LOT & COMPANY: II

1

BELLAIR reached New York on a mid-May morning from the west, and walked

up Seventh avenue to his old room. It was a time of day that he had

seldom known the street and step. There was a different expression

of daylight upon them. Of course, he had met these matters on many

Sundays, but Sunday light and atmosphere was invariably different

to his eyes--something foreign and false about it. He saw the old

hall-mark, however, in the vestibule--the partial sweeping.... It

had always been her way; all things a form. The vestibule and stone

steps had to be swept--that was the law; to be swept with strength and

thoroughness was secondary. He rang, and asked the servant for the

woman of the house.

Waiting, he found himself in a singular depression of mind. The City

had cramped and bewildered him. A small oval of grey-white cloud

appeared in the dark hall. It came nearer, and Bellair saw the face of

dusty wax--smaller, a little lower from his eyes. It came very near,

and was upturned. The vision was dim, and the memory; all the passages

slow and cluttered.

“It is Mr. Bellair,” she said, without offering her hand.

“Yes. I’ve come back.”

“I haven’t a room--for you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“And about your things in storage--I would be glad for the space now.

Could you take care of this to-day?’

“Yes,” he answered.

“I have the bill ready.”... She called the servant who came with the

broom. “On my table among the papers you will find Mr. Bellair’s bill

for storage. Please get it.”

Bellair heard the servant on the stairs, one, two, three flights; then

a long silence. He had never been quite sure where the landlady slept,

believing that she hovered from basement to sky-light according to the

ebb and flow of the tenant tides. The double-doors from the hall to the

lower front room were slightly ajar. This, the most expensive in the

house, appeared to be vacant. The servant was gone a long time. The

landlady did not leave him alone in the hall. They did not speak. The

darkness crept upon Bellair as if he were in a tank that was slowly

but surely being filled, and presently would cover him. The paper was

brought, the charge for six months’ storage, meagre. Bellair paid it,

and offered more. He thought of her hard life, but the extra money was

passed back to him.

“I have that present in keeping,” she said.

“What present?”

“That you gave me the night you went away----”

“But I gave it to you. Would you not take a little gift from one who

had been in your house five years?”

“Money easily got, goes the same,” she answered.

Then Bellair realised how stupid he had been. She had seen the

newspapers. She had been afraid to trust him alone in that bare hall.

The smell of carpets stifled him.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said. “But hold the present a little

longer. Perhaps you will not always feel that it came so easily. I’ll

send for my goods at once.... Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Bellair.”

He was ill. The side-door of a famous hotel yawned to him directly

across the street from his step. He was not sure they would take him.

Registering, he stopped to think where he was from, adding Auckland, N.

Z.... Yes, his bags would be brought from the station. They gave him a

room, and Bellair stood in the centre of it.

For a few moments he actually weakened--limbs and mind. It wasn’t New

York alone, nor the sordid incident across the street, reminding him

so ruthlessly of Lot & Company and all that had been and was still to

do; rather it was a giving way to a loneliness that had been rising

for almost a month, wearing him to a shadow of himself, and giving

him battle night and morning. Like many another solitary young man,

he had brooded much upon what a certain woman might be. He had found

that in those women he met, certain spaces must be filled in by his

own compassion--and these spaces did not endure. Always in a test

they separated from the reality. But the Faraway Woman day by day had

fulfilled; even where his idealism failed, she completed the picture of

the woman above him and of irresistible attraction.

She had come nearer and nearer. She was magic in this way. He had

regarded her at first distantly and askance at the rail of the _Jade_.

A gasp now came from him. That was so impossible and long ago.... She

had not called him any more than a peasant woman. And yet one after

another her rarities had unfolded; it would always be so. She was

the very fountain of romance to him; the essence of whose attraction

is variableness of days. Of all the days together, there had been

no two alike--no two hours alike. He had watched her face under the

light--never twice the same. The child, the maiden, the mother, the

love-woman, the saint--lips passional, devotional ... then those

wonder-moments when the old tragedies came back to her eyes.

They stirred him as if he had known her long ago; and yet nothing of

this had come to him at first. How crude and coarse he had been not

to see. Lot & Company and New York had covered her from his eyes. He

had to fast and pray and concentrate upon her being, as a devotee upon

the ball of crystal to begin upon her mysteries. Every man has his

Lot & Company, his New York--the forces that bind him to the world.

A man bound to the world can see but the body of a thing--the paint

of a picture, just the outline and pigment of a picture or a bit of

nature--just the body of a woman.

Something came to him that instant--of the perfect law of all

things. Those caught in the body of events see but that, hear but

that, anticipate but that--the very secret of all the misery and

shortsightedness in the world. A man must rise, lift the centre of

consciousness above the body of things, even to see physical matters

in their true relation. It was all so thrillingly true to him in this

glimpse--that a man can never see properly the sequence of his actions

unless he can rise above them--that those in the ruck never know what

they are about....

He tried to remember her face, as he stood in the hotel room. Failing,

his mind returned to their days together. He was apart now and could

view them, one by one, in their wonder and beauty. He was torn with

them. At different times on the long voyage he had dwelt separately

upon the episodes. Some had worn him to exhaustion. People on the ship

had believed him a man with a great grief. At first, he looked about

from face to face searching for some one whom he might tell, but there

was no reception for his story. He had to stop and think that he was

different and apart.... She had always been apart.

He had carried it alone, moving hushed and alone with his story; lying

open-eyed in his berth through the hours of night, and often through

the afternoons, an open book face downward upon his chest, his pipe

cold ... living again the different moments in the rooms of the stone

cottage, in the garden, on the shore; their journeys together, their

breakfasts and luncheons and evenings together.

The boy was gone from him, from face and body. He did not know what

had come instead, but he knew that he carried a creative image in his

heart; something of the fragrance of her lingering about him. It had

come to him at night alone on deck--the sweetness of her--on the wind.

All that he wanted, all that he dreamed best of life and labour and

love ... and yet after all, what had he to do with her in relation

to these intimate things? Friend, companion, confidante--she was

everything that a woman could be, except---- Had not the substance of

that kind of giving died for her in the passing of the preacher?...

Something of her story frightened him. She had learned the ultimate

realness of loving. The man who entered her heart now would have to

come with an immortal seal upon him. There was but one who could take

up the fatherhood of the Gleam.... Bellair did not feel the man; did

not know what she had given him; did not know what had come to him--to

his face and carriage and voice. He had not yet lifted himself above

so that he could see. Those whom he met, however, were struck with

a different Bellair, and those who could not understand thought him

touched a little queerly--as a man after sunstroke or any great light.

... It was now noon. He thought of his old friend, Broadwell, of the

advertising-desk at Lot & Company. Perhaps Broadwell would dine with

him. He called. The voice came back to him.... Yes, he would come at

once. Bellair asked him to the hotel. In the interval he called the

Trust company in whose keeping the thousand dollar surety had been,

inquiring if Lot & Company had collected the amount. The answer was

returned presently to the effect that Lot & Company had presented his

release and collected the amount with interest four days after his

departure.

Bellair hearkened to a faint singing somewhere within and found it had

to do with Bessie. He called Brandt’s and ascertained that the same

quartette was to sing there at nine in the evening. This was also one

of the things he had come to do.

Broadwell was a trifle late, but all urbanity. There was something of

the salesman’s manner and enunciation about him. Bellair fell away

after the greeting, caught in a sort of mental flurry in which the

picture of another luncheon engagement recurred to his mind--the day he

had passed the desk and cage of Mr. Sproxley with the stranger named

Filbrick, and his own telling of the cashier’s passionate honour....

When he came back to see clearly the face of Broadwell, he found that

he personally was being scrutinised with odd intensity. Could it be

that Broadwell had something more than a personal friendly interest?

His questions did not seem adroit, and yet he wanted to know so

much--of the ship, of Auckland, but especially of this long drive back

to New York.

“Are you stopping here?” he asked.

“Yes. My old room was just opposite, but I was told that the house was

full.”

“So you came here?”

“Yes.”

“And are you going to stay in New York?”

“I don’t know, Ben. There are a few things to see to.”

“Are you looking for a job?”

“Well, no. Not exactly, at least.”

Try as he might, Bellair could not feel free, as of old time. He felt

the other wanted something, and this checked his every offering.

He knew that Broadwell, at least six months before, could not have

believed ill of Lot & Company, and there was no apparent change. The

disclosure of the press must have righted itself in the office so far

as he, Bellair, was concerned; surely Broadwell did not share the dread

of him the landlady had shown; and yet, it was hard to broach these

things. The advertising-man apparently had no intention of doing so.

“We’ve all missed you on the lower floor,” he said.

“Are there any changes?”

“Very few.”

“Who took my place?”

“Man from outside. Mr. Rawter brought in the man--middle-aged. Mr.

Sproxley knew him, too.”

“Poor devil,” said Bellair, but not audibly. They had not dared to

open the ledger revelations to any one in the office, but had found a

man outside who was doubtless familiar with such books, doubtless one

who had been deformed in the long, slow twistings of trade. Perhaps

this one had children. Children were good for Lot & Company’s most

trusted servants. It was well to have a number of children, like Mr.

Sproxley--for their wants are many, and a man’s soul cannot breathe in

the midst of many wants and small salary.

“Are you coming over to the office?”

“Yes, I find I have to. Some folks are taking the end Lot and Company

gave the newspapers about my leaving. They were very much in a hurry

about giving out that newspaper story--with the money in the vaults.”

Broadwell regarded him seriously. “I suppose they took the point of

view that there could be but one motive for your leaving, without

giving notice. Most firms would----”

“I wonder if most firms would?” Bellair asked. “Men have lapses other

than falling into thievery. At least a firm should look up the facts

in the case first. It’s a rather serious thing to charge a man with

departure with funds. For instance, the public will glance through the

details of such a charge, and miss entirely a denial afterward. Are you

under bond?”

“No, I don’t handle company funds----”

“Suppose you were--and one night you came to the end of your

rope--found you couldn’t go back--found it was a life or death

matter of your soul, whether you went back or not. Still you had

some salary coming and say a thousand dollars’ surety. You took this

amount exactly--salary and bond and interest to the dollar, and left

a note saying so, in place of the amount; also a note releasing to

your firm the amount of the bond and interest, and stating clearly the

item of salary--I say, would you expect to find yourself charged with

embezzlement in next day’s paper?”

