Читать книгу: «The Fighting Chance»

CHAPTER I. ACQUAINTANCE

The speed of the train slackened; a broad tidal river flashed into sight below the trestle, spreading away on either hand through yellowing level meadows. And now, above the roaring undertone of the cars, from far ahead floated back the treble bell-notes of the locomotive; there came a gritting vibration of brakes; slowly, more slowly the cars glided to a creaking standstill beside a sun-scorched platform gay with the bright flutter of sunshades and summer gowns.

“Shotover! Shotover!” rang the far cry along the cars; and an absent-minded young man in the Pullman pocketed the uncut magazine he had been dreaming over and, picking up gun case and valise, followed a line of fellow-passengers to the open air, where one by one they were engulfed and lost to view amid the gay confusion on the platform.

The absent-minded young man, however, did not seem to know exactly where he was bound for. He stood hesitating, leisurely inspecting the flashing ranks of vehicles—depot wagons, omnibusses, and motor cars already eddying around a dusty gravel drive centred by the conventional railroad flower bed and fountain.

Sunshine blazed on foliage plants arranged geometrically, on scarlet stars composed of geraniums, on thickets of tall flame-tinted cannas. And around this triumph of landscape gardening, phaeton, Tilbury, Mercedes, and Toledo backed, circled, tooted; gaily gowned women, whips aslant, horses dancing, greeted expected guests; laughing young men climbed into dog-carts and took the reins from nimble grooms; young girls, extravagantly veiled, made room in comfortable touring-cars for feminine guests whose extravagant veils were yet to be unpacked; slim young men in leather trappings, caps adorned with elaborate masks or goggles, manipulated rakish steering-gears; preoccupied machinists were fussing with valve and radiator or were cranking up; and, through the jolly tumult, the melancholy bell of the locomotive sounded, and the long train moved out through the September sunshine amid clouds of snowy steam.

And all this time the young man, gun case in one hand, suit case in the other, looked about him in his good-humoured, leisurely manner for anybody or any vehicle which might be waiting for him. His amiable inspection presently brought a bustling baggage-master within range of vision; and he spoke to this official, mentioning his host’s name.

“Lookin’ for Mr. Ferrall?” repeated the baggage-master, spinning a trunk dexterously into rank with its fellows. “Say, one of Mr. Ferrall’s men was here just now—there he is, over there uncrating that there bird-dog!”

The young man’s eyes followed the direction indicated by the grimy thumb; a red-faced groom in familiar livery was kneeling beside a dog’s travelling crate, attempting to unlock it, while behind the bars an excited white setter whined and thrust forth first one silky paw then the other.

The young man watched the scene for a moment, then:

“Are you one of Mr. Ferrall’s men?” he asked in his agreeable voice.

The groom looked up, then stood up:

“Yis, Sorr.”

“Take these; I’m Mr. Siward—for Shotover House. I dare say you have room for me and the dog, too.”

The groom opened his mouth to speak, but Siward took the crate key from his fingers, knelt, and tried the lock. It resisted. From the depths of the crate a beseeching paw fell upon his cuff.

“Certainly, old fellow,” he said soothingly, “I know how you feel about it; I know you’re in a hurry—and we’ll have you out in a second—steady, boy!—something’s jammed, you see! Only one moment now! There you are!”

The dog attempted to bolt as the crate door opened, but the young man caught him by the leather collar and the groom snapped on a leash.

“Beg pardon, Sorr,” began the groom, carried almost off his feet by the frantic circling of the dog—“beg pardon, Sorr, but I’ll be afther seem’ if anny of Mr. Ferrall’s men drove over for you—”

“Oh! Are you not one of Mr. Ferrall’s men?”

“Yis, Sorr, but I hadn’t anny orders to meet anny wan—”

“Haven’t you anything here to drive me in?”

“Yis, Sorr—I’ll look to see—”

The raw groom, much embarrassed, and keeping his feet with difficulty against the plunging dog, turned toward the gravel drive where now only a steam motor and a depot-wagon remained. As they looked the motor steamed out, honking hoarsely; the depot-wagon followed, leaving the circle at the end of the station empty of vehicles.

“Didn’t Mr. Ferrall expect me?” asked Siward.

“Aw, yis, Sorr; but the gintlemen for Shotover House does ginerally allways coom by Black Fells, Sorr—”

“Oh, Lord!” said the young man, “I remember now. I should have gone on to Black Fells Crossing; Mr. Ferrall wrote me!” Then, amused: “I suppose you have only a baggage-wagon here?”

“No, Sorr—a phayton”—he hesitated.

“Well? Isn’t a phaeton all right?”

“Yis, Sorr—if th’ yoong lady says so—beg pardon, Sorr, Miss Landis is driving.”

“Oh—h! I see.... Is Miss Landis a guest at Shotover House?”

“Yis, Sorr. An’ if ye would joost ask her—the phayton do be coming now, Sorr!”

The phaeton was coming; the horse, a showy animal, executed side-steps; blue ribbons fluttered from the glittering head-stall; a young girl in white was driving.

Siward advanced to the platform’s edge as the phaeton drew up; the young lady looked inquiringly at the groom, at the dog, and leisurely at him.

So he took off his hat, naming himself in that well-bred and agreeable manner characteristic of men of his sort,—and even his smile appeared to be part and parcel of a conventional ensemble so harmonious as to remain inconspicuous.

“You should have gone on to Black Fells Crossing,” observed Miss Landis, coolly controlling the nervous horse. “Didn’t you know it?”

He said he remembered now that such were the directions given him.

The girl glanced at him incuriously, and with more curiosity at the dog. “Is that the Sagamore pup, Flynn?” she asked.

“It is, Miss.”

“Can’t you take him on the rumble with you?” And, to Siward: “There is room for your gun and suit case.”

“And for me?” he asked, smiling.

“I think so. Be careful of that Sagamore pup, Flynn. Hold him between your knees. Are you ready, Mr. Siward?”

So he climbed in; the groom hoisted the dog to the rumble and sprang up behind; the horse danced and misbehaved, making a spectacle of himself and an agreeable picture of his driver; then the pretty little phaeton swung northward out of the gravel drive and went whirling along a road all misty with puffs of yellow dust which the afternoon sun turned to floating golden powder.

“Did you send my telegram, Flynn?” she asked without turning her head.

“I did, Miss.”

It being the most important telegram she had ever sent in all her life, Miss Landis became preoccupied,—quite oblivious to extraneous details, including Siward, until the horse began acting badly again. Her slightly disdainful and perfect control of the reins interested the young man. He might have said something civil and conventional about that, but did not make the effort to invade a reserve which appeared to embarrass nobody.

A stacatto note from the dog, prolonged infinitely in hysterical crescendo, demanded comment from somebody.

“What is the matter with him, Flynn?” she asked.

Siward said: “You should let him run, Miss Landis.”

She nodded, smiling, inattentive, absorbed in her own affairs, still theorising concerning her telegram. She drove on for a while, and might have forgotten the dog entirely had he not once more lifted his voice in melancholy.

“You say he ought to run for a mile or two? Do you think he’ll bolt, Mr. Siward?”

“Is he a new dog?”

“Yes, fresh from the kennels; supposed to be house-and wagon-broken, steady to shot and wing—” She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “You see how he’s acting already!”

“Do you mind if I try him?” suggested Siward.

“You mean that you are going to let him run?”

“I think so.”

“And if he bolts?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Yes, but please consider my chances, Mr. Siward. The dog doesn’t belong to me.”

“But he ought to run—”

“But suppose he runs away? He’s a horridly expensive creature—if you care to take the risk.”

“I’ll take the risk,” said Siward, smiling as she drew rein. “Now Flynn, give me the leash. Quiet! Quiet, puppy! Everything is coming your way; that’s the beauty of patience; great thing, patience!” He took the leader; the dog sprang from the rumble. “Now, my friend, look at me! No, don’t twist and squirm and scramble; look me square in the eye; so!… Now we know each ether and we respect each other—because you are going to be a good puppy… and obey… Down charge!”

The dog, trembling with eager comprehension, dropped like a shot, muzzle laid flat between his paws. Siward unleashed him, looked down at him for a second, stooped and caressed the silky head, then with a laugh swung himself into the phaeton beside the driver, who, pretty head turned, had been looking on intently.

“Your dog is yard-broken,” he said. “Look at him.”

“I see. Do you think he will follow us?”

“I think so.”

The horse started, Miss Landis looking back over her shoulder at the dog who lay motionless, crouched flat in the road.

Then Siward turned. “Come on, Sagamore!” he said gaily; and the dog sprang forward, circled about the moving phaeton, splitting the air with yelps of ecstasy, then tore ahead, mad with the delight of stretching cramped muscles amid the long rank grass and shrubbery of the roadside.

The girl watched him doubtfully; when he disappeared far away up the road she turned the blue inquiry of her eyes on Siward.

“He’ll be back,” said the young fellow, laughing; and presently the dog reappeared on a tearing gallop, white flag tossing, glorious in his new liberty, enchanted with the confidence this tall young man had reposed in him—this adorable young man, this wonderful friend who had suddenly appeared to release him from an undignified and abominable situation in a crate.

“A good dog,” said Siward; and the girl looked around at him, partly because his voice was pleasant, partly because a vague memory was beginning to stir within her, coupling something unpleasant with the name of Siward.

She had been conscious of it when he first named himself, but, absorbed in the overwhelming importance of her telegram, had left the analysis of the matter for the future.

She thought again of her telegram, theorised a little, came to no conclusion except to let the matter rest for the present, and mentally turned to the next and far less important problem—the question of this rather attractive young man at her side, and why the name of Siward should be linked in her mind with anything disagreeable.

Tentatively following the elusive mental dews that might awaken something definite concerning her hazy impression of the man beside her, she spoke pleasantly, conventionally, touching idly any topic that might have a bearing; and, under a self-possession so detached as to give an impression of indifference, eyes, ears, and intelligence admitted that he was agreeable to look at, pleasant of voice, and difficult to reconcile with anything unpleasant.

Which gradually aroused her interest—the incongruous usually interesting girls of her age—for he had wit enough to amuse her, sufficient inconsequence to please her, and something listless, at times almost absent-minded, almost inattentive, that might have piqued her had it not inoculated her, as it always does any woman, with the nascent germ of curiosity. Besides, there was, in the hint of his momentary preoccupation, a certain charm.

They discussed shooting and the opening of the season; dogs and the training of dogs; and why some go gun-shy and why some ace blinkers. From sport and its justification, they became inconsequential; and she was beginning to enjoy the freshness of their chance acquaintance, his nice attitude toward things, his irrelevancy, his gaiety.

Laughter thawed her; for notwithstanding the fearless confidence she had been taught for men of her own kind, self-possession and reserve, if not inherent, had also been drilled into her, and she required a great deal in a man before she paid him the tribute of one of her pretty laughs.

Apparently they were advancing rather rapidly.

“Don’t you think we ought to call the dog in, Mr. Siward?”

“Yes; he’s had enough!”

She drew rein; he sprang out and whistled; and the Sagamore pup, dusty and happy came romping back. Siward motioned him to the rumble, but the dog leaped to the front.

“I don’t mind,” said the girl. “Let him sit here between us. And you might occupy yourself by pulling some of those burrs from his ears—if you will?”

“Of course I will. Look up here, puppy! No! Don’t try to lick my face, for that is bad manners. Demonstrations are odious, as the poet says.”

“It’s always bad manners, isn’t it?” asked Miss Landis.

“What? Being affectionate?”

“Yes, and admitting it.”

“I believe it is. Do you hear that—Sagamore? But never mind; I’ll break the rules some day when we’re alone.”

The dog laid one paw on Siward’s knee, looking him wistfully in the eyes.

“More demonstrations,” observed the girl. “Mr. Siward! You are hugging him! This amounts to a dual conspiracy in bad manners.”

“Awfully glad to admit you to the conspiracy,” he said. “There’s one vacancy—if you are eligible.”

“I am; I was discovered recently kissing my saddle-mare.”

“That settles it! Sagamore, give the young lady the grip.”

Sylvia Landis glanced at the dog, then impulsively shifting the whip to her left hand, held out the right. And very gravely the Sagamore pup laid one paw in her dainty white gloved palm.

“You darling!” murmured the girl, resuming her whip.

“I notice,” observed Siward, “that you are perfectly qualified for membership in our association for the promotion of bad manners. In fact I should suggest you for the presidency—”

“I suppose you think all sorts of things because I gushed over that dog.”

“Of course I do.”

“Well you need not,” she rejoined, delicate nose up-tilted. “I never kissed a baby in all my life—and never mean to. Which is probably more than you can say.”

“Yes, its more than I can say.

“That admission elects you president,” she concluded. But after a moment’s silent driving she turned partly toward him with mock seriousness: “Is it not horridly unnatural in me to feel that way about babies? And about people, too; I simply cannot endure demonstrations. As for dogs and horses—well, I’ve admitted how I behave; and, being so shamelessly affectionate by disposition, why can’t I be nice to babies? I’ve a hazy but dreadful notion that there’s something wrong about me, Mr. Siward.”

He scrutinised the pretty features, anxiously; “I can’t see it,” he said.

“But I mean it—almost seriously. I don’t want to be so aloof, but—I don’t like to touch other people. It is rather horrid of me I suppose to be like those silky, plumy, luxurious Angora cats who never are civil to you and who always jump out of your arms at the first opportunity.”

He laughed—and there was malice in his eyes, but he did not know her well enough to pursue the subject through so easy an opening.

It had occurred to her, too, that her simile might invite elaboration, and she sensed the laugh in his silence, and liked him for remaining silent where he might easily have been wittily otherwise.

This set her so much at ease, left her so confident, that they were on terms of gayest understanding presently, she gossiping about the guests at Shotover House, outlining the diversions planned for the two weeks before them.

“But we shall see little of one another; you will be shooting most of the time,” she said—with the very faintest hint of challenge—too delicate, too impersonal to savour of coquetry. But the germ of it was there.

“Do you shoot?”

“Yes; why?”

“I am reconciled to the shooting, then.”

“Oh, that is awfully civil of you. Sometimes I’d rather play Bridge.”

“So should I—sometimes.”

“I’ll remember that, Mr. Siward; and when all the men are waiting for you to start out after grouse perhaps I may take that moment to whisper: ‘May I play?’”

He laughed.

“You mean that you really would stay and play double dummy when every other living man will be off to the coverts? Double dummy—to improve my game?”

“Certainly! I need improvement.”

“Then there is something wrong with you, too, Mr. Siward.”

She laughed and started to flick her whip, but at her first motion the horse gave trouble.

“The bit doesn’t fit,” observed Siward.

“You are perfectly right,” she returned, surprised. “I ought to have remembered; it is shameful to drive a horse improperly bitted.” And, after a moment: “You are considerate toward animals; it is good in a man.”

“Oh, it’s no merit. When animals are uncomfortable it worries me. It’s one sort of selfishness, you see.”

“What nonsense,” she said; and her smile was very friendly. “Why doesn’t a nice man ever admit he’s nice when told so?”

It seems they had advanced that far. For she was beginning to find this young man not only safe but promising; she had met nobody recently half as amusing, and the outlook at Shotover House had been unpromising with only the overgrateful Page twins to practise on—the other men collectively and individually boring her. And suddenly, welcome as manna from the sky, behold this highly agreeable boy to play with—until Quarrier arrived. Her telegram had been addressed to Mr. Quarrier.

“What was it you were saying about selfishness?” she asked. “Oh, I remember. It was nonsense.”

“Certainly.”

She laughed, adding: “Selfishness is so simply defined you know.”

“Is it? How.”

“A refusal to renounce. That covers everything,” she concluded.

“Sometimes renunciation is weakness—isn’t it?” he suggested.

“In what case for example?”

“Well, suppose we take love.”

“Very well, you may take it if you like it.”

“Suppose you loved a man!” he insisted.

“Let him beware! What then?”

“—And, suppose it would distress your family if you married him?”

“I’d give him up.”

“If you loved him?”

“Love? That is the poorest excuse for selfishness, Mr. Siward.”

“So you would ruin your happiness and his—”

“A girl ought to find more happiness in renouncing a selfish love than in love itself,” announced Miss Landis with that serious conviction characteristic of her years.

“Of course,” assented Siward with a touch of malice, “if you really do find more happiness in renouncing love than in love itself, it would be foolish not to do it—”

“Mr. Siward! You are derisive. Besides, you are not acute. A woman is always an opportunist. When the event takes place I shall know what to do.”

“You mean when you want to marry the man you mustn’t?

“Exactly. I probably shall.”

“Marry him?

“Wish to!”

“I see. But you won’t, of course.”

She drew rein, bringing the horse to a walk at the foot of a long hill.

“We are going much too fast,” said Miss Landis, smiling.

“Driving too fast for—”

“No, not driving, going—you and I.”

“Oh, you mean—”

“Yes I do. We are on all sorts of terms, already.”

“In the country, you know, people—”

“Yes I know all about it, and what old and valued friends one makes at a week’s end. But it has been a matter of half-hours with us, Mr. Siward.”

“Let us sit very still and think it over,” he suggested. And they both laughed.

It was perhaps the reaction of her gaiety that recalled to her mind her telegram. The telegram had been her promised answer after she had had time to consider a suggestion made to her by a Mr. Howard Quarrier. The last week at Shotover permitted reflection; and while her telegram was no complete answer to the suggestion he had made, it contained material of interest in the eight words: “I will consider your request when you arrive.

“I wonder if you know Howard Quarrier?” she said.

After a second’s hesitation he replied: “Yes—a little. Everybody does.”

“You do know him?”

“Only at—the club.”

“Oh, the Lenox?”

“The Lenox—and the Patroons.”

Preoccupied, driving with careless, almost inattentive perfection, she thought idly of her twenty-three years, wondering how life could have passed so quickly leaving her already stranded on the shoals of an engagement to marry Howard Quarrier. Then her thoughts, errant, wandered half the world over before they returned to Siward; and when at length they did, and meaning to be civil, she spoke again of his acquaintance with Quarrier at the Patroons Club—the club itself being sufficient to settle Siward’s status in every community.

“I’m trying to remember what it is I have heard about you,” she continued amiably; “you are—”

An odd expression in his eyes arrested her—long enough to note their colour and expression—and she continued, pleasantly; “—you are Stephen Siward, are you not? You see I know your name perfectly well—” Her straight brows contracted a trifle; she drove on, lips compressed, following an elusive train of thought which vaguely, persistently, coupled his name with something indefinitely unpleasant. And she could not reconcile this with his appearance. However, the train of unlinked ideas which she pursued began to form the semblance of a chain. Coupling his name with Quarrier’s, and with a club, aroused memory; vague uneasiness stirred her to a glimmering comprehension. Siward? Stephen Siward? One of the New York Siwards then;—one of that race—

Suddenly the truth flashed upon her,—the crude truth lacking definite detail, lacking circumstance and colour and atmosphere,—merely the raw and ugly truth.

Had he looked at her—and he did, once—he could have seen only the unruffled and very sweet profile of a young girl. Composure was one of the masks she had learned to wear—when she chose.

And she was thinking very hard all the while; “So this is the man? I might have known his name. Where were my five wits? Siward!—Stephen Siward!… He is very young, too… much too young to be so horrid.... Yet—it wasn’t so dreadful, after all; only the publicity! Dear me! I knew we were going too fast.”

“Miss Landis,” he said.

“Mr. Siward?”—very gently. It was her way to be gentle when generous.

“I think,” he said, “that you are beginning to remember where you may have heard my name.”

“Yes—a little—” She looked at him with the direct gaze of a child, but the lovely eyes were troubled. His smile was not very genuine, but he met her gaze steadily enough.

“It was rather nice of Mrs. Ferrall to ask me,” he said, “after the mess I made of things last spring.”

“Grace Ferrall is a dear,” she replied.

After a moment he ventured: “I suppose you saw it in the papers.”

“I think so; I had completely forgotten it; your name seemed to—”

“I see.” Then, listlessly: “I couldn’t have ventured to remind you that—that perhaps you might not care to be so amiable—”

“Mr. Siward,” she said impulsively, “you are nice to me! Why shouldn’t I be amiable? It was—it was—I’ve forgotten just how dreadfully you did behave—”

“Pretty badly.”

“Very?”

“They say so.”

“And what is your opinion Mr. Siward?”

“Oh, I ought to have known better.” Something about him reminded her of a bad small boy; and suddenly in spite of her better sense, in spite of her instinctive caution, she found herself on the very verge of laughter. What was it in the man that disarmed and invited a confidence—scarcely justified it appeared? What was it now that moved her to overlook what few overlook—not the fault, but its publicity? Was it his agreeable bearing, his pleasant badinage, his amiably listless moments of preoccupation, his youth that appealed to her—aroused her charity, her generosity, her curiosity?

And had other people continued to accept him, too? What would Quarrier think of his presence at Shotover? She began to realise that she was a little afraid of Quarrier’s opinions. And his opinions were always judgments. However Grace Ferrall had thought it proper to ask him, and that meant social absolution. As far as that went she also was perfectly ready to absolve him if he needed it. But perhaps he didn’t care!—She looked at him, furtively. He seemed to be tranquil enough in his abstraction. Trouble appeared to slide very easily from his broad young shoulders. Perhaps he was already taking much for granted in her gentleness with him. And gradually speculation became interest and interest a young girl’s innocent curiosity to learn something of a man whose record it seemed almost impossible to reconcile with his personality.

“I was wondering,” he said looking up to encounter her clear eyes, “whose house that is over there?”

“Beverly Plank’s shooting-box; Black Fells,” she replied nodding toward the vast pile of blackish rocks against the sky, upon which sprawled a heavy stone house infested with chimneys.

“Plank? Oh yes.”

He smiled to remember the battering blows rained upon the ramparts of society by the master of Black Fells.

But the smile faded; and, glancing at him, the girl was surprised to see the subtle change in his face—the white worn look, then the old listless apathy which, all at once to her, hinted of something graver than preoccupation.

“Are we near the sea?” he asked.

“Very near. Only a moment to the top of this hill.... Now look!”

There lay the sea—the same grey-blue crawling void that had ever fascinated and repelled him—always wrinkled, always in flat monotonous motion, spreading away, away to the sad world’s ends.

“Full of menace—always,” he said, unconscious that he had spoken aloud.

“The sea!”

He spoke without turning: “The sea is a relentless thing for a man to fight.... There are other tides more persistent than the sea, but like it—like it in its menace.”

His face seemed thinner, older; she noticed his cheek bones for the first time. Then, meeting her eyes, youth returned with a laugh and a touch of colour; and, without understanding exactly how, she was aware, presently, that they had insensibly slipped back to their light badinage and gay inconsequences—back to a footing which, strangely, seemed to be already an old footing, familiar, pleasant, and natural to return to.

“Is that Shotover House?” he asked as they came to the crest of the last hillock between them and the sea.

“At last, Mr. Siward,” she said mockingly; “and now your troubles are nearly ended.”

“And yours, Miss Landis?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured to herself, thinking of the telegram with the faintest misgiving.

For she was very young, and she had not had half enough out of life as yet; and besides, her theories and preconceived plans for the safe and sound ordering of her life appeared to lack weight—nay, they were dwindling already into insignificance.

Theory had almost decided her to answer Mr. Quarrier’s suggestion with a ‘Yes.’ However, he was coming from the Lakes in a day or two. She could decide definitely when she had discussed the matter with him.

“I wish that I owned this dog,” observed Siward, as the phaeton entered the macadamised drive.

“I wish so, too,” she said, “but he belongs to Mr. Quarrier.”

CHAPTER II IMPRUDENCE

A house of native stone built into and among weather-scarred rocks, one massive wing butting seaward, others nosing north and south among cedars and outcropping ledges—the whole silver-grey mass of masonry reddening under a westering sun, every dormer, every leaded diamond pane aflame; this was Shotover as Siward first beheld it.

Like the craggy vertebrae of a half-buried fossil splitting the sod, a ragged line of rock rose as a barrier to inland winds; the foreland, set here and there with tiny lawns and pockets of bright flowers, fell away to the cliffs; and here, sheer wet black rocks fronted the eternal battering of the Atlantic.

As the phaeton drew up under a pillared porte-cochere, one or two servants appeared; a rather imposing specimen bowed them through the doors into the hall where, in a wide chimney place, the embers of a drift-wood fire glimmered like a heap of dusty jewels. Bars of sunlight slanted on wall and rug, on stone floor and carved staircase, on the bronze foliations of the railed gallery above, where, in the golden gloom through a high window, sun-tipped tree tops against a sky of azure stirred like burnished foliage in a tapestry.

“There is nobody here, of course,” observed Miss Landis to Siward as they halted in front of the fire-place; “the season opens to-day in this county, you see.” She shrugged her pretty shoulders: “And the women who don’t shoot make the first field-luncheon a function.”

She turned, nodded her adieux, then, over her shoulder, casually: “If you haven’t an appointment with the Sand-Man before dinner you may find me in the gun-room.”

“I’ll be there in about three minutes,” he said; “and what about this dog?”—looking down at the Sagamore pup who stood before him, wagging, attentive, always the gentleman to the tips of his toes.

Miss Landis laughed. “Take him to your room if you like. Dogs have the run of the house.”

So he followed a servant to the floor above where a smiling and very ornamental maid preceded him through a corridor and into that heavy wing of the house which fronted the sea.

“Tea is served in the gun-room, sir,” said the pretty maid, and disappeared to give place to a melancholy and silent young man who turned on the bath, laid out fresh raiment, and whispering, “Scotch or Irish, sir?” presently effaced himself.

Before he quenched his own thirst Siward filled a bowl and set it on the floor, and it seemed as though the dog would never finish gulping and slobbering in the limpid icy water.

“It’s the salt air, my boy,” commented the young man, gravely refilling his own glass as though accepting the excuse on his own account.

Then man and beast completed ablutions and grooming and filed out through the wide corridor, around the gallery, and down the broad stairway to the gun-room—an oaken vaulted place illuminated by the sun, where mellow lights sparkled on glass-cased rows of fowling pieces and rifles, on the polished antlers of shaggy moose heads.

Miss Landis sat curled up in a cushioned corner under the open casement panes, offering herself a cup of tea. She looked up, nodding invitation; he found a place beside her. A servant whispered, “Scotch or Irish, sir,” then set the crystal paraphernalia at his elbow.

He said something about the salt air, casually; the girl gazed meditatively at space.

The sound of wheels on the gravel outside aroused her from a silence which had become a brown study; and, to Siward, presently, she said: “Here endeth our first rendezvous.”

“Then let us arrange another immediately,” he said, stirring the ice in his glass.

The girl considered him with speculative eyes: “I shouldn’t exactly know what to do with you for the next hour if I didn’t abandon you.”

“Why bother to do anything with me? Why even give yourself the trouble of deserting me? That solves the problem.”

“I really don’t mean that you are a problem to me, Mr. Siward,” she said, amused; “I mean that I am going to drive again.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t see at all. There’s a telegram; I’m not driving for pleasure—”

She had not meant that either, and it annoyed her that she had expressed herself in such terms. As a matter of fact, at the telegraphed request of Mr. Quarrier, she was going to Black Fells Crossing to meet his train from the Lakes and drive him back to Shotover. The drive, therefore, was of course a drive for pleasure.

“I see,” repeated Siward amiably.

“Perhaps you do,” she observed, rising to her graceful height. He was on his feet at once, so carelessly, so good-humouredly acquiescent that without any reason at all she hesitated.

“I had meant to show you about—the cliffs—the kennels and stables; I’m sorry,” she concluded, lingering.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he rejoined without meaning anything in particular. That was the trouble, whatever he said, apparently meant so much.

With the agreeable sensation of being regretted, she leisurely gloved herself, then walked through the gun-room and hall, Siward strolling beside her.

The dog followed them as they turned toward the door and passed out across the terraced veranda to the driveway where a Tandem cart was drawn up, faultlessly appointed. Quarrier’s mania was Tandem. She thought it rather nice of her to remember this.

She inspected the ensemble without visible interest for a few moments; the wind freshened from the sea, fluttering her veil, and she turned toward the east to face it. In the golden splendour of declining day the white sails of yachts crowded landward on the last leg before beating westward into Blue Harbour; a small white cruiser, steaming south, left a mile long stratum of rose-tinted smoke hanging parallel to the horizon’s plane; the westering sun struck sparks from her bright-work.

The magic light on land and water seemed to fascinate the girl; she had walked a little way toward the cliffs, Siward following silently, offering no comment on the beauty of sky and cliff. As they halted once more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks, and every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden mound, sprayed with liquid flame.

They had turned their backs to the Tandem; the grooms looked after them, standing motionless at the horses’ heads.

“Mr. Siward, this is too fine to miss,” she said. “I will walk as far as the headland with you.... Please smoke if you care to.”

He did care to; several matches were extinguished by the wind until she spread her skids as a barrier; and kneeling in their shelter he got his light.

“Tobacco smoke diluted with sea breeze is delicious,” she said, as the wind whirled the aromatic smoke of his cigarette up into her face. “Don’t move, Mr. Siward; I like it; there is to me always a faint odour of sweet-brier in the mélange. Did you ever notice it?”

The breeze-blown conversation became fragmentary, veering as capriciously as the purple wind-flaws that spread across the shoals. But always to her question or comment she found in his response the charm of freshness, of quick intelligence, or of a humourous and idle perversity which stimulates without demanding.

Once, glancing back at the house where the T-cart and horses stood, she said that she had better return; or perhaps she only thought she said it, for he made no response that time. And a few moments later they reached the headland, and the Atlantic lay below, flowing azure from horizon to horizon—under a universe of depthless blue. And for a long while neither spoke.

With her the spell endured until conscience began to stir. Then she awoke, uneasy as always, under the shadow of restraint or pressure, until her eyes fell on him and lingered.

A subtle change had come into his face; its leanness struck her for the first time; that, and an utter detachment from his surroundings, a sombre oblivion to everything—and to her.

How curiously had his face altered, how shadowy it had grown, effacing the charm of youth, in it.

The slight amusement with which she had become conscious of her own personal exclusion grew to an interest tinged with curiosity.

The interest continued, but when his silence became irksome to her she said so very frankly. His absent eyes, still clouded, met hers, unsmiling.

“I hate the sea,” he said.

“You—hate it!” she repeated, too incredulous to be disappointed.

“There’s no rest in it; it tires. A man who plays with it must be on his guard every second. To spend a lifetime on it is ridiculous—a whole life of intelligent effort, against perpetual, brutal, inanimate resistance—one endless uninterrupted fight—a ceaseless human manoeuvre against senseless menace; and then the counter attack of the lifeless monster, the bellowing advance, the shock—and no battle won—nothing final, nothing settled, no! only the same eternal nightmare of surveillance, the same sleepless watch for stupid treachery.”

“But—you don’t have to fight it!” she said, astonished.

“No; but it is no secret—what it does to those who do.... Some escape; but only by dying ashore before it gets them. That is the way some of us reach Heaven; we die too quick for the Enemy to catch us.”

He was laughing when she said: “It is not a fight with the sea; it is the battle of Life itself you mean.”

“Yes, in a way, the battle of Life.”

“Oh, you are morbid then. Is there anybody ever born who has not a fight on his hands?”

“No; only I have known men tired out, unfairly, before life had declared war on them.”

“Just what do you mean?”

“Oh, something about fair play—what our popular idol summarises as a ‘square deal’.” He laughed again, easily, his face clearing.

“Nobody worth a square deal ever laments because he hasn’t had it,” she said.

“I dare say that’s true, too,” he admitted listlessly.

“Mr. Siward, exactly what did you mean?”

“I was thinking of men I knew; for example a man who through generations has inherited every impulse and desire that he should not harbour—a man with intellect enough to be aware of it, with decency enough to desire decency.... What chance has he with the storms which have been brewing for him even before he opened his eyes on earth? Is that a square deal?”

The troubled concentration of her face was reflected now in his own; the wind came whipping and flicking at them from league-wide tossing wastes; the steady thunder of the sea accented the silence.

She said: “I suppose everybody has infinite capacity for decency or mischief. I know that I have. And I fancy that this capacity always remains, no matter how moral one’s life may be. ‘Watch and pray’ was not addressed to the guilty alone, Mr. Siward.”

“Oh, yes, of course. As for the balanced capacity for good and evil, how about the inherited desire for the latter?”

“Who is free from that, too? Do you suppose anybody really desires to be good?”

“You mean most people are so afraid not to be, that virtue becomes a habit?”

“Perhaps. It’s a plain business proposition anyway. It pays.”

“Celestial insurance?” he asked, laughing.

“I don’t know, Mr. Siward; do you?”

But he, turning to the sea, had become engrossed in his own thoughts again; and again she was first curious, then impatient at the ease with which he excluded her. She remembered, too, that the cart was waiting; that she had scarcely time now to make the train.

She stood irresolute, inert, disinclined to bestir herself. An inborn aptitude for drifting, which threatened to become a talent for indecision, had always alternated in her with sudden impulsive conclusions; and when her pride was involved, in decisions which sometimes scarcely withstood the analysis of reason.

Physically healthy, mentally unawakened, sentimentally incredulous, totally ignorant of any master passion, and conventionally drilled, her beauty and sweet temper had carried her easily on the frothy crest of her first season, over the eligible and ineligible alike, leaving her at Lenox, a rather tired and breathless girl, in love with pleasure and the world which treated her so well.

The death of her mother abroad had made little impression upon her—her uncle, Major Belwether, having cared for her since her father’s death when she was ten years old. So, although the scandal of her mother’s self-exile had been in a measure condoned by a tardy marriage to the man for whom she had left everything, her daughter had grown up ignorant of any particular feeling for a mother she could scarcely remember.

However, she wore black and went nowhere for the second winter, during which time she learned a great deal concerning the unconventional proclivities of the women of her race and family, enough to impress her so seriously that on an exaggerated impulse she had come to one of her characteristic decisions.

