“Donahue was right,” said the young man, frankly; “I was brought up on

the Bowery. I have been news-boy, teamster, pugilist, member of an

organized band of ‘toughs,’ bartender, and a ‘sport’ in various

meanings of the word. The experience certainly warrants the supposition

that I have at least a passing acquaintance with a few phases of Bowery

life. I will be pleased to place whatever knowledge and experience I

have at the service of my friend Donahue’s friends.”

Rivington seemed ill at ease.

“I say,” he said—somewhat entreatingly, “I thought—you’re not stringing

us, are you? It isn’t just the kind of talk we expected. You haven’t

even said ‘Hully gee!’ once. Do you really belong on the Bowery?”

“I am afraid,” said the Bowery boy, smilingly, “that at some time you

have been enticed into one of the dives of literature and had the

counterfeit coin of the Bowery passed upon you. The ‘argot’ to which

you doubtless refer was the invention of certain of your literary

‘discoverers’ who invaded the unknown wilds below Third avenue and put

strange sounds into the mouths of the inhabitants. Safe in their homes

far to the north and west, the credulous readers who were beguiled by

this new ‘dialect’ perused and believed. Like Marco Polo and Mungo

Park—pioneers indeed, but ambitious souls who could not draw the line

of demarcation between discovery and invention—the literary bones of

these explorers are dotting the trackless wastes of the subway. While

it is true that after the publication of the mythical language

attributed to the dwellers along the Bowery certain of its pat phrases

and apt metaphors were adopted and, to a limited extent, used in this

locality, it was because our people are prompt in assimilating whatever

is to their commercial advantage. To the tourists who visited our newly

discovered clime, and who expected a realization of their literary

guide books, they supplied the demands of the market.

“But perhaps I am wandering from the question. In what way can I assist

you, gentlemen? I beg you will believe that the hospitality of the

street is extended to all. There are, I regret to say, many catchpenny

places of entertainment, but I cannot conceive that they would entice

you.”

I felt Rivington lean somewhat heavily against me.

“Say!” he remarked, with uncertain utterance; “come and have a drink

with us.”

“Thank you, but I never drink. I find that alcohol, even in the

smallest quantities, alters the perspective. And I must preserve my

perspective, for I am studying the Bowery. I have lived in it nearly

thirty years, and I am just beginning to understand its heartbeats. It

is like a great river fed by a hundred alien streams. Each influx

brings strange seeds on its flood, strange silt and weeds, and now and

then a flower of rare promise. To construe this river requires a man

who can build dykes against the overflow, who is a naturalist, a

geologist, a humanitarian, a diver and a strong swimmer. I love my

Bowery. It was my cradle and is my inspiration. I have published one

book. The critics have been kind. I put my heart in it. I am writing

another, into which I hope to put both heart and brain. Consider me

your guide, gentlemen. Is there anything I can take you to see, any

place to which I can conduct you?”

I was afraid to look at Rivington except with one eye.

“Thanks,” said Rivington. “We were looking up . . . that is . . . my

friend . . . confound it; it’s against all precedent, you know . . .

awfully obliged . . . just the same.”

“In case,” said our friend, “you would like to meet some of our Bowery

young men I would be pleased to have you visit the quarters of our East

Side Kappa Delta Phi Society, only two blocks east of here.”

“Awfully sorry,” said Rivington, “but my friend’s got me on the jump

to-night. He’s a terror when he’s out after local colour. Now, there’s

nothing I would like better than to drop in at the Kappa Delta Phi,

but—some other time!”

We said our farewells and boarded a home-bound car. We had a rabbit on

upper Broadway, and then I parted with Rivington on a street corner.

“Well, anyhow,” said he, braced and recovered, “it couldn’t have

happened anywhere but in little old New York.”

Which to say the least, was typical of Rivington.

XXII

GEORGIA’S RULING

If you should chance to visit the General Land Office, step into the

draughtsmen’s room and ask to be shown the map of Salado County. A

leisurely German—possibly old Kampfer himself—will bring it to you. It

will be four feet square, on heavy drawing-cloth. The lettering and the

figures will be beautifully clear and distinct. The title will be in

splendid, undecipherable German text, ornamented with classic Teutonic

designs—very likely Ceres or Pomona leaning against the initial letters

with cornucopias venting grapes and wieners. You must tell him that

this is not the map you wish to see; that he will kindly bring you its

official predecessor. He will then say, “Ach, so!” and bring out a map

half the size of the first, dim, old, tattered, and faded.

By looking carefully near its northwest corner you will presently come

upon the worn contours of Chiquito River, and, maybe, if your eyes are

good, discern the silent witness to this story.

The Commissioner of the Land Office was of the old style; his antique

courtesy was too formal for his day. He dressed in fine black, and

there was a suggestion of Roman drapery in his long coat-skirts. His

collars were “undetached” (blame haberdashery for the word); his tie

was a narrow, funereal strip, tied in the same knot as were his

shoe-strings. His gray hair was a trifle too long behind, but he kept

it smooth and orderly. His face was clean-shaven, like the old

statesmen’s. Most people thought it a stern face, but when its official

expression was off, a few had seen altogether a different countenance.

Especially tender and gentle it had appeared to those who were about

him during the last illness of his only child.

The Commissioner had been a widower for years, and his life, outside

his official duties, had been so devoted to little Georgia that people

spoke of it as a touching and admirable thing. He was a reserved man,

and dignified almost to austerity, but the child had come below it all

and rested upon his very heart, so that she scarcely missed the

mother’s love that had been taken away. There was a wonderful

companionship between them, for she had many of his own ways, being

thoughtful and serious beyond her years.

One day, while she was lying with the fever burning brightly in her

checks, she said suddenly:

“Papa, I wish I could do something good for a whole lot of children!”

“What would you like to do, dear?” asked the Commissioner. “Give them a

party?”

“Oh, I don’t mean those kind. I mean poor children who haven’t homes,

and aren’t loved and cared for as I am. I tell you what, papa!”

“What, my own child?”

“If I shouldn’t get well, I’ll leave them you—not _give_ you, but just

lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too. If you

can find time, wouldn’t you do something to help them, if I ask you,

papa?”

“Hush, hush dear, dear child,” said the Commissioner, holding her hot

little hand against his cheek; “you’ll get well real soon, and you and

I will see what we can do for them together.”

But in whatsoever paths of benevolence, thus vaguely premeditated, the

Commissioner might tread, he was not to have the company of his

beloved. That night the little frail body grew suddenly too tired to

struggle further, and Georgia’s exit was made from the great stage when

she had scarcely begun to speak her little piece before the footlights.

But there must be a stage manager who understands. She had given the

cue to the one who was to speak after her.

A week after she was laid away, the Commissioner reappeared at the

office, a little more courteous, a little paler and sterner, with the

black frock-coat hanging a little more loosely from his tall figure.

His desk was piled with work that had accumulated during the four

heartbreaking weeks of his absence. His chief clerk had done what he

could, but there were questions of law, of fine judicial decisions to

be made concerning the issue of patents, the marketing and leasing of

school lands, the classification into grazing, agricultural, watered,

and timbered, of new tracts to be opened to settlers.

The Commissioner went to work silently and obstinately, putting back

his grief as far as possible, forcing his mind to attack the

complicated and important business of his office. On the second day

after his return he called the porter, pointed to a leather-covered

chair that stood near his own, and ordered it removed to a lumber-room

at the top of the building. In that chair Georgia would always sit when

she came to the office for him of afternoons.

As time passed, the Commissioner seemed to grow more silent, solitary,

and reserved. A new phase of mind developed in him. He could not endure

the presence of a child. Often when a clattering youngster belonging to

one of the clerks would come chattering into the big business-room

adjoining his little apartment, the Commissioner would steal softly and

close the door. He would always cross the street to avoid meeting the

school-children when they came dancing along in happy groups upon the

sidewalk, and his firm mouth would close into a mere line.

It was nearly three months after the rains had washed the last dead

flower-petals from the mound above little Georgia when the “land-shark”

firm of Hamlin and Avery filed papers upon what they considered the

“fattest” vacancy of the year.

It should not be supposed that all who were termed “land-sharks”

deserved the name. Many of them were reputable men of good business

character. Some of them could walk into the most august councils of the

State and say: “Gentlemen, we would like to have this, and that, and

matters go thus.” But, next to a three years’ drought and the

boll-worm, the Actual Settler hated the Land-shark. The land-shark

haunted the Land Office, where all the land records were kept, and

hunted “vacancies”—that is, tracts of unappropriated public domain,

generally invisible upon the official maps, but actually existing “upon

the ground.” The law entitled any one possessing certain State scrip to

file by virtue of same upon any land not previously legally

appropriated. Most of the scrip was now in the hands of the

land-sharks. Thus, at the cost of a few hundred dollars, they often

secured lands worth as many thousands. Naturally, the search for

“vacancies” was lively.

But often—very often—the land they thus secured, though legally

“unappropriated,” would be occupied by happy and contented settlers,

who had laboured for years to build up their homes, only to discover

that their titles were worthless, and to receive peremptory notice to

quit. Thus came about the bitter and not unjustifiable hatred felt by

the toiling settlers toward the shrewd and seldom merciful speculators

who so often turned them forth destitute and homeless from their

fruitless labours. The history of the state teems with their

antagonism. Mr. Land-shark seldom showed his face on “locations” from

which he should have to eject the unfortunate victims of a monstrously

tangled land system, but let his emissaries do the work. There was lead

in every cabin, moulded into balls for him; many of his brothers had

enriched the grass with their blood. The fault of it all lay far back.

When the state was young, she felt the need of attracting newcomers,

and of rewarding those pioneers already within her borders. Year after

year she issued land scrip—Headrights, Bounties, Veteran Donations,

Confederates; and to railroads, irrigation companies, colonies, and

tillers of the soil galore. All required of the grantee was that he or

it should have the scrip properly surveyed upon the public domain by

the county or district surveyor, and the land thus appropriated became

the property of him or it, or his or its heirs and assigns, forever.

In those days—and here is where the trouble began—the state’s domain

was practically inexhaustible, and the old surveyors, with

princely—yea, even Western American—liberality, gave good measure and

over-flowing. Often the jovial man of metes and bounds would dispense

altogether with the tripod and chain. Mounted on a pony that could

cover something near a “vara” at a step, with a pocket compass to

direct his course, he would trot out a survey by counting the beat of

his pony’s hoofs, mark his corners, and write out his field notes with

the complacency produced by an act of duty well performed.

Sometimes—and who could blame the surveyor?—when the pony was “feeling

his oats,” he might step a little higher and farther, and in that case

the beneficiary of the scrip might get a thousand or two more acres in

his survey than the scrip called for. But look at the boundless leagues

the state had to spare! However, no one ever had to complain of the

pony under-stepping. Nearly every old survey in the state contained an

excess of land.

In later years, when the state became more populous, and land values

increased, this careless work entailed incalculable trouble, endless

litigation, a period of riotous land-grabbing, and no little bloodshed.

The land-sharks voraciously attacked these excesses in the old surveys,

and filed upon such portions with new scrip as unappropriated public

domain. Wherever the identifications of the old tracts were vague, and

the corners were not to be clearly established, the Land Office would

recognize the newer locations as valid, and issue title to the

locators. Here was the greatest hardship to be found. These old

surveys, taken from the pick of the land, were already nearly all

occupied by unsuspecting and peaceful settlers, and thus their titles

were demolished, and the choice was placed before them either to buy

their land over at a double price or to vacate it, with their families

and personal belongings, immediately. Land locators sprang up by

hundreds. The country was held up and searched for “vacancies” at the

point of a compass. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of splendid

acres were wrested from their innocent purchasers and holders. There

began a vast hegira of evicted settlers in tattered wagons; going

nowhere, cursing injustice, stunned, purposeless, homeless, hopeless.

