"Eric," said Olaf slowly, "is a spoiled kid. He's just let his

mother's best cow go dry because he don't milk her right. I was

hoping you'd take him away somewhere and put him into business. If

he don't do any good among strangers, he never will." This was a

long speech for Olaf, and as he finished it he climbed into his

buggy.

Nils shrugged his shoulders. "Same old tricks," he thought. "Hits

from behind you every time. What a whale of a man!" He turned and

went round to the kitchen, where his mother was scolding little Eric

for letting the gasoline get low.

IV

Joe Vavrika's saloon was not in the county-seat, where Olaf and Mrs.

Ericson did their trading, but in a cheerfuller place, a little

Bohemian settlement which lay at the other end of the county, ten

level miles north of Olaf's farm. Clara rode up to see her father

almost every day. Vavrika's house was, so to speak, in the back yard

of his saloon. The garden between the two buildings was inclosed by

a high board fence as tight as a partition, and in summer Joe kept

beer-tables and wooden benches among the gooseberry bushes under his

little cherry tree. At one of these tables Nils Ericson was seated

in the late afternoon, three days after his return home. Joe had

gone in to serve a customer, and Nils was lounging on his elbows,

looking rather mournfully into his half-emptied pitcher, when he

heard a laugh across the little garden. Clara, in her riding-habit,

was standing at the back door of the house, under the grapevine

trellis that old Joe had grown there long ago. Nils rose.

"Come out and keep your father and me company. We've been gossiping

all afternoon. Nobody to bother us but the flies."

She shook her head. "No, I never come out here any more. Olaf

doesn't like it. I must live up to my position, you know."

"You mean to tell me you never come out and chat with the boys, as

you used to? He _has_ tamed you! Who keeps up these flower-beds?"

"I come out on Sundays, when father is alone, and read the Bohemian

papers to him. But I am never here when the bar is open. What have

you two been doing?"

"Talking, as I told you. I've been telling him about my travels. I

find I can't talk much at home, not even to Eric."

Clara reached up and poked with her riding-whip at a white moth that

was fluttering in the sunlight among the vine leaves. "I suppose you

will never tell me about all those things."

"Where can I tell them? Not in Olaf's house, certainly. What's the

matter with our talking here?" He pointed persuasively with his hat

to the bushes and the green table, where the flies were singing

lazily above the empty beer-glasses.

Clara shook her head weakly. "No, it wouldn't do. Besides, I am

going now."

"I'm on Eric's mare. Would you be angry if I overtook you?"

Clara looked back and laughed. "You might try and see. I can leave

you if I don't want you. Eric's mare can't keep up with Norman."

Nils went into the bar and attempted to pay his score. Big Joe, six

feet four, with curly yellow hair and mustache, clapped him on the

shoulder. "Not a God-damn a your money go in my drawer, you hear?

Only next time you bring your flute, te-te-te-te-te-ty." Joe wagged

his fingers in imitation of the flute-player's position. "My Clara,

she come all-a-time Sundays an' play for me. She not like to play at

Ericson's place." He shook his yellow curls and laughed. "Not a

God-damn a fun at Ericson's. You come a Sunday. You like-a fun. No

forget de flute." Joe talked very rapidly and always tumbled over

his English. He seldom spoke it to his customers, and had never

learned much.

Nils swung himself into the saddle and trotted to the west end of

the village, where the houses and gardens scattered into

prairie-land and the road turned south. Far ahead of him, in the

declining light, he saw Clara Vavrika's slender figure, loitering on

horseback. He touched his mare with the whip, and shot along the

white, level road, under the reddening sky. When he overtook Olaf's

wife he saw that she had been crying. "What's the matter, Clara

Vavrika?" he asked kindly.

"Oh, I get blue sometimes. It was awfully jolly living there with

father. I wonder why I ever went away."

Nils spoke in a low, kind tone that he sometimes used with women:

"That's what I've been wondering these many years. You were the last

girl in the country I'd have picked for a wife for Olaf. What made

you do it, Clara?"

"I suppose I really did it to oblige the neighbors"--Clara tossed

her head. "People were beginning to wonder."

"To wonder?"

"Yes--why I didn't get married. I suppose I didn't like to keep them

in suspense. I've discovered that most girls marry out of

consideration for the neighborhood."

Nils bent his head toward her and his white teeth flashed. "I'd have

gambled that one girl I knew would say, 'Let the neighborhood be

damned.'"

Clara shook her head mournfully. "You see, they have it on you,

Nils; that is, if you're a woman. They say you're beginning to go

off. That's what makes us get married: we can't stand the laugh."

Nils looked sidewise at her. He had never seen her head droop

before. Resignation was the last thing he would have expected of

her. "In your case, there wasn't something else?"

"Something else?"

"I mean, you didn't do it to spite somebody? Somebody who didn't

come back?"

Clara drew herself up. "Oh, I never thought you'd come back. Not

after I stopped writing to you, at least. _That_ was all over, long

before I married Olaf."

"It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you could do

to me was to marry Olaf?"

Clara laughed. "No; I didn't know you were so fond of Olaf."

Nils smoothed his horse's mane with his glove. "You know, Clara

Vavrika, you are never going to stick it out. You'll cut away some

day, and I've been thinking you might as well cut away with me."

Clara threw up her chin. "Oh, you don't know me as well as you

think. I won't cut away. Sometimes, when I'm with father, I feel

like it. But I can hold out as long as the Ericsons can. They've

never got the best of me yet, and one can live, so long as one isn't

beaten. If I go back to father, it's all up with Olaf in politics.

He knows that, and he never goes much beyond sulking. I've as much

wit as the Ericsons. I'll never leave them unless I can show them a

thing or two."

"You mean unless you can come it over them?"

"Yes--unless I go away with a man who is cleverer than they are, and

who has more money."

Nils whistled. "Dear me, you are demanding a good deal. The

Ericsons, take the lot of them, are a bunch to beat. But I should

think the excitement of tormenting them would have worn off by this

time."

"It has, I'm afraid," Clara admitted mournfully.

"Then why don't you cut away? There are more amusing games than this

in the world. When I came home I thought it might amuse me to bully

a few quarter sections out of the Ericsons; but I've almost decided

I can get more fun for my money somewhere else."

Clara took in her breath sharply. "Ah, you have got the other will!

That was why you came home!"

"No, it wasn't. I came home to see how you were getting on with

Olaf."

Clara struck her horse with the whip, and in a bound she was far

ahead of him. Nils dropped one word, "Damn!" and whipped after her;

but she leaned forward in her saddle and fairly cut the wind. Her

long riding-skirt rippled in the still air behind her. The sun was

just sinking behind the stubble in a vast, clear sky, and the

shadows drew across the fields so rapidly that Nils could scarcely

keep in sight the dark figure on the road. When he overtook her he

caught her horse by the bridle. Norman reared, and Nils was

frightened for her; but Clara kept her seat.

"Let me go, Nils Ericson!" she cried. "I hate you more than any of

them. You were created to torture me, the whole tribe of you--to

make me suffer in every possible way."

She struck her horse again and galloped away from him. Nils set his

teeth and looked thoughtful. He rode slowly home along the deserted

road, watching the stars come out in the clear violet sky. They

flashed softly into the limpid heavens, like jewels let fall into

clear water. They were a reproach, he felt, to a sordid world. As he

turned across the sand creek, he looked up at the North Star and

smiled, as if there were an understanding between them. His mother

scolded him for being late for supper.

V

On Sunday afternoon Joe Vavrika, in his shirt-sleeves and

carpet-slippers, was sitting in his garden, smoking a long-tasseled

porcelain pipe with a hunting scene painted on the bowl. Clara sat

under the cherry tree, reading aloud to him from the weekly Bohemian

papers. She had worn a white muslin dress under her riding-habit,

and the leaves of the cherry tree threw a pattern of sharp shadows

over her skirt. The black cat was dozing in the sunlight at her

feet, and Joe's dachshund was scratching a hole under the scarlet

geraniums and dreaming of badgers. Joe was filling his pipe for the

third time since dinner, when he heard a knocking on the fence. He

broke into a loud guffaw and unlatched the little door that led into

the street. He did not call Nils by name, but caught him by the hand

and dragged him in. Clara stiffened and the color deepened under her

dark skin. Nils, too, felt a little awkward. He had not seen her

since the night when she rode away from him and left him alone on

the level road between the fields. Joe dragged him to the wooden

bench beside the green table.

"You bring de flute," he cried, tapping the leather case under Nils'

arm. "Ah, das-a good! Now we have some liddle fun like old times. I

got somet'ing good for you." Joe shook his finger at Nils and winked

his blue eyes, a bright clear eye, full of fire, though the tiny

blood-vessels on the ball were always a little distended. "I got

somet'ing for you from"--he paused and waved his hand--"Hongarie.

You know Hongarie? You wait!" He pushed Nils down on the bench, and

went through the back door of his saloon.

Nils looked at Clara, who sat frigidly with her white skirts drawn

tight about her. "He didn't tell you he had asked me to come, did

he? He wanted a party and proceeded to arrange it. Isn't he fun?

Don't be cross; let's give him a good time."

Clara smiled and shook out her skirt. "Isn't that like father? And

he has sat here so meekly all day. Well, I won't pout. I'm glad you

came. He doesn't have very many good times now any more. There are

so few of his kind left. The second generation are a tame lot."

Joe came back with a flask in one hand and three wine-glasses caught

by the stems between the fingers of the other. These he placed on

the table with an air of ceremony, and, going behind Nils, held the

flask between him and the sun, squinting into it admiringly. "You

know dis, Tokai? A great friend of mine, he bring dis to me, a

present out of Hongarie. You know how much it cost, dis wine? Chust

so much what it weigh in gold. Nobody but de nobles drink him in

Bohemie. Many, many years I save him up, dis Tokai." Joe whipped out

his official cork-screw and delicately removed the cork. "De old man

die what bring him to me, an' dis wine he lay on his belly in my

cellar an' sleep. An' now," carefully pouring out the heavy yellow

wine, "an' now he wake up; and maybe he wake us up, too!" He carried

one of the glasses to his daughter and presented it with great

gallantry.

Clara shook her head, but, seeing her father's disappointment,

relented. "You taste it first. I don't want so much."

Joe sampled it with a beatific expression, and turned to Nils. "You

drink him slow, dis wine. He very soft, but he go down hot. You

see!"

After a second glass Nils declared that he couldn't take any more

without getting sleepy. "Now get your fiddle, Vavrika," he said as

he opened his flute-case.

But Joe settled back in his wooden rocker and wagged his big

carpet-slipper. "No-no-no-no-no-no-no! No play fiddle now any more:

too much ache in de finger," waving them, "all-a-time rheumatiz. You

play de flute, te-tety-te-tety-te. Bohemie songs."

"I've forgotten all the Bohemian songs I used to play with you and

Johanna. But here's one that will make Clara pout. You remember how

her eyes used to snap when we called her the Bohemian Girl?" Nils

lifted his flute and began "When Other Lips and Other Hearts," and

Joe hummed the air in a husky baritone, waving his carpet-slipper.

"Oh-h-h, das-a fine music," he cried, clapping his hands as Nils

finished. "Now 'Marble Halls, Marble Halls'! Clara, you sing him."

Clara smiled and leaned back in her chair, beginning softly:

"_I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls,

With vassals and serfs at my knee,_"

and Joe hummed like a big bumble-bee.

