This is a very long letter about matters in which you will,

conceivably, take only a vague interest, but I am clearing my mind for

the day, revealing myself to myself, revolving my ideas so that I may

the more fully enjoy them.

Now that I have written this letter, indeed, there seems no real

occasion for sending it, but I will not deprive you of such small

amusement as you may derive from a perusal of its pages.

love from your,

+CAMPASPE+.

Having finished the letter and addressed the envelope, Campaspe dipped

her fingers into a shallow bowl of water-lilies that stood on the desk

and with the moistened tips wet the gum of the envelope and pressed the

flap closed. Leaving the letter for Frederika to post, she rose and

descended to the garden.

Campaspe’s garden, at the rear of the house, was enclosed in high brick

walls on which were trained espaliered fruit-trees. Dwarf shrubs forced

their miniature trunks between the mossy crevices of the flagstones of

various sizes and colours that paved the ground. Over these a quaint

tortoise of considerable size and incredible age, named Aglaë, wandered

in a disconsolate manner. There were a few comfortable chairs and, in

one corner, under the shade of a spreading crab-apple tree, a table. In

the opposite corner rose a rococo fountain which Campaspe, entranced

at first sight, had purchased in an antiquary’s shop in Dresden. This

fountain gave the atmosphere to the whole place. On a low pedestal, in

the midst of a semi-circular pool, a marble Eros, blindfold, knelt. His

bow drawn taut, the god was about to discharge an arrow at random.

Beneath him, prone on the marble sward, a young nymph wept. The figures

were surrounded by a curving row of stiff straight marble narcissi,

the water dripping from their cups into the pool below, in which

silver-fish played.

Charmed by the sun and the contradictory coolness of the day--nature,

she had noted, could be as contradictory and perverse as life itself--,

Campaspe, propped up against cushions, lay back in a comfortable

chaise-longue. Frederika had followed her with a pile of books, which

she placed on a table by the side of her mistress, but, for the moment,

Campaspe did not disturb these. She closed her eyes and half-dreamed in

the bliss of her security. She hoped that no one would call. She had

too much to think about. Campaspe enjoyed being alone. In fact, it was

essential to her happiness that she be alone for at least a part of

every day, occasionally for the whole day, and sometimes for a period

of two or three days. It was during these self-imposed isolations that

she most thoroughly enjoyed the hours in which she was not alone.

Retrospection, revery, was her pleasure, her desire, her vice. She

had no other. Yet, today, she did not give orders that she was not

receiving.

She picked up one of the books, a novel by Waldo Frank, of which

she conned the title with some dismay. She had bought it under the

impression that it was called Darkey Mothers. She was not interested in

the true title. Nevertheless, she opened the book and read a sentence

or two. Then, with some impatience, she tossed the volume aside. Why,

she wondered, did authors write in this uncivilized and unsophisticated

manner? How was it possible to read an author who never laughed? For it

was only behind laughter that true tragedy could lie concealed, only

the ironic author who could awaken the deeper emotions. The tragedies

of life, she reflected, were either ridiculous or sordid. The only

way to get the sense of this absurd, contradictory, and perverse

existence into a book was to withdraw entirely from the reality. The

artist who feels the most poignantly the bitterness of life wears a

persistent and sardonic smile. She remembered the salubrious remark

of a character in André Salmon’s La Négresse du Sacré Cœur: There

is only one truth, steadfast, healing, salutary, and that is the

absurd. This book was mush, as sentimental, she felt, as a book by

Gene Stratton-Porter--she chose a name at random, realizing that she

did not know much about Gene Stratton-Porter except what she had read

in the newspapers. This extremely heavy attempt on the part of Waldo

Frank to take life seriously was just as sentimental as the attempt of

Gene Stratton-Porter to take life, well as _she_ found it. She

recalled Georg Kaiser’s sardonic play, From Morn to Midnight. How much

higher it loomed in her consciousness, how much more lingering the

sting, than plays which, on the surface, appeared to be more bitter,

plays such as Dreiser’s The Hand of the Potter, for Kaiser had laughed

at his puppets. On n’apprend qu’en s’amusant, according to Sylvestre

Bonnard, and she remembered Nietzsche’s defence of the music of Carmen:

It approaches lightly, nimbly, and with courtesy. It is amiable.

It does not produce sweat. What is good is easy; everything divine

runs with light feet: the first proposition of my Æsthetics.... How

delightful the scene in Kaiser’s play in which the German grandmother

dies because her son leaves the house before eating his dinner! It

had never happened before. What a comment on German character! And

ten times as powerful as if the scene had been presented as something

to cry over. One could shed tears to be sure, but not in behalf of

the grandmother. One wept for her nation. She mentally decided that

Hilaire Belloc’s The Mercy of Allah gave a much better picture of a

modern millionaire, because the book was good-humoured, satirical,

and allegorical, than the more solemn performances of W. L. George in

Caliban and Theodore Dreiser in The Financier. It was this same lack

of humour, this sentimental adherence to a rigid point of view which

in her eyes spoiled Three Soldiers. There was something to be said for

such a book, undoubtedly, but you could not say that it was written for

a sophisticated audience. No, in a different sense, it was written for

the stupid, unsophisticated crowd, just as Rupert Hughes’s books were

written for that crowd. Only Hughes wrote to please the crowd and Dos

Passos to annoy it. And such sophisticated souls as were delighted with

Three Soldiers were delighted merely because the crowd was annoyed. An

artist, she said to herself, would leave this crowd indifferent.

She closed her eyes again ... and lighted a fresh cigarette. As she

exhaled the first ring of smoke a fable related by Babbalanja in Herman

Melville’s marvellous Mardi came into her mind: Midni was of opinion

that daylight was vulgar; good enough for taro-planting and travelling,

but wholly unadapted to the sublime ends of study. He toiled by night;

from sunset to sunrise poring over the works of the old logicians. Like

most philosophers, Midni was an amiable man; but one thing invariably

put him out. He read in the woods by glow-worm light; insect in hand,

tracing over his pages, line by line. But glow-worms burn not long: and

in the midst of some calm intricate thought, at some imminent comma,

the insect often expired, and Midni groped for a meaning. Upon such an

occasion, Ho, Ho, he cried; but for one instant of sunlight to see my

way to a period! But sunlight there was none; so Midni sprang to his

feet, and parchment under arm, raced about among the sloughs and bogs

for another glow-worm. Often, making a rapid descent with his turban,

he thought he had caged a prize; but nay. Again he tried; yet with no

better success. Nevertheless, at last he secured one, but hardly had he

read three lines by its light, when out it went. Again and again this

occurred. And thus he for ever went halting and stumbling through his

studies and plunging through his quagmires after a glim.

A book, Campaspe considered, should have the swiftness of melodrama,

the lightness of farce, to be a real contribution to thought. Every

time, had said the Rabbi Moses Maimonides, you find in our books a

tale, the reality of which seems impossible, a story which is repugnant

both to reason and common sense, then be sure that tale contains a

profound allegory, veiling a deeply mysterious truth; and the greater

the absurdity of the letter the deeper the wisdom of the spirit. How

could anything serious be hidden more successfully than in a book

which pretended to be light and gay? Plot was certainly unimportant

in the novel; character drawing a silly device. Anybody could do it.

It was like character acting: give a man a beard and a few trick

phrases and gestures and you have created a masterpiece. How easy it

would be, for example, to put the Duke in a book: his stuttering, his

neglected finger nails, and the man would rise before the reader’s

eyes. Justification? Preparation? In life we never know anything about

the families and early lives of the people we meet; why should we have

to learn all about them in books? Growth of character in a novel was

nonsense. People never change. Psychology: the supreme imbecility. The

long and complicated analyses that serious writers give us merely

define the mental limitations of these writers. The Bible, The Thousand

and One Nights, and Don Quixote certainly were not psychological

novels.... As for Ulysses ... Works like Ulysses are always out of

date. At first too modern, they soon grow old-fashioned. The very group

that is most enthusiastic about Ulysses today will be the first to

spurn it tomorrow.

She lit another cigarette, reflecting on the words of Clive Bell, who

had said that in the best work of Nicolas Poussin the human figure is

treated as a shape cut out of coloured paper to be pinned on as the

composition directs. That was the right way to treat the human figure;

the mistake lay in making these shapes retain the characteristic

gestures of classical rhetoric. She glanced towards the pile of books

again. There were, she noted with a new regret, if no surprise, no

books by Ouida in the pile, and she suddenly became aware of the fact

that only a book by Ouida would satisfy her present mood. Ouida, who

had not written for posterity, realizing, no doubt, that the public of

fifty years hence would be no keener intellectually than her coeval

public. Ouida was entertaining. Her approach was satisfactorily

unpretentious. She wrote about high life, the very rich--and who

wanted to read about any other kind of life? Certainly not the rich,

or the middle classes, or the poor.... Neither the rich nor the poor

were interested in reading about the poor except in the form of the

Cinderella legend and that had been done too often.... Ouida’s

characters had amusing adventures; they were cut out of coloured paper

to be pinned on as the composition directed. I think, Campaspe began to

reason, that Waldo Frank should read Ouida. I wonder if he ever has.

But she apprehended that Waldo Frank would not understand or appreciate

the work of Louise de la Ramé, and so a reading would have no effect

on his own future writing. It was characteristic of Campaspe that she

began to feel a little sorry for Waldo Frank.

Two white doves floated down from the blue and settled on the fountain,

one on the curly head of Eros, the other on a stiff narcissus stem. She

listened to their soft cooing and watched their graceful movements. She

recalled the case of the prisoner in the death-house at Sing Sing, who

had undergone an operation for appendicitis two days before the hour

set for his execution. Skilled surgeons had been rushed from New York

to save his life so that he would not die and “cheat the chair,” as the

New York Times put it. There also lingered in her hospitable memory the

story of the derelict who had been fed by the Y. M. C. A. The secretary

of a branch of that organization had offered the fellow regular meals

and employment if ... IF he would put himself completely in the hands

of the Y. M. C. A. and profess a belief in God. The man had refused,

she recalled with delight. Nothing remained to him but his free will,

and he proposed to keep that. But the Y. M. C. A. secretary, instead

of regarding this stand as an indication of character, wept over this

wolf lost to God. These anecdotes, typical press-cuttings from the

news of the day, were, in their essence, comic arraignments of our

civilization, or so Campaspe considered them. An attempt to trump up

tears for the victims would always fail with a sophisticated audience,

but when ridicule was aimed at the real offender, modern democracy

or the church, a sense of tragic irony ensued. Something might even

happen, although she was extremely dubious about this. It could

hardly be expected that the best surgeons would be rushed to Sullivan

Street to save the life of a poor Italian baby who had no intention

of cheating the chair. Campaspe had a savage hatred of cruelty.

She watched animal acts at the circus with the constant, but still

ungratified, hope that the beasts would kill their trainers.

She lighted another cigarette. The doves had long since flown away.

Aglaë, the tortoise, was reposing, the weight of his years weighing

down his shell. Soft purple shadows in lacework fell athwart the

flagstones.... Considering the heroines of modern fiction, reviewing

their qualifications, Campaspe decided that Savina Grove and Mrs.

Hurstpierpoint were the only two she would invite to call on her. They

had lived their lives, not very amusing lives, perhaps, but at least

their own. She remembered Idalia with pleasure. Idalia, though of

another age, might come too. She must send to Brentano’s for the book

and reread it. Did Brentano’s still keep the works of Ouida in stock?

she wondered. Beyond question the serious books of Ouida were the best

antidote she could think of for the serious books of this generation.

