in what a blaze of triumph it had ended! Anita--she

was my wife, and under my roof! But stronger than the sense of victory

won was a new emotion--a sense of a duty done, of a responsibility

begun.

XIV.

Joe got to the office rather later than usual the next morning. They

told him I was already there, but he wouldn't believe it until he had

come into my private den and with his own eyes had seen me. "Well, I'm

jiggered!" said he. "It seems to have made less impression on you than

it did on us. My missus and the little un wouldn't let me go to bed

till after two. They sat on and on, questioning me and discussing."

I laughed--partly because I knew that Joe, like most men, was as full

of gossip and as eager for it as a convalescent old maid, and that,

whoever might have been the first at his house to make the break for

bed, he was the last to leave off talking. But the chief reason for my

laugh was that, just before he came in on me, I was almost pinching

myself to see whether I was dreaming it all, and he had made me feel

how vividly true it was.

"Why don't you ease down, Blacklock?" he went on. "Everything's

smooth. The business--at least, my end of it, and I suppose your end,

too--was never in better shape, never growing so fast. You could go

off for a week or two, just as well as not."

And he honestly thought it, so little did I let him know about the

larger enterprises of Blacklock & Co. I could have spoken a dozen

words, and he would have been floundering like a caught fish in a

basket. There are men--a very few--who work more swiftly and more

surely when they know they're on the brink of ruin; but not Joe. One

glimpse of our real National Coal account, and all my power over him

couldn't have kept him from showing the whole Street that Blacklock &

Co. was shaky. And whenever the Street begins to think a man is shaky,

he must be strong indeed to escape the fate of the wolf that stumbles

as it runs with the pack.

"No holiday at present, Joe," was my reply to his suggestion. "Perhaps

the second week in July; but our marriage was so sudden that we

haven't had the time to get ready for a trip."

"Yes--it _was_ sudden, wasn't it?" said Joe, curiosity twitching his

nose like a dog's at scent of a rat. "How did it happen?"

"Oh, I'll tell you some time," replied I. "I must go to work now."

And work a-plenty there was. Before me rose a huge sheaf of clamorous

telegrams from our out-of-town customers and our agents; and soon my

anteroom was crowded with my local following, sore and shorn. I

suppose a score or more of the habitual heavy plungers on my tips were

ruined and hundreds of others were thousands and tens of thousands out

of pocket. "Do you want me to talk to these people?" inquired Joe,

with the kindly intention of giving me a chance to shift the

unpleasant duty to him.

"Certainly not," said I. "When the place is jammed, let me know. I'll

jack 'em up."

It made Joe uneasy for me even to talk of using my "language"--he

would have crawled from the Battery to Harlem to keep me from using it

on him. So he silently left me alone. My system of dealing face to

face with the speculating and investing public had many great

advantages over that of all the other big operators--the system of

decoying the public from behind cleverly contrived screens and

slaughtering it without showing so much as the tip of a gun or nose

that could be identified. But to my method there was a disadvantage

that made men, who happen to have more hypocrisy and less nerve than

I, shrink from it--when one of my tips miscarried, down upon me would

swoop the bad losers in a body to give me a turbulent and interesting

quarter of an hour.

Toward ten o'clock, my boy came in and said: "Mr. Ball thinks it's

about time for you to see some of these people."

I went into the main room, where the tickers and blackboards were. As

I approached through my outer office I could hear the noise the crowd

was making--as they cursed me. If you want to rile the very inmost

soul of the average human being, don't take his reputation or his

wife; just cause him to lose money. There were among my customers many

with the true, even-tenored sporting instinct. These were bearing

their losses with philosophy--none of them was there. Of the perhaps

three hundred who had come to ease their anguish by tongue-lashing me,

every one was mad through and through--those who had lost a few

hundred dollars as infuriated as those whom my misleading tip had cost

thousands and tens of thousands; those whom I had helped to win all

they had in the world more savage than those new to my following.

I took my stand in the doorway, a step up from the floor of the main

room. I looked all round until I had met each pair of angry eyes. They

say I can give my face an expression that is anything but agreeable;

such talent as I have in that direction I exerted then. The instant I

appeared a silence fell; but I waited until the last pair, of claws

drew in. Then I said, in the quiet tone the army officer uses when he

tells the mob that the machine guns will open up in two minutes by the

watch: "Gentlemen, in the effort to counteract my warning to the

public, the Textile crowd rocketed the stock yesterday. Those who

heeded my warning and sold got excellent prices. Those who did not

should sell to-day. Not even the powerful interests behind Textile can

long maintain yesterday's prices."