"There's one more you always played," Clara said quietly; "I

remember that best." She locked her hands over her knee and began

"The Heart Bowed Down," and sang it through without groping for the

words. She was singing with a good deal of warmth when she came to

the end of the old song:

"_For memory is the only friend

That grief can call its own._"

Joe flashed out his red silk handkerchief and blew his nose, shaking

his head. "No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Too sad, too sad! I not like-a dat.

Play quick somet'ing gay now."

Nils put his lips to the instrument, and Joe lay back in his chair,

laughing and singing, "Oh, Evelina, Sweet Evelina!" Clara laughed,

too. Long ago, when she and Nils went to high school, the model

student of their class was a very homely girl in thick spectacles.

Her name was Evelina Oleson; she had a long, swinging walk which

somehow suggested the measure of that song, and they used

mercilessly to sing it at her.

"Dat ugly Oleson girl, she teach in de school," Joe gasped, "an' she

still walk chust like dat, yup-a, yup-a, yup-a, chust like a camel

she go! Now, Nils, we have some more li'l drink. Oh,

yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-_yes!_ Dis time you haf to drink, and Clara

she haf to, so she show she not jealous. So, we all drink to your

girl. You not tell her name, eh? No-no-no, I no make you tell. She

pretty, eh? She make good sweetheart? I bet!" Joe winked and lifted

his glass. "How soon you get married?"

Nils screwed up his eyes. "That I don't know. When she says."

Joe threw out his chest. "Das-a way boys talks. No way for mans.

Mans say, 'You come to de church, an' get a hurry on you.' Das-a way

mans talks."

"Maybe Nils hasn't got enough to keep a wife," put in Clara

ironically. "How about that, Nils?" she asked him frankly, as if she

wanted to know.

Nils looked at her coolly, raising one eyebrow. "Oh, I can keep her,

all right."

"The way she wants to be kept?"

"With my wife, I'll decide that," replied Nils calmly. "I'll give

her what's good for her."

Clara made a wry face. "You'll give her the strap, I expect, like

old Peter Oleson gave his wife."

"When she needs it," said Nils lazily, locking his hands behind his

head and squinting up through the leaves of the cherry tree. "Do you

remember the time I squeezed the cherries all over your clean dress,

and Aunt Johanna boxed my ears for me? My gracious, weren't you mad!

You had both hands full of cherries, and I squeezed 'em and made the

juice fly all over you. I liked to have fun with you; you'd get so

mad."

"We _did_ have fun, didn't we? None of the other kids ever had so

much fun. We knew how to play."

Nils dropped his elbows on the table and looked steadily across at

her. "I've played with lots of girls since, but I haven't found one

who was such good fun."

Clara laughed. The late afternoon sun was shining full in her face,

and deep in the back of her eyes there shone something fiery, like

the yellow drops of Tokai in the brown glass bottle. "Can you still

play, or are you only pretending?"

"I can play better than I used to, and harder."

"Don't you ever work, then?" She had not intended to say it. It

slipped out because she was confused enough to say just the wrong

thing.

"I work between times." Nils' steady gaze still beat upon her.

"Don't you worry about my working, Mrs. Ericson. You're getting like

all the rest of them." He reached his brown, warm hand across the

table and dropped it on Clara's, which was cold as an icicle. "Last

call for play, Mrs. Ericson!" Clara shivered, and suddenly her hands

and cheeks grew warm. Her fingers lingered in his a moment, and they

looked at each other earnestly. Joe Vavrika had put the mouth of the

bottle to his lips and was swallowing the last drops of the Tokai,

standing. The sun, just about to sink behind his shop, glistened on

the bright glass, on his flushed face and curly yellow hair. "Look,"

Clara whispered; "that's the way I want to grow old."

VI

On the day of Olaf Ericson's barn-raising, his wife, for once in a

way, rose early. Johanna Vavrika had been baking cakes and frying

and boiling and spicing meats for a week beforehand, but it was not

until the day before the party was to take place that Clara showed

any interest in it. Then she was seized with one of her fitful

spasms of energy, and took the wagon and little Eric and spent the

day on Plum Creek, gathering vines and swamp goldenrod to decorate

the barn.

By four o'clock in the afternoon buggies and wagons began to arrive

at the big unpainted building in front of Olaf's house. When Nils

and his mother came at five, there were more than fifty people in

the barn, and a great drove of children. On the ground floor stood

six long tables, set with the crockery of seven flourishing Ericson

families, lent for the occasion. In the middle of each table was a

big yellow pumpkin, hollowed out and filled with woodbine. In one

corner of the barn, behind a pile of green-and-white-striped

watermelons, was a circle of chairs for the old people; the younger

guests sat on bushel measures or barbed-wire spools, and the

children tumbled about in the haymow. The box-stalls Clara had

converted into booths. The framework was hidden by goldenrod and

sheaves of wheat, and the partitions were covered with wild

grapevines full of fruit. At one of these Johanna Vavrika watched

over her cooked meats, enough to provision an army; and at the next

her kitchen girls had ranged the ice-cream freezers, and Clara was

already cutting pies and cakes against the hour of serving. At the

third stall, little Hilda, in a bright pink lawn dress, dispensed

lemonade throughout the afternoon. Olaf, as a public man, had

thought it inadvisable to serve beer in his barn; but Joe Vavrika

had come over with two demijohns concealed in his buggy, and after

his arrival the wagon-shed was much frequented by the men.

"Hasn't Cousin Clara fixed things lovely?" little Hilda whispered,

when Nils went up to her stall and asked for lemonade.

Nils leaned against the booth, talking to the excited little girl

and watching the people. The barn faced the west, and the sun,

pouring in at the big doors, filled the whole interior with a golden

light, through which filtered fine particles of dust from the

haymow, where the children were romping. There was a great

chattering from the stall where Johanna Vavrika exhibited to the

admiring women her platters heaped with fried chicken, her roasts of

beef, boiled tongues, and baked hams with cloves stuck in the crisp

brown fat and garnished with tansy and parsley. The older women,

having assured themselves that there were twenty kinds of cake, not

counting cookies, and three dozen fat pies, repaired to the corner

behind the pile of watermelons, put on their white aprons, and fell

to their knitting and fancy-work. They were a fine company of old

women, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find them there

together, where the sun made bright patches on the floor and sent

long, quivering shafts of gold through the dusky shade up among the

rafters. There were fat, rosy old women who looked hot in their best

black dresses; spare, alert old women with brown, dark-veined hands;

and several of almost heroic frame, not less massive than old Mrs.

Ericson herself. Few of them wore glasses, and old Mrs. Svendsen, a

Danish woman, who was quite bald, wore the only cap among them. Mrs.

Oleson, who had twelve big grandchildren, could still show two

braids of yellow hair as thick as her own wrists. Among all these

grandmothers there were more brown heads than white. They all had a

pleased, prosperous air, as if they were more than satisfied with

themselves and with life. Nils, leaning against Hilda's

lemonade-stand, watched them as they sat chattering in four

languages, their fingers never lagging behind their tongues.

"Look at them over there," he whispered, detaining Clara as she

passed him. "Aren't they the Old Guard? I've just counted thirty

hands. I guess they've wrung many a chicken's neck and warmed many a

boy's jacket for him in their time."

In reality he fell into amazement when he thought of the Herculean

labors those fifteen pairs of hands had performed: of the cows they

had milked, the butter they had made, the gardens they had planted,

the children and grandchildren they had tended, the brooms they had

worn out, the mountains of food they had cooked. It made him dizzy.

Clara Vavrika smiled a hard, enigmatical smile at him and walked

rapidly away. Nils' eyes followed her white figure as she went

toward the house. He watched her walking alone in the sunlight,

looked at her slender, defiant shoulders and her little hard-set

head with its coils of blue-black hair. "No," he reflected; "she'd

never be like them, not if she lived here a hundred years. She'd

only grow more bitter. You can't tame a wild thing; you can only

chain it. People aren't all alike. I mustn't lose my nerve." He gave

Hilda's pigtail a parting tweak and set out after Clara. "Where to?"

he asked, as he came upon her in the kitchen.

"I'm going to the cellar for preserves."

"Let me go with you. I never get a moment alone with you. Why do you

keep out of my way?"

Clara laughed. "I don't usually get in anybody's way."

Nils followed her down the stairs and to the far corner of the

cellar, where a basement window let in a stream of light. From a

swinging shelf Clara selected several glass jars, each labeled in

Johanna's careful hand. Nils took up a brown flask. "What's this? It

looks good."

"It is. It's some French brandy father gave me when I was married.

Would you like some? Have you a corkscrew? I'll get glasses."

When she brought them, Nils took them from her and put them down on

the window-sill. "Clara Vavrika, do you remember how crazy I used to

be about you?"

Clara shrugged her shoulders. "Boys are always crazy about somebody

or other. I dare say some silly has been crazy about Evelina Oleson.

You got over it in a hurry."

"Because I didn't come back, you mean? I had to get on, you know,

and it was hard sledding at first. Then I heard you'd married Olaf."

"And then you stayed away from a broken heart," Clara laughed.

"And then I began to think about you more than I had since I first

went away. I began to wonder if you were really as you had seemed to

me when I was a boy. I thought I'd like to see. I've had lots of

girls, but no one ever pulled me the same way. The more I thought

about you, the more I remembered how it used to be--like hearing a

wild tune you can't resist, calling you out at night. It had been a

long while since anything had pulled me out of my boots, and I

wondered whether anything ever could again." Nils thrust his hands

into his coat pockets and squared his shoulders, as his mother

sometimes squared hers, as Olaf, in a clumsier manner, squared his.

"So I thought I'd come back and see. Of course the family have tried

to do me, and I rather thought I'd bring out father's will and make

a fuss. But they can have their old land; they've put enough sweat

into it." He took the flask and filled the two glasses carefully to

the brim. "I've found out what I want from the Ericsons. Drink

_skoal_, Clara." He lifted his glass, and Clara took hers with

downcast eyes. "Look at me, Clara Vavrika. _Skoal!_"

She raised her burning eyes and answered fiercely: "_Skoal!_"

* * * * *

The barn supper began at six o'clock and lasted for two hilarious

hours. Yense Nelson had made a wager that he could eat two whole

fried chickens, and he did. Eli Swanson stowed away two whole

custard pies, and Nick Hermanson ate a chocolate layer cake to the

last crumb. There was even a cooky contest among the children, and

one thin, slablike Bohemian boy consumed sixteen and won the prize,

a ginger-bread pig which Johanna Vavrika had carefully decorated

with red candies and burnt sugar. Fritz Sweiheart, the German

carpenter, won in the pickle contest, but he disappeared soon after

supper and was not seen for the rest of the evening. Joe Vavrika

said that Fritz could have managed the pickles all right, but he had

sampled the demijohn in his buggy too often before sitting down to

the table.

While the supper was being cleared away the two fiddlers began to

tune up for the dance. Clara was to accompany them on her old

upright piano, which had been brought down from her father's. By

this time Nils had renewed old acquaintances. Since his interview

with Clara in the cellar, he had been busy telling all the old women

how young they looked, and all the young ones how pretty they were,

and assuring the men that they had here the best farm-land in the

world. He had made himself so agreeable that old Mrs. Ericson's

friends began to come up to her and tell how lucky she was to get

her smart son back again, and please to get him to play his flute.