At least, they were written in the grand manner.... Campaspe was

enjoying her revery and her face changed expression for the worse as

she saw Frederika emerging from the house. Her approach portended

callers.

Mr. Moody is in the salon.

Oh! Paul. Campaspe was relieved. Bring tea, Frederika, and send him out.

Iced tea?

No, hot today.... And wait! Take these books in.

She pushed the rejected pile towards Frederika, who gathered them into

her arms and retreated. Leaning back in her chair, almost recumbent,

gazing at the azure sky through the rent canopy of leaves, Campaspe

blew smoke rings lazily upwards. Glancing down, as Paul came through

the door, she was aware at once that something had happened. His face

wore a harassed expression and there were deep circles underneath his

eyes. These, however, might be after-effects due to the Duke’s opera.

’paspe, have you seen Harold? Paul was breathless.

Harold? No. What’s happened to Harold? She was interested to discover

that she felt a vague alarm.

Gone. Disappeared.

What do you mean?

I called him up this afternoon. Drains told me. The hall-boy reports

that he came in last night, but went out again immediately. I

questioned Drains further. He knew the reason for Harold’s departure.

When he got home he found Zimbule occupying his bed.

Campaspe smiled. The girl is not without guile, but I hadn’t thought

she would do that.... Yet, she said she would.

She did. Drains gave her the key. His father....

That horrible father! Campaspe exclaimed in a tone of disgust. What is

he trying to do to the boy?

I am beginning to wonder myself. Even Drains feels a little contrite.

You see, he likes Harold.

You can’t help liking him.... Have you been to Ronald’s?

Yes. One of the Ceylonese sent me up to the bathroom. Ronald was

immured there, lustily singing Old black Joe.... I interviewed him

through the door. He knew nothing about Harold.

What has Drains done?

Nothing. He has strict orders not to appeal to Mr. Prewett for help in

emergencies. Besides, it is obvious that the boy has merely run away

to escape Zimbule.... I thought he might be here.

He’d sooner go to you, she mused, still blowing rings of grey smoke.

No, in some way he connects me with this plot. Of course, I don’t know

the first thing about it, but _he_ doesn’t know that.... He trusts

_you_.

I’m fond of him, Campaspe remarked simply.

Frederika came back into the garden with the tea-tray which she

deposited on the table, and Campaspe filled two cups, offering one to

Paul, with a napoléon.

You don’t suppose ... he burst out suddenly, and then hesitated,

appalled by the thought.

No, I don’t, Paulet, she replied. He will turn up. I am not really

disturbed when I consider his reason for leaving. Zimbule terrified

him; that’s all. He’s probably gone to a hotel. He has plenty of money?

Heaps.

They talked a little longer. Paul, much too nervous to remain seated,

walked up and down the narrow enclosure, finally taking his departure

with the suddenness of his arrival.

The sun was sinking; the shadows on the flagstones had turned to deep

indigo. Campaspe drank in the warm-cool air with delight. The scene was

about to be played, the scene for which she had waited. The rebellion

had broken out. Instinctively, she had felt the truth when she wrote

Laura. Frederika came back into the garden.

Mr. Prewett came some time ago, madame. He has been waiting in the

salon until Mr. Moody went away.

Harold! Send him out, Frederika, and bring another cup.

If harassed described Paul’s appearance, Harold looked absolutely

haggard. His hair was awry; his cheeks were ashen; his eyes bloodshot.

He still wore his evening clothes and it was apparent that he had not

been to bed.

I hope you’ll excuse my appearance, he began. I shouldn’t have come,

but I had to.... He was almost fierce ... I had to.

I’m glad, Harold, she said.

I asked Frederika if you were alone; I’ve been waiting.... You are the

only person I can talk to, Mrs. Lorillard. I haven’t any friends.

Campaspe, _please_.

Campaspe, he repeated after her. I’m through, he began again with

renewed, withal somewhat shrill, determination. My father can go to

hell. I don’t give a damn about his money. I’ll live the way I want to

from now on. I’ll.... Do you know what’s happened?

I can guess.

Some one has...?

Zimbule told Bunny that she was spending the night with me, but she

wouldn’t let me drive her home.

What _are_ they trying to do to me, Campaspe: Drains and my

father? They have some plan.... I am to do whatever I please, but

constantly they are _suggesting_....

But, Harold, as you have your father’s word that you can do what you

like, why don’t you take advantage of it?

What I like is impossible. Campaspe, I must tell you! I must tell

some one! Then, incoherently, he poured out the story of his meeting

with Alice, and what had happened subsequently, but he refrained from

mentioning her name.

Campaspe listened, enraptured, masking her too eager interest behind

the smoke of her cigarette. It seemed too impossibly romantic to be

real. It had happened, however. Of that the boy’s manner left no

loophole for doubt. When he had concluded his narrative, she paused for

a moment before she said:

Obviously, the thing to do is to find some one who knows the girl, and

who will introduce you properly.

But who? he asked desperately. Who? Whom do I know that would know

people like that, conventional, respectable people? He flushed. I beg

your pardon. I....

Enjoying his discomfiture, she was at the same time amused by his point

of view.

_I_ understand, she said, but perhaps _you_ don’t. It is

barely possible, she began and then broke off. Presently, looking at

him intently and sympathetically, she suggested, Suppose you tell me

the girl’s name.

There was another pause, during which Campaspe had time to perceive

how altogether miserable the boy was. He appeared to be almost ready

to cry. Was he trying to make up his mind whether he could trust

her? Would she, she knew he was asking himself, prove to be another

illusion? At last he spoke, almost in a whisper and in a tone which

bestowed an accolade upon the name.

Alice Blake.

Campaspe, sitting bolt upright, pouring tea, dropped the pot crashing

into the delicate Sèvres cup beneath. The scalding water flooded the

table, unnoticed by her. Falling back against the cushions, she began

to laugh, a loud, pealing mirth-less laugh, a more than terrifying

laugh. Harold bent over her.

What is it, Campaspe? What is the matter?

She stopped laughing as suddenly as she had begun.

I think, Harold, she said very quietly, that I am acquainted with the

lady. The name, however, may not be uncommon. Do you know where she

lives?

56 East Thirty-seventh Street.

She is my sister, Campaspe announced.

Not altogether without sympathy, she watched the blood mount to the

boy’s face, but her sympathy was mingled with another emotion. She

could understand how horrible the idea seemed to him. This news

apparently struck him as the direst blow that had yet fallen. Some

moments elapsed before he was able to speak, and she made no effort

to hurry him. Rather, by her manner, by her poise, by her ease, she

indicated an opportunity for the pause.

Your _sister_! With varying emphasis, he repeated her words again

almost in a whisper: _Your_ sister!

How can that be? you are asking yourself. How can her father be mine?

It is very simple. My father has no control whatever over me. When I

came of age I inherited money left in trust for me by my grandmother,

but even before that I was free, because I married when I was sixteen.

I see very little of Alice now, but I can see her when I wish to. As a

matter of fact, my sons are visiting their grandfather at Southampton,

and Alice is with him too. I can send for her....

Send for her! Would he never be able again to think out a sentence of

his own?

Yes, if you want her sent for. Certainly. Her voice was dead in quality.

Would you?... His manner was eager, yet almost tearful.

How tragic, she thought again, is youth. How much youth suffers

unnecessarily.

Whenever you like. She spoke calmly, evenly.

He rose to this: Now!

Now? She appeared to ponder. Today? I could telephone, she mused, but,

on the whole, I think it’s better to write. You must give me three

days. In three days I’ll bring you and Alice together in this garden.

Three days! He was crestfallen again.

After all, dear boy, you’ve already waited weeks. What are three days

more?

You know best, my dear, dear friend.

She regarded him curiously, weighing him.

Are you.... She began, and then shifting her phrase, went on, Do you

want to marry her?

If she will ... at once!

Oh! she will.

You think....

I am certain of it.

How can I thank you?

Don’t thank me, Harold.

Another problem had arisen in his mind.

Where shall I wait the three days?

Go home, of course. It’s absurd for you to wander about in those

clothes. Now that you know what you are going to do you can handle

Drains. Besides, after last night, I have an idea Drains won’t bother

you any more.

Campaspe had awakened to some show of enthusiasm again. She was making

plans. Get some money together, she went on. You will need it. Alice is

accustomed to spending all she wants to spend. You must go somewhere

and we--you and I--must decide where. Alice has no initiative. I have

it--Campaspe’s eyes glowed with a ruddy fire--; I own a tiny cottage at

Provincetown on Cape Cod. I’ve never been there myself. I bought it as

an investment for an adventure. This, I fancy, is the adventure. Take

it. After you are through with it, I’ll sell it.

To us?

If _you_ want it, I’ll give it to you. I can’t use it twice. The

bloom will be off.

I love her! Harold cried. If you knew how much I love her, Campaspe!

I’m sure you do, my boy, and in three days you shall see her. Come back

to this garden and you will find her here.

He rose, kissed her hand quite spontaneously, although it was the first

time in his life he had ever done such a thing, and took his departure.

Seized with a new nervousness, Campaspe got up and walked about. Her

whole body was glowing and vibrating with joy, and her smile rippled

into laughter. The situation was too perfect. Only one more scene was

required to end the act and bring down the curtain. That scene, she was

now aware, was about to be played, and, consequently, she was in no

way astonished when Frederika presently informed her that Zimbule was

waiting in the salon. Nor was she unprepared for the black garb, the

wholly woebegone appearance of the snake-child, as she slowly emerged

from the house and descended the flagstones to meet Campaspe, who was

standing near the fountain.

Campaspe clasped her hand. I know, dear Zimbule, she said. Harold has

just been here.

The girl threw her arms about Campaspe’s neck, her yellow head

drooping, and gave way to a passionate fit of sobbing.

I’m too late! she cried.

Rather, too early, corrected Campaspe. He will want you later when you

don’t want him.

He told you....

He told me nothing. Paul was here before him, and Paul had seen Drains.

Where’s Harold now?

He went home.

Zimbule made a movement towards the door. I’ll follow him!

Campaspe gently caught the girl’s arm.

No, dear Zimbule, you won’t do that. It would do no good. The boy is in

love.

Zimbule stared hard at Campaspe.

With you?

No, with my sister.

Zimbule, looking straight into Campaspe’s eyes, could not doubt that

she told the truth.

Did you know this last night? she demanded.

I learned it for the first time five minutes ago.

Are you going to help them?

Yes.

Against me?

It’s no good, Zimbule. You know what happened last night. Harold means

it.

The girl sank into a chair and began to sob again, making a good deal

of superfluous noise, Campaspe thought, and yet she was sorry for the

child, and considered Harold a fool for not perceiving how infinitely

superior was this lithe, little animal to her silly sister. He had

made a stupid choice, but it was not her habit to interfere with other

people’s choices. Under the circumstances, however, she decided at

once that she must keep the girl by her. Such tempestuous natures were

capable of suicide. Campaspe was so entirely contented with life in

general and her own participation in it in particular that it also

occurred to her that she might go so far as to do something for Cupid.

She infrequently dined at a public restaurant, more seldom still did

she attend the theatre. It pleased Cupid to do these things, which

to her were merely dull. Her imagination supplied her with so much

better material than such casual experiences could give her. More and

more she was finding it futile to leave her garden. In time, she began

to believe, all the external life she needed would come to her. But

tonight she might make an exception. Rapidly, she planned a dinner

at the Claremont, and an evening at some musical show. She rang for

Frederika.

Is Mr. Lorillard in the house?

He came in half an hour ago, madame. He is in his room dressing.

Ask him to come out here, Frederika. She turned to the snake-child

again. Zimbule, do stop crying. You don’t want to go back to Bunny?

