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THE MANHATTANERS

A Story of the Hour

by

EDWARD S. VAN ZILE

Author of
“A Magnetic Man,” “Last of the Van Slacks,”
etc., etc.






New York
Lovell, Coryell & Company
1895

Copyright, 1895,
By United States Book Company.




THE MANHATTANERS.




CHAPTER I.


“I don’t want to discourage you, my boy, but, as our ‘brevier writers’
are so fond of saying, there is ‘food for reflection’ in that historic
figure.”

It was half an hour after midnight, and two men were standing at the
south-west corner of City Hall park, gazing at the statue of Nathan
Hale. The taller of the two was a man who, having passed the portentous
age of forty, no longer referred to his birthday when he reached it.
He had maintained silence on this subject for several years, and his
friends were not certain whether he was forty-one or forty-five; but
his face seemed to indicate the latter age. It was a strong face,
marked with lines of care, perhaps of dissipation, and about the mouth
lurked an expression of discontent. That he had grown rather weary
of the battle of life was indicated by his dress, which possessed
that indefinable characteristic that may be expressed as careless
shabbiness. His beard was untrimmed, and a slouch hat covered a head
of iron-gray hair that would have been picturesque had it not been
constantly neglected.

His companion was a youth of not more than three-and-twenty, slender,
carefully attired, and with a delicately-moulded face that was
strikingly handsome when he smiled. He was showing his perfect teeth at
this moment, as he glanced first at the statue of the martyred hero,
and then at the sarcastic countenance of his companion.

“Why do you say that, Fenton? Surely there is inspiration in the
sight. Does not the figure prove that the time-worn slur regarding the
ingratitude of republics is false?”

“Hardly that, Richard--_Richard Cœur de Lion_ I shall dub you for
awhile. It simply shows that somebody, at a very late day, had an
attack of spasmodic sentimentality. There are other heroes of the
Revolution, who were as self-sacrificing and patriotic as Nathan
Hale, who are still forgotten by a republic that is grateful only
in spots. Immortality, my dear youngster, is, to a great extent, a
matter of chance. But, to waive that point, don’t you see how this
figure of enthusiastic youth, this doomed martyr--this complete
tie-up on Broadway, as a flippant friend of mine once called the
statue--illustrates the dangers that beset your path?”

“I must acknowledge,” answered Richard Stoughton good-naturedly, as he
placed his arm in Fenton’s and walked westward toward the Sixth Avenue
elevated station at Park Place, “I must acknowledge that I have seen
nothing in the park that tended to dampen my natural enthusiasm, unless
it was the sign, ‘Keep off the grass.’”

“That’s just it,” returned John Fenton in his deep, penetrating voice.
“That statue of Nathan Hale is what might be called an emphasis in
bronze of the warning,--a warning as old as human tyranny,--to keep
off the grass. Hale failed to obey it, and went to an early death.
Take warning, Richard, by the lesson the statue teaches. Don’t let your
dreamy and unpractical enthusiasm carry you into the enemy’s camp.
They’ll hang you if you do.”

“Your words are enigmatical,” commented Stoughton, as the two men
seated themselves in an elevated train bound up-town. “I had looked to
you for comfort and warmth, and you give me a shower-bath.”

“Poor boy!” smiled Fenton, less cynically than was his wont. “When
did the youthful warrior ever gain anything of value by consulting
the battle-scarred and defeated veteran? I have the decayed root of a
conscience somewhere that troubles me now and then. It gave a little
twinge just now, and causes me to doubt the wisdom and justice of my
effort to open your eyes to the truth.”

“But why,” asked the younger man earnestly, “should there be anything
to offend your conscience in telling me the truth?”

“Ah, there, my boy, you ask a question that the wisest men have
failed to answer. There are certain truths that the universe holds in
its secret heart and refuses to divulge. As a microcosm, every man
cherishes in his innermost being some bitter certainty that he must
defend from the gaze of the curious. If he draws the veil, even by a
hair’s-breadth, that exposed nerve known as conscience will throb for
an instant, and close his mouth.”

“But,” persisted the younger man, whose clear-cut face looked, in
contrast with his companion’s, like a delicate cameo beside a mediæval
gargoyle, “I had placed so much value on your advice and sympathy.”

“My sympathy you certainly have,” said Fenton rather harshly; “but
giving you my advice would be--to take a liberty with a time-honored
illustration--like casting swine among pearls. Is it not some
word-juggler, who uses epigrams to conceal the truth, who says that the
only vice that does not cling to youth is advice?”

Richard Stoughton’s face flushed, and his dark gray eyes glanced
questioningly at his companion.

“I sometimes think,” he said rather sadly, “that you are all brains and
no heart, John Fenton.”

“You are mistaken, my boy,” answered Fenton quickly. “In that case I
would have been a millionnaire long ago. I was afflicted with just
enough heart to hamper my brain. The result is that I’m an assistant
city editor in the prime of life, with a very short hill to roll down
to the grave. But never mind what I am, or what I might have been. You
are the only interesting personage present. You have come, like Nathan
Hale, out of the ‘Down East,’ so to speak, to New York, to offer your
youthful enthusiasm to a world that has too little of that sort of
thing; so little, in fact, that it immortalizes Hale’s sacrifice, and
forgets his mission.”

Fenton was silent for a moment.

“Just what do you mean by that last remark?” asked Richard gently.

“I mean that this great metropolitan community is suffering from a
tyranny greater than that against which Hale and his contemporaries
protested. I mean that we erect statues to-day to lovers of liberty,
to martyrs in the cause of freedom, while we blindly and submissively
bow our heads to a yoke more tyrannical than that which the House of
Hanover held over our forefathers. I mean that Nathan Hale died in
vain, unless his example shall inspire a generation yet to come to rise
against an oppression more unjust, more pervasive, and more impregnable
than any the world has ever seen.”

Richard Stoughton looked at his companion in amazement. Fenton’s face
was flushed, a baleful light gleamed in his large, heavy eyes, and he
seemed to be talking more to himself than to his companion. As they
left the train at Twenty-third Street and strolled eastward, the elder
of the two continued in a calmer tone,--

“You haven’t seen much of life, Stoughton. You will find it necessary
to repair, as rapidly as possible, the intellectual ravages of a
college education. The tendency of Yale life is to convince you at
graduation that you know everything. The experience of a few years in
metropolitan newspaper life will convince you that you know nothing.”

“And the last state of this man is happier than the first?”
interrogated Richard lightly.

“Alas, my boy, I fear not. But perhaps that may be a local issue,
a personal equation. I was more contented when I measured the
circumference of knowledge by the diameter of my own experience than
I am at present when I realize that what I know is so insignificant
that it has no mathematical value at all. But my experience has no
significance in connection with yours. The chances are that your career
will be very different from mine. I certainly hope that it will be. At
all events, you have the game to play, and the stakes are on the board.
I drew to good cards, but somebody else won the pot. But what of it?
There would be no fun in the game if everybody won and nobody lost.”

Fenton smiled as he stopped in front of a brilliantly lighted saloon,
and held out his hand to Richard Stoughton.

“Good-night, my boy, and good luck. I’ll do what I can for you on the
paper--and let me give you a word of advice, don’t believe all I say.
Somehow--and of course I’m sorry for it--I’ve got just a little romance
left in my composition, the ruins of a magnificent air-castle I once
built. It is sufficient for me to take an interest in the structure
you’re going to build on the firm foundation of youth, education,
enthusiasm, and natural cleverness. I’ll do what I can to add a stone
now and then to your castle, my boy. And so, good-night.”

The two men shook hands cordially, and Richard turned to hurry up-town
to his rooms in Twenty-eighth Street, when Fenton called him back.

“You understand, _Richard Cœur de Lion_, that it was not rudeness that
prevented my asking you to join me in a drink. I was thinking of your
castle, my boy. It’ll tumble about your head if you put alcohol in the
cellar. Good-night, old fellow. I must have some whiskey. Good-night.”




CHAPTER II.


“The Percy-Bartletts,” as _Town Tattle_ always called them in the
weekly paragraph that it devoted to their doings, were dining alone,
“_en tête-à-tête_ and _en famille_,” as the husband sometimes
remarked in a mildly sarcastic way. Not that Percy-Bartlett was in
the habit of being satirical. Far from it! He considered sarcasm
and satire the outward and visible--or, rather, audible--sign of
an inward and hereditary tendency toward vulgarity. The use of
these weapons of speech implied that one possessed both temper and
originality--characteristics that were not approved in the set in which
the Percy-Bartletts moved. But Percy-Bartlett had, by inheritance, a
rather peppery disposition, and a mind naturally given to creative
effort. It was greatly to his credit, therefore, that he had rubbed
his manners and speech into an almost angelic smoothness, and had so
thoroughly stunted such mental qualities as were not included in the
accepted flora-of-the-mind recognized by his set that he passed current
as a man in no danger of ever saying or doing anything that would
attract special attention to him on the part of the world at large.
It is not generally known, but it is nevertheless a fact, that it
sometimes requires heroic self-restraint to become a “howling swell”--a
vulgar term that cannot be avoided by the writer in his effort to
convey to the reader the exact social status of Percy-Bartlett. He was
known to the lower orders of society as a “howling swell,” which means,
of course, that howling was the very last thing in which he would
indulge. There are those, the poet tells us, who never sing, and die
with all their music in them. In like manner the modern aristocrat is
one who never howls, and dies with all his howling in him.

Let it not be thought for a moment that the perfect self-control
exercised by Percy-Bartlett indicated that there was nothing in his
life to try the temper of either a saint or a howling swell. In
fact, the temptation to give way to his hereditary testiness was with
him, practically, at all times. Percy-Bartlett had nobly triumphed
over all tendency toward originality. His wife had not. It was Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett who constantly tried Percy-Bartlett’s temper. If you are
a married man, O reader, you will realize the full significance of the
assertion, now made with due solemnity and emphasis, that, in spite of
this fact, Mr. Percy-Bartlett had never said an unkind word to her,
had never crossed her will, had never shown her, by word or deed, that
he was bitterly disappointed at her refusal to walk in the very narrow
path that society prescribed for her.

It must be acknowledged that there was something in the face and
manner of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett that rendered her husband’s hesitancy
about opposing her will seemingly explicable. Her dark-brown eyes,
golden-brownish hair, clear-cut nose and mouth, and perfect teeth
combined to give her a beauty that won from every man a chivalric
reverence--from every man, that is, who is awed by the loving-kindness
of the Creator in scattering flowers here and there in a weed-choked
earth. Furthermore, there was something in Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s way
of using her hands and moving her head that told of a will-power as
highly developed as that which had enabled her husband to suppress
every inclination to defy the pattern that had been adopted by his set.
Percy-Bartlett had used his self-command to destroy originality. Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett had made her will-power an ally of her creative genius.
The outlook for a permanent peace between them was not bright, but we
find them at dinner at a time when the _modus vivendi_ was still in
comfortable operation.

“And who sings for you to-night?” asked Percy-Bartlett, his calm, blue
eyes resting on his wife coldly. He was a man of thirty-eight, with
pale cheeks, thin lips, and immobile countenance. The fifteen years’
difference in the ages of husband and wife was more than borne out by
their faces. She looked younger than her years; he was younger than he
looked.

“I think,” she answered, “that it will be a great success. The new
boy-soprano who has made such a sensation at St. George’s is coming. So
is Gordon Mackey, the tenor--you met him one night, you remember. Then
Bryant Stanton is to play the ’cello, and Mlle. de Sarçon has promised
to sing some of the ‘Falstaff’ music. Several others of less importance
will be here,--Barton, the baritone, Miss Ely, the contralto, and
so forth. Barton, you know, has been singing my cradle-song at his
concerts.”

Percy-Bartlett looked at his wife in a way that was distinctly
unsympathetic. He seemed to be thinking that a cradle-song was
something of a _tour-de-force_ for a childless woman; but there
are many things about a musical genius that a layman cannot hope
to understand. Percy-Bartlett had learned his limitations in this
direction long ago, and never asked his wife how or why she wrote vocal
music that was slowly but surely gaining popularity. It was a cross he
had to bear, and, like a perfect gentleman, he bore it in silence.

“Don’t you think, my dear,” suggested Mrs. Percy-Bartlett sweetly, as
they arose from the table, “that you could endure just one evening of
really good music?”

“You will have to let me off to-night, Harriet,” answered
Percy-Bartlett coldly. “I have a committee meeting at the club. By the
way,” he remarked as they entered the library, in the intellectual
atmosphere of which he was in the habit of smoking his after-dinner
cigar, “I had a letter to-day from a business friend of mine, a distant
relative on my mother’s side, Samuel Stoughton of Norwich. He tells me
that his son, Richard, who was graduated from Yale last year, has come
to the city to take a place on the _Morning Trumpet_. He asks me to
show him a little attention. And, really, I don’t see how I can get out
of it.”

“Why should you want to?” asked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, striking a few
chords on the piano, and casting a questioning glance at her husband.
“The Stoughtons are very nice people.”

“Oh, yes, of course. But then a newspaper man, don’t you know, may be
all very well, but--really I can’t understand why Richard Stoughton,
who was left a fortune, if I remember rightly, by his mother, should
take up the drudgery of New York newspaper life.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, looking down at her white,
symmetrical arms and tapering hands, “perhaps the young man wants to
see all sides of life. Perhaps he wants to enlarge his horizon.”

“Humph,” exclaimed Percy-Bartlett, showing more of his ancestral
testiness than was his wont; “I can’t understand such a motive. If
running up and down the city until all hours of the night, making
a nuisance of yourself, is enlarging one’s horizon, I should think
a man of Stoughton’s position and education would prefer to remain
narrow in his vision. But there is no accounting for tastes; and I
must acknowledge that, of late years, a good many very nice fellows
have gone into newspaper work. Well, we’ll ask Stoughton to dinner
some night when we’re dining alone, and see what kind of a boy he is.
Perhaps he’ll get over his attack of journalistic enthusiasm as he
recovered from the mumps or measles. His father has done me some good
turns in business, and has it in his power to do more. I’ll drop a note
to Richard to-morrow and have him call at the office.”

Percy-Bartlett threw away his cigar and rose to go. The picture his
wife presented was irresistibly attractive. He bent over and kissed
her. It was an unusual outbreak of emotion on his part, and Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett smiled up at him as he turned to leave the room.

“How late,” he asked as he reached the portière, “will your musical
friends be here?”

“Oh, not late,” she answered; “come home by twelve and you will find
them gone.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The hour of midnight was striking.

“It was a great success, my little musicale,” Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, with
flushed, triumphant face, was saying to her husband as they stood in
the drawing-room on his return. The evening had been a pleasant one
to Percy-Bartlett, and the genial influences of his club had made him
sociable.

“Come into the library, Harriet,” he said, “while I smoke just one more
cigar.”

The smile on her face vanished, and lines of fatigue formed around her
mouth.

“Please excuse me,” she murmured in a weary tone. “I am very tired.
They encored my cradle-song so many times that--that, really, it
wearied me. I fear I can’t stand success. Good-night. I’m very sorry.”

“Good-night,” he said coldly.

Then he went to the library and moodily lighted a “perfecto.” There
seemed to be something lacking in his life, something that forever
seemed within his grasp and forever escaped him.




CHAPTER III.


“Yes, Richard,” remarked Fenton, as the two strangely-assorted
newspaper men turned into a down-town side-street to take a _table
d’hôte_ dinner at a restaurant well known to the semi-Bohemians of the
city,--real Bohemians we have none, though another generation will
beget them,--“yes, my boy, this is the most interesting metropolis in
the world.”

He hesitated a moment, and taking Richard by the arm, stood still and
looked about him at the passing throng.

“Within a radius of half a mile, Richard, not only every nation, but
nearly every tribe, religion, sect, family, and name that the world has
ever known has its representation. See, there’s an Italian barber-shop
across the street kept by a man named Cæsar. We are to dine at a French
restaurant whose proprietor bears the historic family-name of Valois.
I remember a few lines of an after-dinner poem one of the men in the
office read last year at a journalistic banquet. It began:--

  “‘Did you say there was no romance
    In a town that deftly blends,
    In a picturesque mosaic,
    All the Old World’s odds and ends?
    In a city where the scapegoats
    Of the older countries meet,
    ’Tis a crazy-quilt of nations
    That is seen upon the street.’”

“It is, in a certain sense, the fact you have just touched upon that
brought me here,” said Richard, as they seated themselves at a small
table in a dining-room curiously decorated in black and white. Around
them, seated in small groups, were men whose faces bore the European
stamp. Here and there a young woman could be seen, smiling over her
claret at her _vis-à-vis_, her white teeth making her dark eyes more
striking by contrast. There was nothing distinctly American in the
scene, excepting a small, active, little newsboy, who rushed from table
to table selling the evening edition of the _Trumpet_, and requesting
patronage in a voice that indicated an ancestral brogue. Fenton,
however, soon added one more native feature to the picture by ordering
a Manhattan cocktail from a waiter who looked as though he might be a
pretender to the throne of France, and sipping it slowly as he waited
for Stoughton to explain himself.

“You see,” went on the younger man, whose handsome face had already
begun to attract the burning glances of several impressionable young
women at the surrounding tables, “you see, I had my choice of going
into the bank at Norwich, and depending upon my father’s influence to
push me forward in a line of life I detest, or coming to New York to
follow my natural bent, and to broaden my views by contact with all
kinds of people. Of course my father hoped that I would choose the
former course. But how could I? How good this soup is, Fenton.”

“Yes,” answered the elderly journalist, who was much better groomed
than the first time we met him; “the dinner they serve here is
generally quite eatable--especially good, you know, if the proprietor
realizes that you are a newspaper man. The next thing to being a
millionnaire in New York, my boy, is to be a city editor.” Fenton
smiled in his usual sarcastic way.

“Then I go up a peg to-morrow night,” remarked Richard playfully. “I
dine with a city editor to-night, and with a millionnaire to-morrow
night.”

“Indeed.” Fenton looked at his companion with an expression of interest
on his face.

“Yes; I had a note a few days ago from a distant relative of my
father’s, Percy-Bartlett, who asked me to call on him at his office. He
owns real estate, I think; but to judge from the number of his clerks,
I don’t think he can be overworked himself. At all events, he was quite
cordial, in his touch-me-not kind of way, and I promised to dine with
him and his wife to-morrow evening. I think he was astonished to find
that I was no longer a reporter, for his cordiality increased when I
told him about my promotion.”

Fenton smiled rather coldly, and filled his glass with red wine.

“No wonder he was astonished, my boy,” he said, as he set down his
goblet; “I have been in active newspaper service for nearly fifteen
years, and your elevation from the ranks is the most surprising
occurrence in my recollection.”

“I suppose it is remarkable,” commented Richard, as the waiter served
them with game that had been strong enough to break the law. “I haven’t
quite fathomed it myself.”

“In one sense it is simple enough,” continued Fenton. “‘To him that
hath shall be given,’ you know, ‘and to him that hath not,’ etc. If you
had been seeking a place as brevier writer or editorial paragrapher you
could not have obtained it, but, presto, it comes to you unsought.”

“Tell me all you know about it, Fenton,” suggested the young man as he
sipped his coffee.

“There is very little to tell,” answered his companion as he lighted
a cigar and gazed contentedly at the animated face before him. “A
newspaper is an insatiable beast. Its maw is never satisfied. It
swallows brains, talent, culture, industry, youth, maturity, wit,
wisdom, with an appetite that grows with what it feeds upon. It is the
hungriest monster the ages have produced, and its food is human lives.”

“What an awful picture!” cried Richard cheerfully. “But what I am after
is not the status of a newspaper in the cannibalistic realm, but the
reason for my being given a desk in the editorial rooms.”

“That’s what I was coming to, Mr. Impatience. But you must let me get
at it in my own way. Let me warn you against impetuosity, boy, and
that awful affliction, vulgarly called ‘the big head.’ You have gone
up like a rocket. You’ll come down like a stick if you’re not careful.
And now, as to the cause of your rise. Know then, my young friend, that
in the newspaper field men who can make epigrams are rare. Putting a
column of fact into half an inch of fireworks requires a peculiar cast
of mind. It may be said of paragraphers, as of poets, that they are
born, not made. Now, without knowing it, you gave evidence in several
of your news stories that you are the seventh son of a forty-second
cousin, and can sound the well of truth with the plummet of a paradox.
Mr. Robinson, who is an argus-eyed managing editor, if such a creature
ever existed, was attracted by your sparkling generalizations, and
made inquiries about you. He sent for me, and I told him that what his
editorial page needed, above everything else, was a boy-paragrapher.
And there you are.”

Richard laughed. “I am exceedingly obliged to you, Fenton. I have
noticed that calling a young man a boy is one of the favorite
occupations of men of uncertain age.”

“Well hit, Richard,” cried the elder man, pushing one hand through his
iron-gray locks, and motioning with the other to the waiter to refill
his _liqueur_ glass; “I like your--your ‘spunk.’ Isn’t that what they
call it ‘Down East’? Another thing. You have given me a very conclusive
proof that I am fond of you. My age, you know, is my sensitive spot.
Isn’t it curious that a man who prides himself on his devotion to pure
reason, who glories in the fact that two and two make four, and whose
life is spent in the classification of facts, and the presentation of
truth for the edification of the public, should hesitate to acknowledge
that he was born on a certain date? Well, never mind! Even the greatest
men have flaws in their make-up, Richard--and I have mine.”

As they left the restaurant, strolling leisurely toward Broadway, they
found the streets less crowded than they had been an hour before.

“It is the time,” said Fenton, “when the city rests for a moment
from labor, and pauses to catch its breath before it begins to
dissipate--the interlude between its work for earthly taskmasters and
its work for Satan.”

“What a cynic you are, Fenton!” exclaimed Richard almost deprecatingly.

“Not at all, my boy. I will tell you what I am some day. I am far from
being a cynic; but it makes me sad to think that this whole fabric
of society must undergo heroic treatment before any real progress in
civilization can be made.”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t time to explain just now. I will give you a few books to
read, and your eyes may be opened to certain truths that will change
your whole theory of life. It is seldom that I try to make a convert
to my views, but I have observed surface indications on your part that
you have brains. If you have, the time has come for you to learn that
you live and move and have your being at a most critical time in the
world’s history. We are on the verge of great events, my boy, of great
upheavals and vast changes. You will probably live to see them. I may
or I may not. But whether I do or don’t will make little difference to
me, or to the world. But enough of this. I must get down to the office.
And you, lucky man, have the evening to yourself. What will you do with
it?”

“Go to hear the De Reszkes and Melba in ‘Faust,’ I think.”

“Great scheme! It will do you good. It is much pleasanter watching
Mephistopheles on the stage than fighting him in real life. I envy you,
my boy. And to-morrow night you dine with a millionnaire. Be careful,
Richard; remember Nathan Hale.”

“I don’t see the point,” remarked the youth thoughtfully.

“I didn’t think you would,” answered Fenton; “but don’t forget to come
to me to-morrow for those books. I’ll tell you at the same time what I
know about the Percy-Bartletts, if you wish. Good-night.”

Fenton boarded a cable-car going down town, and Richard Stoughton
strolled moodily up Broadway.

“Fenton’s a curious mixture,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder what he
was driving at.”




CHAPTER IV.


“I fear,” remarked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, looking at Richard Stoughton
with a pleased expression in her brown eyes, “that you studied the art
of flattery at college and have not yet learned its worthlessness.” She
had been singing a little love-song that she had recently composed, and
the thrilling melody had brought a flush of pleasure to the young man’s
face. Without knowing much about the science of music, he was keenly
sensitive to its influence.

As he stood by the piano, looking down into the smiling face of the
most beautiful woman he had ever met, Richard inwardly blessed the
unexpected telegram that had called Percy-Bartlett away to his club
before the coffee had been served at dinner. At the time of which we
write, the financial affairs of the nation were in a disturbed state;
and Percy-Bartlett, like other millionnaires, felt that a great
opportunity had presented itself to him for combining patriotism and
prudence, by giving aid to an improvident nation at a high rate of
interest. His father had followed such a course during the Civil War.
Percy-Bartlett’s financial patriotism was, as it were, hereditary,
and he had left the house that evening with the firm determination
of offering a tithe of his fortune to his afflicted government, on
gilt-edged security, to be redeemed by posterity.

“You do me an injustice, Mrs. Percy-Bartlett,” answered Richard,
returning her smile. “I know that my opinion regarding your song is
of no great value from a technical standpoint, but I can readily
understand how glad the publishers are to get your work.”

Richard had learned much about the Percy-Bartletts that afternoon
from John Fenton. He had heard of the husband’s prominence in society
and business circles and in club life, and of the wife’s devotion to
music, of her talent as a song-writer. But Fenton had not told him
that Mrs. Percy-Bartlett had brown eyes that had a beseeching, almost
caressing expression at times, that her mouth was rather large, but
wonderfully symmetrical, and especially attractive when she smiled and
showed her white, even teeth. Fenton had been silent also regarding her
brown hair--hair that curled and shimmered and waved with a coquettish
life of its own, and gave to Richard Stoughton an almost irresistible
desire to stroke it with his hand. That she had a white, firm neck,
and rounded, dimpled arms, and long, tapering hands that were worthy a
sculptor’s art, his friend had not informed him. Perhaps Fenton did not
know all this.