Joe Vavrika, who could still play very well when he forgot that he

had rheumatism, caught up a fiddle from Johnny Oleson and played a

crazy Bohemian dance tune that set the wheels going. When he dropped

the bow every one was ready to dance.

Olaf, in a frock-coat and a solemn made-up necktie, led the grand

march with his mother. Clara had kept well out of _that_ by sticking

to the piano. She played the march with a pompous solemnity which

greatly amused the prodigal son, who went over and stood behind her.

"Oh, aren't you rubbing it into them, Clara Vavrika? And aren't you

lucky to have me here, or all your wit would be thrown away."

"I'm used to being witty for myself. It saves my life."

The fiddles struck up a polka, and Nils convulsed Joe Vavrika by

leading out Evelina Oleson, the homely school-teacher. His next

partner was a very fat Swedish girl, who, although she was an

heiress, had not been asked for the first dance, but had stood

against the wall in her tight, high-heeled shoes, nervously

fingering a lace handkerchief. She was soon out of breath, so Nils

led her, pleased and panting, to her seat, and went over to the

piano, from which Clara had been watching his gallantry. "Ask Olena

Yenson," she whispered. "She waltzes beautifully."

Olena, too, was rather inconveniently plump, handsome in a smooth,

heavy way, with a fine color and good-natured, sleepy eyes. She was

redolent of violet sachet powder, and had warm, soft, white hands,

but she danced divinely, moving as smoothly as the tide coming in.

"There, that's something like," Nils said as he released her.

"You'll give me the next waltz, won't you? Now I must go and dance

with my little cousin."

Hilda was greatly excited when Nils went up to her stall and held

out his arm. Her little eyes sparkled, but she declared that she

could not leave her lemonade. Old Mrs. Ericson, who happened along

at this moment, said she would attend to that, and Hilda came out,

as pink as her pink dress. The dance was a schottische, and in a

moment her yellow braids were fairly standing on end. "Bravo!" Nils

cried encouragingly. "Where did you learn to dance so nicely?"

"My Cousin Clara taught me," the little girl panted.

Nils found Eric sitting with a group of boys who were too awkward or

too shy to dance, and told him that he must dance the next waltz

with Hilda.

The boy screwed up his shoulders. "Aw, Nils, I can't dance. My feet

are too big; I look silly."

"Don't be thinking about yourself. It doesn't matter how boys look."

Nils had never spoken to him so sharply before, and Eric made haste

to scramble out of his corner and brush the straw from his coat.

Clara nodded approvingly. "Good for you, Nils. I've been trying to

get hold of him. They dance very nicely together; I sometimes play

for them."

"I'm obliged to you for teaching him. There's no reason why he

should grow up to be a lout."

"He'll never be that. He's more like you than any of them. Only he

hasn't your courage." From her slanting eyes Clara shot forth one of

those keen glances, admiring and at the same time challenging, which

she seldom bestowed on any one, and which seemed to say, "Yes, I

admire you, but I am your equal."

Clara was proving a much better host than Olaf, who, once the supper

was over, seemed to feel no interest in anything but the lanterns.

He had brought a locomotive headlight from town to light the revels,

and he kept skulking about it as if he feared the mere light from it

might set his new barn on fire. His wife, on the contrary, was

cordial to every one, was animated and even gay. The deep salmon

color in her cheeks burned vividly, and her eyes were full of life.

She gave the piano over to the fat Swedish heiress, pulled her

father away from the corner where he sat gossiping with his cronies,

and made him dance a Bohemian dance with her. In his youth Joe had

been a famous dancer, and his daughter got him so limbered up that

every one sat round and applauded them. The old ladies were

particularly delighted, and made them go through the dance again.

From their corner where they watched and commented, the old women

kept time with their feet and hands, and whenever the fiddles struck

up a new air old Mrs. Svendsen's white cap would begin to bob.

Clara was waltzing with little Eric when Nils came up to them,

brushed his brother aside, and swung her out among the dancers.

"Remember how we used to waltz on rollers at the old skating-rink in

town? I suppose people don't do that any more. We used to keep it up

for hours. You know, we never did moon around as other boys and

girls did. It was dead serious with us from the beginning. When we

were most in love with each other, we used to fight. You were always

pinching people; your fingers were like little nippers. A regular

snapping-turtle, you were. Lord, how you'd like Stockholm! Sit out

in the streets in front of cafés and talk all night in summer. Just

like a reception--officers and ladies and funny English people.

Jolliest people in the world, the Swedes, once you get them going.

Always drinking things--champagne and stout mixed, half-and-half;

serve it out of big pitchers, and serve plenty. Slow pulse, you

know; they can stand a lot. Once they light up, they're glow-worms,

I can tell you."

"All the same, you don't really like gay people."

"_I_ don't?"

"No; I could see that when you were looking at the old women there

this afternoon. They're the kind you really admire, after all; women

like your mother. And that's the kind you'll marry."

"Is it, Miss Wisdom? You'll see who I'll marry, and she won't have a

domestic virtue to bless herself with. She'll be a snapping-turtle,

and she'll be a match for me. All the same, they're a fine bunch of

old dames over there. You admire them yourself."

"No, I don't; I detest them."

"You won't, when you look back on them from Stockholm or Budapest.

Freedom settles all that. Oh, but you're the real Bohemian Girl,

Clara Vavrika!" Nils laughed down at her sullen frown and began

mockingly to sing:

"_Oh, how could a poor gypsy maiden like me

Expect the proud bride of a baron to be?_"

Clara clutched his shoulder. "Hush, Nils; every one is looking at

you."

"I don't care. They can't gossip. It's all in the family, as the

Ericsons say when they divide up little Hilda's patrimony amongst

them. Besides, we'll give them something to talk about when we hit

the trail. Lord, it will be a godsend to them! They haven't had

anything so interesting to chatter about since the grasshopper year.

It'll give them a new lease of life. And Olaf won't lose the

Bohemian vote, either. They'll have the laugh on him so that they'll

vote two apiece. They'll send him to Congress. They'll never forget

his barn party, or us. They'll always remember us as we're dancing

together now. We're making a legend. Where's my waltz, boys?" he

called as they whirled past the fiddlers.

The musicians grinned, looked at each other, hesitated, and began a

new air; and Nils sang with them, as the couples fell from a quick

waltz to a long, slow glide:

"_When other lips and other hearts

Their tale of love shall tell,

In language whose excess imparts

The power they feel so well,_"

The old women applauded vigorously. "What a gay one he is, that

Nils!" And old Mrs. Svendsen's cap lurched dreamily from side to

side to the flowing measure of the dance.

"_Of days that have as ha-a-p-py been,

And you'll remember me._"

VII

The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. The reaped fields lay

yellow in it. The straw stacks and poplar windbreaks threw sharp

black shadows. The roads were white rivers of dust. The sky was a

deep, crystalline blue, and the stars were few and faint. Everything

seemed to have succumbed, to have sunk to sleep, under the great,

golden, tender, midsummer moon. The splendor of it seemed to

transcend human life and human fate. The senses were too feeble to

take it in, and every time one looked up at the sky one felt unequal

to it, as if one were sitting deaf under the waves of a great river

of melody. Near the road, Nils Ericson was lying against a straw

stack in Olaf's wheat-field. His own life seemed strange and

unfamiliar to him, as if it were something he had read about, or

dreamed, and forgotten. He lay very still, watching the white road

that ran in front of him, lost itself among the fields, and then, at

a distance, reappeared over a little hill. At last, against this

white band he saw something moving rapidly, and he got up and walked

to the edge of the field. "She is passing the row of poplars now,"

he thought. He heard the padded beat of hoofs along the dusty road,

and as she came into sight he stepped out and waved his arms. Then,

for fear of frightening the horse, he drew back and waited. Clara

had seen him, and she came up at a walk. Nils took the horse by the

bit and stroked his neck.

"What are you doing out so late, Clara Vavrika? I went to the house,

but Johanna told me you had gone to your father's."

"Who can stay in the house on a night like this? Aren't you out

yourself?"

"Ah, but that's another matter."

Nils turned the horse into the field.

"What are you doing? Where are you taking Norman?"

"Not far, but I want to talk to you to-night; I have something to

say to you. I can't talk to you at the house, with Olaf sitting

there on the porch, weighing a thousand tons."

Clara laughed. "He won't be sitting there now. He's in bed by this

time, and asleep--weighing a thousand tons."

Nils plodded on across the stubble. "Are you really going to spend

the rest of your life like this, night after night, summer after

summer? Haven't you anything better to do on a night like this than

to wear yourself and Norman out tearing across the country to your

father's and back? Besides, your father won't live forever, you

know. His little place will be shut up or sold, and then you'll have

nobody but the Ericsons. You'll have to fasten down the hatches for

the winter then."

Clara moved her head restlessly. "Don't talk about that. I try never

to think of it. If I lost father I'd lose everything, even my hold

over the Ericsons."

"Bah! You'd lose a good deal more than that. You'd lose your race,

everything that makes you yourself. You've lost a good deal of it

now."

"Of what?"

"Of your love of life, your capacity for delight."

Clara put her hands up to her face. "I haven't, Nils Ericson, I

haven't! Say anything to me but that. I won't have it!" she declared

vehemently.

Nils led the horse up to a straw stack, and turned to Clara, looking

at her intently, as he had looked at her that Sunday afternoon at

Vavrika's. "But why do you fight for that so? What good is the power

to enjoy, if you never enjoy? Your hands are cold again; what are

you afraid of all the time? Ah, you're afraid of losing it; that's

what's the matter with you! And you will, Clara Vavrika, you will!

When I used to know you--listen; you've caught a wild bird in your

hand, haven't you, and felt its heart beat so hard that you were

afraid it would shatter its little body to pieces? Well, you used to

be just like that, a slender, eager thing with a wild delight inside

you. That is how I remembered you. And I come back and find you--a

bitter woman. This is a perfect ferret fight here; you live by

biting and being bitten. Can't you remember what life used to be?

Can't you remember that old delight? I've never forgotten it, or

known its like, on land or sea."

He drew the horse under the shadow of the straw stack. Clara felt

him take her foot out of the stirrup, and she slid softly down into

his arms. He kissed her slowly. He was a deliberate man, but his

nerves were steel when he wanted anything. Something flashed out

from him like a knife out of a sheath. Clara felt everything

slipping away from her; she was flooded by the summer night. He

thrust his hand into his pocket, and then held it out at arm's

length. "Look," he said. The shadow of the straw stack fell sharp

across his wrist, and in the palm of his hand she saw a silver

dollar shining. "That's my pile," he muttered; "will you go with

me?"

Clara nodded, and dropped her forehead on his shoulder.

Nils took a deep breath. "Will you go with me to-night?"

"Where?" she whispered softly.

"To town, to catch the midnight flyer."

Clara lifted her head and pulled herself together. "Are you crazy,

Nils? We couldn't go away like that."

"That's the only way we ever will go. You can't sit on the bank and

think about it. You have to plunge. That's the way I've always done,

and it's the right way for people like you and me. There's nothing

so dangerous as sitting still. You've only got one life, one youth,

and you can let it slip through your fingers if you want to; nothing

easier. Most people do that. You'd be better off tramping the roads

with me than you are here." Nils held back her head and looked into

her eyes. "But I'm not that kind of a tramp, Clara. You won't have

to take in sewing. I'm with a Norwegian shipping line; came over on

business with the New York offices, but now I'm going straight back

to Bergen. I expect I've got as much money as the Ericsons. Father

sent me a little to get started. They never knew about that. There,

I hadn't meant to tell you; I wanted you to come on your own nerve."