A wave of restlessness passed over the crowd. Many shifted their eyes

from me and began to murmur.

I raised my voice slightly as I went on: "The speculators, the

gamblers, are the only people who were hurt. Those who sold what they

didn't have are paying for their folly. I have no sympathy for them.

Blacklock & Co. wishes none such in its following, and seizes every

opportunity to weed them out. We are in business only for the bona

fide investing public, and we are stronger with that public to-day

than we have ever been."

Again I looked from coward to coward of that mob, changed from three

hundred strong to three hundred weak. Then I bowed and withdrew,

leaving them to mutter and disperse. I felt well content with the

trend of events--I who wished to impress the public and the financiers

that I had broken with speculation and speculators, could I have had a

better than this unexpected opportunity sharply to define my new

course? And as Textiles, unsupported, fell toward the close of the

day, my content rose toward my normal high spirits. There was no

whisper in the Street that I was in trouble; on the contrary, the idea

was gaining ground that I had really long ceased to be a stock gambler

and deserved a much better reputation than I had. Reputation is a

matter of diplomacy rather than of desert. In all my career I was

never less entitled to a good reputation than in those June days; yet

the disastrous gambling follies, yes, and worse, I then committed,

formed the secure foundation of my reputation for conservatism and

square dealing. From that time dates the decline of the habit the

newspapers had of speaking of me as "Black Matt" or "Matt" Blacklock.

In them, and therefore in the public mind, I began to figure as "Mr.

Blacklock" and "the well-known authority on finance."

No doubt, my marriage had something to do with this. Probably one

couldn't borrow much money directly in New York on the strength of a

fashionable marriage; but, so all-pervading is the snobbishness there,

one can get, by making a fashionable marriage, any quantity of that

deferential respect from rich people which is, in some circumstances,

easily convertible into cash and credit.

I waited with a good deal of anxiety, as you may imagine, for the

early editions of the afternoon papers. The first article my eye

chanced upon was a mere wordy elaboration of the brief and vague

announcement Monson had put in the _Herald_. Later came an interview

with old Ellersly. "Not at all mysterious," he had said to the

reporters. "Mr. Blacklock found he would have to go abroad on business

soon--he didn't know just when. On the spur of the moment they decided

to marry." A good enough story, and I confirmed it when I admitted the

reporters. I read their estimates of my fortune and of Anita's with

rather bitter amusement--she whose father was living from hand to

mouth; I who could not have emerged from a forced settlement with

enough to enable me to keep a trap. Still, when one is rich, the

reputation of being rich is heavily expensive; but when one is poor

the reputation of being rich can be made a wealth-giving asset.

Even as I was reading these fables of my millions, there lay on the

desk before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs--a

memorandum made by myself for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as

I mastered it. On the face of the figures the balance against me was

appalling. My chief asset, indeed my only asset that measured up

toward my debts, was my Coal stocks, those bought and those contracted

for; and, while their par value far exceeded my liabilities, they had

to appear in my memorandum at their actual market value on that day. I

looked at the calendar--seventeen days until the reorganization scheme

would be announced, only seventeen days!

Less than three business weeks, and I should be out of the storm and

sailing safer and smoother seas than I had ever known. "To indulge

_hopes_ is bad," thought I, "but not to indulge _a_ hope, when one has

only it between him and the pit." And I proceeded to plan on the not

unwarranted assumption that my coal hope was a present reality.

Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among the future's

uncertainties was to put myself among the utterly ruined. Using as

collateral the Coal stocks I had bought outright, I borrowed more

money, and with it went still deeper into the Coal venture.

The morality of these and many of my other doings in those days will

no doubt be severely condemned. By no one more severely than by

myself--now that the necessities which then compelled me have passed.

There is no subject on which men talk, and think, more humbug than on

that subject of morality. As a matter of fact, except in those

personal relations which are governed by the affections, what is

morality but the mandate of policy, and what is policy but the mandate

of necessity? My criticism of Roebuck and the other "high financiers"

is not upon their morality, but upon their policy, which is

shortsighted and stupid and base. The moral difference between me and

them is that, while I merely assert and maintain my right to live,

they deny the right of any but themselves to live. I say I criticise

them; but that does not mean that I sympathize with the public at

large in its complainings against them. The public, its stupidity and

cupidity, creates the conditions that breed and foster these men. A

rotten cheese reviling the maggots it has bred!