Their children began to look up to them for bread, and cry.

It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamlin and Avery had

filed upon a strip of land about a mile wide and three miles long,

comprising about two thousand acres, it being the excess over

complement of the Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in

one of the middle-western counties. This two-thousand-acre body of land

was asserted by them to be vacant land, and improperly considered a

part of the Denny survey. They based this assertion and their claim

upon the land upon the demonstrated facts that the beginning corner of

the Denny survey was plainly identified; that its field notes called to

run west 5,760 varas, and then called for Chiquito River; thence it ran

south, with the meanders—and so on—and that the Chiquito River was, on

the ground, fully a mile farther west from the point reached by course

and distance. To sum up: there were two thousand acres of vacant land

between the Denny survey proper and Chiquito River.

One sweltering day in July the Commissioner called for the papers in

connection with this new location. They were brought, and heaped, a

foot deep, upon his desk—field notes, statements, sketches, affidavits,

connecting lines—documents of every description that shrewdness and

money could call to the aid of Hamlin and Avery.

The firm was pressing the Commissioner to issue a patent upon their

location. They possesed inside information concerning a new railroad

that would probably pass somewhere near this land.

The General Land Office was very still while the Commissioner was

delving into the heart of the mass of evidence. The pigeons could be

heard on the roof of the old, castle-like building, cooing and

fretting. The clerks were droning everywhere, scarcely pretending to

earn their salaries. Each little sound echoed hollow and loud from the

bare, stone-flagged floors, the plastered walls, and the iron-joisted

ceiling. The impalpable, perpetual limestone dust that never settled,

whitened a long streamer of sunlight that pierced the tattered

window-awning.

It seemed that Hamlin and Avery had builded well. The Denny survey was

carelessly made, even for a careless period. Its beginning corner was

identical with that of a well-defined old Spanish grant, but its other

calls were sinfully vague. The field notes contained no other object

that survived—no tree, no natural object save Chiquito River, and it

was a mile wrong there. According to precedent, the Office would be

justified in giving it its complement by course and distance, and

considering the remainder vacant instead of a mere excess.

The Actual Settler was besieging the office with wild protests _in re_.

Having the nose of a pointer and the eye of a hawk for the land-shark,

he had observed his myrmidons running the lines upon his ground. Making

inquiries, he learned that the spoiler had attacked his home, and he

left the plough in the furrow and took his pen in hand.

One of the protests the Commissioner read twice. It was from a woman, a

widow, the granddaughter of Elias Denny himself. She told how her

grandfather had sold most of the survey years before at a trivial

price—land that was now a principality in extent and value. Her mother

had also sold a part, and she herself had succeeded to this western

portion, along Chiquito River. Much of it she had been forced to part

with in order to live, and now she owned only about three hundred

acres, on which she had her home. Her letter wound up rather

pathetically:

“I’ve got eight children, the oldest fifteen years. I work all day and

half the night to till what little land I can and keep us in clothes

and books. I teach my children too. My neighbours is all poor and has

big families. The drought kills the crops every two or three years and

then we has hard times to get enough to eat. There is ten families on

this land what the land-sharks is trying to rob us of, and all of them

got titles from me. I sold to them cheap, and they aint paid out yet,

but part of them is, and if their land should be took from them I would

die. My grandfather was an honest man, and he helped to build up this

state, and he taught his children to be honest, and how could I make it

up to them who bought from me? Mr. Commissioner, if you let them

land-sharks take the roof from over my children and the little from

them as they has to live on, whoever again calls this state great or

its government just will have a lie in their mouths”

The Commissioner laid this letter aside with a sigh. Many, many such

letters he had received. He had never been hurt by them, nor had he

ever felt that they appealed to him personally. He was but the state’s

servant, and must follow its laws. And yet, somehow, this reflection

did not always eliminate a certain responsible feeling that hung upon

him. Of all the state’s officers he was supremest in his department,

not even excepting the Governor. Broad, general land laws he followed,

it was true, but he had a wide latitude in particular ramifications.

Rather than law, what he followed was Rulings: Office Rulings and

precedents. In the complicated and new questions that were being

engendered by the state’s development the Commissioner’s ruling was

rarely appealed from. Even the courts sustained it when its equity was

apparent.

The Commissioner stepped to the door and spoke to a clerk in the other

room—spoke as he always did, as if he were addressing a prince of the

blood:

“Mr. Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask Mr. Ashe, the state

school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as

convenient?”

Ashe came quickly from the big table where he was arranging his

reports.

“Mr. Ashe,” said the Commissioner, “you worked along the Chiquito

River, in Salado County, during your last trip, I believe. Do you

remember anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” the blunt, breezy, surveyor answered. “I crossed it

on my way to Block H, on the north side of it. The road runs with the

Chiquito River, along the valley. The Denny survey fronts three miles

on the Chiquito.”

“It is claimed,” continued the commissioner, “that it fails to reach

the river by as much as a mile.”

The appraiser shrugged his shoulder. He was by birth and instinct an

Actual Settler, and the natural foe of the land-shark.

“It has always been considered to extend to the river,” he said, dryly.

“But that is not the point I desired to discuss,” said the

Commissioner. “What kind of country is this valley portion of (let us

say, then) the Denny tract?”

The spirit of the Actual Settler beamed in Ashe’s face.

“Beautiful,” he said, with enthusiasm. “Valley as level as this floor,

with just a little swell on, like the sea, and rich as cream. Just

enough brakes to shelter the cattle in winter. Black loamy soil for six

feet, and then clay. Holds water. A dozen nice little houses on it,

with windmills and gardens. People pretty poor, I guess—too far from

market—but comfortable. Never saw so many kids in my life.”

“They raise flocks?” inquired the Commissioner.

“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” laughed the surveyor; “two-legged,

and bare-legged, and tow-headed.”

“Children! oh, children!” mused the Commissioner, as though a new view

had opened to him; “they raise children!

“It’s a lonesome country, Commissioner,” said the surveyor. “Can you

blame ’em?”

“I suppose,” continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully

pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, “not all of them are

tow-headed. It would not be unreasonable, Mr. Ashe, I conjecture, to

believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”

“Brown and black, sure,” said Ashe; “also red.”

“No doubt,” said the Commissioner. “Well, I thank you for your courtesy

in informing me, Mr. Ashe. I will not detain you any longer from your

duties.”

Later, in the afternoon, came Hamlin and Avery, big, handsome, genial,

sauntering men, clothed in white duck and low-cut shoes. They permeated

the whole office with an aura of debonair prosperity. They passed among

the clerks and left a wake of abbreviated given names and fat brown

cigars.

These were the aristocracy of the land-sharks, who went in for big

things. Full of serene confidence in themselves, there was no

corporation, no syndicate, no railroad company or attorney general too

big for them to tackle. The peculiar smoke of their rare, fat brown

cigars was to be perceived in the sanctum of every department of state,

in every committee-room of the Legislature, in every bank parlour and

every private caucus-room in the state Capital. Always pleasant, never

in a hurry, in seeming to possess unlimited leisure, people wondered

when they gave their attention to the many audacious enterprises in

which they were known to be engaged.

By and by the two dropped carelessly into the Commissioner’s room and

reclined lazily in the big, leather-upholstered arm-chairs. They

drawled a good-natured complaint of the weather, and Hamlin told the

Commissioner an excellent story he had amassed that morning from the

Secretary of State.

But the Commissioner knew why they were there. He had half promised to

render a decision that day upon their location.

The chief clerk now brought in a batch of duplicate certificates for

the Commissioner to sign. As he traced his sprawling signature, “Hollis

Summerfield, Comr. Genl. Land Office,” on each one, the chief clerk

stood, deftly removing them and applying the blotter.

“I notice,” said the chief clerk, “you’ve been going through that

Salado County location. Kampfer is making a new map of Salado, and I

believe is platting in that section of the county now.”

“I will see it,” said the Commissioner. A few moments later he went to

the draughtsmen’s room.

As he entered he saw five or six of the draughtsmen grouped about

Kampfer’s desk, gargling away at each other in pectoral German, and

gazing at something thereupon. At the Commissioner’s approach they

scattered to their several places. Kampfer, a wizened little German,

with long, frizzled ringlets and a watery eye, began to stammer forth

some sort of an apology, the Commissioner thought, for the congregation

of his fellows about his desk.

“Never mind,” said the Commissioner, “I wish to see the map you are

making”; and, passing around the old German, seated himself upon the

high draughtsman’s stool. Kampfer continued to break English in trying

to explain.

“Herr Gommissioner, I assure you blenty sat I haf not it

bremeditated—sat it wass—sat it itself make. Look you! from se field

notes wass it blatted—blease to observe se calls: South, 10 degrees

west 1,050 varas; south, 10 degrees east 300 varas; south, 100; south,

9 west, 200; south, 40 degrees west 400—and so on. Herr Gommissioner,

nefer would I have—”

The Commissioner raised one white hand, silently, Kampfer dropped his

pipe and fled.

With a hand at each side of his face, and his elbows resting upon the

desk, the Commissioner sat staring at the map which was spread and

fastened there—staring at the sweet and living profile of little

Georgia drawn thereupon—at her face, pensive, delicate, and infantile,

outlined in a perfect likeness.

When his mind at length came to inquire into the reason of it, he saw

that it must have been, as Kampfer had said, unpremeditated. The old

draughtsman had been platting in the Elias Denny survey, and Georgia’s

likeness, striking though it was, was formed by nothing more than the

meanders of Chiquito River. Indeed, Kampfer’s blotter, whereon his

preliminary work was done, showed the laborious tracings of the calls

and the countless pricks of the compasses. Then, over his faint

pencilling, Kampfer had drawn in India ink with a full, firm pen the

similitude of Chiquito River, and forth had blossomed mysteriously the

dainty, pathetic profile of the child.

The Commissioner sat for half an hour with his face in his hands,

gazing downward, and none dared approach him. Then he arose and walked

out. In the business office he paused long enough to ask that the Denny

file be brought to his desk.

He found Hamlin and Avery still reclining in their chairs, apparently

oblivious of business. They were lazily discussing summer opera, it

being, their habit—perhaps their pride also—to appear supernaturally

indifferent whenever they stood with large interests imperilled. And

they stood to win more on this stake than most people knew. They

possessed inside information to the effect that a new railroad would,

within a year, split this very Chiquito River valley and send land

values ballooning all along its route. A dollar under thirty thousand

profit on this location, if it should hold good, would be a loss to

their expectations. So, while they chatted lightly and waited for the

Commissioner to open the subject, there was a quick, sidelong sparkle

in their eyes, evincing a desire to read their title clear to those

fair acres on the Chiquito.

A clerk brought in the file. The Commissioner seated himself and wrote

upon it in red ink. Then he rose to his feet and stood for a while

looking straight out of the window. The Land Office capped the summit

of a bold hill. The eyes of the Commissioner passed over the roofs of

many houses set in a packing of deep green, the whole checkered by

strips of blinding white streets. The horizon, where his gaze was

focussed, swelled to a fair wooded eminence flecked with faint dots of

shining white. There was the cemetery, where lay many who were

forgotten, and a few who had not lived in vain. And one lay there,

occupying very small space, whose childish heart had been large enough

to desire, while near its last beats, good to others. The

Commissioner’s lips moved slightly as he whispered to himself: “It was

her last will and testament, and I have neglected it so long!”