“At all events,” thought Richard to himself, “I’m inclined to think
that if Fenton _could_ see her beauty, although he might admire it, he
would find some reason for saying that she had no right to it--that so
much of it as she derived from her handsome ancestors was ill-gotten
gain.” Which thought, the reader will observe, proved that Richard
had been skimming the books Fenton had given to him, and had come,
as he fondly believed, upon certain arguments that seemed to him to
be founded on fallacy. Stoughton never went very deeply into any
subject presented to his attention. He had that faculty of mind which
enabled him to cover a good deal of ground at a glance, and to condense
into showy half-truths the results of his rapid mental processes. It
was this gift--a dangerous one to a man who wishes to make a solid
rather than a glittering success of life--that had suddenly given him
a prominent place on the _Trumpet_ as the spiciest paragrapher the
editorial page had had for years. And it was this faculty applied to
the airy nothings of unimportant conversation that had given him the
reputation of being a wit--a reputation much more to be dreaded than
that of a rake. No woman fears a rake, but she has a deep-seated dread
of a wit.

“But come, Mr. Stoughton,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, standing up and
looking at him with mock commiseration, “I have been very cruel to
inflict my music on you, when I know that you are dying for a cigar.
Come into the library and let me repair my lack of hospitality. Mr.
Percy-Bartlett would feel that he had committed sacrilege if he failed
to smoke a cigar after dinner.”

“It would be something worse than sacrilege in such companionship,”
remarked Stoughton, lighting a “perfecto” and seating himself opposite
his hostess; “it would be folly.”

“There can be no folly, Mr. Stoughton, after marriage, you know. I
mean in our set, of course. A thing is either good form or bad form.
What is good form may seem foolish to the world at large, and what is
bad form may, in reality, be wise. But our motto of _noblesse oblige_
has absolutely nothing to do with folly or wisdom in the abstract. It
simply presupposes an obligation on our part to observe certain canons
of taste and habits of life that have no relation to wisdom or folly,
virtue or vice, progress or retrogression. You know all this, though,
as well as I do.”

“Only in a general way,” answered Richard, somewhat surprised at her
earnestness. He felt that, somehow, she was tempted to treat him in
a more confidential way than the duration of their acquaintanceship
strictly warranted. “I have had little opportunity, as yet, to study
the different phases of New York society.”

“But,” she persisted, her face slightly flushed with eagerness, “there
is no difference in the social cult of the most exclusive set in New
York and that which dominates the inner circle of other cities in what
we might call the eastern belt of civilization. That awful Frankenstein
called ‘Bad Form,’ a monster created by society, and dogging our steps
at all times, is not confined to New York. Haven’t you endured his
threatening glances in your New England cities?”

“Yes,” confessed Richard; “I know the creature--and, in a certain
sense, I suppose I have run away from him. I came here to New York,
against my father’s wishes, that I might be free to live my life as my
tastes and inclinations inspired me, not as a select few in my native
city ordained that I should live it.”

With an impetuous gesture Mrs. Percy-Bartlett placed her hand on his
for an instant and blushed slightly as their eyes met.

“Do you know,” she said, “I feel an almost irresistible inclination to
tell you a secret, a secret that all the world knows, but that I have
not yet confessed to a human soul.” An odd smile played across her
mouth.

“I shall feel more flattered than I can tell you,” exclaimed Richard
with marked emphasis.

“Well, then,” went on Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, “I am a rebel. Remember,
Mr. Stoughton, that this is the first time I have ever said this. I
hardly know why I have said it to you; but, somehow, I feel thoroughly
in touch with you on some points, and you seem more like an old friend
than a new acquaintance.”

Perhaps later on she would analyze this feeling more thoroughly, and
realize that she had reached a crisis in her life when an attractive
man in the first flush of youth, and still possessing a freshness of
view, and the enthusiasm of newly tried powers that had already won
recognition from the world, stimulated that part of her nature that the
atmosphere in which she lived tended to repress. But, for the moment,
she had not stopped to ask herself why Richard Stoughton attracted
her. She had simply given herself up to the fascination he had for her,
and had left to the future the solution of the problem as to how far
she should allow this fascination to influence her.

“As a rebel,” remarked Richard earnestly, “I give you greeting. I think
I understand your revolt.”

“I know you do,” she exclaimed with enthusiasm. “You see, it is
perfectly allowable for me to cultivate music as an accomplishment;
but to take it seriously, to do something with it, to write songs that
people outside of our circle will sing--that, you know, is bad form. I
assure you, Mr. Stoughton, it took some courage to do it.”

“But not to do it would have been a crime,” said Richard, puffing his
cigar thoughtfully.

“But a crime in the interest of the canons of good taste is not only
allowable but imperative,” returned Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, smiling. “You
must understand that there is a vast difference between having your
name in the newspapers as being one of the best-dressed women at the
Patriarchs’, and being referred to as a composer--both popular and
promising.”

“You mean that society would condemn you to die with all your music in
you?”

“Practically, yes; but I refused to obey the sentence. Therefore, I am
a rebel.”

She arose, and he followed her into the music-room.

“Here’s a little thing,” she said, striking a few chords on the
instrument, “that I have never sent to my publisher.”

The chords ran into a weird, almost barbaric prelude. Then she began
to sing. She had used the words of Heine’s little gem of crystallized
unrest:--

   “A pine-tree standeth lonely,
      On a far Norland height;
    It slumbereth, while around it
      The snow falls thick and white.

    And of a palm it dreameth
      That in a Southern land,
    Lonely and silent standeth
      Amid the drifting sand.”

There was passion, protest, longing in the music, and the refrain died
away and came again like the sobs of a broken heart.

Richard bent over her and looked into her eyes, dark with unshed tears.
His voice trembled as he whispered,--

“I am so sorry for you.”

She arose and stood before him, a peculiar smile on her face.

“Isn’t it hard,” she said, “to distinguish between the real and the
unreal? When we go together into the unknown land, we seem to have
been friends for ages piled on ages. Then we come back to reality,
and I sit down here and we talk about the weather. And that of course
is much better. It is, you know, bad form--oh, how weary I am of the
phrase--for you to tell me that you’re sorry for me.”

Richard leaned against the piano and looked down at her thoughtfully.

“Yes--and absurd. Why should I be sorry for you? Suppose, for
instance--and of course it is not a possibility--that I should tell
my cynical friend Fenton, of whom I want to talk to you sometime,
that I had met a woman young, beautiful, wealthy, courted by society,
wonderfully accomplished, a musician possessing genius, a soul
sensitive to all that is noble and beautiful in life, and that I had
expressed to her my commiseration. What would he say?”

“Probably,” suggested Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, with a note of recklessness
in her voice, “your friend Fenton, if he is a man of the world,--and he
probably is, as you call him cynical,--would ask you if this unhappy
being was married or unmarried. If you told him she was free”--

“Well?”

“Well, he would advise you to check your sympathy and defend your own
freedom.”

“And if I said that she was married?”

“He would say that you must have known her a long time to take such a
liberty.” The words were robbed of their harshness by the smile that
accompanied them.

“Forgive me, please,” he pleaded, bending over her. “How can I help it
if words come unbidden to my lips, if I forget that I have known you
only a few hours? Won’t you absolve me before I go?”

She stood up and gave him her hand.

“I have forgiven you,” she said. “It was my fault. You are too
sensitive to music.”

Then with that charming inconsistency that adds so much to woman’s
fascination and to the sorrows of the world, she continued:--

“Have you an engagement, Mr. Stoughton, for Friday night? No? I should
so much like to have you join us in our box at the Metropolitan that
evening. ‘Sanson et Dalila’ is to be given for the first time in this
country, you know. Would you care to hear it?”

“It is very good of you,” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “How
much pleasure your invitation gives me I dare not tell you--for fear of
taking a liberty.”

She smiled merrily at his little shaft of sarcasm, and he left her with
the roguish light still dancing in her eyes.

She turned and walked across the drawing-room and wandered aimlessly
into the library. Soon she found herself seated at the piano, but there
was no comfort there. For the first time within her recollection her
bosom friend, her confidante, the sharer of her joys and sorrows, had
turned false.

Throwing herself down upon a divan, she buried her head in the pillows
and sobbed bitterly.




CHAPTER V.


“One robbery does not justify another.”

So said Richard Stoughton to John Fenton as they sat at dinner in the
restaurant of the Astor House, while the wind and the snow played tag
up and down Broadway, and men compared the blizzard of ’88 with the
storm that was then raging, and incidentally wondered how the star-eyed
goddess of Reform enjoyed cleaning the streets.

It was Friday evening, and Richard was hurrying his dinner that he
might reach his rooms in time to dress for the opera. He and Fenton
had just come from a visit to a tenement house not far from the famous
hotel in which they were seated, and their conversation had naturally
turned upon the great problem suggested by the sights they had
witnessed.

“Come with me,” Fenton had said to the younger man an hour before. “I
want to show you a picture that will make a striking contrast to the
scene you will witness at the Metropolitan to-night.”

Somewhat against his will, Richard had consented to accompany Fenton,
and they had found a family in a garret, starving and freezing,
almost within a stone’s throw of the City Hall. It had been a painful
experience, no less to Fenton, whose long years in active newspaper
life had accustomed him to the phenomena that vice and poverty exhibit
in a great city, than to the younger man, whose life had been spent
in the sunny haunts of prosperity, and who knew little of the outward
aspects of human misery beyond what his imagination could picture.

“Explain yourself,” said Fenton rather sternly, refilling his sherry
glass.

“What I mean is simple enough,” answered Richard. “I have read the
books you gave me, and I acknowledge they have presented a startling
picture of the horrors that result, seemingly, from the unequal
distribution of wealth. I think I am even willing to admit that,
theoretically, nobody can show any very satisfactory claim to even a
square foot of the earth’s surface. But it is one thing arguing in the
abstract, and another looking at life in the concrete. Granting, for
instance, that my ancestors stole land from the Indians, who may have
taken it by force from some prehistoric race, is that any reason why
those who believe in a new method of taxation should wrest my property
from me?”

A smile, both sad and sarcastic, lingered about Fenton’s firm,
unsymmetrical mouth.

“I have played my game with you and lost, Richard,” he said at length,
lighting a cigar, while his companion sipped a _demi-tasse_ of coffee,
“and, on the whole, I am not surprised. Neither am I especially sorry.
The economic theories toward which I was trying to direct your steps
are not such as lead to peace of mind. Had you become an enthusiast in
the great crusade for the introduction of the millennium, you would
have grown old before your time, the pressure of things that are
would crush you in your effort to hold to the things that should be,
and I would have been responsible for making you a discontented and
restless being like myself. I told you at the outset that I was not in
the habit of trying to make converts to the views of my master. Why I
experimented with you I can hardly say. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

The gentle, affectionate smile on Fenton’s face was an unwonted visitor
to that stern countenance. Richard impulsively put out his hand to his
friend.

“There is nothing to forgive, old man. I realize the unselfishness that
prompts you to long for a change in the conditions that beget so much
human suffering. Don’t think that I am so heartless that the scenes we
have just witnessed do not affect me. They do; and I fully understand
that the future has the greatest problem of all the ages yet to
solve. But you cannot wonder, John Fenton, that at my age and with my
prospects it is hard for me to take the whole human race to my heart,
and try to remedy wrongs for which I am in no way responsible.”

Fenton puffed his cigar in silence for a while. Finally he said, more
as if he spoke to himself than to his companion,--

“Yes, youth is _so_ strong; but the pleasures of life weave their
web, and the hour of strength goes by! To-night youth and wealth
and beauty will gather to hear an allegory,--an allegory centuries
old,--the ancient, impressive story of Samson and Delilah. In that
vast throng will there be one who reads in that old biblical legend
the story of the hour? Will they see in Samson the figure of American
youth, glorious in its strength, falling a victim to the wiles of the
temptress? They will see this same man of power, who has desecrated the
precious heritage intrusted to him, blind, maddened by the suffering
he has brought upon himself, pulling down in his frenzy the gorgeous
structure above his devoted head; and they will go away to their clubs
and ball-rooms and supper-parties, and discuss Mantelli’s voice, and
Tamagno’s conception of his _rôle_.

    “‘Oh, let the strücken deer go weep, the hart ungallëd play,
    For some must watch, while some must weep--so runs the world away.’

The older I grow, Richard, the more I am amazed at Shakespeare’s
thorough grasp of human nature as we find it at the end of the
nineteenth century.”

Richard arose and donned his overcoat.

“Well, John,” he remarked smilingly, “I’ll compromise with you, then;
I’ll read Shakespeare instead of the contemporary writer to whom you
have introduced me; and thus your hope for my redemption may still be
kept alive.”

Fenton made no answer, and a moment later they stood at the door,
looking through the frost-covered glass upon the wind-swept street. For
an instant they hesitated to plunge into the wintry blast. Suddenly
Fenton turned to his companion.

“How did Mrs. Percy-Bartlett impress you, Richard?”

The unexpectedness of the question caused the young man to start
nervously.

“I find her,” he answered hesitatingly, “a very charming woman.”

“Yes, I believe you do,” returned Fenton gruffly.

Then he pushed open the doors, and made his way hurriedly across
Broadway, leaving Richard Stoughton standing on the hotel steps, gazing
wonderingly at the retreating figure of his eccentric friend.




CHAPTER VI.


In spite of the storm, a large audience had gathered at the
Metropolitan Opera House. The first rendition of Saint-Saëns’s opera,
“Sanson et Dalila” had been a magnet to the multitude that can endure a
biblical story if it is presented to them in an attractive setting. As
the irreverent Buchanan Budd had whispered to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, “The
Old Testament is full of unused librettos. But it is strange that the
‘first lesson’ of this evening’s service should come to us from wicked
Paris.”

The Percy-Bartletts’ parterre-box contained four persons as the curtain
arose, the stage showing the unhappy Hebrews mourning the desertion of
Jehovah, and the afflictions forced upon them by the priests of Dagon,
the fish-god.

Just in front of Richard Stoughton sat Gertrude Van Vleck, for the
time being Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s most intimate friend. This means, of
course, that they confided in each other in a gingerly way, and spoke
of each other in terms of enthusiastic admiration to third persons.

Gertrude Van Vleck had been a reigning belle for two seasons. Society
had received her with a good deal of enthusiasm. She was rich,
handsome,--in a rather striking style,--and her blood was as blue as
any that a new country can produce. But, after her first appearance
as a _débutante_, Gertrude Van Vleck had not been especially popular
in the inner circle. She had had many suitors of course, but her
indifference to their wooing had been the occasion of remark. But this
was not all. From her mother, who had come from an old New England
family, Gertrude had inherited a strain of Yankee humor that was
not appreciated by the set in which she moved. The whisper had been
spread abroad in her first season that she had said several really
clever things, and a good many conservative people had considered
this an erratic tendency on her part that was distinctly dangerous.
Society did not feel certain that Gertrude Van Vleck might not at
any moment perpetrate a witticism that would scratch the face of its
most cherished traditions. The worst of it was that her position in
society was so firmly established that she could afford to indulge her
appreciation of the ludicrous and her inclination to look at things in
an original way. Society was powerless to discipline her.

Furthermore, it was suspected that Gertrude Van Vleck was in sympathy
with the effort of woman to break away from her time-honored
subserviency to man, and to do a great deal of independent thinking
about the problems that agitate the world. She had given her
countenance to the efforts of women to turn the political scale at the
last election into the lap of reform,--whatever that elusive thing
may be,--and she had been a pioneer in the movement that had gained
recognition for the bicycle from the swell set.

Richard Stoughton had heard something of all this; and he found himself
looking at Gertrude with considerable curiosity, while the Hebrews were
airing their woes upon the stage--woes that awakened little sympathy
from an audience that knew how well in latter days the oppressed race
has triumphed over all obstacles, and has placed a mortgage on a planet
that has practically refused them a native land. Richard admitted to
himself that Miss Van Vleck was handsome, that her eyes were of a
cerulean tint worthy of her blood, that her dark hair was strikingly
effective, that her white neck and arms were well cut. He also felt
that nothing too bitter to please a man or woman of sense could fall
from a mouth so finely shaped as hers.

Nevertheless, he turned from the contemplation of Gertrude’s statuesque
beauty to glance at the softer, but equally effective, radiance of
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett; and their eyes met for the first time since he
had entered the box. Richard felt that the sympathy that had seemed to
exist between himself and Mrs. Percy-Bartlett at their first meeting
was not a dream, but a reality; that the unrest he had experienced
since he had looked into her brown eyes on parting with her a few
nights before could still find relief when he gazed into those eyes
again. She smiled, and leaned toward him.

“I am not in the mood for oratorio, as this first act seems to be,” she
whispered. “I’d rather talk to you.”

Richard bent nearer to her. The perfume of her hair thrilled him with a
subtle ecstasy.

“I have much to say to you,” he answered, “about--about”--

“About what?” she murmured, smiling at his hesitancy.

“About yourself. Myself--the last few days--about a thousand things
that--that might bore you.”

“Then don’t say them,” she remarked. “I cannot bear to be bored.”

She turned to look at the stage, and Richard felt a pang of annoyance
at her coquetry. Had he been a few years older, a bit more experienced
in the ways of woman, he would have been pleased at her treatment
of him. A woman does not waste coquetry on a man in whom she is not
interested.

Buchanan Budd and Gertrude Van Vleck were good friends. As there had
never been anything warmer in their acquaintanceship than a keen
appreciation of each other’s mental alertness, they took solid pleasure
in each other’s society. Budd was a rather clever fellow by nature;
but he had never let his cleverness go beyond the bonds of strict
propriety. Having attained a much higher place in society than his
parents had occupied, he conformed with almost religious reverence to
the forms and edicts prescribed by the leaders of the circle in which
he occupied a somewhat precarious position. He was a handsome man,
and had inherited a large fortune; and so society had overlooked the
fact that his immediate ancestors had been in trade, and had admitted
him into its sacred precincts. Nevertheless, he had never felt quite
assured of his position, and had made it a practice to walk in the very
narrow groove paced by the leaders of his set.

“Do you not find food for reflection?” he whispered to Gertrude Van
Vleck, during the second act of the opera, “in this unhappy story of
woman’s interference in public affairs?”

She turned her dark blue eyes on him, and smiled coldly.

“There are women and women,” she returned. “It was Samson’s weakness
that brought disaster to himself and his people.”

“I acknowledge my defeat,” said Budd humbly. “I have nothing to say for
Samson, excepting that he sings rather well.”

“That is graceful of you. But, frankly, Mr. Budd, you don’t approve of
woman going into public life, and riding the bicycle?”

“Whether I do or do not makes little difference, Miss Van Vleck. The
time is past when the opinion of men regarding these matters has any
weight. The wise man to-day is he who frankly acknowledges that he is
no longer a lord of creation, and settles down to suffer in silence,
and to adapt himself to the new conditions.”

Gertrude’s eyes twinkled merrily.

“What a sad picture!” she exclaimed under her breath. “I am as sorry
for you as for that poor Hebrew giant, with his shorn locks and his
sightless eyes. But I am very glad, Mr. Budd, that you are not inclined
to pull down the temple about our heads.”

Richard had been talking to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett about John Fenton.

“You interest me in the man,” she said earnestly. “I have a vague idea
of having heard Mr. Percy-Bartlett speak of him as a brilliant but
eccentric man of good origin, who cut quite a figure in society fifteen
or twenty years ago. I think he had an unhappy love-affair that drove
him into dissipation. Then he squandered his fortune, and dropped out
of sight.”

“I did not know all this,” said Richard musingly; “but it explains
several things. At all events, Fenton has exercised a great fascination
over me. I really like him better than any man I have met in New
York. This is the more peculiar, as I am not in sympathy with any
idea or theory that he propounds. It is strange how we are drawn to
or repelled by people, without being able to explain just why we like
one man and detest another, why one woman makes us misogynistic, and
another causes us to forget everything but the heaven that lies in
her”--

Richard hesitated.

“Well?” whispered Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, glancing up at him rather shyly.

“The heaven that lies in her deep, brown eyes,” he murmured recklessly,
as the house broke into applause after a thrilling duet between Samson
and Delilah.

As the opera neared its conclusion, Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, who had been
gazing thoughtfully at the stage without seeming to be much impressed
by the drama enacted there, turned to Richard, and said,--

“I am to have a small musicale on Tuesday evening. Do you think you
could persuade Mr. Fenton to come to it?”

Richard looked at her a moment in silence. He was surprised at her
proposal.

“I cannot answer for him,” he said at length. “He is very eccentric.”

“That is why I want him to come,” returned Mrs. Percy-Bartlett
stubbornly. “There is something in his career and in his personality,
as you describe it, that leads me to try an experiment with him.”

Richard glanced at her questioningly. He did not quite approve of her
at that moment. She seemed to understand the expression on his face.

“I want him to meet Gertrude Van Vleck,” she explained, smiling at him
frankly.

Richard returned her smile, and said, “I will bring him if I can;” then
he added after a pause, “but the age of miracles has passed.”




CHAPTER VII.


“He certainly has an extremely attractive face, Harriet,” remarked
Gertrude Van Vleck, looking at Mrs. Percy-Bartlett amusedly; “but isn’t
he very young?”

“Perhaps he is in one sense,” assented the elder woman, striking a few
chords on the piano impatiently. “But he’s exactly my age--and I’m very
old.”

Gertrude laughed and settled herself comfortably in an easy-chair for a
confidential chat with her bosom friend. It was early in the afternoon
of a brilliant winter day, and the music-room of the Percy-Bartletts’
house was a very cosey little confessional at the moment.

“I wish I could like men somewhere near my own age,” mused Gertrude,
her eyes still resting thoughtfully on her companion’s rather disturbed
face. “But I can’t; there really seems to be something fatally wrong in
my inclinations and disinclinations. There is something authoritative
about a man of forty that pleases me. But in our set the men at forty
are either married impossibilities or confirmed bachelors.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett laughed merrily.

“How we do crave contrasts,” she exclaimed. “You are suffering from too
much attention from boys just out of college, and I--well, I’m married
to a man nearly forty.”

“After all, Harriet, I don’t believe that age has so much to do with
it as we seem to imply.” Gertrude clasped her hands around her knee as
she sat leaning forward, and looked up at her friend earnestly. “There
is one thing that the new movement among the women of our class has
done. It has tended to weary us of men who are all cut on one pattern.
Take any given subject of any importance and ask one of the men of our
set what he thinks about it. Dear little parrot, he will repeat to you
the general verdict of his club on the question at issue, without the
slightest suspicion that he is a mental marionette.”

“That is very true,” assented Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. “Perhaps that fact
may explain to you why I enjoy talking to Richard Stoughton.”

“Oh,” cried Gertrude, her face displaying an animation that it seldom
exhibited in public. “Then he is not yet spoiled by the churning
process? He certainly carries himself like other society men of his
age. His face is brighter than the average youngster’s, but another
season will change all that.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett swung around on the music-stool and looked
earnestly into Gertrude’s face.

“He’s not a society man, my dear girl. He _could_ have the _entrée_ if
he wanted it. His people are very prominent in Connecticut, and he was
in the best set at Yale. But, do you know, although he has plenty of
money, he is quite ambitious in a very queer line.”

“Yes?” questioned Gertrude, curious regarding her friend’s feelings
toward Richard.

“Yes. He is a newspaper man. He’s on the _Trumpet_, you know, and has
been wonderfully successful in some way or other. He writes awfully
bright things for the editorial page. Percy-Bartlett says that it is a
most unusual thing for a man as young as Richard Stoughton to jump at a
bound into such a prominent position.”

“A newspaper man. Isn’t that amusing! I never met one before.”

“Well,” commented the musician, turning around and drumming softly on
the piano, “there is one thing to be said about them; they have to be
bright, or they couldn’t be newspaper men.”

“That is a very sweeping assertion,” remarked Gertrude, smiling in
amusement. “I wonder if it applies to newspaper women.”

“I don’t know; I never met one,” answered Mrs. Percy-Bartlett coldly.

“But tell me,” persisted Gertrude, her blue eyes dark with mischief;
“what are you going to do with him?”

Almost unconsciously Mrs. Percy-Bartlett began to play the air she had
composed to Heine’s poem on the pine-tree that dreamed of the palm.
Suddenly she ceased playing, and gazed earnestly at Gertrude.

“I don’t know,” she said at length, and the roguish light died out of
Gertrude’s eyes.