Broadwell’s shoulders straightened.

“Not in next day’s paper,” he said, with a smile.

Bellair did not miss the cut of this.

“You think that my case was not like that exactly?” he asked.

“I can’t see why a firm would give such a story to the press--unless

they uncovered a loss,” Broadwell said slowly.

“Lot & Company couldn’t have uncovered a loss without looking in the

very place where my note was, which proved there was no loss. Lot &

Company couldn’t have collected my bond without proceedings--unless

they found my release of it. And the bond was collected.”

“Then I can’t see any reason for incriminating--any one,” said

Broadwell.

“Well, there was a reason--though the facts of my case are exactly as

stated. Lot & Company had a reason. I haven’t decided whether it will

be necessary to make that known.... But I didn’t bring you here to

discuss this affair. I wanted to see _you_----”

Just then Mr. Broadwell was paged. A messenger was said to be waiting

for him in the lobby.

“Send him in,” Broadwell said thoughtlessly.

Davy Acton came, and Broadwell saw his error. Bellair perceived that

his luncheon-companion had made known his engagement at the office

before leaving....

“Sit down, Davy. I’m glad to see you----”

The boy had grown. Bellair noted that simple thing, as he noted the

fact also that Davy was tortured with embarrassment, and had not meant

to come in. He wriggled his hand forward to take Bellair’s, which was

held toward his, and then looked down shamefacedly, as if _he_ had been

charged with theft. Bellair knew well that the boy’s trouble was how to

meet him--formerly a friend, but now an outcast from the firm. A kind

of darkness stole over him. He saw now that Broadwell believed him a

thief, even as the landlady had believed; but in the case of neither

of these did the dread finality come to him, as from the face of this

stricken boy.

This was the thought that shot through Bellair’s mind, “No one liked

Davy so well as I did; no one tried to help him as I did; and now he

thinks my liking and my helping, a part of the looseness of character

which made me a thief.”

The thought was strange, yet natural, too. It came into the darkness

which had covered the abode of Bellair’s consciousness.

* * * * *

“A bit of copy--that I missed getting off,” Broadwell was saying. “I

was excited when you called.... All right, Davy. I’ve told ’em where

to find it on the back of the note.... And now Bellair--you were

saying----”

2

Bellair watched for the turn on the part of Broadwell that would reveal

the character of his message, for he did not believe the matter of the

copy for the printer. The chill was thick between them, yet Bellair

managed to say:

“I’m not here for reprisal or trouble-making. It’s rather a novelty to

be innocent, yet charged with a thing; certainly one sees a look from

the world that could come no other way. I want to see you again--soon.

I’ve got a story to tell you. It was a big thing to me. We used to have

things in common. I’d like to tell you the story and see how it strikes

you----”

“Good. I’m to spare----”

“Suppose you come here to lunch to-morrow----”

“No, you come with me.”

“I’d prefer it the other way,” Bellair declared. “It’s my story you are

to listen to.”

As they parted, there was just a trace of the old Broadwell, that left

Bellair with a feeling of kindness.

“I’m interested to hear that story,” the advertising-man said. “It did

something to you apparently. Pulled you down a lot--but that’s not all.

I can’t make it out exactly--but you’ve got something, Bellair.”

That was a long afternoon.... He had been gone less than six months;

and yet was as much a stranger, as a young man coming in from the West

for the first time. The hours dragged. The City did not awe him, but

so much of it struck him in places tender. He could give and give;

there seemed no other way, no other thing to do. He sat on a bench in

Union Square, and talked with an old man who needed money so badly

that Bellair reflected for some time the best way to bestow it without

shock. The old fellow looked so near gone, that one feared his heart

would break under any undue pressure of excitement.

Bellair concluded he had better buy a stimulant first of all, so he

led the way across the Square to Kiltie’s. They lined up against the

bar, and warmed themselves, the idea in Bellair’s mind being to give

something beside money. Now the old man (not in the least understanding

more than it was the whim of the stranger to do something for him),

was so intent on what was to be done that he could not listen. Bellair

had to come to the point. They went to a table for a bite of lunch, and

the spectacle of a beggar’s mind opened--a story lacking imagination

and told with the pitiful endeavour to fit into what was imagined to be

the particular weakness of this listener.

For months, Bellair had not touched the little orbit of the trodden

lives. The story was not true, for no single group of ten words hinged

upon what had been said, or folded into the next statement. The old

man was not simple, but his guile was simple, and the simplicity of

that was obscene. Begging might be a fine art, but men chose or fell

into their work without thought of making an art of it. The old man did

not know his own tremendous drama. Had he dared plainly to be true, he

would have captivated the world with his own poor faculties. Behind the

affectations were glimpses of great realities--if only the fallen mind

could accept his days and tell them as they came--just the imperishable

fruits of his days. As it was, the whiskey swept them farther away,

and the creature attempted to act; his pitiful conception of effects

were called into being. The throb of it all was the way the world was

brought back to Bellair. His whole past city life thronged into mind.

This was but a shocking example of myriads of lives--trying to be what

their undeveloped senses prompted for the moment, rather than to be

themselves. This was the salesman’s voice and manner, he had seen in

Broadwell.... He stopped his revery by handing over the present.

The old man’s eyes were wild now with hope and anguish to get away;

a mingling of fear, too, lest the great sum of money in one piece be

counterfeit; lest the stranger ask it back, or some one knock him down

and take it away.

“I sat in a small boat,” Bellair was saying, “for ten days, with very

little food and water. I saw one man die like a beast of thirst--or

fear of thirst; and I saw another man master it--so that he died

smiling--as only a man can die----”

Bellair did not finish. He had tried to catch the old man’s attention

with this--to hold it an instant, thinking that some word would get

home, something of the immortal facts in his heart, something greater

than cash ... but the old man believed him insane, a liar, a fool or

all three.

“Yes, yes,” he said, looking to the side, and to the door.

So he could listen, neither before nor afterward. Bellair eased his

agony by letting him go--the money gripped in his hands, his limbs

hastening, eyes darting to the right and left, as he sped through the

swinging door.... For several moments, Bellair sat in the sorrow of

it--lost in the grimmest of all tragedies--that here we are, a human

family, all designed for lofty and majestic ends, yet having lost

the power to articulate to each other. Suddenly Bellair remembered

that the old face had looked into his for a swift second, when he was

released--shaken, ashen, a murmur of something like “God thank you,”

on the trembling lips. There was a bit of a ray in that.... Then

he settled back into the tragedy again. It was this--that the old

man had thought him insane for trying to help him; that he had seen

something foreign and altogether amiss in the landlady’s eyes, in Ben

Broadwell’s, and what was more touching to him, in Davy Acton’s.

Bellair straightened his shoulders. The misery of the thing oppressed

him until he brought it to the laugh. Formerly he would have tried to

escape. It was not his business if the old man would not be helped; he

had tried. If a man can succeed in radiating good feelings and a spirit

of helpfulness, he has done his part; the consequences are out of his

hand. He saw that he had wanted to help; that what he had taken from

the open boat and from the woman had brought this impulse to the fore

in all his thinking. After that he must be an artist in the work; must

become consummate; but having done his best--he must not spend energy

in moods and personal depressions.... As for Lot & Company, he must

meet them on their own footings--forgetting everything but their points

of view. It was his business now to make a black spot clean, and it

was an ugly material matter to be coped with as such, calling forth

will-power and acumen of a world kind. He would see if he was to fail.

Bellair’s laugh was hard at first, from the tensity of the temptation

to give up and let New York have its way in his case. Having whipped

that (and it was a fair afternoon’s work) the smile softened a little,

and he entered upon the task of the evening.

... Brandt’s was just as he had left it. The crowd increased; the

quartette came. Bessie was lovely as ever; slightly different, since

he had thought of her so much in the old hat. She did not see him,

but her smile was like a flower of warmth and culture. A touch of the

old excitement mounted in his breast, as they sang.... This was New

York--among men--food and drink and warmth. This, too, was life; these

were men who toil every day, who cannot take months to dream in, who

cannot cross the sea and observe heroes and saints, but men who crowd

and toil and fight, even expire, for their pleasures--such were the

surgings of Bellair’s brain in the midst of the music. Bessie was the

arch of it all--the arch of the old home, New York,--not this Bessie,

but the Bessie that might be, the significant woman it was his work to

make and mould. He was living his own thoughts, as much as listening.

They vanished when the music stopped.... He sent a waiter to her with

this written on a blank card:

“Will you sing _Maying_ for an old friend?”

... The song choked the wanderer, and this was the new mystery of

_Maying_--that it left him at the stone gate of a door-yard beyond

windy Auckland....

* * * * *

He sent forward a gift of flowers, and was in a daze when she came to

him and sat down.

“I have only a few minutes. We sing once more and then go. How dark and

thin you look!”

He wanted to see her after her work was done, but dared not ask until

other things were said.... There were words that left no impress, until

he heard himself saying:

“I read the New York papers at sea----”

“... The reporters came to me. I had told some one of seeing you. It

was just after I had read the news. It was new to me to have reporters

come--and somehow they got what they wanted----”

“Oh, that didn’t matter. Only it was all unnecessary. My accounts there

were never other than straight.”

She said she was glad. He saw she was more glad to drop the subject,

and didn’t exactly believe him.

“And you’ve had luck away?”

“Yes, in several ways--beside money.”

It seemed necessary to add the last. He was struck with the shame and

pity of it; yet it had to do with seeing her again.

“Are you going to be in New York long?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to talk with you to-night, after you are

through. I might know better then--how long I am to stay.... Is it

possible?”

“Yes--yes, I think so.”

“When?”

“After the _Castle_”

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to be given a chance--in two weeks--a real chance,” she

declared. “I’ll tell you later.”

He tried to make himself believe that it was just as it had been; that

Bessie was the same, the meaning of New York and the fortune that had

come to him. How could she sing so, if it were not true?

“The formal try-out is two weeks from to-day,” she added. “The rest

is done. It’s the chance for life--one of the leads with the _King

Follies_ for next season. They’ve already heard me. I need to do no

more, than has been done?”