The child vigorously shook her head.

Then stay to dinner with us, and spend the night here.

She put her hand tenderly on the girl’s head, and she knew that Zimbule

would stay.

Presently Cupid appeared, a little alarmed, obviously wondering what

was up. He looked rather pompous in his fat, small way. Campaspe noted

that he was losing his hair.

Hello, ’paspe, do you want to see me?

Yes, Cupid, I do. This is Miss O’Grady. Zimbule bowed her head but did

not offer her hand. She’s dining with us, and going to the theatre.

To the theatre! Cupid was very much astonished.

Certainly. Why not?

But you usually.... I have an engagement, but I’ll break it. Whenever

you want me, you know I’m here.

Why was every one so pathetic today? She remembered that Paul had once

asked her why she had married, and she had answered that everybody

should marry at least once, and he had insisted, But why Cupid? and she

had replied, He’s the very man I should have married. How true! she

thought now with a smile.

The dinner, on the verandah of the Claremont, was rather solemn.

Zimbule ate little and did not talk at all. Cupid made a determined

effort to entertain his wife. He had, she could see, caught a false

strand of hope, and had woven dreams for himself out of it; she did

not disillusion him. She was kind and gracious and even amusing. She

did not try to draw Zimbule into the conversation. The girl, she was

sure, would be happier quiet. Occasionally, even while she chattered,

she gazed across to the lights on the black river and thought her own

thoughts.

It was late when they had finished dinner, too late, she decided, to

use their seats for the Follies, and she suggested that they drop into

a Negro revue at the Forty-eighth Street Theatre for a half-hour or so.

An amazing mulatto woman, Edith Wilson, who sang a song entitled, He

may be your man but he comes to see me sometimes, held her attention

for a few moments. Presently, she became aware that Cupid was finally

awake to Zimbule’s beauty. He was the last to observe just what was

most obvious to others, she reflected. They drove home.

Escorted by Frederika, Zimbule slipped off at once to her room. Cupid,

rather awkwardly, attempted to seize Campaspe’s hand.

No, Cupid, don’t misunderstand....

The poor little man was ridiculous in his dejection.

I like you, you know, she added.... Good-night.

At the first landing, she peeped over the banisters for a glimpse of

the pitiful figure standing alone below, and then she continued on her

way upstairs. Before her desk she wrote a short note to her father, and

sent Frederika with it to the nearest post-box on Irving Place. Then

she went to Zimbule’s room and tapped gently on the door.

Come in!

The child was lying nude on the bed, lovely in her despair as she had

been the night before in her joy.

Are you feeling better, dear Zimbule?

Worse.

Do you want anything?

You know damn well what I want.

The girl began to cry again and Campaspe, sitting on the edge of the

bed, bending over her, found it difficult to quiet her. She began to

stroke the girl’s head. Silently, her hand glided back and forth. Quite

suddenly, a strange thing happened. Zimbule, Campaspe observed, had

fallen into a deep sleep. She stole back on tiptoe to her own chamber.

Frederika was waiting for her and, with her maid’s assistance, she

prepared for bed.

I shall not read tonight, Frederika. Put out the lights ... and

good-night.

Good-night, madame.

That night Campaspe dreamed a curious dream. She found herself walking

in her bare feet on a bed of oyster-shells, but the sharp edges made no

impression on her tender soles. Presently, and inexplicably, she seemed

to be lying in a nest of silken cushions, which stung her soft flesh

like a thicket of nettles. Now a butterfly flew past her, and appeared

to be beckoning her to follow. Rising, she ran after the butterfly

through a great open doorway into a wide Moorish court, in the centre

of which a blindfold, curly-headed Eros, carved in marble, appeared

about to discharge an arrow aimed at no target. Her senses swerved in a

curious state of transition: she touched Burgundy; she smelled purple;

she heard vervain; she tasted space; she saw the chord of B flat minor.

A thick cloud settled down over the court, but through its veils she

caught glimpses of shadows, approaching and receding. When she followed

them, they glided back, and when they followed her, she ran away from

them. The shadows were nude and wore masks. One of them, a woman,

lifted her mask and Campaspe recognized Zimbule, Zimbule with a great

green letter flaming on her breast. Campaspe raised her hand, her palm

towards the vision, and it disappeared.

_Chapter IX_

Greyness was the characteristic tone of Provincetown. The houses were

grey; the sky and the sand and the sea often seemed grey. Even the

trees, the leaves powdered with dust, assumed a greyish sage-green

tinge. One long curving street, fringed with tiny wooden cottages, ran

along the shore. These little houses, many of which were surrounded by

hedges of untrimmed privet, sprinkled untidily with white blossoms,

indifferently faced the road or the ocean. Tods of ivy and clematis,

blue and white, draped the painted boards, and in the gardens dahlias,

cosmos, zinnias, petunias, verbenas, portulaca, asters, and golden-glow

grew in great irregular clumps. The street culminated in two landmarks,

a church-spire, that might or might not have been designed by Sir

Christopher Wren, and a tall Italian tower of brick, the Pilgrim

Monument. In the harbour a warship rode at anchor, and there were

fleets of rude fishing-smacks, among which the smug white sails of

pleasure sloops looked as uncomfortable and awkward as a Londoner with

morning coat and top hat would look in the midst of Shore-ditch. The

shore was lined with quaint, dilapidated boat-houses, rotting piers,

and great nets, their edges bound with bobbins of cork, hung out to

dry. As in all fishing-villages, there was a prevailing odour of dead

fish. In this grey, gloomy town, the only colour, save that of the

flowers, was supplied by the tawny, smiling faces of the Portuguese

settlers, who mingled, somewhat aloof, to be sure, somewhat derisively,

with the visiting artists from Greenwich Village.

Campaspe’s cottage was not on the main street. It was situated about

a mile and a half northwest across the cape, facing the open sea,

near the life-saving station. For a time, the rough road leading

thither wended its uncertain way through a scattering of scrub-oaks,

scrub-pines, and maples, with patches of tiger-lilies, golden rod,

purple asters, old maid’s pinks, and Queen Anne’s lace, on either

side, then straggled on across a mile of sand-dunes, rolling down

and up, like great stationary waves, some as high as twenty feet, on

which the only vegetation was beach-grass, beach-plums, and bayberry

shrubs. The beach was low and here the sand was packed hard and smooth.

Higher up, back a little from the beach near the life-saving station,

solitary but for its gaunt, uncordial companion in the midst of the

grey dunes, stood the little white cottage with its slanting roof of

unpainted shingles, and its great chimney, fashioned of huge boulders

by some local builder. From afar, of course, as she had never visited

Provincetown, it had amused Campaspe to plan this house somewhat in

the spirit (certainly not the style!) of the farms of the Trianon.

It had been her intention to arrange an opportunity for a rustic,

aquatic villeggiatura, where she might conceivably disguise herself as

a sailor’s bride and entertain thought of adventures with sea-faring

men. Having arranged for this house, actually ordering it built and

furnished, indeed, the necessity for further action did not seem to

present itself. To all intents and purposes, Campaspe had lived in it,

enjoyed the imagined experience, and forgotten the episode.

On the grey, rough plaster walls of the interior hung madonnas,

photographs of celebrated paintings, madonnas as placid as though

they had never suffered the pangs of childbirth. The furniture was of

white maple, polished to a state in which tables might have been used

as mirrors, had occasion for such a compromise arisen. The hexagonal

dining-table, the ancient chairs and beds and highboys and bureaux, had

been bought from nearby farmers, who were glad to dispose of this junk

at a low figure so that they might make their homes more modern with

show-pieces from the Grand Rapids emporiums and beds of shiny brass

from Boston. Bayberry dips stood in the stately Colonial candlesticks.

The coverlets on the beds were masterpieces of nineteenth century

provincial ingenuity and the rugs on the waxed floors had been woven by

tired and patient grandmothers, who had spent their dead living years

at work on them. The service was composed of Brittany china, Spanish

peasant porcelain, and a gay Hungarian pottery, painted with brilliant

flowers. It had been Campaspe’s satisfied desire that no two cups or

plates should be identical. On the wall a brass ship’s-clock ticked out

the time, sounding bells in lieu of hours, and lanterns, burning sperm

oil, which had formerly served to illuminate the cabins of old whaling

vessels, hung from the ceilings. The doors, with their oval tops,

together with the rest of the woodwork, like the shingles on the roof,

were oiled but unpolished.

To Harold, satiated with what he regarded as an exotic and artificial

atmosphere, this pseudo-communion with a more natural environment,

which, in a sense, reminded him of his boyhood, his Aunt Sadi and

Persia Blaine, seemed heavenly. He took long walks on the spar-strewn

dunes and, clad in tarpaulins, went fishing for flounders in a decaying

boat, rowed to a suitable depth by a weather-beaten tar, who told him

venerable yarns of the old leviathan hunts, and more recent scandals

of the New England village. Occasionally, with Alice, he went for a

sail, the veteran mariner guiding the helm and calling out to Harold

incomprehensible nautical directions (subsequently translated) for

handling the canvas of the sloop, a sorry affair smelling of dead fish.

The sickly aroma of dead fish, indeed, haunted the nostrils and never

entirely passed away, just as the dampness penetrated even the heavy

cedar clothes-presses, and covered the books, ranged on shelves behind

glass doors, with a film of mildew.

Alice, who had come to this retreat straight from Southampton, found

this setting for a honeymoon a little primitive, a little abnormally

primitive. Her pale blond beauty was curious in this regard, that in

the city she seemed decidedly a rural type, while in the country one

could only think of her as belonging to the city. She found the old

sailor vulgar, and once or twice nearly lost her temper with Emma, a

taciturn and sardonic Portuguese woman, of middle-age, who had acted as

care-taker of the place and now lingered on in an ancillary capacity.

Campaspe’s taste in plates also annoyed Alice. Why were they all

different? she asked herself. In this prospect only Harold pleased her.

The two had had been here nearly a month now, idling together, and it

may be reported that they had discovered some measure of happiness.

Alice was bored rather than unhappy. She had no leanings towards

domesticity, towards keeping house; she gave Emma few orders. It was

characteristic of her to complain instead because her unuttered desires

were not carried out. She was not interested in reading, resembling

Harold in this respect. She sewed a little, finding occupation in the

construction of a beaded bag, but time, on the whole, passed slowly for

her. She liked best to sit on the dunes with Harold, holding his hand,

making plans for the future. She talked quite easily of children, so

easily, indeed, that occasionally Harold caught himself wondering if

he really wanted children. Somewhat self-consciously, Alice was prone

to regard this excursion, this singular honeymoon, in the light of a

temporary lark, a lark from which she was not deriving any excruciating

amount of pleasure. In the foreground of her mind rose a picture of a

somewhat more solid life in New York, with a great house and servants,

friends to dinner, dinners which would be returned in due course by

these friends, a box at the opera, theatres and shops to visit, calls

to pay, the conventional life of a respectable matron, and, in time,

her daughters....

She gave voice to some of her ideals, and Harold loved to hear her talk

about them. He, too, would be glad of a home, he felt, a place that

was his own, in which he might sit with his pipe, slippers on feet,

slackly, but respectably, comfortable. He even looked forward to the

social life, of which she had given him glimpses, into which they would

presumably fit. Very different, he imagined it would be, from that of

Campaspe. He wondered often how the two could be sisters. He remembered

how they had appeared as strangely separate entities that afternoon in

the little garden on East Nineteenth Street: Alice softly acquiescent,

Campaspe radiantly benedictory, hovering like a bishop over some secret

glory. How simple it all had been. He had expected strife, opposition,

obstruction. There had been nothing of the sort. Oliver, apprised of

his plan, had come forward with a sufficient sum to pay for a trip to

Buenos Ayres, more than enough to cover an indefinite sojourn in this

cottage by the sea. His father had telegraphed his congratulations, and

had mailed a further cheque of quite an amazing denomination. Campaspe

had presented them with this house. Paul had appeared to be rather

melancholy, and he had shaken Harold’s hand with an intensity which led

the boy to believe that he must have misjudged his mentor. The Duke had

sent the couple a set of Tennyson, bound in half-morocco. Harold was

not acquainted with the works of Tennyson, but he had sensed a derisory

intention in this gift. Mr. Blake, in a letter, had hinted of future

delights in store for the happy pair when they returned to New York.