That decision was to break the unsavoury record at the first justifiable opportunity. And the opportunity came in the shape of Quarrier. As though wedlock were actually the sanctuary which an alarmed nation pretends it to be!

Now, approaching the threshold of a third and last season, and having put away her almost meaningless mourning, there had stolen into her sense of security something irksome in the promise she had made to give Quarrier a definite answer before winter.

Perhaps it had been the lack of interest in the people at Shotover, perhaps a mental review of her ancestors’ capricious records—perhaps a characteristic impulse that had directed a telegram to Quarrier after a midnight confab with Grace Ferrall.

However it may have been, she had summoned him. And now he was on his way to get his answer, the best whip, the most eagerly discussed, and one of the wealthiest unmarried men in America.

Lingering irresolutely, considering with idle eyes the shadows lengthening across the sun-shot moorland, the sound of Siward’s even voice aroused her from a meditation bordering on lassitude.

She answered vaguely. He spoke again; all the agreeable, gentle, humourous charm dominant once more—releasing her from the growing tension of her own thoughts, absolving her from the duty of immediate decision.

“I feel curiously lazy,” she said; “perhaps from our long drive.” She seated herself on the turf. “Talk to me, Mr. Siward—in that lazy way of yours.”

What he had to say proved inconsequent enough, an irrelevant suggestion concerning the training of field-dogs for close covert work and the reasons for not breaking such dogs on quail. Then the question of cross-breeding came up, and he gave his opinion on the qualities of “droppers.” To which she replied, sleepily; and the conversation veered again toward the mystery of heredity, and the hopelessness of escape from its laws as illustrated now by the Sagamore pup, galloping nose in the wind, having scented afar the traces of the forbidden rabbit.

“His ancestors turned ‘round and ‘round to flatten the long reeds and grasses in their lairs before lying down,” observed Siward. “He does it, too, where there is nothing to flatten out. Did you ever notice how many times a dog turns around before lying down? And there goes the carefully schooled Sagamore, chasing rabbits! Why? Because his wild ancestors chased rabbits.... Heredity? It’s a steady, unseen, pulling, dragging force. Like lightning, too, it shatters, sometimes, where there is resistance.”

“Do you mean, Mr. Siward, that heredity is an excuse for moral weakness?”

“I don’t know. Those inheriting nothing of evil say it is no excuse.”

“It is no excuse.”

“You speak with authority,” he said.

“With more than you are aware of,” she murmured, not meaning to say it.

She stood up impulsively, her fresh face turned to the distant house, her rounded young figure poised in relief against the sky.

“Inherited or not, idleness, procrastination, are my besetting sins. Can’t you suggest the remedy, Mr. Siward?”

“But they are only the thieves of Time; and we kill the poor old gentleman.”

“Leagued assassins,” she repeated pensively.

Her gown had caught on the cliff briers; he knelt to release it, she looking down, noting an ugly tear in the fabric.

“Payment for my iniquities—the first instalment,” she said, still looking down over his shoulder and watching his efforts to release her. “Thank you, Mr. Siward. I think we ought to start, don’t you?”

He straightened up, smiling, awaiting her further pleasure. Her pleasure being capricious, she seated herself again, saying: “What I meant to say was this: evils that spring from heredity are no excuse for misconduct in people of our sort. Environment, not heredity, counts. And it’s our business, who have every chance in the world, to make good!”

He looked down, amused at the piquant incongruity of voice and vernacular.

“What time is it?” she asked irrelevantly.

He glanced at his watch. She turned her eyes toward the level sun, conscious, and a little conscience-stricken that it was too late for her to drive to Black Fells Crossing—unless she started at once.

The sun hung low over the pines; all the scrubby foreland ran molten gold in every tufted furrow; flock after flock of twittering little birds whirled into the briers and out again, scattering inland into undulating flight.

The zenith turned shell pink; through clotted shoals of clouds spread spaces of palest green like calm lakes in the sky.

It grew stiller; the wind went down with the sun.

Doubtless he had forgotten to tell her the time; she had almost forgotten that she had asked him. With the silence of sunset a languor, the indolence of content, crept over her; she saw him close his watch with the absent-minded air which she already associated with him, and she let the question go from sheer disinclination for the effort of repetition—let the projected drive go—acquiescent, content that matters shape themselves without any interference from her. The sense of ease, of physical well-being invaded her with an agreeable relaxation as though tension somewhere had slackened.

They chatted on, casually, impersonally, in rather subdued tones. The dog returned now and then to see that all was well. All was well enough, it appeared, for she sat beside Siward, quite content, knees clasped in her hands, exchanging impressions of life with a man who so far had been sympathetically considerate in demanding from her no intellectual effort.

The conversation drifted illogically; sometimes he stirred her to amusement, even a hushed laughter; sometimes she smilingly agreed with his views, sometimes she let them go, uncriticised; or, intent on her own ideas, shook her small head in amused disapproval.

The stillness over all, the deepening mellow light, the blessed indolence of the young world—and their few years in it—Youth! That was perhaps the key to it all, after all.

“To-morrow,” she mused aloud, knees cradled in her clasped fingers, “to-morrow they’ll shoot—with great circumstance and fuss—a few native woodcock—there’s no flight yet from the north!—a few grouse, fewer snipe, a stray duck or two. Others will drive motor cars over bad roads; others will ride, sail, golf—anything to kill the eternal enemy.”

“And you?”

“Je n’en sais rien, monsieur.”

“Mais je voudrais savoir.”

“Pourquoi?”

“To lay a true course by the stars”; he looked at her blue eyes and she laughed easily under the laughing flattery.

“You must seek another compass—to-morrow,” she said. Then it occurred to her that nobody could guess her decision in regard to Quarrier; and she partly raised her eyes, looking at him, indolent speculation under the white lids.

She liked him already; in fact she had liked few men as well on such brief acquaintance.

“You know the majority of the people here, or coming, don’t you?” she inquired.

“Who are they?”

She began: “The Leroy Mortimers?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Lord Alderdene and Captain Voucher, and the Page twins and Marion?”

“Yes.”

“Rena Bonnesdel, the Tassel girl, Agatha Caithness, Mrs. Vendenning—all sorts, all sets.” And, with an effort: “If I’m to drive, I should like—to—to know what time it is?”

He informed her; and she, too indolent to pretend surprise, and finding reproach easier, told him that he had no business to permit her to forget.

His smiling serenity under the rebuke aroused in her a slight resentment as though he had taken something for granted.

Besides, she had grown uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train. He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She didn’t exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed, that, contemplating his equitable perfections, her awe and admiration grew as one on whom dawns the exquisite adjustments of an almost human machine.

And, thinking of him now, she again made up her mind to give him the answer which he now had every reason to expect from her. This decision appeared to lubricate her conscience; it ran more smoothly now, emitting fewer creaks.

“You say that you know Mr. Quarrier?” she began thoughtfully.

“Not well.”

“I—hope you will like him, Mr. Siward.”

“I do not think he likes me, Miss Landis. He has reasons not to.”

She looked up, suddenly remembering: “Oh—since that scrape? What has Mr. Quarrier to do—” She did not finish the sentence. A troubled silence followed; she was trying to remember the details—something she had paid small attention to at the time—something so foreign to her, so distant from her comprehension that it had not touched her closely enough for her to remember exactly what this young man might have done to forfeit the good-will of Howard Quarrier.

She looked at Siward; it was impossible that anything very bad could come from such a man. And, pursuing her reasoning aloud: “It couldn’t have been very awful,” she argued; “something foolish about an actress, was it not? And that could not concern Mr. Quarrier.”

“I thought you did know; I thought you—remembered—while you were driving me over from the station—that I was dropped from my club.”

She flushed up: “Oh!—but—what had Mr. Quarrier to do with that?”

“He is a governor of that club.”

“You mean that Mr. Quarrier had you—dropped?”

“What else could he do? A man who is idiot enough to risk making his own club notorious, must take the consequences. And they say I took that risk. Therefore Mr. Quarrier, Major Belwether—all the governors did their duty. I—I naturally conclude that no governor of the Patroons Club feels very kindly toward me.”

Miss Landis sat very still, her small head bent, a flush still brightening her fair face.

She recalled a few of the details now—the scandal—something of the story. Which particular actress it was she could not remember; but some men who had dined too freely had made the wager, and this boy sitting beside her had accepted it—and won it, by bringing into the sacred precincts of the Patroons Club a foolish, shameless girl disguised in a man’s evening dress.

That was bad enough; that somebody promptly discovered it was worse; but worst of all was the publicity, the club’s name smirched, the young man expelled from one of the two best clubs in the metropolis.

To read of such things in the columns of a daily paper had meant little to her except to repell her; to hear it mentioned among people of her own sort had left her incurious and indifferent. But now she saw it in a new light, with the man who had figured in it seated beside her. Did such men as he—such attractive, well-bred, amusing men as he—do that sort of thing?

There he sat, hat off, the sun touching his short, thick hair which waved a little at the temples—a boyish mould to head and shoulders, a cleanly outlined check and chin, a thoroughbred ear set close—a good face. What sort of a man, then, was a woman to feel at ease with? What eye, what mouth, what manner, what bearing was a woman to trust?

“Is that the kind of man you are, Mr. Siward?” she said impulsively.

“It appears that I was; I don’t know what I am—or may be.”

“The pity of it!” she said, still swayed by impulse. “Why did you do—didn’t you know—realize what you were doing—bringing discredit on your own club?”

“I was in no condition to know, Miss Landis.”

The crude brutality of the expression might merely have hurt or disgusted her had she been less intelligent. Nor, as it was, did she fully understand why he chose to use it—unless that he meant it in self-punishment.

“It’s rather shameful!” she said hotly.

“Yes,” he assented; “it’s a bad beginning.”

“A—beginning! Do you mean to go on?”

He did not reply; his head was partly turned from her. She sat silent for a while. The dog had returned to lie at Siward’s feet, its brown eyes tirelessly watching the man it had chosen for its friend; and the man, without turning his eyes, dropped one hand on the dog’s head, caressing the silky ears.

Some sentimentalist had once said that no man who cared for animals could be wholly bad. Inexperience inclined her to believe it. Then too, she had that inclination for overlooking offences committed against precept, which appears to be one of those edifying human traits peculiar to neither sex and common to both. Besides, her knowledge of such matters was as vague as her mind was healthy and body wholesome. Men who dined incautiously were not remarkable for their rarity; the actress habit, being incomprehensible to her, meant nothing; and she said, innocently: “What men like you can find attractive in a common woman I do not understand; there are plenty of pretty women of your own sort. The actress cult is beyond my comprehension; I only know it is generally condoned. But it is not for such things that we drop men, Mr. Siward. You know that, of course.”

“For what do you drop men?”

“For falsehood, deception, any dishonesty.”

“And you don’t drop a man when you read in the papers that one of the two best clubs in town has expelled him?”

She gave him a troubled glance; and, naively: “But you are still a member of the other, are you not?” Then hardening: “It was common! common!—thoroughly disgraceful and incomprehensible!”—and with every word uttered insensibly warming in her heart toward him whom she was chastening; “it was not even bad—it was worse than being simply bad; it was stupid!”

He nodded, one hand slowly caressing the dog’s head where it lay across his knees.

She watched him a moment, hesitated, then smiling a little: “So now I know the worst about you; do I not?” she concluded.

He did not answer; she waited, the smile still curving her red mouth. Had she been too severe? She wondered. “You may help me to my feet,” she said sweetly. She was very young.

He rose at once, holding out his hands to aid her in that pleasantly impersonal manner so suited to him; and now they stood together in the purple dusk of the uplands—two people young enough to take one another seriously.

“Let me tell you something,” she said, facing him, white hands loosely linked behind her. “I don’t exactly understand how it has happened, but you know as well as I do that we have formed a—an acquaintance—the sort that under normal conditions requires a long time and several conventional and preliminary chapters.... I should like to know what you think of our performance.”

“I think,” he said laughing, “that it is charming.”

“Oh, yes; men usually find the unconventional agreeable. What I want to know is why I find it so, too?”

“Do you?” A dull colour stained his cheek-bones.

“Certainly I do. Is it because I’ve had a delightful chance to admonish a sinner—and be—just a little sorry—that he had made such a silly spectacle of himself?”

He laughed, wincing a trifle.

“Hence this agreeably righteous glow suffusing me,” she concluded. “So now that I have answered my own question, I think that we had better go. …Don’t you?”

They walked for a while, subdued, soberly picking their path through the dusk. After a few moments she began to feel doubtful, a little uneasy, partly from a reaction which was natural, partly because she was not at all sure what either Quarrier or Major Belwether would think of the terms she was already on with Siward. Suppose they objected? She had never thwarted either of these gentlemen. Besides she already had a temporary interest in Siward—the interest that women always cherish, quite unconsciously, for the man whose shortcomings they have consented to overlook.

As they crossed the headland, through the deepening dusk the acetylene lamps on a cluster of motor cars spread a blinding light across the scrub. The windows of Shotover House were brilliantly illuminated.

“Our shooting-party has returned,” she said.

They crossed the drive through the white glare of the motor lamps; people were passing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two in shooting-tweeds or khaki.

As they entered the hall together, she turned to him, an indefinable smile curving her lips; then, with a little nod, friendly and sweet, she left him standing at the open door of the gun-room.

CHAPTER III SHOTOVER

The first person he encountered in the gun-room was Quarrier, who favoured him with an expressionless stare, then with a bow, quite perfunctory and non-committal. It was plain enough that he had not expected to meet Siward at Shotover House.

Kemp Ferrall, a dark, stocky, active man of forty, was in the act of draining a glass, when, though the bottom he caught sight of Siward. He finished in a gulp, and advanced, one muscular hand outstretched: “Hello, Stephen! Heard you’d arrived, tried the Scotch, and bolted with Sylvia Landis! That’s all right, too, but you should have come for the opening day. Lots of native woodcock—eh, Blinky?” turning to Lord Alderdene; and again to Siward: “You know all these fellows—Mortimer yonder—” There was the slightest ring in his voice; and Leroy Mortimer, red-necked, bulky, and heavy eyed, emptied his glass and came over, followed by Lord Alderdene blinking madly though his shooting-goggles and showing all his teeth like a pointer with a “tic.” Captain Voucher, a gentleman with the vivid colouring of a healthy groom on a cold day, came up, followed by the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, who shook hands shyly, enchanted to be on easy terms with the notorious Mr. Siward. And last of all Tom O’Hara arrived, reeking of the saddle and clinking a pair of trooper’s spurs over the floor—relics of his bloodless Porto Rico campaign with Squadron A.

It was patent to every man present that the Kemp Ferralls had determined to ignore Siward’s recent foolishness, which indicated that he might reasonably expect the continued good-will of several sets, the orbits of which intersected in the social system of his native city. Indeed, the few qualified to snub him cared nothing about the matter, and it was not likely that anybody else would take the initiative in being disagreeable to a young man, the fortunes and misfortunes of whose race were part of the history of Manhattan Island. Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of course in New York.

So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through his shooting-goggles at everybody.

“These little brown snipe you call woodcock,” he began; “we bagged nine brace, d’you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers—”

“Rotten,” said Mortimer thickly; “Ferrall, you’re all calf and biceps, and it’s well enough for you to go floundering into bogs—”

“Where do you expect to find native woodcock?” demanded Ferrall, laughing.

“On the table hereafter,” growled Mortimer.

“Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank’s tame pheasants,” retorted Ferrall amiably; “Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn’t kicking.”

“Not I,” said Voucher; “the sport is capital—if one can manage to hit the beggars—”

“Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting,” observed Ferrall; “that is, everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack! and,” turning to Alderdene, “it’s like taking money from you, Blinky—which reminds me that we’ve time for a little Preference before dressing.”

His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed knickerbockers and heather-spats. Mortimer, industriously distending his skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter. The aromatic perfume of the spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a servant.

“This salt air keeps one thirsty,” he observed to Ferrall; then something in his host’s expression arrested the glass at his lips. He had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.

He set his glass on the table thoughtfully; a tinge of colour had crept into his lean checks.

Ferrall, too, suddenly uncomfortable, stood up saying something about dressing; several men arose a trifle stiffly, feeling in every joint the result of the first day’s shooting after all those idle months. Mortimer got up with an unfeigned groan; Siward followed, leaving his glass untouched.

One or two other men came in from the billiard-room. All greeted Siward amiably—all excepting one who may not have seen him—an elderly, pink, soft gentleman with white downy chop-whiskers and the profile of a benevolent buck rabbit.

“How do you do, Major Belwether?” said Siward in a low voice without offering his hand.

Then Major Belwether saw him, bless you! yes indeed! And though Siward continued not to offer his hand, Major Belwether meant to have it, bless your heart! And he fussed and fussed and beamed cordiality until he secured it in his plump white fingers and pressed it effusively.

There was something about his soft, warm hands which had always reminded Siward of the temperature and texture of a newly hatched bird. It had been some time since he had shaken hands with Major Belwether; it was apparent that the bird had not aged any.

“And now for the shooting!” said the Major with an arch smile. “Now for the stag at bay and the winding horn—

 
    ‘Where sleeps the moon On Mona’s rill—’
 

Eh, Siward?

 
    ‘And here’s to the hound With his nose upon the ground—’
 

Eh, my boy? That reminds me of a story—” He chuckled and chuckled, his lambent eyes suffused with mirth; and slipping his arm through the pivot-sleeve of Lord Alderdene’s shooting-jacket, hooking the other in Siward’s reluctant elbow, and driving Mortimer ahead of him, he went garrulously away up the stairs, his lordship’s bandy little legs trotting beside him, the soaking gaiters and shoes slopping at every step.

Mortimer, his mottled skin now sufficiently distended, greeted the story with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his listless, pleasant way, and turned off down his corridor, unaware that the Sagamore pup was following close at his heels until he heard Quarrier’s even, colourless voice: “Ferrall, would you be good enough to send Sagamore to your kennels?”

“Oh—he’s your dog! I forgot,” said Siward turning around.

Quarrier looked at him, pausing a moment.

“Yes,” he said coldly, “he’s my dog.”

For a fraction of a second the two men’s eyes encountered; then Siward glanced at the dog, and turned on his heel with the slightest shrug. And that is all there was to the incident—an anxious, perplexed puppy lugged off by a servant, turning, jerking, twisting, resisting, looking piteously back as his unwilling feet slid over the polished floor.

So Siward walked on alone through the long eastern wing to his room overlooking the sea. He sat down on the edge of his bed, glancing at the clothing laid out for him. He felt tired and disinclined for the exertion of undressing. The shades were up; night quicksilvered the window-panes so that they were like a dark mirror reflecting his face. He inspected his darkened features curiously; the blurred and sombre-tinted visage returned the stare.

“Not a man at all—the shadow of a man,” he said aloud—“with no will, no courage—always putting off the battle, always avoiding conclusions, always skulking. What chance is there for a man like that?”

As one who raises a glass to drink wine and unexpectedly finds water, he shrugged his shoulders disgustedly and got up. A bath followed; he dressed leisurely, and was pacing the room, fussing with his collar, when Ferrall knocked and entered, finding a seat on the bed.

“Stephen,” he said bluntly, “I haven’t seen you since that break of yours at the club.”

“Rotten, wasn’t it?” commented Siward, tying his tie.

“Perfectly. Of course it doesn’t make any difference to Grace or to me, but I fancy you’ve already heard from it.”

“Oh, yes. All I care about is how my mother took it.”

“Of course; she was cut up I suppose?”

“Yes, you know how she would look at a thing of that sort; not that any of the nine and seventy jarring sets would care, but those few thousands invading the edges, butting in—half or three-quarters inside—are the people who can’t afford to overlook the victim of a fashionable club’s displeasure—those, and a woman like my mother, and several other decent-minded people who happen to count in town.”

Ferrall, his legs swinging busily, thought again; then: “Who was the girl, Stephen?”

“I don’t think the papers mentioned her name,” said Siward gravely.

“Oh—I beg your pardon; I thought she was some notorious actress—everybody said so.... Who were those callow fools who put you up to it?… Never mind if you don’t care to tell. But it strikes me they are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to face the governors I think—”

“No, I think not.”

Ferrall, legs swinging busily, considered him.

“Too bad,” he mused; “they need not have dropped you—”

“Oh, they had to. But as long as the Lenox takes no action I can live that down.”

Ferrall nodded: “I came in to say something—a message from Grace—confound it! what was it? Oh—could you—before dinner—now—just sit down and with that infernal facility of yours make a sketch of a man chasing a gun-shy dog?”

“Why yes—if Mrs. Ferrall wishes—”

He walked over to the desk in his shirt-sleeves, sat down, drew a blank sheet of paper toward him, and, dipping his pen, drew carelessly a gun-shy setter dog rushing frantically across the stubble, and after him, bare-headed, gun in hand, the maddest of men.

“Put a Vandyke beard on him,” grinned Ferrall over his shoulder. “There! O Lord! but you have hit it! Put a ticked saddle on the cur—there!”

“Who is this supposed to be?” began Siward, looking up. But “Wait!” chuckled his host, seizing the still wet sketch, and made for the door.

Siward strolled into the bath-room, washed a spot or two of ink from his fingers, returned and buttoned his waistcoat, then, completing an unhurried toilet, went out and down the stairway to the big living-room. There were two or three people there—Mrs. Leroy Mortimer, very fetching with her Japanese-like colouring, black hair and eyes that slanted just enough; Rena Bonnesdel, smooth, violet-eyed, blonde, and rather stunning in a peculiarly innocent way; Miss Caithness, very pale and slimly attractive; and the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, delightfully shy and interested, and having a splendid time with any woman who could afford the intellectual leisure.

Siward spoke pleasantly to them all. Other people drifted down—Marion Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant, almost boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of an adolescent.

She gave Siward one pretty sun-browned hand and laid the other above his, holding it a moment in her light clasp.

“Stephen! Stephen!” she said under her breath, “it’s because I’ve a few things to scold you about that I’ve asked you to Shotover.”

“I suppose I know,” he said.

“I should hope you do. I’ve a letter to-night from your mother.”

“From my mother?”

“I want you to go over it—with me—if we can find a minute after dinner.” She released his hand, turning partly around: “Kemp, dinner’s been announced, so cut that dog story in two! Will you give me your arm Major Belwether? Howard!”—to her cousin, Mr. Quarrier, who turned from Miss Landis to listen—“will you please try to recollect whom you are to take in—and do it?” And, as she passed Siward, in a low voice, mischievous and slangy: “Sylvia Landis for yours—as she says she didn’t have enough of you on the cliffs.”

The others appeared to know how to pair according to some previous notice. Siward turned to Sylvia Landis with the pleasure of his good fortune so plainly visible in his face, that her own brightened in response.

“You see,” she said gaily, “you cannot escape me. There is no use in looking wildly at Agatha Caithness”—he wasn’t—“or pretending you’re pleased,” slipping her rounded, bare arm through the arm he offered. “You can’t guess what I’ve done to-night—nobody can guess except Grace Ferrall and one other person. And if you try to look happy beside me, I may tell you—somewhere between sherry and cognac—Oh, yes; I’ve done two things: I have your dog for you!”

“Not Sagamore?” he said incredulously as he was seating her.

“Certainly Sagamore. I said to Mr. Quarrier, ‘I want Sagamore,’ and when he tried to give him to me, I made him take my cheque. Now you may draw another for me at your leisure, Mr. Siward. Tell me, are you pleased?”—for she was looking for the troubled hesitation in his face and she saw it dawning.

“Mr. Quarrier doesn’t like me, you know—”

“But I do,” she said coolly. “I told him how much pleasure it would give me. That is sufficient—is it not?—for everybody concerned.”

“He knew that you meant to—”

“No, that concerns only you and me. Are you trying to spoil my pleasure in what I have done?”

“I can’t take the dog, Miss Landis—”

“Oh,” she said, vexed; “I had no idea you were vindictive—”

There was a silence; he bent forward a trifle, gravely scrutinising a “hand-painted” name card, though it might not have astonished him to learn that somebody’s foot had held the brush. Somewhere in the vicinity Grace Ferrall had discovered a woman who supported dozens of relatives by painting that sort of thing for the summer residents at Vermillion Point down the coast. So being charitable she left an order, and being thrifty, insisted on using the cards, spite of her husband’s gibes.

People were now inspecting them with more or less curiosity; Siward found his “hand-painting” so unattractive that he had just tipped it over to avoid seeing it, when a burst of laughter from Lord Alderdene made everybody turn. Mrs. Vendenning was laughing; so was Rena Bonnesdel looking over Quarrier’s shoulder at a card he was holding—not one of the “hand-decorated,” but a sheet of note-paper containing a drawing of a man rushing after a gun-shy dog.

The extraordinary cackling laughter of his lordship obliterated other sounds for a while; Rena Bonnesdel possessed herself of the drawing and held it up amid a shout of laughter. And, to his excessive annoyance, Siward saw that, unconsciously, he had caricatured Quarrier—Ferrall’s malicious request for a Vandyke beard making the caricature dreadfully apparent.

Quarrier had at first flushed up; then he forced a smile; but his symmetrical features were never cordial when he smiled.

“Who on earth did that?” whispered Sylvia Landis apprehensively. “Mr. Quarrier dislikes that sort of thing—but of course he’ll take it well.”

“Did he ever chase his own dog?” asked Siward, biting his lip.

“Yes—so Blinky says—in the Carolinas last season. It’s Blinky!—that’s his notion of humour. Did you ever hear such a laugh? No wonder Mr. Quarrier is annoyed.”

The gay uproar had partly subsided, renewed here and there as the sketch was passed along, and finally, making the circle, returned like a bad penny to Quarrier. He smiled again, symmetrically, as he received it, nodding his compliments to Alderdene.

“Oh, no,” cackled his lordship; “I didn’t draw it, old chap!”

“Nor I! I only wish I could,” added Captain Voucher.

“Nor I—nor I—who did it?” ran the chorus along the table.

“I didn’t do it!” said Sylvia gravely, looking across at Quarrier. And suddenly Quarrier’s large, handsome eyes met Siward’s for the briefest fraction of a second, then were averted. But into his face there crept an expressionless pallor that did not escape Siward—no, nor Sylvia Landis.

Presently under cover of a rapid fire of chatter she said: “Did you draw that?”

“Yes; I had no idea it was meant for him. You may imagine how likely I’d be to take any liberty with a man who already dislikes me.”

“But it resembles him—in a very dreadful way.”

“I know it. You must take my word for what I have told you.”

She looked up at him: “I do.” Then: “It’s a pity; Mr. Quarrier does not consider such things humourous. He—he is very sensitive.... Oh, I wish that fool Englishman had been in Ballyhoo!”

“But he didn’t do it!”

“No, but he put you up to it—or Grace Ferrall did. I wish Grace would let Mr. Quarrier alone; she has always been perfectly possessed to plague him; she seems unable to take him seriously and he simply hates it. I don’t think he’d tolerate her if she were not his cousin.

“I’m awfully sorry,” was all Siward said; and for a while he gloomily busied himself with whatever was brought to him.

“Don’t look that way,” came a low voice beside him.

“Do I show everything as plainly as that?” he asked, curiously.

“I seem to read you—sometimes.”

“It’s very nice of you,” he said.

“Nice?”

“To look at me—now and then.”

“Oh,” she cried resentfully, “don’t be grateful.”

“I—really am not you know,” he said laughing.

“That,” she rejoined slowly, “is the truth. You say conventional things in a manner—in an agreeably personal manner that interests women. But you are not grateful to anybody for anything; you are indifferent, and you can’t help being nice to people, so—some day—some girl will think you are grateful, and will have a miserable time of it.”

“Miserable time?”

“Waiting for you to say what never will enter your head to say.”

“You mean I—I—”

“Flirt? No, I mean that you don’t flirt; that you are always dreamily occupied with your own affairs, from which listlessly congenial occupation, when drawn, you are so unexpectedly nice that a girl immediately desires to see how nice you can be.”

“What a charming indictment you draw!” he said, amused.

“It’s a grave one I assure you. I’ve been talking about you to Grace Ferrall; I asked to be placed beside you at dinner; I told her I hadn’t had half enough of you on the cliff. Now what do you think of yourself for being too nice to a susceptible girl? I think it’s immoral.”

They both were laughing now; several people glanced at them, smiling in sympathy. Alderdene took that opportunity to revert to the sketch, furnishing a specimen of his own inimitable laughter as a running accompaniment to the story of Quarrier and his dog in North Carolina, until he had everybody, as usual, laughing, not at the story but at him. All of which demonstration was bitterly offensive to Quarrier. He turned his eyes once on Miss Landis and on Siward, then dropped them.

The hostess arose; a rustle and flurry of silk and lace and the scraping of chairs, a lingering word or laugh, and the colour vanished from the room leaving a circle of men in black standing around the table.

Here and there a man, lighting a cigarette, bolted his coffee and cognac and strolled out to the gun-room. Ferrall, gesticulating vigorously, resumed his preprandial dog story to Captain Voucher; Belwether buttonholed Alderdene and bored him with an interminably facetious tale until that nobleman, threatened with maxillary dislocation, fairly wrenched himself loose and came over to Siward, squinting furiously.

“Old ass!” he muttered; “his chop whiskers look like the chops of a Southdown ram—and he’s got the wits of one. Look here, Stephen, I hear you fell into no end of a scrape in town—”

“Tu quoque, Blinky? Oh, read the newspapers and let it go at that!”

“Just as you like old chap!” returned his lordship unabashed. “All I meant was—anything Voucher and I can do—of course—”

“You’re very good. I’m not dead you know.”

“‘Not dead, you know’,” repeated Major Belwether coming up behind them with his sprightly step; “that reminds me of a good one—” He sat down and lighted a cigar, then, vainly attempting to control his countenance as though roguishly anticipating the treat awaiting them, he began another endless story.

Tradition had hallowed the popular notion that Major Belwether was a wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he was very wealthy.

Siward watched him with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his listener’s overwhelming hilarity.

The Page boys, very callow, very much delighted, and a little in awe of such a celebrated personage, laughed heartily. And altogether there was sufficient attention and sufficient laughter to make a very respectable noise. This, being the major’s cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar too masculine and mighty for the ears of such a sex.

“Ass!” muttered Alderdene, getting up and pattering about the room in his big, shiny pumps. “Give me a peg—somebody!”

Mortimer swallowed his brandy, lingered, lifted the decanter, mechanically considering its remaining contents and his own capacity; then:

“Bridge, Captain?”

“Certainly,” said Captain Voucher briskly.

“I’ll go and shoo the major into the gun-room,” observed Ferrall—“unless—” looking questioningly at Siward.

“I’ve a date with your wife,” observed that young man, strolling toward the hall.

The Page boys, Rena Bonnesdel, and Eileen Shannon were seated at a card table together, very much engaged with one another, the sealed pack lying neglected on the green cloth, a vast pink box of bon-bons beside it, not neglected.

O’Hara and Quarrier with Marion Page and Mrs. Mortimer were immersed in the game, already stony faced and oblivious to outer sounds.

About the rooms were distributed girls en tête-à-tête, girls eating bon-bons and watching the cards—among them Sylvia Landis, hands loosely clasped behind her, standing at Quarrier’s elbow to observe and profit by an expert performance.

As Siward strolled in she raised her dainty head for an instant, smiled in silence, and resumed a study of her fiancé’s game.

A moment later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the mêlée, she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe the brilliancy of Mr. Quarrier’s game.

But Siward, outside on the veranda, was saying at that moment to his hostess: “I shall be very glad to read my mother’s letter at any time you choose.”

“It must be later, Stephen. I’m to cut in when Kemp sends for me. He has a lot of letters to attend to.... Tell me, what do you think of Sylvia Landis?”

“I like her, of course,” he replied pleasantly.

Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: “That sketch you made proved a great success, didn’t it?” And she laughed under her breath.

“Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed—”

“Really? What a muff that cousin of mine is. He’s such a muff, you know, that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up.”

“I don’t think you’d best use me for the stick next time,” said Siward. “He’s not my cousin you know.”

Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: “By the way”—she said curiously—“who was that girl?”

“What girl,” he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her boyish sunburn and freckles.

“You won’t tell me I suppose?”

“I’m sorry—”

“Was she pretty, Stephen?”

“Yes,” he said sulkily; “I wish you wouldn’t—”

“Nonsense! Do you think I’m going to let you off without some sort of confession? If I had time now—but I haven’t. Kemp has business letters: he’ll be furious; so I’ve got to take his cards or we won’t have any pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes.”

She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.

“You minx!” she whispered; “aren’t you ashamed?”

“Very much, dear. What for?” And catching sight of Siward outside in the starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess’ meaning, for she laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.

“You don’t suppose for a moment,” she began, “that I have—”

“Yes I do. You always do.”

“Not with that sort of man,” she returned naïvely; “he won’t.”

Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: “You always pick out exactly the wrong man to play with—”

They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess’ arm linked in the arm of the younger girl.

“The wrong man?” repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her straight brows beginning to bend inward.

“I didn’t mean that—exactly. You know how much I care for his mother—and for him.” The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the narrowing blue gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.

“What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?” she asked.

“Nothing. There was an affair—”

“This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?”

“Yes—for the present,” replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: “For goodness’ sake, Sylvia, don’t cross examine me that way! I care a great deal for that boy—”

“So do I. I’ve made him take my dog.”

There was an abrupt pause, and presently Mrs. Ferrall began to laugh.

“I mean it—really,” said Sylvia quietly; “I like him immensely.”

“Dearest, you mean it generously—with your usual exaggeration. You have heard that he has been foolish, and because he’s so young, so likable, every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to—to be nice to him—”

“And if that were—”

“There is no harm, dear—” Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: “It’s rather pathetic,” she said in a low voice. “Kemp thinks he’s foredoomed—like all the Siwards. It’s an hereditary failing with him,—no, it’s hereditary damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know—” She bit her lip, thinking a moment. “His grandfather was a friend of my grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and—doomed! His own father was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had wandered when stupefied—a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that outbreak of Stephen’s means to those whose families have been New Yorkers since New York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous—it means that the master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall never, never admit it to his mother.”