The big brown cigars of Hamlin and Avery were fireless, but they still

gripped them between their teeth and waited, while they marvelled at

the absent expression upon the Commissioner’s face.

By and by he spoke suddenly and promptly.

“Gentlemen, I have just indorsed the Elias Denny survey for patenting.

This office will not regard your location upon a part of it as legal.”

He paused a moment, and then, extending his hand as those dear old-time

ones used to do in debate, he enunciated the spirit of that Ruling that

subsequently drove the land-sharks to the wall, and placed the seal of

peace and security over the doors of ten thousand homes.

“And, furthermore,” he continued, with a clear, soft light upon his

face, “it may interest you to know that from this time on this office

will consider that when a survey of land made by virtue of a

certificate granted by this state to the men who wrested it from the

wilderness and the savage—made in good faith, settled in good faith,

and left in good faith to their children or innocent purchasers—when

such a survey, although overrunning its complement, shall call for any

natural object visible to the eye of man, to that object it shall hold,

and be good and valid. And the children of this state shall lie down to

sleep at night, and rumours of disturbers of title shall not disquiet

them. For,” concluded the Commissioner, “of such is the Kingdom of

Heaven.”

In the silence that followed, a laugh floated up from the patent-room

below. The man who carried down the Denny file was exhibiting it among

the clerks.

“Look here,” he said, delightedly, “the old man has forgotten his name.

He’s written ‘Patent to original grantee,’ and signed it ‘Georgia

Summerfield, Comr.’”

The speech of the Commissioner rebounded lightly from the impregnable

Hamlin and Avery. They smiled, rose gracefully, spoke of the baseball

team, and argued feelingly that quite a perceptible breeze had arisen

from the east. They lit fresh fat brown cigars, and drifted courteously

away. But later they made another tiger-spring for their quarry in the

courts. But the courts, according to reports in the papers, “coolly

roasted them” (a remarkable performance, suggestive of liquid-air

didoes), and sustained the Commissioner’s Ruling.

And this Ruling itself grew to be a Precedent, and the Actual Settler

framed it, and taught his children to spell from it, and there was

sound sleep o’ nights from the pines to the sage-brush, and from the

chaparral to the great brown river of the north.

But I think, and I am sure the Commissioner never thought otherwise,

that whether Kampfer was a snuffy old instrument of destiny, or whether

the meanders of the Chiquito accidentally platted themselves into that

memorable sweet profile or not, there was brought about “something good

for a whole lot of children,” and the result ought to be called

“Georgia’s Ruling.”

XXIII

BLIND MAN’S HOLIDAY

Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of

perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the

landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of

Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of

fools; at another he conceived that he followed ideals so fine that the

world was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed his

folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene grandeur

akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.

Generations before, the name had been “Larsen.” His race had bequeathed

him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance of

thrift and industry.

From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society,

forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability;

a denizen _des trois-quarts de monde_, that pathetic spheroid lying

between the _haut_ and the _demi_, whose inhabitants envy each of their

neighbours, and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this

opinion, as he was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern

city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for

longer than a year, knowing but few, keeping in a subjective world of

shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring

realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a cheap

restaurant, and his story begins.

The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, is a street of ghosts. It lies in the

quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated pride

and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and dreamed of

gold and grants and ladies’ gloves. Every flagstone has its grooves

worn by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the fighting. Every

house has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its untold tale of

gallant promise and slow decay.

By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the

groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of

Moorish iron balconies. The old houses of monsieur stand yet,

indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The street

is one of ghosts to whosoever can see them.

A faint heartbeat of the street’s ancient glory still survives in a

corner occupied by the Café Carabine d’Or. Once men gathered there to

plot against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they

are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these; those

would have set their faces against an army. Above the door hangs the

sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of unfamiliar

species. In the act of firing upon this monster is represented an

unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the colour of bright

gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the

gun’s relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal,

wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has resolved itself into a

shapeless blot.

The place is known as “Antonio’s,” as the name, white upon the red-lit

transparency, and gilt upon the windows, attests. There is a promise in

“Antonio”; a justifiable expectancy of savoury things in oil and pepper

and wine, and perhaps an angel’s whisper of garlic. But the rest of the

name is “O’Riley.” Antonio O’Riley!

The Carabine d’Or is an ignominious ghost of the Rue Chartres. The café

where Bienville and Conti dined, where a prince has broken bread, is

become a “family ristaurant.”

Its customers are working men and women, almost to a unit. Occasionally

you will see chorus girls from the cheaper theatres, and men who follow

avocations subject to quick vicissitudes; but at Antonio’s—name rich in

Bohemian promise, but tame in fulfillment—manners debonair and gay are

toned down to the “family” standard. Should you light a cigarette, mine

host will touch you on the “arrum” and remind you that the proprieties

are menaced. “Antonio” entices and beguiles from fiery legend without,

but “O’Riley” teaches decorum within.

It was at this restaurant that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy

fellow with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to

take the other chair at the little table where she stopped, but Lorison

slipped into the seat before him. Their acquaintance began, and grew,

and now for two months they had sat at the same table each evening, not

meeting by appointment, but as if by a series of fortuitous and happy

accidents. After dining, they would take a walk together in one of the

little city parks, or among the panoramic markets where exhibits a

continuous vaudeville of sights and sounds. Always at eight o’clock

their steps led them to a certain street corner, where she prettily but

firmly bade him good night and left him. “I do not live far from here,”

she frequently said, “and you must let me go the rest of the way

alone.”

But now Lorison had discovered that he wanted to go the rest of the way

with her, or happiness would depart, leaving, him on a very lonely

corner of life. And at the same time that he made the discovery, the

secret of his banishment from the society of the good laid its finger

in his face and told him it must not be.

Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love,

the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through

stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying

lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that

most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case of

Lorison, his particular ethics positively forbade him to declare his

sentiments, but he must needs dally with the subject, and woo by

innuendo at least.

On this night, after the usual meal at the Carabine d’Or, he strolled

with his companion down the dim old street toward the river.

The Rue Chartres perishes in the old Place d’Armes. The ancient

Cabildo, where Spanish justice fell like hail, faces it, and the

Cathedral, another provincial ghost, overlooks it. Its centre is a

little, iron-railed park of flowers and immaculate gravelled walks,

where citizens take the air of evenings. Pedestalled high above it, the

general sits his cavorting steed, with his face turned stonily down the

river toward English Turn, whence come no more Britons to bombard his

cotton bales.

Often the two sat in this square, but to-night Lorison guided her past

the stone-stepped gate, and still riverward. As they walked, he smiled

to himself to think that all he knew of her—except that he loved

her—was her name, Norah Greenway, and that she lived with her brother.

They had talked about everything except themselves. Perhaps her

reticence had been caused by his.

They came, at length, upon the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate

beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river

slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black

bulk against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled with exact stars.

The girl was young and of the piquant order. A certain bright

melancholy pervaded her; she possessed an untarnished, pale prettiness

doomed to please. Her voice, when she spoke, dwarfed her theme. It was

the voice capable of investing little subjects with a large interest.

She sat at ease, bestowing her skirts with the little womanly touch,

serene as if the begrimed pier were a summer garden. Lorison poked the

rotting boards with his cane.

He began by telling her that he was in love with some one to whom he

durst not speak of it. “And why not?” she asked, accepting swiftly his

fatuous presentation of a third person of straw. “My place in the

world,” he answered, “is none to ask a woman to share. I am an outcast

from honest people; I am wrongly accused of one crime, and am, I

believe, guilty of another.”

Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. The

story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the

slightest touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler’s declension.

During one night’s sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain

amount of his employer’s money, which, by accident, he carried with

him. He continued to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain,

leaving the game winner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night

his employer’s safe was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of

Lorison were found in his room, their total forming an accusative

nearness to the sum purloined. He was taken, tried and, through

incomplete evidence, released, smutched with the sinister _devoirs_ of

a disagreeing jury.

“It is not in the unjust accusation,” he said to the girl, “that my

burden lies, but in the knowledge that from the moment I staked the

first dollar of the firm’s money I was a criminal—no matter whether I

lost or won. You see why it is impossible for me to speak of love to

her.”

“It is a sad thing,” said Norah, after a little pause, “to think what

very good people there are in the world.”

“Good?” said Lorison.

“I was thinking of this superior person whom you say you love. She must

be a very poor sort of creature.”

“I do not understand.”

“Nearly,” she continued, “as poor a sort of creature as yourself.”

“You do not understand,” said Lorison, removing his hat and sweeping

back his fine, light hair. “Suppose she loved me in return, and were

willing to marry me. Think, if you can, what would follow. Never a day

would pass but she would be reminded of her sacrifice. I would read a

condescension in her smile, a pity even in her affection, that would

madden me. No. The thing would stand between us forever. Only equals

should mate. I could never ask her to come down upon my lower plane.”

An arc light faintly shone upon Lorison’s face. An illumination from

within also pervaded it. The girl saw the rapt, ascetic look; it was

the face either of Sir Galahad or Sir Fool.

“Quite starlike,” she said, “is this unapproachable angel. Really too

high to be grasped.”

“By me, yes.”

She faced him suddenly. “My dear friend, would you prefer your star

fallen?” Lorison made a wide gesture.

“You push me to the bald fact,” he declared; “you are not in sympathy

with my argument. But I will answer you so. If I could reach my

particular star, to drag it down, I would not do it; but if it were

fallen, I would pick it up, and thank Heaven for the privilege.”

They were silent for some minutes. Norah shivered, and thrust her hands

deep into the pockets of her jacket. Lorison uttered a remorseful

exclamation.

“I’m not cold,” she said. “I was just thinking. I ought to tell you

something. You have selected a strange confidante. But you cannot

expect a chance acquaintance, picked up in a doubtful restaurant, to be

an angel.”

“Norah!” cried Lorison.

“Let me go on. You have told me about yourself. We have been such good

friends. I must tell you now what I never wanted you to know. I

am—worse than you are. I was on the stage . . . I sang in the chorus .

. . I was pretty bad, I guess . . . I stole diamonds from the prima

donna . . . they arrested me . . . I gave most of them up, and they let

me go . . . I drank wine every night . . . a great deal . . . I was

very wicked, but—”

Lorison knelt quickly by her side and took her hands.

“Dear Norah!” he said, exultantly. “It is you, it is you I love! You

never guessed it, did you? ’Tis you I meant all the time. Now I can

speak. Let me make you forget the past. We have both suffered; let us

shut out the world, and live for each other. Norah, do you hear me say

I love you?”

“In spite of—”

“Rather say because of it. You have come out of your past noble and

good. Your heart is an angel’s. Give it to me.”

“A little while ago you feared the future too much to even speak.”

“But for you; not for myself. Can you love me?”

She cast herself, wildly sobbing, upon his breast.

“Better than life—than truth itself—than everything.”

“And my own past,” said Lorison, with a note of solicitude—“can you

forgive and—”

“I answered you that,” she whispered, “when I told you I loved you.”

She leaned away, and looked thoughtfully at him. “If I had not told you

about myself, would you have—would you—”

“No,” he interrupted; “I would never have let you know I loved you. I

would never have asked you this—Norah, will you be my wife?”

She wept again.

“Oh, believe me; I am good now—I am no longer wicked! I will be the

best wife in the world. Don’t think I am—bad any more. If you do I

shall die, I shall die!”

While he was consoling, her, she brightened up, eager and impetuous.

“Will you marry me to-night?” she said. “Will you prove it that way. I

have a reason for wishing it to be to-night. Will you?”

Of one of two things was this exceeding frankness the outcome: either

of importunate brazenness or of utter innocence. The lover’s

perspective contained only the one.