In those very hours when I was obeying the great imperative law of

self-preservation, was clutching at every log that floated by me

regardless of whether it was my property or not so long as it would

help me keep my head above water--what was going on all around me? In

every office of the downtown district--merchant, banker, broker,

lawyer, man of commerce or finance--was not every busy brain plotting

not self-preservation but pillage and sack--plotting to increase the

cost of living for the masses of men by slipping a little tax here and

a little tax there onto the cost of everything by which men live? All

along the line between the farm or mine or shop and the market, at

every one of the tollgates for the collection of _just_ charges, these

big financiers, backed up by the big lawyers and the rascally public

officials, had an agent in charge to collect on each passing article a

little more than was honestly due. A thousand subtle ways of levying,

all combining to pour in upon the few the torrents of unjust wealth. I

always laugh when I read of laboring men striking for higher wages.

Poor, ignorant fools--they almost deserve their fate. They had better

be concerning themselves with a huge, universal strike at the polls

for lower prices. What will it avail them to get higher wages, so long

as their masters control and can and will recoup on, the prices of all

the things for which those wages must be spent?

However, as I was saying, I lived in Wall Street, in its atmosphere of

the practical morality of "finance." On every side swindling

operations, great and small; operations regarded as right through

long-established custom, dishonest or doubtful; operations on the way

to becoming established by custom as "respectable." No man's title to

anything conceded unless he had the brains to defend it. There was a

time when it would have been regarded as wildly preposterous and

viciously immoral to deny property rights in human beings. There may

come a time--who knows?--when "high finance's" denial of a moral right

to property of any kind may cease to be regarded as wicked. However, I

attempt no excuses for myself; I need them no more than a judge in the

Dark Ages needed to apologize for ordering a witch to the stake. I

could no more have done differently than a fish could breathe on land

or a man under water. I did as all the others did--and I had the

justification of necessity. Right of might being the code, when men

set upon me with pistols, I meet them with pistols, not with the

discarded and antiquated weapons of sermon and prayer and the law.

And I thought extremely well of myself and of my pistols that June

afternoon, as I was hurrying uptown the moment the day's settlement on

'Change was finished. I had sent out my daily letter to investors, and

its tone of confidence was genuine--I knew that hundreds of customers

of a better class would soon be flocking in to take the places of

those I had been compelled to teach a lesson in the vicissitudes of

gambling. With a light heart and the physical feeling of a football

player in training, I sped toward home. Home! For the first time since

I was a squat little slip of a shaver the word had a personal meaning

for me. Perhaps, if the only other home of mine had been less

uninviting, I should not have looked forward with such high beating of

the heart to that cold home Anita was making for me. No, I withdraw

that. It is fellows like me, to whom kindly looks and unbought

attentions are as unfamiliar as flowers to the Arctic--it is men like

me that appreciate and treasure and warm up under the faintest show or

shadowy suggestion of the sunshine of sentiment. I'd be a little

ashamed to say how much money I handed out to servants and beggars and

street gamins that day. I had a home to go to!

As my electric drew up at the Willoughby, a carriage backed to make

room for it. I recognized the horses and the driver and the crests.

"How long has Mrs. Ellersly been with my wife?" I asked the elevator

boy, as he was taking me up.

"About half an hour, sir," he answered. "But Mr. Ellersly--I took up

his card before lunch, and he's still there."

Instead of using my key, I rang the bell, and when Sanders opened, I

said: "Is Mrs. Blacklock in?" in a voice loud enough to penetrate to

the drawing room.

As I had hoped, Anita appeared. Her dress told me that her trunks had

come--she had sent for her trunks! "Mother and father are here," said

she, without looking at me.

I followed her into the drawing room and, for the benefit of the

servants, Mr. and Mrs. Ellersly and I greeted each other courteously,

though Mrs. Ellersly's eyes and mine met in a glance like the flash of

steel on steel. "We were just going," said she, and then I felt that I

had arrived in the midst of a tempest of uncommon fury.

"You must stop and make me a visit," protested I, with elaborate

politeness. To myself I was assuming that they had come to "make up

and be friends"--and resume their places at the trough.

