It's a long way from MacDougall Alley to Fort George at any time. It is
rendered longer when the wind is chill; but Jimmy, no longer the jester,
could never remember how he reached there on that wintry afternoon, and
its hills, bleak with snow, were no more drab and cold than the dead
fires of his dreams. The skies above were leaden, with no ray of
sunlight. Away behind him the smoke of the city seemed leveled like a
shroud. Its distant monotone of sound became a dirge. Unmindful of the
chill, he found a bench, brushed the snow from a corner and sat there
for a long time, seeing nothing, unobservant of his surroundings, and
thinking of all that somehow seemed left irrevocably behind. It was as
if it had been ages ago! It had been ages ago since happiness had fled.
There was not a laugh left in all the sad world that had abruptly grown
old, and savorless. A vagrant, aged, dirty, ragged, accosted him,
begging alms, and without looking up, Jimmy thrust a hand into his
pocket and took therefrom a dollar note. The beggar mumbled thanks,
stamped his feet, turned away, and then came back and said, "Hope you're
not down on your luck. I wish you luck, sir!"
"Luck? Oh, no. It's all right. I'm not down on my luck. Only--'They're
hanging Danny Deever in the morning!'"
The vagrant shuffled away, shaking his head. He did not in the least
appreciate the sorry quip. All that he knew was that sometimes
well-dressed men who came and thus sat in the parks, were sometimes
found in the same place by a policeman--and usually such men had holes,
self-inflicted, in their heads. But long before he had passed from sight
Jimmy had reverted to the thought that to-morrow was the end. To see her
just once more, and after that--nothing to look forward to, nothing to
hope for, nothing to dream about. Strangely enough it is the men whose
laugh is readiest, whose mental sufferings and depressions are greatest.
Often the laugh is but a forced cloak for grief. Well, to-morrow he
would laugh! Be Bill Jones for the last time! Make a decent finish of
the dream! Leave with this girl he had so loved a kindly recollection
of a strange adventure as he made his exit from her life! There should
be neither sighs, sentiment, nor repining.
Despite the fact that he had slept so little on the previous night, he
moved restlessly about his room all that evening, standing before his
window now and then to look out over the lights that flared and
glittered from electric signs, hearing absently the hoarse whistles of
ships out in the harbors, and the clamor of street cars that surged up
and down the arteries of the city and went heedlessly on with its
existence. Jimmy wondered, as the street life of the night waned and the
lights went out, if there were others out there in the darkness as
unhappy as was he. His new employment that had so elated him with its
promise of golden opportunity sometimes came to his mind, but now he
felt that success was empty without Mary Allen to share it with him. It
was not until dawn that he fell asleep, exhausted, and even then trouble
pursued him in his dreams.
When he awoke, at noon, he tried for a few minutes to imagine that it
was still a very happy, prosperous and promising world; but it was all
in vain. He sat on the edge of his bed, and again thought that if he had
lost to any other than the Judge, it might not have been so distressing.
He got up and looked at his own face in the glass, and hated it for that
peculiar resemblance. It was certain now, after her confession, that all
the time she had believed him to be the Judge and yet, because when with
Mary Allen the Judge's very existence had been forgotten, Jim could not
accuse himself of having fostered her illusion. Honesty would compel her
to admit that. And, on the other hand, thinking it over, he could not
remember that he had ever talked of the road, his business, or
commercial adventure, because it was a rule of his never to "talk shop"
out of hours. He thought she had already experienced too much of that
and she had told him once that she detested chocolates. The only feature
for which he could at all censure himself was for lack of frankness.
"If I hadn't been such a rotten coward, and had told her plainly after
the first afternoon I ever had with her who I was, that I'd forgotten
her name and all, it would never have come to this!" he soliloquized,
and then, an instant later, reversed himself, considered that if he had
been frank he might never have got to love her at all, and--to have
loved her for so long and to have been with her so many times, was worth
more than all else. Could he but have that measure of delight again, and
then die, Death wouldn't be so grim and hopeless as this present pass.
He flattered himself that she could never imagine all his folly of love.
He was grateful to Fate that he had never uttered such avowal and
suffered its inevitable rejection; for now she could always remember him
as a friend. Rejections, he decided, must inevitably leave unpleasant or
harrowing memories. He throttled all his sad eagerness for the farewell
visit and resolutely delayed it until late in the afternoon. He schooled
himself to the determination that there should be no sentimental speech
or action lest she suspect his wounds and perhaps be thereby saddened.
He had come to her with a laugh, he would leave her with a laugh. That
was the brave way.