Clara looked off across the fields. "It isn't that, Nils, but

something seems to hold me. I'm afraid to pull against it. It comes

out of the ground, I think."

"I know all about that. One has to tear loose. You're not needed

here. Your father will understand; he's made like us. As for Olaf,

Johanna will take better care of him than ever you could. It's now

or never, Clara Vavrika. My bag's at the station; I smuggled it

there yesterday."

Clara clung to him and hid her face against his shoulder. "Not

to-night," she whispered. "Sit here and talk to me to-night. I don't

want to go anywhere to-night. I may never love you like this again."

Nils laughed through his teeth. "You can't come that on me. That's

not my way, Clara Vavrika. Eric's mare is over there behind the

stacks, and I'm off on the midnight. It's good-by, or off across the

world with me. My carriage won't wait. I've written a letter to

Olaf; I'll mail it in town. When he reads it he won't bother us--not

if I know him. He'd rather have the land. Besides, I could demand an

investigation of his administration of Cousin Henrik's estate, and

that would be bad for a public man. You've no clothes, I know; but

you can sit up to-night, and we can get everything on the way.

Where's your old dash, Clara Vavrika? What's become of your Bohemian

blood? I used to think you had courage enough for anything. Where's

your nerve--what are you waiting for?"

Clara drew back her head, and he saw the slumberous fire in her

eyes. "For you to say one thing, Nils Ericson."

"I never say that thing to any woman, Clara Vavrika." He leaned

back, lifted her gently from the ground, and whispered through his

teeth: "But I'll never, never let you go, not to any man on earth

but me! Do you understand me? Now, wait here."

Clara sank down on a sheaf of wheat and covered her face with her

hands. She did not know what she was going to do--whether she would

go or stay. The great, silent country seemed to lay a spell upon

her. The ground seemed to hold her as if by roots. Her knees were

soft under her. She felt as if she could not bear separation from

her old sorrows, from her old discontent. They were dear to her,

they had kept her alive, they were a part of her. There would be

nothing left of her if she were wrenched away from them. Never could

she pass beyond that sky-line against which her restlessness had

beat so many times. She felt as if her soul had built itself a nest

there on that horizon at which she looked every morning and every

evening, and it was dear to her, inexpressibly dear. She pressed her

fingers against her eyeballs to shut it out. Beside her she heard

the tramping of horses in the soft earth. Nils said nothing to her.

He put his hands under her arms and lifted her lightly to her

saddle. Then he swung himself into his own.

"We shall have to ride fast to catch the midnight train. A last

gallop, Clara Vavrika. Forward!"

There was a start, a thud of hoofs along the moonlit road, two dark

shadows going over the hill; and then the great, still land

stretched untroubled under the azure night. Two shadows had passed.

VIII

A year after the flight of Olaf Ericson's wife, the night train was

steaming across the plains of Iowa. The conductor was hurrying

through one of the day-coaches, his lantern on his arm, when a lank,

fair-haired boy sat up in one of the plush seats and tweaked him by

the coat.

"What is the next stop, please, sir?"

"Red Oak, Iowa. But you go through to Chicago, don't you?" He looked

down, and noticed that the boy's eyes were red and his face was

drawn, as if he were in trouble.

"Yes. But I was wondering whether I could get off at the next place

and get a train back to Omaha."

"Well, I suppose you could. Live in Omaha?"

"No. In the western part of the State. How soon do we get to Red

Oak?"

"Forty minutes. You'd better make up your mind, so I can tell the

baggageman to put your trunk off."

"Oh, never mind about that! I mean, I haven't got any," the boy

added, blushing.

"Run away," the conductor thought, as he slammed the coach door

behind him.

Eric Ericson crumpled down in his seat and put his brown hand to his

forehead. He had been crying, and he had had no supper, and his head

was aching violently. "Oh, what shall I do?" he thought, as he

looked dully down at his big shoes. "Nils will be ashamed of me; I

haven't got any spunk."

Ever since Nils had run away with his brother's wife, life at home

had been hard for little Eric. His mother and Olaf both suspected

him of complicity. Mrs. Ericson was harsh and fault-finding,

constantly wounding the boy's pride; and Olaf was always getting her

against him.

Joe Vavrika heard often from his daughter. Clara had always been

fond of her father, and happiness made her kinder. She wrote him

long accounts of the voyage to Bergen, and of the trip she and Nils

took through Bohemia to the little town where her father had grown

up and where she herself was born. She visited all her kinsmen

there, and sent her father news of his brother, who was a priest; of

his sister, who had married a horse-breeder--of their big farm and

their many children. These letters Joe always managed to read to

little Eric. They contained messages for Eric and Hilda. Clara sent

presents, too, which Eric never dared to take home and which poor

little Hilda never even saw, though she loved to hear Eric tell

about them when they were out getting the eggs together. But Olaf

once saw Eric coming out of Vavrika's house,--the old man had never

asked the boy to come into his saloon,--and Olaf went straight to

his mother and told her. That night Mrs. Ericson came to Eric's room

after he was in bed and made a terrible scene. She could be very

terrifying when she was really angry. She forbade him ever to speak

to Vavrika again, and after that night she would not allow him to go

to town alone. So it was a long while before Eric got any more news

of his brother. But old Joe suspected what was going on, and he

carried Clara's letters about in his pocket. One Sunday he drove out

to see a German friend of his, and chanced to catch sight of Eric,

sitting by the cattle-pond in the big pasture. They went together

into Fritz Oberlies' barn, and read the letters and talked things

over. Eric admitted that things were getting hard for him at home.

That very night old Joe sat down and laboriously penned a statement

of the case to his daughter.

Things got no better for Eric. His mother and Olaf felt that,

however closely he was watched, he still, as they said, "heard."

Mrs. Ericson could not admit neutrality. She had sent Johanna

Vavrika packing back to her brother's, though Olaf would much rather

have kept her than Anders' eldest daughter, whom Mrs. Ericson

installed in her place. He was not so high-handed as his mother, and

he once sulkily told her that she might better have taught her

granddaughter to cook before she sent Johanna away. Olaf could have

borne a good deal for the sake of prunes spiced in honey, the secret

of which Johanna had taken away with her.

At last two letters came to Joe Vavrika: one from Nils, inclosing a

postal order for money to pay Eric's passage to Bergen, and one from

Clara, saying that Nils had a place for Eric in the offices of his

company, that he was to live with them, and that they were only

waiting for him to come. He was to leave New York on one of the

boats of Nils' own line; the captain was one of their friends, and

Eric was to make himself known at once.

Nils' directions were so explicit that a baby could have followed

them, Eric felt. And here he was, nearing Red Oak, Iowa, and rocking

backward and forward in despair. Never had he loved his brother so

much, and never had the big world called to him so hard. But there

was a lump in his throat which would not go down. Ever since

nightfall he had been tormented by the thought of his mother, alone

in that big house that had sent forth so many men. Her unkindness

now seemed so little, and her loneliness so great. He remembered

everything she had ever done for him: how frightened she had been

when he tore his hand in the corn-sheller, and how she wouldn't let

Olaf scold him. When Nils went away he didn't leave his mother all

alone, or he would never have gone. Eric felt sure of that.

The train whistled. The conductor came in, smiling not unkindly.

"Well, young man, what are you going to do? We stop at Red Oak in

three minutes."

"Yes, thank you. I'll let you know." The conductor went out, and the

boy doubled up with misery. He couldn't let his one chance go like

this. He felt for his breast pocket and crackled Nils' kind letter

to give him courage. He didn't want Nils to be ashamed of him. The

train stopped. Suddenly he remembered his brother's kind, twinkling

eyes, that always looked at you as if from far away. The lump in his

throat softened. "Ah, but Nils, Nils would _understand_!" he

thought. "That's just it about Nils; he always understands."

A lank, pale boy with a canvas telescope stumbled off the train to

the Red Oak siding, just as the conductor called, "All aboard!"

* * * * *

The next night Mrs. Ericson was sitting alone in her wooden

rocking-chair on the front porch. Little Hilda had been sent to bed

and had cried herself to sleep. The old woman's knitting was in her

lap, but her hands lay motionless on top of it. For more than an

hour she had not moved a muscle. She simply sat, as only the

Ericsons and the mountains can sit. The house was dark, and there

was no sound but the croaking of the frogs down in the pond of the

little pasture.

Eric did not come home by the road, but across the fields, where no

one could see him. He set his telescope down softly in the kitchen

shed, and slipped noiselessly along the path to the front porch. He

sat down on the step without saying anything. Mrs. Ericson made no

sign, and the frogs croaked on. At last the boy spoke timidly.

"I've come back, Mother."

"Very well," said Mrs. Ericson.

Eric leaned over and picked up a little stick out of the grass.

"How about the milking?" he faltered.

"That's been done, hours ago."

"Who did you get?"

"Get? I did it myself. I can milk as good as any of you."

Eric slid along the step nearer to her. "Oh, Mother, why did you?"

he asked sorrowfully. "Why didn't you get one of Otto's boys?"

"I didn't want anybody to know I was in need of a boy," said Mrs.

Ericson bitterly. She looked straight in front of her and her mouth

tightened. "I always meant to give you the home farm," she added.

The boy started and slid closer. "Oh, Mother," he faltered, "I don't

care about the farm. I came back because I thought you might be

needing me, maybe." He hung his head and got no further.

"Very well," said Mrs. Ericson. Her hand went out from her suddenly

and rested on his head. Her fingers twined themselves in his soft,

pale hair. His tears splashed down on the boards; happiness filled

his heart.

_McClure's_, August 1912

_Consequences_

Henry Eastman, a lawyer, aged forty, was standing beside the

Flatiron building in a driving November rainstorm, signaling

frantically for a taxi. It was six-thirty, and everything on wheels

was engaged. The streets were in confusion about him, the sky was in

turmoil above him, and the Flatiron building, which seemed about to

blow down, threw water like a mill-shoot. Suddenly, out of the

brutal struggle of men and cars and machines and people tilting at

each other with umbrellas, a quiet, well-mannered limousine paused

before him, at the curb, and an agreeable, ruddy countenance

confronted him through the open window of the car.

"Don't you want me to pick you up, Mr. Eastman? I'm running directly

home now."

Eastman recognized Kier Cavenaugh, a young man of pleasure, who

lived in the house on Central Park South, where he himself had an

apartment.

"Don't I?" he exclaimed, bolting into the car. "I'll risk getting

your cushions wet without compunction. I came up in a taxi, but I

didn't hold it. Bad economy. I thought I saw your car down on

Fourteenth Street about half an hour ago."

The owner of the car smiled. He had a pleasant, round face and round

eyes, and a fringe of smooth, yellow hair showed under the rim of

his soft felt hat. "With a lot of little broilers fluttering into

it? You did. I know some girls who work in the cheap shops down

there. I happened to be down-town and I stopped and took a load of

them home. I do sometimes. Saves their poor little clothes, you

know. Their shoes are never any good."