“Just singing?”

“There are many lines and some dancing--oh, it’s a chance to storm the

piece--if I can.”

She enlarged and detailed the promise; Bellair forgot many things he

had to say.

“Is that all you want, Bessie?”

“What?”

“This chance.”

Her brows knit with irritation. It was her high tide, and he did not

seem able to rise with it. Still she dared not be angry with him.

“Don’t you see--it’s everything?”

“A good salary, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes----”

“And you are all fixed for it?”

“All but clothes--the old struggle. You helped me wonderfully before.”

“Perhaps I could help you again?”

“Oh, could you?” She was joyousness aflame--her whole nature winging

about him.

Deep within, he was empty and bleak and cold. He wanted to give her

money, but somehow could not make it easy for her. It cheapened him in

his own eyes.... He was silent--his thoughts having crossed the world.

There is no one to explain the sentence that ran through his mind, “...

_who buys wine for the Japanese girls in Dunedin, since Norcross was

conscripted in the service we all shall know?_”

“... But what am I to do for you,” he heard the girl inquire, “since

you are--not going away to-night?”

He quaked at the old recall. Perhaps he had forgotten a little how to

be sharp and city-wise; at least, he did not make himself clear at

once.

“You have your mornings, don’t you, Bessie?”

“Not if I’m to have new clothes. That’s morning work----”

“There’s so much to say. I’ve thought about you in a lot of strange

places----”

She leaned forward and said with a pitiful quiet, “Once, you only

wanted me to be good.”

Then it dawned on him. “Good God, Bessie,” he cried, “I don’t want you

to be bad!”

She regarded him, playing with the stem of her glass, as of old time. A

curious being he was to her, and quite inexplicable.

“You love me?” she asked.

The bass now beckoned, and she fled.

3

Bellair saw that one may have a gift from heaven, a superb

singing-voice, for instance, but that one must also furnish the thought

behind it. It was not that Bessie Brealt lacked ambition; in fact,

she had plenty of that, but it was the sort that cannot wait for real

results. She did not see the great singer; she had not a thought to

give with her song. She had not the emotions upon which a great organ

of inspiration might be built with the years. Already she was touched

with the world; the world stirred her desires; matters of first

importance in her mind were the things she wanted.

She was not different from the thousands, from the millions, in this.

He had not altogether lost the conviction that she might be made

different. Already she was singing too much; her voice would never

reach its full measure under these conditions. She would suffer the

fate of the countless high-bred colts that are ruined by being raced

too young, being denied the right to sound maturity. She should have

been out of the life-struggle for years yet; in the country, in the

perfect convent of natural life. She had not answered the true call,

but meanwhile a call had come; its poison had entered. Bellair saw that

the process before him, if any, was to break before building.... If

consummate art were used, might not Bessie be helped to conceive the

great career? Of course that thought must come first. However, he was

far from believing that any art of his could be consummate.... Speaking

that night of her new opportunity, he said:

“They will rehearse you a great deal--then performances twice a

day--and you’re not more than twenty----”

“Just twenty----”

“You should be forty--before giving your voice so much work----”

She laughed. “Forty, I will doubtless be finished. Forty, and before,

the fat comes----”

“People can forget fat--when a great voice is singing----”

“The great voices have sung from children,” she answered.

He believed this untrue; at least, he believed that with conservation,

a more sumptuous power was attainable. “They have sung naturally

perhaps, but not professionally. If they were called into the stress

of life very young, any greatness afterward was in spite of the early

struggle, not because of it. The voice is an organ that wears out. It

is not the same as the character which improves through every test. If

you were to spend ten years in study--ten years, not alone in vocal

culture, but in life preparation and the culture of happiness----”

“I suppose you would have me give up this chance with the _Follies_?”

she asked with the control that suggests imminent fracture.

“Yes. There is nothing that passes so quickly--as the voice of a

season. It is the plaything of a people without memory. If you had

ever listened to the best of the light opera singers, in contrast to a

really developed talent----”

But this was not the way. Bellair finished the sentence vaguely, not

with the sharpness of the idea that had come to him. She was nervous

and irritable and tired. She was enduring him, much as one endures a

brother from the country, for whom allowances must be made; also there

was a deeper reason.

“Perhaps what I think of you,” he said, stirring to thrill her some way

if possible, “is really a fiery thing, Bessie. I think of you singing

great hordes of creatures into unity of idea that would lift them from

beasts into men. The world is so full of sorrow and dulness of seeing;

the world is in a cloud--I want you to sing the clouds away. If you

could wait--just wait, as one holding a sure and perfect gift--until

the real call comes to you, and then sing, knowing your part, not

in pleasure and amusement, but in life, in the stirring centres of

struggle and strife. If you would go forth singing that great song

of yours--from your soul! It would be like a voice from the East--to

bring the tatters of humanity together. I felt all this vaguely when I

first heard you--six months ago. I have thought of it nights and days

on the ocean--in times when we had to live on our thoughts, hold fast

to them or go mad, for we had two days’ water for ten, and two days’

food for ten. Then I remembered how I came into Brandt’s, torn that

night, not knowing what to do--dull-eyed and covered with wrongs. You

sang me free. For the minute you sang me out of all that. I could not

have freed myself perhaps--without that song. I know that there are

thousands of men like me to be freed----”

Bellair felt on sure ground now. This was his particular manner and

message--the finest and strangest thing about him--the fact that

had always appeared, making him different even from Fleury and the

woman,--the thought that he was average--and not more impressionable

than the multitudes. If they could be reached, they would make the big

turn that he had been shoved into.

“... Thousands just as I was that night, preyed upon by trade,

dull-witted with the ways of trade, the smug, the bleak, the poisonous

tricks of trade, born and bred--their real life softened and watered

and wasted away ... thousands who could turn into men at the right

song, the right word. I always thought of you, Bessie--as one of the

great helpers. If you can wait, the way will come. I will help you to

wait. I came back to New York to help you----”

She picked up his glass and smelled it, her eyes twinkling. “Splendid,”

she said, “but are you quite sure you haven’t a stick in this

ginger-ale?”

Bellair leaned back. He hadn’t touched _it_ yet. Perhaps something

would come, better than words. It was not straight-going--this work

that he had dreamed; always a shock in bringing down dreams from Sinai;

always something deadly in meeting the empirical. He smiled. “Just

ginger-ale, Bessie, but you are a stimulant. You are more beautiful

than before. Not quite so girlish, but there is something new that is

very intense to me----”

She leaned toward him now, very eager.

“I wondered what you would see. The difference was plain at once in

you.... Tell me what you see----”

“Just between the fold of the eye and the point of the chin----” he

answered.... (Queerly now he imagined himself talking on the shore to

the little Gleam; it gave him just the touch that helped.) “--a little

straightening of the oval, and the little puff at the mouth-corners

drawn out. Why, Bessie, it’s just the vanishing child. And you are

taller. I’m almost afraid to speak--to try to put it into words, how

pretty you are----”

She was elate and puzzled, too. “Where did you get anything like that?”

she asked. “It’s what made me remember before. Always when you get

through preaching--you pay for it----”

It was out before she thought--yet for once the exact unerring thing

that was in her mind.

He treasured it; saw that his appeal was certain this way; that he must

be of the world, and right glib to master her. The way of reality was

slow; he must never fail to pay for preaching.... They laughed, and

the weariness went from her eyes. The bloom of her health was at its

height. Now as Bellair watched her, thinking of the world-ways, she

suddenly swept home to him--the old forbidden adventure of her, the

meaning of money and nights, her homelessness, the city, the song, the

price she would pay if he demanded it.

The thing was upon him before he realised. It had all been the new

Bellair until now. His body had lain as if in a vault of wax, its

essential forces in suspension. Suddenly without warning, the wax

had melted away. He did not instantly give battle to the gust of

desire--met it eye-to-eye. Bellair felt his own will, and knew he

would use it presently. He was rather amazed at the power of the thing

as it struck him, and the nature of it, so utterly detached from the

redolence and effulgence he had known in the Stone House. This was

not the old Hunting Companion who had come with garlands; a minkish

aborigine, this, who had come empty-handed, whose hands were out to be

filled.

The meaning of all that Stackhouse had left in wallets and sea-girt

archipelagoes was in this sullen-eyed entity--in the _O_ formed of

thirsting lips. Bellair tried to check it before it came--the thought

that this was peculiarly a New York manifestation, one destined to be

Bessie Brealt’s familiar in future years.... He did not have to use his

will. He lost himself in thinking of her plight.

“... Please bring the coffee,” she was saying to the waiter, her hand

lifted, as if she would touch his sleeve, the familiarity of one who

had sung here many nights. “Yes, he will have coffee. He is merely away

somewhere.... Yes, we will have it smoked with cognac--but here--do it

here. I like to see it burn....”

“Very well, Miss Brealt----”

The lights had all come back to Bellair. He was miserable--the

adventure palled. There had been no lift, nor tumultuous carrying away.

The quick change chilled him. Her words one by one had chilled him....

At least, he had demanded a madness to-night. Bessie did not have the

wine of madness in her veins. This much had been accomplished. He could

not break training coldly.... And now he felt as if the day had drained

him to the heart, as if the day had come to an end, and he must rest.

He turned to her. “I found a little check-book for you to-day, but

you must go to the bank and give them your signature. It is made of

leather, small enough for your purse almost. The bank-book is with it.

You will find a little account started.... And now I will call a cab

for you----”

“But your coffee----” she said.

“Yes, we will have that----”

He had to get away for a moment. His heart was desolate with hunger....

The smell of the kitchen made him think of the galley of a ship....

* * * * *

“Oh, what can I do for you?” Bessie asked, when he returned.

“It’s what you can do for yourself that interests me----”

“But I must go with the _Follies_--if I win. It’s the career--the

beginning!”

“If you must.”

“And when shall I see you?”

“Here to-morrow night--if you will.”

“Yes,” she said eagerly.

4

On the way to Lot & Company’s the next morning Bellair smiled at the

sense of personal injustice which had returned to him. He held fast to

a sort of philosophical calm, but permitted his energy to be excited by

a peculiar blending of contempt and desire to wring the truth from Lot

& Company at any price.