The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder’s gaze was upon her, but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.

“Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line,” said Mrs. Ferrall thoughtfully. “The main thing is to keep him among people, not to drop him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident, happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary, there’s not a chance in the world for him.... It’s a pity. I know he meant to make himself the exception to the rule—and look! Already one carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!”

Sylvia flushed and looked up: “Grace, may I ask you a plain question?”

“Yes, child,” she answered absently.

“Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches me very closely?”

Mrs. Ferrall’s wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.

“You—you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?”

“Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity—the danger of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done—before I came into the world they found so amusing.”

“I told you several things,” returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. “Your uncle thought it best for you to know.”

“Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather. In fact,” she added coolly, “where the women of my race loved they usually found the way—rather unconventionally. There was, if I understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I might care to claim—”

“Sylvia!”

The girl lifted her pretty bare shoulders. “I’m sorry, but could I help it? Very well; all I can do is to prove a decent exception. Very well; I’m doing it, am I not?—practically scared into the first solidly suitable marriage offered—seizing the unfortunate Howard with both hands for fear he’d get away and leave me alone with only a queer family record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why everybody, in my case, didn’t go about with sanctimonious faces and dolorous mien repeating: ‘Her grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away. Poor child, she’s doomed! doomed!’”

“Sylvia, I—”

“Yes—why didn’t they? That’s the way they talk about that boy out there!” She swept a rounded arm toward the veranda.

“Yes, but he has already broken loose, while you—”

“So did I—nearly! Had it not been for you, you know well enough I might have run away with that dreadful Englishman at Newport! For I adored him—I did! I did! and you know it. And look at my endless escapes from compromising myself! Can you count them?—all those indiscretions when mere living seemed to intoxicate me that first winter—and only my uncle and you to break me in!”

“In other words,” said Mrs. Ferrall slowly, “you don’t think Mr. Siward is getting what is known as a square deal?”

“No, I don’t. Major Belwether has already hinted—no, not even that—but has somehow managed to dampen my pleasure in Mr. Siward.”

Mrs. Ferrall considered the girl beside her—now very lovely and flushed in her suppressed excitement.

“After all,” she said, “you are going to marry somebody else. So why become quite so animated about a man you may never again see?”

“I shall see him if I desire to!”

“Oh!”

“I am not taking the black veil, am I?” asked the girl hotly.

“Only the wedding veil, dear. But after all your husband ought to have something to suggest concerning a common visiting list—”

“He may suggest—certainly. In the meantime I shall be loyal to my own friends—and afterward, too,” she murmured to herself, as her hostess rose, calmly dropping care like a mantle from her shoulders.

“Go and be good to this poor young man then; I adore rows—and you’ll have a few on your hands I’ll warrant. Let me remind you that your uncle can make it unpleasant for you yet, and that your amiable fiancé has a will of his own under his pompadour and silky beard.”

“What a pity to have it clash with mine,” said the girl serenely.

Mrs. Ferrall looked at her: “Mercy on us! Howard’s pompadour would stick up straight with horror if he could hear you! Don’t be silly; don’t for an impulse, for a caprice, break off anything desirable on account of a man for whom you really care nothing—whose amiable exterior and prospective misfortune merely enlist a very natural and generous sympathy in you.”

“Do you suppose that I shall endure interference from anybody?—from my uncle, from Howard?”

“Dear, you are making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Don’t be emotional; don’t let loose impulses that you and I know about, knew about in our school years, know all about now, and which you and I have decided must be eliminated—”

“You mean subdued; they’ll always be there.”

“Very well; who cares, as long as you have them in leash?”

Looking at one another, the excited colour cooling in the younger girl’s cheeks, they laughed, one with relief, the other a little ashamed.

“Kemp will be furious; I simply must cut in!” said Mrs. Ferrall, hastily turning toward the gun-room. Miss Landis looked after her, subdued, vaguely repentant, the consciousness dawning upon her that she had probably made considerable conversation about nothing.

“It’s been so all day,” she thought impatiently; “I’ve exaggerated; I’ve worked up a scene about a man whose habits are not the slightest concern of mine. Besides that I’ve neglected Howard shamefully!” She was walking slowly, her thoughts outstripping her errant feet, but it seemed that neither her thoughts nor her steps were leading her toward the neglected gentleman within; for presently she found herself at the breezy veranda door, looking rather fixedly at the stars.

The stars, shining impartially upon the just and the unjust, illuminated the person of Siward, who sat alone, rather limply, one knee crossed above the other. He looked up by chance, and, seeing her star-gazing in the doorway, straightened out and rose to his feet.

Aware of him apparently for the first time, she stepped across the threshold meeting his advance half-way.

“Would you care to go down to the rocks?” he asked. “The surf is terrific.”

“No—I don’t think I care—”

They stood listening a moment to the stupendous roar.

“A storm somewhere at sea,” he concluded.

“Is it very fine—the surf?”

“Very fine—and very relentless—” he laughed; “it is an unfriendly creature, the sea, you know.”

She had begun to move toward the cliffs, he fell into step beside her; they spoke little, a word now and then.

The perfume of the mounting sea saturated the night with wild fragrance; dew lay heavy on the lawns; she lifted her skirts enough to clear the grass, heedless that her silk-shod feet were now soaking. Then at the cliffs’ edge, as she looked down into the white fury of the surf, the stunning crash of the ocean saluted her.

For a long while they watched in silence; once she leaned a trifle too far over the star-lit gulf and, recoiling, involuntarily steadied herself on his arm.

“I suppose,” she said, “no swimmer could endure that battering.”

“Not long.”

“Would there be no chance?”

“Not one.”

She bent farther outward, fascinated, stirred, by the splendid frenzy of the breakers.

“I—think—,” he began quietly; then a firm hand fell over her left hand; and, half encircled by his arm she found herself drawn back. Neither spoke; two things she was coolly aware of, that, urged, drawn by something subtly irresistible she had leaned too far out from the cliff, and would have leaned farther had he not taken matters into his own keeping without apology. Another thing; the pressure of his hand over hers remained a sensation still—a strong, steady, masterful imprint lacking hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though her hand still tightened under his—and she was conscious, too, that nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no tremor of instinctive recoil. For never before had she touched or suffered a touch from a man, even a gloved greeting, that had not in some measure subtly repelled her, nor, for that matter, a caress from a woman without a reaction of faint discomfort.

“Was I in any actual danger?” she asked curiously.

“I think not. But it was too much responsibility for me.”

“I see. Any time I wish to break my neck I am to please do it alone in future.”

“Exactly—if you don’t mind,” he said smiling.

They turned, shoulder to shoulder, walking back through the drenched herbage.

“That,” she said impulsively, “is not what I said a few moments ago to a woman.”

“What did you say a few moments ago to a woman?”

“I said, Mr. Siward, that I would not leave a—a certain man to go to the devil alone!”

“Do you know any man who is going to the devil?”

“Do you?” she asked, letting herself go swinging out upon a tide of intimacy she had never dreamed of risking—nor had she the slightest idea whither the current would carry her.

They had stopped on the lawn, ankle deep in wet grass, the stars overhead sparkling magnificently, and in their ears the outcrash of the sea.

“You mean me,” he concluded.

“Do I?”

He looked up into the lovely face; her eyes were very sweet, very clear—clear with excitement—but very friendly.

“Let us sit here on the steps a little while, will you?” she asked.

So he found a place beside her, one step lower, and she leaned forward, elbows on knees, rounded white chin in her palms, the starlight giving her bare arms and shoulders a marble lustre and tinting her eyes a deeper amethyst.

And now, innocently untethered, mission and all, she laid her heart quite bare—one chapter of it. And, like other women-errant who believe in the influence of their sex individually and collectively, she began wrong by telling him of her engagement—perhaps to emphasise her pure disinterestedness in a crusade for principle only. Which naturally dampened in him any nascent enthusiasm for being ministered to, and so preoccupied him that he turned deaf ears to some very sweet platitudes which might otherwise have impressed him as discoveries in philosophy.

Officially her creed was the fashionable one in town; privately she had her own religion, lacking some details truly enough, but shaped upon youthful notions of right and wrong. As she had not read very widely, she supposed that she had discovered this religion for herself; she was not aware that everybody else had passed that way—it being the first immature moult in young people after rejecting dogma.

And the ripened fruit of all this philosophy she helpfully dispensed for Siward’s benefit as bearing directly on his case.

Had he not been immersed in the unexpected proposition of her impending matrimony, he might have been impressed, for the spell of her beauty counted something, and besides, he had recently formulated for himself a code of ethics, tinctured with Omar, and slightly resembling her own discoveries in that dog-eared science.

So it was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired—nay in the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living, that his reasonings found voice in the material comment:

“I never imagined you were engaged!”

“Is that what you have been thinking about?” she asked, innocently astonished.

“Yes. Why not? I never for one instant supposed—”

“But, Mr. Siward, why should you have concerned yourself with supposing anything? Why indulge in any speculation of that sort about me?”

“I don’t know, but I didn’t,” he said.

“Of course you didn’t; you’d known me for about three hours—there on the cliff—”

“But—Quarrier—!”

Over his youthful face a sullen shadow had fallen—flickering, not yet settled. He would not for anything on earth have talked freely to the woman destined to be Quarrier’s wife. He had talked too much anyway. Something in her, something about her had loosened his tongue. He had made a plain ass of himself—that was all,—a garrulous ass. And truly it seemed that the girl beside him, even in the starlight, could follow and divine what he had scarcely expressed to himself; or her instincts had taken a shorter cut to forestall his own conclusion.

“Don’t think the things you are thinking!” she said in a fierce little voice, leaning toward him.

“What do you mean?” he asked, taken aback.

“You know! Don’t! It is unfair—it is—is faithless—to me. I am your friend; why not? Does it make any difference to you whom I marry? Cannot two people remain in accord anyway? Their friendship concerns each other and—nobody else!” She was letting herself go now; she was conscious of it, conscious that impulse and emotion were the currents unloosed and hurrying her onward. And with it all came exhilaration, a faint intoxication, a delicate delight in daring to let go all and trust to impulse and emotions.

“Why should you feel hurt because for a moment you let me see—gave me a glimpse of yourself—of life’s battle as you foresee it? What if there is always a reaction from all confidences exchanged? What if that miserable French cynic did say that never was he more alone than after confessing to a friend? He died crazy anyhow. Is not a rare moment of confidence worth the reaction—the subsidence into the armored shell of self? Tell me truly, Mr. Siward, isn’t it?”

Breathless, confused, exhilarated by her own rapid voice she bent her face, brilliant with colour, and very sweet; and he looked up into it, expectant, uncertain.

“If such a friendship as ours is to become worth anything to you—to me, why should it trouble you that I know—and am thinking of things that concern you? Is it because the confidence is one-sided? Is it because you have given and I have listened and given nothing in return to balance the account? I do give—interest, deep interest, sympathy if you ask it; I give confidence in return—if you desire it!”

“What can a girl like you need of sympathy?” he said smiling.

“You don’t know! you don’t know! If heredity is a dark vista, and if you must stare through it all your life, sword in hand, always on your guard, do you think you are the only one?”

“Are you—one?” he said incredulously.

“Yes”—with an involuntary shudder—“not that way. It is easier for me; I think it is—I know it is. But there are things to combat—impulses, a recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort—never even deep emotion.”

“You are in love!”

“Yes, thoroughly,” she added with conviction, “but not violently. I—” she hesitated, stopped short, leaning forward, peering at him through the dusk; and: “Mr. Siward! are you laughing?” She rose and he stood up instantly.

There was lightning in her darkening eyes now; in his something that glimmered and danced. She watched it, fascinated, then of a sudden the storm broke and they were both laughing convulsively, face to face there under the stars.

“Mr. Siward,” she breathed, “I don’t know what I am laughing at; do you? Is it at you? At myself? At my poor philosophy in shreds and tatters? Is it some infernal mirth that you seem to be able to kindle in me—for I never knew a man like you before?”

“You don’t know what you were laughing at?” he repeated. “It was something about love—”

“No I don’t know why I laughed! I—I don’t wish to, Mr. Siward. I do not desire to laugh at anything you have made me say—anything you may infer—”

“I don’t infer—”

“You do! You made me say something—about my being ignorant of deep, of violent emotion, when I had just informed you that I am thoroughly, thoroughly in love—”

“Did I make you say all that, Miss Landis?”

“You did. Then you laughed and made me laugh too. Then you—”

“What did I do then?” he asked, far too humbly.

“You—you infer that I am either not in love or incapable of it, or too ignorant of it to know what I’m talking about. That, Mr. Siward, is what you have done to me to-night.”

“I—I’m sorry—”

“Are you?”

“I ought to be anyway,” he said.

It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.

“How can you laugh!” she said. “How dare you! I don’t care for you nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly—too intimately. There is too much mockery in you—” She ceased suddenly, watching the sombre alteration of his face; and, “Have I hurt you?” she asked penitently.

“No.”

“Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it.” The attitude, the words, slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment’s silence, stirred him.

“I’m rather ignorant myself of violent emotion,” he said. “I suspect normal people are. You know better than I do whether love is usually a sedative.”

“Am I normal—after what I have confessed?” she asked. “Can’t love be well-bred?”

“Perfectly I should say—only perhaps you are not an expert—”

“In what?”

“In self-analysis, for example.”

There was a vague meaning in the gaze they exchanged.

“As for our friendship, we’ll do the best we can for it, no matter what occurs,” he added, thinking of Quarrier. And, thinking of him, glanced up to see him within ear-shot and moving straight toward them from the veranda above.

There was a short silence; a tentative civil word from Siward; then Miss Landis took command of something that had a grotesque resemblance to a situation. A few minutes later they returned slowly to the house, the girl walking serenely between Siward and her preoccupied affianced.

“If your shoes are as wet as my skirts and slippers you had better change, Mr. Siward,” she said, pausing at the foot of the staircase.

So he took his congé, leaving her standing there with Quarrier, and mounted to his room.

In the corridor he passed Ferrall, who had finished his business correspondence and was returning to the card-room.

“Here’s a letter that Grace wants you to see,” he said. “Read it before you turn in, Stephen.”

“All right; but I’ll be down later,” replied Siward passing on, the letter in his hand. Entering his room he kicked off his wet pumps and found dry ones. Then moved about, whistling a gay air from some recent vaudeville, busy with rough towels and silken foot-gear, until, reshod and dry, he was ready to descend once more.

The encounter, the suddenly informal acquaintance with this young girl had stirred him agreeably, leaving a slight exhilaration. Even her engagement to Quarrier added a tinge of malice to his interest. Besides he was young enough to feel the flattery of her concern for him—of her rebuke, of her imprudence, her generous emotional and childish philosophy.

Perhaps, as like recognises like, he recognised in her the instincts of the born drifter, momentarily at anchor—the temporary inertia of the opportunist, the latent capacity of an unformed character for all things and anything. Add to these her few years, her beauty, and the wholesome ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank, and unworldly friendliness for himself.

Not that he objected to her marrying Quarrier; he rather admired her for being able to do it, considering the general scramble for Quarrier. But let that take care of itself; meanwhile, their sudden and capricious intimacy had aroused him from the morbid reaction consequent upon the cheap notoriety which he had brought upon himself. Let him sponge his slate clean and begin again a better record, flattered by the solicitude she had so prettily displayed.

Whistling under his breath the same gay, empty melody, he opened the top drawer of his dresser, dropped in his mother’s letter, and locking the drawer, pocketed the key. He would have time enough to read the letter when he went to bed; he did not just now feel exactly like skimming through the fond, foolish sermon which he knew had been preached at him through his mother’s favourite missionary, Grace Ferrall. What was the use of dragging in the sad old questions again—of repeating his assurances of good behaviour, of reiterating his promises of moderation and watchfulness, of explaining his own self-confidence? Better that the letter await his bed time—his prayers would be the sincerer the fresher the impression; for he was old-fashioned enough to say the prayers that an immature philosophy proved superfluous. For, he thought, if prayer is any use, it takes only a few minutes to be on the safe side.

So he went down-stairs leisurely, prepared to acquiesce in any suggestion from anybody, but rather hoping to saunter across Sylvia Landis’ path before being committed.

She was standing beside the fire with Quarrier, one foot on the fender, apparently too preoccupied to notice him; so he strolled into the gun-room, which was blue with tobacco smoke and aromatic with the volatile odours from decanters.

There were a few women there, and the majority of the men. Lord Alderdene, Major Belwether, and Mortimer were at a table by themselves; stacks of ivory chips and five cards spread in the centre of the green explained the nature of their game; and Mortimer, raising his heavy inflamed eyes and seeing Siward unoccupied, said wheezily: “Cut out that ‘widow,’ and give Siward his stack! Anything above two pairs for a jack triples the ante. Come on, Siward, there’s a decent chap!”

So he seated himself for a sacrifice to the blind goddess balanced upon her winged wheel; and the cards ran high—so high that stacks dwindled or toppled within the half-hour, and Mortimer grew redder and redder, and Major Belwether blander and blander, and Alderdene’s face wore a continual nervous snicker, showing every white hound’s tooth, and the ice in the tall glasses clinked ceaselessly.

It was late when Quarrier “sat in,” with an expressionless acknowledgment of Siward’s presence, and an emotionless raid upon his neighbour’s resources with the first hand dealt, in which he participated without drawing a card.

And always Siward, eyes on his cards, seemed to see Quarrier before him, his overmanicured fingers caressing his silky beard, the symmetrical pompadour dark and thick as the winter fur on a rat, tufting his smooth blank forehead.

It was very late when Siward first began to be aware of his increasing deafness, the difficulty, too, that he had in making people hear, the annoying contempt in Quarrier’s woman-like eyes. He felt that he was making a fool of himself, very noiselessly somehow—but with more racket than he expected when he miscalculated the distance between his hand and a decanter.

It was time for him to go—unless he chose to ask Quarrier for an explanation of that sneer which he found distasteful. But there was too much noise, too much laughter.

Besides he had a matter to attend to—the careful perusal of his mother’s letter to Mrs. Ferrall.

Very white, he rose. After an indeterminate interval he found himself entering his room.

The letter was in the dresser; several things seemed to fall and break, but he got the letter, sank down on the bed’s edge and strove to read,—set his teeth grimly, forcing his blurred eyes to a focus. But he could make nothing of it—nor of his toilet either, nor of Ferrall, who came in on his way to bed having noticed the electricity still in full glare over the open transom, and who straightened out matters for the stunned man lying face downward across the bed, his mother’s letter crushed in his nerveless hand.

CHAPTER IV THE SEASON OPENS

Breakfast at Shotover, except for the luxurious sluggards to whom trays were sent, was served in the English fashion—any other method or compromise being impossible.

Ferrall, reasonable in most things, detested customs exotic, and usually had an Englishman or two about the house to tell them so, being unable to jeer in any language except his own. Which is partly why Alderdene and Voucher were there. And this British sideboard breakfast was a concession wrung from him through force of sheer necessity, although the custom had already become practically universal in American country houses where guests were entertained.

But at the British breakfast he drew the line. No army of servants, always in evidence, would he tolerate, either; no highly ornamented human bric-à-brac decorating halls and corners; no exotic pheasants hustled into covert and out again; no fusillade at the wretched, frightened, bewildered aliens dumped by the thousand into unfamiliar cover and driven toward the guns by improvised beaters.

“We walk up our game or we follow a brace of good dogs in this white man’s country,” he said with unnecessary emphasis whenever his bad taste and his wife’s absence gave him an opportunity to express to the casual foreigner his personal opinions on field sport. “You’ll load your own guns and you’ll use your own legs if you shoot with me; and your dogs will do their own retrieving, too. And if anybody desires a Yankee’s opinion on shooting driven birds from rocking-chairs or potting tame deer from grand-stands, they can have it right now!”

Usually nobody wanted his further opinion; and sometimes they got it and sometimes not, if his wife was within earshot. Otherwise Ferrall appeared to be a normal man, energetically devoted to his business, his pleasures, his friends, and comfortably in love with his wife. And if some considered his vigour in business to be lacking in mercy, that vigour was always exercised within the law. He never transgressed the rules of war, but his headlong energy sometimes landed him close to the dead line. He had already breakfasted, when the earliest risers entered the morning room to saunter about the sideboards and investigate the simmering contents of silver-covered dishes on the warmers.

The fragrance of coffee was pleasantly perceptible; men in conventional shooting attire roamed about the room, selected what they cared for, and carried it to the table. Mrs. Mortimer was there consuming peaches that matched her own complexion; Marion Page, always more congruous in field costume and belted jacket than in anything else, and always, like her own hunters, minutely groomed, was preparing a breakfast for her own consumption with the leisurely precision characteristic of her whether in the saddle, on the box, or grassing her brace of any covey that ever flushed.

Captain Voucher and Lord Alderdene discussed prospects between bites, attentive to the monosyllabic opinions of Miss Page. Her twin brothers, Gordon and Willis, shyly consuming oatmeal, listened respectfully and waited on their sister at the slightest lifting of her thinly arched eyebrows.

Into this company sauntered Siward, apparently no worse for wear. For as yet the Enemy had set upon him no proprietary insignia save a rather becoming pallor and faint bluish shadows under the eyes. He strolled about, exchanging amiable greetings, and presently selected a chilled grape fruit as his breakfast. Opposite him Mortimer, breakfasting upon his own dreadful bracer of an apple soaked in port, raised his heavy inflamed eyes with a significant leer at the iced grape fruit. For he was always ready to make room upon his own level for other men; but the wordless grin and the bloodshot welcome were calmly ignored, for as yet that freemasonry evoked no recognition from the pallid man opposite, whose hands were steady as though that morning’s sun had wakened him from pleasant dreams.

“The most difficult shot in the world,” Alderdene was explaining, “is an incoming pheasant, sailing on a slant before a gale.”

“A woodcock in alders doing a jack-snipe twist is worse,” grunted Mortimer, drenching another apple in port.

“Yes,” said Miss Page tersely.

“Or a depraved ruffed cock-grouse in the short pines; isn’t that the limit?” asked Mortimer of Siward.

But Siward only shrugged his comment and glanced out through the leaded casements into the brilliant September sunshine.

Outside he could see Major Belwether, pink skinned, snowy chop whiskers brushed rabbit fashion, very voluble with Sylvia Landis, who listened absently, head partly averted. Quarrier in tweeds and gaiters, his morning cigar delicately balanced in his gloved fingers, strolled near enough to be within ear-shot; and when Sylvia’s inattention to Major Belwether’s observations became marked to the verge of rudeness, he came forward and spoke. But whatever it was that he said appeared to change her passive inattention to quiet displeasure, for, as Siward rose from the table, he saw her turn on her heel and walk slowly toward a group of dogs presided over by some kennel men and gamekeepers.

She was talking to the head gamekeeper when he emerged from the house, but she saw him on the terrace and gave him a bright nod of greeting, so close to an invitation that he descended the stone steps and crossed the dew-wet lawn.

“I am asking Dawson to explain just exactly what a ‘Shotover Drive’ resembles,” she said, turning to include Siward in an animated conference with the big, scraggy, head keeper. “You know, Mr. Siward, that it is a custom peculiar to Shotover House to open the season with what is called a Shotover Drive?”

“I heard Alderdene talking about it,” he said, smilingly inspecting the girl’s attire of khaki with its buttoned pockets, gun pads, and Cossack cartridge loops, and the tan knee-kilts hanging heavily pleated over gaiters and little thick-soled shoes. He had never cared very much to see women afield, for, in a rare case where there was no affectation, there was something else inborn that he found unpleasant—something lacking about a woman who could take life from frightened wild things, something shocking that a woman could look, unmoved, upon a twitching, blood-soiled heap of feathers at her feet.

Meanwhile Dawson, dog-whip at salute, stood knee deep among his restless setters, explaining the ceremony with which Mr. Ferrall ushered in the opening of each shooting season:

“It’s our own idee, Miss Landis,” he said proudly; “onc’t a season Mr. Ferrall and his guests likes it for a mixed bag. ‘Tis a sort of picnic, Miss; the guns is in pairs, sixty yards apart in line, an’ the rules is, walk straight ahead, dogs to heel until first cover is reached; fire straight or to quarter, never blankin’ nor wipin’ no eyes; and ground game counts as feathers for the Shotover Cup.”

“Oh! It’s a skirmish line that walks straight ahead?” said Siward, nodding.

“Straight ahead, Sir. No stoppin’, no turnin’ for hedges, fences, water or rock. There is boats f’r deep water and fords marked and corduroy f’r to pass the Seven Dreens. Luncheon at one, Miss—an hour’s rest—then straight on over hill, valley, rock, and river to the rondyvoo atop Osprey Ledge. You’ll see the poles and the big nests, Sir. It’s there they score for the cup, and there when the bag is counted, the traps are ready to carry you home again.”… And to Siward: “Will you draw for your lady, Sir? It is the custom.”

“Are you my ‘lady’?” he asked, turning to Sylvia.

“Do you want me?”

In the smiling lustre of her eyes the tiniest spark flashed out at him—a hint of defiance for somebody, perhaps for Major Belwether who had taken considerable pains to enlighten her as to Siward’s condition the night before; perhaps also for Quarrier, who had naturally expected to act as her gun-bearer in emergencies. But the gaily veiled malice of the one had annoyed her, and the cold assumption of the other had irritated her, and she had, scarcely knowing why, turned her shoulder to both of these gentlemen with an indefinite idea of escaping a pressure, amounting almost to critical importunity.

“I’m probably a poor shot?” she said, looking smilingly, straight into Siward’s eyes. “But if you’ll take me—”

“I will with pleasure,” he said; “Dawson, do we draw for position? Very well then”; and he drew a slip of paper from the box offered by the head keeper.

“Number seven!” said Sylvia, looking over his shoulder. “Come out to the starting line, Mr. Siward. All the positions are marked with golf-discs. What sort of ground have we ahead, Dawson?”

“Kind o’ stiff, Miss,” grinned the keeper. “Pity your gentleman ain’t drawed the meadows an’ Sachem Hill line. Will you choose your dog, Sir?”

“You have your dog, you know,” observed Sylvia demurely. And Siward, glancing among the impatient setters, saw one white, heavily feathered dog, straining at his leash, and wagging frantically, brown eyes fixed on him.

The next moment Sagamore was free, devouring his master with caresses, the girl looking on in smiling silence; and presently, side by side, the man, the girl, and the dog were strolling off to the starting line where already people were gathering in groups, selecting dogs, fowling-pieces, comparing numbers, and discussing the merits of their respective lines of advance.

Ferrall, busily energetic, and in high spirits, greeted them gaily, pointing out the red disc bearing their number, seven, where it stood out distinctly above the distant scrub of the foreland.

“You two are certainly up against it!” he said, grinning. “There’s only one rougher line, and you’re in for thorns and water and a scramble across the back-bone of the divide!”

“Is it any good?” asked Siward.

“Good—if you’ve got the legs and Sylvia doesn’t play baby—”

“I?” she said indignantly. “Kemp, you annoy me. And I will bet you now,” she added, flushing, “that your old cup is ours.”

“Wait,” said Siward, laughing, “we may not shoot straight.”

“You will! Kemp, I’ll wager whatever you dare!”

“Gloves? Stockings?—against a cigarette case?” he suggested.

“Done,” she said disdainfully, moving forward along the skirmish line with a nod and smile for the groups now disintegrating into couples, the Page boys with Eileen Shannon and Rena Bonnesdel, Marion Page followed by Alderdene, Mrs. Vendenning and Major Belwether and the Tassel girl convoyed by Leroy Mortimer. Farther along the line, taking post, she saw Quarrier and Miss Caithness, Captain Voucher with Mrs. Mortimer, and others too distant to recognise, moving across country with glitter and glint of sunlight on slanting gun barrels.

CHAPTER V A WINNING LOSER

The week passed swiftly, day after day echoing with the steady fusillade from marsh to covert, from valley to ridge. Guns flashed at dawn and dusk along the flat tidal reaches haunted of black mallard and teal; the smokeless powder cracked through alder swamp and tangled windfall where the brown grouse burst away into noisy blundering flight; where the woodcock, wilder now, shrilled skyward like feathered rockets, and the big northern hares, not yet flecked with snowy patches of fur, loped off into swamps to the sad undoing of several of the younger setters.

There was a pheasant drive at Black Fells to which the Ferralls’ guests were bidden by Beverly Plank—a curious scene, where ladies and gentlemen stood on a lawn, backed by an army of loaders and gun-bearers, while another improvised army of beaters drove some thousands of frightened, bewildered, homeless foreign pheasants at the guns. And the miserable aliens that escaped the guns were left to perish in the desolation of a coming winter which they were unfitted to withstand.

So the first week of the season sped gaily, ending on Saturday with a heavy flight of northern woodcock and an uproarious fusillade among the silver birches.

Once Ferrall loaded two motor cars with pioneers for a day beyond his own boundaries; and one day was spent ingloriously with the beagles; but otherwise the Shotover estate proved more than sufficient for good bags or target practice, as the skill of the sportsmen developed.

Lord Alderdene, good enough on snipe and cock, was driven almost frantic by the ruffed grouse; Voucher did better for a day or two, and then lost the knack; Marion Page attended to business in her cool and thorough style, and her average on the gun-room books was excellent, and was also adorned with clever pen-and-ink sketches by Siward.

Leroy Mortimer had given up shooting and established himself as a haunter of cushions in sunny corners. Tom O’Hara had gone back to Lenox; Mrs. Vendenning to Hot Springs. Beverly Plank, master of Black Fells, began to pervade the house after a tentative appearance; and he and Major Belwether pottered about the coverts, usually after luncheon—the latter doing little damage with his fowling-piece, and nobody knew how much with his gossiping tongue. Quarrier appeared in the field methodically, shot with judgment, taking no chances for a brilliant performance which might endanger his respectable average. As for the Page boys, they kept the river ducks stirring whenever Eileen Shannon and Rena Bonnesdel could be persuaded to share the canoes with them. Otherwise they haunted the vicinity of those bored maidens, suffering snubs sorrowfully, but persistently faithful. They were a great nuisance in the evening, especially as their sister did not permit them to lose more than ten dollars a day at cards.

Cards—that is Bridge and Preference—ruled as usual; and the latter game being faster suited Mortimer and Ferrall, but did not aid Siward toward recouping his Bridge losses.

Noticing this, late in the week, Major Belwether kindly suggested Klondyke for Siward’s benefit, which proved more quickly disastrous to him than anything yet proposed; and he went back to Bridge, preferring rather to “carry” Agatha Caithness at intervals than crumble into bankruptcy under the sheer deadly hazard of Klondyke.

Two matters occupied him; since “cup day” he had never had another opportunity to see Sylvia Landis alone; that was the first matter. He had touched neither wine nor spirits nor malt since the night Ferrall had found him prone, sprawling in a stupor on his disordered bed. That was the second matter, and it occupied him, at times required all his attention, particularly when the physical desire for it set in, steadily, mercilessly, mounting inexorably like a tide.... But, like the tide, it ebbed at last, particularly when a sleepless night had exhausted him.

He had gone back to his shooting again after a cool review of the ethics involved. It even amused him to think that the whimsical sermon delivered him by a girl who had cleverness enough to marry many millions, with Quarrier thrown in, could have so moved him to sentimentality. He had ceded the big cup of antique silver to Quarrier, too—a matter which troubled him little, however, as in the irritation of the reaction he had been shooting with the brilliancy of a demon; and the gun-room books were open to any doubting guests’ inspection.

Time, therefore, was never heavy on his hands, save when the tide threatened—when at night he stirred and awoke, conscious of its crawling advance, aware of its steady mounting menace. Moments at table, when the aroma of wine made him catch his breath, moments in the gun-room redolent of spicy spirits; a maddening volatile fragrance clinging to the card-room, too! Yes, the long days were filled with such moments for him.

But afield the desire faded; and even during the day, indoors, he shrugged desire aside. It was night that he dreaded—the long hours, lying there tense, stark-eyed, sickened with desire.

As for Sylvia, she and Grace Ferrall had taken to motoring, driving away into the interior or taking long flights north and south along the coast. Sometimes they took Quarrier, sometimes, when Mrs. Ferrall drove, they took in ballast in the shape of a superfluous Page boy and a girl for him. Once Grace Ferrall asked Siward to join them; but no definite time being set, he was scarcely surprised to find them gone when he returned from a morning on the snipe meadows. And Sylvia, leagues away by that time, curled up in the tonneau beside Grace Ferrall, watched the dark pines flying past, cheeks pink, eyes like stars, while the rushing wind drove health into her and care out of her—cleansing, purifying, overwhelming winds flowing through and through her, till her very soul within her seemed shining through the beauty of her eyes. Besides, she had just confessed.

“He kissed you!” repeated Grace Ferrall incredulously.

“Yes—a number of times. He was silly enough to do it, and I let him.”

“Did—did he say—”

“I don’t know what he said; I was all nerves—confused—scared—a perfect stick in fact!… I don’t believe he’d care to try again.”

Then Mrs. Ferrall deliberately settled down in her furs to extract from the girl beside her every essential detail; and the girl, frank at first, grew shy and silent—reticent enough to worry her friend into a silence which lasted a long while for a cheerful little matron of her sort.

Presently they spoke of other matters—matters interesting to pretty women with much to do in the coming winter between New York, Hot Springs, and Florida; surmises as to dinners, dances, and the newcomers in the younger sets, and the marriages to be arranged or disarranged, and the scandals humanity is heir to, and the attitude of the bishop toward divorce.

