I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore

kilts. But I see I shall have to amend that, because he was not a

celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I

had left New York for the West. In the old days, to my commonplace and

unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never

read me any of his manuscripts, which I can safely say he would have done

had he written any at that time, and therefore my lack of detection of

his promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of the

oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and

which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the

Celebrity. Hence I am constrained to the belief that his eccentricity

must have arrived with his genius, and both after the age of twenty-five.

Far be it from me to question the talents of one upon whose head has been

set the laurel of fame!

When I knew him he was a young man without frills or foibles, with an

excellent head for business. He was starting in to practise law in a

downtown office with the intention of becoming a great corporation

lawyer. He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and

was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover

laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised

to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon

notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's

shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.

When I went West, he fell out of my life. I probably should not have

given him another thought had I not caught sight of his name, in old

capitals, on a daintily covered volume in a book-stand. I had little

time or inclination for reading fiction; my days were busy ones, and

my nights were spent with law books. But I bought the volume out of

curiosity, wondering the while whether he could have written it. I was

soon set at rest, for the dedication was to a young woman of whom I had

often heard him speak. The volume was a collection of short stories. On

these I did not feel myself competent to sit in judgment, for my personal

taste in fiction, if I could be said to have had any, took another turn.

The stories dealt mainly with the affairs of aristocratic young men and

aristocratic young women, and were differentiated to fit situations only

met with in that society which does not have to send descriptions of its

functions to the newspapers. The stories did not seem to me to touch

life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and

perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They

left with me the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture,

with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and

whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator. Their charm to me lay

in the manner of the telling, the style, which I am forced to admit was

delightful.

But the book I had bought was a success, a great success, if the

newspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted. I read the

criticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two of

them were alike: they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive.

I have to confess that it gratified me not a little to find the negatives

for the most part of my poor way of thinking. The positives, on the

other hand, declared the gifted young author to have found a manner of

treatment of social life entirely new. Other critics still insisted it

was social ridicule: but if this were so, the satire was too delicate for

ordinary detection.

However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At

the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence. He

at once became the hero of the young women of the country from Portland,

Maine, to Portland, Oregon, many of whom wrote him letters and asked him

for his photograph. He was asked to tell what he really meant by the

vague endings of this or that story. And then I began to hear rumors

that his head was turning. These I discredited, of course. If true,

I thought it but another proof of the undermining influence of feminine

flattery, which few men, and fewer young men, can stand. But I watched

his career with interest.

He published other books, of a high moral tone and unapproachable

principle, which I read carefully for some ray of human weakness, for

some stroke of nature untrammelled by the calling code of polite society.

But in vain.

CHAPTER II

It was by a mere accident that I went West, some years ago, and settled

in an active and thriving town near one of the Great Lakes. The air and

bustle and smack of life about the place attracted me, and I rented an

office and continued to read law, from force of habit, I suppose. My

experience in the service of one of the most prominent of New York

lawyers stood me in good stead, and gradually, in addition to a

heterogeneous business of mines and lumber, I began to pick up a few

clients. But in all probability I should be still pegging away at mines

and lumber, and drawing up occasional leases and contracts, had it not

been for Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, of Philadelphia. Although it has

been specifically written that promotion to a young man comes neither

from the East nor the West, nor yet from the South, Mr. Cooke arrived

from the East, and in the nick of time for me.

I was indebted to Farrar for Mr. Cooke's acquaintance, and this

obligation I have since in vain endeavored to repay. Farrar's profession

was forestry: a graduate of an eastern college, he had gone abroad to

study, and had roughed it with the skilled woodsmen of the Black Forest.

Mr. Cooke, whom he represented, had large tracts of land in these parts,

and Farrar likewise received an income from the state, whose legislature

had at last opened its eyes to the timber depredations and had begun to

buy up reserves. We had rooms in the same Elizabethan building at the

corner of Main and Superior streets, but it was more than a year before I

got farther than a nod with him. Farrar's nod in itself was a repulsion,

and once you had seen it you mentally scored him from the list of your

possible friends. Besides this freezing exterior he possessed a cutting

and cynical tongue, and had but little confidence in the human race.

These qualities did not tend to render him popular in a Western town,

if indeed they would have recommended him anywhere, and I confess to have

thought him a surly enough fellow, being guided by general opinion and

superficial observation. Afterwards the town got to know him, and if it

did not precisely like him, it respected him, which perhaps is better.

And he gained at least a few warm-friends, among whom I deem it an honor

to be mentioned.

Farrar's contempt for consequences finally brought him an unsought-for

reputation. Admiration for him was born the day he pushed O'Meara out

of his office and down a flight of stairs because he had undertaken to

suggest that which should be done with the timber in Jackson County. By

this summary proceeding Farrar lost the support of a faction, O'Meara

being a power in the state and chairman of the forestry board besides.

But he got rid of interference from that day forth.

Oddly enough my friendship with Farrar was an indirect result of the

incident I have just related. A few mornings after, I was seated in my

office trying to concentrate my mind on page twenty of volume ten of the

Records when I was surprised by O'Meara himself, accompanied by two

gentlemen whom I remembered to have seen on various witness stands.

O'Meara was handsomely dressed, and his necktie made but a faint pretence

of concealing the gorgeous diamond in his shirt-front. But his face wore

an aggrieved air, and his left hand was neatly bound in black and tucked

into his coat. He sank comfortably into my wicker chair, which creaked a

protest, and produced two yellow-spotted cigars, chewing the end of one

with much apparent relish and pushing the other at me. His two friends

remained respectfully standing. I guessed at what was coming, and braced

myself by refusing the cigar,--not a great piece of self-denial, by the

way. But a case meant much to me then, and I did seriously regret that

O'Meara was not a possible client. At any rate, my sympathy with Farrar

in the late episode put him out of the question.

O'Meara cleared his throat and began gingerly to undo the handkerchief

on his hand. Then he brought his fist down on the table so that the ink

started from the stand and his cheeks shook with the effort.

"I'll make him pay for this!" he shouted, with an oath.

The other gentlemen nodded their approval, while I put the inkstand in a

place of safety.

"You're a pretty bright young man, Mr. Crocker," he went on, a look of

cunning coming into his little eyes, "but I guess you ain't had too many

cases to object to a big one."

"Did you come here to tell me that?" I asked.

He looked me over queerly, and evidently decided that I meant no

effrontery.

"I came here to get your opinion," he said, holding up a swollen hand,

"but I want to tell you first that I ought to get ten thousand, not a

cent less. That scoundrelly young upstart--"

"If you want my opinion," I replied, trying to speak slowly, "it is that

Mr. Farrar ought to get ten thousand dollars. And I think that would be

only a moderate reward."

I did not feel equal to pushing him into the street, as Farrar had done,

and I have now but a vague notion of what he said and how he got there.

But I remember that half an hour afterwards a man congratulated me openly

in the bank.

That night I found a new friend, although at the time I thought Farrar's

visit to me the accomplishment of a perfunctory courtesy to a man who had

refused to take a case against him. It was very characteristic of Farrar

not to mention this until he rose to go. About half-past eight he

sauntered in upon me, placing his hat precisely on the rack, and we

talked until ten, which is to say that I talked and he commented. His

observations were apt, if a trifle caustic, and it is needless to add

that I found them entertaining. As he was leaving he held out his hand.

"I hear that O'Meara called on you to-day," he said diffidently.

"Yes," I answered, smiling, "I was sorry not to have been able to take

his case."

I sat up for an hour or more, trying to arrive at some conclusion about

Farrar, but at length I gave it up. His visit had in it something

impulsive which I could not reconcile with his manner. He surely owed

me nothing for refusing a case against him, and must have known that my

motives for so doing were not personal. But if I did not understand him,

I liked him decidedly from that night forward, and I hoped that his

advances had sprung from some other motive than politeness. And indeed

we gradually drifted into a quasi-friendship. It became his habit, as he

went out in the morning, to drop into my room for a match, and I returned

the compliment by borrowing his coal oil when mine was out. At such

times we would sit, or more frequently stand, discussing the affairs of

the town and of the nation, for politics was an easy and attractive

subject to us both. It was only in a general way that we touched upon

each other's concerns, this being dangerous ground with Farrar, who was

ever ready to close up at anything resembling a confidence. As for me, I

hope I am not curious, but I own to having had a curiosity about Farrar's

Philadelphia patron, to whom Farrar made but slight allusions. His very

name--Farquhar Fenelon Cooke--had an odd sound which somehow betokened an

odd man, and there was more than one bit of gossip afloat in the town of

which he was the subject, notwithstanding the fact that he had never

honored it with a visit. The gossip was the natural result of Mr.

Cooke's large properties in the vicinity. It has never been my habit,

however, to press a friend on such matters, and I could easily understand

and respect Farrar's reluctance to talk of one from whom he received an

income.

I had occasion, in the May of that year, to make a somewhat long business

trip to Chicago, and on my return, much to my surprise, I found Farrar

awaiting me in the railroad station. He smiled his wonted fraction by

way of greeting, stopped to buy a newspaper, and finally leading me to

his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at

such an unusual proceeding.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"I shan't bother you long," he said; "I simply wanted the chance to talk

to you before you got to your office. I have a Philadelphia client, a

Mr. Cooke, of whom you may have heard me speak. Since you have been away

the railroad has brought suit against him. The row is about the lands

west of the Washita, on Copper Rise. It's the devil if he loses, for the

ground is worth the dollar bills to cover it. I telegraphed, and he got

here yesterday. He wants a lawyer, and I mentioned you."

There came over me then in a flash a comprehension of Farrar which I had

failed to grasp before. But I was quite overcome at his suggestion.

"Isn't it rather a big deal to risk me on?" I said. "Better go to

Chicago and get Parks. He's an expert in that sort of thing." I am

afraid my expostulation was weak.

"I merely spoke of you," replied Farrar, coolly,--"and he has gone around

to your office. He knows about Parks, and if he wants him he'll probably

take him. It all depends upon how you strike Cooke whether you get the

case or not. I have never told you about him," he added with some

hesitation; "he's a trifle queer, but a good fellow at the bottom.

I should hate to see him lose his land."

"How is the railroad mixed up in it?" I asked.

"I don't know much about law, but it would seem as if they had a pretty

strong case," he answered. He went on to tell me what he knew of the

matter in his clean, pithy sentences, often brutally cynical, as though

he had not a spark of interest in any of it. Mr. Cooke's claim to the

land came from a maternal great-uncle, long since deceased, who had been

a settler in these regions. The railroad answered that they had bought

the land with other properties from the man, also deceased, to whom the

old gentleman was alleged to have sold it. Incidentally I learned

something of Mr. Cooke's maternal ancestry.

We drove back to the office with some concern on my part at the prospect

of so large a case. Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the

first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad

gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might

have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines. A silver snaffle on a

heavy leather watch guard which connected the pockets of his corduroy

waistcoat, together with a huge gold stirrup in his Ascot tie,

sufficiently proclaimed his tastes. But I found myself continually

returning to the countenance, and I still think I could have modelled a

better face out of putty. The mouth was rather small, thick-tipped, and

put in at an odd angle; the brown eyes were large, and from their habit

of looking up at one lent to the round face an incongruous solemnity.

But withal there was a perceptible acumen about the man which was

puzzling in the extreme.

"How are you, old man?" said he, hardly waiting for Farrar to introduce

me. "Well, I hope." It was pure cordiality, nothing more. He seemed to

bubble over with it.

I said I was well, and invited him inside.

"No," he said; "I like the look of the town. We can talk business here."

And talk business he did, straight and to the point, so fast and

indistinctly that at times I could scarcely follow him. I answered his

rapid questions briefly, and as best I knew how. He wanted to know what

chance he had to win the suit, and I told him there might be other

factors involved beside those of which he had spoken. Plainly, also,

that the character of his great-uncle was in question, an intimation

which he did not appear to resent. But that there was no denying the

fact that the railroad had a strong thing of it, and a good lawyer into

the bargain.

"And don't you consider yourself a good lawyer?" he cut in.

I pointed out that the railroad lawyer was a man of twice my age,

experience, and reputation.

Without more ado, and before either Farrar or myself had time to resist,

he had hooked an arm into each of us, and we were all three marching down

the street in the direction of his hotel. If this was agony for me, I

could see that it was keener agony for Farrar. And although Mr. Farquhar

Fenelon Cooke had been in town but a scant twenty-four hours, it seemed

as if he knew more of its inhabitants than both of us put together.

