young. Now the hair about the brows was thin and white, the drooping
mustache that entirely concealed the mouth was grizzled; lines
furrowed the forehead, outlined the sunken eyes, and gave an added
thinness to the nostrils. She bent once more over the face, to her
only a strange cold mask. A painful fascination held her for several
minutes, forcing her to mark how love, that had kept her young, proud,
content in its very existence, had sapped his life, and doubled his
years.
The realization bent her slender figure under a load of self-reproach
and self-mistrust. She drooped lower and lower above the sad, dead
face until she slid to the ground beside him. Heavy tearless sobs
shook her slight frame as it stretched its length beside the dead love
and the dead dream. The ideal so long treasured in her soul had lost
its reality. The present had wiped out the past as a sponge wipes off
a slate.
If she had but heeded his warning, and refrained from coming until
later, she would have escaped making a stranger of him forever. Now
the sad, aged face, the dead, strange face which she had seen but five
minutes before, had completely obscured in her memory the long-loved,
young face that had been with her all these years. The spirit whose
consoling presence she had thought to feel upholding her at this
moment made no sign. She was alone in the world, bereft of her one
supporting ideal, alone beside the dead body of one who was a stranger
alike to her sight and her emotions; alone at night in an isolation as
unexpected as it was terrible to her, and which chilled her senses as
if it had come to oppress her forever.
The shadows which she had not noticed before, the dark corners of the
tomb, the motionless gleam of the moon as it fell through the open
door, and laid silently on the floor like light stretched dead, the
low rustle of the wind as if Nature restlessly moved in her sleep,
came suddenly upon her, and brought her--fear. She held her breath as
she stilled her sobs to realize that she alone lived in this city of
the Dead. The chill of fright crept along the surface of her body,
which still vibrated with her storm of grief.
She seemed paralyzed. She dared not move.
Every sense rallied to her ears in dread.
Suddenly she heard her name breathed: "Margaret!"
It was whispered in a voice once so familiar to her ears, a voice that
used to say, "Madge."
She raised herself on her elbow.
She dared not answer.
She hardly dared breathe.
She was afraid in every sense, and yet she hungered for another sound
of that loved voice. Every hour of its banishment was regretted at
that moment. There seemed no future without it.
Every nerve listened.
At first she heard nothing but the restless moving of the air, which
merely emphasized her loneliness, then she caught the pulsation of
slow regular breathing.
She started to her feet.
She snatched up the lantern and quickly mounted to the bier. She
looked sharply down into the dead face.
Silent, with its white hair, and worn lines, it rested on its white
pillows.
No sound came from the cold still lips.
Yet, while her eyes were riveted on them, once more the longed-for
voice breathed her name. "Margaret!"
It came from behind her.
She turned quickly.
There in the moonlit doorway, with a sad, compassionate smile on his
strong, young face--as if it were yesterday they had parted--stood the
man she remembered so well.
Her bewildered eyes turned from the silent, unfamiliar face among the
satin cushions, to the living face in the moonlight,--the young, brown
eyes, the short, brown hair falling forward over the left temple, the
erect, elastic figure, the strong loving hands stretching out to her.
She was so tired, so heart sick, so full of longing for the love she
had lost.
"Felix," she sobbed, and, blindly groping to reach what she feared
was a hallucination, she stumbled down the steps, and was caught up in
the arms flung wide to catch her, and which folded about her as if
forever. She sighed his name again, upon the passionate young lips
which had inherited the great love she had put aside so long before.
* * * * *
As the last words died away, the Critic drew himself up and laughed.
He had told the story very dramatically, reading the letter from the
envelope he had called a "property," and he had told it well.
The laugh broke the spell, and the Doctor echoed it heartily.
"All right, old man," said the Critic, "you owed me that laugh. You're
welcome."
"I was only thinking," said the Doctor, his face still on a broad
grin, "that we have always thought you ought to have been a novelist,
and now we know at last just what kind of a novelist you would have
been."
"Don't you believe it," said the Critic, "That was only
improvisatore--that's no sample."
"Ho, ho! I'll bet you anything that the manuscript is up in your
trunk, and that you have been committing it to memory ever since this
idea was proposed," said the Doctor, still laughing.