Suddenly he stopped. Lot & Company was merely something to master. Lot

& Company was but an organised bit of the world which he had met; all

men had their own organisations to face, to comprehend the vileness

and illusion of, and then to get underfoot, neck and other vitals....

Bessie had helped him. There was something in that.... He felt the

fighting readiness within him, and an added warning not to raise his

voice. He must deal with Lot & Company on the straight low plane of

what-was-wanted. That was the single level of the firm’s understanding.

Davy Acton smiled at him shyly--the first face after the pale

telephone-miss at the door. Davy was more at home in these halls and

floors than in the hotel dining-room. Bellair heard the jovial voice

of Mr. Rawter behind his partition. From the distance, Broadwell

glanced up and waved at him. Mr. Sproxley’s black eyes were fixed in

his direction from behind the grating of his cage. Mr. Sproxley came

forward, greeted him and returned. Bellair had asked to see the elder

Mr. Wetherbee, but it appeared that Mr. Seth was not in.

“I’ll speak with Mr. Nathan Lot,” said Bellair.

“Mr. Lot is occupied.”

“Mr. Jabez then.”

Mr. Jabez came forth presently.... He had been married in the interval,

according to Broadwell; the fact had touched the wide, limp mouth. A

very rich girl had joined pastures with Jabez; so that this coming

forward was one of the richest young men in New York, representing

the fortune of his mother which the dreaming Nathan had put into

works; representing the fortune he had recently wedded with or without

dreaming, and also the Lot & Company millions. Mr. Jabez also stood

for the modern note of the firm; he was designed to bring the old and

prosperous conservatism an additional new and up-to-the-hour force of

suction.... Mr. Jabez smiled.

“Hello, Bellair,” he said with a careless regard,--doubtless part of

the modern method, the laxity of new America which knows no caste. The

thought had formed about him something to this effect: “What’s the use

of me carrying it--you will not be able to forget you are talking to

forty millions?”

“Come in,” he added and Bellair followed.

Mr. Nathan was beyond the partition. The atmosphere of the dreamer had

looped over into the son’s sanctum.... Bellair began at the point of

his handing the letter, addressed to Mr. Nathan, to the station-porter

at the last moment from the platform of the Savannah Pullman.

“But mails don’t miscarry,” said Mr. Jabez, impatiently.

“That’s a fact. Perhaps mine wasn’t mailed. Of course,” he added

quietly, “you didn’t require that letter. You had my note of release in

the safe. They say at the Trust company that you collected the thousand

dollars and interest within four days after I left.”

“Suppose every employé who has a deposit of faith--should tie us up

that way?”

“It would be well to find out what he has done--before calling in the

police.”

“What do you want, Bellair?”

Mr. Jabez could hold his temper, when its display was an inconvenience.

“I want a paper signed by you for Lot & Company, stating that you were

in error when you charged me with absconding with company funds; that

my accounts were afterward found to be entirely correct.”

Jabez Lot surveyed him. There was some change which he did not

understand. The paper asked for, was a mere matter of dictation, a

thing that might be forced from the firm. He believed, however, that

Bellair wanted something else.

“I think the wisest plan for us will be to turn your case over to our

attorney,” he said.

“Why?” Bellair asked. The full episode of the Nubian File and Mr.

Prentidd passed through his mind.

“You see these affairs are adjusted better out of the office----”

“Why?”

“As a matter of fact, Bellair,” Mr. Jabez said patiently, “Lot &

Company is eager to make amends for its mistake----”

There was a slow, quiet cough, the most natural and thoughtless sort of

cough from the inner office. Bellair wondered if the modern method of

Mr. Jabez was wearing a bit upon the dreamer, or if he were really lost

in some inscrutable departure of mind.

“That would seem natural,” said he. “It would seem the direct, clear

way. I am not boisterous; I threaten nothing.”

Bellair knew that this reminder of the Prentidd episode did not

help his cause, but he wished nothing to be lost from the force he

possessed. At the same time, he knew that it was the policy of Lot &

Company to give nothing unforced. He was interested.

“We hadn’t thought of it, of course,” the future head now said, “but I

have no doubt that Lot & Company has something as good for you as your

old place, if you----”

“But I do not want a position,” said Bellair.

“What is it you want--again?”

“I want a paper, saying that I stole nothing, that Lot & Company was in

error in charging me with taking funds----”

“A sort of explanation of our course?”

“Not exactly--a statement of your course, and that you incriminated me

unjustly----” Bellair spoke with slow clearness.

“I really believe you had better see Mr. Jackson.”

“Why?”

“Because this is most unusual----”

Another cough was heard.

“Unusual--to straighten out a wrong that has hurt a man?”

“The way you ask it. Lot & Company is willing to take you back----”

“But I do not want to come back. You say that Lot & Company is eager to

make amends----”

Davy Acton came in, saying that Mr. Jabez was called to the advertising

department for a moment.... To Bellair this was like an interruption

of an interesting story, but he did not wait long. The scene was merely

shifted. He was in Mr. Nathan’s room. Mr. Rawter joined them and Mr.

Jabez returned directly. The latter reopened the conversation by

relating justly and patiently what Bellair asked.

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t have such a paper,” said Mr. Nathan,

brushing his fingers through his hair, as if to force his thoughts

down. He was not a whit older. The same identical dandruff was upon his

shoulders.

Mr. Rawter laughed jovially: “Don’t you see? That’s just it.

Individually, that is exactly the situation--but a big house--all its

ramifications affected--and who’s to be responsible for Lot & Company

as a whole?”

“It was Lot & Company that incriminated me,” said Bellair.

“I told Mr. Bellair----” Mr. Jabez began.

“Mr. Bellair had better come back to the House--that in itself is our

acknowledgement,” interrupted his father. Evidently the son was not yet

finished in training.

Bellair turned to Mr. Jabez, who explained the point of Bellair’s

unwillingness to return. There was silence at this, as if it were

entirely incomprehensible.

“Have you taken a position elsewhere in New York?” Mr. Nathan asked.

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“On that--I cannot be sure.”

Mr. Rawter now arose and came forward, placing his arm across Bellair’s

shoulder. The latter winced, but not physically. For an instant it had

fired and fogged him. “Bellair, my boy, on the face of it--this that

you ask would seem very simple,” he began. “I would ask it in your

case, but think of us. By misunderstanding, we let out the fact that

you had gone with funds not your own.... You were away. We looked for

you everywhere before this happened----”

“You let it out,” said Bellair. “It is very simple. Call it in

again----”

“It isn’t so simple.”

“I might come back to work for you,” Bellair added, “and those who

knew would say, ‘He hadn’t anything. Instead of locking him up, Lot &

Company took him back to work out what he had taken----’”

“I might give you a personal letter, saying I was very sorry, that in

the bewilderment of the moment, we jumped at the conclusion that you

were identified with the missing funds----”

“But the funds were not missing. You could not look into the vault-box

without finding my letter.”

“Our funds were not all in that box, Bellair.”

“They would know by next morning, if I had broken into your bank----”

Mr. Nathan appeared to be gone from them, his eyes softened with

visions.

“Write him the letter, Mr. Rawter----” suggested Mr. Jabez.

It struck Bellair like a hated odour--this tool for unclean work,

Rawter’s part in the establishment. He did not hasten now, though he

knew they were waiting for his answer. The head of the sales resumed:

“Yes, I will do this gladly--in fact, it would relieve my mind to do

this in the most cordial terms, but I would be interested first in

learning just what disposition of it was intended----”

“It would be mine,” said Bellair. “Of course, I should use it as I

thought fit.”

“I was thinking--in adjusting the tone of the letter, the wording, you

know----”

“Adjust the tone--the wording--to the facts--that would seem best. But

I would not accept such a letter from you personally. It would have to

be written for Lot & Company----”

Mr. Nathan now showed signs of coming back.

“Let us have a day to think it over, Bellair,” he said.

“In that case--my part is finished. I have asked to be lifted out of

a shameful position. You acknowledge that I have this lift coming.”

It was at this point that an inspiration arrived. “All that there is

left, naturally and equitably, is for you to do your part. A man’s name

is of more importance than a firm’s name, and in any event, no man nor

firm was ever hurt by squaring a crooked action.”

Mr. Nathan appeared to welcome the slight heat of this remark. It

brought the moment nearer in which hands might be washed and the

attorney summoned. But Bellair was not heated, Mr. Rawter fumed a

little.

“What do you mean by a man’s name being more important than a firm’s

name?” he demanded.

“A firm shares its responsibility. A man shoulders it alone.”

“And what do you mean by your part being finished?”

“I have worked in this office five years,” Bellair answered. “I never

saw nor heard of a man in my position, or in a similar position of

asking something, who profited by allowing delay. I will put the matter

out of mind if the letter is not furnished to-day. Of course, I expect

to get it. In fact, I have the pressure to force the issue--although it

seems trivial for me to mention it.”

Bellair had thought of Mr. Prentidd again. There was doubtless a case

of some kind pending on the matter of the Nubian File. Mr. Prentidd was

no man to stop. It would not have been settled within six months. Lot

& Company knew of his knowledge of this affair. Bellair plunged:

“In fact, there is a case against Lot & Company, to which I might add

a singular weight of testimony. As for my own, it would go to the same

counsel----”

Mr. Nathan ruffled his hair and the silent fall of grey white dust

followed. Bellair felt pent. After so long a time at sea, it was hard

for him to breathe in this place. He wearied now of the game, although

Mr. Nathan was palpably down, present in the material plane.

“Bellair,” said he, turning about in his chair, “the added pressure

of a discredited employé doesn’t count for much as testimony in any

case----”

“I realised at once the reason why you discredited me--to cripple for

the time being any knowledge I might care to use against you. However,

you have all granted that I am not discredited. The only item mentioned

in the charge was the item covered by the Trust company. You would have

to work with Mr. Sproxley to show a deficit in the books having to do

with my departure----”

“Bellair,” said Mr. Nathan, “a poor man can never win a suit against a

strongly backed firm----”

“That is unfortunately true,” said Bellair, “but I am not poor. I came

into an inheritance during the past six months. The fact is, I think

I could spend as much money to buy justice as Lot & Company would be

willing to spend to prevent it.”