When he entered the studio for the last time, it seemed in twilight, for
the shadows of a midwinter afternoon were already long. He saw that she
had set out a dainty little tea table and his heart gave a throb when he
discerned in its center, in a cut glass bowl, the violets that he had
brought her on the preceding day. They seemed to scent the room with a
definite and yet elusive fragrance, quite like her personality that was
so soon to be but a memory.
"Well, Bill Jones, Pirate, you are late," she said, as she took his hat
from his hand, while he removed his overcoat and hung it on the tiny
little cloak stand in the corner, thinking as he did so, that there it
brushed, honored, against her hanging garments.
"The obsequies of a pirate are best held in late afternoon," he replied.
"It's a time-honored form. I'm very formal, as you know."
"I suppose Mary Allen has to die, too, doesn't she? That's the way
pirate romances should end," she retorted. "I don't see why we never
hear what becomes of the pirate's lady friends. Surely any decent,
self-respecting pirate who is an honor to his profession, should have a
woman somewhere to either mourn his loss or--as I suggested--go to the
gallows and hang with him."
She turned to shift the tiny brass tea kettle that was beginning to
steam in the little grate, and, fascinated by her grace, he forgot to
speak. He thought he should always remember the firelight on her
profile--there in the shadows of the room.
"Remember the time we had tea together in that funny little inn out on
Long Island?" she asked, and then, before he could answer, laughed,
gently, and added, as if pleased by the reminiscence--"and the car broke
down on the way home, and we had to walk three miles to get another? And
then we were so hot and thirsty that we stopped in the inn and had
beer--plain, frothy beer--while the chauffeur was trying to start his
old contraption into life. Um-mh! That seems a dreadfully long time
ago."
"It does! It does!" he assented glumly, and fell to staring into the
fire as if therein he could bring it all back to vision. "We agreed,
then, that some day when summer came again, we'd do it all over. And
now--there will be no more summers!"
Unconsciously he had betrayed himself in a despair of voice and twitch
of movement.
"Are--are you sorry?" she asked, softly. "Are you sorry that Bill Jones
and Mary Allen are finished?"
All his previous resolutions were forgotten, swept away as it by the
hand of grief. All his pre-imagined repression vanished. He was but the
heart-broken jester now, impulsive, outspoken.
"Oh, if I could live these few times over again, I think I could die
happy! Mary! Mary! I never knew until yesterday how precious they were.
Never knew that when Bill Jones died, the heart of me died with him!
I'm--I'm----" He checked himself, shut his hands tightly over the arms
of his chair, and exclaimed, "I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean to
tell you anything; because I've no right to say anything of the sort to
you--now that Bill Jones is dead! I can't seem to remember that he was
executed in that moment when you told me of your betrothal."
She abruptly dropped the steaming kettle back into the fender and he
feared that she thus indicated resentment of his outburst. She got to
her feet and walked across to the window where the rapidly waning light
seemed hastily pulling drop curtains over their brief romance and he,
fearful that he had offended her, sat dejectedly in his chair.
"One imagines many things! One is curious about them, sometimes," she
said, softly. "And so--and so I wonder what you would have said, if
Bill Jones had not passed out."
She stood as if considering something of grave importance and then, as
if resolved, turned and came back until she stood near the chair in
which he sat with bent head and shoulders, so unlike the buoyant, erect
man she had known.
"It is but a week ago when being--being somewhat tired of neglect, I
wrote a letter. Oh, I could kick myself for that! I suppose it must have
been rather--let's say--familiar. It was addressed to Judge Granger. By
return mail came a proposal of marriage and--well--I accepted it. Then
he came on and--oh, it was a dreadful mixup! After just one evening
together I knew that he wasn't, and never could have been, Bill Jones,
the Pirate. And I didn't know what to do, or who, or what Bill Jones
really was, and--and I was furious, disappointed and humiliated, and
then you returned and--and----"
She paused and he looked up to find that her eyes were not on him, and
that she was twisting her wisp of a handkerchief between her fingers
quite as if considering whether such fury, disappointment and
humiliation could ever be forgiven. He felt that he was on trial and
that his future hung upon her judgment.
"But--but--it wasn't altogether my fault--Mary," he pleaded in a voice
in which contrition, distress and desire were eloquently blended. "I
didn't mean to be dishonest. Coward I may have been but--but--oh, Mary!
What can I say or do to be forgiven? To be at least kindly remembered?"
He bent forward again, resting his elbows on his knees and clutching his
temples in his palms as if utterly given over to despair. It seemed to
him that there was a prolonged wait in which she was coming to her
decision, an interval filled with portent and so lifeless and still that
tiny sounds from without became magnified.