And the new pavillion to be built for Saint Berold’s Hospital, and the various states of the various charities each was interested in, and the chances of something new at the opera, and the impossibility of saving Fifth Avenue from truck traffic, and the increasing importance of Washington as a social centre, and the bad manners of a foreign ambassador, and the better manners of another diplomat, and the lack of discrimination betrayed by our ambassador to a certain great Power in choosing people for presentation at court, and the latest unhappy British-American marriage, and the hopelessness of the French as decent husbands, and the recent accident to the Claymores’ big yacht, and the tendency of well-born young men toward politics, and the anything but distinguished person of Lord Alderdene, which was, however, vastly superior to the demeanour and person of others of his rank recently imported, and the beauty of Miss Caithness, and the chance that Captain Voucher had if Leila Mortimer would let him alone, and the absurdity of the Page twins, and the furtive coarseness of Leroy Mortimer and his general badness, and the sadness of Leila Mortimer’s lot when she had always been in love with other people,—and a little scandalous surmise concerning Tom O’Hara, and the new house on Seventy-ninth Street building for Mrs. Vendenning, and that charming widow’s success at last year’s horse show—and whether the fashion of the function was reviving, and whether Beverly Plank had completely broken into the social sets he had besieged so long, or whether a few of the hunting and shooting people merely permitted him to drive pheasants for them, and why Katharyn Tassel made eyes at him, having sufficient money of her own to die unwed, and—and—and then, at last, as the big motor car swung in a circle at Wenniston Cross-Roads, and poked its brass and lacquer muzzle toward Shotover, the talk swung back to Siward once more—having travelled half the world over to find him.

“He is the sweetest fellow with his mother,” sighed Grace; “and that counts heavily with me. But there’s trouble ahead for her—sorrow and trouble enough for them both, if he is a true Siward.”

“Heredity again!” said Sylvia impatiently. “Isn’t he man enough to win out? I’ll bet you he settles down, marries, and—”

“Marries? Not he! How many girls do you suppose have believed that—were justified in believing he meant anything by his attractive manner and nice ways of telling you how much he liked you? He had a desperate affair with Mrs. Mortimer—innocent enough I fancy. He’s had a dozen within three years; and in a week Rena Bonnesdel has come to making eyes at him, and Eileen gives him no end of chances which he doesn’t see. As for Marion Page, the girl had been on the edge of loving him for years! You laugh? But you are wrong; she is in love with him now as much as she ever can be with anybody.”

“You mean—”

“Yes I do. Hadn’t you suspected it?”

And as Sylvia had suspected it she remained silent.

“If any woman in this world could keep him to the mark, she could,” continued Mrs. Ferrall. “He’s a perfect fool not to see how she cares for him.”

Sylvia said: “He is indeed.”

“It would be a sensible match, if she cared to risk it, and if he would only ask her. But he won’t.”

“Perhaps,” ventured Sylvia, “she’ll ask him. She strikes me as that sort. I do not mean it unkindly—only Marion is so tailor-made and cigaretteful—”

Mrs. Ferrall looked up at her.

“Did he propose to you?”

“Yes—I think so.”

“Then it’s the first time for him. He finds women only too willing to play with him as a rule, and he doesn’t have to be definite. I wonder what he meant by being so definite with you?”

“I suppose he meant marriage,” said Sylvia serenely; yet there was the slightest ring in her voice; and it amused Mrs. Ferrall to try her a little further.

“Oh, you think he really intended to commit himself?”

“Why not?” retorted Sylvia, turning red. “Do you think he found me over-willing, as you say he finds others?”

“You were probably a new sensation for him,” inferred Mrs. Ferrall musingly. “You mustn’t take him seriously, child—a man with his record. Besides, he has the same facility with a girl that he has with everything else he tries; his pen—you know how infernally clever he is; and he can make good verse, and write witty jingles, and he can carry home with him any opera and play it decently, too, with the proper harmonies. Anything he finds amusing he is clever with—dogs, horses, pen, brush, music, women”—that was too malicious, for Sylvia had flushed up painfully, and Grace Ferrall dropped her gloved hand on the hand of the girl beside her: “Child, child,” she said, “he is not that sort; no decent man ever is unless the girl is too.”

Sylvia, sitting up very straight in her furs, said: “He found me anything but difficult—if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t. Please don’t be vexed, dear. I plague everybody when I see an opening. There’s really only one thing that worries me about it all.”

“What is that?” asked Sylvia without interest.

“It’s that you might be tempted to care a little for him, which, being useless, might be unwise.”

“I am… tempted.”

“Not seriously!”

“I don’t know.” She turned in a sudden nervous impatience foreign to her. “Howard Quarrier is too perfectly imperfect for me. I’m glad I’ve said it. The things he knows about and doesn’t know have been a revelation in this last week with him. There is too much surface, too much exterior admirably fashioned. And inside is all clock-work. I’ve said it; I’m glad I have. He seemed different at Newport; he seemed nice at Lenox. The truth is, he’s a horrid disappointment—and I’m bored to death at my brilliant prospects.”

The low whizzing hum of the motor filled a silence that produced considerable effect upon Grace Ferrall. And, after mastering her wits, she said in a subdued voice:

“Of course it’s my meddling.”

“Of course it isn’t. I asked your opinion, but I knew what I was going to do. Only, I did think him personally possible—which made the expediency, the mercenary view of it easier to contemplate.”

She was becoming as frankly brutal as she knew how to be, which made the revolt the more ominous.

“You don’t think you could endure him for an hour or two a day, Sylvia?”

“It is not that,” said the girl almost sullenly.

“But—”

“I’m afraid of myself—call it inherited mischief if you like! If I let a man do to me what Mr. Siward did when I was only engaged to Howard, what might I do—”

“You are not that sort!” said Mrs. Ferrall bluntly. “Don’t be exotic, Sylvia.”

“How do you know—if I don’t know? Most girls are kissed; I—well I didn’t expect to be. But I was! I tell you, Grace, I don’t know what I am or shall be. I’m unsafe; I know that much.”

“It’s moral and honest to realize it,” said Mrs. Ferrall suavely; “and in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn’t meddled; I’m meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don’t give Howard his congé for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on the impulse of the moment.”

“I know it.”

“You are too clever not to. Consider the matter wisely, dispassionately, intelligently, dear; then if by April you simply can’t stand it—talk the thing over with me again,” she ended rather vaguely and wistfully; for it had been her heart’s desire to wed Sylvia’s beauty and Quarrier’s fortune, and the suitability of the one for the other was apparent enough to make even sterner moralists wobbly in their creed. Quarrier, as a detail of modern human architecture, she supposed might fit in somewhere, and took that for granted in laying the corner stone for her fairy palace which Sylvia was to inhabit. And now!—oh, vexation!—the neglected but essentially constructive detail of human architecture had buckled, knocking the dream palace and its princess and its splendour about her ears.

“Things never happen in real life,” she observed plaintively; “only romances have plots where things work out. But we people in real life, we just go on and on in a badly constructed, plotless sort of way with no villains, no interesting situations, no climaxes, no ensemble. No, we grow old and irritable and meaner and meaner; we lose our good looks and digestions, and we die in hopeless discord with the unity required in a dollar and a half novel by a master of modern fiction.”

“But some among us amass fortunes,” suggested Sylvia, laughing.

“But we don’t live happy ever after. Nobody ever had enough money in real life.”

“Some fall in love,” observed Sylvia, musing.

“And they are not content, silly!”

“Why? Because nobody ever had enough love in real life,” mocked Sylvia.

“You have said it, child. That is the malady of the world, and nobody knows it until some pretty ninny like you babbles the truth. And that is why we care for those immortals in romance, those fortunate lovers who, in fable, are given and give enough of love; those magic shapes in verse and tale whose hearts are satisfied when the mad author of their being inks his last period and goes to dinner.”

Sylvia laughed awhile, then, chin on wrist, sat musing there, muffled in her furs.

“As for love, I think I should be moderate in the asking, in the giving. A little—to flavour routine—would be sufficient for me I fancy.”

“You know so much about it,” observed Mrs. Ferrall ironically.

“I am permitted to speculate, am I not?”

“Certainly. Only speculate in sound investments, dear.”

“How can you make a sound investment in love? Isn’t it always sheerest speculation?”

“Yes, that is why simple matrimony is usually a safer speculation than love.”

“Yes, but—love isn’t matrimony.”

“Match that with its complementary platitude and you have the essence of modern fiction,” observed Mrs. Ferrall. “Love is a subject talked to death, which explains the present shortage in the market I suppose. You’re not in love and you don’t miss it. Why cultivate an artificial taste for it? If it ever comes naturally, you’ll be astonished at your capacity for it, and the constant deterioration in quantity and quality of the visible supply. Goodness! my epigrams make me yawn—or is it age and the ill humour of the aged when the porridge spills over on the family cat?”

“I am the cat, I suppose,” asked Sylvia, laughing.

“Yes you are—and you go tearing away, back up, fur on end, leaving me by the fire with no porridge and only the aroma of the singeing fur to comfort me.... Still there’s one thing to comfort me.”

“What?”

“Kitty-cats come back, dear.”

“Oh, I suppose so.... Do you believe I could induce him to wear his hair any way except pompadour?… and, dear, his beard is so dreadfully silky. Isn’t there anything he could take for it?”

“Only a razor I’m afraid. Those long, thick, soft, eyelashes of his are ominous. Eyes of that sort ruin a man for my taste. He might just as reasonably wear my hat.”

“But he can’t follow the fashions in eyes,” laughed Sylvia. “Oh, this is atrocious of us—it is simply horrible to sit here and say such things. I am cold-blooded enough as it is—material enough, mean, covetous, contemptible—”

“Dear!” said Grace Ferrall mildly, “you are not choosing a husband; you are choosing a career. To criticise his investments might be bad taste; to be able to extract what amusement you can out of Howard is a direct mercy from Heaven. Otherwise you’d go mad, you know.”

“Grace! Do you wish me to marry him?”

“What is the alternative, dear?”

“Why, nothing—self-respect, dowdiness, and peace.”

“Is that all?”

“All I can see.”

“Not Stephen Siward?”

“To marry? No. To enjoy, yes.... Grace, I have had such a good time with him; you don’t know! He is such a boy—sometimes; and I—I believe that I am rather good for him.... Not that I’d ever again let him do that sort of thing.... Besides, his curiosity is quenched; I am the sort he supposed. Now he’s found out he will be nice.... It’s been days since I’ve had a talk with him. He tried to, but I wouldn’t. Besides, the major has said nasty things about him when Howard was present; nothing definite, only hints, smiling silences, innuendoes on the verge of matters rather unfit; and I had nothing definite to refute. I could not even appear to understand or notice—it was all done in such a horridly vague way. But it only made me like him; and no doubt that actress he took to the Patroons is better company than he finds in nine places out of ten among his own sort.”

“Oh,” said Grace Ferrall slowly, “if that is the way you feel, I don’t see why you shouldn’t play with Mr. Siward whenever you like.”

“Nor I. I’ve been a perfect fool not to.... Howard hates him.”

“How do you know?”

“What a question! A woman knows such things. Then, you remember that caricature—so dreadfully like Howard? Howard has no sense of humour; he detests such things. It was the most dreadful thing that Mr. Siward could have done to him.”

“Meddled again!” groaned Grace. “Doesn’t Howard know that I did that?”

“Yes, but nothing I can say alters his conviction that the likeness was intended. You know it was a likeness! And if Mr. Siward had not told me that it was not intended, I should never have believed it to be an accident.”

After a prolonged silence Sylvia said, overcarelessly: “I don’t quite understand Howard. With me anger lasts but a moment, and then I’m open to overtures for peace… I think Howard’s anger lasts.”

“It does,” said Grace. “He was a muff as a boy—a prig with a prig’s memory under all his shallow, showy surface. I’m frank with you; I never could take my cousin either respectfully or seriously, but I’ve known him to take his own anger so seriously that years after he has visited it upon those who had really wronged him. And he is equipped for retaliation if he chooses. That fortune of his reaches far.... Not that I think him capable of using such a power to satisfy a mere personal dislike. Howard has principles, loads of them. But—the weapon is there.”

“Is it true that Mr. Siward is interested in building electric roads?” asked Sylvia curiously.

“I don’t know, child. Why?”

“Nothing. I wondered.”

“Why?”

“Mr. Mortimer said so.”

“Then I suppose he is. I’ll ask Kemp if you like. Why? Isn’t it all right to build them?”

“I suppose so. Howard is in it somehow. In fact Howard’s company is behind Mr. Siward’s, I believe.”

Grace Ferrall turned and looked at the girl beside her, laughing outright.

“Oh, Howard doesn’t do mysterious financial things to nice young men because they draw impudent pictures of him running after his dog—or for any other reason. That, dear, is one of those skilfully developed portions of an artistic plot; and plots exist only in romance. So do villains; and besides, my cousin isn’t one. Besides that, if Howard is in that thing, no doubt Kemp and I are too. So your nice young man is in very safe company.”

“You draw such silly inferences,” said Sylvia coolly; but there was a good deal of colour in her cheeks; and she knew it and pulled her big motor veil across her face, fastening it under her chin. All of which amused Grace Ferrall infinitely until the subtler significance of the girl’s mental processes struck her, sobering her own thoughts. Sylvia, too, had grown serious in her preoccupation; and the partie-à-deux terminated a few minutes later in a duet of silence over the tea-cups in the gun-room.

The weather had turned warm and misty; one of those sudden sea-coast changes had greyed the blue in the sky, spreading a fine haze over land and water, effacing the crisp sparkle of the sea, dulling the westering sun.

A few moments later Sylvia, glancing over her shoulder, noticed that a fine misty drizzle had clouded the casements. That meant that her usual evening stroll on the cliffs with Quarrier, before dressing for dinner, was off. And she drew a little breath of unconscious relief as Marion Page walked in, her light woollen shooting-jacket, her hat, shoes, and the barrels of the fowling-piece tucked under her left arm-pit, all glimmering frostily with powdered rain drops.

She said something to Grace Ferrall about the mist promising good point-shooting in the morning, took the order book from a servant, jotted down her request to be called an hour before sunrise, filled in the gun-room records with her score—the species and number bagged, and the number of shells used—and accepting the tea offered, drew out a tiny cigarette-case of sweet-bay wood heavily crusted with rose-gold.

“With whom were you shooting?” asked Grace, as Marion dropped one well-shaped leg over the other and wreathed her delicately tanned features in smoke.

“Stephen Siward and Blinky. They’re at it yet, but I had some letters to write.” She glanced leisurely at Sylvia and touched the ash-tray with the whitening end of her cigarette. “That dog you let Mr. Siward have is a good one. I’m taking him to Jersey next week for the cock-shooting.”

Sylvia returned her calm gaze blankly.

An unreasonable and disagreeable shock had passed through her.

“My North Carolina pointers are useless for close work,” observed Marion indifferently; and she leaned back, watching the blue smoke curling upward from her cigarette.

Sylvia, distrait, but with downcast eyes on fire under the fringed lids, was thinking of the cheque Siward had given her for Sagamore. The transaction, for her, had been a business one on the surface only. She had never meant to use the cheque. She had laid it away among a few letters, relics, pleasant souvenirs of the summer. To her the affair had been softened by a delicate hint of intimacy,—the delight he was to take in something that had once been hers had given her a faint taste of the pleasure of according pleasure to a man. And this is what he had done!

The drizzle had turned to fog, through which rain was now pelting the cliffs; people were returning from the open; a motor-car came whizzing into the drive, and out of it tumbled Rena and Eileen and the faithful Pages, the girls irritable and ready for tea, and the boys like a pair of eager, wagging, setter puppies, pleased with everything and everybody, utterly oblivious to the sombre repose brooding above the tea-table.

Their sister calmly refused them the use of her cigarettes. Eileen presented her pretty shoulder, Rena nearly yawned at them, but, nothing dampened, they recounted a number of incidents with reciprocal enthusiasm to Sylvia, who was too inattentive to smile, and to Grace Ferrall, who smiled the more sweetly through sheer inattention.

Then Alderdene came in, blinking a greeting through his foggy goggles, sloppy, baggy, heavy shoes wheezing, lingered in the vicinity long enough to swallow his “peg” and acquire a disdainful opinion of his shooting from Marion, and then took himself off, leaving the room noisy with his laugh, which resembled the rattle of a startled kingfisher.

In ones and twos the guests reported as the dusk-curtained fog closed in on Shotover. Quarrier came, dry as a chip under his rain-coat, but his silky beard was wet with rain, and moisture powdered his long, soft eyelashes and white skin; and his flexible, pointed fingers, as he drew off his gloves, seemed startling in their whiteness through the gathering gloom.

“I suppose our evening walk is out of the question,” he said, standing by Sylvia, who had nodded a greeting and then turned her head rather hastily to see who had entered the room. It was Siward, only a vague shape in the gloom, but perfectly recognisable to her. At the same moment Marion Page rose leisurely and strolled toward the billiard-room.

“Our walk?” repeated Sylvia absently—“it’s raining, you know.” Yet only a day or two ago she had walked to church with Siward through the rain, the irritated Major feeling obliged to go with them. Her eyes followed Siward’s figure, suddenly dark against the door of the lighted billiard-room, then brilliantly illuminated, as he entered, nodded acceptance to Mortimer’s invitation, and picked up the cue just laid aside by Agatha Caithness, who had turned to speak to Marion. Then Mortimer’s bulk loomed nearer; voices became gay and animated in the billiard-room. Siward’s handsome face was bent toward Agatha Caithness in gay challenge; Mortimer’s heavy laugh broke out; there came the rattle of pool-balls, and the dull sound of cue-butts striking the floor; then, crack! and the game began, with Marion Page and Siward fighting Mortimer and Miss Caithness for something or other.

Quarrier had been speaking for some time before Sylvia became aware of it—something about a brisk walk in the morning somewhere; and she nodded impatiently, watching Marion’s supple waist-line as she bent far over the illuminated table for a complicated shot at the enemy.

His fiancée’s inattention was not agreeable to Quarrier. A dozen things had happened since his arrival which had not been agreeable to him: her failure to meet him at the Fells Crossing, and the reason for her failure; and her informal acquaintance with Siward, whose presence at Shotover he had not looked for, and her sudden intimacy with the man he had never particularly liked, and whom within six months he had come to detest and to avoid.

These things—the outrageous liberty Siward had permitted himself in caricaturing him, the mortifying caprice of Sylvia for Siward on the day of the Shotover cup-drive—had left indelible impressions in a cold and rather heavy mind, slow to waste effort in the indulgence of any vital emotion.

In a few years indifference to Siward had changed to passive disapproval; that, again, to an emotionless dislike; and when the scandal at the Patroons Club occurred, for the first time in his life he understood what it was to fear the man he disliked. For if Siward had committed the insane imprudence which had cost him his title to membership, he had also done something, knowingly or otherwise, which awoke in Quarrier a cold, slow fear; and that fear was dormant, but present, now, and it, for the time being, dictated his attitude and bearing toward the man who might or might not be capable of using viciously a knowledge which Quarrier believed that he must possess.

For that reason, when it was not possible to avoid Siward, his bearing toward him was carefully civil; for that reason he dampened Major Belwether’s eagerness to tell everybody all he knew about the shamelessly imprudent girl who had figured with Siward in the scandal, but whose identity the press had not discovered.

Silence was always desirable to Quarrier; silence concerning all matters was a trait inborn and congenially cultivated to a habit by him in every affair of life—in business, in leisure, in the methodical pursuits of such pleasures as a limited intellect permitted him, in personal and family matters, in public questions and financial problems.

He listened always, but never invited confidences; he had no opinion to express when invited. And he became very, very rich.

And over it all spread a thin membrane of vanity, nervous, not intellectual, sensitiveness; for all sense of humour was absent in this man, whose smile, when not a physical effort, was automatically and methodically responsive to certain fixed cues. He smiled when he said “Good morning,” when declining or accepting invitations, when taking his leave, when meeting anybody of any financial importance, and when everybody except himself had begun to laugh in a theatre or a drawing-room. This limit to any personal manifestation he considered a generous one. And perhaps it was.

“I do not give you up,” he said, with a savage note hardening his voice; and it thrilled her to hear it, and every drop of blood in her body leaped as she yielded to his arms again, heavy-lidded, trembling, confused, under the piercing sweetness of contact.

The perfume of her mouth, her hair, the consenting fingers locked in his, palm against palm, the lips, acquiescent, then afire at last, responsive to his own; and her eyes opening from the dream under the white lids—these were what he had of her till every vein in him pulsed flame. Then her voice, broken, breathless:

“Good night. Love me while you can—and forgive me!… Good night.... Where are we? All—all this must have stunned me, blinded me.... Is this my door, or yours? Hush! I am half dead with fear—to be here under the light again.... If you take me again, my knees will give way.... And I must find my door. Oh, the ghastly imprudence of it!… Good night… good night. I—I love you!”

CHAPTER VI MODUS VIVENDI

After the first few days of his arrival at Shotover time had threatened to hang heavily on Mortimer’s mottled hands. After the second day afield he recognised that his shooting career was practically over; he had become too bulky during the last year to endure the physical exertion; his habits, too, had at length made traitors of his eyes; a half hour’s snipe-shooting in the sun, and the veins in his neck swelled ominously. Panting, eyes inflamed, fat arms wobbly, he had scored miss after miss, and laboured onward, sullenly persistent to the end. But it was the end. That cup day finished him; he recognised that he was done for. And, following the Law of Pleasure, which finishes us before we are finished with it, he did not experience any particular sense of deprivation in the prospect. Only the wholesome dread caging. But Mortimer, not yet done with self-indulgence in more convenient forms, cast about him within his new limits for occupation between those hours consecrated to the rites of the table and the card-room.

He drove four, but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the malodours of periwinkle and clam.

Then he frankly took to Major Belwether’s sunny side of the gun-room, with illustrated papers and apples and decanter. But Major Belwether, always as careful of his digestion as of his financial secrets, blandly dodged the pressing invitations to rum and confidence, until Mortimer sulkily took up his headquarters in the reading-room, on the chance of his wife’s moving elsewhere. Which she did, unobtrusively carrying Captain Voucher with her in a sudden zeal for billiard practice on rainy mornings now too frequent along the coast.

Mortimer possessed that mysterious talent, so common among the financially insolvent, for living lavishly on an invisible income. But, plan as he would, he had never been able to increase that income through confidential gossip with men like Quarrier or Belwether, or even Ferrall. What information his pretty wife might have extracted he did not know; her income had never visibly increased above the vanishing point, although, like himself, she denied herself nothing. One short, lively interview with her had been enough to drive all partnership ideas out of his head. If he wanted to learn anything financially advantageous to himself he must do it without her aid; and as he was perpetually in hopes of the friendly hint that never came, he still moused about when opportunity offered; and this also helped to kill time.

Besides, he was always studying women. Years before, Grace Ferrall had snapped her slim fingers in his face; and here, at Shotover, the field was limited. Mrs. Vendenning had left; Agatha Caithness was still a pale and reticent puzzle; Rena, Katharyn, and Eileen tormented him; Marion Page, coolly au fait, yawned in his face. There remained Sylvia, who, knowing nothing about his species, met him half-way with the sweet and sensitive deference due a somewhat battered and infirm gentleman of forty-eight—until a sleek aside from Major Belwether spoiled everything, as usual, for her, leaving her painfully conscious and perplexed between doubt and disgust.

Meanwhile, the wealthy master of Black Fells, Beverly Plank, had found encouragement enough at Shotover to venture on tentative informality. There was no doubt that ultimately he must be counted on in New York; but nobody except him was impatiently cordial for the event; and so, at the little house party, he slipped and slid from every attempt at closer quarters, until, rolling smoothly enough, he landed without much discomfort somewhere between Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Mortimer. And it was not a question as to “which would be good to him,” observed Major Belwether, with his misleading and benevolent mirth; “it was, which would be goodest quickest!”

And Mrs. Mortimer, abandoning Captain Voucher by the same token, displayed certain warning notices perfectly comprehensive to her husband. And at first he was inclined to recognise defeat.

But the general insuccess which had so faithfully attended him recently had aroused the long-dormant desire for a general review of the situation with his wife—perhaps even the furtive hope of some conjugal arrangement tending toward an exchange of views concerning possible alliance.

The evening previous, to his intense disgust, host, hostess, and guests had retired early, in view of the point-shooting at dawn. For not only was there to be no point-shooting for him, but he had risen from the card-table heavily hit; and besides, for the first time his apples and port had disagreed with him.

As he had not risen until mid-day he was not sleepy. Books were an aversion equalled only by distaste for his own company. Irritated, bored, he had perforce sulkily entered the elevator and passed to his room, where there was nothing on earth for him to do except to thumb over last week’s sporting periodicals and smoke himself stupid.

But it required more than that to ensnare the goddess of slumber. He walked about the room, haunted of slow thoughts; he stood at the rain-smeared pane, fat fingers resting on the glass. The richly flavoured cigar grew distasteful; and if he could not smoke, what, in pity’s name, was he to do?

Involuntarily his distended eyes wandered to his wife’s locked and bolted door; then he thought of Beverly Plank, and his own failure to fasten himself upon that anxiously over-cordial individual with his houses and his villas and his yachts and his investments!

He stepped to the switch and extinguished the lights in his room. Under the door, along the sill, a glimmer came from his wife’s bed-chamber. He listened; the maid was still there; so he sat down in the darkness to wait; and by-and-by he heard the outer bedroom door close, and the subdued rustle of the departing maid.

Then, turning on his lights, he moved ponderously and jauntily to his wife’s door and knocked discreetly.

Leila Mortimer came to the door and opened it; her hair was coiled for the night, her pretty figure outlined under a cascade of clinging lace.

“What is the matter?” she asked quietly.

“Are you point-shooting to-morrow?”

“I wanted to chat with you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m driving to Wenniston, after breakfast, with Beverly Plank, and I need sleep.”

“I want to talk to you,” he repeated doggedly.

She regarded him for a moment in silence, then, with an assenting gesture, turned away into her room; and he followed, heavily apprehensive but resolved.

She had seated herself among a pile of cushions, one knee crossed over the other, her slim white foot half concealed by the silken toe of her slipper. And as he pulled a chair forward for himself, her pretty black eyes, which slanted a little, took his measure and divined trouble.

“Leila,” he said, “why can’t we have—”

“A cigarette?” she interrupted, indicating her dainty case on the table.

He took one, savagely aware of defiance somewhere. She lighted her own from a candle and settled back, studying the sequence of blue smoke-rings jetting upward to the ceiling.

“About this man Plank,” he began, louder than he had intended through sheer self-mistrust; and his wife made a quick, disdainful sign of caution, which subdued his voice instantly. “Why can’t we take him up—together, Leila?” he ended lamely, furious at his own uneasiness in a matter which might concern him vitally.

“I see no necessity of your taking him up,” observed his wife serenely. “I can do what may be useful to him in town.”

“So can I. There are clubs where he ought to be seen—”

“I can manage such matters much better.”

“You can’t manage everything,” he insisted sullenly. “There are chances of various sorts—”

“Investments?” asked Mrs. Mortimer, with bright malice.

“See here, Leila, you have your own way too much. I say little; I make damned few observations; but I could, if I cared to.... It becomes you to be civil at least. I want to talk over this Plank matter with you; I want you to listen, too.”

A shade of faint disgust passed over her face. “I am listening,” she said.

“Well, then, I can see several ways in which the man can be of use to me.... I discovered him before you did, anyway. And what I want to do is to have a frank, honourable—”

“A—what?”

“—An honourable understanding with you, I said,” he repeated, reddening.

“Oh!” She snapped her cigarette into the grate. “Oh! I see. And what then?”

“What then?”

“Yes; what then?”

“Why, you and I can arrange to stand behind him this winter in town, can’t we?”

“And then?”

“Then—damn it!—the beggar can show his gratitude, can’t he?”

“How?” she asked listlessly.

“By making good. How else?” he retorted savagely. “He can’t welch because there’s little to climb for beyond us; and even if he climbs, he can’t ignore us. I can do as many things for him in my way as you can in yours. What is the use of being a pig, Leila? Anything he does for me isn’t going to cancel his obligations to you.”

“I know him better than you do,” she observed, bending her head and pleating the lace on her knee. “There is Dutch blood in him.”

“Not good Hollander, but common Dutch,” sneered Mortimer. “And you mean he’ll squeeze a dollar till the eagle screams-don’t you?”

She sat silent, pleating her lace with steady fingers.

“Well, that’s all right, too,” laughed Mortimer easily; “let the Audubon Society worry over the eagle. It’s a perfectly plain business proposition; we can do for him in a couple of winters what he can’t do for himself in ten. Figure it out for yourself, Leila,” he said, waving a mottled fat hand at her.

“I—have,” she said under her breath.

“Then, is it settled?

“Settled—how?”

“That we form ourselves into a benevolent society of two in behalf of Plank?”

“I—I don’t want to, Roy,” she said slowly.

“Why not?”

She did not say why not, seated there nervously pleating the fragile stuff clinging to her knee.

“Why not?” he repeated menacingly. Her unexpectedly quiescent attitude had emboldened him to a bullying tone—something he had not lately ventured on.

She raised her eyes to his: “I—rather like him,” she said quietly.

“Then, by God! he’ll pay for that!” he burst out, mask off, every inflamed feature shockingly congested.

“Roy! You dare not—”

“I tell you I—”

“You dare not!”

The palpitating silence lengthened; slowly the blood left the swollen veins. Heavy pendulous lip hanging, he stared at her from distended eyes, realising that he had forgotten himself. She was right. He dared not. And she held the whip-hand as usual.

For every suspicion he could entertain, she had evidence of a certainty to match it; for every chance that he might have to prove anything, she had twenty proven facts. And he knew it. Why they had, during all these years, made any outward pretence of conjugal unity they alone knew. The modus vivendi suited them better than divorce: that was apparent, or had been until recently. Recently Leila Mortimer had changed—become subdued and softened to a degree that had perplexed her husband. Her attitude toward him lacked a little of the bitterness and contempt she usually reserved for him in private; she had become more prudent, almost cautious at times.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said with a sudden snarl: “You’d better be careful there is no gossip about you and Plank.”

She reddened under the insult.

“Now we’ll see,” he continued venomously, “how far you can go alone.”

“Do you suppose,” she asked calmly, “that I am afraid of a divorce court?”

The question so frankly astonished him that he sat agape, unable to reply. For years he had very naturally supposed her to be afraid of it—afraid of not being qualified to obtain it. Indeed, he had taken that for granted as the very corner-stone of their mutual toleration. Had he been an ass to do so? A vague alarm took possession of him; for, with that understanding, he had not been at all careful of his own behaviour, neither had he been at any particular pains to conceal his doings from her. His alarm increased. What had he against her, after all, except ancient suspicions, now so confused and indefinite that memory itself outlawed the case, if it ever really existed. What had she against him? Facts—unless she was more stupid than any of her sex he had ever encountered. And now, this defiance, this increasing prudence, this subtle change in her, began to make him anxious for the permanency of the small income she had allowed him during all these years—doled out to him, as he believed, though her dormant fear of him.

“What are you talking about?” he said harshly.

“I believe I mentioned divorce.”

“Well, cut it out! D’ye see? Cut it, I say. You’d stand as much chance before a referee as a snowball in hell.”

“There’s no telling,” she said coolly, “until one tries.”

He glared at her, then burst into a laugh. “Rot!” he said thickly. “Talk sense, Leila! And keep this hard-headed Dutchman for yourself, if you feel that way about it. I don’t want to butt in. I only thought—for old times’ sake—perhaps you’d—”

“Good night,” she managed to say, her disgust almost strangling her.

And he went, furtively, heavy-footed, perplexed, inwardly cursing his blunder in stirring up a sleeping lioness whom he had so long mistaken for a dozing cat.

For hours he sat in his room, or paced the four walls, doubtful, chagrined, furious by turns. Once he drew out a memorandum-book and stood under a lighted sconce, studying the figures. His losses at Shotover staggered him, but he had looked to his wife heretofore in such emergencies.

Certainly the time had come for him to do something. But what?—if his wife was going to strike such attitudes in the very face of decency? Certainly a husband in these days was without honour in his own household.

His uneasiness had produced a raging thirst. He punched an electric button with his fleshy thumb, and prowled around, waiting. Nobody came; he punched again, and looked at his watch. It astonished him to find the hour was three o’clock in the morning. That discovery, however, only appeared to increase his thirst. He opened the hall door, prepared to descend into the depths of the house and raid a sideboard; and as he thrust his heavy head out into the lighted corridor his eyes fell upon two figures standing at the open door of a bedroom. One was Siward; that was plain. Who was the girl he had kissed? One of the maids? Somebody’s wife? Who?

Every dull pulse began to hammer in Mortimer’s head. In his excitement he stepped half-way into the corridor, then skipped nimbly back, closing his door without a sound.

“Sylvia Landis, by all that’s holy!” he breathed to himself, and sat down rather suddenly on the edge of the bed.

After a while he rose and crept to the door, opened it, glued his eyes to the crack, in time to catch a glimpse of Siward entering his own corridor alone.

And that night, Mortimer, lying awake in bed, busy with schemes, became conscious of a definite idea. It took shape and matured so suddenly that it actually shocked his moral sense. Then it scared him.

“But—but that is blackmail!” he whispered aloud. “A man can’t do that sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head?… And there are men I know—women, too—scoundrelly blackguards, who’d use that information somehow; and make it pay, too. The scoundrels!”

He squirmed down among the bedclothes with a sudden shiver; but the night had turned warm.

“Scoundrels!” he said, with milder emphasis. “Blackmailers! Contemptible pups!”

He fell asleep an hour later, muttering something incoherent about scoundrels and blackmail.