“Bellair,” said Mr. Nathan, “you will find it impossible to move the

press in your behalf against the firm of Lot & Company, with our

advertising contracts among the valuable ones in the city lists----”

Knowledge now counted. “You do not advertise in the _Record_,” he

declared. “I have often heard from the advertising department that

there is a rupture between this office and that paper, dating over a

quarter of a century----”

Mr. Nathan touched a button for his stenographer. She lit upon the

little chair beside him like a winged seed.

* * * * *

“To all Parties interested: Mr. Bellair left our employ suddenly and

without furnishing customary warning,” the president dictated. “Finding

a certain explanation in the vault, instead of a sum slightly over one

thousand dollars belonging to this firm, we hastily assumed that his

sudden departure was energised by the usual conditions. In fact, such

a suspicion was stated to the press by this firm. We have since found

Mr. Bellair’s accounts to be correct in every detail, and we furnish

this letter to express in part our concern for Mr. Bellair’s character

which our hasty conclusion impinged upon. Mr. Bellair left a letter

of explanation in the vault, but his action in leaving abruptly and

without explanation forced us on the spur of the moment to discredit

it. However, the statement of his letter proved true, and the money

taken by Mr. Bellair was the exact amount of his surety bond, with

stipulated interest, and his salary to the hour of departure.”

* * * * *

“You have heard it?” Mr. Nathan inquired.

“Yes, it will do,” said Bellair.

The president nodded to his stenographer, who whisked out. “It will

be ready in a moment,” he said. “I will sign it for Lot & Company....

Bellair, are you sure you don’t want your old desk back?”

“Quite sure,” said Bellair.

Mr. Jabez and Mr. Rawter had departed. Bellair glanced at his watch.

It was a moment past the hour of Mr. Broadwell’s leaving for luncheon.

The advertising-man, of course, was aware of his presence in the lower

office. Bellair stepped out, however, to make sure of his appointment.

Broadwell, hat in hand, was engaged in talk with Mr. Jabez. Bellair

returned to the office of the president to wait for the stenographer.

Not more than two minutes later, Davy Acton came in with this message:

“Mighty sorry to call luncheon off. Am hurrying to catch a train for

Philadelphia for the rest of the day. Will see you later.--Broadwell.”

... Bellair folded this thoughtfully. The stenographer brought the

letter with copy. The front draft was approved for signature, and

Bellair’s morning work accomplished.

In the hall he met Davy Acton, and followed a quick impulse.

“Davy, lad, how soon will you be ready to go out to lunch?”

“In about three minutes----”

“I’ll wait for you. I’m going your way.”

Davy’s customary exit was the side-door. Bellair waited there

accordingly. The girls were coming down the iron stairway from the

bindery. He stepped back in the shadow to let them pass. There were

figures and faces that clutched at his throat.... And then a story

began, half way up the first flight, and came nearer and nearer, the

voice carrying easily to one who listened with emotion:

“Did you know that Mr. Bellair was back?... Bellair, the absconding

clerk--Mr. Sproxley’s assistant. Lot & Company has refused to

prosecute. He will not be arrested.... And think of his nerve--asking

his old position back----”

... They saw merely the back of a man, if they saw him at all. The talk

was not interrupted on the way to the street and beyond.... Bellair

came up with a start to find the boy at his side.

5

For a square or two, Davy Acton walking beside him, Bellair did not

speak. He had needed that last bit. The morning would have blurred his

hard-earned knowledge of Lot & Company and the world, without that

moment under the iron stairs. It was hard to take, but a man mustn’t

forget such realities as this. He loses his grip on the world when he

forgets. Happy to lose, of course, but the point of his effectiveness

is gone when these rock-bottom actualities are forgotten.... He looked

down, Davy was hopping every third step to keep up. Bellair had

quickened his pace to put the stench of the swamp farther behind him,

but it was still in his nostrils.... He laughed.

“I was thinking, Davy, and the thoughts were like spurs. We’re in no

hurry, really.”

He would not take the boy to a stately and formal dining-room for him

to be embarrassed. Bellair felt that he had something very precious

along; a far graver solution than luncheon with Broadwell. They sat

down at a little table in the corner of one of the less crowded

restaurants. As they waited, Bellair said, drawing out the paper he had

received from the dreaming Mr. Nathan:

“I want you to see this first. In fact, I was particularly concerned

about getting it, just to show you. Davy, it hit me like a rock--the

way you looked at me in the hotel yesterday. I couldn’t have that.

We’ve been too good friends----”

Davy read the letter carefully, deep responsibility upon his

understanding.

“Did you have trouble getting it?” he asked finally.

“It took the forenoon, Davy. I found that they had not taken the

trouble to tell my old friends on the different floors that I was not a

thief. What was worse for me, they let you think so----”

“I wouldn’t believe it at first,” said Davy.

“I’m glad of that.”

“I said to Mr. Broadwell, that they’d find out differently and be

sorry. They didn’t let us know when they found out----”

“That’s why it was important for me to come back----”

“But why did you go away like that?”

The boy’s mind dwelt in the fine sense of being treated as an equal.

Bellair felt called upon to be very explicit and fair:

“I came to the time when I couldn’t live with myself any longer--and

stay in the cage with Mr. Sproxley. I saw a ship in the harbour the

Sunday before--a sailing-ship,” he began, and then made a picture of

it; also of his own hopelessness and what the years would mean, not

touching specific dishonesties, but suggesting the atmosphere which

had suddenly become poisonous to him. He did not forget that Davy had

no other place, that he must keep a certain sense of loyalty, or be

destroyed in such conditions.

“It would have taken two weeks to get clear in the ordinary way,” he

added. “My decision came the day of the squabble with Mr. Prentidd in

the office. I had to leave right then--was off for Savannah that very

night----”

“And you found the ship there?” Davy asked eagerly.

“I beat her there a day and a half. Then we sailed for South America. I

want to tell you the whole story. This is not the place. Could you come

up in my room after supper to-night?”

“I think my mother will let me come----”

“Tell me about your mother, Davy. Is she well? I remember I meant to

meet her some time.”

“Yes--just the same. You know she works a little, too----”

“Where?” Bellair asked absently.

Davy swallowed, and before he spoke, the man saw with a queer thrill

that the boy hadn’t yet learned to lie.

“Well, she goes out three days a week--to do the laundry work--for

people who have had her a long time.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I’m hoping to get where she won’t have to.”

“Of course.”

The dinner was brought. Bellair tried to make up for the place--in

quantity. Neither spoke for the present. The man was hungry, too.

“I’m glad you told me that,” he said after a time, “glad you told me

just that way.”

Davy applied himself further. Manifestly here was a point that he need

not follow.

“Davy, you’ll come through. You’re starting in the right hard way--the

old-fashioned way. It won’t be so slow as you think----” He was

reminded now of what Fleury had said about the little Gleam that first

night in the open boat.

“Slow but sure at Lot & Company’s--if a fellow does his part and works

hard----”

Davy was being brought up in the usual way.

Bellair said: “I’m coming over to see you at your house some evening

soon--if I may.”

“Sure.... It isn’t much of a house.”

“I’m not so certain about that. Anyway, I want to come. We’ll talk

about it again this evening. You ask your mother when she’ll let me----”

“You might come to-night---instead of me coming to the hotel----”

“No, I want to talk with you alone.”

Davy looked relieved.... He was on his way presently, and the town

appeared better to Bellair that afternoon. At five he was in the

hotel-lobby when a hand plucked his sleeve and he looked down into the

whitest, most terrified face, he had ever seen.

“I’m fired!” was the intelligence that came up from it, and there was

reproach, too.

“Come on upstairs, but first take it from me that you’ll be glad of it,

in ten minutes----”

Bellair had to furnish a swift, heroic antidote for that agony.

“You haven’t been home, of course?” the man asked in the elevator.

“No.”

“Could we send a messenger to your mother--so she wouldn’t worry, and

you wouldn’t have to go home until after we talk?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I’ll see to that at once.”

Davy wrote with trembling hands. The messenger was asked to bring an

answer from Mrs. Acton.

“Now tell me,” said Bellair.

“Old Mr. Seth was down when I got back. You know he only comes down for

an hour or two now in the middle of the day. He called me to him, and

asked where I had been to lunch. I said with you. That was all, until

four o’clock, when Mr. Eben came to me and asked if you had shown me

anything--a letter from Lot & Company, for instance. I said yes. He

went away, and at half-past four, he called me again, handed me my

weekly envelope, saying that they would not need me any longer. I came

right here. It seemed, I couldn’t go home----”

“Davy, lad, I’m glad I’m not broke, but if I were and couldn’t do a

thing to make up--it would be a lucky day for you.”

Bellair ordered supper served in the room. They were free and alone.

Faith returned to the boy, enough for the hour. Davy was consulted

carefully upon the details of the order, a subtle suggestion from

Bellair from time to time. Something of the long dinners on the _Jade_

had come to his mind in this rôle. He had learned much about food that

voyage, the profundity and emptiness of the subject. Bellair told his

story, making it very clear to Davy--this at first:

“The office was doing to me just what it would do to you, Davy. It

was breaking me down. The floors of Lot & Company are filled with

heart-broken men. They do not know it well; some of them could

never know, but there are secrets in the breasts of men there, that

you wouldn’t dream of. It is so all over New York. Trade makes it

so--offices, the entire city, crowded with heart-broken men.... They

say first, ‘Why, every one is out for himself and the dollar--why

not I?’ You and I were taught so in our little schooling. Then Lot

& Company taught us. They are old masters--generations of teachers.

Cramped and bleak, but loyal to the one verb--_get_. In all the Lot

family, Davy, there is not a true life principle such as you brought

to the office in the beginning. But if Lot & Company were unique--they

would be an interesting study. The city is crowded with such

firms--heart-breakers of men, the slow, daily, terrible grind; every

movement, every expression, a lie--until to those inside, the lie is

reality--and the truth a forbidden and terrible stranger. Every man has

his Lot & Company.