Eastman looked at his rescuer. "Aren't they notoriously afraid of

cars and smooth young men?" he inquired.

Cavenaugh shook his head. "They know which cars are safe and which

are chancy. They put each other wise. You have to take a bunch at a

time, of course. The Italian girls can never come along; their men

shoot. The girls understand, all right; but their fathers don't. One

gets to see queer places, sometimes, taking them home."

Eastman laughed drily. "Every time I touch the circle of your

acquaintance, Cavenaugh, it's a little wider. You must know New York

pretty well by this time."

"Yes, but I'm on my good behavior below Twenty-third Street," the

young man replied with simplicity. "My little friends down there

would give me a good character. They're wise little girls. They have

grand ways with each other, a romantic code of loyalty. You can find

a good many of the lost virtues among them."

The car was standing still in a traffic block at Fortieth Street,

when Cavenaugh suddenly drew his face away from the window and

touched Eastman's arm. "Look, please. You see that hansom with the

bony gray horse--driver has a broken hat and red flannel around his

throat. Can you see who is inside?"

Eastman peered out. The hansom was just cutting across the line, and

the driver was making a great fuss about it, bobbing his head and

waving his whip. He jerked his dripping old horse into Fortieth

Street and clattered off past the Public Library grounds toward

Sixth Avenue. "No, I couldn't see the passenger. Someone you know?"

"Could you see whether there was a passenger?" Cavenaugh asked.

"Why, yes. A man, I think. I saw his elbow on the apron. No driver

ever behaves like that unless he has a passenger."

"Yes, I may have been mistaken," Cavenaugh murmured absent-mindedly.

Ten minutes or so later, after Cavenaugh's car had turned off Fifth

Avenue into Fifty-eighth Street, Eastman exclaimed, "There's your

same cabby, and his cart's empty. He's headed for a drink now, I

suppose." The driver in the broken hat and the red flannel neck

cloth was still brandishing the whip over his old gray. He was

coming from the west now, and turned down Sixth Avenue, under the

elevated.

Cavenaugh's car stopped at the bachelor apartment house between

Sixth and Seventh Avenues where he and Eastman lived, and they went

up in the elevator together. They were still talking when the lift

stopped at Cavenaugh's floor, and Eastman stepped out with him and

walked down the hall, finishing his sentence while Cavenaugh found

his latch-key. When he opened the door, a wave of fresh cigarette

smoke greeted them. Cavenaugh stopped short and stared into his

hallway. "Now how in the devil--!" he exclaimed angrily.

"Someone waiting for you? Oh, no, thanks. I wasn't coming in. I have

to work to-night. Thank you, but I couldn't." Eastman nodded and

went up the two flights to his own rooms.

Though Eastman did not customarily keep a servant he had this winter

a man who had been lent to him by a friend who was abroad. Rollins

met him at the door and took his coat and hat.

"Put out my dinner clothes, Rollins, and then get out of here until

ten o'clock. I've promised to go to a supper to-night. I shan't be

dining. I've had a late tea and I'm going to work until ten. You may

put out some kumiss and biscuit for me."

Rollins took himself off, and Eastman settled down at the big table

in his sitting-room. He had to read a lot of letters submitted as

evidence in a breach of contract case, and before he got very far he

found that long paragraphs in some of the letters were written in

German. He had a German dictionary at his office, but none here.

Rollins had gone, and anyhow, the bookstores would be closed. He

remembered having seen a row of dictionaries on the lower shelf of

one of Cavenaugh's bookcases. Cavenaugh had a lot of books, though

he never read anything but new stuff. Eastman prudently turned down

his student's lamp very low--the thing had an evil habit of

smoking--and went down two flights to Cavenaugh's door.

The young man himself answered Eastman's ring. He was freshly

dressed for the evening, except for a brown smoking jacket, and his

yellow hair had been brushed until it shone. He hesitated as he

confronted his caller, still holding the door knob, and his round

eyes and smooth forehead made their best imitation of a frown. When

Eastman began to apologize, Cavenaugh's manner suddenly changed. He

caught his arm and jerked him into the narrow hall. "Come in, come

in. Right along!" he said excitedly. "Right along," he repeated as

he pushed Eastman before him into his sitting-room. "Well I'll--" he

stopped short at the door and looked about his own room with an air

of complete mystification. The back window was wide open and a

strong wind was blowing in. Cavenaugh walked over to the window and

stuck out his head, looking up and down the fire escape. When he

pulled his head in, he drew down the sash.

"I had a visitor I wanted you to see," he explained with a nervous

smile. "At least I thought I had. He must have gone out that way,"

nodding toward the window.

"Call him back. I only came to borrow a German dictionary, if you

have one. Can't stay. Call him back."

Cavenaugh shook his head despondently. "No use. He's beat it.

Nowhere in sight."

"He must be active. Has he left something?" Eastman pointed to a

very dirty white glove that lay on the floor under the window.

"Yes, that's his." Cavenaugh reached for his tongs, picked up the

glove, and tossed it into the grate, where it quickly shriveled on

the coals. Eastman felt that he had happened in upon something

disagreeable, possibly something shady, and he wanted to get away at

once. Cavenaugh stood staring at the fire and seemed stupid and

dazed; so he repeated his request rather sternly, "I think I've seen

a German dictionary down there among your books. May I have it?"

Cavenaugh blinked at him. "A German dictionary? Oh, possibly! Those

were my father's. I scarcely know what there is." He put down the

tongs and began to wipe his hands nervously with his handkerchief.

Eastman went over to the bookcase behind the Chesterfield, opened

the door, swooped upon the book he wanted and stuck it under his

arm. He felt perfectly certain now that something shady had been

going on in Cavenaugh's rooms, and he saw no reason why he should

come in for any hang-over. "Thanks. I'll send it back to-morrow," he

said curtly as he made for the door.

Cavenaugh followed him. "Wait a moment. I wanted you to see him. You

did see his glove," glancing at the grate.

Eastman laughed disagreeably. "I saw a glove. That's not evidence. Do

your friends often use that means of exit? Somewhat inconvenient."

Cavenaugh gave him a startled glance. "Wouldn't you think so? For an

old man, a very rickety old party? The ladders are steep, you know,

and rusty." He approached the window again and put it up softly. In

a moment he drew his head back with a jerk. He caught Eastman's arm

and shoved him toward the window. "Hurry, please. Look! Down there."

He pointed to the little patch of paved court four flights down.

The square of pavement was so small and the walls about it were so

high, that it was a good deal like looking down a well. Four tall

buildings backed upon the same court and made a kind of shaft, with

flagstones at the bottom, and at the top a square of dark blue with

some stars in it. At the bottom of the shaft Eastman saw a black

figure, a man in a caped coat and a tall hat stealing cautiously

around, not across the square of pavement, keeping close to the dark

wall and avoiding the streak of light that fell on the flagstones

from a window in the opposite house. Seen from that height he was of

course fore-shortened and probably looked more shambling and

decrepit than he was. He picked his way along with exaggerated care

and looked like a silly old cat crossing a wet street. When he

reached the gate that led into an alley way between two buildings,

he felt about for the latch, opened the door a mere crack, and then

shot out under the feeble lamp that burned in the brick arch over

the gateway. The door closed after him.

"He'll get run in," Eastman remarked curtly, turning away from the

window. "That door shouldn't be left unlocked. Any crook could come

in. I'll speak to the janitor about it, if you don't mind," he added

sarcastically.

"Wish you would." Cavenaugh stood brushing down the front of his

jacket, first with his right hand and then with his left. "You saw

him, didn't you?"

"Enough of him. Seems eccentric. I have to see a lot of buggy

people. They don't take me in any more. But I'm keeping you and I'm

in a hurry myself. Good night."

Cavenaugh put out his hand detainingly and started to say something;

but Eastman rudely turned his back and went down the hall and out of

the door. He had never felt anything shady about Cavenaugh before,

and he was sorry he had gone down for the dictionary. In five

minutes he was deep in his papers; but in the half hour when he was

loafing before he dressed to go out, the young man's curious

behavior came into his mind again.

Eastman had merely a neighborly acquaintance with Cavenaugh. He had

been to a supper at the young man's rooms once, but he didn't

particularly like Cavenaugh's friends; so the next time he was

asked, he had another engagement. He liked Cavenaugh himself, if for

nothing else than because he was so cheerful and trim and ruddy. A

good complexion is always at a premium in New York, especially when

it shines reassuringly on a man who does everything in the world to

lose it. It encourages fellow mortals as to the inherent vigor of

the human organism and the amount of bad treatment it will stand

for. "Footprints that perhaps another," etc.

Cavenaugh, he knew, had plenty of money. He was the son of a

Pennsylvania preacher, who died soon after he discovered that his

ancestral acres were full of petroleum, and Kier had come to New

York to burn some of the oil. He was thirty-two and was still at it;

spent his life, literally, among the breakers. His motor hit the

Park every morning as if it were the first time ever. He took people

out to supper every night. He went from restaurant to restaurant,

sometimes to half-a-dozen in an evening. The head waiters were his

hosts and their cordiality made him happy. They made a life-line for

him up Broadway and down Fifth Avenue. Cavenaugh was still fresh and

smooth, round and plump, with a lustre to his hair and white teeth

and a clear look in his round eyes. He seemed absolutely unwearied

and unimpaired; never bored and never carried away.

Eastman always smiled when he met Cavenaugh in the entrance hall,

serenely going forth to or returning from gladiatorial combats with

joy, or when he saw him rolling smoothly up to the door in his car

in the morning after a restful night in one of the remarkable new

roadhouses he was always finding. Eastman had seen a good many young

men disappear on Cavenaugh's route, and he admired this young man's

endurance.

To-night, for the first time, he had got a whiff of something

unwholesome about the fellow--bad nerves, bad company, something on

hand that he was ashamed of, a visitor old and vicious, who must

have had a key to Cavenaugh's apartment, for he was evidently there

when Cavenaugh returned at seven o'clock. Probably it was the same

man Cavenaugh had seen in the hansom. He must have been able to let

himself in, for Cavenaugh kept no man but his chauffeur; or perhaps

the janitor had been instructed to let him in. In either case, and

whoever he was, it was clear enough that Cavenaugh was ashamed of

him and was mixing up in questionable business of some kind.

Eastman sent Cavenaugh's book back by Rollins, and for the next few

weeks he had no word with him beyond a casual greeting when they

happened to meet in the hall or the elevator. One Sunday morning

Cavenaugh telephoned up to him to ask if he could motor out to a

roadhouse in Connecticut that afternoon and have supper; but when

Eastman found there were to be other guests he declined.

* * * * *

On New Year's eve Eastman dined at the University Club at six

o'clock and hurried home before the usual manifestations of insanity

had begun in the streets. When Rollins brought his smoking coat, he

asked him whether he wouldn't like to get off early.

"Yes, sir. But won't you be dressing, Mr. Eastman?" he inquired.

"Not to-night." Eastman handed him a bill. "Bring some change in the

morning. There'll be fees."

Rollins lost no time in putting everything to rights for the night,

and Eastman couldn't help wishing that he were in such a hurry to be

off somewhere himself. When he heard the hall door close softly, he

wondered if there were any place, after all, that he wanted to go.

From his window he looked down at the long lines of motors and taxis

waiting for a signal to cross Broadway. He thought of some of their

probable destinations and decided that none of those places pulled

him very hard. The night was warm and wet, the air was drizzly.