“The sooner,” said Lorison, “the happier I shall be.”

“What is there to do?” she asked. “What do you have to get? Come! You

should know.”

Her energy stirred the dreamer to action.

“A city directory first,” he cried, gayly, “to find where the man lives

who gives licenses to happiness. We will go together and rout him out.

Cabs, cars, policemen, telephones and ministers shall aid us.”

“Father Rogan shall marry us,” said the girl, with ardour. “I will take

you to him.”

An hour later the two stood at the open doorway of an immense, gloomy

brick building in a narrow and lonely street. The license was tight in

Norah’s hand.

“Wait here a moment,” she said, “till I find Father Rogan.”

She plunged into the black hallway, and the lover was left standing, as

it were, on one leg, outside. His impatience was not greatly taxed.

Gazing curiously into what seemed the hallway to Erebus, he was

presently reassured by a stream of light that bisected the darkness,

far down the passage. Then he heard her call, and fluttered lampward,

like the moth. She beckoned him through a doorway into the room whence

emanated the light. The room was bare of nearly everything except

books, which had subjugated all its space. Here and there little spots

of territory had been reconquered. An elderly, bald man, with a

superlatively calm, remote eye, stood by a table with a book in his

hand, his finger still marking a page. His dress was sombre and

appertained to a religious order. His eye denoted an acquaintance with

the perspective.

“Father Rogan,” said Norah, “this is _he_.”

“The two of ye,” said Father Rogan, “want to get married?”

They did not deny it. He married them. The ceremony was quickly done.

One who could have witnessed it, and felt its scope, might have

trembled at the terrible inadequacy of it to rise to the dignity of its

endless chain of results.

Afterward the priest spake briefly, as if by rote, of certain other

civil and legal addenda that either might or should, at a later time,

cap the ceremony. Lorison tendered a fee, which was declined, and

before the door closed after the departing couple Father Rogan’s book

popped open again where his finger marked it.

In the dark hall Norah whirled and clung to her companion, tearful.

“Will you never, never be sorry?”

At last she was reassured.

At the first light they reached upon the street, she asked the time,

just as she had each night. Lorison looked at his watch. Half-past

eight.

Lorison thought it was from habit that she guided their steps toward

the corner where they always parted. But, arrived there, she hesitated,

and then released his arm. A drug store stood on the corner; its

bright, soft light shone upon them.

“Please leave me here as usual to-night,” said Norah, sweetly. “I

must—I would rather you would. You will not object? At six to-morrow

evening I will meet you at Antonio’s. I want to sit with you there once

more. And then—I will go where you say.” She gave him a bewildering,

bright smile, and walked swiftly away.

Surely it needed all the strength of her charm to carry off this

astounding behaviour. It was no discredit to Lorison’s strength of mind

that his head began to whirl. Pocketing his hands, he rambled vacuously

over to the druggist’s windows, and began assiduously to spell over the

names of the patent medicines therein displayed.

As soon as he had recovered his wits, he proceeded along the street in

an aimless fashion. After drifting for two or three squares, he flowed

into a somewhat more pretentious thoroughfare, a way much frequented by

him in his solitary ramblings. For here was a row of shops devoted to

traffic in goods of the widest range of choice—handiworks of art, skill

and fancy, products of nature and labour from every zone.

Here, for a time, he loitered among the conspicuous windows, where was

set, emphasized by congested floods of light, the cunningest spoil of

the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad. He

was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow man

only at the gear of a levelled cog-wheel—at right angles, and upon a

different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit. The stroke

of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon

the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which, when thus

buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded motion, a

complete change of key and chord.

Strolling along the pacific avenue, he experienced singular,

supernatural calm, accompanied by an unusual activity of brain.

Reflecting upon recent affairs, he assured himself of his happiness in

having won for a bride the one he had so greatly desired, yet he

wondered mildly at his dearth of active emotion. Her strange behaviour

in abandoning him without valid excuse on his bridal eve aroused in him

only a vague and curious speculation. Again, he found himself

contemplating, with complaisant serenity, the incidents of her somewhat

lively career. His perspective seemed to have been queerly shifted.

As he stood before a window near a corner, his ears were assailed by a

waxing clamour and commotion. He stood close to the window to allow

passage to the cause of the hubbub—a procession of human beings, which

rounded the corner and headed in his direction. He perceived a salient

hue of blue and a glitter of brass about a central figure of dazzling

white and silver, and a ragged wake of black, bobbing figures.

Two ponderous policemen were conducting between them a woman dressed as

if for the stage, in a short, white, satiny skirt reaching to the

knees, pink stockings, and a sort of sleeveless bodice bright with

relucent, armour-like scales. Upon her curly, light hair was perched,

at a rollicking angle, a shining tin helmet. The costume was to be

instantly recognized as one of those amazing conceptions to which

competition has harried the inventors of the spectacular ballet. One of

the officers bore a long cloak upon his arm, which, doubtless, had been

intended to veil the candid attractions of their effulgent prisoner,

but, for some reason, it had not been called into use, to the

vociferous delight of the tail of the procession.

Compelled by a sudden and vigorous movement of the woman, the parade

halted before the window by which Lorison stood. He saw that she was

young, and, at the first glance, was deceived by a sophistical

prettiness of her face, which waned before a more judicious scrutiny.

Her look was bold and reckless, and upon her countenance, where yet the

contours of youth survived, were the finger-marks of old age’s

credentialed courier, Late Hours.

The young woman fixed her unshrinking gaze upon Lorison, and called to

him in the voice of the wronged heroine in straits:

“Say! You look like a good fellow; come and put up the bail, won’t you?

I’ve done nothing to get pinched for. It’s all a mistake. See how

they’re treating me! You won’t be sorry, if you’ll help me out of this.

Think of your sister or your girl being dragged along the streets this

way! I say, come along now, like a good fellow.”

It may be that Lorison, in spite of the unconvincing bathos of this

appeal, showed a sympathetic face, for one of the officers left the

woman’s side, and went over to him.

“It’s all right, Sir,” he said, in a husky, confidential tone; “she’s

the right party. We took her after the first act at the Green Light

Theatre, on a wire from the chief of police of Chicago. It’s only a

square or two to the station. Her rig’s pretty bad, but she refused to

change clothes—or, rather,” added the officer, with a smile, “to put on

some. I thought I’d explain matters to you so you wouldn’t think she

was being imposed upon.”

“What is the charge?” asked Lorison.

“Grand larceny. Diamonds. Her husband is a jeweller in Chicago. She

cleaned his show case of the sparklers, and skipped with a comic-opera

troupe.”

The policeman, perceiving that the interest of the entire group of

spectators was centred upon himself and Lorison—their conference being

regarded as a possible new complication—was fain to prolong the

situation—which reflected his own importance—by a little afterpiece of

philosophical comment.

“A gentleman like you, Sir,” he went on affably, “would never notice

it, but it comes in my line to observe what an immense amount of

trouble is made by that combination—I mean the stage, diamonds and

light-headed women who aren’t satisfied with good homes. I tell you,

Sir, a man these days and nights wants to know what his women folks are

up to.”

The policeman smiled a good night, and returned to the side of his

charge, who had been intently watching Lorison’s face during the

conversation, no doubt for some indication of his intention to render

succour. Now, at the failure of the sign, and at the movement made to

continue the ignominious progress, she abandoned hope, and addressed

him thus, pointedly:

“You damn chalk-faced quitter! You was thinking of giving me a hand,

but you let the cop talk you out of it the first word. You’re a dandy

to tie to. Say, if you ever get a girl, she’ll have a picnic. Won’t she

work you to the queen’s taste! Oh, my!” She concluded with a taunting,

shrill laugh that rasped Lorison like a saw. The policemen urged her

forward; the delighted train of gaping followers closed up the rear;

and the captive Amazon, accepting her fate, extended the scope of her

maledictions so that none in hearing might seem to be slighted.

Then there came upon Lorison an overwhelming revulsion of his

perspective. It may be that he had been ripe for it, that the abnormal

condition of mind in which he had for so long existed was already about

to revert to its balance; however, it is certain that the events of the

last few minutes had furnished the channel, if not the impetus, for the

change.

The initial determining influence had been so small a thing as the fact

and manner of his having been approached by the officer. That agent

had, by the style of his accost, restored the loiterer to his former

place in society. In an instant he had been transformed from a somewhat

rancid prowler along the fishy side streets of gentility into an honest

gentleman, with whom even so lordly a guardian of the peace might

agreeably exchange the compliments.

This, then, first broke the spell, and set thrilling in him a

resurrected longing for the fellowship of his kind, and the rewards of

the virtuous. To what end, he vehemently asked himself, was this

fanciful self-accusation, this empty renunciation, this moral

squeamishness through which he had been led to abandon what was his

heritage in life, and not beyond his deserts? Technically, he was

uncondemned; his sole guilty spot was in thought rather than deed, and

cognizance of it unshared by others. For what good, moral or

sentimental, did he slink, retreating like the hedgehog from his own

shadow, to and fro in this musty Bohemia that lacked even the

picturesque?

But the thing that struck home and set him raging was the part played

by the Amazonian prisoner. To the counterpart of that astounding

belligerent—identical at least, in the way of experience—to one, by her

own confession, thus far fallen, had he, not three hours since, been

united in marriage. How desirable and natural it had seemed to him

then, and how monstrous it seemed now! How the words of diamond thief

number two yet burned in his ears: “If you ever get a girl, she’ll have

a picnic.” What did that mean but that women instinctively knew him for

one they could hoodwink? Still again, there reverberated the

policeman’s sapient contribution to his agony: “A man these days and

nights wants to know what his women folks are up to.” Oh, yes, he had

been a fool; he had looked at things from the wrong standpoint.

But the wildest note in all the clamour was struck by pain’s

forefinger, jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting—a

mounting love unworthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved her;

he bore in his own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavour to his

predicament struck him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he swung

down the echoing pavement. An impetuous desire to act, to battle with

his fate, seized him. He stopped upon his heel, and smote his palms

together triumphantly. His wife was—where? But there was a tangible

link; an outlet more or less navigable, through which his derelict ship

of matrimony might yet be safely towed—the priest!

Like all imaginative men with pliable natures, Lorison was, when

thoroughly stirred, apt to become tempestuous. With a high and stubborn

indignation upon him, be retraced his steps to the intersecting street

by which he had come. Down this he hurried to the corner where he had

parted with—an astringent grimace tinctured the thought—his wife.

Thence still back he harked, following through an unfamiliar district

his stimulated recollections of the way they had come from that

preposterous wedding. Many times he went abroad, and nosed his way back

to the trail, furious.

At last, when he reached the dark, calamitous building in which his

madness had culminated, and found the black hallway, he dashed down it,

perceiving no light or sound. But he raised his voice, hailing loudly;

reckless of everything but that he should find the old mischief-maker

with the eyes that looked too far away to see the disaster he had

wrought. The door opened, and in the stream of light Father Rogan

stood, his book in hand, with his finger marking the place.

“Ah!” cried Lorison. “You are the man I want. I had a wife of you a few

hours ago. I would not trouble you, but I neglected to note how it was

done. Will you oblige me with the information whether the business is

beyond remedy?”

“Come inside,” said the priest; “there are other lodgers in the house,

who might prefer sleep to even a gratified curiosity.”

Lorison entered the room and took the chair offered him. The priest’s

eyes looked a courteous interrogation.

“I must apologize again,” said the young man, “for so soon intruding

upon you with my marital infelicities, but, as my wife has neglected to

furnish me with her address, I am deprived of the legitimate recourse

of a family row.”

“I am quite a plain man,” said Father Rogan, pleasantly; “but I do not

see how I am to ask you questions.”