“I don’t understand you, Harriet,” she said very seriously. “You don’t
mean that--that”--

“I mean nothing,” cried Mrs. Percy-Bartlett rather feverishly, turning
to the piano and playing a few bars of the latest waltz music.
Presently she turned around and said,--

“You are unkind, Gertrude. You are unmarried, unengaged, and you
can take as much interest as you may care to in any man, married or
otherwise, and the world doesn’t stop to gossip about you--that is,
of course, if you don’t go on in a scandalous way. But let a married
woman show the slightest attention to a man who is not her husband,
and everybody begins to whisper and nod and smile, and you are lucky
if _Town Tattle_ doesn’t begin to hint at another divorce in the inner
circle. I don’t care how many people sing my songs and admire my music,
but I wish they _would_ stop talking about _me_. Can you tell me,
Gertrude, why I shouldn’t have the privilege of talking to--to Richard
Stoughton, for instance, without being gossiped about?”

“The trouble is, you know, Harriet,” answered Gertrude, the mischievous
gleam returning to her eye, “that whatever may be the case with
marriage, it was long ago decided that Platonic friendship is a
failure.”

“Perhaps so,” returned Mrs. Percy-Bartlett rather wearily. “But people
will follow it, _ignis fatuus_ though it may be, to the end of time.”

Gertrude arose to go. “Well, Harriet,” she said softly, bending
over and kissing her friend on the forehead, “don’t be annoyed at
anything I’ve said. I certainly have the warmest sympathy with your
disinclination to let life bore you.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett arose and took Gertrude’s hand. “And you will come
to my musicale on Tuesday night, my dear?”

“Indeed I shall. I want to get better acquainted with Mr. Richard
Stoughton, you know.”

At that moment a servant entered the room and handed a note to her
mistress.

“Excuse me, Gertrude,” she said, and opening the envelope read the
following words from Richard:--

  “MY DEAR MRS. PERCY-BARTLETT,--The miracle has been performed.
  Mr. John Fenton will accompany me to your musicale on Tuesday
  evening. Your invitation will reach him if addressed to the Press
  Club.”

The reader smiled, and handed the epistle to Gertrude Van Vleck.

“And who is John Fenton?” asked Gertrude, after perusing the note.

“Oh, John Fenton,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett gayly, “John Fenton is an
experiment.”




CHAPTER VIII.


“Meeting strangers at a musicale is not always a pleasant experience.
If you are musical, the people bore you; if you are sociable, the music
bores you.”

So John Fenton had said to Richard Stoughton, when the latter had
made his first effort to perform a miracle and obtain the former’s
acceptance in advance of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s invitation.

“But you owe me this reparation, Fenton,” Richard had urged. “When you
gave me those books on the single-tax theory to read, did I hold off
and say that if I was indifferent the books would bore me, or, if I
became a convert, I would bore my friends? No; I made no excuses, but
read the books. Now I claim my reward. You have failed, after a fair
trial, to make me an advocate of the immediate establishment of the
millennium. Let me now have an equal chance of persuading you that the
best thing to do is to take the world as we find it, and enjoy the good
the gods provide.”

The two men were spending the hour after dinner in Fenton’s
bachelor-apartments. They had fallen into the way of dining together
whenever they were both free to do so; and their friendship, having
withstood the failure of Fenton’s effort to make the young man an
economic radical, had grown warmer as the weeks went by. In several
ways Fenton had derived considerable benefit from his close intercourse
with Stoughton. It had been remarked in the city room of the _Trumpet_
that Fenton had given up drinking cocktails, and that he had grown
particular about his attire. He no longer allowed his hair and beard to
show signs of neglect; and the reporters for the paper had said to each
other that the assistant editor did not seem to be quite as sarcastic
and testy as he had been in former times. But if any one had told
Fenton that a youth not long out of college, and of a mental make-up
that was dazzling rather than convincing, had been the active cause
in begetting certain reforms in his habits of life, the cynical and
time-scarred journalist would have considered his informant insane. The
strongest men are moulded and remoulded by their friends, but they are
seldom willing to acknowledge the fact.

After Richard’s last argument, Fenton had puffed his cigar in
silence for a time. But he was not thinking of what his companion
had just said. He had grown convinced from several remarks, dropped
inadvertently by his friend, that the young man had become very much
interested in Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. It was not within the possibilities
of their existing friendship for him to question Richard very closely
on this point; but he was extremely anxious to know the exact truth
of the matter. If he went to the musicale, he thought, he could see
for himself just how the affair stood, and would be the better able to
guide his own steps in the premises. It had been his passion, when a
young man, for a certain married woman, that had ruined John Fenton.
He had a well-grounded horror, therefore, of seeing Richard Stoughton
wrecking himself on the same rock that had caused his own downfall.

“You have stated your arguments very cleverly, Richard,” he had said,
after a time. “You sacrificed yourself on the altar of my books. I will
reciprocate by throwing myself under the juggernaut of your musicale.
But, understand me, you will be disappointed in the result. Society has
no allurements for me. I touched it at all points years ago, when I had
much more enthusiasm than I have now; and, I tell you, there is nothing
in it as a permanent amusement for a man of sense. What is a gathering
of people of fashion, at its best? Nothing more than a dress-parade
of more or less well-groomed men and women who revenge themselves for
boring each other in public by destroying each other’s characters in
private.”

“If you ever have time,” suggested Richard, smiling, “you should write
a novel, John. You have a way of scolding the universe with a kind of
epigrammatic fervor that might prove popular.”

“You flatter me, Richard, by the implied conviction that I have not yet
been flippant enough to produce a work of fiction. I don’t want you to
idealize me; so I might as well confess, that, years ago, when I was
about your age, I did write a novel.” Fenton looked at Richard with
an expression on his face that would have fitted the confession of a
crime. Then he stepped to a closet, and, after rumaging around for a
while, brought forth a dust-covered roll of manuscript.

“This,” he said, “is one of the little gravestones in my very large
cemetery of dead hopes and dreams.”

He brushed the dust off of the roll with almost reverent hand.

“I haven’t looked at this thing for years, Richard. I’d almost
forgotten about it, until you made that remark about my writing a
novel. I have a sort of indistinct idea that, in the storehouse of your
ambitions, you have high literary aspirations, more or less concealed
from view. If you have, let this, my boy, be a warning to you not to
waste your time on a novel.”

Richard had been looking through the manuscript with an unaffected show
of interest.

“You call it ‘Ephemeræ,’” he remarked. “It is a taking title.”

“But it didn’t take the publishers,” returned Fenton, whose face had
grown unusually animated by the unexpected revival of long-buried
emotions. He had put a good deal of the energy, enthusiasm, and vigor
of early manhood into the rejected novel, and it had received the
minute polish that his life of leisure at that time had enabled him
to give it. How bitterly disappointed he had been at its refusal by a
leading publishing house he had long forgotten; but the present moment
had brought back to him a multitude of conflicting emotions, changed by
time into a general feeling of regret and self-pity.

“My writing is rather blind,” he remarked, taking the manuscript from
his friend. “Let me read you the prologue; not for publication, but as
an evidence of good faith.”

For the first time in their acquaintanceship, Fenton’s unsymmetrical
face appeared actually handsome in Richard’s eyes. The spirit of the
past that lurks in the relics of by-gone years had gently spoken from
the dust-stained manuscript, and had bidden John Fenton’s lost youth to
gleam again in his eyes, and to add a note of enthusiasm to his voice.

“It was a strangely pessimistic piece of work for a man as young as I
was at that time to write,” he said musingly. “But, as I can say now,
after years have strengthened my judgment, this novel is strong and
artistic. At the time when it was sent to the publishers, there was
little chance for the acceptance of anything written by an American
that was not strictly moral and what the good old fossils of that day
were so fond of calling ‘wholesome.’ This is the prologue, Richard. It
gives the keynote to the story.”

Fenton leaned back in his chair, and read aloud the opening words of
his novel:--

“It was not a pretty fly, but it loved the sun. It rejoiced in the
power of its wings, the length of its antennæ, the pulsing health
of its little body. It was summer, and the fly flitted about in the
warm and caressing atmosphere, as though God smiled for its especial
pleasure.

“Oh, the glory of the day! No shadow saw the fly, for it soared so high
that nought but the golden glory of a smiling universe met its gaze.

“But when the day was done, the little fly was dead.

“It never knew, the joyous trifler, that it was only one of a group of
neuropterous insects, belonging to the genus Ephemeræ, that live in
the adult or winged state for a single day, and die when the darkness
falls.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Richard said:--

“I feel sure, John, that if I had picked up a novel containing that
prologue my curiosity would have been piqued; that I would have been
anxious to read on to see how the author had made his story harmonize
with his melancholy text.”

“I remember,” said Fenton, lighting a fresh cigar, and rambling on
musingly, “that when I conceived the story I was actuated by the
feeling that men take themselves and their affairs too seriously.
There seemed to me to be something grimly ludicrous about the vast
majority of men, who fuss around for a few years on an insignificant
planet in an out-of-the-way corner of space, as if they had been placed
here for eternity, and were individually of tremendous significance
to the universe at large. I worked out the story on lines intended to
show, in a comparatively small compass, that we are as powerless and
unimportant in the infinite realm of existence as the foolish little
flies that buzz so loud on a summer’s day. If I should rewrite the
story to-day, I am not quite sure that I should take so hopeless a view
of the significance of human life. As I have grown older, I have become
more inclined to think that no man has a right to consider himself of
no importance in the _tout ensemble_ of the universe; not, at least,
until it is proved conclusively that there is no such thing as a soul
possessing eternal life. At all events, if we are _ephemeræ_, I am
sure that one fly has as much right as another to the sunshine of the
noonday. And so I make of an economic theory a religion,--for want of a
better.” Fenton’s sarcastic smile played across his mouth again as he
ceased speaking.

Richard had put on his overcoat, and was holding out his hand for the
manuscript of Fenton’s novel.

“Let me take the story with me, John,” he said. “I want to read it. I
am rather inclined to think, from what I know of the present literary
market, that now is the appointed time for you to win fame in the realm
of letters.”

Fenton, after a moment’s hesitancy, handed the scroll to his friend.

“I am not ambitious in that line,” he said firmly; “but it will do no
harm to have you read the book.”

“And you will go to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s with me?” Richard exclaimed
smilingly. “I am very glad, John, I assure you. I’m sure that our
hostess will feel that you have paid her a great compliment.”

Fenton smiled, almost bitterly; and, as if memory had sharpened his
tongue, he said, as he held Richard’s hand a moment,--

“I gave that up long ago, my boy. Paying a compliment to a woman is
like giving sugar-plums to a child. It establishes a precedent, and
begets an appetite. Never tell a woman a thing you don’t mean, Richard;
especially a married woman.”




CHAPTER IX.


“Men used to be divided into two classes, you know, Mr. Fenton,--those
who belonged to our set, and those who did not.”

Gertrude Van Vleck and John Fenton had retired to a remote corner of
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s drawing-room, and were keeping up as animated
a conversation as the depressing influences of a musicale permit. In
evening dress, Fenton was a man of a most impressive presence. He had
come to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s musicale expecting to be bored. The
expression on his strong, thoughtful face, as he gazed smilingly at the
handsome, aristocratic-looking girl beside him, proved that she had
followed in Richard Stoughton’s footsteps, and had performed a miracle.

“And what is the distinction that you yourself make, Miss Van Vleck?”
asked Fenton.

She looked at him earnestly a moment.

“To me,” she answered, “there are two kinds of men,--those who interest
me, and those who do not.”

“Perhaps,” said Fenton, taking advantage of an interlude in the
music-room, “perhaps it is inconsiderate on my part to ask the
question, but I acknowledge that I am curious to know what ratio exists
between the men who interest you and the men who do not.”

“I don’t know that I ever put the problem on a mathematical basis,”
answered Gertrude, an amused smile playing across her face. “I am
inclined to think that the ratio changes from year to year.”

“To your advantage?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not. As time goes on I find that I meet more men who do not
interest me and fewer who do. But there is compensation for this in the
fact that women have grown more attractive to each other than they used
to be.”

An enthusiastic soprano was at the moment striking certain high notes
as though she had a grudge against them, and Fenton was obliged to
pause a moment before he asked,--

“Won’t you explain that to me, Miss Van Vleck? It is, as you put it, a
novel idea.”

“Why, don’t you see,” she said earnestly, “the very fact that women are
joined together in a protest against ancient customs and prejudices has
drawn them closer to each other; while, at the same time, it has tended
to bring out the most characteristic qualities of each individual
woman. In a word, we women interest each other more as rebels than we
did as slaves.”

Again the soprano uttered her protest against peace and quiet, and
Fenton had an opportunity to weigh Gertrude Van Vleck’s words. His
_vis-à-vis_ was a social product the like of which had not existed in
the days when he had been a member of New York’s inner circle, and had
expected from a young unmarried woman nothing in a conversational way
that would challenge thought. Of course, in his journalistic occupation
he had been obliged to follow in detail the progress of woman toward a
broader, perhaps higher, plane of endeavor; but this was the first time
that Fenton had come face to face with the new ideas incarnate. He was
entertained, stimulated, inspired, by the experience. At first he had
looked upon Gertrude Van Vleck simply as a finely developed specimen of
the patrician type, whose dark hair, deep blue eyes, and finely rounded
neck formed a combination very pleasing to the eye, and indicated a
remote Spanish strain mingling with her Dutch blood. But after a few
moments in her companionship, he had discovered that she not only
satisfied his æsthetic nature, but piqued his intellectual make-up.
She had given him the highest pleasure that one mind can bestow upon
another, by opening up new vistas of thought to him.

John Fenton had reached that period of a life that had been filled with
disappointments when feminine sympathy and appreciation are among the
few things left in the world that are wholly satisfying. Perhaps it was
this very fact that had led him to make a friend of Richard Stoughton,
a youth whose quick intuitions and mental alertness had much in them
that was feminine.

There was, furthermore, a note of defiance in Gertrude’s last remark
that struck a sympathetic chord in Fenton’s nature. No man can accept
the premises upon which the economic theories to which Fenton had
subscribed are based without developing the rebellious tendencies that
lie more or less dormant in all men. For the first time, the similarity
impressed him that exists between woman’s revolt against the oppression
of man, and man’s restlessness under the threatening inequalities of
wealth.

“And as rebels women are much more attractive to men than they were
as conformists,” remarked Fenton, seizing an opportunity to resume
the conversation, after a self-satisfied tenor had proved to his own
satisfaction that he had a divine right to be conceited about his
voice. “To use a rather shop-worn quotation, ‘Blessings brighten as
they take their flight.’”

“But that is not a fair illustration,” exclaimed Gertrude earnestly.
“We are not trying to fly away from men, but to fly with them.”

“That may be true,” said Fenton, smiling thoughtfully; “but men are
naturally startled at the suddenly displayed power of your wings, and
are a little shy at first.”

“Why should they be? After all, I believe that the underlying ambition
of the new woman--as she is rather vulgarly called--is to make herself
intellectually attractive to the brightest men.”

“Then the progress of woman has not decreased the social importance of
the clever man?” asked Fenton humbly.

“On the contrary, Mr. Fenton, it has enhanced it--by giving him a
larger and more appreciative audience. The man of mental power would
hold a higher place in a community containing many Mesdames de Staël
than in a social circle possessing only one. Is it not so?”

“Do you know, Miss Van Vleck,” said Fenton, not answering her question
directly, “that I begin to think that I shall owe you a great debt of
gratitude?”

A slight tinge of red mounted to her face as her eyes met his. He
impressed her as a man more fitted to bestow favors than to accept them.

“I don’t quite understand you,” she said softly.

“We owe much,” he continued, “to those who take us out of our mental
grooves and give us a new standpoint from which to view the world.
There may be a good deal of selfishness in occupying one’s mind
entirely with man’s inhumanity to man, and blinding ourselves to man’s
inhumanity to woman. I have to thank you for a new point of view.”

“But,” protested Gertrude, “I have said nothing that we do not read in
print every day.”

“Even if that is so,” said Fenton, “truths that would make no
impression on me if I read them on an editorial page come to me with
startling force when you present them. I repeat, that I owe you a debt
of gratitude.”

At that moment Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s voice, a rich, highly-cultivated
contralto, was heard, giving passionate expression to Heine’s mournful
little story of the pine that dreamt of love. Richard Stoughton stood
at the entrance to the music-room, forgetful of the crowd around him.
There was something in her voice that seemed to be meant for him alone,
something that told him she was thinking of the night when she had
first sung the song to him. “I must be growing wofully egotistic,” he
thought; but at that instant their eyes met, and his self-deprecation
vanished.

She came to him after the applause had died away, and called his
attention to an unoccupied corner of the drawing-room.

“I want to talk to you,” she said simply. “Come!”

“Do you know,” she began playfully, after they were seated, “I have
begun to feel a good deal awed in your presence. A man who can perform
miracles, you know”--

“Well?” exclaimed Richard, as she hesitated a moment.

“A man who can perform miracles is to be avoided. Just think of poor
Trilby and Svengali.”

Richard laughed outright.

“That is a most complimentary remark! If I follow you, you mean that I
hypnotized John Fenton. I certainly feel flattered. But, do you know,
I begin to suspect that your friend, Miss Van Vleck, will prove a much
more successful medium than I?”

They both glanced at Gertrude and John Fenton, who were deep in
conversation in the opposite corner of the drawing-room.

“I am very glad that all responsibility for the man’s future has been
taken off of my hands,” said Richard. “The fact is, I feel that I have
all that I can do to take care of myself.”

He looked into her eyes with an expression in his own that was hardly
allowable--even at a musicale.

“How selfish a man is,” Mrs. Percy-Bartlett murmured musingly. “It is
almost impossible for him to be a consistent friend to another man. How
much less is he able to be a true friend to a woman.”

“The basis of all friendship is affection,” argued Richard, lowering
his voice as the music of a ’cello crept softly through the room. “And
affection is a very hard thing to hold in check.”

She looked up at him with a smile on her lips, but an expression of
sadness in her eloquent brown eyes.

“It is, indeed!” she almost whispered. Then, as if regretting the
admission, she leaned back in her chair, and seemed to listen to the
soft, throbbing harmonies that the piano and the ’cello begot as their
tones met and mingled, as though they caressed each other.

Richard bent forward, and their eyes met again.

“Do you reject my--my friendship?” he whispered.

Suddenly he felt her hand in his; and she smiled as he pressed it,
while her eyes brightened, and her cheeks flushed. Withdrawing her
hand, she said, her voice hardly audible even as he bent his face close
to hers:--

“Remember that there is another foundation-stone to friendship: it is
unselfishness.”

The words, and the pleading tone in which they were uttered, combined
to make her remark sound more like a prayer to his generosity than a
statement founded on a time-worn truth.

“I will try,” whispered Richard earnestly, “I will try to be an ideal
friend to you. I would rather have your friendship than the love of any
other woman in the world.”

She smiled up at him gratefully, as though he had made a great
sacrifice for her happiness. They say that Love is blind. Perhaps that
is the reason that the little rascal is such a consummate liar. How can
one expect a sightless imp, whose domain is youth, and whose throne
is the heart, to wield his sceptre with absolute respectability? If
he could see further, Cupid might behave better as a monarch; but the
chances are, in that case, that he would be compelled to abdicate.

The hour was waxing late.

“I must resume my duties,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett reluctantly; “and
abandon my friend for the sake of my guests. Will you come to see me
soon? Let me see--a week from to-night I have no engagement. Will you
come and talk to me of friendship?”

“Very gladly,” murmured Richard, touching her willing hand again.
“Until then I shall not live, but dream!”

Richard and Fenton strolled together down the avenue, silent and
self-absorbed. Finally the former asked,--

“Did you have a pleasant evening, John?”

“Very,” answered Fenton gruffly.

They walked for half a block before they spoke again.

“The music was well done,” ventured Richard.

“Yes,” assented Fenton. Neither of the two again opened their lips
until they reached the cross-street at which they were to part.

“Good-night, John,” said Richard, holding out his hand.

“Good-night, boy! See you to-morrow,” exclaimed Fenton hurriedly. Then
he walked onward alone.

“I went there,” he was saying to himself, “to get a line on the
youngster’s affair. But the cold, hard fact is that I forgot all about
him.”...

At that same moment Percy-Bartlett and Buchanan Budd were smoking their
good-night cigars together at the club.

“It is really too bad,” Budd was saying, “that the newspapers have been
able to print so much scandal about our set. But I suppose there is no
way to prevent it.”

“But there is a way,” returned Percy-Bartlett almost sternly. “What we
need in the inner circle is more heroism and less heroics. If _noblesse
oblige_ means anything at all in these days, it demands of those who
live up to its behests that they be self-contained, not hysterical.
There is no necessity for a domestic tragedy getting into print if the
man or woman who is wronged is fundamentally worthy of a place in the
most select coterie on earth.”

“You would rather wink at crime than have the public gossip about you,
then?” asked Budd.

“I would--a thousand times!” answered Percy-Bartlett, throwing away his
cigar and saying “good-night” cheerily.




CHAPTER X.


“I am not in the mood for listening to the confessions of a frivolous
boy,” remarked John Fenton, looking up from his desk in the city room
of the _Trumpet_ at Richard Stoughton on the afternoon following Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett’s musicale.

“Don’t be cross with me, John,” implored Richard gently; “I have no
intention of worrying you with my peccadilloes. But I want you to look
in on me for an hour after dinner. I really have a very important
matter I want to talk to you about. You aren’t on duty to-night, are
you?”

“No,” answered Fenton, with apparent reluctance. Then he hesitated a
moment, and finally said,--

“Very well, Richard. I’ll do you the great honor of calling on you
about half after seven. But I give you fair warning, if you begin to
bore me, I shall fly at once.”

“It’s a bargain!” exclaimed the youth, as he turned away.

Richard occupied a rather luxurious suite of bachelor-apartments on
a side-street not very far up-town. As he sat before an open fire
after dinner that evening awaiting the arrival of John Fenton, he
felt thoroughly contented with himself and the world at large. He had
come to New York unknown and unheralded, and lo! the great city, so
indifferent to the advent of most strangers, had opened its arms to
him, had patted him on the back, had told him that he was clever, and
therefore welcome. The great metropolis has an insatiable hunger for
able men in all lines of life, but it is often blind for many years to
the merits of certain citizens who need only an opportunity to become
prominent. Once in a great while, however, it seizes a very young man
by the collar of his coat, as it were, and thrusts him forward in some
field of endeavor, and the multitude of older men who have failed to
take advantage of their life-tide at its flood, look on with mingled
amazement and envy at the lucky youth. Chance had thrown Richard
Stoughton into the front ranks of journalism; and as he watched the
flickering blaze before him, or followed the smoke from his cigar with
his eye, he felt that he was worthy of the position he held, and that
the metropolis had not made a blunder when it had picked him out as one
entitled to applause.

The door behind Richard opened softly, and John Fenton entered the room
and quietly seated himself at the other side of the fireplace.

“Have a cigar, John,” said the youth, deserting his air-castles for the
stern realities that Fenton always seemed to carry with him. Turning to
offer his guest a light, Richard was surprised to see that Fenton was
garbed in evening dress. “My miracle is taking on a chronic form,” he
said to himself. Then aloud he remarked,--

“I thank you, John, for not disappointing me. I have several weighty
problems on my mind, and you’re the only man of my acquaintance who can
help me out.”

Fenton puffed away silently for a few moments.

“Go on,” he said at length, rather coldly. “You want to talk to me
about--what?”

“About the single-tax theory, John, as applied to affairs of the heart.”

Fenton glanced sternly at his companion, but there was no sign of
mischief on Richard’s face. He was gazing at the fire as though trying
to read in the dancing flames the answer to the riddle that annoyed him.

“Explain yourself,” said Fenton suspiciously.

“Well,” went on Richard with studied calmness, “you see, I am trying to
get into touch with all the new ideas that have a marked influence on
the life of our times. I am, however, especially interested in watching
the effect of theories on the actions of my friends. It’s almost a new
science, I think. I must look up some Greek roots and give it a name.
Perhaps I’ll go down to fame as the inventor of a new and very useful
line of study.”

“What are you attempting to get at, Richard?” exclaimed Fenton,
twisting around uneasily in his chair and trying to obtain a clear
view of the young man’s face.

“That’s not the point, John. The question is, what are _you_ striving
to accomplish? You see, I have been doing a good deal of unconscious
cerebration in regard to your single-tax ideas, and I have reached a
point where I should like to ask a few more questions regarding the
demands that your belief makes on your habits of life. Now, you know,
our good old Puritan ancestors were fond of looking upon this world as
‘a vale of tears.’ You single-tax people go a step farther, and call it
‘a den of thieves.’”

“Come, Richard,” said Fenton firmly, “don’t be flippant.”

“The very last thing that I feel inclined to be, John. I’m in sober
earnest. Let me ask you a question. You consider, of course, a man who
collects rents from property he holds in this city from his ancestors a
receiver of stolen goods?”

“Well, what if I do?” asked Fenton testily.