Certain it is that he was less particular with his acquaintances. He

hailed the most astonishing people with an easy air of freedom, now

releasing my arm, now Farrar's, to salute. He always saluted. He

stopped to converse with a dozen men we had never seen, many of whom

smelled strongly of the stable, and he invariably introduced Farrar as

the forester of his estate, and me as his lawyer in the great quarrel

with the railroad, until I began to wish I had never heard of Blackstone.

And finally he steered us into the spacious bar of the Lake House.

The next morning the three of us were off early for a look at the

contested property. It was a twenty-mile drive, and the last eight miles

wound down the boiling Washita, still high with the melting snows of the

pine lands. And even here the snows yet slept in the deeper hollows.

unconscious of the budding green of the slopes. How heartily I wished

Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke back in Philadelphia! By his eternal accounts

of his Germantown stables and of the blue ribbons of his hackneys he

killed all sense of pleasure of the scene, and set up an irritation that

was well-nigh unbearable. At length we crossed the river, climbed the

foot-hills, and paused on the ridge. Below us lay the quaint inn and

scattered cottages of Asquith, and beyond them the limitless and

foam-flecked expanse of lake: and on our right, lifting from the shore by

easy slopes for a mile at stretch, Farrar pointed out the timbered lands

of Copper Rise, spread before us like a map. But the appreciation of

beauty formed no part of Mr. Cooke's composition,--that is, beauty as

Farrar and I knew it.

"If you win that case, old man," he cried, striking me a great whack

between the shoulder-blades, "charge any fee you like; I'll pay it! And

I'll make such a country-place out of this as was never seen west of New

York state, and call it Mohair, after my old trotter. I'll put a palace

on that clearing, with the stables just over the knoll. They'll beat the

Germantown stables a whole lap. And that strip of level," he continued,

pointing to a thinly timbered bit, "will hold a mile track nicely."

Farrar and I gasped: it was as if we had tumbled into the Washita.

"It will take money, Mr. Cooke," said Farrar, "and you haven't won the

suit yet."

"Damn the money!" said Mr. Cooke, and we knew he meant it.

Over the episodes of that interminable morning it will, be better to pass

lightly. It was spent by Farrar and me in misery. It was spent by Mr.

Farquhar Fenelon Cooke in an ecstasy of enjoyment, driving over and

laying out Mohair, and I must admit he evinced a surprising genius in his

planning, although, according to Farrar, he broke every sacred precept of

landscape gardening again and again. He displayed the enthusiasm of a

pioneer, and the energy of a Napoleon. And if he were too ignorant to

accord to nature a word of praise, he had the grace and intelligence to

compliment Farrar on the superb condition of the forests, and on the

judgment shown in laying out the roads, which were so well chosen that

even in this season they were well drained and dry. That day, too, my

views were materially broadened, and I received an insight into the

methods and possibilities of my friend's profession sufficient to instil

a deeper respect both for it and for him. The crowded spots had been

skilfully thinned of the older trees to give the younger ones a chance,

and the harmony of the whole had been carefully worked out. Now we drove

under dark pines and hemlocks, and then into a lighter relief of birches

and wild cherries, or a copse of young beeches. And I learned that the

estate had not only been paying the taxes and its portion of Farrar's

salary, but also a considerable amount into Mr. Cooke's pocket the while

it was being improved.

Mr. Cooke made his permanent quarters at the Lake House, and soon became

one of the best-known characters about town. He seemed to enjoy his

popularity, and I am convinced that he would have been popular in spite

of his now-famous quarrel with the railroad. His easy command of

profanity, his generous use of money, his predilection for sporting

characters, of whom he was king; his ready geniality and good-fellowship

alike with the clerk of the Lake House or the Mayor, not to mention his

own undeniable personality, all combined to make him a favorite. He had

his own especial table in the dining-room, called all the waiters by

their first names, and they fought for the privilege of attending him.

He likewise called the barkeepers by their first names, and had his own

particular corner of the bar, where none dared intrude, and where he

could almost invariably be found when not in my office. From this corner

he dealt out cigars to the deserving, held stake moneys, decided all

bets, and refereed all differences. His name appeared in the personal

column of one of the local papers on the average of twice a week, or in

lieu thereof one of his choicest stories in the "Notes about Town"

column.

The case was to come up early in July, and I spent most of my time, to

the detriment of other affairs, in preparing for it. I was greatly

hampered in my work by my client, who filled my office with his

tobacco-smoke and that of his friends, and he took it very much for

granted that he was going to win the suit. Fortune had always played

into his hands, he said, and I had no little difficulty in convincing him

that matters had passed from his hands into mine. In this I believe I

was never entirely successful. I soon found, too, that he had no ideas

whatever on the value of discretion, and it was only by repeated threats

of absolute failure that I prevented our secret tactics from becoming the

property of his sporting fraternity and of the town.

The more I worked on the case, the clearer it became to me that Mr.

Farquhar Fenelon Cooke's great-uncle had been either a consummate

scoundrel or a lunatic, and that our only hope of winning must be based

on proving him one or the other; it did not matter much which, for my

expectations at best were small. When I had at length settled to this

conclusion I confided it as delicately as possible to my client, who was

sitting at the time with his feet cocked up on the office table, reading

a pink newspaper.

"Which'll be the easier to prove?" he asked, without looking up.

"It would be more charitable to prove he had been out of his mind," I

replied, "and perhaps easier."

"Charity be damned," said this remarkable man. "I'm after the property."

So I decided on insanity. I hunted up and subpoenaed white-haired

witnesses for miles around. Many of them shook their heads when they

spoke of Mr. Cooke's great-uncle, and some knew more of his private

transactions than I could have wished, and I trembled lest my own

witnesses should be turned against me. I learned more of Mr. Cooke's

great-uncle than I knew of Mr. Cooke himself, and to the credit of my

client be it said that none of his relative's traits were apparent in

him, with the possible exception of insanity; and that defect, if it

existed in the grand-nephew, took in him a milder and less criminal turn.

The old rascal, indeed, had so cleverly worded his deed of sale as to

obtain payment without transfer. It was a trifle easier to avoid being

specific in that country in his day than it is now, and the document was,

in my opinion, sufficiently vague to admit of a double meaning. The

original sale had been made to a man, now dead, whom the railroad had

bought out. The Copper Rise property was mentioned among the other lands

in the will in favor of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, and the latter had

gone ahead improving them and increasing their output in spite of the

repeated threats of the railroad to bring suit. And it was not until its

present attorney had come in and investigated the title that the railroad

had resorted to the law. I mention here, by the way, that my client was

the sole heir.

But as the time of the sessions drew near, the outlook for me was

anything but bright. It is true that my witnesses were quite willing to

depose that his actions were queer and out of the common, but these

witnesses were for the most part venerable farmers and backwoodsmen:

expert testimony was deplorably lacking. In this extremity it was Mr.

Farquhar Fenelon Cooke himself who came unwittingly to my rescue. He had

bought a horse,--he could never be in a place long without one,--which

was chiefly remarkable, he said, for picking up his hind feet as well as

his front ones. However he may have differed from the ordinary run of

horses, he was shortly attacked by one of the thousand ills to which

every horse is subject. I will not pretend to say what it was. I found

Mr. Cooke one morning at his usual place in the Lake House bar holding

forth with more than common vehemence and profanity on the subject of

veterinary surgeons. He declared there was not a veterinary surgeon in

the whole town fit to hold a certificate, and his listeners nodded an

extreme approval to this sentiment. A grizzled old fellow who kept a

stock farm back in the country chanced to be there, and managed to get a

word in on the subject during one of my client's rare pauses.

"Yes," he said, "that's so. There ain't one of 'em now fit to travel

with young Doctor Vane, who was here some fifteen years gone by. He

weren't no horse-doctor, but he could fix up a foundered horse in a night

as good as new. If your uncle was livin', he'd back me on that, Mr.

Cooke."

Here was my chance. I took the old man aside, and two or three glasses

of Old Crow launched him into reminiscence.

"Where is Doctor Vane now?" I asked finally.

"Over to Minneapolis, sir, with more rich patients nor he can take care

of. Wasn't my darter over there last month, and seen him? And demned if

he didn't pull up his carriage and talk to her. Here's luck to him."

I might have heard much more of the stockraiser had I stayed, but I fear

I left him somewhat abruptly in my haste to find Farrar. Only three days

remained before the case was to come up. Farrar readily agreed to go to

Minneapolis, and was off on the first train that afternoon. I would have

asked Mr. Cooke to go had I dared trust him, such was my anxiety to have

him out of the way, if only for a time. I did not tell him about the

doctor. He sat up very late with me that night on the Lake House porch

to give me a rubbing down, as he expressed it, as he might have

admonished some favorite jockey before a sweepstake. "Take it easy, old

man," he would say repeatedly, "and don't give things the bit before

you're sure of their wind!"

Days passed, and not a word from Farrar. The case opened with Mr.

Cooke's friends on the front benches. The excitement it caused has

rarely been equalled in that section, but I believe this was due less to

its sensational features than to Mr. Cooke, who had an abnormal though

unconscious talent for self-advertisement. It became manifest early that

we were losing. Our testimony, as I had feared, was not strong enough,

although they said we were making a good fight of it. I was racked with

anxiety about Farrar; at last, when I had all but given up hope, I

received a telegram from him dated at Detroit, saying he would arrive

with the doctor that evening. This was Friday, the fourth day of the

trial.

The doctor turned out to be a large man, well groomed and well fed, with

a twinkle in his eye. He had gone to Narragansett Pier for the summer,

whither Farrar had followed him. On being introduced, Mr. Cooke at once

invited him out to have a drink.

"Did you know my uncle?" asked my client.

"Yes," said the doctor, "I should say I did."

"Poor old duffer," said Mr. Cooke, with due solemnity; "I understand he

was a maniac."

"Well," said the doctor, while we listened with a breathless interest,

"he wasn't exactly a maniac, but I think I can safely say he was a

lunatic."

"Then here's to insanity!" said the irrepressible, his glass swung in

mid-air, when a thought struck him, and he put it down again and looked

hard at the doctor.

"Will you swear to it?" he demanded.

"I would swear to it before Saint Peter," said the doctor, fervently.

He swore to it before a jury, which was more to the point, and we won our

case. It did not even go to the court of appeals; I suppose the railroad

thought it cheaper to drop it, since no right of way was involved. And

the decision was scarcely announced before Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke had

begun work on his new country place, Mohair.

I have oftentimes been led to consider the relevancy of this chapter, and

have finally decided to insert it. I concluded that the actual narrative

of how Mr. Cooke came to establish his country-place near Asquith would

be interesting, and likewise throw some light on that gentleman's

character. And I ask the reader's forbearance for the necessary personal

history involved. Had it not been for Mr. Cooke's friendship for me I

should not have written these pages.

CHAPTER III

Events, are consequential or inconsequential irrespective of their size.

The wars of Troy were fought for a woman, and Charles VIII, of France,

bumped his head against a stone doorway and died because he did not stoop

low enough. And to descend from history down to my own poor chronicle,

Mr. Cooke's railroad case, my first experience at the bar of any gravity

or magnitude, had tied to it a string of consequences then far beyond my

guessing. The suit was my stepping-stone not only to a larger and more

remunerative practice, but also, I believe, to the position of district

attorney, which I attained shortly afterwards.

Mr. Cooke had laid out Mohair as ruthlessly as Napoleon planned the new

Paris; though not, I regret to say, with a like genius. Fortunately

Farrar interposed and saved the grounds, but there was no guardian angel

to do a like turn for the house. Mr. Langdon Willis, of Philadelphia,

was the architect who had nominal charge of the building. He had

regularly submitted some dozen plans for Mr. Cooke's approval, which were

as regularly rejected. My client believed, in common with a great many

other people, that architects should be driven and not followed, and was

plainly resolved to make this house the logical development of many

cherished ideas. It is not strange, therefore, that the edifice was

completed by a Chicago contractor who had less self-respect than Mr.

Willis, the latter having abruptly refused to have his name tacked on to

the work.

Mohair was finished and ready for occupation in July, two years after the

suit. I drove out one day before Mr. Cooke's arrival to look it over.

The grounds, where Farrar had had matters pretty much his own way, to my

mind rivalled the best private parks in the East. The stables were

filled with a score or so of Mr. Cooke's best horses, brought hither in

his private cars, and the trotters were exercising on the track.