Vapor hung in clouds about the _Times_ Building, half hid the top of

it, and made a luminous haze along Broadway. While he was looking

down at the army of wet, black carriage-tops and their reflected

headlights and tail-lights, Eastman heard a ring at his door. He

deliberated. If it were a caller, the hall porter would have

telephoned up. It must be the janitor. When he opened the door,

there stood a rosy young man in a tuxedo, without a coat or hat.

"Pardon. Should I have telephoned? I half thought you wouldn't be

in."

Eastman laughed. "Come in, Cavenaugh. You weren't sure whether you

wanted company or not, eh, and you were trying to let chance decide

it? That was exactly my state of mind. Let's accept the verdict."

When they emerged from the narrow hall into his sitting-room, he

pointed out a seat by the fire to his guest. He brought a tray of

decanters and soda bottles and placed it on his writing table.

Cavenaugh hesitated, standing by the fire. "Sure you weren't

starting for somewhere?"

"Do I look it? No, I was just making up my mind to stick it out

alone when you rang. Have one?" he picked up a tall tumbler.

"Yes, thank you. I always do."

Eastman chuckled. "Lucky boy! So will I. I had a very early dinner.

New York is the most arid place on holidays," he continued as he

rattled the ice in the glasses. "When one gets too old to hit the

rapids down there, and tired of gobbling food to heathenish dance

music, there is absolutely no place where you can get a chop and

some milk toast in peace, unless you have strong ties of blood

brotherhood on upper Fifth Avenue. But you, why aren't you starting

for somewhere?"

The young man sipped his soda and shook his head as he replied:

"Oh, I couldn't get a chop, either. I know only flashy people, of

course." He looked up at his host with such a grave and candid

expression that Eastman decided there couldn't be anything very

crooked about the fellow. His smooth cheeks were positively

cherubic.

"Well, what's the matter with them? Aren't they flashing to-night?"

"Only the very new ones seem to flash on New Year's eve. The older

ones fade away. Maybe they are hunting a chop, too."

"Well"--Eastman sat down--"holidays do dash one. I was just about to

write a letter to a pair of maiden aunts in my old home town,

up-state; old coasting hill, snow-covered pines, lights in the

church windows. That's what you've saved me from."

Cavenaugh shook himself. "Oh, I'm sure that wouldn't have been good

for you. Pardon me," he rose and took a photograph from the

bookcase, a handsome man in shooting clothes. "Dudley, isn't it? Did

you know him well?"

"Yes. An old friend. Terrible thing, wasn't it? I haven't got over

the jolt yet."

"His suicide? Yes, terrible! Did you know his wife?"

"Slightly. Well enough to admire her very much. She must be terribly

broken up. I wonder Dudley didn't think of that."

Cavenaugh replaced the photograph carefully, lit a cigarette, and

standing before the fire began to smoke. "Would you mind telling me

about him? I never met him, but of course I'd read a lot about him,

and I can't help feeling interested. It was a queer thing."

Eastman took out his cigar case and leaned back in his deep chair.

"In the days when I knew him best he hadn't any story, like the

happy nations. Everything was properly arranged for him before he

was born. He came into the world happy, healthy, clever, straight,

with the right sort of connections and the right kind of fortune,

neither too large nor too small. He helped to make the world an

agreeable place to live in until he was twenty-six. Then he married

as he should have married. His wife was a Californian, educated

abroad. Beautiful. You have seen her picture?"

Cavenaugh nodded. "Oh, many of them."

"She was interesting, too. Though she was distinctly a person of the

world, she had retained something, just enough of the large Western

manner. She had the habit of authority, of calling out a special

train if she needed it, of using all our ingenious mechanical

contrivances lightly and easily, without over-rating them. She and

Dudley knew how to live better than most people. Their house was the

most charming one I have ever known in New York. You felt freedom

there, and a zest of life, and safety--absolute sanctuary--from

everything sordid or petty. A whole society like that would justify

the creation of man and would make our planet shine with a soft,

peculiar radiance among the constellations. You think I'm putting it

on thick?"

The young man sighed gently. "Oh, no! One has always felt there must

be people like that. I've never known any."

"They had two children, beautiful ones. After they had been married

for eight years, Rosina met this Spaniard. He must have amounted to

something. She wasn't a flighty woman. She came home and told Dudley

how matters stood. He persuaded her to stay at home for six months

and try to pull up. They were both fair-minded people, and I'm as

sure as if I were the Almighty, that she did try. But at the end of

the time, Rosina went quietly off to Spain, and Dudley went to hunt

in the Canadian Rockies. I met his party out there. I didn't know

his wife had left him and talked about her a good deal. I noticed

that he never drank anything, and his light used to shine through

the log chinks of his room until all hours, even after a hard day's

hunting. When I got back to New York, rumors were creeping about.

Dudley did not come back. He bought a ranch in Wyoming, built a big

log house and kept splendid dogs and horses. One of his sisters went

out to keep house for him, and the children were there when they

were not in school. He had a great many visitors, and everyone who

came back talked about how well Dudley kept things going.

"He put in two years out there. Then, last month, he had to come

back on business. A trust fund had to be settled up, and he was

administrator. I saw him at the club; same light, quick step, same

gracious handshake. He was getting gray, and there was something

softer in his manner; but he had a fine red tan on his face and said

he found it delightful to be here in the season when everything is

going hard. The Madison Avenue house had been closed since Rosina

left it. He went there to get some things his sister wanted. That,

of course, was the mistake. He went alone, in the afternoon, and

didn't go out for dinner--found some sherry and tins of biscuit in

the sideboard. He shot himself sometime that night. There were

pistols in his smoking-room. They found burnt out candles beside him

in the morning. The gas and electricity were shut off. I suppose

there, in his own house, among his own things, it was too much for

him. He left no letters."

Cavenaugh blinked and brushed the lapel of his coat. "I suppose," he

said slowly, "that every suicide is logical and reasonable, if one

knew all the facts."

Eastman roused himself. "No, I don't think so. I've known too many

fellows who went off like that--more than I deserve, I think--and

some of them were absolutely inexplicable. I can understand Dudley;

but I can't see why healthy bachelors, with money enough, like

ourselves, need such a device. It reminds me of what Dr. Johnson

said, that the most discouraging thing about life is the number of

fads and hobbies and fake religions it takes to put people through a

few years of it."

"Dr. Johnson? The specialist? Oh, the old fellow!" said Cavenaugh

imperturbably. "Yes, that's interesting. Still, I fancy if one knew

the facts--Did you know about Wyatt?"

"I don't think so."

"You wouldn't, probably. He was just a fellow about town who spent

money. He wasn't one of the _forestieri_, though. Had connections

here and owned a fine old place over on Staten Island. He went in

for botany, and had been all over, hunting things; rusts, I believe.

He had a yacht and used to take a gay crowd down about the South

Seas, botanizing. He really did botanize, I believe. I never knew

such a spender--only not flashy. He helped a lot of fellows and he

was awfully good to girls, the kind who come down here to get a

little fun, who don't like to work and still aren't really tough,

the kind you see talking hard for their dinner. Nobody knows what

becomes of them, or what they get out of it, and there are hundreds

of new ones every year. He helped dozens of 'em; it was he who got

me curious about the little shop girls. Well, one afternoon when his

tea was brought, he took prussic acid instead. He didn't leave any

letters, either; people of any taste don't. They wouldn't leave any

material reminder if they could help it. His lawyers found that he

had just $314.72 above his debts when he died. He had planned to

spend all his money, and then take his tea; he had worked it out

carefully."

Eastman reached for his pipe and pushed his chair away from the

fire. "That looks like a considered case, but I don't think

philosophical suicides like that are common. I think they usually

come from stress of feeling and are really, as the newspapers call

them, desperate acts; done without a motive. You remember when Anna

Karenina was under the wheels, she kept saying, 'Why am I here?'"

Cavenaugh rubbed his upper lip with his pink finger and made an effort

to wrinkle his brows. "May I, please?" reaching for the whiskey.

"But have you," he asked, blinking as the soda flew at him, "have

you ever known, yourself, cases that were really inexplicable?"

"A few too many. I was in Washington just before Captain Jack Purden

was married and I saw a good deal of him. Popular army man, fine

record in the Philippines, married a charming girl with lots of

money; mutual devotion. It was the gayest wedding of the winter, and

they started for Japan. They stopped in San Francisco for a week and

missed their boat because, as the bride wrote back to Washington,

they were too happy to move. They took the next boat, were both good

sailors, had exceptional weather. After they had been out for two

weeks, Jack got up from his deck chair one afternoon, yawned, put

down his book, and stood before his wife. 'Stop reading for a moment

and look at me.' She laughed and asked him why. 'Because you happen

to be good to look at.' He nodded to her, went back to the stern and

was never seen again. Must have gone down to the lower deck and

slipped overboard, behind the machinery. It was the luncheon hour,

not many people about; steamer cutting through a soft green sea.

That's one of the most baffling cases I know. His friends raked up

his past, and it was as trim as a cottage garden. If he'd so much as

dropped an ink spot on his fatigue uniform, they'd have found it. He

wasn't emotional or moody; wasn't, indeed, very interesting; simply

a good soldier, fond of all the pompous little formalities that make

up a military man's life. What do you make of that, my boy?"

Cavenaugh stroked his chin. "It's very puzzling, I admit. Still, if

one knew everything----"

"But we do know everything. His friends wanted to find something to

help them out, to help the girl out, to help the case of the human

creature."

"Oh, I don't mean things that people could unearth," said Cavenaugh

uneasily. "But possibly there were things that couldn't be found

out."

Eastman shrugged his shoulders. "It's my experience that when there

are 'things' as you call them, they're very apt to be found. There

is no such thing as a secret. To make any move at all one has to

employ human agencies, employ at least one human agent. Even when

the pirates killed the men who buried their gold for them, the bones

told the story."

Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile.

"I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it

means that we can't, after all, go so far afield as we might," he

hesitated, "yes, as we might."

Eastman looked at him sourly. "Cavenaugh, when you've practised law

in New York for twelve years, you find that people can't go far in

any direction, except--" He thrust his forefinger sharply at the

floor. "Even in that direction, few people can do anything out of

the ordinary. Our range is limited. Skip a few baths, and we become

personally objectionable. The slightest carelessness can rot a man's

integrity or give him ptomaine poisoning. We keep up only by

incessant cleansing operations, of mind and body. What we call

character, is held together by all sorts of tacks and strings and

glue."

Cavenaugh looked startled. "Come now, it's not so bad as that, is

it? I've always thought that a serious man, like you, must know a

lot of Launcelots." When Eastman only laughed, the younger man

squirmed about in his chair. He spoke again hastily, as if he were

embarrassed. "Your military friend may have had personal

experiences, however, that his friends couldn't possibly get a line

on. He may accidentally have come to a place where he saw himself in

too unpleasant a light. I believe people can be chilled by a draft

from outside, somewhere."

"Outside?" Eastman echoed. "Ah, you mean the far outside! Ghosts,

delusions, eh?"

Cavenaugh winced. "That's putting it strong. Why not say tips from

the outside? Delusions belong to a diseased mind, don't they? There

are some of us who have no minds to speak of, who yet have had

experiences. I've had a little something in that line myself and I

don't look it, do I?"