And meanwhile, in the darkened house, from all round came the noise of knocking on doors, sounds of people stirring—a low voice here and there, lights breaking out from transoms, the thud of rubber-shod heels, the rattle of cartridges from the echoing gun-room. For the guests at Shotover were awaking, lest the wet sky, whitening behind the east, ring with the whimpering wedges of wild-fowl rushing seaward over empty blinds.

The unusual stillness of the house in the late morning sunshine was pleasant to Miss Landis. She had risen very late, unconscious of the stir and movement before dawn; and it was only when a maid told her, as she came from her bath, that she remembered the projected point-shooting, and concluded, with an odd, happy sense of relief, that she was almost alone in the house.

A little later, glancing from her bedroom window for a fulfilment of the promise of the sun which a glimpse of blue sky heralded, she saw Leila Mortimer settling herself in the forward seat of a Mercedes, and Beverly Plank climbing in beside her; and she watched Plank steer the big machine across the wet lawn, while the machinist swung himself into the tonneau; and away they rolled, faster, faster, rushing out into the misty hinterland, where the long streak of distant forest already began to brighten, edged with the first rays of watery sunshine.

So she had the big house to herself—every bit of it and with it freedom from obligation, from comment, from demand or exaction; freedom from restraint; liberty to roam about, to read, to dream, to idle, to remember! Ah, that was what she needed—a quiet interval in this hurrying youth of hers to catch her breath once more, and stand still, and look back a day or two and remember.

So, to breakfast all alone was delicious; to stroll, unhurried, to the sideboard and leisurely choose among the fresh cool fruits; to loiter over cream-jug and cereal; to saunter out into the freshness of the world and breathe it, and feel the sun warming cheek and throat, and the little breezes from a sunlit sea stirring the bright strands of her hair.

In the increasing brilliancy of the sunshine she stretched out her hands, warming them daintily as she might twist them before the fire on the hearth. And here, at the fragrant hearth of the world, she stood, sweet and fresh as the morning itself, untroubled gaze intensely blue with the tint of the purple sea, sensitive lips scarcely parting in the dreaming smile that made her eyes more wonderful.

As the warmth grew on land and water, penetrating her body, a faintly delicious glow responded in her heart,—nothing at first wistful in the serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young figure straightened, confronting the sea.

Out over the rain-wet, odorous grass she picked her way, skirts swung high above the delicate contour of ankle and limb, following a little descending path she knew full of rocky angles, swept by pendant sprays of blackberry, and then down under the jutting rock, south through thickets of wild cherry along the crags, until, before her the way opened downward again where a tiny crescent beach glimmered white hot in the sun.

From his bedroom window Mortimer peeped forth, following her progress with a leer.

As she descended, noticing the rifts of bronzing seaweed piled along the tide mark, her foot dislodged a tiny triangle of rock, which rolled clattering and ringing below; and as she sprang lightly to the sand, a man, lying full length and motionless as the heaped seaweed, raised himself on one arm, turning his sun-dazzled eyes on her.

The dull shock of surprise halted her as Siward rose to his feet, still dazed, the sand running from his brown shooting-clothes over his tightly strapped puttees.

“Have you the faintest idea that I supposed you were here?” she asked briefly. Then, frank in her disappointment, she looked up at the cliffs overhead, where her line of retreat lay.

“Why did you not go with the others?” she added, unsmiling.

“I—don’t know. I will, if you wish.” He had coloured slowly, the frank disappointment in her face penetrating his surprise; and now he turned around, instinctively, also looking for the path of retreat.

“Wait,” she said, aware of her own crude attitude and confused by it; “wait a moment, Mr. Siward. I don’t mean to drive you away.”

“It’s self-exile,” he said quietly; “quite voluntary, I assure you.”

“Mr. Siward!”

And, as he looked up coolly, “Have you nothing more friendly to say to me? Is your friendship for me so limited that my first caprice oversteps the bounds? Must I always be in dread of wounding you when I give you the privilege of knowing me better than anybody ever knew me—of seeing me as I am, with all my faults, my failings, my impulses, my real self? …I don’t know why the pleasure of being alone to-day should have meant exclusion for you, too. It was the unwelcome shock of seeing anybody—a selfish enjoyment of myself—that surprised me into rudeness. That is all.... Can you not understand?”

“I think so. I meant no criticism—”

“Wait, Mr. Siward!” as he moved slowly toward the path. “You force me to say other things, which you have no right to hear.... After last night”—the vivid tint grew in her face—“after such a night, is it not—natural—for a girl to creep off somewhere by herself and try to think a little?”

He had turned full on her; the answering colour crept to his forehead.

“Is that why?” he asked slowly.

“Is it not a reason?”

“It was my reason—for being here.”

She bit her bright lip. This trend to the conversation was ominous, and she had meant to do her drifting alone in still sun-dreams, fearing no witness, no testimony, no judgment save her own self in court with herself.

“I—I suppose you cannot go—now,” she reflected innocently.

“Indeed I can, and must.”

“And leave me here to dig in the sand with my heels? Merci!”

“Do you mean—”

“I certainly do, Mr. Siward. I don’t want to dream, now; I don’t care to reflect. I did, but here you come blundering into my private world and upset my calculations and change my intentions! It’s a shame, especially as you’ve been lying here doing what I wished to do for goodness knows how long!”

“I’m going,” he said, looking at her curiously.

“Then you are very selfish, Mr. Siward.”

“We will call it that,” he said with an odd laugh.

“Very well.” She seated herself on the sand and calmly shook out her skirts.

“About what time would you like to be called?” he asked smilingly.

“Thank you, I shall do no sun-dreaming.”

“Please. It is good for you.”

“No, it isn’t good at all. And I am grateful to you for waking me,” she retorted with a sudden gay malice that subdued him. And she, delicate nose in the air, laughingly watching him, went on with her punishment: “You see what you’ve done, don’t you?—saved me from an entire morning wasted in sentimental reverie over what might have been. Now you can appreciate it, can’t you?—your wisdom in appearing in the flesh to save a silly girl the effort of evoking you in the spirit! Ah, Mr. Siward, I am vastly obliged to you! Pray sit here beside me in the flesh, for fear that in your absence I might commit the folly that tempted me here.”

His low running laughter accompanying her voice had stimulated her to a gay audacity, which for the instant extinguished in her the little fear of him she had been barely conscious of.

“Do you know,” he said, “that you also aroused me from my sun-dreams?”

“Did I? And can’t you resume them?”

“You save me the necessity.”

“Oh, that is a second-hand compliment,” she said disdainfully—“a weak plagiarism on what I conveyed very wittily. You were probably really asleep, and dreaming of bird-murder.”

He waited for her to finish, then, amused eyes searching, he roamed about until high on a little drifted sand dune he found a place for himself; and while she watched him indignantly, he curled up in the sunshine, and, dropping his head on the hot sand, calmly closed his eyes.

“Upon—my word!” she breathed aloud.

He unclosed his eyes. “Now you may dream; you can’t avoid it,” he observed lazily, and closed his eyes; and neither taunts nor jeers nor questions, nor fragments of shells flung with intent to hit, stirred him from his immobility.

She tired of the attempt presently, and sat silent, elbows on her thighs, hands propping her chin. Thoughts, vague as the fitful breeze, arose, lingered, and, like the breeze, faded, dissolved into calm, through which, cadenced by the far beat of the ebb tide, her heart echoed, beating the steady intervals of time.

She had not meant to dream, but as she sat there, the fine-spun golden threads flying from the whirling loom of dreams floated about her, settling over her, entangling her in unseen meshes, so that she stirred, groping amid the netted brightness, drawn onward along dim paths and through corridors of thought where, always beyond, vague splendours seemed to beckon.

Now lost, now restless, conscious of the perils of the shining path she followed, the rhythm of an ocean soothing her to false security, she dreamed on awake, unconscious of the tinted sea and sky which stained her eyes to hues ineffable. A long while afterward a small cloud floated across the sun; and, in the sudden shadow on the world, doubt sounded its tiny voice, and her ears listened, and the enchantment faded and died away.

Turning, she looked across the sand at the man lying there; her eyes considered him—how long she did not know, she did not heed—until, stirring, he looked up; and she paled a trifle and closed her eyes, stunned by the sudden clamour of pulse and heart.

When he rose and walked over, she looked up gravely, pouring the last handful of white sand through her stretched fingers.

“Did you dream?” he asked lightly.

“Yes.”

“Did you dream true?”

“Nothing of my dream can happen,” she said. “You know that,… don’t you?”

“I know that we love… and that we dare not ignore it.”

She suffered his arm about her, his eyes looking deeply into hers—a close, sweet caress, a union of lips, and her dimmed eyes’ response.

“Stephen,” she faltered, “how can you make it so hard for me? How can you force me to this shame!”

“Shame?” he repeated vaguely.

“Yes—this treachery to myself—when I cannot hope to be more to you—when I dare not love you too much!”

“You must dare, Sylvia!”

“No, no, no! I know myself, I tell you. I cannot give up what is offered—for you!—dearly, dearly as I do love you!” She turned and caught his hands in hers, flushed, trembling, unstrung. “I cannot—I simply cannot! How can you love me and listen to such wickedness? How can you still care for such a girl as I am—worse than mercenary, because I have a heart—or had, until you took it! Keep it; it is the only part of me not all ignoble.”

“I will keep it—in trust,” he said, “until you give yourself with it.”

But she only shook her head wearily, withdrawing her hands from his, and for a time they sat silent, eyes apart.

Then—“There is another reason,” she said wistfully.

He looked up at her, hesitated, and—“My habits?” he asked simply.

“Yes.”

“I have them in check.”

“Are you—certain?”

“I think I may be—now.”

“Yet,” she said timidly, “you lost one fight—since you knew me.”

The dull red mantling his face wrung her heart. She turned impulsively and laid both hands on his shoulders. “That chance I would take, with all its uncertainty, all the dread inheritance you have come into. I love you enough for that; and if it turned out that—that you could not stem the tide, even with me to face it with you; and if the pity of it, the grief of it, killed me, I would take that chance—if you loved me through it all.... But there is something else. Hush; let me have my say while I find the words—something else you do not understand.... Turn your face a little; please don’t look at me. This is what you do not know—that, in three generations, every woman of my race has—gone wrong.... Every one! and I am beginning—with such a marriage!… deliberately, selfishly, shamelessly, perfectly conscious of the frivolous, erratic blood in me, aware of the race record behind me.

“Once, when I knew nothing—before I—I met you—I believed such a marriage would not only permit me mental tranquillity, but safely anchor me in the harbour of convention, leaving me free to become what I am fashioned to become—autocrat and arbiter in my own world. And now! and now! I don’t know—truly I don’t know what I may become. Your love forces my hand. I am displaying all the shallowness, falseness, pettiness, all the mean, and cruel and callous character which must be truly my real self.... Only I shall not marry you! You are not to run the risk of what I might prove to be when I remember in bitterness all I have renounced. If I married you I should remember, unreconciled, what you cost me. Better for you and for me that I marry him, and let him bear with me when I remember that he cost me you!”

She bent over, almost double, closing her eyes with small clenched hands; and he saw the ring shimmering in the sunshine, and her hair, heavily, densely gold, and the white nape of her neck, and the tiny close-set ears, and the curved softness of cheek and chin; every smooth, childlike contour and mould—rounded arms, slim, flowing lines of body and limb—all valued at many millions by her as her own appraiser.

Suddenly, deep within him, something seemed to fail, die out—perhaps a tiny newly lighted flame of unaccustomed purity, the dawning flicker of aspiration to better things. Whatever it was, material, spiritual, was gone now, and where it had glimmered for a night, the old accustomed twilit doubt crept in—the same dull acquiescence—the same uncertainty of self, the familiar lack of will, of incentive, the congenial tendency to drift; and with it came weariness—perhaps reaction from the recent skirmishes with that master-vice.

“I suppose,” he said in a dull voice, “you are right.”

“No, I am wrong—wrong!” she said, lifting her lovely face and heavy eyes. “But I have chosen my path.... And you will forget.”

“I hope so,” he said simply.

“If you hope so, you will.”

He nodded, unconvinced, watching a flock of sand-pipers whirling into the cove like a gray snow-squall and fearlessly settling on the beach.

After a while, with a long breath: “Then it is settled,” she concluded.

If she expected corroboration from him she received none; and perhaps she was not awaiting it. She sat very still, her eyes lost in thought.

And Mortimer, peeping down at them over the thicket above, yawned impatiently and glanced about him for the most convenient avenue of self-effacement when the time arrived.

CHAPTER VII PERSUASION

The days of the house-party at Shotover were numbered. A fresh relay of guests was to replace them on Monday, and so they were making the most of the waning week on lawn and marsh, in covert and blind, or motoring madly over the State, or riding in parties to Vermillion Light. Tennis and lawn bowls came into fashion; even water polo and squash alternated on days too raw for more rugged sport.

And during all these days Beverly Plank appeared with unflagging persistence and assiduity, until his familiar, big, round head and patient, delft-blue, Dutch eyes became a matter of course at Shotover, indoors and out.

It was not that he was either accepted, tolerated, or endured; he was simply there, and nobody took the trouble to question his all-pervading presence until everybody had become too much habituated to him to think about it at all.

The accomplished establishment of Beverly Plank was probably due as much to his own obstinate and good-tempered persistence as to Mrs. Mortimer. He was a Harvard graduate—there are all kinds of them—enormously wealthy, and though he had no particular personal tastes to gratify, he was willing and able to gratify the tastes of others. He did whatever anybody else did, and did it well enough to be amusing; and as lack of intellectual development never barred anybody from any section of the fashionable world, it seemed fair to infer that he would land where he wanted to, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mortimer led him about with the confidence that was her perquisite; and the chances were that in due time he would have house-parties of his own at Black Fells—not the kind he had wisely denied himself the pleasure of giving, with such neighbours as the Ferralls to observe, but the sort he desired. However, there were many things to be accomplished for him and by him before he could expect to use his great yacht and his estates and his shooting boxes and the vast granite mansion recently completed and facing Central Park just north of the new palaces built on the edges of the outer desert where Fifth Avenue fringes the hundreds.

Meanwhile, he had become in a measure domesticated at Shotover, and Shotover people gradually came to ride, drive, and motor over the Fells, which was a good beginning, though not necessarily a promise for anything definite in the future.

Mortimer, riding a huge chestnut—he could still wedge himself into a saddle—had now made it a regular practice to affect the jocular early-bird squire, and drag Plank out of bed. And Plank, in no position to be anything but flattered by such sans gêne, laboriously and gratefully splashed through his bath, wallowed amid the breakfast plates, and mounted a hunter for long and apparently aimless gallops with Mortimer.

His acquaintance among people who knew Mortimer being limited, he had no means of determining the latter’s social value except through hearsay and a toadying newspaper or two. Therefore he was not yet aware of Mortimer’s perennial need of money; and when Mortimer laughingly alluded to his poverty, Plank accepted the proposition in a purely comparative sense, and laughed, too, his thrifty Dutch soul untroubled by misgivings.

Meanwhile, Mortimer had come, among other things, on information; how much, and precisely of what nature, he was almost too much ashamed to admit definitely, even to himself. Still, the idea that had led him into this sudden intimacy with Plank, vague or not, persisted; and he was always hovering on the edge of hinting at something which might elicit a responsive hint from the flattered master of Black Fells.

There was much about Plank that was unaffected, genuine, even simple, in one sense; he cared for people for their own sakes; and only stubborn adherence to a dogged ambition had enabled him to dispense with the society of many people he might easily have cultivated and liked—people nearer his own sort; and that, perhaps, was the reason he so readily liked Mortimer, whose coarse fibre soon wore through the polish when rubbed against by a closer, finer fibre. And Plank liked him aside from gratitude; and they got on famously on the basis of such mutual recognition. Then, one day, very suddenly, Mortimer stumbled on something valuable—a thread, a mere clew, so astonishing that for an instant it absolutely upset all his unadmitted theories and calculations.

It was nothing—a vague word or two—a forced laugh—and the scared silence of this man Plank, who had blundered on the verge of a confidence to a man he liked.

A moment of amazement, of half-incredulous suspicion, of certainty; and Mortimer pounced playfully upon him like a tiger—a big, fat, friendly, jocose tiger:

“Plank, is that what you’re up to!”

“Up to! Why, I never thought of such a—”

“Haw! haw!” roared Mortimer. “If you could only see your face!”

And Beverly Plank, red as a beet, comfortably suffused with reassurance under the reaction from his scare, attempted to refute the other’s conclusions: “It doesn’t mean anything, Mortimer. She’s just the handsomest girl I ever saw. I know she’s engaged. I only admired her a lot.”

“You’re not the only man,” said Mortimer blandly, still striving to reconcile his preconceived theories with the awkward half-confession of this great, red-fisted, hulking horseman riding at his stirrup.

“I wouldn’t have her dream,” stammered Plank, “that I had ever thought of such a—”

“Why not? It would only flatter her.”

“Flatter a woman who is engaged to marry another man!” gasped Plank.

“Certainly. Do you think any woman ever had enough admiration in this world?” asked Mortimer coolly. “And as for Sylvia Landis, she’d be tickled to death if anybody hinted that you had ever admired her.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Plank, alarmed; “You wouldn’t make a joke of it! you wouldn’t be careless about such a thing! And there’s Quarrier! I’m not on joking terms with him; I’m on most formal terms.”

“Quarrier!” sneered the other, flicking at his stirrup with his crop. “He’s on formal terms with everybody, including himself. He never laughed on purpose in his life; once a month only, to keep his mouth in; that’s his limit. Do you suppose any woman would stand for him if a better man looked sideways at her?” And, reversing his riding crop, he deliberately poked Mr. Plank in the ribs.

“A—a better man!” muttered Plank, scarce crediting his ears.

“Certainly. A man who can make good, is good; but a man who can make better is it with the ladies—God bless ‘em!” he added, displaying a heavy set of teeth.

Beverly Plank knew perfectly well that, in the comparison so delicately suggested by Mortimer, his material equipment could be scarcely compared to the immense fortune controlled by Howard Quarrier; and as he thought it, his reflections were put into words by Mortimer, airily enough:

“Nobody stands a chance in a show-down with Quarrier. But—”

Plank gaped until the tension became unbearable.

“But—what?” he blurted out.

“Plank,” said Mortimer solemnly, and his voice vibrated with feeling, “Let me do a little thinking before I ask you a—a vital question.”

But Plank had become agitated again, and he said something so bluntly that Mortimer wheeled on him, glowering:

“Look here, Plank: you don’t suppose I’m capable of repeating a confidence, do you?—if you choose to make me understand it’s a confidence.”

“It isn’t a confidence; it isn’t anything; I mean it is confidential, of course. All there’s in it is what I said—or rather what you took me up on so fast,” ended Plank, abashed.

“About your being in love with Syl—”

“Confound it!” roared Plank, crimson to his hair; and he set his heavy spurs to his mount and plunged forward in a storm of dust. Mortimer followed, silent, profoundly immersed in his own thoughts and deductions; and as he pounded along, turning over in his mind all the varied information he had so unexpectedly obtained in these last few days, a dull excitement stirred him, and he urged his huge horse forward in a thrill of rising exhilaration such as seizes on men who hunt, no matter what they hunt—the savage, swimming sense of intoxication which marks the man who chases the quarry not for its own value, but because it is his nature to chase and ride down and enjoy spoils.

And all that afternoon, having taken to his room on pretence of neuralgia, he lay sprawled on his bed, thinking, thinking. Not that he meant harm to anybody, he told himself very frequently. He had, of course, information which certain degraded men might use in a contemptible way, but he, Mortimer, did not resemble such men in any particular. All he desired was to do Plank a good turn. There was nothing disreputable in doing a wealthy man a favour.... And God knew a wealthy man’s gratitude was necessary to him at that very moment—gratitude substantially acknowledged.... He liked Plank—wished him well; that was all right, too; but a man is an ass who doesn’t wish himself well also.... Two birds with one stone.... Three! for he hated Quarrier. Four!… for he had no love for his wife.... Besides, it would teach Leila a wholesome lesson—teach her that he still counted; serve her right for her disgusting selfishness about Plank.

No, there was to be nothing disreputable in his proceedings; that he would be very careful about.... Probably Major Belwether might express his gratitude substantially if he, Mortimer, went to him frankly and volunteered not to mention to Quarrier the scene he had witnessed between Sylvia Landis and Stephen Siward at three o’clock in the morning in the corridor; and if, in playful corroboration, he displayed the cap and rain-coat and the big fan, all crushed, which objects of interest he had discovered later in the bay-window.... Yes, probably Major Belwether would be very grateful, because he wanted Quarrier in the family; he needed Quarrier in his business.... But, faugh! that was close enough to blackmail to rub off!… No!… No! He wouldn’t go to Belwether and promise any such thing!… On the contrary, he felt it his duty to inform Quarrier! Quarrier had a right to know what sort of a girl he was threatened with for life!… A man ought not to let another man go blindly into such a marriage.... Men owed each other something, even if they were not particularly close friends.... And he had always had a respect for Quarrier, even a sort of liking for him—yes, a distinct liking!… And, anyhow, women were devils! and it behooved men to get together and stand for one another!

Quarrier would give her her walking papers damned quick!… And, in her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn’t snap up Plank in such a fix?… And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier?… But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money.... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have.... And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer, had cut his wisdom teeth, by God!

As for Siward, he amounted to nothing; probably was one of that contemptible sort of men who butted in and kissed a pretty girl when he had the chance. He, Mortimer, had only disgust for such amateurs of the social by-ways; for he himself kept to the highways, like any self-respecting professional, even when a tour of the highways sometimes carried him below stairs. There was no romantic shilly-shallying fol-de-rol about him. Women learned what to expect from him in short order. En garde, Madame!—ou Mademoiselle—tant pis!

He laughed to himself and rolled over, digging his head into the pillows and stretching his fat hands to ease their congestion. And most of all he amused himself with figuring out the exact degree of his wife’s astonishment and chagrin when, without consulting her, he achieved the triumph of Quarrier’s elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether, too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated, crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a very much mussed-up buck-rabbit.

“Haw! haw!” roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and regarded his environment with a subdued grin.

Everything seems easy when it seems funny. After all, the matter was simple—absurdly simple. A word to Quarrier, and crack! the match was off! Girl mad as a hornet, but staggered, has no explanation to offer; man frozen stiff with rage, mute as an iceberg. Then, zip! Enter Beverly Plank—the girl’s rescuer at a pinch—her preserver, the saviour of her “face,” the big, highly coloured, leaden-eyed deus ex machina. Would she take fifty cents on the dollar? Would she? to buy herself a new “face”? And put it all over Quarrier? And live happy ever after? Would she? Oh, not at all!

And Mortimer rolled over in another paroxysm; which wasn’t good for him, and frightened him enough to lie still awhile and think how best he might cut down on his wine and spirits.

The main thing, after all, was to promise Plank his opportunity, but not tell him how he was to obtain it; for Mortimer had an uneasy idea that there was something of the Puritan deep planted under the stolid young man’s hide, and that he might make some absurd and irrelevant objection to the perfectly proper methods employed by his newly self-constituted guide and mentor. No; that was no concern of Plank’s. All he had to do was to be ready. As for Quarrier, anybody could forecast his action when once convinced of Sylvia’s behaviour.

He lay there pondering several methods of imparting the sad but necessary information to Quarrier. One thing was certain: there was not now time enough before the house-party dissolved to mould Plank into acquiescent obedience. That must be finished in town—unless Plank invited him to stay at the Fells after his time was up at Shotover. By Heaven! That was the idea! And there’d be a chance for him at cards!… Only, of course, Plank would ask Leila too.... But what did he care! He was no longer afraid of her; he’d soon be independent of her and her pittance. Let her go to the courts for her divorce! Let her—

He sat up rather suddenly, perplexed with a new idea which, curiously enough, had not appealed to him before. The astonishing hint so coolly dropped by his wife concerning her fearlessness of divorce proceedings had only awakened him to the consciousness of his own vulnerability and carelessness of conduct.

Now it occurred to him, for the first time, that if it were not a mere bluff on Leila’s part, this sudden coquetting with the question of divorce might indicate an ulterior object. Was Leila considering his elimination in view of this ulterior object? Was there an ulterior gentleman somewhere prepared to replace him? If so, where? And who?

His wife’s possible indiscretions had never interested him; he simply didn’t care—had no curiosity, as long as appearances were maintained. And she had preserved appearances with a skill which required all the indifferent and easy charity of their set to pretend completely deceived everybody. Yes, he gave her credit for that; she had been clever. Nobody outside of the social register knew the true state of affairs in the house of Leroy Mortimer—which, after all, was all anybody cared about.

And so, immersed in the details of his dirty little drama, he pondered over the possibility of an ulterior gentleman as he moved heavily to and fro, dressing himself—his neuralgia being much better—and presently descended the stairs to find everybody absent, engaged, as a servant explained, in a game of water basket-ball in the swimming pool. So he strolled off toward the north wing of the house, which had been built for the squash-courts and swimming pool.

There was a good deal of an uproar in the big gymnasium as Mortimer walked in, threading his way through the palms and orange-trees; much splashing in the pool, cries and stifled laughter, and the quick rattle of applause from the gallery of the squash-courts.

The Page boys and Rena and Eileen on one side were playing the last match game against Sylvia, Marion Page, Siward, and Ferrall on the other; the big, slippery, glistening ball was flying about through storms of spray. Marion caught it, but her brother Gordon got it away; then Ferrall secured it and dived toward the red goal; but Rena Bonnesdel caught him under water; the ball bobbed up, and Sylvia flung both arms around it with a little warning shout and hurled it back at Siward, who shot forward like an arrow, his opponents gathering about him in full cry, amid laughter and excited applause from the gallery, where Grace Ferrall and Captain Voucher were wildly offering odds on the blue, and Alderdene and Major Belwether were thriftily booking them.

Mortimer climbed the slippery, marble stairway as fast as his lack of breath permitted, anxious for his share of the harvest if the odds were right. He ignored his wife’s smilingly ironical offer, seeing no sense in bothering about money already inside the family; but he managed to make several apparently desirable wagers with Katharyn Tassel and one with Beverly Plank, who was also obstinately backing the blues, the losing side. Sylvia played forward for the blues.

Agatha Caithness, sleeves rolled up, tall and slim and strangely pale in her white flannels, came from the squash-court with Quarrier to watch the finish; and Mortimer observed her sidewise, blinking, irresolute, for he had never understood her and was always a trifle afraid of her. A pair of icicles, she and Quarrier, with whom he had never been on betting terms; so he made no suggestions in that direction, and presently became absorbed in the splashing battle below. Indeed, such a dashing of foam and showering of spray was taking place that the fronds of the big palms hung dripping amid drenched blossoms overweighted and prone on the wet marble edges of the pool.

Suddenly, through the confused blur of foam and spray, the big, glistening ball shot aloft and remained.

“Blue! Blue!” exclaimed Grace Ferrall, clapping her hands; and a little whirlwind of cries and hand clapping echoed from the gallery as the breathless swimmers came climbing out of the pool, with scarcely wind enough left for a word or strength for a gesture toward the laughing crowd above.

Mortimer, disgusted, turned away, already casting about him for somebody to play cards with—it being his temperament and his temper to throw good money after bad. But Quarrier and Miss Caithness had already returned to the squash-courts, the majority of the swimmers to their several dressing-rooms, and Grace Ferrall’s party, equipped for motoring, to the lawn, where they lost little time in disappearing into the golden haze which a sudden shift of wind had spun out of the cloudless afternoon’s sunshine.

However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a practice of taking away his money—Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene. He hadn’t particularly wanted them; he wanted somebody he could play with, like Siward, for example, or even the two ten-dollar Pages; not that their combined twenty would do him much good, but it would at least permit him the pleasures of the card-table without personal loss.

But the Pages had retired to dress, and Voucher was for motoring, and he had no use for his wife, and he was afraid of Plank’s game, and Siward, seated on the edge of the pool and sharing a pint of ginger-ale with Sylvia Landis, shook his head at the suggestion and resumed his division of the ginger-ale.

Plank and Leila Mortimer came down to congratulate them. Sylvia, always instinctively and particularly nice to people of Plank’s sort whom she occasionally encountered, was so faultlessly amiable, that Plank, who had never before permitted himself the privilege of monopolising her, found himself doing it so easily that it kept him in a state of persistent mental intoxication.

That slow, sweet, upward training inflection to a statement which instantly became a confided question was an unconscious trick which had been responsible, in Sylvia’s brief life, for more mistakes than anything else. Like others before him, Beverly Plank made the mistake that the sweetness of voice and the friendliness of eyes were particularly personal to him, in tribute to qualities he had foolishly enough hitherto not suspected in himself. Now he suspected them, and whatever of real qualities desirable had been latent in him also appeared at once, confirming his modest suspicions. Certainly he was a wit! Was not this perfectly charming girl’s responsive and delicious laughter proof enough? Certainly he was epigrammatic! Certainly he could be easy, polished, amusing, sympathetic, and vastly interesting all the while. Could he not divine it in her undivided attention, the quick, amused flicker of recognition animating her beautiful face when he had turned a particularly successful phrase or taken a verbal hurdle without a cropper? And above all, her kindness to him impressed him; her natural and friendly pleasure in being agreeable. Here he was already on an informal footing with one of the persons of whom he had been most shy and uncertain. If people were going to be as considerate of him as she had proved, why—why—

His dull, Dutch-blue eyes returned to her, fascinated. The conquest of what he desired and meant to have became merged in a vague plan which included such a marriage as he had dreamed of.

Somebody had once told him that a man who could afford to dress for dinner could go anywhere; meaning that, being a man, nature had fitted his feet with the paraphernalia for climbing as high as he cared to climb.

There was just enough truth in the statement to determine him to use his climbing irons; and he had done so, carrying his fortune with him, which had proved neither an impediment nor an aid so far. But now he had concluded that neither his god-sent climbing irons, his amiability, his obstinacy, his mild, tireless persistency, nor his money counted. It had come to a crisis where personal worth and sterling character must carry him through sheer merit to the inner temple—that inner temple of raw gold whose altars are served by a sexless skeleton in cap and bells!

Siward, inclined to be amused by the duration of the trance into which Plank had fallen, watched the progress of that bulky young man’s infatuation as he sat there on the pool’s marble edge, exchanging trivial views on trivial subjects with Mrs. Leroy Mortimer.

But her conversation, even when inconsequential, was never wearisome except when she made it so for her husband’s benefit. Features, person, personality, and temperament were warmly exotic; her dark eyes with their slight Japanese slant, the clear olive skin with its rose bloom, the temptation of mouth and slender neck, were always provocative of the audacity in men which she could so well meet with amusement or surprise, or at times with a fascinating audacity of her own wholly charming because of its setting.

Once, in their history, during her early married life, Siward had been very sentimental about her; but neither he nor she had approached the danger line closer than to make daring eyes at one another across the frontiers of good taste. And their youthful enchantment had faded so naturally, so pleasantly, that always there had remained to them both an agreeable after-taste—a sort of gay understanding which almost invariably led to mutual banter when they encountered. But now something appeared to be lacking in their rather listless badinage—something of the usual flavour which once had salted even a laughing silence with significance. Siward, too, had ceased to be amused at the spectacle of Plank’s calf-like infatuation; and Leila Mortimer’s bored smile had lasted so long that her olive-pink cheeks were stiff, and she relaxed her fixed features with a little shrug that was also something of a shiver. Then, looking prudently around, she encountered Siward’s eyes; and during a moment’s hesitation they considered one another with an increasing curiosity that slowly became tentative intelligence. And her eyes said very plainly and wickedly to Siward’s: “Oho, my friend! So it bores you to see Mr. Plank monopolising an engaged girl who belongs to Howard Quarrier!”

And his eyes, wincing, denying, pretending ignorance too late, suddenly narrowed in vexed retaliation: “Speak for yourself, my lady! You’re no more pleased than I am!”

The next moment they both regretted the pale flash of telepathy. There had been something wounded in his eyes; and she had not meant that. No; a new charity for the hapless had softened her wonderfully within a fortnight’s time, and a self-pity, not entirely ignoble, had subdued the brilliancy of her dark eyes, and made her tongue more gentle in dealing with all failings. Besides, she was not yet perfectly certain what ailed her, never having really cared for any one man before. No, she was not at all certain.... But in the meanwhile she was very sorry for herself, and for all those who drained the bitter cup that might yet pass from her shrinking lips. Who knows! “Stephen,” she said under her breath, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.... Don’t scowl. Listen. I have already entirely forgotten the nature of my offense. Pax, if you please.”

He refused to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a rival infant with whom her matchless offspring was coquetting.

Then, without appearing to, she took Plank away from temptation; so skilfully that nobody except Siward understood that the young man had been incontinently removed. He, Plank, never doubting that he was a perfectly free agent, decided that the time had arrived for triumphant retirement. It had; but Leila Mortimer, not he, had rendered the decision, and so cleverly that it appeared even to Plank himself that he had dragged her off with him rather masterfully. Clearly he was becoming a devil of a fellow!

Sylvia turned to Siward, glanced up at him, hesitated, and began to laugh consciously:

“What do you think of my latest sentimental acquisition?”

“He’d be an ornament to a stock farm,” replied Siward, out of humour.

“How brutal you can be!” she mused, smiling.

“Nonsense! He’s a plain bounder, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know.... Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly—even pathetically; they usually do, that sort.... As though the trouble they took could ever be worth the time they lose!… There are dozens of men I know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of things—like degenerate horses, you know—always pathetic to me; but they’re still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. …And if I were a donkey I’d sing and cavort with my own kind, and let horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme of things.... Now I have been brutal. But—I’m easily coloured by my environment.”

She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.

“Are you reconciled?” she asked presently.

“To what?”

“To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my poor friend:

“‘Yon rising moon that looks for us again—How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same mansion—and for one in vain!’”

“That is I—the one, you know. You may be here again; but I—I shall not be I if I ever come to Shotover again.”