“I was curious to know, that’s all.”

“And what if I say that I do?” persisted Fenton at length, in a more
amenable tone of voice.

“Well, if you do, would you make a bosom friend of a son of this
receiver of stolen goods, who will, in all likelihood, come into the
booty after a time, and whose blood is tainted by his descent from a
line of land-pirates?”

“Nonsense, Richard! I don’t see the use of putting those questions to
me--just at this time. If a man is by heredity a drunkard I may feel
sorry for him, but it is not my duty to express my disapproval of his
ancestors so long as he treats me decently.”

“That’s logical enough,” commented Richard enthusiastically. “I really
begin to think, John, that you still have sense enough left not to let
your economic theories and beliefs--convictions that, I have heard,
sometimes make fanatics of those who hold them--ruin any chance that
might come to you for great happiness in life.”

There was silence in the room for several minutes.

“It’s curious,” remarked Fenton musingly, “that you have taken just
this tack, Richard. You have that faculty of intuition that is, for
the most part, a feminine characteristic. I can see evidences of that
peculiarity of mind in your work on the editorial page. You seem to
reach at a bound deductions that most men would have to work out with
painful effort.”

“You mean by that, John, that, to use the words of our professional
President, it is a condition, not a theory, that confronts you, and
that I know it.”

“I admit nothing, Richard,” said Fenton stubbornly, and looking at his
watch.

“But,” persisted Richard, as his friend rose to go, “you believe that
a man who holds real estate in New York--derived, let us say, from his
Dutch ancestors--is the dishonest holder of ill-gotten gain?”

“This is unkind, Richard,” said Fenton, with more emotion in his
voice than his friend had ever heard it express. “I have neither the
inclination nor the time at present to explain my present position.”

“Why not the time, John?” asked Richard, smiling mischievously.

“Because, my boy,” and Fenton spoke like a man driven to the wall, “I’m
going up-town to call on Miss Van Vleck.”

Richard laughed outright.

“No wonder,” he cried, “that you can’t explain your present position.”

Richard found himself alone in the room, and, lighting a fresh cigar,
reseated himself before the fire.

“It was heroic treatment,” he mused, “but it’s the only course to
pursue with such a man as John Fenton.”

Then he fell to thinking of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, and the hours flew by.




CHAPTER XI.


Buchanan Budd had been doing a good deal of deep thinking of
late--proof positive that the times were out of joint. Budd, of course,
was obliged to do more or less thinking in order to be always correctly
dressed, but it was only a great crisis that could compel him to ponder
really weighty problems for any length of time.

When a subterranean disturbance shakes a city it is the most clumsily
constructed houses that go down first. In like manner, when the most
select circle of society is in trouble, it is the man who has no very
good claim to recognition in that circle who first feels the effects of
the internal agitation.

As Buchanan Budd listened to the current gossip at his clubs, and read
in the newspapers impudent criticisms on the doings of the people with
whom he associated, he came reluctantly, but firmly, to the conclusion
that it behooved him to take some step that would strengthen his
position as a recognized member of the most exclusive social clique in
the country--perhaps in the world.

It did not take him long to decide that the only fitting strategical
move on his part lay along the line of matrimony. Not that he came to
this conviction willingly. He enjoyed life as a bachelor, and he felt
that in taking to himself a wife he would be making a most dangerous
experiment. He could not blind himself to the fact that the unpleasant
publicity at that time being thrust upon certain members of the inner
circle had had its origin in unfortunate marriages. Nevertheless,
he realized that society expected of him, at some time or other, a
personal sacrifice of his liberty on the altar of matrimony; and the
present crisis seemed to be an appropriate moment for propitiating the
powers controlling the inner circle by taking to himself a wife who
would render him safe for the future in any sifting process in which
society might indulge.

After going over the list of eligible young women in his set, he had
decided, without much hesitation, that Gertrude Van Vleck was, as he
put it to himself, the card for him to play. She possessed several
characteristics that rendered her especially eligible. In the first
place, her position in society was thoroughly assured. Furthermore,
she possessed sufficient mental alertness to render her companionable
to a man who had not been quite able to crush all fondness for
originality out of his make-up. Then again--and this was an important
consideration--he had never made love to her. They had been good
friends, to use a rather meaningless phrase, and Budd was encouraged
by the thought that he had never prejudiced his chances with her by
invoking sentiment to add spice to their intercourse.

That she had rejected several suitors was a fact well known to society,
and there had been a good deal of discussion as to Gertrude Van
Vleck’s motive for refusing at least two offers that were generally
considered especially desirable. In weighing this phase of the case,
Buchanan Budd, who was not an abnormally modest man, asked himself if
the explanation of her reluctance to enter into wedlock had not been
due to the fact that he, in certain respects one of the most eligible
bachelors in the city, had hitherto approached her only as a friend. It
is true that she had sometimes appeared to indulge in a little sarcasm
at his expense, but her tongue might have been inspired by pique. What
more likely than that his failure to put any special warmth into his
manner, when she had hoped for something more than friendship, had been
the underlying cause of those shafts of satire that she had sometimes
launched at him? The more Buchanan Budd questioned himself on this
point, the more he became convinced that Gertrude Van Vleck concealed a
fondness for him that she only awaited a change in his manner to reveal.

There was one peculiarity possessed by Budd that might have enabled him
to earn his own living, if fate had not ordained that he should lie on
a bed of roses. When he had decided upon a course of action, he never
hesitated to begin operations at once. But, as he seldom reached any
conclusion that demanded the exercise of energy and directness, there
was something novel and inspiring in the emotions that animated him as
he sent in his card to Gertrude Van Vleck on the very evening on which
he had pursued, while smoking a cigar at his favorite club, the mental
processes outlined above. He felt that there was something Napoleonic
in thus moving on the enemy’s stronghold at once, and he entered her
drawing-room with almost the air of a conqueror. One fact that rendered
bachelorhood so satisfactory to Buchanan Budd was that he possessed
quite a vivid imagination. No man will grow too lonely if he can
constantly delude himself with flattering fancies, and picture himself
as the centre of the universe, with the ends of space to do his bidding.

“And what am I to have from you this evening, Mr. Budd?” asked
Gertrude, seating herself for a chat that she knew would prove
amusing. “Censure for the new woman?”

“No, Miss Van Vleck; I crave advice for the old-fashioned man.”

Gertrude smiled, and her eyes flashed merrily as she exclaimed,--

“There is a mystery here! Mr. Buchanan Budd seeking advice from a
woman whom he suspects of holding advanced ideas! That seems hardly
reasonable.”

There was something in Gertrude Van Vleck’s manner and appearance
that struck Budd as unusual. He had always considered her a handsome
woman, but to-night her eyes were more brilliant, her complexion more
dazzling, than he had ever seen them, while there was something in
the tone of her voice and the movements of her hands that seemed to
indicate suppressed excitement. These phenomena, he argued, augured
well for the advance movement that he, with Napoleonic cleverness, had
determined to order along the entire line of his attack. But the moment
for his forward movement had not quite come. A little skirmishing in
the open field was essential before he ordered up his heavy troops.

“But why is it not reasonable, Miss Van Vleck? Surely, even a
conservative, and, if you please, reactionary, man may feel anxious
to put himself in touch with the new ideas. It may even be that he
honestly desires to embrace as many of the iconoclastic theories of the
day as possible, if for no other purpose than to retain the friendships
he made in the peaceful days before--before”--

“Before the women of our set began to think, you mean,” said Gertrude,
as he hesitated a moment. “It is certainly complimentary on your
part--and so self-sacrificing.” There was a touch of sarcasm in her
voice.

Budd looked at her appealingly. “You hardly do justice to my motives,
Miss Van Vleck. I am honestly anxious to overcome my ancient prejudices
and to put myself in sympathy with the age in which I live. You can do
_so_ much to help me in this--if you will.”

There was a note of tenderness in his voice that Gertrude had never
heard in it before, and she glanced at him suspiciously. She had
derived considerable pleasure, in a mild way, from her friendly
intercourse with Buchanan Budd; and her liking for him had been based,
to a great extent, on the utter absence of flirtatiousness in his
manner. That he had any intention of jeopardizing their friendship by
injecting sentiment into the relationship was a new thought to her.
At that moment it was the most unwelcome suspicion that could have
entered her mind. There is no time when a woman so dreads the advances
of a man to whom she is indifferent as the moment when she admits to
herself that her heart is influenced by another. Buchanan Budd had
unconsciously forced Gertrude Van Vleck into a self-confession that
made her pulse flutter and her cheek turn pale.

“I fear, Mr. Budd,” she went on with nervous vivacity, “that you would
not be willing to follow us very far--no matter how great an effort I
made to put you in sympathy with the new movement. Let me tell you, Mr.
Budd, there is no predicting where it will all end. A woman in Vienna
has applied to the authorities to be appointed chief-executioner. A
Miss Edith Walker is an applicant in Bogota, Columbia, for the office
of chief of police. I see by your face that you are shocked at all
this. I am so glad.”

“Glad that I am shocked?” exclaimed Budd confusedly.

“No, not that; but that I have had the courage to warn you.”

“To warn me?”

“Yes,” answered Gertrude, the former paleness of her cheeks giving
place to a slight flush, “to warn you. Don’t you see that there is
great danger in attempting to keep up with the restless activity of
the _fin-de-siècle_ woman? I think you will be much happier, Mr. Budd,
in sticking to your former convictions, and not attempting to take an
interest in movements and tendencies with which, you know, you are not
in sympathy at heart.”

“But,” persisted Budd, who felt that somehow his plan of campaign
was not working itself out with the success that should attend a
truly Napoleonic manœuvre, “I came here to ask you to help me, not by
throwing cold water on my aspirations, but by telling me how to become
worthy of--of the new woman.”

Gertrude Van Vleck laughed nervously.

“I appreciate the compliment you have paid me, Mr. Budd, but I am
unworthy of the trust you seem to place in me. Frankly, I find it so
difficult to adjust my former, I might say my hereditary, convictions
to the teachings of the day, that I feel that I must remain a follower
instead of a leader, even at the expense of not winning for the cause
so valuable a champion as Mr. Buchanan Budd.”

For the first time since he had opened fire, Buchanan Budd realized
that his skirmish-line had been driven back. But a battle is never lost
until the last charge is made.

“I am sorry,” he said in a musing tone, “that you have not
given me more encouragement in my effort to--to revise my ideas
regarding--regarding woman’s sphere, I think you call it. I assure you,
Miss Van Vleck,” and he bent toward her, “that my motive in asking you
to help me in this matter was not of small importance to myself. I am
very anxious to--to”--

He paused for words with a hesitation that was not at all Napoleonic.
At that moment a servant entered with a card for Miss Van Vleck.

“Mr. John Fenton!” exclaimed Gertrude, with something in her voice that
did not please Buchanan Budd.

Then she turned calmly toward him and asked, “Do you know Mr. Fenton,
Mr. Budd?”

A hitherto unpublished anecdote tells how a daring onlooker approached
Napoleon on the morning of Waterloo and said,--

“Pardon me, Sire, but have you ever met Wellington before?”




CHAPTER XII.


“I think, Mr. Budd, that Mr. Fenton can give you the advice and counsel
that I have so wofully failed to furnish you,” remarked Gertrude, after
her callers were seated. “You see, Mr. Fenton takes the new woman
seriously.”

“Surely, Mr. Budd,” said John Fenton, “there is no great merit in that.
We are obliged to, are we not?”

“I am disappointed in you, Mr. Fenton,” exclaimed Gertrude. “I thought
you did it willingly, and now you hint at compulsion.”

Buchanan Budd grasped the opportunity for a flank movement.

“You have thrown yourself open to suspicion, Mr. Fenton. I fear your
counsel and advice to one who is very glad to welcome woman to new
privileges would not be as valuable as I had hoped it would be.”

Fenton saw that he had placed himself at a disadvantage.

“You both do me an injustice,” he explained. “Although there may be, as
I have said, no possibility of retreat, we men still take pleasure in
advancing with women, rather than against them.”

Budd saw at once that his opponent was a strategist worthy of his own
Napoleonic skill.

“You see,” said Budd, gazing earnestly at Gertrude, “that you find all
men ready to capitulate. The burden now lies on your own shoulders. It
is for you to direct your allies in the line that they should take.”

Gertrude smiled in apparent amusement; but she had a painful
consciousness that her hand would tremble perceptibly if she held it
out straight before her.

“It seems,” she remarked, looking at Fenton, “that everything has been
turned around. As a guide and adviser to men, I fear that woman is not
yet quite up in her part.”

“As my friend Richard Stoughton,--you met him at the musicale last
evening, Miss Van Vleck,--as Stoughton puts it, woman has evoluted
into a mentor from a tormentor,” remarked Fenton, proving that he was
no longer a young man, by quoting the witticism of a friend and giving
credit to the author.

“I have been told that Mr. Stoughton is clever,” remarked Gertrude. “He
is on a newspaper, is he not?”

A slight flush mounted to Fenton’s cheek.

“Yes,” he answered, looking at Budd steadily; “he is one of my
colleagues on the _Trumpet_.”

“Ah,” commented Budd, with what he doubtless considered an effectively
Napoleonic drawl, “you are--ah--in journalism, Mr. Fenton?”

There was nothing offensive in the words themselves, but the speaker’s
tone implied that he considered journalism a line of endeavor that was
not recognized in his set. Gertrude Van Vleck understood the veiled
sneer in his voice, and her eyes shone mischievously as she cast a
rapid glance at Fenton, and then said to Budd,--

“It seems to me, and I know so many women who agree with me, that
journalism is, above all others, the appropriate profession for a man
of intellect in these days.”

So far as good form permitted it to express any emotion, Buchanan
Budd’s face wore a look of surprise as she uttered these words. Fenton
smiled slightly, and said,--

“Won’t you explain your position, Miss Van Vleck? Your remark is so
distinctly complimentary to my line of life that I should be delighted
to have you enlighten us further regarding your reason for the
conclusion you have reached.”

“Perhaps that would be killing two birds with one stone,” suggested
Gertrude enthusiastically. “Mr. Budd has been asking my advice about
the best method of getting into touch with the new ideas that are
influencing the world--especially as they apply to woman. It seems
to me that the life of a newspaper man must, of necessity, place him
in sympathy with the most advanced tendencies of thought. I mean, of
course, a newspaper man who holds a position of any prominence in
journalism.”

“If I follow you--ah--Miss Van Vleck,” put in Budd, his drawl growing
somewhat more pronounced as he realized that the enemy had cleverly
thrown him upon the defensive, “if I follow you, the proposition seems
to be that in order to become thoroughly imbued with the theories that
dominate woman at present, I should--ah--go into journalism.”

Gertrude laughed nervously.

“What do you advise, Mr. Fenton? Mr. Budd is honestly anxious to be
progressive; he even flattered me by saying that I could help him to
overcome certain ancient prejudices that still cling to him. But I feel
convinced that you can be of more service to him in this matter than
I--or any woman--could ever be.”

“I fear,” said Fenton coldly, “that the treatment for Mr. Budd,
at which you have hinted, is much too heroic. The life of the New
York newspaper man is not devoted to the study of theories, but to
the discovery and publication of facts. Our effort is to free from
imprisonment poor old ‘Truth, crushed to earth,’ to use the words of
the poet.”

“I suppose--ah--Mr. Fenton,” suggested Budd, “that the reason the
newspapers stir up so much mud, then, is that they find--ah--Truth in
such an unfortunate position.”

Gertrude and Fenton laughed outright.

“Very well put, Mr. Budd,” exclaimed the latter. “I feel convinced
that you need no outside aid to enable you to keep up with current
tendencies; provided, of course,”--and Fenton looked earnestly at
Budd,--“provided, of course, that you honestly prefer to be progressive
rather than reactionary.”

Budd had arisen to make his adieux.

“I--ah--feel very much encouraged, Mr. Fenton, by your words.
Especially as they don’t condemn me--ah--to a newspaper life,” he said,
smiling sarcastically. Then he turned and took Gertrude’s hand.

“I hope, Miss Van Vleck,” he said earnestly, “that you feel encouraged
about my redemption.”

Gertrude looked at him with mock solemnity. “I fear, Mr. Budd, that
the age of miracles has long gone by.”

Budd strolled thoughtfully along the avenue toward his favorite club.
“She is mistaken about the age of miracles,” he was saying to himself.
“There are amazing and inexplicable phenomena in sight all around us. A
newspaper man who appears to advantage in a drawing-room! Is not that a
miracle? And I even suspect that she admires him. It’s most incredible.”

There was a great deal in the world that astonished Napoleon when he
reached St. Helena and had time to sit down and think.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Do you know anything of a man named John Fenton--a journalist, I
believe?” asked Buchanan Budd of Percy-Bartlett when he reached the
club.

“Yes,” answered the latter. “Fenton belonged to our set years
ago--before you entered it, you know. He’s a thoroughbred, but
eccentric, and completely out of the running.”

This answer did not tend to restore Budd’s disturbed equilibrium. He
suspected that Percy-Bartlett underrated John Fenton’s staying powers.




CHAPTER XIII.


It was a bright moonlight night as John Fenton strode hurriedly
away from the Van Vleck mansion, and bent his steps toward Richard
Stoughton’s apartments. Just why, at such an hour, he had determined to
call on his youthful friend, he could hardly say. He was discontented
with himself and the world. He had had, in a certain sense, an
enjoyable evening; but a man of Fenton’s age and mental tendencies does
not make a radical change in his habits without a protest that finds
expression in his actions. A broken piston-rod may not ruin an Atlantic
liner, but it causes many eccentric variations in the vessel’s course.

For ten years past John Fenton had been a man of somewhat questionable
habits, and of distinctly iconoclastic convictions. He had discovered,
of a sudden, that a change had crept over the details of his daily
life, and that his iconoclasm was no longer followed by an exclamation
point, but by an interrogation mark. What influence had been brought
to bear to beget these changes, he was not sure. He realized that his
intercourse with Richard Stoughton had had some effect upon his mode
of life and cast of thought, but he had never acknowledged to himself
that he had taken the young man _au sérieux_. That a rather superficial
boy, not long out of college, could throw a man of Fenton’s age and
character entirely out of time-worn grooves seemed to be an absurdity.
But as Fenton strode down the avenue, so deep in self-communion that
he noted not the beauty of the night, he realized that influences he
could not trace, and whose force he could not measure, had been at work
to disturb the even tenor of his life, and to throw him back into that
state of unrest and questioning that had agitated his existence before
he had abandoned, as he fondly thought forever, the ambitions that the
average man cherishes.

Modern life has one characteristic that must be taken into
consideration as we follow the outward manifestations in our
fellow-men of the inward impetus that dominates them; namely, its
complexity. An individual, in this age of the world, is powerless
in any effort to shape his life in opposition to the currents that
influence the world at large. Isolation is practically impossible. Our
butler remarks that coffee and tea have become expensive luxuries. We
realize that a revolution in Brazil, or a war in the far East, has had
its effect in swelling the expenses of our cuisine.

Society is closely knit together. Jenkins, the millionnaire, gets drunk
at dinner. The butler tells the cook, the cook tells his sweetheart,
his sweetheart tells her brother, her brother tells a bartender, the
bartender tells a loafer, the loafer tells a tramp. Does not all this
illustrate the perfect brotherhood of man?

John Fenton had made a close study of modern social problems; and he
was thoroughly conversant with the fact that the interdependence of
individuals has been vastly increased by the characteristic features
of contemporary life. Nevertheless, there was a certain stubbornness
in his make-up that made him revolt against the very tendencies that
had seemed to him, in his more optimistic moods, to insure the final
salvation of society. He was a man who objected to the idea that he had
yielded to an influence that he could not follow to its source, and
had drifted away from his former moorings. Accepting the complexity of
society as a stimulating, and perhaps encouraging, fact, he objected to
its personal application. He had tried hard to be a rebel in manner as
well as in theory. That he had sent up a flag of truce was a conviction
that filled him with both self-distrust and discontent.

As he turned into the side street leading to Stoughton’s lodgings,
he stopped before a brilliantly lighted saloon. For fully a month
Fenton had abstained almost entirely from alcoholic stimulants; but
at this moment he craved the revivifying influence of a cocktail. He
turned back into the avenue, and retraced his steps for half a block.
He was astonished at his hesitation,--his seemingly childish lack of
determination. He tried to analyze his mood. He realized that he had
no objections to offer to one harmless little cocktail at ten o’clock
at night. What, then, was it that caused him to repass the saloon
without entering it? “Perhaps,” he said to himself, “perhaps I am
growing snobbish again since I returned to the inner circle. If I want
a cocktail hereafter I shall be obliged to rejoin one or more of my old
clubs.”

Fenton found Richard Stoughton still seated before the dying embers
of the fire, and thoughtfully puffing cigar-smoke into the heavy
atmosphere.

“Come, come, Richard,” cried Fenton, throwing up one of the windows.
“You might as well go the pace in gay company as to ruin your
constitution in solitude in a room actually choking with nicotine. I
was not sure that I should find you; but I took the chance.”

Richard gazed at his friend searchingly as he handed him a cigar.

“Well, John, I’m glad to see you, of course, although I had not looked
forward to your reappearance to-night. And now tell me, old man, are
you with us or against us?”

“I don’t quite understand your question, Richard,” exclaimed Fenton,
regretting for a moment that he had not taken a cocktail to restore his
nervous energy.

“Well, John, forgive me then, if I take a liberty and put my question
in different words. Did you enjoy your call on Miss Van Vleck?”

“Those are, indeed, very different words, Richard. The two questions
seem to have no very close relationship.”

“Perhaps not, John. That’s for me to judge. But answer one or the other
of them; whichever one you choose.”

“Well, my boy, I can say honestly,” remarked Fenton guardedly, “that I
have had a very pleasant evening.”

“But it was not wholly satisfactory, or you wouldn’t be here,”
commented Richard in a tone of conviction. “Come, old man, free your
mind. You need a father-confessor. I’ll try to fill the _rôle_ if you
will bear with my youth and inexperience.”

Fenton puffed at his cigar in silence for a time, and gazed moodily
into the gleaming coals in the grate.

“I acknowledge, Richard,” he said at length, “that I am in a disturbed
state of mind. But if I can’t help myself, nobody else can give me the
aid I need.”

“Proud and stubborn heart,” cried Richard. “Let me diagnose your case.
You believe in certain novel theories, and have become a convert to
various economic teachings that embrace more in their ultimate effects
than a mere question of taxation. You are suddenly confronted by the
fact that it is possible for even political economy to demand martyrs
on the altars it has raised. Naturally, you object to being a martyr.”

“Your way of putting it, Richard,” said Fenton slowly, “may have a
basis of truth. I admit that I seem to have come to a turning-point
imperatively demanding a decision on my part that will have a radical
effect on my life.”

“It is,” suggested Richard, “a question of hearts _versus_ theories.”

“Not yet, perhaps,” answered Fenton; “but it may become so if I don’t
call a halt at once in my present methods.”

“No man can serve two masters to-day, John, any more than our remote
ancestors could when the proposition was first put into words. Of
course you know, without any explanation on my part, how my sympathy
lies in the struggle that is worrying you. In the first place, although
I may be forced to admit the strength of the premises upon which the
writer you call master bases his conclusions, I refuse to accept the
conclusions. Chasing a rainbow seems to me to be a useless occupation,
no matter how much we admire the rainbow. Furthermore, the personal
element enters largely into my way of looking at this matter. I
have grown very fond of you, John,” and Richard’s voice grew almost
caressing in its tone, “and I should like to see you take the path to
happiness that chance has thrown open to you.”

“We are talking in the air, my boy,” said Fenton earnestly, with a note
of sadness in his intonation. “It is only excessive egotism on my part
that could lead me to believe that the path to happiness of which you
speak has really opened up before me.”

“But if,” persisted Richard, “you felt sure that by sacrificing what I
take the liberty of calling your chimerical efforts to put salt on the
tail of the millennium, you could win the joy that has suddenly met
your gaze, would you not abandon your philanthropic but hopeless dreams
for the alluring reality within your grasp?”

“Frankly, Richard,” answered Fenton, after a moment’s silence, “I
cannot answer the question to-night. It takes a man in middle life a
long time to overturn the results of ten years of reading and thinking
and endeavor. But I am glad that you have put the problem in concrete
form. I can look at it more calmly now that I have heard you put it
into words. But it is late and I must go. I have been very selfish,
Richard, I fear. Tell me, my boy, why have you wasted an entire evening
looking at a bed of coals, and blowing smoke into the air?”

Richard smiled as he took Fenton’s outstretched hand.

“I have been trying to come to a decision, John.”

“And have you reached it?”

“I fear not, old man. Decisions are hard to arrive at, John, are they
not?”

“They are, indeed,” assented Fenton sadly, as he said good-night.




CHAPTER XIV.


