Early that year, the touch of autumn came to the air. Often, returning
at sundown from the afternoon life class, Samson felt the lure of its
melancholy sweetness, and paused on one of the Washington Square
benches, with many vague things stirring in his mind. Some of these
things were as subtly intangible as the lazy sweetness that melted the
façades of the walls into the soft colors of a dream city. He found
himself loving the Palisades of Jersey, seen through a powdery glow at
evening, and the red-gold glare of the setting sun on high-swung gilt
signs. He felt with a throb of his pulses that he was in the Bagdad of
the new world, and that every skyscraper was a minaret from which the
muezzin rang toward the Mecca of his Art. He felt with a stronger throb
the surety of young, but quickening, abilities within himself. Partly,
it was the charm of Indian summer, partly a sense of growing with the
days, but, also, though he had not as yet realized that, it was the new
friendship into which Adrienne had admitted him, and the new experience
of frank _camaraderie_ with a woman not as a member of an inferior
sex, but as an equal companion of brain and soul. He had seen her
often, and usually alone, because he shunned meetings with strangers.
Until his education had advanced further, he wished to avoid social
embarrassments. He knew that she liked him, and realized that it was
because he was a new and virile type, and for that reason a diversion
--a sort of human novelty. She liked him, too, because it was rare for a
man to offer her friendship without making love, and she was certain he
would not make love. He liked her for the same many reasons that every
one else did--because she was herself. Of late, too, he had met a
number of men at Lescott's clubs. He was modestly surprised to find
that, though his attitude on these occasions was always that of one
sitting in the background, the men seemed to like him, and, when they
said, "See you again," at parting, it was with the convincing manner of
real friendliness. Sometimes, even now, his language was ungrammatical,
but so, for the matter of that, was theirs.... The great writer smiled
with his slow, humorous lighting of the eyes as he observed to Lescott:
"We are licking our cub into shape, George, and the best of it is
that, when he learns to dance ragtime to the organ, he isn't going to
stop being a bear. He's a grizzly!"
One wonderful afternoon in October, when the distances were mist-hung,
and the skies very clear, Samson sat across the table from Adrienne
Lescott at a road-house on the Sound. The sun had set through great
cloud battalions massed against the west, and the horizon was fading
into darkness through a haze like ash of roses. She had picked him up
on the Avenue, and taken him into her car for a short spin, but the
afternoon had beguiled them, luring them on a little further, and still
a little further. When they were a score of miles from Manhattan, the
car had suddenly broken down. It would, the chauffeur told them, be the
matter of an hour to effect repairs, so the girl, explaining to the boy
that this event gave the affair the aspect of adventure, turned and led
the way, on foot, to the nearest road-house.
"We will telephone that we shall be late, and then have dinner," she
laughed. "And for me to have dinner with you alone, unchaperoned at a
country inn, is by New York standards delightfully unconventional. It
borders on wickedness." Then, since their attitude toward each other
was so friendly and innocent, they both laughed. They had dined under
the trees of an old manor house, built a century ago, and now converted
into an inn, and they had enjoyed themselves because it seemed to them
pleasingly paradoxical that they should find in a place seemingly so
shabby-genteel a _cuisine_ and service of such excellence. Neither
of them had ever been there before, and neither of them knew that the
reputation of this establishment was in its own way wide--and unsavory.
They had no way of knowing that, because of several thoroughly bruited
scandals which had had origin here, it was a tabooed spot, except for
persons who preferred a semi-shady retreat; and they passed over
without suspicion the palpable surprise of the head waiter when they
elected to occupy a table on the terrace instead of a _cabinet
particulier_.
But the repairs did not go as smoothly as the chauffeur had expected,
and, when he had finished, he was hungry. So, eleven o'clock found them
still chatting at their table on the lighted lawn. After awhile, they
fell silent, and Adrienne noticed that her companion's face had become
deeply, almost painfully set, and that his gaze was tensely focused on
herself.
