IV

THE Halidons floated off to Europe for the summer. In due course their

return was announced in the social chronicle, and walking up Fifth

Avenue one afternoon I saw the back of the Brereton house sheathed in

scaffolding, and realized that they were adding a wing.

I did not look up Halidon, nor did I hear from him till the middle of

the winter. Once or twice, meanwhile, I had seen him in the back of his

wife's opera box; but Mrs. Halidon had grown so resplendent that she

reduced her handsome husband to a supernumerary. In January the papers

began to talk of the Halidon ball; and in due course I received a card

for it. I was not a frequenter of balls, and had no intention of going

to this one; but when the day came some obscure impulse moved me to set

aside my rule, and toward midnight I presented myself at Ned's

illuminated portals.

I shall never forget his look when I accosted him on the threshold of

the big new ballroom. With celibate egoism I had rather fancied he

would be gratified by my departure from custom; but one glance showed

me my mistake. He smiled warmly, indeed, and threw into his hand-clasp

an artificial energy of welcome--"You of all people--my dear fellow!

Have you seen Daisy?"--but the look behind the smile made me feel cold

in the crowded room.

Nor was Mrs. Halidon's greeting calculated to restore my circulation.

"Have you come to spy on us?" her frosty smile seemed to say; and I

crept home early, wondering if she had not found me out.

It was the following week that Halidon turned up one day in my office.

He looked pale and thinner, and for the first time I noticed a dash of

gray in his hair. I was startled at the change in him, but I reflected

that it was nearly a year since we had looked at each other by

daylight, and that my shaving-glass had doubtless a similar tale to

tell.

He fidgeted about the office, told me a funny story about his little

boy, and then dropped into a chair.

"Look here," he said, "I want to go into business."

"Business?" I stared.

"Well, why not? I suppose men have gone to work, even at my age, and

not made a complete failure of it. The fact is, I want to make some

money." He paused, and added: "I've heard of an opportunity to pick up

for next to nothing a site for the Academy, and if I could lay my hands

on a little cash--"

"Do you want to speculate?" I interposed.

"Heaven forbid! But don't you see that, if I had a fixed job--so much a

quarter--I could borrow the money and pay it off gradually?"

I meditated upon this astounding proposition. "Do you really think it's

wise to buy a site before--"

"Before what?"

"Well--seeing ahead a little?"

His face fell for a moment, but he rejoined cheerfully: "It's an

exceptional chance, and after all, I _shall_ see ahead if I can get

regular work. I can put by a little every month, and by and bye, when

our living expenses diminish, my wife means to come forward--her idea

would be to give the building--"

He broke off and drummed on the table, waiting nervously for me to

speak. He did not say on what grounds he still counted on a diminution

of his household expenses, and I had not the cruelty to press this

point; but I murmured, after a moment: "I think you're right--I should

try to buy the land."

We discussed his potentialities for work, which were obviously still an

unknown quantity, and the conference ended in my sending him to a firm

of real-estate brokers who were looking out for a partner with a little

money to invest. Halidon had a few thousands of his own, which he

decided to embark in the venture; and thereafter, for the remaining

months of the winter, he appeared punctually at a desk in the brokers'

office, and sketched plans of the Academy on the back of their business

paper. The site for the future building had meanwhile been bought, and

I rather deplored the publicity which Ned gave to the fact; but, after

all, since this publicity served to commit him more deeply, to pledge

him conspicuously to the completion of his task, it was perhaps a wise

instinct of self-coercion that had prompted him.

It was a dull winter in realty, and toward spring, when the market

began to revive, one of the Halidon children showed symptoms of a

delicate throat, and the fashionable doctor who humoured the family

ailments counselled--nay, commanded--a prompt flight to the

Mediterranean.

"He says a New York spring would be simply criminal--and as for those

ghastly southern places, my wife won't hear of them; so we're off. But

I shall be back in July, and I mean to stick to the office all summer."

He was true to his word, and reappeared just as all his friends were

deserting town. For two torrid months he sat at his desk, drawing fresh

plans of the Academy, and waiting for the wind-fall of a "big deal";

but in September he broke down from the effect of the unwonted

confinement, and his indignant wife swept him off to the mountains.