The middle of June found Farrar and myself at the Asquith Inn. It was

Farrar's custom to go to Asquith in the summer, being near the forest

properties in his charge; and since Asquith was but five miles from the

county-seat it was convenient for me, and gave me the advantages of the

lake breezes and a comparative rest, which I should not have had in

town. At that time Asquith was a small community of summer residents

from Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and other western cities, most of

whom owned cottages and the grounds around them. They were a quiet lot

that long association had made clannish; and they had a happy faculty, so

rare in summer resorts, of discrimination between an amusement and a

nuisance. Hence a great many diversions which are accounted pleasurable

elsewhere are at Asquith set down at their true value. It was,

therefore, rather with resentment than otherwise that the approaching

arrival of Mr. Cooke and the guests he was likely to have at Mohair were

looked upon.

I had not been long at Asquith before I discovered that Farrar was acting

in a peculiar manner, though I was longer in finding out what the matter

was. I saw much less of him than in town. Once in a while in the

evenings, after ten, he would run across me on the porch of the inn,

or drift into my rooms. Even after three years of more or less intimacy

between us, Farrar still wore his exterior of pessimism and indifference,

the shell with which he chose to hide a naturally warm and affectionate

disposition. In the dining-room we sat together at the end of a large

table set aside for bachelors and small families of two or three, and

it seemed as though we had all the humorists and story-tellers in that

place. And Farrar as a source of amusement proved equal to the best

of them. He would wait until a story was well under way, and then

annihilate the point of it with a cutting cynicism and set the table in

a roar of laughter. Among others who were seated here was a Mr. Trevor,

of Cincinnati, one of the pioneers of Asquith. Mr. Trevor was a trifle

bombastic, with a tendency towards gesticulation, an art which he had

learned in no less a school than the Ohio State Senate. He was a

self-made man,--a fact which he took good care should not escape

one,--and had amassed his money, I believe, in the dry-goods business.

He always wore a long, shiny coat, a low, turned-down collar, and a black

tie, all of which united to give him the general appearance of a

professional pallbearer.

But Mr. Trevor possessed a daughter who amply made up for his

shortcomings. She was the only one who could meet Farrar on his own

ground, and rarely a meal passed that they did not have a tilt. They

filled up the holes of the conversation with running commentaries, giving

a dig at the luckless narrator and a side-slap at each other, until one

would have given his oath they were sworn enemies. At least I, in the

innocence of my heart, thought so until I was forcibly enlightened.

I had taken rather a prejudice to Miss Trevor. I could find no better

reason than her antagonism to Farrar. I was revolving this very thing

in my mind one day as I was paddling back to the inn after a look at my

client's new pier and boat-houses, when I descried Farrar's catboat some

distance out. The lake was glass, and the sail hung lifeless. It was

near lunch-time, and charity prompted me to head for the boat and give it

a tow homeward. As I drew near, Farrar himself emerged from behind the

sail and asked me, with a great show of nonchalance, what I wanted.

"To tow you back for lunch, of course," I answered, used to his ways.

He threw me a line, which I made fast to the stern, and then he

disappeared again. I thought this somewhat strange, but as the boat was

a light one, I towed it in and hitched it to the wharf, when, to my great

astonishment, there disembarked not Farrar, but Miss Trevor. She leaped

lightly ashore and was gone before I could catch my breath, while Farrar

let down the sail and offered me a cigarette. I had learned a lesson in

appearances.

It could not have been very long after this that I was looking over my

batch of New York papers, which arrived weekly, when my eye was arrested

by a name. I read the paragraph, which announced the fact that my friend

the Celebrity was about to sail for Europe in search of "color" for his

next novel; this was already contracted for at a large price, and was to

be of a more serious nature than any of his former work. An interview

was published in which the Celebrity had declared that a new novel was

to appear in a short time. I do not know what impelled me, but I began

at once to search through the other papers, and found almost identically

the same notice in all of them.

By one of those odd coincidents which sometimes start one to thinking,

the Celebrity was the subject of a lively discussion when I reached the

table that evening. I had my quota of information concerning his

European trip, but I did not commit myself when appealed to for an

opinion. I had once known the man (which, however, I did not think it

worth while to mention) and I did not feel justified in criticising him

in public. Besides, what I knew of him was excellent, and entirely apart

from the literary merit or demerit of his work. The others, however,

were within their right when they censured or praised him, and they did

both. Farrar, in particular, surprised me by the violence of his

attacks, while Miss Trevor took up the Celebrity's defence with equal

ardor. Her motives were beyond me now. The Celebrity's works spoke

for themselves, she said, and she could not and would not believe such

injurious reports of one who wrote as he did.

The next day I went over to the county-seat, and got back to Asquith

after dark. I dined alone, and afterwards I was strolling up and down

one end of the long veranda when I caught sight of a lonely figure in a

corner, with chair tilted back and feet on the rail. A gleam of a cigar

lighted up the face, and I saw that it was Farrar. I sat down beside

him, and we talked commonplaces for a while, Farrar's being almost

monosyllabic, while now and again feminine voices and feminine laughter

reached our ears from the far end of the porch. They seemed to go

through Farrar like a knife, and he smoked furiously, his lips tightly

compressed the while. I had a dozen conjectures, none of which I dared

voice. So I waited in patience.

"Crocker," said he, at length, "there's a man here from Boston, Charles

Wrexell Allen; came this morning. You know Boston. Have you ever heard

of him?"

"Allen," I repeated, reflecting; "no Charles Wrexell."

"It is Charles Wrexell, I think," said Farrar, as though the matter were

trivial. "However, we can go into the register and make sure."

"What about him?" I asked, not feeling inclined to stir.

The Celebrity

"Oh, nothing. An arrival is rather an occurrence, though. You can hear

him down there now," he added, tossing his head towards the other end of

the porch, "with the women around him."

In fact, I did catch the deeper sound of a man's voice among the lighter

tones, and the voice had a ring to it which was not wholly unfamiliar,

although I could not place it.

I threw Farrar a bait.

"He must make friends easily," I said.

"With the women?--yes," he replied, so scathingly that I was forced to

laugh in spite of myself.

"Let us go in and look at the register," I suggested. "You may have his

name wrong."

We went in accordingly. Sure enough, in bold, heavy characters, was the

name Charles Wrexell Allen written out in full. That handwriting was one

in a thousand. I made sure I had seen it before, and yet I did not know

it; and the more I puzzled over it the more confused I became. I turned

to Farrar.

"I have had a poor cigar passed off on me and deceive me for a while.

That is precisely the case here. I think I should recognize your man if

I were to see him."

"Well," said Farrar, "here's your chance."

The company outside were moving in. Two or three of the older ladies

came first, carrying their wraps; then a troop of girls, among whom was

Miss Trevor; and lastly, a man. Farrar and I had walked to the door

while the women turned into the drawing-room, so that we were brought

face to face with him, suddenly. At sight of me he halted abruptly,

as though he had struck the edge of a door, changed color, and held out

his hand, tentatively. Then he withdrew it again, for I made no sign of

recognition.

It was the Celebrity!

I felt a shock of disgust as I passed out. Masquerading, it must be

admitted, is not pleasant to the taste; and the whole farce, as it

flashed through my mind,--his advertised trip, his turning up here under

an assumed name, had an ill savor. Perhaps some of the things they said

of him might be true, after all.

"Who the devil is he?" said Farrar, dropping for once his indifference;

"he looked as if he knew you."

I evaded.

"He may have taken me for some one else," I answered with all the

coolness I could muster. "I have never met any one of his name. His

voice and handwriting, however, are very much like those of a man I used

to know."

Farrar was very poor company that evening, and left me early. I went

to my rooms and had taken down a volume of Carlyle, who can generally

command my attention, when there came a knock at the door.

"Come in," I replied, with an instinctive sense of prophecy.

This was fulfilled at once by the appearance of the Celebrity. He was

attired--for the details of his dress forced themselves upon me vividly

--in a rough-spun suit of knickerbockers, a colored-shirt having a large

and prominent gold stud, red and brown stockings of a diamond pattern,

and heavy walking-boots. And he entered with an air of assurance that

was maddening.

"My dear Crocker," he exclaimed, "you have no idea how delighted I am to

see you here!"

I rose, first placing a book-mark in Carlyle, and assured him that I was

surprised to see him here.

"Surprised to see me!" he returned, far from being damped by my manner.

"In fact, I am a little surprised to see myself here."

He sank back on the window-seat and clasped his hands behind his head.

"But first let me thank you for respecting my incognito," he said.

I tried hard to keep my temper, marvelling at the ready way he had chosen

to turn my action.

"And now," he continued, "I suppose you want to know why I came out

here." He easily supplied the lack of cordial solicitation on my part.

"Yes, I should like to know," I said.

Thus having aroused my curiosity, he took his time about appeasing it,

after the custom of his kind. He produced a gold cigarette case, offered

me a cigarette, which I refused, took one himself and blew the smoke in

rings toward the ceiling. Then, raising himself on his elbow, he drew

his features together in such a way as to lead me to believe he was about

to impart some valuable information.

"Crocker," said he, "it's the very deuce to be famous, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is," I replied curtly, wondering what he was driving at;

"I have never tried it."

"An ordinary man, such as you, can't conceive of the torture a fellow in

my position is obliged to go through the year round, but especially in

the summer, when one wishes to go off on a rest. You know what I mean,

of course."

"I am afraid I do not," I answered, in a vain endeavor to embarrass him.

"You're thicker than when I used to know you, then," he returned with

candor. "To tell the truth, Crocker, I often wish I were back at the

law, and had never written a line. I am paying the penalty of fame.

Wherever I go I am hounded to death by the people who have read my books,

and they want to dine and wine me for the sake of showing me off at their

houses. I am heartily sick and tired of it all; you would be if you had

to go through it. I could stand a winter, but the worst comes

in the summer, when one meets the women who fire all sorts of

socio-psychological questions at one for solution, and who have

suggestions for stories." He shuddered.

"And what has all this to do with your coming here?" I cut in, strangling

a smile.

He twisted his cigarette at an acute angle with his face, and looked at

me out of the corner of his eye.

"I'll try to be a little plainer," he went on, sighing as one unused to

deal with people who require crosses on their t's. "I've been worried

almost out of my mind with attention--nothing but attention the whole

time. I can't go on the street but what I'm stared at and pointed out,

so I thought of a scheme to relieve it for a time. It was becoming

unbearable. I determined to assume a name and go to some quiet little

place for the summer, West, if possible, where I was not likely to be

recognized, and have three months of rest."

He paused, but I offered no comment.

"Well, the more I thought of it, the better I liked the idea. I met a

western man at the club and asked him about western resorts, quiet ones.

'Have you heard of Asquith?' says he. 'No,' said I; 'describe it.' He

did, and it was just the place; quaint, restful, and retired. Of course

I put him off the track, but I did not count on striking you. My man

boxed up, and we were off in twenty-four hours, and here I am."

Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the

Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that

adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought

the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

"You won't tell anyone who I am, will you?" he asked anxiously.

He even misinterpreted my silences.

"Certainly not," I replied. "It is no concern of mine. You might come

here as Emil Zola or Ralph Waldo Emerson and it would make no difference

to me."

He looked at me dubiously, even suspiciously.

"That's a good chap," said he, and was gone, leaving me to reflect on the

ways of genius.

And the longer I reflected, the more positive I became that there existed

a more potent reason for the Celebrity's disguise than ennui. As actions

speak louder than words, so does a man's character often give the lie to

his tongue.

CHAPTER IV

A Lion in an ass's skin is still a lion in spite of his disguise.

Conversely, the same might be said of an ass in a lion's skin. The

Celebrity ran after women with the same readiness and helplessness that

a dog will chase chickens, or that a stream will run down hill. Women

differ from chickens, however, in the fact that they find pleasure in

being chased by a certain kind of a man. The Celebrity was this kind of

a man. From the moment his valet deposited his luggage in his rooms,

Charles Wrexell Allen became the social hero of Asquith. It is by straws

we are enabled to tell which way the wind is blowing, and I first noticed

his partiality for Miss Trevor from the absence of the lively conflicts

she was wont to have with Farrar. These ceased entirely after the

Celebrity's arrival. It was the latter who now commanded the

conversation at our table.

I was truly sorry for Farrar, for I knew the man, the depth of his

nature, and the scope of the shock. He carried it off altogether too

well, and both the studied lightness of his actions and the increased

carelessness of his manner made me fear that what before was feigned,

might turn to a real bitterness.

For Farrar's sake, if the Celebrity had been content with women in

general, all would have been well; but he was unable to generalize, in

one sense, and to particularize, in another. And it was plain that he

wished to monopolize Miss Trevor, while still retaining a hold upon the

others. For my sake, had he been content with women alone, I should have

had no cause to complain. But it seemed that I had an attraction for

him, second only to women, which I could not account for. And I began to

be cursed with a great deal of his company. Since he was absolutely

impervious to hints, and would not take no for an answer, I was helpless.