"No, _that_ I deny," replied the Critic, "but as I am no _poseur_, I
will own that I wrote it years ago, and rewrote it so often that I
never could forget it. I'll confess more than that, the story has been
'declined with thanks' by every decent magazine in the States and in
England. Now perhaps some one will tell me why."
"I don't know the answer," said the Youngster, seriously, "unless it
is 'why not?'"
"I shouldn't wonder if it were sentimental twaddle," sighed the
Journalist, "but I don't _know_."
"I noticed," expostulated the Critic, "that you all listened,
enthralled."
"Oh," replied the Doctor, "that was a tribute to your personal charm.
You did it very well."
"Exactly," said the Critic, "if editors would let me read them my
stories, I could sell them like hot cakes. I never believed that Homer
would have lived as long as he has, if he had not made the reputation
of his tales by singing them centuries before any one tried to read
them. Now no one _dares_ to say they bore him. The reading public, and
the editors who cater to it, are just like some stupid theatrical
managers I know of, who will never let an author read a play to them
for fear that he may give the play some charm that the fool theatrical
man might not have felt from mere type-written words on white or
yellow paper. By Jove, I know the case of a manager who once bought
the option on a foreign play from a scenario provided by a clever
friend of mine--and paid a stiff price for it, too, and when he got
the manuscript wrote to the chap who did the scenario--'Play
dashety-dashed rot. If it had been as good as your scenario, it would
have gone.' And, what is more, he sacrificed the tidy five thousand he
had paid, and let his option slide. Now, when the fellow who did the
scenario wrote: 'If you found anything in the scenario that you did
not discover in the play, it is because I gave you the effect it would
have behind the footlights, which you have not the imagination to see
in the printed words,' the Manager only replied 'You are a nice chap.
I like you very much, but you are a blanketty-blanketty fool.'"
"Which was right?" asked the Journalist.
"The scenario man."
"How do you know?"
"How do I know? Why simply because the play was produced later--ran
five years, and drew a couple of million dollars. That's how I know."
"By cricky," exclaimed the Youngster, "I believe he thinks his story
could earn a million if it had a chance."
"I don't say 'no,'" said the Critic, yawning, "but it will never get a
chance. I burned the manuscript this morning, and now being delivered
of it, I have no more interest in it than a sparrow has in her last
year's offspring."
"The trouble with you is that you haven't any patience, any staying
power. That ought to have been a three volume novel. We would have
heard all about their first meeting, their first love, their
separation, his marriage, her _débuts_, etc., etc.," declared the
Journalist.
"Oh, thunder," said the Doctor. "I think there was quite enough of it.
Don't throw anything at me--I liked it--I liked it! Only I'm sorry she
died."
"So am I," said the Critic. "That really hurt me."
"Because," said the Doctor, shying away toward the door, "I should
have liked to know if the child turned out to be a genius. That kind
do sometimes," and he disappeared into the doorway.
"Anyhow," said the Critic, "I am going to wear laurels until some one
tells a better--and I'd like to know why the Journalist looks so
pensively thoughtful?"
"I am trying to recall who she was--Margaret Dillon."
"Don't fret--she may be a 'poor thing,' but she is all 'mine own'--a
genuine creation, Mr. Journalist. I am no reporter."
"Ah? Then you are more of a sentimentalist than I even dared to
dream."
"Don't deny it," said the Critic, as he rose and yawned. "So I am
going to bed to sleep on my laurels while I may. Good night."
"Well," called the Sculptor after him, as he sauntered away, "as one
of our mutual friends used to say 'The Indian Summer of Passion
scorches.'"
"But, alas!" added the other, "it does not _always_ kill."
"Witness--" began the Journalist, but the Critic cut him short.
"As you love me--not that famous list of yours including so many of
the actresses we all know. I can't bear THAT to-night. After
all the French have a better phrase for it--'La Crise de quarante
ans.'"
The Nurse and Divorcée had been very quiet, but here they locked
hands, and the former remarked that they prepared to withdraw:
"That is our cue to disappear--and you, too, Youngster. These men are
far too wise."