Persia Blaine had sent a great pink and white cake. Only his aunt,

incomprehensibly, had not been complaisant. She had written a letter

which Harold had found it difficult to understand, and which now he was

finding it difficult to forgive. Nearly a month had gone by and he had

not yet answered it. Scarcely a day passed, however, in which he did

not read it.

My dear Harold [the letter began in a manner which he recognized as

not unduly formal for his decidedly formal aunt],

I do not feel much inclined to write to you, but I suppose it is my

duty, and duty is something that I never shirk. This letter, however,

will be no bearer of congratulations.

To be blunt, I feel that you are making a mistake. You should

never have gone to your father. Had it been in my power, I should

have prevented it. He is wrecking your life with his ego and his

selfishness. He broke your mother’s will, and he will break yours.

If I had stayed with him in business, he would have broken mine. I

have wept hot tears since I received your telegram, as I understand

only too well what all this means. Poor ignorant boy, you have walked

straight into the trap set for you. When you are through with this

marriage, come back to me. Your father will be enraged that he has

lost you, but I will be glad that I have found you.

Miss Perkins is here and sends her love to you. Persia has not been

very well. You will remember that she always suffers from hay fever

at this time of year. I cut my thumb a few days ago, paring peaches

to preserve, and it still bothers me considerably.

I remain, with love,

your +AUNT SADI+.

Harold could explain this letter satisfactorily to himself on no

other ground save the ground of jealousy. She is enraged because I

am married, he thought, and she is blaming my father for something

with which he had nothing whatever to do, to which certainly, in the

beginning, he was opposed, for did he not send me to Paul and to a

life which is the farthest removed from the life that I wish to live?

Now that I have married Alice, he has accepted the situation with more

grace than could have been expected from him. He said, Do anything you

please, and apparently he meant it. How much broader and bigger in

spirit he is than Aunt Sadi.

He had not yet showed the letter to Alice, but one day, when he had

been talking about his childhood, he felt moved to do so. Drawing it

from the pocket where he always carried it, he handed it to his wife,

with a few words of explanation.

Do not let it hurt you, he said. She is an old woman, and what she says

cannot matter after all. I have meant a good deal to her, probably, in

her loneliness, and she thinks she is losing me. But she is wrong about

my father. He has been very good to me.

He was not surprised to observe that she flushed as she read the

letter. Handing it back to him, she stared at him in a peculiarly

searching manner. There was an expression around her eyes that he had

never noticed there before.

The letter does not hurt me, she said at last, only....

Only what?

Regarding him more intently still, she paused for a moment. Then,

turning her head so that their eyes no longer met, she replied: Your

father may have had some purpose in view, Harold, but he meant it for

your good, I feel sure.

And now that I have done what he didn’t want me to do he has forgiven

me?

Ye-es, she replied, rather hesitantly, although he was not conscious

of her lack of enthusiasm. Quite suddenly, she bent towards him and

kissed his eyes. Let us go back to the house, Harold, she said.

They had been sitting on the dunes in the dying sunlight, for the day

had been bright with a brightness, however, which merely served to

accentuate the cold greyness of the place. A dragon-fly, shining purple

and green, steered his course round and round Alice’s head, like a

miniature airplane. A flock of gulls swooped down over the sea, crying

mournfully, and some of them disappeared under the grey waves, capped

with white. A cool breeze was blowing in over the water and, as Alice

rose, she drew the blue knitted scarf she was wearing more closely

about her shoulders.

In the cottage, when they arrived, Emma, silent and stern, was laying

the table with the gay variety of design which Alice instinctively

hated. She especially detested the opaque white glass chickens of the

Civil War period, consecrated to hold eggs, but the Spanish, Hungarian,

and Brittany china offended her taste almost equally. She liked white

plates with gold borders for the roasts, and engraved glass plates with

gold borders for the salad and dessert. The cotton print curtains at

the windows annoyed her, and her mind reverted to the consideration of

some striped stiff taffetas she had examined at Johnson and Faulkner’s.

Their magnificence, distributed at the windows and in the wall-panels,

would almost serve to furnish the drawing-room. There would also be a

great divan, upholstered in royal blue velvet, and a royal blue velours

carpet on the floor. This maple! Mahogany was Alice’s favourite wood.

Some of these opinions she had uttered aloud at one time or another,

safely enough, she thought, because this cottage represented her

sister’s taste. If Harold had been responsible...!

Harold was both pleased and alarmed by these discourses on the subject

of interior decoration. Alice seemed so practical and matter of fact.

He had not sensed these qualities in her before marriage. He was

coming to believe, indeed--he was thinking in terms of fact and not of

deprecation--, that he had known nothing whatever about his wife before

marriage. He had hardly even conversed with her. But, fundamentally,

he felt, she was his kind, and this interest in house furnishing, this

passion for children, however incautiously and belatedly divulged, were

part of what he wanted. They were fractions of a great normal entity to

which he aspired. Yet, sometimes, with the cold breeze from the sea,

a parallel psychic frigid wind had blown across his soul, an unknown

terror had assailed him. His reason could not tell him what it meant

but, instinctively, he understood, dimly enough at first, perhaps,

that it portended disillusion. He was also amazed, sometimes, to find

himself thinking--so little was he analytical--that a great part of

Alice’s charm for him, in this newly and none too securely established

intimacy, consisted in the essential fact that she was Campaspe’s

sister, for, from that brief excursion into an alien world, he had

borne away a perplexing but permanent affection for Mrs. Lorillard.

She had seemed to him the only real person he had met in that world,

and he never ceased to wonder why it interested her, what she got from

it, for it was apparent, even to him, that it _did_ interest her.

Gradually, however, from Alice he had learned how closely Campaspe was

bound to other more conventional circles in New York society, how in

the fall she attended the Horse Show, and during the winter was seen in

the boxes of people whose names frequently appeared in the newspapers,

how she gave dinners and dances for these people, and went to theirs.

Very often there was mention of Laura, who, he gathered, with an

adumbration of perception, would not have been altogether comfortable

in the presence of the Duke of Middlebottom.

Laura and her children were the subject of a good deal of Alice’s

idle chatter. They were the most divine children, Alice asserted; she

only hoped hers would be as good. She drew a showy picture of the

nursery: Laura’s Rollo-like offspring eating at a little table with

their Belgian governess, while Laura in a Bendel gown received in the

drawing-room below. Laura in most respects was obviously Alice’s model.

At night, it was usually cold enough for a fire and, with the ruddy

logs glowing in the great boulder fireplace, the pair sat on a wooden

settle banked with cotton print covered cushions, facing the fire,

holding hands. It was Alice who did most of the talking. She had so

much to say. Harold was comparatively inarticulate; very few thoughts

in his mind urgently demanded expression, and he had to search to find

words in which to express even these. Half-comprehending, half-dreading

life, he seldom asserted himself. He basked in the pleasant warmth of

Alice’s conversation, as she basked in the heat of the burning logs,

enjoying Alice, talk, and fire, objectively. He, indeed, would have

been glad to remain indefinitely at Provincetown, or near it, although

they knew nobody and it seemed they never would, for Alice objected

that she could not meet people from Greenwich Village, and, of course,

she added, one can’t know the natives. The Portuguese themselves, had

she but been aware of it, would have taken the first step, had it

been necessary, towards preventing any narrowing of this always ample

breach. However that may be, although Harold and Alice crossed the

dunes nearly every day to go to the post office or the market, they

made no acquaintances of any kind.

Their intimacy was so complete and exclusive, indeed, that to the

Provincetowners--both natives and visitors--they appeared to be a

couple of youngsters revelling in their first illicit love. The

married state, certainly, was never ascribed to them. Gossip was

endemic among the Portuguese, and, as the rumour grew, biographies

were invented to fit the happy pair. Letters passed back and forth as

the gossip bubbled, gossip to which Emma added her unwholesome quota.

Heartily disliking Alice, Emma permitted herself uncontrolled flights

of the imagination once she met her friends in the village.

* * * * *

Emma brought in the soup. They sat down to eat at two adjoining sides

of the hexagonal table. Later, there was fish. Almost invariably,

indeed, there was fish.

Alice’s glance was directed towards the prongs of her fork.

Harold, she asked, shall we live here much longer?

The boy showed his astonishment. Are you unhappy, dear? he questioned

her in return.

Not unhappy, no, but restless. You know it isn’t my kind of place.

But New York in the summer....

We can’t go back just yet, of course ... but in a little while. I

suppose, too, that you will want to be getting to work. She observed

his expression of amazement, but she hurried on: You are going to work,

aren’t you?

Of course.

He felt confused and embarrassed. Here was an aspect of the situation

which had never occurred to him. Now that he was a family man he would

be expected to make a living for his bride.

You can’t, she went on rather sententiously, always live on your

father, Harold dear. My daughters.... Well, dearest, they couldn’t

respect you.

What would he do? Harold helplessly interrogated himself. No more was

said about the matter that night, but he tossed about restlessly in

bed, his heart beating violently, revolving the idea over and over.

It seemed that he could never accustom himself to the problems of

life. As fast as the old ones were solved, fresh ones rose on every

hand. Nothing seemed simple. How, for example, could he expect to get

on sufficiently well to enable him to support his wife without his

father’s assistance? He could think of no possible opening in the

business line except to go in with his father, and his father had

expressly said that he did not wish him to do that. What could he do?

Alice, on her part, did not refer to the matter again for several days.

She exposed the pleasantest side of her nature, wore her prettiest

dresses. She even refrained from complaining about the plates. They

took long idyllic walks together on the dunes. They bathed in the sea.

The actual clouds drifted out of the sky and the tone of the atmosphere

grew more mellow, less grey. Their evenings they passed on the settle.

The morose Emma, having washed the dishes and arranged the neat

punnets of berries in the ice-chest, left them alone, after fortifying

herself for three hours of creative gossip with a nip of perry, a

beverage she was skilful in brewing. In spite of the apparent calm,

Alice’s words ate deeper and deeper into Harold’s consciousness. He

felt that she was right and, finally, one night, he summoned up enough

courage to broach the subject again.

Alice dear, I’ve been worrying about what you said....

She frowned, questioningly. What I said? she repeated, with an

interrogative inflection.

About my going to work.

Dearest boy, I didn’t mean to worry you.... Only--she was nervously

switching her suède shoes with a willow-bough she had cut during her

afternoon walk--, only, it has seemed to me at times that perhaps you

are taking things too easily, too much as a matter of course; that was

all. We can’t stay here for ever, you know.

I understand. His tone was low and serious. I have been thinking about

it and I know that you are right.

She brightened, and threw the switch into the fire.

I’m glad you agree with me, Harold. Now, what are you going to do?

That’s just it, he groaned. I haven’t the least idea!

Don’t you think it’s best for you to go in with your father? He would

help you so much, and you would get on so fast, and we should all be so

proud of you!

But my father doesn’t want me to go into his business. I’ve explained

all that to you.