Her voice, hesitant, and low, but, to his relief, gentle, broke the
interminable spell.
"Suppose--suppose I were to tell you that--that I'm not going to marry
Judge Granger, because after you came here yesterday I knew how
impossible it was and wrote and told him so. And----"
"Mary! Mary, don't make it supposititious," he appealed, leaping to his
feet. "That would be cruelty! Tell me that it's true, and that I am
free to tell you that I love you--love you! You know that I do, and that
there's no use in my trying to hide it."
She retreated from him a trifle, as if to escape his impetuosity, then,
when he paused as if fearing to frighten her with his ardor, smiled at
him and said, "Yes, Bill Jones. It's true!"
He caught her in his arms. For a moment he held her close while she made
her last resistance, and then slowly lifted her hands upward until they
came to rest about his shoulders.
"That's why I made you promise to come back," she said. "I--I couldn't
let you go! I couldn't! I don't care what anyone thinks of it, I am what
I am, and--I love you!"
They were suddenly aware of heavy steps climbing the studio stairs and
she pushed him away hurriedly, bashfully.
"My Father!" she whispered. "I--I forgot that he was coming to get me.
But--you'll love Dad," and then, as if suddenly remembering something,
she laughed softly and added hastily, "I don't believe you even know my
name. Don't forget it, now that Mary Allen is dead. My name is
Sayers--Margaret Sayers, and my father's name is Sayers, Thomas Sayers,
and he's in the motor business and--for heaven's sake!--pretend we've
known each other for years and years!"
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Jimmy, panic-stricken, as she hastened toward the
door. "Tom Sayers! My job's gone bust! I'm done!"
The door opened and her hand swept up to a light switch in the lintel,
there was a click, and the room was brilliant.
"Dad," she said, trying to suppress some trepidation of voice, "I want
you to know Mr. Gollop. And I'd like to have you like him, because you
see, I'm going to marry him, if you do."
Jimmy had been tempted to run; but now stood bending his head forward,
blinking, and holding his breath in astonishment
"Martin--Martin--Mr. Martin--and you are not Martin, but are Mr. Sayers,
and----"
But the man he had known as Martin smiled, for the moment ignored him,
permitted his daughter to cling to him, and as he caressed her hair with
tender fingers, said soothingly, "There! There! Don't be afraid of me,
my girl. I've known this boy Jim for some time. I knew that he knew you,
and I satisfied myself what sort he was, too, before things went too
far. I never did like Granger. When you first told me that you had met
Granger here in New York, I knew it couldn't be so, because I had seen
him going through Media City on the previous day to keep some political
appointment. And then I met Jim, and--I fooled him a little bit because
I wanted to know just what sort of a man it was who had dared to look at
you, and to take you to a horse show. Let go now! Let go, while Jim and
I shake hands. But--inasmuch as your mother has always belonged to the
Granger party, I suppose--I suppose she'll just raise hell! That's a
part of the affair that I reckon you two had best leave to me. There's
time enough, because, mark you both, there'll be no wedding bells in
this firm until Jim satisfies me that he can make good."
And then he turned discreetly to hang up his overcoat and hat as if
unaware that Mary Allen, struggling artist, and Bill Jones, Pirate,
jubilant and unabashed, were again in each others' arms.
THE END
* * * * *
FLORENCE L. BARCLAY'S NOVELS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER
A novel of the 12th Century. The heroine, believing she had lost her
lover, enters a convent. He returns, and interesting developments
follow.
THE UPAS TREE
A love story of rare charm. It deals with a successful author and his
wife.
THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE
The story of a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy in ages
vanished into insignificance before the convincing demonstration of
abiding love.
THE ROSARY
The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty above all else
in the world, but who, when blinded through an accident, gains life's
greatest happiness. A rare story of the great passion of two real people
superbly capable of love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward.
THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE
The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the death of a
husband who never understood her, meets a fine, clean young chap who is
ignorant of her title and they fall deeply in love with each other. When
he learns her real identity a situation of singular power is developed.
THE BROKEN HALO
The story of a young man whose religious belief was shattered in
childhood and restored to him by the little white lady, many years older
than himself, to whom he is passionately devoted.
THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR
The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for Africa, marries
wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her fulfill the conditions of her
uncle's will, and how they finally come to love each other and are
reunited after experiences that soften and purify.
* * * * *
ETHEL M. DELL'S NOVELS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
THE LAMP IN THE DESERT
The scene of this splendid story is laid in India and tells of the lamp
of love that continues to shine through all sorts of tribulations to
final happiness.
GREATHEART
The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals a noble soul.
THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE
A hero who worked to win even when there was only "a hundredth chance."