"I wish we could," she answered, in her best manner. And she was

moving toward the door, the old man in her wake. Neither of them

offered to shake hands with me; neither made pretense of saying

good-by to Anita, standing by the window like a pillar of ice. I had

closed the drawing-room door behind me, as I entered. I was about to

open it for them when I was restrained by what I saw working in the

old woman's face. She had set her will on escaping from my loathed

presence without a "scene"; but her rage at having been outgeneraled

was too fractious for her will.

"You scoundrel!" she hissed, her whole body shaking and her carefully

cultivated appearance of the gracious evening of youth swallowed up in

a black cyclone of hate. "You gutter plant! God will punish you for

the shame you have brought upon us."

I opened the door and bowed, without a word, without even the desire

to return insult for insult--had not Anita again and finally rejected

them and chosen me? As they passed into the private hall I rang for

Sanders to come and let them out. When I turned back into the drawing

room, Anita was seated, was reading a book. I waited until I saw she

was not going to speak. Then I said: "What time will you have dinner?"

But my face must have been expressing some of the joy and gratitude

that filled me. "She has chosen me!" I was saying to myself over and

over.

"Whenever you usually have it," she replied, without looking up.

"At seven o'clock, then. You had better tell Sanders." And I rang for

him and went into my little smoking room. She had resisted her

parents' final appeal to her to return to them. She had cast in her

lot with me. "The rest can be left to time," said I to myself. And,

reviewing all that had happened, I let a wild hope thrust tenacious

roots deep into me--the hope that she did not quite understand her own

mind as to me. How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge

would make the step falter and the heart quail. Who would have the

courage, not to speak of the desire, to live his life, if he knew his

own future?

XV.

During dinner I bore the whole burden of conversation--though burden I

did not find it. Like most of the most reticent men, I am extremely

talkative. Silence sets people to wondering and prying; he hides his

secrets best who hides them at the bottom of a river of words. If my

spirits are high, I often talk aloud to myself when there is no one

convenient. And how could my spirits be anything but high, with her

sitting there opposite me, mine, mine for better or for worse, through

good and evil report--my wife!

She was only formally responsive, reluctant and brief in answers,

volunteering nothing. The servants waiting on us no doubt laid her

manner to shyness; I understood it, or thought I did--but I was not

troubled. It is as natural for me to hope as to breathe; and with my

knowledge of character, how could I take seriously the moods and

impulses of one whom I regarded as a childlike girl, trained in false

pride and false ideals? "She has chosen to stay with me," said I to

myself. "Actions count, not words or manner. A few days or weeks, and

she will be herself, and mine." And I went gayly on with my efforts to

interest her, to make her smile and forget the role she had commanded

herself to play. Nor was I wholly unsuccessful. Again and again I

thought I saw a gleam of interest in her eyes or the beginnings of a

smile about that sweet mouth of hers. I was careful not to overdo my

part. As soon as we finished dessert I said: "You loathe cigar smoke,

so I'll hide myself in my den. Sanders will bring you the cigarettes."

I had myself telephoned for a supply of her kind early in the day.

She made a polite protest for the benefit of the servants; but I was

firm, and she was free to think things over alone in the drawing

room--"your sitting room," I called it now. I had not finished a small

cigar when there came a timid knock at my door. I threw away the cigar

and opened. "I thought it was you," said I. "I'm familiar with the

knocks of all the others. And this was new--like a summer wind tapping

with a flower for admission at a closed window." And I laughed with a

little raillery, and she smiled, colored, tried to seem cold and

hostile again.

"Shall I go with you to your sitting room?" I went on. "Perhaps the

cigar smoke here----"

"No, no," she interrupted; "I don't really mind cigars--and the

windows are wide open. Besides, I came for only a moment--just to

say----"

As she cast about for words to carry her on, I drew up a chair for

her. She looked at it uncertainly, seated herself. "When mamma was

here--this afternoon," she went on, "she was urging me to--to do what

she wished. And after she had used several arguments, without changing

me--she said something I--I've been thinking it over, and it seemed I

ought in fairness to tell you."

I waited.

"She said: 'In a few days more he'--that meant you--'he will be

ruined. He imagines the worst is over for him, when in fact they've

only begun.'"

"They!" I repeated. "Who are 'they'? The Langdons?"

"I think so," she replied, with an effort. "She did not say--I've told

you her exact words--as far as I can."

"Well," said I, "and why didn't you go?"