Alice gazed at him intently for a little while, as if weighing him and

the consequences of what she was about to divulge. As she began to

speak, her glance dropped to the fire.

I think it’s only fair that you should know something, Harold, she said

at last.

He searched her face with some alarm.

Nothing serious. She grasped his arm and rubbed her cheek

affectionately against his cheek. He has done it for your good, dear.

Your father has been deceiving you.

My father! He sprang away from her in amazement and stood, helplessly,

a little apart, trying to find some kind of meaning in her words.

It was a sort of plot or plan, she went on in a somewhat pedantic

manner, as though she had been rehearsing this speech for a long time.

You see your father had the feeling that, as you had been brought up by

women, you were innocent and ignorant of life. He was afraid if he took

you right into his business that you might break away, be misled--Oh!

I don’t know what exactly. Anyway, you said you didn’t want to go in

with him, and he hoped you would eventually decide for yourself that

you did want to. So--she tried to approach him again but his manner

warned her that this would be dangerous, or at least difficult--, he

thought that if he threw you into the _wrong_ kind of life in the

beginning you would _hate_ it, and come round to him of your own

accord. That is why he made life unpleasant for you, as disagreeable

for you as possible, hoping that a year of it would tire you. You were

tired in a month. He was so pleased. He wants you with him, Harold--she

was pleading now--; he is expecting you. Only, you must _ask_ him.

He won’t ask _you_. Don’t you understand?

Harold was standing with his back to the fire, his face, in the shadow,

almost green in its pallor. His head seemed to be reeling around and

around. Suddenly he realized that he was excessively angry.

I’d see him in hell first! he cried.

Harold!

I mean it. Who’s to blame for the way I was brought up? He didn’t do

much to prevent it, did he? the boy asked scornfully.

Harold!

And so, he went on, the whole thing was a trick!

Now, completely the prey of alarm, a suspicion of tears crept into

Alice’s voice. It was for your good, Harold, to make a man of you. She

was whining, whimpering.

And who kept me from being a man? Who? I should like to know.

His voice had grown so incisive and cold that it scarcely seemed to be

he that was talking.

Alice was really crying now. I shouldn’t have told you, she sobbed.

Only, it seemed to be the right time ... and ... and I thought you

loved me, Harold ... I couldn’t help telling you, Harold, because I

love you.

He ignored this. How did you find all this out? was his next question.

She was trembling. Your father, she began.

Our meeting ... the stalled car ... arranged? He was sneering.

No, Harold, no! That was an accident. Only....

Only what?

Only, you see, after we met.... Well, your father, of course, knows my

father.... It seemed best to keep us apart.

You knew all this?

Why yes, Harold. It seemed all right. I loved you, Harold, and they

told me....

Did Campaspe know?

She stopped crying at once and her tone became petulant.

Campaspe? Why do you bring in Campaspe? Campaspe! Campaspe! Campaspe!

Why are you questioning me? Why do you look at me like that?

Did Campaspe know? His tone was colder, more acid.

No.

Harold, who until now had stood as stiffly as a birch-tree, began to

move about the room. Presently, he laughed.

So, he said, she’s clean. They’re all clean: Paul, and Bunny, and

Ronald, compared with my own wife, my own father.

Harold!

You’ve tricked me: Your father, my father, you. At last I understand

what Aunt Sadi meant in her letter. It doesn’t matter. Only this--he

grasped her shoulders firmly and held her at arm’s length--only this,

you can tell my father that I’m going straight back where he sent me!

Harold!

Straight back. They’re clean. They didn’t know what it was all about,

but they were natural and real while all you rotters have been playing

parts.

Harold, you can’t mean what you’re saying!

I haven’t even begun to say what I mean! He threw her roughly back

against the settle, relinquishing his hold on her shoulders. I’m

through.

He crossed the room in great strides and rushed out through the door.

Her screams rang in his ears as he staggered off across the dunes,

black in the night, stumbling, falling even, in the deep sand. There

was a distant rumble of thunder, faint flashes of lightning. A storm

was arising over the sea.

_Chapter X_

On an afternoon in September, Campaspe woke up feeling a little ill,

and decided not to go out. She did not, however, send for a physician.

Campaspe cherished a peculiar superstition in regard to ill-health. She

considered it as a visitation in the nature of a warning, a warning to

take a rest. Any interference with the course of the complaint she held

to be artificial and even vicious. The miraculously prolonged youthful

appearance of her mother, who had never permitted a doctor to visit her

since the days when she bore her children, confirmed Campaspe in this

esoteric belief.

If I had a broken leg, she assured herself, I would call in a surgeon

to set it, but a headache or a hæmorrhage is natural. Decayed cells are

breaking down and need to be replaced, or I am being punished by nature

for some misdemeanour. When it is over, and the cells have renewed

themselves, I shall be stronger than ever.

She glanced over her mail. A letter from Laura, which she did not

open.... A postcard from the Duke, with a lithograph in colours of a

cottage smothered in rambler roses, and a Nantucket post-mark. Inside

quotation marks the Duke had written the following on the reverse side

of the card: “Tu te prives de viandes, de vin, d’étuves, d’esclaves

et d’honneurs; mais comme tu laisses ton imagination t’offrir des

banquets, des parfums, des femmes nues et des foules applaudissantes!

Ta chasteté n’est qu’une corruption plus subtile, et ce mépris du

monde l’impuissance de ta haine contre lui!” Ronald was amusing....

And so he had gone away again. She sighed, as she tore open an orange

envelope with a Danish stamp. The contents were printed, but in such

delightfully large type, in reds and greens and blacks and blues,

that she was moved to examine the sheet more particularly. It was

a prospectus, the preliminary announcement, of the Danish Colonial

Lottery. A whole ticket, five drawings, was available at $37.50. One

might win 100,000 francs on each of the first four drawings and as much

as 1,000,000 francs on the fifth drawing. The lucky number suggested

by the agents was 38653. Mentally, Campaspe rapidly added these digits

to see if the result conformed with certain figures on a chart that

an adept in Kabbalism had recently made out for her. She was a trifle

disappointed to find that it did not.... Pushing aside the remainder of

her correspondence, a mass of invitations and bills, her mind wandered

to an article she had read in some magazine, picked up in a dentist’s

waiting-room, an article concerning the extermination of rats. The

plan proposed was to catch the rats alive, kill all the females, and

set the males free again. In time, as a consequence, the males would

outnumber the females by such a high percentage that their persecution

of the latter would eventually end in sterility and death for the

whole race. In the same magazine there was a paper on hierba maté,

the South American beverage, bitter and unpalatable until a taste for

it is acquired, draughted from the leaves of the Ilex Paraguayensis.

Genaro Romero, the Paraguayan, had rhapsodized regarding it: When we

taste maté our energies are renewed, our nerves are comforted by the

effect of the green sap, the juice of hope of the Paraguayan flora;

and we experience strange impressions, we are nourished by an infusion

of energy, and gilded dreams, possibly of good fortune, caress us.

Campaspe wondered, at this juncture, if Esperanto had any irregular

verbs.... She made an attempt to define her impression of the work of

Gertrude Stein. She uses words, thought Campaspe, for their detonations

and their connotations.... In the New York Times she discovered an

account of a man who had devoted years to the engraving of the Lord’s

Prayer on the head of a pin. Once this task was accomplished, he went

first blind and then insane.... Out of the back of her mind she picked

another detail: girls working in cordite factories use the explosive

for chewing-gum. It acts as a heart stimulant.

Campaspe began to feel restless and energetic. She was not, she now

believed, ill enough to keep to her room; nor did she deny herself to

callers, although she was expecting no one in particular. Her mood

was capricious, volatile, vibratory. She welcomed, therefore, the

announcement of the arrival of the expressman with two large crates

from Paris, and she ordered them deposited in the drawing-room, sending

Frederika for the butler and hammer and screw-driver. The crates were

not entirely a surprise. Fannie had written that she was shipping some

pictures.

They proved to be unusually interesting pictures by Henri Rousseau and

Marc Chagall, artists whose work Campaspe admired vastly. The Chagall

was a portrait of a girl with bangs across her forehead, long hair down

her back, melancholy eyes (eyes which were uncertain, Campaspe noted),

a sensual mouth, and an intellectual nose. She wore a tight-fitting

yellow bodice with a frill, clasped by a brooch, around the throat,

and deep indigo gloves. The background, too, was a rich blue. Campaspe

considered the picture: fantasy, fable, colour. She would think about

it a good deal more in the future, she was certain. She realized that

Laura’s first question would be, What does it mean? That was, perhaps,

its chief charm, that it did not mean anything; it was as meaningless

as Mozart’s E flat major symphony or life itself. The Rousseau was a

splendid and definite jungle, with curiously exotic trees with long

green fronds, plants with startling scarlet blossoms, monkeys, and

a royal tiger. She recalled that Rousseau had been a working-man,

painting on Sunday, his only free day, how he had never left Paris,

creating his jungles after visits to the Jardin d’Acclimatation and the

Jardin des Plantes. What a genius! This was not imitation but creation.

And yet there were those who asserted that he painted in this sure way

through naïveté. Looking at the picture, Campaspe realized that the

artist had been entirely aware of what he was doing, that he must have

been certain even on his darkest days that eventual recognition would

come to him. Work such as this--Campaspe was irresistibly reminded

of Lucas Cranach--was assuredly no accident. She pondered over this

idea. She was sitting on the floor in the centre of the drawing-room,

still regarding the pictures, set up against the wall, when Bunny was

announced.

Hello, Bunny, she called out, without rising, when he was shown in.

Hello, ’paspe. His manner was solemn. What have you got here?

Oh! some pictures Fannie sent me. Aren’t they divine? I could eat that

tiger of Rousseau’s.

They _are_ good. There’s something about that jungle which

suggests to me what I have been trying to do in my rotten music.

Your music is as good as the picture, she retorted.

I can’t compose any longer, ’paspe.

He had been standing, but now she rose to her feet and led him to the

divan.

Poor Bunny.

I wish I’d never seen her!

Bunny! Don’t forget the music she made you write!

I don’t give a damn about that! I can’t do it any more. I’m no good at

all now. It’s all gone ... with her. If I only had her back!

Campaspe changed the subject abruptly: What’s Paul doing? He hasn’t

been near me.

Harold’s father sent him another cheque; so he’s happy. All he needs,

for happiness, Bunny added bitterly, is money. Drains received a

cheque, too, and he’s gone off with the Duke.

Back to Ronald.

Everybody goes back to Ronald, Bunny remarked with some resentment. He

bought a bulldog before he left town, he continued inconsequentially.

Whatever will he do with it?

Campaspe’s mind reverted to the dog-fight in the garden. There was a

moment’s silence, during which she gazed intently at the Rousseau.

Bunny’s expression was most lugubrious.

A perfectly divine tiger! she repeated at last, as if speaking to

herself.

’paspe, I don’t believe you’ve been listening!

... heard every word.

Do you know what Zimbule is doing?

She rose slowly, still scrutinizing the painting which held her fancy.

No. What? Her manner was preoccupied.

Moving pictures. Angel. Apartment. Riverside Drive.

My dear Bunny, I believe you are a detective. Do you know who he is?

Yes, I do. His tone was hard and there was a challenge to interrogation

in it. Nevertheless, Campaspe did not ask the question Bunny expected

to hear.

Where is she living? she queried, lightly.

The Lombardy.

Campaspe smiled. I think I’ll send her a picture.

She won’t like it. She wouldn’t understand _these_. He swept

his arm around in a vague gesture. It was characteristic of Bunny’s

movements that they were never definite and forceful.

Oh! I wouldn’t send her one of these. I like them too well myself. I’ll

send her the pictures I take down when I hang these.