Eastman looked at the bland countenance turned toward him. "Not

exactly. What's your delusion?"

"It's not a delusion. It's a haunt."

The lawyer chuckled. "Soul of a lost Casino girl?"

"No; an old gentleman. A most unattractive old gentleman, who

follows me about."

"Does he want money?"

Cavenaugh sat up straight. "No. I wish to God he wanted

anything--but the pleasure of my society! I'd let him clean me out

to be rid of him. He's a real article. You saw him yourself that

night when you came to my rooms to borrow a dictionary, and he went

down the fire-escape. You saw him down in the court."

"Well, I saw somebody down in the court, but I'm too cautious to

take it for granted that I saw what you saw. Why, anyhow, should I

see your haunt? If it was your friend I saw, he impressed me

disagreeably. How did you pick him up?"

Cavenaugh looked gloomy. "That was queer, too. Charley Burke and I

had motored out to Long Beach, about a year ago, sometime in

October, I think. We had supper and stayed until late. When we were

coming home, my car broke down. We had a lot of girls along who had

to get back for morning rehearsals and things; so I sent them all

into town in Charley's car, and he was to send a man back to tow me

home. I was driving myself, and didn't want to leave my machine. We

had not taken a direct road back; so I was stuck in a lonesome,

woody place, no houses about. I got chilly and made a fire, and was

putting in the time comfortably enough, when this old party steps

up. He was in shabby evening clothes and a top hat, and had on his

usual white gloves. How he got there, at three o'clock in the

morning, miles from any town or railway, I'll leave it to you to

figure out. _He_ surely had no car. When I saw him coming up to the

fire, I disliked him. He had a silly, apologetic walk. His teeth

were chattering, and I asked him to sit down. He got down like a

clothes-horse folding up. I offered him a cigarette, and when he

took off his gloves I couldn't help noticing how knotted and spotty

his hands were. He was asthmatic, and took his breath with a wheeze.

'Haven't you got anything--refreshing in there?' he asked, nodding

at the car. When I told him I hadn't, he sighed. 'Ah, you young

fellows are greedy. You drink it all up. You drink it all up, all

up--up!' he kept chewing it over."

Cavenaugh paused and looked embarrassed again. "The thing that was

most unpleasant is difficult to explain. The old man sat there by

the fire and leered at me with a silly sort of admiration that

was--well, more than humiliating. 'Gay boy, gay dog!' he would

mutter, and when he grinned he showed his teeth, worn and

yellow--shells. I remembered that it was better to talk casually to

insane people; so I remarked carelessly that I had been out with a

party and got stuck.

"'Oh yes, I remember,' he said, 'Flora and Lottie and Maybelle and

Marcelline, and poor Kate.'

"He had named them correctly; so I began to think I had been hitting

the bright waters too hard.

"Things I drank never had seemed to make me woody; but you can never

tell when trouble is going to hit you. I pulled my hat down and

tried to look as uncommunicative as possible; but he kept croaking

on from time to time, like this: 'Poor Kate! Splendid arms, but dope

got her. She took up with Eastern religions after she had her hair

dyed. Got to going to a Swami's joint, and smoking opium. Temple of

the Lotus, it was called, and the police raided it.'

"This was nonsense, of course; the young woman was in the pink of

condition. I let him rave, but I decided that if something didn't

come out for me pretty soon, I'd foot it across Long Island. There

wasn't room enough for the two of us. I got up and took another try

at my car. He hopped right after me.

"'Good car,' he wheezed, 'better than the little Ford.'

"I'd had a Ford before, but so has everybody; that was a safe guess.

"'Still,' he went on, 'that run in from Huntington Bay in the rain

wasn't bad. Arrested for speeding, he-he.'

"It was true I had made such a run, under rather unusual

circumstances, and had been arrested. When at last I heard my

life-boat snorting up the road, my visitor got up, sighed, and

stepped back into the shadow of the trees. I didn't wait to see what

became of him, you may believe. That was visitation number one. What

do you think of it?"

Cavenaugh looked at his host defiantly. Eastman smiled.

"I think you'd better change your mode of life, Cavenaugh. Had many

returns?" he inquired.

"Too many, by far." The young man took a turn about the room and

came back to the fire. Standing by the mantel he lit another

cigarette before going on with his story:

"The second visitation happened in the street, early in the evening,

about eight o'clock. I was held up in a traffic block before the

Plaza. My chauffeur was driving. Old Nibbs steps up out of the

crowd, opens the door of my car, gets in and sits down beside me. He

had on wilted evening clothes, same as before, and there was some

sort of heavy scent about him. Such an unpleasant old party! A

thorough-going rotter; you knew it at once. This time he wasn't

talkative, as he had been when I first saw him. He leaned back in

the car as if he owned it, crossed his hands on his stick and looked

out at the crowd--sort of hungrily.

"I own I really felt a loathing compassion for him. We got down the

avenue slowly. I kept looking out at the mounted police. But what

could I do? Have him pulled? I was afraid to. I was awfully afraid

of getting him into the papers.

"'I'm going to the New Astor,' I said at last. 'Can I take you

anywhere?'

"'No, thank you,' says he. 'I get out when you do. I'm due on West

44th. I'm dining to-night with Marcelline--all that is left of her!'

"He put his hand to his hat brim with a grewsome salute. Such a

scandalous, foolish old face as he had! When we pulled up at the

Astor, I stuck my hand in my pocket and asked him if he'd like a

little loan.

"'No, thank you, but'--he leaned over and whispered, ugh!--'but save

a little, save a little. Forty years from now--a little--comes in

handy. Save a little.'

"His eyes fairly glittered as he made his remark. I jumped out. I'd

have jumped into the North River. When he tripped off, I asked my

chauffeur if he'd noticed the man who got into the car with me. He

said he knew someone was with me, but he hadn't noticed just when he

got in. Want to hear any more?"

Cavenaugh dropped into his chair again. His plump cheeks were a

trifle more flushed than usual, but he was perfectly calm. Eastman

felt that the young man believed what he was telling him.

"Of course I do. It's very interesting. I don't see quite where you

are coming out though."

Cavenaugh sniffed. "No more do I. I really feel that I've been put

upon. I haven't deserved it any more than any other fellow of my

kind. Doesn't it impress you disagreeably?"

"Well, rather so. Has anyone else seen your friend?"

"You saw him."

"We won't count that. As I said, there's no certainty that you and I

saw the same person in the court that night. Has anyone else had a

look in?"

"People sense him rather than see him. He usually crops up when I'm

alone or in a crowd on the street. He never approaches me when I'm

with people I know, though I've seen him hanging about the doors of

theatres when I come out with a party; loafing around the stage

exit, under a wall; or across the street, in a doorway. To be frank,

I'm not anxious to introduce him. The third time, it was I who came

upon him. In November my driver, Harry, had a sudden attack of

appendicitis. I took him to the Presbyterian Hospital in the car,

early in the evening. When I came home, I found the old villain in

my rooms. I offered him a drink, and he sat down. It was the first

time I had seen him in a steady light, with his hat off.

"His face is lined like a railway map, and as to color--Lord, what a

liver! His scalp grows tight to his skull, and his hair is dyed

until it's perfectly dead, like a piece of black cloth."

Cavenaugh ran his fingers through his own neatly trimmed thatch, and

seemed to forget where he was for a moment.

"I had a twin brother, Brian, who died when we were sixteen. I have

a photograph of him on my wall, an enlargement from a kodak of him,

doing a high jump, rather good thing, full of action. It seemed to

annoy the old gentleman. He kept looking at it and lifting his

eyebrows, and finally he got up, tip-toed across the room, and

turned the picture to the wall.

"'Poor Brian! Fine fellow, but died young,' says he.

"Next morning, there was the picture, still reversed."

"Did he stay long?" Eastman asked interestedly.

"Half an hour, by the clock."

"Did he talk?"

"Well, he rambled."

"What about?"

Cavenaugh rubbed his pale eyebrows before answering.

"About things that an old man ought to want to forget. His

conversation is highly objectionable. Of course he knows me like a

book; everything I've ever done or thought. But when he recalls

them, he throws a bad light on them, somehow. Things that weren't

much off color, look rotten. He doesn't leave one a shred of

self-respect, he really doesn't. That's the amount of it." The young

man whipped out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

"You mean he really talks about things that none of your friends

know?"

"Oh, dear, yes! Recalls things that happened in school. Anything

disagreeable. Funny thing, he always turns Brian's picture to the

wall."

"Does he come often?"

"Yes, oftener, now. Of course I don't know how he gets in

down-stairs. The hall boys never see him. But he has a key to my

door. I don't know how he got it, but I can hear him turn it in the

lock."

"Why don't you keep your driver with you, or telephone for me to

come down?"

"He'd only grin and go down the fire escape as he did before. He's

often done it when Harry's come in suddenly. Everybody has to be

alone sometimes, you know. Besides, I don't want anybody to see him.

He has me there."

"But why not? Why do you feel responsible for him?"

Cavenaugh smiled wearily. "That's rather the point, isn't it? Why do

I? But I absolutely do. That identifies him, more than his knowing

all about my life and my affairs."

Eastman looked at Cavenaugh thoughtfully. "Well, I should advise you

to go in for something altogether different and new, and go in for

it hard; business, engineering, metallurgy, something this old

fellow wouldn't be interested in. See if you can make him remember

logarithms."

Cavenaugh sighed. "No, he has me there, too. People never really

change; they go on being themselves. But I would never make much

trouble. Why can't they let me alone, damn it! I'd never hurt

anybody, except, perhaps----"

"Except your old gentleman, eh?" Eastman laughed. "Seriously,

Cavenaugh, if you want to shake him, I think a year on a ranch would

do it. He would never be coaxed far from his favorite haunts. He

would dread Montana."

Cavenaugh pursed up his lips. "So do I!"

"Oh, you think you do. Try it, and you'll find out. A gun and a

horse beats all this sort of thing. Besides losing your haunt, you'd

be putting ten years in the bank for yourself. I know a good ranch

where they take people, if you want to try it."

"Thank you. I'll consider. Do you think I'm batty?"

"No, but I think you've been doing one sort of thing too long. You

need big horizons. Get out of this."

Cavenaugh smiled meekly. He rose lazily and yawned behind his hand.

"It's late, and I've taken your whole evening." He strolled over to

the window and looked out. "Queer place, New York; rough on the

little fellows. Don't you feel sorry for them, the girls especially?

I do. What a fight they put up for a little fun! Why, even that old

goat is sorry for them, the only decent thing he kept."

Eastman followed him to the door and stood in the hall, while

Cavenaugh waited for the elevator. When the car came up Cavenaugh

extended his pink, warm hand. "Good night."

The cage sank and his rosy countenance disappeared, his round-eyed

smile being the last thing to go.

* * * * *

Weeks passed before Eastman saw Cavenaugh again. One morning, just

as he was starting for Washington to argue a case before the Supreme

Court, Cavenaugh telephoned him at his office to ask him about the

Montana ranch he had recommended; said he meant to take his advice

and go out there for the spring and summer.

When Eastman got back from Washington, he saw dusty trunks, just up

from the trunk room, before Cavenaugh's door. Next morning, when he

stopped to see what the young man was about, he found Cavenaugh in

his shirt sleeves, packing.

"I'm really going; off to-morrow night. You didn't think it of me,

did you?" he asked gaily.