She pressed her lips firmly together. Finally, with a straight look

into my eyes, she replied: "I shall not discuss that. You probably

misunderstand, but that is your own affair."

"You believed what she said about me, of course," said I.

"I neither believed nor disbelieved," she answered, indifferently, as

she rose to go. "It does not interest me."

"Come here," said I. And I waited until she reluctantly joined me at

the window. I pointed to the steeple of the church across the way.

"You could as easily throw down that steeple by pushing against it

with your bare hands," I said to her, "as 'they,' whoever they are,

could put me down. They might take away my money. But if they did,

they would only be giving me a lesson that would teach me how more

easily to get it back again. I am not a bundle of stock certificates

or a bag of money. I am--here," and I tapped my forehead.

She forced a faint, scornful smile. She did not wish me to see her

belief of what I said.

"You think that is vanity," I went on. "But you will learn, sooner or

later, the difference between boasting and simple statement of fact.

You will learn that I do not boast. What I said is no more a boast

than for a man with legs to say, 'I can walk.' Because you have known

only legless men, you exaggerate the difficulty of walking. It's as

easy for me to make money as it is for some people to spend it."

It is hardly necessary for me to say I was not insinuating anything

against her people. But she was just then supersensitive on the

subject, though I did not suspect it. She flushed hotly. "You will not

have any cause to sneer at my people on that account hereafter," she

said. "I settled _that_ to-day."

"I was not sneering at them," I protested. "I wasn't even thinking of

them. And--you must know that it's a favor to me for anybody to ask me

to do anything that will please you."

She made a gesture of impatience. "I see I'd better tell you why--part

of the reason why--I did not go with them to-day. I insisted that they

give back all they have taken from you. And when they refused, I

refused to go."

"I don't care why you refused," said I. "I am content with the fact

that you are here."

"But you misunderstand it," she said, coldly.

"I don't understand it, I don't misunderstand it," was my reply. "I

accept it."

She looked depressed, discouraged. She turned away from the window,

drifted out of the room. While the surface of my mind was taken up

with her, I must have been thinking, underneath, of the warning she

had brought; for, perhaps half or three-quarters of an hour after she

left, I was suddenly whirled out of my reverie at the window by a

thought like a pistol thrust into my face. "What if 'they' should

include Roebuck!" And just as a man begins to defend himself from a

sudden danger before he clearly sees what the danger is, so I began to

act before I even questioned whether my suspicion was plausible or

absurd. I went into the hall, rang the bell, slipped a lightweight

coat over my evening dress and put on a hat. When Sanders appeared, I

said: "I'm going out for a few minutes--perhaps an hour--if anyone

should ask." A moment later I was in a hansom and on the way to

Roebuck's.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE WINDOW

This is the window where, one day,

I watched him as he came,

When all the world was white with May,

And vibrant with his name.

His eyes to mine, my eyes to his--

Oh lad, how glad were we,

What time I leaned to catch the kiss

Your fingers tossed to me!

This is the window where, one day,

I crouched to see him go,

When all the world with wrath was gray

And desolate with snow.

Oh, this the glass where prophet-wise

My fate I needs must spell;

Through this I looked on Paradise,

Through this I looked on Hell.

THEODOSIA GARRISON.

AMERICANS IN LONDON

By LADY WILLSHIRE

The author of the following essay on "Americans in London" is

one of the most distinguished of the leaders of English Society.

She is the daughter of Sir Sanford Freeling, who was for a time

military secretary at Gibraltar. Her husband, Sir Arthur

Willshire, was an officer in the Guards. Lady Willshire, in

addition to her social activities, is, without ostentation, a

woman whose charities occupy a large part of her time. In

appearance she is over middle height, rather fragile, with great

charm of manner. She is an accomplished musician and linguist.

Her favorite recreations are riding, driving and bicycling, and

she is looked upon as the best dancer in London Society.

I can well remember the time when I could easily reckon up the whole

list of my American acquaintances resident in London on the fingers of

one hand, and most of those were the wives of English husbands.

That was certainly not more than ten years ago, and then the majority

of Americans that one chanced to meet in England were travelers, who

knew very little of, and cared less apparently to see or take part in,

the doings of our London society.