“Pardon my indirectness,” said Lorison; “I will ask one. In this room

to-night you pronounced me to be a husband. You afterward spoke of

additional rites or performances that either should or could be

effected. I paid little attention to your words then, but I am hungry

to hear them repeated now. As matters stand, am I married past all

help?”

“You are as legally and as firmly bound,” said the priest, “as though

it had been done in a cathedral, in the presence of thousands. The

additional observances I referred to are not necessary to the strictest

legality of the act, but were advised as a precaution for the

future—for convenience of proof in such contingencies as wills,

inheritances and the like.”

Lorison laughed harshly.

“Many thanks,” he said. “Then there is no mistake, and I am the happy

benedict. I suppose I should go stand upon the bridal corner, and when

my wife gets through walking the streets she will look me up.”

Father Rogan regarded him calmly.

“My son,” he said, “when a man and woman come to me to be married I

always marry them. I do this for the sake of other people whom they

might go away and marry if they did not marry each other. As you see, I

do not seek your confidence; but your case seems to me to be one not

altogether devoid of interest. Very few marriages that have come to my

notice have brought such well-expressed regret within so short a time.

I will hazard one question: were you not under the impression that you

loved the lady you married, at the time you did so;”

“Loved her!” cried Lorison, wildly. “Never so well as now, though she

told me she deceived and sinned and stole. Never more than now, when,

perhaps, she is laughing at the fool she cajoled and left, with

scarcely a word, to return to God only knows what particular line of

her former folly.”

Father Rogan answered nothing. During the silence that succeeded, he

sat with a quiet expectation beaming in his full, lambent eye.

“If you would listen—” began Lorison. The priest held up his hand.

“As I hoped,” he said. “I thought you would trust me. Wait but a

moment.” He brought a long clay pipe, filled and lighted it.

“Now, my son,” he said.

Lorison poured a twelve month’s accumulated confidence into Father

Rogan’s ear. He told all; not sparing himself or omitting the facts of

his past, the events of the night, or his disturbing conjectures and

fears.

“The main point,” said the priest, when he had concluded, “seems to me

to be this—are you reasonably sure that you love this woman whom you

have married?”

“Why,” exclaimed Lorison, rising impulsively to his feet—“why should I

deny it? But look at me—am I fish, flesh or fowl? That is the main

point to me, I assure you.”

“I understand you,” said the priest, also rising, and laying down his

pipe. “The situation is one that has taxed the endurance of much older

men than you—in fact, especially much older men than you. I will try to

relieve you from it, and this night. You shall see for yourself into

exactly what predicament you have fallen, and how you shall, possibly,

be extricated. There is no evidence so credible as that of the

eyesight.”

Father Rogan moved about the room, and donned a soft black hat.

Buttoning his coat to his throat, he laid his hand on the doorknob.

“Let us walk,” he said.

The two went out upon the street. The priest turned his face down it,

and Lorison walked with him through a squalid district, where the

houses loomed, awry and desolate-looking, high above them. Presently

they turned into a less dismal side street, where the houses were

smaller, and, though hinting of the most meagre comfort, lacked the

concentrated wretchedness of the more populous byways.

At a segregated, two-story house Father Rogan halted, and mounted the

steps with the confidence of a familiar visitor. He ushered Lorison

into a narrow hallway, faintly lighted by a cobwebbed hanging lamp.

Almost immediately a door to the right opened and a dingy Irishwoman

protruded her head.

“Good evening to ye, Mistress Geehan,” said the priest, unconsciously,

it seemed, falling into a delicately flavoured brogue. “And is it

yourself can tell me if Norah has gone out again, the night, maybe?”

“Oh, it’s yer blissid riverence! Sure and I can tell ye the same. The

purty darlin’ wint out, as usual, but a bit later. And she says:

‘Mother Geehan,’ says she, ‘it’s me last noight out, praise the saints,

this noight is!’ And, oh, yer riverence, the swate, beautiful drame of

a dress she had this toime! White satin and silk and ribbons, and lace

about the neck and arrums—’twas a sin, yer reverence, the gold was

spint upon it.”

The priest heard Lorison catch his breath painfully, and a faint smile

flickered across his own clean-cut mouth.

“Well, then, Mistress Geehan,” said he, “I’ll just step upstairs and

see the bit boy for a minute, and I’ll take this gentleman up with me.”

“He’s awake, thin,” said the woman. “I’ve just come down from sitting

wid him the last hour, tilling him fine shtories of ould County Tyrone.

’Tis a greedy gossoon, it is, yer riverence, for me shtories.”

“Small the doubt,” said Father Rogan. “There’s no rocking would put him

to slape the quicker, I’m thinking.”

Amid the woman’s shrill protest against the retort, the two men

ascended the steep stairway. The priest pushed open the door of a room

near its top.

“Is that you already, sister?” drawled a sweet, childish voice from the

darkness.

“It’s only ould Father Denny come to see ye, darlin’; and a foine

gentleman I’ve brought to make ye a gr-r-and call. And ye resaves us

fast aslape in bed! Shame on yez manners!”

“Oh, Father Denny, is that you? I’m glad. And will you light the lamp,

please? It’s on the table by the door. And quit talking like Mother

Geehan, Father Denny.”

The priest lit the lamp, and Lorison saw a tiny, towsled-haired boy,

with a thin, delicate face, sitting up in a small bed in a corner.

Quickly, also, his rapid glance considered the room and its contents.

It was furnished with more than comfort, and its adornments plainly

indicated a woman’s discerning taste. An open door beyond revealed the

blackness of an adjoining room’s interior.

The boy clutched both of Father Rogan’s hands. “I’m so glad you came,”

he said; “but why did you come in the night? Did sister send you?”

“Off wid ye! Am I to be sint about, at me age, as was Terence McShane,

of Ballymahone? I come on me own r-r-responsibility.”

Lorison had also advanced to the boy’s bedside. He was fond of

children; and the wee fellow, laying himself down to sleep alone in

that dark room, stirred-his heart.

“Aren’t you afraid, little man?” he asked, stooping down beside him.

“Sometimes,” answered the boy, with a shy smile, “when the rats make

too much noise. But nearly every night, when sister goes out, Mother

Geehan stays a while with me, and tells me funny stories. I’m not often

afraid, sir.”

“This brave little gentleman,” said Father Rogan, “is a scholar of

mine. Every day from half-past six to half-past eight—when sister comes

for him—he stops in my study, and we find out what’s in the inside of

books. He knows multiplication, division and fractions; and he’s

troubling me to begin wid the chronicles of Ciaran of Clonmacnoise,

Corurac McCullenan and Cuan O’Lochain, the gr-r-reat Irish

histhorians.” The boy was evidently accustomed to the priest’s Celtic

pleasantries. A little, appreciative grin was all the attention the

insinuation of pedantry received.

Lorison, to have saved his life, could not have put to the child one of

those vital questions that were wildly beating about, unanswered, in

his own brain. The little fellow was very like Norah; he had the same

shining hair and candid eyes.

“Oh, Father Denny,” cried the boy, suddenly, “I forgot to tell you!

Sister is not going away at night any more! She told me so when she

kissed me good night as she was leaving. And she said she was so happy,

and then she cried. Wasn’t that queer? But I’m glad; aren’t you?”

“Yes, lad. And now, ye omadhaun, go to sleep, and say good night; we

must be going.”

“Which shall I do first, Father Denny?”

“Faith, he’s caught me again! Wait till I get the sassenach into the

annals of Tageruach, the hagiographer; I’ll give him enough of the

Irish idiom to make him more respectful.”

The light was out, and the small, brave voice bidding them good night

from the dark room. They groped downstairs, and tore away from the

garrulity of Mother Geehan.

Again the priest steered them through the dim ways, but this time in

another direction. His conductor was serenely silent, and Lorison

followed his example to the extent of seldom speaking. Serene he could

not be. His heart beat suffocatingly in his breast. The following of

this blind, menacing trail was pregnant with he knew not what

humiliating revelation to be delivered at its end.

They came into a more pretentious street, where trade, it could be

surmised, flourished by day. And again the priest paused; this time

before a lofty building, whose great doors and windows in the lowest

floor were carefully shuttered and barred. Its higher apertures were

dark, save in the third story, the windows of which were brilliantly

lighted. Lorison’s ear caught a distant, regular, pleasing thrumming,

as of music above. They stood at an angle of the building. Up, along

the side nearest them, mounted an iron stairway. At its top was an

upright, illuminated parallelogram. Father Rogan had stopped, and

stood, musing.

“I will say this much,” he remarked, thoughtfully: “I believe you to be

a better man than you think yourself to be, and a better man than I

thought some hours ago. But do not take this,” he added, with a smile,

“as much praise. I promised you a possible deliverance from an unhappy

perplexity. I will have to modify that promise. I can only remove the

mystery that enhanced that perplexity. Your deliverance depends upon

yourself. Come.”

He led his companion up the stairway. Halfway up, Lorison caught him by

the sleeve. “Remember,” he gasped, “I love that woman.”

“You desired to know.

“I—Go on.”

The priest reached the landing at the top of the stairway. Lorison,

behind him, saw that the illuminated space was the glass upper half of

a door opening into the lighted room. The rhythmic music increased as

they neared it; the stairs shook with the mellow vibrations.

Lorison stopped breathing when he set foot upon the highest step, for

the priest stood aside, and motioned him to look through the glass of

the door.

His eye, accustomed to the darkness, met first a blinding glare, and

then he made out the faces and forms of many people, amid an

extravagant display of splendid robings—billowy laces, brilliant-hued

finery, ribbons, silks and misty drapery. And then he caught the

meaning of that jarring hum, and he saw the tired, pale, happy face of

his wife, bending, as were a score of others, over her sewing

machine—toiling, toiling. Here was the folly she pursued, and the end

of his quest.

But not his deliverance, though even then remorse struck him. His

shamed soul fluttered once more before it retired to make room for the

other and better one. For, to temper his thrill of joy, the shine of

the satin and the glimmer of ornaments recalled the disturbing figure

of the bespangled Amazon, and the base duplicate histories lit by the

glare of footlights and stolen diamonds. It is past the wisdom of him

who only sets the scenes, either to praise or blame the man. But this

time his love overcame his scruples. He took a quick step, and reached

out his hand for the doorknob. Father Rogan was quicker to arrest it

and draw him back.

“You use my trust in you queerly,” said the priest sternly. “What are

you about to do?”

“I am going to my wife,” said Lorison. “Let me pass.”

“Listen,” said the priest, holding him firmly by the arm. “I am about

to put you in possession of a piece of knowledge of which, thus far,

you have scarcely proved deserving. I do not think you ever will; but I

will not dwell upon that. You see in that room the woman you married,

working for a frugal living for herself, and a generous comfort for an

idolized brother. This building belongs to the chief costumer of the

city. For months the advance orders for the coming Mardi Gras festivals

have kept the work going day and night. I myself secured employment

here for Norah. She toils here each night from nine o’clock until

daylight, and, besides, carries home with her some of the finer

costumes, requiring more delicate needlework, and works there part of

the day. Somehow, you two have remained strangely ignorant of each

other’s lives. Are you convinced now that your wife is not walking the

streets?”

“Let me go to her,” cried Lorison, again struggling, “and beg her

forgiveness!’

“Sir,” said the priest, “do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems so

often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be

taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must

not compromise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best.

You went to her with the fine-spun sophistry that peace could be found

in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved,

thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful

lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as innocent

and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that lowly street

where she dwells she first saw the light, and she has lived there ever

since, spending her days in generous self-sacrifice for others. Och, ye

spalpeen!” continued Father Rogan, raising his finger in kindly anger

at Lorison. “What for, I wonder, could she be after making a fool of

hersilf, and shamin’ her swate soul with lies, for the like of you!”