I’m sure she has plenty of pictures. The boy was actually malicious.

No doubt, but one can always use a few more. Possibly she cares for

change as much as I do.

* * * * *

Campaspe did not carry out her threat. Instead, she made a resolution

to call on Zimbule in a day or so. She had heard the story of Harold’s

disappearance, or as much of it as she needed to hear, from Alice.

Her father, too, had been voluble. Where was Harold? She must know;

of that these two obtuse members of her family were firmly convinced.

As a matter of fact she did not, and she was making no effort to find

out. When he was ready he would come to her, and, subsequently, she

determined, her family should hear nothing whatever about the visit.

Her father and Alice had almost put her through three degrees in their

effort to drag the information out of her which they were certain that

she possessed. It required very little of this kind of thing to satisfy

Campaspe. Her manner assumed a crisp frigidity which her family had

encountered on occasion in the past. They knew the meaning of it, and,

for the moment, they withdrew their brisk importunities.

She had considered the possibility of taking Paul with her when she

called on Zimbule. After a little reflection, she decided to go alone.

She dressed very carefully for the adventure, wearing a smart, grey

tailored costume which had just arrived from Redfern, and a black hat

adorned with white wings. From her wrist dangled a cluster of crystal

grapes, an inspiration of Marie El Khoury.

As her motor bore her into the unfamiliar neighbourhood, already she

began to smile. She was in her best humour as she stood before the

telephone operator in the elaborate hallway, which reminded her,

somehow, of a scene in a Theodore Dreiser novel. She had, she was

convinced, never before seen so much onyx all at once, such highly

polished onyx, too. The electroliers of burnished gold, the tall gothic

seats, with their rich, red velvet cushions, the purple uniforms and

brass buttons of the black attendants, all played their parts in

creating an effect in which she could perceive no single flaw. She

recalled a happy Spanish proverb, If you want to go to the devil, at

least go in a carriage!

Once she had been admitted to Zimbule’s apartment, she resumed her

inquisitive appraisement, with some stupefaction at first, until she

remembered that there was a trade called interior decorating. The room

was Viennese (or München) in style--an amazingly acute originality for

New York in 1922, Campaspe thought. The walls were brown, the furniture

heavy but extremely picturesque, in the fascinatingly tortured shapes

affected by modern Austrian or Bavarian cabinet-makers. Campaspe cried

out with delight when she descried a porcelain stove in one corner.

Over a particularly ornately constructed sofa hung a horizontal row

of framed samplers, all the Scandinavian goddesses, Freya, Iduna, and

the rest, done in red yarn. There were other pictures, bright amazing

dancers by Schnackenberg, portraits of Maria Hagen, Peter Pathé, Anne

Ehmans, and Lo Hesse, more remote conceits in black and white by

Alastair, a poster for a baroque ballet by Mela Koehler, and nude,

graceful pretties with cats by Raphael Kirchner. A great green and

red and blue box of Baumgarten bonbons stood on a table covered with

a square scarf which resembled an Italian futurist painting. Over the

mantelpiece, on which two heavy vases of garnet and gold Bohemian glass

seemed very much at home, hung a large picture in pure design by Jean

Metzinger.

I wonder, Campaspe was thinking, if Zimbule lives up to this

incongruous environment.

Zimbule, at last, came in. Her blond hair, turning at the roots, back

to its natural colour, still framed her face in a nervous shock. She

was wearing a négligé of coral sequins over Turkish trousers fashioned

of gold cloth, and she plied a fan of ostrich plumes, unnaturally

joined to prolong their length, of the colour of green jade. She was,

Campaspe observed at once, as much at her ease as ever.

Campaspe! I’m so glad to see you.

You never come to me; so I had to come to you. You haven’t been near me

since....

Out! The girl flung her fan across the room. I’m trying to forget him.

Love! Nothing in it.

But.... Campaspe looked around.

Yes, Zimbule remarked blandly, crossing her legs as she seated herself

on a great stuffed ottoman, I’ve capitalized my talents. Why not? They

all do. Probably you did it yourself when you married--Campaspe did not

even trouble to shake her head in denial of this. There was a sudden

and complete metamorphosis. Do you know where Harold is?

No, Zimbule, I wish I did.

I hear she’s left him! Zimbule was eager.

You hear ... Campaspe permitted an expression of light surprise to play

over her features, an expression not unnoted by Zimbule.

Yes. I met Cupid in the Park. He told me.

It is true. They are separated, but _he_ left _her_.

Zimbule ignored this echo of an event she had every desire to forget,

and begged: Where is he, Campaspe? Help me find him.

I wish I could.... But tell me about yourself. You’re doing pictures?

Zimbule was frankly bored. She pulled great tufts of down out of a

quilt of colibri feathers which she had drawn over her knee. Yes, she

assented, I’m in the movies.

What company?

Zimbule O’Grady Incorporated. Capital $200,000. Zimbule yawned.

When do you start work?

Commenced a week ago. I’m not in the scenes today.

What is the picture called?

A Long Island Phryne.... Campaspe, please help me to find Harold.

I haven’t an idea where to look. She paused. That’s an interesting

picture you have. She pointed to the Metzinger.

Yes, I got it because it has significant form. He’s sure to come to see

you.

Campaspe adopted a more sympathetic tone. When he turns up, she said,

I’ll let you know.

Promise? Zimbule, with an instinctive gesture, thrust her hands

forwards, and on one of her fingers Campaspe caught a glimpse of a

familiar ring, a sapphire intaglio, set most curiously, and engraved

with a banyan-tree, an ape, a cobra, and the motto, Fronti nulla fides.

I promise. As soon as he comes to me I shall let you know.

She kissed the child.

Campaspe went out smiling, through the polished onyx hallway, past

the black attendants, to her car, standing in the warm autumn sun.

She consulted her watch. She would have time to get Han Ryner’s Les

Paraboles cyniques, Jean de Tinan’s Penses-tu réussir, and P. J.

Toulet’s La Jeune fille verte.

Go to Dorbon’s, she commanded her chauffeur, 561 Madison Avenue.

She settled herself comfortably back against the puce-colour cloth

cushions as the car drove away from Riverside Drive.

_Chapter XI_

If Campaspe had conceived the idea of making a search for Harold,

she would have been hard put to think of a way to go about it. He

seemed, indeed, completely cut off both from his family and from the

group which had been charged, for a few weeks, with his education.

She pictured him, like a kitten in a bath-tub half-full of water,

struggling in an alien element. As it happened, however, one of

Campaspe’s most steadfast convictions was that nothing in life

should be sought. People who were always seeking never found. Even

if they discovered what they had been looking for, they discovered

simultaneously that they really wanted something else. She held the

theory that if Diogenes had stayed at home and attended to business,

instead of prowling around Athens with a smelly lantern, he would have

been visited by any number of honest men. Everything comes to him who

waits might be a trite proverb, but experience had taught her that

it was a true one. Therefore, she followed her invariable custom in

such instances, dropping the matter from her mind, arranging her days

as pleasantly as possible, and waiting with as much composure as

she could assume, taking into consideration the fact that Harold was

probably the one person alive that she cared very much about seeing.

October came to New York warm and golden. The early days of the month,

indeed, resembled the sultry daughters of midsummer. Nevertheless, in

spite of the unusual heat, Campaspe’s friends began to return from the

country and from Europe. Every train, every boat, brought more of them

back, and Campaspe’s mail grew heavier with invitations to lunch and

dinner. Houses on Park and Madison Avenues opened their boarded eyelids

and one encountered familiar and friendly motors in the Park. The Ritz,

Voisin’s, Pierre’s, and the Crillon at one o’clock were again crowded

with gay, brilliant groups. Mrs. Pollanger had even begun to plan a

charity entertainment for the last days of the month. A bit of scandal

enlivened, for Campaspe, the monotony of this accustomed renaissance.

Amy, having lost her Paul, had, according to report, found her Paula.

Laura, of course, always correct, had come back with the others, and

had opened her house in East Sixty-eighth Street for a few weeks, long

enough, at least, to afford her the opportunity of packing her boys off

to school and arranging a few dinners before she went away again. The

winter exodus was already a subject under discussion. Recurrence was

a word that held few terrors for the members of Laura’s conventional

world, but fourteen consecutive winters at Palm Beach seemed almost

sufficient even to this group and there was some talk of a more novel

hegira, a motor trip along the Italian Riviera or an excursion to

Shepheard’s Hotel. Laura had begged Campaspe to join this comparatively

radical party but, although Campaspe was still planning to go abroad a

little later, she had no intention of travelling with any one else. Nor

did the names of Spezia, Mentone, Monte Carlo, Nice, Cannes, and Genoa

intrigue her. In the back of her mind were the happier alternatives of

Trebizond, Chypre, Stamboul, Saïgon, and Ronda. She did not explain

this directly to Laura, however. She did not definitely, indeed, refuse

to become a factor in Laura’s plan. It was part of her power and charm

that she seldom said yes or no. At least, whenever she did say one or

the other, nobody could be entirely certain that she meant it.

One day she went for a long course in her car, making several calls,

stopping at Bergdorf and Goodman’s to order a gown, looking in at an

exhibition at the Bourgeois Gallery, and dropping off at the little

shop of T. Azeez, where she purchased a pair of ear-rings, clusters of

sardonyx grapes to match the crystal pendants dangling from her wrist.

On her return Frederika met her at the door with the news that Harold

was in the garden. Throwing her sable scarf over a chair, she hastened

out to join him.

Dear Harold, I _am_ glad to see you. Why haven’t you been here

before?

She was shocked by the boy’s appearance. Deep grey circles had formed

under his eyes. His cheek-bones seemed unnaturally prominent. He was

thinner. And, Campaspe noted at once, he suggested, as usual, the

dominant note of pathos. It was the one quality she had never been

quite able to dissociate from him, or from any other very young person,

for that matter. One never begins to be happy until one is thirty, she

reflected, and then, sometimes, one only begins.

He did not seem able to muster sufficient poise to respond immediately

to her greeting, and so she asked Frederika to bring out tea, and she

moved freely about the garden, hoping to put him at his ease by the

apparent carelessness of her manner. Her beloved Eros still aimed his

bow at random and the nymph still lay prostrate on the marble sward,

but the fountain had ceased to function and the basin was choked

with yellow and red leaves, discarded by a neighbour’s maple-tree.

The pavement, too, was strewn with leaves, and the aged tortoise had

burrowed under a heap of them in one corner. It was a setting replete

with melancholy.

I wasn’t sure you would want me, Harold replied hesitantly, at last.

He _was_ pathetic.

Not want you! Of course, I wanted you. How, conceivably, could you get

that idea?

You are her sister....

Bosh! I didn’t arrange that.

She seated him in a chair beside her, adjacent to the table, on which

Frederika was laying out pots and bowls and cups, slices of lemon and

slim sandwiches.

Frederika, Campaspe said, will you please run around the corner to the

grocery and order some gin. We’re all out.... She turned to Harold:

Lemon or cream?

Lemon, please.

His hand shook, she observed, as he took the cup, but he was beginning

to look more comfortable, appeared to be surer of his ground.

You’ve seen her? he questioned Campaspe eagerly. She’s told you?

I’ve scarcely seen anybody else, it seems to me, looking back. She has

been here nearly every day. She is sure that I know where you live.

You won’t tell her, he pleaded.

I don’t know.

But you will....

Naturally, I won’t tell her.

It was awful, Campaspe! he groaned.

A melodrama. It sounded incredible. But don’t blame Alice. _She_

didn’t do it.... She isn’t clever enough to think of it, she added.