In ten years, however, amazing changes can and do take place,

especially where the natives of the States are concerned, and nowadays

I find that not only does it require a great many leaves in my

capacious address book to hold the names of the Americans--and the

women most particularly--who live and move and have a large part of

their social being in London, but that a very impressive majority of

these attractive and prominent ladies are not the life partners of

voting, title-holding British subjects at all.

The good work accomplished both ways by the international marriage

goes merrily on. At the present moment we can claim not less than

twenty-five peeresses of transatlantic birth, while we don't pretend

to keep anything like an exact record of the ever-increasing

acquisitions, from American sources, to our gentry class; but, for all

that, the present big average of American women who come across the

ocean to conduct a successful siege of London no longer regard the

English husband as a sort of necessary preliminary and essential ally

to the business of getting on in our smart metropolitan society.

The fair and welcome invader from the land of the free and the home of

the brave can, and does, "arrive" astonishingly well without masculine

assistance and encouragement.

She may appear as maid, wife or widow; sometimes as divorcee; but,

personally, she conducts her own campaign. Furthermore, she comes

fully equipped to carry everything before her--she has wit, wealth and

good looks at her command, and she works along approved and sensible

lines of action.

If she has a thoroughgoing conquest of London planned out, she does

not put up at a fashionable hotel and spread her fine plumage and wait

for notice.

She usually begins by taking a house; she furnishes it with original

but discreet good taste; she wears startlingly pretty gowns--quite the

best, as a rule, that Paris can supply; she gives the most taking

sorts of entertainments, and the ordinary result is that in one season

she is not only launched and talked about, but securely placed and

greatly admired.

And if you want to know why she does this thing, the answer you can

get, as I did, from her own mouth; she simply "likes London and London

society."

As an amiable, broad-minded woman, she does not love her own country

so much that she cannot find a place in her heart for London, too, and

that which chiefly appeals to her in our elderly, sprawling, sooty,

amusing and splendid old capital is the fact that she finds it

interesting.

There you have one explanation, at least, of the apparent phenomenon

of the ever-growing circle of American women in the very heart of our

biggest city. But it becomes a Londoner to confess that another good

reason why she is so familiar and conspicuous a figure among us is

because we reciprocate her liking with the strongest possible warmth

of admiration.

Not only do we regard our American colony with genuine enthusiasm, and

take pride and pleasure in the fact that it is the largest of its kind

in any European capital, but social London pleasantly feels its

influence.

Now, influence is one of those qualities that the American woman

carries about with her just as naturally as she carries her pretty

airs of independence, or her capacity for easy and amusing speech, and

it is a sad mistake for anyone to take it for granted that on her

wealth or her pulchritude alone all her claim to success and

popularity in England rests.

In no way that I know of has her influence been more sensibly and

beneficially felt among us than in the introduction of a quick,

vivacious tone to conversation.

Her gift for light, easy, semi-humorous talk, her gay, self-confident

way of telling a good story, constitute her a leading and most lasting

attraction in English estimation. From her the English woman has

learned, first, that which it seems every transatlantic sister is

aware by intuition, that one supreme duty of the sex, as it is

represented in society, is to know how to talk a little to everybody,

to talk always in sprightly fashion, and never to adopt the English

woman's depressing method of answering all conversational efforts and

overtures with chilling monosyllables.

It is no exaggeration to say that since the tremendous enlargement of

the American colony, the whole pace of London drawing-room talk has

enormously improved. We British are not by nature a sprightly and

speechful race, with the gift of gay gab, but under the American

woman's cheerful influence we are enjoying a sort of reformation.

We send our daughters even to a fashionable school in fashionable

Kensington, which is kept by a long-headed American woman, who will very

nearly guarantee to bid a door post discourse freely and be obeyed. And

the women to whom first honors are due for having inspired London with

a wholesome respect for what I may justly call the very superior

American parts of speech, are Mrs. George Cornwallis-West--perhaps

better known on both sides of the ocean as Lady Randolph

Churchill--and Consuelo, the Dowager Duchess of Manchester.

It would be a superfluous and ungrateful task to try to recall the

number of years that have flown since these two women, unusually

attractive as they are, even for Americans, came over to literally

take London by storm.

Suffice it to say that, as Shakespeare wrote of Cleopatra, "age cannot

wither nor custom stale her infinite variety;" and in spite of the

amazing influx of their young and lovely and accomplished countrywomen

into London since their day of arrival, these two ladies still stand,

as they have stood for years, at the very top of the entire American

set abroad.