“Sir,” said Lorison, trembling, “say what you please of me. Doubt it as

you must, I will yet prove my gratitude to you, and my devotion to her.

But let me speak to her once now, let me kneel for just one moment at

her feet, and—”

“Tut, tut!” said the priest. “How many acts of a love drama do you

think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what kind

of figures do we cut, spying upon the mysteries of midnight millinery!

Go to meet your wife to-morrow, as she ordered you, and obey her

thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgiveness for the part I

have played in this night’s work. Off wid yez down the shtairs, now!

’Tis late, and an ould man like me should be takin’ his rest.”

XXIV

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES

“Aunt Ellen,” said Octavia, cheerfully, as she threw her black kid

gloves carefully at the dignified Persian cat on the window-seat, “I’m

a pauper.”

“You are so extreme in your statements, Octavia, dear,” said Aunt

Ellen, mildly, looking up from her paper. “If you find yourself

temporarily in need of some small change for bonbons, you will find my

purse in the drawer of the writing desk.”

Octavia Beaupree removed her hat and seated herself on a footstool near

her aunt’s chair, clasping her hands about her knees. Her slim and

flexible figure, clad in a modish mourning costume, accommodated itself

easily and gracefully to the trying position. Her bright and youthful

face, with its pair of sparkling, life-enamoured eyes, tried to compose

itself to the seriousness that the occasion seemed to demand.

“You good auntie, it isn’t a case of bonbons; it is abject, staring,

unpicturesque poverty, with ready-made clothes, gasolined gloves, and

probably one o’clock dinners all waiting with the traditional wolf at

the door. I’ve just come from my lawyer, auntie, and, ‘Please, ma’am, I

ain’t got nothink ’t all. Flowers, lady? Buttonhole, gentleman?

Pencils, sir, three for five, to help a poor widow?’ Do I do it nicely,

auntie, or, as a bread-winner accomplishment, were my lessons in

elocution entirely wasted?”

“Do be serious, my dear,” said Aunt Ellen, letting her paper fall to

the floor, “long enough to tell me what you mean. Colonel Beaupree’s

estate—”

“Colonel Beaupree’s estate,” interrupted Octavia, emphasizing her words

with appropriate dramatic gestures, “is of Spanish castellar

architecture. Colonel Beaupree’s resources are—wind. Colonel Beaupree’s

stocks are—water. Colonel Beaupree’s income is—all in. The statement

lacks the legal technicalities to which I have been listening for an

hour, but that is what it means when translated.”

“Octavia!” Aunt Ellen was now visibly possessed by consternation. “I

can hardly believe it. And it was the impression that he was worth a

million. And the De Peysters themselves introduced him!”

Octavia rippled out a laugh, and then became properly grave.

“_De mortuis nil_, auntie—not even the rest of it. The dear old

colonel—what a gold brick he was, after all! I paid for my bargain

fairly—I’m all here, am I not?—items: eyes, fingers, toes, youth, old

family, unquestionable position in society as called for in the

contract—no wild-cat stock here.” Octavia picked up the morning paper

from the floor. “But I’m not going to ‘squeal’—isn’t that what they

call it when you rail at Fortune because you’ve, lost the game?” She

turned the pages of the paper calmly. “‘Stock market’—no use for that.

‘Society’s doings’—that’s done. Here is my page— the wish column. A Van

Dresser could not be said to ‘want’ for anything, of course.

‘Chamber-maids, cooks, canvassers, stenographers—’”

“Dear,” said Aunt Ellen, with a little tremor in her voice, “please do

not talk in that way. Even if your affairs are in so unfortunate a

condition, there is my three thousand—”

Octavia sprang up lithely, and deposited a smart kiss on the delicate

cheek of the prim little elderly maid.

“Blessed auntie, your three thousand is just sufficient to insure your

Hyson to be free from willow leaves and keep the Persian in sterilized

cream. I know I’d be welcome, but I prefer to strike bottom like

Beelzebub rather than hang around like the Peri listening to the music

from the side entrance. I’m going to earn my own living. There’s

nothing else to do. I’m a—Oh, oh, oh!—I had forgotten. There’s one

thing saved from the wreck. It’s a corral—no, a ranch in—let me

see—Texas: an asset, dear old Mr. Bannister called it. How pleased he

was to show me something he could describe as unencumbered! I’ve a

description of it among those stupid papers he made me bring away with

me from his office. I’ll try to find it.”

Octavia found her shopping-bag, and drew from it a long envelope filled

with typewritten documents.

“A ranch in Texas,” sighed Aunt Ellen. “It sounds to me more like a

liability than an asset. Those are the places where the centipedes are

found, and cowboys, and fandangos.”

“‘The Rancho de las Sombras,’” read Octavia from a sheet of violently

purple typewriting, “‘is situated one hundred and ten miles southeast

of San Antonio, and thirty-eight miles from its nearest railroad

station, Nopal, on the I. and G. N. Ranch, consists of 7,680 acres of

well-watered land, with title conferred by State patents, and

twenty-two sections, or 14,080 acres, partly under yearly running lease

and partly bought under State’s twenty-year-purchase act. Eight

thousand graded merino sheep, with the necessary equipment of horses,

vehicles and general ranch paraphernalia. Ranch-house built of brick,

with six rooms comfortably furnished according to the requirements of

the climate. All within a strong barbed-wire fence.

“‘The present ranch manager seems to be competent and reliable, and is

rapidly placing upon a paying basis a business that, in other hands,

had been allowed to suffer from neglect and misconduct.

“‘This property was secured by Colonel Beaupree in a deal with a

Western irrigation syndicate, and the title to it seems to be perfect.

With careful management and the natural increase of land values, it

ought to be made the foundation for a comfortable fortune for its

owner.’”

When Octavia ceased reading, Aunt Ellen uttered something as near a

sniff as her breeding permitted.

“The prospectus,” she said, with uncompromising metropolitan suspicion,

“doesn’t mention the centipedes, or the Indians. And you never did like

mutton, Octavia. I don’t see what advantage you can derive from

this—desert.”

But Octavia was in a trance. Her eyes were steadily regarding something

quite beyond their focus. Her lips were parted, and her face was

lighted by the kindling furor of the explorer, the ardent, stirring

disquiet of the adventurer. Suddenly she clasped her hands together

exultantly.

“The problem solves itself, auntie,” she cried. “I’m going to that

ranch. I’m going to live on it. I’m going to learn to like mutton, and

even concede the good qualities of centipedes—at a respectful distance.

It’s just what I need. It’s a new life that comes when my old one is

just ending. It’s a release, auntie; it isn’t a narrowing. Think of the

gallops over those leagues of prairies, with the wind tugging at the

roots of your hair, the coming close to the earth and learning over

again the stories of the growing grass and the little wild flowers

without names! Glorious is what it will be. Shall I be a shepherdess

with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep the bad wolves from the lambs,

or a typical Western ranch girl, with short hair, like the pictures of

her in the Sunday papers? I think the latter. And they’ll have my

picture, too, with the wild-cats I’ve slain, single-handed, hanging

from my saddle horn. ‘From the Four Hundred to the Flocks’ is the way

they’ll headline it, and they’ll print photographs of the old Van

Dresser mansion and the church where I was married. They won’t have my

picture, but they’ll get an artist to draw it. I’ll be wild and woolly,

and I’ll grow my own wool.”

“Octavia!” Aunt Ellen condensed into the one word all the protests she

was unable to utter.

“Don’t say a word, auntie. I’m going. I’ll see the sky at night fit

down on the world like a big butter-dish cover, and I’ll make friends

again with the stars that I haven’t had a chat with since I was a wee

child. I wish to go. I’m tired of all this. I’m glad I haven’t any

money. I could bless Colonel Beaupree for that ranch, and forgive him

for all his bubbles. What if the life will be rough and lonely! I—I

deserve it. I shut my heart to everything except that miserable

ambition. I—oh, I wish to go away, and forget—forget!”

Octavia swerved suddenly to her knees, laid her flushed face in her

aunt’s lap, and shook with turbulent sobs.

Aunt Ellen bent over her, and smoothed the coppery-brown hair.

“I didn’t know,” she said, gently; “I didn’t know—that. Who was it,

dear?”

When Mrs. Octavia Beaupree, née Van Dresser, stepped from the train at

Nopal, her manner lost, for the moment, some of that easy certitude

which had always marked her movements. The town was of recent

establishment, and seemed to have been hastily constructed of undressed

lumber and flapping canvas. The element that had congregated about the

station, though not offensively demonstrative, was clearly composed of

citizens accustomed to and prepared for rude alarms.

Octavia stood on the platform, against the telegraph office, and

attempted to choose by intuition from the swaggering, straggling string

of loungers, the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras, who had been

instructed by Mr. Bannister to meet her there. That tall, serious,

looking, elderly man in the blue flannel shirt and white tie she

thought must be he. But, no; he passed by, removing his gaze from the

lady as hers rested on him, according to the Southern custom. The

manager, she thought, with some impatience at being kept waiting,

should have no difficulty in selecting her. Young women wearing the

most recent thing in ash-coloured travelling suits were not so

plentiful in Nopal!

Thus keeping a speculative watch on all persons of possible managerial

aspect, Octavia, with a catching breath and a start of surprise,

suddenly became aware of Teddy Westlake hurrying along the platform in

the direction of the train—of Teddy Westlake or his sun-browned ghost

in cheviot, boots and leather-girdled hat—Theodore Westlake, Jr.,

amateur polo (almost) champion, all-round butterfly and cumberer of the

soil; but a broader, surer, more emphasized and determined Teddy than

the one she had known a year ago when last she saw him.

He perceived Octavia at almost the same time, deflected his course, and

steered for her in his old, straightforward way. Something like awe

came upon her as the strangeness of his metamorphosis was brought into

closer range; the rich, red-brown of his complexion brought out so

vividly his straw-coloured mustache and steel-gray eyes. He seemed more

grown-up, and, somehow, farther away. But, when he spoke, the old,

boyish Teddy came back again. They had been friends from childhood.

“Why, ’Tave!” he exclaimed, unable to reduce his perplexity to

coherence. “How—what—when—where?”

“Train,” said Octavia; “necessity; ten minutes ago; home. Your

complexion’s gone, Teddy. Now, how—what—when—where?”

“I’m working down here,” said Teddy. He cast side glances about the

station as one does who tries to combine politeness with duty.

“You didn’t notice on the train,” he asked, “an old lady with gray

curls and a poodle, who occupied two seats with her bundles and

quarrelled with the conductor, did you?”

“I think not,” answered Octavia, reflecting. “And you haven’t, by any

chance, noticed a big, gray-mustached man in a blue shirt and

six-shooters, with little flakes of merino wool sticking in his hair,

have you?”

“Lots of ’em,” said Teddy, with symptoms of mental delirium under the

strain. Do you happen to know any such individual?”

“No; the description is imaginary. Is your interest in the old lady

whom you describe a personal one?”

“Never saw her in my life. She’s painted entirely from fancy. She owns

the little piece of property where I earn my bread and butter—the

Rancho de las Sombras. I drove up to meet her according to arrangement

with her lawyer.”

Octavia leaned against the wall of the telegraph office. Was this

possible? And didn’t he know?

“Are you the manager of that ranch?” she asked weakly.

“I am,” said Teddy, with pride.

“I am Mrs. Beaupree,” said Octavia faintly; “but my hair never would

curl, and I was polite to the conductor.”