When he had no engagement he would thrust himself on me. He seemed to

know by intuition--for I am very sure I never told him--what my amusement

was to be the mornings I did not go to the county-seat, and he would

invariably turn up, properly equipped, as I was making my way with judge

Short to the tennis court, or carrying my oars to the water. It was in

vain that I resorted to subterfuge: that I went to bed early intending to

be away before the Celebrity's rising hour. I found he had no particular

rising hour. No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the

veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a

message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly

wait. And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all

elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when

he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.

Much of this persecution I might have put up with, indeed, had I not

heard, in one way or another, that he was doing me the honor of calling

me his intimate. This I could not stand, and I soberly resolved to leave

Asquith and go back to town, which I should indeed have done if

deliverance had not arrived from an unexpected quarter.

One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the

steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join

him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from

interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with

a fox terrier. Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a

three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone

with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and

I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the

direction of Mohair.

"That must be your friend Cooke," remarked the Celebrity, looking up.

There could be no doubt of it. With little difficulty I recognized on

the box the familiar figure of my first important client, and beside him

was a lady whom I supposed to be Mrs. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, although I

had had no previous knowledge that such a person existed. The horses

were on a brisk trot, and Mr. Cooke seemed to be getting the best out of

them for the benefit of the sprinkling of people on the inn porch.

Indeed, I could not but admire the dexterous turn of the wrist which

served Mr. Cooke to swing his leaders into the circle and up the hill,

while the liveried guard leaned far out in anticipation of a stumble.

Mr. Cooke hailed me with a beaming smile and a flourish of the whip as

he drew up and descended from the box.

"Maria," he exclaimed, giving me a hearty grip, "this is the man that won

Mohair. My wife, Crocker."

I was somewhat annoyed at this effusiveness before the Celebrity, but I

looked up and caught Mrs. Cooke's eye. It was the calm eye of a general.

"I am glad of the opportunity to thank you, Mr. Crocker," she said

simply. And I liked her from that moment.

Mr. Cooke at once began a tirade against the residents of Asquith for

permitting a sandy and generally disgraceful condition of the roads. So

roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with such

a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on the

veranda. The Celebrity stood by the block, in an amazement which gave

me a wicked pleasure, and it was some minutes before I had the chance

to introduce him.

Mr. Cooke's idea of an introduction, however, was no mere word-formula:

it was fraught with a deeper and a bibulous meaning. He presented the

Celebrity to his wife, and then invited both of us to go inside with him

by one of those neat and cordial paraphrases in which he was skilled.

I preferred to remain with Mrs. Cooke, and it was with a gleam of hope

at a possible deliverance from my late persecution that I watched the two

disappear together through the hall and into the smoking-room.

"How do you like Mohair?" I asked Mrs. Cooke.

"Do you mean the house or the park?" she laughed; and then, seeing my

embarrassment, she went on: "Oh, the house is just like everything else

Fenelon meddles with. Outside it's a mixture of all the styles, and

inside a hash of all the nationalities from Siamese to Spanish. Fenelon

hangs the Oriental tinsels he has collected on pieces of black baronial

oak, and the coat-of-arms he had designed by our Philadelphia jewellers

is stamped on the dining-room chairs, and even worked into the fire

screens."

There was nothing paltry in her criticism of her husband, nothing she

would not have said to his face. She was a woman who made you feel this,

for sincerity was written all over her. I could not help wondering why

she gave Mr. Cooke line in the matter of household decoration, unless

it was that he considered Mohair his own, private hobby, and that she

humored him. Mrs. Cooke was not without tact, and I have no doubt she

perceived my reluctance to talk about her husband and respected it.

"We drove down to bring you back to luncheon," she said.

I thanked her and accepted. She was curious to hear about Asquith and

its people, and I told her all I knew.

"I should like to meet some of them," she explained, "for we intend

having a cotillon at Mohair,--a kind of house-warming, you know. A party

of Mr. Cooke's friends is coming out for it in his car, and he thought

something of inviting the people of Asquith up for a dance."

I had my doubts concerning the wisdom of an entertainment, the success

of which depended on the fusion of a party of Mr. Cooke's friends and

a company from Asquith. But I held my peace. She shot a question at me

suddenly:

"Who is this Mr. Allen?"

"He registers from Boston, and only came a fortnight ago," I replied

vaguely.

"He doesn't look quite right; as though he had been set down on the wrong

planet, you know," said Mrs. Cooke, her finger on her temple. "What is

he like?"

"Well," I answered, at first with uncertainty, then with inspiration, "he

would do splendidly to lead your cotillon, if you think of having one."

"So you do not dance, Mr. Crocker?"

I was somewhat set back by her perspicuity.

"No, I do not," said I.

"I thought not," she said, laughing. It must have been my expression

which prompted her next remark.

"I was not making fun of you," she said, more soberly; "I do not like Mr.

Allen any better than you do, and I have only seen him once."

"But I have not said I did not like him," I objected.

"Of course not," said Mrs. Cooke, quizzically.

At that moment, to my relief, I discerned the Celebrity and Mr. Cooke in

the hallway.

"Here they come, now," she went on. "I do wish Fenelon would keep his

hands off the people he meets. I can feel he is going to make an

intimate of that man. Mark my words, Mr. Crocker."

I not only marked them, I prayed for their fulfilment.

There was that in Mr. Cooke which, for want of a better name, I will call

instinct. As he came down the steps, his arm linked in that of the

Celebrity, his attitude towards his wife was both apologetic and defiant.

He had at once the air of a child caught with a forbidden toy, and that

of a stripling of twenty-one who flaunts a cigar in his father's face.

"Maria," he said, "Mr. Allen has consented to come back with us for

lunch."

We drove back to Mohair, Mr. Cooke and the Celebrity on the box, Mrs.

Cooke and I behind. Except to visit the boathouses I had not been to

Mohair since the day of its completion, and now the full beauty of the

approach struck me for the first time. We swung by the lodge, the keeper

holding open the iron gate as we passed, and into the wide driveway,

hewn, as it were, out of the virgin forest. The sandy soil had been

strengthened by a deep road-bed of clay imported from the interior, which

was spread in turn with a fine gravel, which crunched under the heavy

wheels. From the lodge to the house, a full mile, branches had been

pruned to let the sunshine sift through in splotches, but the wild nature

of the place had been skilfully retained. We curved hither and thither

under the giant trees until suddenly, as a whip straightens in the

snapping, one of the ancient tribes of the forest might have sent an

arrow down the leafy gallery into the open, and at the far end we caught

sight of the palace framed in the vista. It was a triumph for Farrar,

and I wished that the palace had been more worthy.

The Celebrity did not stint his praises of Mohair, coming up the drive,

but so lavish were his comments on the house that they won for him a

lasting place in Mr. Cooke's affections, and encouraged my client to pull

up his horses in a favorable spot, and expand on the beauties of the

mansion.

"Taking it altogether," said he, complacently, "it is rather a neat box,

and I let myself loose on it. I had all these ideas I gathered knocking

about the world, and I gave them to Willis, of Philadelphia, to put

together for me. But he's honest enough not to claim the house. Take,

for instance, that minaret business on the west; I picked that up from a

mosque in Algiers. The oriel just this side is whole cloth from Haddon

Hall, and the galleried porch next it from a Florentine villa. The

conical capped tower I got from a French chateau, and some of the

features on the south from a Buddhist temple in Japan. Only a little

blending and grouping was necessary, and Willis calls himself an

architect, and wasn't equal to it. Now," he added, "get the effect. Did

you ever see another house like it?"

"Magnificent!" exclaimed the Celebrity.

"And then," my client continued, warming under this generous

appreciation, "there's something very smart about those colors. They're

my racing colors. Of course the granite's a little off, but it isn't

prominent. Willis kicked hard when it came to painting the oriel yellow,

but an architect always takes it for granted he knows it all, and a--"

"Fenelon," said Mrs. Cooke, "luncheon is waiting."

Mrs. Cooke dominated at luncheon and retired, and it is certain that both

Mr. Cooke and the Celebrity breathed more freely when she had gone. If

her criticisms on the exterior of the house were just, those on the

interior were more so. Not only did I find the coat-of-arms set forth on

the chairs, fire-screens, and other prominent articles, but it was even

cut into the swinging door of the butler's pantry. The motto I am afraid

my client never took the trouble to have translated, and I am inclined to

think his jewellers put up a little joke on him when they chose it.

"Be Sober and Boast not."

I observed that Mrs. Cooke, when she chose, could exert the subduing

effect on her husband of a soft pedal on a piano; and during luncheon she

kept, the soft pedal on. And the Celebrity, being in some degree a

kindred spirit, was also held in check. But his wife had no sooner left

the room when Mr. Cooke began on the subject uppermost in his mind. I

had suspected that his trip to Asquith that morning was for a purpose at

which Mrs. Cooke had hinted. But she, with a woman's tact, had aimed to

accomplish by degrees that which her husband would carry by storm.

"You've been at Asquith sometime, Crocker," Mr. Cooke began, "long enough

to know the people."

"I know some of them," I said guardedly. But the rush was not to be

stemmed.

"How many do you think you can muster for that entertainment of mine?

Fifty? I ought to have fifty, at least. Suppose you pick out fifty, and

send me up the names. I want good lively ones, you understand, that will

stir things up."

"I am afraid there are not fifty of that kind there," I replied.

His face fell, but brightened again instantly. He appealed to the

Celebrity.

"How about it, old man?" said he.

The Celebrity answered, with becoming modesty, that the Asquithians were

benighted. They had never had any one to show them how to enjoy life.

But there was hope for them.

"That's it," exclaimed my client, slapping his thigh, and turning

triumphantly to me, he continued, "You're all right, Crocker, and know

enough to win a damned big suit, but you're not the man to steer a

delicate thing of this kind."

This is how, to my infinite relief, the Celebrity came to engineer the

matter of the housewarming; and to him it was much more congenial. He

accepted the task cheerfully, and went about it in such a manner as to

leave no doubt in my mind as to its ultimate success. He was a master

hand at just such problems, and this one had a double attraction. It

pleased him to be thought the arbiter of such a worthy cause, while he

acquired a prominence at Asquith which satisfied in some part a craving

which he found inseparable from incognito.

His tactics were worthy of a skilled diplomatist. Before we left Mohair

that day he had exacted as a condition that Mr. Cooke should not appear

at the inn or in its vicinity until after the entertainment. To this my

client readily pledged himself with that absolute freedom from suspicion

which formed one of the most admirable traits of his character. The

Celebrity, being intuitively quick where women were concerned, had

surmised that Mrs. Cooke did not like him; but as her interests in the

affair of the cotillon coincided with those of Mr. Cooke, she was

available as a means to an end. The Celebrity deemed her, from a social

standpoint, decidedly the better part of the Mohair establishment, and he

contrived, by a system of manoeuvres I failed to grasp, to throw her

forward while he kept Mr. Cooke in the background.

He had much to contend with; above all, an antecedent prejudice against

the Cookes, in reality a prejudice against the world, the flesh, and the

devil, natural to any quiet community, and of which Mohair and its

appurtenances were taken as the outward and visible signs. Older people

came to Asquith for simplicity and rest, and the younger ones were

brought there for these things. Nearly all had sufficient wealth to

seek, if they chose, gayety and ostentation at the eastern resorts. But

Asquithians held gayety and ostentation at a discount, and maintained

there was gayety enough at home.

If any one were fitted to overcome this prejudice, it was Mrs. Cooke.

Her tastes and manners were as simple as her gowns. The Celebrity, by

arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at

Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the

track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they

were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house.

Their example was followed by others at a time when the master of Mohair

was superintending in person the docking of some two-year-olds, and

equally invisible. These ladies likewise came back to sing Mrs. Cooke's

praises. Mrs. Cooke returned the calls. She took tea on the inn

veranda, and drove Mrs. Short around Mohair in her victoria.

Mr. Cooke being seen only on rare and fleeting occasions, there gradually

got abroad a most curious misconception of that gentleman's character,

while over his personality floated a mist of legend which the Celebrity

took good care not to dispel. Farrar, who despised nonsense, was

ironical and non-committal when appealed to, and certainly I betrayed

none of my client's attributes. Hence it came that Asquith, before the

house-warming, knew as little about Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, the man, as

the nineteenth century knows about William Shakespeare, and was every

whit as curious. Like Shakespeare, Mr. Cooke was judged by his works,

and from these he was generally conceded to be an illiterate and

indifferent person of barbarous tastes and a mania for horses. He was

further described as ungentlemanly by a brace of spinsters who had been

within earshot on the veranda the morning he had abused the Asquith

roads, but their evidence was not looked upon as damning. That Mr. Cooke

would appear at the cotillon never entered any one's head.