“I sent for you to cheer me up, Gertrude, but, really, you’re the most
depressing creature I’ve seen in a long time. You’re not like yourself
at all. What is the matter?”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett and Gertrude Van Vleck were spending an afternoon
together, indulging in what the former called “boudoir repentance.”
Lent had come, and the reaction from social gayety had caused society
to sit down for a time and try to think. Sackcloth and ashes were
very becoming to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett; for she had never looked more
attractive to the eyes of Gertrude Van Vleck than she did at that
moment, as she drew her chair close to her friend’s side, and, taking
her hand, smiled up into her troubled face questioningly.

“You have something on your mind, Gertrude; I am sure of it. Tell me
what it is.”

Gertrude Van Vleck’s clear-cut face was paler than its wont, and there
were dark circles under her eyes.

“You are mistaken, Harriet,” she answered evasively. “I always feel
a certain depression when Lent begins. I suppose that that is very
becoming on my part. Lent means more to us, whose days are nearly all
Easters, than to people who spend their whole lives in the shadow of
self-sacrifice and denial. Do you know, Harriet, I sometimes feel a
great pity for the worried and overworked world that lies outside our
set. It seems so unjust that a few of us should have all the good
things of the earth, while the millions are obliged to toil and sicken
and die in the mere effort to get enough to eat and wear.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett looked at Gertrude with undisguised astonishment in
her eyes.

“What queer ideas you are getting into your head, Gertrude! I am glad
you are going to Europe so soon. The change will do you good.”

“I hope it will, Harriet,” said Gertrude earnestly, “for I am really
wofully out of sorts. I have often thought, don’t you know, that it
was a glorious thing that we women of to-day are not contented to take
everything for granted, and are inclined to do a little reading and
thinking for ourselves. But we pay the penalty for our intellectual
emancipation in various ways. Isn’t it Byron who says that ‘knowledge
is sorrow, and he who knows the most must mourn the most.’”

“What a curious girl you are, Gertrude! I didn’t know that anybody ever
quoted Byron in these days. He’s so old-fashioned, is he not? But,
Gertrude, I am really worried about you. Surely it isn’t our fault if
the world is all wrong. What can we do to set things right? Absolutely
nothing, my dear. We might as well feel sorry that the Japanese have
killed a lot of Chinamen, as to worry about the poverty and distress on
the East Side--or is it the West Side--of this great city. I’m sorry,
Gertrude, that you aren’t literary, or musical, or something of that
kind. It’s a wonderful thing to have an outlet for just such moods as
you are in. If it wasn’t for my music, I don’t know what I’d do at
times. Something reckless, I’m afraid.”

“No,” said Gertrude sadly, “I haven’t anything of that kind to help
me out. I sometimes wish that I could write a great novel. I know, of
course, that that sounds absurd, but I do so want to do something worth
doing.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett smiled amusedly at her companion.

“I hope,” she said, “that you won’t give way to the temptation, my
dear. But, seriously, Gertrude, I want you to make me a promise, a
solemn promise, for the sake of your own happiness.”

“What is it?” asked Gertrude, a sad smile on her face. “I am in the
mood to promise almost anything.”

“Then, Gertrude,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, gently stroking her
friend’s hand, “then, I want you to promise me that you will fall in
love.”

Gertrude laughed, almost merrily.

“What a strange request, Harriet! I don’t see what my word given to
you would be worth in such a case.” Then her face took on a look
of sadness. “I wonder,” she said musingly, “if I ought to tell you
something. I should like to so much, Harriet, but it doesn’t seem to be
quite fair.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett threw her arm around Gertrude’s neck, and drew her
close to her side.

“You can trust me, Gertrude. Don’t you know you can? I knew that you
had something to tell me. Whisper it, my dear. What is it?”

Gertrude bent her head close to her confidante’s ear.

“Buchanan Budd proposed to me last night, Harriet.”

“And you”--

“And I refused him,” answered Gertrude, a hysterical break in her voice.

“I am so sorry,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett caressingly, as she gently
stroked Gertrude’s luxuriant hair.

The girl’s eyes met hers questioningly.

“Sorry, Harriet; sorry that I refused him?”

“No, no, my dear; not that at all. I’m sorry that you had to go
through such an ordeal. But, Gertrude, you have something more to tell
me--something more important.”

Gertrude Van Vleck drew herself up and looked at her friend searchingly.

“You are so hard to satisfy, Harriet,” she exclaimed at length. “Is it
not enough that I have confessed to you that a man proposed to me last
night, and that I rejected him. Really, my dear, you must check your
awful appetite for gossip.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett arose, a hurt look on her face.

“I don’t wonder, Gertrude, that a good many people fear you. You say
very cutting things at times.”

“Forgive me, Harriet,” cried Gertrude impulsively. “Come, sit down
here. I didn’t mean to be sarcastic, my dear. That’s nice of you. Come
close to me. Don’t you know, Harriet, that the penitent never tells
quite all that is on her soul, at the confessional? You mustn’t expect
too much of me. I’m only human, you know, my dear. What would a woman
be without her secret? You must let me have mine, Harriet, and I will
not ask for yours.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett flushed slightly as her eyes met Gertrude’s.

“Perhaps I was too exacting, Gertrude,” she said softly. “But I am so
anxious to see you perfectly happy, that I let my wishes get the better
of my discretion. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

“Anxious to see me perfectly happy,” repeated Gertrude musingly. “And
that seems to mean, Harriet, that you would like to have me married.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett laughed nervously.

“It does appear illogical,” she remarked in a voice that sounded cold
and hard, even to herself. “It is curious how marriage seems to make
every woman a match-maker. I’m sure that I, for one, can’t understand
it.”

There was silence in the room for several moments. Gertrude and
Harriet understood each other perfectly; but there is always a
well-defined limit to frankness between two women, especially when one
is married and the other not.

With studied composure, Gertrude asked indifferently, as she rose to
go:--

“Have you seen Mr. Stoughton recently, Harriet?”

“Yes, he has called several times.”

“And you like him?”

“Very much. He is coming to-night, I believe. We are very good friends.”

With an impulsiveness that was not habitual with her, Gertrude bent and
kissed her friend on the lips.

“Be careful, Harriet. Be careful,” she whispered, and then turned and
left the room.




CHAPTER XV.


“You look tired, Mr. Stoughton. You have been working too hard.”

Thus said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett to Richard, as her brown eyes rested
questioningly on his pale countenance. When a woman frankly comments on
a man’s appearance to his face it is evident that her friendship for
him is on a very firm basis.

“Perhaps so,” returned Richard, smiling gratefully. “I sometimes get
very tired of pouring water through a sieve; of rolling a stone to the
top of a hill every day to find it at the bottom the next morning.”

She bent toward him, and looked up into his face earnestly.

“But it must be a glorious privilege, Mr. Stoughton, to feel that what
you write is read by thousands and tens of thousands of people; that
you are an important part of that great force in modern life, the daily
press.”

“In one sense,” he returned thoughtfully, “it is a satisfaction to know
that you are addressing a large audience--an audience that is powerless
to hiss you off the stage if it is not pleased with your words. But at
its best my editorial work is both ephemeral and anonymous.”

She smiled at him sympathizingly.

“I know what is in your mind,” she exclaimed. “You desire the
recognition and applause of the public. But that is sure to come to
you in time. You have great talents, Mr. Stoughton; and--pardon me for
saying so--you are young, and can afford to wait.”

They were silent for a time, proof positive that their friendship had
made great progress. It is not so much what people say to each other
as what they conceal from each other, that marks the status of their
intercourse. A long silence between a man and woman seated alone
together is very eloquent; and its significance is in direct ratio to
their mental alertness. There is no dynamic repression in the silence
of a stick and a stone; but when the gods on Olympus cease to speak,
the earth trembles with apprehension.

“Do you know,” remarked Richard at length, “that I have lost something
of the ambition that inspired me some months ago? Perhaps I have
grown weary of work, or this great city has had a depressing effect
upon my aspirations. Whatever may be the reason, however, I find that
I no longer build the castles in the air that I raised with so much
enthusiasm not long ago. Why is it, do you think?”

He glanced at her searchingly; and, as their eyes met, her cheeks lost
something of their color.

“Ambition may sleep, but it never dies, Mr. Stoughton. You are
suffering from the reaction of your sudden and remarkable success.”

“My success!” he exclaimed. “Yes; I have won one great and gratifying
success since I came to New York; and only one.”

“And that is?” she asked softly, and with averted eyes.

“I have made you my friend,” he said, bending toward her until the
perfume of her luxuriant hair thrilled him with vague ecstasy, and the
smile on her lips seemed almost a caress.

Suddenly she looked up at him, and in her eyes lay a troubled and
beseeching gleam.

“And the price of my friendship--are you willing to pay it?” she asked
gently.

“Of course I am!” he exclaimed. “No sacrifice on my part is too great
to make in such a cause. Bargains like this one are made in heaven, are
they not?”

She glanced at him with an expression in her eyes that told him he had
wounded her. Without a word she arose and walked into the music-room,
and he followed her with a repentant look in his face. Seating herself
at the piano, she played softly some of the Lenten music she had heard
at the afternoon service.

The prayer of a heart-broken world breathed in the sobbing chords. Then
the movement changed, and the harmony seemed to promise rest and peace
to the weary sons of men. The spirit of the penitential season had been
crystallized in sound, and touched the heart as though a voice had
whispered from another world.

The music died away, as if the infinite had taken to its breast the
tired soul of one who cried aloud, then passed away in peace; and she
turned and looked into the face of the youth at her side.

“Is it not restful?” she asked gently. “How wonderful it is that music
should so change our mood and aspirations.”

“And you forgive me?” he asked penitently.

She laughed almost gayly.

“Is it not a habit I’ve fallen into? I am always granting you pardon,
am I not? Do you remember, the very first time I met you you were
obliged to ask forgiveness for what you said. How many times since then
I’ve pardoned you I can hardly say. You have been very rebellious.”

“How could I be otherwise?” he exclaimed, his eyes avoiding hers.
“Does the prisoner feel less impatient because of his chains. It is so
difficult, is it not, to be civilized?”

“I hardly understand you, Mr. Stoughton,” she said, trying hard to
speak very coldly.

  “Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth,”

he quoted.

“How thoroughly Tennyson gives expression to the revolt of youth
against the shackles that civilization, so called, has thrown around
it! I think I know, to my cost, how he felt when he wrote certain lines
in ‘Locksley Hall.’”

Richard took a few steps up and down the room, and then threw himself
into a chair and looked steadfastly at Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. Her face
had lost its color, and there were dark shadows beneath her eyes, while
a smile of sadness, perhaps of regret, hovered round her mouth.

“I have something to say to you,” she remarked, after a moment’s
silence, her voice low and firm. “You must sit where you are and listen
to me attentively. Will you promise me to weigh my words carefully
and--and--not misunderstand me?”

He saw that she was essaying a difficult task, and he said gently,--

“I promise; go on.”

“Then,” she continued, smiling at him gratefully, “I want to say
frankly that I have taken a great deal of pleasure in our friendship.
It is hardly necessary, however, to tell you that. I think I have
proved it to you in many ways. But the time has come when it rests with
you as to what the future shall hold for us. If you are willing to be
a true and unselfish friend to me,--to be ‘civilized’ in the highest
sense of the word,--we can go on as we have gone before. But if--if
your chains fret you too much, or if there is the slightest danger that
you will ever break them, then it is better that we should part. It is
so easy for a man to misunderstand a woman--therefore, I am frank with
you. Are you not grateful? Don’t you thank me?” There was a note of
pleading in her voice.

Richard arose, and moved restlessly up and down the room a moment.
Civilization decreed that he should remain seated and suppress all
evidences of emotion; but there is a strong vein of savagery in youth,
and Richard Stoughton was very young.

“‘They also serve who only stand and wait!’” he exclaimed irrelevantly.

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett laughed outright.

“The quotation does you credit in one way, Mr. Stoughton, even if it
doesn’t seem to be very _àpropos_.”

“Perhaps not,” he acknowledged, reseating himself. “But somehow it has
relieved the situation. At least, let it indicate that I accept your
ultimatum.”

“If I knew you well enough,” commented Mrs. Percy-Bartlett smilingly,
“I should say that that sounded rather cross. I hate to think that I
have formulated an ultimatum. That seems unwomanly, does it not?”

“I hardly know,” he said musingly. “It is hard to tell in these days
what is womanly and what is not. A few years ago we would have said
that it was unwomanly for a girl to stand before a miscellaneous
audience and make a political speech. No one would dare to take that
ground now.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett smiled sympathizingly.

“I am sure,” she said, “that you don’t approve of the effort of woman
to break away from the old restrictions.”

“Not altogether,” he answered frankly. “I have a strong vein of New
England conservatism in my make-up. It revolts against many of the
end-of-the-century ideas that are making such progress in this city.”

And so they talked on for a time, in a vein that proved the thorough
efficacy of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s ultimatum.

“It is so much better,” she said, as she arose to give him her hand
at parting, “it is so much better to talk about the ‘new woman’
than--than”--

“Than the old Adam,” he added. “Yes, I agree with you--for the sake of
friendship.”

“And you are my friend,” she cried impulsively, while he still held her
hand, suddenly grown cold.

“Yes,” he murmured in a muffled tone, bending and kissing the slender
fingers in his grasp.

She stood at the entrance to the music-room until she heard the
hall-door close. Then she turned, and seated herself at the piano. It
was here that Percy-Bartlett found her, idly weaving strange melodies
as the night grew old.

“You look pale and tired, dear,” he said gently, as he bent and kissed
her colorless cheek. “I did not think that you would wait up.”

“Is it late?” she asked wearily. “I had lost all track of time.”

“I shall be very glad,” remarked her husband, seating himself and
lighting a cigar, “when my affairs and the nation’s are so arranged
that I won’t be obliged to talk business at night. Has no one been in,
Harriet?”

“Yes,” she answered in a careless tone, and striking a few soft chords
on the instrument; “Mr. Stoughton called, and stayed an hour or so.”

Percy-Bartlett flicked the ashes from his cigar impatiently. He was
silent for some time, firmly suppressing any feeling of annoyance that
her words had caused.

“You find the boy interesting?” he asked coldly.

She looked at him calmly an instant, and then said indifferently,--

“Well--I prefer him to solitude, at least.”

Then she arose and said “good-night,” leaving Percy-Bartlett to such
comfort as he could derive from his thoughts and his tobacco.




CHAPTER XVI.


It was Saturday night at La Ria’s. John Fenton and Richard Stoughton
were seated side by side near one end of the room, awaiting with true
La Rian patience the coming of the soup. No one who is in a hurry ever
goes to La Ria’s on Saturday night. Impatience is sacrilege in that
Bohemian republic that lies under the sidewalk on a down-town street,
and draws into its charming boundaries many of the brightest men and
most attractive women in the city. La Ria’s is both a pleasure and a
protest. The pleasure is on the surface, the protest is underneath. The
former is what the true La Rian feels, the latter is what he thinks.
His presence on Saturday evening in that famous restaurant proves his
unwillingness to permit the New World’s metropolis to become nothing
but a colorless aggregation of very wealthy and very poor citizens. La
Ria’s furnishes an outlet both to the rich and poor for the inherent
fondness in men and women for the picturesque and unconventional.

There is nothing attractive in this low-ceilinged room, blue with
cigarette-smoke even before the soup is served; but if you ask the
loyal La Rian if he would have the “historic banquet-hall”--as an
enthusiastic reporter once called it--changed in any important
particular, he would look at you in scorn. Raise the ceiling, decorate
the walls, put in mirrors and gilding and rugs and a costly service,
and the broken-hearted La Rians would file sorrowfully out into the
night, bewailing the moment when money had thrown its fatal blight
over the one spot in the city where the millionnaire sinks into
insignificance when he comes to dine with the poet and the artist and
the journalist, and where, once a week at least, there is “a feast of
reason and a flow of soul.”

“There is a fascination about this sort of thing that is irresistible,”
whispered Richard to John Fenton, as he sipped his claret after the
dinner had been fairly started and gazed around him in delight. He
was still young enough and sufficiently unsophisticated to enjoy the
glamour of his surroundings without looking beneath the surface, and
seeing there the life-tragedies that the actors in the scene before
him concealed under the mask of gayety. His eye caught the smiling
glance of a dark-haired girl, with classically regular features and a
delicately shaped hand, who raised her wine-glass as she returned his
smile and seemed to pledge his health with the utmost goodfellowship.
She sat at a table half-way down the room, and had been laughing
and chatting with several men wearing Van Dyke beards, one of whom,
Richard learned later, was a famous painter of perfectly innocuous
landscapes--a man who looked like Mephistopheles, but said his prayers
before retiring.

“Be careful, Richard,” remarked Fenton good-naturedly; “she’s a
beautiful girl, but very dangerous.”

The young man glanced up at his friend laughingly.

“You brought me here, John. You are responsible for the consequences.”

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” asked the elder man solemnly. “You are old
enough, Richard, to take care of yourself, I suppose. I wash my hands
of the whole affair.”

As the dinner progressed, Richard felt an intoxication that had no
foundation in wine; for he was not fond of alcoholic stimulants,
and drank very sparingly. There was a strange exhilaration in his
surroundings that gave him a novel sensation. Of the hundred and
more men and women in the room he knew little or nothing; but he
could see that among them were those of both sexes whose faces and
bearing indicated refinement and high birth. That there were others
whose origin was questionable, and who carried with them the stamp of
vulgarity, did not alter, but emphasized, the fact that the noble blood
of Bohemia was represented before his gaze. After a time he gave up
generalizing about his companions, and found his attention concentrated
on the girl who had smilingly touched her glass to him. By the time
the cheese and coffee had come he was obliged to admit that she
possessed the most fascinating face he had yet seen, and that there
was something in the glance of her dark eyes more intoxicating than
any cordial he had ever sipped. As he lighted a cigarette, and leaned
back in his chair to listen to the songs and speeches that Fenton had
told him would follow the dessert, he found himself reproaching his own
fickleness, but more than ever determined to make the acquaintance of
the _jolie Bohemienne_.

“Wine, women, and song!” exclaimed a dignified but genial-looking man,
arising at the farther end of the room, as if to crystallize in one
effort the scattered elements of goodfellowship begotten by the modest
but very eatable dinner, “and the greatest of these is”-- He paused, as
if waiting for a reply.

“Wine,” cried a few; “women,” shouted many; and a solitary voice said
“song.”

Turning instantly to the reckless individual who had declared in
favor of song, the toast-master called upon him by name to arise and
vindicate his position. Blushing more with annoyance than modesty, a
young man stood up and broke the silence that followed by chanting
in a pleasing but untrained voice a ballad of Rudyard Kipling, set to
music by the singer. A round of applause followed, and the ice was
broken. Songs and stories followed each other in rapid succession.

“It’s great!” exclaimed Richard in Fenton’s ear; and again he raised
his glass to the dark-haired girl, who was puffing a cigarette in a
nonchalant way and smiling cordially, now and again, as she caught
Richard’s eye.

The toast-master arose, and, putting up his hand for silence, said with
simple eloquence,--

“The priests and ministers, the bishops and strolling preachers, have
through the ages called themselves ‘divines;’ and, lo! they stand
aside, and we, the moderns, give that title in our heart of hearts to
the poets, the dramatists, the weavers of tales that touch the soul,
the wonder-workers in words and thoughts who have wrought that glorious
temple we call literature. Homer and Plato and Horace and Shakespeare
and Goethe,--these are the true ‘divines;’ these are the inspired and
anointed teachers who, making no demands for our reverence and awe,
find all the generations bending the knee before them.”

He paused for breath, and a round of applause drove the tobacco-smoke
against the ceiling.

“With this introduction,” he went on, “I will present an old friend
of yours, who has written a poem that he has modestly informed me is
‘simply great.’”

A shout of laughter greeted this sally, as a tall, slim man with gray
hair and a youthful cast of countenance arose. That he was well known
and thoroughly liked was proved by the applause that welcomed him.

He stood at the end of the table at which Richard’s inamorata was
seated; and, as he recited the following poem, he indicated by look and
gesture that the dark-haired girl had been its inspiration--by-play
that amused his hearers, but filled Richard with a jealousy that was as
pronounced as it was unreasonable.

“I call this little effort to amuse you,” said the poet, “Prince
Spaghetti’s Vengeance.”

Then he recited, with a good deal of elocutionary cleverness, the
following lines:--

   “Not where garish lights are gleaming,
      Not in brilliant banquet-hall,
    Not where waiters, silent, solemn,
      Make the gaudy grandeur pall;
    Not where wine is so expensive
      That your very thirst seems crime,
    And to ‘wet your whistle’ often
      Is a recklessness sublime;
    But for us a quiet corner
      In a side-street, down a stair,
    _Vive Bohème_ and _Vive La Ria_!
      Who would be a millionnaire?
    Here are brains, served up _en bon mot_,
      Here’s spaghetti, piping hot;
    Here’s a crowd of jolly fellows,
      Well contented with their lot.
    Mayhap, as the feast progresses,
      And the wine flows with the wit,
    Visions come, and fancy whispers
      ’Tis a palace where we sit.
    ’Tis the palace Macaroni,
      Built in ages long ago
    By a count of many titles,
      Where the waves of Tiber flow.
    How we got there doesn’t matter.
      Maraschino? Yes--a drop.
    Thanks! a little bit of cognac?
      Just a trifle, on the top.
    And the palace by the Tiber,
      Where we dine to-night in state,
    Here it was Count Macaroni
      Met his most heart-rending fate.
    ’Twas when Rome was in a ferment,
      As she used to be at times--
    Strange how black that ancient city
      Is with undiscovered crimes--
    Then it was that Macaroni
      Princess Gorgonzola met--
    Yes, methinks your face is like her,
      Seen beyond this cigarette.
    Gorgonzola, she was charming,
      Black-eyed maiden, ripe to fall
    In the arms of Love, if mother
      Let her get beyond her call.
    Macaroni, Gorgonzola,
      They were such a handsome pair
    That in strolling by the Tiber
      E’en the boatmen had to stare.
    Well, where am I? In La Ria’s?
      No; Saint Peter knows I’m not.
    Just another sip of cognac?
      Thanks--it reached the very spot.
    Well, the Count and Gorgonzola
      By a villain were pursued,
    Prince Spaghetti was his title--
      Scion of an evil brood.
    Prince Spaghetti loved the maiden
      In a weird and wicked way,
    And he swore that Macaroni
      Must forswear the light of day.
    Thus he mixed a potent poison
      In a glass of ruby wine--
    Yes, I’ll light one more perfecto--
      Gad, I think the earth is mine!
    One more little sip of cognac?
      Thanks, I cannot say thee nay;
    Well--where was I? Oh, Spaghetti
      Macaroni meant to slay.
    Did I kill him? Say, my fair one,
      You with Gorgonzola’s eyes,
    Did I make him drink the poison?
      Answer--you who were the prize.
    Well, the tale is nearly ended--
      Strange that I should live to-night,
    Dining in La Ria’s with you.
      Thanks! that cognac’s out of sight.”

A roar of delight rewarded the poet’s effort; and he reseated himself
smilingly, while the dark-eyed maiden at his table--who, by the way,
went by the name of “Gorgonzola” ever after--raised her _liqueur_
glass, and drank gratefully to the genius who had done what he could to
immortalize her beauty.

The hour was growing late, and the jolly diners had begun to disperse.
Fenton was engaged in a discussion of the single-tax theory with an
English newspaper correspondent on his left, when Richard noticed with
regret that his inamorata and her friends, the artists, had arisen to
take their departure. It was time for decisive action; and impulsively
he fumbled in his cardcase, found his pencil in time to write his
address on one of his paste-boards, and had resumed a position of
becoming dignity before the gay group, making for the entrance, had
reached his table. As the girl passed him, smiling down at him with
her dancing black eyes, he handed the card to her. It was all over in
a moment, and Richard found himself practically alone. The room seemed
utterly deserted after her departure.

“Well, young light-o’-love,” remarked Fenton, as they strolled
homeward, “have you had a pleasant evening?”

“Delightful, John,” answered the youth. Then he said earnestly,--

“John, at what age do you think that it is possible for a man to fall
honestly and thoroughly in love?”

“Not until after he is forty, my boy,” answered Fenton gravely. “Don’t
take yourself or anybody else too seriously, Richard, until you have
reached middle life.”

“That’s not the doctrine you preached to me some months ago, John
Fenton,” said Richard thoughtfully.

“I know you better now, my dear fellow,” returned Fenton, adding to
himself, “and myself too.”




CHAPTER XVII.


That John Fenton was in a peculiar frame of mind was sufficiently
proved by the fact that Sunday morning had arrived, and he had arisen
early,--very early, three hours before noon,--and was pleased at
this innovation in his habits. It was a clear, bracing day, with a
promise of spring in the air, and a saline odor in the breeze, a
public confession that it had kissed the sea when the sun came up.
How much he owes to the salt air for the sprightliness that is in him
the average New Yorker seldom realizes. Manhattan Island is a natural
health-resort. That many of its inhabitants languish and die before
their time is the fault not of nature but of man.