“Davy, I breathed a bit of open that Sunday--so that I could see, but

the next morning it closed about me again. It was Mr. Prentidd who

helped me out. They stole from him and lied to him. Face to face, eye

to eye, old Seth Wetherbee, the Quaker, lied to him, taking hundreds

of dollars in the lie--millionaires taking hundreds of dollars from

a poor inventor. I had the book of the London transaction before me,

which showed the truth as they talked, and Mr. Sproxley came and took

the book from me, and shut it in the safe.... And then when I left,

they knew I had their secrets. You wondered why they called me a

thief, when I was not. It was plain, Davy, to spoil anything I might

say about their methods. Instantly they discredited me, because I was

one of six or seven in the office who knew that they were thieves and

liars. And why did they fire you to-day for lunching with me? Because

they were afraid of what I might have told you. And why did they

send Broadwell to Philadelphia when they knew he was to have lunch

with me? For fear of what I might tell Broadwell. Even now they will

not tell the different floors that I am exonerated.... But they are

afraid, Davy--that’s their hell. That is their life--fear and the lie.

Imagine men standing straight up to heaven--spines lifted from the

ground, but going back to the ground--who knows but their souls already

belly-down?--because they break the hearts of men, and live with fear

and the lie.”

He told of Fleury and Stackhouse and the Faraway Woman--of McArliss,

of striking the reef, and day by day in the open boat.... Davy’s eyes

bulged. The boy saw Stackhouse at one end and quiet manhood in the

other. He sat with Bellair, whom he could understand, in the point

of balance between these forces. Bellair told of the stars and the

child, and the distance from which they viewed the little things of

the world and the grand simplicity of God. He pictured the man Fleury

had become--the straight-seeing, the fearless, the ignited man, who

mastered the lie in his heart and the animal in his abdomen--the man

he, Bellair, wanted to be, and wanted Davy to be.... The _Formahaut_

came, with Spika agleam to the northward, and Fleury died--the picture

in his mind of a man, rising rather than falling.... Bellair told him

of the first moment he heard the real voice of Fleury, as he stood

on the tilted deck of the _Jade_ in the dark, while he went back for

water.... “I’ll hold a place for you!”

“A real man always says that, Davy. A real man will hold a place for

you. And I thought, as I saw Stackhouse die and remembered his life,

that he was the saddest and most terrible animal in human form. He

was a glutton and a coward, but mainly he broke his own heart and not

others. He was a slave to his stomach, but there was life, not creeping

death, in his mind. I saw the pictures that moved there, low, vivid

pictures, animal dreams, but he was not a destroyer of children or a

breaker of the hearts of men. Low Nature was loose in him, but it was

not a predatory instinct alone. Having enough, he could give. He could

give fifty thousand dollars and a wallet full of valuable papers for

a bottle of whiskey--but the Lots and the Wetherbees would have died

clutching their money. I learned Stackhouse, Davy--only to understand

that there is a depth below his. I think I should have taken you out

somehow--if they hadn’t let you go----”

Davy asked questions, and the story came better and better. The thing

that held him especially was the last days in the open boat.

“And did you really suffer less when you decided to make it a fast?”

“Yes, that was true in my case. Many have set out to fast ten days, and

done with as little as we did. Of course it was harrowing, because we

didn’t know when it would end; then the little baby was there, and the

mother.”

“And you think _he_ was really as happy as he said?”

“Davy, lad, Fleury was a prince. He would have given you his shirt. He

had himself going so strong _for us_--that the fire of happiness ran

through him. I’ll give you some books about that. It’s really a fact.

You can’t suffer pain, when you’ve got something really fine up your

sleeve for another. Perhaps you’ve felt it at Christmas----”

“You’re all out of yourself-like----”

“That’s it,” said the man.

More words would have stuck in his throat. Davy got it--got something

of it. Bellair had come to ask so little, that this seemed a great

deal.... He followed Davy down and into the street. It was still two

hours before he was due at the _Castle_.

“How long does it take to get to your house, Davy?”

“About twenty-five minutes. It’s ’way down town.”

“Suppose I should go home and meet your mother. I have the time----”

“Yes, come with me. She will be watching.”

They passed a delicatessen-store, ripe cherries in the window, and a

counter full of provisions that would have been far more thrilling had

they not dined so well.

“Do you suppose we might take home an armful of these things?” Bellair

asked.

Davy dissuaded weakly.... That clerk must have thought him mad, for

Bellair merely pointed to bottles and jars and baskets--until they were

both loaded. There was a kind of passion about it for the man. He hated

to stop; in fact did not, until it occurred to him that this was not

the last night of the world, and that Davy doubtless required many more

substantial matters, which would furnish a rapturous forenoon among the

stores--to-morrow forenoon....

They sat in an almost empty downtown subway train, their bundles about

them, the stops called by the guard. They both hunched a little, when

the stop nearest Lot & Company’s was called, but did not speak. Farther

and farther downtown--the last passengers leaving. It was the hour the

crowds move upward. Strange deep moments for Bellair--moments in which

this was more than Davy sitting beside him. This was Boy--Davy Acton

but the symbol of a great need.

6

A hurried walk to the east with their bundles to a quarter that Bellair

had not known before, past the great stretches of massive buildings

which the day had abandoned, to a low and older sort that carried on a

night-life of their own, where children cried, halls were narrow, and

the warmth became heaviness.... A plump little woman who had not lost

hope (she did not see the stranger at first because the boy filled her

eyes); a dark, second-floor hall, a little room with a lamp and a red

table-cloth; a door at either end, and opposite the door they entered,

one window.... How bewildered she was with the bundles, desiring to

prepare something for them right away. Indeed, it would have helped her

to be active in their behalf.... Bellair was smiling.

Davy told part and Bellair part. Presently all was forgotten in the

presence of the calamity that had befallen. It was slow to change her

mind about Lot & Company. Davy had impressed upon her for two years

the lessons administered there. Not to be changed in a moment, this

estimate--that before all poverty, before all need, and above all hope,

a place at Lot & Company’s was a permanent place, “if a fellow did his

part”--that Lot & Company was an honest house. Davy told of the paper

Mr. Bellair had forced from them, and Bellair touched upon the life

he had led in those halls, just a little and with haste. To help him

to speak authoritatively, he added that he would help Davy to another

position.... Then he looked around, and glanced at his watch. There was

a small anteroom which they occupied.... Bellair had asked about the

other door. “An empty room,” Mrs. Acton told him.

Of course it was for rent. On the spur of the moment, he declared

he would take it, asked her to rent it for him, insisting on paying

in advance. He would come in the morning--have his things brought

later.... No, Davy was not to look for a position to-morrow. Davy must

devote himself to him to-morrow. He left them happily. The mother

called after him in hopeless excitement that he had left enough to rent

the room all summer.

He did not show the Lot & Company paper to Bessie; in fact, he never

showed it but once, and that was to Davy Acton immediately after it

was obtained. He had thought of taking it across the street to show

the landlady, but perhaps that would merely have added to her living

confusion. It had been most important for Davy, but to reopen the

subject with Bessie, his manner might have touched an “I-told-you-so”

indelicacy.... She was happy when he found her that night. Clothes

in quantity were already begun--the next ten forenoons at the

dressmakers’. She thanked him charmingly, studied him with a quizzical

expression that invariably haunted him afterward.

Bellair could never tell just what would do it, but occasionally

through an hour’s chat, he would say something, just enough above her

comprehension to challenge her. Once opened, her faculties were not

slow, but the life she had chosen, held her mind so consistently to its

common level that the habit was formed. Mainly when he spoke above her,

she ceased to listen, ignored him; but when something he said just hit

home, she praised him with animation, as one would a sudden gleam of

unexpected intelligence on the part of a child. It became one of his

most remarkable realisations that a man who has anything worth while to

say must come down to say it, just as certainly as he must go up to get

it.

The sense of adventure with her did not return this night, though she

had seemed to accept him differently from before; as if he belonged,

part of her impediment mainly, but at moments of surpassing value, like

a machine that one packs a day for a half-hour’s work it may do. His

money had purchased something.

Bellair sat in the dark of his room, feet on the window-sill, hat

still on, at two o’clock, his last night in the hotel where he never

had belonged. He was very tired and longed for sleep; and yet there

was a different longing for sleep than that which belonged to physical

weariness. It had to do with his hunger for the Faraway Woman. This

startled him. What was that refreshing mystery afterward? Did he go

to her in sleep--did she come? Why was it that the burden of parting

invariably increased through the long days? It had been so on the ship.

In the morning he could live; then the hours settled down, until it

seemed he must leap back to her; the ship’s ever increasing distance at

times literally twisting his faculties until he was dazed with pain.

He had not thought of this before. Why was it always when the pressure

increased and the ardour mounted--that he longed for sleep?... Nothing

came to his work-a-day brain from the nights. His dreams were of lesser

matters--and yet, something within pulled him to unconsciousness like

the rush of a tide. It gave him a sense of the vastness, a glimpse of

the inner beauty of life.

Far below in the side-street a heavy, slow-trotting horse clattered

by. The motors were more and more hushed, even the hell of Broadway

subdued. A different set of sounds came home to him, but he did not

interpret for the present; their activity playing upon deeps of their

own--a bridge swung open between them and his exterior thoughts....

Slowly all exterior matters slipped away--the mother and Davy and

Bessie. The bridge between the surface and the deeps swung to, and he

heard the sounds that had been thrilling his real being all the time as

he sat by the window--the liner whistles that crossed Manhattan from

the harbour, the deep-sea bayings which seemed to be calling him home.

7

Bellair must have rested well in a few hours, for he arose early,

feeling very fit in and out. For years the man he had seen in the

glass when he was alone, had aroused little or no curiosity; a sort

of customary forbearance rather. The fact is, he had not looked close

for years. This morning as he shaved, something new regarded him from

the face, still deeply dark from the open boat. He called it a glint,

but would have designated it as something that had to do with power in

another. It was fixed--something earned and delivered.

Perhaps it was something she had seen.

This animated him. It had come from Fleury and the fasting, but most of

all from contemplating her face and her nature. Was it the arousing of

his own latent will? Was it because he was lifted above Lot & Company?

What part of it had come from the anguish of separation? Truly a man

must build something if he manages to live against the quickened beat

of a hungry heart.

The face was very thin, too. He had felt that so often as he used the

morning knife, but he saw it now. Thin and dark, and the boy gone

altogether.... Bellair smiled. Lot & Company had tried to take the

boy. Had they not failed, the man would never have come, but something

craven in the place of the boy, something tied to its own death, its

soul shielded from the light--a shield of coin-metals.