Thus it was, for a fortnight, Mr. Cooke maintained a most rigid

seclusion. Would that he had discovered in the shroud of mystery the

cloak of fame!

THE CELEBRITY

By Winston Churchill

VOLUME 2.

CHAPTER V

It was small wonder, said the knowing at Asquith, that Mr. Charles

Wrexell Allen should be attracted by Irene Trevor. With the lake

breezes of the north the red and the tan came into her cheeks, those boon

companions of the open who are best won by the water-winds. Perhaps they

brought, too, the spring to the step and the light under the long lashes

when she flashed a look across the table. Little by little it became

plain that Miss Trevor was gaining ground with the Celebrity to the

neglect of the other young women at Asquith, and when it was announced

that he was to lead the cotillon with her, the fact was regarded as

significant. Even at Asquith such things were talked about. Mr. Allen

became a topic and a matter of conjecture. He was, I believe, generally

regarded as a good match; his unimpeachable man-servant argued worldly

possessions, of which other indications were not lacking, while his crest

was cited as a material sign of family. Yet when Miss Brewster, one of

the brace of spinsters, who hailed from Brookline and purported to be an

up-to-date edition of the Boston Blue Book, questioned the Celebrity on

this vital point after the searching manner warranted by the gravity of

the subject, he was unable to acquit himself satisfactorily. When this

conversation was repeated in detail within the hearing of the father of

the young woman in question, and undoubtedly for his benefit, Mr. Trevor

threw shame to the winds and scandalized the Misses Brewster then and

there by proclaiming his father to have been a country storekeeper.

In the eyes of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke the apotheosis of the Celebrity

was complete. The people of Asquith were not only willing to attend the

house-warming, but had been worked up to the pitch of eagerness. The

Celebrity as a matter of course was master of ceremonies. He originated

the figures and arranged the couples, of which there were twelve from

Asquith and ten additional young women. These ten were assigned to the

ten young men whom Mr. Cooke expected in his private car, and whose

appearances, heights, and temperaments the Celebrity obtained from Mr.

Cooke, carefully noted, and compared with those of the young women. Be

it said in passing that Mrs. Cooke had nothing to do with any of it, but

exhibited an almost criminal indifference. Mr. Cooke had even chosen the

favors; charity forbids that I should say what they were.

Owing to the frequent consultations which these preparations made

necessary the Celebrity was much in the company of my client, which he

came greatly to prefer to mine, and I therefore abandoned my

determination to leave Asquith. I was settling down delightedly to my

old, easy, and unmolested existence when Farrar and I received an

invitation, which amounted to a summons, to go to Mohair and make

ourselves generally useful. So we packed up and went. We made an odd

party before the arrival of the Ten, particularly when the Celebrity

dropped in for lunch or dinner. He could not be induced to remain

permanently at Mohair because Miss Trevor was at Asquith, but he

appropriated a Hempstead cart from the Mohair stables and made the trip

sometimes twice in a day. The fact that Mrs. Cooke treated him with

unqualified disapproval did not dampen his spirits or lessen the

frequency of his visits, nor, indeed, did it seem to create any breach

between husband and wife. Mr. Cooke took it for granted that his friends

should not please his wife, and Mrs. Cooke remarked to Farrar and me that

her husband was old enough to know better, and too old to be taught. She

loved him devotedly and showed it in a hundred ways, but she was

absolutely incapable of dissimulation.

Thanks to Mrs. Cooke, our visit to Mohair was a pleasant one. We were

able in many ways to help in the arrangements, especially Farrar, who had

charge of decorating the grounds. We saw but little of Mr. Cooke and the

Celebrity.

The arrival of the Ten was an event of importance, and occurred the day

of the dance. I shall treat the Ten as a whole because they did not

materially differ from one another in dress or habits or ambition or

general usefulness on this earth. It is true that Mr. Cooke had been

able to make delicate distinctions between them for the aid of the

Celebrity, but such distinctions were beyond me, and the power to make

them lay only in a long and careful study of the species which I could

not afford to give. Likewise the life of any one of the Ten was the life

of all, and might be truthfully represented by a single year, since each

year was exactly like the preceding. The ordinary year, as is

well-known, begins on the first of January. But theirs was not the

ordinary year, nor the Church year, nor the fiscal year. Theirs began in

the Fall with the New York Horse Show. And I am of the opinion, though

open to correction, that they dated from the first Horse Show instead of

from the birth of Christ. It is certain that they were much better

versed in the history of the Association than in that of the Union, in

the biography of Excelsior rather than that of Lincoln. The Dog Show was

another event to which they looked forward, when they migrated to New

York and put up at the country places of their friends. But why go

farther?

The Ten made themselves very much at home at Mohair. One of them told

the Celebrity he reminded him very much of a man he had met in New York

and who had written a book, or something of that sort, which made the

Celebrity wince. The afternoon was spent in one of the stable lofts,

where Mr. Cooke had set up a mysterious L-shaped box, in one arm of which

a badger was placed by a groom, while my client's Sarah, a terrier, was

sent into the other arm to invite the badger out. His objections

exceeded the highest hopes; he dug his claws into the wood and devoted

himself to Sarah's countenance with unremitting industry. This

occupation was found so absorbing that it was with difficulty the Ten

were induced to abandon it and dress for an early dinner, and only did so

after the second peremptory message from Mrs. Cooke.

"It's always this way," said Mr. Cooke, regretfully, as he watched Sarah

licking the accessible furrows in her face; "I never started in on

anything worth doing yet that Maria did not stop it."

Farrar and I were not available for the dance, and after dinner we looked

about for a quiet spot in which to weather it, and where we could be

within reach if needed. Such a place as this was the Florentine

galleried porch, which ran along outside the upper windows of the

ball-room; these were flung open, for the night was warm. At one end of

the room the musicians, imported from Minneapolis by Mr. Cooke, were

striking the first discordant notes of the tuning, while at the other the

Celebrity and my client, in scarlet hunting-coats, were gravely

instructing the Ten, likewise in scarlet hunting-coats, as to their

conduct and functions. We were reviewing these interesting proceedings

when Mrs. Cooke came hurrying towards us. She held a letter in her hand.

"You know," said she, "that Mr. Cooke is forgetful, particularly when his

mind is occupied with important matters, as it has been for some time.

Here is a letter from my niece, Miss Thorn, which he has carried in his

pocket since Monday. We expected her two weeks ago, and had given her

up. But it seems she was to leave Philadelphia on Wednesday, and will

be at that forlorn little station of Asquith at half-past nine to-night.

I want you two to go over and meet her."

We expressed our readiness, and in ten minutes were in the station wagon,

rolling rapidly down the long drive, for it was then after nine. We

passed on the way the van of the guests from Asquith. As we reached the

lodge we heard the whistle, and we backed up against one side of the

platform as the train pulled up at the other.

Farrar and I are not imaginative; we did not picture to ourselves any

particular type for the girl we were going to meet, we were simply doing

our best to get to the station before the train. We jumped from the

wagon and were watching the people file out of the car, and I noticed

that more than one paused to look back over their shoulders as they

reached the door. Then came a maid with hand-bag and shawls, and after

her a tall young lady. She stood for a moment holding her skirt above

the grimy steps, with something of the stately pose which Richter has

given his Queen Louise on the stairway, and the light of the reflector

fell full upon her. She looked around expectantly, and recognizing Mrs.

Cooke's maid, who had stepped forward to relieve hers of the shawls, Miss

Thorn greeted her with a smile which greatly prepossessed us in her

favor.

"How do you do, Jennie?" she said. "Did any one else come?"

"Yes, Miss Marian," replied Jennie, abashed but pleased,--"these

gentlemen."

Farrar and I introduced ourselves, awkwardly enough, and we both tried to

explain at once how it was that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Cooke was there to

meet her. Of course we made an absolute failure of it. She scanned our

faces with a puzzled expression for a while and then broke into a laugh.

"I think I understand," she said; "they are having the house-warming."

"She's first-rate at guessing," said Farrar to me as we fled

precipitately to see that the trunks were hoisted into the basket.

Neither of us had much presence of mind as we climbed into the wagon,

and, what was even stranger, could not account for the lack of it. Miss

Thorn was seated in the corner; in spite of the darkness I could see that

she was laughing at us still.

"I feel very badly that I should have taken you away from the dance," we

heard her say.

"We don't dance," I answered clumsily, "and we were glad to come."

"Yes, we were glad to come," Farrar chimed in.

Then we relapsed into a discomfited silence, and wished we were anywhere

else. But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud, and with

such a hearty enjoyment that instead of getting angry and more mortified

we began to laugh ourselves, and instantly felt better. After that we

got along famously. She had at once the air of good fellowship and the

dignity of a woman, and she seemed to understand Farrar and me perfectly.

Not once did she take us over our heads, though she might have done so

with ease, and we knew this and were thankful. We began to tell her

about Mohair and the cotillon, and of our point of observation from the

Florentine galleried porch, and she insisted she would join us there.

By the time we reached the house we were thanking our stars she had come.

Mrs. Cooke came out under the port-cochere to welcome her.

"Unfortunately there is no one to dance with you, Marian," she said; "but

if I had not by chance gone through your uncle's pockets, there would

have been no one to meet you."

I think I had never felt my deficiency in dancing until that moment. But

Miss Thorn took her aunt's hand affectionately in hers.

"My dear Aunt Maria," said she, "I would not dance to-night if there were

twenty to choose from. I should like nothing better than to look on with

these two. We are the best of friends already," she added, turning

towards us, "are we not?"

"We are indeed," we hastened to assure her.

Mrs. Cooke smiled.

"You should have been a man, Marian," she said as they went upstairs

together.

We made our way to the galleried porch and sat down, there being a lull

in the figures just then. We each took out a cigar and lighted a match;

and then looked across at the other. We solemnly blew our matches out.

"Perhaps she doesn't like smoke," said Farrar, voicing the sentiment.

"Perhaps not," said I.

Silence.

"I wonder how she will get along with the Ten?" I queried.

"Better than with us," he answered in his usual strain. "They're

trained."

"Or with Allen?" I added irresistibly.

"Women are all alike," said Farrar.

At this juncture Miss Thorn herself appeared at the end of the gallery,

her shoulders wrapped in a gray cape trimmed with fur. She stood

regarding us with some amusement as we rose to receive her.

"Light your cigars and be sensible," said she, "or I shall go in."

We obeyed. The three of us turned to the window to watch the figure, the

music of which was just beginning. Mr. Cooke, with the air of an English

squire at his own hunt ball, was strutting contentedly up and down one

end of the room, now pausing to exchange a few hearty words with some

Presbyterian matron from Asquith, now to congratulate Mr. Trevor on the

appearance of his daughter. Lined against the opposite wall were the

Celebrity and his ten red-coated followers, just rising for the figure.

It was very plain that Miss Trevor was radiantly happy; she was easily

the handsomest girl in the room, and I could not help philosophizing

when I saw her looking up into the Celebrity's eyes upon the seeming

inconsistency of nature, who has armed and warned woman against all but

her most dangerous enemy.

And then a curious thing happened. The Celebrity, as if moved by a

sudden uncontrollable impulse, raised his eyes until they rested on the

window in which we were. Although his dancing was perfect, he lost the

step without apparent cause, his expression changed, and for the moment

he seemed to be utterly confused. But only for the moment; in a trice he

had caught the time again and swept Miss Trevor rapidly down the room and

out of sight. I looked instinctively at the girl beside me. She had

thrown her head forward, and in the streaming light I saw that her lips

were parted in a smile.

I resolved upon a stroke.

"Mr. Allen," I remarked, "leads admirably."

"Mr. Allen!" she exclaimed, turning on me.

"Yes, it is Mr. Allen who is leading," I repeated.

An expression of perplexity spread over her face, but she said nothing.

My curiosity was aroused to a high pitch, and questions were rising to my

lips which I repressed with difficulty. For Miss Thorn had displayed,

purposely or not, a reticence which my short acquaintance with her

compelled me to respect; and, besides, I was bound by a promise not to

betray the Celebrity's secret. I was, however, convinced from what had

occurred that she had met the Celebrity in the East, and perhaps known

him.