THE SWINDLER
The story of a "bad man's" soul revealed by a woman's faith.
THE TIDAL WAVE
Tales of love and of women who learned to know the true from the false.
THE SAFETY CURTAIN
A very vivid love story of India. The volume also contains four other
long stories of equal interest.
* * * * *
EDGAR RICE BURROUGH'S NOVELS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
TARZAN THE UNTAMED
Tells of Tarzan's return to the life of the ape-man in his search for
vengeance on those who took from him his wife and home.
JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN
Records the many wonderful exploits by which Tarzan proves his right to
ape kingship.
A PRINCESS OF MARS
Forty-three million miles from the earth--a succession of the weirdest
and most astounding adventures in fiction. John Carter, American, finds
himself on the planet Mars, battling for a beautiful woman, with the
Green Men of Mars, terrible creatures fifteen feet high, mounted on
horses like dragons.
THE GODS OF MARS
Continuing John Carter's adventures on the Planet Mars, in which he does
battle against the ferocious "plant men," creatures whose mighty tails
swished their victims to instant death, and defies Issus, the terrible
Goddess of Death, whom all Mars worships and reveres.
THE WARLORD OF MARS
Old acquaintances, made in the two other stories, reappear, Tars Tarkas,
Tardos Mors and others. There is a happy ending to the story in the
union of the Warlord, the tide conferred upon John Carter, with Dejah
Thoris.
THUVIA, MAID OF MARS
The fourth volume of the series. The story centers around the adventures
of Carthoris, the son of John Carter and Thuvia, daughter of a Martian
Emperor.
* * * * *
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S STORIES OF ADVENTURE
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
THE RIVER'S END
A story of the Royal Mounted Police.
THE GOLDEN SNARE
Thrilling adventures in the Far Northland.
NOMADS OF THE NORTH
The story of a bear-cub and a dog.
KAZAN
The tale of a "quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky" torn
between the call of the human and his wild mate.
BAREE, SON OF KAZAN
The story of the son of the blind Grey Wolf and the gallant part he
played in the lives of a man and a woman.
THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
The story of the King of Beaver Island, a Mormon colony, and his battle
with Captain Plum.
THE DANGER TRAIL
A tale of love, Indian vengeance, and a mystery of the North.
THE HUNTED WOMAN
A tale of a great fight in the "valley of gold" for a woman.
THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH
The story of Fort o' God, where the wild flavor of the wilderness is
blended with the courtly atmosphere of France.
THE GRIZZLY KING
The story of Thor, the big grizzly.
ISOBEL
A love story of the Far North.
THE WOLF HUNTERS
A thrilling tale of adventure in the Canadian wilderness.
THE GOLD HUNTERS
The story of adventure in the Hudson Bay wilds.
THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE
Filled with exciting incidents in the land of strong men and women.
BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY
A thrilling story of the Far North. The great Photoplay was made from
this book.
* * * * *
ZANE GREY'S NOVELS
May be had wherever books an sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
THE MAN OF THE FOREST
THE DESERT OF WHEAT
THE U.P. TRAIL
WILDFIRE
THE BORDER LEGION
THE RAINBOW TRAIL
THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS
THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN
THE LONE STAR RANGER
DESERT GOLD
BETTY ZANE
LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS
The life story of "Buffalo Bill" by his sister Helen Cody Wetmore, with
Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey.
ZANE GREY'S BOOKS FOR BOYS
KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE
THE YOUNG LION HUNTER
THE YOUNG FORESTER
THE YOUNG PITCHER
THE SHORT STOP
THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND OTHER BASEBALL STORIES
* * * * *
KATHLEEN NORRIS' STORIES
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list
SISTERS. Frontispiece by Frank Street
The California Redwoods furnish the background for this beautiful story
of sisterly devotion and sacrifice.
POOR, DEAR, MARGARET KIRBY. Frontispiece by George Gibbs.
A collection of delightful stories, including "Bridging the Years" and
"The Tide-Marsh." This story is now shown in moving pictures.
JOSSELYN'S WIFE. Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.
The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for happiness
and love.
MARTIE, THE UNCONQUERED. Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers.
The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions.
THE HEART OF RACHAEL. Frontispiece by Charles E. Chambers.
An interesting story of divorce and the problems that come with a second
marriage.
THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE. Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.
A sympathetic portrayal of the guest of a normal girl, obscure and
lonely, for the happiness of life.
SATURDAY'S CHILD. Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes.
Can a girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through sheer
determination to the better things for which her soul hungered?
MOTHER. Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background of every
girl's life, and some dreams which came true.
_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
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