He shuddered, less at the narrowness of his own escape, than at New

York whose business came up to him now through the open windows.... The

shaving had dragged. He was not accustomed to study his own face. The

very novelty of it had held him this time--and especially the thought

of what she might have seen there. Suddenly he wanted something big to

take back to her--a manhood of mind and an integrity of soul--something

to match that superb freedom she had wrung from the world. A thousand

times the different parts of her story had returned to his mind, always

filling him with awe and wonder. She had come like one with a task, and

set about it from a child, against all odds, putting all laws of men

beneath--as if the task had been arranged before she came. He knew that

the essence of this freedom was in the hearts of women everywhere, but

she had made it manifest, dared all suffering for it. And yet with all

the struggle behind her, the gentleness which he had come to know in

her nature was one of the great revelations. It gave him a vision of

the potential beauty of humanity; it made him understand that one must

be powerful before one can be gentle; that one must master one’s self

before one dare be free. All that he had was far too little to bring

home to her. This morning he felt that nothing short of the impossible

was worth going after.

A little later as he was leaving the room, the telephone rang. The

operator said that a gentleman wanted to see him. On the lower floor,

Bellair glanced into the eyes of a young man who wanted something;

“glanced _into_” is somewhat inaccurate; rather his eyes glanced

from the other’s, and took away a peculiar, indescribable interest.

It was the look of a colt he had seen, a glitter of wildness and

irresponsibility in a face that was handsome but not at its best.

Bellair had seen something of the expression in the faces of young men

who had been fathered too much; those who had not met the masterful

influence of denial, and had been allowed to lean too long. The face

had everything to charm and to express beauty and reality with, but the

inner lines of it were not formed; the judgments lacking, the personal

needs too imperious. He had made the most of well-worn clothing, but

appeared to feel keenly the poorness of it.

“I came in here yesterday,” he said hastily. “It all happened because

the ledger was turned back. I glanced at it, as one will, and standing

out from the page was ‘Auckland, N. Z.’ It was as if written in

different colour to me. I followed the line back to the name--and tried

to see you yesterday afternoon and last night. You didn’t come in----”

“You come from Auckland?” Bellair asked.

“Yes----”

“How long?”

“It’s more than a year.... Small thing to meet a stranger on, but it

was all I had. Auckland is so far and so different--that when I saw

it--it seemed there must be a chance----”

“Of course. I know how it is,” said Bellair. “Do you want to get back?”

“That isn’t it, exactly, though I haven’t anything here----”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“N-no.”

“Come in with me and we’ll talk. I have a half-hour to spare.”

Bellair heard his voice and wondered at the coldness of it. He

remembered afterward the covered billiard-tables at the far end of

the hall and the dimness of the hall’s length, as he led the way. His

own custom was a pot of coffee and a bit of toast, but the other’s

possible need of food had a singular authority over him, so he made out

that this was one of the main feeding features of his day.... But the

other was intent upon certain things beside food. He had been unlucky.

Everything that he had tried in the year of New York had failed him

somehow--little ventures, positions lost--and always some one was to

blame, not this one who spoke and had suffered so. Bellair hearkened

for one note that would confine itself to the unfinished mouth and

the unstable character; one note that would suggest the possibility

of a clue that the series of failures lay in his own shortcomings of

strength and quality, but the boy had not this suggestion in his heart.

“Are you married?” Bellair asked.

“No.”

There was an instant’s lull, and then was turned off another story of

misfortune:

“... I didn’t want to marry her. I got her in trouble down in New

Zealand. Her father wanted me to marry her--was willing to pay for

it--but a fellow can’t take a chance like that. We came up together

with the kid to New York, but everything broke bad for me----”

The voice went on, but Bellair lost his face. There was a

greenish-yellow light between their faces, at least, for Bellair’s

eyes, and the floor seemed shaken with heavy machinery. Bellair

knew the burn of hate, and the thirst to kill--and then he was all

uncentred, like a man badly wounded. He arose.

“... The fact is, I don’t think she was quite _right_. None of them

are----”

“I won’t be able to hear any more of that just now,” Bellair said

slowly. “I’m leaving this hotel to-day for other quarters. But

to-morrow morning at ten, I shall be here and listen to what you want.

Perhaps I can set you straight a bit--for the present, anyway. And

this--is so you won’t miss any meals in the meantime----”

Bellair handed him money.

“Please excuse me,” he added. “And finish your breakfast----”

He called the waiter and signed the card. Then he turned as if to look

around the room. He located the door by which they had entered, drew

his hands strangely across his eyes. Effusive gratefulness was seeking

his ears from the young man in the chair. Bellair lifted his hand as if

to cut off the voice, and then started for the door, his step hastening.

8

It was truly a tenement quarter in which Davy and his mother lived. The

fact awed Bellair somewhat. Had he been a cripple in a wheeled-chair,

confined to one side of one block, he could have found a life’s

work.... Little faces that choked him everywhere. One might toss coins

at their feet, but the futility of that was like a cry to God.

Davy’s mother was making his room ready. By some chance it faced the

east; between ten and noon, there was sunlight. Forty years ago it had

been the kitchen of a second-floor apartment, doubtless respectable.

Only the scars of the kitchen fixtures remained, like organs gone back

to a rudiment in swift involution. Water now was to be had in but one

place on each floor--in the hall, and the natives came there with their

pitchers and cans as tropical villagers, morning and evening to the

well.

Mrs. Acton had spared a bit of carpet, which looked as if it had been

scrubbed; and just below the window the tip of a heaven-tree waved. It

was thin as his single bed, but even that growth seemed miraculously

attained, as if the seed must have held all the nourishment. Bellair

stared down through shadows and litter, and could discern no more than

a crack in the stone pavement, from which this leafy creature had come

to him. Quite as miraculously it was, with the myriad children in the

streets and halls. Certainly this was a place to keep tender. Davy had

gone forth on an errand.

“What was he interested in especially when he was little?” Bellair

asked.

“Boats--boats,” said the mother.

It struck the man queerly that he had not noted this. Davy had devoured

his little list of sea stories, and had listened as no one else to the

open boat narrative, but the man fancied it just the love of adventure.

Bellair’s mother might have said the same thing.

“Did he draw them, you mean?” he asked.

“Yes, and played with them. His father was a seaman, Mr. Bellair.”

Bellair’s father had not been a seaman, but there was little to that.

They were one in the initial proclivity. Perhaps if the truth were

shaken down, there was something in this fact that had to do with their

relation.

“Could I have breakfast and supper here with you?” he asked suddenly.

The woman looked startled. “You see, I am away three days a week.”

It was Bellair’s idea to make this impossible, so he insisted:

“My wants are simple. I might not be here always to supper--but, of

course, I should want to pay for it. It would be pleasant--we three

together--and no matter to me if supper were a bit late. You see, Mrs.

Acton, now that I’ve begun, I insist on having a home. I lived in one

room for five years, and that sort of thing is ended. A hotel is no

better.”

Davy returned and Bellair took him forth at once, impatient to continue

the adventure of the purchases, begun the night before. Hours passed.

Once Davy looked up to him in a mixture of awe and joy:

“Why are you buying so many things for us, Mr. Bellair?”

“Sit down,” the man answered.

They were in a retail clothier’s. The salesman drew back.

“Davy,” said Bellair, “it’s the most natural thing. First I have the

money and you have the needs. Second, we are friends----”

Bellair had felt many things hammering for utterance, but when he had

come thus far, he found that the whole ground was covered.... The boy

hurried home, but Bellair was not ready. With all his affection for

the lad, he wanted to be alone. He had held himself to Davy’s needs

for hours; but through it all, the sentences--so brief and thoughtless

across the breakfast table--recurred smitingly. They hurt everything in

him and in an incredible fashion. He marvelled that he had been able

to reply quietly. His face burned now, and he thought of the Faraway

Woman--how gentle she had been, blaming nothing, holding no sense of

being wronged. It was that which helped him now, though his heart was

hot and aching.... One must have compassion for the world--one whose

home is the house of such a woman.

“It must not hurt the Gleam,” he said half-aloud. This was the burden

of all his effort. “The Gleam is hers. I must not let the thought of

this touch the Gleam--not even in my mind.”

The young man was stranded in New York. They met as arranged the

next morning. Many difficulties were related, and the perversities

of outside influences and the actions of others. The great regret

was that at a certain time when he _had_ the money more than a year

ago, the young man had delayed for a day to purchase a certain little

tobacconist’s shop on Seventh avenue. A friend of his had advised him

against it, and plucked the fruit himself. This gave Bellair an idea.

In the next ten days, everything seemed waiting for the manager of

the _Follies_ to decide the case of Bessie Brealt. Davy was permitted

to look for a new job, but Bellair made light of his unsuccess....

He did not look up Broadwell again, understanding clearly that the

advertising-man would endanger his position in calling on him. Bellair

was not ready to be responsible for such a loss to Broadwell. Employés

of Lot & Company did not change easily.... He was frequently, but never

long with Bessie during these days. There were moments of disturbing

sweetness, and moments that he struggled quickly to forget, as Nature

sets about hastily to cover unseemly matters upon the ground.

Now that the great event of her life had come, Bessie required much

sleep, and cared for her beauty as never before. She already lived, for

the most part, in the actual substance of victory, as only the young

dare to do; yet she lost none of her zeal in preparation.... Bellair

held to the original idea, though the means was not yet articulate. He

was sensitive enough to realise that a man may be impertinent, even

when trying to help another.

The tremendous discovery in this interval was that the open boat events

which had proved so salutary and constructive in his own case, did not

appear to have a comparable effect upon others when he related them. He

began to believe that he had not authority, and that he must somehow

try to gain authority by making good with men. He had his story to

tell. He had seen the spirit and the flesh--beast and saint--watched

them die. All life and hope and meaning were caught and held, as he saw

it, between the manner of the deaths of two men. This experience had

changed him--if not for the better--then he was insane.