Had she fallen in love with him, as was the common fate of all young

women he met? I changed my opinion on this subject a dozen times. Now I

was sure, as I looked at her, that she was far too sensible; again, a

doubt would cross my mind as the Celebrity himself would cross my view,

the girl on his arm reduced to adoration. I followed him narrowly when

in sight. Miss Thorn was watching him, too, her eyes half closed, as

though in thought. But beyond the fact that he threw himself into the

dance with a somewhat increased fervor, perhaps, his manner betokened no

uneasiness, and not even by a glance did he betray any disturbing

influence from above.

Thus we stood silently until the figure was finished, when Miss Thorn

seated herself in one of the wicker chairs behind us.

"Doesn't it make you wish to dance?" said Farrar to her. "It is hard

luck you should be doomed to spend the evening with two such useless

fellows as we are."

She did not catch his remark at first, as was natural in a person

preoccupied. Then she bit her lips to repress a smile.

"I assure you, Mr. Farrar," she said with force, "I have never in my life

wished to dance as little as I do now."

But a voice interrupted her, and the scarlet coat of the Celebrity was

thrust into the light between us. Farrar excused himself abruptly and

disappeared.

"Never wished to dance less!" cried the Celebrity. "Upon my word, Miss

Thorn, that's too bad. I came up to ask you to reconsider your

determination, as one of the girls from Asquith is leaving, and there is

an extra man."

"You are very kind," said Miss Thorn, quietly, "but I prefer to remain

here."

My surmise, then, was correct. She had evidently met the Celebrity, and

there was that in his manner of addressing her, without any formal

greeting, which seemed to point to a close acquaintance.

"You know Mr. Allen, then, Miss Thorn?" said I.

"What can you mean?" she exclaimed, wheeling on me; "this is not Mr.

Allen."

"Hang you, Crocker," the Celebrity put in impatiently; "Miss Thorn knows

who I am as well as you do."

"I confess it is a little puzzling," said she; "perhaps it is because I

am tired from travelling, and my brain refuses to work. But why in the

name of all that is strange do you call him Mr. Allen?"

The Celebrity threw himself into the chair beside her and asked

permission to light a cigarette.

"I am going to ask you the favor of respecting my incognito, Miss Thorn,

as Crocker has done," he said. "Crocker knew me in the East, too. I had

not counted upon finding him at Asquith."

Miss Thorn straightened herself and made a gesture of impatience.

"An incognito!" she cried. "But you have taken another man's name. And

you already had his face and figure!"

I jumped.

"That is so," he calmly returned; "the name was ready to hand, and so I

took it. I don't imagine it will make any difference to him. It's only

a whim of mine, and with me there's no accounting for a whim. I make it

a point to gratify every one that strikes me. I confess to being

eccentric, you know."

"You must get an enormous amount of gratification out of this," she said

dryly. "What if the other man should happen along?"

"Scarcely at Asquith."

"I have known stranger things to occur," said she.

The Celebrity smiled and smoked.

"I'll wager, now," he went on, "that you little thought to find me here

incognito. But it is delicious, I assure you, to lead once more a

commonplace and unmolested existence."

"Delightful," said Miss Thorn.

"People never consider an author apart from his work, you know, and I

confess I had a desire to find out how I would get along. And there

comes a time when a man wishes he had never written a book, and a longing

to be sought after for his own sake and to be judged on his own merits.

And then it is a great relief to feel that one is not at the beck and

call of any one and every one wherever one goes, and to know that one

is free to choose one's own companions and do as one wishes."

"The sentiment is good," Miss Thorn agreed, "very good. But doesn't it

seem a little odd, Mr. Crocker," she continued, appealing to me, "that a

man should take the pains to advertise a trip to Europe in order to

gratify a whim of this sort?"

"It is indeed incomprehensible to me," I replied, with a kind of grim

pleasure, "but you must remember that I have always led a commonplace

existence."

Although the Celebrity was almost impervious to sarcasm, he was now

beginning to exhibit visible signs of uneasiness, the consciousness

dawning upon him that his eccentricity was not receiving the ovation it

merited. It was with a palpable relief that he heard the first warning

notes of the figure.

"Am I to understand that you wish me to do my part in concealing your

identity?" asked Miss Thorn, cutting him short as he was expressing

pleasure at her arrival.

"If you will be so kind," he answered, and departed with a bow.

There was a mischievous mirth in her eye as she took her place in the

window. Below in the ball-room sat Miss Trevor surrounded by men, and

I saw her face lighting at the Celebrity's approach.

"Who is that beautiful girl he is dancing with?" said Miss Thorn.

I told her.

"Have you read his books?" she asked, after a pause.

"Some of them."

"So have I."

The Celebrity was not mentioned again that evening.

CHAPTER VI

As an endeavor to unite Mohair and Asquith the cotillon had proved a

dismal failure. They were as the clay and the brass. The next morning

Asquith was split into factions and rent by civil strife, and the porch

of the inn was covered by little knots of women, all trying to talk at

once; their faces told an ominous tale. Not a man was to be seen. The

Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Chicago papers, all of which had previously

contained elaborate illustrated accounts of Mr. Cooke's palatial park and

residence, came out that morning bristling with headlines about the ball,

incidentally holding up the residents of a quiet and retiring little

community in a light that scandalized them beyond measure. And Mr.

Charles Wrexell Allen, treasurer of the widely known Miles Standish

Bicycle Company, was said to have led the cotillon in a manner that left

nothing to be desired.

So it was this gentleman whom the Celebrity was personating! A queer

whim indeed.

After that, I doubt if the court of Charles the Second was regarded by

the Puritans with a greater abhorrence than was Mohair by the good ladies

of Asquith. Mr. Cooke and his ten friends were branded as profligates

whose very scarlet coats bore witness that they were of the devil. Mr.

Cooke himself, who particularly savored of brimstone, would much better

have remained behind the arras, for he was denounced with such energy and

bitterness that those who might have attempted his defence were silent,

and their very silence told against them. Mr. Cooke had indeed outdone

himself in hospitality. He had posted punch-bowls in every available

corner, and so industriously did he devote himself to the duties of host,

as he conceived them, that as many as four of the patriarchs of Asquith

and pillars of the church had returned home more or less insensible,

while others were quite incoherent. The odds being overwhelming, the

master of Mohair had at length fallen a victim to his own good cheer.

He took post with Judge Short at the foot of the stair, where, in spite

of the protests of the Celebrity and of other well-disposed persons, the

two favored the parting guests with an occasional impromptu song and

waved genial good-byes to the ladies. And, when Mrs. Short attempted to

walk by with her head in the air, as though the judge were in an

adjoining county, he so far forgot his judicial dignity as to chuck her

under the chin, an act which was applauded with much boyish delight by

Mr. Cooke, and a remark which it is just as well not to repeat. The

judge desired to spend the night at Mohair, but was afterwards taken home

by main force, and the next day his meals were brought up to him. It is

small wonder that Mrs. Short was looked upon as the head of the outraged

party. The Ten were only spoken of in whispers. Three of them had been

unable to come to time when the last figure was called, whereupon their

partners were whisked off the scene without so much as being allowed to

pay their respects to the hostess. Besides these offences, there were

other minor barbarisms too numerous to mention.

Although Mrs. Short's party was all-powerful at Asquith, there were some

who, for various reasons, refused to agree in the condemnation of Mr.

Cooke. Judge Short and the other gentlemen in his position were, of

course, restricted, but Mr. Trevor came out boldly in the face of severe

criticism and declared that his daughter should accept any invitation

from Mrs. Cooke that she chose, and paid but little attention to the

coolness resulting therefrom. He was fast getting a reputation for

oddity. And the Celebrity tried to conciliate both parties, and

succeeded, though none but he could have done it. At first he was eyed

with suspicion and disgust as he drove off to Mohair in his Hempstead

cart, and was called many hard names. But he had a way about him which

won them in the end.

A few days later I ran over to Mohair and found my client with the

colored Sunday supplement of a Chicago newspaper spread out before him,

eyeing the page with something akin to childish delight. I discovered

that it was a picture of his own hunt ball, and as a bit of color it was

marvellous, the scarlet coats being very much in evidence.

"There, old man!" he exclaimed. "What do you think of that? Something

of a sendoff, eh?" And he pointed to a rather stout and important

gentleman in the foreground. "That's me!" he said proudly, "and they

wouldn't do that for Farquhar Fenelon Cooke in Philadelphia."

"A prophet is without honor in his own country," I remarked.

"I don't set up for a prophet," said Mr. Cooke, "but I did predict that I

would start a ripple here, didn't I?"

I did not deny this.

"How do I stand over there?" he inquired, designating Asquith by a twist

of the head. "I hear they're acting all over the road; that they think

I'm the very devil."

"Well, your stock has dropped some, I admit," I answered. "They didn't

take kindly to your getting the judge drunk, you know."

"They oughtn't to complain about that," said my client; "and besides, he

wasn't drunk enough to amount to anything."

"However that may be," said I, "you have the credit for leading him

astray. But there is a split in your favor."

"I'm glad to know that," he said, brightening; "then I won't have to

import any more."

"Any more what?" I asked.

"People from the East to keep things moving, of course. What I have here

and those left me at the inn ought to be enough to run through the summer

with. Don't you think so?"

I thought so, and was moving off when he called me back.

"Is the judge locked up, old man?" he demanded.

"He's under rather close surveillance," I replied, smiling.

"Crocker;" he said confidentially, "see if you can't smuggle him over

here some day soon. The judge always holds good cards, and plays a

number one hand."

I promised, and escaped. On the veranda I came upon Miss Thorn

surrounded by some of her uncle's guests. I imagine that she was bored,

for she looked it.

"Mr. Crocker," she called out, "you're just the man I have been wishing

to see."

The others naturally took this for a dismissal, and she was not long in

coming to her point when we were alone.

"What is it you know about this queer but gifted genius who is here so

mysteriously?" she asked.

"Nothing whatever," I confessed. "I knew him before he thought of

becoming a genius."

"Retrogression is always painful," she said; "but tell me something about

him then."

I told her all I knew, being that narrated in these pages. "Now,"

said I, "if you will pardon a curiosity on my part, from what you

said the other evening I inferred that he closely resembles the man

whose name it pleased him to assume. And that man, I learn from the

newspapers, is Mr. Charles Wrexell Allen of the 'Miles Standish Bicycle

Company.'"

Miss Thorn made a comic gesture of despair.

"Why he chose Mr. Allen's name," she said, "is absolutely beyond my

guessing. Unless there is some purpose behind the choice, which I do not

for an instant believe, it was a foolish thing to do, and one very apt to

lead to difficulties. I can understand the rest. He has a reputation

for eccentricity which he feels he must keep up, and this notion of

assuming a name evidently appealed to him as an inspiration."

"But why did he come out here?" I asked. "Can you tell me that?"

Miss Thorn flushed slightly, and ignored the question.

"I met the 'Celebrity,' as you call him," she said, "for the first time

last winter, and I saw him frequently during the season. Of course

I had heard not a little about him and his peculiarities. His name seems

to have gone the length and breadth of the land. And, like most girls,

I had read his books and confess I enjoyed them. It is not too much to

say," she added archly, "that I made a sort of archangel out of the

author."

"I can understand that," said I.

"But that did not last," she continued hastily. "I see I have got beside

my story. I saw a great deal of him in New York. He came to call, and I

believe I danced with him once or twice. And then my aunt, Mrs. Rivers,

bought a place near Epsom, in Massachusetts, and had a house party there

in May. And the Celebrity was invited."

I smiled.

"Oh, I assure you it was a mere chance," said Miss Thorn. "I mention

this that I may tell you the astonishing part of it all. Epsom is one of

those smoky manufacturing towns one sees in New England, and the 'Miles

Standish' bicycle is made there. The day after we all arrived at my

aunt's a man came up the drive on a wheel whom I greeted in a friendly

way and got a decidedly uncertain bow in return.

"I thought it rather a strange shift from a marked cordiality, and spoke

of the circumstance to my aunt, who was highly amused. 'Why, my dear,'

said she, 'that was Mr. Allen, of the bicycle company. I was nearly

deceived myself.'"

"And is the resemblance so close as that?" I exclaimed.

"So close! Believe me, they are as like as two ices from a mould. Of

course, when they are together one can distinguish the Celebrity from the

bicycle man. The Celebrity's chin is a little more square, and his nose

straighter, and there are other little differences. I believe Mr. Allen

has a slight scar on his forehead. But the likeness was remarkable,

nevertheless, and it grew to be a standing joke with us. They actually

dressed ludicrously alike. The Celebrity became so sensitive about it

that he went back to New York before the party broke up. We grew to be

quite fond of the bicycle man."