So we of the discussed sex made a circle with our clasped hand about
the Youngster and danced him into the house. The last I saw of the
garden that night, as I looked out of my window toward the northeast,
with "Namur" beating in my head, the five men had their heads still
together, but whether "the other sex" was getting scientifically torn
to bits, or they, too, had Namur in their minds I never knew.
IV
THE DOCTOR'S STORY
AS ONE DREAMS
THE TALE OF AN ADOLESCENT
The next day was very peaceful. We were becoming habituated to the
situation. It was a Sunday, and the weather was warm. There had been
no real news so far as we knew, except that Japan had lined up with
the Allies. The Youngster had come near to striking fire by wondering
how the United States, with her dislike for Japan, would view the
entering into line of the yellow man, but the spark flickered out, and
I imagine we settled down for the story with more eagerness than on
the previous evening, especially when the Doctor thrust his hands into
his pockets and lifted his chin into the air, as if he were in the
tribune. More than one of us smiled at his resemblance to Pierre Janet
entering the tribune at the _Collège de France_, and the Youngster
said, under his breath, "A _Clinique_, I suppose."
The Doctor's ears were sharp. "Not a bit," he answered, running his
keen brown eyes over us to be sure we were listening before he began:
* * * * *
In the days when it was thought that the South End was to be the smart
part of Boston, and when streets were laid out along wide tree shaded
malls, with a square in the centre, in imitation of some quarters of
London,--for Boston was in those days much more English in appearance
than it is now,--there was in one of those squares a famous private
school. In those days it was rather smart to go to a private school.
It was in the days before Boston had much of an immigrant quarter,
when some smart families still lived in the old Colonial houses at the
North End, and ministers and lawyers and all professional men sent
their sons and their daughters to the public schools, at that time
probably the best in the world.
At this private school, there was, at the time of which I speak, what
one might almost call a "principal girl."
She was the daughter of a rich banker--his only daughter. The gods all
seemed to have been very good to her. She was not only a really
beautiful girl, she was, for her age, a distinguished girl,--one of
the sort who seemed to do everything better than any one else, and
with a lack of self-consciousness or pretension. Every one admired
her. Some of her comrades would have loved her if she had given them
the chance. But no one could ever get intimate with her. She came and
went from school quite alone, in the habit of the American girl of
those days before the chaperon became the correct thing. She was
charming to every one, but she kept every one a little at arm's
length. Of course such a girl would be much talked over by the other
type of girl to whom confidences were necessary.
As always happens in any school there was a popular teacher. She
taught history and literature, and I imagine girls get more intimate
with such a teacher than they ever do with the mathematics.
Also, as always happens, there was a "teacher's pet," one of those
girls that has to adore something, and the literature teacher, as she
was smart and good looking, was as convenient to adore as anything
else,--and more adjacent.
Of course "teacher's pet" never has any secrets from the teacher, and
does not mean to be a sneak either. Just can't help turning herself
inside out for her idol, and when the heart of a girl of seventeen
turns itself inside out, almost always something comes out that is not
her business. That was how it happened that one day the literature
teacher was told that the "Principal Girl" was receiving wonderful
boxes of violets at the school door, and "Don't you know ONE
DAY she was seen by a group of pupils who happened to be going
home, and were just behind her, getting into a closed carriage and
driving away from the corner of the street!"
Now the literature teacher did not, as a rule, encourage such
confidences, but this time it seemed useful. She liked the Principal
Girl--admired her, in fact. She was terribly shocked. She warned her
pet to talk to no one else, and then she went at once to the clergyman
who was at the head of the school. She knew that he felt responsible
for his pupils, and this had an unpleasant look. He took the pains to
verify the two statements. Then there was but one thing to do--to lay
the matter before the parents of the girl.
Now, as so often happens in American families, the banker and his wife
stood in some awe of their daughter. There was not that confidence
between them which one traditionally supposes to exist between parents
and children. I imagine that there is no doubt that the adolescent
finds it much easier to confide in some one other than the parents who
would seem to be her proper confidants.