For a moment that strange, grown-up look came back, and removed Teddy

miles away from her.

“I hope you’ll excuse me,” he said, rather awkwardly. “You see, I’ve

been down here in the chaparral a year. I hadn’t heard. Give me your

checks, please, and I’ll have your traps loaded into the wagon. José

will follow with them. We travel ahead in the buckboard.”

Seated by Teddy in a feather-weight buckboard, behind a pair of wild,

cream-coloured Spanish ponies, Octavia abandoned all thought for the

exhilaration of the present. They swept out of the little town and down

the level road toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and

disappeared, and they struck across a world carpeted with an endless

reach of curly mesquite grass. The wheels made no sound. The tireless

ponies bounded ahead at an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made

fragrant by thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers, roared

gloriously in their ears. The motion was aërial, ecstatic, with a

thrilling sense of perpetuity in its effect. Octavia sat silent,

possessed by a feeling of elemental, sensual bliss. Teddy seemed to be

wrestling with some internal problem.

“I’m going to call you madama,” he announced as the result of his

labours. “That is what the Mexicans will call you—they’re nearly all

Mexicans on the ranch, you know. That seems to me about the proper

thing.”

“Very well, Mr. Westlake,” said Octavia, primly.

“Oh, now,” said Teddy, in some consternation, “that’s carrying the

thing too far, isn’t it?”

“Don’t worry me with your beastly etiquette. I’m just beginning to

live. Don’t remind me of anything artificial. If only this air could be

bottled! This much alone is worth coming for. Oh, look I there goes a

deer!”

“Jack-rabbit,” said Teddy, without turning his head.

“Could I—might I drive?” suggested Octavia, panting, with rose-tinted

cheeks and the eye of an eager child.

“On one condition. Could I—might I smoke?”

“Forever!” cried Octavia, taking the lines with solemn joy. “How shall

I know which way to drive?”

“Keep her sou’ by sou’east, and all sail set. You see that black speck

on the horizon under that lowermost Gulf cloud? That’s a group of

live-oaks and a landmark. Steer halfway between that and the little

hill to the left. I’ll recite you the whole code of driving rules for

the Texas prairies: keep the reins from under the horses’ feet, and

swear at ’em frequent.”

“I’m too happy to swear, Ted. Oh, why do people buy yachts or travel in

palace-cars, when a buckboard and a pair of plugs and a spring morning

like this can satisfy all desire?”

“Now, I’ll ask you,” protested Teddy, who was futilely striking match

after match on the dashboard, “not to call those denizens of the air

plugs. They can kick out a hundred miles between daylight and dark.” At

last he succeeded in snatching a light for his cigar from the flame

held in the hollow of his hands.

“Room!” said Octavia, intensely. “That’s what produces the effect. I

know now what I’ve wanted—scope—range—room!”

“Smoking-room,” said Teddy, unsentimentally. “I love to smoke in a

buckboard. The wind blows the smoke into you and out again. It saves

exertion.”

The two fell so naturally into their old-time goodfellowship that it

was only by degrees that a sense of the strangeness of the new

relations between them came to be felt.

“Madama,” said Teddy, wonderingly, “however did you get it into your

head to cut the crowd and come down here? Is it a fad now among the

upper classes to trot off to sheep ranches instead of to Newport?”

“I was broke, Teddy,” said Octavia, sweetly, with her interest centred

upon steering safely between a Spanish dagger plant and a clump of

chaparral; “I haven’t a thing in the world but this ranch—not even any

other home to go to.”

“Come, now,” said Teddy, anxiously but incredulously, “you don’t mean

it?”

“When my husband,” said Octavia, with a shy slurring of the word, “died

three months ago I thought I had a reasonable amount of the world’s

goods. His lawyer exploded that theory in a sixty-minute fully

illustrated lecture. I took to the sheep as a last resort. Do you

happen to know of any fashionable caprice among the gilded youth of

Manhattan that induces them to abandon polo and club windows to become

managers of sheep ranches?”

“It’s easily explained in my case,” responded Teddy, promptly. “I had

to go to work. I couldn’t have earned my board in New York, so I

chummed a while with old Sandford, one of the syndicate that owned the

ranch before Colonel Beaupree bought it, and got a place down here. I

wasn’t manager at first. I jogged around on ponies and studied the

business in detail, until I got all the points in my head. I saw where

it was losing and what the remedies were, and then Sandford put me in

charge. I get a hundred dollars a month, and I earn it.”

“Poor Teddy!” said Octavia, with a smile.

“You needn’t. I like it. I save half my wages, and I’m as hard as a

water plug. It beats polo.”

“Will it furnish bread and tea and jam for another outcast from

civilization?”

“The spring shearing,” said the manager, “just cleaned up a deficit in

last year’s business. Wastefulness and inattention have been the rule

heretofore. The autumn clip will leave a small profit over all

expenses. Next year there will be jam.”

When, about four o’clock in the afternoon, the ponies rounded a gentle,

brush-covered hill, and then swooped, like a double cream-coloured

cyclone, upon the Rancho de las Sombras, Octavia gave a little cry of

delight. A lordly grove of magnificent live-oaks cast an area of

grateful, cool shade, whence the ranch had drawn its name, “de las

Sombras”—of the shadows. The house, of red brick, one story, ran low

and long beneath the trees. Through its middle, dividing its six rooms

in half, extended a broad, arched passageway, picturesque with

flowering cactus and hanging red earthen jars. A “gallery,” low and

broad, encircled the building. Vines climbed about it, and the adjacent

ground was, for a space, covered with transplanted grass and shrubs. A

little lake, long and narrow, glimmered in the sun at the rear. Further

away stood the shacks of the Mexican workers, the corrals, wool sheds

and shearing pens. To the right lay the low hills, splattered with dark

patches of chaparral; to the left the unbounded green prairie blending

against the blue heavens.

“It’s a home, Teddy,” said Octavia, breathlessly; that’s what it

is—it’s a home.”

“Not so bad for a sheep ranch,” admitted Teddy, with excusable pride.

“I’ve been tinkering on it at odd times.”

A Mexican youth sprang from somewhere in the grass, and took charge of

the creams. The mistress and the manager entered the house.

“Here’s Mrs. MacIntyre,” said Teddy, as a placid, neat, elderly lady

came out upon the gallery to meet them. “Mrs. Mac, here’s the boss.

Very likely she will be wanting a hunk of ham and a dish of beans after

her drive.”

Mrs. MacIntyre, the housekeeper, as much a fixture on the place as the

lake or the live-oaks, received the imputation of the ranch’s resources

of refreshment with mild indignation, and was about to give it

utterance when Octavia spoke.

“Oh, Mrs. MacIntyre, don’t apologize for Teddy. Yes, I call him Teddy.

So does every one whom he hasn’t duped into taking him seriously. You

see, we used to cut paper dolls and play jackstraws together ages ago.

No one minds what he says.”

“No,” said Teddy, “no one minds what he says, just so he doesn’t do it

again.”

Octavia cast one of those subtle, sidelong glances toward him from

beneath her lowered eyelids—a glance that Teddy used to describe as an

upper-cut. But there was nothing in his ingenuous, weather-tanned face

to warrant a suspicion that he was making an allusion—nothing. Beyond a

doubt, thought Octavia, he had forgotten.

“Mr. Westlake likes his fun,” said Mrs. Maclntyre, as she conducted

Octavia to her rooms. “But,” she added, loyally, “people around here

usually pay attention to what he says when he talks in earnest. I don’t

know what would have become of this place without him.”

Two rooms at the east end of the house had been arranged for the

occupancy of the ranch’s mistress. When she entered them a slight

dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their

furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a

semi-tropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived

efforts to conform to it. The sashes had already been removed from the

big windows, and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze that streamed

through the wide jalousies. The bare floor was amply strewn with cool

rugs; the chairs were inviting, deep, dreamy willows; the walls were

papered with a light, cheerful olive. One whole side of her sitting

room was covered with books on smooth, unpainted pine shelves. She flew

to these at once. Before her was a well-selected library. She caught

glimpses of titles of volumes of fiction and travel not yet seasoned

from the dampness of the press.

Presently, recollecting that she was now in a wilderness given over to

mutton, centipedes and privations, the incongruity of these luxuries

struck her, and, with intuitive feminine suspicion, she began turning

to the fly-leaves of volume after volume. Upon each one was inscribed

in fluent characters the name of Theodore Westlake, Jr.

Octavia, fatigued by her long journey, retired early that night. Lying

upon her white, cool bed, she rested deliciously, but sleep coquetted

long with her. She listened to faint noises whose strangeness kept her

faculties on the alert—the fractious yelping of the coyotes, the

ceaseless, low symphony of the wind, the distant booming of the frogs

about the lake, the lamentation of a concertina in the Mexicans’

quarters. There were many conflicting feelings in her

heart—thankfulness and rebellion, peace and disquietude, loneliness and

a sense of protecting care, happiness and an old, haunting pain.

She did what any other woman would have done—sought relief in a

wholesome tide of unreasonable tears, and her last words, murmured to

herself before slumber, capitulating, came softly to woo her, were “He

has forgotten.”

The manager of the Rancho de las Sombras was no dilettante. He was a

“hustler.” He was generally up, mounted, and away of mornings before

the rest of the household were awake, making the rounds of the flocks

and camps. This was the duty of the major-domo, a stately old Mexican

with a princely air and manner, but Teddy seemed to have a great deal

of confidence in his own eyesight. Except in the busy seasons, he

nearly always returned to the ranch to breakfast at eight o’clock, with

Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre, at the little table set in the central

hallway, bringing with him a tonic and breezy cheerfulness full of the

health and flavour of the prairies.

A few days after Octavia’s arrival he made her get out one of her

riding skirts, and curtail it to a shortness demanded by the chaparral

brakes.

With some misgivings she donned this and the pair of buckskin leggings

he prescribed in addition, and, mounted upon a dancing pony, rode with

him to view her possessions. He showed her everything—the flocks of

ewes, muttons and grazing lambs, the dipping vats, the shearing pens,

the uncouth merino rams in their little pasture, the water-tanks

prepared against the summer drought—giving account of his stewardship

with a boyish enthusiasm that never flagged.

Where was the old Teddy that she knew so well? This side of him was the

same, and it was a side that pleased her; but this was all she ever saw

of him now. Where was his sentimentality—those old, varying moods of

impetuous love-making, of fanciful, quixotic devotion, of

heart-breaking gloom, of alternating, absurd tenderness and haughty

dignity? His nature had been a sensitive one, his temperament bordering

closely on the artistic. She knew that, besides being a follower of

fashion and its fads and sports, he had cultivated tastes of a finer

nature. He had written things, he had tampered with colours, he was

something of a student in certain branches of art, and once she had

been admitted to all his aspirations and thoughts. But now—and she

could not avoid the conclusion—Teddy had barricaded against her every

side of himself except one—the side that showed the manager of the

Rancho de las Sombras and a jolly chum who had forgiven and forgotten.

Queerly enough the words of Mr. Bannister’s description of her property

came into her mind—“all inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence.”

“Teddy’s fenced, too,” said Octavia to herself.

It was not difficult for her to reason out the cause of his

fortifications. It had originated one night at the Hammersmiths’ ball.

It occurred at a time soon after she had decided to accept Colonel

Beaupree and his million, which was no more than her looks and the

entrée she held to the inner circles were worth. Teddy had proposed

with all his impetuosity and fire, and she looked him straight in the

eyes, and said, coldly and finally: “Never let me hear any such silly

nonsense from you again.” “You won’t,” said Teddy, with an expression

around his mouth, and—now Teddy was inclosed within a strong

barbed-wire fence.