She paused and shifted her chair, which had rocked close to mine.

"And can you account for his coming to Asquith?" I asked innocently.

She was plainly embarrassed.

"I suppose I might account for it, Mr. Crocker," she replied. Then she

added, with something of an impulse, "After all, it is foolish of me not

to tell you. You probably know the Celebrity well enough to have learned

that he takes idiotic fancies to young women."

"Not always idiotic," I protested.

"You mean that the young women are not always idiotic, I suppose. No,

not always, but nearly always. I imagine he got the idea of coming to

Asquith," she went on with a change of manner, "because I chanced to

mention that I was coming out here on a visit."

"Oh," I remarked, and there words failed me.

Her mouth was twitching with merriment.

"I am afraid you will have to solve the rest of it for yourself, Mr.

Crocker," said she; "that is all of my contribution. My uncle tells me

you are the best lawyer in the country, and I am surprised that you are

so slow in getting at motives."

And I did attempt to solve it on my way back to Asquith. The conclusion

I settled to, everything weighed, was this: that the Celebrity had become

infatuated with Miss Thorn (I was far from blaming him for that) and had

followed her first to Epsom and now to Asquith. And he had chosen to

come West incognito partly through the conceit which he admitted and

gloried in, and partly because he believed his prominence sufficient to

obtain for him an unpleasant notoriety if he continued long enough to

track the same young lady about the country. Hence he had taken the

trouble to advertise a trip abroad to account for his absence.

Undoubtedly his previous conquests had been made more easily, for my

second talk with Miss Thorn had put my mind at rest as to her having

fallen a victim to his fascinations. Her arrival at Mohair being

delayed, the Celebrity had come nearly a month too soon, and in the

interval that tendency of which he was the dupe still led him by the

nose; he must needs make violent love to the most attractive girl on the

ground,--Miss Trevor. Now that one still more attractive had arrived

I was curious to see how he would steer between the two, for I made no

doubt that matters had progressed rather far with Miss Trevor. And in

this I was not mistaken.

But his choice of the name of Charles Wrexell Allen bothered me

considerably. I finally decided that he had taken it because convenient,

and because he believed Asquith to be more remote from the East than the

Sandwich Islands.

Reaching the inn grounds, I climbed the hillside to a favorite haunt of

mine, a huge boulder having a sloping back covered with soft turf. Hence

I could watch indifferently both lake and sky. Presently, however, I was

aroused by voices at the foot of the rock, and peering over the edge I

discovered a kind of sewing-circle gathered there. The foliage hid me

completely. I perceived the Celebrity perched upon the low branch of an

apple-tree, and Miss Trevor below him, with two other girls, doing

fancy-work. I shall not attempt to defend the morality of my action, but

I could not get away without discovery, and the knowledge that I had

heard a part of their conversation might prove disquieting to them.

The Celebrity had just published a book, under the title of 'The

Sybarites', which was being everywhere discussed; and Asquith, where

summer reading was general, came in for its share of the debate. Why it

was called The Sybarites I have never discovered. I did not read the

book because I was sick and tired of the author and his nonsense, but I

imbibed, in spite of myself, something of the story and its moral from

hearing it talked about. The Celebrity himself had listened to arguments

on the subject with great serenity, and was nothing loth to give his

opinion when appealed to. I realized at once that 'The Sybarites' was

the present topic.

"Yes, it is rather an uncommon book," he was saying languidly, "but there

is no use writing a story unless it is uncommon."

"Dear, how I should like to meet the author!" exclaimed a voice.

"He must be a charming man, and so young, too! I believe you said

you knew him, Mr. Allen."

"An old acquaintance," he answered, "and I am always reminding him that

his work is overestimated."

"How can you say he is overestimated!" said a voice.

"You men are all jealous of him," said another.

"Is he handsome? I have heard he is."

"He would scarcely be called so," said the Celebrity, doubtfully.

"He is, girls," Miss Trevor interposed; "I have seen his photograph."

"What does he look like, Irene?" they chorused. "Men are no judges."

"He is tall, and dark, and broad-shouldered," Miss Trevor enumerated,

as though counting her stitches, "and he has a very firm chin, and a

straight nose, and--"

"Perfect!" they cried. "I had an idea he was just like that. I should

go wild about him. Does he talk as well as he writes, Mr. Allen?"

"That is admitting that he writes well."

"Admitting?" they shouted scornfully, "and don't you admit it?"

"Some people like his writing, I have to confess," said the Celebrity,

with becoming calmness; "certainly his personality could not sell an

edition of thirty thousand in a month. I think 'The Sybarites' the best

of his works."

"Upon my word, Mr. Allen, I am disgusted with you," said the second

voice; "I have not found a man yet who would speak a good word for him.

But I did not think it of you."

A woman's tongue, like a firearm, is a dangerous weapon, and often

strikes where it is least expected. I saw with a wicked delight that the

shot had told, for the Celebrity blushed to the roots of his hair, while

Miss Trevor dropped three or four stitches.

"I do not see how you can expect men to like 'The Sybarites'," she said,

with some heat; "very few men realize or care to realize what a small

chance the average woman has. I know marriage isn't a necessary goal,

but most women, as well as most men, look forward to it at some time of

life, and, as a rule, a woman is forced to take her choice of the two or

three men that offer themselves, no matter what they are. I admire a man

who takes up the cudgels for women, as he has done."

"Of course we admire him," they cried, as soon as Miss Trevor had stopped

for breath.

"And can you expect a man to like a book which admits that women are the

more constant?" she went on.

"Why, Irene, you are quite rabid on the subject," said the second voice;

"I did not say I expected it. I only said I had hoped to find Mr. Allen,

at least, broad enough to agree with the book."

"Doesn't Mr. Allen remind you a little of Desmond?" asked the first

voice, evidently anxious to avoid trouble.

"Do you know whom he took for Desmond, Mr. Allen? I have an idea it was

himself."

Mr. Allen, had now recovered some of his composure.

"If so, it was done unconsciously," he said. "I suppose an author must

put his best thoughts in the mouth of his hero."

"But it is like him?" she insisted.

"Yes, he holds the same views."

"Which you do not agree with."

"I have not said I did not agree with them," he replied, taking up his

own defence; "the point is not that men are more inconstant than women,

but that women have more excuse for inconstancy. If I remember

correctly, Desmond, in a letter to Rosamond, says: 'Inconstancy in a

woman, because of the present social conditions, is often pardonable. In

a man, nothing is more despicable.' I think that is so. I believe that

a man should stick by the woman to whom he has given his word as closely

as he sticks by his friends."

"Ah!" exclaimed the aggressive second voice, "that is all very well. But

how about the woman to whom he has not given his word? Unfortunately,

the present social conditions allow a man to go pretty far without a

definite statement."

At this I could not refrain from looking at Miss Trevor. She was bending

over her knitting and had broken her thread.

"It is presumption for a man to speak without some foundation," said the

Celebrity, "and wrong unless he is sure of himself."

"But you must admit," the second voice continued, "that a man has no

right to amuse himself with a woman, and give her every reason to believe

he is going to marry her save the only manly and substantial one. And

yet that is something which happens every day. What do you think of a

man who deserts a woman under those conditions?"

"He is a detestable dog, of course," declared the Celebrity.

And the cock in the inn yard was silent.

"I should love to be able to quote from a book at will," said the

quieting voice, for the sake of putting an end to an argument which bid

fair to become disagreeable. "How do you manage to do it?"

"It was simply a passage that stuck in my mind," he answered modestly;

"when I read a book I pick them up just as a roller picks up a sod here

and there as it moves over the lawn."

"I should think you might write, Mr. Allen, you have such an original way

of putting things!"

"I have thought of it," returned the Celebrity, "and I may, some fine

day."

Wherewith he thrust his hands into his pockets and sauntered off with

equanimity undisturbed, apparently unaware of the impression he had left

behind him. And the Fifth Reader story popped into my head of good King

William (or King Frederick, I forgot which), who had a royal fancy for

laying aside the gayeties of the court and straying incognito among his

plainer subjects, but whose princely origin was invariably detected in

spite of any disguise his Majesty could invent.

CHAPTER VII

I experienced a great surprise a few mornings afterwards. I had risen

quite early, and found the Celebrity's man superintending the hoisting of

luggage on top of a van.

"Is your master leaving?" I asked.

"He's off to Mohair now, sir," said the valet, with a salute.

At that instant the Celebrity himself appeared.

"Yes, old chap, I'm off to Mohair," he explained. "There's more sport in

a day up there than you get here in a season. Beastly slow place, this,

unless one is a deacon or a doctor of divinity. Why don't you come up,

Crocker? Cooke would like nothing better; he has told me so a dozen

times."

"He is very good," I replied. I could not resist the temptation to add,

"I had an idea Asquith rather suited your purposes just now."

"I don't quite understand," he said, jumping at the other half of my

meaning.

"Oh, nothing. But you told me when you came here, if I am not mistaken,

that you chose Asquith because of those very qualities for which you now

condemn it."

"Magna est vis consuetudinis," he laughed; "I thought I could stand the

life, but I can't. I am tired of their sects and synods and sermons. By

the way," said he pulling at my sleeve, "what a deuced pretty girl that

Miss Thorn is! Isn't she? Rollins, where's the cart? Well, good-bye,

Crocker; see you soon."

He drove rapidly off as the clock struck six, and an uneasy glance he

gave the upper windows did not escape me. When Farrar appeared, I told

him what had happened.

"Good riddance," he replied sententiously.

We sat in silence until the bell rang, looking at the morning sun on the

lake. I was a little anxious to learn the state of Farrar's feelings in

regard to Miss Trevor, and how this new twist in affairs had affected

them. But I might as well have expected one of King Louis's carp to

whisper secrets of the old regime. The young lady came to the

breakfast-table looking so fresh and in such high spirits that I made

sure she had not heard of the Celebrity's ignoble escape. As the meal

proceeded it was easy to mark that her eye now and again fell across his

empty chair, and glanced inquiringly towards the door. I made up my mind

that I would not be the bearer of evil news, and so did Farrar, so we

kept up a vapid small-talk with Mr. Trevor on the condition of trade in

the West. Miss Trevor, however, in some way came to suspect that we

could account for that vacant seat. At last she fixed her eye

inquiringly on me, and I trembled.

"Mr. Crocker," she began, and paused. Then she added with a fair

unconcern, "do you happen to know where Mr. Allen is this morning?"

"He has gone over to Mohair, I believe," I replied weakly.

"To Mohair!" she exclaimed, putting down her cup; "why, he promised to

go canoeing at ten.

"Probably he will be back by then," I ventured, not finding it in my

heart to tell her the cruel truth. But I kept my eyes on my plate. They

say a lie has short legs. Mine had, for my black friend, Simpson, was at

that instant taking off the fruit, and overheard my remark.

"Mr. Allen done gone for good," he put in, "done give me five dollars

last night. Why, sah," he added, scratching his head, "you was on de

poch dis mornin' when his trunks was took away!"

It was certainly no time to quibble then.

"His trunks!" Miss Trevor exclaimed.

"Yes, he has left us and gone to Mohair," I said, "bag and baggage. That

is the flat truth of it."

I suppose there is some general rule for calculating beforehand how a

young woman is going to act when news of this sort is broken. I had no

notion of what Miss Trevor would do. I believe Farrar thought she would

faint, for he laid his napkin on the table. She did nothing of the kind,

but said simply:

"How unreliable men are!"

I fell to guessing what her feelings were; for the life of me I could not

tell from her face. I was sorry for Miss Trevor in spite of the fact

that she had neglected to ask my advice before falling in love with the

Celebrity. I asked her to go canoeing with me. She refused kindly but

very firmly.

It is needless to say that the Celebrity did not come back to the inn,

and as far as I could see the desertion was designed, cold-blooded, and

complete. Miss Trevor remained out of sight during the day of his

departure, and at dinner we noticed traces of a storm about her,--a storm

which had come and gone. There was an involuntary hush as she entered

the dining-room, for Asquith had been buzzing that afternoon over the

episode. And I admired the manner in which she bore her inspection.

Already rumors of the cause of Mr. Allen's departure were in active

circulation, and I was astonished to learn that he had been seen that day

seated upon Indian rock with Miss Thorn herself. This piece of news gave

me a feeling of insecurity about people, and about women in particular,

that I had never before experienced. After holding the Celebrity up to

such unmeasured ridicule as she had done, ridicule not without a

seasoning of contempt, it was difficult to believe Miss Thorn so

inconsistent as to go alone with him to Indian rock; and she was not

ignorant of Miss Trevor's experience. But the fact was attested by

trustworthy persons.