It was hard for him to grasp, that the thing which had changed him

could not change others--even Bessie. Yet those who listened, except

Davy and his mother, appeared to think that he was making much of an

adventure for personal reasons. He tried to write his story, but felt

the bones of his skull as never before. He began, “I am a simple man,”

but deep guile might be construed to that.... “I want nothing,” he

wrote, “but to make you see the half that I saw in the open boat,” and

he heard the world replying in his consciousness, “The open boat is on

this man Bellair’s nerves. It’s his mania. The sun or the thirst _did_

touch him a bit.”...

He became afraid to talk much even with Bessie, and New York boomed

by, leaving him out--out.... He tried to lift the signs of misery on

the way to the home of Davy’s mother, and in the surrounding halls,

but the extent and terror of it dismayed him; and remarkably enough,

always this same answer came: that he must get himself and the South

Sea business in hand before a true beginning could be made here....

It wasn’t on Seventh avenue that he found a cigar store to suit his

purpose in this interval, but the promise was certainly as good as

the old one. He put the New Zealand young man in charge, on a basis

designed to challenge any one’s quality; and having done this in a

businesslike fashion, Bellair made haste to escape. The sense was cool

and abiding in his mind that in this case, as in Lot & Company’s, the

circle was complete. Still he retained the suspicion that the young man

did not believe him sane.

He followed the singer when she permitted, to dressmakers, rehearsals,

quartette performances and meals; found other men following singers

similarly, in all their byways of routine; he disliked them, disliked

himself.

He had not told her of his fortune, because he knew in his heart it

would change everything. He helped in many small ways, and allowed her

to believe what she chose. She had never identified him with large

things, did not think the present arrangement could last, and made as

much as possible of the convenience. They were together on the night

before her try-out, though as usual it was but a matter of moments.

Bellair used most of them in silence. The tension of hurry always

stopped his throat. He longed for one full day with her, a ramble

without the clock; yet what would he do with it--he, who dared not go

to the water-front alone--to whom the night whistling of steamers in

the harbour was like the call of the child of his heart?

“You are at your best,” he said. “Your voice was never sweeter than

to-night. You must go now and sleep. To-morrow, of course, you will

win, and when may I come?”

Her face clouded. Perhaps because he said the opposite, the thought of

possible defeat came now with a clearness which had not before appealed

to her unpracticed imagination.

“You may come to my room at twelve--no, at one. I shall go there at

once after the trial--and you shall be first.”

It pleased him, and since she did not seem inclined to leave just

then, Bellair found himself talking of the future. Perhaps he did not

entirely cover his zeal to change a little her full-hearted giving of

self to the foam. Bessie bore it. He had not spoken of the open boat,

but something he said was related to it in her mind.

“To-morrow will settle everything,” she declared.... “And I don’t like

that other woman on the ship. She isn’t human. You think it amazing

because she didn’t cry and scream. That isn’t everything.... She’d be

lost and unheard of here in New York.”

“Yes, that is probably true.”

“It’s all right for people who don’t write or paint or sing--to talk

about real life and what’s right work in the world, but artists see it

differently. Anyway, it’s the only job we’ve got.”

Bellair never forgot that, or rather what she had meant to say.

“Singing is what drew me to you, Bessie. What I object to is what the

world tries to do with its singers, and that so many singers fall for

it.”

“The world lets you more or less alone--until you make good. Plenty of

time after that to answer back.”

She yawned. It was as near reality as they had gotten, and Bellair, who

asked so little, had a glimpse again of the loveliness he had first

taken to sea--even to the kiss at the last. She also granted him this:

“You’ve been good to me. I couldn’t have done without you----”

He lay awake long. The house in which he lived was very silent, and it

pressed so close to the sea.

9

She was only partly dressed when he came early the next afternoon, but

was not long in letting him in. Before any words, he knew that she had

won. A man often has to readjust hastily after the night before. It was

so with Bellair now. Her eyes were bright with emotions, but a certain

hardness was shining there. It was an effort for her to think of him

and be kind. He would have seen it all in another’s story.

His glance kept turning to her bare arm, upon which a hideous

vaccination-scar was revealed. _They_ had not thought of her singing

in those days.... She had never spoken of her house or her people. It

was enough that those days were finished. Bellair could understand

that. Her victory was all through her now, satisfying, completing her.

She did not love money for its own sake or she would have treated him

differently. All her surplus energy, even her passion, was turned to

this open passage of her career. Having that, previous props could be

kicked away; at least, Bellair felt this.

“Yes, it’s all done. A month of solid rehearsal--then the road. I take

the second part, but I hope to come back in the first----”

“You were at your best at the trial?”

“After the first moment or two.... And no more Brandt’s or _Castle_--no

more with the other three--God, how sick I am of them--and of this

room!”

“Will you lunch with me?”

“Yes--I have until three.”

It was shortly after one. She talked with animation about her work,

her eyes held to a glistening future. She finished her dressing

leisurely, with loving touches, abandoning herself completely to

the mirror as an old actress might, having conceded the essential

importance of attractions. She studied her face and figure as if she

were the maid to them. Bessie dressed for the world, not for herself,

certainly not for Bellair. Without, in the world--streets, restaurants,

theatres--there existed an abstraction which must be satisfied. She had

not yet entered upon that perilous adventure of dressing for the eyes

of one man. She did not think of Bellair as she lifted her arms to her

hair. On no other morning could she have been so far from the sense of

him in her room. Empires have fallen because a woman has lifted her

naked arms to her hair with a man in the room.

An older woman would have rewarded him for being there; an older woman

never would have put on her hat for the street without remembering her

humanity. There was something in Bessie that reserved the kiss for the

last. Possibly after the last song of the day, a kiss remained. She put

on the flowers he brought; even that did not remind her, nor the dress

he had bought for her--asking him if he approved, not that she cared,

but because she was turning before the glass with the thing upon her

body and mind. She would have asked a child the same.

They went to Beathe’s for luncheon, which was also Bessie’s breakfast.

There, it may have been that she was ready to forget herself, knowing

it would keep for a little. In any event, she seemed to see Bellair

as he ordered for her, as if recalling that he had made many things

move easily of late, and that it was pleasant to have these matters,

even luncheons, conducted by another. Thinking of him, the voyage was

instantly associated:

“I said last night that I didn’t like that woman,” she began. “I didn’t

mean just that, of course. But a woman can see another woman better

than a man. There are women who keep their mouths shut and get great

reputations for being wise and all that. They never associate with

women. You’ll always find them with men, playing sister and helping and

saying little. Men get to think they’re the whole thing----”

“I suppose there are,” said Bellair.

He wished she had not picked up this particular point again; and yet a

certain novelty about this impressed him now, and recurred many times

afterward--that it was she who had broached the subject.

“Do you think a man knows men better than a woman does?” he asked.

Bessie had not thought of it; she was not sure.

Nor was Bellair. “The fact is, it doesn’t greatly matter what women

think of women, and what men think of men--compared to what men and

women think of each other,” he observed.

“You say you didn’t know that other man at first--that preacher,” she

remarked.

“That’s true. There had to be danger--I had to hear his voice in

danger.”

Bellair was lifted to his life-theme. He had never really told it in

one piece. He did not mean to now, but Fleury came clearly to mind. The

food was served and it was quiet behind the palms. If he could only say

something for her heart. She seemed ready. Points of human interest

were crowding to mind--perhaps he could hold her with them.

“... His every thought was for others,” he was saying. “I disliked him

at first, but he was so kind and good-natured throughout that he could

not fail to impress me a bit, but I didn’t really see him before the

night of the wreck, when he arose to take things in hand. It was not

noise, nor voice, but a different force. He seemed to rise--so that the

huge Stackhouse was just a squealing pig before him. He had no fear.

You looked into his face and wanted to be near him, and to do what

he said. I caught his secret. A fool would. It was because he wasn’t

thinking of himself. It seems, Bessie, as sure as you live--that the

more a man gives out in that pure way Fleury did for us all--the more

power floods into him. It came to him in volumes. We all knew it--even

Stackhouse----

“And this is what I’m getting at. _You’ve_ got the chance to use it.

I can’t yet. I seem to be all clotted with what I want, but you can!

You did. You pulled me out of the crowd, not knowing me at all--made

me come to you--changed me. You can _give_ with your singing--to

hundreds--so that they will answer in their thoughts, and do things

strange to themselves at first. They’ll want to die for you--but

that isn’t the thing for you. You must want to sing for them--want

to give them your soul all the time. Greater things will come to you

than this--this which makes you happy. All that the world could give

you--you will come to see--doesn’t matter--but what you can give the

world----”

He saw her falling away from his story. It crippled him. He did not

think he could fail so utterly.

“But you _were_ a thief,” she said.

“I--was what?”

“You preach all the time, but you were a thief----”

He had heard aright. His hand reached for the wallet, that contained

the letter from Lot & Company, but fell from it again.

“If you like,” he answered, “but I saw a beast die in the open

boat--and saw a saint die----”

“You preach--preach--preach!” she cried, and her own points of view

returned with greater intensity. “You’ve been kind--but, oh, you bore

me so! You have been kind--but oh, don’t think you fail to make

one pay the price! You were sunstruck, or crazed--and you come back

preaching. I’m sick of you--just in my highest day, after the months of

struggle--I hate you----”

Bellair heard a ship’s bell. It was dark about him--a cool, serene

dark. The air fanned him softly and sweet; the place rocked--just for

an instant, as if he were at sea.

“I hate you when you preach,” she finished. Her voice was softer. He

knew she was smiling, but did not look at her face. She had delivered

him. He was calm, and ineffably free, the circle finished.

“_Oh, that we two were Maying_----” he muttered, his thoughts far down

the seas--remote and insular, serene and homing thoughts.

“It takes two to sing that,” she said.

“Yes.”

“But, I’m so sick of that----”

“You must have sung it many times,” he said.

He did not want to linger. A certain hush had come to her from him. It

was not yet three.... He seemed surprised to find it broad day in the

street. She touched his sleeve, drawing him to the curb, away from the

crowds which astonished him. Clearly something was wrong with his head.

“Bessie--before your salary begins--have you everything? Isn’t there

something----?”

She smiled and hesitated. He rubbed his eyes.

“I’m so glad I thought of it,” he said, drawing forth the brown wallet.

His gift bewildered her, but she did not ask him this time what he

wanted. Instead she asked:

“But where are you going?”

“Why, Bessie, I’m going home.”