But she knew all about it. I blame her for that.

She loves you. Campaspe’s manner was as simple as it was possible for

her to make it.

Even after....

Yes. She put her hand on his wrist. I don’t want you to go back to

her, Harold, that is I want you to do what you really _feel_ like

doing, but it is the truth. She loves you. Of that I am certain.

Campaspe sipped her tea and nibbled a slender sandwich. Harold looked

at her intently, searching her eyes.

Campaspe.... I don’t believe I’ve ever loved ... Alice. It was the

first time that he had spoken the name and the effort was apparent.

I’ve been a fool. Sometimes, up in Provincetown, sitting on the

beach, I have wondered if it didn’t all come about--the marriage, I

mean--because she was _your_ sister.

But, Harold, you met her first.

It’s very difficult to explain. I don’t believe I can explain. What I

want you to try to understand is that when I married Alice I had some

kind of subconscious feeling that I was marrying _you_.

Harold, you delightful boy! Her expression was quizzical.

I don’t know myself! I don’t know myself! he moaned. That’s the whole

trouble.

You’re young, boy.

So is Bunny. So is Paul. So is Ronald. So is--he hesitated

again--Zimbule, but they do.

She remained silent.

Will I ever learn to understand myself?

I think so.

It’s very hard. I’ve been trying to get on, to do something. I’m not

used to it, but it seemed the only decent thing to do. He broke off

suddenly and asked, Do you know how I was brought up? Do you know about

my Aunt Sadi?

Alice has told me something. I think I understand.

The best woman in the world ... after you. It’s not her fault. It’s

just my misfortune.

Campaspe brought him back. What have you been trying to do, Harold?

I don’t want to talk about that ... ever. It hasn’t been a success.

I’ve got to begin all over.

What do you _want_ to do?

It isn’t so much that. The question is what can I do?

Can’t you go back to your Aunt? Campaspe hoped for a negative reply.

Yes. She wants me. She wrote me a letter asking me to come back. But

what would be the good of that? That would mean going back to what I

began with and staying there. Probably I could never get away again....

He stared at her with some embarrassment for a moment before he said:

I’d thought of the stage.

Her reaction to this was direct: But you’re such a bad actor!

He groaned again.

I don’t know that that makes any great difference, Campaspe reminded

herself aloud. Then suddenly, she exclaimed: I have it! The very

thing! The movies. You have a good appearance, and if you were a good

actor you couldn’t get into the pictures. Into the pictures you shall

go!

Do you mean...?

She cut him off: No, I don’t own a company, but I know some one who

does. She tossed the name lightly out: Zimbule.

He rose to his feet. I couldn’t do that, he said.

Why not? she asked, her voice as even as usual. Why not? Don’t be

silly any longer, Harold. You are permitting your youthful pride and

prejudice to govern you too much. You must take things just a little

more as they come....

But....

Try to realize, Harold, that some day you will get over some of your

notions; you will even compromise with a few that you don’t get over.

Even Nana--Campaspe began to laugh--, even Nana, disgusted with ...

well, with something new to her, reasoned that one should never dispute

about tastes and colours because one never could be sure what one would

like in the future.... And there is the story of the ship captain,

related by Cunninghame-Graham. You see this water, he said. All my

life I have loved water, ... good air, good water and good bells, the

proverb says, and yet, when I have been in an old sailing-ship out in

the eastern seas, and when the water had run short been put upon two

pints a day for drinking and cooking, I have stand round the barrel,

and though it smelled just like the drainings of a tanyard, counted the

drops when it was poured into my pannikin as if they had been gold....

Si, señor, ... that is I mean, ... how do you put it, eh?--it is not

good to say fountain--out of your basin I shall never drink ... eh, no

señor.

Harold wavered. But will she want me?

That we must find out, was Campaspe’s reply.

After he had departed, a half-hour later, Campaspe strolled back into

the house and on to the drawing-room. A day or so earlier she had sent

for some music by Bach, in order to satisfy a certain intellectual

curiosity. Bach! Bach! Bach! She met the name, enshrined in extravagant

encomiums, in all the writings about music that she read, but where

was Bach played? Who played Bach? She was beginning to believe that

Bach was one of the veiled gods, and she wanted to settle the question

for herself. Among the Etruscans certain of the most powerful deities

were never seen by the people. The priests referred to these hidden

idols as Dii Involuti, veiled gods. Their words were frequently

quoted, but the gods themselves remained invisible. Certain savants

have derived from this fact the explanation that the Etruscans may

have held transcendental views in regard to the invisibility of the

true god, but at least one commentator, whose work had come under

Campaspe’s eternally roving eye, had held that there might be a simpler

interpretation of the phenomenon. The gods, he hinted, were concealed

because they were no longer fit to look at. Rude tribes had carved

them. Supplanted by more sightly idols, the only possible manner in

which reverence might be preserved for them was to keep them behind

screens, so that no comparisons could be made. And, as they were never

shown, it was quite simple for the priests to aver that their splendour

was so divine that ordinary senses would be overpowered by it.

In the temple of Isis at Sais, the inscription read: I am that which

has been, which is, and which shall be, and no one has yet lifted the

veil which hides me. It is highly probable, thought this same sapient

commentator, that the goddess was _black_, and as the fairer race

mingled with the darker in Egypt this primitive Nubian countenance, if

exhibited, would no longer inspire reverence, and so a curtain was hung

before her altar. The Ark of Moses, probably concealing objects which

had lost their attraction for the eye, two scrawled stones, the bones

of Joseph, a pot of manna, and the serpent-staff which is said to have

blossomed, carried this veil into the wilderness. To this very day,

indeed, the Ark is hidden. Twice the veil of the Temple has been rent:

allegorically at the crucifixion and actually by Titus, but no Ark was

discovered. The Jews, then, must have been saying their prayers before

a veil which concealed nothing. In later days, as scepticism grew,

there were those who had no desire to share the deceit practised on

the Jews. There is, for example, the case of the celebrated bambino of

the Aracœli Church at Rome. Alleged to have been carved by a pilgrim

out a piece of wood from a tree on the Mount of Olives and painted by

St. Luke while the pilgrim was asleep, this effigy is now bestowed in

an Ark, but, occasionally, visitors are permitted a view of a part of

the face. Flat, blackened, and rouged, this is a thing of ugliness,

but it is set in jewels and the walls are covered with pictures of the

miracles it has performed, pictures which have attracted the faithful

in such numbers that at one time it is said to have received more fees

than all the doctors of Rome.... Campaspe seated herself before the

piano, opened the pages of the Wohltemperirtes Clavier, and struck a

chord....

_Chapter XII_

Harold had been working in the studio three days in the second week

of November. It would be more accurate to say that he had reported

for work, had made up and dressed for his part, but he had been kept

waiting in his dressing-room, a tiny chamber, separated from the

adjoining cubicles by thin walls of rough pine boards, which rose ten

feet in the air and then suddenly terminated while yet some appreciable

distance from the ceiling. A pine shelf served as a dressing-table,

over which hung a mirror, framed in zinc, outlined with a blaze of

electric lights. This was one in a long row of similar rooms on the

second floor of a mammoth building which looked as if it had been put

up over night and which probably could be destroyed by a brisk fire in

considerably less time even than that.

A red and white sign vocatively adjured against smoking, and a poster

of Zimbule in her costume as the Long Island Phryne, a veil of orange

tulle and a rope of pearls, hung on the wall of this room, as it

hung, Harold soon discovered, on all the other walls of this vast

factory, for factory was what it seemed to him, but he had not yet

caught a glimpse of Zimbule herself. Her dressing-room was located

on the opposite side of the building and was approached by a separate

staircase. He had taken it for granted that she would be working in the

studio below and that was primarily the reason why he had refrained

from wandering about downstairs, although he had been encouraged to do

so by various actors, camera-men, and stage-hands, who had lounged into

his room out of curiosity, ostensibly to light their cigarettes, or to

ask the time. He had not taken advantage of their invitation to roam;

instead, he sat alone in his room, waiting ... for what? he wondered.

Campaspe had oiled the wheels. He had found it incredibly simple to

become a cabot of the silver sheets, an epithet for his new profession

dropped by one of his visitors, an assistant director named Rex

MacGregor, a lad about seventeen years old, whose thin white face was

profusely sprinkled with pimples, and who wore ridiculously tight

shepherd’s plaid trousers over his extremely thin legs, a waistcoat

which exposed about as much of his shirt as the similar garment of a

Spanish matador, and a coat in which the pockets were cut at angles

which would have thrown a cubist painter into a delirium. Harold had

called one morning, following instructions, on the casting director,

and when he encountered that superb individual, with his shirt-sleeves

rolled back to the shoulder, exposing the lumps of muscle which

distorted the contour of his hairy arms, a huge black cigar between

his teeth, sitting before a desk littered with papers and stills, he

had not felt encouraged. This ruffian apparently had forgotten that

Harold had been announced, and after leaving him standing for half an

hour or so while he conversed, in a language of which Harold could only

understand one word in ten, with a blonde lady, massive and buxom in

the style of 1896, the figure tightly corseted and swelling with curves

like a Bartlett pear, he turned suddenly and savagely on the boy and

asked him his business. Who are you and what d’ye want? he growled.

But when Harold had repeated his name, the man’s manner considerably

altered. His face became wreathed in equivocal, nay blandiloquent,

smiles and, without a single further question, he pushed a long sheet

of printed paper over towards Harold, and asked him to sign it. The

man never laughed, Harold observed, and even his smile he controlled

in a curious and disgusting way with his tongue. There was something

about this smile, indeed, that Harold did not quite like. Nevertheless,

before he signed the document, which he took to be a contract, his

natural honesty compelled him to explain that this was his first job in

pictures, that he was wholly inexperienced, that he hoped, etc. But the

casting director, alternately biting his cigar brutally and removing it

to give vent to one of his enigmatical and unsatisfactory smiles, waved

away this attempt at reason with a That’s all right. I know. I know,

pronouncing these I knows with a downward inflection which gave them,

perhaps, a richer meaning. Sign here. He indicated a dotted line and

Harold signed.

A little later, when alone, it occurred to him to read the document

and he discovered, to his amazement, that his salary was to be $400

a week and that he was engaged to play leads. He was employed,

apparently, by the Zimbule O’Grady Film Company, Incorporated, to

appear in a picture entitled The Passionate Flapper. He endeavoured

to satisfy his conscience by assuring himself that he owed this turn

in his fortunes to Campaspe, but his uneasy conscience retorted that

Campaspe had arranged his easy ingress only through the influence of

Zimbule. How could he, he asked himself, accept the position under

these humiliating circumstances? The fact remained, however, that he

had signed the contract, and a certain clause provided definitely

that in case the contract should be broken by either party, a large

sum of money was to be forfeited. It was too late, then, to listen to

his conscience. Besides he was not sure. Perhaps Campaspe had friends

among the directors of the company. It was possible, indeed, that she,

herself, in spite of her denial, had put money into the project. It

was like her to wish to help Zimbule and, if she had bought stock with

this intention, it would be unlike her to seek any recognition for her

good deed. As the days passed, he grew more uncertain still. Zimbule

had made no effort to approach him. If my contract had been arranged

through her she would have come to gloat, he argued, or she would send

for me. As a final mode of relieving his tortured mind, he determined

to make good. If I do satisfactory work in this picture, he reasoned,

if I do what I have to do well, it doesn’t matter who got me the job.

In any case, then, I will be earning my salary. With casuistry of this

nature he held daily communication with himself.