Her stockinged heels beat the devil’s tattoo against the marble sides of the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering branch of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: “I’m accustoming myself to this most significant perfume,” she said, looking at him askance. And she deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his sullen face.

“If you had the courage of a sparrow you’d make life worth something for us both,” he said.

“I know it; I haven’t; but I seem to possess the remainder of his lordship’s traits—inconsequence, self-centred selfishness, the instinct for Fifth Avenue nest-building—all the feathered vices, all the unlovely personality and futility and uselessness of my prototype.... Only, as you observe, I lack the quality of courage.”

Crisis after crisis swept him; sometimes he found his feet and moved blindly about the room.

Strange periods of calm intervened; sensation seemed deadened; and he stood as a man who listens, scarcely daring to breathe lest the enemy awake and seize him.

He turned on the light, later, to look for his pipe, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was a sick man who stared back at him out of hollow eyes, and the physical revulsion shocked him into something resembling self-command.

“Damn you!” he said fiercely, setting his teeth and staring back at his reflected face, “I’ll kill you yet before I’ve finished with you!”

Then he filled his pipe, and opening his bedroom window, sat down, resting his arm on the sill. A splendid moon silvered the sea; through the intense stillness he heard the surf, magnificently dissonant among the reefs, and he listened, fascinated, loathing the tides as he feared and loathed the inexorable tides that surged and ebbed with his accursed desire.

Once he said to himself, weakly—for he was deadly tired—“What am I making the fight for, anyway?” And “Who are you making the fight for?” echoed his heavy pulses.

He had asked that question and received that answer before. After all, it had been for his mother’s sake alone. And now—and now?—his heart beat out another answer; and before his eyes two other eyes seemed to open, fearlessly, sweetly, divinely tender. But they were no longer his mother’s grave, gray eyes.

After the second pipe he remembered his letter. It gave him something to do, so he opened it and tried to read it, but for a long while, in his confused physical and mental condition, he could make no sense of it.

Little by little he began to comprehend its purport that his resignation was regretfully requested by the governors of the Lenox Club for reasons unassigned.

The shock of the thing came to him after a while, like a distant, dull report long after the flash of the explosion. Well, the affair, bad enough at first, was turning worse, that was all. How much of that sort of discredit could a man stand and keep his balance?… And what would his mother say?

Confused from his own physical suffering, the blow had fallen with a deadened force on nerves already numbed; but his half-stupefied acquiescence had suddenly become a painful recoil when he remembered where the brunt of the disgrace would fall—where the centre of suffering must always be, and the keenest grief concentrated. Roused, appalled, almost totally unnerved, he stood staring at the letter, beginning to realise what it would mean to his mother. A passion of remorse and resentment swept him. She must be spared that! There must be some way—some punishment for his offence that could not strike her through him! It was wicked, it was contemptible, insane, to strike her! What were the governors of the Lenox about—a lot of snivelling hypocrites, pandering to the horrified snobbery at the Patroons! Who were they, anyway, to discipline him! Scarce one in fifty among the members of the two clubs was qualified to sit in judgment on a Siward!

But that tempest of passion and mortification passed, too, leaving him standing there, dumb, desperate, staring at the letter crushed in his shaking hand.

He must see somebody, some member of the Lenox, and do something—something! Ferrall! Was that Ferrall’s step on the landing?

He sprang to the door and opened it. Quarrier, passing the corridor, turned an expressionless visage toward him, and passed on with a nod almost imperceptible.

“Quarrier!” he called, swept by a sudden impulse.

Quarrier halted and turned.

“Could you give me a moment—here in my room? I won’t detain you.”

The faint trace of surprise faded from Quarrier’s face; he quietly retraced his steps, and, entering Siward’s room, stood silently confronting its pallid tenant.

“Will you sit down a moment?”

Quarrier seated himself in the arm-chair by the window, and Siward found a chair opposite.

“Quarrier,” said the younger man, turning a tensely miserable face on his visitor, “I want to ask you something. I’ll not mince matters. You know that the Patroons have dropped me, and you know what for.”

“Yes, I know.”

“When I was called before the Board of Governors to explain the matter, if I could, you were sitting on that Board.”

“Yes.”

“I denied the charge, but refused to explain.... You remember?”

Quarrier nodded coldly.

“And I was dropped by the club!”

A slight inclination of Quarrier’s symmetrical head corroborated him.

“Now,” said Siward, slowly and very distinctly, “I shall tell you unofficially what I refused to tell the other governors officially.” And, as he began speaking, Quarrier’s face flushed, then the features became immobile, set, and inert, and his eyes grew duller and duller, as though, under a smooth surface the soul inside of him was shrinking back into some dark corner, silent, watchful, suspicious, and perhaps defiant.

“Mr. Quarrier,” said Siward quietly, “I did not take that girl to the Patroons Club—and you know it.”

Quarrier was all surface now; he had drawn away internally so far that even his eyes seemed to recede until they scarcely glimmered through the slits in his colourless mask. And Siward went on:

“I knew perfectly well what sort of women I was to meet at that fool supper Billy Fleetwood gave; and you must have, too, for the girl you took in was no stranger to you.... Her name is Lydia Vyse, I believe.”

The slightest possible glimmer in the elder man’s eyes was all the answer he granted.

“What happened,” said Siward calmly, “was this: She bet me she could so disguise herself that I could safely take her into any club in New York. I bet her she couldn’t. I never dreamed of trying. Besides, she was your—dinner partner,” he added with a shrug.

His concentrated gaze seemed at length to pierce the expressionless surface of the other man, who moved slightly in his chair and moistened his thin lips under the glossy beard.

“Quarrier,” said Siward earnestly, “What happened in the club lobby I don’t exactly know, because I was not in a condition to know. I admit it; that was the trouble with me. When I left Fleetwood’s rooms I left with a half dozen men. I remember crossing Fifth Avenue with them; and the next thing I remember distinctly was loud talking in the club lobby, and a number of men there, and a slim young fellow in Inverness and top hat in the centre of a crowd, whose face was the face of that girl, Lydia Vyse. And that is absolutely all. But I couldn’t do more than deny that I took her there unless I told what I knew; and of course that was not possible, even in self-defence. But it was for you to admit that I was right. And you did not. You dared not! You let another man blunder into your private affairs and fall a victim to circumstantial evidence which you could have refuted; and it was up to you to say something! And you did not!… And now—what are you going to do? The Lenox Club has taken this thing up. A man can’t stand too much of that sort of thing. What am I to do? I can’t defend myself by betraying my accidental knowledge of your petty, private affairs. So I leave it to you. I ask you what are you going to do?”

“Do you mean”—Quarrier’s voice was not his own, and he brought it harshly under command—“do you mean that you think it necessary for me to say I knew her? What object would be attained by that? I did not take her to the Patroons’.”

“Nor did I. Ask her how she got there. Learn the truth from her, man!”

“What proof is there that I ever met her before I took her into supper at Fleetwood’s?”

“Proof! Are you mad? All I ask of you is to say to the governors what I cannot say without using your name.”

“You wish me,” asked Quarrier icily, “to deny that you made that wager? I can do that.”

“You can’t do it! I did make that bet.”

“Oh! Then, what is it you wish me to say?”

“Tell them the truth. Tell them you know I did not take her to the club. You need not tell them why you know it. You need not tell them how much you know about her, whose brougham she drove home in. I can’t defend myself at your expense—intrench myself behind your dirty little romance. What could I say? I denied taking her to the club. Then Major Belwether confronted me with my wager. Then I shut up. And so did you, Quarrier—so did you, seated there among the governors, between Leroy Mortimer and Belwether. It was up to you, and you did not stir!”

“Stir!” echoed the other man, exasperated. “Of course I did not stir. What did I know about it? Do you think I care to give a man like Mortimer a hold on me by admitting I knew anything?—or Belwether—do you think I care to have that man know anything about my private and personal business? Did you expect me to say that I was in a position to prove anything one way or another? And,” he added with increasing harshness, “how do you know what I might or might not prove? If she went to the Patroons Club, I did not go with her; I did not see her; I don’t know whether or not you took her.”

“I have already told you that I did not take her,” said Siward, turning whiter.

“You told that to the governors, too. Tell them again, if you like. I decline to discuss this matter with you. I decline to countenance your unwarranted intrusion into what you pretend to believe are my private affairs. I decline to confer with Belwether or Mortimer. It’s enough that you are inclined to meddle—” His cold anger was stirring. He rose to his full, muscular height, slow, menacing, his long, pale fingers twisting his silky beard. “It’s enough that you meddle!” he repeated. “As for the matter in question, a dozen men, including myself, heard you make a wager; and later I myself was a witness that the terms of that wager had been carried out to the letter. I know absolutely nothing except that, Mr. Siward; nor, it appears, do you, for you were drunk at the time, and you have admitted it to me.”

“I have asked you,” said Siward, rising, and very grave, “I have asked you to do the right thing. Are you going to do it?”

“Is that a threat?” inquired Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-kept teeth. “Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what you believe you know of my private life? Is it really intimidation?”

And still Siward stared into his half-veiled, sneering eyes, speechless.

“There is only one name used for this kind of thing,” added Quarrier, taking a quick involuntary step backward to the door as the blaze of fury broke out in Siward’s eyes.

“Good God! Quarrier,” whispered Siward with dry lips, “what a cur you are! What a cur!”

And long after Quarrier had passed the door and disappeared in the corridor, Siward stood there, frozen motionless under the icy waves of rage that swept him.

He had never before had an enemy worth the name; he knew he had one now. He had never before hated; he now understood something of that, too. The purely physical craving to take this man and crush him into eternal quiescence had given place to a more terrible mental desire to punish. His brain surged and surged under the first flood of a mortal hatred. That the hatred was sterile made it the more intense, and, blinded by it, he stood there or paced the room minute after minute, hearing nothing but the wild clamour in his brain, seeing nothing but the smooth, expressionless face of the man whom he could not reach.

Toward midnight, seated in his chair by the window, a deathly lassitude weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding heels of departure—a stillness that settled like a mist through hall and corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, then absolute, echoless silence. And for a long while he sat there listening.

The cool wind from the ocean blew his curtains far into the room, where they bellied out, fluttering, floating, subsiding, only to rise again in the freshening breeze. He sat watching their silken convolutions, stupidly, for a while, then rose and closed his window, and raised the window on the south for purposes of air.

As he turned to adjust his transom, something white thrust under the door caught his eye, and he walked over and drew it across the sill. It was a sealed note. He opened it, reading it as he walked back to the drop-light burning beside his bed:

“Did you not mean to say good-bye? Because it is to be good-bye for a long, long time—for all our lives—as long as we live—as long as the world lasts, and longer.... Good-bye—unless you care to say it to me.”

He stood studying the note for a while; presently, lighting a match, he set fire to it and carried it blazing to the grate and flung it in, watching the blackened ashes curl up, glow, whiten, and fall in flakes to the hearth. Then he went out into the corridor, and traversed the hall to the passage which led to the bay-window. There was nobody there. The stars looked in on him, twinkling with a frosty light; beneath, the shadowy fronds of palms traced a pale pattern on the glass roof of the swimming pool. He waited a moment, turned, retraced his steps to his own door and stood listening. Then, moving swiftly, he walked the length of the corridor, and, halting at her door, knocked once.

After a moment the door swung open. He stepped forward into the room, closing the door behind him, and confronted the tall girl standing there silhouetted against the lamp behind her.

“You are insane to do this!” she whispered. “I let you in for fear you’d knock again!”

“I went to the bay-window,” he said.

“You went too late. I was there an hour ago. I waited. Do you know what time it is?”

“Come to the bay-window,” he said, “if you fear me here.”

“Do you know it is nearly three o’clock?” she repeated. “And you leave at six.

“Shall we say good-bye here?” he asked coolly.

“Certainly. I dare not go out. And you—do you know the chances we are running? You must be perfectly mad to come to my room. Do you think anybody could have seen—heard you—”

“No. Good night.” He offered his hand; she laid both of hers in it. He could scarcely distinguish her features where she stood dark against the brilliant light behind her.

“Good-bye,” he whispered, kissing her hands where they lay in his.

“Good-bye.” Her fingers closed convulsively, retaining his hands. “I hope—I think that—you—” Her head was drooping; she could not control her voice.

“Good-bye, Sylvia,” he said again.

It was quite useless, she could not speak; and when he took her in his arms she clung to him, quivering; and he kissed the wet lashes, and the hot, trembling lips, and the smooth little hands crushed to his breast.

“We have a year yet,” she gasped. “Dear, take me by force before it ends. I—I simply cannot endure this. I told you to take me—to tear me from myself. Will you do it? I will love you—truly, truly! Oh, my darling, my darling! Don’t—don’t give me up! Can’t you do something for us? Can’t you—”

“Will you come with me now?”

“How can—”

“Will you?”

A sudden sound broke out in the night—the distant pealing of the lodge-gate bell. Startled, she shrank back; somebody in the adjoining room had sprung to the floor and was opening the window.

“What is it?” she motioned with whitening lips. “Quick! oh, quick, before you are seen! Grace may come! I—I beg of you to go!”

As he stepped into the corridor he heard, below, a sound at the great door, and the stirring of the night watchman on post. At his own door he turned, listening to the movement and whispering. Ferrall, in dressing-gown and slippers, stepped into the corridor; below, the chains were rattling as the wicket swung open. There was a brief parley at the door, sounds of retreating steps on the gravel outside, sounds of approaching steps on the stairway.

“What’s that? A telegram?” said Ferrall sharply. “Here, give it to me.... Wait! It isn’t for me. It’s for Mr Siward!”

Siward, standing at his open door, swayed slightly. A thrill of pure fear struck him through and through. He laid one hand on the door to steady himself, and stepped forward as Ferrall came up.

“Oh! You’re awake, Stephen. Here’s a telegram.” He extended his hand. Siward took the yellow envelope, fumbled it, tore it open.

“Good God!” whispered Ferrall; “is it bad?”

And Siward’s glazed eyes stared and stared at the scrawled and inky message:

“YOUR MOTHER IS VERY ILL. COME AT ONCE.”

The signature was the name of their family physician, Grisby.

CHAPTER VIII CONFIDENCES

By January the complex social mechanism of the metropolis was whirling smoothly again; the last ultra-fashionable December lingerer had returned from the country; those of the same caste outward bound for a Southern or exotic winter had departed; and the glittering machine, every part assembled, refurbished, repolished, and connected, having been given preliminary speed-tests at the horse show, and a tuning up at the opera, was now running under full velocity; and its steady, subdued whir quickened the clattering pulse of the city, keying it to a sublimely syncopated ragtime.

The commercial reaction from the chaos of the holidays had become a carnival of recovery; shop windows grew brighter and gayer than ever, bursting into gaudy winter florescence; the main arteries of the town roared prosperity; cross streets were packed; Fifth Avenue, almost impassible in the morning, choked up after three o’clock; and all the afternoon through, and late into the night, mounted police of the traffic squad, adrift in the tide of carriages, stemmed the flashing currents pouring north and south from the white marble arch to the gilded bronze battle-horse and its rider on guard at the portals of the richest quarter of the wealthiest city in the world.

So far, that winter, snow had fallen only twice, lasting but a day or two each time; street and avenue remained bone dry where the white-uniformed cleaning squads worked amid clouds of dust; and all day long the flinty asphalt echoed the rattling slap of horses’ feet; all day long the big, shining motor-cars sped up town and down town, droning their distant warnings. It was an open winter in New York, and, financially, a prosperous one; and that meant a brilliant social season. Like a set piece of fireworks, with its interdependent parts taking fire in turn, function after function, spectacle after spectacle, glittered, fizzed, and was extinguished, only to give place to newer and more splendid spectacles; separate circles, sets, and groups belonging to the social solar system whizzed, revolved, rotated, with edifying effects on everybody concerned, unconcerned, and not at all concerned; and at intervals, when for a moment or two something hung fire, the twinkle of similar spectacles sputtering away in distant cities beyond the horizon was faintly reflected in the social sky above the incandescent metropolis. For the whole nation was footing it, heel and toe, to the echoes of strains borne on the winds from the social capital of the republic; and the social arbiter at Bird Centre was more of a facsimile of his New York confrère than that confrère could ever dream of even in the most realistic of nightmares.

Three phenomena particularly characterised that metropolitan winter: the reckless rage for private gambling through the mediums of bridge and roulette; the incorporation of a company known as The Inter-County Electric Company, capitalised at a figure calculated to disturb nobody, and, so far, without any avowed specific policy other than that which served to decorate a portion of its charter which otherwise might have remained ornately and comparatively blank; the third phenomenon was the retirement from active affairs of Stanley S. Quarrier, the father of Howard Quarrier, and the election of the son to the presidency of the great Algonquin Loan and Trust Company, with its network system of dependent, subsidiary, and allied corporations.

The day that the newspapers gave this interesting information to the Western world, Leroy Mortimer, on being bluntly notified that he had overdrawn his account with the Algonquin Loan and Trust, began telephoning in every direction until he located Beverly Plank at the Saddle Club—an organisation of wealthy men, and sufficiently exclusive not to compromise Plank’s possible chances for something better; in fact, the Saddle Club, into which Leroy Mortimer had already managed to pilot him, was one riser and tread upward on the stair he was climbing, though it was more of a lobby for other clubs than a club in itself. To be seen there was, perhaps, rather to a man’s advantage, if he did not loaf there in the evenings or use it too frequently. As Plank carefully avoided doing either, Mortimer was fortunate in finding him there; and he crawled out of his hansom, saying that the desk clerk would pay, and entered the reading-room, where Plank sat writing a letter.

Beverly Plank had grown stouter since he had returned to town from Black Fells; but the increase of weight was evenly distributed over his six feet odd, which made him only a trifle more ponderous and not abdominally fat. But Mortimer had become enormous; rolls of flesh crowded his mottled ear-lobes outward and bulged above his collar; cushions of it padded the backs of his hands and fingers; shaving left his heavy, distended face congested and unpleasantly shiny. But he was as minutely groomed as ever, and he wore that satiated air of prosperity which had always been one of his most important assets.

The social campaign inaugurated by Leila Mortimer in behalf of Beverly Plank had, so far, received no serious reverses. His box at the horse show, of course, produced merely negative results; his box at the opera might mean something some day. His name was up at the Lenox and the Patroons; he had endowed a ward in the new pavilion of St. Berold’s Hospital; he had presented a fine Gainsborough—The Countess of Wythe—to the Metropolitan Museum; and it was rumoured that he had consulted several bishops concerning a new chapel for that huge bastion of the citadel of Faith looming above the metropolitan wilderness in the north.

So far, so good. If, as yet, he had not been permitted to go where he wanted to go, he at least had been instructed where not to go and what not to do; and he was as docile as he was dogged, understanding how much longer it takes to shuffle in by way of the mews and the back door than to sit on the front steps and wait politely for somebody to unchain the front door.

Meanwhile he was doggedly docile; his huge house, facing the wintry park midway between the squat palaces of the wealthy pioneers and the outer hundreds, remained magnificently empty save for certain afternoon conferences of very solemn men, fellow directors and associates in business and financial matters—save for the periodical presence of the Mortimers: a mansion immense and shadowy, haunted by relays of yawning, livened servants, half stupefied under the vast silence of the twilit splendour. He was patient, not only because he was told to be, but also because he had nothing better to do. Society stared at him as blankly as the Mountain confronted Mahomet. But the stubborn patience of the man was itself a strain on the Mountain; he was aware of that, and he waited for it to come to him. As yet, however, he could detect no symptoms of mobility in the Mountain.

“Things are moving all the same,” said Mortimer, as he entered the reading room of the Saddle Club. “Quarrier and Belwether have listened a damned sight more respectfully to me since they read that column about you and the bishops and that chapel business.”

Plank turned his heavy head with a disturbed glance around the room; for he always dreaded Mortimer’s indiscretions of speech—was afraid of his cynical frankness in the presence of others; even shrank from the brutal bonhomie of the man when alone with him.

“Can’t you be careful?” he said; “there was a man here a moment ago.” He picked up his unfinished letter, folded and pocketed it, touched an electric bell, and when a servant came, “Take Mr. Mortimer’s order,” he said, supporting his massive head on his huge hands and resting his elbow on the writing-desk.

“I’ve got to cut out this morning bracer,” said Mortimer, eyeing the servant with indecision; but he gave his order nevertheless, and later accepted a cigar; and when the servant had returned and again retired, he half emptied his tall glass, refilled it with mineral water, and, settling back in the padded arm-chair, said: “If I manage this thing as it ought to be managed, you’ll go through by April. What do you think of that?”

Plank’s phlegmatic features flushed. “I’m more obliged to you than I can say,” he began, but Mortimer silenced him with a gesture: “Don’t interrupt. I’m going to put you through The Patroons Club by April. That’s thirty yards through the centre; d’ye see, you dunderheaded Dutchman? It’s solid gain, and it’s our ball. The Lenox will take longer; they’re a ‘holier-than-thou’ bunch of nincompoops, and it always horrifies them to have any man elected, no matter who he is. They’d rather die of dry rot than elect anybody; it shocks them to think that any man could have the presumption to be presented. They require the spectacle of fasting and prayer—a view of a candidate seated in sackcloth and ashes in outer darkness. You’ve got to wait for the Lenox, Plank.”

“I am waiting,” said Plank, squaring his massive jaws.

“You’ve got to,” growled Mortimer, emptying his glass aggressively.

Plank looked out of the window, his shrewd blue eyes closing in retrospection.

“Another thing,” continued Mortimer thickly; “the Kemp Ferralls are disposed to be decent. I don’t mean in asking you to meet some intellectual second-raters, but in doing it handsomely. I don’t know whether it’s time yet,” he added, with a sidelong glance at Plank’s stolid face; “I don’t want to push the mourners too hard… Well, I’ll see about it… And if it’s the thing to do, and the time to do it”—he turned on Plank with his boisterous and misleading laugh and clapped him on the shoulder—“it will be done, as sure as snobs are snobs; and that’s the surest thing you ever bet on. Here’s to them!” and he emptied his glass and fell back into his chair, wheezing and sucking at his unlighted cigar.

“I want to say,” began Plank, speaking the more slowly because he was deeply in earnest, “that all this you are doing for me is very handsome of you, Mortimer. I’d like to say—to convey to you something of how I feel about the way you and Mrs. Mortimer—”

“Oh, Leila has done it all.”

“Mrs. Mortimer is very kind, and you have been so, too. I—I wish there was something—some way to—to—”

“To what?” asked Mortimer so bluntly that Plank flushed up and stammered:

“To be—to do a—to show my gratitude.”

“How? You’re scarcely in a position to do anything for us,” said Mortimer, brutally staring him out of countenance.

“I know it,” said Plank, the painful flush deepening.

Mortimer, fussing and growling over his cigar, was nevertheless stealthily intent on the game which had so long absorbed him. His wits, clogged, dulled by excesses, were now aroused to a sort of gross activity through the menace of necessity. At last Plank had given him an opening. He recognised his chance.

“There’s one thing,” he said deliberately, “that I won’t stand for, and that’s any vulgar misconception on your part of my friendship for you. Do you follow me?”

“I don’t misunderstand it,” protested Plank, angry and astonished; “I don’t—”

“—As though,” continued Mortimer menacingly, “I were one of those needy social tipsters, one of those shabby, pandering touts who—”

“For Heaven’s sake, Mortimer, don’t talk like that! I had no intention—”

“—One of those contemptible, parasitic leeches,” persisted Mortimer, getting redder and hoarser, “who live on men like you. Confound you, Plank, what the devil do you mean by it?”

“Mortimer, are you crazy, to talk to me like that?”

“No, I’m not, but you must be! I’ve a mind to drop the whole cursed business! I’ve every inclination to drop it! If you haven’t horse-sense enough—if you haven’t innate delicacy sufficient to keep you from making such a break—”

“I didn’t! It wasn’t a break, Mortimer. I wouldn’t have hurt you—”

“You did hurt me! How can I feel the same again? I never imagined you thought I was that sort of a social mercenary. Why, so little did I dream that you looked on our friendship in that light that I was—on my word of honour!—I was just now on the point of asking you for three or four thousand, to carry me to the month’s end and square my bridge balance.”

“Mortimer, you must take it! You are a fool to think I meant anything by saying I wanted to show my gratitude. Look here; be decent and fair with me. I wouldn’t offer you an affront—would I?—even if I were a cad. I wouldn’t do it now, just when you’re getting things into shape for me. I’m not a fool, anyway. This is in deadly earnest, I tell you, Mortimer, and I’m getting angry about it. You’ve got to show your confidence in me; you’ve got to take what you want from me, as you would from any friend. I resent your failure to do it now, as though you drew a line between me and your intimates. If you’re really my friend, show it!”

There was a pause. A curious and unaccustomed sensation had silenced Mortimer, something almost akin to shame. It astonished him a little. He did not quite understand why, in the very moment of success over this stolid, shrewd young man and his thrifty Dutch instincts, he should feel uncomfortable. Were not his services worth something? Had he not earned at least the right to borrow from this rich man who could afford to pay for what was done for him? Why should he feel ashamed? He had not been treacherous; he really liked the fellow. Why shouldn’t he take his money?

Perhaps Plank had changed, perhaps Siward had; for he found nothing offensive in the bulky young man now—nothing particularly attractive, either, except for a certain simplicity, a certain direct candour in the heavy blue eyes which met his squarely.

“Come in for a cigar when you have a few moments idle,” said Siward slowly.

“It will give me great pleasure,” said Plank, bowing.

And that was all. He followed Fleetwood down the stairs; Wands held their coats, and bowed them out into the falling shadows of the winter twilight.

Siward, sitting beside his window, watched them enter their hansom and drive away up the avenue. A dull flush had settled over his cheeks; the aroma of spirits hung in the air, and he looked across the room at the decanter. Presently he drank some of his tea, but it was lukewarm, and he pushed the cup from him.

The clatter of the cup brought the old butler, who toddled hither and thither, removing trays, pulling chairs into place, fussing and pattering about, until a maid came in noiselessly, bearing a lamp. She pulled down the shades, drew the sad-coloured curtains, went to the mantelpiece and peered at the clock, then brought a wineglass and a spoon to Siward, and measured the dose in silence. He swallowed it, shrugged, permitted her to change the position of his chair and footstool, and nodded thanks and dismissal.

“Gumble, are you there?” he asked carelessly.

The butler entered from the hallway. “Yes, sir.”

“You may leave that decanter.”

But the old servant may have misunderstood, for he only bowed and ambled off downstairs with the decanter, either heedless or deaf to his master’s sharp order to return.

For a while Siward sat there, eyes fixed, scowling into vacancy; then the old, listless, careworn expression returned; he rested one elbow on the window-sill, his worn cheek on his hand, and with the other hand fell to weaving initials with his pencil on the margin of the newspaper lying on the table beside him.

Lamplight brought out sharply the physical change in him—the angular shadows flat under the cheek-bones, the hard, slightly swollen flesh in the bluish shadows around the eyes. The mark of the master-vice was there; its stamp in the swollen, worn-out hollows; its imprint in the fine lines at the corners of his mouth; its sign manual in the faintest relaxation of the under lip, which had not yet become a looseness.

For the last of the Siwards had at last stepped into the highway which his doomed forebears had travelled before him.

“Gumble!” he called irritably.

A quavering voice, an unsteady step, and the old man entered again. “Mr. Stephen, sir?”

“Bring that decanter back. Didn’t you hear me tell you just now?”

“Sir?”

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes, Mr. Stephen, sir.”

There was a silence.

“Gumble!”

“Sir?”

“Are you going to bring that decanter?”

The old butler bowed, and ambled from the room, and for a long while Siward sat sullenly listening and scoring the edges of the paper with his trembling pencil. Then the lead broke short, and he flung it from him and pulled the bell. Wands came this time, a lank, sandy, silent man, grown gray as a rat in the service of the Siwards. He received his master’s orders, and withdrew; and again Siward waited, biting his under lip and tearing bits from the edges of the newspaper with fingers never still; but nobody came with the decanter, and after a while his tense muscles relaxed; something in his very soul seemed to snap, and he sank back in his chair, the hot tears blinding him.

He had got as far as that; moments of self-pity were becoming almost as frequent as scorching intervals of self-contempt.

So they all knew what was the matter with him—they all knew—the doctor, the servants, his friends. Had he not surprised the quick suspicion in Fleetwood’s glance, when he told him he had slipped, and sprained his ankle? What if he had been drunk when he fell—fell on his own doorsteps, carried into the old Siward house by old Siward servants, drunk as his forefathers? It was none of Fleetwood’s business. It was none of the servants’ business. It was nobody’s business except his own. Who the devil were all these people, to pry into his affairs and doctor him and dose him and form secret leagues to disobey him, and hide decanters from him? Why should anybody have the impertinence to meddle with him? Of what concern to them were his vices or his virtues?

The tears dried in his hot eyes; he jerked the old-fashioned bell savagely; and after a long while he heard servants whispering together in the passageway outside his door.

He lay very still in his chair; his hearing had become abnormally acute, but he could not make out what they were saying; and as the dull, intestinal aching grew sharper, parching, searing every strained muscle in throat and chest, he struck the table beside him, and clenched his teeth in the fierce rush of agony that swept him from head to foot, crying out an inarticulate menace on his household. And Dr. Grisby came into the room from the outer shadows of the hall.

He was very small, very meagre, very bald, and clean-shaven, with a face like a nut-cracker; and the brown wig he wore was atrocious, and curled forward over his colourless ears. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles, each glass divided into two lenses; and he stood on tiptoe to look out through the upper lenses on the world, and always bent almost double to use the lower or reading lenses.

Besides that, he affected frilled shirts, and string ties, which nobody had ever seen snugly tied. His loose string tie was the first thing Siward could remember about the doctor; and that the doctor had permitted him to pull it when he had the measles, at the age of six.

“What’s all this racket?” said the little old doctor harshly. “Got colic? Got the toothache? I’m ashamed of you, Stephen, cutting capers and pounding the furniture! Look up! Look at me! Out with your tongue! Well, now, what the devil’s the trouble?”

“You—know,” muttered Siward, abandoning his wrist to the little man, who seated himself beside him. Dr. Grisby scarcely noted the pulse; the delicate pressure had become a strong caress.

“Know what?” he grunted. “How do I know what’s the matter with you? Hey? Now, now, don’t try to explain, Steve; don’t fly off the handle! All right; grant that I do know what’s bothering you; I want to see that ankle first. Here, somebody! Light that gas. Why the mischief don’t you have the house wired for electricity, Stephen? It’s wholesome. Gas isn’t. Lamps are worse, sir. Do as I tell you!” And he went on loquaciously, grumbling and muttering, and never ceasing his talk, while Siward, wincing as the dressing was removed, lay back and closed his eyes.

Half an hour later Gumble appeared, to announce dinner.

“I don’t want any,” said Siward.

“Eat!” said Dr. Grisby harshly.

“I—don’t care to.”

“Eat, I tell you! Do you think I don’t mean what I say?”

So he ate his broth and toast, the doctor curtly declining to join him. He ate hurriedly, closing his eyes in aversion. Even the iced tea was flat and distasteful to him.

And at last he lay back, white and unstrung, the momentarily deadened desperation glimmering under his half-closed eyes. And for a long while Dr. Grisby sat, doubled almost in two, cuddling his bony little knees and studying the patterns in the faded carpet.

“I guess you’d better go, Stephen,” he said at length.

“Up the river—to Mulqueen’s?”

“Yes. Let’s try it, Steve. You’ll be on your feet in two weeks. Then you’d better go—up the river—to Mulqueen’s.”

“I—I’ll go, if you say so. But I can’t go now.”

“I didn’t say go now. I said in two weeks.”

“Perhaps.”

“Will you give me your word?” demanded the doctor sharply.

“No, doctor.”

“Why not?”

“Because I may have to be here on business. There seems to be some sort of crisis coming which I don’t understand.”

“There’s a crisis right here, Steve, which I understand!” snapped Dr. Grisby. “Face it like a man! Face it like a man! You’re sick—to your bones, boy—sick! sick! Fight the fight, Steve! Fight a good fight. There’s a fighting chance; on my soul of honour, there is, Steve, a fighting chance for you! Now! now, boy! Buckle up tight! Tuck up your sword-sleeve! At ‘em, Steve! Give ‘em hell! Oh, my boy, my boy, I know; I know!” The little man’s voice broke, but he steadied it instantly with a snap of his nut-cracker jaws, and scowled on his patient and shook his little withered fist at him.

His patient lay very still in the shadow.

“I want you to go,” said the doctor harshly, “before your self-control goes. Do you understand? I want you to go before your decision is undermined; before you begin to do devious things, sly things, cheating things, slinking things—anything and everything to get at the thing you crave. I’ve given you something to fight with, and you won’t take it faithfully. I’ve given you free rein in tobacco and tea and coffee. I’ve helped you as much as I dare to weather the nights. Now, you help me—do you hear?”

“Yes… I will.”

“You say so; now do it. Do something for yourself. Do anything! If you’re sick of reading—and I don’t blame you, considering the stuff you read—get people down here to see you; get lots of people. Telephone ‘em; you’ve a telephone there, haven’t you? There it is, by your elbow. Use it! Call up people. Talk all the time.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Good! Now, Steve, we know what’s the matter, physically, don’t we? Of course we do! Now, then, what’s the matter mentally?”

“Mentally?” repeated Siward under his breath.

“Yes, mentally. What’s the trouble? Stocks? Bonds? Lawsuits? Love?” the slightest pause, and a narrowing of the gimlet eyes behind the lenses. “Love?” he repeated harshly. “Which is it, boy? They’re all good to let alone.”

“Business,” said Siward. But, being a Siward, he was obliged to add “partly.”

“Business—partly,” repeated the doctor. “What’s the matter with business—partly?”