John Fenton strode down the avenue after breakfast, one of the
best-dressed men abroad at that early hour. The last few months
had made a great change in his outward appearance. Somewhat to
his surprise, he had found that by refraining from alcoholic
self-indulgence he had not only gained in nervous energy, but had
reaped a fat financial harvest. Renewing his youth in more ways than
one, he had expended at his tailor’s money that, under his former
habits of life, would have gone to swell a saloon’s growing surplus.
He had been noted in the old days for his good taste in dress, and his
years of carelessness had not destroyed his natural ability to select
attire that was at once fashionable and becoming.

With a clean-shaven face, a glow on his cheeks, and the light of
physical contentment in his eyes, John Fenton looked positively
handsome as he entered Richard Stoughton’s rooms, and found his young
friend, _en négligé_, smoking a pipe, and perusing, with a sense of
self-satisfaction that age cannot wither nor custom stale, his work of
the previous day as it appeared in print in that morning’s edition of
the _Trumpet_.

“What is it I see before me?” cried Richard, springing up, and holding
out his hand to his guest. “Upon what meat doth this, our Cæsar, feed,
that he gets up and out before noon?”

Fenton seated himself, and lighted a cigar.

“Do you know, my boy,” he remarked quietly, “I have spent the night
in a sleepless vigil, pondering the error of your ways. I have become
convinced that it is absolutely imperative that you should be given an
antidote for last night’s poison.”

“I did smoke too much, I acknowledge,” returned Richard densely; “but I
have drunk several cups of coffee this morning, and feel much better.”

“Flippant youngster! have you no reverence in your make-up? I referred
not to the cigars, but to the _tout ensemble_.”

“Is that her name, John? It’s a queer one, you must admit. But,
seriously, what are you driving at? Here you are at ten o’clock on
Sunday morning--an hour that has for years, as you have told me, found
you sound asleep--abroad in the land, dressed with the most extreme
care, and delivering sermons gratis to your friends. I acknowledge that
there is a mystery here that I cannot solve.”

“It is simple enough, Richard. I have come to an important decision,
and I am about to take a step in which I want your companionship and
sympathy.”

There was a solemnity in Fenton’s manner that caused Richard to look at
him with mingled curiosity and surprise.

“Of course, John, I’ll give you all the help I can. But frankly, now,
what are you going to do?”

Fenton puffed in silence for a moment, gazing earnestly at his
companion.

“What am I going to do, Richard? I’m going to church.”

Richard laughed merrily.

“And you want my support and countenance in this heroic purpose? Well,
John, I see no reason why I should discourage your eccentric but
praiseworthy design. If you’ll amuse yourself with the papers for a few
moments, I will get into a garb of a more devotional character than
this old smoking-jacket. To go to church with John Fenton! That is a
privilege that I had never hoped to win. But I’ve given up all hope of
understanding you, John. You’re a puzzle I can’t solve.”

With these words Richard entered an inner room, and left John Fenton
to puff his cigar, and glance indifferently over the newspapers. It is
seldom that a true journalist cannot find occupation, even excitement,
in the latest edition of the newspaper with which he is connected;
but, for some reason or other, Fenton was in no mood to take his usual
professional interest in the Sunday make-up of the _Trumpet_, and
when Richard returned to the room he found his friend standing at the
window, and gazing dreamily into the street.

A quarter of an hour later the two friends were seated in one of the
rear pews of a church that had kept pace with the demands that the
modern love of luxury makes on the outward and visible signs of an
inward and spiritual cult. An agnostic, even an atheist, would have
felt a reverential awe in such surroundings, an inclination to worship
something, if it was nothing but the beauty of interior decoration, as
an abstract influence, or the concrete glory of well-dressed women.
There is something for all men in a church that frowns not on the
æsthetic pleasures that the eye and ear can taste.

As they rose at the opening words of the service, “The Lord is in his
holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him,” Richard’s eye
followed Fenton’s, and a new light broke upon his mind. His friend was
not as inexplicably eccentric as he had considered him. About half-way
between them and the altar, and at an angle that placed her in full
view from where they stood, Richard saw Gertrude Van Vleck, a striking
figure even in that gathering of women of fashion. He turned on the
instant, and his eyes looked into Fenton’s. He could not repress a
smile that impressed its meaning upon the latter, whose face bore an
expression of mingled satisfaction and annoyance as he knelt to join in
the general confession. His satisfaction was caused by the fact that
he could watch Gertrude Van Vleck, unobserved by her, for an entire
morning. His annoyance was due to the mocking light in Richard’s glance.

As the service progressed, with its stately and impressive words and
forms, Richard felt keenly the influence of his surroundings. He had
been brought up in the atmosphere of the church, and under its caress
the highest dreams and aspirations of his early youth were revivified.
Before long he had forgotten John Fenton and Gertrude Van Vleck; and
as the soft strains of Lenten music stole through the perfumed air,
the face of a brown-eyed woman whose gaze was sad and tearful filled
his soul with remorse. He felt like one who had committed sacrilege.
The garish glitter, the tawdry brilliancy, of the night he had spent
in Bohemia seemed to him at that moment pitifully repulsive. The dark
face of the girl who had fascinated him for the moment told its true
story as he recalled it in the calm and holy precincts of the temple
where he sat. That he had yielded to the debasing influence that she
had exerted at the time was a fact that filled him with amazement and
discontent.

“What strange coincidence is this?” he exclaimed to himself, as the
words of the Epistle for the Third Sunday in Lent seemed to voice
the thoughts that were surging through his brain: “Be ye therefore
followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ
also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a
sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. But all uncleanness, let
it not be once named amongst you, as becometh saints; neither foolish
talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of
thanks. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things
which are done of them in secret.”

Richard Stoughton was of an extremely impressionable temperament, and
time had not yet hardened the shell that surrounds the soul. It seemed
to him at that moment as though the inspired word of God had spoken to
him alone in that consecrated temple, and had warned him to seek higher
things; to avoid, for the sake of a great reward, the mud-holes and
pitfalls in the path before him. He knelt in prayer with a reverential
fervor that was new to him.

From the Gospel for the day, St. Luke xi. 14, the rector had taken his
text: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not
with me scattereth.” Richard listened to the sermon with an interest
that was almost painful. The preacher was a man not yet in middle life,
who had already won a high position for his eloquence and fearlessness.
There was no prosy reiteration of self-evident truths that have lost
their influence through long service in the pulpit in the words that
he poured forth. He was a man of the times; and he applied the faith
that was in him to the topics of the hour, and drove his lesson home
with a skill and courage that were intensely effective. He seemed
to recognize that he was a warrior in the front ranks of the church
militant, and there was no half-heartedness in the blows that he
struck. The prosperity of a sermon, like that of a jest, lies in the
ear of him that hears it. Richard Stoughton was in a receptive mood,
and the ringing words of the preacher touched chords in his nature
that had long ceased to vibrate. He bent his head at the benediction
with a sense of renewed reverence and faith that was both welcome and
inspiring.

When or how he lost track of John Fenton he never knew. He remembered,
later on, that as he had left the church he had caught a glimpse of his
friend walking down the avenue by the side of Gertrude Van Vleck, but
at the moment the sight had made no impression on him. The dominant
thought in his mind found expression in the words that seemed to rise
uncontrollably to his lips:--

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against
us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For
thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen.”




CHAPTER XVIII.


It was a cold night in early spring. It seemed as if the winter had
forgotten something, and had returned to look for it. Its search
being futile, it had relieved its feelings by howling up and down
the streets, feebly tweaking the noses of pedestrians in its senile
disappointment.

As an atmospheric crazy-quilt, early spring in New York is a success.
The modern craving for variety is fully satisfied in the metropolis,
so far as the weather is concerned, from the last of February to the
first of June. Between those dates no New Yorker is astonished at
anything that may be hurled at him from the skies, from a sunstroke to
a blizzard.

John Fenton had had a fire lighted in his grate, and was puffing his
after-dinner cigar before the blaze, bewailing inwardly the fact that
he was due at the office of the _Trumpet_ within the hour. He would
have preferred to spend the evening revising his general theories of
life than in correcting proofs at high pressure in the overwrought
atmosphere of a newspaper office.

He had much to think about and a weighty decision to make. He had been
drifting in a current that had carried him far in a direction that he
had long ago determined never to take again. For the moment, he could
not say whether he was happy or discontented. For the first time in
his life, as he fully realized, he was thoroughly in love; but, as he
pondered the situation calmly, there seemed to be insuperable obstacles
in the path that led toward happiness.

“What am I, after all, Richard?” he said to his friend, as Stoughton
entered the room and quietly seated himself at the opposite side of
the fireplace. “A wreck that has been patched up; a failure, not
quite hopeless; a man who has been condemned by the world, with a
recommendation to mercy.”

“I don’t like your mood, John,” remarked Richard, lighting a
cigarette, and puffing the smoke slowly into the air. “No game is lost
until the hand is played out. I think you stand to win, if you don’t
lose your pluck. I had good news for you to-day.”

“No? What was it?” asked Fenton, with no great show of interest.

“When I reached the office this morning,” continued Richard, unawed by
his friend’s coldness, “I found two letters and a bundle on my desk.”

“Yes?”

“One of the letters was from the dark-eyed girl I saw at La Ria’s.”

Fenton smiled, but said nothing.

“I tore it up, John. I suppose you will call me very young--your pet
accusation.”

“Hardly, my boy, hardly. You have simply proved that you are wiser in
the morning than you are at night.”

“Well, most men are, I suppose. There is nothing eccentric or
meritorious in that. And so much for ‘Gorgonzola.’ Let her rest in
peace. But the other letter, John, was of more importance. It will
interest you.”

“Yes?”

“You see, old man, I have played you false. I have come here to confess
and to ask forgiveness. You remember you gave me the manuscript
of ‘Ephemeræ’ to read. Well, I took it to a well-known publisher,
suppressing the name of the author, and asking for an expression of
opinion regarding its merits.”

Fenton knocked the ashes from his cigar with a gesture of annoyance,
but said nothing.

“Have you no curiosity, John?” exclaimed Richard impatiently. “Don’t
you care to hear the verdict?”

Without waiting for a reply the youth arose, and, fumbling in his
overcoat for a moment, took therefrom a roll of manuscript and a letter.

“I am tempted to punish your indifference, John; but the game is not
worth the candle, I fear. Never mind a light. The letter is short. I
can read it by the fire, if you will deign to listen. The publisher,
John, expresses himself as much pleased with the book, and is inclined
to think that it would find a ready market. He objects, however, to the
title, and to one or two small details in the _dénouement_. If you will
make the changes he suggests, however, he will bring out the story at
once. In closing he politely hints that a type-written copy be returned
to him.”

Fenton puffed on in silence for a time, and then leaned forward and
took the roll of manuscript from Richard’s hand. Hesitating an instant,
as if to make sure that the decision he had reached was irrevocable, he
threw the bundle of paper into the fire. Richard sprang forward, but
Fenton seized him by the arm and forced him back into his seat.

“Let it burn, Richard. Let it burn. It has had two narrow escapes from
publication already. It shall never have another.”

“But are you mad, John? The story would make you famous. Good Heavens,
man! it is too late. I call it a crime, John, a crime! Do you hear?”

“Come, come, Richard! don’t grow hysterical,” remarked Fenton calmly,
as he leaned back in his chair and resumed his cigar, to dissipate the
odor of burnt paper that filled the room.

“But why, John, did you do such a reckless thing? You’re the last man
in the world to act like a child.”

Fenton remained silent for some moments, and then said gently,--

“We can’t hark back in this life, Richard. Time is an inexorable
tyrant. If you try to take a liberty with him you are certain to
be punished. What I wrote in my youth would do no credit to my
maturity--no matter what you or a publisher or the public might say
to the contrary. One of the strangest things about the life of an
intellectual man, Richard, is that his views regarding the fundamental
problems of existence are in a constant state of change. How we regard
death and love and friendship and immortality, and other matters of
more or less significance, at twenty-five has little, if anything, to
do with the way we look at these matters twenty years later. I know of
no greater wrong you could do to a man of intelligence than to present
to him in type a record of the opinions he openly expressed ten years
ago, and inform him that it was imperative that he should go before the
public on that basis. In fact, Richard, I have grown very suspicious of
those chameleons we so proudly call convictions. Lucky is the man who
can reach middle life and still feel absolutely certain that two and
two make four.”

Richard remained silent for a time after Fenton had ceased to speak,
but finally said gently,--

“I think, John, that I can see as much through a knot-hole as most men
of my age, when the points of interest are called to my attention; but
I must acknowledge that I had never expected to hear you preach the
doctrine of uncertainty.”

“You mistake me, boy. I preach nothing!” exclaimed Fenton, arising
and peering at his watch in the darkness. “Nothing but the glorious
doctrine that hard work is the only relief from futile questionings.
Good-night, my boy. I am sorry to rush off, but I must get to the
office at once. And you?”

“Can’t you guess?” asked Richard, smiling.

“I might if I tried,” answered Fenton, holding his friend’s hand a
moment; “but I sha’n’t try. But bear in mind, Richard, that the glory
of a renunciation lies in the strength of the temptation.”

“I thought, John, that you had no convictions!” exclaimed Richard
pointedly.

“You are mistaken, boy,” returned Fenton, with a touch of his old
cynicism. “Every man has a large supply of them--to offer to his
friends. Good-night.”




CHAPTER XIX.


“You are very thoughtful, Mr. Stoughton,” remarked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett
gently, as she wheeled around on the piano-stool and looked Richard
squarely in the face.

“I was weighing a sentence just uttered by John Fenton--one of those
haunting phrases of his that will not take a back seat when they have
once entered the mind.”

“He must be a man of peculiar power, this John Fenton,” commented Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett musingly. “I have heard him quoted a good deal of late.”

“By Gertrude Van Vleck?” asked Richard, with an impulsive exhibition of
bad taste.

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett frowned.

“I am astonished, Mr. Stoughton! Your question is simply shocking.
But tell me,” she continued, leaning forward, and looking at him
inquisitively, “do you really think that Mr. Fenton is interested in
Gertrude?”

“I am astonished!” cried Richard. “Your question is simply shocking,
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett.”

Their eyes met, and they laughed merrily. They were both very happy for
the moment. The love-affairs of other people may form at times a very
effective counter-irritant and delay a crisis that Platonic friendship
is apt to carry with it when a young married woman and an ardent youth
use it as a cloak to conceal their feelings.

“In some respects,” remarked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett musingly, “it would be
an ideal union.”

“If there are such,” put in Richard reflectively.

“That sounds like the cynicism of your friend Mr. Fenton. I hope, Mr.
Stoughton, that you are not losing your ideals.”

“On the contrary,” said Richard earnestly, “I am finding new ones.”

“May I ask where?” she murmured, a wistful look in her brown eyes.

“I have found the highest of them all in this little music-room,” he
said with more earnestness in his tone than it had held before. “What
ideal is so beautiful as that which forms the basis of our friendship?
Is it not true that the altar on which we make the hardest sacrifice
is that which becomes the most sacred in our sight? I might live a
thousand years, but when memory grew weary of its heavy task, it would
still turn fondly to the scene before me now, and I would see myself in
fancy a youth with an ideal--an ideal that sealed his lips--and broke
his heart.”

He had turned very pale, and his words seemed to him to have been
forced from him by a mysterious and irresistible influence that he
could neither recognize nor control.

The woman’s eyes were heavy with unshed tears. As he had gone on
speaking in a low, vibrant tone, she had felt the blood rush to her
face, and then recede, leaving her cheeks white and drawn. Her hands
trembled as she turned and struck a few wavering, melancholy chords on
the piano.

Richard had arisen, and was looking down at her, his face grown old,
as if life had whispered a mighty secret into his unwilling ears, and
marred the pristine glory of his youth.

Neither of them spoke for a time. Finally he said,--

“I had started to quote to you something that Fenton said. Do you care
to hear it?”

His voice was almost hard with the effort he made to control its
trembling.

“Yes,” she murmured, looking up at him, in her eyes a mute appeal, an
unspoken prayer to his nobler self.

“‘The glory of a renunciation,’ said my friend, ‘lies in the strength
of the temptation.’”

She put her cold, trembling hand into his and their eyes met.

“Please go,” she whispered. “If you care for me at all you will do as I
ask.”

She withdrew her hand, and Richard turned away as if determined to
do as she had requested. For a moment he saw himself in his true
character,--an impressionable, impetuous man, inexperienced in the
ways of the world, and easily influenced by his surroundings.
He saw himself casting meaning glances at a dark-eyed girl in an
unconventional restaurant. Then the remorse and self-loathing that had
come over him as he knelt in prayer in the sombre shadows that haunted
a church-pew returned for an instant, and he felt an irresistible
desire to prove, for his own satisfaction, that the higher aspirations
that had dominated him later on were not mere fleeting fancies. He
turned and reseated himself in the chair at her side.

“Forgive me for what I’ve said,” he implored, his voice low and firm;
“I dare not leave you now. It will drive me mad to reflect that I have
been unkind to you. I have been very selfish. Let me have at least one
more chance to prove that I can be your friend.”

She smiled sadly, and turning to the instrument played softly the
refrain of Heine’s melancholy song.

The impotence of longing, the futility of rebellion, were emphasized in
Richard’s restless mind as he recalled the words of the poem she had
set to music. What availed it that the pine-tree craved the palm? The
inexorable fiat of a universe controlled by laws as pitiless as they
are unchangeable had decreed that only in dreams should its love find
satisfaction.

She turned and looked at him again. Her face was pale, and there were
shadows beneath her eyes, but in her smile was a ray of sunshine.

“Why can you not be content?” she asked gently. “Do you not find
pleasure in spending an evening with me now and then?”

“You need not ask,” he murmured.

“But do you know that it would end all this if--if”--

“If?”

“If you were always as reckless as you have been to-night.”

“How hard it is to obtain justice in this world,” he cried, a faint
smile on his lips. “How well I know that, far from being reckless, I
have exercised the greatest self-restraint. Do you know,--please don’t
turn your eyes away,--do you know what temptation I have resisted
to-night? Is it not true that the grandeur of a victory lies in the
martial power of the enemy overthrown? I would have been a coward had
I retreated when you asked me to. Is it not better for us to sit here
contentedly and talk of friendship?”

She glanced at him deprecatingly.

“Do you know,” she said in a tone of sadness, “that there is sometimes
a mocking note in your voice and an expression on your face that make
me wonder if you ever take yourself or any one else seriously?”

She had put into words a doubt that had never before been symbolized
in his mind, though often vaguely felt. He was silent for a moment,
wondering if it was only his youth, or a fundamental defect in
character, that had awakened in her a questioning that found so
unwelcome a response in his own heart. Unfortunate is that man who
finds nothing at the very depths of his own personality but an
interrogation mark.

“Are you not unreasonable?” he suggested quietly, striving to obtain
self-justification. “When I speak earnestly--and honestly--you ask me
to leave you. When I openly ratify the terms upon which you allow me to
remain, you say I jest. I almost despair of ever winning your favor.”

She smiled encouragingly.

“I like you now,” she remarked frankly. “Perhaps, after all, I am not
as daring a rebel as I once told you that I was.”

Some one had entered the drawing-room; and turning toward the portière,
they saw Percy-Bartlett, his pale face just a shade whiter than usual.

“Good-evening, Stoughton,” he said, coming forward and giving the young
man his hand. “Harriet, we ask your indulgence. Shall we smoke here or
go into the library?”

Richard’s first inclination was to take his departure at once, but he
realized in time the awkwardness that would attend such a step.

“Always the slaves to habit!” cried Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, with a
vivacity born of nervous reaction rather than of satisfaction at the
_contretemps_.

“I long ago gave up the idea of defending my music-room from
cigar-smoke, Mr. Stoughton. In fact, I have become fond of it. I
think,” and she looked at her husband smilingly, but with a gleam of
defiance in her eyes, “that I will take to cigarettes. They’re really
quite good form in these days, are they not?”

“It is hard to say at present,” remarked Percy-Bartlett, puffing his
cigar reflectively, “what is good form and what is not. I confess,
Stoughton, that I am rather old-fashioned in my ideas.”

“For instance?” suggested Richard, not wholly at his ease.

“There are a thousand illustrations on my tongue. But of what use is
resistance? The new ideas--and cigarettes are an appropriate symbol
of many of them--are too strong at present in their initial force to
succumb to opposition. But I have never lost faith in the power of
reaction. We have gone ahead too fast. There must be a return to the
old ways soon.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett turned restlessly to the piano, and struck a few
defiant chords on the instrument. She had expressed a doubt as to her
status as a rebel. Her husband had appeared at the right moment to
fling those doubts to the wind.

As Richard arose to take his departure, Percy-Bartlett said to him,
with more cordiality than the young man inwardly felt that he deserved
from such a source,--

“Don’t let the atmosphere in which you are thrown, Stoughton, cause
you to cast away your birthright. It is on men of birth and education
that the safety of this country ultimately depends. You should be--and
I hope you are--a conservative of the conservative. I want to get you
into the Sons of the Revolution and the Society of Colonial Wars. I am
an enthusiast on these things, Stoughton,--a man must have a fad, you
know,--and you’re the kind of material that we can’t afford to give to
the enemy. Good-night! Drop into my office some morning soon, and we’ll
talk these matters over.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett gave her cold hand to Richard and said, with
a conventional intonation that chilled him, in spite of the soft
expression in her eyes,--

“And we will see you soon again, Mr. Stoughton?”

“Thanks,” he said, “and good-night.”

Percy-Bartlett had reseated himself, and was taking the final puffs
from his cigar, as his wife returned and began to rearrange the sheets
of music on the piano.

“Stoughton is a boy I think I might like,” remarked Percy-Bartlett,
gazing at his wife steadily. “But he looks worn-out. I fear he is
overdoing things.”

“Perhaps,” she answered with studied indifference. “I suppose his work
is very wearing.”

“Yes; and that’s what I can’t understand about the youngster. He has
money of his own. Why doesn’t he travel and study instead of tying
himself to such a merciless mill-wheel as a daily newspaper?”

How magnificent is man’s blind egotism! Percy-Bartlett, a
millionnaire, was devoting his whole time and nervous energy to adding
to his wealth, and still he censured a youth, by no means rich, for
following a line of life that insured him a living. It is so easy to
demand of our neighbor that he lead an ideal existence!

“You look very pale, my dear,” remarked his wife after a long silence,
with more concern in her voice than it often held in his hearing.

“I am not feeling especially well,” he returned gratefully, and
throwing away his cigar, “I must give up smoking, Harriet. The doctor
says it is imperative.”




CHAPTER XX.


John Fenton had once called Mr. Robinson, of the _Trumpet_, an
argus-eyed editor. But Fenton did not fully realize how searching and
far-reaching was his superior’s gaze. The managing editor of a New York
newspaper is seldom appreciated at his true worth by his subordinates.
They are too closely in touch with the methods by which he produces his
effects to grant him that admiration that the readers of his newspaper
feel for him. It is enough if the navigator of a journalistic craft
obtains the respect and loyalty of his crew. He must not expect to be
the object of hero-worship in the forecastle. It depends upon which end
of the telescope you place before your eye, the impression that the
moon makes on your mind. The public looks at a famous editor through
the large end of the instrument, while his subordinates view him
through the small end. Rare and precious is the newspaper potentate who
can stand both tests.

Editor Robinson of the _Trumpet_ was not a great man,--a creature
that the end of the century seems disinclined to produce in any line
of human endeavor,--but he possessed ripe experience, a wide range
of vision, and a keen appreciation of the merits and demerits of the
material at his disposal. In judging the availability of a piece of
news or the advisability of a certain line of editorial policy his mind
worked with great rapidity and acuteness. When it came to rendering
a final verdict regarding any man with whom he came in contact he
was hesitating and conservative. He had learned by experience that
it is dangerous to admire Dr. Jekyll too much until you have proved
conclusively that he is not a Mr. Hyde.

There were two men in the office who had, of late, been under Mr.
Robinson’s close inspection. He was making a thorough study of John
Fenton and Richard Stoughton for a cherished purpose that he had
long had at heart. Many circumstances had combined to lead him to the
conclusion that slowly but surely these two men had rendered themselves
eligible for a post that neither of them had ever dreamed of filling.

A man is always going up or coming down in a newspaper office,--a fact
that proves how like the world at large a journalistic sanctum is.
In Mr. Robinson’s eyes, Fenton and Stoughton were on the up-grade.
Regarding Fenton he had long been in doubt. He had grown to look
upon him as a man of ability who had lost all ambition, and whose
questionable habits and iconoclastic tendencies of thought had unfitted
him for any higher place than he already held. Fenton’s long service
in the city department and his thorough knowledge of men and affairs
in the metropolis had rendered him a valuable assistant, in spite of
his peccadilloes and theories; but that he would ever become fitted
for a higher line of journalistic achievement Mr. Robinson had never
imagined. For some months, however, the managing editor’s keen eye had
observed a great change in Fenton’s demeanor and appearance. Much to
Mr. Robinson’s astonishment, he saw that his subordinate was inclined
to refrain from alcoholic stimulants, that he had grown very particular
about his attire and that he seemed fond of the society of young
Stoughton.