"What is it, Mr. South?" she demanded.
The young man began to speak, in a steady, self-accusing voice.
"I was sitting here, looking at you," he said, bluntly. "I was
thinking how fine you are in every way; how there is as much difference
in the texture of men and women as there is in the texture of their
clothes. From that automobile cap you wear to your slippers and
stockings, you are clad in silk. From your brain to the tone of your
voice, you are woven of human silk. I've learned lately that silk isn't
weak, but strong. They make the best balloons of it." He paused and
laughed, but his face again became sober. "I was thinking, too, of your
mother. She must be sixty, but she's a young woman. Her face is smooth
and unwrinkled, and her heart is still in bloom. At that same age,
George won't be much older than he is now."
The compliment was so obviously not intended as compliment at all that
the girl flushed with pleasure.
"Then," went on Samson, his face slowly drawing with pain, "I was
thinking of my own people. My mother was about forty when she died. She
was an old woman. My father was forty-three. He was an old man. I was
thinking how they withered under their drudgery--and of the monstrous
injustice of it all."
Adrienne Lescott nodded. Her eyes were sweetly sympathetic.
"It's the hardship of the conditions," she said, softly. "Those
conditions will change."
"But that's not all I was thinking," went on the boy.
"I was watching you lift your coffee-cup awhile ago. You did it
unconsciously, but your movement was dainty and graceful, as though an
artist had posed you. That takes generations, and, in my imagination, I
saw my people sitting around an oil-cloth on a kitchen table, pouring
coffee into their saucers."
"'There are five and twenty ways
"'Of writing tribal lays,'"
quoted the girl, smilingly,
"'And every single one of them is right.'"
"And a horrible thought came to me," continued Samson. He took out his
handkerchief, and mopped his forehead, then tossed back the long lock
that fell over it. "I wondered"--he paused, and then went on with a set
face--"I wondered if I were growing ashamed of my people."
"If I thought that," said Miss Lescott, quietly, "I wouldn't have much
use for you. But I know there's no danger."
"If I thought there was," Samson assured her, "I would go back there
to Misery, and shoot myself to death.... And, yet, the thought came to
me."
"I'm not afraid of your being a cad," she repeated.
"And yet," he smiled, "I was trying to imagine you among my people.
What was that rhyme you used to quote to me when you began to teach me
manners?"
She laughed, and fell into nonsense quotation, as she thrummed lightly
on the table-cloth with her slim fingers.
"'The goops they lick their fingers,
"'The goops eat with their knives,
"'They spill their broth on the table-cloth,
"'And lead disgusting lives.'"
"My people do all those things," announced Samson, though he said it
rather in a manner of challenge than apology, "except spilling their
broth on the table-cloth.... There are no table-cloths. What would you
do in such company?"
"I," announced Miss Lescott, promptly, "should also lick my fingers."
Samson laughed, and looked up. A man had come out onto the verandah
from the inside, and was approaching the table. He was immaculately
groomed, and came forward with the deference of approaching a throne,
yet as one accustomed to approaching thrones. His smile was that of
pleased surprise.
The mountaineer recognized Farbish, and, with a quick hardening of the
face, he recalled their last meeting. If Farbish should presume to renew
the acquaintanceship under these circumstances, Samson meant to rise
from his chair, and strike him in the face. George Lescott's sister
could not be subjected to such meetings. Yet, it was a tribute to his
advancement in good manners that he dreaded making a scene in her
presence, and, as a warning, he met Farbish's pleasant smile with a look
of blank and studied lack of recognition. The circumstances out of which
Farbish might weave unpleasant gossip did not occur to Samson. That they
were together late in the evening, unchaperoned, at a road-house whose
reputation was socially dubious, was a thing he did not realize. But
Farbish was keenly alive to the possibilities of the situation. He chose
to construe the Kentuckian's blank expression as annoyance at being
discovered, a sentiment he could readily understand. Adrienne Lescott,
following her companion's eyes, looked up, and to the boy's astonishment
nodded to the new-comer, and called him by name.