"Why Ned should work when we have the money--I wish he would sell that

wretched piece of land!" And sell it he did one day: I chanced on a

record of the transaction in the realty column of the morning paper. He

afterward explained the sale to me at length. Owing to some spasmodic

effort at municipal improvement, there had been an unforeseen rise in

the adjoining property, and it would have been foolish--yes, I agreed

that it would have been foolish. He had made $10,000 on the sale, and

that would go toward paying off what he had borrowed for the original

purchase. Meanwhile he could be looking about for another site.

Later in the winter he told me it was a bad time to look. His position

in the real-estate business enabled him to follow the trend of the

market, and that trend was obstinately upward. But of course there

would be a reaction--and he was keeping his eyes open.

As the resuscitated Academy scheme once more fell into abeyance, I saw

Halidon less and less frequently; and we had not met for several

months, when one day of June, my morning paper startled me with the

announcement that the President had appointed Edward Halidon of New

York to be Civil Commissioner of our newly acquired Eastern possession,

the Manana Islands. "The unhealthy climate of the islands, and the

defective sanitation of the towns, make it necessary that vigorous

measures should be taken to protect the health of the American citizens

established there, and it is believed that Mr. Halidon's large

experience of Eastern life and well-known energy of character--" I read

the paragraph twice; then I dropped the paper, and projected myself

through the subway to Halidon's office. But he was not there; he had

not been there for a month. One of the clerks believed he was in

Washington.

"It's true, then!" I said to myself. "But Mrs. Halidon in the

Mananas--?"

A day or two later Ned appeared in my office. He looked better than

when we had last met, and there was a determined line about his lips.

"My wife? Heaven forbid! You don't suppose I should think of taking

her? But the job is a tremendously interesting one, and it's the kind

of work I believe I can do--the only kind," he added, smiling rather

ruefully.

"But my dear Ned--"

He faced me with a look of quiet resolution. "I think I've been through

all the _buts_. It's an infernal climate, of course, but then I am used

to the East--I know what precautions to take. And it would be a big

thing to clean up that Augean stable."

"But consider your wife and children--"

He met this with deliberation. "I _have_ considered my children--that's

the point. I don't want them to be able to say, when they look back:

'He was content to go on living on that money--'"

"My dear Ned--"

"That's the one thing they _shan't_ say of me," he pressed on

vehemently. "I've tried other ways--but I'm no good at business. I see

now that I shall never make money enough to carry out the scheme

myself; but at least I can clear out, and not go on being _his_

pensioner--seeing his dreams turned into horses and carpets and

clothes--"

He broke off, and leaning on my desk hid his face in his hands. When he

looked up again his flush of wrath had subsided.

"Just understand me--it's not _her_ fault. Don't fancy I'm trying for

an instant to shift the blame. A woman with children simply obeys the

instinct of her sex; she puts them first--and I wouldn't have it

otherwise. As far as she's concerned there were no conditions

attached--there's no reason why she should make any sacrifice." He

paused, and added painfully: "The trouble is, I can't make her see that

I am differently situated."

"But, Ned, the climate--what are you going to gain by chucking yourself

away?"

He lifted his brows. "That's a queer argument from _you_. And, besides,

I'm up to the tricks of all those ague-holes. And I've _got_ to live,

you see: I've got something to put through." He saw my look of enquiry,

and added with a shy, poignant laugh--how I hear it still!--: "I don't

mean only the job in hand, though that's enough in itself; but Paul's

work--you understand.--It won't come in _my_ day, of course--I've got

to accept that--but my boy's a splendid chap" (the boy was three), "and

I tell you what it is, old man, I believe when he grows up _he'll put

it through_."

Halidon went to the Mananas, and for two years the journals brought me

incidental reports of the work he was accomplishing. He certainly had

found a job to his hand: official words of commendation rang through

the country, and there were lengthy newspaper leaders on the efficiency

with which our representative was prosecuting his task in that lost

corner of our colonies. Then one day a brief paragraph announced his

death--"one of the last victims of the pestilence he had so

successfully combated."

That evening, at my club, I heard men talking of him. One said: "What's

the use of a fellow wasting himself on a lot of savages?" and another

wiseacre opined: "Oh, he went off because there was friction at home. A

fellow like that, who knew the East, would have got through all right

if he'd taken the proper precautions. I saw him before he left, and I

never saw a man look less as if he wanted to live."

I turned on the last speaker, and my voice made him drop his lighted

cigar on his complacent knuckles.

"I never knew a man," I exclaimed, "who had better reasons for wanting

to live!"

A handsome youth mused: "Yes, his wife is very beautiful--but it

doesn't follow--"

And then some one nudged him, for they knew I was Halidon's friend.