Mr. Robinson was what the world calls a self-made man. He had “come
up from the case,” as the expression goes, having been a journeyman
printer in the days of his youth. It is a curious fact that a man
who has made a success of his life in spite of heavy obstacles can
never destroy a certain undefined admiration for a man who, being
born to wealth, position, and leisure has carelessly thrown away his
advantages and fallen from his high estate. The fact that Fenton had
abandoned as useless toys the very things for which Robinson had
been striving all his life gave the city editor,--as Fenton was at
this time,--a unique place in the eyes of his chief. In his heart of
hearts, he considered Fenton a being superior to himself; and it was
this feeling that often added a brusqueness to his manner when dealing
with his subordinate that had not tended to make their relations
very cordial. But, then, cordiality between the heads of the various
departments of a metropolitan daily is a gem as rare as it is precious.
Down in the pressroom a great object-lesson is presented to the eyes
of a thoughtful man. Here is a vast amount of machinery, the most
insignificant part of which is obliged to work in perfect union with
all other parts, small or great. By the constant application of oil,
friction is prevented and the gigantic presses perform their task in a
way that shows what tremendous results can be obtained by a complicated
machine when absolute sympathy between all the varying features is
maintained.

How different is the working of the great brain-engine above stairs!
Here man rubs against man, jealousy and discontent and favoritism do
what they can to clog the machinery; and the more one knows about the
inner life of a newspaper-office, the more the wonder grows that the
newspaper of to-day approximates so closely to the highest journalistic
ideal. You may find flaws, gentle reader, in what your favorite journal
says, but its typographical make-up is always perfect. Bear in mind
that the brain-machine that turns out the ideas it presents is laboring
under the obstacles that poor, weak, erring human nature begets, while
the engines that deal with the materialistic make-up of the paper are
influenced neither by jealousy nor heart-burning, neither by revenge
nor malice. If the harmony that prevails in the workings of the
press-room could dominate the editorial departments, an ideal newspaper
would be the result--a result that will not be obtained until the
millennium has done its elevating work.

It is just possible that Mr. Robinson was not altogether at ease in
his mind over the advance that John Fenton had made in his outward
bearing and in his position and influence on the _Trumpet_. One of
the chief occupations of an editor in charge of a great newspaper
consists in keeping his mind awake to possible rivals. That Fenton
had become in the last few months a very important factor in the
office was apparent to the most insignificant reporter; and to Mr.
Robinson the desirability of checking the rise of a possible competitor
seemed imperative. But hard steel or cold poison is not available
in these days for the removal of a man who stands in our way. In a
newspaper-office, however, there are weapons that take their place.
One is promotion, the other is exile. In the case of John Fenton, Mr.
Robinson had decided, after mature consideration, to combine both.

“I have sent for you, Mr. Fenton,” remarked the editor, smiling
cordially as he wheeled around in his chair and motioned to his
subordinate to be seated, “to discuss quite an important matter.”

“_Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes_,” muttered Fenton to himself, as he
drew up a chair and looked at his chief inquiringly.

“Pardon me, I didn’t catch your remark?” and Mr. Robinson looked at
Fenton suspiciously.

“‘I am at your service Mr. Robinson,’ I said,” answered Fenton, smiling.

“Ah, very good of you! Well, now tell me, Mr. Fenton, what is your
opinion of young Stoughton? You have seen a great deal of him, have you
not?”

“Yes; he’s a very clever boy. I’m exceedingly fond of him.”

“You find him thoroughly companionable?”

“Extremely so,” answered Fenton, wondering what the editor was getting
at. Mr. Robinson did not waste time in the afternoon on unimportant
gossip.

“And now, Mr. Fenton,” continued Robinson, putting the tips of
his fingers together, after a habit that pertained to his more
Machiavellian moods, “how long is it since you were on the other side?”

“Fifteen years, I think,” answered Fenton reflectively. “I spent two
years in London and on the Continent just before I went into newspaper
work.”

“Hum! Very good. Well, the fact is, Mr. Fenton, I have long had a
scheme in mind for making a great improvement in our foreign service.
Stilson, you know, has resigned the London office. My idea is this:
I am very much pleased with young Stoughton’s work as a paragrapher.
He’s very pithy, and his style has really created quite a sensation.
Now, there is no man in the profession who has a more artistic estimate
of news than you have, Mr. Fenton. Furthermore, your acquaintanceship
with men and affairs has been wide, and, I might say, international. It
seems to me that if you took the London office, with Stoughton as your
assistant, we could make a great feature of a line of news-matter in
which we have been pretty weak of late years. You catch my idea? You’re
to shoot the game, and Stoughton’s to dress it for the table. I needn’t
tell you, of course, that your salary will be much larger in London
than it is here, and the work will be much easier and of a character
more acceptable to your tastes, Mr. Fenton.”

John Fenton’s mind had been very busy while Mr. Robinson was speaking.
Three months before he would not have hesitated a moment to accept
the editor’s proposition. He was not sure now that it did not offer
a solution to a difficulty that he had not yet had strength of mind
enough to solve himself. But Fenton was not a man to do anything in
a hurry--unless it was to fall in love. He looked at Mr. Robinson in
silence for a moment, and then said,--

“There is much that is very satisfactory to me in what you have said,
Mr. Robinson. But I’m a slow, rather conservative man, and I seldom
come to a conclusion in a hurry. May I have a day or two to weigh this
matter?”

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” answered the editor, not wholly pleased
at the position Fenton had taken. “Give me your answer day after
to-morrow. It will do as well then as now.”

Fenton arose to go.

“And about Stoughton?” he asked.

Mr. Robinson sat silent for a time. Finally he said,--

“I leave him to you, Mr. Fenton. Talk the matter over with him, and
bring him with you when you come to me Monday. Good-day.”

Fenton returned to his desk in a more excited mood than he had expected
ever to feel again. When a man renews his youth the rejuvenation is
apt to bring with it many surprises. That it should make any important
difference to him whether he lived in New York or London was an
astonishing fact to John Fenton. It was an unpleasant truth that, in
a way, forced him to come to a decision that he had been avoiding for
a long time. Should he or should he not give up all thought of making
Gertrude Van Vleck his wife, was the question that haunted him.

And Mr. Robinson, gazing moodily out of the window in his room
up-stairs, was thinking that John Fenton’s hesitation was due to
ambition.




CHAPTER XXI.


“If we go, Richard, we burn our bridges behind us.”

So said John Fenton, as he walked restlessly up and down the room,
puffing a pipe nervously, his face paler than usual, and a gleam in his
eyes that indicated a mind disturbed.

Stoughton was lounging in one of Fenton’s easy-chairs and gazing at his
friend questioningly. It was the evening of the day on which Fenton had
listened to Mr. Robinson’s proposition, and he had summoned Richard to
his rooms for a council of war.

“I am fully convinced,” continued Fenton, “that the best thing that
could happen to you at present, Richard, would be a long absence from
New York. As for myself, I am not sure that this London scheme would
not save me from making a fool of myself. But”--

“But,” put in Richard solemnly, “you love Gertrude Van Vleck. The
‘but’ is a very important one. Why should you give her up? Of course,
John, there are several reasons why I can see an advantage for myself
in going to London as your assistant. But I am perfectly willing to
waive all that, if you’ll throw away your unreasonable scruples, and
take the good the gods provide.”

Fenton seated himself and puffed at his pipe musingly.

“There’s a vulgar assertion,” he remarked at length, “that informs us
how hard it is to teach an old dog new tricks. Admitting, Richard, that
what you say is true,--granting your premises, I mean,--I cannot accept
your conclusion. Listen to me a moment, and don’t interrupt. I will
acknowledge that I should like to make Gertrude Van Vleck my wife, but
let us look at the matter from all points of view. In the first place,
I have no means of knowing that she esteems me more than other men.
I have grown distrustful, Richard, of my own impressions in a matter
of this kind. Her cordiality toward me may mean anything or nothing.
But, after all, that is not the important point. The fact is, my boy,
that I have no right to woo her. I have made a failure of life, for
one thing. Furthermore, I have been for some years a determined foe to
the institutions that have surrounded her with wealth and luxury. I am
willing to acknowledge that I am not as aggressive a radical as I was
some time ago, but that does not alter the fact that I have long been
an outspoken opponent of timocracy.”

“Timocracy?” exclaimed Richard. “The word sounds familiar, but my Greek
is rusty. What does it mean, John?”

Fenton looked at his friend suspiciously. For an instant he had a
feeling that Richard was ridiculing him. But the earnest expression in
the youth’s face reassured him.

“Timocracy, you remember, Richard, established a man’s social and
political status according to the amount of grain he owned. We have a
timocracy in this country, in fact, if not in theory. A man is known
by the _companies_ he is in. But this is wandering a long way from
the point. The fact is, Richard, that I have been under a tremendous
temptation for the last few weeks, a temptation against which my
better nature has been at war. What if I had given in to it, and had,
let us say, won the hand of Gertrude Van Vleck? I could never make
her happy. Ten years ago, perhaps, such a woman might have moulded me
into something approaching an ideal husband. But time is tyrannical,
Richard. It is too late now for me to ask of life the greatest blessing
that it holds for man, a companionable wife. I cannot accept the
sacrifice of youth, beauty, intellect, and affection on the altar of
my selfishness. It wouldn’t do, Richard. It wouldn’t do at all. Let
the dream pass! Come, boy, help me to be a man. Let us try London,
Richard, and see if its fogs can’t hide the foolish mirage our fevered
brains have raised. You need heroic treatment as much as I do. From one
standpoint, in fact, your case, Richard, is worse than mine. If you
stay here you may bring misery to at least three people. If I remain,
the worst I could do would be to make myself and one other unhappy.
Mathematically you are more deserving of exile than I am.”

“I tell you, John,” exclaimed Richard, his eyes resting on his friend’s
face affectionately, “I tell you I don’t want you to bring me in as an
important factor in this matter. You are treating a great crisis in
your life with more cold-blooded cynicism than I thought you retained.
Don’t you see that you may be doing Gertrude Van Vleck a great wrong?
Don’t you understand that you may be recklessly throwing away your
chance of lifelong happiness? What have your years, or your past, or
your theories got to do with the matter? The only question at issue
in the whole affair is this: Does Gertrude Van Vleck love you? If she
does, your sacrifice would be simply a cruelty. If she doesn’t, your
sacrifice wouldn’t be a sacrifice. That sounds Irish, but it expresses
my meaning.

    ‘He either fears his fate too much,
      Or his deserts are small,
    That dares not put it to the touch,
      To gain or lose it all.’”

An amused smile played over Fenton’s pale face.

“And what course of action do you advise, young hot-head?”

“There is only one thing for you to do, John. Go to Gertrude Van Vleck,
and tell her that you love her. If she accepts you, that settles the
problem before us. If she rejects you, we will go to London.”

Fenton arose, and resumed his impatient march up and down the room.

“How impetuous youth is!” he remarked after a time. Then he halted;
and, standing in front of Richard, looked down at the young man
solemnly. “You know little of true love, Richard. It is based on
unselfishness and is only true to itself when it remains worthy of its
foundation. Listen, boy, and learn. If I propose to Gertrude Van Vleck,
and she rejects me, I have subjected to a painful experience the woman
I love. If she accepts me, the same result, emphasized, is reached; for
I am not worthy of her, Richard. I could not make her happy. No, no; do
not answer me. No man can tell another what is the right course in such
an affair as this. I have confessed to you more than I ever expected
to reveal to any one. I have fought my fight and won my victory.”

Fenton turned, and seated himself wearily. “It has not been easy for
me, Richard,” he continued after a long silence. “But let that pass.
If you really care for me,--and I feel that you do,--you will never
refer to the matter again. I have dreamed my dream, and the awakening
has come. I see clearly that there is only one way for me to be true to
myself and just to others. I shall take that way. And now, Richard, let
us talk of our plans. You have never been in London?”

Richard Stoughton’s heart was heavy as he talked with Fenton about
their future. He could not but admire the strength and nobility of
his friend’s character; but there seemed to be something left unsaid,
some argument not yet advanced, that might throw a different light on
the problem Fenton had weighed and solved for himself. But Richard had
learned in the last few months that there was a stubbornness and pride
in his companion’s nature that rendered opposition impossible after a
certain point had been reached.

Furthermore, he could not disguise from himself that he was pleased
at Fenton’s decision in so far as it affected himself. Stoughton was
a thorough modern in his ways of looking at most subjects, and a few
years of experience and travel might easily make his impressionable
nature very broad in its tendencies. But there was an ancestral strain
of Puritanism in his make-up that still had a strong influence on his
ideas of life. Just what his feelings toward Mrs. Percy-Bartlett were
he hardly knew; but he realized that if he continued to meet her on
the footing that had existed between them of late, he would in the end
lose sight of certain principles to which he still fondly clung. He
was old-fashioned enough, as yet, to respect, in his cooler moments,
the musty teachings that still prevail in certain parts of New England
regarding the sacredness of another man’s wife. He had not yet grasped
the comparatively modern discovery that to a bachelor all things are
pure.

Then, again, with his fondness for Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was mingled an
admiration for a vein of self-restraint that he felt certain existed
in the foundation of her character. He knew intuitively that if, by
word or action, he overstepped certain well-defined boundaries, his
intercourse with her would come to an abrupt and unpleasant end.

That Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was not especially fond of her husband he
felt convinced, not by any word of hers, but from the indefinable but
overwhelming testimony of airy nothings. That she had grown to care for
him, Richard Stoughton, a youth who had brought something into her life
the lack of which she had long felt, he could well imagine--without,
perhaps, a too excessive egotism. But from whatever point of view
he considered the matter, the more it seemed to him best that the
ocean should roll between them for a time. Richard Stoughton, as the
reader has long since observed, was a youth extremely sensitive to
his surroundings. The decision he had come to might never have been
reached in the Percy-Bartletts’ music-room. In Fenton’s parlor, and
in the presence of a man who had made, in Richard’s sight, a great
renunciation, it was not so hard to live up to his highest ideals.

“And so,” said Fenton as he arose to bid his guest good-night, “and
so, Richard, our problems are solved at last. Come to my room at three
o’clock on Monday and we will go up and have a talk with Mr. Robinson.
Good-night, my boy, and good luck. I have much to thank you for,
Richard--but never mind about it now. Good-night.”




CHAPTER XXII.


The Percy-Bartletts were dining with Gertrude Van Vleck and her father.
Cornelius Van Vleck was a man sixty years of age, whose life had been
spent, for the most part, in maintaining the traditions of his family.
As the Van Vlecks had been prominent in the city since the year 1636,
the number of these traditions that he had been called upon to cherish
rendered his task no sinecure.

Cornelius Van Vleck had good reason to be proud of his ancestors. They
had possessed a combination of foresight and conservatism that had
conferred on their posterity the blanket-blessing of vast wealth. The
man who is a landed proprietor on Manhattan Island need never fear
want. Banks may fail, the credit of the country may be threatened,
railroads may dodge their dividends, and hard times may cast their
shadow over a long-suffering people, but the New York landlord is
intrenched behind a financial Gibraltar. How is he to blame if his
ancestors were thrifty and far-seeing? Render to Cæsar the things that
are Cæsar’s, ye grumbling and restless tenants, and accept the world as
you find it. Cornelius Van Vleck could no more help being rich than you
can avoid being poor. Wherever the blame may lie for the inequalities
that exist in the distribution of wealth, surely Cornelius Van Vleck
cannot be held responsible. He is as much the victim of a system as
you are. But he bears his burden without a protest. Never during
his long life as a man of great financial and social importance has
Cornelius Van Vleck been heard to reproach his ancestors for the load
of responsibility that they placed upon his shoulders. He has lived up
to his position in the community with an almost heroic devotion to his
lofty duties; and in his old age he is still inspired by that fine old
motto of _noblesse oblige_.

One of the hereditary obligations to which he has always conformed,
for the honor of his forefathers and his own satisfaction, consists
in dining well. Cornelius Van Vleck has the reputation of giving the
most artistic dinners in the city. But he never casts pearls before
swine. His guests must be worthy of his _chef_. The hospitable but
somewhat testy old gentleman demands from those who sit at his board an
appreciation as keen as his own of the gastronomic excellence of the
entertainment provided. It is for this reason that he always enjoys
having the Percy-Bartletts at his table. Whether Mrs. Percy-Bartlett
fully appreciates the delicate lights and shades of the epicurean
masterpieces produced by the Van Vlecks’ _chef_, the host has never
been quite certain. But he has no doubt of Mr. Percy-Bartlett’s ability
to understand and rejoice in the fine touches that the artist below
stairs so deftly makes.

“I have my doubts, my friend,” he is saying to Percy-Bartlett, as they
puff their cigars and sip a liqueur after the ladies have retired
to the drawing-room, “I have my doubts that a woman can ever become
a thoroughly equipped _connoisseuse_ at the dinner-table. I know
that there is no line of endeavor in which the new woman does not
feel competent to shine; but,” and here the old gentleman waved his
liqueur-glass at Percy-Bartlett with a stately and hospitable gesture,
“but they haven’t that delicate sense of taste, that sensitiveness
to the most refined and elusive flavors that we men possess. Do you
know, there are some dishes that I can’t make Gertrude eat at all!
Just imagine, sir, a woman, an intellectual woman, who takes pride
in shocking her old father with her advanced ideas and theories, and
who has had every advantage of travel and instruction, who absolutely
refuses to eat terrapin in any form. How, sir, can woman expect us to
acknowledge her equality when she boldly admits that she doesn’t like
terrapin?”

Percy-Bartlett smiled; but his eyes were restless, his face pale, and
his manner that of a man who is making an effort to be sociable against
his inclinations.

“I think, Mr. Van Vleck,” he replied, “that you and I are in close
sympathy regarding the absurd pretensions made by women to-day. Do
you know, sir, I have grown very weary of the whole thing. There is a
restlessness, a pushing, discontented, crude, and unfeminine spirit
abroad among the women of our set that has actually had a crushing
effect upon me. I think that it is responsible for the constantly
recurring fits of the blues that have bothered me so much of late.”

Cornelius Van Vleck, whose heavy but not unsymmetrical features lacked
mobility, gazed at his guest with some concern in his bluish-gray eyes.

“You aren’t looking quite fit, young man, that’s a fact. Take some of
that brandy. It’s something very fine, I assure you. By the way, why
don’t you knock off a bit, and run over to the other side with us?
Gertrude and I are going over at once. She needs a change, a great
change. There’s something wrong with the girl. She has grown morbid
and flighty, sir. I can’t understand it--unless these new ideas that
are floating around have struck in. She has been asking me some very
embarrassing questions of late, sir, some very embarrassing questions.
I even suspect that Gertrude has been visiting some of my tenants on
the East Side, and distributing alms. As if organized charities were
not sufficient to relieve the distress in the city! I have remonstrated
with her, sir; but what can you do with a woman to-day? Whose authority
do they respect, sir? A father’s? a husband’s?”

Percy-Bartlett sipped his brandy nervously, while a slight flush arose
to his pallid cheeks.

“I thoroughly sympathize with you, Mr. Van Vleck. We are almost
powerless to check this rebellious spirit. There is a limit, of course,
to protest beyond which a gentleman cannot go. I fully realize that.
There have been many things to disturb us of late; we, I mean, who
cling to the old ideas and the best traditions of our set. And, do you
know, I hold the newspapers responsible for a good deal of the harm
that has been done.”

“You are right, Percy-Bartlett! you are right!” cried his host
with more animation than he usually displayed. “There have been
those among us who seemed to actually crave notoriety. It has been
shocking--shocking! I really don’t know what we’re coming to. Do you
know, I gave a small dinner-party last night,--twelve at the table,
you know,--and, will you believe me, a reporter came to the house and
asked for a list of my guests. That’s a straw that shows which way the
wind blows. When I was young, sir, a man could dine at home without
awakening the curiosity of the public. But, tell me, aren’t you well?
You look very pale. I am worried about you, my friend.”

Percy-Bartlett was leaning back in his chair, a gray pallor on his
face, and his lips almost colorless. Leaning forward with an effort, he
swallowed the remaining drops of brandy in his glass.

“It is nothing, Mr. Van Vleck,” he said, after a moment’s silence; “I
have been doing too much work and worrying of late. I really believe I
need a vacation.”

“You do indeed, sir,” remarked his host emphatically. “Come, young man,
listen to reason. The one great privilege that wealth grants is that
it gives us our freedom. Come over to London with us. We sail Wednesday
morning. Drop your work right here and take a rest. If you don’t,
you’ll break down, Percy-Bartlett, and all the king’s horses and all
the king’s men won’t be able to pull you together again.”

Percy-Bartlett looked at his elderly companion gratefully. It was
a novel and welcome sensation to have some one take an interest in
his welfare. There was silence for a time. Then he said, as he arose
slowly, as though his head felt giddy,--

“Perhaps you are right, Mr. Van Vleck. Come into the drawing-room with
me. I’ll ask Harriet what she thinks of the scheme.”




CHAPTER XXIII.


“Even if it turns out happily, Harriet, I will always feel that she did
an unwomanly thing.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett and Gertrude Van Vleck were seated _en tête-à-tête_
in the drawing-room, talking of a quiet wedding that had taken place
recently in the inner circle. This matrimonial event had possessed
peculiar features. It was rumored, on evidence more conclusive than
gossip often enjoys, that the bride had done the larger part of the
wooing and had actually proposed to the man of her choice. What the
circumstances were that had led to this reversal of ancient custom
on the part of people to whom time-honored precedents are especially
dear nobody but the high contracting parties knew; but it was well
understood that the woman had taken the initiative, and had been
successful in her egotistic match-making. There were a good many
spinsters in society who approved of her course, but Gertrude Van
Vleck was not among them.

“But,” argued Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, “I thought, Gertrude, that you were
progressive. You seem to accept many of the new ideas, but reject
others. I am sure I can’t see why she did an unwomanly thing. In these
days there is hardly anything that can be called unwomanly--if it is
done gracefully.”

Gertrude smiled sadly as she looked into her friend’s sympathetic eyes.
They both realized that the problem they were discussing was not an
abstract question, but that, on the contrary, it possessed a concrete
and vital significance for one of them.

“I’m afraid, Harriet,” said Gertrude musingly, “that I cannot keep
up with women who are determined to be in the front ranks of the new
movement. I have too many conservative characteristics in my make-up,
inherited from my father.”

She looked about her with restless eyes, her glance seeming to appeal
to the spirit of the room in which they sat for strength and comfort.
There are many drawing-rooms in New York that combine luxury with
taste. Not a few are actually regal in their magnificence. But a
drawing-room that indicates ancestral glories, that seems to rejoice in
the fact that it is the storehouse of patrician memories, is a rarity.
The Van Vlecks’ drawing-room was a shrine sacred to the cult of true
American aristocracy. You might pooh-pooh the Van Vlecks’ coat-of-arms,
their family livery, or other outward manifestations of ancestral
pride, but only an iconoclast deluded by delirium could enter that
drawing-room without feeling the subtle influence that it exerted in
opposition to the image-breakers of to-day.

Suddenly Mrs. Percy-Bartlett broke the silence that had followed
Gertrude’s last remark.

“You sail Wednesday. You do not expect to see him before you go?”

“No. Why should I? He will not come to me again.”

“Tell me, Gertrude, how you know,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett gently,
taking the girl’s cold hand in hers.

“It is hard to explain,” remarked Gertrude wearily. “I understand
him so well, Harriet. He is very proud, and has such queer ideas!
He--he--don’t think me awfully conceited, Harriet--he--I’m sure he
likes me. But I never expect to see him again.”

There was the suspicion of a sob in her voice. Mrs. Percy-Bartlett
gazed earnestly into her friend’s eyes.

“Tell me, Gertrude,” she said beseechingly, “what has happened. You are
concealing something from me.”

“Nothing, truly,” exclaimed Gertrude, a frank smile on her lips. “There
has been absolutely nothing between Mr. Fenton and myself that you do
not know about, Harriet.”

“But why, my dear, do you say that you never expect to see him again? I
can’t understand it.”

“I hardly know how to explain it to you, Harriet. I am not in the
habit of placing too much confidence in intuition and inexplicable
impressions, but I feel certain that he will never come to me
again--unless I send for him.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was silent for a time. Things seemed so fatally
wrong in the world at that moment. She felt confused, discontented,
wholly unfit to give comfort or advice to her unhappy friend. And
yet why should she not urge her to take a step that might lead to
happiness? Why should pride and precedent be permitted to stand between
John Fenton and Gertrude Van Vleck when the very spirit of the age was
teaching men and women to be broad-minded and reasonable, and, perhaps,
more natural? Impulsively she turned to Gertrude and bent very close to
her.