"Oh, I've always had hopes of you!" Eastman declared. "But you are

in a hurry, it seems to me."

"Yes, I am in a hurry." Cavenaugh shot a pair of leggings into one

of the open trunks. "I telegraphed your ranch people, used your

name, and they said it would be all right. By the way, some of my

crowd are giving a little dinner for me at Rector's to-night.

Couldn't you be persuaded, as it's a farewell occasion?" Cavenaugh

looked at him hopefully.

Eastman laughed and shook his head. "Sorry, Cavenaugh, but that's

too gay a world for me. I've got too much work lined up before me. I

wish I had time to stop and look at your guns, though. You seem to

know something about guns. You've more than you'll need, but nobody

can have too many good ones." He put down one of the revolvers

regretfully. "I'll drop in to see you in the morning, if you're up."

"I shall be up, all right. I've warned my crowd that I'll cut away

before midnight."

"You won't, though," Eastman called back over his shoulder as he

hurried down-stairs.

The next morning, while Eastman was dressing, Rollins came in

greatly excited.

"I'm a little late, sir. I was stopped by Harry, Mr. Cavenaugh's

driver. Mr. Cavenaugh shot himself last night, sir."

Eastman dropped his vest and sat down on his shoe-box. "You're

drunk, Rollins," he shouted. "He's going away to-day!"

"Yes, sir. Harry found him this morning. Ah, he's quite dead, sir.

Harry's telephoned for the coroner. Harry don't know what to do with

the ticket."

Eastman pulled on his coat and ran down the stairway. Cavenaugh's

trunks were strapped and piled before the door. Harry was walking up

and down the hall with a long green railroad ticket in his hand and

a look of complete stupidity on his face.

"What shall I do about this ticket, Mr. Eastman?" he whispered. "And

what about his trunks? He had me tell the transfer people to come

early. They may be here any minute. Yes, sir. I brought him home in

the car last night, before twelve, as cheerful as could be."

"Be quiet, Harry. Where is he?"

"In his bed, sir."

Eastman went into Cavenaugh's sleeping-room. When he came back to

the sitting-room, he looked over the writing table; railway folders,

time-tables, receipted bills, nothing else. He looked up for the

photograph of Cavenaugh's twin brother. There it was, turned to the

wall. Eastman took it down and looked at it; a boy in track clothes,

half lying in the air, going over the string shoulders first, above

the heads of a crowd of lads who were running and cheering. The face

was somewhat blurred by the motion and the bright sunlight. Eastman

put the picture back, as he found it. Had Cavenaugh entertained his

visitor last night, and had the old man been more convincing than

usual? "Well, at any rate, he's seen to it that the old man can't

establish identity. What a soft lot they are, fellows like poor

Cavenaugh!" Eastman thought of his office as a delightful place.

_McClure's_, November 1915

_The Bookkeeper's Wife_

Nobody but the janitor was stirring about the offices of the Remsen

Paper Company, and still Percy Bixby sat at his desk, crouched on

his high stool and staring out at the tops of the tall buildings

flushed with the winter sunset, at the hundreds of windows, so many

rectangles of white electric light, flashing against the broad waves

of violet that ebbed across the sky. His ledgers were all in their

places, his desk was in order, his office coat on its peg, and yet

Percy's smooth, thin face wore the look of anxiety and strain which

usually meant that he was behind in his work. He was trying to

persuade himself to accept a loan from the company without the

company's knowledge. As a matter of fact, he had already accepted

it. His books were fixed, the money, in a black-leather bill-book,

was already inside his waistcoat pocket.

He had still time to change his mind, to rectify the false figures

in his ledger, and to tell Stella Brown that they couldn't possibly

get married next month. There he always halted in his reasoning, and

went back to the beginning.

The Remsen Paper Company was a very wealthy concern, with easy,

old-fashioned working methods. They did a longtime credit business

with safe customers, who never thought of paying up very close on

their large indebtedness. From the payments on these large accounts

Percy had taken a hundred dollars here and two hundred there until

he had made up the thousand he needed. So long as he stayed by the

books himself and attended to the mail-orders he couldn't possibly

be found out. He could move these little shortages about from

account to account indefinitely. He could have all the time he

needed to pay back the deficit, and more time than he needed.

Although he was so far along in one course of action, his mind still

clung resolutely to the other. He did not believe he was going to do

it. He was the least of a sharper in the world. Being scrupulously

honest even in the most trifling matters was a pleasure to him. He

was the sort of young man that Socialists hate more than they hate

capitalists. He loved his desk, he loved his books, which had no

handwriting in them but his own. He never thought of resenting the

fact that he had written away in those books the good red years

between twenty-one and twenty-seven. He would have hated to let any

one else put so much as a pen-scratch in them. He liked all the boys

about the office; his desk, worn smooth by the sleeves of his alpaca

coat; his rulers and inks and pens and calendars. He had a great

pride in working economics, and he always got so far ahead when

supplies were distributed that he had drawers full of pencils and

pens and rubber bands against a rainy day.

Percy liked regularity: to get his work done on time, to have his

half-day off every Saturday, to go to the theater Saturday night, to

buy a new necktie twice a month, to appear in a new straw hat on the

right day in May, and to know what was going on in New York. He read

the morning and evening papers coming and going on the elevated, and

preferred journals of approximate reliability. He got excited about

ballgames and elections and business failures, was not above an

interest in murders and divorce scandals, and he checked the news

off as neatly as he checked his mail-orders. In short, Percy Bixby

was like the model pupil who is satisfied with his lessons and his

teachers and his holidays, and who would gladly go to school all his

life. He had never wanted anything outside his routine until he

wanted Stella Brown to marry him, and that had upset everything.

It wasn't, he told himself for the hundredth time, that she was

extravagant. Not a bit of it. She was like all girls. Moreover, she

made good money, and why should she marry unless she could better

herself? The trouble was that he had lied to her about his salary.

There were a lot of fellows rushing Mrs. Brown's five daughters, and

they all seemed to have fixed on Stella as first choice and this or

that one of the sisters as second. Mrs. Brown thought it proper to

drop an occasional hint in the presence of these young men to the

effect that she expected Stella to "do well." It went without saying

that hair and complexion like Stella's could scarcely be expected to

do poorly. Most of the boys who went to the house and took the girls

out in a bunch to dances and movies seemed to realize this. They

merely wanted a whirl with Stella before they settled down to one of

her sisters. It was tacitly understood that she came too high for

them. Percy had sensed all this through those slumbering instincts

which awake in us all to befriend us in love or in danger.

But there was one of his rivals, he knew, who was a man to be

reckoned with. Charley Greengay was a young salesman who wore

tailor-made clothes and spotted waistcoats, and had a necktie for

every day in the month. His air was that of a young man who is out

for things that come high and who is going to get them. Mrs. Brown

was ever and again dropping a word before Percy about how the girl

that took Charley would have her flat furnished by the best

furniture people, and her china-closet stocked with the best ware,

and would have nothing to worry about but nicks and scratches. It

was because he felt himself pitted against this pulling power of

Greengay's that Percy had brazenly lied to Mrs. Brown, and told her

that his salary had been raised to fifty a week, and that now he

wanted to get married.

When he threw out this challenge to Mother Brown, Percy was getting

thirty-five dollars a week, and he knew well enough that there were

several hundred thousand young men in New York who would do his work

as well as he did for thirty.

These were the factors in Percy's present situation. He went over

them again and again as he sat stooping on his tall stool. He had

quite lost track of time when he heard the janitor call good night

to the watchman. Without thinking what he was doing, he slid into

his overcoat, caught his hat, and rushed out to the elevator, which

was waiting for the janitor. The moment the car dropped, it occurred

to him that the thing was decided without his having made up his

mind at all. The familiar floors passed him, ten, nine, eight,

seven. By the time he reached the fifth, there was no possibility of

going back; the click of the drop-lever seemed to settle that. The

money was in his pocket. Now, he told himself as he hurried out into

the exciting clamor of the street, he was not going to worry about

it any more.

* * * * *

When Percy reached the Browns' flat on 123d Street that evening he

felt just the slightest chill in Stella's greeting. He could make

that all right, he told himself, as he kissed her lightly in the

dark three-by-four entrance-hall. Percy's courting had been

prosecuted mainly in the Bronx or in winged pursuit of a Broadway

car. When he entered the crowded sitting-room he greeted Mrs. Brown

respectfully and the four girls playfully. They were all piled on

one couch, reading the continued story in the evening paper, and

they didn't think it necessary to assume more formal attitudes for

Percy. They looked up over the smeary pink sheets of paper, and

handed him, as Percy said, the same old jolly:

"Hullo, Perc'! Come to see me, ain't you? So flattered!"

"Any sweet goods on you, Perc'? Anything doing in the bong-bong line

to-night?"

"Look at his new neckwear! Say, Perc', remember me. That tie would

go lovely with my new tailored waist."

"Quit your kiddin', girls!" called Mrs. Brown, who was drying

shirt-waists on the dining-room radiator. "And, Percy, mind the rugs

when you're steppin' round among them gum-drops."

Percy fired his last shot at the recumbent figures, and followed

Stella into the dining-room, where the table and two large

easy-chairs formed, in Mrs. Brown's estimation, a proper background

for a serious suitor.

"I say, Stell'," he began as he walked about the table with his

hands in his pockets, "seems to me we ought to begin buying our

stuff." She brightened perceptibly. "Ah," Percy thought, "so that

_was_ the trouble!" "To-morrow's Saturday; why can't we make an

afternoon of it?" he went on cheerfully. "Shop till we're tired,

then go to Houtin's for dinner, and end up at the theater."

As they bent over the lists she had made of things needed, Percy

glanced at her face. She was very much out of her sisters' class and

out of his, and he kept congratulating himself on his nerve. He was

going in for something much too handsome and expensive and

distinguished for him, he felt, and it took courage to be a plunger.

To begin with, Stella was the sort of girl who had to be well

dressed. She had pale primrose hair, with bluish tones in it, very

soft and fine, so that it lay smooth however she dressed it, and

pale-blue eyes, with blond eyebrows and long, dark lashes. She would

have been a little too remote and languid even for the fastidious

Percy had it not been for her hard, practical mouth, with lips that

always kept their pink even when the rest of her face was pale. Her

employers, who at first might be struck by her indifference,

understood that anybody with that sort of mouth would get through

the work.

After the shopping-lists had been gone over, Percy took up the

question of the honeymoon. Stella said she had been thinking of

Atlantic City. Percy met her with firmness. Whatever happened, he

couldn't leave his books now.

"I want to do my traveling right here on Forty-second Street, with a

high-price show every night," he declared. He made out an itinerary,

punctuated by theaters and restaurants, which Stella consented to

accept as a substitute for Atlantic City.

"They give your fellows a week off when they're married, don't

they?" she asked.

"Yes, but I'll want to drop into the office every morning to look

after my mail. That's only businesslike."

"I'd like to have you treated as well as the others, though." Stella

turned the rings about on her pale hand and looked at her polished

finger-tips.

"I'll look out for that. What do you say to a little walk, Stell'?"

Percy put the question coaxingly. When Stella was pleased with him

she went to walk with him, since that was the only way in which

Percy could ever see her alone. When she was displeased, she said

she was too tired to go out. To-night she smiled at him

incredulously, and went to put on her hat and gray fur piece.