"Mr. Farbish," she laughed, with mock confusion and total innocence of
the fact that her words might have meaning, "don't tell on us."
"I never tell things, my dear lady," said the newcomer. "I have dwelt
too long in conservatories to toss pebbles. I'm afraid, Mr. South, you
have forgotten me. I'm Farbish, and I had the pleasure of meeting you"
--he paused a moment, then with a pointed glance added--"at the Manhattan
Club, was it not?"
"It was not," said Samson, promptly. Farbish looked his surprise, but
was resolved to see no offense, and, after a few moments of affable
and, it must be acknowledged, witty conversation, withdrew to his own
table.
"Where did you meet that man?" demanded Samson, fiercely, when he and
the girl were alone again.
"Oh, at any number of dinners and dances. His sort is tolerated for
some reason." She paused, then, looking very directly at the
Kentuckian, inquired, "And where did you meet him?"
"Didn't you hear him say the Manhattan Club?"
"Yes, and I knew that he was lying."
"Yes, he was!" Samson spoke, contemptuously. "Never mind where it was.
It was a place I got out of when I found out who were there."
The chauffeur came to announce that the car was ready, and they went
out. Farbish watched them with a smile that had in it a trace of the
sardonic.
The career of Farbish had been an interesting one in its own peculiar
and unadmirable fashion. With no advantages of upbringing, he had
nevertheless so cultivated the niceties of social usage that his one
flaw was a too great perfection. He was letter-perfect where one to the
manor born might have slurred some detail.
He was witty, handsome in his saturnine way, and had powerful friends
in the world of fashion and finance. That he rendered services to his
plutocratic patrons, other than the repartee of his dinner talk, was a
thing vaguely hinted in club gossip, and that these services were not
to his credit had more than once been conjectured.
When Horton had begun his crusade against various abuses, he had cast
a suspicious eye on all matters through which he could trace the trail
of William Farbish, and now, when Farbish saw Horton, he eyed him with
an enigmatical expression, half-quizzical and half-malevolent.
After Adrienne and Samson had disappeared, he rejoined his companion,
a stout, middle-aged gentleman of florid complexion, whose cheviot
cutaway and reposeful waistcoat covered a liberal embonpoint. Farbish
took his cigar from his lips, and studied its ascending smoke through
lids half-closed and thoughtful.
"Singular," he mused; "very singular!"
"What's singular?" impatiently demanded his companion. "Finish, or
don't start."
"That mountaineer came up here as George Lescott's protégé," went on
Farbish, reflectively. "He came fresh from the feud belt, and landed
promptly in the police court. Now, in less than a year, he's pairing
off with Adrienne Lescott--who, every one supposed, meant to marry
Wilfred Horton. This little party to-night is, to put it quite mildly,
a bit unconventional."
The stout gentleman said nothing, and the other questioned, musingly:
"By the way, Bradburn, has the Kenmore Shooting Club requested Wilfred
Horton's resignation yet?"
"Not yet. We are going to. He's not congenial, since his hand is
raised against every man who owns more than two dollars." The speaker
owned several million times that sum. This meeting at an out-of-the-way
place had been arranged for the purpose of discussing ways and means of
curbing Wilfred's crusades.
"Well, don't do it."
"Why the devil shouldn't we? We don't want anarchists in the Kenmore."
After awhile, they sat silent, Farbish smiling over the plot he had
just devised, and the other man puffing with a puzzled expression at
his cigar.
"That's all there is to it," summarized Mr. Farbish, succinctly. "If
we can get these two men, South and Horton, together down there at the
shooting lodge, under the proper conditions, they'll do the rest
themselves, I think. I'll take care of South. Now, it's up to you to
have Horton there at the same time."
"How do you know these two men have not already met--and amicably?"
demanded Mr. Bradburn.
"I happen to know it, quite by chance. It is my business to know
things--quite by chance!"