“My dear girl, you are doing him and yourself a great wrong. You should
write to him and ask him to come to you. It is the only way.”

“And when he comes?” asked Gertrude in a whisper.

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett bent and kissed the pale cheek of the trembling
girl.

“Tell him that you love him, Gertrude.”

A flush overspread Gertrude’s face and her eyes flashed. She arose and
looked down at her friend.

“I cannot, Harriet. When you put it into words, it scares me. It is
horrible to talk of such a thing. I am sorry--so sorry, that you said
it.” She reseated herself and looked into the sad, brown eyes that
gazed at her almost reproachfully.

“I know that you meant it for the best, Harriet, but it can never be.
And, now, promise me that you will never refer to this again. You know
my secret. Let us go on as though I had never told you.”

They were silent for a time, their cold hands clasped in a contact that
expressed more than words. After a time Gertrude spoke,--

“I am so sorry to go away from you just now, Harriet. I never needed
you so much before.”

Mrs. Percy-Bartlett sighed wearily.

“I am so tired, Gertrude. When you are gone I don’t know what I shall
do. Life is such a weird and wearisome affair. I am young, and the
world has given me everything that I ought to ask of it--but--but”--

She hesitated. Gertrude bent toward her.

“I think I understand, my dear. I am so sorry.”

There was a note of sympathetic pity in her voice that was sweet and
soothing in her hearer’s ear. They were both tasting the bitter cup
that every man and woman must sometime hold to the lips, and in the
moment of their sorrow their friendship for each other became more
precious than it had ever been. It was hard to part at the greatest
crisis in their lives, to say farewell when they needed from each other
the inspiration that the closest intercourse could give.

Cornelius Van Vleck and Percy-Bartlett entered the drawing-room.

“I have great news for you both,” cried the former as he came forward,
his phlegmatic face more animated than usual.

They looked up at him inquiringly.

“Your husband and I have a secret, Mrs. Percy-Bartlett,” he went on
playfully. “Are you not curious to know what it is?”

“Of course I am, Mr. Van Vleck. Am I not a woman?”

The glimpse she caught of her husband’s face startled her. There was an
unnatural flush in his cheeks, and his eyes were feverishly bright.

“What is it, dear?” she exclaimed, rising and putting her hand on his
arm. Percy-Bartlett smiled reassuringly.

“Nothing serious,” he answered. “I disobeyed the doctor and smoked one
of Mr. Van Vleck’s cigars. Furthermore,” and he looked at his host
knowingly, “I fear that I am threatened with an attack of _mal-de-mer_.”

Gertrude Van Vleck sprang up in excitement.

“Do you mean it?” she cried. “O Harriet! don’t you understand? You are
going with us. Am I not right, papa?”

Cornelius Van Vleck smiled benignantly.

“I have become your husband’s medical adviser,” he remarked, turning to
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, “and have ordered him to take a sea-voyage for
his health.”

“And you have agreed?” asked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett of her husband, her
voice cold, almost harsh, from the excitement that she restrained.

“If you wish,” he answered, seating himself wearily, and looking up at
his wife with an affectionate gleam in his eyes.

“It is almost too good to be true,” cried Gertrude Van Vleck, trying to
meet Harriet’s averted gaze. “I am so happy.”

“Is it not charming, Gertrude?” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, seating
herself by her husband’s side and speaking with as much enthusiasm as
she could summon to her aid. But she was not an actress, and to her
husband and her confidante there seemed to be an unconvincing note in
her voice, a suggestion that she was accepting the inevitable with a
protest that vainly craved expression.




CHAPTER XXIV.


Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was seated at the piano, idly striking chords
that seemed to vibrate with the melancholy of her mood. It was
Tuesday evening, and her husband had gone to his club to attend to
several matters that required settlement before his departure. They
were to sail for Europe early on the following morning, and Mrs.
Percy-Bartlett’s revery was one of mingled apprehension and regret.
Her mind assured her that the exile before her was the best possible
solution of a problem that had forced itself upon her; her heart
revolted against the thought of a difficult but imperative step that
she must take. She had sent a note that morning to Richard Stoughton,
telling him that she was to leave for Europe on Wednesday and that she
would be glad to see him in the evening, if he was at leisure. The
messenger had returned with an answer to her note that had filled her
with surprise and consternation.

“I will call this evening,” Richard had written, “not to say adieu to
you, but to bid us both _bon voyage_. I am overjoyed at the outlook.”

What these enigmatical words meant she had been unable to determine. He
seemed to imply that he, too, was to sail for Europe in the morning.
If that were the case, she realized that she had a hard task before
her. Her instinct told her that it would be fatally unwise for them to
make the voyage together. In the first place, the presence of Richard
Stoughton on the steamer would look very queer to Percy-Bartlett.
Surely the increase of his jealousy was not the line of treatment
likely to restore her husband to health. Furthermore, she longed for
rest and peace. She had rebelled in her heart at first against the
idea of running away from the one great pleasure of her life, the
comradeship of Richard Stoughton; but later on her mood had changed,
and she had begun to take a melancholy satisfaction in the thought
that if absence might mean pain and longing it would also beget its own
anæsthetic.

And now she sat awaiting Richard’s coming, her heart beating
feverishly, her face pale and her eyes restless and brilliant. She
had determined, if the worst came to the worst, that she would ask
him to make a great sacrifice for her on the altar of friendship.
She had not reached this decision without a struggle. It would be so
pleasant to have him with her on the voyage! She had grown to take so
much pleasure in his companionship that it seemed almost sacrilege to
place any obstacle in the path of events that conspired to prolong
their intimacy. And it was chance, not design, that was responsible for
the fact--if it were a fact--that they were to sail for the Old World
together. But Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was too clever a woman to allow the
tempting fallacies that beset her mind to long have sway. She realized
that it is very easy to find arguments to defend and justify almost any
course of action; but she still retained her confidence in that vague,
indefinable, but insistent guide that is generally called conscience,
and when she was weary of inward debate she always fell back on it for
the final word, the motive-power that should carry her in the right
direction. In this instance, conscience whispered to her that either
Richard Stoughton or herself must remain in New York when the Majestic
left the pier in the morning. That it would be well nigh impossible for
her to make a change in her plans without undergoing many embarrassing
questions from her husband, she well knew. Her ultimate hope lay in
Richard Stoughton’s unselfishness. If he cared for her “in the right
way,” as she put it to herself, he would alter his movements for her
sake.

The portière was pushed back, and a servant announced “Mr. Stoughton.”
Richard entered the music-room, a flush of pleasure and excitement on
his cheeks and the joy of youthful enthusiasm in his eyes.

As she gave him her hand it felt as cold as marble in his grasp, and
he saw that her face was pale and her expression one of apprehension
rather than delight.

“Something is worrying you,” he said, as he seated himself where he
could look into her face. “Did you not understand my note?”

She smiled sadly. “I fear that I did,” she answered in a low voice.
“You sail on the Majestic to-morrow morning?”

“Yes.”

“I am very sorry,” she faltered, feeling that it was harder to obey the
voice of conscience than she had thought it would be.

The light in his face died out and he looked at her with mingled
surprise and regret.

“I had thought,” he said, almost bitterly, “that you would be pleased
to have me for a fellow-traveller.”

How could she explain to him her feelings in the matter? His very youth
made it difficult. It would be so easy for him to misunderstand her.
At that moment she felt that she was years older than this man whose
birthday was in the same month as her own. And in his presence it
was harder to make the sacrifice she had determined upon than it had
appeared to be an hour before. She looked up at him shyly. His face had
grown pale and the smile had died away from his lips. A woman never
knows how much she really cares for a man until she is obliged to ask
of him a great renunciation for her sake. It is in the nature of a
generous and affectionate woman to confer favors, not to plead for them.

The silence in the room had grown embarrassing. She turned and almost
impatiently struck a few sombre chords on the piano. She feared that he
would see the tears that had gathered in her eyes.

Richard arose and walked to the farther end of the room, then turned
and approached her. Her golden-brown hair, the whiteness of her neck,
and the rounded outlines of her shoulders thrilled him with mingled
delight and despair. He was vaguely conscious of the fact that this
woman was asking of him a sacrifice that he would find it hard to make.
He understood her well enough to realize that in his own inherent
generosity she was placing a confidence that demanded on his part
both reticence and renunciation. She had said that she was sorry that
they were to be companions on an ocean voyage. Feverishly his mind
endeavored to grasp the full significance of her words. He could not
at that moment weigh them in all their bearings, but it was enough
that she had expressed regret at the coincidence that had turned their
faces toward Europe at the same moment. It would be cruel, unnecessary,
to make her explain herself more fully. One thought overshadowed all
others in his mind. If she did not care for him,--why should he mince
words?--did not love him, she would not admit that she was sorry that
he was to be by her side for so long a time. She had confessed to him
that the shadow of self-distrust was on her soul. He could not ask for
more. All men may be selfish, but at a great crisis there are those who
can be chivalric.

Richard reseated himself and looked at her mournfully.

“You have a favor to ask of me,” he ventured after a time.

She turned and glanced at him, with a gleam of merriment in her
changeful eyes.

“You sometimes seem to me to have clairvoyant power,” she remarked.
“Yes, I have a request to make--but it seems so selfish of me! It is
the hardest thing I ever had to do.”

He arose and stood looking down into her face.

“Please don’t feel that it is difficult,” he said gently. “I think I
know what you would ask. If you wish, I will put off my departure until
Saturday. No, don’t thank me. I shall find my reward in the thought
that--that”--

He hesitated, and she raised her face until their eyes met. He bent
toward her.

“In the thought that you may realize how hard it is for me to let you
go.”

He had taken both her hands, and the tears in her eyes made it
well-nigh impossible for her to see how close his lips were to hers.

“You are a noble fellow,” she whispered.

Richard was torn with the tempest of love and desperation that filled
his soul. The incense of her hair, the warm caress of her breath as it
touched his face, the sad, white misery of her trembling lips seemed
to madden him. He hesitated an instant, while the spirits of light and
darkness warred within him. Then a strange thing happened. He heard,
as though the speaker stood close to his ear, the ringing voice of the
preacher who had stirred his soul amid the solemn shadows of a church
some weeks before, and it seemed to say: “Be true to your manhood; for
the light that is within you is divine.”

Richard turned on the instant, unconscious that his overwrought nerves
had worked what seemed at the moment to be a miracle. White and
trembling, he sank into the chair by the side of the sobbing woman,
whose icy hand still rested wearily in his.

As he had turned, it had seemed to him that the portières at the end
of the room were falling into place, as though they had been suddenly
disturbed; but as he looked at them again, hanging heavy and quiet
in the shadows, he felt that the fever that had caused him to hear a
stranger’s voice had cast its delirious witchery upon his vision. But
the truth was that his ears had played him false, while his eyes had
not.




CHAPTER XXV.


In certain respects Percy-Bartlett was an ideal clubman. He was a
member of several exclusive clubs, but he frequented only one. He
took more interest in the welfare of this organization than he did
in the growth of the West or the opening of Africa to civilization.
Philanthropists might have called him narrow-minded. He would have been
astonished at the accusation. He subscribed liberally to the fund of
his church for foreign missions and had once helped to equip a Polar
expedition. A man who could open his purse to enterprises of this
character would never look upon himself as an individual restricted in
his sympathies. Cannot a man be a broad-minded benefactor of his race
without seeking the companionship of those beneath him in the social
make-up? Percy-Bartlett never imagined for a moment that in confining
his intercourse to those whom he considered his equals, he was
putting himself out of touch with the age and world in which he lived.
Theoretically, he acknowledged the brotherhood of man. Practically, he
found satisfaction only in the companionship of men who were eligible
to membership in his favorite club. He devoted a tithe of his fortune
to charity; why should he not have the privilege of giving most of
his time to clubdom? Percy-Bartlett, like a good many Americans,
acknowledged the grandeur of the Declaration of Independence, but did
not feel that that instrument had established a ritual.

It is said that a man cannot serve both God and Mammon. However this
may be,--and there are clever individuals who seem to fight under both
banners,--it is certain that it takes genius for a man to do his duty
equally well to his club and to his home. Percy-Bartlett was not a
genius. He was a thorough gentleman, of fair ability, who had found
himself inclined, at one time, to sacrifice his club for the sake of
his home. But, other things being equal, a man, in the long run,
will take the path in which he finds the readiest and most pronounced
sympathy. Percy-Bartlett was appreciated at his true worth at his club.
He realized vaguely that at his home he was in an atmosphere that was
not wholly congenial, and that he did not hold the high place in the
bosom of his family that assures to a husband the domestic felicity
that is, in the end, fatal to prominence in club life. A companionable
husband, like anything else worth having, is the product of assiduous
cultivation. The converse is also true; and a man cannot enjoy the
intercourse of a thoroughly congenial woman unless he has the tact and
perseverance necessary to the production of this rare and priceless
blossom of the social flora. Marriage is like a garden, in which two
plants are set aside to tend each other. If one of them is neglectful
of the task imposed upon it, they both suffer equally; and the garden
in which they have been placed grows narrow and distasteful in their
sight. If you grasp the full significance of this illustration, O
gentle reader, you will be able to understand why it is that in these
progressive times not only married men but married women have their
clubs. We all crave sympathy, and an outlet for the unrest that is
in us. If we cannot find them at home, we must go to our club, where
we may meet some one who understands us, and who will offer us a
relief-pipe for the pent-up individuality that so sorely chafes us.
And thus it is that both men and women need their clubs to-day. The
end of the last century found the world emphasizing the brotherhood of
man. The end of the present century is busy underscoring the sisterhood
of woman. Is it strange that the last years of the eighteenth century
were not more disturbing to the institution of marriage than are the
closing days of the nineteenth century? The only conclusion that seems
deducible to the student of contemporary social unrest is that the
millennium will not be reached until the problem of how to make a home
a club is solved.

Percy-Bartlett was not especially happy, although such an admission was
the last that he would willingly have made to himself. He had grown
accustomed to deceiving himself into the belief that he thoroughly
enjoyed life. Surely it had done much for him. He had wealth, position,
friends, and a beautiful and accomplished wife. But slowly the fine
flavor of existence had passed away, and sometimes the unwelcome
thought would force itself upon him that he was a tired and lonely man.
Never by word or look did he hint at this suspicion, even to his most
intimate friends. They had noticed of late that he had lost his spirits
and looked ill and weary; but he had spoken of his recurrent attacks of
indigestion, and they had seen that he had become very abstemious in
the use of alcohol and tobacco. That there was anything radically wrong
with him neither he nor they suspected.

Percy-Bartlett was in a more cheerful mood than usual when he left
his club on Tuesday evening at an earlier hour than was his wont to
return home. The future looked brighter than it had appeared for some
time past. He had placed his affairs in such shape that he could take
a long vacation without worrying about the details of his personal
interests. He walked rapidly down the avenue, anxious to have a long
chat with his wife before retiring. They would be obliged to rise early
in the morning to take the steamer, which left her pier at eleven
o’clock.

There was a smile of contentment on his face as he thought that a
change of scene and the excitement of travel might do much to draw
his wife closer to him. She would have no time on the journey, he
reflected, to become wholly absorbed in her musical pursuits. That he
had grown jealous of Richard Stoughton he had never acknowledged to
himself, but he had long resented the rivalry of his wife’s piano, and
he rejoiced at the fact that she could not take it with her.

Furthermore, he realized that his precarious health demanded from
him a long rest and a thorough change of scene. He was not over-fond
of travel, but in these days the possession of wealth insures to the
tourist an amount of comfort that is almost equal to that obtained
from his club. From all points of view, the immediate future looked
bright to Percy-Bartlett as he slowly mounted the steps of his house,
and puffing slightly from the exertion, quietly opened the hall-door
with a night-key. He would come upon his wife quietly and enjoy the
expression of surprise on her face at his early return. That there
would be a warm welcome in her smile he hardly dared to hope. But it is
very easy to fall into the habit of expecting from those we love the
reflection of the mood that we happen to be in. That Percy-Bartlett
had often been disappointed in obtaining from his wife the sympathy
he craved had not made him despair of sometime winning from her the
response to his affection that he knew she had the power to give.

The moment seemed to him to be favorable for breaking down the barriers
that had so long appeared to separate him from his wife. He would find
her in the music-room. Diplomate that he was, he would ask her to sing
one or two of her own songs to him, and then he would tell her of
the outlines of their journey that he had prepared, and would make
whatever changes in the itinerary that she suggested. He could see her,
in imagination, closing her piano for the last time, and turning to him
with a bright smile on her face when she had locked the instrument and
put the key in her pocket.

His heart beat with stifling rapidity as he quietly entered the
drawing-room. He smiled as the thought flashed through his mind that
he was more in the mood of a young lover, staking his life’s happiness
on a few burning words, than in that of a middle-aged husband about to
discuss the prosaic details of a European trip with his wife.

The drawing-room was dimly lighted, and the portières at the entrance
to the music-room were closely drawn. He approached them noiselessly,
somewhat surprised that his rival, the piano, was not taking advantage
of his absence to strengthen its hold upon his wife.

Gently he laid his trembling hand upon the heavy hangings, and looked
into the music-room. Then he dropped the portière and turned away,
his face ghastly in its pallor, and his eyes wild with sudden pain.
He staggered forward across the drawing-room, making an heroic effort
to avoid stumbling against the furniture. Strangely enough, the one
overpowering fear that possessed him at the moment was that, by some
accident, he should make his presence known in the music-room. He
looked, as he actually skulked toward the hall, like a man who had
committed some awful crime, and who was making a desperate effort to
avoid detection. Great beads of perspiration had broken out upon his
brow. His face was drawn and set, and his lips were pressed against his
teeth in a way that gave his countenance an expression of ghastly mirth.

The dread that beset him was that in the hall he would attract the
attention of one of the servants. Trembling with cold, he crept into
his overcoat and tip-toed to the door. All was silent in the house.
Out into the night he stole, glancing furtively up and down the avenue
like one who dreads detection. He reeled with dizziness as he reached
the sidewalk and leaned for a moment against a railing. The night air
seemed to revive him after a time; for pulling himself together with a
mighty effort, he moved on toward his club like one who walks in sleep
and flees from the phantoms of his dream.




CHAPTER XXVI.


“It is hard, Gertrude; very hard! But I must be in London a week from
to-day.”

Gertrude Van Vleck looked up at her father as he uttered these words,
and her face grew a shade paler, while the tears started to her eyes.
She was clad in a travelling costume that was extremely becoming to her
tall and graceful figure. In her hand she held an almost undecipherable
scrawl. It was from Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, and ran as follows:--

  “MY DEAR GERTRUDE,--Perhaps you have already heard the awful
  news. My husband died suddenly at the Union Club last night. I
  am so utterly stunned that I cannot write coherently, but one
  insistent thought is with me at this sad time. You must not
  change your plans on my account. I long for you at this moment
  with my whole heart, but my selfishness must have no weight with
  you. If you really wish it, I will join you in London soon; but I
  can make no special arrangements just now. I will write to you
  or send you a cable message as soon as I have the strength and
  opportunity to think of the future.”

“Listen, Gertrude,” continued Mr. Van Vleck, almost sternly, “We have
no time to lose. Don’t think me heartless, my child; but I must be in
London on the date I have set, for many reasons that would not interest
you. Sit down and write to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett at once. Tell her that
we will wait for her in London, and take her to the Continent with
us. I absolutely cannot wait over a steamer at this time. Poor little
woman, I am sorry that there is no other way.”

With a heavy heart Gertrude Van Vleck penned a note--how inadequate,
almost heartless, it appeared to her as she re-read it--and despatched
it by a messenger to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. The generous, affectionate
heart of the girl rebelled against the necessity that compelled her to
take this course; but there seemed to be, at the moment, no alternative.

Gertrude had had but little personal contact with that mysterious thing
we call death. The suddenness of her friend’s bereavement appalled
her. There comes a time in every one’s experience, early or late, when
the insignificance of one human life in the make-up of the illimitable
universe is emphasized with a stunning force that leaves us wiser,
perhaps, but infinitely more sad. Gertrude Van Vleck had thought much
about the strange problems that the life of the world presents, but
the final and most significant riddle that haunts the mind of man, the
awful question that death asks, had never touched her deeply. But now
it had come to her in a new guise, and she felt crushed and hopeless
with the pitiless suddenness of the shock.

The drive to the steamer seemed almost interminable. The noises of
the streets, the disjointed exclamations of her father, the feverish
throbbing in her head, caused Gertrude the most acute suffering. The
bustle and excitement at the pier aggravated the restlessness and
discontent that made her whole being ache. There seemed to be something
childish in the vivacity of the men and women around her, who came
and went, laughed and cried, were silent or loquacious, as if a voyage
across the Atlantic were a thing of great moment. What was it compared
with that mysterious journey into the unknown that we must all take
to-day, or to-morrow, or a few years hence?

It was not until the steamer was well down the bay, and the cool,
salt breeze that swept the decks had begun to bring the color back to
Gertrude’s cheeks, that she was able to throw off the dreary thoughts
that oppressed her. And even then it was not with a cheerful gleam in
her eyes that she gazed out upon the throbbing sea. Her heart cried
out in revolt against the fate that had followed her. She was leaving
behind her all that had made life interesting of late. The only woman
she really cared for, and the only man she had ever felt that she could
love, were going out of her life, as the great city sank toward the
horizon in the west. It was very hard. She gazed down upon the waters
rushing backward in her sight, while the hot tears filled her eyes, and
the sea-breeze kissed them cold against her cheek.

“This is a weird and inexplicable world,” she heard a voice that
thrilled her with mingled amazement and joy saying at her side. She
started, for the words seemed to give expression to her very thought,
and turning, she beheld John Fenton, his face reflecting the wonder and
delight that filled her soul. Her hand trembled as she placed it in his
for a moment.

“I am so glad to see you,” she said simply, but her voice trembled with
the nervous reaction that affected her. “I--I--did not know that you
were going abroad.”

John Fenton kept her cold hand in his much longer than perfect
etiquette warranted. Words come less readily to a man than to a woman
at a great and unexpected crisis, and he was silent for some time.
Finally he said, as he leaned against the rail and looked at her white
face, that still bore traces of her despairing mood,--

“What is to be, will be. Tell me, are you a fatalist?”

“I hardly know,” she answered. “Everything seems inexplicable and
unnatural to me at this moment. You have heard that Percy-Bartlett is
dead?”

“Yes,” answered Fenton, gazing seaward for a moment. “I received a note
from Richard Stoughton this morning. He was coming with me, you know.
He has postponed the voyage for a week or so.”

Gertrude’s blue eyes looked into his questioningly.

“He was there last evening?” she asked.

“Yes. He was just leaving when Mrs. Percy-Bartlett received a note from
Buchanan Budd saying that her husband had died suddenly at the club.”

“I am very glad that Mr. Stoughton did not sail,” she said, more to
herself than to Fenton. It was strange how much the salt air had done
to restore the color to her face and the light of contentment to her
eyes. “She--that is Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, you know--is coming over to us
at once.”

There was silence for a time. As they looked down at the surging
waters, the strange coincidence that had thrown them together again
seemed to them both to take on a supernatural character.

“You were going away without bidding me good-by,” she said in a low
voice. Her eyes met his reproachfully.

“You do me an injustice,” he returned. “I wrote to you this morning.”

She turned from him, and her eyes sought the horizon. She felt that his
words had placed her in an embarrassing position. She could not ask him
what his letter said; but she longed to know.

They stood without speaking for some time. He was gazing at her
clear-cut profile, and, as he looked, the scruples that had led him to
make a great renunciation for her sake seemed to him at that moment to
be strained and illogical. Had he not made every sacrifice on the altar
of his Quixotic creed? And had not fate rendered his efforts futile?
Surely he and Gertrude Van Vleck would not be standing together on the
deck of an ocean steamer, outward bound, if the stars in their courses
had not ordained that he should tell her what was in his heart.

“I wish,” he said at length, “that you would do me a favor.”

She turned to him with a puzzled smile on her face.

“Promise me,” he continued earnestly, “that, if the letter I sent to
you this morning ever comes to your hand, you will destroy it unopened.”

The smile died away from her face. He saw that he had placed himself
in the position of being misunderstood. What could he do but explain
himself? His face was pale with emotion, and he grasped the rail
nervously.

“Gertrude,” he said in a low voice, vibrant with suppressed passion,
“Gertrude, I love you! Tell me, will you--can you give me hope?”

She was gazing seaward, with eyes that were moist with the tears of
happiness.

Presently he felt a cold, trembling hand in his and the sun on the
instant broke through the clouds and kissed the smiling sea, as their
grasp grew firm with the fervor of their love.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaired quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unpaired.