It was on this first ride of inspection that Teddy was seized by the

inspiration that suggested the name of Mother Goose’s heroine, and he

at once bestowed it upon Octavia. The idea, supported by both a

similarity of names and identity of occupations, seemed to strike him

as a peculiarly happy one, and he never tired of using it. The Mexicans

on the ranch also took up the name, adding another syllable to

accommodate their lingual incapacity for the final “p,” gravely

referring to her as “La Madama Bo-Peepy.” Eventually it spread, and

“Madame Bo-Peep’s ranch” was as often mentioned as the “Rancho de las

Sombras.”

Came the long, hot season from May to September, when work is scarce on

the ranches. Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater’s dream.

Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed

interest in her old water-colour box and easel—these disposed of the

sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring

enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy,

when the moon gave light over the wind-swept leagues, chaperoned by the

wheeling night-hawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would come

up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of

heart-breaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy

gallery, and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and Mrs.

MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched

the lighter humour in which she was lacking.

And the nights came, one after another, and were filed away by weeks

and months—nights soft and languorous and fragrant, that should have

driven Strephon to Chloe over wires however barbed, that might have

drawn Cupid himself to hunt, lasso in hand, among those amorous

pastures—but Teddy kept his fences up.

One July night Madame Bo-Peep and her ranch manager were sitting on the

east gallery. Teddy had been exhausting the science of prognostication

as to the probabilities of a price of twenty-four cents for the autumn

clip, and had then subsided into an anesthetic cloud of Havana smoke.

Only as incompetent a judge as a woman would have failed to note long

ago that at least a third of his salary must have gone up in the fumes

of those imported Regalias.

“Teddy,” said Octavia, suddenly, and rather sharply, “what are you

working down here on a ranch for?”

“One hundred per,” said Teddy, glibly, “and found.”

“I’ve a good mind to discharge you.”

“Can’t do it,” said Teddy, with a grin.

“Why not?” demanded Octavia, with argumentative heat.

“Under contract. Terms of sale respect all unexpired contracts. Mine

runs until 12 P. M., December thirty-first. You might get up at

midnight on that date and fire me. If you try it sooner I’ll be in a

position to bring legal proceedings.”

Octavia seemed to be considering the prospects of litigation.

“But,” continued Teddy cheerfully, “I’ve been thinking of resigning

anyway.”

Octavia’s rocking-chair ceased its motion. There were centipedes in

this country, she felt sure; and Indians, and vast, lonely, desolate,

empty wastes; all within strong barbed-wire fence. There was a Van

Dresser pride, but there was also a Van Dresser heart. She must know

for certain whether or not he had forgotten.

“Ah, well, Teddy,” she said, with a fine assumption of polite interest,

“it’s lonely down here; you’re longing to get back to the old life—to

polo and lobsters and theatres and balls.”

“Never cared much for balls,” said Teddy virtuously.

“You’re getting old, Teddy. Your memory is failing. Nobody ever knew

you to miss a dance, unless it occurred on the same night with another

one which you attended. And you showed such shocking bad taste, too, in

dancing too often with the same partner. Let me see, what was that

Forbes girl’s name—the one with wall eyes—Mabel, wasn’t it?”

“No; Adèle. Mabel was the one with the bony elbows. That wasn’t wall in

Adèle’s eyes. It was soul. We used to talk sonnets together, and

Verlaine. Just then I was trying to run a pipe from the Pierian

spring.”

“You were on the floor with her,” said Octavia, undeflected, “five

times at the Hammersmiths’.”

“Hammersmiths’ what?” questioned Teddy, vacuously.

“Ball—ball,” said Octavia, viciously. “What were we talking of?”

“Eyes, I thought,” said Teddy, after some reflection; “and elbows.”

“Those Hammersmiths,” went on Octavia, in her sweetest society prattle,

after subduing an intense desire to yank a handful of sunburnt, sandy

hair from the head lying back contentedly against the canvas of the

steamer chair, “had too much money. Mines, wasn’t it? It was something

that paid something to the ton. You couldn’t get a glass of plain water

in their house. Everything at that ball was dreadfully overdone.”

“It was,” said Teddy.

“Such a crowd there was!” Octavia continued, conscious that she was

talking the rapid drivel of a school-girl describing her first dance.

“The balconies were as warm as the rooms. I—lost—something at that

ball.” The last sentence was uttered in a tone calculated to remove the

barbs from miles of wire.

“So did I,” confessed Teddy, in a lower voice.

“A glove,” said Octavia, falling back as the enemy approached her

ditches.

“Caste,” said Teddy, halting his firing line without loss. “I

hobnobbed, half the evening with one of Hammersmith’s miners, a fellow

who kept his hands in his pockets, and talked like an archangel about

reduction plants and drifts and levels and sluice-boxes.”

“A pearl-gray glove, nearly new,” sighed Octavia, mournfully.

“A bang-up chap, that McArdle,” maintained Teddy approvingly. “A man

who hated olives and elevators; a man who handled mountains as

croquettes, and built tunnels in the air; a man who never uttered a

word of silly nonsense in his life. Did you sign those lease-renewal

applications yet, madama? They’ve got to be on file in the land office

by the thirty-first.”

Teddy turned his head lazily. Octavia’s chair was vacant.

A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate,

expounded the situation. It was early one morning while Octavia and

Mrs. Maclntyre were trimming the honeysuckle on the west gallery. Teddy

had risen and departed hastily before daylight in response to word that

a flock of ewes had been scattered from their bedding ground during the

night by a thunder-storm.

The centipede, driven by destiny, showed himself on the floor of the

gallery, and then, the screeches of the two women giving him his cue,

he scuttled with all his yellow legs through the open door into the

furthermost west room, which was Teddy’s. Arming themselves with

domestic utensils selected with regard to their length, Octavia and

Mrs. Maclntyre, with much clutching of skirts and skirmishing for the

position of rear guard in the attacking force, followed.

Once outside, the centipede seemed to have disappeared, and his

prospective murderers began a thorough but cautious search for their

victim.

Even in the midst of such a dangerous and absorbing adventure Octavia

was conscious of an awed curiosity on finding herself in Teddy’s

sanctum. In that room he sat alone, silently communing with those

secret thoughts that he now shared with no one, dreamed there whatever

dreams he now called on no one to interpret.

It was the room of a Spartan or a soldier. In one corner stood a wide,

canvas-covered cot; in another, a small bookcase; in another, a grim

stand of Winchesters and shotguns. An immense table, strewn with

letters, papers and documents and surmounted by a set of pigeon-holes,

occupied one side.

The centipede showed genius in concealing himself in such bare

quarters. Mrs. Maclntyre was poking a broom-handle behind the bookcase.

Octavia approached Teddy’s cot. The room was just as the manager had

left it in his hurry. The Mexican maid had not yet given it her

attention. There was his big pillow with the imprint of his head still

in the centre. She thought the horrid beast might have climbed the cot

and hidden itself to bite Teddy. Centipedes were thus cruel and

vindictive toward managers.

She cautiously overturned the pillow, and then parted her lips to give

the signal for reinforcements at sight of a long, slender, dark object

lying there. But, repressing it in time, she caught up a glove, a

pearl-gray glove, flattened—it might be conceived—by many, many months

of nightly pressure beneath the pillow of the man who had forgotten the

Hammersmiths’ ball. Teddy must have left so hurriedly that morning that

he had, for once, forgotten to transfer it to its resting-place by day.

Even managers, who are notoriously wily and cunning, are sometimes

caught up with.

Octavia slid the gray glove into the bosom of her summery morning gown.

It was hers. Men who put themselves within a strong barbed-wire fence,

and remember Hammersmith balls only by the talk of miners about

sluice-boxes, should not be allowed to possess such articles.

After all, what a paradise this prairie country was! How it blossomed

like the rose when you found things that were thought to be lost! How

delicious was that morning breeze coming in the windows, fresh and

sweet with the breath of the yellow ratama blooms! Might one not stand,

for a minute, with shining, far-gazing eyes, and dream that mistakes

might be corrected?

Why was Mrs. Maclntyre poking about so absurdly with a broom?

“I’ve found it,” said Mrs. MacIntyre, banging the door. “Here it is.”

“Did you lose something? asked Octavia, with sweetly polite

non-interest.

“The little devil!” said Mrs. Maclntyre, driven to violence. “Ye’ve no

forgotten him alretty?”

Between them they slew the centipede. Thus was he rewarded for his

agency toward the recovery of things lost at the Hammersmiths’ ball.

It seems that Teddy, in due course, remembered the glove, and when he

returned to the house at sunset made a secret but exhaustive search for

it. Not until evening, upon the moonlit eastern gallery, did he find

it. It was upon the hand that he had thought lost to him forever, and

so he was moved to repeat certain nonsense that he had been commanded

never, never to utter again. Teddy’s fences were down.

This time there was no ambition to stand in the way, and the wooing was

as natural and successful as should be between ardent shepherd and

gentle shepherdess.

The prairies changed to a garden. The Rancho de las Sombras became the

Ranch of Light.

A few days later Octavia received a letter from Mr. Bannister, in reply

to one she had written to him asking some questions about her business.

A portion of the letter ran as follows:

“I am at a loss to account for your references to the sheep ranch. Two

months after your departure to take up your residence upon it, it was

discovered that Colonel Beaupree’s title was worthless. A deed came to

light showing that he disposed of the property before his death. The

matter was reported to your manager, Mr. Westlake, who at once

repurchased the property. It is entirely beyond my powers of conjecture

to imagine how you have remained in ignorance of this fact. I beg that

you that will at once confer with that gentleman, who will, at least,

corroborate my statement.”

Octavia sought Teddy, with battle in her eye.

“What are you working on this ranch for?” she asked once more.

“One hundred—” he began to repeat, but saw in her face that she knew.

She held Mr. Bannister’s letter in her hand. He knew that the game was

up.

“It’s my ranch,” said Teddy, like a schoolboy detected in evil. “It’s a

mighty poor manager that isn’t able to absorb the boss’s business if

you give him time.”

“Why were you working down here?” pursued Octavia still struggling

after the key to the riddle of Teddy.

“To tell the truth, ’Tave,” said Teddy, with quiet candour, “it wasn’t

for the salary. That about kept me in cigars and sunburn lotions. I was

sent south by my doctor. ’Twas that right lung that was going to the

bad on account of over-exercise and strain at polo and gymnastics. I

needed climate and ozone and rest and things of that sort.”

In an instant Octavia was close against the vicinity of the affected

organ. Mr. Bannister’s letter fluttered to the floor.

“It’s—it’s well now, isn’t it, Teddy?”

“Sound as a mesquite chunk. I deceived you in one thing. I paid fifty

thousand for your ranch as soon as I found you had no title. I had just

about that much income accumulated at my banker’s while I’ve been

herding sheep down here, so it was almost like picking the thing up on

a bargain-counter for a penny. There’s another little surplus of

unearned increment piling up there, ’Tave. I’ve been thinking of a

wedding trip in a yacht with white ribbons tied to the mast, through

the Mediterranean, and then up among the Hebrides and down Norway to

the Zuyder Zee.”

“And I was thinking,” said Octavia, softly, “of a wedding gallop with

my manager among the flocks of sheep and back to a wedding breakfast

with Mrs. MacIntyre on the gallery, with, maybe, a sprig of orange

blossom fastened to the red jar above the table.”

Teddy laughed, and began to chant:

“Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,

And doesn’t know where to find ’em.

Let ’em alone, and they’ll come home,

And—”

Octavia drew his head down, and whispered in his ear.

But that is one of the tales they brought behind them.