Passionately, he wanted to make good for his own sake, for Campaspe’s

sake, even for Alice’s sake. He would show Alice that he could get

along on his own. He had to confess to himself, however, that as yet he

was not on his own, that in taking this position he had been obliged to

make as great a sacrifice of his principles as if he had accepted his

father’s shameful offer. Principles! He was beginning to wonder if he

had any left! And then alleviation came again in the thought that what

he was now doing he was doing independently, of his own free will. He

had not been tricked and driven into this corner. He had listened to

Campaspe’s arguments and, with his eyes open, he had walked voluntarily

into it. If he succeeded, Alice might never know, perhaps, how the

chance had come to him. She might even credit him with initiative in

the matter.

As for Campaspe, she was more in his thoughts than any one else.

Without professing to understand her or her motives, he thought of her

as a consistently kind and sympathetic person. She was more than she

appeared to be in the somewhat ribald crowd with which she so strangely

associated, of that he was sure. His sympathy for her, as the weeks

had gone by, had deepened into a kind of affection, in which, even

he, with his naïve reasoning powers, recognized a filial element. In

some respects, he realized, he regarded her somewhat as he might have

regarded his mother, but this, for him, who had never known his mother,

was a dangerous affection, the most dangerous of all. Again, the

inexplicable tangle confused his thinking: how, inconceivably, he had

married Alice with the idea of Campaspe paramount. And there was much

more that he did not understand at all.

He wondered if Zimbule would show resentment, turn spiteful. Towards

her, from her point of view, he had, indubitably, behaved in the

shabbiest possible manner. She had gravitated towards him naturally.

She did everything naturally. Campaspe was right: Zimbule was a little

animal. Why had he rejected her attentions so forcibly, so rudely?

He could not tell. He knew only that he was subject to extravagant

reactions, insane impulses. Everybody around him seemed to take life

as a matter of course. He, alone, seemed to regard it with suspicion,

a suspicion, he was horrified to discover, which seemed to aggrandize

with every new opportunity. He was afraid of life; that was it, afraid

of life! Nothing seemed to be easy for him. Another, perhaps, even more

thin-skinned than himself, but less obstinate, less timid, would have

put up with his father’s stupid joke, have fallen in with his father’s

wishes. Paul would have done so, he reflected. To Paul, with his sense

of irony, one course would have seemed as bad or as good as another.

There was, apparently, a great gulf fixed between any two generations,

the way people have lived and the way they live now. Youth must bridge

this gulf. Others did; why couldn’t he? Why to all intents and purposes

did he still belong to his Aunt Sadi’s generation rather than to

Paul’s? Paul seemed to have nothing in his nature which resisted, which

_revolted_, while he seemed to have nothing else but resistance

and revolt in his nature. He could accept nothing unaccustomed without

an internal struggle. What was it: pride or stupidity which held him

in its vice, so that he felt unable to turn in any direction without

a sense that he was shaming some older and more honourable intention?

He did not know. All he knew was that he was that way, and he had

begun to realize that, at bottom, no one changes. As one is born one

is ... always. The only growth possible lay on the side of increasing

comprehension of oneself. He did not understand himself, or Alice, or

Campaspe, but Campaspe he accepted, as he accepted his aunt and Persia

Blaine. These three, alone, in the world with which he had yet come

into contact, did not arouse him to resistance. These three and one

other. Paul, he could understand after a fashion, and Zimbule, a sheet

of flame burning a path before her desire, he understood only too well.

In the past he had avoided this flame, only, it would appear, to walk

voluntarily into it in the present. And the question he asked himself,

so much had his experience already taught him, was whether it was worth

while to struggle against this flame any longer, whether it would not

be better to.... But did Zimbule still cherish her old desire? That

doubt assailed him fifty times a day and it had lodged in his mind

afresh when he heard a voice down the corridor calling, Mr. Proowit!

Mr. Proowit! He started guiltily as he bade the boy come in, and he was

in a perspiration of dread and fear when Rex entered to tell him that

he was wanted at once in the studio below.

He quickly rubbed a little more flesh paint into his cheeks--the first

day, following the advice of some ancient thespian, he had used yellow

powder, but a lad in the next room who visited Harold to borrow towels,

rabbits’ feet, matches, soap, and eyebrow pencils, had informed him

categorically that the employment of yellow powder was obsolete. This

ain’t a Pearl White serial, he explained. Them days is over.... Harold

drew on his dinner coat, examining himself once more in the mirror,

catching therein a glimpse of the impertinent and grinning Rex gazing

over his shoulder, and then started out.

As he entered the enormous studio, crowded with actors, stage-hands,

carpenters building sets in various corners, producing a deafening

racket with their hammers, he felt as though everybody were staring

at him. As a consequence he could scarcely walk steadily. Rex guided

him to the proper set and once he was there he found that no one was

aware of his presence at all. The director, the camera-man, and the

art director were in the midst of a heated argument. It can’t be done,

the camera-man was yelling. I ain’t never done it before and anything

I ain’t never done nobody can do. I tell you it can, declared the art

director, with the finality of a person who knew. Well, it won’t be.

See! put in the director, setting his square jaw high. Not if I have my

way. And I’m going to have it. It’s my job to arrange the sets. What

do you think I’m getting paid more’n anybody else around here for? To

argue with a bunch of fish? By God, I’ll see you all in hell if you

don’t do what I want!

At this seemingly crucial moment--to Harold the men seemed on the

verge of murder--, round a corner of the scenery, set to represent

a moving picture art director’s idea of a somewhat flashy Parisian

apartment, Harold saw Zimbule approaching, leading a leopard by a

silver chain. She was wearing a costume fashioned entirely of strands

of rhine-stones. On her head waved a forest of yellow feathers, secured

in a crown of brilliants. Her bare arms were encased nearly to the

elbow in a succession of circles of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and

rubies. On her bare right ankle--her feet were casketed in sandals--,

she wore three more of these circles. There was a heavy impression of

muguet in the air.

Are you all cuckoo? the girl demanded of the belligerent group. This

ain’t a bull-fight or a base-ball game! What d’ye think y’are, she

inquired shrilly of the art director, Babe Ruth?

Zimbule passed the silver chain, with the leopard attached, to her

Negro maid, who followed her. The men were apologetic.

I was jest tellin’ ’em it couldn’t be done, explained the camera-man.

That’s right, Zimbule sneered. You tell ’em, Sweeney, you’re the

biggest. Suddenly she saw Harold. Hello, she said, in a friendly enough

tone. So you’re here.

As she walked towards him he advanced to meet her, thinking at the same

time that never before had she appeared so beautiful. He hesitated

for a second as to whether or not he should offer his hand and she,

observing his confusion, held out her own. Curiously, she too seemed a

little ill at ease.

I hope, he stammered, that you’ll find me all right. You know--he

patted his face with his handkerchief; even in November the studio

was a hot-house and he was perspiring freely--, you know how little

experience I’ve had.

She regarded him quizzically, but when she spoke her tone was careless.

I hope so, she echoed, her mind apparently elsewhere. Then, more

seriously, Of course you will. Even the wops can do it. Never look at

the camera. Look at me. I’ll _make_ you act.

Scene, Miss O’Grady, please, cried the director.

Zimbule took Harold’s arm and propelled him into the flashy Parisian

apartment. Now the lights, full on his face, were blinding,

suffocating. The strands of gems which hung from Zimbule’s shoulders

and waist flashed blue and white messages to his eyes. He seemed to

have lost his vision. His head began to ache and, in the intensity

of the heat, he could scarcely breathe. Behind the camera he vaguely

caught a glimpse of a knot of bystanders, men and women in evening

dress, waiting, probably, to appear in some ball or fête scene. Zimbule

did not seem to be conscious of their presence.

I haven’t the least idea what I am to do, Harold whispered in

desperation. I haven’t seen the scenario.

I haven’t either, she laughed. It doesn’t make any difference. That’s

what that stiff is paid for. He’ll tell us what to do.

Now we’ll take the temptation scene, the director shouted, in a tone

suggesting that he was advising a crowd of ten thousand people in

Madison Square Garden to vote for Debs. Hey! Cut that! This to the

carpenters who had now begun to pound at double the rate they had

hitherto employed. Rex dashed off to the further end of the room

to repeat the injunction. Soon there was comparative silence, only

about as much noise as in the Stock Exchange on a fairly busy day.

The director continued: Harold--Harold was a trifle startled by this

familiar approach from a man he had never seen before--, you are alone

with Dolly, the passionate flapper. She is determined to seduce you,

and you are almost ready to yield when you see that picture of the

madonna on the wall. The picture reminds you of your good wife, calls

you back to your senses, and you cast the vamp off. Now, try it.

Harold sat down, as directed, and Zimbule approached him.

Register the beginning of passion! You are fascinated by the sigh-reen,

screamed the director, through a megaphone.

Harold had the air of a man who has just been told that he will die

within the month. On the arm of his chair, Zimbule smoothed his hair

with her right hand. He felt her warm breath on his cheek. His heart

was beating violently in an irregular rhythm that Stravinsky would have

given his right ear to have invented.

Nothing like it! NO-THING LIKE IT! drawled the director in a hoarse

wail of dissatisfaction. Passion! PASSION!!! You aren’t saved yet. You

haven’t seen the picture YET! Snuggle! SNUGGLE!

Harold tried desperately hard to snuggle. He put one arm tentatively

and awkwardly around Zimbule’s waist. With valiant cozenage she fell

limply into his lap. Now the gods had not given Harold any talent

for acting, but he was not entirely bereft of natural feeling. Quite

unexpectedly he began to sense the spirit of the scene.

More like it! shouted the director. Now, look at the madonna and think

of your poor little wife at home. Harold obeyed. The blood rushed to

his face.

Push her away!

Harold pushed. Zimbule fell before him, pleading on her knees. She

wept, she wrung her hands, she clasped his legs.

Keep your eyes on the madonna! Sp--URN the gurrrrulll!

Harold kept his eyes on the madonna. His nails were digging into his

palms as he held his arms tight against his sides. His brain began to

reel. Quite suddenly he had realized that he desired wildly to take

Zimbule in his arms, to caress her, to kiss her violently, to crush

her, to beat her. So love was like this. All that was needed to set

one afire was propinquity and opportunity. Alice one week; Zimbule the

next. He began to have a glimmering of understanding and he recalled

Campaspe’s story: It is not good to say fountain--out of your basin I

shall never drink ... eh, no señor.

The scene was over.

Great stuff! said Zimbule, picking herself up. I knew you’d do.

Go over it again! the director ordered.

This time, when Zimbule touched his head with her hand, he half rose,

and drew her towards him. Pulling her down into the chair, he covered

her face and throat with kisses. Their lips met.

That’s eeee----NOUGH! Look at the madonna. Think of your WIFE!

You love me! Zimbule whispered.

As he looked at the picture and pushed her away, Harold nodded. This

time, Zimbule fell with her back to the camera and in her eyes, as she

gazed at the man who was trying hard to register rejection, there was

an expression of triumph.

We can’t see your face, Miss O’Grady!

As she turned, she burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing. Then she

fell back on the floor, laughing and crying, her lithe, young body

shaken with convulsions.

Great! commented the director. Great! We’ll take it.

Zimbule, still crying, staggered to her feet. Her maid, having

passed the young leopard on to Rex, approached with a mirror and a

powder-puff, but Zimbule, unable to control her emotion, rushed off to

her room.

The kid’s gone too far, commented the camera-man. She’s wore herself

out.

You’re the goods, boy, the director said to Harold. Valentino himself

couldn’t do better.

Harold was dazed. He scarcely knew what had happened and apparently it

had to happen again. He tried to get his bearings. After a long wait,

during which nobody exhibited any surprise or impatience, Zimbule

reappeared.