Both of them, by marriage or through years of long association, have

become thoroughly identified with English society, but, unlike Lady

Vernon-Harcourt, widow of the great leader of the Liberal party, and

daughter of the famous historian Motley, they have never lost their

strong American individuality.

Lady Vernon-Harcourt, to sight and hearing, seems almost a typical and

thoroughgoing English woman, but Mrs. George Cornwallis-West and the

Duchess Consuelo are, to all intents and purposes, as distinctly

American as the day on which they were presented as brides and

beauties at one of Queen Victoria's drawing-rooms.

Then, as well as now, they were both fair to look upon, but they were

also something more--they were the cleverest of talkers, and the

beautiful Consuelo, in her soft, Southern voice, possessed a faculty

for quaint and witty turns of phrase that made her an instant

favorite.

At the time of her debut, London had yet to meet the American woman

who could not only chatter along cheerfully and intelligently, but who

could artfully and unembarrassedly tell an amusing story before the

big and critical audience that the average dinner table supplies. Our

fair Creole and the fair New Yorker were, however, more than equal to

all and any such emergencies and occasions.

It was with their capable tongues, quite as much as with their

charming faces, that they scored their social triumphs in England, and

it was mainly through their beguiling conversational powers that they

both caught the attention of the present king and queen--at that time

Prince and Princess of Wales--and aroused royalty's prompt and lasting

admiration.

Until that time no American could boast the fact that she was the

friend of the queen, prince or princess, but the young duchess and

Lady Randolph Churchill changed all that. They were the first of their

nation to be asked to the Sandringham house parties, to be included in

the lists of guests invited to meet royal folk at dinners, etc., and

to inspire in the present king and queen the thoroughgoing liking they

now cherish for American things in general and the American woman in

particular.

A good deal of brown Thames water has flowed under London Bridge, it

is true, since these exponents of two entirely different types of

American womanhood came over to astonish even our _blase_ society, but

no two of their sex and nation have succeeded in making a more deep

and lasting impression upon London than these, or have done more to

insure the social success of their countrywomen who followed in their

footsteps.

Consuelo, the duchess, is a grandmother to-day, but she is almost as

prominent a figure in the gay world as she ever was; unlike Mrs.

George Cornwallis-West, she never went in, so to speak, for political

prestige. She has cared for social gayety pure and simple, preserved

much of her beauty, maintained her reputation as the most delightful

house-party guest in England, and is noted nowadays as being, as well,

the most skillful, tactful and serenely polite bridge-whist partner in

the United Kingdom.

When, a few months ago, a house-party for royalty was given at

Chatsworth by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, it was at the urgent

request of both the king and queen that the Dowager Duchess of

Manchester came over from Paris to spend a few days under the same

roof with their majesties, whose affection for this low-voiced,

sweet-tempered, witty American woman has never wavered. Every now and

then one hears anew in London drawing rooms of some amusing saying of

hers, for she is as gracious and graceful a conversationalist as of

yore, and with three young and blooming American duchesses to rival

her, still stands well apart from and ahead of them all, at least so

far as the homage of our smart and titled society can be accepted as

proof of a woman's position.

Of all the three young duchesses, I think her youthful Grace of

Marlborough is far and away the most distinctly popular and

influential. She has conquered even the most indifferent and the most

prejudiced, by an exquisitely charming sweetness of manner that is

quite irresistible.

She does not possess what a Frenchman would call the _vif_ style of

her average countrywomen, and she is not a very vigorous talker, but

she is wonderfully sympathetic and attractive of manner; her porcelain

fine, aristocratic prettiness makes her a distinguished figure

wherever she goes, and from the first she presided at the head of her

vast establishment, and took her rightful position in England with a

natural dignity and a complete grasp of the situation that literally

took the breath away from the rather skeptical British onlooker.

There is a story told, _sub rosa_, of the discomfiture of a high-nosed

and rather too helpful aristocratic matron and relative, who, on the

arrival of her shy looking, slim young Grace, undertook to set her

right and well beforehand on points of etiquette, ducal duty and

responsibilities, etc.