At any rate the banker and his wife were simply staggered. They dared
not broach the subject to the Principal Girl, and in their distress
turned to the family lawyer. As they were too cowardly to take his
first advice--perhaps they were afraid the daughter would lie, they
sometimes do in the best regulated families,--it was decided to put a
discreet person "on the job," and discover first of all what was
really going on.
The result of the investigation was at first consoling, and then
amazing.
They discovered that the bunches of violets were ordered at a smart
down town florist by the girl herself, and by her order delivered at
the school door by a liveried messenger boy, who, by her orders,
awaited her arrival. As for the closed carriage, that she also bespoke
herself at a smart livery stable where she was known. When she entered
it, she was at once driven to the Park Street station, where she
bought a round trip ticket to Waltham. There she walked to the river,
hired a boat, rowed herself up stream, tied her boat at a wooden bank,
climbed the slope, and sat there all the afternoon, sometimes reading,
and sometimes merely staring out at the river, or up at the sky. At
sunset she rowed back to the town, returned to the city, and walked
from the station to her home.
This all seemed simple enough, but it puzzled the father, it made him
unquiet in his mind. Why all this mystery? Why--well, why a great many
things, for of course the Principal Girl had to prepare for these
absences, and, although the little fibs she told were harmless
enough--well, why? The literature teacher, who had been watching her
carefully, had her theory. She knew a lot about girls. Wasn't she once
one herself? So it was by her advice that the family doctor was taken
into the family confidence, chiefly because neither father nor mother
had the pluck to tackle the matter--they were ashamed to have their
daughter know that she had been caught in even a small deception--it
seemed so like intruding into her intimate life.
There are parents like that, you know.
The doctor had known the girl since he ushered her into the world. If
there were any one with whom she had shown the slightest sign of
intimacy, it was with him. Like all doctors whose associations are so
largely with women, and who are moderately intelligent and
temperamental, he knew a great deal about the dangers of the
imagination. No one ever heard just what passed between the two. One
thing is pretty sure, he made no secrets regarding the affair, and at
the end of the interview he advised the parents to take the girl out
of school, take her abroad, keep her active, present her at courts,
show her the world, keep her occupied, interest her, keep her among
people whether she liked it or not.
The literature teacher counted for something in the affair, and I
imagine that it was never talked over between the parents and
daughter, who soon after left town for Europe, and for three years
were not seen in Boston.
When they _did_ return, it was to announce the marriage of the
Principal Girl to the son of the family lawyer, a clever man, and a
rising politician.
Relations between the literature teacher and the Principal Girl had
never wholly broken off, so ten years after the school adventure it
happened one beautiful day in early September that the teacher was a
guest at the North Shore summer home of the Principal Girl, now the
mother of two handsome boys.
That afternoon at tea, sitting on the verandah, watching the white
sails as the yachts made for Marblehead harbor, and the long line of
surf beating against the rugged rocks beyond the wide pebbly beach on
which the dragging stones made weird music, the literature teacher,
supposing the old story to be so much ancient history that it could,
as can so many of the incidents of one's teens, be referred to
lightly, had the misfortune to mention it. To her horror, the
Principal Girl gave her one startled look, and then rolled over among
the cushions of the hammock in which she was swinging, and burst into
a torrent of tears.
When the paroxysm had passed, she sat up, wiped her eyes in which,
however, there was no laughter, and said passionately:
"I suppose you think me the most ungrateful woman in the world. I know
only too well that to many women my position has always appeared
enviable. Poor things, if they only knew! Of course, my husband is a
good man. In all ways I do him perfect justice. He is everything that
is kind and generous--only, alas, he is not the lover of my dreams. My
children are nice handsome boys, but they are the every day children
of every day life. I dreamed another and a different life in which my
children were oh, so different, and beside which the life I try to
lead with all the strength I have is no more like the life I dreamed
than my boys are like my dream children. If you think it has not taken
courage to play the part I have played, I am sorry for your lack of
insight."
And she got up, and walked away.
It was as well, for, as the literature teacher told the doctor
afterward, it was one notch above her experience, and she absolutely
could have found no word to say. When the Wife came back to the
hammock, ten minutes later, the cloud was gone from her face, and she
never mentioned the subject again. And you may be sure that the
literature teacher never did. She always looked upon the incident as
her worst moment of tactlessness.