I have often wondered what prompted me to ask Miss Trevor again to go

canoeing. To do myself justice, it was no wish of mine to meddle with or

pry into her affairs. Neither did I flatter myself that my poor company

would be any consolation for that she had lost. I shall not try to

analyze my motive. Suffice it to record that she accepted this second

invitation, and I did my best to amuse her by relating a few of my

experiences at the bar, and I told that memorable story of Farrar

throwing O'Meara into the street. We were getting along famously,

when we descried another canoe passing us at some distance, and we both

recognized the Celebrity at the paddle by the flannel jacket of his

college boat club. And Miss Thorn sat in the bow!

"Do you know anything about that man, Miss Trevor?" I asked abruptly.

She grew scarlet, but replied:

"I know that he is a fraud."

"Anything else?"

"I can't say that I do; that is, nothing but what he has told me."

"If you will forgive my curiosity," I said, "what has he told you?"

"He says he is the author of The Sybarites," she answered, her lip

curling, "but of course I do not believe that, now."

"But that happens to be true," I said, smiling.

She clapped her hands.

"I promised him I wouldn't tell," she cried, "but the minute I get back

to the inn I shall publish it."

"No, don't do that just yet," said I.

"Why not? Of course I shall."

I had no definite reason, only a vague hope that we should get some

better sort of enjoyment out of the disclosure before the summer was

over.

"You see," I said, "he is always getting into scrapes; he is that kind of

a man. And it is my humble opinion that he has put his head into a noose

this time, for sure. Mr. Allen, of the 'Miles Standish Bicycle

Company,' whose name he has borrowed for the occasion, is enough like

him in appearance to be his twin brother."

"He has borrowed another man's name!" she exclaimed; "why, that's

stealing!"

"No, merely kleptomania," I replied; "he wouldn't be the other man if he

could. But it has struck me that the real Mr. Allen might turn up here,

or some friend of his, and stir things a bit. My advice to you is to

keep quiet, and we may have a comedy worth seeing."

"Well," she remarked, after she had got over a little of her

astonishment, "it would be great fun to tell, but I won't if you say so."

I came to, have a real liking for Miss Trevor. Farrar used to smile when

I spoke of this, and I never could induce him to go out with us in the

canoe, which we did frequently,--in fact, every day I was at Asquith,

except of course Sundays. And we grew to understand each other very

well. She looked upon me in the same light as did my other friends,

--that of a counsellor-at-law,--and I fell unconsciously into the role of

her adviser, in which capacity I was the recipient of many confidences I

would have got in no other way. That is, in no other way save one, and

in that I had no desire to go, even had it been possible. Miss Trevor

was only nineteen, and in her eyes I was at least sixty.

"See here, Miss Trevor," I said to her one day after we had become more

or less intimate, "of course it's none of my business, but you didn't

feel very badly after the Celebrity went away, did you?"

Her reply was frank and rather staggering.

"Yes, I did. I was engaged to him, you know."

"Engaged to him! I had no idea he ever got that far," I exclaimed.

Miss Trevor laughed merrily.

"It was my fault," she said; "I pinned him down, and he had to propose.

There was no way out of it. I don't mind telling you."

I did not know whether to be flattered or aggrieved by this avowal.

"You know," she went on, her tone half apologetic, "the day after he came

he told me who he was, and I wanted to stop the people we passed and

inform them of the lion I was walking with. And I was quite carried away

by the honor of his attentions: any girl would have been, you know."

"I suppose so," I assented.

"And I had heard and read so much of him, and I doted on his stories, and

all that. His heroes are divine, you must admit. And, Mr. Crocker," she

concluded with a charming naivety, "I just made up my mind I would have

him."

"Woman proposes, and man disposes," I laughed. "He escaped in spite of

you."

She looked at me queerly.

"Only a jest," I said hurriedly; "your escape is the one to be thankful

for. You might have married him, like the young woman in The Sybarites.

You remember, do you not, that the hero of that book sacrifices himself

for the lady who adores him, but whom he has ceased to adore?"

"Yes, I remember," she laughed; "I believe I know that book by heart."

"Think of the countless girls he must have relieved of their affections

before their eyes were opened," I continued with mock gravity. "Think of

the charred trail he has left behind him. A man of that sort ought to be

put under heavy bonds not to break any more hearts. But a kleptomaniac

isn't responsible, you understand. And it isn't worth while to bear any

malice."

"Oh, I don't bear any malice now," she said. "I did at first,

naturally. But it all seems very ridiculous now I have had time to think

it over. I believe, Mr. Crocker, that I never really cared for him."

"Simply an idol shattered this time," I suggested, "and not a heart

broken."

"Yes, that's it," said she.

"I am glad to hear it," said I, much pleased that she had taken such a

sensible view. "But you are engaged to him."

"I was."

"You have broken the engagement, then?"

"No, I--haven't," she said.

"Then he has broken it?"

She did not appear to resent this catechism.

"That's the strange part of it," said Miss Trevor, "he hasn't even

thought it necessary."

"It is clear, then, that you are still engaged to him," said I, smiling

at her blank face.

"I suppose I am," she cried. "Isn't it awful? What shall I do, Mr.

Crocker? You are so sensible, and have had so much experience."

"I beg your pardon," I remarked grimly.

"Oh, you know what I mean: not that kind of experience, of course. But

breach of promise cases and that sort of thing. I have a photograph of

him with something written over it."

"Something compromising?" I inquired.

"Yes, you would probably call it so," she answered, reddening. "But

there is no need of my repeating it. And then I have a lot of other

things. If I write to break off the engagement I shall lose dignity, and

it will appear as though I had regrets. I don't wish him to think that,

of all things. What shall I do?"

"Do nothing," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. Do not break the engagement, and keep the photograph and

other articles for evidence. If he makes any overtures, don't consider

them for an instant. And I think, Miss Trevor, you will succeed sooner

or later in making him very uncomfortable. Were he any one else I

shouldn't advise such a course, but you won't lose any dignity and

self-respect by it, as no one will be likely to hear of it. He can't be

taken seriously, and plainly he has never taken any one else so. He

hasn't even gone to the trouble to notify you that he does not intend

marrying you."

I saw from her expression that my suggestion was favorably entertained.

"What a joke it would be!" she cried delightedly.

"And a decided act of charity," I added, "to the next young woman on his

list."

CHAPTER VIII

The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I

had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;

for, even after she had conquered her love for the Celebrity, the

mortification of having been jilted by him remained. Now she had come

to look upon the matter in its true proportions, and her anticipation of

a possible chance of teaching him a lesson was a pleasure to behold. Our

table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating wit and

caustic repartee, Farrar bracing up to his old standard, and the demand

for seats in the vicinity rose to an animated competition. Mr. Charles

Wrexell Allen's chair was finally awarded to a nephew of Judge Short, who

could turn a story to perfection.

So life at the inn settled down again to what it had been before the

Celebrity came to disturb it.

I had my own reasons for staying away from Mohair. More than once as I

drove over to the county-seat in my buggy I had met the Celebrity on a

tall tandem cart, with one of Mr. Cooke's high-steppers in the lead, and

Miss Thorn in the low seat. I had forgotten to mention that my friend

was something of a whip. At such times I would bow very civilly and pass

on; not without a twinge, I confess. And as the result of one of these

meetings I had to retrace several miles of my road for a brief I had

forgotten. After that I took another road, several miles longer, for the

sight of Miss Thorn with him seriously disturbed my peace of mind.

But at length the day came, as I had feared, when circumstances forced me

to go to my client's place. One morning Miss Trevor and I were about

stepping into the canoe for our customary excursion when one of Mr.

Cooke's footmen arrived with a note for each of us. They were from Mrs.

Cooke, and requested the pleasure of our company that day for luncheon.

"If you were I, would you go?" Miss Trevor asked doubtfully.

"Of course," I replied.

"But the consequences may be unpleasant."

"Don't let them," I said. "Of what use is tact to a woman if not for

just such occasions?"

My invitation had this characteristic note tacked on the end of it

"DEAR CROCKER: Where are you? Where is the judge? F. F. C."

I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very

mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom

relaxed. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair, the judge

occupied by his own guilty thoughts, and I by others not less disturbing.

My client welcomed the judge with that warmth of manner which grappled so

many of his friends to his heart, and they disappeared together into the

Ethiopian card-room, which was filled with the assegais and exclamation

point shields Mr. Cooke had had made at the Sawmill at Beaverton.

I learned from one of the lords-in-waiting loafing about the hall that

Mrs. Cooke was out on the golf links, chaperoning some of the Asquith

young women whose mothers had not seen fit to ostracize Mohair. Mr.

Cooke's ten friends were with them. But this discreet and dignified

servant could not reveal the whereabouts of Miss Thorn and of Mr. Allen,

both of whom I was decidedly anxious to avoid. I was much disgusted,

therefore, to come upon the Celebrity in the smoking-room, writing

rapidly, with, sheets of manuscript piled beside him. And he was quite

good-natured over my intrusion.

"No," said he, "don't go. It's only a short story I promised for a

Christmas number. They offered me fifteen cents a word and promised to

put my name on the cover in red, so I couldn't very well refuse. It's no

inspiration, though, I tell you that." He rose and pressed a bell behind

him and ordered whiskeys and ginger ales, as if he were in a hotel. "Sit

down, Crocker," he said, waving me to a morocco chair. "Why don't you

come over to see us oftener?"

"I've been quite busy," I said.

This remark seemed to please him immensely.

"What a sly old chap you are," said he; "really, I shall have to go back

to the inn and watch you."

"What the deuce do you mean?" I demanded.

He looked me over in well-bred astonishment and replied:

"Hang me, Crocker, if I can make you out. You seem to know the world

pretty well, and yet when a fellow twits you on a little flirtation you

act as though you were going to black his eyes."

"A little flirtation!" I repeated, aghast.

"Oh, well," he said, smiling, "we won't quarrel over a definition. Call

it anything you like."

"Don't you think this a little uncalled for?" I asked, beginning to lose

my temper.

"Bless you, no. Not among friends: not among such friends as we are."

"I didn't know we were such devilish good friends," I retorted warmly.

"Oh, yes, we are, devilish good friends," he answered with assurance;

"known each other from boyhood, and all that. And I say, old chap," he

added, "you needn't be jealous of me, you know. I got out of that long

ago. And I'm after something else now."

For a space I was speechless. Then the ludicrous side of the matter

struck me, and I laughed in spite of myself. Better, after all, to

deal with a fool according to his folly. The Celebrity glanced at the

door and drew his chair closer to mine.

"Crocker," he said confidentially, "I'm glad you came here to-day. There

is a thing or two I wished to consult you about."

"Professional?" I asked, trying to head him off.

"No," he replied, "amateur,--beastly amateur. A bungle, if I ever made

one. The truth is, I executed rather a faux pas over there at Asquith.

Tell me," said he, diving desperately at the root of it, "how does Miss

Trevor feel about my getting out? I meant to let her down easier; 'pon

my word, I did."

This is a way rascals have of judging other men by themselves.

"Well;" said I, "it was rather a blow, of course."

"Of course," he assented.

"And all the more unexpected," I went on, "from a man who has written

reams on constancy."

I flatter myself that this nearly struck home, for he was plainly

annoyed.

"Oh, bother that!" said he. "How many gowns believe in their own

sermons? How many lawyers believe in their own arguments?"

"Unhappily, not as many as might."

"I don't object to telling you, old chap," he continued, "that I went in

a little deeper than I intended. A good deal deeper, in fact. Miss

Trevor is a deuced fine girl, and all that; but absolutely impossible.

I forgot myself, and I confess I was pretty close to caught."

"I congratulate you," I said gravely.

"That's the point of it. I don't know that I'm out of the woods yet.

I wanted to see you and find out how she was acting."

My first impulse was to keep him in hot water. Fortunately I thought

twice.

"I don't know anything about Miss Trevor's feelings--" I began.

"Naturally not--" he interrupted, with a smile.

"But I have a notion that, if she ever fancied you, she doesn't care a

straw for you to-day."

"Doesn't she now," he replied somewhat regretfully. Here was one of the

knots in his character I never could untie.

"Understand, that is simply my guess," I said. "You must have discovered

that it is never possible to be sure of a woman's feelings."

"Found that out long ago," he replied with conviction, and added:

"Then you think I need not anticipate any trouble from her?"

"I have told you what I think," I answered; "you know better than I what

the situation is."

He still lingered.

"Does she appear to be in,--ah,--in good spirits?"

I had work to keep my face straight.