Nobody knows to this day just what passed between the fair girl and

the stately matron, but the duchess was not very much bothered with

unnecessary advice after one short interview with her rather officious

social fairy-godmother. And if the duchess was not ready to take

advice, it was simply because she did not need it. When she gave her

first great house party at Blenheim, it rather outrivaled in splendor

anything of the sort done in England in a long time, and her chief

guests were royalties; nevertheless, there was not a hitch or a

mistake in all the elaborate proceedings; and a critical peer, who

enjoyed the magnificent hospitality of the Marlboroughs, was heard to

remark afterward that to be born an American millionairess is to

apparently know by instinct all that has to be taught from childhood

to a native English duchess.

That Her Grace of Marlborough has a natural taste for splendid

surroundings is shown by her fondness for big Blenheim and the

marvelous luxury she has introduced into every part of that vast

mansion; and when her indulgent father offered to buy for her a house

in London, she imposed but two guiding conditions on his choice for

her of a home in town.

"I want the biggest house on the most fashionable street," she is said

to have said. The result was that Mr. Vanderbilt purchased Sunderland

House, in Curzon Street, and there the duchess is fittingly installed.

There the most sumptuous decorating and furnishing has been done, and

when she entertains, her dinners will be the most splendid and her

balls the largest and most luxurious of the season, for whatever the

duchess does is done in almost regal style.

Eventually no London hostess can or will outshine her, and yet this

first among the American duchesses is not very socially inclined. She

prefers the country life and Blenheim to the best that London can give

her, and this taste is to a great measure shared by many of our

American peeresses and guests.

The Countess of Orford, Lady Monson, the Countess of Donoughmore, Mrs.

Spender Clay, Lady Charles Ross and Mrs. Langhorne Shaw, for example,

find English country life pre-eminently to their taste, and all but

avoid the town, save in the very height of the season.

Lady Orford--who was Miss Corbin--lives at Waborne Hall, her husband's

magnificent Georgian place in Norfolk. There she gives shooting

parties, from there she goes with her husband and pretty young

daughter to fish in Scotland and Norway, and the chief interest that

brings her up to London is her taste for music and the opera, which,

she declares, is the only pleasure that one cannot gratify out of

town.

Next after music, sport--fishing most especially--engages her

particular interest. Though she rarely goes out with the guns, her

husband declares she is a capital shot, and that she could and would

ride to hounds with the most daring of our fox-hunting peeresses, if

Norfolk was a hunting shire.

Prominent, however, among the hunting set is the handsome Countess of

Donoughmore, whose father, the American millionaire Grace, owns Battle

Abbey, and has made England his home for many years. His slender,

pretty daughter, who was Miss Eleana Grace before she married an Irish

earl, rode to hounds from her days of floating locks and short skirts.

Now, as a fair and fashionable peeress, she hunts Ireland and England

both with all the zest and skill of a native-born Irish woman. Her

keenest American competitor, in the art of hard cross-country riding,

is a young and beautiful Virginian, Mrs. Langhorne-Shaw, who comes

over every year to hunt, and for no other purpose.

In spite of all her youth and beauty and charm, this fair

sister-in-law of the famous American artist, Charles Dana Gibson,

scarcely makes an appearance in London at all. She arrives in England

at the season when the scent is best and the hounds at their briskest,

and, American-wise, she takes a house in the very heart of the hunting

district.

Sometimes she brings over her own string of horses from her native

State, for she is a judge of sound and capable animals; and she has

done more than any other one of her sex and race to prove that the

American-built riding habit is a capital garment, and that when she is

well mounted and in the field there are few in England who can surpass

an American woman at hard and intelligent riding.

Lady Monson, though less of a sportswoman than Lady Donoughmore or

Mrs. Langhorne-Shaw, is, if anything, more devoted to country life in

England than either, for a very great part of every year she spends,

by preference, at her husband's beautiful home, "Barton Hall," and

there she entertains not only extensively and luxuriously, but chiefly

the diplomats, domestic and foreign.

This capacity for gathering about her quite the most interesting among

notable men has made her house parties rather famous in an enviable

way, and has given Lady Monson a marked reputation as a hostess. Her

husband is the nephew of Sir Edmund Monson, the well-known ambassador

to France, and Lady Monson is herself a famous beauty. Before her

first marriage, to a wealthy New Yorker, she was Miss Romaine Stone,

and celebrated in London, Newport and New York for a uniquely delicate

loveliness of face and form.

Her beauty was, indeed, as widely talked about and ardently admired in

London as was that of Lady Naylor Leyland some years ago, or as we now

very enthusiastically discuss the charming features of Mrs. Sam

Chauncey or Lady Ross, who are prominent members of the younger

American colony.