* * * * *
"Bully, bully!" exclaimed the Lawyer, "Take off your laurels, Critic,
and crown the Doctor!"
"For that little tale," shouted the Critic. "Never! That has not a bit
of literary merit. It has not one rounded period."
"The Lawyer is a realist," said the Sculptor. "Of course that appeals
to him."
"If you want my opinion, I consider that there is just as much
imagination in that story as in the morbid rigmarole you threw at us
last night," persisted the Lawyer.
"Why," declared the Critic, "I call mine a healthy story compared with
this one. It is a shocking tale for the operating room--I mean the
insane asylum."
"All right," laughed the Doctor, "then we had all better go inside the
sanitarium walls at once."
"Do you presume," said the Journalist, "to pretend that this is a
normal incident?"
"I am not going into that. I only claim that more people know the
condition than dare to confess it. It is after all only symbolic of
the duality of the soul--or call it what you like. It is the
embodiment of a truth which no one thinks of denying--that the spirit
has its secrets. Imagination plays a great part in most of our
lives--it is the glory that gilds our facts--it is the brilliant
barrier which separates us from the beasts, and the only real thing
that divides us into classes, though, of course, it does not run
through the world like straight lines of latitude and longitude, but
like the lines of mean temperature."
"The truth is," said the Lawyer, "if the Principal Girl had been
obliged to struggle for her living, the fact that her imagination did
not run at any point into her world of realities would not have been
dangerous."
"Naturally not," said the Doctor, "for she would have been a great
novelist, or a poor one, and all would have been well, or not,
according to circumstances."
"All the same," persisted the Critic, "I think it a horrid story
and--"
"I think," interrupted the Doctor, "that you have a vicious mind,
and--" Here the Doctor cast a quick look in the direction of the
Youngster, who was stretched out in a steamer chair and had not said a
word.
"All right," said the Trained Nurse, "he is fast asleep." And so he
was.
"Just as well," said the Doctor, "though it does not speak so well for
the story as it might."
"Well," laughed the Journalist, "you have had a double success,
Doctor. You have been spontaneously applauded by the man of law, and
sent the man of the air to _faire dodo_. I reckon you get the
laurels."
"Don't you be in such a hurry to award the palm," protested the
Sculptor. "There are some of us who have not spoken yet. I am going to
put some brilliant touches on mine before I give my star performance."
"What's that about stars?" yawned the Youngster, waking up slowly.
"Nothing except that you have given a very distinguished and
unexpected star performance as a sleeper," said the Doctor.
"I say!" he exclaimed, sitting up. "By Jove, is the story of the
Principal Girl all told? That's a shame. What became of her?"
"You'll never know now," said the Doctor.
"Besides," said the Critic, "you would not understand. You are too
young."
"Well, I like your cheek."
"After all," said the Journalist, "it is only another phase of the
Dear Little Josephine, and I still think that is the banner story."
"Me, too," said the Doctor, as we went into the house.
And I thought to myself, "I can tell a third phase--the tragic--when
my turn comes," and I was the only one who knew that my story would
come last.
V
THE SCULPTOR'S STORY
UNTO THIS END
THE TALE OF A VIRGIN
It was on August 26th that we were first sure that the Allied forces
and the German army had actually come in contact. It seemed impossible
for us to realize it, but, in the afternoon the Doctor, the Lawyer,
and the Youngster took one of the cars, and made a run to the
northeast. The news they brought back did not at all coincide with the
hopeful tone of the morning papers. In fact it was not only evident
that the fall of Namur had been followed almost immediately by that of
Mons and Charleroi, but that the German hordes were well over the
French frontier, and advancing rapidly, and the Allied armies simply
flying before them.
The odd part was, that though the Youngster said that they had only
run out fifty miles, they had heard the guns, and "the Doctor
thinks," he added, under his breath, "that we may be able to stick it
out to the last day of the month. Anyway, I advise you girls to look
over your kits. We may fly in a hurry--such of us as must fly."