“I don’t know. There are rumours. Hetherington is pounding us—apparently. That Inter-County crowd is acting ominously, too. There’s something underhand, somewhere.” He bent his head and fell to plucking at the faded brocade on the arm of his chair, muttering to himself, “somewhere, somehow, something underhand. I don’t know what; I really don’t.”

“All right—all right,” said the doctor testily; “let it go at that! There’s treachery, eh? You suspect it? You’re sure of it—as reasonably sure as a gentleman can be of something he is not fashioned to understand? That’s it, is it? All right, sir—all right! Very well—ver-y well. Now, sir, look at me! Business symptoms admitted, what about the ‘partly,’ Stephen?—what about it, eh? What about it?”

But Siward fell silent again.

“Eh? Did you say something? No? Oh, very well, ver-y well, sir.... Perfectly correct, Stephen. You have not earned the right to admit further symptoms. No, sir, you have not earned the right to admit them to anybody, not even to yourself. Nor to—her!”

“Doctor!”

“Sir?”

“I have—admitted them.”

“To yourself, Steve? I’m sorry. You have no right to—yet. I’m sorry—”

“I have admitted them—admitted them—to her.”

“That settles it,” said the doctor grimly, “that clinches it! That locks you to the wheel! That pledges you. The squabble is on, now. It’s your honour that’s engaged now, not your nerves, not your intestines. It’s a good fight—a very good fight, with no chance of losing anything but life. You go up the river to Mulqueen’s. That’s the strategy in this campaign; that’s excellent manoeuvring; that’s good generalship! Eh? Mask your purpose, Steve; make a feint of camping out here under my guns; then suddenly fling your entire force up the Hudson and fortify yourself at Mulqueen’s! Ho, that’ll fix ‘em! That’s going to astonish the enemy!”

His harsh, dry, crackling laughter broke out like the distant rattle of musketry.

The ghost of a smile glimmered in Siward’s haunted eyes, then faded as he leaned forward.

“She has refused me,” he said simply.

The little doctor, after an incredulous stare, began chattering with wrath. “Refused you! Pah! Pooh! That’s nothing! That signifies absolutely nothing! It’s meaningless! It’s a detail. You get well—do you hear? You go and get well; then try it again! Then you’ll see! And if she is an idiot—in the event of her irrational persistence in an incredible and utterly indefensible attitude”—he choked up, then fairly barked at Siward—“take her anyway, sir! Run off with her! Dominate circumstances, sir! take charge of events!… But you can’t do it till you’ve clapped yourself into prison for life.... And God help you if you let yourself escape!”

And after a long while Siward said: “If I should ever marry—and—and—”

“Had children, eh? Is that it? Oh, it is, eh? Well, I say, marry! I say, have children! If you’re a man, you’ll breed men. The chances are they may not inherit what you have. It skips some generations—some, now and then. But if they do, good God! I say it’s better to be born and have a chance to fight than never to come into the arena at all! By winning out, the world learns; by failure, the world is no less wise. The important thing is birth. The main point is to breed—to produce—to reproduce! but not until you stand, sword in hand, and your armed heel on the breast of your prostrate and subconscious self!”

He jumped up and began running about the room with short little bantam steps, talking all the while.

“People say, ‘Shall criminals be allowed to mate and produce young? Shall malefactors be allowed to beget? No!’ And I say no, too. Never so long as they remain criminals and malefactors; so long as the evil in them is in the ascendant. Never, until they are cured. That’s what I say; that’s what I maintain. Crime is a disease; criminals are sick people. No marriage for them until they’re cured; no children for them until they’re well. If they cure themselves, let ‘em marry; let ‘em breed; for then, if their children inherit the inclination, they also inherit the grit to cauterise the malady.”

He produced a huge handkerchief from the tails of his coat, and wiped his damp features and polished his forehead so violently that his wig took a new and jaunty angle.

“I’m talking too much,” he said fretfully; “I’m talking a great deal—all the time—continually. I’ve other patients—several—plenty! Do you think you’re the only man I know who’s trying to disfigure his liver and make spots come out all over inside him? Do you?”

Siward smiled again, a worn, pallid smile.

“I can stand it while you are here, doctor, but when I’m alone it’s—hard. One of those crises is close now. I’ve a bad night ahead—a bad outlook. Couldn’t you—”

“No!”

“Just enough—”

“No, Stephen.”

“—Enough to dull it—just a little? I don’t ask for enough to make me sleep—not even to make me doze. You have your needle; haven’t you, doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Then, just this once—for the last time.”

“No.”

“Why? Are you afraid? You needn’t be, doctor. I don’t care for it except to give me a little respite, a little rest on a night like this. I’m so tired of this ache. If I could only have some sleep, and wake up in good shape, I’d stand a better chance of fighting.... Wait, doctor! Just one moment. I don’t mean to be a coward, but I’ve had a hard fight, and—I’m tired.... If you could see your way to helping me—”

“I dare not help you any more that way.”

“Not this once?”

“Not this once.”

There was a dead silence, broken at last by the doctor with a violent gesture toward the telephone. “Talk to the girl! Why don’t you talk to the girl! If she’s worth a hill o’ beans she’ll help you to hang on. What’s she for, if she isn’t for such moments? Tell her you need her voice; tell her you need her faith in you. Damn central! Talk out in church! Don’t make a goddess of a woman. The men who want to marry her, and can’t, will do that! The nincompoop can always be counted on to deify the commonplace. And she is commonplace. If she isn’t, she’s no good! Commend me to sanity and the commonplace. I take off my hat to it! I honour it. God bless it! Good-night!”

Siward lay still for a long while after the doctor had gone. More than an hour had passed before he slowly sat up and groped for the telephone book, opened it, and searched in a blind, hesitating way until he found the number he was looking for.

He had never telephoned to her; he had never written her except once, in reply to her letter in regard to his mother’s death—that strange, timid, formal letter, in which, grief-stunned as he was, he saw only the formality, and had answered it more formally still. And that was all that had come of the days and nights by that northern sea—a letter and its answer, and silence.

And, thinking of these things, he shut the book wearily, and lay back in the shadow of the faded curtain, closing his sunken eyes.

CHAPTER IX CONFESSIONS

In a city in transition, where yesterday is as dead as a dead century, where those who prepare the old year for burial are already taking the ante-mortem statement of the new, the future fulfils the functions of the present. Time itself is considered merely as a by-product of horse-power, discounted with flippancy as the unavoidable friction clogging the fly-wheel of progress.

Memory, once a fine art, is becoming a lost art in Manhattan.

His world and his city had almost ceased to think of Siward.

For a few weeks men spoke of him in the several clubs of which he had lately been a member—spoke of him always in the past tense; and after a little while spoke of him no more.

In that section of the social system which he had inhabited, his absence on account of his mother’s death being taken for granted, people laid him away in their minds almost as ceremoniously as they had laid away the memory of his mother. Nothing halted because he was not present; nothing was delayed, rearranged, or abandoned because his familiar presence chanced to be missing. There remained only one more place to fill at a cotillion, dinner, or bridge party; only another man for opera box or week’s end; one man the more to be counted on, one more man to be counted out—transferred to the credit of profit and loss, and the ledger closed for the season.

They who remembered him, among those who had not yet lost that old-fashioned art, were very few—a young girl here and there, over whom he had been absent-mindedly sentimental; a débutante or two who had adored him from a distance as a friend of elder sister or brother; here and there an old, old lady to whom he had been considerate, and who perhaps remembered something of the winning charm of the Siwards when the town was young—his father, perhaps, perhaps his grandfather—these thought of him at intervals; the remainder had no leisure to remember even if they had not forgotten how to do it. Several cabmen missed him for a while; now and then a privileged café waiter inquired about him from gay, noisy parties entering some old haunt of his. Mr. Desmond, of art gallery and roulette notoriety, whose business is not to forget, was politely regretful at his absence from certain occult ceremonies which he had at irregular intervals graced with votive offerings. And the list ended there—almost, not quite; for there were two people who had not forgotten Siward: Howard Quarrier and Beverly Plank; and one other, a third, who could not yet forget him if she would—but, as yet, she had not tried very desperately.

The day that Siward left New York to visit everybody’s friend, Mr. Mulqueen, in the country, Plank called on him for the second time in his life, and was presently received in the south drawing-room, the library being limited to an informality and intimacy not for Mr. Plank.

Siward, still lame, and using unskilfully two shiny new crutches, came down the stairs and stumped into the drawing-room, which, in spite of the sombre, clustering curtains, was brightly illuminated by the winter sunshine reflected from the snow in the street. Plank was shocked at the change in him—at the ghost of a voice, listlessly formal; at the thin, nerveless hand offered; startled, so that he forgot his shyness, and retained the bony hand tightly in his, and instinctively laid his other great cushion-like paw over it, holding it imprisoned, unable to speak, unconscious, in the impulse of the moment, of the liberty he permitted himself, and which he had never dreamed of taking with such a man as Siward.

The effect on Siward was composite; his tired voice ceased; surprise, inability to understand tinged with instinctive displeasure, were succeeded by humourous curiosity; and, very slowly it became plain to him that this beefy young man liked him, was naively concerned about him, felt friendly toward him, and was showing it as spontaneously as a child. Because he now understood something of how it is with a man who is in the process of being forgotten, his perceptions were perhaps the finer in these days, and the direct unconsciousness of Plank touched him more heavily than the pair of heavy hands enclosing his.

“I thought I’d come,” began Plank, growing redder and redder as he began to realise the enormity of familiarity committed only on the warrant of impulse. “You don’t look well.”

“It was good of you to think of me,” said Siward. “Come up to the library, if you’ve a few minutes to spare an invalid. Please go first; I’m a trifle lame yet.”

“I—I am sorry,” muttered Plank, “very, very sorry.”

At first, in the library, Plank was awkward and silent, finding nothing to say, and nowhere to dispose of his hands, until Siward gave him a cigar to occupy his fingers. Even then he continued to sit uncomfortably, his bulk balanced on a rickety, spindle-legged chair, which he stubbornly refused to exchange for another, at Siward’s suggestion, out of sheer embarrassment, and with a confused idea that his refusal would somehow ultimately put him at his ease with his surroundings.

Siward, secretly amused, rang for tea, although the hour was early. After a little while, either the toast or the tea appeared to act on Plank as a lingual laxative, for he began suddenly to talk, which is characteristic of bashful men; and Siward gravely helped him on when he floundered and turned shy. After a little, matters went very well with them, and Plank, much more at ease than he had ever dared to hope he could be with Siward, talked and talked; and Siward, his crutches across his knees, lay back in his arm-chair, chatting with that winning informality so becoming to men who are unconscious of their charm.

Watching Plank, it occurred to him gradually that this great, cumbersome creature was not a shrewd, thrifty, self-made and self-finished adult at all; only a big, wistful, lonely boy, without comrades and with nowhere to play. On Plank’s round face there remained no trace of shrewdness, of stubbornness, nothing even of the heavy, saturnine placidity of a dogged man who waits his turn.

Plank spoke of himself after a while, sounding the personal note with tentative timidity. Siward gravely encouraged him, and in a little while the outlines of his crude autobiography appeared, embodying his eventless boyhood in a Pennsylvania town; his career at the high school; the dawning desire for college equipment, satisfied by his father, who owned shares in the promising Deepvale Steel Plank Company; the unhappy years at Harvard—hard years, for he learned with difficulty; solitary years, for he was not sought by those whom he desired to know. Then he ventured to speak of his father’s growing interest in steel; the merging and absorbing of independent plants; his own entry upon the scene on the death of his father; and—the rest—material fortune and prosperity, which, perhaps, might stand substitute as a social sponsor for him; stand, perhaps, for something of what he lacked in himself, which only long residence amid the best, long-formed habits for the best, or a long inheritance of the best could give. Did Siward think so? Was the best beyond his reach? Was it hopeless for such a man as he to try? And why?

The innocent snobbery, the abashed but absolute simplicity of this ponderous pilgrim from the smelting pits clambering upward through the high school of the smoky town, groping laboriously through the chilly halls of Harvard toward the outer breastworks of Manhattan, interested Siward; and he said so in his pleasant way, without offence, and with a smiling question at the end.

“Worth while?” repeated Plank, flushing heavily, “it is worth while to me. I have always desired to be a part of the best that there is in my own country; and the best is here, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” said Siward, still smiling. “The noisiest is here, and some of the best.”

“Which is the best?” inquired Plank naively.

“Why, all plain people, whose education, breeding, and fortune permit them the luxury of thinking, and whose tastes, intelligence, and sanity enable them to express their thoughts. There are such people here, and some of them form a portion of the gaudier and noisier galaxy we call society.”

“That is what I wish to be part of,” said Plank. “Could you tell me what are the requirements?”

“I don’t believe I could, exactly,” said Siward, amused. “With us, the social system, as an established and finished system, has too recently been evolved from outer chaos to be characteristic of anything except the crudity and energy of the chaos from which it emerged. The balance between wealth, intelligence, and breeding has not yet been established—not from lack of wealth or intelligence. The formula has not been announced, that is all.”

“What is the formula?” insisted Plank.

“The formula is the receipt for a real society,” replied Siward, laughing. “At present we have its uncombined ingredients in the raw—noisy wealth and flippant fashion, arrogant intelligence and dowdy breeding—all excellent materials, when filtered and fused in the retort; and many of our test tubes have already precipitated pure metal besides, and our national laboratory is turning out fine alloys. Some day we’ll understand the formula, and we’ll weld the entire mass; and that will be society, Mr. Plank.”

“In the meanwhile,” repeated Plank, unsmiling, “I want to be part of the best we have. I want to be part of the brightness of things. I mean, that I cannot be contented with an imitation.”

“An imitation?”

“Of the best—of what you say is not yet society. I ask no more than your footing among the people of this city. I wish to be able to go where such men as you go; be permitted, asked, desired to be part of what you always have been part of. Is it a great deal I ask? Tell me, Mr. Siward—for I don’t know—is it too much to expect?”

“I don’t think it is a very high ambition,” said Siward, smiling. “What you ask is not very much to ask of life, Mr. Plank.”

“But is there any reason why I may not hope to go where I wish to go?”

“I think it depends upon yourself,” said Siward, “upon your capacity for being, or for making people believe you to be exactly what they require. You ask me whether you may be able to go where you desire; and I answer you that there is no limit to any journey except the sprinting ability of the pilgrim.”

Plank laughed a little, and his squared jaws relaxed; then, after a few moments’ thought:

“It is curious that what you cast away from you so easily, I am waiting for with all the patience I have in me. And yet it is always yours to pick up again whenever you wish; and I may never live to possess it.”

He was so perfectly right that Siward said nothing; in fact, he could have no particular interest or sympathy for a man’s quest of what he himself did not understand the lack of. Those born without a tag unmistakably ticketing them and their positions in the world were perforce ticketed. Siward took it for granted that a man belonged where he was to be met; and all he cared about was to find him civil, whether he happened to be a policeman or a master of fox-hounds.

He was, now that he knew Plank, contented to accept him anywhere he met him; but Plank’s upward evolutions upon the social ladder were of no interest to him, and his naïve snobbery was becoming something of a bore.

So Siward directed the conversation into other channels, and Plank, accepting another cup of tea, became very communicative about his stables and his dogs, and the preservation of game; and after a while, looking up confidently at Siward, he said:

“Do you think it beastly to drive pheasants the way I did at Black Fells? I have heard that you were disgusted.”

“It isn’t my idea of a square deal,” said Siward frankly.

“That settles it, then.”

“But you should not let me interfere with—”

“I’ll take your opinion, and thank you for it. It didn’t seem to me to be the thing; only it’s done over here, you know. The De Coursay’s and the—”

“Yes, I know.... Glad you feel that way about it, Plank. It’s pretty rotten sportsmanship. Don’t you think so?”

“I do. I—would you—I should like to ask you to try some square shooting at the Fells,” stammered Plank, “next season, if you would care to.”

“You’re very good. I should like to, if I were going to shoot at all; but I fancy my shooting days are over, for a while.”

“Over!”

“Business,” nodded Siward, absently grave again. “I see no prospect of my idling for the next year or two.”

“You are in—in Amalgamated Electric, I think,” ventured Plank.

“Very much in,” replied the other frankly. “You’ve read the papers and heard rumours, I suppose?”

“Some. I don’t suppose anybody quite understands the attacks on Amalgamated.”

“I don’t—not yet. Do you?”

Plank sat silent, then his shrewd under lip began to protrude.

“I’m wondering,” he began cautiously, “how much the Algonquin crowd understands about the matter?”

Siward’s troubled eyes were on him as he spoke, watching closely, narrowly.

“I’ve heard that rumour before,” he said.

“So have I,” said Plank, “and it seems incredible.” He looked warily at Siward. “Suppose it is true that the Algonquin Trust Company is godfather to Inter-County. That doesn’t explain why a man should kick his own door down when there’s a bell to ring and servants to let him in—and out again, too.”

CHAPTER X THE SEAMY SIDE

About four o’clock on the following afternoon Mrs. Mortimer’s maid, who had almost finished drying and dressing her mistress’ hair, was called to the door by a persistent knocking, which at first she had been bidden to disregard.

It was Mortimer’s man, desiring to know whether Mrs. Mortimer could receive Mr. Mortimer at once on matters of importance.

“No,” said Leila petulantly. “Tell Mullins to say that I can not see anybody,” and catching a glimpse of the shadowy Mullins dodging about the dusky corridor: “What is the matter? Is Mr. Mortimer ill?”

But Mullins could not say what the matter might be, and he went away, only to return in a few moments bearing a scratchy note from his master, badly blotted and still wet; and Leila, with a shrug of resignation, took the blotched scrawl daintily between thumb and forefinger and unfolded it. Behind her, the maid, twisting up the masses of dark, fragrant hair, read the note very easily over her mistress’ shoulder. It ran, without preliminaries:

“I’m going to talk to you, whether you like it or not. Do you understand that? If you want to know what’s the matter with me you’ll find out fast enough. Fire that French girl out before I arrive.”

She closed the note thoughtfully, folding and double-folding it into a thick wad. The ink had come off, discolouring her finger-tips; she dropped the soiled paper on the floor, and held out her hands, plump fingers spread. And when the maid had finished removing the stains and had repolished the pretty hands, her mistress sipped her chocolate thoughtfully, nibbled a bit of dry toast, then motioned the maid to take the tray and her departure, leaving her the cup.

A few minutes later Mortimer came in, stood a moment blinking around the room, then dropped into a seat, sullen, inert, the folds of his chin crowded out on his collar, his heavy abdomen cradled on his short, thick legs. He had been freshly shaved; linen and clothing were spotless, yet the man looked unclean.

Save for the network of purple veins in his face, there was no colour there, none in his lips; even his flabby hands were the hue of clay.

“Are you ill?” asked his wife coolly.

“No, not very. I’ve got the jumps. What’s that? Tea? Ugh! it’s chocolate. Push it out of sight, will you? I can smell it.”

Leila set the delicate cup on a table behind her.

“What time did you return this morning?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“I don’t know; about five or six. How the devil should I know what time I came in?”

Sitting there before the mirror of her dresser she stole a second glance at his marred features in the glass. The loose mouth, the smeared eyes, the palsy-like tremors that twitched the hands where they tightened on the arms of his chair, became repulsive to the verge of fascination. She tried to look away, but could not.

“You had better see Dr. Grisby,” she managed to say.

“I’d better see you; that’s what I’d better do,” he retorted thickly. “You’ll do all the doctoring I want. And I want it, all right.”

“Very well. What is it?”

He passed his swollen hand across his forehead.

“What is it?” he repeated. “It’s the limit, this time, if you want to know. I’m all in.”

“Roulette?” raising her eyebrows without interest

“Yes, roulette, too. Everything! They got me upstairs at Burbank’s. The game’s crooked! Every box, every case, every wheel, every pack is crooked! crooked! crooked, by God!” he burst out in a fever, struggling to sit upright, his hands always tightening on the arms of the chair. “It’s nothing but a creeping joint, run by a bunch of hand-shakers! I—I’ll—”

Stuttering, choking, stammering imprecations, his hoarse clamour died away after a while. She sat there, head bent, silent, impassive, acquiescent under the physical and mental strain to which she had never become thoroughly hardened. How many such scenes had she witnessed! She could not count them. They differed very little in detail, and not at all in their ultimate object, which was to get what money she had. This was his method of reimbursing himself for his losses.

He made an end to his outburst after a while. Only his dreadful fat breathing now filled the silence; and supposing he had finished, she found her voice with an effort:

“I am sorry. It comes at a bad time, as you know—”

“A bad time!” he broke out violently. “How can it come at any other sort of time? With us, all times are bad. If this is worse than the average it can’t be helped. We are in it for keeps this time!”

“We?”

“Yes, we!” he repeated; but his face had grown ghastly, and his uncertain eyes were fastened on her’s in the mirror.

“What do you mean—exactly?” she asked, turning from the dresser to confront him.

He made no effort to answer; an expression of dull fright was growing on his visage, as though for the first time he had begun to realise what had happened.

She saw it, and her heart quickened, but she spoke disdainfully: “Well, I am ready to listen—as usual. How much do you want?”

He made no sign; his lower lip hung loose; his eyes blinked at her.

“What is it?” she repeated. “What have you been doing? How much have you lost? You can’t have lost very much; we hadn’t much to lose. If you have given your note to any of those gamblers, it is a shame—a shame! Leroy, look at me! You promised me, on your honour, never to do that again. Have you lied, after all the times I have helped you out, stripped myself, denied myself, put off tradesmen, faced down creditors? After all I have done, do you dare come here and ask for more—ask for what I have not got—with not one bill settled, not one servant paid since December—”

“Leila, I—I’ve got—to tell you—”

“What?” she demanded, appalled by the change in his face. If he was overdoing it, he was overdoing it realistically enough.

“I—I’ve used Plank’s cheque!” he mumbled, and moistened his lips with his tongue.

She stared back at him, striving to comprehend. “Plank’s!” she repeated slowly, “Plank’s cheque? What cheque? What do you mean?”

“The one he gave you last night. I’ve used that. Now you know!”

“The one he—But you couldn’t! How could you? It was not filled in.”

“I filled it.”

Her dawning horror was reacting on him, as it always did, like a fierce tonic; and his own courage came back in a sort of sullen desperation.

“You… You are trying to frighten me, Leroy,” she stammered. “You are trying to make me do something—give you what you want—force me to give you what you want! You can’t frighten me. The cheque was made out to me—to my order. How could you have used it, if I had not indorsed it?”

“I indorsed it. Do you understand that!” he said savagely.

“No, I don’t; because, if you did, it’s forgery.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think it is!” he broke in fiercely. “All I’m worried over is what Plank will think. I didn’t mean to do it; I didn’t dream of doing it; but when Burbank cleaned me up I fished about, and that cursed cheque came tumbling out!”

In the rising excitement of self-defence the colour was coming back into his battered face; he sat up straighter in his chair, and, grasping the upholstered arms, leaned forward, speaking more distinctly and with increasing vigour and anger:

“When I saw that cheque in my hands I thought I’d use it temporarily—merely as moral collateral to flash at Burbank—something to back my I. O. U.‘s. So I filled it in.”

“For how much?” she asked, not daring to believe him; but he ignored the question and went on: “I filled it and indorsed it, and—”

“How could you indorse it?” she interrupted coolly, now unconvinced again and suspicious.

“I’ll tell you if you’ll stop that fool tongue a moment. The cheque was made to ‘L. Mortimer,’ wasn’t it? So I wrote ‘L. Mortimer’ on the back. Now do you know? If you are L. Mortimer, so am I. Leila begins with L; so does Leroy, doesn’t it? I didn’t imitate your two-words-to-a-page autograph. I put my own fist to a cheque made out to one L. Mortimer; and I don’t care what you think about it as long as Plank can stand it. Now put up your nose and howl, if you like.”

But under her sudden pallor he was taking fright again, and he began to bolster up his courage with bluster and noise, as usual:

“Howl all you like!” he jeered. “It won’t alter matters or square accounts with Plank. What are you staring at? Do you suppose I’m not sorry? Do you fancy I don’t know what a fool I’ve been? What are you turning white for? What in hell—”

“How much have you—” She choked, then, resolutely: “How much have you—taken?”

“Taken!” he broke out, with an oath. “What do you mean? I’ve borrowed about twenty thousand dollars. Now yelp! Eh? What?—no yelps? Probably some weeps, then. Turn ‘em on and run dry; I’ll wait.” And he managed to cross one bulky leg over the other and lean back, affecting resignation, while Leila, bolt upright in her low chair, every curved outline rigid under the flowing, silken wrap, stared at him as though stunned.

“Well, we’re good for it, aren’t we?” he said threateningly. “If he’s going to turn ugly about it, here’s the house.”

“My—house?”

“Yes, your house! I suppose you’d rather raise something on the house than have the thing come out in the papers.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, staring into his bloodshot eyes.

“Yes, I do. I’m damn sure of it!”

“You are wrong.”

“You mean that you are not inclined to stand by me?” he demanded.

“Yes, I mean that.”

“You don’t intend to help me out?”

“I do not intend to—not this time.”

He began to show his big teeth, and that nervous snickering “tick” twitched his upper lip.

“How about the courts?” he sneered. “Do you want to figure in them with Plank?”

“I don’t want to,” she said steadily, “but you can not frighten me any more by that threat.”

“Oh! Can’t frighten you! Perhaps you think you’ll marry Plank when I get a decree? Do you? Well, you won’t for several reasons; first, because I’ll name other corespondents and that will make Plank sick; second, because Plank wants to marry somebody else and I’m able to assist him. So where do you come out in the shuffle?”

“I don’t know,” she said, under her breath, and rested her head against the back of the chair, as though suddenly tired.

“Well, I know. You’ll come out smirched, and you know it,” said Mortimer, gazing intently at her. “Look here, Leila: I didn’t come here to threaten you. I’m no black-mailer; I’m no criminal. I’m simply a decent sort of a man, who is pretty badly scared over what he’s done in a moment of temptation. You know I had no thought of anything except to borrow enough on my I. O. U.‘s to make a killing at Burbank’s. I had to show them something big, so I filled in that cheque, not meaning to use it; and before I knew it I’d indorsed it, and was plunging against it. Then they stacked everything on me—by God, they did! and if I had not been in the condition I was in I’d have stopped payment. But it was too late when I realised what I was against. Leila, you know I’m not a bad man at heart. Can’t you help a fellow?”

His manner, completely changed, had become the resentful and fretful appeal of the victim of plot and circumstance. All the savage brutality had been eliminated; the sneer, the truculent attempts to browbeat, the pitiful swagger, the cynical justification, all were gone. It was really the man himself now, normally scared and repentant; the frightened, overfed pensioner on his wife’s bounty; not the human beast maddened by fear and dissipation, half stunned, half panic-stricken, driven by sheer terror into a rôle which even he shrank from—had shrunk from all these years. For, leech and parasite that he was, Mortimer, however much the dirty acquisition of money might tempt him in theory, had not yet brought himself to the point of attempting the practice, even when in sorest straits and bitterest need. He didn’t want to do it; he wished to get along without it, partly because of native inertia and an aversion to the mental nimbleness that he would be required to show as a law-breaker, partly because the word “black-mail” stood for what he did not dare suggest that he had come to, even to himself. His distaste was genuine; there were certain things which he didn’t want to commit, and extortion was one of them. He could, at a pinch, lie to his wife, or try to scare her into giving him money; he could, when necessary, “borrow” from such men as Plank; but he had never cheated at cards, and he had never attempted to black-mail anybody except his wife—which, of course, was purely a family matter, and concerned nobody else.

Now he was attempting it again, with more sincerity, energy, and determination than he ever before had been forced to display. Even in his most profane violence the rage and panic were only partly real. He was, it is true, genuinely scared, and horribly shaken physically, but he had counted on violence, and he stimulated his own emotions and made them serve him, knowing all the while that in the reaction his ends would be accomplished, as usual. This policy of alternately frightening, dragooning, and supplicating Leila had carried him so far; and though it was true that this was a more serious situation than he had ever yet faced, he was convinced that his wife would pull him out somehow; and how that was to be accomplished he did not very much care, as long as he was pulled out safely.

“What this household requires,” he said, “is economy.” He spread his legs, denting the Aubusson carpet with his boot-heels, and glanced askance at his wife. “Economy,” he repeated, furtively wetting his lips with a heavily coated tongue; “that’s the true solution; economical administration in domestic matters. Retrenchment, Leila! retrenchment! Fewer folderols. I’ve a notion to give up that farm, and stop trying to breed those damfool sheep. They cost a thousand apiece, and do you know what I got for those six I sent to Westbury? Just twelve hundred dollars from Fleetwood—the bargaining shopkeeper! Twelve hundred! Think of that! And along comes Granby and sells a single ram for six thousand plunks!”

Leila’s head was lowered. He could not see her expression, but he had always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him among some men, even among some women.

“We’ll fix it somehow,” he said reassuringly; “don’t you worry, Leila. I’ve confidence in you, little girl! You’ve got me out of sticky messes before, eh? Well, we’ve weathered a few, haven’t we?”

Even the horrible parody on wedded loyalty left her silent, unmoved, dark eyes brooding; and he began to grow a little restless and anxious as his jocularity increased without a movement in either response or aversion from his wife.

“You needn’t be scared, if I’m not,” he said reproachfully. “The house is worth two hundred and fifty thousand, and there’s only fifty on it now. If that fat, Dutch skinflint, Plank, shows his tusks, we can clap on another fifty.” And as she made no sound or movement in reply: “As far as Plank goes, haven’t I done enough for him to square it? What have we ever got out of him, except a thousand or two now and then when the cards went against me? If I took it, it was practically what he owes me. And if he thinks it’s too much—look here, Leila! I’ve a trick up my sleeve. I can make good any time I wish to. I’m in a position to marry that man to the girl he’s mad about—stark, raving mad.”

Mrs. Mortimer slowly raised her head and looked at her husband.

“Leroy, are you mad?”

“I! Not much!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I can make him the husband of the most-run-after girl in New York—if I want to. And at the same time I can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish, purse-proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a director’s table. O-ho! Now you’re staring, Leila. I can do it; I can make good. What are you worrying about? Why, I’ve got a hundred ways to square that cheque, and each separate way is a winner.”

He rose, shook out the creases in his trousers, and adjusted the squat, gold fob which ornamented his protruding waistcoat.

“So you’ll fix it, won’t you, Leila?” he said, apparently oblivious that he had expressed himself as able to adjust the matter in one hundred equally edifying and satisfactory manners.

She did not answer. He lingered a moment at the door, looking back with an ingratiating leer; but she paid him no attention, and he took himself off, confident that her sulkiness could not result in anything unpleasant to anybody except herself.

Nor did it, as far as he could see. The days brought no noticeable change in his wife’s demeanour toward him. Plank, when he met him, was civil enough, though it did occur to Mortimer that he saw very little of Plank in these days.

“Ungrateful beggar!” he thought bitterly; “he’s toadying to Belwether now. I can’t do anything more for him, so I don’t interest him.”

And for a while he wore either a truculent, aggrieved air in Plank’s presence, or the meeker demeanour of a martyr, sentimentally misunderstood, but patient under the affliction.

Then there came a time when he needed money. During the few days he spent circling tentatively and apprehensively around his wife he learned enough to know that there was nothing to be had from her at present. No doubt the money she raised to placate Plank—if she had placated him in that fashion—was a strain on her resources, whatever those resources were.

One thing was certain: Plank had not remained very long in ignorance of the cheque drawn against his balance, if indeed, as Mortimer feared, the bank itself had not communicated with Plank as soon as the cheque was presented for payment. Therefore Plank must have been placated by Leila; how, Mortimer was satisfied not to know.

“Some of these days,” he said to himself, “I’ll catch her tripping, and then there’ll be a decent division of property, or—there’ll be a divorce.” But, as usual, Mortimer found such practices more attractive in theory than in execution, and he was really quite contented to go on as things were going, if somebody would see that he had some money occasionally.

One of these occasions when he needed it was approaching. He had made a “killing” at Desmond’s, and had used the money to stop up the more threatening gaps in the tottering financial fabric known as his “personal accounts.” The fabric would hold for a while, but meantime he needed money to go on with. And Leila evidently had none. He tried everybody except Plank. He had scarcely the impudence to go to Plank just yet; but when, completing the vicious circle, he found his borrowing capacity exhausted, and himself once more face to face with the only hope, Plank, he sat down to consider seriously the possibility of the matter.

Of course Plank owed him more than he could ever pay—the ungrateful parvenu!—but what Plank had thought of that cheque transaction he had never been able to discover.

Somehow or other he must put Plank under fresh obligations; and that might have been possible had not Leila invaded the ground, leaving nothing, now that Plank was secure in club life.

Of course the first thing that presented itself to Mortimer’s consideration was the engineering of Plank’s matrimonial ambitions. Clearly the man had not changed. He was always at Sylvia’s heels; he was seen with her in public; he went to the Belwether house a great deal. No possible doubt but that he was as infatuated as ever. And Quarrier was going to marry her next November—that is, if he, Mortimer, chose to keep silent about a certain midnight episode at Shotover.

It was his inclination, except in theory, to keep silent, partly because of his native inertia and unwillingness to go to the physical and intellectual exertion of being a rascal, partly because he didn’t really want to be a rascal of that sort.

Like a man with premonitions of toothache, who walks down to the dentist’s just to see what the number of the house looks like, and then walks around the block to think it over, so Mortimer, suffering from lack of money, walked round and round the central idea, unable to bring himself to the point.

Several times he called up Quarrier on the ‘phone and made appointments to lunch with him; but these meetings never resulted in anything except luncheons which Mortimer paid for, and matters were becoming desperate.

So one day, after having lunched too freely, he sat down and wrote Plank the following note:

My Dear Beverly: You will remember that I once promised you my aid in securing what, to you, is the dearest object of your existence. I have thought, I have pondered, I have given the matter deep and, I may add without irreverence, prayerful consideration, knowing that the life’s happiness of my closest friend depended on my judgment and wisdom and intelligence to secure for him the opportunity to crown his life’s work by the acquisition of the brightest jewel in the diadem of old Manhattan.

“By George! that’s wickedly good, though!” chuckled Mortimer, refreshing himself with his old stand-by, an apple, quartered, and soaked in very old port. So he sopped his apple and swallowed it, and picked up his pen again, chary of overdoing it.

All I say to you is, be ready! The time is close at hand when you may boldly make your avowal. But be ready! All depends upon the psychological moment. An instant too soon, an instant too late, and you are lost. And she is lost forever. Remember! Be faithful; trust in me, and wait. And the instant I say, “Speak!” pour out your soul, my dear friend, and be certain you are not pouring it out in vain. L. M.

Writing about “pouring out” made him thirsty, so he fortified himself several times, and then, sealing the letter, went out to a letter-box and stood looking at it.

“If I mail it I’m in for it,” he muttered. After a while he put the letter in his pocket and walked on.

“It really doesn’t commit me to anything,” he reflected at last, halting before another letter-box. And as he stood there, hesitating, he glanced up and saw Quarrier entering the Lenox Club. The next moment he flung up the metal box lid, dropped in his letter, and followed Quarrier into the club.

Then events tumbled forward almost without a push from him. Quarrier was alone in a window corner, drinking vichy and milk and glancing over the afternoon papers. He saw Mortimer, and invited him to join him; and Mortimer, being thirsty, took champagne.

“I’ve been trying a new coach,” said Quarrier, in his colourless and rather agreeable voice; and he went on leisurely explaining the points of the new mail-coach which had been built in Paris after plans of his own, while Mortimer gulped glass after glass of chilled wine, which seemed only to make him thirstier. Meantime he listened, really interested, except that his fleshy head was too full of alcohol and his own project to contain additional statistics concerning coaching. Besides, Quarrier, who had never been over-cordial to him, was more so now—enough for Mortimer to venture on a few tentative suggestions of a financial nature; and though, as usual, Quarrier was not responsive, he did not, as usual, get up and go away.

A vague hope stirred Mortimer that it might not be beyond his persuasive tongue to make this chilly, reticent young man into a friend some day—a helpful friend. For Mortimer all his life had trusted to his tongue; and though poorly enough repaid, the few lingual victories remained in his memory, along with an inexhaustible vanity and hope; while his countless defeats and the many occasions on which his tongue had played him false were all forgotten. Besides, he had been drinking more heavily all day than was his custom.

So Quarrier talked, sparingly, about his new coach, about Billy Fleetwood’s renowned string of hunters, about Ashley Spencer’s new stable and his chances at Saratoga with Roy-a-neh, for which he had paid a fabulous sum—the sum and the story probably equally fabulous.

Mortimer’s head was swimming with ideas; he was also talking a great deal, much more than he had intended; he was saying things he had not exactly intended to say, either, in just that way. He realised it, but he went on, unable to stop his own tongue, the noise of which intoxicated him.

Once or twice he thought Quarrier looked at him rather strangely; but he would show Quarrier that he was nobody’s fool; he’d show Quarrier that he was a friend, a good, staunch friend; and that Quarrier had long, long undervalued him. Waves of sentiment spread through and through him; his affection for Quarrier dampened his eyes; and still he blabbed on and on, gazing with brimming eyes upon Quarrier, who sat back silent and attentive as Mortimer circled and blundered nearer and nearer to the crucial point of his destination.

Midway in one of his linguistic ellipses Quarrier leaned forward and caught his arm in a grip of steel. Another man had entered the room. Mortimer, made partly conscious by the pain of Quarrier’s vise-like grip, was sober enough to recognise the impropriety of his continuing aloud the veiled story he had been constructing with what he supposed to be a cunning as matchless as it was impenetrable.

Later he found himself upstairs in a private card-room, facing Quarrier across a table, and still talking and quenching his increasing thirst. He knew now what he was telling Quarrier; he was unveiling the parable; he was stripping metaphor from a carefully precise story. He used Siward’s name presently; presently he used Sylvia’s name. A moment later—or was it an hour?—Quarrier stopped him, coldly, without a trace of passion, demanding corroborative detail. And Mortimer gave it, wagging his head and one fat forefinger as emphasis.

“You saw that?” repeated Quarrier, deadly white of a sudden.

“Yes; an’ I—”

“At three in the morning?”

“Yes; an’ I want—”

“You saw him enter her room?”

“Yes; an’ I wan’ tersay thish to you, because I’m your fr’en’. Don’ wan’ anny fr’en’s mine get fooled on women! See? Thash how I feel. I respec’ the sect! See! Women, lovely women! See? Respec’ sect! Gimme y’han’, buzzer—er—brother Quar’er! Your m’ fr’en’; I’m your fr’en’. I know how it is. Gotter wife m’own. Rotten one. Stingy! Takes money outter m’ pockets. Dam ‘stravagant. Ruin me!… Say, old boy, what about dividend due ‘morrow on Orange County Eclectic—mean Erlextic—no!—mean ‘Letric! Damn!—Wasser masser tongue?”

Opening his fond and foggy eyes, and finding himself alone in the card-room, he began to cry; and a little later, attempting to push the electric button, he fell over a lounge and lay there, his shirt-front soiled with wine, one fat leg trailing to the floor; not the ideal position for slumber, perhaps, but what difference do attitudes and postures and poses make when a gentleman, in the sacred seclusion of his own club, is wooing the drowsy goddess with blasts of votive music through his empurpled nose?

In the meantime, however, he was due to dine at the Belwether house; and when eight o’clock approached, and he had not returned to dress, Leila called up Sylvia Landis on the telephone:

“My dear, Leroy hasn’t returned, and I suppose he’s forgotten about the Bridge. I can bring Mr. Plank, if you like.”

“Very well,” said Sylvia, adding, “if Mr. Plank is there, may I speak to him a moment?”

So Leila rose, setting the receiver on the desk, and Plank came in from the library and settled himself heavily in the chair:

“Did you wish to speak to me, Miss Landis?”

“Is that you, Mr. Plank? Yes; will you dine with us at eight? Bridge afterward, if you don’t mind.”

“Thank you.”

“And, Mr. Plank, you had a note from me this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Please disregard it.”

“If you wish.”

“I do. It is not worth while.” And as Plank made no comment, “I have no further interest in the matter. Do you understand?”

“No,” said Plank doggedly.

“I have nothing more to say. I am sorry. We dine at eight,” concluded Sylvia hurriedly.

Plank hung up the receiver and sat eyeing it for a while in silence. Then his jaw began to harden and his under lip protruded, and he folded his great hands, resting them in front of him on the edge of the desk, brooding there, with eyes narrowing like a sleepy giant at prayer.

When Leila entered, in her evening wraps, she found him there, so immersed in reverie that he failed to hear her; and she stood a moment at the doorway, smiling to herself, thinking how pleasant it was to come down ready for the evening and find him there, as though he belonged where he sat, and was part of the familiar environment.

Recently she had grown younger in a smooth-skinned, full-lipped way—so much younger that it was spoken of. Something girlish in figure, in spontaneity, in the hesitation of her smile, in the lack of that hard, brilliant confidence which once characterised her, had developed; as though she were beginning her début again, reverting to a softness and charm prematurely checked. Truly, her youth’s discoloured blossom, forced by the pale phantom of false spring, was refolding to a bud once more; and the harsher tints of the inclement years were fading.

“Beverly,” she said, “I am ready.”

Plank stood up, dazed from his reverie, and walked toward her. His white tie had become disarranged; she raised her hands, halting him, and pulled it into shape for him, consciously innocent of the intimacy.

“Thank you,” he said. “Do you know how pretty you are this evening?”

“Yes; I was very happy at my mirror. Do you know, the withered years seem to be dropping from me like leaves from an autumn sapling. And I feel young enough to say so poetically.... Did Sylvia try to flirt with you over the wire?”

“Yes, as usual,” he said drily, descending the stairs beside her.

“And really you don’t love her any more?” she queried.

“Scarcely.” His voice was low and rather disagreeable, and she looked up.

“I wish I knew what you and Sylvia find to talk about so frequently, if you’re not in love.”

But he made no answer; and they drove away to the Belwether house, a rather wide, old-style mansion of brown stone, with a stoop dividing its ugly façade, and a series of unnecessary glass doors blockading the vestibule.

CHAPTER XI THE CALL OF THE RAIN

The park was very misty and damp and still that morning

There was a scent of sap and new buds in the February haze, a glimmer of green on southern slopes, a distant bird note, tentative, then confident, rippling from the gray tangle of naked thickets. Here and there in hollows the tips of amber-tinted shoots pricked the soil’s dark surface; here and there in the sparse woodlands a withered leaf still clinging to oak or beech was forced to let go by the swelling bud at its base and fell rustling stiffly in the silence.

Far away on the wooded bridle-path the dulled double gallop of horses sounded, now muffled in a hollow, now louder, jarring the rising ground, nearer, heavier, then suddenly checked to a trample, as Sylvia drew bridle by the reservoir, and, straightening in her saddle, raised her flushed face to the sky.

“Rain?” she asked, as Quarrier, controlling his beautiful, restive horse, ranged up beside her.

“Probably,” he said, scarcely glancing at the sky, where, above the great rectangular lagoons, hundreds of sea-gulls, high in the air, hung flapping, stemming some rushing upper gale unfelt below.

She walked her mount, head lifted, watching the gulls; he followed, uninterested, imperturbable in his finished horsemanship. With horses he always appeared to advantage, whether on the box of break or coach, or silently controlling a spike or tandem, or sitting his saddle in his long-limbed, faultless fashion, maintaining without effort the very essence of form. Here he was at his best, perfectly informal, informally perfect.

They had ridden every day since the weather permitted—even before it permitted—thrashing and slashing through the rotting ice and snow, galloping over the frozen, gravelly loam, amid leafless trees and a winter-smitten perspective—drearier for the distant, eastern glimpse of the avenue’s marble and limestone façades and the vast cliffs of masonry and brick looming above the west and south.

On these daily rides together it was her custom to discuss practical matters concerning their future; and it was his custom to listen until pressed for a suggestion, an assent, or a reply.

Sparing words—cautious, chary of self-commitment, and seldom offering to assume the initiative—this was the surface character which she had come to recognise and acquiesce in; this was Quarrier as he had been developed from her hazy, preconceived ideas of the man before she had finally accepted him at Shotover the autumn before. She also knew him as a methodical man, exacting from others the orderly precision which characterised his own dealings; a man of education and little learning, of attainments and little cultivation, conversant with usages, formal, intensely sensitive to ridicule, incapable of humour.

This was Quarrier as she knew him or had known him. Recently she had, little by little, become aware of an indefinable change in the man. For one thing, he had grown more reticent. At times, too, his reserve seemed to have something almost surly about it; under his cold composure a hint of something concealed, watchful, and very quiet.

Confidences she had never looked for in him nor desired. It appalled her at moments to realise how little they had in common, and that only on the surface—a communion of superficial interest incident to the fulfilment of social duties and the pursuit of pleasure. Beyond that she knew nothing of him, required nothing of him. What was there to know? what to require?

Now that the main line of her route through life had been surveyed and carefully laid out, what was there more for her in life than to set out upon her progress? It was her own road. Presumptive leader already, logical leader from the day she married—leader, in fact, when the ukase, her future legacy, so decreed; it was a royal road laid out for her through the gardens and pleasant places; a road for her alone, and over it she had chosen to pass. What more was there to desire?

From the going of Siward, all that he had aroused in her of love, of intelligence, of wholesome desire and sane curiosity—the intellectual restlessness, the capacity for passion, the renaissance of the simpler innocence—had subsided into the laissez faire of dull quiescence. If in her he had sown, imprudently, subtle, impulsive, unworldly ideas, flowering into sudden brilliancy in the quick magic of his companionship, now those flowers were dead under the inexorable winter of her ambition, where all such things lay; her lonely childhood, with its dimmed visions of mother-love ineffable; the strange splendour of the dreams haunting her adolescence—pageants of bravery and the glitter of the cross, altars of self-denial and pure intent, service and sacrifice and the scorn of wrong; and sometimes, seen dimly with enraptured eyes through dissolving mists—the man! glimmering for an instant, then fading, resolved into the starry void which fashioned him.

Riding there, head bent, her pulses timing the slow pacing of her horse, she presently became aware, without looking up, that Quarrier was watching her. Dreams vanished. A perfectly unreasonable sense of being spied upon, of something stealthy about it all, flashed to her mind and was gone, leaving her grave and perplexed. What a strange suspicion! What an infernal inference! What grotesque train of thought could have culminated in such a sinister idea!

She moved slightly in her saddle to look at him, and for an instant fancied that there was something furtive in his eyes; only for an instant, for he quietly picked up the thread of conversation where she had dropped it, saying that it had been raining for the last ten minutes, and that they might as well turn their horses toward shelter.

“I don’t mind the rain,” she said; “there is a spring-like odour in it. Don’t you notice it?”

“Not particularly,” he replied.

“I was miles away a moment ago,” she said; “years away, I mean—a little girl again, with two stiff yellow braids, trying to pretend that a big arm-chair was my mother’s lap and that I could hear her whispering to me. And there I sat, on a day like this, listening, pretending, cuddled up tight, and looking out at the first rain of the year falling in the backyard. There was an odour like this about it all. Memory, they say, is largely a matter of nose!” She laughed, fearing that he might have thought her sentimental, already regretting the familiarity of thrusting such trivial and personal incidents upon his notice. He was probably too indifferent to comment on it, merely nodding as she ended.

Then, without reason, through and through her shot a shiver of loneliness—utter loneliness and isolation. Without reason, because from him she expected nothing, required nothing, except what he offered—the emotionless reticence of indifference, the composure of perfect formality. What did she want, then—companions? She had them. Friends? She could scarcely escape from them. Intimates? She had only to choose one or a hundred attuned responsive to her every mood, every caprice. Lonely? With the men of New York crowding, shouldering, crushing their way to her feet? Lonely? With the women of New York struggling already for precedence in her favour?—omen significant of the days to come, of those future years diamond-linked in one unbroken, triumphant glitter.

Lonely!

The rain was falling out of the hanging mist, something more than a drizzle now. Quarrier spoke of it again, but she shook her head, walking her horse slowly onward. The train of thought she followed was slower still, winding on and on, leading her into half light and shadow, and in and out through hidden trails she should have known by this time—always on, skirting the objective, circling it through sudden turns. And now she was becoming conscious of the familiar way; now she recognised the quiet, still by-ways of the maze she seemed doomed to wander in forever. But, for that matter, all paths of thought were alike to her, for, sooner or later, all ultimately led to him; and this she was already aware of as a disturbing phenomenon to consider and account for and to provide against—when she had leisure.

“About that Amalgamated Electric Company,” she began without prelude; “would you mind answering a question or two, Howard?”

“You could not understand it,” he said, unpleasantly disturbed by her abruptness.

“As you please. It is quite true I can make nothing of what the newspapers are saying about it, except that Mr. Plank seems to be doing a number of things.”

“Injunctions, and other matters,” observed Quarrier.

“Is anybody going to lose any money in it?”

“Who, for example?”

“Why—you, for example,” she said, laughing.

“I don’t expect to.”

“Then it is going to turn out all right? And Mr. Plank and Kemp Ferrall and the major and—the other people interested, are not going to be almost ruined by the Inter-County people?”

“Do you think a man like Plank is likely to be ruined, as you say, by Amalgamated Electric?”

“No. But Kemp and the major—”

“I think the major is out of danger,” replied Quarrier, looking at her with the new, sullen narrowing of his eyes.

“I am glad of that. Is Kemp—and the others?”

“Ferrall could stand it if matters go wrong. What others?”

“Why—the other owners and stockholders—”

“What others? Who do you mean?”

“Mr. Siward, for example,” she said in an even voice, leaning over to pat her horse’s neck with her gloved hand.

“Mr. Siward must take the chances we all take,” observed Quarrier.

“But, Howard, it would really mean ruin for him if matters went badly. Wouldn’t it?”

“I am not familiar with the details of Mr. Siward’s investments.”

“Nor am I,” she said slowly.

He made no reply.

Lack of emotion in the man beside her she always expected, and therefore this new, sullen note in his voice perplexed her. Too, at times, in his increasing reticence there seemed to be almost a hint of cold effrontery. She felt it now—an indefinite suggestion of displeasure and the power to retaliate; something evasive, watchful, patiently hostile; and, try as she might, she could not rid herself of the discomfort of it, and the perplexity.

She spoke about other things; he responded in his impassive manner. Presently she turned her horse and Quarrier wheeled his, facing a warm, fine rain, slanting thickly from the south.

His silky, Vandyke beard was all wet with the moisture. She noticed it, and unbidden arose the vision of the gun-room at Shotover: Quarrier’s soft beard wet with rain; the phantoms of people passing and repassing; Siward’s straight figure swinging past, silhouetted against the glare of light from the billiard-room. And here she made an effort to efface the vision, shutting her eyes as she rode there in the rain. But clearly against the closed lids she saw the phantoms passing—spectres of dead hours, the wraith of an old happiness masked with youth and wearing Siward’s features!

She must stop it! What was all this crowding in upon her as she rode forward through the driving rain—all this resurgence of ghosts long laid, long exorcised? Had the odour of the rain stolen her senses, awakening memory of childish solitude? Was it that which was drugging her with remembrance of Siward and the rattle of rain in the bay-window above the glass-roofed swimming-pool?

She opened her eyes wide, staring straight ahead into the thickening rain; but her thoughts were loosened now, tuned to the increasing rhythm of her heart: and she saw him seated there, his head buried in his hands as she stole through the dim corridors to her first tryst; saw him look up; saw herself beside him among the cushions; tasted again the rose-petals that her lips had stripped from the blossoms; saw once more the dawn of something in his steady eyes; felt his arm about her, his breath—

Her horse, suddenly spurred, bounded forward through the rain, and she rode breathless, with lips half parted, as if afraid, turning her head to look behind—as though she could outride the phantom clinging to her stirrup, masked like youth, wearing the shadowy eyes of Love!

In her drenched habit, standing before her dressing-room fire, she heard her maid soliciting entrance, and paid no heed, the door being locked—as though a spectre could be bolted out of rooms and houses! Pacing the floor, restless, annoyed, and dismayed by turns, she flung her wet skirt and coat from her, piece by piece, and stood for awhile, like some slender youth in riding breeches and shirt, facing the fire, her fingers resting on her hips.

In the dull light of a rainy noon-day the fire reddened the ceiling, throwing her giant shadow across the wall, where it towered, swaying, like a ghost above her. She caught sight of it over her shoulder, and watched it absently; then gazed into the coals again, her chin dropping on her bared chest.

At her maid’s repeated knocking she turned, her boots and the single spur sparkling in the firelight, and opened the door.

An hour later, fresh from her bath, luxurious in loose and filmy lace, her small, white feet shod with silk, she lunched alone, cradled among the cushions of her couch.

Twice she strolled through the rooms leisurely, summoned by her maid to the telephone; the first time to chat with Grace Ferrall, who, it appeared, was a victim of dissipation, being still abed, and out of humour with the rainy world; the second time to answer in the negative Marion’s suggestion that she motor to Lakewood with her for the week’s end before they closed their house.

Sauntering back again, she sipped her milk and vichy, tasted the strawberries, tasted a big black grape, discarded both, and lay back among the cushions, her naked arms clasped behind her head, and dropping one knee over the other, stared at the ceiling.

Restlessness and caprice ruled her. She seldom smoked, but seeing on the table a stray cigarette of the sort she kept for any intimates who might desire them, she stretched out her arm, scratched a match, and lighted it with a dainty grimace.

Lying there, she tried to make rings; but the smoke only got into her delicate uptilted nose and stung her tongue, and she very soon had enough of her cigarette.

Watching the slow fire consume it between her fingers she lay supine, following the spirals of smoke with inattentive eyes. By-and-by the lengthening ash fell, powdering her, and she threw the cigarette into the grate, flicked the ashes from her bare, round arm, and, clasping her hands under her neck, turned over and closed her eyes.

Sleep?—with every pulse awake and throbbing, every heart-beat sending the young blood rushing out through a body the incarnation of youth and life itself! There was a faint flush in the hollow of each upturned palm, where the fingers like relaxed petals curled inward; a deepening tint in the parted lips; and under the lids, through the dusk of the lashes, a glimmer of blue.

Lying there, veiled gaze conscious of the rose-light which glowed and waned on the ceiling, she awaited the flowing tide on which so often she had embarked and drifted out into that golden gloom serene, where, spirit becalmed, Time and Grief faded, and Desire died out upon the unshadowed sea of dreams.

It is long waiting for the tide when the wakeful heart beats loudly, when the pulses quicken at a memory, and the thousand idle little cellules of the brain, long sealed, long unused, and consigned to the archives of What Is Ended, open one by one, releasing each its own forgotten ghost.

And how can the heart rest, the pulse sleep, startled to a flutter, as one by one the tiny cells unclose unbidden, and the dead remembrance, from its cerements freed, brightens to life?

Words he had used, the idle lifting of his head, the forgotten inflection of his voice, the sunlight on his hair and the sea-wind stirring it; his figure as it turned to move away, the half-caught echo of his laugh, faint, faint!—so that her own ears, throbbing, strained to listen; the countless unimportant moments she had thought unmarked, yet carefully stored up, without her knowledge, in the magic cellules of her brain—all, all were coming back to life, more and more distinct, startlingly clear.

And she lay like one afraid to move, lest her stirring waken a vague something that still slept, something she dared not arouse, dared not meet face to face, even in dreams. An interval—perhaps an hour, perhaps a second—passed, leaving her stranded so close to the shoals of slumber that sleep passed only near enough to awaken her.

The room was very still and dim, but the clamour in her brain unnerved her, and she sat up among the cushions, looking vacantly about her with the blue, confused eyes, the direct, unseeing gaze of a child roused by a half-heard call.

The call—low, imperative, sustained—continued softly persistent against her windows—the summons of the young year’s rain.

She went to the window and stood among the filmy curtains, looking out into the mist; a springlike aroma penetrated the room. She opened the window a little way, and the sweet, virile odour enveloped her.

A thousand longings rose within her; unnumbered wistful questions stirred her, sighing, unanswered.

Aware that her lips were moving unconsciously, she listened to the words forming automatic repetitions of phrases long forgotten:

“And those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the door shall be shut in the streets.”

What was it she was repeating?

“Also they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fear shall be in the way.”

What echo of the past was this?

“And desire shall fail: because—”

Intent, absorbed in retracing the forgotten sequence to its source, she stood, breathing the thickening incense of the rain; and every breath was drawing her backward, nearer, nearer to the source of memory. Ah, the cliff chapel in the rain!—the words of a text mumbled deafly—the yearly service for those who died at sea! And she, seated there in the chapel dusk thinking of him who sat beside her, and how he feared a heavier, stealthier, more secret tide crawling, purring about his feet!

Enfin! Always, always at the end of everything, He! Always, reckoning step by step, backward through time, He! the source, the inception, the meaning of all!

Unmoored at last, her spirit swaying, enveloped in memories of him, she gave herself to the flood—overwhelmed, as tide on tide rose, rushing over her—body, mind, and soul.

She closed her eyes, leaning there heavily amid the cloudy curtains; she moved back into the room and stood staring at space through wet lashes. The hard, dry pulse in her throat hurt her till her under lip, freed from the tyranny of her small teeth, slipped free, quivering rebellion.

She had been walking her room to and fro, to and fro, for a long time before she realised that she had moved at all.

And now, impulse held the helm; a blind, unreasoning desire for relief hurried into action on the wings of impulse.

There was a telephone at her elbow. No need to hunt through lists to find a number she had known so long by heart—the three figures which had reiterated themselves so often, monotonously insistent, slyly persuasive; repeating themselves even in her dreams, so that she awoke at times shivering with the vision in which she had listened to temptation, and had called to him across the wilderness of streets and men.

“Is he at home?”

“—!”

“Would you ask him to come to the telephone?”

“—!”

“Please say to him that it is a—a friend.... Thank you.”

In the throbbing quiet of her room she heard the fingers of the prying rain busy at her windows; the ticking of the small French clock, very dull, very far away—or was it her heart? And, faintly ringing in the receiver pressed against her ear, millions of tiny stirrings, sounds like instruments of an elfin orchestra tuning, echoes as of steps passing through the halls of fairy-land, a faint confusion of human-like tones; then:

“Who is it?”

Her voice left her for an instant; her dry lips made no answer.

“Who is it?” he repeated in his steady, pleasant voice.

“It is I.”

There was absolute silence—so long that it frightened her. But before she could speak again his voice was sounding in her ears, patient, unconvinced:

“I don’t recognise your voice. Who am I speaking to?”

“Sylvia.”

There was no response, and she spoke again:

“I only wanted to say good morning. It is afternoon now; is it too late to say good morning?”

“No. I’m badly rattled. Is it you, Sylvia?”

“Indeed it is. I am in my own room. I—I thought—”

“Yes, I am listening.”

“I don’t know what I did think. Is it necessary for me to telephone you a minute account of the mental processes which ended by my calling you up—out of the vasty deep?”

The old ring in her voice hinting of the laughing undertone, the same trailing sweetness of inflection—could he doubt his senses any longer?

“I know you, now,” he said.

“I should think you might. I should very much like to know how you are—if you don’t mind saying?”

“Thank you. I seem to be all right. Are you all right, Sylvia?”

“Shamefully and outrageously well. What a season, too! Everybody else is in rags—make-up rags! Isn’t that a disagreeable remark? But I’ll come to the paint-brush too, of course.... We all do. Doesn’t anybody ever see you any more?”

She heard him laugh to himself unpleasantly; then: “Does anybody want to?”

“Everybody, of course! You know it. You always were spoiled to death.”

“Yes—to death.”

“Stephen!”

“Yes?”

“Are you becoming cynical?”

“I? Why should I?”

“You are! Stop it! Mercy on us! If that is what is going on in a certain house on lower Fifth Avenue, facing the corner of certain streets, it’s time somebody dropped in to—”

“To—what?”

“To the rescue! I’ve a mind to do it myself. They say you are not well, either.”

“Who says that?”

“Oh, the usual little ornithological cockatrice—or, rather, cantatrice. Don’t ask me, because I won’t tell you. I always tell you too much, anyway. Don’t I?”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do. Everybody spoils you and so do I.”

“Yes—I am rather in that way, I suppose.”

“What way?”

“Oh—spoiled.”

“Stephen!”

“Yes?”

And in a lower voice: “Please don’t say such things—will you?”

“No.”

“Especially to me.”

“Especially to you. No, I won’t, Sylvia.”

And, after a hesitation, she continued sweetly:

“I wonder what you were doing, all alone in that old house of yours, when I called you up?”

“I? Let me see. Oh, I was superintending some packing.”

“Are you going off somewhere?”

“I think so.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, Sylvia.”

“Stephen, how absurd! You must know where you are going! If you mean that you don’t care to tell me—”

“I mean—that.”

“I decline to be snubbed. I’m shameless, and I wish to be informed. Please tell me.”

“I’d rather not tell you.”

“Very well.... Good-bye.... But don’t ring off just yet, Stephen.... Do you think that, sometime, you would care to see—any people—I mean when you begin to go out again?”

“Who, for example?”

“Why, anybody?”

“No; I don’t think I should care to.”

“I wish you would care to. It is not well to let go every tie, drop everybody so completely. No man can do that to advantage. It would be so much better for you to go about a bit—see and be seen, you know; just to meet a few people informally; go to see some pretty girl you know well enough to—to—”

“To what? Make love to?”

“That would he very good for you,” she said.

“But not for the pretty girl. Besides, I’m rather too busy to go about, even if I were inclined to.”

“Are you really busy, Stephen?”

“Yes—waiting. That is the very hardest sort of occupation. And I’m obliged to be on hand every minute.”

“But you said that you were going out of town.”

“Did I? Well, I did not say it, exactly, but I am going to leave town.”

“For very long?” she asked.

“Perhaps. I can’t tell yet.”

“Stephen, before you go—if you are going for a very, very long while—perhaps you will—you might care to say good-bye?”

“Do you think it best?”

“No,” she said innocently; “but if you care—”

“Do you care to have me?”

“Yes, I do.”

There was a silence; and when his voice sounded again it had altered:

“I do not think you would care to see me, Sylvia. I—they say I am—I have—changed—since my—since a slight illness. I am not over it yet, not cured—not very well yet; and a little tired, you see—a little shaken. I am leaving New York to—to try once more to be cured. I expect to be well—one way or another—”

“Stephen, where are you going? Answer me!”

“I can’t answer you.”

“Is your illness serious?”

“A—it is—it requires some—some care.”

Her fingers tightening around the receiver whitened to the delicate nails under the pressure. Mute, struggling with the mounting impulse, voice and lip unsteady, she still spoke with restraint:

“You say you require care? And what care have you? Who is there with you? Answer me!”

“Why—everybody; the servants. I have care enough.”

“Oh, the servants! Have you a physician to advise you?”

“Certainly—the best in the world. Sylvia, dea—, Sylvia, I didn’t mean to give you an impression—”

“Stephen, I will have you truthful with me! I know perfectly well you are ill. I—if I could only—if there was something, some way—Listen: I am—I am going to do something about it, and I don’t care very much what I do!”

“What sweet nonsense!” he laughed, but his voice was no steadier than hers.

“Will you drive with me?” she asked impulsively, “some afternoon—”

“Sylvia, dear, you don’t really want me to do it. Wait, listen: I—I’ve got to tell you that—that I’m not fit for it. I’ve got to be honest with you; I am not fit, not in physical condition to go out just yet. I’ve really been ill—for weeks. Plank has been very nice to me. I want to get well; I mean to try very hard. But the man you knew—is—changed.”

“Changed?”

“Not in that way!” he said in a slow voice.

“H-how, then?” she stammered, all a-thrill.

“Nerve gone—almost. Going to get it back again, of course. Feel a million times better already for talking with you.”

“Do—does it really help?”

“It’s the only panacea for me,” he said too quickly to consider his words.

“The only one?” she faltered. “Do you mean to say that your trouble—illness—has anything to do with—”

“No, no! I only—”

“Has it, Stephen?”

“No!”

“Because, if I thought—”

“Sylvia, I’m not that sort! You mustn’t talk to me that way. There’s nothing to be sorry for about me. Any man may lose his nerve, and, if he is a man, go after it and get it back again. Every man has a fighting chance. You said it yourself once—that a man mustn’t ask for a fighting chance; he must take it. And I’m going to take it and win out one way or another.”

“What do you mean by ‘another,’ Stephen?”

“I—Nothing. It’s a phrase.”

“What do you mean? Answer me!”

“It’s a phrase,” he said again; “no meaning, you know.”

“Stephen, Mr. Plank says that you are lame.”

“What did he say that for?” demanded Siward wrathfully.

“I asked him. Kemp saw you on crutches at your window. So I asked Mr. Plank, and he said you had discarded your crutches too soon and had fallen and lamed yourself again. Are you able to walk yet?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Outdoors?”

“A—no, not just yet.”

“In other words, you are practically bedridden.”

“No, no! I can get about the room very well.”

“You couldn’t go down-stairs—for an hour’s drive, could you?”

“Can’t manage that for awhile,” he said hastily.

“Oh, the vanity of you, Stephen Siward! the vanity! Ashamed to let me see you when you are not your complete and magnificently attractive self! Silly, I shall see you! I shall drive down on the first sunny morning and sit outside in my victoria until you can’t stand the temptation another instant. I’m going to do it. You cannot stop me; nobody can stop me. I desire to do it, and that is sufficient, I think, for everybody concerned. If the sun is out to-morrow, I shall be out too!… I am so tired of not seeing you! Let central listen! I don’t care. I don’t care what I am saying. I’ve endured it so long—I—There’s no use! I am too tired of it, and I want to see you.... Can’t we see each other without—without—thinking about things that are settled once and for all?”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Then you’d better learn to! Because, if you think I’m going through life without seeing you frequently you are simple! I’ve stood it too long at a time. I won’t go through this sort of thing again! You’d better be amiable; you’d better be civil to me, or—or—nobody on earth can tell what will happen! The idea of you telling me you had lost your nerve! You’ve got to get it back—and help me find mine! Yes, it’s gone, gone, gone! I lost it in the rain, somewhere, to-day.... Does the scent of the rain come in at your window?… Do you remember—There! I can’t say it.... Good-bye. Good-bye. You must get well and I must, too. Good-bye.”

The fruit of her imprudence was happiness—an excited happiness, which lasted for a day. The rain lasted, too, for another day, then turned to snow, choking the city with such a fall as had not been seen since the great blizzard—blocking avenues, barricading cross-streets, burying squares and circles and parks, and still falling, drifting, whirling like wind-whipped smoke from cornice and roof-top. The electric cars halted; even the great snow-ploughs roared impotent amid the snowy wastes; waggons floundered into cross-streets and stuck until dug out; and everywhere, in the thickening obscurity, battalions of emergency men with pick and shovel struggled with the drifts in Fifth Avenue and Broadway. Then the storm ended at daybreak.

All day long squadrons of white gulls wheeled and sailed in the sky above the snowy expanse of park where the great, rectangular sheets of water glimmered black in their white setting. As she sat at her desk she could see them drifting into and out of the gray squares of sky framed by her window-panes. Two days ago she had seen them stemming the sky blasts, heralding the coming of unfelt tempests, flapping steadily through the fragrant rain. Now, the false phantom which had mimicked spring turned on the world the glassy glare of winter, stupefying hope, stunning desire, clogging the life essence in all young, living things. The first vague summons, the restlessness of awakening aspiration, the first delicate, indrawn breath, were stilled to deathly immobility.